Blue-Bots are Elementary

This year Scarsdale elementary students are hearing a lot about robots in the classroom. It doesn't seem that long ago that the idea of a robot in our lives was limited to SciFi plotlines or expensive house servants. But today robots are more accessible to young learners than ever before.

At Jerry Crisci's annual district technology report, he overviewed the K-12 STEAM offerings, but showed how K-2 students in particular are learning to code using an online platform called Kodable and two robots -- Dash and Blue-Bots.

Blue-Bots, also known as Bee-Bots, provides our youngest students with an introduction to programming concepts in a manner that's concrete, hands-on, and so much fun! These robots can be operated using five main push-button commands on its back -- Forward, Backward, Left Turn, Right Turn, and GO, which will RUN the user's programmed sequence of instructions. With each forward or backward command, the BlueBot will roll 6 inches. With each press of the Left Turn arrow, the Blue-Bot will make a 90 degree turn to the left of the direction it is facing.

Seeing these instructions through the eyes of Blue-Bot is important. It teaches students to step outside themselves and see from the perspective of another being, whether it's a robot or a person. But let's face it. Kids treat them as more than just robots. The Blue-Bots are pretty cute and our primary grade students adore them. They shower them with cheerful praise as if they were a younger child or a puppy. But the level of engagement goes well beyond puppy love. These 5-7 year olds are learning how to sequence, loop, and debug. Through robotics they are learning fundamental programming concepts. They are developing an understanding that their actions trigger an outcome and that if two don't match, then they need to walk back their steps, analyze their code, and patiently devise a plan to achieve their hoped for outcome. It's a mindset that will serve them well for the rest of their lives.

Video: see BlueBot in action

Room 18 Grant

What Could we do with Room 18? It’s what we’re asking of Edgewood students and teachers. Take an empty classroom and contemplate the use of space. Remove the classic classroom structures and redesign the room to encourage contemporary thoughts on learning and teaching.

Room 18, which was formerly used as a classroom, has become our laboratory for experimental thinking on instructional redesign. The lead research team includes Marilyn Blackley (4th grade), Matthew Fitzpatrick (art), Lisa Forte (music), and Paul Tomizawa (technology). The team is supported by Dr. Scott Houseknecht and William Yang, along with other staff. Our goal, with the support of a Center for Innovation grant, is to use this space to springboard ideas that seek to re-envision existing classrooms and prompt thinking on how space impacts teaching and learning. Room 18 is an environment that will provide flexible learning spaces and materials to help us develop collaborative and problem solving skills. It’s where, through the principles of Design Thinking, we can research and tackle problems, whether they are located globally or in our own classrooms. It’s where teachers and students can imagine the potential inside their own classrooms.

Teachers are perpetually intrigued with reconfiguring their rooms, for the sake of igniting student activity, but the exercise of moving and removing pieces of furniture, often leaves teachers faced with the dread of eliminating the structures that support a longstanding curriculum. Our hope is that Room 18 becomes the antidote to that dread, providing a sandbox for redesigning classroom space and curriculum experiences, while better meeting the needs of today’s diverse learners. Our hope is that this space is where teachers and students will come to be inspired, using the tools and materials they will need to some day contemplate the question: “What could we do with our own classroom?”

Rigor. The Good Kind

Kindergarteners problem solving
with Kodable.

When students are engaged in a deep-think activity, I notice the faces. Slightly scrunched with squinted, blinking eyes that signal disbelief as in "That doesn't make sense." But it's not a face that shows quit. It's a look that's about to roll up its sleeves and hunker down for serious mano a mano combat. For me, this is what rigor looks like in the classroom.

I see this expression in students of all elementary grades. Even in kindergarten as students absorb complex programming concepts through challenging activities in the Kodable app, they'll stop, stare, gaze in disbelief, but push forward to success, often with a little help from their friends and classmates.

These days rigor is considered a desired learning trait. A trendy question among parents and educators asks what rigor looks like in the classroom. It's initially a strange question to consider since the word is typically defined with words such as strictness, severity, harsh, unyielding, inflexible, and my favorite (not really) -- cruelty.

Perhaps, as parents and educators, we have come to manipulate the definition of rigor into something virtuous as a proactive response. We see a cruel world outside the protective nurturing biodomes of the home and classroom and we want children to be prepared for life's hardships, to have the savvy and Hamburger Hill-type grit to overcome the unexpected and enduring challenges in their lives. Or maybe we just want them to put down their Snapchat videos and mow the lawn. Anyone's lawn.

2nd Graders join forces.

When I see second graders, such as those in Ms. Martin's room, warming up their brains with Kodable programming challenges, coming together to share solutions, trying them each, and learning from their mistakes in Design Thinking manner, and ultimately exalting in a shared success, I'm reminded that the look of rigor does not have a standard definition. Yi Cheng and Julian say it best.

"It's fun. Is it easy? Not really. It's easy then it gets harder harder harder. We like challenges," assures Yi Cheng. "It works your brain," says Julian with the gratified look of someone's who's put in a hard day's work.
This is how you define rigor. The good kind.

Piece by Piece: Best Summer Vacation without WIFI Ever!

Design challenges with Plus Plus

For an entire week, my children indulged in activities that didn't rely on electricity or WIFI. It wasn't a form of punishment or an organized "family values" challenge (see Screen Free week). It was a week in the Adirondacks. When they weren't discovering new ways to jump in a lake or capture little frogs, they played card games (Crazy 8s, Go Fish, etc), Pixie Sticks, Jenga, but there was something new to me that was just so mind-blowing in its intellectual absorption and simplicity.

Nothing more mesmerizing than
watching your kids being mesmerized.

They are called Plus Plus puzzle pieces made by a company in Denmark. Each piece is small enough to sit comfortably on your fingertip and is made of flexible plastic. Since the sets do not come with directions, the blueprint is truly in the hands of builder. But they have the same allure of Lego bricks, begging to be pieced together. Try connecting two pieces. And I defy you to not attach a third, fourth, and so on.

The activity easily promotes fine motor development, hand eye coordination, pattern recognition, interpersonal skills since builders often ask for feedback, and spatial reasoning. Research has indicated that children who play puzzles are more likely to develop an interest in the STEM fields.

My kids would sit for lengthy sessions, manipulating the Plus Plus pieces into place in their best efforts to match the design they envisioned. There's nothing more mesmerizing than watching your children being mesmerized. I'm not sure if I could've stopped them if I waved a WIFI enabled iPad in front of them. Oh sure, now that we're back from the Adirondacks, they do have their WIFI devices again, but they're still building with Plus Plus keeping their fingers dexterous and persistent and their imaginations lively.

Classroom Architect

Create a new classroom floor plan
with this drag and drop online tool

     Teachers often wrangle with the issue of insufficient or inadequate use of classroom space. It's especially true today as teachers make the most of a 1:1 model or carve out space for making or taking apart those broken printers and VCRs. So for those teachers who want to put on their architect hat and create a new classroom floor plan, the 4Teachers site offers this handy online tool.
     For more ideas on what to consider when redesigning your room, this blog post from Edutopia offers a few suggestions. Happy hacking!

Video Book Reviews

Green screen backgrounds
can become anything!

     Second grade teacher Mrs. Marceau was looking for a way to use technology to present her students' opinion writing pieces. Book reviews. We focused on using video. Our conversation about book review videos sparked Mrs. Marceau's memory of the classic Reading Rainbow book reviews. So we decided to recreate them. I set up the green screen on the wall in the computer lab. Then the students wrote a shortened version of their book review. One that was easier to read on camera.

The closer the teleprompter is to the
camera lens, the better the student's
eye contact with the camera.

Then Emily Sun, my SHS senior options student, transferred the short text onto a web site, which turned our iPad into a teleprompter. One by one, students stepped in front of the camcorder and read from the teleprompter. It can be a nerve wracking experience for any adult, let alone 8 year olds, but each student performed admirably with their pre-production work as well as with their on-camera Reading Rainbow performance. We recorded each video and uploaded them for display on the class blog. It was hard work, but like all tough jobs, gratifying.

From Wondering to Researching to Teaching

Wondering topics ranged from
supernovas, to sustainable energy, to
Sesame Street.

     Children come to school each day with that built-in sense of wonder. Classroom teachers are challenged to find ways to sharpen their skills for finding answers to the things they wonder about. These essential research skills, whether asking targeted questions, synthesizing ideas, or educating an audience, will serve them well in school and life. Mrs. Blackley challenged her 5th grade students to wonder about anything and write a short narrative that incorporated their findings. And while their writings were fascinating reads in themselves, the impact is in the videos they produced and then published to the Internet, which will allow them to reach and teach a broader and, potentially, global audience.
     So as a class, we discussed the video medium and how the spoken words, or script, provide information, often research findings, that support the visuals. The video script is a different style of writing compared with their expository pieces. Once we had a rough script, we developed a visual storyboard using Google Slides.
     The storyboard is our pre-production plan for editing in iMovie. Students recorded their narration using Vocaroo, a web based tool, downloaded mp3, picture, and video files into iMovie, and after one or two editing lessons, were on their way. The results were impressive. But as I always tell students, the most informative and engaging videos begin with an informative and engaging script. The foundation of the video has to be a great story. Otherwise, the video becomes Grandpa's slideshow of Yellowstone Park and your audience will yawn and lean towards the door. As I often tell my students, when it comes to making videos, the easiest thing to do is make a bad one. Our goal was to make videos that engaged and informed an audience and left them begging to see it again and again. I believe we accomplished that. Check out Manami's fantastic video production as well as her storyboard. It's unfathomable that when the year began, she hardly spoke English :)

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.