Bud the Teacher

    I’m pretty excited about tomorrow.   Tomorrow, I begin this class:

The K120
Online Conference is an online offering of presentations created by
educators and centered around new applications and new technologies.
It’s a way to address both teachers’ needs as well as the opportunity to
connect to an online network of professionals that can be drawn upon
for future professional development activities.

There will be four
face-to-face sessions of this PST. In between each of these sessions,
participants will be expected to engage two sessions from the
conference, for a minimum of eight face-to-face hours and eight online
conference hours.

Each participant will
write a two-page reflection and keep a log of the sessions attended.
The final face-to-face session will be a facilitated discussion about
what was learned, the benefits of the conference, and the next steps
for those involved in terms of taking their learning back into their
classrooms. This discussion will be recorded and released as a podcast.

I’m excited about the class because it allows me to do two things that I think are pretty important: 
1.  Introduce smart people to new tools and opportunities.
2.  Take our time and do it right.

    I think so many of the professional opportunities that teachers are afforded are races, mere dips of a toe into the waters of potential.  There’s lots to do and not enough time to do it.  Time is a precious, precious resource that is in short supply.  I also think that many of the tools that are influencing my network, and , frankly, me right now, encourage haste and speed and the like.  Twitter, on the short list of my favorite read/write web tools, can be reflective, but perhaps not richly so.  I wrote a tweet the other day that hasn’t left my head.  I was thinking about how busy I’ve been lately – racing from one really interesting project to the next, knowing that the excitement wasn’t a good replacement for the lasting learning that I knew just wasn’t happening for me:

   
      Not much reflection, though – just lots of doing.  That’s not sustainable.  Or worth sustaining.

I want sustainability.  I want reflection.  I think others want it, too.  we don’t learn by racing.  We learn by doing and reflecting and questioning.  It’s a recursive cycle, and one that doesn’t happen enough for me.  I wonder if it’s become too easy to communicate, in some ways.  Do I get so busy communicating that I haven’t bothered to say anything?  (Does that even make sense?)
    Which leads me back to tomorrow.  (Man, I really, really buried the lede in this post, didn’t I?)  Tomorrow, I begin a facilitated, slow and thorough look at the K12Online Conference, both the 2006 and 2007 editions.  Over the next four months, in two hour chunks, I hope to study and learn from the presentations of the last two years.  I want to dig in to the content that I felt whipped by so dang fast in late October when it was released.   This is what the conference invites, as  all the sessions are archived. 
    So we will.  I hope to use the class time as discussion time to talk about the different presentations, as well as an opportunity to think about how these different sessions might offer some ideas for change in our classrooms here in my district.   I’ll be asking participants, on a voluntary basis, to share their favorites with the group in 15 minute "spotlight sessions."  These, I hope, will foster conversation and inquiry into new tools and classroom strategies.
    I’m interested, too, in looking for ways to connect folks from all over to my district’s virtual classroom.  but before I do that, though, I want to meet the class and make sure they’re comfortable with that.  Stay tuned for further developments. 
    If you’ve any advice, or even a "must see" presentation recommendation for these first time K12Online Conference attenders, I’d welcome it in the comments – we’ll share your tips during our first session. 

    About a week ago, Brian posted:

Paul Hamilton  left this comment on my last post:

This week, I did a workshop for
classroom teachers on using blogging in the classroom as one UDL
approach for ALL learners. There were questions about the quality of
posted student writing. So, here are my questions to you. Do you
approve and/or edit every student post? How much editing do you do? How
time consuming is the process? (I notice that you were working at it on
a Friday evening!) Do you have any related tips for teachers who are
holding back out of concerns in this area?

Since I’m not sure about the statute of limitations on blog responses, I’m going to answer now, as I was asked at the end of the post. 

    I’ve run blogs where I approve everything and others where my students had all the control of what got published and when.  I always approved material for our student newspaper (now defunct, sigh), in part because I wanted an opportunity to do revision and editing with each student, and in part because I thought the professional nature of the newspaper made sense for such controls.  When I taught speech via blogs, I was willing to let my students decide what they published and when.  We discussed appropriate behavior as well as that if they weren’t sure about whether or not to publish , they could certainly seek the advice of their fellow students or their teacher.  Since their blogs were more for reporting research than they were for formal presentation, I tended to cut the students some leeway when it came to the "rules."  If it was readable, and approaching formal English (or, if you prefer, "acceptable public voice,"), then I let it go. 
    In two years of blogging with students, I asked one student to change a piece, once, and even he agreed, after re-reading, that he shouldn’t have hit "publish" in the first place – but that he was frustrated when he made the post.
    The time involved with editing is much the same as with not editing.  I think it’s irresponsible for a teacher to require writing and then to not read that writing.  (I don’t mean read every word; teachers, though, should at least skim every post a student makes, for a number of reasons.)  So whether or not a teacher is editing prior to publication, or is reading after publication, the time factor is still there.  I would argue for making the time spent editing a student’s work with a student a learning experience, akin to a writing conference.
     The trick, when editing, is to help the writer to become a better writer – and not to mask their student voice with your own teacher voice.  I struggle with that one every time I work with a student in a conference. I don’t think we should edit every word or sentence for grammar and proper punctuation – but we should attend to egregious errors.  Your own judgment will help you to determine what "egregious" means for your students. 
    I hope this is helpful, even if it’s a bit late.  You asked a great set of questions, Paul.  Thanks, Brian, for allowing me to take a crack at them. 

    I wanted to send out a quick thank you to all the fine people who have taken the time recently to share their greetings and advice to the folks who have been in my sessions on Social Networking lately.  The Twitter ShoutOut ("Say hello to my audience, tweets!") seems to be one of the best all around hooks for helping people to see the potential of a world-wide network.  It’s weird, and kind of wonderful, and something I never would have dreamed of two years ago, but I regularly count on my network, in various forms and permutations, to just be there. 
    I’m humbled by that.  Thank you for helping to teach me and my students and colleagues.  I don’t want to take advantage.  I promise I’ll continue to return the favor.  Isn’t it amazing that we talk to the world, and the world answers back?