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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/BudTheTeacher/~3/320216318/ The conversation I did last week with Teachers Teaching Teachers is now up as a podcast. Plenty of great information about some interesting summer professional development. You should listen. After some gentle nudges in the chat room, I’ll be talking more about CyberCamp at a NECC Unplugged session at 3:30pm on Tuesday in the NECC Blogger’s Cafe. I’ll make sure there’s a stream and will share the link when I know what it is.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/BudTheTeacher/~3/319760790/ Good morning from TIE. This morning, I’m in live blogging a session on data driven decision making facilitated by Chris O’Neal. Join me!
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/BudTheTeacher/~3/316536127/ I guess the biggest frustration to me regarding the “Oh no - we didn’t realize the policy and now we’re certain that ISTE’s out to get independent media and citizen journalists and quash the edupunks and destroy any chance of education reform ever in the history of forever!” hysteria over ISTE’s NECC audio/video policy is that so many of my colleagues, people whom I respect and value, are probably going to end today or start next week thinking that this conversation and its tone was/is/shall forever be a fine example of the power of blogs and new media to make change. And that would be wrong.
The problem I have with seeing this as a victory is that the bloggers in this one come out looking like a cross between Chicken Little and Tony Soprano. And that’s not a good thing. In the past 24 hours, I’ve read misstatements, threats, assumptions, and lazy research. “I’m taking my ball and going home” lines, too. From educators. Attempting to solve a problem. It’s disappointing. A rational, responsible, and patient tone would have been much better than some most of what I’ve seen and read in regards to this issue.
I’ll be the first to say that I’m pleased to see the policy changed, albeit temporarily. It was an old rule that didn’t fit the current media landscape. ISTE, I hope, would be the first to say that. And I’m pleased that so many bloggers felt compelled to address the issue. But I’d like to think that some more patient and questioning language might have been used in the “investigation.” Questions inviting dialogue, perhaps, rather than assumptions and anger. I felt like we were headed up the mountain to the monster’s castle, pitchforks and torches in hand.
We’d never let our students get away with this type of conclusion jumping and invective. And so, we shouldn’t be happy about the methods, but we should be pleased about the outcome. I hope the folks who make it to the table in future conversations on this and other matters of policy and disagreement are those who approach with patience and kindness, checking their assumptions at the door. And I hope that, if I’m ever guilty of such poor choices in language and attitude, that you’ll be quick to call me on it.
My goal here is not so much to place blame - but to suggest that perhaps we could all do better. I know I’ve been guilty of getting excited and forgetting to do a gutcheck in the past. Let’s all try not to do that. There are too many rules and policies and issues and problems and situations that need changing and will require our best work.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/BudTheTeacher/~3/314559627/ I’ll be talking about CyberCamp on Teachers Teaching Teachers tonight at 7pm Mountain Time as a piece of a show about summer professional development. I’ve invited all the CyberCampers, too, so I hope to include them in the conversation. I hope you can join us, too.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/BudTheTeacher/~3/311899728/ The more I work as a professional developer and teacher of teachers, the more I am resolved that I will do my best to never create a resource for one situation that cannot be useful in another. There are too few of me and too many needs in my district to do otherwise.
I think, though, the careful consideration of audience and purpose that I engage in before creating a resource is a valuable one for all readers, writers, and creators. Perhaps there’s value, in a connective writing class, in spending some time on rhetorical analysis, specifically in the vein of thinking about multi-purposed work.
This isn’t a new statement for me to make, either here or in my classroom(s), as I’ve always operated under the assumption that the best writing happens when writers consider their audience and their purpose for writing, allowing them to determine the focus they should take in a particular piece. This idea (often called the rhetorical triangle, with each of the points defined slightly differently by the person(s) doing the defining) can and should be expanded to include all kinds of composition and writing, not just print texts. This leads me to the teaching point that I would want to include in my connective writing work:
As much as possible, all texts should have a life outside of the classroom.
This “extra-curricular life” can take multiple forms, and won’t make sense for all types of writing and creation, but I strongly believe that we should never create something that will die after a teacher has blessed or cursed it with a grade. I’ve always believed that, but the more I learn, the less I’m willing to suggest that such multi-purposed work should only happen at the end of a course, after all the practice work is completed. Project-based learning, too, embodies this philosophy, as projects should have a life outside of the classroom.
What does “extracurricular life,” or multi-purposed work, look like in a professional learning experience for teachers? One way I attempted to create a multi-purpose-able resource in CyberCamp was through the series of Works in Progress (WiP) presentations that we asked every participant to do. As I explained at the beginning of CyberCamp:
One of the values of CyberCamp is sharing. Talking about what we’re up to is a good way to better understand our own work, and the act of sharing it with a group is useful, too, because it allows your fellow CyberCampers to help you out, be it through good questions, suggestions, or becoming an extra set of eyes and ears in the world seeking resources to help you with your project.
Because sharing is so essential, we’ve set up time here at CyberCamp for everyone to have a 20 minute block of time in which to share their work. Each day, we’ll ask two of you to share what you’re working on and then we’ll give ten minutes to the CyberCampers to give you some constructive feedback. We’ll be talking more about what “constructive feedback” looks at CyberCamp, but know that you’ll be getting help - not criticism.
Again, because sharing is so essential to what we do, we’ll be adding an extra level of sharing to your process. We’ll literally be sharing your Work in Progress conversation with the world and archiving your presentation here on the blog using a tool called Ustream. This will allow you to share your work with, and to learn from, the world. While that can be scary, trust us when we tell you that your work is important and worthy of being shared.
Not to toot our own horn (or whistle, to stick with the camp metaphor), but it seems to me that a twenty minute investment of class time here (thirty minutes if you leave time for some feedback) leads to an excellent archive/snapshot of a work in progress, a chance to get very specific feedback, and a permanent record of the event that is available for further scrutiny, reflection and commenting. Not bad, as far as multi-purposing goes. Add in the fact that these presentations also become resources for other people working on similar projects as well as models of our activity for future CyberCamp experiences, and we’ve got some handy multi-purpose resources.
Other examples of multi-purposing in CyberCamp include our project proposals as well as our blog. Pretty much, any well-written blog (as a whole, not each entry) is a fine example of multi-purposed writing. But perhaps that’s another post.
One of the struggles, of course, with trying to build multi-purpose resources, or to find ways to ask learners to do so, at least one that I worry/wonder about, is making sure that I’m never putting the needs of future learners or secondary audiences ahead of the learners who are the “primary” audience for a particular activity/event/experience. Let me try to say that better - we can sometimes create problems for our class when we try to create opportunities with “outsiders,” particularly if we’re forcing a connection that maybe isn’t organically or authentically there. Connections just for connections’ sake are bad ideas, maybe even educational malpractice. The trick becomes figuring out where those lines and boundaries are, and when to say no to kind invitations to meet/Skype/join up with others who may or may not be in a similar place, educationally speaking.
Another struggle, I suspect, is figuring out how to contextualize those creations in a way as to make them as useful as possible. I’m beginning to practically understand why so many higher ed folks talk about learning objects and repositories and a slew of related issues, and struggle with those things, too.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/BudTheTeacher/~3/305027755/ My wife sent me the following exchange via e-mail today, a conversation between herself and Ani, who’s three and not quite a half:
A lunchtime conversation:
Ani: My ice cream is too cold to eat.
Me: Well, you can wait and let it warm up, but it will melt.
Ani: I can eat it when it’s melted.
Me: Yes, but you might have to drink it through a straw. Ice cream is like Frosty the Snowman — it melts.
Ani: Chocolate melts.
Me: Yes. What else melts?
Ani: I don’t know.
Me: Does ice melt?
Ani: Yes.
Me: Do strawberries melt?
Ani: No.
Me: Do popsicles melt?
Ani: Yes.
Me: Do people melt?
Ani (in that of-course-not-you’re-so-silly tone): No! (Then matter-of-factly): They die, though.
Smart kid. Wise, maybe. Just saying.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/BudTheTeacher/~3/303772726/ At the risk of getting a little too meta, I’m going to be talking through my history of thinking about linking, or conective writing, today during CyberCamp as a part of our series of “Works in Progress” conversations. I’m inviting you, if you’re interested, mostly to help me model how a backchannel and uStream conversation can be of value to a face to face group, but selfishly, too, because I’m always interested in how others are thinking about these ideas. So, if you’re willing and able, join us at around 11:30am MST for a short uStream presentation. All the details are on our wiki.
Thanks in advance!
http://www.nycwpinquiry.com/?p=73 I'm back on the Twitter bandwagon, thanks to Henry. (If you're on twitter, look me up: NCavillones.)
I've been trying out some twitter-centered tools. One was suggested by Paul Allison. TweetScan is a search engine for topic-specific tweets. Right now, I'm checking out tweets that contain the word "homeschool," since ...
http://www.nycwpinquiry.com/?p=72 It's never too early to mark your calendars for the New York City Writing Project's 10th Annual Teacher-to-Teacher Conference. This year, the conference will be held on Saturday, March 29th at Lehman College in the Bronx. The scheduled keynote speaker is Linda Christensen, author of Reading, Writing and Rising Up: ...
http://www.nycwpinquiry.com/?p=71 Sounds neat. I'll try to make to it, if I'm feeling up to it! (And yes, you saw this same post on Ms. Frizzle's blog).
EduCamp NYC is a gathering born from the desire by teachers, researchers, and technology specialists in K-12 education to share and learn in an open ...
http://www.nycwpinquiry.com/?p=70 Thanks to Jeff for this link!
Google For Educators
http://www.nycwpinquiry.com/?p=69 Eric recently mentioned on his blog that he is using the new Flock release. I've downloaded it to try it out, since it comes with many new features. I used it awhile back but found myself annoyed with it, so I went back to Firefox.
http://www.nycwpinquiry.com/?p=68 I'm up early today to meet the UFT teacher center staffter at my school, to talk about how I'll use the SmartBoard in my class today. I went to the Apple Store yesterday to buy the peripheral I need to connect my MacBook to the school's projector. I'm looking forward ...
http://www.nycwpinquiry.com/?p=67 It's not too late to join Tech Thursdays! Here's a flyer: Tech Thursdays
The next meeting is November 8th. If you are interested, please shoot me an e-mail, or e-mail the folks noted at the bottom of the flyer. Hope to see you there!
http://www.nycwpinquiry.com/?p=66 Olmstead/Wasserman 212 is the class blog of a colleague I met at NCTE last year, in Nashville. His sophomores are posting on current events, and Jeff has put out a call for readers, so that his students will see that their audience goes beyond just each other.
[cross-posted at Se ...
 I'm sitting here in Chicago with my step-daughter...trying to get her hooked on social networking. This year she has a fabulous job teaching 2nd graders at a school where children love to learn. What a treat. She's looking to hook up with other elementary school teachers who are using the Writing Workshop methodology. Anyone have a network suggestion?
Image: "" by Lauren Murphy
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurenmurphy/2139611841/)
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/
Posted by Madeline Brownstone @ Tech Thursdays
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I'm working on improving my planning methods, but mostly I have to jump right in, hit the ground running, tell the kids we're doing it, and try to stay on top of it. More confessions... but, otherwise I'd never try anything new :-) http://wjpsartfall2007.blogspot.com/
I have a couple of ideas knocking around in my head about utilizing Wikis to promote sound tech learning. One is to have the students spend some time roaming around Wikipedia, until they find stub entries or empty pages in subjects they have interests in. Then they would do the research to expand those stubs into full-fledged Wikpedia entries, in the proper format (including references). Another would be to create our own Wiki, and populate it with information that the kids would find useful in school. I got the idea from a 10th grade personal project that a student of mine did last year, a "survival guide" for our school. The kids would populate this wiki with information that other students, especially the younger ones, would find useful. This would become the basis of a "User Guide to BSGE", which will provide advice, coping strategies, and resources the students can use, updated with new information as the students gain experience. BTW, feel free to "steal" either of these ideas, if in fact they are original, and not accidentally stolen by me because i didn't remember where they came from.
Keywords: student experiences, Wiki
http://spajal.targeteil.org:80/?q=node/248 Systematic Acquisition
Right now I'm working on something I call Systematic Acquisition. The focus is vocabulary and grammar.
Vocabulary
On the vocabulary front, I'm doing two things.
First, I'm compiling a wordlist (currently 27746 words) from various sources such as the the Dolch Sight Word List, the General Service List, the Academic Word List and the Collins COBUILD Learner's Dictionary. It's all going into an Excel file called Multilist. Multilist includes information about presence in a list, frequency in a corpus, type of entry in a source, inflections and alternate spellings. All this information will be used to construct a systematic list which I will use to create vocabulary learning materials.
Second, I'm refining a vocabulary teaching technique which combines Language Item Management (LIM) and Discourse Loading (DL).
Language Item Management empowers the learner to rapidly assess his or her own knowledge of various language items (including vocabulary and grammar) and to make decisions about which items should be learned to which degree. It begins with a five-item (Lykert) scale called the NUMPY Scale (No-Unlikely-Maybe-Probably-Yes). Learners grade each item in a list (for example, the target words in a reading passage) according to their answers to the question: Would I recognize and understand this item if I saw it in a sentence? The instructor verifies the assessments by asking for definitions or examples. Faulty definitions are corrected and unfamiliar words are explained. In the full form of LIM, the NUMPY Scale is applied to five Acquisition Fields and objectives for all items are set based on an agreed assessment of how well each item should be learned. Each acquisition field is a box which combines two parameters: Production-Reception and Competence-Competition. Production is active use of an item in speech and writing. Reception is passive use of an item in listening and reading. Competence is current and constant facility with the item. Competition is opportunistic facility in response to an ephemeral situation such as a language test, an interview or a presentation. An item may be assessed as productive-competent, productive-competitive, receptive-competent, receptive-competitive or null (neither competent nor competitive in either production or reception). On the NUMPY Scale, Y corresponds to productive competence, P corresponds to receptive competence, M corresponds to productive competition, U corresponds to receptive competition and N corresponds to null. Items may be bumped up or bumped down as learner and instructor agree based on learner needs.
Discourse Loading is the practice of generating "teaching sentences". A teaching sentence is an individual sentence or set of sentences that contains sufficient contextual information to make the meaning of its target item unmistakable. Imagine the blank in a cloze item without an accompanying list of previously distinguished vocabulary. To draw the learner's mind to a particular word out of the thousands the learner may have acquired, the sentence must contain an abnormally large amount of distinguishing information. For the word ant, a sentence like "There was an ____ in my sandwich" would be woefully inadequate if the environmental context of the sentence provided no clues. Ignoring the phonemic clue of "an", the target could be any noun whose real-world counterpart was small enough to fit in a sandwich, anything from a bacterium to a pickle to a small mouse to a cigarette butt. If we add sufficient context to the sentence (or set of sentences itself), the possibilities become limited to one word or one set of words which share one meaning--and meaning is the desired element in a discourse loaded sentence. "There was an _____ in my sandwich. It must have crawled in there when I set the sandwich down on the blanket at the picnic. There were thousands of the little black insects hunting in the grass for food to take back to their colony" tunes the choices down to pretty well one. Crawl, blanket, picnic, thousands, little, black, insects, hunt, grass, food, take back and colony all work together to restrict the potential meaning of the omitted item.
The advantages of Discourse Loading are at least four. First, in order to imagine the context necessary to limiting the possible meanings of the target item, the learner must concentrate very keenly on the target item's meaning, creating a tighter association between meaning and form. Second, in order to build the required context, the learner must recycle previously learned vocabulary, thus refreshing or reactivating the selected vocabulary. Third, having generated the context-laden sentence, the learner has an example for future reference. Fourth, the example makes the meaning of the target item so unmistakably clear that even ten, twenty or thirty years later, the item will be instantly reactivated if the learner happens upon the sentence in notebook or memory.
Grammar
On the grammar front, I am developing an approach to teaching grammar called Behavioural Grammar. The impetus for this project arose from the realization that a Grammar Gap exists between those who are able and those who are unable to translate the conceptual grammars taught in most language courses into behavioural grammars. Grammar is traditionally taught as a concept to be mysteriously transmuted in the learner's mind from a set of ideas to a set of procedures. Communicative and interactional grammar teaching seek to facilitate the process of translation by making grammar immediate and urgent; however, translation of concept to procedure is still left to the learner. Just as some but not all would-be musicians take rapidly and apparently effortlessly to musical procedures, with or without conceptual training, so some but not all would-be language learners take rapidly and apparently effortlessly to linguistic procedures. Rapid and apparently effortless acquisition of any procedure stems from what I call operance, or a natural tendency or inclination to emit behaviours that naturally lead to acquisition of a procedure. A learner who is operant in regard to a particular subject will seem to learn it rapidly and effortlessly, while learners who are respondant or, worse, resistant, to the subject will either struggle or rebel. One advantage of teaching behavioural grammar is that the non-operant learner is not required to translate concepts to behaviours.
The relationship of operance to respondance can be clarified by analogy to genius and ordinary intelligence. The formula for calculating the length of the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is annually acquired and applied by millions if not billions of ordinary adolescent minds the world over. Yet never in a million or billion years would even the average engineer have come up with that formula on his or her own. It takes a genius like Pythagorus to discover or invent such a thing, but any normal mind can comprehend and commandeer it. Even the formulations of later luminaries like Newton and Einstein are perfectly accessible to ordinary minds. How is this so? It is so because each genius translated his conceptual insight into a procedural formula and nearly anyone can grasp and make use of a formula. In principle, anything can be taught to anyone if it is taught as a behaviour and all useful concepts are eventually translated into behaviours. In terms of achievement, the ordinary learner is equivalent to the genius if he or she is able to acquire and apply the genius's insight. The only difference is that the genius acquired the insight and developed the procedure operantly, by virtue of his or her own natural tendencies, while the ordinary learner acquired the procedure respondantly, that is, in response to instruction aimed at instilling the insight and conditioning the behaviour.
At present, I am working on verb inflection. I have distilled a formula for consistent correct inflection of English verbs and am developing activities for conditioning this behaviour in all of my students, from those in individual classes to those in large group classes. Preliminary results are encouraging and I am swiflty refining both approach and technique.
Differential Acquisition Theory
Concerned about helping my students really achieve real native-like fluency in vocabulary and grammar, I have been striving to understand how first (L1) and second (L2) languages are learned and acquired by people of various ages. From all this cogitation, based on experience as a learner/acquirer of an L1 (English) and four L2s (French, Haitian Creole, Russian and Mandarin), on observations as an ESL instructor in Ukraine and Taiwan, and on reading in language acquisition theory and learning theory, has emerged a theory I call Differential Acquisition. In brief, it recognizes that human beings go through three stages of development when it comes to language learning: innate, instinctive and intellectual.
The Innate Stage
The innate stage may also be termed the neural stage, because all language activity at this stage is essentially neural. The idiolinguoverse (individual language universe) is "hooking up" with its instruments of reception and production, the auditory and vocal tracts. This corresponds by analogy to the early development of the universe as a growing collection of elements under high energies. This elemental stage is characterized by high activity and low organization. All activity at this stage is random, the elements behaving according to their properties and under no other control than their inherent nature. It is the stage of speciation, at which the individual acquires the the characterisitics of its species, including a characteristic set of faculties, among which is the language faculty (whether or not this faculty is separate from a general learning faculty).
The Instinctive Stage
The instinctive stage may also be termed the social stage, because language activity at this stage becomes increasingly social. The idiolinguoverse has come into contact with the sociolinguoverse (group language universe) and is chiefly concerned with copying it. This corresponds by analogy to the development of life on earth with a focus on survival. This biological stage is characterized by continuing high activity and increasing organization. It is the stage of genius for most individuals, the stage at which activity and organization are both high, resulting in frequent environmentally responsive reorganization. Early activity is random, but becomes increasingly subject to a developing instinct, an instinct focused on survival within the group and therefore on becoming recognizably of the group, that is, acquiring the culture and so, by inclusion, acquiring the language of the group to a degree that marks the individual as belonging to the group.
The Intellectual Stage
The intellectual stage may also be termed the individual stage, because language activity at this stage becomes increasingly achievement-oriented. The idiolinguoverse focuses now on its own ends, which often do not entirely coincide with those of the group, usually as a complex, but occasionally as separate objectives. This corresponds by analogy to the development of technology in human culture. This technological stage is charaterized by decreasing activity and increasing organization. It is the stage of lost genius for most inidividuals. The tension between activity and organization has settled in favour of organization and reorganization becomes increasingly difficult. Activity at this stage is mainly deliberate or intellectual. The individual already belongs to a group and is seldom sufficiently motivated to fully acculturate with another group. Lingustic interaction with other groups focuses on specific material ends rather than general acceptance.
Efficiency
The overriding principle of lanuage acquisition is efficiency. Each stage is naturally tuned to maximize efficiency in handling its material. Newborns essentially ignore the sociolinguoverse because they must first develop the idiolinguoversal equipment to perceive, interpret and respond to it. Very young children indiscriminately absorb the characteristics of groups to which they feel they must belong because belonging increases the chances of being cared for and protected and therefore of surviving at a time when the individual is incapable of surviving without a great deal of tending. Teenagers and adults (and younger children not exposed to language under survival conditions) aquire only those elements of new sociolinguoverses they find necessary to achieving their ends (which may range from very basic interaction through various levels of communication to conscientious artistic performance).
A Cure for Efficiency
Systematic Acquisition provides a means to access or at least mimic the dormant instinctive stage. When language items are taught as behaviours and accurate behaviour is crucial to success, intellectual learners revert, at least partially, to a survival-oriented acculturation approach. Of course, the elements of the target culture to be acquired and the degree to which they must be acquired come under the control of the instructor, whose artificial culture, one which demands greater instinctive accuracy than does the natural intellectual culture of the real language world, will push the learner's achievement closer to the native standard than the non-operant learner could manage by simple immersion.
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=7199946315 I'm still recovering from the wreck that stopped my curriculum as surely as the elevated subway stopped this truck, just outside of my school a couple of weeks ago. 
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=7150676315 What if we could have students post from their facebook Notes into an elgg. Seems possible!
http://paulrallison.blogspot.com/2007/11/protest-or-acting-irresponsibly Link to audio
Today is one of several days out of the year when teachers are proctoring tests -- assessments that determine our school grade. This is so Orwellian that I don't know where to start to protest, so I just keep saying "No!" I don't do this loudly or even explicitly. My negative opinion about the testing-mandated-curriculum culture just seems to ooze out of me. Mainly I teach new things to students like blogging and podcasting and -- like now -- I'm setting up for a webcast tomorrow, instead of proctoring for a test. Unfortunately my attitude and teaching can't last long in a school, so I guess I need to be ready to keep looking again and again. Why can't I find a school that might be willing to re-think curriculum in such a way that computers are necessary to do the tasks we imagine for young people?
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