Category Archives: Homepage

What I wrote about when I had nothing to write about

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In my first year as a newspaper reporter, there were days when I had not beat to cover and no assignment, and I would be hanging around the office, desperate for something to do (I was paid per story). One day, my editor told me to get in my car and drive around. He pointed me to the smallest town in our coverage area. It was a community of about 100 people, tops.

Head there and find some news, he said. Something must be happening.

I did as he told, although I was skeptical. I got into my car and drove. I wandered through the small town in the middle of the day. There were no stores there, just homes, and everyone was at work or doing something else. They were not making news on their front porch.

Keep looking, my editor said, when I found a pay phone to call him. Knock on doors, he suggested.

Instead, I drove to the next town, where there was a convenience store and grabbed a soda and a snack. I relaxed for a spell. I drove again into the small town, just wandering. Just looking. And finding nothing.

I returned later to the office, my notebook empty. I worried about facing the editor, whom I wanted to impress.

Well? my editor asked. What did you find?

Nothing, I said. It’s quiet.

Some days are like that, he said, surprising me. I’ll pay you anyway.

I went home that night, not having written a thing.

Some days, there’s not much to write about. But still, I write. You just read it.

Peace (in the remembering),
Kevin

Guest Blogging at Two Writing Teachers

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I have the privilege of being a guest writer over at Two Writing Teachers (another blog that should be firmly fed into your RSS Reader as Ruth and Stacey are thoughtful users and reflective writers of literacy instruction) this morning as I explore a “Make Your Own Adventure” project with students.

Oh, and I made the post by creating a ‘Make Your Own Learning” website, with links to follow and decisions to make.

Come join me over at Two Writing Teachers.

Peace (in the choices),

Kevin

Leadership Day 2010: A Webcomic Message

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Leadershipday2010

Scott McLeod, whose blog Dangerously Irrelevant is a must have for your RSS for his thoughtful views, is launching the fourth annual Leadership Day, in which he urges educational bloggers to craft a message for school administrators about the impact of technology on learning.

As Scott writes:

“Administrators’ lack of knowledge is not entirely their fault. Most of them didn’t grow up with these technologies. Many are not using digital tools on a regular basis. Few have received training from their employers or their university preparation programs on how to use, think about, or be a leader regarding digital technologies.

So… let’s help them out.”

This year, I decided to create a comic — just to go a different route. I hope you consider adding your own two or three thoughts into the mix. If so, be sure to go to Scott’s blog post and add the hashtag #leadershipday10 to your tag and also fill out Scott’s form where he keeps track of things.

Leadership Day 2010 Comic

(a larger version of the photo is here)
Peace (in the sharing of ideas),
Kevin

The Common Core Comes to Massachusetts

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Our state of Massachusetts has joined a growing list of other states (28, I think) in adopting the Common Core of Standards as our own curriculum framework for the future. (see news release from our Education Department).

This is sure to be a controversial decision for some time, as so much of the work we do in our classrooms and professional development revolves around our state curriculum frameworks (which form the basis for our MCAS standardized test). While I have some issues with our past state frameworks, for the most part, I found them to be pretty thoughtful (with the exception that technology was never really embedded in there) and placed a lot of emphasis on creative content.The Common Core is much more focused on expository reading and writing, with informational text at the heart of much of the standards.

In fact, some backlash on the decision to move into the Common Core is already starting, as some believe that the Common Core is a step backwards for Massachusetts, given its past work around curriculum frameworks, and they worry about what a national assessment of the Common Core might look like in the future.

“We are now tethered to the rest of the country. Where we could have shown the political courage of implementing state reforms that gave us the best schools in the world, well, now we have to drag along the rest of the country before we can do it.” – from the blog post by Jim Stergios, of the Pioneer Institute.

The full Common Core document for ELA is here.

The Common Core will become our new state guideposts for English Language Arts and Mathematics, although when and how that transition will take shape is unknown. At a recent New Literacies Initiative week that I was part of, our state education commissioner sort of hemmed and hawed about whether Massachusetts would actually adopt the Common Core this summer, but I knew it would surely happen because we are in line for federal dollars in our bid for Race to the Top and the Common Core is a huge carrot dangling in front of us.

While I am not sure that moving towards a national curriculum framework is the right path, I do like that the Common Core emphasizes the teaching of writing and reading across the content areas.  I know my students come to me with a real weakness in understanding informational text. This shift puts literacy right into the heart of most learning, although at what expense to creative writing and reading, I can’t yet say. (Sidenote: Next week, my wife is joining a group of National Writing Project folks on a year-long project to begin work on designing lesson plans and curriculum guides that will allow teachers to meet the requirements of the Common Core while still retaining writing at the heart of activities and teacher flexibility. More on that in the future …)

One thing that occurs to me is that our school district’s Standards-based progress report (formerly know as our report card) is built off our of (now) old Massachusetts curriculum frameworks, which means that we need to revisit that system again in light of the adoption of the Common Core standards. Looking over the Common Core document, there is a lot of alignment between the two sets of standards, but I foresee some more progress report work in the near future.

Right now, I am pulling out all of the sixth grade reading and writing standards from the Common Core report as a way to get a sense of what is there and I am hoping this will help me shape my overall opinions of it as a curriculum guide. I know there are plenty of folks who don’t like the Common Core standards, but I want to see it in all of its details myself before making a judgment.

Peace (in the changes),
Kevin

Andrea Asks: What Did You Learn Today?

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I was away this weekend, reconnecting with a group of friends, and am trying to weed through my RSS. I came across a blog post by my friend, Andrea, who interviewed another friend, Paul, about motivation and learning. At the end, she asked the question: what did you learn today?

I thought about the weekend with my friends, whom I see only once a year but that yearly connection is so important to all of us now that we are scattered about and have families, etc.

So, here is my response to Andrea.

What I Learned (or relearned) This Weekend

Peace (in the thinking),
Kevin

Ning, Pearson and Who Own Our Content

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It’s July and for many of us who have Ning sites, that means changes are soon to be afoot. I have a handful of sites that I have created in Ning for various elements of my writing, technology exploration and more. Most of those I am going to let vanish into the ether (really, though, do things really vanish anymore? Some echoes will remain in the far corners of the Net). These sites are too small to deal with, although I hate to see them go.

Ning now has a three-tiered pricing plan and for most of the sites that I manage (most for the National Writing Project), the middle tier makes the most sense, but I am still not completely clear on how the change will impact the way the site has run in the past. Can I still embed videos hosted elsewhere, for example?

When Ning announced it plan to move away from the ad-driven model to a pricing plan, there was an uproar of concern from educators who were using the platform for work with students (only 13 and older are allowed by Ning) and other educators. We liked “free” and wanted it to remain “free,” although free meant ads on our sites (which I paid to remove, whenever possible). Ning listened and promised that a company would be providing free “Ning Mini” plans for educators. Many of wondered who that would be.

It’s Pearson, and that has given rise to some mixed emotion in me. I won’t be using Pearson’s sponsorship program. I have done some work for the National Writing Project and Pearson (see my resource around using claymation in the classroom at a Pearson “Profiles in Practice” site). It was fine and I have no complaints. I did opt out of a video interview by Pearson once because I worried about how I was giving them something for free that they could use to gain revenue.

Apparently, you have to be an educator in North America to get Pearson sponsorship, and you have to brand your Ning with Pearson logo, and you have to create a “Pearson member profile” in the network, too. The sponsorship lasts for three years, too.

So, here is my question: Who will own the “content” on the site that is being funded by Pearson? Is it you, the owner (and students, if it is a class site), or is it Pearson, the sponsor? Or is it Ning that owns the content?

This is a crucial questi0n in this day and age of managing information on digital platforms. And the issue is not addressed in any of the Ning announcements, as far as I can tell.  I would worry that Pearson, while seeming generous, is gaining access to a vast data set of what teachers are doing, what students are doing, and then leveraging that access down the road. Pearson’s business is built on educational trends, remember.

On the Ning FAQ site, they pose the question of whether Pearson can contact your members directly through your site. The answer (which sounds good) is:

Pearson will not contact members without the Network Creator’s consent. Pearson may contact you, the Network Creator, directly from time to time, but these communications will not extend to your members unless you agree to do so.

Am I being too skeptical of Pearson and Ning? No. These are questions we have to ask before we put our work in the hands of a company who makes their money in our educational circles. Ask the questions and get the answers before you let Pearson into your site.

Peace (in the questions),
Kevin

Testing with Errors

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It’s almost a bit too easy to take a shot at this, but I saw this short news piece in our paper this morning in which the superintendent of the largest school district in 0ur area admitted that a standardized test given to high school students was riddled with grammatical and spelling errors. (See AP story)

I’m resisting the urge to create a comic about it. Resisting ….

What I wonder is how many students caught the errors  and then wondered if the errors were part of the test? Maybe one error might make you think, that was a mistake. But 100 errors? That becomes like some Jedi mind trick, don’t you think? And who are the “district proofreaders” and what were they doing when they should have been reading the test?

Sometimes, in novels, I stumble across an error and it always makes me stop and wonder about the editorial process, and the layers of proofreading that go on (we went through it with our Teaching the New Writing collection) and still, that one erroneous werd finds its way in there like a worm in the ear.

Peace (in the proof),
Kevin

PS — Yes, werd was intentional. I hope you caught it. If so, give the Springfield schools a call. They may be searching for some folks.

A Note that Made My Day

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I received an email from a colleague in the Western Massachusetts Writing Project who is teaching a course at the college level for the first time around technology and education. He developed a great syllabus and I tried to give him some ideas about practical uses of technology in the classroom.

Yesterday, he sent me an email.

Sometimes as teachers we do not know about all the ways we help our students until a much later time. That will not be the case this time. A few weeks ago you gave me some tips, some new sites to try. Wallwisher was a big hit, as was the NWP site. We played your Vimeo video on technology last class, and it was almost as good as having you with us in person. And your message resonated with all of the students in the class.
(Here, he provided me with some of the response from one of his students, who talked about using Wallwisher for class collaboration and sharing)

It is clear from your writing that you have a BIG impact on the students and staff at Norris, but you should know that you have had a BIG impact on the work of 20 teachers who are taking the Intro to Tech in Education class at the Elms this summer. Amanda–the author of the above comment–would have never have heard of Wallwisher without the tip from you…and now she is using it to point her students in the right direction as they head out for summer vacation. Simply amazing!

That kind of letter makes my day. I’m glad the sharing I do can help someone else.

Peace (in the note),
Kevin

iPod Program at my school

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We recently received a Thinkfinity grant that will allow us to purchase some iPods and develop connections to science and math, with technology. The local newspaper did an article on it.

Peace (in the news),
Kevin