South side

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Again

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World Made New

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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WolframAlpha in Physics

For about a year and a half now I have been using WolframAlpha (WA) in class. Students may use it for any assignment or assessment. This changes the problems that you assign. Drastically.

Many easy problems can be simply cut and past into WA and solved. So what becomes important is assigning problems that get at the real skills we would like students to have from problems. Problems that they have to break apart and digest and put together the simple things that WA can solver for them. This is not unlike what I do when I solve problems in my own work.

What I did not know until now was how little of that kind of problem solving I used to teach. I assign many fewer problems that are much harder and require a ton more thinking. Since this is not what I am used to many of my old methods of teaching problem solving are not working as well. Here is the punch line: WA is making me think that I need to have my students talk more about the problems they are solving. This technology is making me see a need for my students to be more social. I should have read Frank's post more closely.

There are so many complaints out there that technology makes us less social, but I think in the end it frees us to be more social. But it is hard work getting there.

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Gene Norris

I have been using Bluefire Reader to read ePub books from the library on the iPad. I have not checked this many books out from the library in years.

I love Pat Conroy's  storytelling and I have been reading My Reading Life. My favorite book by him is the must read teacher book, The Water Is Wide. I ran across this quote about his favorite English teacher, "'Mr. Norris acted like I was the most important girl in the world.' she said. 'You were. That was Gene's secret. All of us were.'"

I am starting a collection of quotes the exemplify what I am currently calling a posture of the image of God. This posture is a combination of two ideas that I have been toying with. In the Kalyanpur and Harry's book Culture in Special Education the propose that special education teachers need a, "posture of cultural reciprocity." Their idea is that you cannot understand the needs of a student and their family until you have some handle on what is cultural to both you and the student. Since you are the teacher you are the one who has to build into your life a posture of always looking to learn about those around you. The book is another must read.

I tied this idea to one I got from CS Lewis in The Weight of Glory [PDF], "There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors." This caught my attention because of another quote, this one unattributed brought to me by a professor this summer, "There is a part of who God is that only gets expressed through who you are."

Teaching means to have a posture of the image of God. Whoever you run into has some piece of the image of God that you will only see by looking closely at that person. As a teacher I need to work to bring this unique piece of God's image out in each student. This is the task of revealing the immortal, of helping students, "know fully, just as [they] have been fully known."

Gene Norris had a posture of the image of God, whether he knew it or not.

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Drawing Graphs

These students are doing problems. Very traditional problems. Yet they are drawing graphs to start. This is one of the things that starting with inquiry does. Since they started with graphs of data they are more likely to draw graphs of problems, which better mimics how real problems are solved.

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Doing What Works

via dww.ed.gov

Click through and listen to this teacher on using presentations to asses student learning. He lays out perfectly what a valuable use of class time presentations can be if they teacher is working hard to make them valuable. I particularly love that he is going to the groups and telling them ahead of time what his questions will be. This makes the kids feel empowered and motivated to learn.

This tab was to the right of my twitter tab, so I think I owe a debt of gratitude to @fnoschese for this link.

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Family

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qBits | Announcing Air Sketch 2.0, with PDF projection!

via qrayon.com

I installed this update as soon as I saw it and PDF import is an incredible addition to AirSketch. Now you can export a PDF from your favorite presentation software and display it from your iPad on the projector in your room and annotate the slides. Better yet, students can do the same.

There is a post in this, but I am using the Dropbox program and app to transfer PDFs. Any better ideas on moving PDFs to and from the iPad?

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qBits | MSNBC selects Air Sketch for use on Air

via qrayon.com

I have been using this program in a similar way to use the iPad school is letting me play with to control my screen. Today I had several breakthroughs that are moving me closer and closer to thinking that this is the way to go. In the past my classroom has used the awesome combination of Skitch and a Wacom Graphire Wireless, and I still love and recommend that combination to anyone looking at a traditional interactive white board. Much cheaper, much more student, subject and learning focused and significantly cheaper. Above all this, it just works which is important for teachers. Teachers do not use stuff that does not work every time.

That being said I am trying AirSketch on the iPad. Why? because it is cheap as well. The combo that I use is about $300, but if you buy the pads from Promethian or Mimio they will set you back north of $400. Lately I have see iPad popping up on the refurbished list for $450. So if you can make it work as well as these other options, for only $50 more you also have a iPad instead of a hunk of plastic. And, since the connection is through your wireless network there is little chance of interference like there is with my Wacom.

Two things happened today to make it click that AirSketch might just be the right thing. First, I accidently two finger zoomed, and sure enough I could fill in details in a section of my drawing. Details are much easier to draw with a pen than a finger. The AirSketch app makes detail possible by allowing you to zoom in and work in a small area. Before I knew this I was not able to fit an entire problem on a page.

Second, I figured out how to take a screen shot using my iPad, this is then 3 clicks away from being a background to draw on in AirSketch. For me this is essential, since most of my homework is online. I used to surf to a problem that a students asks about and screen shot it with Skitch and go. Now I surf on the iPad to the problem, screen shot it by pressing the Power button and the iPad button at the same time, then switch to AirSketch and pull it out of the photo gallery and draw on it to help the students.

What is super cool is now I can also give it to the students, since they can see where they are writing. If only the iPad had four finger swipe application switching we would be all set.

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Marla Coleman: The value of summer camp | SummitDaily.com

Thousands of my colleagues across the nation will attest to the power of camp. No grades. No permanent records. Just authentic connections to the real world. Play is the work of childhood; it's how children invent and re-invent themselves, find their place in the universe, and learn what they are good at and where they need to practice. Life is the quintessential test tomorrow's leaders need to pass.

via summitdaily.com

I love this and the rest of this post on what camps can teach schools. Every kid deserves to learn the lessons of camp. School can be that place. In my case I keep my physics room filled with physics stuff to play with. I ask students to explore their world and try to teach them how to do that well, because they will be doing that the rest of their lives.

In short I have spent a educational career trying to bring camp to the classroom, because it is the most effective way to teach for real learning.

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Family

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Physics Is Streetlights

via chartercities.org

So we bounced balls and we modeled the real world with some math. I even had students with graphing calculators out with no prompting. We figured out that we can do the basics of this physics thing. But why would we do this physics thing?

I had the students look at this picture for a few minutes. Actually 3.5 minutes exactly. I do this thing where when I give them time to complete a task I open up my iTunes and play a song the length that I give them to work. I even have music sets for longer periods of time. And just in case that is not enough the last song in a set is always orchestral in nature so they know that work time is coming to an end.

I asked them to write about the picture. Start with just noticing details and then ask questions about the picture. What do you want to know about what is going on?

"In this picture, the first thing that i saw right away was the race of all 7 men. They are of course sitting in the streets and they have notebooks and books with them. As people would get stereotyped into the group as "People who live in the projects, have no future". But looking at this picture made me feel like they wanted to better themselves and better their lives and get an education. That was my first assumption. Also, it looks dark outside, and they are outside reading. I'm not sure if it was night or early morning. If it's the morning, it made me feel like they were maybe waiting for a bus or about to go to school. If it's at night, maybe some of them don't have homes with electricity. So they need light to see what they are reading. Their cloths look rugged and worn. They aren't the newest, yet they aren't the oldest. But as I looked into every each and one of their faces, you can just see the determination and dedication they have to better their lives, and actually have and hold a future, instead of risk themselves surviving without an education for the rest of their life."

What teacher needs to say anything when the students bring that kind of heat? What if we brought that to our studies? What if we had a reason to bring that kind of dedication to our studies? The students do not know the question ahead of them yet. The big question will hopefully make their studies this important. And physics is what brings us light today.

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Project Based Learning Resources

I had great conversation yesterday about project based learning. I think a well designed project with an authentic audience is the thing that all students need. The conversation surrounded the benefits to honors students. I followed up with this email.

Here is a blog post with some project resources. Specifically this document mentioned in that post is a document I read over before finalizing any plans for a project.

Edutopia.org, in spite of the very idealistic name, is also an excellent resource. Here is a great reading list of their favorite articles on project based learning.

Two last things, both of them personal. Here is a link to my blog. Here is a link to where I keep my web bookmarks on projects. It will update as I find new interesting things.

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Culture in Special Education - Image of God

I have been refining my thoughts on what it means to bear the image of God. What are the fundamental human characteristics? 

God uniquely creates all humans each day.
All humans live in brokenness each day.
God requires us to carry each other through the brokenness each day.

Kalyanpur and Harry's describe a "posture of cultural reciprocity" (pp. 118-119) as a solution to communication problems with parents of special education students. It described treating all people like they bear the image of God. I thought of God creating me through being a reflective person. "In other words, first ask yourself, 'Why?'" (p. 118) When they tell me to find out about the culture of the person I am trying to help, I know I am asked to help. When they ask me to give of myself to aid the understanding of others, I know that is required of me. When through this process a good solution is found, a solution that will carry us all through the brokenness, I should not be surprised. As God uses us to create each other, we find a way to carry each other.

"If we seek to understand ourselves and the families who we serve at every intersection, however small, then the task will seem less onerous." (pp. 130 - 131) Carrying each other and allowing ourselves to be created is an everyday occurrence. Like having a posture of cultural reciprocity, it cannot just be used when needed. Each of us is unique, therefore it requires a lot of work to understand everyone we serve. We cannot ever be the same as anyone else, "but that we have the willingness to learn about and understand their experiences, that we are willing to understand how our own experiences have shaped us, and that we respect and accept these differences in our various experiences" (p.131) helps us carry and create each other every day.

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Culture in Special Education - Work

Kalyanpur and Harry use "two criteria [to define] meaningful work: 1)It should be essential in that if one individual did not undertake the task another would have to, and 2) it should be paid." (p. 111)

We often hear the argument that one of the objectives of school is to prepare students for the world of work. In the case of special education students, it means specifically that parents and professionals will be setting goals for the work a student might do. At first read, I underlined the quote above and thought it was a good working definition of work. But, it was followed up with this, "As Harry and Kalyanpur pointed out, however, these criteria do not apply to all valued work even within the mainstream: work such as that of housewife... and that of an entertainer or an artist... These criteria also do not apply to entrepreneurs who create new new kinds of businesses for which there was no previous demand." (p. 111)

What is totally interesting to me is the arguments that we made for bringing laptops into the school mirror much closer the needs of the efforts that are outside the working definition of work. We never claimed that test scores would go up or that students would be better workers. We claimed they would be more creative, artistic, expressive, and musical because we see the laptops as the ultimate creativity machine. We claimed students would be more collaborative, and raising children requires support and collaboration. We claimed students would be more creative problem solvers, thinking outside the box like entrepreneurs.

May be this is cliche to say, but I am glad that we are not preparing students for the world of work. We are helping students become who God wants them to be. That will include using amazing skills in places of work and other places they never imagined to bring God's Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

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Culture in Special Education - Parenting

"More and more, the task of child rearing no longer remains solely in the hands of parents and extended family but has come to be shared with experts and paid professionals who design, oversee, and provide services." (p. 81)

A couple of weeks ago at camp I was sitting on the floor of the lodge building, listening to the rain and participating in chapel. I watched as a counselor a few rows up from me turned to try and get a camper to sit still. At first I thought it was going to be just a look, but then I saw that the camper was struggling to put his arms in has t-shirt. It was cold that morning and the camper had not worn a jacket. The counselor quickly figured out what was happening and handed over his coat. The camper eagerly participated in the rest of the chapel.

The camper could very easily have been a fidgety eight year old. We make assumptions about students behavior all the time. It seems much rarer that we look for ways to figure out what the problem really is. We assume that when something goes wrong it is the same reason every time. Like eight year old boys just cannot sit still. Kalyanpur and Harry argue that right and wrong are not so easy to define in parenting. They argue that most parenting decisions are built on a few continuums that reflect the culture and realities of their life. For example, one parent might make a decision with only the nuclear family involved. On the other side of the spectrum there may be families for whom descisions have to go through a large extended family before they can be made. This extened family may even include, "fictive kin" (Stack, 1975, p. 59) who are not related at all.

I really like the image of parenting choices being a set of sliders, like the sliders on a color chooser. Every kid, reflecting the uniqueness that God created them with will end up a unique color. Each decision about how to help a child become involves adjusting some sliders, like how many people are considered family, and how hierarchical the family is; or how involved the family is at that stage the person is at. As people who love a child, it is important that we all communicate where we think the sliders be adjusted to and why. It is also incredibly important that we listen to the other who have a stake in those sliders as well.

As I read this, I thought a lot about discipline. It is hard to talk about discipline publicly. As a technology coordinator I get involved in discipline issues. The cultures at the places where I have worked with kids seems to be that parents, teachers and administrators all want to put in the good work to help everyone navigate the complicated waters that we have today. I think this respects the uniqueness of each child and family while building the community to be more resilient against the forces that would normally break us down.

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Culture in Special Education - Objectivit

"Objectivity is highly valued in the low-context culture of Western professionalism, the assumption being that professionals are likely to diagnose and remediate more effectively when they are not emotionally involved with their clients and when the process is informed by a scientifically based and, therefore, objective body of knowledge that yields universal solutions. Indeed, the concept of objectivity itself is essentially Western." (p. 51)

I am struggling with what role objectivity plays in the life of an educator. The more I practice the more I think it does not belong. There is no way to do something so human as educate a child, really to find truth together with a child, and do it without putting your own heart in the game. All that objectivity serves to do is distance me from the subject and from the learner, and in my experience, increased distance does not help learning. This quote hit me hard because I have been deeply struggling with what true objectivity is, and this has been a core struggle. Then to think that the idea of objectivity might just be a cultural artifact from the scientific revolution shakes me up even more.

Here is why the struggle to define objectivity is important to a technology coordinator. We are asked to evaluate the one to one laptop program all the time. Currently numbers define educational success, but numbers do not tell the story. In some sense numbers are not objective. You have to come and visit. You have to talk with our teachers about the impact of technology on learning. You have to hear the stories of students creating their learning. Objectivity is a, "judgment based on observable phenomena and uninfluenced by emotions or personal prejudices" and as such seeks truth. We should make observations. We should allow those observation to shape us, in fact we have to because they become part of our experience. If we learn something from an observation we will not remain uninfluenced. It will be personal because learning is personal.

What I strive for in helping people understand the impact of technology on teaching and learning is understanding. I want them to learn from me and my wonderful colleagues. I do not really want them to have an objective opinion. I want them to to be impacted by experience and put their own imprint on me. Just like I want my students to explore their worlds and show me the great new things that they find.

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Culture in Special Education - IQ

"The problem with IQ and other standardized test is that they overlook the fact that children are competent in multiple domains, such as kinesthetic, and interpersonal skills, and not just the academic domains that IQ tests measure" (p. 36)

People sometimes ask what books are on my reading list. recently it has just been things I am reading for class, like Culture in Special Education. However, I also try to read things that I find referenced from two different sources. So if I am going through my twitter feed and see two people who do not know each other comment on a book that they are reading, I add it to my Amazon wish list for later reading.

I did not originally underline the quote above as I read. However, it was one of my classmates favorite quotes. I am very thankful to her for pointing it out. It fits my test for a good future read, except it is a test for something that is true. The education blogs love quotes like the one above because of the call for changing school to be more individual and student centered. They love it because it talks about needing to nurture each learner or like Proverbs 22:6 says, "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it." (KJV) The point of the proverb is that each child has a way. Each child has a unique, creative, Kingdom-building way to go.

Therefore, it is good to hear the same news in a different arena. And to think, if it were not for a colleague I would have read right past it.

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Culture in Special Education - Individualism

Americans are individualistic. There may be many faults with this, but there is no getting away from the basic truth. In reading Chapter 2 of Culture in Special Education I learned that there is a very intentional affirming of this in our special education laws. The laws are set up to make every American as independent as they can be, "to ensure that individuals who posses a trait -- an 'immutable characteristic' -- that could reduce their chances for making choices toward the pursuit of happiness will not be denied these opportunities." (p. 27) The law also seems to require an independent American parent to advocate for the services a child qualifies for.

The point the authors make is that this culture of individualism does not work for every sub-culture in the United States. Certain "families may be both unfamiliar and uncomfortable with the prevailing 'culture of rights' on which American special education policy and therefore, practice are based." (p.26) If the goal is pursuit of happiness for all Americans, is it acceptable that we would have certain sub-cultures who cannot access the services that would give them this right. One could argue that in figuring out how to achieve the services the sub-culture become more American, but one could also argue that if they never get the services the sub-culture risks never joining the greater culture. Either way, this is a great example of two cultures tugging at each other as they work to reshape each other.

In my setting I wonder: how have I as a technology coordinator set up an individualistic foundation in our policies, and who am I missing because of this? In my context I still get students who claim to not be computer literate even though they have had a laptop every day of the school year since eighth grade. I wonder if this is because there is little formal help for students who need help using programs. They are told to ask a teacher, a friend, the helpdesk if there is no hardware issues, or try Atomic Learning. We assume that they will advocate for themselves in their learning of computer skills, probably because most of them do. However, the most vulnerable to this problem have the greatest need. I think it will be important going forward that we have student ambassadors that help students new to the school learn about the use of the laptops.

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