Doing Right - Coming Full Circle?

I watched King (Tom Brokaw's documentary on MLK) on the History Channel. I'm watching it again as I write this.

I am also reading through my feeder. Serendipity, it's called. David Warlick is returning to the basics, and Vicki Davis reminds us too. Here are their quotes:

Warlick - In response to "What is the purpose of education?"

Today, I have a new answer. My old one is still good. I’ll continue to use it. But if you ask me, “What is the purpose of education?” today, I’ll say,

The purpose of education is to make the world a better place!"

Davis - In a personal "crisis" is inspired by a quote from Tom Brokaw (yep, same one in King) on a Starbuck's cup.

It will do us little good to wire the world if we short-circuit our souls.
There is no delete button for racism, poverty or sectarian violence.
No keystroke can ever clear the air, save a river, preserve a forest.
This transformational new technology must be an extension of our hearts as well as of our minds.
The old rules still apply..."
-Tom Brokaw, American Journalist

Vicki won't mind, not sure about David, positive that King would agree...But what education needs is a revival of religious proportion.

I'm not saying teach the Bible in the schools, although I'm not saying don't. To quote King in his Letter From A Birmingham Jail:

As T. S. Eliot has said: "The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason."

Traditionally, revivals are about encouraging people to get back to the basics, the "first love," the foundational reason for existing. Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing.

We (meaning tech-savvy teachers) have had so many distractions since the Internet entered the conversation, and especially Web 2.0 tools. We have said, "It's not about the tools; it's what the tools allow you to do." But, really, what do they truly allow us to do? We haven't answered that question except to say that we can publish, collaborate, and have others respond to our work to make us "feel good."

But what difference are we really making with these tools?

Have we influenced the minds of the Palestinians and Israelis that their 4000-year hatred of each other is affecting the world in ways that are no longer acceptable?

Have we really changed the underlying racism, poverty, and discrimination still infecting our own nation? Yes, we have an African-American inaugurated tomorrow, and statistically it is now true that a Black man is nearly as likely to become President (1 in 44 - 2.2%) than to become a Head Coach in college football (3.3%). My point, there is still a systemic discrimination.

In my own school, I have students whose families live on less than $15,000 a year with students whose families make $15,000 a month. Will these kids grow up understanding that people in our community really want it to stay that way?

Global Warming, rainforest destruction, desertification, and the like do not really concern me in the face of "Man's inhumanity to Man." It seems to me that to focus on these "environmental" issues are a way to deflect attention from the real problem of the human condition.

In order to "make the world a better place" it must be done by changing the hearts of people, and how they treat each other. Remember, we do not teach subjects - we teach children.

From MLK's speech after the "Mississippi Burning" deaths of three young men trying to register Blacks to vote:

It is not WHO killed them, but WHAT. And in a strange sense, when we discover that, we find that it affects all of us in a deep way.

It still does affect us all. It is not who is killing whom. It is not who is keeping opportunities from our students (by "standardizing," "testing," and "dictating" curriculum), but WHAT is it behind the decisions made to require this standardization. Is it to maintain a permanent underclass by taking away the dreams of the young and making everyone who goes through public education "equally" unprepared?

Sir Ken Robinson has said that public education systematically removes the creativity of the children.

I say public schools are in the business of stealing dreams.

Until we have enough teachers (the overwhelming majority of whom were educated in the public schools and colleges) who realize that they have been duped into becoming dream-stealers we may not truly Overcome.

I have a Dream - that we shall Overcome - That we shall overcome the tyranny of public education - That we shall overcome the hesitancy to do right for the right reason - That we shall overcome the fear that we could be dismissed for low test scores - that we develop the courage it takes to be a real teacher for our students. Yes, I have a Dream today.

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The Cool Cat Burns With Passion

We have a small window of opportunity to suggest and create structures of what WE, the educators who use these technologies, suggest we should do about the whole digital citizenship, safety, and success issue.Then, we will be TOLD what to do because of our lack of action. And we know how that goes.

Cool Cat Teacher Blog: My passion is quilted in these letters: ad4dcss

Vicki has been a favorite read of mine since I met her at the GAETC in 2006. Her activity is always focused and directed toward the learning of others. Honestly, she is hard to keep up with. Personally, I think it is her background in business that makes her so productive as an educator.

I would not want anyone to leave the classroom who is as effective as Vicki, but I would greatly support Vicki if she chose to do something for educators under the umbrella of student online safety, digital citizenship, and the like.

As I was working through my Ed.S. at Valdosta State, we spent a semester on a digital citizenship. Dr. Jane Zahner was the instructor for this class. It was a good class. It was a practical class. It was something I wanted to implement with my students in my middle school class. It was also about this time that our school system decided to abdicate their obligation to teach digital citizenship by choosing 8e6 Technologies as their censor instead of using technology teachers to discuss and demonstrate proper digital citizenship.

So, GO VICKI GO!

Digital Citizenship resources
http://www.digitalcitizenship.net/Nine_Elements.html
http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Citizenship-Schools-Mike-Ribble/dp/1564842320

Creating Self-Importance

I've been away, for longer than I like, from posting. I've been reading, but time to write has been limited.

I've been coaching our middle school track teams. Our boys went undefeated, with 4 school records broken, and our girls finished first in all their meets except 1 - against a great private school team in Chattanooga. Anyway, my evenings have been busy -- and fun. But I haven't had the time to blog.

I was also notified last week that I get to return to the classroom to teach 7th grade Social Studies next year. I'm looking forward to it. Middle East, Africa, Asia - History, Geography, Economics, and Culture. I've already started compiling my resources, finding websites for WebQuests and Treasure Hunts. Thanks to my Twitter/blog friends for the congratulatory notes. It really means a lot to me.

But I've been reading my feeds. Blogging, to me, is active reading. I write about what I read. Occasionally I'll have a post that derives from personal experiences, but mostly I reflect, and use the information as raw data (D. Warlick).

So here's my favorite reflection of the past week or so.

Jon Becker (much like Tim Holt last summer) posted to his blog that he feels left out of the inner circle. He then gives his evaluation of the inner circle members - Will, David, Wes, Vicki, Dean, Stephen, and Chris.

[Hey Tim, If you're reading this - there doesn't seem to be a big change from last summer in the buffet :-) -
Yes, there are a few Hispanics and there are a
few women, but for the most part, the dinner is being hosted by white
guys. And it is being hosted by middle age, middle class white guys.
Still feel like coming to dinner?]

So, what's my point? Simply this, and most already know this - I did it too. If you want to get noticed, drop some serious blogger names. As Scott says - quoting Seth -

[They] don't care about you. [They] care about themselves.

Jon, you have gotten several people who have noticed you because of your thoughts. You are figuring out how to make yourself known in the information economy. Either praise the people who have gone before you, or criticize the ones who have gone before you. [They] will notice - and respond! I didn't know about you until I read Scott's post. Dr. McLeod gives very good advice, and does it consistently.

So Jon - Here's my advice. You now have an audience. Many of the people whose names you included in your post have responded, and in doing so, they have given you an audience (that's how I found you). Now for the hard part: What will you provide to keep us coming back? You have invited yourself to the buffet. You have knocked on the door to the inner circle. You have made your presence known. You have said, as all of us have, "I am somebody. I am important in the conversation."

What will your role in the conversation be?

Blogged with the Flock Browser

iPhone Use - November 19, 2007

Media Specialist classes and Subject Headings

I am taking a class on Cataloging for Media Specialist certification purposes in the state of Georgia. I could complain about the rules for Georgia certification in the field, but what's the use. Suffice it to say at this point, Georgia has some of the most restrictive avenues for certification, and yet state test scores are 46th in the nation. Seems to me, the state Professional Standards Commission would welcome training from some other state prep programs. But that's just my opinion.

Anyway, I finish reading Everything in Miscellaneous by David Weinberger this summer. The book's title is not as accurate as perhaps Everything is Personal would be. It is not so much that information is categorized under miscellaneous as his point was information has personal meaning, and we should be learning how to categorize information for personal retrieval purposes.

So, I am "struggling" with the traditional methodology of school library cataloging practice, and the idea that our students (middle school - shoot -- k-12 really) could not care any less about how we classify information and what headings are acceptable and which sub-headings can be used, and what order is correct. I understand the idea of consistency, really I do. But my question is, when information can be so personalized, and all students can write reviews of books in our Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC), why are we so hung up on a "proper" way of organizing Subject Headings, and how can one way of organizing be consider "better" or more "correct" than another?

We are using the Sears List of Subject Headings. The Library of Congress uses their own Subject Heading List. Bloggers use their own way of tagging information. I noticed this evening that Vicki is tagging things with an hz08 tag to organize her Horizon Project 2008 material. I'm sorry, Vicki, but that is not an acceptable Subject Heading ;-)

So where are we? I'm getting a brain-full of information on how to categorizes, catagorize, and organize material based on a past paradigm. I am not saying there is no value in it. I am asking how valuable this paradigm will be for our students, or for that matter, anyone.

I seldom have students (okay never) ask me what is the correct Subject to look up when they want to find out about spiders. They conduct a generic search on "spiders" to find the books call number.

Students ask me everyday if we have a book like another book they have read. It seems that there could be some value in tagging books with an "other books like this one" list, instead of comparing subjects.

As an example I will give you this one from last week.

Student: Mr. Murry, do you have any other books about spiders?

Me: Sure. Let's go over to the non-fiction side (in the 595 area), and I'll show you what we have. [We arrive at the books]

Student: No, not those kind of spider books. I just finished reading a book to my little brother about the spider who spins the web on the farm. Then she dies at the end. He wants me to read him another one like it.

Me: Do you mean Charlotte's Web?

Student: Yeah! That's it. Do you have any other books like that one?

Me: Sure. Let's go look over on the other side of the room.

The subject headings from WorldCat for Charlotte's Web are:

Animals-Fiction (over 15,000 books on WorldCat)
Pigs-Fiction (over 2000 books on WorldCat)
Spiders-Fiction
Farm life-FictionFantasy

That means if I go to our OPAC, search for Charlotte's Web to see if there is anything like the book, I would have to search by those subjects. Not very likely that many middle school kids will take the time to search through all the books with such broad subjects. They will get too many books that are too young, and others too mature, that they will just go home and tell their little brother they couldn't find one.

But what if the student could begin a way to classify their own information with the help of friends, teachers, librarians that created a list of similar books instead of subject headings? Would that help? I think so. It would be personal, but useful to others if they wanted to look at the list. Shelfari works this way. It is a social network for book junkies.

I am trying to work all this stuff out in my brain. I know that what we are doing now does not seem valuable to the students (and teachers). Finding information and material is not as difficult as libraries try to make it. Most book orders we get come with full MARC records as a file we add to our OPAC, and if I can't get it that way, I can copy the information from some other library's OPAC. I just think it is work that is unimportant in a connected world. It seems like busy-work at the graduate level to me. Or maybe I'm just tired of going to school. Who knows?

More on the Buffet

Tim Holt has started a great conversation here and here. Wes Fryer has picked it up too. So have numerous others as your read their comments.

In essence, the conversation is that middle-aged, white, males are dominating the edublogosphere. Moreover, they are the ones speaking at the conferences. Tim questions the small invitation list in that females, black, hispanics, and others do not seem to be getting a voice in the conversation. He does list a few who are with the "in crowd." Further, he asked readers to check their RSS feeds for the people they read. So I have. Here are my results.

I counted 91 blogs in my reader. I didn't count my own, or the basketball articles from newspapers, or my comics :^) Click the image for bigger picture.



Here are my thoughts. Yep, over half of the blogs I read are written by males. I read Miguel Guhlin, and he mentions in this conversation that he is hispanic. He is the only one I know of who fits this description.

Of the women, eight of them are from a different country, four from Australia - (library folks). I also realized how much I miss Kathy Sierra.

The 13 blogs with multiple contributors are libraries, DEN, Google, and technology related blogs.

So, at first glance, I think Tim is on to something important. I appreciate what Vicki Davis said about intentionally seeking leaders/bloggers who are "minorities" (I hate that term).

More to say, coming soon.