If we ran businesses like (publicly-funded) education; A Prologue

If we ran businesses like (publicly-funded) education: A Prologue

Analogical? What's this?

New blog post "Analogical? What's this?"

Techno Tutor Qu'est-ce que c'est?

I've started experimenting with Tumblr --- just because! Here is a link to my most recent post about using technology to teach reading fluency.

Tiptoe with the Tutor...

Retirement from something I love to do but am too tired to continue doing it has been interesting. I really didn't want to quit working; I just wanted to quit working so hard. In order to continue in the field of education without burning myself to a crisp, I've opted to try out tutoring for awhile.

I am particularly fortunate to have an office of the Learning Disabilities Association of Saskatchewan within walking distance of my home. One of their programs, ABSee, hires people with B.Ed's to tutor students. I work by the hour. Most students contract for 1 to 2 hours per week. Presently, my youngest student is 7 and the oldest is an adult.

Since in one of my previous teacher incarnations I was a resource room teacher, some of this work is familiar. I work one on one with a student to teach specific skills or help with homework. What is profoundly different, however, is not having any contact at all with the students' regular educational institution. I know from my special ed days that what a student can do one on one with you, isn't what that student does in a classroom. When I've asked parents if their child is doing better in school, they expect that I should be able to tell by how the student is progressing with their tutoring.

I had looked forward to being able to use all that cool online technology to supplement my tutoring. The good news is there is an incredible amount of "stuff" online and a lot of it is incredibly good. (Here's a "link to my links"; I still have Google Notebooks, so if you go to "More from Pat.Cone, you should find other pages.) The bad news is that internet access is even flakier in downtown Saskatoon than it had been in Hafford! (I don't know if everyone checks email and FaceBook before they leave work?)

It took awhile to orient myself to my new surroundings and working conditions, but I must say I'm starting to enjoy what I'm doing. I get to teach without burning. Bonus.

Notes from Somewhere over the Rainbow...

"Billy is spastic in time, has no control over where he is going next, and the trips aren't necessarily fun. He is in a constant state of stage fright, he says, because he never knows what part of his life he is going to have to act in next." (23) Slaughterhouse 5

My former tekkie colleagues who have read this blog in the past know that I retired from my teaching job last June. My life has been somewhat "Billy Pilgrimesque" in that, now that I'm legitimately unemployed, I often have these time-travelling mental experiences of who I am and what I am doing with my time. Let me try to explain.

For 29.2 odd years of my life I've needed a mental front-end loader to get me up, get me dressed, and get me out the door to work. I'm not a morning person. This is how I've survived teaching until about noon each day. Now I can park the loader, but I'm more than a little lost without it. Often I get this overwhelming panic that I'm going to be late - and then realize "for what?"

I can walk pretty much where I need to just like I could in high school and university. Sometimes, en route, I revert to this pre-working self. I like her. I love being in Saskatoon with my feet on the ground that I've trodden all my life. The landscape alternately confirms and shatters my sense of where and who I am in time and space.

I have to say, one of the biggest reasons I liked teaching was for my creativity fix. Those adrenaline rushes were wonderful. Other than taking photos I haven't really found a substitute; the rush made the drudgery of the front-end loader life worthwhile. I love teaching and much of what it entails, but I don't have the energy to keep up with the grind. Creativity takes energy.

Am I old? Mentally I can feel 18 to 22 again, but physically my body tells me I'm not. I hurt. "I ache in the places where I used to play," as Leonard Cohen put so eloquently. I love listening to my iPod, but I worry about hearing loss. I'm a step-grandmother, but the kiddies aren't anywhere nearby for me to dote on. My hair hasn't even turned grey! I swallow pills, and I have to watch what I eat.

I'm sitting writing this post about the time I would have been starting work for 29.2 odd years. I'm fighting the urge to go back to bed. The sunshine and blue sky beckon me, and I know I'll have much more pep if I shower and get dressed. Maybe I'll finally make the NIA class at Lawson Civic Centre today...

The Day the "World" Came to My School

"Everybody" assumes if you are the "computer" teacher all you do is teach "geeky" and "tekkie" things. Right?

Ummm...not quite. Let me explain. I'm a TEACHER that teaches with "technology" in order to "communicate".

Last Friday, students, parents, teachers, EA's, and young siblings from Walter Murray Collegiate's ESL (English as a Second Language) classes - about 70 of them - came on two school busses to Hafford to have a visit with my grade 6, 7, and 8 social studies students. We had a video scavenger hunt (9 groups, 1 video capable digital camera, videoing 3 places - one in the school, one on the playground, and one "downtown" ) and then went to Redberry Lake park for an incredible international potluck lunch and wienie roast, games in the rosebowl, walking around, playing, and visiting. (Soccer and eating really are international languages!) It was a WONDERFUL day.

How incredibly..."geekie?"

This adventure all started quite a few years ago and has its genesis in the Educational Communications master's program at the University of Saskatchewan. Koreen Geres and I are both graduates, but knew each other because of mutual friends in the program. One Showcase 2008 convention day, after meeting up in a Dean Shareski session, Koreen, an ESL teacher at Walter Murray, and I had lunch. She was working on a doctorate concerning problems encountered by refugee youth, and I was a grade five and six ELA teacher, teaching a novel study on social issues. Wouldn't it be cool, we thought, if somehow our students could communicate with each other. I should also mention, that my school, Hafford Central, is a UNESCO ASPnet school. I'm always looking for ways to integrate learning about international cooperating and understanding into my classes.

Two years passed, and we met again. I was teaching the same novel study and we discussed again how our students could communicate. Koreen decided she could arrange for her students to visit Hafford, and sent email addresses so my grade six, seven and eight social studies students could begin emailing each other. My students emailed to 6-10 of her students who felt comfortable enough writing in English. This was great as my students were looking for their epal buddies when the visit began.

Technology is a tool that allows us to communicate. I'd say that we did a lot of communicating and had a heck of a lot of fun that was possible in part because of the technology available. The day worked because of all the INCREDIBLE people involved especially the Hafford and Walther Murray students!

What is old is new again.

I went to high school from 1968 to 1972 (yes that makes me OLD). For the first two years it was an "old school" system: streamed homeroom classes based intellectual "ability", dress codes (no pants for girls, no facial hair for boys!), and regular exam sittings. After my grade 10 year the administration changed and brought with it new and "enlightened" practices. Term and final exams were abolished and replaced with "continuous evaluation." Teachers experimented with new teaching and evaluation styles. (All my social studies evaluations were "oral exams"). We didn't write essays. We had quite a bit of choice as to how to structure our time and when we would complete assignments. We didn't even have to go to class. Dress codes - we had to wear clothes. In total the school experience was supposed to be modern and "relevant."

I should also add we were working class kids. Most of our parents had working class jobs and little experience with post-secondary education. Post-secondary ed was possible because we could live at home and take the bus to tech school or university.

I chose to go to university. I remember how ill-prepared I was for the experience. Most of my academic survival skills came from the first two not the last two years of high school studies. I survived but many others did not. ( I should add that the technical schools are even more demanding than university and often more difficult to enter.) Students who came from more traditional educational experiences coped a whole lot better than I did.

A lot of the people who didn't survive post-secondary studies went to work and stayed in those jobs. In the seventies, you could go to work at potash mines or meat packing plants and make pretty good money. Interestingly now most of their kids pursue university or some form of post-secondary training.

I think we need to be EXTREMELY careful when we talk of educational reform. I see a lot of people arguing for something VERY MUCH like what I experienced my last two years of high school. My students write exams and essays not because I think they are particularly superior educational activities. They may need these skills in order to help them move onto something they really want to do with their lives.

Teaching with (more) Technology: The Adventure So Far

I like teaching social studies. Really. I loved social studies as a student. Now I get to teach it...sometimes. I even did my masters project ( in 1998) on using the internet to teach grade 6 social studies

At my present school, I've taught grade 5 and 6 social studies for at least 5 years. This year, much to my surprise, I'm teaching grade 7 and 8 social studies for the first time in at least 5 years.

I'm also the "computer teacher" at my school. After somewhat of a hiatus of a few years, I'm back in the lab.

I've decided I'm going to experiment to my little techno-teacher heart's content this year. Here's the summary of some adventure highlights and lowpoints:

1. Every student I teach has a Google Docs account. I have them complete and share as many assignments as possible on them. I can "mark" them (or even PRE-VIEW them) and give suggestions how to improve the assignment. Some students are actually revising their work. They can email me with questions. (Buzz just came out last week. I wonder if that will be useful).

1a. Students started playing with Buzz the minute they saw it. I don't think they quite get how public it is. There is a 78 comment conversation between some of my grade six students that strays into the realm of cyber-bullying. We'll have to deal with that when we get back to school next Monday.

2. I have been composing "study units" using a Google Doc. I do run off a paper copy for students. What is really useful, however, is having my unit online by linking the doc as a web page. All the links are live. Students can copy and paste parts of my doc (a chart for example) into their work. I've been able to scan useful pages of their ancient textbook into PDF format and link them. Graphics are in colour. No student is ever without a copy of the assignment as long as they have access to a computer and the internet.

3. Online videos and photographic slide shows are wonderful teaching tools. Unfortunately they clog up bandwidth. We've choked up the network on many occasions. We are still working on possible solutions. I'm not sure how legal it is, but I made screenshots of a particularly wonderful slideshow and put them on a Google Doc presentation. When the original website chokes, students have an alternative.

3a. We need to reframe the idea of watching video and looking at pictures as "work."

3b. We need to reframe the idea of being on a computer as "work."

4. I'm finding I have to provide a lot of modeling and framing for students. For example: I've started to include frame paragraph outlines to help students structure short answers. I provide cut and paste charts for compare and contrast activities. I'm finding that If I want to get students to use higher order thinking skills to finish assignments, I have to provide pretty concrete instructional examples on how to complete the assignment. Some students don't need this structure and can create their own. I'm fine with that. Some will always need that structure. (Did I mention I used to be a special ed teacher?)

5. My grade six classes have been epals with a school in Illinois for a few years now. We usually have a Skype session at the end of their quarters. Just this week I've made contact with a teacher in New Jersey to do more Skyping and online collaboration.

6. I'm liking the conversations I'm starting to have with my students. I'm liking that I can incorporate information sources from close to home and analyze them.

7. I'm tired. This kind of teaching, no matter how much fun, is a LOT of work and takes even more time.

7a. You can't always get what you want. Some online stuff, no matter how cool or useful, just will never be available on our school network.

8. The adventure continues...

Wall-E, the Flu, and Me

I was taken with the movie Wall-E. I was fascinated with the animation, and how I could be entertained by an animated piece of technology. I was also a little horrified how close to the truth the depictions of future humanity might be. So what does this have to do with the 'flu.

I'm one of those teachers who has been stricken with the "flu du jour". I'm also an asthmatic. The two don't go together well, and suffice it to say extreme fatigue, aches, pains, and coughs have kept me away from work this week in the flesh. (I thought it would be extremely rude of me to cough in parents' faces during parent-teacher -interviews even though I've finished a course of Tamiflu.)

Interestingly enough, despite my illness and because of technology, I've been "working" a lot.

No matter how sick I am, no matter how much sleep I need, I still need something to do when laying on the couch and staring at the ceiling. To the rescue: wireless internet and a laptop.

Most of what I do with my laptop has to do with...you guessed....work. On it I can make up my dayplan, email my sub, mark emailed assignments, and enter marks all done between naps and creative staring at the wall. My sub is email literate and we've emailed back and forth during class time. I've even made up two quizzes and a new social studies major assignment. I'm not to the point Eldon G. was where he was teaching from Edmodo, but the possibility is there. I could see myself teaching from my laptop connected continuously to my ever-becoming-techno-literate sub!!! (She's great! Always up for a new challenge).

It scares me to think how much like one of the techno-humans of Wall-E I've become.

Am I a digital teacher? Am I stupid or am I addicted to my job?

At our I-SITS meeting, Donna showed a video of a first year "digital teacher". The young woman in question was very definite in her opinions of her teaching methods and why they were the right ones for kids of the "digital generation". I found her presence irritating and arrogant and in response my back went up. Whatever she was saying might have been true, but I didn't want to listen to it.

On reflection, I wonder about my reaction to her. Is it that she is young, beautiful, and a recent graduate of UBC. (I checked her web page). Is it her definite "know-it-all attitude" that implies to my aging ears that she knows a whole lot more about effective teaching than I do. (I've been at it 29 years and I'm a graduate of the U of S Masters in Educational Communications program albeit 10 11 years ago.) In her defense, someone else has edited her talk, and perhaps presented her as being more forceful and know-it-all than she appears on the video.

I love being part of the I-SITS committee. I love the spirited debate, the thirst for knowledge, the camaraderie of educators that rejuvenates me and helps sustain me when I spend most of my weekend prepping "digital" lessons and marking. Right now, I'm trying to imagine this teacher or someone like her on this committee. Would she have anything to learn from us? Would she have the patience to teach us something or share with us her not-so-successful experiments in the classroom? I hope so. The video presentation doesn't leave me hopeful.

As I said, I've been teaching somewhere around 29 years. I'm still "prepping my face off". I feel guilty if I use the same lesson and lesson plan more than once without revising and enriching it. Somewhere in all of this, my "real life" continues to suffer? Am I stupid, inefficient or addicted to my job? I don't know. I still love to teach and prep lessons. I'd also really like a "life."

A plea to those of partisan politics; Please teach me something I didn't know.

Here we go again. Another Canadian election is happening possibly as soon as this fall. The last one wasn't supposed to happen because Prime Minister Harper and his ruling Conservatives had passed a law mandating Canadian elections be held once every four years. Hmm....the last election was against the law and almost no Canadians wanted to have it. This possible coming election is equally as popular as the last one.

South of the border there is a never-ending stream of partisan politics Republicans versus Democrats. Right now, the rhetoric concerns universal health care. We Canadians - at least many of us - look smugly and condescendingly upon Americans for their "pay-per-use" healthcare. Is healthcare in Canada truly as good as we think it is? Are there any reasoned and calm Republicans out there who can explain to Canadians why publicly-funded healthcare is not what we think it is?

Could everybody please stop with the mud-slinging and scare tactics? When you persist, I tune you out.

I am pleading with people of all political persuasions to please teach me something I don't already know. Provide me with facts and figures and the results of reputable studies. Treat me like I am a world citizen hungry for knowledge to help me make my own mind up about economics, politics, and social good. I'm not stupid. I want to be informed.

The somewhat open, social, and highly connected wedding.

As my FaceBook and Flickr friends know, my oldest step-daughter, Jennifer, was married last week at her mother's country residence. The bride was beautiful, the groom handsome, the wedding party stunning, the location breathtaking, and the weather perfect. How did Web 2.0 have, and not have, a role in the wedding.

First, my step-daughter keeps a blog. The official announcement of the relationship happened sometime in March of 2008. We were treated to pictures and stories about their shared adventures in the Caribbean and at the Medical University of the Americas.

We did meet Brandon, then the "significant other" at Christmastime of 2008. It was a face-t0-face visit and turkey dinner at our house.

Officially the wedding announcement didn't happen until invitations were sent out. An official wedding site was created, and prospective guests had the option of confirming or declining their presence on the website. The gift registry was on Amazon.com.

The "bride-to-be" kept us updated on her blog. Upon returning to Saskatchewan to study fot her US medical licensing exam, Mondays were reserved for wedding plans. She updated her blog faithfully.

The bride and groom had arranged photographers from Edmonton to pictorially document the wedding and the wedding rehearsal. People like me, the evil-wicked-stepmother, had a field day taking digital photos (I snapped over 200).

Interestingly enough, no one "officially" videotaped the wedding. I'm thinking that photographs are moments in time from the point of view of the photographer. We can use the images to pique our own memories and feelings of the event. I'm not sure a video could evoke being there in the same way. Unless one could be there, physically. for the event, I think photos are the next best thing.

The bride and groom took off the next day so the bride could start her clinical rotations in Oklahoma city. We the family, check her blog, Twitter, and Facebook accounts regularly. After the wedding, guests have been uploading images to the group Flickr site.

Life goes on. Some of it gets shared via Web 2.0.

Why I Really Liked Being on the In-School Technology Committee

I've always known why I love being in Educational Technology. It isn't machines, or computer scripts, or games, or....

The real reason I love it so much is that I get to indulge my passion for eclecticism and to hang out with an eclectic group of people all concerned with teaching and learning. We all come from different academic and technical backgrounds so for us to "talk shop" we need to focus on how we teach not what we teach. I can't think of getting any closer to educational heaven than that!!!

What Have I Learned? A Response to the REAL Gary's Post

What is the most recent thing I've learned as a teacher? I've been mulling that over since Gary wrote his post and put out the "challenge". I guess I have to haul out my "dirty little secrets" about why I wanted to become a teacher in the first place.

Way back when (1976) when I finally finished my first degree (Arts 4 year, sociology) I began to re-ponder the question..."What do I want to be when I grow up?" I'd had one disastrous (for me) year in the (now defunct) College of Home Economics (I wanted to learn interior design). I'd always said I didn't want to become a teacher; however when I sat down to look at my career options one of the things I always like to do is learn. It seemed to me at that time that teaching was a logical choice to meet that need.

Even though teaching has been difficult (I'm a pretty hardcore introvert) it has met my need to learn (and learn and learn....). Teaching is never dull. If it becomes dull (for me) it means I need to learn something new which has meant going back to university ... in 1981 -82 to study special education, and in 1994 to start a masters in educational communications.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm teaching something new just for the sake of meeting my need for novelty as opposed to being a truly innovative teacher. Am I meeting my students' academic needs or are we just mucking around in the unknown for the sake of doing it? Is it even ethical to depart from the "tried and true" in order to forge new pedagogical territory? My step-daughter has just finished five semesters of medical education; her studying arsenal includes piles of flashcards to prepare her to write multiple choice exams.

. I know I have to follow "the curriculum". My experience and what I have learned from my studies in grad school don't always match up to what "the curriculum" tells me to do. Teaching ro me is a never-ending series of questions, and experiments in order to teach my students effectively.

Inspired by the TL Summit and Cool Math Teachers...

This morning as I was driving my 1 hour drive to Hafford, I had a "ping" moment. My students could take definitions from their geometry unit and with the help of a drawing program create slide images to explain these geometric concepts. I could import them into Windows Movie Maker, or just put them on a Google Docs slide show and post it in our blog.

Yesterday, I had all my students copy a portable program that cannot be named into their documents folder. This program has draw tools that can create circle pies. While the student creates them, he/she can see the exact angle of the pie in a tiny window. I wanted them to have some practice creating and measuring angles, as well as learn how to use draw tools. (Never teach anything that doesn't go with at least 3 other things I always say; it's the wardrobe planning method of instructional design...but I digress).

Today with the same program, each student created a slide and we exported them to .gif. I learned that I had to save the documents to their accounts and then copy them to the homework file, rather than saving them directly the homeowrk file.

Kids said it was the most fun they'd had in a math class. I guess I'd better not do this again. School, especially math class, is supposed to be miserable.

Educational Reform = Societal Reform

I think education has become the scapegoat of society. Schools are expected more and more to perform the duties that only a whole, well-functioning and integrated society can.

I remember some things learned back in my caveperson university days, an era when calculators had just replaced slide rules. I remember learning that schools are a reflection of the communities they serve. If this is true, (I think it is) then it is nearly pointless to ponder educational reform until social reforms take place.

It would seem in our society that we have compartmentalized everything, for example religion, food production, commerce, health care, families, child rearing, elder care, education of the young, safety. We have created experts and institutions for each of these social functions. These experts and institutions tend not to take any responsibility for matters not considered under their authority. The individual must deal with a dizzying number of experts and institutions in order to just survive from day to day.

Somehow in our 21st century world we are getting worse and worse at effectively meeting the needs of the people who live here. Society needs to function as a whole unit since a whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Until we world citizens can de - compartmentalize our institutions and learn to communicate and effectively problem solve together, I don't think anything will get much better, and probably will get a whole lot worse.

Apology to Dean Shareski

I need to apologize to Mr. Shareski. In the heat of an intense tekkie meeting I responded to an image projected by Donna D. and obtained via Dean's flickr. I meant to find the image to attach to my blog to complete the context...but my eyes are failing me and I couldn't see the projection and then I couldn't find the flickr image...and then we had to go home.

Without the image the post made it sound like Mr. S. himself had made the quote, when in fact, he had just posted it from somebody else. Thank you for graciously pointing this out to me in your comment. I am honoured that you would read "Life on the Lefthand Side". I enjoy your blog tremendously and have also enjoyed hearing you present at conferences. You make me think (I hope not just react!) For that I am indebted.
Pat

Personal Lerning Networks: A response to Donna's presentation

This is a response to our tekkie meeting and a comment posted by Dean Shareski that I can't find at the moment but it struck a nerve anyway...so I'll write about it.

I don't think personal learning networks are new. They are the way of the world.

I find Shareski's quote so arrogant. While "technology" is useful (don't get me wrong I LOVE it) I have to ask myself, What constitutes technology?" Isn't a note in a bottle a form of technology? A nail dipped in blood can be used to write. What does it mean "to advance"? Does one need a computer to promote learning and wisdom?

If one does not value learning, expanding one's own horizons, and questioning what one holds to be true, it doesn't matter how much technology one has and how many people one can connect with. Learning is a way of being, a lifestyle, a spiritual practice if you will. Technology, whatever it is, is merely a tool.

It takes a whole (global) village to raise a child doesn't it?

Friday afternoon, fourth class, second day of the second semester, first day second semester with this class. I had an unpleasant incident with two grade 10 students the details of which don't really matter.

What really matters is that the situation in which the students found themselves isn't the situation that most met their needs at that particular time. Neither of them wanted to do what I, the school, society, and possibly the other students wanted them to do. Their actions involved insubordination. The consequences needed to address that were provided by the administration (to whom I am extremely grateful).

Later on, I whined on Twitter, "If we are such an advanced society, why are we keeping kids in school when they don't want to be there. We have nothing better for them?"

The school cannot give either of these students precisely what it is they most need. To succeed in schools, students need to become skilled in time management and delayed gratification. Successful time management and delayed gratification become possible only if the child's needs for food, shelter, clothing, safety,nurturing, identity, love and belonging are adequately met. I don't believe that the school, on its own, can begin to meet these basic human needs. Schools CAN be part of a co-parenting of children with all the rest of the village.

For these two kids, and a whole lot of others, co-parenting from the village isn't happening. Until it does, some teachers and some students are doomed to play out the unpleasant drama we enacted yesterday afternoon.

Would This Qualify as "21st Century Skills"?

My grade 5/6 social studies class is ticked off with me. Really.

We are studying the geographic regions of Canada. We've already gone over what they are by reading a section of a book and making notes. We've even marked the notes together as a class.

As a follow - up, I've put them into groups of 3, given them short articles on the geographic regions of Canada from 2 different photocopiable activity books (which means that the printing is big and the headings and sub headings are large) and I've given them a frame (aka "note taking sheet") into which they have to put the correct information to complete the notes. In order to do the task, hopefully, a) they will work as a group; b) they will use headings and subheadings to help locate information; c) they will look for specific bits of information by skimming and looking for key words or clue words from the notes.

Yes we are using pencil and paper. Yes we are getting information from two different sources and putting it together. Yes maybe we are getting the idea that the information really DOES EXIST even though I can't locate it in 2.5 nanoseconds (Ms. Cone wasn't really lying after all.)

My experience with kids using the internet for locating information is that they have no, or almost no clue that they actually have to READ something beyond the first sentence or paragraph. Hopefully this kind of activity will translate into the development of better over all research skills so that they will use the internet (and other sources) effectively.

Wish us luck.