The Souls of the Machine: Clay Shirky’s Internet Revolution - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Souls of the Machine
Clay Shirky says the Internet revolution has only just begun.
This is worth reading, I think. Enjoy!
Changes!
It’s been awhile since I posted anything here and the reason is simple: I have a new job and we moved across the country. I am now working at the University of Oregon as a Research and Instructional Technologist, in beautiful Eugene, Oregon. We’ve been here a little over three weeks now and are settling in–me into my job and my family into this place. I think we’re going to like it here quite a bit.
Over the coming days I hope to update this with some of the work projects that I have going on and try to explain my understanding of the world of higher education, as brief as my time has been here. I have been a little reluctant to try and do that as I have just really gotten started with all of this. I might change my mind, too, but I do think this is a good place to start. So, bear with me.
I want to say thanks to all of my friends in Virginia who I will miss greatly at the VSTE Conference and at other events, but I also know that we’ll see each other in this online world, which is a very nice thing. It makes the leaving and the change not-quite-so-hard as it might have been.
Cheers!
The Random Thoughts of Louis Schmier
The Random Thoughts of Louis Schmier
Should teaching be any different? It takes a lot of work to live, care, and love; it is a lot of work to reflect, articulate, imagine, devise, activate; it is a lot of work to prepare, design, deliver, evaluate to what extent it worked or needs reworking; it is a lot of work to get to know each student, to be in their thoughts and emotions; and so, it is a lot of work to know of the currents students are swimming against in order to offer the support and encouragement for each of them to have a chance to make it.
Louis
I’ve always like Louis’s writing. I’ve always gotten something out of what he has to say about teaching. He’s a people guy and I like that. He reminds me on a regular basis, through stories and anecdotes, what teaching is all about at the center and core. Good stuff to ponder as we roll into a new school year.
Bridging Differences: The Purpose of Small Schools
Bridging Differences: The Purpose of Small Schools
Small schools are an attempt to re-create, intentionally, the best of the family dinner table, the town meeting, the public square, the legislative process, the team, and the academy of thinkers—with as much of the diversity of the larger community as we can corral all in one manageable place.
This article got me to thinking about my teaching experiences and where I’m at now. In particular it got me considering the small school at which I taught for eight years. The Little School is quite a different place and I think that this article speaks to many aspects that we were striving for and towards. Curriculum was “emergent,” based on student and teacher interests; classrooms were no more than sixteen students; desks were non-existent (we had tables and chairs); there was a lot of student choice throughout the day; academics were often taught through projects; assessments were narrative formats for each student; parents were invited to observe all morning before conferencing afterward; we took into account each individual student’s developmental timetable, aware that no two kids were developing at the same time, in the same rate in all areas. Assessments were also done based on work samples and observation. Kind of radical compared to standards, teachers being told what to teach, and helping students do well on standardized tests.
I’ve often believed that school is the one place in a childs life where they can come and be part of a community, learn to be part of a community that is not their family, with other humans that are in their same stage of life. My question after reading an article like the one linked above is how do we make our schools smaller learning communities, even within the confines of a large school? How do teachers create their community in their classroom while helping students to be part of their larger school community?
Exploding heads!
Man, my head is going to explode I think. This summer has been full of ___________ . I’ve had some fantastic discussion on my PBS Teacherline training discussion board and am enjoying some great emails with John Hendron about this whole thing called educational technology, standards, and professional development. Perhaps for the first time I am really beginning to organize my thoughts in a way in which I can articulate them clearly, with passion and openness. It’s a little hard to explain, to be honest.
In addition to this I’ve read some compelling posts by edu-bloggers as well. Specifically this post from Will Richardson titled, “What I Hate about Twitter.” The comments here are excellent in terms of what this whole thing means to others. At the same time I’ve been aware, more or less, of what I call the ‘house of mirrors’ or ‘the echo chamber,’ that we edu-blogger techie folks tend to live in. As I’ve become more aware of this, I now want to work this next year to expand these ideas and these practices throughout my ‘overly small’ school division in southwest virginia. i’m compiling some simple goals to work towards next year that i think will help.
The area that I’ve been chewing hard on is that area that has to do with the whole emphasis on standardized testing. It seems often that the focus of using educational techology is on how we improve test scores. Not that this is a horrible thing, but it seems to me that it is perhaps a little misguided. At the same time, the internal dialogue pushes back when I remind myself that the teachers with whom I work are judged based on how their particular group of students score on the test at the end of the year. Keep those test scores up and you’re good. If they’re low then things can get dicey.
My focus is less on the test score but more on the fact that we want teachers to use technology in appropriate ways in their classrooms because this is the world in which their students live. Or will live, if they don’t already. Even in my overly small school division.
Finally, my blogroll over to the right there has some good stuff to check out. Feel free and enjoy.
~ until next time~
UW study reaffirms nature’s stress relieving powers
UW study reaffirms nature’s stress relieving powers
I guess this means ditch the plasma and look outside. Better yet, go outside! 
Questions.
We are about to finish up our state testing with tomorrow being the last day. It has all gone well this year with our computer systems, the software, the students and teachers. For that I am grateful and relieved. This time of year does bring up, for me anyways, the BIG QUESTIONS about what exactly we are doing as educators. As I sit down to compose my thoughts I realize that I can have a tendency to go down the path of “ranting” about SOL tests and I am going to try to avoid doing that here. At least that is a goal that I’m starting out with. There might be some ranting along the way, just to be sure. You have been warned.
So, with testing and especially the emphasis on testing I ask myself what makes a good teacher? Teachers are judged on how well their students perform on standardized tests. Yes, this is true. It is one piece of the puzzle that evaluations are made up of, but with the hyper-emphasis on test scores, I think it is weighted a little bit more. There is a sense of relief from teachers when the testing is over and especially when their students performed well and a large number of their group passed. Still, what makes a good teacher?
In my mind it isn’t only the test score that makes a good teacher. There is so much more to being an educator than just helping students learn material that they can then use to answer the questions correctly on a standardized test. Teaching, to me at least, is also about all of the intangibles that aren’t measurable that a teacher deals with each and every day. For example, if a student comes to school late or tired; if a student is afraid of other students because they are being teased and bullied; if a student is simply bored with the material that they are being taught in class; again, there is so much more.
When I think back on teachers that made a difference to me, it wasn’t the content that I remember. It wasn’t what they taught me that makes me remember them as good teachers. It is that they took an interest in me as a person. Flash back to 8th grade for me: Mr. Stuart’s english class. It was there that I began to feel confident that I could write ok. At least I was better at that than I was at math, I knew that for sure. But more than that, it was the following year in 9th grade when Mr. Stuart and I started talking about books that really made an impact. I wasn’t a huge reader at that point in my life, but in one conversation, he recommended a book to me. It was some science fiction novel, probably written by Robert Heinlein, but I can’t remember. Anyways, I read it. The whole thing. I brought it back to Mr. Stuart and we talked about it. He then grabbed another book off of his bookshelf and said, “try this one.” I did. Several books and conversations later I realized that I was reading. Whole books. All the way through. Of course I didn’t realize until much later that he and I had just formed our very own two person book club as well. Mr. Stuart taught me that I could read books that had a lot of pages in them, talk about them, but mostly just enjoy them. That was the key. Was he my “best” teacher ever? Probably not . . .that is hard for me to say. Was he a very influential teacher for me? Absolutely.
So, it is beyond the content and has to be beyond the content. As educators we aren’t just teaching four choices on a computerized exam that comes once a year. We are <hopefully> teaching about kindness, how to learn, to think, to reflect, to communicate and express thoughts and ideas clearly. As teachers we are small steps in each child’s life that will help them grow up to become adults who are engaged in the world around them. Hopefully.
Self-Confidence
The Random Thoughts of Louis Schmier
I’ll repeat something I told a colleague earlier: inspiration is far more powerful than intimidation; self-confidence, pride, enthusiasm reaps higher yields than insecurity, disbelief, and fear; aspiration will seldom occur in a hell hole of desperation; a smile is more powerful than a sneer; a tap of kindness will get you more than a slap of sarcasm; spotlighting strengths and talents is far more uplifting than focusing on weaknesses and shortcomings; fortifying a student’s self-worth will get better results than tearing down a student; and, caring is far more invigorating than not giving a damn.
Whenever I need a dose of perspective, I head over to Louis’s blog and check out one of his posts. He always seems to nail it for me, whether it is a reflection on teaching, a thought about a particular student, or a short story about a classroom episode–he has a viewpoint and points-of-view that help remind me what teaching and education are really all about.
