Collaborative Storytelling Experiement

Collaborative storytelling in
kindergarten with the Wixie app

I recently experimented with two things: my homemade portable sound booth and importing student pages to create a single, multimedia story using Wixie, a cloud-based drawing tool. You've got to love a job where you can take a chance on the belief that the rewards will far outweigh the risks in attempting a new technique or approach to teaching. That was the case in Ms. Theall's kindergarten class, which wrote the story of Little Bear and his search for his dancing pants. It was an idea planted by visiting storyteller, Jonathan Kruk.
   

Portable sound booth made with
canvas storage box and acoustic foam

The students each wrote a line of the story and then drew a picture of this sentence using Wixie on their iPad. That's when I broke out the new recording booth. Each student then came to me and placed their iPad in the sound booth, which was basically a 12x12 canvas storage container from Home Goods, padded with acoustic rubber foam. It does not make the recordings "sound proof," but it can block out a great deal of ambient classroom noise. And that's a good thing if you want a recording that limits the distraction of background noise.

Listening to his story, post recording. #edgewoodproud @mrtomizawa pic.twitter.com/cOeLb1cBgy

— Kindergarten Theall (@kimberleytheall) March 4, 2016

   

Import drawings from different
accounts into one Wixie project

    Once all the stories were recorded, I used Wixie's import tool. This allows the teacher to look at the Wixie files of each student in class and import the precise page needed into a new project. It makes the construction of a collaboratively authored multimedia story very simple. Take a look at our story. You'll need this public access key-- cpj65d.

New Talent Show Technology

Talent Show production crew silently
 communicates using Today's Meet

In the final February Talent Show the production crew experimented with new technology. It's a site called Today's Meet. The audience didn't see or hear it, but it kept the adult and student production team on the same page. Today's Meet is an online "backchannel" tool. The balcony and backstage crew used it to silently share information through on screen texts. For instance, the backstage "projector" light is still on or the emcee is causing feedback when he talks into the mic while underneath the PA speaker or giving the whole crew a heads up on an unplanned stage entrance. In a live show, scripted events change and the production crew needs to be ready to jump in, make adjustments, and keep the show rolling. People come out to watch our talented young performers, but the behind-the-scenes work of the backstage and balcony crew is in itself a performance worth seating an audience. Whether their work involves adjusting wireless microphones on stage or balancing vocals with recorded music through a mixer in the sound booth, each production crew member, working outside the spotlight, contributes to the show's successes. And Today's Meet, I think, will make our jobs this much easier. -- Paul Tomizawa

Media Literacy Through the PSA

     More than ever, young people need to be equipped with media literacy skills. To be able to dissect and analyze abundant digital information for meaning and credibility. To recognize fact from fiction. To understand when a message is angled towards a single perspective. One way to develop these media literacy skills is to have students produce their own digital stories. In Mr. DelMonaco's 5th grade class, we produced video Public Service Announcements. These videos were inspired by their own persuasive writing stories. We first examined production techniques used in other PSAs. We noticed the tone. Some were funny, some serious. We noticed how some conveyed information visually, some with a narrator. We discussed the possible reasons for the pacing of nvideo cuts. And we paid attention to how music influenced the message the viewers received. Then we created storyboards to convey the main idea of our persuasive writing pieces. Once the storyboards were completed and approved, the students formed small production teams and launched into the Edgewood hallways, the back yard, the front yard, and into classroom nooks with iPads recording each storyboarded scene. These scenes were then assembled in the iMovie app to put the final edits on their :30-:60 video PSAs. They were all put on display outside Mr. DelMonaco's room using the Aurasma app, but you can take a look at one of them here. This one's on school locker searches. https://goo.gl/a8Hg6p

Girls Who Engineer Their Future

Girls design 3D models in Tinkercad.

About 20 girls took part in our first lunchtime Coding & Design club of the year. These girls will engage in coding with Scratch and/or Tynker, but we began our lunch sessions in design. In Mr. Fitzpatrick's art studio (STEAM Lab), the girls used Tinkercad, an online 3D modeling program, to create artifacts that represent Edgewood history. Our school just turned 97 years old on January 5 and with our Centennial seemingly just around the corner and with the upcoming launch of the Edgewood History Club, the 3D design work seemed timely. This club is available to both girls and boys, but as the old saying goes...girls first. It's well-known that while girls are drawn towards the creative problem-solving and "making" aspect of the STEM fields, keeping them in these fields as they get older is a challenge. But educators and corporate experts believe it's possible to attract girls for the long haul. We agree. - Paul Tomizawa

Sculpting an Act of Faith and Charity

   

4th grade donated over 700 cans of food with this sculpture.

     At the holiday assembly, the 4th grade unveiled an impressive sculpture of the American Flag. It was a work of art consisting of 373 cans of Campbell's Tomato Soup and 174 cans of Starkist tuna cans. But like any collaborative project or novel approach to learning, there were doubts. Would it work? Would it be appreciated? And considering the many needs of building a classroom community, teaching/learning the curriculum, and meeting the diverse needs and interests of an energetic student body, would it be a worth the time invested in this learning experience? So the teachers, Mrs. Aberman, Mrs. Mraz, Mrs. Nedwick, and myself and our students, slogged through the doubts, looking for reasons to believe and persevere.     Students and teachers discussed construction strategies, engineering and mathematics, elements of design, and we experimented in the computer lab by building short towers of cans and wondered how high we could build, before they toppled. We had begun collecting cans in early November. Parents quickly responded to our requests for donations. And while we had ambitious designs on completing the sculpture in time for the Thanksgiving assembly, things...you know... happen. Still we persisted and took advantage of the extra time to sort through questions across the grade level and experiment with ideas that were sprouting across the grade level. We debated whether we should build a single layer construction or a double layer.     The original Canstruction sculpture from which we drew our inspiration, used a double layer. But a double layer meant asking parents for nearly 100 additional soup cans, to match our original goal. A single layer could be built against a backboard, but would probably mean that we'd lose the bend in our sculpture that would make our flag look like it was waving in the breeze. It was clear that students wanted to keep the flag-wave, but acknowledged that we didn't have time to collect more cans. Fortunately, in visiting the rules for creating Canstruction sculptures, we learned we could use tape. YES! So teams of students began binding the cans that we had and later stacked them in columns on stage.     Today, this sculpture only lives in memories and photos. Shortly after we unveiled this beautiful work of art, we deconstructed it, and donated over 700 cans of food to the Soup Kitchen at St. Peter's Church in Portchester, NY. Looking back, it was clear that this project was not just about collaboration, engineering, and design. It was an act of conscience shared by parents, students, and their teachers.  - Paul Tomizawa

Screen Time. The Good Kind.

The look of rigorous learning.

     During the Hour of Code, one common sight among students and adults engaged in programming was the prolonged, unblinking gaze into a screen. And a head prop. It was as if the brain activity was so consuming and heavy that it was necessary to support the head with one or sometimes two hands.      More to the point, not all screen time is bad. There is passive engagement, such as watching videos, that can be considered a "lean back" screen activity. And then there's "lean forward," in which children are actively engaged-- creating, problem solving, communicating.      The American Academy of Pediatrics recently reworked their restrictions on screen time for children under the age of two. Now pediatricians are encouraging the use of positive media. Recognition that today's children are intellectually engaged with technology, pivoting the focus of our culture from consumption to creation. - Paul Tomizawa

Indoor Growing Season

Mr. Fitzpatrick demonstrates
the hydroponics system.

“Repeat after me,” Mr. Fitz(patrick) cheerfully instructs. “Hydroponics.” The kindergarteners repeat the new word in staggered unison, as you might expect at this age. “We’re using water to grow plants.” And with this, these young learners entered the era of Sustainability.
     The students had come to Mr. Fitz’ art room to learn about the new hydroponics vegetable garden that was being installed in their classroom. In a hydroponics growing system, plants are placed in nutrient-rich water that is fed through a tube and up a vertical structure by a motorized pump. It’s a common hydroponics system that requires no soil and uses less space than a typical garden plot.
     “Criss cross applesauce. So everyone can see,” Mr. Fitz reminded the excitable group of students as they leaned forward and ever higher for a better view. “Are the roots going to stay wet? Yes! And it’s going to pump the water with all the nutrients to the roots of the plant.” In this case, basil, beans, and tomatoes.
     Several Edgewood classrooms are engaged in the hydroponics experiment. It’s part of a larger effort in support of the school’s Compact Committee theme Sustainability. And it’s a reminder that today’s school is more than just Readin’, ‘Ritin’, and ‘Rithmatic.  - Paul Tomizawa

Persuasive Writing

Everyone’s got an opinion. And parents aren’t going to like to hear this, but Scarsdale teachers are training elementary students to strengthen their powers of persuasion through a literacy unit on Writing Opinions.This unit is a K-5 writing strand and it is aligned with the national Common Core standards. In a recent writing workshop in Mrs. Blackley’s 5th grade class, Kristin Smith, a staff developer from Teachers College coached students on how to structure a well-reasoned opinion. She emphasized the use of supportive research.

While other Edgewood teachers observed this fishbowl-styled professional development lesson, Ms. Smith instructed students to review the list of reasons they had given to support their written opinions and to look for a fairly common mistake-- overlapping reasons. For example, she explained, “It’s good exercise and it’s good for your health” are not two reasons. They are one and the same and should be combined and rephrased. “But what if I don’t have a third?” She assured students that opinions are better supported with  “two good ones, than one that sounds the same” as the others.
This session also reminded students that they are writing for an audience and that the purpose of rewriting and restructuring their arguments was to ensure that their reasons were compelling and persuasive. So, fair warning parents. Don’t be surprised if those backseat or kitchen table arguments in the future become a little more challenging to squash.

Facing Their Future

For the promises our teachers gave
If we worked hard
If we behaved
So the graduations hang on the wall
But they never really helped us at all
No they never taught us what was real          
- Allentown by Billy Joel

Billy Joel originally called this song Levittown, but changed it for musical and thematic reasons. Musically, Allentown (PA) sounded better. But it also had a familiar problem. A depressed factory town suffering from global realities. What happens when traditional practices do not match changing needs?

So the graduations hang on the wall
But they never really helped us at all

Today's college graduates are facing high rates of unemployment and underemployment. Graduates are finding themselves unqualified for the high-paying jobs that are offered, but overqualified for the low-paying jobs they are taking, often 2 or 3 at a time to meet their expenses, which include massive student loans. 

The world is well into another industrial revolution. Corporate and national economies are highly interdependent and technology dependent. The global economy has a voracious appetite and it's clear that today's graduates cannot satisfy that hunger. It's clear that traditional practices do not match changing needs. So if today's public school system was designed to feed the needs of the 18th Century Industrial Revolution, isn't it time for the system to evolve to meet the industrial needs of the 21st Century? 

Yet today, many school districts across the country continue to adopt curriculum, sometimes provided by their state eds, that emphasize standardized teaching and learning for the sake of preparing students for high stakes tests. It's a policy that's failing children. It limits their growth by telling them what to do, rather than asking them how they will do it. Educators and policy makers must give up outdated practices and curriculum that do not inspire today's learners. Children come to school wanting to explore, wanting to create, wanting to contribute. It's time for a curriculum that is facing their future and allows them to tinker, invent, collaborate, and communicate with the world. It's time for an Educational Revolution.

My Daily Affirmation

When I was a classroom teacher in the Bronx, the district office would occasionally send a team of inspectors to each school in its jurisdiction. It was an "all hands on deck" team, which even included non-education staff members. One year, I remember talking with my 4th grade students in my classroom, when the district accountant poked his head through the door. He didn't say hello or make eye contact with me. He just stood in the doorway, scanned the room, ticked items off his checklist and left, without saying thank you, goodbye, or making eye contact. And that was how the district evaluated me as an educator. A 5 minute, fly-by from the district accountant and his checklist. I'd like to think the standards and techniques for evaluating teachers have improved, since the 90s. But if they had evolved to take into account the complexities of managing diverse, personalized learning needs, while growing a community of learners, would an accountant be able to reliably evaluate a teacher's performance? Probably not. And that's why in this country, we have high-stakes tests, the ultimate clipboard checklist. But that doesn't stop a good teacher from trying to move even the most challenging students...forward.

Pixie Sticks!

When I see my elementary students light up each time they launch the art program Pixie, I think about how art is often abused in public schools.

Let's get this straight. Art is not a curriculum checklist item. It is also not an enrichment activity or a pleasing diversion from the rigors of the school day. Instead, it is essential to growing young minds and developing the intellectual skills needed for success within the traditional curriculum and even further.

Let's take a look at drawing. For some parents, cynicism and disgust is a natural response to the umpteenth sketching of Thomas the Tank (read Mom, You're One Tough Art Critic from the NY Times). But when children have the opportunity to draw freely, they are exercising their brains.
To borrow from an article written by Jean Mormon-Unsworth:

"Art is not just skill. It is the process of thinking, imagining, risking, seeing connections, inventing, expressing in unique visual form. Drawing is as basic and essential a mode of expression as is language and writing. Everyone can draw. And, just as we all learn the same form of cursive writing but develop an individuality that becomes our identification, so our drawing develops as individually as our writing. The task of a teacher is not to tell the student what it should look like; rather, the teacher's role is to lead the student to look. There is no absolute standard of good drawing."

In Scarsdale, elementary students come to the computer lab and use a drawing program called Pixie. This software is easy enough for a kindergartner to master the basics (my pre-K daughter loves it too!), while offering sophisticated features that an older elementary student can appreciate as well.

Pixie is the drawing/painting equivalent of a sandbox. Children jump in, grab a paint brush, and splash the digital canvas with color. They stamp images from a bountiful graphics library. They smear paint and grab a roller to leave a trail of balloons or animal tracks. And as if life in the sandbox couldn't get any better, Pixie connects to your computer's built-in web cam allowing students to add pictures of themselves to their artwork. Talk about setting a classroom on fire!

Interested in buying a copy for home use? The company, Tech4Learning, is selling this program for $25, that's more than 50% off the list price. Visit their site here and use this Discount Code: HUCVL100

Over the last ten years in Scarsdale, we've tried a number of art programs at the elementary level, each too flawed to continue, but I have a feeling Pixie will stick around.

King of the Mont(blanc)

Producing holiday cards can be stressful. Themes, costumes, set designs. So many choices. But this year, my wife and I ditched them all as the postal deadline got closer.

Instead, we used pre-existing photos and Shutterfly! Done!

Using web services like Shutterfly, American Greetings, or Jib Jab to produce photo cards, e-cards, and animated movies can certainly cut down on stress and production time. And animated greetings like the one I made using Jib Jab took 15 minutes to produce, but I'll enjoy it for the rest of my life.

Now on the surface, it might seem I've identified another arena where digital gives "hand-cranked" technology a beat down. But let's be clear. My wife and I didn't write holiday cards. We produced and sent them, but didn't write unless, "Happy holidays from the Tomizawas" in red blazoned text counts as writing.

This is not writing, it's efficiency. Technology for the masses makes life a little easier and a little less stressful. Still, for every leap forward we take with technology, we tend to lose a step somewhere else. For instance, I don't have any numbers to make this point, but I'm guessing we were probably a more literate nation (read and wrote more) before television, not to mention the Internet and YouTube. And in the days before GPS, I'll bet more people could find their way out of the wilds by pinpointing their position using the sun or stars. Nowadays, people can barely find their way out of the mall parking lot, GPS or not.

Technology has great power in connecting people, but only virtually. And in a virtual world, everyone keeps their hands to themselves. You can't hug someone online, although apparently there's a service for that too. Yes, I love writing letters and cards by hand. There are only a handful of people like me left.

Handwritten notes, letters, and greeting cards provide an intimacy that electronic messages cannot. They provide a direct connection between reader and writer through paper that is literally touched by both, through the ink that seemingly carries the smell and caress of the writer's hands, and through thoughtful, inspiring, and loving words which flow from one person to the other from the moment the envelope is opened. They are deeply personal and everlasting.

Can an email, ecard, photocard, or animated Flash movie top that?

I guess the short answer is, it depends on who's writing. These days if you walk into a greeting card store, you'll find thousands of cards that do the talking for you. Just sign your name to it. You know how hard it is to find a blank greeting card these days? It's as if we are being told, "You have no words of value to share with your daughter on the eve of her wedding, so let this card do the talking with its catchy limerick from Shoebox Greetings."

But look at me, the hypocrite. While my holiday photo card allowed me space on the back to embrace individual friends and family with handwritten words filled with sentiment, grandeur, and herald angels, albeit over the Shutterfly invoice order number and date stamp, we mostly went with "Happy holidays from the Tomizawas" and slapped a postage stamp to it.

Now I'm going to have to atone for my sin. Where did I leave the pen and paper? But first, let me take one more look at our holiday video!

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.

I'm Sure I've Seen Dumber

I've been reading a book called The Dumbest Generation by Mark Bauerlein. It contends that despite the many promises made of new technologies to revolutionize learning, they are more likely making our young people stupid...er.

The author marches out a brigade of statistics from national academic, arts, and research groups. The numbers show that young people aren't reading anymore. Their writing skills are unacceptable for college and the workplace. They are disinterested in artwork that's not a product of their culture. And they lack the mental stamina to stay focused on singular projects that require intensive critical thinking.

And then I put the book down on my nightstand, next to several other books I haven't finished reading.

I understand the distress felt by this author and many others. It's today's adults believing that today's youth lack knowledge, responsibility, and accountability. Of course, with Social Security running on empty, a booming global population that will threaten the viability of natural resources, and an endless parade of pandering, self-indulgent public officials who are more focused on, above all else, staying in power... well... I guess the feeling is mutual.

And while the author makes a compelling case, I hope it becomes more than self-righteous fodder for those already forecasting a nuclear winter, circling 2012 on their Mayan kitchen calendars, and sporting bumper stickers that read, "Nostradamus was right!"

And yes, I've seen other distressing numbers too. Our nation's students have more school days than many other developed nations, yet their performance lags in areas such as math and science, two subject areas that will produce the engineers and ingenuity needed to change the world's economy. Back in the days of the Apollo space program, most NASA engineers were in their 20s. Today, they're in the 40s. One presenter at a tech conference I attended mentioned that today there are more NASA engineers in their 60s, than in their 30s.

Where are NASA's future engineers? Possibly in China or India which are graduating more engineers from college than the US.

Regardless, I'm more of a "future is bright. Gotta wear shades" type of optimist. Especially when I see my two little kids jostling playfully in the shopping cart. Maybe one of them is a future NASA engineer.

Mr. Bauerlein begins a terrific conversation. So I will add that today's young people have developed skills that were not foreseen, ten years ago, applying technologies that were not imagined 15 years ago, sharing their ideas through a medium (the Internet) that did not exist to the public 20 years ago. They can mobilize, inspire, and inform hundreds, thousands, millions of people with the tap of a keystroke, thus creating a new power structure, where anyone has a say in decision making. Potentially, it offers the purest form of democracy.

This ability cannot be dismissed, no matter what the statistics say. Sure, it's a goofy idea that one electronic message can mobilize dozens to Grand Central Terminal to freeze their bodies at a precise time all for the sake of 'performance art,' but anyone who's ever tried to organize a group of children or teachers... you have to admit, it's pretty impressive.

So perhaps the problem is not so much the youth of today, but with the educational system-- a system that reflects the needs of an agricultural and industrial society of long ago-- that the grown-ups have stuck them with. Maybe the problem is with inadequate assessments that don't paint a complete picture of the learner and uninspiring curriculua or teaching strategies.

That said, it is imperative for educational leaders, parents, and bureaucrats in charge of what is taught in schools to reshape the curriculum so that we can make the best of the know-how, curiosities, and passions of today's students. Learning should be experiential. It should be fun and it should be relevant to our world. How much more powerful will the writings of Shakespeare, Newton, and Gandhi be when their words are invoked by teachers in a manner that connects students to their experiences? As adults, if we can create learning contexts for kids to apply their creative talents, then perhaps we won't be complicit in raising the Dumbest Generation.

Edgewood News. We're Fairly Balanced

Jillian, a second grader, came up to me one day and told me a joke: "Why don't skeletons like scary movies? Because they don't have the guts."

On the one hand, very cute. On the other, Jillian did something that kids do naturally. She shared a joke. And just like that, Jillian had unwittingly launched the latest page of Edgewood News, our Jokes page.

Edgewood News, in case you haven't visited the site, publishes audio and visual content that highlight special people and events in our school. And while the web site has been magnificently designed and maintained by Edgewood's super tech genius, Mr. Cadalzo, the content is generated entirely by students.

Mr. Cadalzo, along with Mr. DelMonaco, Mr. Scholl, and myself are the staff advisers for the Media Club, which includes students from grades 3, 4, and 5, who gather during weekly lunch sessions to work on their news stories for the web site or produce Keynote slides for EagleVision, the wide screen TV in our main lobby.

Student work in the Media Club is impressive for its scope and independence. The students pitch the stories, take photographs, identify resources for interviews, develop questions, book, conduct, record, and transcribe interviews, extract audio excerpts, write a script (sometimes collaboratively) grounded in research information culled from interviews, then either produce a Keynote slide or edit an audio story using the Garageband software. Not a bad working lunch.

The angle of each story, whether for EagleVision or Edgewood News, is the kid's perspective. Staff advisers provide some technical and editorial assistance, but mostly we help students stay focused on their story, perspective, and voice.

We're also working on multiple ways for kids to interact with the website. For instance, we provide a moderated comments section in which visitors can leave positive feedback for published students. And it's a good way to practice appropriate online behavior. Visitors can also upload video suggestions for our 3 Words segment, which is in its infancy, but gaining traction. And finally, our latest venture in online interactivity, the Jokes page.

Ultimately, stories produced by the Media Club for EagleVision and Edgewood News will give readers, viewers, and listeners a sense of what we value in our school, from our school's most important contributors, those in the K-5 demographic.

Do you want to see photos of the entire school making our Swimmy photo? Edgewood News has it! Want to know about life as a firefighter? Got that too! Ever wondered why the teacher always wore sunglasses to school? Well, I won't spill the punchline, but you can find it here too.

Kids Say the Darndest Things

My wife was chatting on the phone with her mother, speaking in Spanish, interspersing the conversation with the name of my daughter. I turned to my 3 year old daughter and said, "You're going to have to learn Spanish." She replied, "Que?"

My kid, like many of my students, is constantly surprising me with her quick thought and information processing, as well as her impeccable comedic timing.

And as her dad, I know my responsibility is to feed her stimulating, intellectual opportunities so that she can go forward to create, participate, and share with the world, while squeezing in the occasional stand-up at Dangerfields.

At the Edgewood lunchtime Media Club, we give our students time to explore and create. Two students in Mrs. Huang's 5th grade class came to the lab, opened up the Garageband audio editing software, which they were using in Ms. Forte's music class, and created the Circuit Rap. This song was a reflection of their classroom lesson on electricity.

I find that the key to positive learning is teaching basic skills, then giving kids time and opportunity to practice and discover. And when they discover, as a researcher, I learn so much.

Adora Svitak is a 12-year old author, public speaker, and according to the media notes, a child prodigy. She agrees that "learning between grownups and kids should be reciprocal."

She recently spoke at a TED conference. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design and these conferences bring in speakers who have ideas that are deemed worthy of sharing with the world.

This tender-aged presenter is a gifted and polished public speaker. And her ideas are compelling, although not new to every educator.

She reminds her audience, consisting primarily of adults, "The way progress happens is because new generations and new eras grow and develop and become better than the previous ones. It's the reason we're not in the Dark Ages anymore. No matter your position or place in life it is imperative to create opportunities for children so we can grow up and blow you away."

Take a few moments to watch her presentation. She'll blow you away.

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?