Why Students Need Access to Web 2.0 and Why Teachers Need to Master It!

A fellow LMS in my district shared some great news with me this week. The National Council for the Social Studies released a position statement on media literacy. Social Studies gets it. Will the other professional organizations be far behind?

Below are some key quotes from the statement. Below these quotes is a link to the site.
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“The 21st century world is media saturated, technologically dependent, and globally connected. We live in a multimedia age where the majority of information people receive comes less often from print sources and more typically from highly constructed visual images, complex sound arrangements, and multiple media formats. The multimedia age requires new skills for accessing, analyzing, evaluating, creating, and distributing messages within a digital, global, and democratic society. The acquisition and application of critical analysis and media production skills are part of what constitutes media literacy. The Internet and the everyday use of social networking technologies, together with the expansive growth of corporate entertainment media and the integration of popular culture, also require us as social studies educators to link participatory media literacy with civic education.”

“These changes in society and the experiences the students bring into the classroom challenge social studies teachers to change both how and what we teach. One reaction is to fear these changes and try to protect our students from things we don’t understand or appreciate. Such an approach is neither helpful nor pedagogically sound. Another response is to take advantage instructionally of the wealth of experiences that young people have making media choices by respecting those choices when consistent with democratic principles.”

“Since young people overly rely upon commercial venues for information, the 21st century social studies teacher should guide students to explore different sources of information such as independent blogs, open source sites, wikis, podcasts, and numerous new resources that offer alternatives to corporate media. Teaching students to think critically about the content and the form of mediated messages is an essential requirement for social studies education in this millennium.”

http://www.socialstudies.org/positions/medialiteracy

BEDA Buddy Episode 3 - Meet Karson

Yay, Yay, It is Karson's Day!!!

Karson is another BEDA Buddy that Maureen Johnson was so awesome in picking for me. MJ likes to do these match making blogs, and I thought they were kind of silly. But, I know now that she really does have a talent for this, at least for friends.

Here is my Top 10 of why Karson is Awesome!

10. Her name ends in the "n" sound. So do all my children. It really is an awesome name. I would like to know how she got it. If I was still having children, I would name my 4th child Karson. It would not matter if I had a boy or a girl (... must find a novena that covers me from having more children, might have jinxed myself).

9. She is on Twitter - @karsonreed - Follow Her Now!

8. She has a blog on a ning site - http://maureenjohnson.ning.com/profile/KarsonReed - Once again, Follow this NOW! You will learn why if you keep reading.

7. She is on Facebook, but you can't be her friend just because you read this, you have to be special like me. I am HER BEDA Buddy and I will only share her with Rafia and Cassandra, so no stalking!

6. Despite the aforementioned #'s 7, 8, and 9, Karson thinks that she is somehow behind the game on this Web 2.0 thing. I mean, seriously, she is a social networking diva! She even does all this stuff on her phone! Egads! woman, what else do you have to do to be high tech??? (wondering... if my iPhone and her Blackberry got together and had 2.0 babies, what would that look like? Thinking my iPhone is the guy, but I could be wrong?)

5. She is a teacher. Future of the world in her hands and what not. 'nuff said!

4. She is a Language Arts Teacher. She knows that reading and writing are the most important things in the world (obviously not money or job security considering her vocational calling).

3. She is a LA teacher for Middle School kids. I teach 10-12 grade. I do not have the cojones to teach students younger than this, especially middle school students. They scare me. Check out "You might teach middle school if..." My personal favorite - You believe "extremely annoying" should have its own box on the report card.

2. She is a Library Media Specialist! She says she "used" to be and is now in a smaller classroom, but really Karson, once you get the initial retina scan, undergo insertion of the "know it all" data chip in your brain, and learn the secret hand shake, there is no leaving. We are watching! And anyway, Batgirl was a librarian (wait a minute, Batgirl kind of looks like Karson... what if...?)



#1. She is a writer and can do the most amazing things with just 55 words. It should not be legal. And she blogs about it! Just puts it out there for the whole world to see. Really, you have got to see this! (I WILL answer your challenge Karson. I am just not as awesome as you with brevity. I have to tell all my dirty secrets in long hand.)

So, you have now met the gang. Twitter, Maureen Johnson, and Providence -- Thanks!


P.S. Karson. It is OK if you correct my grammatical errors. I can handle it.

BEDA 16 - The Seekret to Gruwell's Success?

I read Freedom Writers Diary from the perspective of a teacher in a very large urban(ish) high school who very much desires school reform. I have still not seen the movie.

I can break down, into three categories, the reasons why the students in FWD overcame their often times unbearable living conditions, made education their main priority, learned more than their non-freedom writer peers (even in those in the advanced classes), and made such a splash in the world. Basically, they were given what every young adult needs and deserves from a public education.

#1 - The School Environment

They had a small school environment. Wilson High School could have been the largest school in America, but those students were able to stay with the same group of about 150 students (at least for one class period a day), one willing and able teacher, and several caring adults, for 4 years. Even those who transferred in at a later date benefited immensely from a diverse, socially active, and caring group of peers.

Scheduling like this in a large school is not necessarily an easy thing. Wilson High counselors and building administrators had to be willing to stretch outside of their day to day responsibilities and traditional ways of doing things to make this happen. This means that they had to care enough about those students, and belive in enough in the teacher, to break the status quo.

Field Trips, events, donations, and community involvement were allowed to take place without too much red tape. Public schools today are full of red tape and it can be a deterrent for many over burden teachers to tackle.

Given this type of environment, any student, from any background, with any type of personal hurdle (drug and alcohol addiction, gang involvement, prison record, abusive relationships, language barriers, terminal illness, rape, homelessness, poverty, starvation, etc...) has a very good chance of succeeding in school.


#2 - The Dedicated Educator(s)and other Adults

A teacher, who honestly cared about her students, who had the opportunity to have the same group of students for 4 years, became very much like a family to her. She invested herself in their educational growth and was willing to fight for her students right to an authentic academic and socially aware school experience. She was free of, or ignored, artificial "professional" pressures so that she could communicate with her students in a way they could respect and understand.

Other adults in the community, including parents, public speakers, and business leader, became active stakeholders and philanthropic activists for this group of young adults.

When local teachers and administrators were not supportive of the Ms. Gruwell's methods, or the plans and ideas of her students, district, state, and even national educators took up her cause.

#3 - The curriculum

Here is a very important piece of the equation. The teacher was allowed to decide, in many cases, what literature and writing skills to teach and how to teach her students. She could move away from the decided "norm" and make decisions based on her individual and collective student needs. If she needed to slow down, she could. If she needed to assess differently she was able. If she felt that some traditional lessons or skills were not inherently beneficial to the long term goals of her students, she dropped them.

It didn't appear to me that this teacher felt forced to be a slave to nationally or even state mandated standards, common standardized assessments, or other such academic nonsense. Unfortunately, I see standards treated as the holy grail every day where I teach, and woe to the teacher who does not at least pretend to agree.

Ms. Gruwell's class showed their learning through socially constructed projects, as well as through individual, private, and non assessed writing.

Textbooks were replaced by authentic and good literature that were explored through the students' viewpoint. This included a mix of contemporary YA literature as well as classics that were usually reserved for the AP curriculum.

Just a personal thought here - if more schools would ditch the textbooks and give teachers the time and support to create curriculum from authentic literature and primary sources, schools would save millions a year.

There were exams mentioned in the book, but students found themselves able to respond to the questions without much trouble and all the teens that were mentioned in the book appeared to succeeded in a traditional GPA scale.

** The criticisms of traditional public education.

Many criticisms of this books stem from the statement that this type of learning environment is not possible or (in some cases) not necessary for most high school students. I would disagree with both of these statements. All students can and whould benefit from small school environment, a caring and able teacher, and community support, and if local and state communities decide that this is imporant, it could happen more often.

A database or google search will show you comments from thousands of educators who get discouraged when they read about the personal sacrifices that Erin Gruwell had to make in order to fight for the autonomy to make sound decisions for the learning of her students. I have personally heard administrators, who are not currently in the classroom, and are making large sums of money every year, point to Erin Gruwell and the sacrifices she made as the model for how their educators should live and work. Their mind set seems to be: "why can't other teachers work two jobs, fight with their fellow peers, and sacrifice their family time to make this happen?" I think types of demands would be rare amoung other professionals outside of the classroom.

Would we ever think that a surgeon should work a job at a department store to be able to fund necessary instruments with which to do surgery? Would we ever ask a superintendent to bag groceries so that the senior class would go on college visits?

To these criticisms, I have several responses in the forms of questions:

Why can't our districts and states support a small school environment by hiring more teachers or making decisions for smaller schools?

Why must we have this trend of supermarket schools, where everyone has to know everything, and we as teachers feel forced or compelled to base our methods on political initiatives that require us to machine gun fire knowledge at students for 50 minutes, 7 times week?

Why do we track and move students who can't learn in this type of environment to lower level, "non essential" or sub-standard classes as if they, the students, are the problem and not the system we as a society have created?

Why is a lack of funding always the party line for the lack of consistency in good research based academic programs when we see more and more high paid administrators and consultants being hired?

Why do politicians force schools to adhere to an economic formula that allows for millions to be spent on on big gyms, sports stadiums, textbooks, non essential staffing, and fancy architecture while ensuring that teachers are cut every year, class sizes are larger, and school library and classroom budgets are slashed?

Why do we expect more out of our teachers in terms of professional education and licensing, class sizes, assessment, dicipline, and number of courses taught, when more and more local control over what is taught in the classroom is taken away?

Why do our professional associations fight for trivial things and not concentrate time and funding by encouraging and protecting teachers like Erin Gruwell (of which there are hundreds in every school district)?

Why are socially aware and responsible teachers (like Ms. Gruwell) forced to fight tooth and nail for the right to teach their students in a non traditional way, spend all of their personal and family time (to the determent of their own families), and spend so much of their own hard earned income to help their students succeed?

If classroom environments, and curriculum development, like I read about in Room 203 were the accepted "best practice", then wouldn't there be fewer personal hardships exptect out of teachers who demand the right to use better and more effective methods?

Why are the students in Advanced Placement or who are severally learning disabled permitted to be blessed with a small school environment when research and experience says this is the best way to educate all young people?

How can educators, politicians, and the American public except that 50% to 75% of students in any given school are not worthy of the benefits of a small school environment?

I would like to see these questions answered without one financial or economic excuse given. In real life, we as individuals and as a collective society find and spend money based on what is most important to us. Maybe we need to reassess our priorities?

Textbooks Must Die

Good BEDA #9 Afternoon and Happy Thursday!

Today I received another timely link from edutopia.com about textbooks, so I am dragging this issue through the mud one more time.

From me to you for your reading pleasure: "the dysfunctional world of textbooks," a $4.3 BILLION per year industry.

Couldn't schools help stimulate the economy in other ways that are better for learning??? http://www.edutopia.org/textbook-publishing-controversy

My ideas: More authentic literature/media for libraries and classrooms, plus hardware, software and Internet connectivity for online learning environments. Add a healthy dollop of time for professional collaboration and development. Of course this one fix everything but would help get public schools on the right track.

Thoughts? Anyone out there (crickets chirping...) I would love to hear what you think.

A Pox On Textbooks

BEDA 6 - Things I Would Change #1

If I were princess of my own school, what would I do differently?

Textbooks would never be ordered.

They are big, bulky, expensive, and in my opinion full of very biased and incomplete information. And even when textbooks are digital, the content is still so watered down from political and economic pressures that they are less valid than normal tertiary reference sources.

Here is one example of the lack of breadth and depth of textbooks. My colleague and I recently did a presentation on non textbook print digital resources for the social studies curriculum. We ran a quick discussion of the Japanese Internment during WWII. We had letters, pictures, signs, and interview, and a scanned image of the actual order signed by the president to move citizens into these work camps. It took me about one hour to gather all of these sources. Everyone got to choose one piece of information to review for 5 minutes. Then we discussed it in a large group setting for another 15 minutes. Everyone learned something and there were some emotional discussions. When I asked the teachers who much space the textbooks devoted to this subject, I was told "less than a whole paragraph and one tiny picture." BTW - we have many students in our school with Japanese heritage.

School districts spend millions of dollars per year on textbooks, and I per school district. I am not exaggerating. This money, at least in Indiana, comes from one of two places.

The first thing schools do is bill the families for these texts. Most call this book rental. School fees are getting really, really expensive. My daughter, who is in High School, brought home her book rental last August and the cost was almost $300. At about the same time, my mother just happened to give me some documents from my high school days in the late 80's. There was a receipt for book rental that amounted to $35. Book rental fees included some technology funds and other "disposable" fees as well (for toner, printer paper, and some supplies), but most of that money goes to pay for textbooks. Textbooks that I believe are worse than a lot of the free information on the web.

Unfortunately not every family can afford to pay their school fees every year. Our family is firmly on the middle class scaffold, but that $300 fee was a punch in the gut of our budget. So, what happens is that many, many families just do not pay these fees, ever. When $300 is all you have for food or day care, or your light bill..., well priorities are priorities.

What then happens is that the schools encourage students fill out forms for financial aid (free and reduced lunch as we call it) from the state to supplement what they cannot pay, or schools just don't get money for a student, period. If students do not complete the application for aid, or are deemed to be financially able to pay, some schools will send parents or guardians to a collections agency. Mostly that money is not recovered and if it is, the attorneys get a big chunk off the top. So schools in poor areas take a loss every year on textbook fees, and somehow in Indiana our property taxes or other state/local funds need to make up the difference.

No matter how much money schools recover (or not) for book fees, the publishers always paid. Of course they do, they are for profit organizations. They are in the business of making money, not in educating children. This, IMHO, is a huge conflict of interest. Not because publishers and authors of original work don't deserved to be paid. It is a conflict because these companies know that their client base (students) is basically unable to make their own choice for purchase because they are captive to a compulsory system that requires them (or the state) to purchase approximately one book per student per subject per year. The average high school students will have lug around more than 40 books in their 4 years in high school. This is a much different scenario then say, students and teachers deciding that it is worth to all read Elie Wiesel's, Night. This book was not written primarily for the purpose of making money off of schools.

Publishers spend millions on marketing to schools, especially schools in states like Indiana, where the DOE committee adopts a set amount of textbooks on a 5 to 7 year cycle. Schools are expected to choose from the vendors on a list approved by the state. It seems that publishers will do or say just about anything to get their product in front of administrators and teachers. And in some cases their marketing messages are getting downright insulting.

Last semester I was writing a curriculum review for a prepackaged curriculum along with other students in my class. One teacher wrote her review on a software/textbook/testing program that was all nice and shiny and shrink wrapped. Here was their selling point. The "Teacher Proof" curriculum. WT? In my line of work, them's fighten' words. What has our profession come to when a publisher can feel safe make those claims while marketing to the same people they are insulting?

Many states do not have compulsory text book adoptions. I think the ration of adoption states to non-adoptions states is close to 50/50, but I would have to double check this claim, my info is a bit old. Even Indiana is realizing mandatory textbook adoption is a waste of time and money. This year the DOE released a statement about the lack of quality in social studies texts (see: http://thejournal.com/articles/24033). However, still districts have the last word, and many teachers opt for the crutch of textbooks rather than choosing their own curriculum from better sources.

What would I do instead of textbooks?

Teaching and learning would be based on authentic literature, peer reviewed non fiction sources, primary source material and user created content. This would includes print, digital, and multimedia genres. All information collected would be written/produced from a variety of viewpoints (not just the rich white guys of old).

Students would read periodicals, picture books, trade books, short stories, plays, etc... in the original, unabridged form. Often the students would self select reading materials and as they get older and would evaluate the content they use in their learning. However, one of the main roles of the teacher or teacher-librarian would be to keep up with new information, creatively and collaboratively collect and create information, evaluate information for credibility, and then push it out to students, families, and the community.

Instead of purchasing millions of dollars for 6+ to 1 technology (each student has more than 6 books per year), we would invest in that old fashioned sharing technology I still like to call a library. Support your school libraries and there will be thousands of current and quality print and media materials that can physically circulate. Students would receive and create digital content on school provided Netbooks or inexpensive laptops. This isn't a stretch of my imagination. Schools are already doing this.

I would also invest in Internet connectivity for the community to ensure that all students had free and equal access to the same information. But more about that tomorrow...

Change. Blink. You Missed It. Here it Comes Again.

Hey, you. Yeah you. The library hipster drinking that Red Bull and Vodka at the bar. Your School Media program is OLD, OBSOLETE, OUT DATED, and INEFFECTIVE! Yep, you blinked, and one nanosecond later, you are reduced to the 21st Century equivalent of the bunhead herding teens out of the restricted section while book-talking the merits of the new Nancy Drew series.

Many of you who graduated from Library School in the last 10 to 15 years are probably feeling indignant or at least uneasy with this bold statement. You are no doubt thinking something along these lines...

Change? Us? But we are CHANGE incarnate! We are the GC (Generation Change)! WE brought Harry Potter, streaming media, manga, and blogging into the world of the school libraries. WE cast a pox on Donald Rumsfeld for his snide disinterest in the looting of Iraqi libraries and museums (yeah, "Stuff Happens" doesn't it Rumsfeld? People under pressure just "step down" from their jobs too...). WE (hand-and-hand with our bunheaded forerunners to be sure) earned the honorary title of "Radical, Militant Librarians" from the FBI for daring to question the Magnum Opus of the Bush Regime! WE don't shush people! WE even renamed our Libraries and call them Media Centers by golly!

So, how could the "new" generation of teacher-librarians be behind the times already? We are just hitting our stride, right? Wrong. Why?

Simply put: We are part of an outdated organizational structure that has been busy with the job of staying in business instead of effectively serving it's patrons. The Public Schools.

Our society has changed, rapidly. Our teens (and little ones too for my elementary hipsters) are Digital Natives. They come to school because they "have too" not because they "want to" or because they know it is the only way they can "get ahead" and "earn a decent living" someday. Schools are not in harmony with the rest of their social schema. School is a place apart to be tolerated. It does not connect with how they live and what they do in their natural habitat. This isn't about teen angst, rebellion, or coming of age. For the first time in history, we are literally speaking a different language (not just adolescent slang, yo) and living in a different world than our students.

But why? Why is it so hard to make changes that are research based or based on common sense? Don't bother asking the legislators and politicians who hold the purse strings because frankly, they don't know. That would be like asking my hairdresser to recommend the correct dosage of Prozac (that is, if I really needed to take Prozac, and being a teacher, chances are good that I would) and then asking my physician what level of developer would make my hair that lovely shade of strawberry blond (that is, if my hair wasn't naturally that color, and it is, really...).

We should instead ask the academic gurus (teachers, union reps, principals, supers, school boards, School of Ed professors) right? Here are some of the the answers I got when I asked:

- The teachers' union make it too difficult
- Parents would not like it or understand
- We would have to change the way the system works, (or better yet):
- The system can't do that (system being computer networks, scheduling programs, grading software, etc...)
- Teachers are not trained properly and will reject this change
- Our students just can't handle it
- The administrators are uninformed or don't understand the need
- There is not enough funding available
- We have to be very careful about how we spend tax payer money that is available
- and my personal favorite: I don't think we can do this under the current education laws and/or school board approved policies.

Frustrating right? At times, it kind of makes me want to stick my head in the wheels of the machine and be done with it! Well LMS's, times have changes, we missed it, we are still missing it, we have missed that we missed it, we are 1.0 in a 2.0 world, we are pullers not pushers (of info I mean) and we are NOT serving our patrons with the measure of equality they deserve.

Not surprising that over the years, and especially over the last 10, change (or reform if you dare) in public schools has been slow at best, stagnant as a rule, and punitive for students and change agents at worst. I know from experience that to introduce change, I mean real lasting curricular and pedagogical change, you must tirelessly fight the machine. If you are a change agent, you are a cog out of place. You will hopelessly throw everything out of whack if you go messing around with the way things are done and darn it missy/mister, they just can't let you do that! At the very least, not without a written and approved proposal, an action research pilot project, committee discussion, legislative action, and a papal bull!

But what exactly needs to be changed? All this talk of change, but no clear answers, no marching orders, no strategy? If you want to know what needs to be changed and how we can change it, join me for my BEDA installments and I will share with you what I am learning, real time.

But I warn you, if you want to make change my friends, get ready for a fight. Thankfully, the odds are in our favor. You will NEVER find a profession that can organize and defend civil rights like a School of Teacher-Librarians. We helped fight Donny, the FBI, and the Supreme Court, almost simultaneously, and we persevered! We can take on this insignificant institution we call public schools, right? Hum, well, we can always call on Batgirl and the Ninja librarian when we need reinforcements!

Keep reading, writing, and loving it, because you can!

Teachers are Fools! We Should Be In School Today

Today, of all days, teachers and librarians should be in school. But alas, so many of us are out on compulsary Spring Break.

This morning, I have been happily inundated with the most interesting of news, blogs, and tweets, and it is not even 11:00 a.m. Who knew how many ground breaking stories could be unleashed in one day? Much of this news directly relates to teens and their interests. Just think of all the reading, witing, and conversing that would be going on today behind those sacred institutional walls, if only... In less than an hour, I was privilaged to be one of the first (million) people on the pulling end of pushed updates on YA authors, Comics, Video Games, Google Innovations, etc...

For example:

Author Neil Gaiman is in danger of being stripped of his Newbery for The Graveyard Book - did you hear? http://tinyurl.com/conu44

Marvel Comics signs fresh, young, talent. Anyone can aspire to be a Marvel comic artist! - http://is.gd/q2na

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 developers just added a new butt-kicking character! This babe is none other than Aunt May. Could this be the beginning of the end for media discrimination of the elderly! - http://is.gd/q5hN

Google unleashes CADIE (Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity). An online social being that actually learns, you know, like artificial intelligence. And is it ever cute! - http://cadiesingularity.blogspot.com/

YA educators are missing the academic boat load today for sure. Of course we would have to deal with multiple requests for left handed pens, desks and chairs turned upside down and moved about, permanent marker in exchange for dry erase, and books all backwards on the shelves. I, for one, truly believe the pedagogical benefits of teaching on such a great day in history would outweigh these trivial annoyances.

We are YA educators darn it! We should be engaging our student, not lazying around, sipping coffee, contemplating a shower, or deciding for or against wearing our pj's all day. Today is a missed opportunity to teach, a professional crisis.

Are you with me? Then lets start a movement. No Spring Break on April 1st Act of 2009. Go to this form letter where you can write your congress person asking them to bring this bill before the general assembly. Let's put our students education first people!