Friday, December 7, 2007
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Saturday at NCTE 07
Saturday’s Stuff!
We started the day early- at 8am (that’s 5am pacific!) with an author’s talk from Sid Jacobsen and Ernie Colon, who created a graphic novel from the 911 commission report.
Ernie- the artist
Sid- the managing editor
Both have worked extensively for Harvey comics. Ernie is most famous for his comics Casper the Friendly Ghost and Richie Rich. Sid also spent many years as managing editor fro Marvel Comics.
A general history of Harvey comics- the main difference between Marvel and Harvey – Marvel has always had a reluctance to expand into education. Harvey has always found it to be natural, and has created graphic novels for many different things over the last 50 years.
They use the medium to tell a story. This use of comics to increase depth in understanding is what graphics application is all about.
In the book on the 911 report it was the timeline that was the most difficult to tell. In the actual book it was very hard to follow, and it took a long time to actually sort out all of the players and what was going on when and where. This finally turned into the books timeline which is the entire beginning of the book. The timeline is a great example of how graphics can add depth and clarity in understanding difficult things.
This book is the only thing to be endorsed by the 911 commission because it clearly tells the story. Graphics shows and tells in a way that words and photos can’t.
The authors hope that teachers will use more graphic novels as a means of information. At this time movie houses are paying attention to graphic novels because they make great story boards for movies. They also wanted to show that you can use graphic novels with adults, and in an educational setting.
A side note- it was Will Eisner who coined the term “Graphic Novel” when he wrote one called “Contract With God”. He didn’t want to call it a comic book because it wasn’t for children, so he changed the name to graphic novel.
Other graphic novels that they recommend:
Mous I, Maus II – Art Spiegelman
Persepolis – Marjane Satrapi
Epileptic -
Palestine – Joe Sacco
Barefoot Gen: Life After the Bomb (four volumes) – Keiji Nakazwa
Fax From Sarajevo – Joe Kubert
The Cartoon History of the United States – Larry Gonick
The Four Immigrants Manga – Henry (Yoshitaka) Kiyama
We also went to two related sessions, one using graphic novels to map history curriculum as well as creating student graphic novels for better understanding of texts.
Mrs. Benson and Mr. Belveal went to a session on grammar and had to leave because it was putting them to sleep… and as an added bonus Mrs. Benson tried to go to a session on research and was turned away by the fire marshal because there were too many people in the room already (there were guards at both doors by the time she got over there).
As always, Mrs. Anderson picked up tons of free books in the book hall.
In the afternoon we took the subway up to Columbia University, and spent the afternoon there.
Yay for us!
We started the day early- at 8am (that’s 5am pacific!) with an author’s talk from Sid Jacobsen and Ernie Colon, who created a graphic novel from the 911 commission report.
Ernie- the artist
Sid- the managing editor
Both have worked extensively for Harvey comics. Ernie is most famous for his comics Casper the Friendly Ghost and Richie Rich. Sid also spent many years as managing editor fro Marvel Comics.
A general history of Harvey comics- the main difference between Marvel and Harvey – Marvel has always had a reluctance to expand into education. Harvey has always found it to be natural, and has created graphic novels for many different things over the last 50 years.
They use the medium to tell a story. This use of comics to increase depth in understanding is what graphics application is all about.
In the book on the 911 report it was the timeline that was the most difficult to tell. In the actual book it was very hard to follow, and it took a long time to actually sort out all of the players and what was going on when and where. This finally turned into the books timeline which is the entire beginning of the book. The timeline is a great example of how graphics can add depth and clarity in understanding difficult things.
This book is the only thing to be endorsed by the 911 commission because it clearly tells the story. Graphics shows and tells in a way that words and photos can’t.
The authors hope that teachers will use more graphic novels as a means of information. At this time movie houses are paying attention to graphic novels because they make great story boards for movies. They also wanted to show that you can use graphic novels with adults, and in an educational setting.
A side note- it was Will Eisner who coined the term “Graphic Novel” when he wrote one called “Contract With God”. He didn’t want to call it a comic book because it wasn’t for children, so he changed the name to graphic novel.
Other graphic novels that they recommend:
Mous I, Maus II – Art Spiegelman
Persepolis – Marjane Satrapi
Epileptic -
Palestine – Joe Sacco
Barefoot Gen: Life After the Bomb (four volumes) – Keiji Nakazwa
Fax From Sarajevo – Joe Kubert
The Cartoon History of the United States – Larry Gonick
The Four Immigrants Manga – Henry (Yoshitaka) Kiyama
We also went to two related sessions, one using graphic novels to map history curriculum as well as creating student graphic novels for better understanding of texts.
Mrs. Benson and Mr. Belveal went to a session on grammar and had to leave because it was putting them to sleep… and as an added bonus Mrs. Benson tried to go to a session on research and was turned away by the fire marshal because there were too many people in the room already (there were guards at both doors by the time she got over there).
As always, Mrs. Anderson picked up tons of free books in the book hall.
In the afternoon we took the subway up to Columbia University, and spent the afternoon there.
Yay for us!
Friday, November 16, 2007
Afternoon Sessions
This afternoon we met at the Marriott in Times square, where I went to a session on intellectual property, after which we heard Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson speak. We them made the trip back across town to the convention center where we went to sessions on blogging and wikis as well as doing author studies via the internet.
below is some of the more relevant content that we collected.
Enjoy!
Fair use in the media and in education
Fair use balances the rights of owners with the rights of users to stimulate growth and ideas.
Considerations cannot be taken one by one; they must be looked at as a whole.
www.centerforsocialmedia.org/medialiteracy
socialmedia@american.edu
all of the “rules” that we hear about are actually guidelines, not really rules. They are not actually LAW. They are a negotiation; an attempt to try to clarify what fair use would be .Fair use is actually flexible in its application, based upon use and where we are in time (ex. 1970 vs. 2007).
Kenneth Cruz
These guidelines are actually a narrowing of the law- they have done more harm than good because they are not the law and don’t really show a consensus of what educators actually do.
Some of these guidelines, as soon as they were created were rejected by major groups of educators. They were always considered a compromise.
Written by a group of well meaning people who carved out a deal thinking that they were helping educators, but they have actually confused people more.
Reality is that as soon as we create a set of rules they will be outdated. there are actually four factors and they need to be applied broadly on a case by case basis.
So, what is fair?
Merchants of Cool (video) freely available from the PBS website.
The four factors that determine fair use:
Purpose of the use
Extent of the use
Nature of the use
Effect of the use on the market
General case law in the last 15 years, it is no longer just a matter of looking at the four factors. Increasingly courts are saying that there is really one big question, the answer to which will determine the other four answers.
The” transformitiveness” of the use. Is the use a new application of an existing product for the same purpose
Or is it an added value purpose (repurposing)- making something completely new by using what is already available. In order to transform an existing work in this scenario you don’t have to change it in the traditional sense- you can just reframe it.
Example: a book publisher putting out a coffee table book of the greatful dead, some small but complete reproductions of artwork used in the early years of the band (Fillmore posters)- publisher tried to make a deal for the poster art and some tickets, couldn’t make a deal. The publisher decided to go ahead, BGP sued and it went up the chain of command in the courts. It was finally decided that the inclusion of the work was a reframing of it- using it for a new purpose. Thus it was fair use.
The publisher did not alter the artwork, but recontextualized the work for a retrospective. Thus they created a new purpose for the work.
Most use is not challenged in education because it is actually fair use and the authors don’t want to set a precedent (they already know that it is fair use and don’t want others to know).
REPURPOSING AS A CATALYST FOR DISCUSSION IN THE CLASS IS TRANSFORMATIVE
If you use a film for the purpose that it was intended then it is not fair use.
Section 110 paragraph 1 it is ok to display copyrighted works in connection with a lesson in education.
Works for major motion pictures that a teacher shows in class that are relevant to the subject matter that they are teaching.
Example- Monty Python and the Holy Grail at the end of the school year in the 7th grade.
Does not work for babysitting movies.
Music- when played for the purpose of teaching (example – exposure to culture) effectively repurposes the work
Example would be playing music for the kids while they are working.
Websites from one of the sessions on Wikis and blogging:
EduWikis:
http://educaionalwikis.wikispaces.com
Free sites:
http://wikispaces.com
PBWiki
http://pbwiki.com
Wet Paint:
www.wetpaint.com/category/education
below is some of the more relevant content that we collected.
Enjoy!
Fair use in the media and in education
Fair use balances the rights of owners with the rights of users to stimulate growth and ideas.
Considerations cannot be taken one by one; they must be looked at as a whole.
www.centerforsocialmedia.org/medialiteracy
socialmedia@american.edu
all of the “rules” that we hear about are actually guidelines, not really rules. They are not actually LAW. They are a negotiation; an attempt to try to clarify what fair use would be .Fair use is actually flexible in its application, based upon use and where we are in time (ex. 1970 vs. 2007).
Kenneth Cruz
These guidelines are actually a narrowing of the law- they have done more harm than good because they are not the law and don’t really show a consensus of what educators actually do.
Some of these guidelines, as soon as they were created were rejected by major groups of educators. They were always considered a compromise.
Written by a group of well meaning people who carved out a deal thinking that they were helping educators, but they have actually confused people more.
Reality is that as soon as we create a set of rules they will be outdated. there are actually four factors and they need to be applied broadly on a case by case basis.
So, what is fair?
Merchants of Cool (video) freely available from the PBS website.
The four factors that determine fair use:
Purpose of the use
Extent of the use
Nature of the use
Effect of the use on the market
General case law in the last 15 years, it is no longer just a matter of looking at the four factors. Increasingly courts are saying that there is really one big question, the answer to which will determine the other four answers.
The” transformitiveness” of the use. Is the use a new application of an existing product for the same purpose
Or is it an added value purpose (repurposing)- making something completely new by using what is already available. In order to transform an existing work in this scenario you don’t have to change it in the traditional sense- you can just reframe it.
Example: a book publisher putting out a coffee table book of the greatful dead, some small but complete reproductions of artwork used in the early years of the band (Fillmore posters)- publisher tried to make a deal for the poster art and some tickets, couldn’t make a deal. The publisher decided to go ahead, BGP sued and it went up the chain of command in the courts. It was finally decided that the inclusion of the work was a reframing of it- using it for a new purpose. Thus it was fair use.
The publisher did not alter the artwork, but recontextualized the work for a retrospective. Thus they created a new purpose for the work.
Most use is not challenged in education because it is actually fair use and the authors don’t want to set a precedent (they already know that it is fair use and don’t want others to know).
REPURPOSING AS A CATALYST FOR DISCUSSION IN THE CLASS IS TRANSFORMATIVE
If you use a film for the purpose that it was intended then it is not fair use.
Section 110 paragraph 1 it is ok to display copyrighted works in connection with a lesson in education.
Works for major motion pictures that a teacher shows in class that are relevant to the subject matter that they are teaching.
Example- Monty Python and the Holy Grail at the end of the school year in the 7th grade.
Does not work for babysitting movies.
Music- when played for the purpose of teaching (example – exposure to culture) effectively repurposes the work
Example would be playing music for the kids while they are working.
Websites from one of the sessions on Wikis and blogging:
EduWikis:
http://educaionalwikis.wikispaces.com
Free sites:
http://wikispaces.com
PBWiki
http://pbwiki.com
Wet Paint:
www.wetpaint.com/category/education
NCTE 2007 Friday Morning
Hi all,
SO here is a quick recap...
Yesterday we presented at 12pm Eastern time, go to www.teacherweb.com/ca/wellsmiddleschool-dublin/anderson
and click on NCTE for our info.
We went to the Met in the late afternoon and wrapped the day up at the opening night Gala with Jonathan Kozol.
Today we were up early (5am pacific!) to see amy Tan speak, and now we are at a media literacy lecture.
go to
www.frankwbaker.com/ncte_presentation_page_2007.htm
To make a wiki go to this page
http://pbwiki.com/education.wiki
We are now off to head across town to get to our next sessions (yes, I said across town)
Cheers to you!
SO here is a quick recap...
Yesterday we presented at 12pm Eastern time, go to www.teacherweb.com/ca/wellsmiddleschool-dublin/anderson
and click on NCTE for our info.
We went to the Met in the late afternoon and wrapped the day up at the opening night Gala with Jonathan Kozol.
Today we were up early (5am pacific!) to see amy Tan speak, and now we are at a media literacy lecture.
go to
www.frankwbaker.com/ncte_presentation_page_2007.htm
To make a wiki go to this page
http://pbwiki.com/education.wiki
We are now off to head across town to get to our next sessions (yes, I said across town)
Cheers to you!
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
CTAP October BARC meeting
BARC Meeting on Tuesday 10/23/07
(Bay Area Regional CTAP Meeting)
(California Technology Assistance Project)
These are the notes from the first BARC meeting of the year, involving the implementation of technology standards (NETS) and technology in the classroom.
www.ctap4.org
There are many new low cost or free workshops involving technology.
There is a new partnership between Calisphere and CTAP- they are looking for district teams grade 4,8,11 history to create content in California history.
Team needs to submit one mini media project.
CTAP will look at the application, the media used, the makeup of the team.
Around 10 teams will be accepted.
Need teachers plus a media specialist. 3-4 people per team.
Go to upcoming events on the CTAP page for many more events. Flyer is in the calendar section.
For information on upcoming grants, the k12 voucher program, and EETT funding opportunities is on the CTAP website under the grants/tech plans tab.
BARC meetings this year will focus on integrating digital citizenship, and the 21st century learner.
Upcoming CUE events:
Both on 2/2/08
Silicon Valley CUE- 10th Annual technology conference on web enhanced learning
East Bay CUE- Cool tools for learning
BARC meetings this year:
10/23/07 NETS and supporting 21st century students,
1/29/08 Framework for 21st century learning,
4/29/08 Digital Citizenship for global learning
Dr. Kathy Hayden, featured speaker:
http://cnets.iste.org/
What has changed and what do we need to pay attention to as we move forward within each district?
As you may know, over the last year iste has been looking at what needs to be changed and these are the results of those meetings.
The order of the standards has changed:
1. Creativity and Information:
Students demonstrate creative thinking, construct knowledge, and develop innovative products and processes using technology.
2. Communication and Collaboration:
Students use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a distance, to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others.
3. Students apply digital tools to gather, evaluate, and use information.
4. Students use critical thinking skills to plan and conduct research, manage projects, solve problems, and make informed decisions using appropriate digital tools and resources.
5. Students understand human, cultural, and societal issues relating to technology and practice legal and ethical behavior.
6. Students demonstrate a sound understanding of technology concepts, systems, and operations.
Focusing on Creativity and innovation. Research is showing that students who are using technology in the classroom (such as video creation, etc.) score higher on math tests.
Sometimes in our standards based world we forget that it takes some art to get kids involved.
Escondido elementary school district has many examples of technology integration.
http://www.eusd4kids.org/#
Great resource.
Digital citizenship:
The power to communicate with other people in other countries. Not only kids but experts. We do not want to avoid the use of digital media because we are afraid of student use and safety. Instead we need to think about digital citizenship and ethics and how to help our students move forward in these areas.
It is hard to get teachers to be facilitators when they have major technological barriers and differences between schools and districts. Also, teachers feel afraid to step into waters that they are unfamiliar with, or will have to rework their current projects.
Barriers:
No money, no time, no coaches
Teachers need much more help integrating technology
Administrators are very nervous about technology, which makes tech have to work that much harder to get it into the schools.
Things need to be done from a student’s point of view, not the teachers or the adult point of view.
Example of technology integration:
Candidate watch (this is for teachers): http://tinyurl.com/3ycdc5
Integrating technology and Google earth to track the candidates in this year’s election.
Thanks ACOE!
(Bay Area Regional CTAP Meeting)
(California Technology Assistance Project)
These are the notes from the first BARC meeting of the year, involving the implementation of technology standards (NETS) and technology in the classroom.
www.ctap4.org
There are many new low cost or free workshops involving technology.
There is a new partnership between Calisphere and CTAP- they are looking for district teams grade 4,8,11 history to create content in California history.
Team needs to submit one mini media project.
CTAP will look at the application, the media used, the makeup of the team.
Around 10 teams will be accepted.
Need teachers plus a media specialist. 3-4 people per team.
Go to upcoming events on the CTAP page for many more events. Flyer is in the calendar section.
For information on upcoming grants, the k12 voucher program, and EETT funding opportunities is on the CTAP website under the grants/tech plans tab.
BARC meetings this year will focus on integrating digital citizenship, and the 21st century learner.
Upcoming CUE events:
Both on 2/2/08
Silicon Valley CUE- 10th Annual technology conference on web enhanced learning
East Bay CUE- Cool tools for learning
BARC meetings this year:
10/23/07 NETS and supporting 21st century students,
1/29/08 Framework for 21st century learning,
4/29/08 Digital Citizenship for global learning
Dr. Kathy Hayden, featured speaker:
http://cnets.iste.org/
What has changed and what do we need to pay attention to as we move forward within each district?
As you may know, over the last year iste has been looking at what needs to be changed and these are the results of those meetings.
The order of the standards has changed:
1. Creativity and Information:
Students demonstrate creative thinking, construct knowledge, and develop innovative products and processes using technology.
2. Communication and Collaboration:
Students use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a distance, to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others.
3. Students apply digital tools to gather, evaluate, and use information.
4. Students use critical thinking skills to plan and conduct research, manage projects, solve problems, and make informed decisions using appropriate digital tools and resources.
5. Students understand human, cultural, and societal issues relating to technology and practice legal and ethical behavior.
6. Students demonstrate a sound understanding of technology concepts, systems, and operations.
Focusing on Creativity and innovation. Research is showing that students who are using technology in the classroom (such as video creation, etc.) score higher on math tests.
Sometimes in our standards based world we forget that it takes some art to get kids involved.
Escondido elementary school district has many examples of technology integration.
http://www.eusd4kids.org/#
Great resource.
Digital citizenship:
The power to communicate with other people in other countries. Not only kids but experts. We do not want to avoid the use of digital media because we are afraid of student use and safety. Instead we need to think about digital citizenship and ethics and how to help our students move forward in these areas.
It is hard to get teachers to be facilitators when they have major technological barriers and differences between schools and districts. Also, teachers feel afraid to step into waters that they are unfamiliar with, or will have to rework their current projects.
Barriers:
No money, no time, no coaches
Teachers need much more help integrating technology
Administrators are very nervous about technology, which makes tech have to work that much harder to get it into the schools.
Things need to be done from a student’s point of view, not the teachers or the adult point of view.
Example of technology integration:
Candidate watch (this is for teachers): http://tinyurl.com/3ycdc5
Integrating technology and Google earth to track the candidates in this year’s election.
Thanks ACOE!
Saturday, October 20, 2007
CAG Conference on assessment
CAG conference on Assessment; Saturday 10/20/07 Rancho Cordova, CA
Notes on the sessions:
This blog entry includes my notes from the California Association for the Gifted conference on Assessment with Dr. Sandra Kaplan. This conference focused on specific areas within the GATE standards.
Opener: Marilyn Lane
GATE standards
Section 1 Program Design
Section 2 Identification
Section 3 Curriculum and Instruction
Section 4 Social and Emotional Development
Section 5 Professional Development
Section 6 Parent and Community Development
Section 7 Program Assessment
The specific standards within each section listed above can be found at the CAG website.
http://www.cagifted.ord/
A good place to discuss differentiation is in your department meetings. Teachers are already differentiating for below basic students, we now need to add in what we can do to tweak a curriculum for those who are above the average without adding more work.
Dr. Kaplan notes:
Looking at the idea of evaluation across the last 50 years… Many of he skills that we are trying to teach, such as critical thinking are skills that take a lifetime to master, thus they are hard to evaluate.
Testing procedures for many skill sets are already in place, so how do you add an evaluation without adding an evaluation. State tests don’t necessarily measure what we are teaching gifted students. Saying that a good measure is for gifted students to perform high on state tests is not accurate because we are not necessarily interested in measuring their factual knowledge.
How do you measure someone’s ability to be productive or to get better at decoding thoughts and ideas? How do you measure ones ability to think?
Texas has spent about 55 million dollars developing what they call performance standards for gifted students.
They have created benchmarks for grades 4,8,12 for where they anticipate a gifted student will be. They are getting ready to implement. Dr. Kaplan feels that these standards are only good for advocacy. We often use survey data (qualitative data)- which measures their overall happiness. We also see high reading scores- but that is not a reflection of a gifted program, as those kids would probably be reading at that level anyway.
What is a challenge?
Many students don’t have a clear understanding of what that is.
A real challenge: potential transmitted (manifested) into performance
What needs to be provided to help transmit potential into performance? How do you assess performance?
Contributing VS Contributors
What is an accomplishment? How do we define it?
Objective v. subjective?
Defined by..
Me?
You?
The world?
All measures should help a person understand who they are and what their accomplishments are or will be.
What are the things people do to be successful and what are the problems that hinder success?
Assessment should be affective, and help us understand what it means to us.
I don’t necessarily care that you get to the end point, I care about what you are doing along the way to get to where you are going.
The end point is the examples of good work and accomplishment, but the process is what helps us to understand who we are.
Dependency on their teachers to evaluate them and tell them what to do is not helping them develop into autonomous thinking people. Many students get angry when you say “I don’t know, lets look at the criteria and you tell me whether you are doing enough”…
“Is this the answer you are looking for”- Students want specifics and want to give the teacher what THEY want, not what they think. They need to take control of their learning process.
The students’ own evaluation and awareness of where they are and where they have weaknesses is the most important.
We should be preparing students for AP in kindergarten. Determine relevance, understanding the nature of the piece, summarize, drawing conclusions, deep understanding of how to cite examples that give authenticity to your arguments. Understand how to present an argument, language patterns and construction patterns of different ways of writing.
How do students decode what is in a message (prompt) and understand how to thoughtfully respond.
Test preparation
For good Performance students need to understand what we want:
Thinking: inductive or deductive?
Concrete to abstract or the other way round?
Students should automatically be thinking in clusters.Example: discuss the nature of love as seen in this story. – The student should automatically be looking at all aspects.
There is a difference between performance for today and performance for a lifetime.
Readiness:
Just because a person is gifted doesn’t mean that they are prepared. We need to be clear about what we want as outcomes, then we need to map backwards to figure out what skills they need to get there.
In handouts:
Rubric:
Acceleration
Depth
Complexity
Novelty
To determine the relevance is to take on the task of determining why something is important, to find evidence, authenticate and substantiate what you have learned.
What is the relevance of ________ in relationship to ___________
Event : today
Author : genre
Etc.
If we say “how do you know ____is good”, what criteria would you use to decide?
If Abraham Lincoln is judged to be a here, What criteria is being used to decide then, and what is being used now? How are they different?
We are not talking about the practice of the skill void of content. It is the relevance of the material in a wide spectrum of application
How do you read something, digest something, interact with something with a critical eye, not criticizing.
Assessment has an intimidation factor.
Vulnerability:
Student:
What if I fail?
Parent:
Get the kid out because parents can't keep up- loss of face
Teacher:
When students don’t perform the teacher suffers (mentally)
Administrator:
The school will look bad- pressure from the DO
If we are trying to get students to be self aware- to know if they are at a point of mastery, or where they are on the road.
Teachers often express frustration because they would like to do X with their students, and things like NCLB require them to do Y in the classroom. For many districts the test is becoming an end point in determining progress, instead of mastery of the thought process.
The intent for gifted education is the idea that tests are a means to an end not the end itself. Yes, you can get high grades; this doesn’t mean that you can perform well in your chosen field. Performance is the final assessment. Tests are meant to be used as measures only.
Intellectual Humility;
If you don’t have a clear understanding of how you are doing you will never understand your giftedness. Students need to understand that they are not great at everything, and be able to value and understand where they fall on a continuum of learning.
Learning to be accomplished.
Digging into information:
Looking deeper into things that capture your attention. Not the same as checking it out, or adding information to what you already know.
What it is… What the icon looks like…
Check it out Check Mark
The point .
Dig into Shovel
Point of view Glasses
Question ?
Frame/save Picture frame or piggy bank
Add to/incomplete +
Communicate Pencil
Checking it out means that it is unclear- add for understanding
Questioning refers to a new area of exploration
Teachers can replace icons with different icons that have ore meaning in your schema.
Icons are good for site analysis (on the web)
Reading for meaning.
Right Edge thinking:
On one edge:
Art of Argumentation
The evidence seems to indicate that…
Another way to perceive this would be…
What if…
On the other edge:
Logical Thought
Relate
Inductive reasoning
Deductive reasoning
Right angle thinking is the intersection of what \’s going on with other ideas.
Absorbing, comprehending, listening in ways that cause you to think, question, look for more information.
When elaborating on information...
Building a Knowledge Hierarchy
Build Down:
Take an idea and be able to:
Elaborate
Apply: look at today
Defend: look at the argument about why this is really important
Build Up:
Take an idea and be able to:
Research
Take in a different directionExtend
Build up and down:
Take an idea and be able to:
Choose what direction to take
On the ruler, each side is important for the student, but it is where the two sides intersect that holds the meaning for them. This is right angle thinking.
Substantiate
Authenticate
Verify
Students need to practice prioritizing, from least important to most important.
Relate to the big idea
Look at the overall repetition of ideas
Look at the purpose of the work
Think about personal values
Higher levels of knowing, not necessarily higher levels of thinking.
When determining relevance, copy a page of text and have students use scissors to literally cut out the main points, discuss.
Or, give them a page of text and have them cross out all of the words that they think are not important. Repeat, and repeat until they get down to the main point. Then ask them how to get there quicker.
Summarizing:
Glue: A universal concept
Change
Systems
Power
Relationships, etc.
Use as a way to unite ideas.
We are telling students that on one hand they aren’t good learners if they can’t regurgitate the information given to them and on the other hand we are telling them that they are not a good learner if they can’t think about all of the other ways to see it.
We want to get them to ask the question, “why does this make sense?”
What is the role of a professional student?
In this classroom…
You have the right to challenge ideas appropriately- politely.
GATE students get into a rut of being the first to raise their hand go tell us what the “right” answer is, and then sit back to look at the rest of the class with disdain.
We recognize individual differences.
Research reports that if you don’t have an environment that allows differences, the kids start to conquer and divide. Put things up that are done DIFFERENTLY.
In this classroom what we really prize most is your ability to try and your ability to improve.
Equal opportunity is not the same as the same opportunity.
There are times when…
I have control
You choose
You work alone
We work together
What we teach the kids cognitively HAS to have an affective component.
Making connections.
Use sheets to show the structural representation of what we are asking them to do. They show the thinking that we are trying to reinforce.
How does one determine relevance in a comparative base?
With reagard to the rubric driven lesson:
The most important part is in the beginning, when you address the reason “why”
Students should be able to ask the question “why are we doing this?”
Why is their behavior the way it is?
In the Rubric Related Lesson Plan presented by Dr. Kaplan:
The whole to parts section is where students are learning what to look for and what to listen for,
In the integration section:
Look at a single subject in depth and work on retrieval
Application: interdisciplinarity
This model has been built on:
Characteristics of gifted children
Pedagogy
GATE Standards
The lesson plan is open ended and can be used with all aspects of student learning.
Judging with Criteria:
We are really asking kids to become decision makers, a process that is usually difficult for them.
An intellectual responsibility goes into the decision making process. It is the fact that a person had better make sure that they understand what they are committing to.
Research by Renzulli as well as Maslow-
The concept of commitment to task is germain. Students need to understand their choices and commit to them. The concept is that you’ve done the best judgement that you can based upon your commitment.
Criteria can change in terms of:
Availability
Function/purpose
Rationale
Value
Example:
Former Olympic swimmer stated that if she were a swimmer in today’s world she would not be invited to the Olympics. This is because the availability of things to use in training has changed, the purpose of the sport has changed, the value of the sport has changed, etc.
Students need to learn to:
Judge _______by looking at/thinking about criteria within its own discipline
When judging in a comparative base:
Compare __________to ___________ using these criteria (solidify what they are by survey of the group)- how can they justify or agree upon criteria? Conventional wisdom, reference points such as the California state standards, etc.
Criteria is the wedge for judging.
What is judging like in the real world?
Becoming critical as a consequence of judging with criteria
What is the difference between subjective and objective?
Different times give different values to the same thing.
Context- the concept of time, the concept of place, the concept of philosophy
Development of a critical eye-
Example:
Look at a review of the author’s philosophy as related to the body of an author’s work. Is there congruence?
There are multiple critical eyes that see the same thing – they may all see it differently. What is that makes them see things differently?
What is the difference between a critic and a potter?
You shape things in the way that you perceive them.
Things like:
gender
work
knowledge
skill
all affect how we see things.
Helping kids understand the nature of bias and the nature of prejudice. Students cannot understand the role of being critical until they understand the role of the self.
“I just do” how much is that a help or a hindrance in making judgments?
It’s one thing to be critical and another to be a critic.
Closing:
You have to be very careful that you don’t misunderstand the fact that giftedness doesnot transcend humanness. They still need significant instruction.
We want students to know:
Ideas are related to each other
Built upon each other
What we are really doing is making judgments with criteria and determining relevance
These skills give greater depth of understanding and higher levels of knowing.
Thanks CAG and Dr. Kaplan!
Notes on the sessions:
This blog entry includes my notes from the California Association for the Gifted conference on Assessment with Dr. Sandra Kaplan. This conference focused on specific areas within the GATE standards.
Opener: Marilyn Lane
GATE standards
Section 1 Program Design
Section 2 Identification
Section 3 Curriculum and Instruction
Section 4 Social and Emotional Development
Section 5 Professional Development
Section 6 Parent and Community Development
Section 7 Program Assessment
The specific standards within each section listed above can be found at the CAG website.
http://www.cagifted.ord/
A good place to discuss differentiation is in your department meetings. Teachers are already differentiating for below basic students, we now need to add in what we can do to tweak a curriculum for those who are above the average without adding more work.
Dr. Kaplan notes:
Looking at the idea of evaluation across the last 50 years… Many of he skills that we are trying to teach, such as critical thinking are skills that take a lifetime to master, thus they are hard to evaluate.
Testing procedures for many skill sets are already in place, so how do you add an evaluation without adding an evaluation. State tests don’t necessarily measure what we are teaching gifted students. Saying that a good measure is for gifted students to perform high on state tests is not accurate because we are not necessarily interested in measuring their factual knowledge.
How do you measure someone’s ability to be productive or to get better at decoding thoughts and ideas? How do you measure ones ability to think?
Texas has spent about 55 million dollars developing what they call performance standards for gifted students.
They have created benchmarks for grades 4,8,12 for where they anticipate a gifted student will be. They are getting ready to implement. Dr. Kaplan feels that these standards are only good for advocacy. We often use survey data (qualitative data)- which measures their overall happiness. We also see high reading scores- but that is not a reflection of a gifted program, as those kids would probably be reading at that level anyway.
What is a challenge?
Many students don’t have a clear understanding of what that is.
A real challenge: potential transmitted (manifested) into performance
What needs to be provided to help transmit potential into performance? How do you assess performance?
Contributing VS Contributors
What is an accomplishment? How do we define it?
Objective v. subjective?
Defined by..
Me?
You?
The world?
All measures should help a person understand who they are and what their accomplishments are or will be.
What are the things people do to be successful and what are the problems that hinder success?
Assessment should be affective, and help us understand what it means to us.
I don’t necessarily care that you get to the end point, I care about what you are doing along the way to get to where you are going.
The end point is the examples of good work and accomplishment, but the process is what helps us to understand who we are.
Dependency on their teachers to evaluate them and tell them what to do is not helping them develop into autonomous thinking people. Many students get angry when you say “I don’t know, lets look at the criteria and you tell me whether you are doing enough”…
“Is this the answer you are looking for”- Students want specifics and want to give the teacher what THEY want, not what they think. They need to take control of their learning process.
The students’ own evaluation and awareness of where they are and where they have weaknesses is the most important.
We should be preparing students for AP in kindergarten. Determine relevance, understanding the nature of the piece, summarize, drawing conclusions, deep understanding of how to cite examples that give authenticity to your arguments. Understand how to present an argument, language patterns and construction patterns of different ways of writing.
How do students decode what is in a message (prompt) and understand how to thoughtfully respond.
Test preparation
For good Performance students need to understand what we want:
Thinking: inductive or deductive?
Concrete to abstract or the other way round?
Students should automatically be thinking in clusters.Example: discuss the nature of love as seen in this story. – The student should automatically be looking at all aspects.
There is a difference between performance for today and performance for a lifetime.
Readiness:
Just because a person is gifted doesn’t mean that they are prepared. We need to be clear about what we want as outcomes, then we need to map backwards to figure out what skills they need to get there.
In handouts:
Rubric:
Acceleration
Depth
Complexity
Novelty
To determine the relevance is to take on the task of determining why something is important, to find evidence, authenticate and substantiate what you have learned.
What is the relevance of ________ in relationship to ___________
Event : today
Author : genre
Etc.
If we say “how do you know ____is good”, what criteria would you use to decide?
If Abraham Lincoln is judged to be a here, What criteria is being used to decide then, and what is being used now? How are they different?
We are not talking about the practice of the skill void of content. It is the relevance of the material in a wide spectrum of application
How do you read something, digest something, interact with something with a critical eye, not criticizing.
Assessment has an intimidation factor.
Vulnerability:
Student:
What if I fail?
Parent:
Get the kid out because parents can't keep up- loss of face
Teacher:
When students don’t perform the teacher suffers (mentally)
Administrator:
The school will look bad- pressure from the DO
If we are trying to get students to be self aware- to know if they are at a point of mastery, or where they are on the road.
Teachers often express frustration because they would like to do X with their students, and things like NCLB require them to do Y in the classroom. For many districts the test is becoming an end point in determining progress, instead of mastery of the thought process.
The intent for gifted education is the idea that tests are a means to an end not the end itself. Yes, you can get high grades; this doesn’t mean that you can perform well in your chosen field. Performance is the final assessment. Tests are meant to be used as measures only.
Intellectual Humility;
If you don’t have a clear understanding of how you are doing you will never understand your giftedness. Students need to understand that they are not great at everything, and be able to value and understand where they fall on a continuum of learning.
Learning to be accomplished.
Digging into information:
Looking deeper into things that capture your attention. Not the same as checking it out, or adding information to what you already know.
What it is… What the icon looks like…
Check it out Check Mark
The point .
Dig into Shovel
Point of view Glasses
Question ?
Frame/save Picture frame or piggy bank
Add to/incomplete +
Communicate Pencil
Checking it out means that it is unclear- add for understanding
Questioning refers to a new area of exploration
Teachers can replace icons with different icons that have ore meaning in your schema.
Icons are good for site analysis (on the web)
Reading for meaning.
Right Edge thinking:
On one edge:
Art of Argumentation
The evidence seems to indicate that…
Another way to perceive this would be…
What if…
On the other edge:
Logical Thought
Relate
Inductive reasoning
Deductive reasoning
Right angle thinking is the intersection of what \’s going on with other ideas.
Absorbing, comprehending, listening in ways that cause you to think, question, look for more information.
When elaborating on information...
Building a Knowledge Hierarchy
Build Down:
Take an idea and be able to:
Elaborate
Apply: look at today
Defend: look at the argument about why this is really important
Build Up:
Take an idea and be able to:
Research
Take in a different directionExtend
Build up and down:
Take an idea and be able to:
Choose what direction to take
On the ruler, each side is important for the student, but it is where the two sides intersect that holds the meaning for them. This is right angle thinking.
Substantiate
Authenticate
Verify
Students need to practice prioritizing, from least important to most important.
Relate to the big idea
Look at the overall repetition of ideas
Look at the purpose of the work
Think about personal values
Higher levels of knowing, not necessarily higher levels of thinking.
When determining relevance, copy a page of text and have students use scissors to literally cut out the main points, discuss.
Or, give them a page of text and have them cross out all of the words that they think are not important. Repeat, and repeat until they get down to the main point. Then ask them how to get there quicker.
Summarizing:
Glue: A universal concept
Change
Systems
Power
Relationships, etc.
Use as a way to unite ideas.
We are telling students that on one hand they aren’t good learners if they can’t regurgitate the information given to them and on the other hand we are telling them that they are not a good learner if they can’t think about all of the other ways to see it.
We want to get them to ask the question, “why does this make sense?”
What is the role of a professional student?
In this classroom…
You have the right to challenge ideas appropriately- politely.
GATE students get into a rut of being the first to raise their hand go tell us what the “right” answer is, and then sit back to look at the rest of the class with disdain.
We recognize individual differences.
Research reports that if you don’t have an environment that allows differences, the kids start to conquer and divide. Put things up that are done DIFFERENTLY.
In this classroom what we really prize most is your ability to try and your ability to improve.
Equal opportunity is not the same as the same opportunity.
There are times when…
I have control
You choose
You work alone
We work together
What we teach the kids cognitively HAS to have an affective component.
Making connections.
Use sheets to show the structural representation of what we are asking them to do. They show the thinking that we are trying to reinforce.
How does one determine relevance in a comparative base?
With reagard to the rubric driven lesson:
The most important part is in the beginning, when you address the reason “why”
Students should be able to ask the question “why are we doing this?”
Why is their behavior the way it is?
In the Rubric Related Lesson Plan presented by Dr. Kaplan:
The whole to parts section is where students are learning what to look for and what to listen for,
In the integration section:
Look at a single subject in depth and work on retrieval
Application: interdisciplinarity
This model has been built on:
Characteristics of gifted children
Pedagogy
GATE Standards
The lesson plan is open ended and can be used with all aspects of student learning.
Judging with Criteria:
We are really asking kids to become decision makers, a process that is usually difficult for them.
An intellectual responsibility goes into the decision making process. It is the fact that a person had better make sure that they understand what they are committing to.
Research by Renzulli as well as Maslow-
The concept of commitment to task is germain. Students need to understand their choices and commit to them. The concept is that you’ve done the best judgement that you can based upon your commitment.
Criteria can change in terms of:
Availability
Function/purpose
Rationale
Value
Example:
Former Olympic swimmer stated that if she were a swimmer in today’s world she would not be invited to the Olympics. This is because the availability of things to use in training has changed, the purpose of the sport has changed, the value of the sport has changed, etc.
Students need to learn to:
Judge _______by looking at/thinking about criteria within its own discipline
When judging in a comparative base:
Compare __________to ___________ using these criteria (solidify what they are by survey of the group)- how can they justify or agree upon criteria? Conventional wisdom, reference points such as the California state standards, etc.
Criteria is the wedge for judging.
What is judging like in the real world?
Becoming critical as a consequence of judging with criteria
What is the difference between subjective and objective?
Different times give different values to the same thing.
Context- the concept of time, the concept of place, the concept of philosophy
Development of a critical eye-
Example:
Look at a review of the author’s philosophy as related to the body of an author’s work. Is there congruence?
There are multiple critical eyes that see the same thing – they may all see it differently. What is that makes them see things differently?
What is the difference between a critic and a potter?
You shape things in the way that you perceive them.
Things like:
gender
work
knowledge
skill
all affect how we see things.
Helping kids understand the nature of bias and the nature of prejudice. Students cannot understand the role of being critical until they understand the role of the self.
“I just do” how much is that a help or a hindrance in making judgments?
It’s one thing to be critical and another to be a critic.
Closing:
You have to be very careful that you don’t misunderstand the fact that giftedness doesnot transcend humanness. They still need significant instruction.
We want students to know:
Ideas are related to each other
Built upon each other
What we are really doing is making judgments with criteria and determining relevance
These skills give greater depth of understanding and higher levels of knowing.
Thanks CAG and Dr. Kaplan!
Friday, October 19, 2007
Cyber Ethics Summit
Here at the Yahoo campus on October 19,2007. Listening to David Warlick discuss how our world is outpacing us. The following are my notes from the seminar.
Links from presenters:
Keynote speakers handouts, bib., etc.
http://davidwarlick.com/wordpress/?p=202
Other speaker sites:
http://www.ctap4.org/cybersafety/
http://landmark-project.com/
http://www.werenotafraid.com/
http://connectsafely.org/
http://safely.yahoo.com/
http://www.isafe.org/
http://www.cyberbully.org/
http://www.netsmartz.org/
http://www.safekids.org/
http://digg.com/spy
http://digg.com/
http://www.ikeepsafe.org/
Video Games: students are doing more than playing, they are looking for stories and are inserting themselves into the plots. They are becoming a part of the story. This makes them fundamentally different from many of their teachers, who see gaming differently.
We tend to want our students to be the children that we want to teach, instead of letting them be who they are.
Realistically, we have around 5 years until the students we have in our classrooms are completely 21st century natives. They will not have been around for the typewriter, or the electric typewriter. They never knew a divided Berlin, or a U.S.S.R., they didn't experience vinyl records, and don't know a world without computers.
Even now by middle school many of them have cell phones, portable music players, and portable video games. Increasingly students will expect the classroom to include the technology that they have grown up learning with and using, and we are not necessarily prepared to help them manage this technology in a way that promotes effective, focused, and positive learning.
Students are growing up as a part of a connected network- they look for their information from this network, it is a collaborative community.
For us information is seen as consumable: CD's, DVD's. etc. We buy it and we use it the way it was intended for us to. We don't attempt to change or reshape what we have.
For our students information is seen as raw material- It's value is in what can be done with it, not necessarily what it is. Our students see information as changeable, for example: taking video games and using them as movie sets for videos, making video and setting it to audio from movies and musicals.
Web 1.0- Is static, authoritarian. Like our textbooks, it is information that has been selected for us and not meant to be questioned. A great example of this is the New York Times Website. There is a place for this type of information. It is needed.
Web 2.0.- Is dynamic, changeable, collaborative. The information in these types of websites is meant to be manipulated by users. The collaborative nature of these websites allows for collaboration and interface. A great example of this is digg.com
Our students are frequently collaborating, using social networking sites (like Facebook and Myspace), and making multiple meanings from the digital media that they use. So, the question is...
What do we want our students, who live in this world to know?
We can't shove them into our world because it is really not fair to them, as we would be asking them to live in what is ostensibly their past instead of moving forward into the future.
What kind of literacy do our children need to have in order to be successful in their world?
They have already created an entire new grammar system for the new language of text messaging and instant messaging, so what is literacy?
In reality we are talking about global learning vs sardine can learning. Students need to be empowered and learn to take ownership of the things that they create on the net. The new classroom needs to be a learning engine, with the teacher maintaining it. It is collaborative, with the students having an audience- their peers on the net.
Increasingly we are in a participatory information landscape. Everything is connected- the teacher- the net- the student- information.
The web that the student crawls is defined by an abundance of free information. Literacy changes in this environment. To them it is a playground.
In 2007 it is expected that we will have a 35 billion dollar loss due to spam. We could bring HIV/AIDS under control world wide with this amount of money.
Starting in kindergarten we need to be teaching our students about ethics on the Internet. We focus throughout the grade levels on what we can call "regular" ethics- but we don not broach to topic of cyber ethics. Like all things, students rely on the adults around them to understand what is right, wrong, safe, and unsafe.
Many students will comment on how their parents are very involved in maintaining their safety. They check in at school, know who their friends are, check up on their activities. But they don't check in on their activities on the web. This causes students to often think that the web is safe, otherwise their parents would be monitoring.
We have decided that every child needs to learn to read in this country. It is in their best interest. It is also in their best interest to have convenient access to digital content. it is the world that they will spend their adult life in, and it is not ethical of us to deny them this. That is why schools, communities, and teachers need to do everything in their power to help them get connected.
As we look at acceptable use:
We need to include students in the process.
Students don't understand what intellectual property is. To them the Internet is free because they can download or copy and paste what they need. This is different from a bookstore or a library, where they must check out or pay for materials. They are further confused because, unlike us, they view the materials that they get from the Internet as raw material, while we view it as consumable.
We can help them gain understanding by having them create their own type of "copyright" symbols for work that they publish to the web.
A side note... many teachers have the same problem dealing with copies!
Parents need to get more involved in their child's Internet life. As schools we need to help parents learn to parent their kids on the web. They don't tend to come to info meetings, so ...
get them where they are. Partner with local businesses, orthodontists, doctors, etc. to have infomercial type videos playing in their foyers and waiting rooms. Record meetings you do hold and upload them to the district website as podcasts. Have administrators such as principals, deans, VP's and DO personnel blog on easy to access websites.
These steps will get to many parents with information as well as tips. It won't get to our hardest to reach - the parents of at risk students. These families are traditionally non-responsive. For these students we need to get to and connect the professionals that are working with the population.
Parents need to become a part of their child's online world. One option is to make companion sites on their child's social networking site (facebook, myspace, club penguin) and then make their kid a friend. Check the photos and web posts that their children make, and talk to them about why some posts may not be appropriate.
In reality, most students don't have a clear understanding of what the line of appropriateness is (especially in our mall driven world!) so they really need to be monitored by an adult who is comfortable having conversations instead of barking orders. In most cases, when a student realizes the type of impression they are giving out to the web, they make really good choices about changing their online behavior. And that is what we really want- for them to learn to edit themselves, and create boundaries within their world.
This will help them also with their ethical understandings as well. In the end the rules we need to communicate to parents are:
Keep current
Communicate
Keep checking
When parents are not involved with computers and the digital world their kids assume that there is no risk, the Internet becomes another playground.
Cyber bullying:
The school needs to be able to respond in a meaningful way when online bullying affects their life at school.
1. Students need to be able to recognize what cyber bullying is- most don't really understand. We tell them not to do it, but never really explain what it is that they aren't supposed to do.
2. Students don't understand that there is no anonymity on the web. Things that they say or do will be out there forever, with no real way to take them back. They don't understand that comments and pictures spread on the net.
For the school, there is a balance between the ease of use and the safety of the kids. Teachers and parents need to be more aware of what cyber bullying looks like in its various forms, and what to do about it.
School officials can respond to cyber bullying if it has caused or has the potential to cause on campus harm. It is a very complicated area for schools and they often opt to do nothing, which is also to the detriment of the students. In general cyber bullying falls under the jurisdiction of the state.
We spent the last part of the day in group discussions. Thanks Yahoo!
Mrs. Anderson
Links from presenters:
Keynote speakers handouts, bib., etc.
http://davidwarlick.com/wordpress/?p=202
Other speaker sites:
http://www.ctap4.org/cybersafety/
http://landmark-project.com/
http://www.werenotafraid.com/
http://connectsafely.org/
http://safely.yahoo.com/
http://www.isafe.org/
http://www.cyberbully.org/
http://www.netsmartz.org/
http://www.safekids.org/
http://digg.com/spy
http://digg.com/
http://www.ikeepsafe.org/
Video Games: students are doing more than playing, they are looking for stories and are inserting themselves into the plots. They are becoming a part of the story. This makes them fundamentally different from many of their teachers, who see gaming differently.
We tend to want our students to be the children that we want to teach, instead of letting them be who they are.
Realistically, we have around 5 years until the students we have in our classrooms are completely 21st century natives. They will not have been around for the typewriter, or the electric typewriter. They never knew a divided Berlin, or a U.S.S.R., they didn't experience vinyl records, and don't know a world without computers.
Even now by middle school many of them have cell phones, portable music players, and portable video games. Increasingly students will expect the classroom to include the technology that they have grown up learning with and using, and we are not necessarily prepared to help them manage this technology in a way that promotes effective, focused, and positive learning.
Students are growing up as a part of a connected network- they look for their information from this network, it is a collaborative community.
For us information is seen as consumable: CD's, DVD's. etc. We buy it and we use it the way it was intended for us to. We don't attempt to change or reshape what we have.
For our students information is seen as raw material- It's value is in what can be done with it, not necessarily what it is. Our students see information as changeable, for example: taking video games and using them as movie sets for videos, making video and setting it to audio from movies and musicals.
Web 1.0- Is static, authoritarian. Like our textbooks, it is information that has been selected for us and not meant to be questioned. A great example of this is the New York Times Website. There is a place for this type of information. It is needed.
Web 2.0.- Is dynamic, changeable, collaborative. The information in these types of websites is meant to be manipulated by users. The collaborative nature of these websites allows for collaboration and interface. A great example of this is digg.com
Our students are frequently collaborating, using social networking sites (like Facebook and Myspace), and making multiple meanings from the digital media that they use. So, the question is...
What do we want our students, who live in this world to know?
We can't shove them into our world because it is really not fair to them, as we would be asking them to live in what is ostensibly their past instead of moving forward into the future.
What kind of literacy do our children need to have in order to be successful in their world?
They have already created an entire new grammar system for the new language of text messaging and instant messaging, so what is literacy?
In reality we are talking about global learning vs sardine can learning. Students need to be empowered and learn to take ownership of the things that they create on the net. The new classroom needs to be a learning engine, with the teacher maintaining it. It is collaborative, with the students having an audience- their peers on the net.
Increasingly we are in a participatory information landscape. Everything is connected- the teacher- the net- the student- information.
The web that the student crawls is defined by an abundance of free information. Literacy changes in this environment. To them it is a playground.
In 2007 it is expected that we will have a 35 billion dollar loss due to spam. We could bring HIV/AIDS under control world wide with this amount of money.
Starting in kindergarten we need to be teaching our students about ethics on the Internet. We focus throughout the grade levels on what we can call "regular" ethics- but we don not broach to topic of cyber ethics. Like all things, students rely on the adults around them to understand what is right, wrong, safe, and unsafe.
Many students will comment on how their parents are very involved in maintaining their safety. They check in at school, know who their friends are, check up on their activities. But they don't check in on their activities on the web. This causes students to often think that the web is safe, otherwise their parents would be monitoring.
We have decided that every child needs to learn to read in this country. It is in their best interest. It is also in their best interest to have convenient access to digital content. it is the world that they will spend their adult life in, and it is not ethical of us to deny them this. That is why schools, communities, and teachers need to do everything in their power to help them get connected.
As we look at acceptable use:
We need to include students in the process.
Students don't understand what intellectual property is. To them the Internet is free because they can download or copy and paste what they need. This is different from a bookstore or a library, where they must check out or pay for materials. They are further confused because, unlike us, they view the materials that they get from the Internet as raw material, while we view it as consumable.
We can help them gain understanding by having them create their own type of "copyright" symbols for work that they publish to the web.
A side note... many teachers have the same problem dealing with copies!
Parents need to get more involved in their child's Internet life. As schools we need to help parents learn to parent their kids on the web. They don't tend to come to info meetings, so ...
get them where they are. Partner with local businesses, orthodontists, doctors, etc. to have infomercial type videos playing in their foyers and waiting rooms. Record meetings you do hold and upload them to the district website as podcasts. Have administrators such as principals, deans, VP's and DO personnel blog on easy to access websites.
These steps will get to many parents with information as well as tips. It won't get to our hardest to reach - the parents of at risk students. These families are traditionally non-responsive. For these students we need to get to and connect the professionals that are working with the population.
Parents need to become a part of their child's online world. One option is to make companion sites on their child's social networking site (facebook, myspace, club penguin) and then make their kid a friend. Check the photos and web posts that their children make, and talk to them about why some posts may not be appropriate.
In reality, most students don't have a clear understanding of what the line of appropriateness is (especially in our mall driven world!) so they really need to be monitored by an adult who is comfortable having conversations instead of barking orders. In most cases, when a student realizes the type of impression they are giving out to the web, they make really good choices about changing their online behavior. And that is what we really want- for them to learn to edit themselves, and create boundaries within their world.
This will help them also with their ethical understandings as well. In the end the rules we need to communicate to parents are:
Keep current
Communicate
Keep checking
When parents are not involved with computers and the digital world their kids assume that there is no risk, the Internet becomes another playground.
Cyber bullying:
The school needs to be able to respond in a meaningful way when online bullying affects their life at school.
1. Students need to be able to recognize what cyber bullying is- most don't really understand. We tell them not to do it, but never really explain what it is that they aren't supposed to do.
2. Students don't understand that there is no anonymity on the web. Things that they say or do will be out there forever, with no real way to take them back. They don't understand that comments and pictures spread on the net.
For the school, there is a balance between the ease of use and the safety of the kids. Teachers and parents need to be more aware of what cyber bullying looks like in its various forms, and what to do about it.
School officials can respond to cyber bullying if it has caused or has the potential to cause on campus harm. It is a very complicated area for schools and they often opt to do nothing, which is also to the detriment of the students. In general cyber bullying falls under the jurisdiction of the state.
We spent the last part of the day in group discussions. Thanks Yahoo!
Mrs. Anderson
Thursday, June 28, 2007
The Eagle Has Landed
Or aken off, depending on your perspective! On this day the American Bald Eagle was taken off of the endangered species list, and I, Mrs. Anderson, moved my blog to blogspot.com. I've also changed my eamil address. So there.
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