A full day and I need some help

Tomorrow promises to be a full day of heavy thinking and not because I'm getting in a stack of papers. As mentioned earlier, I'm taking on that hour-long workshop after school to introduce some colleagues to the potential of web 2.0. I'm ok there.

However, I'm also scheduled to participate in a release day with two other teachers to begin putting the finishing touches on our school's honor's option for our heterogeneously-grouped 10th grade classes. We've already laid out the skeleton (dates, general overview, some specific content areas) on a wiki I set up in the fall. Now it's down to the details so it can implemented equally by the five sophomore English teachers (me included!). Basically we need to illustrate on Thursday what this thing will look like in the classroom. That's where the call for help comes in.

Philosophically, I believe that offering an honors option will best serve all our students in the non-tracked classes. Too often I think we have neglected the higher achieving students in these classes, typically because they stand out among their peers. We need to do more to challenge them, just as if they were in an honors course. Forget the growing pressure from parents and colleges to pad transcripts with AP and honors courses, I'm talking about pedagogically-sound instruction that reaches as many students as possible. However, just what an honors curriculum should look like is a matter of debate. Can a student receive rigorous instruction and challenging assignments in a class that also contains some lower achieving students? Do the socializing benefits of heterogeneity outweigh the inequity that can arise in such settings? Technology must be part of the equation, but exactly how?

Right now, it's an experiment in planning stages. I have been unable to find too many examples of schools who offer a similar challenge. The details we work out tomorrow, putting the policies and procedures in place for next year, are going to help determine just how successful this can be. We need to be ready for the difficulties that will arise, and be careful not to overtax the teachers in the course to the detriment of other students. It's a vexing challenge. But one I am willing to undertake.

That being said, I'd love to hear from some others in the edublogosphere about this issue and move this discussion beyond my building. The outline for English 10 is all spelled out here for anyone (hint, hint) to peruse. Suggestions for going forward? Thoughts on our approach? ...

Nailing down the professional day

This week is the one-hour workshop I volunteered way back when to present to my department. Now it seems like I have to move beyond the "here are some things I can do" stage to the "here's what I am going to do."

First, I have lots of good feedback on my original intentions, which Brian suggested may be too much to undertake in one hour. Point well taken. Essentially, I want the teachers in the department who are still unaware of the possibilities of web 2.0 tools to glimpse what is possible without being too overwhelmed. It has to be practical for the classroom, without being forced down anyone's throats. If the teachers leave Thursday's session wanting to experiment more, than I've achieved my objective.

Another thing came up as well when I posted Karl Fisch's Did You Know? video to my students and asked for their reactions. I, too, plan to show the video to the teachers to kick off a discussion of what we as educators are facing in the future. Then, I want to hand out some excerpts of what my students said in response to my posting on the English 10 blog. Two birds with one stone: modeling one possible classroom use of a blog and presenting valuable content to the participants. As one of my students wrote "The only thing is that as of right now, it seems as though people are being taught how to use the technology that we have, but the problem is that the technology keeps on getting even more improved so people have to keep on learning more and new things about new developments in technology. The only thing that I believe that we can do is just stay on top of what is going on in the world with the technology being used and fully understand and be capable of using it when we have to use it."

"...stay on top of what's going on in the world ... and be capable of using it when we have to use it..." He's absolutely right because there will be times when we have to use it, and if now's not the time, I don't know when it will be. For English teachers, playing around with a blog is the most accessible entry point into the read/write web. I can show a few good examples of classroom blogs to show different ways they are used. The more technical stuff, the pedagogy behind blogging, can come later when teachers have a better sense of exactly what a blog is.

I think that will be enough.

However, I'll keep on deck a Google Earth Lit trip file for Night, which shows Elie Wiesel's journey into the Holocaust. It's a great visual and - just as important - presents another easy entry point into the classroom.

I'll keep you posted.

I have had a most rare vision

Near the end of A Midsummer Night's Dream, the brilliantly foolish Nick Bottom awakes and finds himself all alone in the woods. Still in the midst of a dream, he calls out for his mates and hears no response. Then it hits him. Something strange and unusual has happened; he has had a "most rare vision."

That's where we were in class today in: "Bottom's Dream."

Most of the period we looked at Bottom's delightfully bumbling soliloquy, another of Shakespeare's little gems tucked away at the end of Act IV, scene 1. In past years, I've spent little time looking at these lines and, instead, glossed over them, maybe mentioning the reference to I Corinthians 2:9 that Bottom screws up so wonderfully. However, today, when the kids walked into F14, they were assigned a bit of updating. Put Bottom's speech into language they could better understand. (I never use the word translate when discussing Shakespeare because it is, of course, still English; it would only need translating to say French or Sanskrit). Since Bottom is having a tough time coming up with the right words, maybe the students could relate. It turned into a nice, simple lesson.

I think every now and then I have to be reminded to slow down, spend some time on shorter pieces of text. Look closely at the writing. In this case, it's a master writer presenting a purposely garbled rendering of his ideas. It takes a little time to muddle through and appreciate. This isn't Shakespeare's crowning moment in the play, like some of the longer poetic speeches by Titania or Oberon. It's worth the time we spent on it today, though. With a deeper understanding of Bottom's take, we can better appreciate Theseus's more rational explanation at the opening of Act V. Once we get that out of the way, we can sit back and enjoy the play-within-a-play that Bottom and his mates perform for Theseus.

Just as important, the assignment allowed the students to get beyond Bottom's initial confusion, which I think is easily understood by any one who's ever woken from a powerful dream. The students wrote in their own words how Bottom wants his buddy Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream, otherwise no one will believe it. One student said it the best during our discussion when she said that something like Bottom's adventures with fairy queen Titania is so unbelievable that the only way for it to make sense to us (dare I say "mortals"?) is if it is put forth as fiction or literature.

Absolutely. Even Bottom knows that.

Secrets of success meme

A great thing about blogging and using other web 2.0 technology is the opportunity it offers to connect with people beyond my typical orbit. It happened again this week; Patrick tagged me to participate in my first meme. As a result, I also discovered that he and I have two more things in common: we both attended Syracuse University and have both been tagged for the first time. Anyway, the meme (which as far as I can tell, originated here) is:

"List the top 5 to 10 things that you do almost every day that help you to be
successful. They can be anything at all, but they have to be things that you do
at least 4 or 5 times every week. Anything less than that may be a hobby that
helps you out, but we are after the real day in and day out habits that help you
to be successful."

This is no easy task, and although I am delighted to be included, I still wonder who is to say that I even qualify as a success. And reflecting on what I've consciously done to make that so-called success happen poses even more of a challenge. Where to begin to look for signs of success? Case in point: when I began blogging here, I had the intention of using it as a way to explore reflections and thoughts on teaching with a focus on Literature Circles and like teaching methods. In some ways, I think I may have envisioned my undertaking much like the reflective journals I kept during my teacher prep program. Of course it has become something else entirely. But a success, or more broadly does it make me a successful teacher? Through blogging, I've learned quite a bit about teaching and the use of technology, which possibly could become part of a success equation. However, blogging is only a small part of my life. How about what I do in the classroom? Is that a success? Again, that's not an entire picture of me.

As I thought more about it, it struck me: why do I have to equate success with specific actions or tasks completed, like blogging or teaching? If I rely on such a performance-based criteria, then do I logically have to start thinking about whether there will be a time when I achieve a certain level proficiency that I can retire or be elected to some kind of hall of fame? That doesn't quite work. Looking at success in that vein, gives it more of a competitive flavor, or one that is measured by someone else's yardstick. This is what Patrick seems to be saying when wrote: "External definitions of success place such undue stress on us, but are often what derail us as we move through life."

So I haven't blogged in a while. I also haven't organized my classes in Literature Circle groups lately either. I value both those actions, but I also do not mean to imply that they are somehow the most important or telling criteria for which to judge overall success. I'm not exactly sure if there is a strictly defined set of criteria for success. Instead, this meme gave me an opportunity to simply reflect on what it is I do and how it is that I conduct my life. On some of my things listed there is a blurred line between habits and state of mind, but I think both are important to consider. So without any further rambling, the things I do (in no particular order) on a regular basis are:

1. make time for what I enjoy to do
2. think about how my actions, reactions, even impressions given out, are viewed by other people
3. ask questions of and talk to my colleagues about what they do
4. use my lunch break to laugh about nothing in particular with people who's company I enjoy
5. consciously think about how my students see their world, or at least the tiny part of their world of which I'm a part
6. get up early and have a cup of coffee and a relaxing few moments before starting my day (maybe this is more of a routine, but it is an important part of my day)
7. spend time to consider the "big picture" and how what I do and what I am asked to do is part of that
8. sit down for dinner with my family and not start eating until everyone (there's four of us) is at the table

Now that I've shared, I guess I need to tag some other fellow bloggers. Here goes...
Brian Grenier (who has been generous with advice and input on issues with which I'm grappling)
Nancy McKeand
Stephen Lazar
Tamara Eden

The Slowskis

Feeling a little bit slow and behind lately, which got me thinking...

One of my favorite commericals are those Comcast spots featuring the Slowskis, a pair of turtles struggling to survive in today's super fast world. Some of the spots are pretty funny. Sometimes I know just how those two turtles feel.

[By the way, I have no connection to Comcast except I subscribe to their cable channels and pay too much a month for it. In fact, I use DSL.]

Spring cleaning

Looks like I can't avoid it. I need to do some spring cleaning...

This week is April vacation. There are no papers to grade - they come in the Friday we get back. I need to plan some of the upcoming lessons, but don't expect that to take too much time. Three weeks away is the mini-workshop I'm planning for the department. Still plenty of time. More on that later.

Looks like I have a perfect opportunity to get my digital house in order. Several months ago I began my blogging experiment. I call it an experiment because it was undertaken with a specific purpose in mind: to expand my knowledge and learning about web 2.0 teaching and productivity tools. At this point, I consider it a success.

However, in that time, as I've come across dozens of nifty tools, I've also found that the resources connected to my learning are scattered to the winds. Much like a typical high school curriculum, little logic or reason binds these valuable ideas together in any meaningful way.

Let me see, first there's that wiki I set up which has a sizeable collection of resources, links, and information, including a few scattered recollections of what I've taught this year. Some of what's there is merely experimental, like incorporating a live feed into the page. Other stuff is under some broad headings. Despite its current random appearance, I'm thinking this may be the best place for a central clearinghouse, only because it provides the most potential for an organized structure. That being said, I need to rethink it's focus so the organization comes a little simpler.

Next, is my Google notebook with a smattering of interesting tidbits I've picked up along the way. Probably best if I simply go through it and move anything valuable over to the wiki. I have my del.icio.us account to keep track of interesting, worthwile sites I come across. Maybe I should incorporate an RSS feed of my del.icio.us findings right into the wiki? This is probably the easiest fix. And I have to remember, I began experimenting with Google notebook with an eye on requiring it as part of a yet-to-be-thought-up future research project for my students.

Ok, then there's my bloglines account. I love trolling through my blogrolls on a regular basis, but what has happened is I've clipped some of the feeds I've found carried meaningful entries worth referring back to in the future. They are in my clippings file which I haven't completely figured out the best use for. I've also marked some entries as "keep new." Now they sit in my blogroll, available whenever I skim the latest feeds. It looks like, they are needed now. Maybe I'll spend the time coming up with a summary of important ideas, and then categorize them on the wiki with links back to the original posts?

Well, that's a start. It just seems kind of overwhelming. Worthwhile, but overwhelming.

I didn't know if I knew...

Yesterday, my dad and I were chatting on the phone and he asked me if I had checked my e-mail. I hadn't, but called it up while we talked. It seems he had sent me an e-mail with an interesting link. He often sends me e-mails, usually jokes or links to the latest news from my hometown, but yesterday's e-mail contained a video he had received from a friend, and he was passing it along to about a dozen of his regular e-mail cohorts. It took about 10 seconds to log in and call it up while we talked. This was no joke, he said, but something he thought I'd find quite interesting.

It was Karl Fisch's Did You Know? video.

The fact that it came from my dad, who just turned 70 and retired as a teacher in 1999, gave the video a different kind of impact. My dad was, in effect, asking me: Did I know? How great is that? Karl has blogged about the video and how it has become viral. This was a perfect example of that. And thanks to Karl's ubiquitous video, my dad and I had a nice conversation about the changing world we live in, one in which it is still possible to be shocked and surprised about where technology has taken us. [As an aside, the video was linked here, a place I am unfamiliar with.]

I told my dad that I had seen the video before, and I even gave him the background on how it came about, which is something I only know because I started regularly reading The Fischbowl along with about four dozen other edublogs in the last three months. He was interested.

During our talk, I also told him about my most recent posting on the English 10 homework blog, where I asked my students to view the video and reflect on it. So I sent him the link to that post and asked him to read what my 10th graders thought when I asked them, Did you know? I could feel myself getting excited as I recounted the story of the video and explained how I had begun experimenting and implementing many different web 2.0 tools. So he read their thoughts and sent me back an e-mail commenting on the perceptive insights he encountered. The only thing that would have made this flat world tale more tidy, would have been if he posted his comments on the blog, triggering a conversation with one of my students. Still, the entire episode is energizing and another example of the many different sides our flat world can have.

On a personal side, my first year of teaching started the September after he retired. Like me, he too switched careers and took up teaching around age 30. He's retained a strong interest in my career, but yesterday's exchange was the first time he and I have shared such a solid connection related to actually hands-on teaching. Chalk it up to another positive from our ever-growing technology.

I thought I knew before, but now I guess I know even better.

Watching my students think this all through

Over at the English 10 homework blog, I posted Karl Fisch's Did you know? video. It was a break from the regular posts relating to A Midsummer Night's Dream. Here's what I asked the students:

After viewing this video, consider this: Web technology is transforming how we communicate, and it is opening up countless opportunities for the collaboration, discussion, and sharing of ideas... the potential is almost limitless. Such social networking has powerful potential and will be a major part of the world that you will be living and working in. We need to be ready to survive and thrive in that world. How can educators, like me, better prepare you for such a future? What kinds of skills will you need to be successful in a rapidly changing world like this?

Here's a sampling of what I got - and am still getting:

"It doesn't take skill to press a button to park your car. In my opinion, thats how everything will be in the future;You press a button, and it works.I think we should take environmental classes for the future. We should learn how to save fuel, prevent pollution, and save energy. That is how we can protect and advance our future. That is our best preparation."

"Sometimes it takes a video like this one to clearly put things into perspective, and realize there are billions of people out there who are more advanced than we are. I think that the best thing educators can do is encourage people to open their eyes, and motivate tomorrow’s leaders to want to make a difference. And motivate people to want to learn, and be more tolerant of other cultures."

"Although I think the world is changing so fast that it may be difficult to keep up, I also think that things such as doing blog postings, like these, help for us to learn how to communicate with others, and learn from others without actually seeing and talking to them. It is important for us to learn how to learn without someone saying and feeding us information."

"No one really knows what the new technologies are going to be in the future, I think we are just going that have to wait and see, and then learn about them when the time comes. I feel that maybe if technology gets more advance then people are going to get lazy, but also there may be people that can learn from it and get smarter, because that is what it should be used for."

"How can you teach kids about something that hasn’t happened yet or hasn't even been created yet? Technology has been developing fast but some things are self-learnable. Like Ipods and cell phones, we never had to have a class in school to learn how to use them."

I'm not really sure what I expected from student responses. But one thing that struck me is the nonchalance at which they approached the ever changing world. Should they be more concerned about what those changes will mean 10, 20 years from now? Or maybe they're living in a world so conditioned to continual change, one in which during their short lives they've already witnessed what to them are significant shifts. They can probably remember when not everyone had a cell phone or an Ipod. To me, a digital immigrant, I'm overwhelmed at the numbers that say China has more honors students than we have students. These new digital tools are exciting, especially for someone who was a junior in high school the year the computer mouse was first introduced. While I want to embrace them and look for ways to change what I've been doing, the students are possibly in a better place. They don't have as many comfortable habits to break. Maybe I should have asked the question differently, turned it back on the students. Instead of what we educators can do to get you ready, how about what are you, the student, going to do to be ready?

Are they ready? Am I ready?

Good news: I've been given the chance to experiment

Some good news across my e-mail inbox this afternoon. Branford High School is one of 13 districts in the state chosen for a computer assisted writing and testing grant. It was also announced here.

Details are still coming in, but the focus revolves around piloting online writing evaluation and feedback software. I helped write Branford's grant application, which means I should have at my disposal - hopefully soon - a set of classroom laptops, a laptop cart, and funding access to other related technological goodies. It's truly a special opportunity for my students, and me, to further experiment with and implement in the classroom the use of numerous web 2.0 tools.

Stay tuned.

Stepping out, putting my money where my blog is

Ok. So I finally, after weeks of agonizing and reflecting, I took the step. For five months, I've used this forum to write about my discovery of web 2.0 technologies, about what vast potential exists, and about what I can and should be doing next. Well, next is now.

Today I walked into the principal's office and volunteered to present a one-hour after school presentation to the English department on some of these digital tools available to us. Our contract requires we participate in 10 hours of after school professional development, and we were scheduled for round four of our year-long initiative to continually review varied in-class literacy strategies. We've been down that road before and some of my colleagues were growing leery.

The workshop is not for another two weeks, which includes a week of April vacation, but I have begun to brew up some ideas about how to go about it. For months I've been making note of the excellent resources popping up all over the place. Patrick Higgins has a great web 2.0 resource wiki. Brian at Bump on the Blog likewise has a great resource wiki and it seems has even found some success inspiring novice teachers to "implement and experiment." That's encouraging.

I'm going to start pretty basic. For one thing, I don't want to overwhelm anyone in the short hour I have. And second, I'd like this session to lead to further professional development, rather than be an eye-rolling session that shouts out the latest and greatest tech toys. My goal has always been that we teachers need to use these tools to enhance professional growth and to better focus our instruction in a manner that best helps our students learn. One of my biggest fears is that teachers will immediately ask the question: when am I supposed to find time to do this, between grading papers, planning units, dealing with parents, etc...? There's never enough time. This isn't about time for something new, it's about something new to help us better use our time.

With that being said, I have a rough agenda sketched out for the afternoon, but am open to any feedback:

• Show Karl Fisch's (now viral) video "What if...?"
• Discussion/introduction to 21st Century skills and demands
  
• Comparison of web 1.0 to web 2.0
• Demonstrate Google Earth and Sketchup - use Globe Theatre model and London map as example
  
• What is a blog? - introduction to blogger
  
• How can blogs be used in the classroom? - show examples...
• What's next?
  

Am I on the right track? I tend to think many of the teachers who will attend the session have little experience incorporating digital tools into the classroom beyond using e-mail. I chose Google Earth and Sketchup up because it seems to be an accessible entry point to the true power of the Internet. The same for blogger. On the one hand it looks so elementary, but on the other hand it will mostly be new information to many of them.

What is the best entry point for teachers like that? Should I take another tact? Like maybe get everyone in front of a computer and sign them up for a blogger account? It comes back again to that nagging fear: will I somehow turn teachers off from implementing and experimenting with what I truly believe are vital educational tools? I hope not.

photo credit: First Step by roujo on Flickr

This just in: New 'trend' detected in classrooms

My principal just sent around an interesting article from the Sacramento Bee (free registration required to read) about a teacher, Dylan Holcomb, who is using, among other tools, Google Earth and blogs to enhance his students' learning in English class. It is worth reading, and it strikes me as one of the few news pieces which portrays these web 2.0 tools in a positive, innovative light, rather than as a warning siren of a murky online community, ripe with lurking predators.

I'm wondering, though, is there a bit of a disconnect between the innovators like Dylan and those whose charge it is to lead our school districts into the 21st Century? The article quotes one superintendent who, with a wonderful sense of ironic understatement, categorically declares: "There is definitely a trend in the educational community at large of using the Internet in the classroom." Yes. That's one way to say it. However, is that really what we're talking about here? If we want Boards of Education to fund our efforts in the classroom, we have to spread the word that 21st Century skills means more than just installing a digital projector in every classroom. Otherwise, it just becomes a different way to show a movie.

The bottom line is that the only way for such changes to become truly embedded in the educational system is for teachers, like Dylan, to take on leadership roles. The article states that he taught a packed workshop for his district's teachers, showing them digital tools, including everything "from sites to help generate surveys to free podcasts by professors at UC Berkeley and Massachusetts Institute of Technology." Numerous examples abound about teachers leading the change, including most recently by Dana, who presented to her faculty how to incorporate the use of wikis in the classroom.

I'd like to tell you all about how I, too, have been a guiding force at my school, spreading the message of the web 2.0 shift to the masses. I'd like to. I just can't. And I can't because I still haven't completely grown comfortable fully utilizing these tools in my classroom. Maybe I'm slower or less confident than some other teachers, or maybe I fear too much the overwhelmed effect too many teachers get from sitting in on professional development about the latest "new" thing. The most I can talk about are several meaningful discussions with a handful of other teachers who feel the same way I do, and who have begun to experiment with what I consider the first steps - blogs and wikis.

I'd like to start to do more. I'd like to take the lead of educators like Dylan and Dana (not to mention the rest of the all-stars in my Bloglines blogroll) and share this potential for meaningful change. Stay tuned.

Lover's advice and baby step blogging

Just got finished reading some of the comments on the English 10 blog, where we are currently sharing some ideas about Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. In this latest assignment, the students wrote advice letters to one of the four lovers in the play - Lysander, Hermia, Helena, or Demetrius. They wrote some great stuff. I can't imagine that if they had written these assignments on paper and handed them in, they'd be as thoughtful or would they have made some of the deep personal connections to the characters that I enjoyed reading on the blog. It makes a difference that they know their classmates are reading each other. The assignment does not rise to the level of a formal essay, so posting them as comments on a blog are perfect. For now.

My next professional step is to begin planning for more embedded and regular blogging in my classroom. The comments on my blog posting are fine, but as I'm coming to discover, another effective way to improve student writing is through the use of regular blogging. I plan to try. My bloglines roll is full of worthy edubloggers to emulate and continue learning from.

Meanwhile, I'm still inching my students along this journey with me. Last week, Bill at Shakespeare Teacher noticed our work. And it got me thinking, what a great opportunity to remind my students about the potential of these web 2.0 tools that we have only just begun to use. These are baby steps, based on what I see other educators doing, but necessary ones. As part of any web 2.0 curriculum, there should be emphasis that what we write and post online can be read - in fact it is being read - by people all over the world. My students this year have only just begun discovering this. Bill's post is a nice reminder of how, even as a 10th grade high school English class, our voices can be heard beyond F14.

I see their knavery: starting A Midsummer Night's Dream...

So we began our unit on A Midsummer Night's Dream. I decided, this year, to begin by giving the students a summary of the first half of the play - in my words - as their first taste of the thing. They read it and I told them that they probably would be confused, especially seeing several of those names poached from Greek mythology - Theseus, Hippolyta, Demetrius, Hermia, Lysander, even Helena. In past years, I've given them this summary and asked them to write a paper in which they came up with their own creative ending to the complicated love mess. That usually produced some fun writing. As I decided earlier, I'm going to ask students to post their endings as comments on the class blog.

Today, instead, was about introducing the play. This means undertaking what I call advance ops: jotting down notes on background, engaging in general discussion about the play and Shakespeare (the kids get a kick out of the fact that I visited Stratford-upon-Avon during my honeymoon. One memorable comment from the front row: "Wow, I'm surprised your wife still wanted to marry you." But it was said with a smile), and a light walk through of the plot and characters. As expected, the strongest responses from the students came when we went over Nick Bottom, who gets saddled with the head of an ass. For sophomores, just hearing that word is enough to draw some laughter. And why not? It's funny, and I think Shakespeare would agree. It led to quite a lively and energetic discussion, a prelude to what I hope is a lively and energetic experience with the play.

To help frame my instruction, I gave the students the three essential questions of the unit:

1. How do we act when we are in love? Why?
2. Which emotions “from the heart” are the strongest? Which reveal our true selves?
3. How effectively does Shakespeare use humor to make his ideas known about human behavior?

What surprised me about our discussion was the idea about emotions "from the heart." To me, that is one of the most important concepts about Midsummer. Shakespeare creates these characters - especially the lovers - and puts them in situations in which their emotions are exposed. They fluctuate between love, hate, and jealousy with relative ease. Albeit they are under the influence of a magic spell, we can still relate to their inconstancy. This can be a key entry point for teenagers, who live in a world of shifting and mysterious emotions.

For the next lesson, I plan to start with the Act I, scene ii, when the mechanicals first meet to plan their rehearsals. I got this idea from the excellent resource book Shakespeare Set Free, which apparently is useful not just for Midsummer. Todd is using it for Macbeth. Anyway, in an essay in the book, Michael Tolaydo suggests starting a Shakespeare play in the classroom with a large group scene, especially one that contains language more approachable to the students. "This approach," Tolaydo writes in "Three-Dimensional Shakespeare," "generates and puts into play the necessary tools and skills to examine those more difficult and complex portions of the play, while it supplies students with self-esteem and confidence in their own ideas and opinions." (28) I've never taught it this way, but I am eager to try it out. This scene fits the bill Tolaydo describes, and to me is one of the most humorous scenes in the entire play. Bottom's insistence on playing all the parts and his repeated malapropisms set the stage for what's coming, his impending ass-head and the incompetence of the play performance at the end. I hope I can keep the kids with me that long.

photo credit: Bottom with the Faires in a costume sketch from Charles Kean's scrapbook for a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Shelfmark ART Vol. d48. from the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Spreading the word, looking for suggestions

Ok, here I go again...

It seems I'm not the only one grappling with how to start taking some of those next steps and spread the word about the best uses of these web 2.0 tools we all blog about. Dan, a math teacher in California, volunteered himself to research and suggest an educational application to bring to his district that will be easy to use for teachers of all digital proficiency abilities and interest levels. It seems some of those in his department suggested the school invest in some PD time on how to update HTML files and upload them to the school server. To do this, they also suggested buying more server space and some publishing software. That's when Dan rightly stepped in. And now he's taking a day off to put together some web 2.0 solutions. He's looking for some input. The best I could do was suggest he consider some of the ideas about blogging that have been bandied about recently. Based on what I've read of his blog in the last several months, Dan will surely come up with something that is both well thought out AND well-written. Check back to see.

Along a similar vein, Eric is in search of the killer EdApp, and he's gotten quite a bit of feedback from some people who know what they're doing. A lot more than I do, that's for sure. I also like the wiki resource that Patrick Higgins has put together for a workshop along these same lines. I'm glad guys like that are on the job.

All of this has kept me thinking about how these next steps are going to be taken. Finding that killer EdApp is a laudable goal, but I wonder if is reasonable to think there is just one. One of the defining characteristics of web 2.0 is the inter-connectivity between users, a dynamic consumption of information, and the remixing of data from different sources.

That seems to imply that even if there was a killer app, the very nature of our changing digital world is that the tasks and tools that it would provide could and should be reused and remixed as user needs change and evolve. Thus, today's killer app is tomorrows piece of the larger puzzle. I think that's how we need to approach our task of making such instructional tools more widespread in our classrooms. My immediate goal is to bring to F14 a more authentic writing model for my students, and it's looking more and more like it needs to start with some form of class wide blogging.

I'll get on that as soon as I get my Midsummer unit ready and under control.

Starting to think about where to begin with a batch of digitally challenged teachers

I'm not exactly where this all started, but I've been hashing out the subtleties of using blogs and blogging in the classroom. There's been some good conversation about just what is the best use of blogs by students as part of a class. Clay has smartly drawn a fine distinction in the pedagogy of using blogs in class, separating them into two different types, for two different purposes. Others have pointed to earlier portfolio assessment models as a place to look for further ideas for refinement. Check out Clay's post and ensuing comments) Essentially, it comes down to what we, as teachers, believe will best serve our students. All this talk has prompted me to look back on my short journey of discovery this year. If we are going to ask - expect - demand - other teachers to embrace this new technology and use it to promote 21st century skills, where is the best place to start with a batch of digitally illiterate teachers? Or even those with basic digital skills who are still unaware of the full educational potential of web 2.0. I can't imagine that my path would be the most effective model in which to bring others along.

Let me step back in time a few months...

When school started in August, a fellow English teacher told me about the blog she's starting this year to post a daily record of class assignments and lesson plans, like a resource for herself and her students. It serves the purpose of providing her students a place to get the work they miss if they're absent, and serve as a repository of her lesson plans throughout the year. Cool, I thought. But I have my web page for that.

Then come October, a colleague of mine shows me a blog he set up for his AP Calculus class. On it, he had posted questions and asked students to respond. It was a model he found engaging and new, an assessment he said his students shared. I was familiar with blogs and understood the general idea of what they were, specifically what made them different from web pages, for example. What a great idea, I thought. I could do that, too.

I set up an account in Blogger and created a site for my English 10 class. On the blog, I posted a few open-ended questions related to our readings. I played around with the comments section, figuring out what was required to allow commenting, either from students our others. I spent some time talking to another colleague, a special education teacher who co-teaches one of my English 10 sections with me. I decided to try it out while reading The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man in the Moon Marigolds. I put up a prompt, brought the kids to the computer lab, paired them up, and showed them how to comment. That was the first assignment.

That was October and November. Meanwhile, I set up my own personal blog and began reading some others I came across. I discovered Bloglines and began compiling feeds. I discovered wikis and experimented with a few collaborative writing projects. I continued to blog about it as best I could. It's through the blogging where I've benefited from the knowledge of others farther along this path than me. I've listened to them hash out ideas, or present new uses for the emerging social networking technology.

Which brings me back to the original intent of this post. As we bring others along, where is the best place to start? What is the one or two most important web 2.0 tools or concepts a newbie should be taught? For example, there's no sense teaching someone how to set up a Bloglines account if they have little concept of what kinds of blogs or other feeds are available. The social bookmarking and networking tools are wonderful, but require a deeper understanding of the types of information and ideas out there.

Eric maintains an excellent wiki where he organizes his technology resources under the following categories: one-to-one; one-to-many; many-to-many. Blogs are under one-to-many. I like that categorization. Maybe the best way to spread the word is to use those categories, and start by showing other teachers the potential of one-to-many. I'd love to know how such efforts - these drops of change in otherwise stagnant pools - have gone in other schools, where the ripples of change have begun to spread.

To me, it makes the most sense to show a newbie how to set up a blog. And by extension, the easiest and simplest use of a blog is posting content-based prompts to which students respond. It's simple, straightforward, and most closely matches an instructional model that digitally illiterate teachers are familiar with. We, as teacher-leaders, must understand any distinctions between different types of student blogging. The potential I saw in blogging when I first asked students to post comments to my prompts was powerful. For the first time, they had the opportunity to read each other's ideas. Although it was not truly embedded in that form, it did provide me that glimpse of the power of web 2.0 that has led me here.

photo credit: Disperse by CentralJake on Flickr.

Props to the best web 2.0 tools for educators

A few weeks back, Steve put out the word asking edublog folks to tell him what their three favorite free web 2.0 tools were. Here he posts the top 10, with del.icio.us leading the way.

Some random thoughts on the list...

My three favorites made it - Bloglines, Google (do I really need to link that?), and Wikispaces. (He actually lists wikispaces and pbwiki which are both great wiki tools.) In fact, I just finished reading my students' posts on the class wiki with Bloglines. It's simple. I set up an RSS feed to pick up all page changes. When I click on a new feed coming into my Bloglines feeds, I get the newest addition on the page in green and the deletions in red. Google reader does not provide the same type of feed.

Flickr came in at number three. So far I've uploaded only a handful of photos there. Only one I made public. Essentially, I've discovered that I'm not the greatest photographer, despite that class I took in high school in which we all used a twin lens reflex camera. Let me play around some more before I have enough confidence. Also, a little faux pas this week reminded me that I'm still learning the rules about photo sharing and the like. Also, check out the thread started with the fifth comment here. Oops.

Hand-wringing and other approaches toward professional growth

Been reading Clay Burrell's regular thoughts about the evolving nature of blogs in schools. One interesting thread addresses teachers sucking blogs dry by using them for too much "homeworky" stuff, such as simply posting prompts online to replace traditional paper assignments. His original post garnered some interesting comments, including one from yours truly. He says,

"'Blogging is just another way to turn in homework.' That's the sentence that scares me. Because that's how non-blogging teachers, and perhaps those unfamiliar with literacy pedagogy--communication across the curriculum, writing to learn, authentic writing, and more--will probably use blogging in the classroom. And it will become drudgery. And the students (not learners here, because "teacher" can't let go of being "teacher," dominating, squelching, and dictating to students) will bang out the minimum for "blog homework," as in old days, and turn to something authentic. Like their MySpace."

What struck me is that I've spoken - or at least thought - that first sentence. That's had me wringing my hands for the last few days. In fact, my first introduction to blogging was using them in just the way that scares Clay. The kids seemed to like it, better than the "old" paper way of handing out assignments at least, and it provided me with a more dynamic way to keep track of and assess their thinking. I'm not going to use the term homework in this context because what I did was fundamentally different than the "traditional" homework model. The comments on the blog were richer, more open-ended than what I would have expected from the students if I had asked them to write a journal entry or respond to a question on a piece of notebook paper to hand in to me. The very nature of posting their thinking as comments allowed them to see each other's work, an unprecedented opportunity that I think benefited them and improved the level of instruction in class.

However, I understand that I was not fully maximizing the blog's potential. I am still preparing myself to move my students into that next step. It's where I am now, ready to make that jump, but not feeling all that prepared. What am I afraid of?

Clay, as usual, has been thinking through the issue and working out a way to help teachers avoid "ruining" blogging for students, and instead keep it as authentic writing by establishing a school-wide plan. Some of the suggestions: One student, one blog; only writing quality should be assessed;and homework assignments are a no-no. His pedagogically-grounded approach sounds like the multi-literate teacher described by Sheryl (via Vance Stevens), who sees "these technologies as a medium, a canvas, a portal used to connect, collaborate, empower, and a catalyst for deep meaningful change-- both in the profession as a whole and in teachers/students as individuals." Will Richardson spells it out in a similar manner, that if we teachers want to effectively teach reading and writing through blogging, then we must read and write online ourselves.

Well, there you have it. Maybe the hand-wringing comes from a personal enxiety about blogging. Finding time to post regularly. Finding a voice for what I do post. Both of those have been a struggle for me.

I applaud the lofty efforts of Clay, Will, and others in the edublogosphere who are working and thinking hard about the diverse web 2.0 technologies afforded to us. They know a lot more about this stuff than I do. In the last several months, I've listened and tried to learn. I will continue to do so.

If nothing else, I think I know what I need to do, which is a lot better than where I was even just four months ago. I need to continue to use blogging as part of my professional growth plan. I need to help spread the word to other teachers in the building. I need to continue to use these tools in my classroom. It's the only way my students - and I - will benefit.

High stakes testing, high standards, and my sophomores

Today was Day 3 of our state standardized testing for sophomores. In Connecticut, we call it CAPT. Students wrote a persuasive letter, the second such one they had to write. The test consists of two non-fiction articles, from which the testees must pull information, examples, and quotes to build their case. On Wednesday, their task involved reading a short story and answering four questions based on it. [Disclaimer: I am not an offiical proctor, but I teach 10th graders. When they returned to my class after the tests, they told me the topics.]

Needless to say, it can be dreadful for them. Although I believe that what CAPT is assessing in our students is valid, I still can't get over the high-stakes, high-pressure testing environment it creates in our schools. But how can we get around that? If you're interested in Branford's scores, see the chart above or look closer at the data here.

Essentially, the reading and writing portions of test require students to use evidence to back up their positions, and to read critically for a variety of purposes, and blend their prior knowledge with new learning. That's all great stuff, and I'll be honest, it has helped guide the curriculum in a meaningful way here in Connecticut. Our school has created a series of graduation requirements linked to CAPT standards; for each requirement, a school wide rubric is used to assess student efforts. For English teachers, this includes writing for a variety of purposes, reading non-fiction, and understanding and appreciating literature. None of this is the perfect solution to the issues we have in education. But then again, what or who is perfect? Certainly not me.

Case in point: when the sophomores showed up in F14 this morning - fresh off 3+ hours of testing, all of it essay writing by the way - they were a tad antsy. I started handing out the thinking logs for the day's Literature Circle discussion, and there was a little uproar and groaning that they'd have to do work, and they hadn't done the homework reading for the day. My first reaction: a testy lecture about keeping up with work. That quieted them down. Then I stopped and looked around. And I told them they could have the time to catch up on their reading or to start brainstorming ideas for their papers. And you know what? I feel guilty for scolding them today, and I feel guilty for giving them a break.

Thankfully there's no CAPT again until Tuesday.

I'm ready to hang with that cool dude, Billy Shakes

I've been enjoying reading about Dana Huff's unit on Romeo & Juliet, but I have to say that I much prefer the happier side of teen romance. That's why A Midsummer Night's Dream is probably my favorite piece of literature to teach. Like Dana, I've memorized many parts, and even play a game with the kids at the end of the unit, in which they read a random line and I guess who said it and in what act. There's something about the play, with it's overwhelmed lovers, clueless actors, and meddling fairies, that makes it, well, magical. It can also be pretty darn funny. And what I think I enjoy the most is when the students, too, appreciate the humor that Shakespeare so obviously intended. Karl Fisch got me thinking about if Shakespeare was one of our students today. Based on some of his choices in Midsummer, I imagine myself pulling him aside after class to discuss his latest antics:

"Now, Will, come on. You're a funny kid, but you can't keep handing in work like this. Don't keep trying to tell me that when you were writing about that Bottom with the head of an ass that you were actually referring to a donkey. Well, you're not fooling me, mister..."

With that in mind, I am eagerly preparing the unit to start in about two weeks. Before the kids can appreciate any of the different kinds of humor in the play, we face a major obstacle right off the bat: the Athenian lovers. Who loves whom? Shakespeare intended it to be muddled, and it is. His point seemed to be that whether it's Lysander or Demetrius or Helena or Hermia, all of us - humans that is, not just ancient Athenians - are pretty much the same when it comes to the power of love. For 10th graders trying to keep track of who Lysander loves as opposed to Demetrius can be downright confusing and typically frustrating.

One effective approach I've found is to provide the students the general plot of the play in a scaled down summary. I tell them the whole thing, from the lovers coming to Duke Theseus right up to the part in the play when Puck has accidentally mixed up all their affections for one another. And, oh yeah, he's put the head of an ass on Nick Bottom. I stop right there and turn the story over to the kids. Fix this whole mess, I tell them, and make sure it has a happy ending. It's a comedy, afterall.

There's a lot of confusion at first. So who does Helena love again? What's up with that Indian boy? That's ok. I'd rather have them struggle with who's who before they're faced with Shakespeare's archaic language - the "thees" and "therefores" that today's audiences have a difficult time getting past. The students' writing on this assignment is typically some of the most enjoyable I read all year. They seem to like the total creative control of such an assignment.

This year, as I continue my journey of discover, I am eager to put a web 2.0 spin on it. Maybe I could set up a wiki and assign the kids to collaborate on an ending with a student from a different class period. Maybe I could use a wiki or blog to create an ongoing story, with kids adding their twists to those posted by classmates.

Or you know what, maybe I don't have to make it any more complicated than it has to be. I'm still wrapping my brain around all this. So, instead of handing out the assignment, I'll post it on the blog. Kids will write their story and post it as a comment. Yeah, I know. That's not true web 2.0 application, but rather a different way to word process. However, it will allow them to read how their classmates tied up the loose ends of the story. That can't be a bad thing.

photo credit: Sleepy Hollow on Flickr

The challenge for our students is now ours

One of the biggest challenges our high school is undertaking is developing an honors challenge option for our mixed-ability sophomore classes. In other words, we plan to retain our heterogenously grouped English 10 course but add an option for those students wishing to extend higher-level thinking and English skills. If the student successfully completes the option, they would earn an honors designation on his/her transcript.

I've blogged about it before. A draft of the department's proposal is currently being developed on a wikispace wiki. Essentially it will allow a student to independently earn an honors distinction - perfect for padding a transcript or boosting a grade point average. We plan to have guidelines and procedures in place to assist students taking on such a learning challenge. The only way to get the honors distinction is to earn it. For the student to earn it, not just for the parent to want it.

On a philosophical level, I wholeheartedly embrace such an idea. I teach English 10, and one of the most rewarding aspects of the sophomore program at Branford High School is the true broad spectrum of students that come into my class everyday. No levels. No remediation. No distinctions based on anything. Of course there are challenges inherent in that setup. You can imagine the range of writing and reading ability I see between students sitting in the same class. Differentiation is essential.

Put aside philosophy right now. Here's where the rub is. As head of the English department, I am spearheading efforts to develop and implement the honors challenge option so it is consistent across the board. How do we balance the needs to sufficiently challenge high-achieving students, while not demanding too much extra from the teachers in the class? There is fear that such a program will turn into a logistical nightmare for the teachers and lead to essentially another prep. How do we keep our expections clear, firm and simple? Can it be done? Should it be done. There are certainly plenty of teachers who feel true honors means a separate honors class.

Right now I don't have those answers, but I expect to be figuring it out over the next few months. And if anyone has any suggestions or can point me towards some resources, I'd be grateful.