Part of corporate resistance to experimenting with hands-on activities comes from the difficulty of measuring the value of paying employees to, say, build a go-cart or a radio set while in the office. Yet educators say the benefits, even if intangible, are clear. “All your intelligence isn’t in your brain,” Mr. Burnett says. “You learn through your hands.”

At Stanford, the rediscovery of human hands arose partly from the frustration of engineering, architecture and design professors who realized that their best students had never taken apart a bicycle or built a model airplane. For much the same reason, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology offers a class, “How to Make (Almost) Anything,” which emphasizes learning to use physical tools effectively.

“Students are desperate for hands-on experience,” says Neil Gershenfeld, who teaches the course.

–G. Pascal Zachary, in “Digital Designers Rediscover Their Hands“  NY Times August 17, 2008

At the end of my 7th grade course last year, students asked if they would be building things next year. I sensed that they were yearing for the physical pleasure of working with their hands, and I am too. This year we will get back to Design Tech, for sure. I feel better already.

Image Credit: by andrew_j_w/,
Original at: http://flickr.com/photos/andrew_j_w/2642202581/sizes/s/

“Still, a lot of good work—verifiable, informative, brain-leapingly strange—is being cast out of this paperless, infinitely expandable accordion folder by people who have a narrow, almost grade-schoolish notion of what sort of curiosity an on-line encyclopedia will be able to satisfy in the years to come”

I’m surprised that Baker did not develop the argument further. I want to know if the trend towards exclusionary practices and the speed with which articles are labeled “nonnotable” and earmarked for removal are really the result of schoolish provincialism as he proposes, or if it is something else. Certainly there is a tension between the preponderance of data being added to Wikipedia and the ability of editors to reasonably keep up with their self-described job of shepherding that data and shaping it into reliable information. Is the urge to purge coming out of the fact that the current active editors have little understanding of and/or patience for developing expertise in vastly divergent areas of knowledge that is needed to keep Wikipedia reliable? Baker reports:

In the fall of 2006, groups of editors went around getting rid of articles on webcomic artists—some of the most original and articulate people on the Net. They would tag an article as nonnotable and then crowd in to vote it down. One openly called it the “web-comic articles purge of 2006.

Where, if not in Wikipedia, will such valuable information be aggregated? I’m thinking of attending the NY Wikipedia Meet-Up on March 6th 16th in NYC. See link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC. Any other NYC folks interested in attending?

Image Credit: By robotscience http://www.flickr.com/photos/robotconscience/
Creative Commons: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/

When I am curious about something that has caught my attention, I usually know where to go and I love the journey. I thumb through books, magazines, and newspapers and search the Net. Wikipedia is usually my first stop when seeking information on a concept I don’t get.

How does social networking fit into this scheme? Sometimes I bring up my ideas to my husband, who is a scholar and avid news wonk. Sometimes I share my questions with professional colleagues I know and distant fellow travelers on the Net. Lately I turn to Twitter. Tweets that crawl along the side of my browser often arouse my curiosity to follow up and research more. A few times I have tweeted a query and received guidance from the kindness of strangers and those I know in the face-to-face world.

When do students have the luxury of following their own curiosities? They are shoved from assignment to assignment. My students are in a program of study that requires a portfolio of three “research” papers based on ethical and social issues that arise from IT news. I love reading IT news. Well, it scared me that after two months of teaching the class few had a habit of reading the news. What to do?

I set up a blog and asked them, in their first post to write about what IT issues were bugging them. Their topics ranged from “RFID: Scary Advancements” to “Spoofing” to “Swiping our Info Away” and to questions around encryption security. Next they were asked to go back to their RSS feed readers that they had set up as instructed. It was time to start building the habit of reading the IT news and making connections to it. I told them to find IT news that caught their attention and share their point of view about it in the blog. They did that, and added snippits from the article along with a link back to the original. Blogging the news is a standing weekly assignment that is not formally assessed. There is no grade assigned for the blogs, no mark on their report card. It’s simply a habit that I would like to see them develop. It is sort of taking root. There are hundreds of posts on a myriad of topics.

My next challenge is to twofold: turning them on to how to follow through on further research around their passion in IT developments and how to craft their writing for the readership they desire to attract. You see, like their teacher, they are quite new to the blogisphere. They have not yet fully participated in regularly commenting on other’s blogs. They have not yet developed a following of active readers who participate in their ideas. That’s the next step. But it starts with personal research. I listened to a podcast on Teachers Teaching Teachers, “A Few Sides of the Research Elephant“. Paul Allison of the NYCWP hosts the show and has long been an inspiration to my teaching. He has the luxury of allowing his students to follow their passions through their freewrites. That leads to a course of personal research and rewrites that end up posted in student blogs. It’s a wonderful model. I guess my goal is to spark the place inside my students that allows them to find their passion within the constraints of the content I am obliged to guide them through this year and next. Then, to share with them how to start that journey through books, magazines, newspapers, the Web and making contact with humans who are in the worlds of their research. The Internet has brought all of that to my lap wherever I am–as long as there’s broadband to hook up to. What a wonderful world!

Tags: NYCWP,research,education,writing,k12,ITGS,

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License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License

Tags: NYCWP, reading, education, writing, k12, iEARN

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(http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=232051253&size=l)
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/

• My 11th grade bloggers (Information Technology in a Global Society) will learn to write compelling posts that attract commentaries rather than hit-and-run traffic.
• My 8th graders will adopt blogging and commenting in the elgg as a preferred mode of expression over MySpace banter.
• My 7th graders (have yet to meet them) will engage in an authentic collaboration with their age-mates in Australia (Students of Jo McLeay).
• My mixed-grade after-school YouthCaN group’s wiki will transform into an international collaboration.

As I learn to use the tools to their best advantage, my students will follow. First I need to bring shape to my PLN. Any advice on aggregating everything I read into one easy to reach place?

I have a 30G video iPod with absolutely no music on it. Not sure what that says about me, but I am fond of listening to  select podcasts when I’m on the go.  I regularly listen to a number of IT podcasts. Cranky Geeks and Security Now are two of them that come to mind that I would like to share with my ITGS students. I hesitate because as listen to Security Now this morning I find myself pausing the podcast to Google the key terms discussed. It occurs to me, that’s what I want my students to do. I want them to be active participants in their own education. Oh how they love to ask questions during a mini-lesson. While listening to a podcast they can multi-task as they ask and answer their own questions while listening.

I can tell by classroom demeanor that my ITGS students are keenly interested in IT security. I think they would love the episode of Security Now that I listened to this morning. But would they? How long can someone sustain a interest in listening when there is so much that is new and unfamiliar? Each time Steve Gibson and Leo Leporte introduced a new product or concept in the show I was too often asking myself, “What’s that?”  What keeps me listening is that I Google the terms as I listen, and pause the pundits while I catch up enough to follow the thread of their conversations. Would my students take the time to do that? Would they enjoy it? I’m not sure. So today I made a Trailfire of my searching to be a companion to the podcast. (Trailfire is a mashup tool that allows the web surfer to leave virtual notes in the margins of the webpages she visits and store the trail of notes for later access or to share with others. It even allows a wiki feature to invite others to interject their notes into the “mother” trail.) I will ask my students to listen to the podcast  and follow along with Trailfire. Maybe then they will get hooked on this mode of learning.

Please share your experiences of using podcasts in the classroom.

Image Credits: “RSS + MP3 V.2″ by Alan Joyce
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/everythingdigital/8453832/)
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/

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Tags: trailfire, security, podcast, Security Now, Leo Leporte, Steve Gibson, education, high school, ITGS,

Students are assessed in various ways all through school. Who benefits from those assessments? For five years I have been teaching in the MYP (Middle Years Program) at BSGE, an IB school in NYC. Our method of assessment is criterion referenced. In the MYP there are no external assessments at the end of the course. This year, all that will change for me because starting in September I will be teaching a course in the DP (Diploma Program) called ITGS (Information Technology in a Global Society). ITGS is offered at the IB level (11th and 12th grades) and students will be tested on their understanding at the end of the 2-year cycle. In preparation, I am reviewing the materials from the training session I attended last month. IB provides a report at the end of each testing cycle. An analysis of how students fared on each examination area is provided. By reviewing the lengthy report that digests the results of student performance worldwide, I can get a good idea of the strengths and weaknesses of the previous year’s curriculum–worldwide. This information will guide my planning. If I use this information in planning my course, my students will benefit from last year’s assessments. That is a wonderful thing!

What is lacking in most schools is an analysis of the assessment results. Just as we want our students to take stock of what they are doing well and what they need to do to improve, teachers need to do the same. In New York State, high school students sit for NYS Regents Exams. The score on that exam indicates if a student got enough points to pass or fail. Who benefits from this assessment? Where is the analysis? What are teachers to make of the results?

Photo Credit: Image: "Anu's Piece in the Paper" by indi.ca
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/indi/44243905/)
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

technorati tags:education, k12, assessment, regents, tests, edtech, IT, IB, MYP, BSGE

Students for whom performance is paramount want to look smart even if it means not learning a thing in the process. For them, each task is a challenge to their self-image, and each setback becomes a personal threat. So they pursue only activities at which they’re sure to shine—and avoid the sorts of experiences necessary to grow and flourish in any endeavor. Students with learning goals, on the other hand, take necessary risks and don’t worry about failure because each mistake becomes a chance to learn. Dweck’s insight launched a new field of educational psychology—achievement goal theory. STANFORD Magazine: March/April 2007 > Features > Mind-set Research

What does it take to change their mindset to be goal oriented? And to be able to try to reach that goal? I have been having a frustrating time with one of my 7th grade classes. It seems that there are around half who are able to engage in inquiry learning and sustain their interest in learning when they leave the classroom and work unassisted at home. The other half are not working well in the classroom in small groups and rarely do much quality work at home. Friday I asked the students if they thought that there were some students in the school who were just plain “smart” that they were born with a gift and everything comes easy to them. Many hands went up.

Dweck explains. People with performance goals, she reasoned, think
intelligence is fixed from birth. People with learning goals have a
growth mind-set about intelligence, believing it can be developed.
(Among themselves, psychologists call the growth mind-set an
“incremental theory,” and use the term “entity
theory” for the fixed mind-set.) STANFORD Magazine: March/April 2007 > Features > Mind-set Research

It’s their mind-set that I must change. I must teach them to think differently about their And here I thought I was teaching design technology.

Culture can play a large role in shaping our beliefs, Dweck says. A
college physics teacher recently wrote to Dweck that in India, where
she was educated, there was no notion that you had to be a genius or
even particularly smart to learn physics. “The assumption was
that everyone could do it, and, for the most part, they did.” But
what if you’re raised with a fixed mind-set about
physics—or foreign languages or music? Not to worry: Dweck has
shown that you can change the mind-set itself. STANFORD Magazine: March/April 2007 > Features > Mind-set Research

I have begun giving cues that are about putting in more effort, and trying harder. It sounds so strange to say that because I have unlearned that lingo. In my school (BSGE) we try to make our comments to the students grounded in the specifics of their work. We make a positive statement about what is working, what is going well, with reference to something specific they did. Then, we make one statement that starts something like this: “To reach a higher level of achievement you need to do X.” “X” is never “try harder”; it is always a very specific action they need to take on their next project.

The most dramatic proof comes from a recent study by Dweck and Lisa
Sorich Blackwell of low-achieving seventh graders. All students
participated in sessions on study skills, the brain and the like; in
addition, one group attended a neutral session on memory while the
other learned that intelligence, like a muscle, grows stronger through
exercise. Training students to adopt a growth mind-set about
intelligence had a catalytic effect on motivation and math grades;
students in the control group showed no improvement despite all the
other interventions.

“Study skills and
learning skills are inert until they’re powered by an active
ingredient,” Dweck explains. Students may know how to study, but
won’t want to if they believe their efforts are futile. “If
you target that belief, you can see more benefit than you have any
reason to hope for.” STANFORD Magazine: March/April 2007 > Features > Mind-set Research

Looking forward to reading Dweck’s book. I want to help these children. I’m growing weary from my futile efforts thus far.

technorati tags:education, k12, failure, goals, culture, learning, Dweck, psychology, effort, teched, IB, MYP, BSGE

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Max Matt December 25th 1910-March 23, 2007
A celebration of his life.

In this podcast Max talks to the piano player about his army days at Camp Shelby, Mississippi in February 1941 and his favorite tune, “Blue Moon”. After a brief cut of the tune, Max continues to talk about learning Yiddish at ninety-six and muses about answering an ad in the Yiddish Forward for a mohel in Uganda. This was recorded at a family gathering for Eli Debs’ 70th birthday in 2006. (It is a bit difficult to hear Max over all the sounds of dinner and music, but if you turn up the volume on your computer, you will be fine.)

Max touched many lives in his long journey from the Ukraine to Romania to Montreal to Conneticut. Family and friends are urged to leave comments, memories, and stories in the comment section below.

Max, we’ll miss you.

Listen to podcast by clicking the icon below. (N.B. it is not necessary to have an iPod for listening to podcasts.)

technorati tags:Matt, montreal, Camp Shelby, Yiddish, circumcision, mohel, Jewish, Yiddish Forward, Mississippi