Why Blog?

Well, I certainly don't blog for the readership. For me, it's a creative outlet. A constant reminder that I should be writing something else, but at least I'm writing. Although I will say it feels great when I hear that it is being read.

When students blog at Edgewood it's an opportunity to practice skills and etiquette required in an online community, while sharing ideas, perspectives, and attitudes. For teachers, it's not only a means to assess student learning, but an opportunity to correct breaches of etiquette that if gone unchecked can become those infamous incidents that make tabloid news.

A good friend of mine blogs with her first grade students. She recalled a parent who once questioned the appropriateness of first graders participating in online work. Perhaps 5th grade, the parent suggested. My teacher friend replied, "If we wait 'til 5th grade, we will already have lost them." In short, if disregard for civic and moral obligations go unaddressed they might become deep-seated and possibly inextricable. That's why it's important to expose our young children to social media (videochats, blogs, wikis, podcasts, etc) as early as possible and walk them through their responsibilities to fellow members of their online community.

When I see students participating in a class blog I think about my own childhood. I wish my teachers had blogged with me. That way whenever a teacher had asked if any student had questions about a lesson that was so overwhelming and convoluted I would have been able to say, "Yes! Me! I don't get it! Help!" and slam the brakes on the teacher before he moved on to the next subject. Instead, I was too afraid to compose an intelligent question or articulate my confusion. I was incapable of asking for help.

So, I'd walk home frustrated, full of despair. Until suddenly, it would hit me. And I'd have the question and the words to articulate exactly what I would need from my teacher. But by morning, that language would be gone, buried in fear and the shame of my own ignorance. In class, the teacher would move on, confident that every child was ready to move forward. And I would slip back, a little further, each day.

This is why I love watching teachers blog with their students. They post discussions to their blog, prompting students to reflect on what they learned, assessing their learning through their ideas, and using their questions to frame subsequent class conversations or entire lessons.

They're giddy, confidently sharing observations and questions, responding to comments posted by other classmates, while demonstrating a healthy respect and appreciation for the words and wisdom of their peers, ultimately creating an environment in which no child is left behind.

Measuring Great Schools

Lately, my daughter Isabella has been singing of a "sentimental feeling." Why a 3 year old would be having feelings of nostalgia was beyond me. Then again, I thought, well the holidays ARE just around the corner.

But it turns out she was practicing a song for her pre-school holiday show. It was Rocking Around the Christmas Tree -- "you will get a sentimental feeling when you hear... Voices singing let's be jolly, deck the halls with boughs of holly..."

My daughter loves school. She loves her teacher, her friends, her schoolmates --older and younger--, and even loves homework. Isabella and her friends make school seem so carefree and important and fun all at the same time. I suppose for young children, it is.

So why does school have to change for so many students, teachers, and parents? Why did it change? Throughout this country, we talk of the importance of "love of learning," perhaps my least favorite cliche in education, although it has plenty of competition. But what does "love of learning" mean when student and teacher achievement is primarily measured with raw numbers? I can't think of anything further removed from love than using numbers to quantify it.

I question any educational system's ability to promote a love of learning culture, when its priority, official or not, is to test its way to the global apex of student achievement and to use test scores as a measurement of student performance relative to kids in other countries. Not because I disagree with the idea of testing, but because I disagree with tests that are based on standards and skills that represent only a fraction of those needed to prepare our children for the global challenges of today and tomorrow and in the process suck the love out of learning (and teaching).

Too often it seems that our political leaders just want numbers to establish the appearance of greatness. Perhaps it's to earn re-election to public office. Or maybe it's to show that we're still a pre-eminent nation and no country, let alone one smaller than Rhode Island, should ever upstage America. Is it even possible to promote a love of learning culture, when all that these officials want is to train American youngsters to beat kids from Singapore in the international math assessments? "C'mon!" they shriek, "We're America! We beat the Russians at Lake Placid! We won the Cold War! We can't lose to Singapore!

Cut to film studio.

Take Scene 97: America Restores Greatness in Education...roll film... and ACTION!

How do we beat those kids from Singapore? We must develop a sophisticated, carefully considered approach, marshaling good old fashioned American know-how.

First, we'll implement highly scripted curriculua that takes the pressure off teachers, allowing them to focus on content distribution, rather than say, teaching. Then for the kids, we'll lower the passing grades, so that many of our kids will do well on state tests. Brilliant idea, Texas!

Talk about your shot across the bow of the SS Singapore!

Wait, lowering passing grades didn't work. Still too many kids not passing state tests? So strange. What was that Texas? Just make the tests easier. Texas, I have no idea where you come up with these awesome ideas, but keep 'em coming!

Wait a minute. We still have too many failing kids on our rolls. Try what, Texas? Just kick the perpetually failing kids out of our schools so they no longer put a drag on our overall test scores. That's pure genius, Texas!

Hey wait, lowering passing grades, making tests easier, automatizing teachers, and kicking kids out of school appears to have made our kids dumber and less interested in learning. What do we do now, Texas? Anyone?

Cut to reality.

When we put too much emphasis on test scores, we become vulnerable to the weaknesses of a flawed testing system. We lose focus on the the social, emotional, and intellectual development of children. Judge a child solely on his/her performance on a math or literacy test and you miss the big picture. Our children have value far beyond what single-shot state assessments are capable of measuring.

I think about what it took for those Chilean miners to find the inner strength to stay alive. How do you measure fortitude? Perseverance?

What about the inner city child who rushes home after school to make sure his little brothers and sisters are fed and bathed, with homework finished, before mom returns from a long day at work? How do you measure devotion? Love?

In his new book called the Six Leading Edges of Innovation in Our Schools, Milton Chen quotes a former schools Superintendent who said that his single measurement of a great school is, "Do the kids run to school as fast as they leave it?"

And that's when my thoughts turn to Isabella. Sometimes I need to drag her out of school at the end of the day. I hope she never loses her love of learning.

Online Stopwatch

Need a new stop watch? Try the nifty Online Stop Watch.

It offers a variety of stop watches from the egg timer, to a lap splits count, to a metronome, and if you're really bored and want to live a virual life as a member of an explosives team, there's the Bomb Countdown, which is probably a safer pastime than Milton Bradley's Time Bomb that I had as a child. If you ended that game with only one black eye or chipped tooth, you considered yourself a winner!

A Culture of Participation

We are in a burgeoning Age of Online Participation. Burgeoning only because let's face it, who knows what tomorrow will bring and how technology will influence the extent of and enthusiasm for participation.

But for now, consider this. If Facebook and its 500 million active users were a nation, it would be the third largest behind China and India. Every minute, 24 hours worth of NEW video is posted to YouTube. And then, consider pro-democracy movements of recent years that were influenced by technology.

In Burma (Myanmar) 2007, anti-government rallies flare like wildfires, encouraged by messages and photos posted by bloggers and other online users, using foreign based web hosts, thus complicating the military government's crackdown efforts. In Iran 2009, the integrity of the presidential election is questioned publicly via Twitter Tweets in both Farsi and English, calling the attention of a global audience to ongoing government acts of injustice.

In previous years, before Tweeters, bloggers, and YouTubers, the rest of the world might have carried on without noticing that somewhere in the world, innocent people were being forcibly removed from their homes and detained without due process.

But today, we are living in a Culture of Participation, a phrase I first heard from educator Steve Hargadon. It is now the norm to email, post and read reviews on Amazon before buying online, upload images to shared photo sites such as Flickr, read Wikipedia, not to mention participate in the world of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Even elementary students are contributing to online conversations. At Edgewood, I surveyed students in grades 3-5 last spring. 53% say they have personal email accounts. 82% participate in a social networking site such as Moshi's Monsters, Club Penguin, YouTube, and even Facebook, which technically does not allow users under the age of 13.

Still, despite all the negative publicity geared towards the use of the Internet, these resources offer each online user a voice to be heard and shared. And in a time of increasing polarization in our country, where pundits and public officials are grabbing mics and air time to point fingers and incite fear, more than ever we need to hear voices of reason, compromise, and justice for all.