Sportsmanship

In a softball season where victories have been measured in managing to get through all seven innings without getting 10 or 12 runned, in hitting the cutoff man, in catching the fly ball in the outfield, in a successful double play, in knocking the ball down in the infield, in pitching over and over and over again when your fielders aren't backing you up very well, or in a particularly good individual hit, it's hugely apparent how hurtful and inappropriate public fan disagreement with the umpires is. I don't care if you think a call was completely wrong. It does no one any good to berate the umpire. Hats off to the umpire who confronted the unsportsmanlike conduct of the man in the crowd last night. The truth of the matter is that umpires are a part of the game, and like the team members, are doing the best they can to be accurate. It is not the job of the fans to second guess those calls at the time they are made. It's part of the game, folks.

Hats off to Lily, Ashley, Shelby, Megan, Alanna, Alyssa, Maggie, Katie, Annabelle, Brenna, Emily, and Haylee. You girls have shown us what true sportsmanship and loyalty to one's school looks like. When we adults were teetering on the edge of calling off softball for the year, this group of mostly inexperienced girls continued to go to open gyms and let us know that they were willing to compete under the Tornado Green and White no matter what the wins and losses would look like. Hats off to your two game wins! Hats off especially, though, to your tenacity, your hard work, your undying spirit, and your love of the game. We adults could take a lesson. Good luck at Regional play this weekend!

Last Day of 10-11 School Year

It's so hard to believe that the school year is officially over today. I guess the adage "Time flies when you're having fun" applies! What a year we've had with lots of new technology equipment, an abundance of in-house educational technology professional development, several EdTech conferences attended by lots of district teachers, and the continuation of collaboration between teachers not only within our own district but collaboration with others out of the district. It's no longer acceptable to rely on textbooks that can be outdated before they're even shipped or to continue with instructional strategies that were acceptable thirty years ago. Teachers have a responsibility to stay on the cutting edge of technologies that are available in the district and to use them effectively with their students to increase learning.

I'll say it again, it's easy to take new technology and use it to present to one's class. What's difficult is to take new technologies and put them in the hands of students to give them control over their own learning. That's a paradigm shift for many teachers, and I'm proud to say we're getting there in our district. Bring on school year 11-12!

God Bless the Teachers

As I think about this talented group of teachers who are retiring from SLCSD this year, I think of all the teachers I've had over the course of my life. I think of all the teachers in my extended family, both those who are still teaching and those who have also retired. What a special group of people teachers are. Underpaid, undervalued, often blamed for things beyond their control, they continue on, fearlessly knowing that what they are doing is important for individual students surely, but also for the future of our world. I am who I am today because of my teachers and so are you. Thank a teacher today!

TED Talks Filter Bubbles

I love TED talks! The most interesting topics are discussed:

http://www.ted.com/talks

The one I listened to today concerns what Eli Pariser calls "Filter Bubbles." Did you realize that when you search for something on the web, it is personalized for you? For example, Amazon knows what you've looked at before and what you've purchased, and it shows you things that you might be interested in based on that. Facebook, Netflix, and the Huffington Post do, too. What these sites "know" about you determines what you will see when you search on them. Did you know the same goes for Google? If two of us search for the same thing on Google, using the same words, we will not get the same results. The results will be based on what Google "knows" about each of us. This is remarkable to me.

What this TED talk points out is that those who are writing the algorithms for the Internet have to reconsider these "filter bubbles" that they create for us, these personalized search results. Take a look at his TED talk. It's only nine minutes long:



The ramifications of this for education are so huge. Students searching for information but only seeing the information that agrees with things they've accessed in the past. Teachers searching for information and not digging deep enough to find what they really need. Any of us travelers looking for current news about a place but seeing a bunch of travel links.

Wow! This is one of many important concepts we owe it to our students to teach them. Who knew?

Knowledge is power

Facts:

• The Internet is the major source of information in the 21st Century.
• Information leads to knowledge.
• Knowledge is power.
• Therefore, technology integration in our classrooms is no longer optional.

Our students need us. Are we up to the challenge?

Technology for students is not optional

How does one get across the importance of technology--for providing access to information for students--to those who still look at tech as an expensive add on? Since we all went to school, too many have the tendency to look back at their education and what it looked like and theorize that it should still work for today’s students. This is flawed reasoning. I always like the analogy that has been drawn many times before that compares modern medicine with what was done medically in the past. Would you go to a doctor who still practiced medicine like it was practiced 50 years ago, just because that medical practice produced cures back then? Of course you wouldn’t. You want your doctor to use all the advancements of modern medicine to diagnose and cure you. We owe the same to our students in classrooms.

I remember learning history from ten year old textbooks that were probably outdated the day they arrived in the classroom. I remember working from five year old workbooks that we couldn’t write in, because they had to be reused year after year. I remember typing papers with typewriters that even with the correction ribbon ended up too messy to use, requiring typing over again. I remember filing index cards of information for debate in file boxes we could hardly carry. Did I learn? You better believe it. I amassed a spectacular foundation of learning that made me an ardent (perhaps obsessive!) lifelong learner. Is it the way I want my children educated? Absolutely not. It’s not the way we do things in today's world.

The point is that information is available from the Internet now. Why would we ever think there’s an alternative to that? Sure, books are great, and I still buy books, but I would never think books could stand alone anymore. Information needs to be gathered, evaluated, analyzed, synthesized, organized, and used to create new products and new thoughts. How do we do that? We do that with technology now. A school is unfair to its students if the people in it or around it think you can learn to your highest capacity without the greatest source of information in the world today, the Internet. Individuals buying insurance, shopping for merchandise, evaluating health options, hiring employees, researching the law, finding recipes, picking cell phones, collaborating with others, working in all industries, all industries. The work place has changed. Homes have changed. Education must continue to change.

We would never put our students behind the wheel of a car without teaching them behind the wheel of a car. Why would we ever think it’s OK to educate without putting the source of information in the hands of our students and teaching them to use it wisely? Technology will never replace teachers. Never. I believe that adamantly, and I’ve posted about it before. However, that doesn’t make technology optional. From PreK through advanced degrees, technology in the hands of students is imperative. We need people and connected technology, and we better continue to figure out how to make that happen financially in our schools.

Temptations of the Internet: Personal Responsibility

Have you ever stood behind a room full of teachers or administrators at meetings or professional development? What do you see on their computer screens? Let’s see—Email to keep track of what’s going on at work; Twitter to provide a back channel for communicating with others near and far; web sites that are the topic of the gathering and web sites that clearly aren’t; calendars to see what’s coming up tomorrow; blogs of favorite authors; consumer retail sites, and that’s just to name a few distractions. Add to that the cell phones, and the neighbor we’re chatting with, and it’s a wonder that we ever hear a word that’s said on the topic of the gathering or accomplish the tasks at hand. Are we surprised that we see the same thing in our classrooms, and by the way, what is the solution?

The truth of the matter is that we can only focus on one thing at a time. While we can cruise between lots of tasks in tiny bursts of concentration, we truly can’t be processing two thoughts on two different topics at the same time. How many times have you heard what a moderator said, taken off on that tangent in some way on your laptop (or on some other completely off task tangent) and then had to ask for the next part of the presentation to be repeated? I’ve never been to a gathering of professionals where this didn’t happen, and many times it’s me who got lost by my wandering fingers on the keyboard or phone.

I know what the canned responses are:

“Whose fault is it if students are running around on Facebook when they should be on task in the classroom?”

“Chat should be open for back channel conversations, and students who are engaged won’t talk about anything but the current topic."

“Stand and deliver presentations deserve the lack of engagement.”

“Find something students care about, and they’ll pay attention.”

“Show students how the topic applies to them in real life, and they won’t even think of socializing with their peers.”

Are you serious? Do you really believe that students, young and old, can use their interpretation of the quality of the class or meeting as their cop out for not paying attention? Who’s to judge that quality? I have one daughter who hates small group work. I have a son who would rather shovel snow than listen to a lecture. I have another daughter who thinks online classes are the best way to learn and another daughter who can’t stand not having other people physically present when learning. Do we really think that depending on each student's learning style or preference, an excuse can be made for not paying attention?

The truth of the matter is that despite the best intentions of presenters or moderators, whether with lessons for classrooms of students, or with PD or meetings for teachers and administrators, the temptations for participants’ forging ahead on their own, whether on or off topic, is enormous. We pick and choose what we care about, and we focus on what our priorities are at the time. In so doing, the entire purpose of the class or the gathering can be lost. Whose fault is that?

I’m going to go out on a limb here, and assert that the locus of control does not rest with the teacher or moderator alone, although they certainly share responsibility. The responsibility also has to lie with those who came to the class or session. Just because laptops or cell phones present huge temptations to wander off mentally, we owe it to ourselves and our peers to stay on task. I don’t care if the class or session isn’t perfect. I don’t care if there’s too much stand and deliver. I don’t care if the small group work seems ill defined. I don’t even care if someone is waiting for an important email to arrive. There comes a point when one has to take responsibility for his/her own learning. Students, young and old, who don’t are cheating themselves and their cohorts. Surely part of our job as educators, in addition to creating the best learning tasks we can, is to clearly define our behavioral expectations in our classrooms or meeting rooms, and surely our job as students is to follow the rules, pay attention, and learn. No excuses.