Bud the Teacher

    I guess it’d be a good thing if I slapped together a few of my best posts and put them on a page for teachers.  Then, I’d probably let everyone know that I’ve created a great new resource for teachers, one with an exclusive newsletter and very special stuff, stuff that I’ve collected from other places and put here, in this one special place.  Then, I could spend some money on teachers and bring them together to look at all the stuff that I created relabeled just for them.  They’d probably go nuts about that.  You know how we teachers like free stuff.
    That’d be pretty cool, huh?
      Seriously, though.  There’s always someone trying to make a dollar off of a teacher or a classroom.  Sometimes that’s an okay thing, because they’ve got a product that helps me do something that I want to do.  Other times, that’s no good, because they’re poor salespeople — they want to sell me something that I don’t really need, or won’t actually do something for the benefit of my students.
    Google, like lots of other vendors and merchants and innovative-type folks, has created some amazing stuff, and hopefully, will be involved in fascinatingly complex innovations in the future.
    But just because they’ve slapped "for teachers" on their cool stuff doesn’t suddenly mean that they’ve created vast new resources that will help me, or anyone else, do our jobs better.  What they’ve actually done, or so it seems to me, is that they’ve "given permission" for people to start using those tools in the classroom.
    We shouldn’t need permission.  We shouldn’t be so locked into paradigms and routines that when something interesting, fascinating, or just downright useful come along, we wait until we’re told it’s "okay" to use that tool in our schools.
    I’m hopeful, though, that the creation of Google for Educators can eventually lead to a meaningful conversation about how business can help teachers in mutually beneficial ways.  The folks at Discovery Education, when they’re not flinging book bags and projectors at teachers, are doing some interesting and meaningful work.    I don’t mean to pick on these two companies, or set them up as diametrically opposed.  Both have potential, both are selling products.   There are other corporate partnerships that work, too.  Plenty that don’t.   
    Maybe Google for Educators is the next big thing.  I just haven’t seen it yet.

PS — Bill and Will, aside from rhyming, are two smart folks who aren’t waiting for permission from anyone.  Their conversation about open source vs. corporate creation is wrapped up in my still cold-riddled brain as I think about this topic.
I just couldn’t figure out a witty way to work them into this post.   I’m also thinking of this comment, which I will address as the cold begins to give up brain control:

I checked out your link to I Love
Bees. Have you ever read the book Born to Buy by Juliet Schor. Schor
discusses these marketing campaigns to children which I found
troubling. The wiki you provided said I Love Bees was part of a viral
marketing campaign for Halo 2.

What’s Cathy’s Book trying to sell?

The short answer to Keri’s question is CoverGirl.  The longer answer is whether or not corporate sponsorship that leads to an interesting opportunity for learning is always a bad thing.  The book and some clever, or highly concerning, depending on your personal opinion, has started a bit of a conversation about product placement in books.  A better question is are they really selling us anything at all?  Does placing a product in a book make a meaningful marketing difference?   Does having a corporate connection necessarily make for a "dirty" experience, one that isn’t as good or pure or righteous or holy as one that would involve an open source tool?  I don’t mean to trivialize the question — it’s a really important one that has implications for Google for Educators just as much as it does for any other corporate connection to an educational initiative or vice versa. 
    I don’t know the answers yet, but I intend to speak with my students about it when we meet for book club tomorrow.
    This is definitely first draft thinking.  Be gentle.

    I’ve had a cold all week that’s been slowly taking away my ability to think and to communicate at the same time.  I’ve been striking back as best as I can, but last night, after the very enjoyable fireside chat session with the K12 Online folks, the cold won the battle. 
    I caved and took some cold medicine.  Now, irony of ironies, I can’t sleep, as all of the thinking I was trying to do today was sort of backed up in my brain until now, so I’m learning instead.  So long as there’s no talking, I think my brain can keep up with my typing.  Maybe.
    Thanks to Rick, I spent some time this evening at YouTube.  Here’s a video that pretty much matches our reaction to finding Cathy’s Book on the bookshelf.
    Sean Stewart, one of the authors of Cathy’s Book, has an essay on ARG’s posted at his website on ARG’s.  Since he’s been involved with the artform/genre/mindtrip since the beginning of the artform, I think he counts as an expert.  You should definitely read in its entirety, particularly if you think gaming has a place in schools.
This is a little jumbled, I know, between the cold medicine and the excited synapses going off and fighting for control of my intellect.  Forgive me.  There’s lots of synthesis to do between Stewart’s words and lots of the great conversations going on about how to tell a new story in school.  This might be one of those ways to teach the new story in schools — or I’m mixing my metaphors.  Either way, I blame the virus. 

On the idea of ARG’s not being a new experience, Stewart writes:

By the way, I do NOT assert that the Beast was the first, or greatest,
example of massively multi-player collaborative investigation and
problem solving. Science, as a social activity promoted by the Royal
Society of Newton’s day and persisting to this moment, has a long head
start and a damn fine track record. Not to mention more profound
investigations and way more scandalous gossip.

We just accidentally re-invented Science as pop culture entertainment.

Can you imagine the classroom power of reinventing our content as pop culture entertainment?  Sure, there’s some dangerous ground there — but plenty of potential in there too.
    Feels like the cold’s taking over again — off to rest.  And read.   Before I go, though, I’m curious — how many of you actually dialed the number on the cover (650-266-8233)?  What was your reaction?

    I’m teaching a book club class in the afternoons for students who want to take their independent reading a little further.  We meet twice a week, discuss their reading and generally do book clubbish things, such as share ideas, questions, and, occasionally, chocolate.   There are only two students in the class at the moment, and we’ve been together for nine weeks, so we’re starting to get used to each other as readers and thinkers. 
    We pick the books that we’re reading together, and so it was a pretty normal day when we arrived at a local book store to pick out our next text, as well as some new books for the library that I had ordered.
    Of course, the book we had selected wasn’t in.  But we found something else.
    A student handed me a black, hard cover book, with the words "Cathy’s Book: If found call (650) 266-8233" written with what appeared to be silver marker on the cover.  She asked me what I thought.  On a hunch, I asked her if she had her cell phone with her.  She pulled it from her pocket, at which point I instructed her to dial the number. 
    She was nervous about that, so she asked me to instead. 
    I’m going to interrupt this narrative to ask you to dial that number, so long as it’s reasonably cost-effective for you to do so.  If you’ve a Skype account, it’s probably a free call for you at the moment — go ahead and dial.  I’ll wait. 
    From the moment we heard that message, we were curious.  Then, we opened the book.  Alongside a pretty standard looking book was a pouch full of documents and other stuff: ripped up photographs, a menu, some old letters, and some other odd items.  We shared the find with the other student in the class, dialed the number for her, she took a listen, and we headed to the register with our new read in hand.
    This is an interesting book. 
    Written by one of the creators of  I Love Bees, an early incarnation of an ARG (alternate reality game), Cathy’s Book is a puzzle wrapped inside a book and scattered around lots of voice mail boxes, collections of documents, websites, and .  .  .  well, we’re not sure what else yet.  We just know it’s addictive and contagious.  At least one other student here at school is waiting to read the book, and we’re all reading voraciously; we even met up today during lunch to check in on the progress that we’ve each made.  (All of us had discovered different clues that allowed us to access various hidden puzzles.  We needed each other to make the picture begin to be complete.  VERY COOL.)
    I like the idea of a novel that uses a narrative that exists in lots of places.  I’ve written about this before, but I really, really think there’s potential in these types of stories, stories where we have to access different types of information and begin to make sense of what’s real, what’s relevant, and what’s important to the story. 
    After only a day of reading Cathy’s Book, I’m hooked, as are my students.  The only problem I see with that excitement is that in a week or two, we’re going to need another book that engages us in this way. 
    Got any ideas?

    The K12 Online Conference kicked off this morning, my keynote included.    Lots to see, write, explore and discuss.  Hope to "see" you there, especially at the Fireside chat on Thursday, 5pm Mountain time.

    I’ve been following a group of preservice teachers as they begin to explore both blogging and teaching.  I wonder if you might be willing to hop over and give them a hearty welcome comment or two.  I think they’re beginning to ask some pretty interesting questions for a project they’re working on.  You can find the group via their teacher’s blog.  Look to the sidebar on the right side for the university students’ blogs.
    Sheryl has her preservice teachers’ blogs all glu’d up.  Alex Reid is blogging with preservice folks, too.  Any others? I like following new teachers’ thoughts and questions — both because of the New Voices column I edit for English Journal, and because I constantly fear falling into a rut of poor quality thinking.

    I received a press release in my e-mail on Thursday night, but I ignored it until yesterday.  Here ’tis:

On behalf of the MacArthur Foundation initiative
on digital
media and learning, we invite you, your colleagues, and your students
to join
us in two online forums which will run from Monday, October 23 through
Friday,
Nov. 3rd.

The MacArthur Foundation seeks to create networks
of
interested scholars and practitioners as they move toward a substantial
investment in the area of digital media and learning. Our specific
working
group is identifying consequences of digital media use that might be
unanticipated or unexpected, which we will examine in-depth in a book
of essays
to be completed next year.

We are undertaking two online discussions over the
next two
weeks. The first seeks to explore the
possibilities and limits of using digital media in the K-12 classroom
by
engaging with teachers who face such questions every day, particularly
since
this group is a significant stakeholder in the issue of digital media
and
learning. The conversation is framed
around three questions:

1. “If you were free to use digital media to teach
in any
way you wanted, how would you use it?”
2. “What currently limits your use of digital media in the classroom?”
3. “What has surprised you about you students’ digital media use?"

The second forum is designed to encourage youth to
respond
to ideas being formulated by our researchers. If possible, we’d love to hear from your students.

Responses generated through these forums will
enrich our
research and may be included in our published volume and in other
MacArthur
materials.

To join us, please go to one of our online
discussion forums
at:
For Teachers: http://community.macfound.org/openforum?go=z1082179
For Youth: http://community.macfound.org/openforum?go=z1082180
The first time you visit the site, you’ll need to create
a user name and password (simply click on “Join”); once you register,
you’ll be
directed to one of the forums.

Further background: The
John
D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation recently announced plans to
build the emerging
field of digital media and learning, committing $50 million over five
years to
the effort.  The Foundation will fund
research and innovative projects focused on understanding the impact of
the
widespread use of digital media on our youth and how they learn. See www.macfound.org/digital
for more information.

Please
circulate and/or blog this information as you see fit, with
apologies for any cross-postings, and don’t hesitate to contact me
should you have questions.
 

All best,

Tara McPherson

Editor, volume on Innovative Uses & Unexpected Consequences
Associate Professor, USC School of Cinematic Arts

    Any time folks ask my students to participate in questions that might come back to directly affect them, I’m interested.  The timing on these fora (or it is forums) is also perfect — they’ll be running concurrently with the K12 Online Conference.  This MacArthur initiative is very, very interesting, although a bit confusing to navigate via their collection of sites and whatnot.  I’m trying to understand the implications, but I don’t.  Yet.  (I did, however, discover this interesting Spotlight blog.  Some pretty smart folks writing there, even if I don’t yet grasp why.)
    Tom makes some good suggestions about aims for educators in this endeavor:

I would propose that it should be our goal to extract two things from this initiative:

1. That future grant cycles include some teacher-initiated projects,
   with the initiative providing development and research support;
2. That those projects release any code written under an open source license.

He even offers to help write some software with folks.  I think I’ll definitely need to pay attention to the MacArthur initiative, even though I don’t yet understand what it all means.  Five years and fifty million seems, well, like there might be plenty of opportunities for good things to happen.

    I haven’t watched it yet, and I’m not sure when/if I will, but I thought I’d pass on that Bill Moyers did a PBS special on Wednesday night about net neutrality.  It’s part of a larger series on modern citizenship that looks downright interesting.  All of the series, like other PBS programs, is available online for viewing via stream.

    Had a "first draft thinking" conversation with Dave Cormier yesterday about some of the side conversation/question/criticism around the K12Online Conference.  Specifically, we were discussing a recent post by Stephen Downes, as well as some of our own concerns/questions/observations about the conference.  Since our recording, Stephen has further elaborated on his remarks. 
    The goal of the conversation was to honestly hash out some of those thoughts.  It’s certainly my hope that the discussion both about the conference and how to conference continues in a productive and useful manner. 

      Ever since Gilgamesh, we mere mortal humans have been trying to write ourselves into immortality.  One of the latest attempts is Yahoo’s digital time capsule:

Like everything Yahoo! does, it’s about you – our amazing users. We
think there’s no one better suited to teach future generations what the
world was like in 2006. For 30 days, from October 10 until November 8,
Yahoo! users worldwide can contribute photos, writings, videos, audio –
even drawings – to this electronic anthropology project. This digital
data will be gathered and preserved for historical purposes.

In
addition to submitting your own content, you can view, read, or hear
the images, words, and sounds contributed by users from around the
world.

The "capsule" is visually stunning and easy to navigate.  It’s also quite addictive, in a curious sort of way.  Arranged by category, there are some posts that are begging for the "rest of the story."  Like this one, from the category of hope:

    my wish is to see and hug my daughter Lynda grace Key one last time befor I die, because I have been sick and I am so scared I will die befor I ever get to see her again, and I just want to tell her I love her and give her the biggest hug ever.

Or this, from a teenager:

I’m 17 and I live in Oroville, CA.  Wow, automatically that makes me look like I have nothing to say so let’s just pretend that I said I am 48 and live in Boston mmkay? Haha, kidding. So being a teenager in 2006 is…damn hard. Adults don’t realize what we go through and no, I’m not talking about "peer pressure" or whatever other annoying terms they like to throw out. I have 6 college-level classes a day and then applying to college…worrying about every detail of hair, body, skin….scholarships…And then all that "why can’t he like me?" stuff. Ya know what I mean. It’s hard. Harder than it was for current adults. I hope when we, and our children, are adults we can raise you, our grandchildren and great-grandchildren, while remembering what it’s like to be you. It’ll probably be even harder for you. But hey, at least you’ll probably have worldwide wireless internet by then so you’ll live.

I think I could get lost in this capsule.   I wonder what the reaction will be in a short twenty years or so.   I wonder, too, if I’ll have anything to contribute.  What might you want the world of the near future to know/see/experience/remember?

    Here’s an interesting blog writing activity:

To me, this high level of diverse thought is a direct challenge. It is
a test to see how well we can hold together such fantastic ideas while
all the while knitting closer together this community of writers. So, I
put it to you. Can you find and put the following images together in
one of your own authentic posts and link to all of the images that you
have found to be useful? If you are the first person to post their
scavenger hunt weekly authentic with correct links to each of the
written images that you find, you will have the choice to drop any
missing assignment you like, take home any book that you like from my
bookshelf, or get a gift certificate for a pizza from anywhere you
like. There will be five other prizes for the best scavenger hunt
entries, so don’t feel like you have to rush through. Also, I would
encourage everyone to comment on the posts that they find throughout
this process, just to show the writers how much you appreciate their
contributions to our community.

A brief excerpt, but maybe you get the idea.  Really cool, for several reasons.  There’s an incorporation of past work, encouragement for students to examine each others’ blogs, as well as a challenging creative writing task.  Head over and check out the sample as well as to see what folks come up with.