This is not a joke. Really.

I know it's old-fashioned, but my husband and I llike to read the newspaper. It's not that we don't also read digital editions. If pressed, I probably couldn't give you a reason why we haven't canceled the paper. We have several news apps on our iPhones and iPad. We've just continued a long-standing, morning ritual of reading the newspaper--the real, paper kind that smells like ink and used to make your fingers dirty. That's a very good thing for our neighbors, as we have been supplying their son with newspapers for several months so he can complete the assignment shown below for his AP Environmental Science class.

It boggles my mind that any class, let alone an AP class, would demand such a cut-and-paste assignment that can only be completed with newspapers. An actual newspaper--not a photocopy of a newspaper article, not an article from a newspaper's website--just a good, old-fashioned newpaper. I''m not too sure what the substantive difference would be between cutting out an article from USA Today (or any other newpaper) and printing the same article from their website, but apparently that's an issue for this teacher.

I did not add the bold-faced type and underlining in the assignment below. What you see is what was assigned. [You might also note the use of "eligible" instead of "illegible." Should we deduct some salary for faulty proof-reading?] What do you think? Is there some rationale for this kind of assignment that I'm missing?

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AP ES Current Events Scrap Book

1. Every week by Monday morning, for 39 weeks, find a large newspaper article related to Environmental Science. The first article should be clipped by Monday, August 16th. Students are expected to continue this project during holiday breaks as well. The 39 articles, and their summaries, should cover the dates August 16th until May 9th.

a. Do not take/use articles from the internet or magazines.
b. Do not print from the internet.
c. Do not photocopy articles.
d. Do not type summary

2. Summarize each article using at least 100 words. The articles should be neatly cut out and taped/glued/pasted/displayed with the handwritten summary page on the right facing page and the original article on the left facing page. Insure that the newspaper’s name and date is displayed on the article. Summaries must be neatly handwritten. Like the AP exam free response question answers, if your handwriting is eligible, points will not be awarded.

3. Include a “Table of Contents” in which you number the individual articles, give the title or byline, list the source, and date of each article. All pages should be sequentially numbered.

Article       Title Source                     Date                 Page (Can't get this to format correctly, but I'm sure you get the point.)

5)              “Polio Pounds Yemen”   Greensboro News  & Record   June 1, 2006     B6

4. The newspaper articles you select must have substance and must have a clear connection to Environmental Science. Make sure that articles are selected on a weekly basis not all the week they are collected.

5. The note books will be collected on the following Mondays for periodic grading:

a. September  13-  Articles 1 through 5
b. October 18 – Articles 1 through 10
c. December 6 – Articles 1 through 17
d. January 10 – Articles 1 through 22
e. February 28 – Articles 1 through 29
f. April 18 – Article 1 through 36
g. May 17 – Article 1 through 39

6. All articles are to be maintained in the scrapbook all year and the “Table of Contents” added to with the sequential numbering and addition of new  articles.

I love Twitter! The last year or so has been an amazing revelation to me. Having the capacity to tap into a community of people willing to help anyone for no purpose other than to be helpful so uplifting. I got another lesson in the kindness of strangers again this week when I put out a request for information.

[The back story] Recently, my family took an Alaskan cruise. Amazingly, three of our tablemates were also teachers. One of them was a French teacher in a private middle school. Although she could see the value of integrating technology into schools, she really didn’t know how to make it work in her French classes. I gave her some examples and told her I would send her my diigo bookmarks on Web 2.0 tools for foreign language. When I got home, I discovered I didn’t have nearly as many foreign language resources as I thought and that most of the ones I have are specific to Spanish. Without hesitation, I popped a request for French resources on my Twitter feed. 

What happened next so clearly demonstrates the power at our fingertips. Helpful people retweeted my request for information. Next thing I know, I’m getting answers from people I don’t know. Not only did I get answers, these strangers asked me questions about what I really wanted so they could make sure the resources they sent me would be appropriate for what I was looking for. Thanks to @concretekax, @MmeVeilleux, @fiteach, @regparsons, @barbaratreacy, @Mollybmom, @Grade1, and @ViewpointrClyde for helping me with my search for resources. Thank you for demonstrating again how interconnected we are in our world today and confirming the goodness of people.

[To see the resources I received, see my bookmarks: http://www.diigo.com/list/blairteach/foreign-language?order_by=0]

I’m looking for input on how to structure a technology training opportunity for secondary building and district administrators in a large, urban district. My topic is Integrating Technology into Your Work Practice, and I only have an hour with each group. Clearly, this training session can only provide an inkling of the possibilities. My goal is to “hook” them on a couple of tools that they can immediately see the value of using as part of their professional practice. We will be working in a computer lab, so they will have access to the internet. Here’s what I’m thinking now, but I’m open to your suggestions and ideas. Thanks!

• Set up a social bookmarking account; share my public bookmarks with them so they see how it works.
• Facilitate a brainstorming session with Wallwisher or Edistorm
• Work in groups on a collaboration activity with typewith.me
• Process sample documents with a couple of Google Docs.
• Share some samples of wikis and blogs.
• Encourage them to establish a blog aggregator (set it up, if time permits).

What do you think? What would you do differently?

I wish the people who believe teachers are eager to adopt and implement social media and digital tools into their instructional repertoire but are being constrained by administrators or IT policies could have been in my workshop recently. As part of the discussion about literacy strategies and student engagement, I mentioned several tools or online resources. Here is what I found when working with >50 teachers in a town of over 120,000 people:

• NOBODY knew what a ning is.
• NOBODY knew what a wiki is.
• NOBODY knew about Curriki or Thnkfinity.
• NOBODY had ever heard of TED Talks.
• NOBODY had heard of Classroom 2.0.
• NOBODY had heard of The World is Flat or Thomas Friedman.
• NOBODY had heard of Diigo or Delicious or social bookmarking.
• NOBODY knew about teachertube or schooltube.
• NOBODY used Twitter or blogs.
• NOBODY had any idea that there is any educational use for cell phones in schools.

Somebody asked me what a podcast is. Oh me, oh my. There is much work to be done.

History Project #1            Due: (one week)

Wanted Poster

We have studied several individuals that made significant contributions during the Renaissance and Reformation.* You will create a wanted poster about one of these people. The information on the poster must include:

1. Poster MUST be on an 8 1/2 X 11 sheet of paper. (10 points)
2. Mug shot - We need to know what they look like! (10 points)
3. First and Last name of your historical figure. (5 points)
4. Birth Date and Year of Death. (5 points)
5. What country were they born in and where did they do their work? (10 points)
6. What are they famous (wanted) for? 5-8 complete sentences, in your own words, for full credit. (30 points)
7. A fact that you found interesting OR a quote by the person. (10 points)
8. Print out or photocopy of your sources with info highlighted. (15 points)
9. Your name on the bottom right corner. (5 points)

What do you think? What learning value does this assignment provide?

[We could talk about this assignment on many levels. For example, the point values provide disproportionate weight on compliance to arbitrary conditions, and there is no criteria established to evaluate quality of the information.]

I’ve used this assignment in several workshops with teachers and always ask them what grade-level students would need to be in to be capable of completing this assignment and how long they think it would take. The consensus is usually somewhere around 4^th or 5^th grade; most people believe the assignment would take about 30-60 minutes to complete. They are ALWAYS shocked to hear I picked it up in a 10^thgrade honors history class, and students were given a week to complete it. I kid you not. Tenth grade.

But the story gets worse.

Recently, while working with a group of high school teachers on questioning and quality of work, I shared this assignment to start the discussion. Teachers worked in pairs to suggest revisions to the assignment that would increase the complexity. After the discussion, one of the teachers told me he was given the assignment above (or one eerily similar to it) in a graduate class he was taking to add on a certification to teach gifted classes. It was presented as a sample assignment to use with students.

It took a lot personal restraint to from making some very derogatory comments. Mentally, I was screaming, “Are you kidding me!” How can ANY person involved with training teachers believe this assignment is appropriate for high school students, let alone gifted students? The teacher then asked about the value of using the assignment as a way to teach students “to follow directions.” (Don’t get me started on that.) If the purpose of the assignment is to teach students to follow directions, it could still include additional elements that required thinking skills. If you’re going to give students work to do, as least make it work worth doing – work that will help student learn something, not just repeat facts.

* There were 45 names on the sheet. The teacher cut the names apart and had the students draw a name and told them they were leaving it to "fate" to decide who they would profile.

It occurred to me this morning that interacting with Twitter is like a hobbyist panning for gold. When panning for gold, one dips the pan into the water (the Twitter stream), fills the pan with placer material (tweets), rocks the pan (scans the tweets) and lets the lighter material float away (i.e., “Contemplating the world as I sip my morning coffee.”) while keeping the heavier material in the pan (favorites) until it can be transferred to a pouch (bookmarks) for safekeeping or spent (RT’s). The use of lists and hashtags creates currents in the stream. Deciding which current might yield the richest content helps you seek real gold instead of fool’s gold.

I should probably stop right here, but . . .

As I increased the number of people I followed, the inability to capture everything that floated by bothered me. What if I missed a great resource or powerful article or upcoming event? I had to accept that there are many miners lining the stream; nuggets that escape me will likely be captured by some lucky someone downstream. And sometimes, nuggets get tossed back into the stream (reposts) to be discovered later.

The continual flow of information can become overwhelming. Thinking of the process as panning for gold makes it a little more manageable. I finally accepted that the time I have available for gold panning is limited, and some of the gold may tumble past me on the currents of the stream while I’m doing other things. I can only dip my pan in the Twitter stream every so often, but when I do it, I enjoy swirling around the contents in the pan. Some material floats away while I sort through the heavier matter more carefully. As I sift and sort, I find nuggets and transfer them to my pouch for safekeeping. It takes effort to sift and sort, and there is a limit to how often I can dip my pan in the stream. (After all, it’s a hobby, not my job.) Even with the sorting, sometimes there are worthless rocks mixed with the gold. Regardless, I’m richer for the experience.  

FYI—To carry the analogy a little further, TweetDeck has helped me build a gold sluice so I can process the contents of the stream more efficiently with less effort.

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