Coffee with David Warlick

I had the privilege of spending some time today with David Warlick. (We didn’t actually have coffee, we just sat on the floor and talked) David as most of you know is passionate about helping teachers understand the changing world and telling the new story of learning. As David stated to me, it’s really old stories.

We had a great conversation ranging from blogging to our kids, to our work, politics and the differences between our countries. We’ve been part of many of these conversations online, it was nice to do it face to face. We were able to discuss things like old friends. Perhaps that’s presumptuous of me but because of this thing called the blogosphere, it really did feel familiar. Later David presented to a large crowd. From there he jumped on a plane and headed back to North Carolina to finish up another conference.

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Passion fatigue

There’s been a portion of talk newly in the middle of multifarious edubloggers in respect of their flavour that educators who blog own acquire formed a humans cognate to an invitation-only cocktail troop, that sundry “elites” calculatedly ostracize block out otherwise discredit newcomers, plus that there should make ends meet rules to haul just as blogging, Twittering, otherwise participating fashionable the many societal companionable networks that advice educators on account of they assay additional contemporary tech machinery. I’m not all the more goodbye to do one`s best to chain to examples of this, it’s convincing encouragement potential attainable the fire.

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Rubrics

One last post, and I’m off to bed.  I do, after all, have to teach tomorrow.  I had a discussion with my principal about rubrics the other day, and today I read an article entitled “Why I Won’t Be Using Rubrics to Respond to Students’ Writing” by Maja Wilson (in English Journal, March 2007 — read it here if you are an EJ subscriber).  My only real issue with the article is that Ms. Wilson focuses on personal narrative, which is much harder to look at with an objective rubric.  I would have liked to have seen what she would have done with a persuasive essay, expository essay, or literary analysis, where I think more objectivity in the form of “looking for certain things” certainly exists.  I do, however, think she has some very good points.  I have been a staunch believer in the rubric, and have even written defenses on this very site this year, but my discussion and this article are really making me think.  I do think rubrics have helped me become more objective, but I think I have taken the objectivity too far and some of the human element in what my students are writing has not been considered.  I have ideas about how I will approach things differently next year.  If I had my way, I wouldn’t grade student writing at all, but simply give them feedback so they could improve.  School doesn’t work like that, however, and I have to assign grades to written work.  Instead of being a tool, my rubrics have become my crutch, and I think I could have given more tangible, valuable feedback this year.  I do plan to stick to my resolve about portfolios and typewritten feedback (at least every other essay) for next year.  It’s too late for me to collect data and see what sort of quantifiable impact this approach will have on my students, but I will keep you posted.

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On “Infovores” and “Infofighters”

My aggregator is piling up and I’m in one of those “no-time-to-read-my-feeds” stretches, especially when I get a new book in my hands that really makes me think. Clay Shirky’s “Here Comes Everybody” is probably about the most level headed deconstruction of what’s happening with the Web that I’ve read yet, and, while it’s not nearly as sexy as Pink or Friedman, so far it’s pretty brilliant and much more grounded. He’s one educator who “gets it” in a very measured way. I’ve been marking it up like crazy and want to revisit a lot of it before I attempt some longer thoughts here, but there was one section that connected for me when I somehow landed on “Why We’re Powerless to Resist Grazing on Endless Web Data” from the Wall Street Journal last week.

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Creating our future

Last night I attended our town’s Business Retention & Expansion briefing, which reported on findings from a study conducted last year. One of the findings was that the local business priority is to attract industry to the town. Key issues for local businesses were cost of leasing space; municipal taxes; availability of zoned land and land costs. The local economic development agency stated that it would help businesses in the area through training, mentorship and supporting tourism. The town’s strategy will be a “build it and they will come” approach, focusing on a few key sectors and attempting to attract businesses in those areas.

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New Skype Movie

Skype sent a camera crew to our classroom back in October to make a movie about how we used Skype to include a classmate with leukemia using video-conferencing. Even though Celest attends school regularly now, that day they had her stay home and attend school via Skype. The crew spent the morning in our classroom and the afternoon at Celest’s.

What is nice about this movie is that it gives you the real sense of how well we were able to interact using video-conferencing. If you know the story you’ll hear it again. Click here or the photo to see the video.

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Review: Moodle Teaching Techniques

I had written a review of William Rice’s previous book and noted that it was rather technical. Moodle Teaching Techniques is more pedagogical and gets down to the details of how to develop online courses in Moodle.

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Staying Connected

If you’re not reading the Connectivism Blog by George Siemens you should. I find his theories of learning and education as influenced by the Read/Write Web to be really interesting and in many cases profound (at least for my feeble brain.) But it’s just such a mind shift when you start thinking about how these technologies are all about connections, connections to people, to ideas and to information. It’s that last that he is writing about today:

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Online Master in Education - Quality Schools - Graceland University

Graceland University is proud to offer a Master of Education that emphasizes Dr. William Glasser's quality school concepts and practices. Offered online, this program is the only one of its kind in the United States. Dr. Glasser is a world-renowned psychiatrist, educator and author of many books including Schools Without Failure, Choice Theory, The Quality School, and Every Student Can Succeed. Dr. Glasser believes that choice theory is the cornerstone of a quality education. With choice theory, the key to effective education is a strong student-teacher relationship built on trust and respect. Reduced discipline problems, increased parental support, and improved test scores are results that are achieved consistently in Dr. Glasser's quality schools. Read the rest of this entry »