Alfred Thompson the Cyberspace People Watcher: Education

No I will not do your homework for you

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 18:43:19 GMT

Every so often I get an email from someone saying they are a student and that they are looking for help with a programming assignment. Now sometimes these queries are along the lines of "here is some code - can you tell me where I went wrong?" and I don't mind those so much. In fact I get problems from teachers as well. Generally a student has done something very unusual or convoluted and the teacher needs a second pair of eyes to look at it. I don't mind those at all. After all even the best need someone else to look at a problem once in a while. If I can help a teacher with a problem I am a happy guy.

I will also send pointers to special things or add-ons that are outside the scope of most courses. Or I can point to sample code or documentation. If someone wants to learn more than what is taught in class I feel I have to support that. But absolute basics? That's tougher.

What I get frustrated with are the messages that seem to want someone else to do the whole project. Sometimes I get a project description and it is obvious that the student hasn't done a single thing to start their assignment. Sometimes I will send a nutritive about what steps to take. I do feel bad when someone has no clue how to start. But I will not send code and I clearly will not write the project for them. Unless they show some initiative on their own that initial narrative is all they get from me.

I don't understand why they don't go to their teacher for help. I always encouraged my students to come to me and many of them did. It was helpful to both of us I think. I was able to help them understand and at the same time learned how to better present concepts. But I think the way many young people use the Internet encourages them to just search for the easy way out. They want their solutions created for them. They don't want to be creative or even to learn. They just want the grade as if somehow by magic getting that report card or that degree will make them smart and knowledgeable. Life doesn't work that way.

The Chicken and Egg Problem of Education Reform

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 16:59:37 GMT

Which comes first? Curing poverty or making schools successful? Or if you like call it a Catch-22. You can't fix schools without fixing poverty and you can't cure poverty without fixing education. That seems to be a basic conundrum of education reform.

Jim Horn at the Schools Matter blog expressed things this way "ENDING POVERTY WILL ALLOW EDUCATION REFORMS A CHANCE TO SUCCEED, WHEREAS IGNORING POVERTY WILL ASSURE THEIR CONTINUED FAILURE. Hoping to end poverty by improving education places the cart exactly in front of the horse."

Left unanswered in his post was how to end poverty. If you end poverty by giving people more money what is their incentive to work? Or even to learn enough so they can work at better jobs? There was an interesting article about attempts to fix education for the poor in India in today's New York Times. Parents were saying that putting kids to work for very small sums of money now was worth more to them than the potential to earn more if the students would stay in school.

One on hand that argues that poverty has to be fixed so that families will not need to put their children to work and allow their children to get an education. But how do you do that? Do you pay parents to send their children to school? And if so does that really scale? Of course if you read the article you will find out that India is having major troubles making the schools they have work. They have more students then they can handle and fewer teachers and other resources than they need. It's a bit of a mess to say the least.

Coming back to the US there are many poor areas where students grow up seeing poorly paid unskilled jobs (or crime) as their only options. Convincing them that education holds the key to a better life can be a tough sale. They don't have role models to show them the way. But can you change that without getting them through a good educational program?

Poor people can make their way out of poverty through an education. My father and his siblings did it. So have a great many emigrants to America over the years. We know it works.

We have a lot of statistics and studies that show us that children from well-off and educated homes do much better in school than those from poor and uneducated homes. I worry though that this is not as safe a measure as we like to think it is. More and more I am seeing and hearing about students from well-off and educated homes who just don't want to work in school. They do not care about learning and expect life to be easy. I'm not sure that not being poor is enough anymore.

The problem as I see it is a in the culture. It's not really so much poverty or wealth as it is being in an environment, a culture, where education and the gaining of knowledge is important. That is the piece we are losing. That is what is missing in poverty areas and what seems to be starting to go missing in well-to-do areas. Getting that in place is going to be the real key towards both ending poverty and fixing education.

Schools and Culture

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 20:53:52 GMT

Some years ago I read a very good book called "Catholic Schools and the Common Good." Basically it was a close look at Catholic schools to try and determine if they did in fact do a better job than other schools. And if so, why/how were they better. The conclusions were interesting. Catholic schools tend to be more inclusive than many Protestant schools so one much be careful not to lump the two together. I find that many people want to lump all private schools in one group and all public schools in another. That quite honestly does not work.

What I want to focus on is not Catholic v. Protestant v. big ticket prep school v. regular public school v. entrance exam or magnet public school but just on the cultural factors that appear to make the most difference. Now my experience is not all encompassing but I've worked in more types or schools than most people. I've taught at an exclusive boarding school (you've heard of it), a private Catholic prep high school (with an entrance exam), two Catholic elementary schools (no entrance exams), served as an elected official for a local public school district, and I visit schools of all types on a very regular basis. So while I am not a real expert I like to think I have a clue or two.

One of the things the book I named talked about as a feature of successful schools is that they have a culture - a joint set of understood goals, rules and actions - that are shared by parents, students, teachers and administration. From what I observe this really does seem like the case.

At the schools I have been in where large percentages of students go on to college there attitude is always "which college" or "when a student is in college" but never "if college." Students almost don't know that stopping school after high school, let along without finishing high school, is even an option. At other schools one hears students talking about dropping out or what sort of job they will have after high school. Its not that so many of these kids could not graduate or even that they could not, from a purely intellectual ability, handle college. Rather they have an attitude that something is out of reach and they have often sabotaged their chances to go on starting in middle school.

Often schools just reflect the neighborhood they are in. If the culture places a high value on education the school will support that culture. Unfortunately if the local culture does not place a high value on education the school faces an uphill battle to create a culture that goes, if not completely counter to the neighborhood at least at odds with it. The MATCH school, a charter school in Boston about which I have written before, succeeds at this but they had an advantage of starting from scratch. Changing a school's culture is much more difficult than starting one at a new school.

Many of the best schools started with an ideal, a set of goals, and a culture that expected educational attainment from students. Teachers came with the idea that they would have engaged students who would work with them. Parents likewise expected there to be good teachers with high expectations that matched the expectations they had for their own children. Students knew that parents and teachers were working together with shared expectations and that it was their role to learn. And of course there was an assumption that students could and would succeed. There are schools that lose this edge over time but generally a good administration who hire and retain good teachers can maintain a culture. Parents and/or students either adapt or leave. Of course the whole leaving thing is a lot easier when one is dealing with private schools over public. Public school choice is a step in the right direction towards fixing that but it is truly never easy.

I should mention that no one school is the right place for every child. I love the way that vo-tech schools are meeting the needs of students who often do not succeed in "regular" high schools. The way the culture supports these kids with their vocational goals often helps them to succeed to much higher levels in other traditional academic courses. I've seen students at college prep schools who would have been happier and more successful academically at a vo-tech. There are probably kids in the opposite situation as well. Forcing every child through the same school can do a lot more harm than good.

The toughest thing is to change the culture of an existing school. It requires the right principal for one thing. It also requires the right teachers. It requires teachers who are going to have the right attitude about their students. It also requires parents who are going to support the culture of the school. The parents need to tell children that they can succeed, encourage students to set high aspirations, and to support the demands that the school places on students in both studies and behaviors. The goal here is to change the mind sets of the students. Peer pressure is going to be an issue so only if parents and faculty support each other is there a real chance to change the culture enough so that the peer pressure becomes helpful rather than a barrier.

We underestimate how helpful peer pressure can be because we are too familiar with the bad that it can do. In a school with a culture that encourages learning the peer pressure can become something that pushes students to do well. If scoring well on an SAT is as big a deal to students as scoring in a basketball game then kids will work hard at it. Yes of course we do have to keep an eye on the pressure that it doesn't get to unhealthy levels. I know a school where ulcers are commonly treated among their students. That may be too much pressure. Perhaps some of those students would be happier in other schools. But some pressure in the right direction can be a good thing.

What I don't see in many education discussions is the culture issue. When we talk about schools in Asia or India we talk about classroom hours or rote memorization or regimented rules for behavior but we avoid talking about the culture of the schools and society. It can easily get caught up in unhealthy discussions about race and gender and so gets avoided completely. I just don't see how we can avoid it though if we really want to talk about fixing schools.

One last point about culture. In schools with a strong educational success showing teachers are highly respected by parents and teachers. More than money I think that respect motivates teachers to work hard and push students in the right directions. Teachers leave public schools to teach at private schools not to make more money (more often they take cuts in pay) but because they know they will be respected, listened to, and supported by parents. Something to think about.

Most US 8th Graders Doing Better Than International Competition in Math and Science

Sun, 18 Nov 2007 23:58:29 GMT

I was recently asked about a new report from the American Institutes for Research on the state of American student performance at the eighth grade level compared to students in other countries. It’s pretty interesting and quite thought provoking. I wrote most of this as a reply in email and decided to expand a bit and make it a blog post.

There are a number of interesting things about the countries (Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan) that score better than American students. First is that some of them, Singapore and Hong Kong, are quite small. It is easier to do things in a smaller country. South Korea at around 45 million and Taiwan at about 22 million are both much larger but still nothing like the scale of the US. Japan is of course a very good sized country and they do have a national curriculum as do the other countries. All of these countries have very strong central governments in contrast to the US where states and even smaller governmental units have huge amounts of autonomy in the area of education.

All five countries are blessed, if one can use the word, with a very homogeneous culture which makes things easier. All of them also have a long tradition of respect for education and authority. I noticed in a recent review of New York City public schools that the higher the percentage of Asians in the school the higher performing the school was on recent “school report cards.” Culture is, I believe playing a huge part in the success of those schools. In fact I think that might even be the highest impact. It’s hard to change the culture in the US. So we start behind. I believe that to a large extent schools who succeed do so because they create a culture of learning and of common values and goals that include an appreciation of knowledge for its own sake.

My correspondent posted the following question “Do you think that it is possible to have a national curriculum that is adaptable/dynamic within such a large system? It seems to me that it should be possible with the technology that is available today. ”

The answer is complex. On one hand from a purely technological standpoint a national curriculum is possible. In fact to some extent we have one in the form of the Advanced Placement exams. There are a number of problems with that (see this recent article for some of them) but of course the biggest is that it only covers a subset of the high school curriculum. And I think that most of our problems start in elementary schools and get worse, in part because of poor foundations, in middle school. Trying to fix 8 years of problems in high school is not likely to succeed very often. As the AIR report points out we don't have the same high level of achievement in all 50 states. Some of our 8th grades are far behind.

We have some de facto national standards in a way though the commoditization of textbooks. Three states, California, Texas and Florida, who approve textbooks at the state level have so much clout that textbooks that are not approved by those states pretty much have no chance of making a profit. That does not have any real control of outcomes – the amount of the material that students learn – though. That is probably the bigger problem. There are tests that are taken nationally but since each state sets the bar for success in that state there is a huge variation. A “highly achieved” student in one state is under achieving in another.

Could all states use the same standard? In theory of course. In practice, probably not. Politics gets involved. Some states are dominated by people who set what face they want to present to the world first and then set the standards to match. It’s like deciding that you want the average male population to be 6 feet tall and then defining 6 feet as whatever the average height of males in the population is. It may not be helpful or realistic but there you go.

In my own state, New Hampshire, the insistence over local control makes even state-wide standards all but impossible. Things are phrased as recommendations or suggestions rather than as mandates. I could see independent, private schools setting a national set of standards and curriculum goals long before we ever see it in public schools. That doesn’t mean it’s not a goal worth pursuing of course. It would be great is a high school diploma and transcript meant the same thing in every state in the union. It will be hard to achieve though unless politicians start talking to educators rather than just blaming them for things that are not always under their control. Don’t even get me started on school boards BTW. Ouch.

The Arrogance of (so-called) Educators

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 19:04:40 GMT

Chris Lehmann is angry. Somehow he thinks that business assumes that schools serve business. He believes that setting preparation for careers and success in the workplace as important goals for education are bad. I hear that a lot. He goes on to say:

When someone tells Dalton or Andover or Exeter that their goal is workforce development, then they can tell us that it's ours.

Do he really think that those schools are not hearing about the need to prepare students for careers and the workforce? Really? I’ve only taught at one of those schools and know parents of students one other of the three but I sure got the impression that preparing students to succeed in business and industry as well as in further academic study was a huge part of the reason students were sent there. To suggest that the business elite want public schools to turn out students with more and better skills than they want for their own children is just ridiculous.

I don't know what Chris thinks business wants from schools that they are not currently getting but I'll tell you a couple are critical thinking (an area public schools seem determined to avoid), working in teams (also for some reason something public schools seem to try to avoid) and good communications skills. Business wants students who know how to learn new things rather than just repeating things by rote. Business wants "active, engaged citizens" and "scholars, activists, parents, people" but I don't see many indications that the public schools where I live see those as positives.

As an aside, Andover has a motto "Non Sibi" (not for self alone) that is taught in every aspect of the school. They turn out students who are dedicated to public service as well as to business and industry. Many of their graduates go into government, politics and other areas of public service full-time. Two of their graduates have become president of the United States - no small bit of public service there. I doubt there are many, if any, public schools who do a better job of promoting public service and selfless works than Andover. Few people know of the many outreach programs they have to minorities and other under served groups and what they do to help level the playing field. That is one of the things I respect most about that institution.

Why do so many so-called educators object to preparing students for jobs? Clearly many do. Clearly Chris would rather see his students unprepared for a productive life. Oh sure he wants us to believe otherwise by saying things like "when I do that, we'll get the workforce we need, too." But does he really believe it? He's not even willing to ask business leaders what they want/need. Does he even know what they want? Really I doubt it. He assumes (and we know what assumes means) that his goals and those of business and industry are incompatible. Is his arrogance in any way less harmful than the arrogance he assigns to the business people he doesn't want to listen to? I think not.

I'll add my own final comment since like Chris I am angry. I am angry that public schools are not following democratic ideals. When public schools start preparing students for success in business, in industry, and to be active, engaged citizens, and to be good scholars, parents and people like the expensive private schools are already doing then the elite will start sending their kids to public schools.

I believe Chris is a dedicated professional who cares deeply about his students. In this case though he is letting assumptions and anger cloud his judgement. He, and other educators like him, need to practice some of that open-minded thinking I keep hearing about and open some dialogue. He, his students and society itself will be better served by that in the long run.

A MATCHless School - but does it scale?

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 17:34:41 GMT

The MATCH school is a really amazing high school (a charter school) in Boston. I had the chance to visit there a year or so ago and came away very impressed. Recently ABC News visited the school (report here) because they are the number one school on Massachusetts state-wide math test. The results there are simply amazing. But to be honest it is not a cheap solution to the problem of students entering high school several grade levels below where they should be.

They rely on dedicated low paid fresh out of college tutors who live in a dorm at school to work with students one on one for hours a day. It works great. But that is no real surprise. The students give up a life out of school to work with these tutors and that goes a long way to explain the wonderful success these students have. but can we really find enough college graduates who care enough to put the time and love into this work to solve our education problems on a national scale? I think not. Maybe if there was a draft and doing this was an option we could get the numbers. I'm not sure how good a job people forced into it would do though.

I see this as a stop gap solution. In the long term we really have to stop losing kids in elementary and middle schools. But when you have kids who don't care and parents who don't push it is hard for even the best teachers to make a difference. The students at the MATCH school have decided to step it up. They are not forced into that school and those hours. They volunteer. The real problem in American schools is that too few students are volunteering to work hard in school and too few parents are "drafting" them into the labor of getting an education. Or sure there is blame for teachers in places. But just as we blame teachers for not holding students to high standards sometimes we fail to hold teachers to high standards. It's way to hard to get rid of a teacher who has lost the love for teaching and remains only to get a pay check.

One last thing. People keep talking about a crisis in urban schools. And clearly there is one. But I have to tell you that things are not rosy in a lot of poor rural schools. We should not ignore these students just because of the color of their skin either. A poor student whose parents are uneducated and who do not care about education and who do not push their kids to learn is a bigger handicap than skin color. I don't see any national concern about kids in under performing rural schools. And yes I do think that some racism is involved there.

Banned Books Week 2007

Sat, 29 Sep 2007 16:18:12 GMT

Well it is Banned Books Week again. My wife is a school librarian so Banned Books Weeks is a big deal at our home. Several days last weeks deliveries came with posters, bookmarks and related things for the week. The display in my wife's Literacy Center has been set up for at least a week in advance though.

To some extent Banned Books is a misnomer. At least in the US books are seldom really banned. More often they are challenged. People object to a book being in a library or just being available to children. The challenge is noted, fought and usually defeated. Still it is an interesting exercise. IT starts conversations and from conversations learning takes place.

Sometimes mere availability of a book is enough to bring a challenge but most often the challenge comes about because a book is required reading. In effect the challenge is about providing parents choices about what their children learn as it is about anything else. Teachers require the reading of some books to teach certain things. Often the books they choose teach things the parents do not want their children to learn. Or perhaps it is more fair to say the books teach values that are at odds with the parent's values. That's where it gets sticky.

While books that seem to promote such things as homosexuality and the occult are often challenged but seldom banned I suspect that a public school teacher who required reading the Bible would lose when their selection was challenged. I doubt the ALA or the ACLU would defend them either. A lot of it is about whose ox is being gored.

Not on the top 10 most challenged book list this year is "Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger. I hope that is because fewer teachers are making it required reading and not just because people are becoming desensitized to the coarse language in it. While I can understand parents not wanting their child exposed to that language the language is far from the reason I hope fewer teachers are requiring the book. Frankly I think is is a horrible miserable story. I would not at all be surprised if the suicide rate among adolescents doesn't creep up after students read it. "A Separate Peace" is a similar book that way. What ever possesses teachers to require those books? Are they trying to kill children?

Oh I am not saying the books are not well-written - they are. And I am not saying the books don't have lessons and provide grist for lots of discussions - they do. I'm just saying that the stories themselves are just too depressing for words. I read "Catcher in the Rye" as a child and hated it. A few years ago as an adult I read it again and realized that I'd had great taste as a child.

I do believe that it is good for children to read books that are a bit subversive, that challenge them to think about society, that stretch the way they look at the world and the people in it. But I'm not so interested in sending them into the depths of depression. So many of the books we assign kids to read do that. Even some of the best of them.

Take a look at "1984" and "Fahrenheit 451" which are two of the very best. Great stories, lots of important things to discuss but still depressing. Although I do love the glimmer of hope at the end of "Fahrenheit 451." I understand that "Fahrenheit 451" is a book that a lot of people are reading this year as part of Banned Book Week BTW. A good choice.

Science Fiction books are, in my opinion, some of the most subversive books around. It was comforting to me as a huge science fiction fan as a child, and today, that some of the assigned books were from that genre. Still I think there are better recommendations. That is to say that there are SF books that discuss important social, political and economic ideas but that are not at the same time filled with depression, despair and disaster for the human race. I wish teachers would pick some of them.

Two favorites are "Have Space Suit Will Travel" and "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" both by Robert Heinlein. In the first a young man gets plucked from earth and is forced to defend the humanity of man. It is a theme covered in TV science fiction at least once in Start Trek but done far better in this treatment. And in the second there is revolution over issues both economic and political with the added bonus of the question of what happens when we delegate too much power to computers. And worse still what if that computer decides to make its own decisions? And they turn out well. They have heroes rather than anti-heroes.

I expect that they might get challenged though. Heinlein actually believed that the Constitution, including the Second Amendment, actually mean what they say they do. And that will seldom fly in today's schools.

Free Speech - Just For People We Agree With?

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 15:37:10 GMT

Well there is a big fuss going on about the President of Iran's visit to New York. He wanted to lay a wreath at Ground Zero but that has been nixed citing "security and logistical problems." I suspect this is completely because they are worried about people protesting him and what he has to say. The other big deal is that he has been invited to speak at Columbia University.

People, including the Jewish Defense Organization and some elected officials, object to his being treated as an "honored guest" anywhere in the City. Now granted the man is a font of evil and absurd statements (no Holocaust? Is he kidding?) And is very critical of the US, Israel, Jews in general and on and on. I can't imagine he's said much I agree with if anything. He's a pretty hateful guy.

And does he really not understand that New Yorkers would be upset at him being at Ground Zero? I mean seriously look at how easily he and his countrymen take offense of stuff we do. His he stupid or just trying to cause trouble? My money is on causing trouble.

But all that being said, isn't exposing people to other views a big part of the role of the university in society? And can we really claim to have free speech if we only let "the good guys" talk in public? And if you really didn’t want what he says to get spread around wouldn’t you more logically protest the news media for quoting him and repeating every ridiculous thing he says?

I mean after all if the man speaks to a couple of hundred students is that really so bad? But the newspapers and TV/radio stations will repeat it all endlessly for millions upon millions to read and hear. Who is spreading his lies more? Columbia or the news media! Yeah but we have freedom of the press. OK sure. But what about freedom of speech for Mr. Ahmadinejad?

Let me put it another way - how would the protesters feel if one of their own was treated the same way in Iran? Golden Rule anyone?

Getting Kids to Think About Their Internet Identity

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 13:40:08 GMT

The job of schools, in my opinion, is to educate and to enable. So I don't like a lot of rules especially when they consist largely of lists of things not to do. Rules all too often prevent thinking. Telling students "don't do" is the opposite of enabling them to actually do things. Unfortunately a lot of what passes for Internet Safety training is all lists of "don't do this." So I struggle with how to do it right.

Yesterday I read a post by Vinnie Vrotny, the Director of Academic Technology at a small private preK-12 school in Winnetka, Illinois, that seems like a huge step in the right direction.

Vinnie struggles with some of the same issues I have and has decided to try a new tactic this year. Explaining the Internet user policy and talking about Internet safety falls in his lap at his school and he is tired of focusing on the negative messages. So he is going to talk to students about how they appear on the Internet.

What will people find when they look up the student in a search engine for example. And he is going to talk about consequences and try to get the students to think about what they are doing. As Vinnie says:

I am hoping that this gets students understand that everything that they do has a consequence. Some are trivial, but others may be more long term and potentially damaging to their reputations and meeting goals that they have set for themselves. I am trying to develop a message that is sticky, that students will hear and remember, and hopefully take seriously.

Explaining things to students and trying to get them to think! Sounds like a great idea to me.

BTW I first met Vinnie at Carnegie Mellon years ago when we were both attending a training course for high school computer science teachers. We ran into each other again this past spring at NECC - more specifically the EduBloggerCon. That's when I found out he had a blog. I've been reading it ever since. One can learn a lot from people like Vinnie.

Twittering While America Burns

Tue, 24 Jul 2007 21:25:13 GMT

Boy you have to love it when people go over the top. Vicki Davis linked to a couple of interesting but really over the top posts today. The first one by Gary Stager (Twittering While America Burns) seems to have started it all. Gary is all upset that the education blogosphere is talking about web 2.0 and, in his opinion, ignoring the actual problems that require attention. Matthew Tabor jumps in with a handy list of issues he things the blogosphere is ignoring.

Vicki Davis is a bit defensive on the whole thing but I don't really think she needs to be. Vicki is a gifted (and award winning) teacher who is bringing new technology into her classroom and contributing directly towards improving teaching where she works. That alone is worth kudos in my book. But she goes a step further. A large step further. She shares what she knows, what works for her, and what she finds useful with other teachers. She does it in her blog and she does it with face to face presentations and more ways then that. Not a single thing to apologize for there.

And a lot of the edublogosphere is just like that. It is teachers sharing ideas with other teachers and together helping make the system work better. Those people absolutely should be talking about and using Twitter, and wikis and blogs, and podcasts and all the tools of Web 2.0. Being critical of teachers who are not talking about them I could understand. But teachers who are solving their own local problems using new tools should be encouraged.

Now there are bloggers out there who are more political. There are columnists, consultants, district and state administrators and general critics of education who write about the great problems of the day. I do a bit of that myself from time to time. I think that a lot of teacher bloggers do as well. But that is not everyone's main focus.

Are the political bloggers ignoring the big issues? I'm not so sure they are. I read a lot of current talk about charter schools, union problems, NCLB problems, scandals at the US Department of Education, and much more. Maybe Matthew and Gary are reading the wrong blogs.

I remember some actor saying once that he let his wife handle the small issues like what movies he should make, where they should live, etc and he took care of the large issues like world peace and world hunger. Let's let teachers handle the small problems like educating students and fitting new technology into their classrooms. And we'll let Gary Stager and Matthew Tabor handle the big problems like racism and fixing the countries public schools.

What do teachers make?

Fri, 01 Jun 2007 15:35:00 GMT

Some people, especially non-teachers, may find this video a bit "rabid" (as one friend of mine expressed) but I think teachers will appreciate it. We live in a society that all too often sets value on people and what they do by how much money they make. Teachers, as well as dedicated public servants in a number of other fields, know that what they do is far more important than what they get paid. Taylor Mali in this video shouts this out for a lot of us.

Wait for the the last line "I make a [minor expletive] difference - what about you?" Now that is a statement and a question worth expressing.

Technorati tags: education, teachers, teaching

Schools Within A School

Wed, 09 May 2007 20:25:21 GMT

A couple of posts by Cal Teacher (here, here and here) have gotten me moved me to write about something I have been thinking about for a while - making high schools smaller either by a school within a school model or splitting them up. The Gates Foundation among other groups have been pushing this idea for a while. It sounds good to a lot of people but I'm not so sure about it.

Oh I agree that it many of today's large high schools it is easy to lose students. But small schools are too limited in their options for students. What do you do if there is a poor fit between a student and teacher (it happens) but there is no choice but for that student to have that teacher for a course they need or are interested in? What do you do if a student wants to try something, stretch themselves a bit, but that course is not offered at the school they are at? Transfer? Not always an option.

I went to a very large (over 5000 students) high school a long time ago in a city far far away. But I was never lost even though I was painfully shy and quiet. Why? Because the school had majors or concentrations. I traveled to some key courses (shop, drawing, and science courses tuned to my major) with a smaller cohort. I was at an engineering magnet so we all had shop and drawing classes but they were specific to out major course of studies after our second year. We split up, to some extent but not completely, for other courses like math, English and social studies. So we were a part of the wider school community while maintaining a membership in a smaller community of interest. It worked and worked well.

I think this model could be made to work in schools that are not magnets or special purpose schools as well. Perhaps the focus could be around sports? Or maybe vocational technical programs? Vo-tech students today need and take largely the same math, English and social studies courses other students take. They need to math for example. Perhaps music or performing arts could be a focus. Perhaps, as Cal Teacher suggests, they could be special advisory classes that keep the same students and teacher together for four years. There must be many more ways to build community in a school. The key is to make sure that everyone gets to be a part of a community that knows and values them. Somewhere where as the song goes "everyone knows your name."

[Cross posted from http://on10.net/Blogs/alfredtwo/are-smaller-schools-really-the-answer/ ]

Rush To Judgement

Tue, 17 Apr 2007 16:16:28 GMT

Sometimes, all too often it seems, school administrators and teachers act too much like the children they are supposed to be mentoring. The worst of it is when the rush to judge students harshly. One expects children to jump to conclusions, do inadequate "research" and judge people based on what they want to believe about a person (stereotypes) rather than on their actions. One sees a lot of kids who get into trouble all time because the adults "know" those are the kids who do what ever wrong is done. Likewise one sees other kids get away with things because after all everyone "knows" they are good kids.

I have heard a teacher say things like "they are a B students just give them a B" without any real consideration for the work the student actually did. Likewise I have seen students get detention without any evidence other than that they were in the room when something happened. It's really embarrassing to be part of those situations. Well I found it embarrassing. Others apparently do not.

The worst jumping to conclusions I have heard about recently is the case of Cody Webb who was suspended and jailed for 12 days for making a bomb threat that he didn't make. The principal didn't bother to take the switch to daylight savings time into account and "determined" that Cody's call into an information line was at the same time a bomb threat came into the school. Having determined that Cody was guilty any explanations he made were clearly lies because he was "a criminal."

I wish I was surprised by any of this but I am not. While there are many outstanding administrators who are open-minded, thorough and fair there are always a few who make the rest look bad. I'm not sure what we do about it though. Privacy laws designed to protect children generally prevent independent review of administrative punishments. Appeal is generally limited to going to the school board and boards have a vested interest in protecting their administrators.

I wonder if an independent review board might not be a good idea. Perhaps these boards could be regional in areas where school districts are small. It is unlikely that ever decision or even many decisions would need a review. But for those potentially high profile or very serious incidents and those cases where one student seems to be punished much more than the average these review boards would be useful. I don't actually expect most or even many decisions to be overturned. What I do expect is that an appeal to an independent body would increase the credibility of decisions, increase the perception of fairness, and that students who are truly getting a raw deal would have a reasonable outlet for justice.

Anyone who thinks that ethics are easy hasn't been paying attention

Mon, 18 Sep 2006 18:18:04 GMT

I read a blog by Jeff Utecht that reminded me of several discussions of ethical behavior I had with students. The key point in his post is this "How do you make them understand, when they have grown up in a culture in which free music has always been available via the web." That is a huge part of the problem. Not just music either. Students today have grown up in a world where anything that can be easily copied is considered fair game. I had a student say "If they don't want me to copy it they should have made it hard to copy." Ah, yeah, right. The same student told me that if people leave their doors unlocked it shouldn't be a crime to enter the house. Oh, but if someone entered his house while it was unlocked they would feel free to "beat them up." Oh yes the double standard is not strictly the purview of adults.

But it gets worse before it gets better. The law around entering a house is relatively clear - crystal clear compared to rules around copying media. Jill Walker has a list of different activities around media that shows the differing opinions of if the activity is legal or not from different organizations. The list is from Norway but the rules are no more clear in any other country. What is legal and what is not when different groups say the law means/says different things. What is the poor teacher to do?

Jeff found the situation scary. I must confess that I found similar conversations equally scary. Students are growing up in a time when rules and ideas about property are different, ambiguous (at best), and confusing. Computers and the Internet make moving data (and music and video are are heart data) easy. It doesn't cost much to copy or use data in ways the creators of that data intended. Mark Cuban, who is very involved in media content creation) has a discussion in his blog about YouTube the popular video sharing web site and how it is doomed because of all the illegal content there. Is he right? Hard to say but he is a pretty smart guy who probably hires a lot of good lawyers to advise him. If only teachers had some good advice that they could give their students.

I worry about the future of content creation in this environment. Do we really want a world where no one can make money creating content? Do we want book writing, TV/movie creation, and music making (writing/performing) being solely the area of the amateur? Oh sure life performances will probably remain a pay-per-view event but is that all we want? Sure we complain about actors making millions for a movie or hundreds of thousands of dollars for a TV series. But if the TV stations and movie producers can't make the money to pay those people who are we left with to perform for us? What will the world be like if people can't make money writing, singing, or performing? I have no answers but a lot of questions.

I'd be interested in hearing how students and others answer these questions though.

[Cross posted in my high school computer science teacher blog.]

Educators and the Facebook and related communities

Wed, 03 May 2006 05:58:51 GMT

I found this really good post on the Facebook titled How University Administrators Should Approach the Facebook today thanks to a link from Liz Lawley. I think that a lot of this applies to other sites like MySpaces as well. It clearly applies to high school students on Facebook. There are growing numbers of high school students on the Facebook BTW.

I think that it is imperative that high school administrators and parents of high school students start to understand this whole social computing phenomenon. We have seen far too many cases of administrators over reacting to things they would never have known about if a student hadn’t broadcast something to the entire world over the Internet.

Now I am not saying that students who drink or use drugs or do other illegal, immoral or otherwise irresponsible things should not face consequences for their actions. But I think that if we rush too soon to punishment we may miss opportunities for taking advantage of teachable moments.

Students are saying too much on the Internet. They need to understand why they need to be more careful. But only adults who understand the software students are using are going to have the credibility required to make a case for correct behavior. Students often think they know more than the adults in their lives. Generally they are wrong and the sudden discovery that they are wrong sometimes reinforces the believability of what the adult says. On the other hand when a child finds out for sure that the adult really doesn’t understand a major part of the topic under discussion they child may often discount the truth in the rest of the discussion.

Teachers, administrators and parents do not have to become complete experts by any means. But if the first time they hear of MySpaces or the Facebook is when the excrement has hit to fan they start off way behind in the discussion. Ignorance is not bliss and what you don’t know can hurt you. Adults should start to talk to children about what they are doing on the Internet at an early age. They should talk about protecting their identity and privacy. They should talk about protecting their reputation. Students want to use social computing software to create a reputation. What they need to understand is that the reputation they create now may just stay with them the rest of their lives. That may give them some pause to think. Well, we can hope so.

Talking about Teens' Bold Blogs Alarm Area Schools

Tue, 17 Jan 2006 16:59:43 GMT

The Washington Post has one of the better articles about student blogging that I've seen recently. There is a lot of discussion about how schools are reacting to student blogging. These reactions seem to include a lot more of schools educating their students than we used to read about. Still there is a lot of outright banning of sites among schools. It looks like some schools are reacting strongly to the Facebook. One private school has taken the step of telling students that they are not permitted to use their school email accounts to register for the Facebook.

One of the nice things about this article (unfortunatly not until the last page) that talks about why students blog and why they say the things they do. Apparently middle and high school kids want more attention. This probably does not come as any surprise to anyone who has worked with teens but it seems to surprise newspaper reporters. There is a wake up call for parents and teachers in that though. The web provides a new way for students to get the attention of even more people who prey on students. This suggests that parents and teachers should feel an even greater need to teach their students about safe Internet usage. But even more it suggests that parents and teachers should be more aware of paying the students in their life some good attention for doing good things in good ways.

Quote

Teens' Bold Blogs Alarm Area Schools
No one under 18 would be surprised to hear that teenagers like to post their intimate thoughts and photographs online -- they've done it for years. But school administrators have begun to take notice, and some are warning students that their online activities may affect not only their safety, but also their academic and professional lives.

Missing the teachable moment

Wed, 30 Nov 2005 22:30:34 GMT

The Wall Street Journal has an article about schools and blogs. It is largely a rehash of events that have been talked about in my blog before. I find it interesting that this sort of thing is reaching the mainstream media. I continue to be upset that teachers and administrators seem to be mishandling so many of these cases. Punishment is not the same as education. I think that there need to be more conversations about:

Taking responsibility for what one says
Understanding how words hurt
Understanding that the Internet is not a private conversation

I know that a lot of students do not understand how much their words can hurt others. And they really do not understand that the written word lacks the context of a personal (in real life) conversation. Things said in jest in person are still often misunderstood but this is even more true in written words. Students need to understand that they are responsible for the pain their words can cause. But at the same time the nasty comment in a blog or a forum can be deleted. An apology can be extended. A student can learn not to do it again. All too often a punishment, especially without an educational discussion, can just harden a student and, if anything, make them want to do it again.

And lastly we have to educate students that the words they write are read by others. They are read by people who do not understand the context, the situation or the inside joke. They are likely to take things at face value. This makes nasty comments even worse. And let's not forget that a lot of these comments will be around forever. That's a long time.

Plus of course the comments and information can be read by people who intend to use the information for ill. They will use it to win their way into the hearts and minds of students, and not just the author, for evil. It's not enough to say "don't do that." We don' t tell kids to stay out of the water because they could drown. We teach them to swim. Why can't schools teach students how to handle the Internet? Oh wait, perhaps because they (teachers and administrators) don't know how to do it themselves? We don't accept not knowing how to write or do math in our teachers so why do we accept computer and Internet illiteracy in them?

Amateurs, Professionals and the Wikipedia

Sat, 12 Nov 2005 18:42:47 GMT

I have really enjoyed reading through the Wikipedia looking for information. I asked a librarian for her opinion of Wikipedia and she told me that she had some reservations. She prefers professional encyclopedias and reference databases. We didn't talk about it at length but I recently read a blog by Bjørn Stærk that explained a lot of the same concerns I heard from my librarian friend. A lot of it boils down to the difference between professionals writing about things they really know about with professional editing compared to knowledgeable amateurs writing about things they are interested in commenting on in an environment where real editing is unpopular.

There is a lot of talk about the differences between amateurs and professionals on the Internet these days. There is the whole idea of amateur journalism (aka citizen journalism) for example. It is sometimes, perhaps often, tempting to look at professional journalistic errors and want to believe that amateurs are just some how better, more pure, more honest. There is also an idea, believed by many, that blogs, wikis, and open source software is better because amateurs (or professionals working on their own time) will come in and fix the errors. While that does happen it seems a risky way to bet to me.

I think there is an important role for amateurs on the Internet. I do like the Wikipedia for topics that are not large enough for the professional encyclopedias or for a quick lookup. I use it as a source to link to from time to time.

But those are low stakes posts. I’m not sure I would feel comfortable using it as my only source for something important. Of course in general I would feel more comfortable with two sources any time but if pushed I’d feel a lot more comfortable referencing a professional encyclopedia than the Wikipedia.

Likewise with news sources. Yes, the main stream media gets things wrong a lot. But are they less reliable than blogs? I don’t think so. Everything that is written is written though filters. The filters of the author, of the editor, and of the context in which it is written. I think the valuable service that bloggers and other amateur journalists provide is more context, more views and more different ways of looking at things. In short there is some needed balance. At least in theory there is balance. The reality is that the balance exists only as long as the reader goes and reads sources outside of their own opinion stream. How often to people deliberately read people they know are going to disagree with what they already believe? Unless you do that you are probably better off (in terms of getting reliable information) reading a professional journalist. They have more to lose by getting things wrong than an amateur who counts on his readers to correct them when they get sloppy.

Schools and Blogging

Thu, 27 Oct 2005 14:12:45 GMT

The latest flap around schools and blogs is around a school in New Jersey that has ordered students to remove their blogs from the Internet. (Story here) My own experience with schools and newspapers suggests two things. One is that there is more to this story than is in the press. The other is that overreactions to things students do, and not just on the Internet, is fairly common in schools.

For the media, their biggest interest is in making mountains out of mole hills. Mole hills do not sell newspapers but mountains do. Though the facts may be similar to what is being reported I would not judge any school by what is in the press. But mainly I want to talk about schools so I will move on.

Schools in general are almost paranoid about protecting their students. Admittedly they have historically been more attuned to looking for external (to the school) threats than internal but they are very sensitive to all sorts of threats these days. It is a scary time to be charged with protecting children. There are a lot of bad people out there. Schools have to protect students from other students, from parents, for strangers, and even from themselves. Children make bad decisions on a daily basis.

Schools also try to protect themselves; all organizations do. Schools, especially private schools, live by their reputations. So threats to those reputations are taken seriously. This leads to some over reactions. Just look at how defensive the news media get when they are criticized.

The case in the news article suggests to me that the school in question was worried about students giving away too much personally identifying information. We all know that predators are out there on the Internet and that they use information they find to target kids. It’s a valid concern. But it also apprears that the school was worried about students making negative comments about the school. Kids will do that. One would like to think that the school would trust other adults to be smart enough about the nature of kids to not worry too much about that. But as I said, when your success depends on your reputation you can get very protective about it.

A number of years ago one of my students posted a doctored picture of me, my face on another body, and people got very worked up over it. Yes it was insulting and no I wouldn’t want people to think it represented me. But at the same time I understand that kids will be kids. A bigger deal was made over this than I would have liked. This was a case of the school trying to protect me. And while I appreciate that I would have rather we used the “teachable moment” a little differently.

The same is true with kids and blogging. I wish schools taught more about the Internet. Sometimes, if kids are lucky, there will be a librarian (usually) or other teacher who teaches about how to do a good Internet search and how to evaluate the worth of a site. But that’s usually about as far as we go. No one warns kids about releasing too much information. No one warns them about chat rooms, email scams, IM bullies, or talks to them about proper Internet etiquette.

Of course this Internet thing is new to teachers. At many schools you are lucky if the teachers can use the Internet for more than email and web browsing. Schools of Education are not teaching this stuff. People have to learn it on their own. When you don’t have enough information overreaction is inevitable. So with kids on the Internet there is a sort of perfect storm: protecting kids, protecting the school, and ignorance. Is it any wonder that schools overreact?

The answer, as with so many things, is education. Teachers and administrators need to be educated about the Internet. They need to learn what blogs (and other Internet tools) are and how they are used, they need to know how to use the Internet to search and evaluate web sites and they need to learn how to deal with what students are doing on the Internet.

We only hold students accountable for what is taught. Shouldn’t the same be true for teachers? Now who do we hold accountable to teach the teachers?

- Alfred Thompson

Cross posted to my Computer Science Teacher blog

A Blog for the Class

Tue, 27 Sep 2005 19:33:39 GMT

When I was teaching I tried to keep up a web page with information for my classes. The idea was to post assignments and links to useful information. This way students could double check their assignments. Parents could also keep up with what their children were supposed to be doing. My intentions were good and I did try to keep it current. But it was hard to maintain because the only way I had to do it was to update an old style web page using HTML. Then I had to upload the file to the web site. It was tedious. Not hard to do but tedious. So the truth is that I seldom updated the class web pages as often as I should have and they seldom contained as much or as current information as they should have.

Today I’d have a class blog. Blogging software is easy to use and avoids the entire nasty HTML thing and the troubles I used to have with uploading files to the right place.

I think that blogging would allow me to communicate more information more often to both students and parents. A lack of communication between teachers and parents is, I think, a common source of frustration for both. While there are certainly a lot of parents who are not interested in keeping up with the classroom assignments and activities of their children there are many parents who are frustrated about lack of information. What do they want to know? Well, the obvious is they want to know what assignments their children should be doing, what tests or long term assignments are in the future and what topics are being covered in class. I think that many of them would also welcome pointers to additional resources that they can use to help their students learn to topics under discussion.

Now of course parents often want up to date grading and attendance information that would be inappropriate for a public blog. That sort of detail is best coming from a password protected Student Information System. A blog site could easily link to such a resource with information about getting access.

I tend to think that the educational process works best when there is a partnership between teachers, student and parent. Adding some transparency and additional communication to the process through blogging seems to me like a step in the right direction. Are you or do you know a teacher using blogs for communication with parents and students? How’s it going? I’d love to hear about it.

- Alfred Thompson

Are schools missing the boat on social computing?

Sun, 01 May 2005 23:49:40 GMT

Steve Rubel links to a news story about the main stream media starting to see blogging as important. Kevin O’Keefe talks about Target requiring blogging knowledge and skills for their media relations people.

But at the same time Nancy White (who links to the Target discussion) talks about schools of communication not seeing a need to talk about online communication like blogging in their course work.

We like to think of universities as being places that keep up with the state of the art when they are not creating the state of the art. This, all too often, is not the case. (Don’t get me started about Computer Science programs using 30 year old operating systems. J )

There are a lot of teachers and university educators using blogs of course. But it seems to me that too many of our universities are missing the boat by not paying attention to where the commercial world is going. Yes, it should be about concepts and not about the fads of the moment. But at the same time universities should be using the tools that the outside world is using to teach the concepts students need. Just my opinion of course.

- Alfred Thompson