Please Sir, I Want More... Homework

This video production from some forward thinking teachers in Ohio reminds me of a presentation I saw last year at a technology conference.

The keynote speaker asked: "Why don't kids demand more homework? Why aren't they begging for more homework?"

He noted that kids will go home and dedicate hours of their unstructured, free time to playing video games, chatting online, uploading and sharing videos, listening to their iPods, blogging, texting friends, and pursuing their curiosities on the Internet.

Yet when these highly motivated learners return to school, just about all of these activities are taken away because they are deemed distractions or inappropriate to the curriculum.

These tools and resources that occupy so much of their time at home are the favorite toys in this century's digital playground. Young people, elementary school aged and older, are devoting hours upon hours of their free time in this playground, finding their speaking/writing voice, exchanging ideas with a global audience, collaborating with peers, analyzing and synthesizing information from multiple sources, developing effective presentation skills, and educating themselves in order to refine tastes and pursue personal interests. All before dinner time.

Looking for a powerful and sustainable source of energy? Look no further than the kids in the classroom. Motivated learners can energize the learning day and drive the curriculum to places educators probably couldn't anticipate. Places where the "aha" moments are replaced with souped up "holy crap!" moments. This is where we need to be. This is maximum fuel efficiency.

The world has changed considerably in the last thirty years and so have learners. The learning day and the school day are no longer synonymous. When kids express an interest in something, they have the capability to find a teacher from anywhere in the world, any time of the day. Teaching practices that thrived in the 70s and 80s (and earlier) are not equally effective with today's learners.

Each day educators must ask: Are we getting the most out of our kids? Are we making them ants-in-the-pants ready for the next intellectual challenge? Are we settling for a captive audience or shooting for the captivated audience? We should be shooting for captivated every time. Why else would a teacher take the job?

Lost in Translation

The other day in the family car, my 3 year old daughter and her Japanese grandmother, attempted to jump a vast lingual divide.
It was like watching one of Evel Knievel's daredevil stunts. Not pretty. But you couldn't argue with the entertainment value.

I had just told my daughter that she was invited to jump on our neighbor's trampoline. I could see in the rear view mirror that she was excited. She repeated the word. "Champo-lean. Champo-lean. One champo-lean. Two champo-lean."

Her grandmother, who often gets her understanding of a conversation by focusing on random key words that are barely relevant to the discussion (example-- Me: "The car was sandwiched between the truck and the building." Her: "Today, I ate roast beef."), overheard my daughter and asked aloud, "Japanese?"

That's when the fun started.

My daughter replied, "Champo-lean."
"Japanese?"
"Champo-lean."
"I am Japanese."
"CHAMP-o-lean," snapped my daughter, not to be outdone in this inter-generational throw down. Having too much fun to mediate, I asked my daughter if grandma could go on the trampoline.

"Yes. But she has to take off her shoes. GRANDMA you have to take off your shoes!"
"Of course. I do. I take off my shoes. I am Japanese."

The best translation tools and voice recognition software in the world couldn't have saved this conversation. Google should know. They are among the industry's leaders in providing online translations. But despite the ability to process billions of English words, a few billion more than their competitors, Google translations aren't the most reliable. But if you'd like to give Google a shot at translating your letter to an overseas relative or reading a web page that was not composed in your native tongue, try some of their tools.

The latest Google venture certainly holds a great deal of promise for the hearing impaired. Google is applying its voice recognition software on videos that are shown on its subsidiary, You Tube. If you're watching a You Tube video, check the bottom right corner of the screen for the [CC]. Most often, you'll find that Closed Captions are not yet available on You Tube videos. But if you do, you may find not only an option for on-screen transcription, but an on-screen translation of that transcription in a slew of languages.

For instance, here is 9/11 era speech from President Bush and an essay on race in America from President Obama. The transcriptions on both speeches are mostly effective, although on President Obama's video I did notice one slight discrepancy when he referred to Ezequiel, but the translation said something about gills.

Still, for the hearing impaired, closed captioning on You Tube videos offers context that wasn't available before and is therefore a step in the right direction. Ken Harrenstien, the man who's spearheading Google's effort to add captions to their videos, is deaf. These days he can laugh at the absurd calculations produced by Google's data-driven translations. He's even quick to point out that the name You Tube comes out of the voice recognition program as You Too. Still, he's confident that the technology will continue to improve.

For now, if you're up for a good laugh, consider this: translation is a dish best served... scrambled. So if you're in no rush to catch the next trambilla, remember that life can be unpredictably joyful, when you don't aspire to literal meanings and settle instead for something that is completely different.

Letters to Haiti

Abraham Lincoln once wrote, "The legitimate object of government is to do for people what needs to be done but which they cannot, by individual effort, do at all, or cannot do so well for themselves."

Historians, news makers, media pundits, and opinion makers spin this quotation a number of ways that match one's political leanings, so I'll offer mine. I think Lincoln meant that people have an obligation to humanity. People should help people in need.

My father knew something about this. Long before I even knew of such a word, he showed me, through his actions, the meaning of the word compassion. He had faith in the kindness of strangers and believed we all owed a debt of gratitude to our family and community.

I thought of this when I heard the NPR story of a group of 5th graders in northern California who reached out to students in Haiti, sending them cards & letters, packets of seeds, and wishes for better days. But my eyes immediately teared up when I heard these students were from Northridge, California. This city was the epicenter of an earthquake in 1994. Dozens were killed, thousands were left homeless. These students were not yet born during this quake, but the stories of tragedy and loss are apparently still alive in their families.

Some might say it's easier to be compassionate and empathetic when one has personally experienced loss. These children probably grew up repeatedly hearing stories of their parents' devastation in The Great Quake of '94. But these children are also growing up in a time, when they know they have the ability to reach out to people from all over the world and in the best cases, help those in need. And they have jumped at this opportunity.

This is the strength of a new generation. Start ripples here. Send waves of relief somewhere over there. My father would be proud of these kids.

What's A Wiki?

This year a handful of Edgewood teachers are using class wikis. What's a wiki? A wiki is an online web space that can be edited by multiple users. It owes its name to the Hawaiian word wiki-wiki (rhymes with freaky), which means quick.

Wikis promote a sharing of ideas from a team of contributors. For example, we recently began a new wiki called 2waymichi, which compiles useful phrases for the new Japanese student. We're also working on wikis for other languages.

In other instances, wikis can be used to pool together research resources, or compile a list of problem solving strategies, or explain how they decoded a particular math problem. But because this shared information lives online, students can access these notes and resources when needed, provided they have Internet access.

Here's another use. A class can begin a writing assignment on its wiki. Instead of using a notebook, students can write on their designated wiki space. Classmates can be assigned as peer editors, who can lend a critical ear/eye, posting suggestions to the student's wiki space on how the writing might be improved. In this manner, writing can be developed seamlessly between home and school.

In this case, the wiki becomes a substitute for the notebook. It's important to remember that writing done in the notebook is considered draft work, not yet ready to be published. Misspellings and grammatical mistakes are temporarily forgiven. The same can be said for the wiki. Even though writing done here is visible to classmates, students are most often sharing experimental ideas, not necessarily finished products.

Wikis typically have some form of protection or privacy. Many are visible to the public, but only invited participants can edit text. And some wikis can only be seen by its members. In our district, many class wikis are only visible to its members. Some of these class wikis are produced by students as young as first graders. But for all K-12 students, we promote the importance of netiquette, which means respecting one's online community. This means we give our classmates a pat on the back in the name of creating a safe, productive, and fun learning environment.

Collaboration skills are essential in this global market and must be fostered and developed at an early school age. We can build these skills using a wiki, which does not require its collaborators to be in the same room, same school, or even the same country. If you'd like to learn a little more about wikis, click the video below.

Elvis or Billy Idol?

Tonight at the dinner table I flashed my 11 month old son a modest impersonation of Elvis, consisting of a raised, quivering upper lip. My son returned the gesture with a Billy Idol-like sneer. With two children, including a three year old daughter, who my wife likes to believe is the second most mature person in the house, our home life has been hectic, albeit with unmitigated... happiness.

Needless to say, maintaining this blog was a low priority in the last year. But here I am, in the middle of the night, trying to find the writing voice I misplaced somewhere between the pile of poopy diapers and those nightly, sprints from dinner to bed. I'll say this again, just to be completely clear. I said, "Poopy," comfortably and without shame.

Now that I've managed to climb back on this horse, I will try to stay on. I will resume blog entries that include the big picture look of technology in our world. And I will write more often about the technology work that is shaping the learning environment at Edgewood. That is, when my little Billy Idol isn't too busy Rebel Yelling at me.