Inquiring Minds Want To Know....

I've been teaching my students the Inquiry Based Research process over the last two weeks. Its amazing to me to see the differences in their approach to knowledge and information over that time. One of my students got gum on her jeans and applied the process to determine the best strategy for removing it. Other students have been using the process in their other classes to learn about social mores in South America and customs in Spain. Its very cool, in fact its the wheat in the chaff. More on this later....

The New Information Environment: Redefining the Textbook

The last two days of learning, exploring, and conversation have been most valuable. The Downers Grove Summit has had the net effect of shining a light on emerging technologies, inspiring creative uses for them, and sparking rich conversation about the implications of the web 2.0.

A particular interest of mine lies in the sources of information my biology students have access to and use in developing knowledge. Biology is the science of life, but is in fact a living, dynamic science that changes often. Traditionally, schools have turned to the "authority" of a textbook publishing company as their major sources of information. These companies exerted much control over the tone and content of the information our students were exposed to. They also demanded quite a lot of treasure in exchange for their product. Because of funding concerns and the high price of textbooks, it is not unusual for a school district to go 6 or 7 years with the same books. The problem is, especially in a discipline like biology, that the information in those books is out of date, incomplete, or simply wrong in a much shorter period of time. The net result is that the information our students have traditionally had access to is often out of date, incomplete, or simply wrong. We can do better...

One product of the new information environment is ready access to information that is current, constantly updated, and linked to yet other sources of information of realted subject. We have at our fingertips the equivalent of a world wide library with limitless authors. As in the print world, not all of these authors are popular or credible, but their work is available nonetheless. It is imperative that we teach our students how to separate the wheat from the chaff, and how to use the vast amount of information to help them construct knowledge.

It is my firm belief that if we dare, we can begin to find new ways to provide resources to our students that offer alternatives to the traditinal textbook. We can use the monies saved for other pressing needs (if we can think of any), and we can insure that our students are plugged into the best information possible.

There are issues, as our discussion today clearly showed. Who is an authority? What is the common standard? How do we do this in the face of NCLB and GVC? With the collective brainpower of the Downers Grove Summit I know we can find a way!

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Downers Grove Summit Day 2

We've started today with a brief discussion of how the emerging technologies of blogs, RSS, wikis, aggregators, etc. truly allow for authentic learning opportunities for our students. The challenge for us as teachers is to learn how to effectively use these tools and then organize learning experiences that take the emphasis off of information delivery (lecture) and place it on information discovery and production.

The role of the teacher has traditionally been to inculcate knowledge into the brains of our students. Today that role must be more about helping students to develop the skills necessary to answer a myriad of questions using 21st Century Skills. I wrote about this topic in an earlier post and after our work at the Downers Grove Summit I feel more strongly than ever that the success of our educational system in the 21st century hinges on a new way of doing business. The vast amounts of information available is only an asset if our students have the abilities and the understanding to make use of it. They need to be able to find the wheat from the chaff!

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The RSS Revolution !?!

Perhaps revolution is too strong a word to describe what we'll see with RSS in the coming months and years, but its not far off the mark I think. RSS allows people to select the information that they find most useful and subscribe to it much like a newspaper or magazine. In this way, information comes down a funnel to one site where it can be easily indexed and accessed. Because its based on personal preferences there is no need to sift through the chaff. Everytime the selected information is updated by its author, the RSS feed automatically sends it down the funnel. I think of it as a little bit like TiVo for information.

There are some obvious ramifications to consider here. One is that a tremendous amount of information can be gathered very easily from selected sources. Another is that from each source one might find additional useful sources and develop a network of shared interests. This has the ability greater expand one's social or professional circle.

One concern that may arise from RSS has to do with the narrowing down of perspective that could result from self-selecting sources of information. By "TiVoing" the information that I want, and only looking at that information, I might be missing opposing viewpoints that could round out my ideas. This is a consequence that must be considered when RSS is discussed.

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The Downers Grove Summit

I'm reporting live from the nationally acclaimed and award winning Downers Grove South High School Library. We've got gathered here today a great collection of educators, technologists, and even a student for what has been proclaimed the "Downers Grove Summit" on emerging technologies. Our host is David Jakes and our special guest is David Warlick. Our program will focus on the the development, evolution, and application of 21st Century technologies including blogs, RSS, wikis, tags, and aggregators. Its both exciting and a bit overwhelming to consider how all of these emerging tools can be used to facilitate communication and collaboration. Its also very cool to know that what we are doing these two days in Downers Grove will have national exposure. Its also cool to see on Warlick's blog that he already has images from the workshop online. Instant publishling and sharing of ideas...The future of the "citizen journalist" is here.

Our first assignment has been to develop a blog that we can use to publish our views and evolving thoughts. My blog has been online for half a year already and I'm still thinking about how I can use it. In a few of my earlier posts I diuscuss the nature of information in today's world. The explosion of the blogosphere, RSS, aggregator software, and wikis means that information is being generated at an unprecedented rate. This fact brings to mind three challenges we as educators have in preparing our students for this "brave new world" of information. One, because nobody can "know" everything, we must teach them how to find the information they need. Sometimes this task might be like finding a "needle in a really big haystack." Two, we must help them to become critcal consumers of information. We need to help them develop the evaluative skills to help them separate "the wheat from the chaff." And three, we must help guide them to become collaborative "citizen journalists" who themselves contribute to the "new conversation."

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Its been a long time...

Its been a while since I've posted here...The end of a school year is always so hectic and there are many responsibilities to juggle and deadlines to meet.

Anyway, the purpose of this post is really just to offer kudos to my students on a great year. I've been really fortunate to be able to work with such a great group of people and they've really come a long way in a short amount of time. It seems that just as you start to get in a groove the year is over and a new group is on the way in. Best wishes to my class of 05.

On another note, I'm looking forward to a great summer. My family and I are planning on spending about a month in Germany (can't wait to get the 5 series out on the autobahn) with some side trips to Austria and Switzerland. I'm also going to be doing a fair share of staff development this summer including classes on Blackboard, United Streaming, Pinnacle, and emerging technologies. I'm really looking forward to our discussion of blogs, wikis, and RSS as educational tools. It will be a meeting of some great minds including David Warlick, Dave Jakes, Steve Dembo, Mark Pennington, technology specialists from surrouding districts, and even some students who can provide some valuable perspective. We want to get our students to use the information and communication technologies that are so influential in today's society, but we want them to use them in a thoughtful way.

Every year it seems there's more and more to learn. But that's the fun part, that's the good stuff!

21st Century Assessment Requires 21st Century Skills

I just read an insightful post at Edugadget entitled "Life is an open-book test." The essesnce of the post is summarized by the statement "increasingly the ability to quickly find what is needed in a rapidly changing world is becoming the standard of knowledge." This is right on target and resonates with my philolsophy on equipping students with the right skills to compete in the 21st century. I'm afraid that a good majority of work that students are asked to do in schools is simply not reflective of what they'll need to know and be able to do in the "real world." There is an exponential growth in the amount of information year after year. It is no longer practical for students to be able to know it all (although I know a few who think they do). What students need is fluency in the skills needed to aquire, evaluate, and process information. With the help of my esteemed colleauge and technology maven David Jakes, I ran my classes (high school freshmen biology students) through a two week sequence of information literacy lessons. These lessons taught students the skills of questioning, searching for and evaluating sources of information, citing information, and processing the information to answer essential questions. This sequence of lessons culminated in what we called a "21st Century Assessment." This assessment piece was an essential question on a topic that students had no prior knowledge of. They were given full access to the internet and asked to anwer this question using the skills they have developed. I have continued to develop similar assessments for my curricular units. I've been really impressed by what a group of 14 year olds can do given the right skills and opportunities. They can do good stuff!

Is School Work Work?

I am always trying to incorporate new ways of teaching into my repertoire. This is certainly work for me as it takes a lot of time and energy to develop, implement, and assess lessons that go beyond rote information overkill. But is it work, or is it my mission? David Warlick has an interesting question that he poses towards the end of his most recent post:

My question is, are our students on a mission, or are they doing their jobs. Can we teach our children to accomplish missions from the way that we teach them,
the assignments we give them, the ways that we assess their success, how we listen to them as they express what they have learned, what they believe, and the conclusions that they have discovered.I do not have an answer for this question at present. But it's something that I will continue to think about, and I encourage you to comment with your thoughts. How do we put our students on a mission to learn, grow, and become richer human beings?

This idea of giving kids a mission in schools is perhaps a much needed change in the way we view education. There are many who feel that teachers must be the gatekeepers of infomation and dole it out to the hungry masses. This methodology seems more and more outdated each day. To really teach kids we need to teach them to ask the right kinds of questions, find and sift information, synthesize the information, and finally communicate the information using the tools of the 21st century (blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, etc. )

Because I feel that kids need to be fluent with all the tools and skills of the 21st century, I've made it my mission to make school work more meaningful. Its my mission to find the good stuff and share it with my students.

Photos Tell Stories

This session is all about how images tell stories and how we might improve our own photography. It starts with famous images including those by Ansel Adams.

Images pull out of us memories and emotions, they illicit comments on world events. Some images simply provide enjoyment.

Digital photography changes the way we take and process images. No chemicals, no dark room.

Lighting...look for a well lit scene, use your hand out in front of you to detect lighting in a room.

Low angle light creates the best moods.

The rule of thirds....break the image up, foreground, middle, background, look at the intersections of the areas.

Look small, sometimes we overlook great images when we just look for the big shot.

Elements of Art: light, form, composition, color

The list goes on...we can all learn to do great digital photography.

One-Room Schoolhouse

Dave's at it again with the advanced social software presentation. There's a bigger audienc today---probably word of mouth that the guy from District 99 is great. It strikes me how lucky we are in our district to have access to his knowledge. But that is the purpose of the presentation...making connections to "mavens" who are leading the way. This isn't anything new I guess, its just that today there is faster access to a wider community of mavens. Also, we can connect to any of that person's circle of influence.

Have you seen...

RSS (no)
Blogs (yes)
Aggregators (a few)

This is cutting age stuff. I'd like to be able to connect to other people in this audience. This is where Steve Dembo's ICE blog comes into play. All Good Stuff!