David Warlick's 2¢ Worth

I subscribe to David Warlick's 2¢ Worth and came across this post. I wasn't sure how to get the post to this blog so I just copied the text (Hope that's OK). At any rate I found it thought provoking and want to know what others think. Talk to me...Thanks Leslie
Here's the link:

http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/

Teaching & Learning in the new information landscape...
1 ItemUpdated: Thu, Apr 9 2009 8:04 PM
Let’s just put them all in jail 24/7
By David Warlick on education

Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan

This is one of those posts where I might have gotten a bit carried away. But that title about jail comes from one of the comments I got when I posted some quotes from Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, on Twitter and Facebook yesterday. The national education leader visited two Denver schools on Tuesday, and to an apparently unsympathetic room of about 400 middle and high school students,


Duncan said American schools should be open six days a week, at least 11 months a year, to improve student performance. (Gandy)
According to the 9News.com a story, entitled “Education Secretary says kids need more school,” Duncan said to the teenagers,


You’re competing for jobs with kids from India and China. I think schools should be open six, seven days a week; 11, 12 months a year.
I do not know enough about the school (Bruce Randolph) that Duncan seems to be holding up as a model for the nation, for an opinion. But the two statements, attributed to the education leader, not only make my blood boil — but they are simply “Dead Wrong!”

Arnie Duncan was nominated to the Secretary of Education post by President Barack Obama in mid-December last year, and smarter men than me immediately called foul (See Gary Stager’s “What Do Arne Duncan & Paul Bremer Have in Common?). I wanted to give Duncan the benefit of the doubt, but all doubt’s gone now. We’ve gotten no where and we’re going nowwhere, especially if we are going to extend the sentencing of our children.

One commenter of my Facebook posts said,


..the competition we have vs. India and China (2 Million … Read MoreMinutes) is an impossible task to overcome. Those are the best of the best compared to our better kids.
I would extend this mismatch to suggest that it isn’t simply that we’re comparing their best apples to our better apples. First of all, you’re not going to win the blue ribbon at the county fair by leaving your apple pie in the oven longer. And secondly, why not grow oranges instead. Doesn’t a global market place need diversity of talents and skills — not everyone trying to best each other on the same narrow array of standards.


Isn’t this what we’re doing to our children?


But we’re not talking about fruit are we? We’re talking about our children. ..and let’s face it, we’re talking about nothing less than institutionalizing “child labor” to satisfy a failed belief that higher standardized test scores will reliably lead to a stronger economy, more prosperous citizens, and a vibrant democracy. What it leads to is boredom, ca lapsing morale among our best teachers, children without passion, children dropping out, and a growing and prospering testing industry.

I was so incredibly lucky to have gone to school when I did. Even though I did poorly on tests, was not conscientious about homework, blah blah blah (we didn’t diagnose leaning disabilities (diversities) back then). I had wise teachers who said, “He’s bright and he can learn anything he wants to learn.” My parents didn’t worry.

My son, who’s not A.D.D., still performed poorly, because he was bored. He didn’t care. He wasn’t drinking the kool aid. He spent his time and attention with his music. I remember when a middle school math teacher refused to sign off on his enrolling in more advanced math classes in high school. She urged us to keep him out of math. The cynic in me is convinced that continued poor math performance wouldn’t have been good for the school.

We put him in Math and he performed poorly — until he approached his senior year and realized that his grades would prevent him from earning that music scholarship he need for his music school of choice. So during his senior year, he out-performed, in calculus, classmates who’d already been accepted at MIT.

Now if you think that the moral of this story is “making kids want to do well in Math will result in better performance,” then you’re wrong. The moral of the story is that if my son finally wants a job, where he needs to know Calculus — then he’ll learn calculus. You see,

Anyone who can master something that he or she is passionate about,

Can learn anything!

Bring passion back into education — and kick out the standards!

..and while you’re at it, kick the amateurs out too!

Thing 23

Final Reflections

In my leisure time (what little of it there is) I like to design and make jewelry. Before learning this craft I had never heard of crimping pliers. They are used to “crimp” a small bead at the ends of your beading to ensure that your necklace or bracelet doesn’t come apart. There are other pliers that can be used but once I discovered the crimping pliers I would never choose any other tool for that job. The right tool for the job makes all the difference. Thanks to 23 Things I now have a large repertoire for teaching and learning using Web 2.0 tools. I am a happy camper. So today for example when I sat in a meeting where a document was being edited by a group and one person was attempting to capture all the various suggestions for edits and changes, I immediately thought WIKI!!!
My new tools will help me to ensure that various tasks are done well, easier to do, done more efficiently and more likely to accomplish the intended goal. There are some challenges however and I’d like to offer my list of pros and cons.
Pros

• I have an increased number of communication tools at my fingertips
• Time can be saved when multiple contacts are needed to edit a document (WIKI, Google doc)
• Tools allow for easy sharing of work
• Decreases or eliminates distance barriers, encourages global communications
• Data collection widget allows you to hear from those who visit your site
• Don’t have to know HTML, scripts are provided
• Increasing amounts of information are available

Cons

• I still prefer face to face contacts for some tasks. I like to see facial expressions, gestures etc in attempting to fully understand someone’s point
• May miss cues that you can observe when working in person
• Some tools rely on user preferences i.e. tags are not “standardized” and don’t mean the same thing to everyone.
• Information overload!! Bloglines brings in way too much to read at one time if you subscribe to prolific bloggers
• Can’t always control or know who’s responding
• Limited to page, object formats if you don’t know scripts or HTML
• Information overload. 2 cautions: increased information does not guarantee increased wisdom and all information presented does not necessarily meet “standards”. How do you know information can be trusted?
• Lots of advertising on some sites
• Equal access is not available for all stakeholders
• Sometimes difficult to control who sees or has access

That’s my 2 cents worth. Now I will make some choices of which tools to get good at and explore them more. Hey 23 Things, what’s next? As always, thanks for listening. Leslie

Thing 22

OK, here's my wiki https://knowtes.wikispaces.com/ . What a great way to collaborate. This is more than just self-expression (which is what blogs allow you to do and then others respond). This is "here's my work" and now it's your turn. Change it, add to it, revise it, edit it, delete it (scary) but I WANT you to put your 2 cents in. I would imagine that you have to be ready not to "own" whatever you put out there. It's amazing how differently people see things. I learned that with tags. I never cease to be amazed at what people put under certain tags?????? At any rate, if I had a class of students I would definitely use wikis. This is a tool I would choose as a teacher and then go deep with. As always, thanks for listening. Leslie

Thing 21

Exploring the wikis done by students, schools, classes shows there is no limit to how students can be challenged. One called Aristotle had an outcome of shifting responsibility for learning from teacher to student. http://aristotle-experiment.wikispaces.com/ Browsing the pages revealed some pretty heavy duty topics and student work. Comparison of platforms of presidential candidates done in a blog, Pros/Cons of the death penalty in a wiki, as well as more traditional topics Moby Dick and Romeo and Juliet in wikis. The products are not as polished as in some other tools but the student learning is obvious.

Wikihow is a neat project too. I'd like to write and add an article. Thoughts on the collaborative writing tasks still leave me with a bit of hesitation when it comes to edits without borders. A comment about accidently deleting someones edits caused me to worry a bit. Still I'd like to try it a time or two before forming a final decision. As always, thanks for listening. Leslie

Thing 19 Thing 20

Exploring podcasting and video casting (like the video casting better) was not as interesting as some of the other explorations. I did not subscribe to anything. When I checked my Bloglines for today, I found the greatest segment on the Concord school in Australia. They are a great example of a school where students and staff use several of the 2.0 tools we have explored. Photo sharing, blogging, social networking, and students are now creating and generating their own tools. By the way, it’s a school for students with disabilities. I attempted to embed it into this post but it kept crashing IE. Instead, I added it as a gadget. I think I like it better there anyway that way its always up and visible whenever you visit my blog. It is certainly worth checking out. Let me know what you think. As always, thanks for listening. Leslie

Thing 17 Part 2

Here is my first Knowtes deck - had some trouble with embedding the code and on the website.

Thing 18 General Colin Powell Text

I like SlideShare. Check out this SlideShare Presentation from Colin Powell on Leadership Lessons. Tough talk...I like it.

General Colin Powell Text

View more presentations from Joan Boyer.