Directory of Anti-Teacher Trolls

This was written by Peter Greene who is a long time high school English teacher from New Hampshire. Greene tweets here and blogs here. This post was originally found here. 

by Peter Greene

It may or may not be a good idea to attempt reading all the pieces responding to the Vergara decision, but it's definitely a mistake to read the comments section for any of them.

If there is any group that has been emboldened by the California court's fact-free finding against teacher job protections, it has been the legion of anti-teacher trolls. From mainstreamish media like Slate to the usual bloggy outposts, teacher bashing trollery is in high gear.

So this seems like the perfect time to provide a directory of the basic varieties of internet teacher-haters you may encounter. (And remember-- don't feed them.)

Childless Troll

I don't have any kids, so why should I be paying any kinds of taxes to pay teachers salary? Cut their salary back to where I don't have to pay any taxes ever. Mind you, I still expect my doctor, neighbors, fellow voters, and every employed person I ever deal with to be an educated adult. I just don't want there to be any schools. I don't know how that's going to work. You're so smart, you figure it out.

Public Service Troll

People should work with children for free because it's such important work (also, musicians and artists should never want to be paid). When teachers complain about salary and benefits, it's unseemly. If they really cared about the children, teachers would happily live in a cardboard box just for the warm glow of satisfaction that comes from teaching. When teachers complain about no raise for eight years or trying to support their family, it just pisses me off-- don't they care about the children??

"Those Damn Unions" Troll

It's the damn teachers union. Teachers all want to go sleep at their desks because the union will protect them. The union does nothing but protect bad teachers. In fact, the union actually goes out, recruits bad teachers, and then cleverly forces administrations to give these crappy teachers tenure. The union also elected Obama President, and they have the power to bend all elected officials to their will (except for Rand Paul). Union leaders have a giant pile of money that they like to swim in a la Scrooge McDuck; they use it to buy all the elections and all the power.

Teacher Hater Troll

Teachers are the single biggest obstacle to education today. They are only in it for the power and the glory. Well, no-- they also became teachers because they knew that would put them in the best position to interfere with the education of American students, which is every teacher's goal. Teachers hate children, and they hate learning, so they become teachers so they can devote their entire lives to destroying those things. It's perfectly logical.

Race To The Bottom Troll

The guy who cooks the fries at McDonalds does not have tenure or make any more than minimum wage or get vacations, so neither should teachers. The guy who dropped out of school in tenth grade and now works part-time at Mega-Mart doesn't have job security, and he barely makes enough to pay his cellphone bill, so why should teachers not have to struggle, too? There are employers in this country who force their workers to toil in unconscionable conditions; why should we fight to improve those conditions when we can fight to drag teachers down to that crappy level instead.

Sad Bitter Memories Troll

I hated high school. My teachers were mean to me. I remember a couple who picked on me all the time just because I didn't do my work and slept in class a lot. And boy, they did a crappy job of teaching me anything. I sat in their classroom like a houseplant at least three days a week, and I didn't learn a thing. Boy, did they suck! Crappy teachers like that ought to be fired immediately! And that principal who yelled at me for setting fire to the library? That guy never liked me. Fire 'em all.

Unlikely Anecdote Troll

There was this one teacher in the town just over from where I went to school, and one day he brought in a nine millimeter machine gun and mowed down every kid in his first three classes. The principal was going to fire him, but the union said he couldn't because of tenure, so that guy just kept working there. They even put kids in his class who were related to the ones he shot. Tenure has to be made illegal right away.

Just Plain Wrong Troll

Tenure actually guarantees teachers a job for life, and then for thirty years after they retire and fifty years after they die. It's true. Once you get hired as a teacher you are guaranteed a paycheck with benefits for the next 150 years.

Confused Baloney Troll

If you really care about children and educational excellence, then you want to see teachers slapped down. The only way to foster excellence in education is by beating teachers down so they know their place. Only by beating everyone in the bucket can we get the cream to rise to the top.

Like A Business Troll

You know, in every other job, you get judged on your performance and then rewarded or fired accordingly. Personally, I would have been a useless lazy bastard at my job except that my boss was always looking over my shoulder. People suck unless you threaten them. Nobody threatens teachers enough; that's why they all suck. All the best businesses like, you know, big investment banks like Lehman Brothers or energy companies like Enron-- those totally function on accountability.

Fake Statistic Troll

It's a known fact that 63% of teachers failed high school shop class, and 43% are unable to even dress themselves. If you have a bad teacher in Kindergarten, it's a proven fact that you will make $1 trillion dollars less in life; also, you'll be plagued with adolescent acne until you're 34, and your children will be ugly. 92% of high school graduates last year were unable to read, and 46% of those were unable to even identify the English language. Also, 143% of urban teachers are "highly ineffective" and 52% of those are "grossly ineffective" and 24% of those actually give off waves that cause metal surfaces to rust. I ask you, how can we continue to support public education under these conditions.

Tin Hat Troll

Teachers are part of the Agenda 21 agenda, and will be used as tools to turn students into mindless puppets who will smother their parents in their beds at night. You can read all about it in the Codexes of the Postuleminatti.

Charter School Troll

All of these bad things only apply to public school. In charter schools, all students develop a cure for cancer and build pink unicorns from ordinary materials you can find around the house.

Accountability Troll

There are still poor children in this country who are doing poorly in school. That must be a teacher's fault. Hunt that teacher down and fire him, repeatedly.

Incoherent Rage Troll

Teachers just all suck with the suckiness think they're so smarty pants with their fancy college edumacations and don't even work a whole year or a whole day even they just work an hour and then twelve months off every summer resting up from just babysitting which any moron could do so fire them all because, suck gaaaaahhh.

If I missed any, you can just sign on as a Hey You Made A Serious Omission troll in the comments below.

Alfie Kohn on Twitter

This was written by Alfie Kohn who writes and speaks about parenting and education. His website is here and he tweets here. This post was originally found here.

by Alfie Kohn

In 2009, when a friend breathlessly told me about a new social media format in which messages would be limited to 140 characters, I smirkily predicted that within a few years it would be mentioned in the same breath with the pet rock craze of the 1970s. Fifty-two months after having stuck my toe in these digital waters, however, I'm prepared to admit that I was wrong. This thing may be around for awhile. Still, my attitude about Twitter remains ambivalent, and I thought I'd take about 3000 characters to explain how I view it and use it.

RECEIVING: I've been accused - mostly by people who don't much like my ideas anyway - of being arrogant or unsporting because I don't use Twitter to converse. It's true: I don't. If someone asks a question, and I happen to see the tweet, I'll usually invite him or her to send me an e-mail so we can communicate privately and without the need to omit important qualifications or 2 dpnd on irrtatng abbrvs. I follow only a handful of people - plus another small bunch in a backup account that I check less frequently. That's my limit. I frankly don't understand how it's possible to follow hundreds, or even thousands, of people: Those who do so are either devoting orders of magnitude more time to this medium every day than I do (or would want to), or else they're missing the vast majority of those tweets. Most of the ideas and perspectives I encounter, like most of the conversations I have, don't involve Twitter.

SENDING: I limit myself to one carefully chosen message a day, which is either a reflection (about education, parenting, human behavior, or occasionally politics), a quote I found provocative, a link to a useful resource, or, once every week or two, an article of mine. This limit forces me to be selective. It allows me to avoid (a) spewing out a volume of material that would be more overwhelming than useful to those who follow my tweets, (b) presuming that people care about what restaurant I've just eaten in or whether the traffic is really bad today, or (c) creating a loop of self-congratulation whereby I retweet every message that mentions me favorably. If I restrict myself to a single tweet, I'm not tempted to impersonate a fire hose, or to share my prosaic daily activities with the world, or to keep saying, "Look! Someone likes what I wrote!"

CHATTING: I've tried a few times, but mass Twitter "conversations" just don't work for me. Each person is talking to everyone and to no one. Your attempt to respond to a particular observation or question is quickly buried under a pile of subsequent messages. And I find a 140-character limit a terrible match for the rapid-fire nature of the colloquy. I can be succinct (sometimes) or I can be fast, but please don't ask me to be both at once.

Even reading selectively, Twitter helps me learn about articles I might otherwise have missed. Conversely, I hope my one-a-day links and thoughts are useful to those who follow me. At some point I may rethink and expand my use of the medium, but for now this restricted use - and the limited commitment of time it entails - still makes sense for me.

Tips for Better Blogging

Here are some random thoughts I might pass on to a teacher who wanted to start blogging:

• you have to make blogging enjoyable or you won't do it for long. 

• don't worry about being right -- make the purpose of your blog about learning and growing. If you end up changing your mind about something, be open and honest to others and yourself.

• decide how often you want to post. I might suggest starting with one post per week. Remember they don't have to be long. In fact, some of the best blog posts are rich on quality and relatively short of quantity.

• consider using Twitter to share your blog. Here's why.

• try your best to not care about how many visitors your blog gets. It takes a long time to get any kind of traffic. Paying attention to traffic too early and too often is likely to dissuade you from blogging. Remember that you are blogging mostly for yourself -- your learning. Blogging and sharing for others is ubiquitous.

• be sure to link to other people's stuff in your blog and then make them aware that you have linked to them. This is a great way of connecting with others via Twitter or e-mail.

• I would recommend not monetizing your blog. Keep advertisements and the desire to profit as far away from your blog as possible. Blogging is about learning and sharing. Try not to get distracted from these objectives with profits and popularity.

• consider bringing colleagues in on your blogging. Perhaps influence someone else to start their own blog and work together.

• when done well, blogging and tweeting can become one of the most powerful professional development tools because your learning shifts from something done by distant authorities to you to something you create for yourself.

My three years of blogging and tweeting

For three years, I have made blogging and tweeting the core of my learning. Without a doubt, blogging and tweeting has become the heart and soul of my professional development.

Blogging and tweeting has allowed me to shift my learning from an event done to me to a process that I actively own and engage in almost every single day. My professional development is something I create for myself.

Twitter provides me with an opportunity to share with others that time and distance would normally not allow me to share with. Blogging provides me the opportunity to put my thoughts, questions and beliefs into words.

For the last three years, I've dedicated myself to blogging one piece of content almost everyday. This requires intense reflection.

Once I've shared something with others, they are kind enough to engage me with a comment or a tweet, which allows me to reflect and reconsider my thinking even more. This is invaluable.

In three years, my blog has:

• over 1300 posts
• almost 4000 comments
• over 1 million pageviews

In three years, my Twitter has:

• almost 10,000 followers
• I follow 270 of the coolest people on Twitter
• over 25 000 tweets

Blogging and tweeting has provided me with opportunities to further my learning that without blogging and tweeting wouldn't have likely happened:

• I interact and learn with many people form around the world who share a passion for teaching and learning.
• I co-edited a book on De-Testing and De-Grading Schools: Authentic Alternatives to Accountability and Standardization with Paul Thomas.
• I interact and learn with some of my favorite education authors and speakers.
• I read and write more about education in the last 3 years than I did in my previous 10 years of teaching.
• I receive numerous emails from educators and parents who want to engage in a conversation about how we can change school.
• I keynoted a conference in St. Paul, Minnesota.
• My blog acts as a curator for all the cool stuff I learn. My learning is always at my fingertips.
• I receive invitations to write articles for education magazines and to do radio interviews.
• I hosted a series of professional development events on Skype where I presented through a translator for teachers from Estonia.
• I was appointed to the Alberta Teachers' Associations Strategic Planning Committee.

But most of all, I have developed a network of people that I trust and respect. These connections fuel my learning. I can't overstate how important it is to my learning that I have these connections.

While I can see how all of these connections have influenced my learning, I've come to understand that I will never really know what kind of an impact my sharing will have on others. Sharing is funny that way.

And so this concludes my third year of blogging. I'm going to go off-line over the holidays. That means no Twitter and no blogging.

Happy Holidays!

Why I unfollowed hundreds of people thanks to Tony Baldasaro

I was inspired by Tony Baldasaro's post Why I Unfollowed 5,000 People to reclaim my connection with the people I follow on Twitter by unfollowing hundreds of people.

I joined Twitter in June 2009 because Alfie Kohn posted on his website that he had joined. At the time, I had no idea what I was getting myself into, and promptly gave Twitter up after looking at it for about a month. I didn't necessarily know it at the time, but my problem was that I was not connected to anyone, so lurking got pretty old, pretty fast. 

Then in January 2010, I started this blog, and it made sense to use Twitter to share my latest posts. People started responding and connecting and interacting with me via Twitter, so I stayed interested.

People starting following me. 

I can remember following my first 100 people and making a conscious decision not to follow more than that because I wanted Twitter to remain manageable; however, even 100 people was becoming difficult to keep up with. I quickly realized that I didn't need (or want) to read every single tweet by those I followed.

I remember when I decided to relinquish my self-imposed limit on who I followed when I decided to return the favor to those who followed me by following them. This was a mistake and led to the beginning of the end of my connections with those I followed. Before I knew it, I was following about 1,500 people and I quickly found myself never looking at my Twitter Timeline.

That's when I turned to lists. 

I knew that there really was only a handful of people that I really needed and wanted to stay connected closely with. After looking at the two lists that I use the most, there are actually 40 people on Twitter that I follow on a daily basis. I wanted to know what they knew. I wanted to read what they were reading. I wanted to think about what they are thinking about. I wanted their insight. I wanted to learn from them. 

Months ago, I found myself going through the list of people I followed on Twitter and recognized that I didn't recognize most of them, so I unfollowed about 1,000 people without saying a word to anyone. I forced myself to ignore how many followers I had so that I could not track how many followers I had lost. This left me with about 400 people I "followed" but still payed little attention to. There were still too many tweets to keep track of.

So when I read Tony Baldasoro's post Why I Unfollowed 5,000 People, I knew that I had to be more authentic about who I followed. I mean, how can I claim to know how to use Twitter when I don't even follow the people I follow. I almost exclusively use Twitter on my iPhone, and I'm tired of my home button being useless.

The first run through my unfollowing people was easy -- if I didn't recognize the avatar, I clicked unfollow. But then I still had like 400 people and I knew it was still too many. I had to make some tough decisions. 

Do I unfollow:

• my friend that I used to play hockey with? 
• my school board trustee? 
• my deputy superintendent? 
• people I followed first but no longer connect with?
• popular people that others may follow closely but I don't?

As of now, I'm following about 230 people, and it's still likely too many, but I'm really having a hard time reducing it more than that. Everyone of those 230 people are people that I actively recognize and am at least loosely familiar with. As I approach 10,000 followers, I am again going to have to try and ignore how many followers I might lose because in the end this is about reconnecting with those who I follow and not about simply adding or retaining those who follow me. After all, I'm pretty sure that the actual number of people who really follow me on Twitter is significantly less than 10,000. Never forget that the number of followers you have on Twitter is kind of like the time that used to flash on your VCR.

If you are reading this and you have already checked your Twitter account to see that I have unfollowed you, please don't take it personally.

If you feel the need to unfollow me, I understand. Heck, maybe you could take this opportunity to reconnect with those you follow. Maybe I'm on that list, and maybe I'm not. And if I have to lose some followers so that others can also reclaim and reconnect with those they follow, then I'm more than okay with that.

Please understand that if we are to make social networking about relationships and learning then we all have to make choices about the quality and quantity of people we choose to follow. 

Arne Duncan's To Do List

Arne Duncan's To Do List:

1. Undermine public confidence in teachers and schools via standardized test scores. 

2. Get on Twitter and praise teachers.

Mr. Duncan, your walk does not match your talk.

The Denial of Social Networking

The idea that a child could be born a digital native makes as much sense as the idea that a child could be born literate.

Like reading and writing skills, digital literacy is something constructed inside children while interacting with their environment. It's not about their DNA -- it's about opportunity and guidance.

Part of the illusion here is that too many people mistakenly think a student's digital comfort level equates to their digital skill level or digital literacy.

Phil McRae with the The Alberta Teachers' Association describes some of the results of a recent Canadian study on technology and teacher-student relationships:

Another common finding was that teachers are often unable to make full use of social media in their teaching practice because firewalls prevent them from accessing services such as Twitter, Skype and YouTube. This is an important finding—if we are to teach students to be critical consumers and thoughtful citizens in a digital age, teachers need to be trusted to make pedagogic decisions on the application of technology.

If a school blocks YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, how are teachers suppose to learn about social networking?

If a school blocks YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, how are teachers suppose to teach students how to use social networking appropriately?

If a school blocks YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, how are teachers suppose to teach students how to NOT use social networking inappropriately?

If we deny students and teachers access to social networking in schools where they can learn together about how to properly navigate Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Skype in ways that are pro-social and responsible, we shouldn't be surprised when kids grow up to be adults who use social networking in dysfunctional and dangerous ways.

Anonymity

Not all anonymity is born equal.

For the longest time I left my blog open to anonymous comments because I found many of them were from what appeared to be educators who wanted to speak up in an effort to challenge the status quo in favor of progressive education but fearful of reprimand.

Unfortunately, due to multiple unfortunate circumstances and grossly inappropriate comments from unhealthy individuals (cowards) who chose to use anonymity as a cloak of immunity, I can no longer afford to allow anonymous comments.

I've also found my small share of trolls on Twitter. I don't use the block function often because I'm all for disagreement and cognitive dissonance, but when name calling and personal attacks become the standard, you no longer get to clutter my inbox and timeline.

Anonymity can be used to be courageous in the face of oppressive rule but it can also be used to be an asshole.

Transparency of Tweeting & Blogging

Chris Smeaton is the Superintendent of Holy Spirit Catholic Schools in southwest Alberta. He is one of the few superintendents in Alberta that I know actively Tweets and blogs.
I wish more Superintendents and School Board Trustees would blog and Tweet so that we would all better understand what is on their minds. Ultimately, I want more transparency and more sharing.
Check out this post by Chris Smeaton on Provincial Achievement Tests. Here's an excerpt that got my attention:

So why don’t parents just excuse their children from writing these exams as they legally have the ability to do so? Simple- it impacts the results for the school and system as excused writers count as zero in the calculations. This can be extremely significant and potentially damaging, especially if a small cohort is writing. Those students excused automatically bring down the “rating” without recourse. The focus on those external sources is also why teachers and/or schools use the PAT result for part or all of the final grade. Some students may not necessarily be as motivated to study for a test that means nothing for their own mark. It is a vicious circle!

Ultimately it takes courage to put yourself out their for real on Twitter or blogging. It's a hell of a lot easier to say nothing and wait for others to lead the way. It's infinitely more safe to defend the status quo and wait for someone else to tell you that it's okay to innovate or improve.
It's safer to wait for the memo that gives you permission to change than it is to write your own blog post that demands it of yourself & others.

I went offline

On December 23, I decided to go "offline".

No iPhone.

No blogging.

No Twitter.

No RSS feeds.

No e-mail.

In part, this break was inspired by a tweet from a colleague, Phil McRae:

Phil's words reminded me of a thoughtful talk by Sherry Turkle where she talked about the need to moderate our "online" diet and be present with those who share our physical world.

But mostly this break was inspired by my wife and family. 

This break was a conscious decision in light of the coming holidays where I would be spending a lot of time with family. I didn't know when I would go back online, but I figured it would be sometime after my birthday (December 28). As it turns out, I didn't return "online" until December 30.

At first it was a little tough. Out of habit, I kept grabbing my phone in an effort to check something, but would then catch myself and return it to my pocket. I quickly realized I was better off if the phone wasn't even in my pocket, so I left it at home.

Here's what I learned:

I check my phone for e-mail and Twitter far too often.

The break from being online was liberating in a lot of ways and it's not something that should be reserved for a couple days in December.

#comments4kids

I have found success with engaging students in reading and writing via blogging. 

Reading and writing are social activities that allow us to communicate with others. When we write something, we always have an audience in mind, even if it's ourselves. However, most of the time, students write for other people, and it's even cooler if those other people were more than just their teacher or their peers sitting next to them. 

This is why I have had success engaging even reluctant readers and writers in blogging. 

One of the hooks I often use is the world map widget that I have on my blog. This map allows a blogger to track the visitors and their locations. When I show this to students, they are often fascinated by how the written word can reach distances that are truly on the other side of the planet.

The red dots indicate the places people have accessed my blog while the ones that are blinking indicate people who are visiting my blog right now. I have yet to meet a child (or adult) that did not find this pretty darn cool.

I have helped a number of students start their own blog, and one of the first things I help them set up is this world widget. Once they have this widget, I get them to write up a blog post. Many of the kids are so excited to publish their post that they rush to their world widget to see if anyone visits - only to see nothing happen.

The problem is that publishing a blog post and waiting for visitors is like hitch-hiking in the Sahara -- no one knows you're there.

This is why it helps for the teacher to be a part of some kind of network. While there is no one right tool to tap into a network of connected people, I have found Twitter to be an excellent companion to blogging.

Once a student publishes a post, I then hop on Twitter and post a Tweet to the hashtag #comments4kids. After I do this, watching their world widget becomes a whole lot more fun!

One of the first times I did this, I had a student who blogged about wanting to get an Iguana, but wanted to ask others for their advice about Iguana's -- when I tweeted his post, he watched his world widget and shouted "someone from France is reading my post!" His smile was from ear to ear. This was a very reluctant reader and writer authentically engaged in reading and writing. Because these red dots kept showing up on the world map, our discussion turned into a geography lesson. When the kids themselves are asking the question, "where's Estonia?" you know you are doing something right.

Do I count how many visits they get on their blog? No.

Have I established a complex algorithm that combines their visits to comment ration? No.

Do I use a rubric that allows me to generate pre & post measurements that allow me to quantify the value added? No.

So how do I know this stuff is successful? If my students show a desire to go on reading and writing through blogging when class is over, then I know I'm on the right track. Where there is interest achievement tends to follow.

No testsandgrades required.

For more on how powerful comments for kids can be, read Kathy Cassidy's post It's Never "Just a Comment".

#takethetest

Here is a two part story where a School Board Trustee in Florida took the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, commonly known as the FCAT.

Part 1: When an adult took standardized test forced on kids

Part 2: Revealed: The school board member who took standardized test

This story reminds me of an excerpt from Alfie Kohn's Confusing Harder With Better:

How many adults could pass these exams? How many high school teachers possess the requisite stock of information outside their own subjects? How many college professors, for that matter, or business executives, or state legislators could confidently write an essay about Mayan agricultural practices or divergent plate boundaries? We would do well to adopt (Deborah) Meier's Mandate: No student should be expected to meet an academic requirement that a cross section of successful adults in the community cannot. 

(In the same spirit, I propose Kohn's Corollary to Meier's Mandate: All persons given to pious rhetoric about the need to "raise standards" and produce "world-class academic performance for the 21st century" not only should be required to take these exams themselves but must agree to have their scores published in the newspaper.)

On Tuesday, I came across this Will Richardson Tweet:

Richardson's tweet inspired my brief Twitter discussion with Alberta's Minister of Education Thomas Lukaszuk:

Join #takethetest and invite your politicians to take your state or province's standardized tests and publicize their results.

Social Networking and Learning

When I first joined the social networking scene, I did so only because I was visiting Alfie Kohn's website and saw that he was using Twitter. At the time I didn't really have a clue what Twitter was even about, but if joining meant I might get further insight into what authors like Kohn were reading, thinking or saying, then I thought it was worth the effort.

It's been almost two years since I joined Twitter and a year-and-a-half since I started blogging, and it's been by far the greatest professional development I've ever participated in.

I've learned a lot from others, and I like to think that I've given back in a way that has allowed others to learn a little from me.

Technology and Learning

I did an interview this morning for the Media Awareness Network.

Here is a list of blog posts that I have written that are relevant to the discussion around technology and learning.

Digital Natives they are not

Khan Academy: Improving School by changing nothing

Should I buy iPads for my classroom (checkout the comments for some interesting insight)

Lessons I learned from my students' blogs (this is a guest post by Al Gonzalez - an American educator)

Discussion Thread or Blog Post?

Ethics and Technology

Shoehorning Technology

Poor Pedagogy + Technology = Accelerated Malpractice

Gaming in the classroom: Rock Band

Assessment and Technology

Using Technology to Support Real Learning in Alberta

Kid Technology

Teaching Social Networking: Finger Dipping

Professional Development & Social Networking

My learning and Social Networking

Twitter for Teachers

Here are two quick YouTube videos on how and why educators can use Twitter to connect with other educators from all around the world in an effort to better their craft and develop professionally.

However, chances are if you are reading this on my blog, you are likely familiar with Twitter. So to make this information helpful for those who don't use Twitter or Blogging, you are going to need to share this with them somehow. Consider sending this post's link in an e-mail, or speak to your principal about using some staff meeting time to show this to your colleagues, followed by a conversation.

Ask Sir Ken Robinson

Sir Ken Robinson Q & A #askSKR

Sir Ken Robinson's tweet above got me thinking so I rattled off a couple questions I've been chewing on for some time now:

If you have questions for Sir Ken Robinson, make sure you hop on Twitter and use the #askSKR hashtag.

Gaming and Learning

My school does not have one laptop for every kid, but I've been fortunate to have a class set of laptops every day. I set up a class Ning and have been teaching my grade 6 students the tech skills they need to have an online learning community.

I've also encouraged my students to find games that can support their learning. Some of the games are pretty good, but there are a lot of waste-your-time-mindless drivel out there. As much as I like games and believe they can in fact support learning, I have to admit that there are times when I seriously consider banning certain games from class, so I've been thinking of ways to do more with games than even just playing them.

Today, I had the kids make a strategy guide for a game of their choice. As common practice, I always make sure that I actually do the project I ask the kids to do. I find this important because I sometimes come up with hair-brained ideas that don't appear to be hair-brained ideas until I actually try to do them.

I taught them to paste their screenshots from their games into Microsoft Publisher; using arrows, text boxes and word art, they created a guide. Here is a quick screencast of how we use Publisher:

Here's the guide I made to show kids what their guide might look like when they are done:

Here's the screencast guide I made to show kids what their video guide might look like:

So how did I do all these screencasts? I use screenr. It is free and allows up to 5 minutes of recording. It's also super easy to link directly with Twitter. Here's a 1 minute intro to screenr:

When the kids are done, they publish their strategy guides as PDFs, and upload both their written guide and screencasts to our class Ning, where we can share our finished products.

I only need three reasons to justify this kind of project: It's in a context, for a purpose and FUN!! But, if you are someone who needs to check with the curriculum guide, can you imagine how many outcomes you could achieve with a project like this? 

My learning and Social Networking

I am a teacher, but I'm a learner first.

My head spins when I think back upon how my learning has been influenced by social networking.

• Google Reader: I don't need someone to tell me what to read. Traditional newspapers and magazines just don't make much sense to me. Who gives them the right to tell me what to read? Why do they get to pick what's on the front page? Google Reader allows me to tailor my own personal newspaper with the RSS feeds from my favorite blogs.

• Twitter: It's so important to find like-minded colleagues, but the laws of probability tell us that you have a better chance finding them if you look amongst billions of people virtually than a handful of people physically. Our workplaces simply can not expose us to a large enough population - Twitter has provided me with the opportunity to find my tribe. 

• Diigo: I come across a lot of information in a day. In fact, too much. Quite often, I can't read everything I'd like to but Diigo allows me to bookmark all my stuff with tags. In other words, Diigo is my virtual bookshelf where I place my stuff, and on that bookshelf, I have labels that allow me to easily retrieve anything I've come across. A real life example of this: for the last few years, I've tagged stuff about math, and for the first time in my career I now have the opportunity to teach math, so when I went back to my Diigo, I had 20+ resources to look at. As I read through my stuff, I knew that I had not read them when I tagged them then, but I was sure glad I had them now. 

• Posterous: I use posterous to capture excerpts, pictures and videos that I come across that I wish to comment on. Often I might get around to blogging about these in a more sophisticated manner; however, I really like the idea of sharing with others my thoughts on the stuff I come across on a daily basis. I can think of a handful of people whom I would love to have a live subscription to their daily research, viewing, reading and musings.

When I share this with others who have yet to engage in social networking, their first reaction tends to be something like this "How do you have time for all this stuff?" While I will I agree that I do spend time and effort at this, and that getting this social networking thing "figured out" can initially take a lot of both, it ultimately is one of the cheapest, most efficient and effective ways of gathering such a quantity and quality of information to support my learning.

And it's fun.

Professional Development & Social Networking

My blog was born on January 6, 2010. Today is June 10, 2010.

In 5 months, my blog has:

• Over 20,000 visits
• Over 11,000 unique visitors
• Over 33,000 page visits

I have to admit I am more than happy to see these kinds of numbers, but I do have a grander purpose for sharing this with you than just boasting.

If you are a progressive educator who advocates for education reform and changes to the traditional model of school, there is a good chance that you may be in the minority in your school. In fact, you may find yourself being the only one...

This can be both challenging and lonely.

I can only imagine the number of teachers who have had their progressive voices shushed or outright silenced. Being an agent of change can be challenging enough, but doing it alone may verge on the impossible.

Often having even one like-minded person to share your thoughts and feelings can help you persevere through opposing adversity, but what if there isn't even one like-minded person to be found?

This is why the Internet and social networking has proven to be so liberating - the world is a big place and there is a good chance that somewhere out there like-minded people exist. Twitter, Facebook, blogging, nings and other forms of social networking provide us with an unprecedented ability to find them... from any where in the world. Time and place are rendered obsolete.

While I would never suggest virtual relationships can or should ever replace our physical ones, we are no longer bound to only our locals. When colleagues in the "real world" no longer provide the like-minded support that we desire, we can look to colleagues in the virtual world.

In the spirit of networking, please consider taking a minute to leave a comment:

• Feel free to remain anonymous
• Why do you visit this blog?
• Where in the world are you from?