Creativity

Miguel's response to my post about a good teacher provided more food for thought. He wrote:

But quickly, I believe that we've set teachers up to atrophy that creative engine of their's. Experience teaches me that it doesn't atrophy, but that you can lose confidence in your own ability...creative juices flow strong as ever, you just don't think they're there.

First of all, I think Miguel is very right about the creativity existing long after we have confidence in ourselves. I think of my own experience and know that. As a child, my brother was the artistic, creative one and I was the smart, studious one. I never thought I could be creative at all. But as time passed (and as we discovered my brother was smart and could be studious, too!) I realized that I was as creative as he was. But it took a long time for me to believe that.

I think this is really true for teachers. Teaching is a creative art. Every day we have to go in the classroom and respond to our learners and their needs. We have plans, the broad outline of the painting, but the details must evolve. That is where the creativity comes in. As teachers, we do this on a regular basis. We start a lesson, see it isn't working, and find a new way to present the material. I think that most of us do this even when we have a very rigid curriculum that we have to follow -- or maybe because we have a very rigid curriculum. It requires a great deal of creativity to make that kind of curriculum work.

But we do start to lose confidence in our abilities to be creative when people are second-guessing us, when we have to be too accountable.

Miguel also said:

Reflecting on instructional practice is the catalyst for change, not what you use to accomplish it...however, being connected via blogs and wikis helps accelerate that change tremendously.

I agree with that statement, of course. The connections that we make online can give us ideas we might never have had on our own. We are constantly challenged by the people we read and the ones who read us. We are inspired to action by the success of others.

Change is not easy. If our institutions are not open, innovative places, it is hard for us to find support for change there. The online community meets that need. I still struggle with the question of how to actually bring about the change I want, I but I know that there are people out there who will give me advice, who will let me learn from their successes and their mistakes.

Thank you all.

An adult education resource

A while back I wrote that I wanted to write more about adult ed on this blog. I haven't been doing that (I'm not sure what I have been writing about lately really!), but I am about to correct that right now.

I have been reading a great adult ed blog, Adult Education Matters. The most recent post linked to a number of surveys they do with their students. They have also linked to their course outlines, their student self-evaluation forms for each level, and just about anything else you might be interested in.

This is a tremendous resource for a program like the one I teach in. I am especially interested in the needs assessment survey and their course outlines. There is a lot of information available on the site. It will take time, but I am determined to really look it over.

Three years of blogging

Clarence posted today about this being his third anniversary as a blogger. I was embarrassed because I thought he was much more experienced than I am. He is one of those bloggers I always encourage others to read. Come to find out, I started blogging 10 days before he did! My first post was dated January 19, 2005.

Who would have thought I would have kept it up -- to varying degrees, to be sure -- for so long?

In one of my two posts on that first day, I wrote:

I am glad to know that I am not expected to know all about blogging before I start, and yet this is one of the most difficult aspects of it for me. I don't like not knowing, not feeling confident in what I am doing.

I was amazed to read that. After three years, I look forward to not knowing, to learning about whatever the next challenge is. I do not need to always be in control. How much of that difference can I attribute to blogging? Quite a bit, I think!

Thanks to those of you who have been reading since that first blog post. Thanks to those of you who have been more recent readers. Thanks to those of you who have only stopped by once or twice to comment on something. I would most likely not have continued had it not been for your support and encouragement.

A good teacher is...

Thanks to Ewan's del.icio.us feed, I came across this article from the BBC about good teachers. Researchers were asked to pool their findings in an attempt to answer the question, "What makes a good teacher?" The results were interesting.

One researcher, Professor Patricia Broadfoot, was reported to have said that

the key ingredients of good teaching included: creating an atmosphere of mutual respect and fairness in the classroom, providing opportunities for "active learning" and humour to encourage pupil engagement, making learning interesting, and explaining things clearly.

According to the author, another researcher, Debra Myhill, reported that

The crucial ingredient... was a teacher's ability to reflect on his or her own performance and then to change it.

and that

teachers should neither passively comply with government initiatives, nor should they point blank refuse to implement them. Instead they should "adapt them creatively".

A third researcher, Mary James, said that

the teacher should "promote the active engagement of the learner".

and the author stated:

She noted that teachers liked to be given practical guidance on how to improve their teaching, yet what they really needed to develop was their own judgment of what works and what does not work in their own teaching.

The author of the article, Mike Baker, then goes on to say

The big question now is whether - after 20 years of being told exactly what and how to teach - there are enough teachers ready to be "creatively subversive"?

Also, after years of being told in precise detail how to teach, will teachers feel ready both to devise their own way of teaching and engaging students and also constantly to evaluate and adapt their own teaching methods.

These questions are good ones, I think. I have seen my K-12 teacher friends struggle with mandated curricula that, in some cases, tell you what page you should be working on if today is January 29.

I think, though, from talking with other teachers, from reading the blogs of some really great teachers like Darren, Clarence, Jo, Graham, Eric and a bunch of others that there is, indeed, hope. There are a lot of good teachers out there. And those of us who aren't as good as we would like to be have tremendous opportunities to learn. We can all learn from each other.

Playing around

In doing some of the tasks for the EVO session on Social Media in English Language Teaching, I started playing more with my blogs, to see what I could do to the way they look. I ended up adding a feed to my other blog (Moving Along here; Random Thoughts there) on each of the two I maintain. This has been interesting because it lets me kind of compare the two, see where I am at with each of them, without navigating anywhere.

I don't know why I worry about how the blogs look, but I do. I like adding to them, to the way they look. Now, if only I worried as much about the quality of the posts...

The Guerilla Season Book Blog Project

Eric Langhorst has a notice on his Guerrilla Season Book Blog that the 2008 project will take place March 3 - April 4. If you want to participate (either as an individual or as a class), all you have to do is write him. The details are on the blog.

I hope to participate the project again this year. I read the book and participated to a limited degree on the blog last year, and it was a great experience. The author, Pat Hughes, interacted with Langhorst's 8th grade students on the blog. This year he is promising new features, and I am sure they will be exciting!

I would encourage you to follow the project even if you don't want to participate. (The book is very interesting, though. I really enjoyed reading it.) The blog they will be using this year is http://www.guerrillaseason2008.blogspot.com/. It isn't really up and running yet, of course, but it will be before long.

Creating an audience

Reading a post on one of the blogs for the EVO session Social Media in English Language Teaching, I came across this:

I have used blogs, wikis, 43 places and things to some extent and I enjoy using them, however, I have not had much luck in creating any communities or an audience for what I have added to these platforms.

Creating an audience is a challenge for a new blogger. I remember my early days and not even being sure I wanted an audience, much less having a clue about how to develop one. With time, though, an audience developed.

It seems to me to be a question of commenting on the blogs of other people who share your interests (or not). I can't think of any other reason that most of you are reading this -- assuming you are. But maybe there is more involved. What advice would you give new bloggers?

Another example of not getting it?

I have written before about how it isn't enough to use these exciting new tools to do the same things we have always done. So, I had to stop and think when I read Karen's post about the EVO session she is doing this year: Research and Web 2.0. She makes what was for me, a very startling statement:

For starts, I got kind of hung up on the doing of things the same way…. that is… ok, let’s start with introductions.

And in her introduction she said

I’ve been thinking during this week about this course and wonder about the function of introductions in this setting and the best use of web tools for that.

What was startling? Well, I am a co-moderator of an EVO session called Social Media in English Language Teaching. And we began by asking out participants to introduce themselves. It never occurred to me, at least, that there might be an alternative. Actually, that isn't exactly true. We also had Charles Cameron set up a HipBone game that was supposed to get us in different groupings for deeper conversation than the traditional intro. And that worked. But I would
never have thought not to have participants introduce themselves in a forum-type post. After all, that's how I always begin my classes: We go around the room introducing ourselves to the group.

The question, then, becomes, "What else could we have done?" That's what Karen is asking. Unfortunately, I don't have any answers.

Is there a way to get people to know each other and to begin to develop a sense of community without introductions? Do we actually need to develop community from the beginning or could we allow it to develop over the course of the 6-week session? I don't know. But I want to think about it.

Visuwords

Reading an old post on Sarolta's blog, I found a link to Visuwords. It is a visual dictionary/thesaurus that shows part of speech, definition, and the relationship between that word and others.

This is an example of what it produced for the word connection.


Sarolta says she as begun preparing activities for her students using this site. I can see lots of potential.

VoiceThread for K-12 Education

Listening to Wes Fryer's Podcast 218, I learned that VoiceThread is coming out with a special site for K-12 education. It will be restricted to K-12 teachers, students and administrators, providing a more secure environment for teachers and students. According to the podcast, it was to be up and running today, but when I checked tonight, the notice said they were running late and it would be up and running on January 22.

I love VoiceThread, even though I don't use it much, but I think this new site will make it even more useful for K-12 teachers.

(Cross posted at Moving Along)

HipBone games

I finally got around to playing a HipBone game with my adult ed students. It was wonderful -- as I knew it would be. I have used the games with my students for years but I had not used them with my adult immigrant students until this evening.

For those of you not familiar with HipBone games, they based on Hesse's Glass Bead Game. They are games of connections. Beyond that, they are totally flexible. With students tonight and usually with any group of students, I begin with a very simple vocabulary game. Tonight we formed three teams of 4. Each team got to draw 7 slips of paper into which I had written the vocabulary words from the story we just finished reading. Because I have a very low-tech classroom, I had drawn a Psyche Board on the whiteboard. (I have been trying to upload a picture here, but for some reason I can't.) Each team played a word and then made a sentence with it. As the baord filled up, they made sentences with their word and the other words connected to it. We kept score. Students loved it.

I copied the board onto paper when we were done. I don't have access to a scanner right now to upload a copy of it. When I can, though, I will do that.

2008 Education Blogosphere Survey

The 2008 Education Blogosphere Survey is open and runs through January 26. Please take a few minutes to participate. You can find the link here on Dangerously Irrelevant.

Download Lessig's "The Future of Ideas"

Thanks to Vicki Davis' del.icio.us account, I discovered that Lawrence Lessig's The Future of Ideas is available for download. The link is here in Lessig's blog. His publisher, Random House, agreed to a Creative Commons license. How cool is that?

Obviously, I haven't read all 368 pages since I downloaded it a few minutes ago, but I think it will be fascinating. Quite possibly, as Vicki suggested in her comment on Lessig's post, reading it or parts of it this way, will push me to go out and buy it.

Thanks, Vicki, for the tip!

Can we really eliminate worksheets?

Thanks to Jo, I came across Woody and his post about eliminating worksheets. He says, among other things, that using worksheets:

1. Uses an unspeakable amount of paper. ...
2. Creates teachers that begin to rely on a 1-dimensional teaching method. Introduce... teach... have them fill in the blanks.
3. Creates dependent learners. ...
4. Creates a sense of monotony and boredom amongst most students....
5. Dilutes creativity. ...
6. Creates a stack of graded worksheets that is taken home and thrown away. ...

I am fighting a worksheet-driven curriculum at work. We use worksheets and test according to what is on the worksheets. I use worksheets -- but not fill-in-the-blank ones if I can help it. My students write sentences and paragraphs. They read stories. But they aren't always able to transfer that knowledge to the tests. I wonder if they wouldn't do better on the tests if I gave them more fill-in-the-blank worksheets.

That isn't to say that I am thinking of changing the way I teach to include more worksheets. But it does mean that I have to find a way to prepare students for the kind of testing that they will be forced to undergo. I have no say about the testing that is done; I am expected to use the same test everyone else does. So somehow I have to find a way for it to work for my students while not watering down the way I want to teach. I have been spending a lot of time thinking about this, and I don't know if I have reached a conclusion or not.

Well, it isnt every day, but...

I am really enjoying writing here regularly again. I find it gives me a sense of tranquility that I had been missing. Writing has always done that for me, but sometimes I get so busy and life gets so crazy that I lose site of the importance of regular writing.

For the next 6 weeks, though, I will be struggling to post here and on my other blog, Moving Along, as the 2008 EVO sessions have gotten underway. That is the blog I started last year for the 2007 EVO session (as opposed to this blog that I started for the 2005 EVO session!) and will use this year as well. But I hope to post here regularly, too, regardless of what else is going on.

It's getting hard to believe

The other day, my daughter who lives in Oakland called and told me her laptop had died. What is it with McKeand family computers? She needs a computer and access to programs for work, so I suppose she will go out and buy a new one, but I don't know for sure. But it really seems almost impossible that in the space of 6 weeks or so we could have 6 computers go bad.

PCLinuxOS 2007, again

I know I keep talking about it, but I can't seem to stop! If it didn't make Linux so easy, I wouldn't have to talk about it!

The other day I was talking about my husband's laptop problems. After trying Debian, which he is running on his desktop, and PCLinux Gnome, my husband is back running PCLinuxOS 2007, the KDE version. Nothing else would allow him to set up his wireless card. Or at least, nothing else recognized it even halfway easily. He actually couldn't even set up a wired connection on anything but the KDE version of PCLinux. So, despite his reference for Gnome, my husband is again using KDE -- and learning to love it.

Seriously, if you are even remotely curious about Linux, give PCLinuxOS 2007 a try. You can find links here to either download it or, if you prefer, purchase it on CD for $5.99. Either way, use it off the live CD without installing it. Give it two weeks and see what you think. If you try it, I would love to know your reactions, so feel free to come back here and let me know.

Note: I am still running Ubuntu on my other machine, and I love it. And, as I said, my husband also uses Debian. I don't know if I will ever switch both my machines to the same OS. I like things about both Ubuntu and PCLinuxOS, and there is no reason to limit myself to one! (More free software culture thinking, I guess!)

Free software culture

Last night I was too tired to really comment on the the idea of a free software culture. But the idea is worth more than a few comments.

I have really noticed a change in myself since I started using Linux. Of course, I had been using OpenOffice for a long time before switching to Linux, so the changes had probably been occurring gradually over the space of a couple years. As Byfield's article says,

A Do-it-yourself philosophy runs deep in almost every free software user. The longer they have been using it, the deeper it runs.

I know that I am constantly tinkering with my computer. I download new applications, try them out, switch to them or reject them as I see fit. I can use KDE programs and Gnome programs interchangeably; I am not locked into choosing one or the other. I use different applications for different purposes. I like that freedom to make my computer mine.

I constantly turn to forums for answers. And it doesn't end with forums about my particular software. I look on forums for answers to everything. I know that I can go out and get the answers to almost any question from someone who has actually had the same problem I am having. And if I don't understand the answer, I can ask for clarification. When I do that on a software forum, I have to be prepared to provide information about my own system. I have to go t the command line and get that information. But if I do my part, I can get the answers I need. And it doesn't cost me a penny.

All of this, though, makes me think about the importance of free software in education. This culture, it seems to me, should be the goal of education: individuals who can explore, investigate, ask questions, learn, share their knowledge, and apply what they learn to their own situation and to the situations of others. It is a mind-set that I think schools should want to encourage.

So why is it so hard to get schools and teachers themselves to change?

Free software users

Thanks to LXer, I found a great post by Bruce Byfield, 9 Characteristics of Free Software Users. I found it to be a very interesting list. And a pretty accurate one. Among the 9 are:

3) Free software users expect to work the way they choose

Switching from Windows to GNU/Linux, the first thing that users are likely to notice is how many customization options are available ...

These options are a direct result of the sense of control that free software encourages in its users. Not only do they expect to use menus, toolbars or keyboard shortcuts as their preference dictates, but they expect to control the color, widgets and even placement of desktop features easily and efficiently.

and

6) Free software users expect to help themselves

Free software users ... are far less likely than proprietary users to expect formal technical support. Instead, what they expect are the means to help themselves .... A Do-it-yourself philosophy runs deep in almost every free software user. The longer they have been using it, the deeper it runs.

The whole post is great, but what actually struck me most was his introduction, in which he talks about helping family and friends with their Windows machines. He said:

...I was able to solve problems that baffled the others -- not because of any technical brilliance, but because the free software culture in which I spend my days made me better able to cope.

I believe what he is saying is true. I also think it extends far beyond the questions of computers and software. But that is another topic for another day perhaps.

In answer to the question...

Miguel asked how many machines we have running PCLinux 2007 now. It is up to 4, but my husband is having some trouble with his. He was running PCLinux and everything was fine. He went to bed the other night after being online on the laptop and woke up with no internet access on it at all. I wouldn't connect wirelessly or even wired! He is trying to download PCLinux Gnome now to see if he can get it working that way. (He is more attached to Gnome than I am.) If he can't, he may switch to something else. He told me the other day that he misses the Ubuntu documentation, so he may head back there. We'll see.

My laptop came back from the repair shop, so I am back on PCLinux. I had been using my other computer with Ubuntu on it in the meantime. It is going to take a little while to get back in the swing of things here, I think, but it is nice to be back.

Give them space to learn

Tim over at Assorted Stuff has a post that I have to comment on. He is talking about some reading he did over the break, especially the book What is Your Dangerous Idea?. He was especially talking about the dangerous idea of Roger Schank. Schank writes:

My dangerous idea is one that most people immediately reject without giving it serious thought: school is bad for kids — it makes them unhappy and as tests show — they don't learn much.

and

Schools need to be replaced by safe places where children can go to learn how to do things that they are interested in learning how to do. Their interests should guide their learning.

Tim says he finds himself wanting to argue but agreeing with a lot of Schank's reasoning.

I understand that well. I was a public school teacher when I pulled my children out of school to homeschool them. I was sure it was the right thing for my daughters, but it was hard to explain to my co-workers. Today, one of them is an RN with her Bachelor's degree in nursing and the other is an attorney.

My son, who was born while his sisters were being homeschooled, was the real test of this, though. He never went to school except for brief spurts when we lived overseas. His education was largely self-directed. He was, as a friend of mine pointed out, "unschooled", not homeschooled. And he is doing just fine as a young adult, thank you. He is fascinated by everything from ancient Japan to cooking. He hasn't found what he wants to pursue as a career yet, so we don't have any final answers on him, but I am not worried.

When children are allowed to pursue their interests, they learn. It does not match any state-mandated curriculum in terms of its sequence, and it may not be covering exactly the same material, but it is a valid education. And I believe it serves them better than what is forced on them by others.

Another convert

Today was spent helping my daughter get her computer up and running again. She had wanted to install Ubuntu until she saw Linux Mint. Then she wanted Mint. She installed it and was happy -- until she tried to connect to the Internet. See, she has the infamous Broadcom 4318 chipset in her Linksys wireless card. Now, I have the same chipset in my Compaq, on which I am currently running Ubuntu Gutsy. It was a hassle to get the wireless to work, but I have done it a couple times. I have the drivers. I put them on my daughter's machine, to no avail. I tried with Mint and later with Gutsy. No luck either way. Then I tried PCLinux, used the same drivers I had tried with Ubuntu and Mint. Aside from telling the computer which .inf file I wanted it to use, I had no trouble at all connecting her to the Internet. Needless to say, we installed PCLinux on her machine. She is happy, and so am I. Now, if she could just figure out how to use gnucash...

We could do it

Another post from Technology for the Adult Education Instructor. She calls for:

...an educational revolution. Evolution is common in education. We are reactive rather than proactive, based on the conditions that surround us.

My boss yesterday was telling me of the push at the state level for distance education, but all she could see were the problems. I think, though, that it isn't as tricky as she thinks. I need to talk to her and lay out some ideas I have. I would love to see us develop a website that students around the state could access. We could set up regular courses using Moodle, and we could track enrollment and progress. Maybe we need satellite locations to provide basic computer familiarization and, if necessary, access to computers. I don't know. I know that many of my students have computers but, as one told me yesterday, so far it sits in the corner as a decoration because she is afraid to turn it on.

I am excited about this prospect, more excited than I have been in a long time.

The heart of the matter

I said a while back that I wanted to focus on adult education in this blog, and I have attempted to do so -- without a lot of success. But I started reading adult ed blogs at least. A post on Technology for the Adult Education Instructor today caught my attention today. What it says is applicable to all levels of education, I think, but it is definitely true of adult ed.

Of course, schools have evolved. But has staff evolved as well? To some extent, yes, but is it enough? From the iPhone to Wi-fi to the Wii, technology is part of daily life for students. Yes, there are pockets of educators creating innovative 2.0 interactive Websites and Podcasts, but it is hardly a universal phenomena. The average instructor is satisfied with accessing 20th century technology. Many have changed (usually reluctantly) to LCD projectors and PowerPoint presentations but I am sure that in most every school there are still those using the overheads with abandon....

A lot of people have been saying this: that the problem is the current staff/ employees, not the difficulty in transitioning to whatever the new thing is. And I agree. It is the reluctance of teachers to change and our inability to envision a new way of teaching that slows us down. The technology is out there waiting for us.

And yet, I think about my own situation at the moment. I would willingly teach with all kinds of technology if my students had access to it. I would happily use the most modern and up-to-date gadgets if I had access to them during class. But I don't. So what do I do? How can I exploit technology if I have only a chalkboard?

There are still ways to include technology in my teaching. My students, unfortunately, do not get to participate in it, but they can benefit from it anyway. At the very least, I can avail myself of the wealth of information that is out there and inform my teaching accordingly. I can provide my students who have Internet access with web addresses of sites that might help them with their study of English.

Something else that I can do, and something that intrigues me more than these other options, is to try find low-tech ways to enhance my students' learning. What I am looking for are ways to encourage student investment in learning, connection both with the topic and with each other, and deep thinking. One tool that immediately comes to mind are HipBone games. There are others.

I think, then, that it all comes back to the teachers. Are we willing to change? I don't think that technology will save us if we are unwilling to examine our own classroom practice and its suitability for our situation and our students. I think that there are times and places where overhead projectors are just fine -- better than LCD projectors even. And I can use PowerPoint all day long, but it won't help if the lesson I am teaching with it isn't relevant to my students and their lives. It isn't the tool as much as what we do with it that matters.

I believe that we, as teachers, are at the heart of education. We shape what happens in our classrooms by our action or inaction, by our creativity or lack of it. And that is where I see technology as critical. We can get our encouragement and our ideas from what others are doing. Technology gives us access to classroom practice in hundreds, if not thousands, of classrooms around the world. It gives us access to teachers who may be more creative than we are or who, at least, are ahead of us in learning about some of the options that exist. No other form of professional development is as personal and as universal at the same time.

The tools are out there. The knowledge exists. What remains to be seen is what we do with them.

That time of year again - EVO 2008

It's that time of yar again when I plug TESOL's Electronic Village Online sessions. The info on this year's sessions can be found here. It's free. You don't have to be a member of TESOL to participate. You don't have to be an English teacher. Check out the offerings and see if there isn't something that interests you.

Nothing much...

That's what I have to write about today. I have just returned to New Mexico and am trying to get back in the swing of things here. I have read a lot of interesting posts today - like Miguel's post yesterday on the importance of libraries and Jo's post where she talks about connecting to people around the world, but nothing is inspiring me to write. I am not ready for retrospection or for looking ahead. I guess what I am doing is all I can do today. Maybe tomorrow will be better.

Another year ends

This has not been a great year for me. I find that I am not letting go as well as I should. There is no reason not to, really, but I am not doing it. As I move into the next year, I want to begin to focus more on possibilities than on what did or didn't happen.

That being said, today is my 36th wedding anniversary. (I think I got it right first time, this time! Last year I was confused!) It is a good day. Tomorrow I return to Albuquerque. We'll have to see what 2008 brings around.

One thing that I intend to see happen this coming year is more regular posting to this blog. I didn't realize how much I missed that until I made myself blog regularly again.

Kwout, part 2

So, to test this tool further, I decided to get the bookmarklet and try it on the Scott McLeod's post. Getting the bookmarklet was only difficult because I didn't read. All you do in Firefox is drag it to your bookmarks. Then I opened the page I wanted to copy, clicked on the kwout button, and waited a few seconds while it worked. I selected a portion of the page, clicked another button and waited a few seconds. This is what I got:

Dangerously Irrelevant: Kwout via kwout

Now, if you try the links in the post, they are hot. The links in his kwout demo are not. But all I would have to do it click on the link to the post below the kwout and I would have access to the hot links in the kwout, too.

Now, the question: Will I really use this or is it a fun toy to play with and blog about? It remains to be seen. But it seems like it would make my blogging easier. I guess we'll have to wait and see. Meanwhile, the kwout button is waiting there for me in my bookmarks toolbar.

Kwout

One of the first things I looked at this morning was a post by Scott McLeod about Kwout

Kwout takes a screen shot of a web page, allows you to crop it the way you want, and then allows you to post it to Flickr of anyplace else you want. So, I decided to check out the demo. This is what I got when I used it on my own blog:

Random Thoughts via kwout

Although you can't tell from this post since I don't have any, links in these screen shots are hot. Or they can be if you allow image mapping. All that requires is not unclicking a box.

This seems like a great tool for bloggers. I can't wait to check it out.

Oops!

Well, I looked at my bloglines feeds yesterday morning and didn't find any inspiration for a post. I looked later on and had the same lack of inspiration. I was going to look later yet but forgot. So there was no post yesterday.

While it is not the end of the world and I am not even really disappointed in myself for not posting, I am aware of how easy it is to fall back into that not posting thing. I don't want to do that. I have truly enjoyed writing every day this month (except yesterday, of course!), and I hope to continue the habit. I know from the past almost 3 years of blogging that it isn't easy to sustain, but I have also seen this past month how much pleasure it has given me to write regularly again.

And, with this post, I have matched the number of posts I made last year. Next year is going to be better!

Can we change education?

Another interesting post from Edward Cherlin on the OLPC News. This one is about education. He says:

The problem that we face is that almost every education system in the world was created by a colonial power, not to encourage innovation and problem-solving, but to keep the population in order while their country was pillaged.

Now, I don't want to get involved in a discussion of the political elements of this claim, but I do want to discuss the state of education today.

It seems obvious that our schools do not "encourage innovation and problem-solving". This situation does not seem to be improving. And it is not just K-12 education.

If there is a chance of changing that situation, it comes from the free access to information. And that is where the OLPC project comes in. Students can have access to information much more easily when they have access to the Internet. Children are naturally curious and, given the chance, will follow that curiosity and will learn.

All too often we kill that curiosity in school. We force kids into move lock-step through material that may or may not be interesting to them. I do not understand why this has to be. Why do all students in a class have to do the same thing in the same way at the same time?

There are examples of teachers doing things differently, or starting to anyway. I think of Clarence Fisher's work,like his students' Outsiders wiki . I think of Eric Langhorst's The Guerrilla Season project. And then, of course, there is Barbara Ganley's blogging and her work with her students. She sets the bar, as far as I can see.

Computers don't and won't automatically change education. It will take teachers who are able to open up the world to their students through using them to make a real difference.

His year in photographs

Teacher Dude, who does great photography, has given us a peak at some of his work with wonderful explanations accompanying them in his post today. He has selected one photograph for each month and placed it in a VoiceThread presentation. The photographs, stunning in and of themselves, are enhanced by his descriptions of what and why they are.

The post is wonderful, both as a glimpse into the photographer's mind and as an example of what could be done with VoiceThread. Give it a look. You won't be disappointed.

What can I do?

In a recent post on OLPC News, Edward Cherlin was talking about whether or not computers are the best way to help children in developing countries. His response was, I think, quite good. And it really got me thinking about what I can do. He said, in part:

As to what you and I should do, computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra has a suggestion that I find helps to clarify matters for me: "Only do what only you can do."

Most of us in the laptop project wouldn't be very effective at direct food aid. We find, however, that we are very effective at what we are doing, and nobody else comes close. Please ask yourself what you know that the children need to know, and come to the Wiki to tell us about it.

The Wiki he refers to is the OLPCWiki. It has sections for educators and developers to contribute ideas and actual projects that they could become involved in.

But the question remains: What can I do that only I can do? And that, in turn, begs another question: Am I willing to do it?

Transforming education one laptop at a time

Yahoo news had an article about the One Laptop program as it is playing out in Peru. It is truly encouraging to read.

Oscar Becerra, the head of educational technology in Peru, is hoping that the laptop program will help stop the exodus of young people from rural areas in Peru to the slums of Lima. He said:

If we make education pertinent, something the student enjoys, then it won't matter if the classroom's walls are straw or the students are sitting on fruit boxes.

He also noted that school enrollment has increased since the laptop program was announced. Now, some may see that as an attempt on the part of the families to get a free laptop. And if it is, so what? If it gets the kids in school, if it opens up the world to them even a little bit, it has been worth the money.

Of course, not everyone is convinced. The article quotes a university professor as saying he fears

a general disruption of the educational system that will manifest itself in the students overwhelming the teachers.

While I understand his concern, I think it is that fear of losing control that is keeping education around the world from advancing as it could. But that is another post for another day.

The article goes on to quote a mother who says she sometimes pokes around on the laptop, too. Who knows where it might take her?

If you have been considering participating in One Laptop Give One, Get One program, please do. It is running through December 31st. We bought 4, 2 to "keep" and 2 to go somewhere to help a child. Of course, we aren't really keeping the ones we are getting, much to my husband's dismay! So there will be two kids in our lives who will get a real surprise when they arrive! But the true joy is knowing that other kids in other places will be able to experience the joy of discovery that these children in Peru have.

Thanks to LXer for the tip.

Morality

Stephen Downes has a great post about morality -- not your usual blog post topic maybe, but a really wonderful post nonetheless. He points out how our morality is shifting/has shifted and says that kids are the first ones to notice this. He says:

I think you may also want to examine how publishers and their supporters are changing (or trying to change) the concept of 'morality'.

and goes on to describe some "shifts" in terms of "the doctrine of first sale", "fair use", and "sharing", among others. He concludes by saying:

Children do not have some fundamentally different morality. Rather, they see - while adults, for some reason, are blind - that the game is shifting, that some very self-centered and greedy people are trying to change the rules. The children - who have no stake in this sudden 'ownership society' - are not fooled. We shouldn't be either.

It's a very thought-provoking post. If you are one of 2 people who read this blog and don't read Half an Hour, please correct that situation and read this post.

Are you ready for linux?

Miguel's post rings true:

...In K-12 education, I often hear that Linux just isn't ready...but everyone--except the leadership--knows the truth. The truth is that it's not ready to be supported by the staff you have on hand. So, rather than require people to learn a new operating system and make the switch, you're stuck with an expensive, proprietary system.

Human beings, most of us anyway, don't like change. It is hard to give up the known for the unknown. We only do it when we are forced to.

My son-in-law, for instance, is very happy running PCLinux on his laptop. But he would never had done it had his computer not crashed. And when he gets a new hard drive, I don't know what OS he will put on it. He says he would be happy to keep PCLinux, but the pull to the familiar will be very strong, I am sure.

My daughter is resisting getting comfortable with Knoppix, which is OK since we wouldn't be installing it on her machine anyway. But I hope that being forced to use it (or Ubuntu on my other machine) until they decide what to do with her machine will give her enough of a taste for it that she would consider Linux as an option.

My daughter's problem, actually, isn't an aversion to Linux as much as a commitment to certain Microsoft products (like Money) and Windows/Mac-centric sites like ITunes. I am sure she will end up back on Windows for those reasons.

But enough about me and mine. What about you? Are you ready for Linux? I guarantee there is a variety of Linux out there that would be just perfect for you!

KanTalk

The Teacher Dude wrote about KanTalk yesterday, and I went again to check out their website. It looks really interesting. Do any of you ESL/EFL teachers out there have students who use it? Have you really checked it out enough to have an opinion?

It seems like it has potential. But I wouldn't want to suggest it to students without more input from others.

Why not for Linux?

When I saw the link to the professional learning board toolbar in Vicky's del.icio.us links, I decided to give it a try. But then I saw the system requirements: Windows 2000/XP/Vista. I downloaded it anyway because it is a Firefox add-on. Had to work on PCLinux, right? And it did. More or less, anyway. The "jobs" button gave me a blank screen that wouldn't go away, but the rest of it was OK. I uninstalled it right away because I could see it had nothing of interest to me.

So why put system requirements if they aren't requirements? Why not say, "This will work on almost any machine. You may have improved functionality on some, but the basics will work for anyone." If the assumption is that everyone uses Windows, why put the requirements there at all?

My husband told me the other day that he isn't interested in helping people with Windows problems anymore. If you have a Linux problem, he'll be there to help in a heartbeat. I thought that was a bit extreme, but I am starting to understand.

As more and more people use Linux of one variety or another, we shouldn't be made to feel like second-class citizens. We have to stand up for ourselves. So from now on, if you tell me I need Windows to use your product, I won't even give it a try. Usually it will work, I know, but that isn't the issue. It is a stand I am willing to take.

Guess I am becoming a crotchety old woman!

Worse than not knowing...

I was looking at some Linux sites today and came across An alien's view point. While some of the posts were quite interesting, what I found most interesting was a saying stuck off in the right sidebar:

Worse than not knowing

Is not wanting to know.

What more is there to say? I find myself having little patience with people who do not want to know. It doesn't matter what it is they don't want to know: computers, the Internet, another language, a different way of doing something/anything. It is a mindset I cannot understand.

A coincidence?

In the space of 15 days, three computers in my daughter's house have crashed or suffered some type of serious meltdown. My son-in-law's machine went down as he was trying to finish his last assignments for the semester. Knoppix saved the day -- and his papers. Then the day before I was to return to Louisiana I discovered that my laptop was dead. Well, at least there was nothing other than a light glowing telling me it was plugged in and charged. Knoppix wouldn't do anything for it. It is on its way back to Acer as I write this.

An hour ago I got a call from my daughter telling me that her desktop had crashed. Fortunately, a Knoppix disk proves that the machine has at least some life in it. Hopefully she will be able to get the data off of it, and then she can decide what she wants to do.

But what are the odds of that happening? They seem astronomical, but maybe I am wrong.

A wake-up call to myself

I was looking again at the posts in my clippings file in Bloglines. And I discovered something interesting: I have probably half a dozen posts by Bruce Schauble clipped. Now, you might think that I would have realized that and started reading his blog very closely, but that was definitely not the case. Actually, I almost deleted Brice from my feeds a couple weeks ago. Looking now, though, I see a great Writing Project technique that I want to try using and a discussion of substantive blogging that has me thinking about the quality of my own blogging. I also had clipped another practical post with another classroom writing activity.

I need to read his blog more closely all the time. If you don't read Throughlines, you should. There is a lot of great stuff there.

Back home again

Well, I am back in Louisiana for a few days. It is nice to be here. The only drawback is that I haven't had time today to read anything that I can comment on here today. Hopefully tomorrow!

Catching up

Once I discovered Clippings in Bloglines, I started clipping posts that were of interest. But, of course, I never looked at them again. So I decided to remedy that situation today. One post that I had clipped was from Graham back in February, The Viral Glass Bead Gameboard. This was of particular interest to me because I have been a fan of HipBone games for 7 or 8 years now.

HipBone games were developed by Charles Cameron and are based on Hermann Hesse's Glass Bead Game. The boards look similar to the one Graham used that was developed by Chris and used with his classes.

These games, whichever version you use, are wonderful tools to use in the classroom. I have used them to practice vocabulary and grammar, to stimulate discussion, and to work through a difficult reading. Whenever and however I have used them, students have always loved them.

The games fit well with how we all seem to live and work today. It is all about connections. We follow bread crumbs online and off. Give the games a try and see what you think!

Taking time

Bud has an old post about professional development that really struck a chord with me. He says:

I think so many of the professional opportunities that teachers are afforded are races, mere dips of a toe into the waters of potential. There's lots to do and not enough time to do it.

I feel that way about much of the professional development I have done lately. Maybe all of it. We don't get a chance to really explore the possibilities of a thing before we move on to the next one. We seldom get the opportunity to try something out in our classes and then report back to the group. Reflection is what is missing from most professional development.

Bud goes on to say

I want sustainability. I want reflection. I think others want it, too. we don't learn by racing. We learn by doing and reflecting and questioning.

One good thing that has come from my determination to blog every day until the end of the year has been the fact that I have read more blogs and I have reflected more on what I have read. I think that I am learning from this process; I know that I am. And I am determined to continue after the first of the year.

I don't think it will be easy to continue this pace. I know that at times it will feel impossible. But I think I owe myself the time that it will take. I deserve it, actually!

What if I lost it all?

Like many, many others, I received the email telling me about the closing of Eduspaces next month. I really never got into using it as much as I probably should have, so for me it isn't a major deal. But is made me think. What would I do if I got word that Blogger was shutting down or Wordpress.com? I wouldn't really have to lose all my posts or anything, but I would lose these outlets for my thoughts and my writing. I would really be lost.

We have come to depend so much on free online services, and I seldom think about the possibility of one of them shutting down. I guess I am beginning to understand why people have their own sites to house all their online stuff.

Safe, interactive searches

Ewan pointed to something maybe everyone else knows about already: Quintura for Kids. It really looks great. Your basic search options appear in a cloud: stories, toys, music, school bell, sports, etc. Move the mouse over one of them and you get more options within that option. When you click on one, you are given a more traditional list of sites that fall under that category. The site is visually appealing, sporting a wintry scene right now. I can't wait to see what kids think about it.

The most powerful technology resources

Wesley Fryer's Moving at the Speed of Creativity podcast the other day was the audio portion of a talk he gave to a group of teachers in a professional development workshop. It was called Blending Learning with Powerful Ingredients.

I don't always get around to listening to podcasts, but this is one I am very glad I did. He talked about not just doing the same old thing that we have always been doing. It isn't enough to use technology to tell students to read pages 6-20 and answer questions 1-10. I've talked about this before, and it is something that I really struggle with in my own practice.

The other thing I took away from the podcast was Wesley's picks as the most powerful tech tools or resources. After asking the participants to come up with their own lists, he talked about del.icio.us, flickr, voicethread, and skype. While I use all four extensively, I haven't used them as much with students as I would like. I have used flickr extensively, but that is about it. I need to think about how I can use the others more.

Anyway, it was a great podcast. You have probably listened to it already, but if not, check it out!

This just keeps getting stranger and stranger!

I downloaded task-gnome and have been playing around with it on my PCLinux machine. I was happy -- until I tried to print. It wouldn't work. Not at all. No matter what I did. So, I went back to KDE. It wouldn't print. No matter what I did. Finally, I tried what I did last time: I plugged it in on the Ubuntu machine. It printed fine. Then I plugged it back in on the PCLinux machine with KDE, and it printed fine. I switched to a gnome session, and it printed fine.

If there was some rhyme or reason to this, it would be a lot easier to take. As it is, it is very frustrating! But I guess as long as I have my Ubuntu machine around, I'll be able to "fix" my printing problems.

Today was the big day

My son-in-law received his Masters in Nursing today. I've been busy all day with graduation, dinner, and family festivities. It's been a great day!

MacArthur Series on Digital Media and Learning

Clarence pointed the way to some great books on digital media and learning published by MIT Press and made available freely online thanks to a grant by the MacArthur Foundation. (He got there by way of danah, by the way!)

The available titles are:

Civic Life Online: Learning How Digital Media Can Engage Youth Current Volume

Digital Media, Youth, and Credibility

The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning

Digital Youth, Innovations, and the Unexpected

Learning Race and Ethnicity: Youth and Digital Media

Youth, Identity, and Digital Media

and all are available for free online!

I look forward to reading some of these over the break. What I saw with a quick glance today looked really interesting.

Thanks, but...

Miguel read about my concerns about getting used to KDE and found an answer to my problem: PCLinuxOS Gnome. I immediately downloaded it and ran the Live CD. I love the look and feel of it. I guess I really am a Gnome person at heart! Thanks, Miguel, for the tip.

Now for the "but". It found my printer, but it couldn't download the firmware for it from the Internet. This was the same problem I had when I tried to run Linux Mint. I am sure there is an easy solution, but I don't have time this morning before work to figure it out.

I have to think that the problem is something in Gnome. But I don't understand why this has to happen. If PCLinixOS with KDE can find my printer and set it up and let me print (most of the time!), why can't PCLinux OS with Gnome? Is this the real reason people like KDE better? Does it just work better than Gnome?

I will admit that after only a few days I am getting used to KDE. I got rid of the blue desktop, which is my real objection to it. (I know. That doesn't seem like a real reason to like or not like something, but if I wanted blue, I could log on to my Windows partition!) But I want to give PCLinux with Gnome a try, so I will play around with the printer problem tonight.

Another convert... almost

My son-in-law got his final papers finished and should receive his MA on Friday. He had gotten used to running his computer off the Knoppix Live CD. I gave him a PCLinux disk to look at, and he has been playing around with it. He really likes it. I think that he is going to end up having to put a new hard drive in his machine, but I think it will have PCLinux on it when he does. At least I hope so!

Problem solved -- for now

Well, a good night's rest didn't help my printing problem. I tried all the same things this morning that I had tried last night. Nothing. So then I decided that I needed to be sure that the printer itself wasn't the problem. I plugged it into the Ubuntu machine, and it printed fine. I plugged it back into the PCLinux machine, and it worked fine. Huh? Oh well... for the moment I can print. Let's see how long it lasts!

Ah, the frustration of it all...

So tonight I went to print. And I couldn't. Yesterday I could and tonight I can't. I can't do a test page. I can't print my document. I uninstalled and reinstalled the printer and still can't print anything. I rebooted the computer. Nothing.

This is my frustration with Linux, of whatever variety I am running: Sometimes it just stops working for absolutely no reason that I can determine. I am going to bed now. Maybe the computer is as tired as I am right now. At least I hope that's it!

PCLinuxOS -- and a question

It is interesting to me that my switch to PCLinux from Ubuntu has generated more comments than my announcement about using Ubuntu did. And, if I am to be honest, it has generated more comments than anything I have written in awhile. Guess that means that the PCLinux folks are out there promoting the operating system they really love.

And I can see why they love it. The only problem I am having is making the switch to KDE. I know some people like it better than Gnome, but I am still trying to find my way around it. I got Boinc and Seti up and running yesterday; that was the last piece I needed to get in place.

This morning, though, my flash drive, which was mounted yesterday and removed safely last night, wouldn't mount until I rebooted. None of my flash drives would mount. Is this something i should expect to have happen? Is it going to go south the way it did with Ubuntu and I'll end up not being able to mount them even after rebooting? I would be grateful for any ideas you PCLinux folks might have.

A clarification

I received a comment asking what laptop wouldn't run Ubuntu. I have to say that I ran Ubuntu on that laptop for almost a year. It was fine. It was only after an upgrade to Gutsy that things started not working. It is an Acer Aspire 5100. And, as another comment indicated, I think it has to do with the 64-bit thing.

As for PCLinux, so far I am happy. Except I had a Skype conference call this morning that didn't go well; I couldn't hear them at all. Was it PCLinux? Probably not. But it is curious that it happened now. I was very happy to see that Flash works perfectly, though. I didn't have to log in to Windows to check the latest updates to the course materials.

We'll see what I think in a week or two or a month or two. I still have Ubuntu Gutsy on my other machine, so I don't feel totally disloyal!

A switch

My husband has been at it for some time now, but it wasn't until Miguel talked about it that I was ready to give it a try. PCLinuxOS 2007, that is. I finally switched from Ubuntu to PCLinux on one of my laptops.

Ever since I upgraded to Gutsy Gibbon, I have had trouble getting it to read my flash drives, and Flash wouldn't work right. It was a major pain because of the course development I am doing that is produced in Flash. I had to log into my Windows partition to edit it. (That is all I ever use Windows for anymore!).

So today I backed up everything on my Linux partition and tried live CDs of Linux Mint and PCLinux 2007. I really wanted Mint to work, but it wouldn't find my wireless card. PCLinux found it right out of the box. So I got everything running the way I wanted with the Live CD and then installed it. It was so easy. Everything was exactly the way I wanted it as soon as the installation was finished.

I am sorry to leave Ubuntu, but I need for things to work. For me on this machine, PCLinux is it. I am still running Ubuntu on my other laptop. Everything works much better there. So for now, I am content to leave it that way. But if I have trouble in the future, you can be sure I will try PCLinux on it, too.

Some things to think about

Thanks to Vicky at Cool Cat, I discovered Teen Literacy Tips. The site is great, full of things that I could have used in my old job, things that I am still vitally interested in. As I was looking around today, I found a post called Education Quotes to Peruse and Ponder. One of them seems to speak to what all of us edubloggers believe:

“Who dares to teach must never cease to learn.” — John Cotton Dana

Nothing terrible new there, of course, but it reminded me of how important my blogging and reading of blogs is to me as an educator. It is how I learn. Would I learn if I didn't blog? Probably. I hope so, at least. But what I learned would be different. It would be textbook based. It would be theory more than practice. And that wouldn't be bad. But it would definitely be different.

And another quote:

“An educational system isn’t worth a great deal if it teaches young people how to make a living but doesn’t teach them how to make a life.” — Source Unknown

This goes back to something I wrote about a few days ago, something that Doug brought to my attention, something that Gerald Bracey wrote about: whether or not schools should be in the business of preparing young people for jobs. Maybe this is the approach I should have taken in my post: It is OK for schools to prepare students for jobs, but they should first prepare them for life.

There are other great thougts in the post. Which ones speak to you?

Reality or fantasy

Richard MacManus' post reporting on the faberNovell Consulting research paper on social networks was quite interesting. I am not into Facebook or MySpace, but I know people on both networks. I had never thought of them in the terms that faberNovell did. What struck me was MacManus' statement that:

Facebook is viewed as "real identity", whereas MySpace is "fanntasized identity"!

As I said, I am not overly familiar with either network, but these characterizations don't seem too far off.

What I found interesting was my reaction to the idea of a fantasized identity. Granted, I am quite old (57 at last count!) and stodgy, but I can't imagine going on MySpace and creating a fantasized identity. I don't know how I would even go about it. And if I wanted a fantasized identity, why not do it on one of the many online games that are out there, where you are expected to take on an identity within the game?

I think about my desire for transparency in my blogging and in my life in general. I guess am not a good candidate for MySpace. But then, I am not sure I am a good candidate for Facebook, either.

There is a slideshow of the faberNovell paper in MacManus' post. Check it out.

A circuitous route

I am amazed by the things I can learn online every day. But I am even more fascinated by the path to that knowledge. Take, for example, this post on Read/Write Web by Richard MacManus. I got to it from this post on Column Two, which I got to from a post on elearningpost. I got to elearning post when I added the flake to my Pageflakes page. I was looking at Pageflakes today because of all the recent hype about the Teacher Edition. Although I had seen posts about it before, today I saw it in Ewan McIntosh's del.icio.us links, which appear in my Bloglines account along with his blog posts. I decided to check it out, to see what the difference was between the Teacher's Edition and the "regular" edition. And so started a chain of links that brought me to an interesting post about Facebook and MySpace, which I will talk about in a minute.

Today's post... just barely!

I have been sitting here for half an hour trying to decide if it is better to have a lame post than no post at all today. I finally decided that lame was better than nothing. And actually, I want to talk about something that isn't lame at all: TESOL's Electronic Village Online 2008.

Every year about this time I plug it, and this year is no exception. Check out the call for participation. It gives you a basic idea of the sessions that are being offered this year.

In praise of Knoppix Live CDs

At 7:15 am today I was frantically downloading Knoppix to create a live CD. After I got it, I stuck the disk in my son-in-law's dead computer. It booted right up in Knoppix. After mounting the hard drive, I was able to access his files. We put the ones he needs right now on a thumb drive and transferred them to another computer. Over the weekend I hope to get all his files off the machine. He was good to go when I went to work at 8:45.

If you don't have Knoppix Live CD, get one! It can save you. And it gives you a chance to try Linux, too. You just might find that you like it.

A friendly reminder

My son-in-law has one final paper to finish before he gets his MA on December 14. He had just finished the next to the last project and was turning his attention to the paper when his computer crashed. With many of the articles he still needs to read for the paper on it. We are at the moment trying to get back into the computer and, hopefully, will be successful. If not, we will all start trying to duplicate his search and find the articles again.

But to the reminder -- to myself as much as to anyone else -- please back up your stuff! You never know when things will come crashing down around you!

I know I start out with good intentions and then get busy and forget. I know that's what happened with my son-in-law. Don't let it happen to you!

Mounds and mounds of paperwork

In my new job I find I am suffering from too much paperwork. I know that I am fairly lucky not to have had to deal with all kinds of paperwork before, but that doesn't make me feel much better about having to deal with it now. Right now I feel like my teaching isn't as important as all the paperwork -- at least not to anyone but my students and me.

There is no way to avoid doing it, and I understand the value of it as a way to satisfy funders if nothing else. But I feel like I am shortchanging my students because I am taking time from instruction to test and then test again, and then I have to document all that testing. Then I have to fill out a ton of other forms on top of that and on top of all the other forms we have to fill out throughout the term. Or at least that's how it feels.

Since this is my first time doing all this, I am sure my reaction is a little extreme. In time I should be more used to it and take it in stride. But for now, I am really feeling frustrated and harried.

There must be a better way to do some of this, but I haven't been here long enough to have an idea what it would be. Believe me when I tell you I intend to find out!

Professional development

Miguel's posts usually make me think, and this one on professional development was no exception. I was struck, though, by his parting comment:

In the meantime, I'm glad that I embarked on the blogging adventure 2.5 years ago. I'm much further along than if I'd limited my conversations to traditional venues and people who I hope will embrace a different way of learning.

This ties, again, to what I have been thinking. Reflecting is good. Connecting is good. But blogging is better. What I have learned, the people I have "met" and interacted with since January, 2005, truly amaze me. There is no other way that I could possible have learned as much as I have through blogging and reading blogs.

I have taken three grad classes since I started blogging. None of them made me think as much as blogging has. None exposed me to the variety of thought and opinion as blogging has. Blogging nourishes me as a professional in a way that nothing else seems to. It inspires and challenges me on a daily basis.

My goal for the rest of this year

I know; it's almost over. But in looking at the sidebar on this blog, I saw that this has not been a great year from blogging. At least not for me. So I am determined to finish this year up the way I started blogging almost 3 years ago -- with a post a day. If I can do that and throw in a couple extra posts when time permits, I won't ahve the msot dismal blogging year ever. It still won't be great, but it will be better than last eyar. So I am going to give it a shot and hope that it carries over into 2008, too.

The need for creativity

Coming after my last post, I was interested to read Barbara Ganley's post in which she says:

...I am dismayed that our institutions of higher learning place such little value on creativity-centered courses except for majors in the arts. If a student has 36 courses to take over the four years of college, how many of them are creative-intensive? And yet, what could be more important than building their ability to think and act creatively?

I don't think it is just colleges that are ignoring creativity. I see children doing senseless, mindless worksheets that don't mean anything to them. I see my own students not encouraged to be creative or really interact with what they are learning more often than I would like to admit.

I know that I as a human being am only happy when I am creative. I used to sew and bake. Now I blog and develop courses. And I am happy.

Barbara goes on to say:

In slowing down by moving more deeply into reflection, connection and creativity , my students have gotten in touch with parts of themselves that they haven't seen in years while coming out of themselves to examine the world around them...

Reflection is, in itself, a creative process, I think. So is connection, really. The "product" may not be tangible, but it is very real.

She says more that I need to think about and comment on. But that is for tomorrow, I hope. My thanks to Barbara for helping me think about this.

Preparing young people for jobs

Doug over at Borderland raises an interesting question. Actually, he only relays the question from Gerald Bracey:

Is job preparation what schools should be about?

Despite all the movements to the contrary, I really believe that schools -- K-12, at least -- are not about preparation of people for jobs. They are about the preparation of people for life. Or at least they should be. Work is only a small part of who we are as people. And young people need the opportunity to discover who they are. If schools are focused on preparing students for 21st century jobs, when do young people get to even think about who they are and what interests them?

On the other hand, we do need to make sure that young people have an ability to think and reason and that they can read and write. I think that they need to be encouraged to develop their creativity. And to me, those are job skills.

One of my favorite stories

I was reading my Bloglines feeds when I ran across this story, which made it into my email box several years ago. It is about retiring in Mexico. My husband and I had received it and then, apparently, deleted it but finally found it again about 6 months ago. And today I found it here in a post at Common Craft.

It is important to live life as we go along, not waiting for some magical future. That's a decision my husband and I made 36 years ago, and we have tried to live by it. Our lives have not been comfortable in a traditional sense, but we wouldn't change it for anything.

Reflecting on practice

Reading Adult Education and Technology, I came across a list that the author had gotten from Vicki Davis at Cool Cat Teacher. There were 20 questions in the list, mostly relating to the use of technology by teachers and students. There was one question that I found especially interesting:

19. Have you changed anything significant about ALL of the courses you are teaching THIS YEAR?

I have always wondered how a teacher could just do the same thing over and over again every year. I had teachers like that in high school back in the dark ages, and I have seen teachers like that recently. But I don't get it. Even if you teach the same classes over and over again (Especially if you teach the same classes over and over again!), your students and your classes are never exactly the same from one year to the next. They have different needs and different interests. Why would a teacher not want to tap into those differences each year?

Another interesting question was this one:

14. Is more than 50% of your content relevant "to life?"

As an adult educator, I would like to think that everything that goes on in my class will help students get through life. I wonder, though, if that is true. It probably is true in some long-term existential way, but I am not so sure my students would agree if I were to ask them.

Teaching is not an easy job. If we are to do it well, we must consider the needs of our students, their interests and abilities, and their reasons for studying. We must reflect on our own practice and continue to learn ourselves so we can improve what it is we do and how we do it. The Internet offers teachers a chance to learn and to reflect. All we have to do is make a little effort.

So what's the problem?

I was excited a couple weeks ago to read Konrad Glogowski's post on How to Grow a Blog. I loved the graphic he used with his students to get them thinking about their blogs. I wanted to use it to come up with a new plan for this blog. But somehow or other, it hasn't happened. I can't seem to come up with a plan.

I think this has something to do with the fact that I am still making the transition from Intensive English program instructor to adult educator. I am, in some ways I think, still fighting the transition a little. I can't quite see myself in this new role -- even though it is one I have taken on before.

I want this blog to speak to who I am and what I am doing now. I want to use it to learn more about teaching my adult students. I want to use it to reflect on my practice. But I can't quite figure out yet how to do that.

I have been looking for blogs by adult educators because I want to read about their practice. I know that my blog reading has always inspired and shaped my posts here, so this seems like a necessary step. But I have not had much luck finding Adult Ed blogs. Any suggestions?