Our school is bordered on one side by plots of land used for farming and one of the common practices in Vietnam is to burn off the land in order to prepare it for use. And today, that farmer across the street did just that. The prevailing winds made for a bit of chaos as we left our assembly this morning.
Image Credits:
B5 Courtyard and A Bit of Fire by me, CC BY NC SA
Few things get me giddier than when I open up iTunes and see that my TED podcast subscription has downloaded a new Hans Rosling TED talk. He is, in my mind, the Undisputed King of TED. His ability to blend mathematics and humanities to analyze the past, explain the present and predict the future is impressive. But to do so while seamlessly integrating technology – a technology that he helped develop, by the way - to create a visual representation of enormous amounts of data in order to weave a story that is at different times funny, engaging, poignant, memorable and powerful is what sets him apart.
With his mix of passion and knowledge, of wit and fact, of history and mathematics, of literacy and numeracy, is Hans Rosling the model of what we want our students to become?
Here is his most recently posted TED talk on the Rise of Asia from November 2009:
My last post was about The Dinks. I’d like to say that I conjured that up out of thin air, but that isn’t totally true. I do remember the first time I watched the episode – maybe a year ago – nodding my head empathetically with Prezbo. And then I sort of forgot about it…
Then about a month ago, Dan points us all to Ben Blum Smith’s post about Clever Hans, the counting horse. After reading this post, I immediately thought of The Dinks but my Google-Fu was weak and I couldn’t find the necessary clip of The Wire.
Then last week I read Sam’s post on Problem Solving and , as I was re-watching Season 4, saw that episode again. BOOM! It all came together, seemingly out of thin air.
To bring this full circle, I was reminded of Clever Hans and hence Ben Blum Smith and hence my original attempt to find The Dinks when watching Dan’s presentation on “Be Less Helpful” at CMC North, which I highly recommend any of you math teachers watch.
And a blog post was born.
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons
With the wife and kids away, I’ve had some quality TeeVee time lately so I decided to start re-watching “The Wire“. As a testament to how great the show is (or how little life I have), I am already mostly through Season 4. I came across this scene again last night. I remember smiling and knodding in a “I know that feeling” sort of way as the student explained to Prezbo how he knew the answer. (Warning: This is an HBO show. The language is bound to put somebody off.)
While we are quick to praise our Special Teacher Powers of Intuition and Observation when dealing with students, we often don’t realize how much we give away as teachers. Our facial expressions, our body language, our non-verbal cues are all picked up by students and this instantaneous and (sometimes) subconscious feedback often guides them through their explanations or presentations. (This, by the way, is not always a bad thing.)
Recently Sam made a conscious effort to stop giving out The Dinks and to teach problem solving:
I tell them that I won’t be of much use to them. That they are going to have to use their wit and wiles to do these problems. That they should ask their partners their questions, that if they really get stuck they should go to another group, and if they really, really get stuck, they can talk to me. Although I won’t be of much use to them.
The results are pretty amazing.
Dan has been telling people to be less helpful for a while. It’s even spawned its own website. (I hope this has been done by Dan or with his blessing…)
Is being less helpful and not giving out The Dinks a step toward Coaching Heavy? Is this a method that could work with teachers as well as students? I wonder if some of Sam’s lessons from Day One can be applied to teachers, particularly the ones about “learned helplessness”, not underestimating your students/teachers, and making the puzzle of technology integration fun and interesting once external pressures are removed?
Thanks again to all those in my PLN who gave me some great suggestions regarding classroom management in a 1:1 classroom. After posting my draft version, I made some minor revisions – most of them cosmetic, to be honest.
I gave this presentation today to about 16 teachers, mostly from the middle and high school and my highest turnout to date. I also had the principal for a good portion of the hour. I recorded the entire discussion and have now linked it to the presentation. There are some times when the discussion wanders a bit but it is all still (mostly) relevant to the topic at hand. If you’ve got 45 minutes or so, I invite you to take a look. Or you could browse through the pretty pictures…
I just finished watch Kim Cofino’s Keynote presentation for this year’s conference. To participate in this free online conference:
All presentations are now listed by date/time on the 2009 Schedule. Bookmark / favorite this page, it will be updated throughout the conference as presentations “go live” each day!
Check out the Ning schedule of events and participate as much as you can! Also follow K12Online on Twitter!
(Taken from the K12Online wiki)
Daniel Pink on incentives and performance:
Some highlights:
As long as the task required only mechanical skill, bonuses worked as they would be expected: the higher the pay, the better the performance.
But once the tasked called for even rudimentary cognitive skill, a larger reward led to poorer performance.
To provide intrinsic motivation, you need to provide:
- Autonomy
- Mastery
- Purpose
There is a mismatch between what science knows and what [education] does. Those 20th century rewards, those motivators that we think are a natural part of [education], do work but only in a surprisingly narrow band of circumstances.
I’ve had a great day in Singapore.
First I spent the morning with Keri-Lee Beasley and Katie Day at the UWCSEA East Campus. Believe it or not, it was my first time meeting Twitter friends face-to-face. Other than being close to an hour late and still slightly wet from the morning downpour, I had a fantastic time chatting with Keri-Lee and Kate: answering their questions about our 1:1 program; asking them questions about how they plan to implement the NETS; sharing tips and ideas about Diigo, OneNote, portfolios, planning with other teachers, professional development. And to end it with a bang, one of Keri-Lee’s talented 5th grades gave me a wiz-bang introduction to Scratch!
I then hopped a taxi to the Singapore American School, where I met with Audrey Forgeron and Susan Sedro. I am impressed with the sheer enormity of the school (over 3500 students!) and their continuing efforts to orchestrate an integrated approach to technology. I also learned a few tricks from Susan about Google Docs (apparently anybody can edit now, even without logging in) and SharePoint (specifically focusing on the ‘Share’ part) that could make a huge difference for teachers who are interested in getting their students collaborating and are willing to geek out a bit in order to do so.
There was so much more that was discussed at both campuses; these are just some highlights as it’s impossible for me to put it all into words. Thank you once more to Keri-Lee, Katie, Audrey and Susan for accommodating me and spending such precious time with me. I hope that I can reciprocate in the future!
I’ve been hearing a lot of concerns from teachers about how our students are using their TabletPCs. Most of the concerns, in my mind, are not technological concerns but rather behavioral and social concerns that happen to be manifesting themselves when the tablets are present. So I’ve decided to host a discussion of classroom management practices in a 1:1 environment. I have borrowed heavily from the works of others in the creation of my slide deck, most notably those in my Twitter Network who answered my call a few weeks back, Ann Krembs, the Irving Independent School District, Jim Heyndericks at K12Converge.com, Mike Hasley on Tech Learning, and the Always On podcast.
Here is a draft of my slide deck to date. I really would appreciate any feedback, comments or suggestions. Thanks!
As we continue to explore if how we will implement ePortfolios in the (near) future, I’ve been looking at various options that we can use.
My first attempt was using the blogging platform that comes with our SharePoint portal. It is relatively simple to implement but lacks any sort of character. It would serve well as a reflective tool but may not (easily) work as a type of showcase for students. Also, it is not personalizable and – more importantly – isn’t very portable. Since we, like any international school, have a relatively high transient rate amongst students, this is not a good thing.
Another option that we are considering is the use of a Wordpress-type blog. This might be using edublogs or a local WPMU installation. Dr. Helen Barrett has a pretty good sample of what one could look like. It’s reflective in nature and pages can be added as static web pages used as summative showcases at certain points in the year. It is customizable and portable as well.
I think the option that I like most, at this point, however is the use of Google Sites. Thanks to Joseph over at Thinking with Ahead for pointing me in this direction. I had never used Google Sites before but quickly made up a rough first draft. It includes a document library, a blog for on-going reflection, a checklist of what our PYP students currently add to their portfolios and separate pages for end-of-year summative showcases. This seems to satisfy the desire at our school for the portfolio to be flexible: it can be used for assessment, as evidence of growth and as a showcase. (This might be a bit ambitious on our part but that is another blog post!)
Google Sites can be quickly cloned using templates and ownership can be transferred once the student leaves the school. The showcase pages can be individualized by students giving them a sense of ownership over their summative product. And, with Google Apps, we are opening up a world of Google Goodness to all of our students.
I’ve shared what I’ve found with our team. Now let’s see what can come up with.
Which option do like best? Is there one I’ve left out?
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