Bud the Teacher

I’m writing this morning from the National Writing Project’s web presence working retreat, an event I’ve been fortunate enough to have been involved with as a facilitator since its inception last year.  This is the second time we’ve run the event, which is an attempt to provide some time and structure for teams from writing project sites who wish to think strategically about their web presence.  We’ll spend the weekend thinking through the identity of our respective organizations and what we can do online to both reflect and support that identity and the good work that all of us are trying to do in our various locations around writing and teaching and learning. That means lots of things to lots of people, but there’s plenty of intersection in the general trends.

The event is pretty intense, and, while designed for sites to think about their organizational web presences, is very helpful to me as I think about my personal and professional life online.  One of the big questions that we’re asking people to think about is how their web presences are a reflection of and a lens into their work.  My personal web presence should be like that, too.  But I’m not sure that it is.  I’ve got content spread around the web in a variety of places, everywhere from Flickr to Twitter to this blog to my wiki (which is desperately in need of an update or seven) to my work with other groups and schools and people.  There’s plenty of personal mixed in with the professional, and I think the boundaries between those two areas of my life, never truly separate in “real, offline” life, continue to blur and fade and shift from day to day, week to week, month to year.  (That’s a good thing, I think, for the most part.) How do I, as a blogger and a teacher and a learner and a father and a husband and a citizen, do my best to ensure a consistent presence across the Internet that reflects what I believe to be important?  Just as essential - how do I bring all of that content that sits all over the place into some sort of a coherent whole?  Or do I need to, so long as all that content in all of those places, and others, reflects the message(s) that I want so desperately to convey - that learning and writing and thinking and engaging and passionately working for the benefit of others are essential habits and skills for everyone, regardless of background, culture, or profession?

I think, too, about what “web presence” means.  Having a presence and creating a presence are not necessarily the same thing.  Being and doing aren’t necessarily the same, either.

These are some of my thoughts as I head into a pretty intensive planning process, where, if last year is any indication, I’ll learn as much, and probably a great deal more, than I’m hoping to facilitate.  This summer, I’ll be doing a three-hour session on presence tools, a class of software that are about making one’s presence known in some formal and informal ways, Twitter being one of the tools that I’m most curious about at the moment.  I also would like to explore more about digital identity, a conversation I sort of started here a little while back.  My work this weekend will continue to influence that work.  Lots to learn.  Luckily, I’ve got plenty of smart folks here to learn from and with.  We should all be so lucky.

I read banned books

Originally uploaded by Bud the Teacher

I wonder if there’s a button with the slogan “I surf an unfiltered Internet,” or “I read filtered blogs.” Maybe “I read blocked blogs,” is better - more alliterative.

Along another line, perhaps a button with the message “I’d trust my kids in Al Upton’s classroom,” would be a good slogan, too.
Any graphic artists out there? I’ll buy in bulk.

    A little while back, Dean mentioned a tweet I made that got him thinking.  I’m still thinking - about what’s already out there and what we can learn from it, instead of racing forward to the next new thing in a hurry.  I feel myself skating from content to content and application to application - without enough time to process, to understand.  To learn.  Frustrated with myself, I’m finding myself deep in the archives of bloggers that I trust and respect at the moment, looking for  .  .  .  well, I’m not sure what, but I think it’s important.  I’ve much more to say about that - but in the meantime, here’s a blast from someone else’s past.  I found this line delicious:

I’ve got weblog fever in a bad way, and I know JUST enough about
making them work to make them dangerously intriguing.

The author?  Will Richardson.  August 2002. 

    I always hate being at technology conferences that focus too much on tools and not enough on learning.  I’m pleased that this conference wasn’t one of them.  I attended one "tools focus" session, and that seems like the right ratio for me this conference. 

    Over the past three days, I’ve had some great conversations with folks from my district about tools and strategies and learning and teaching and "21st Century Skills" and lots of other buzzwords and whatnot.  But the big takeaway reminder for me at this conference is the reminder that most of what I want to do with students, and most of what I think the folks that came with me want to do, too, is to promote the progressive ideas of the 19th and 20th Century and (hopefully) the early 21st Century.  Conversations with Chris Lehmann really helped me to re-focus that in my own head (Thanks, Chris!).  We might not say it that way, but really, amidst all of the talk of computers and interactive whiteboards and Internet access, I think we want to create rich spaces full of relevant information for our students and teachers to be able to interact with and contribute to and ask questions of and be in awe of and concern about.  Sometimes, that means using computers.  Other times, it means using paper and pen(cil).  Still others, crayons, or perhaps clay or chemicals.  Or guest speakers.  Or whatever. 
    I think we just want to be able to offer teachers and students and administrators options for how to make their learning goals happen. 
    I was talking with one colleague this morning about textbooks and why we can’t yet get rid of them.  I was having this conversation in whispered tones during a keynote speech, so I wasn’t able to articulate my points as well as I’d like.  Since I know that he’s now a subscriber of this blog (Hi, Jeremy!), as well as a soon-to-be new blog author himself, I thought it would make sense to further elaborate here. 

    I’d like to shut down the textbook flow tomorrow.  Textbooks are un-authentic ways for us to distribute information to teachers and students.  But, rightly or wrongly, they’re the tools that we have.  In our current paradigm (I know - buzzword - but work with me here), they are also the tools that are not considered frivolous or unessential.  In a better paradigm, we would have ubiquitous access to the information streams around us.  We’d have a meaningful 1:1 program for every student.  We’d not have to beg, borrow and steal to provide sufficient bandwidth to all of our classrooms.  But we’re not there.  Yet.
    As a language arts teacher, I preferred to use real-world, authentic texts with my students.  Newspapers, novels, magazines, literature anthologies and many other authentic texts are far better tools for helping students to navigate the information of the human experience, as well as the world of the media and popular culture.  These texts are real and not specifically designed for educational purposes - and I think that’s a good thing.  We need to teach and learn about interacting in the world. 
  Specifically, as I think about providing the most information to students as possible, I think about the Internet.  (I bet that’s no big surprise.)  The Internet is a full-on fire hose of information that I would much rather be using with students.  That information can be authentic, at least more so than a textbook can be. And we can take that information and fiddle with it before, during and after it hits the classroom in ways that maximize the authentic-ness AND the educational value of it.  Our students can and should be a part of this process, too.    1:1 shouldn’t even have to be an argument.  But it is. 

    So when I say that I want to get rid of textbooks, but that I can’t say let’s get rid of them yet, that’s more of what I’m trying to talk about.  We need to provide lots of good raw information to our students so that they can do all of the wonderful things that we want them to do.  Then we need to help them connect to and with that information and each other in some really authentic ways.  But since we can’t provide that information authentically, for too many logistically complex reasons, we’re stuck with textbooks, at best an inefficient information delivery system.  For now.  I hope we can change that soon.  I really don’t believe it’s that hard to do - once we decide we should be doing it.

    I’ve been reading lots of folks lately writing to the effect that this whole read/write web world is not about the tools, it’s about how we use them.  I agree with that notion.  Mostly.
    In some of the conversations I’ve been having recently, I’ve been arguing that, at least at some level, the focus should be on the tools, for a couple of reasons.  One, we need to have a handle on what the tools can do so that we can apply them to our particular teaching and learning situations.  If I don’t know how to publish to the web (or that it’s completely safe for students to do so), then I can’t consider it as a possibility in my classes.   Further, if I don’t know that most wikis won’t allow for same-time multiple edits/editors, then I won’t realize (until it’s too late) that having everyone edit the same piece of text in class is just won’t work. 

  The second reason is a little trickier, but was really brought home to me this week as I was involved in some training on a web-based gradebook. 
    This particular tool, the one that our district provides to teachers as an electronic gradebook, appears to require a letter grade as an output.  What I mean is that, as it’s currently configured, the only possible output for a student grade is a percentage tied to a letter.  While we could tinker with what percentages resulted in what letter, that was all the tinkering that we could do.  So this particular tool (certainly, not a read/write tool, but a technology tool nonetheless) only allows for a particular type of output.  Not using letter grades is not an option with this tool.  (I know - I’ve really, really stated that - but I think it’s very important.)

    While I’m not going to make a case right now for eliminating letter grades, I want to point out that, if my school system decided tomorrow to eliminate letter grading, we couldn’t.  Our computer system would not "allow" it. 
  Currently, many of our middle schools have assessment systems that are standards based and don’t involve letter grades.  The software that creates those is aging and might not be compatible with the new system.  See the potential for a problem?

    I’ll end this post for fear of beginning to lose my point, which is this:  Sometimes, it is about the tools, and about how those tools shape what is and is not "possible" in particular situations.  The tools and their use (or misuse) can completely drive a classroom or management scenario.   Pretending that it is never about the tools, and is only about the pedagogy or philosophy, is shortsighted and ultimately problematic. 

    I’ve had a quick peek at FunnyMonkey’s new flavor of Drupal, soon to be DrupalEd.  It’s pretty dynamically fantastic, despite the fact that it’s in alpha/beta.  Here’s the annoucement:

    I’ve come to depend quite heavily on my Bloglines account — it’s where I keep the people that teach me what I need to know, as well as what I need to need to know, if that makes sense.
    My aggregator is the glue that holds all of my network together.  When it works.
    Has anyone else been having trouble with Bloglines recently?  I’m logging on to find no feeds sometimes, or a messed up memory of what I have and haven’t read.  I thought perhaps that the problem was me — but it isn’t.  I’ve had the same issues on different computers and networks.
    Sometimes it works, other times it doesn’t.  Yuck.  When my aggregator isn’t working, I’m lost.
    I recognize that Bloglines is a free service, and that I’m getting way more than what I’m paying for, but I’ve come to count on the service.  I need it to work.  All of the time. 
    Help?  I’d hate to move elsewhere.  But I might have to.

    Sometime in the next six months, Longmont, the city where I teach, will be rolling out a city-wide wireless network.  Some of my students have their own, WiFi equipped, laptop computers.  Not many, but some.
    Uh oh.
    Can you imagine what’s about to happen?  The storm that’s going to be coming? The only way to keep out unfiltered bandwidth would be to ban all devices that aren’t school network devices.  I don’t see that being a viable solution at all — students bringing their own computers improves access for everyone. 
    The world is coming into our classrooms.   It’s scary, disruptive, messy, engaging, beautiful, offensive, ugly, nice, mean, upset, upside down, and a whole lot else.  Time for us to deal with it rather than try to hide behind a blanket.