Highlights from Channel Thirteen’s Celebration of Teaching and Learning

I had the pleasure of attending the Channel 13 Celebration of Teaching and Learning event on March 6. Described as the World’s Fair of Education, I highly recommend this event as a must-attend for all innovative educators. The celebration's panels, workshops, and speakers are sure to impress. At the conference I had the good fortune to join Geoffrey Canada, Sir Ken Robinson, Eric Schmidt and Michael Horn. Here are the big ideas I took away from each.

Whatever it Takes: Harlem Children's Zone

Geoffrey Canada

Ideas That Stood Out

• They take accountability for their kids from Pre K to College grads and have them 11 months of the year from 8 a.m. – 6 p.m. This is the only way to ensure they are prepared and don’t get lost along the way.
• Geoffrey started a Baby College to teach parents how to be parents.
• Geoffrey says, "I refuse to let kids disappear into the abyss after they leave me.
• Facebook is a great solution to keep up with kids after they leave schools.
• Geoffrey Canada said he wonders, “How do I tell my students that it's no longer true that if you stick with me and graduate college you'll get a good job?”

Conference Biography

In his 20-plus years with Harlem Children’s Zone, Inc., Geoffrey Canada has become nationally recognized for his pioneering work helping children and families in Harlem and as a passionate advocate for education reform. Since 1990, Mr. Canada has been the President and Chief Executive Officer for Harlem Children’s Zone, which The New York Times Magazine called “one of the most ambitious social experiments of our time.” In October 2005, Mr. Canada was named one of “America’s Best Leaders” by U.S. News and World Report.

Read

Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America

Reaching Up for Manhood: Transforming the Lives of Boys in America

Fist Stick Knife Gun: A Personal History of Violence in America

Watch

60 Minutes Ed Bradley’s Reporter’s Notes on His Interview with Geoffrey Canada

The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything

Sir Kenneth Robinson

Ideas That Stood Out

• If everyone agrees we learn at different paces why in school are we expected to teach everyone at the same pace?
• Many adults still do things because they're used to it. An example is the number of Baby Boomers who still wear watches verses teens. When asking about his watch, his daughter said, "Time is everywhere so why do you where a watch? It's a single function device."
  
• A teacher told a student he was dumb for wanting to be a fireman & not attend college. The kid felt better years later when he saved the teacher's life when rescuing him and his wife from a car accident.
• We've become obsessed with making sure kids go to college & many of them don't know why they're there & graduate not knowing why they went.
• Why has date of manufacture become the most important thing educators see kids having in common?

Conference Bio

Sir Ken Robinson is an internationally recognized leader in the development of creativity, innovation, education and human resources. Now based in Los Angeles, he has worked with national governments in Europe and Asia, with international agencies, Fortune 500 companies, not-for-profit corporations and some of the world’s leading cultural organizations. For ten years he was Professor of Education at the University of Warwick in England and is now Professor Emeritus.
Read

The Element – How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything
Watch

Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns

Michael Horn

Ideas That Stood Out

• Online learning as a way to make up a class a student has not passed.
• Schools can have learning centers with learning facilitators that connect them to various learning opportunities i.e. bring experts to the schools for one time or a class with simple Skype/webcam technology.
• In foreign language class have a facilitator that connects students to various digital learning programs so students can study the language(s) of their choice.
• In the not too distant future 50% of all high school classes will be taught online.
• Escape the prisoners of time teaching (i.e. we all learn at the same pace-we don't.). Make the learning constant and time variable.

Conference Bio:

Michael B. Horn is the co-founder and Executive Director, Education of Innosight Institute, a non-profit think tank devoted to applying the theories of disruptive innovation to problems in the social sector. He is the coauthor of Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns (McGraw-Hill: 2008) with Clayton M. Christensen and Curtis W. Johnson. Disrupting Class uses the theories of disruptive innovation to identify the root causes of schools’ struggles and suggests a path forward to customize an education for every child.
Read

Disrupting Class

The Future of Technology

Eric Schmidt, interviewed by Charlie Rose

Ideas that stuck with me

• Soon we will text w/a foreign language speaking friend (with whom u can not speak) w/auto translate.
• Google provides a personal viewing experience. Education does NOT provide a personal learning experience.
• Transparency keeps societies honest.

Conference Bio

Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin recruited Eric Schmidt from Novell, where he led that company’s strategic planning, management and technology development as chairman and CEO. Since coming to Google, Eric has focused on building the corporate infrastructure needed to maintain Google’s rapid growth as a company and on ensuring that quality remains high while product development cycle times are kept to a minimum. Along with Larry and Sergey, Eric shares responsibility for Google’s day-to-day operations. Eric’s Novell experience culminated a 20-year record of achievement as an Internet strategist, entrepreneur and developer of great technologies. His well-seasoned perspective perfectly complements Google’s needs as a young and rapidly growing search engine with a unique corporate culture.

Watch

Facebook Find: Ed Week's Leader Talk - A Blog Worth Reading

As I checked my Facebook this morning I saw this from my personal learning network colleague:

Dennis welcomes comments on his Ed Week LeaderTalk post: Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/LeaderTalk/.

I went to the site and found LeaderTalk, the first group blog by school leaders for school leaders, LeaderTalk expresses the voice of the administrator in this era of school reform. Dennis's piece is compelling as are several of the others.

I'm so thankful to my PLN and powerful networking tools like Facebook and Twitter that make these great discoveries possible. I'm think going forward I will actively focus on selecting a few of my favorites each week to share on my blog.

Is Blogging Worth The Risk? - Yes!

Editor’s Note: Learning & Leading’s popular Point/Counterpoint section is looking for arguments on both sides of the question “Is blogging worth the risk?” They go on to say, “If you’re a K–12 educator under the scrutiny of students, parents, colleagues, and administrators, is publishing a personal blog worth the potential risk to your professional reputation?”

This post is written in response to that question.

21^st century education evangelists often share a dark little joke saying, “If Rip Van Winkle were to awaken in the 21st century he would be bewildered by what he saw. Every place Rip went would baffle him, but when he walked into a schoolroom, the old man would know exactly where he was. ‘This is a school’, he would declare. ‘They looked just like this in 1906.”’ When I began talking about starting a blog several of my colleagues wished me luck, but said they would be apprehensive about doing the same for fear of, “getting in trouble” if they happened to publish ideas that their employer didn’t like.

While I recognize the fear is real, as an innovative educator, I’ve always felt it was part of my responsibility to evangelize different ideas and perspectives when it comes to educating students in the best way possible. A blog provides a terrific platform for doing so. Having a blog is also a great way to get the digital footprint conversation going as well as model best practices for using 21st century tools to build professional learning communities and personal learning networks that support the work we do.

With this philosophy in mind, I began my blog, The Innovative Educator and started writing about educating innovatively. I was so excited to finally have a place to capture and share valuable ideas with a large audience rather than only with those whom I had direct contact. It was also wonderful to be able to answer frequently asked questions with a link to my blog posts. No more having to say or write the same thing again and again.

Once I felt my blog was ready for show time, I followed in the footsteps of some other educational bloggers that I admire and included my blog url in my email signature. That’s where the trouble began. Shortly after, I was mandated to remove my blog url from my email signature which I wrote about in a blog post called Mandate Against Professional Blog URLs in NYC DOE Signature. This in turn led to a slew of press coverage like this piece from the NY Sun Education Dept. Restrictions On Blogs Rile a Staff Blogger (You can view other stories at the original blog post.). I was disappointed by my employer’s decision. I felt my blog was an extension of professional and responsible dialogue. I was excited about the sharing and exchange of ideas with colleagues that having my blog url in my signature provided.

As directed, following the mandate, I placed a disclaimer on my blog indicating the opinions within were my own and were not representative of another entity and I removed my blog url from my email signature. As a result of the chain of events, several colleagues suggested I blog anonymously, however I feel there is tremendous value to blogging under my real name. Because I stand firmly behind what I blog about, I believe it is important for my audience to be able to know the source and engage in conversation with a real person. As Will Richardson (my blog mentor) shares, Those Who Publish Set the Agenda. Maintaining a blog, absolutely comes with a LOT of work and some risks, but for me, the reward of being able to increase the prevalence of educator voice to help “set the agenda,” is well worth it.

No Future Left Behind : Peggy Sheehy's Student Video is a Must See!

Check out this video, "No Future Left Behind." This is what education should be! As you watch I invite you to think about what your favorite quote/idea is in the video and share in a comment. My Personal Learning Network colleague sheasmith tweeted his to me: @InnovativeEdu best line in the video: "I can't create my future with the tools of your past."



I am so impressed with the video my Facebook/Twitter friend and Second Life Queen Peggy Sheehy created with her students. My challenge to innovative educators is to use this video as an inspiration for you and your students to create a video. Below is one such challenge you can enter by March 31 2009. If you do create a video for this challenge, or for any reason, comment here to let me know and I'll be sure to feature your video on The Innovative Educator.

NPR reports on ARIS & Acuity

Below is a piece on NPR reporting on the use and reception of ARIS ($80,000,000 database) and Acuity in NYC public schools. Listen to the very end.

Using Google as an Educational Tool Right From Your Phone!

Your students don't need to have a laptop to access the vast amounts of knowledge formerly available to only those with the internet. Educators can put an endless amount of information at their student's finger tips by asking them to take out their cell phone and text "G-O-O-G-L-E" (466453) - FREE to those with unlimited texting plans.

Here's what you can access with just using GOOGLE text messaging listed by "Search Feature" and "Sample Query" below.

Search Feature - Sample Query 

Weather - weather boston
Glossary - define zenith
Sports - score red sox
Movies - movies 94110
Zip Codes - zip code 72202
Directions - directions pasadena ca to 94043
Maps - map 5th avenue new york
Flights - flight aa 2111
Area Codes - area code 650
Products - price ipod player 40gb
Q&A - abraham lincoln birthday
Airlines - united airlines
Translation - translate hello in french
Web Snippets - web hubble telescope
Calculator - 1 us pint in liters
Currency Conversion - 8 usd in yen
Stocks - stock tgt
Airports - sfo airport
METAR - metar khio
Help - help local

You can see a demonstration of how this functions at http://www.google.com/mobile/default/sms.html and you can watch the below video. I would recommend showing this to your students in class before sending them off to use this tool.


As Marc Prensky explains in his piece What Can You Learn from A Cell Phone? – Almost Anything, and as I shared in my post Pockets of Potential: Using Mobile Technologies to Promote Children’s Learning research shows that phones and texting are valuable educational tools. I've thought of a few ideas for using this resource as an educational tool with your students. Of course, once you discuss this with your students, I'm sure they'll be able to come up with even better ideas.

Five ideas for using Google SMS to enhance learning.

1. Have students compare their neighborhood with one they’re learning about in social studies or in a book they’re reading.
   Possible tools: “Currency,” “Local,” “Weather”
2. Have students create a city guide. I’d recommend first modeling this by creating a guide to the school neighborhood, then let students use this model to create a guide to another neighborhood such as creating a guide to the neighborhood of a great grandparent.
   Possible tools: “Web Snippets,” “Currency,” “Local,” “Translation,” “Weather”
3. Recommend that ELL and foreign language students use the translate tool when they come upon a word they don’t know.
   Possible tool: “Translate"
4. Recommend students use the define tool to look up a word or concept they don't know when reading.
   Possible tools: "Define," "Web Snippets"
5. Incorporate the tools into a math lesson.
   Possible tools: “Calculator,” “Currency Conversion,” “Stocks”

For educators working in school districts that have banned these powerful tools, not to worry. Even though students are banned from using cells as educational tools during the school day, students are free to engage in 21st Century learning outside of school. I encourage innovative educators to "Think Outside the Ban!" and assign your students homework that allows them to use these cells outside of school. Your students will thank you for allowing them to learn in an environment in which they thrive.