As I've mentioned on a couple of occasions on this blog, both of my children are in marching band at their school. Their season is winding down, and last night was what for my wife and myself--after just two short years involved in the marching band--has become our favorite night of the year. It's the night of the final practice before state competition (though this year that's actually a lie--the band practices again this afternoon), and the band does several things to mark the occasion. First, it's "Poster Night": the family of each band member creates a poster for that child and then all 90 or so of them are hung in the hallways outside of the band room while the students practice. The kids come back into the building after practice and here are all of these photos and words of encouragement. It's really neat to see the kids going from poster to poster and laughing about the photos and the encouraging words and the inside jokes written on the posters.
But that's not the real fun. The real fun happens just before that. Each night, at the end of practice, the band finishes the night by doing a complete run through of the entire show. On this final night, though, they actually do the run through three different times. The first time they do a standard run through. After that, though, the seniors leave the field and run up into the press box and watch the rest of the band perform without them. I'm not sure, but I THINK this was originally done for two purposes: 1) To let the seniors see the show themselves, at least one time, and 2) To reveal what a hole there will be in the band without the seniors the following year. Regardless of what the original intent was, though, the show has devolved to the point that it's now just a chance for these bandies to be the clowns that they are, and to rebel a little from the rigid formality they've been practicing for four months now. In any event, it's funny stuff.
Following that run through, the opposite happens: The underclassmen all go up into the stands, and the seniors go out on the field alone and try to do the show all by themselves. It's also funny to watch 10 kids trying to do what almost 100 were designed to do, and again, no one is taking it too seriously.
Here's video of last night's 2nd and 3rd run throughs:
(I can't see the video.)
(I can't see the video.)
Friday, October 28, 2011
Monday, October 24, 2011
Education Technology AND Poetry
As I've mentioned in a prior post, this is my 22nd year working in the field of education. For the first 14 of those years I was an English teacher, and for the last 12 years I've been working with education technology (You may notice that those numbers don't quite add up to 22; that's because for four years I was teaching English half time and teaching and working with education technology the other half of the time). And I was pretty excited today to see the two disparate parts of my work career intersect...
I was reading a book called Education Nation: Six Leading Edges of Innovation in our Schools by Milton Chen. I'd love to recommend the book, but to be honest I'm finding it a little simplistic. For instance, one of the six sections of the book is about technology (which is why I'm reading the book), but the technology section posits some pretty unsound technology educational ideas without paying any attention to real problems with the ideas. In fact, anyone who disagrees with the author is dismissed as a "naysayer," though the author never really says what's wrong with the nay that the people are saying.
But I'm not here to put down the book. I'm here to share an anonymous poem that's in the book. A poem about education technology! As George Costanza said, my world's are colliding!
I checked all over the Internet, and this truly does seem to be an anonymous work (Several blogs don't credit anyone for it, giving the impression that the blog writer himself is the poet, but there are plenty of other posts of the poem that pre-date those entries), so I feel safe sharing it here.
Competition
Let's have a little competition
and get ready for the future.
I will you a laptop
and you will use a paper and pencil. Are you ready?
I will access up-to-date information.
You have a textbook that is five years old.
I will immediately know when I misspell a word.
You will have to wait until it's graded.
I will learn how to care for technology by using it.
You will read about it.
I will see math problems in 3-D.
You will do the odd problems.
I will create artwork and poetry and share it with the world.
You will share yours with the class.
I will have 24/7 access.
You have the entire class period.
I will access the most dynamic information.
Yours will be printed and photocopied.
I will communicate with leaders and experts using email.
You will wait for Friday's speaker.
I will select my learning style.
You will use the teacher's favorite learning style.
I will collaborate with my peers from around the world.
You will collaborate with peers in your classroom.
I will take my learning as far as I want.
You must waint for the rest of the class.
The cost of a laptop per year? $250
The cost of teacher training and student training? Expensive.
The cost of well-educated U.S Citizens and workforce? Priceless.
I have to admit--as a teacher and a lover of poetry, there's not a whole lot all that poetic in the work. And I could argue that many if not all of the stanzas would be better if they were reversed so that the paper and pen example was first. Still, the poem brings up some intriguing ideas.
I was reading a book called Education Nation: Six Leading Edges of Innovation in our Schools by Milton Chen. I'd love to recommend the book, but to be honest I'm finding it a little simplistic. For instance, one of the six sections of the book is about technology (which is why I'm reading the book), but the technology section posits some pretty unsound technology educational ideas without paying any attention to real problems with the ideas. In fact, anyone who disagrees with the author is dismissed as a "naysayer," though the author never really says what's wrong with the nay that the people are saying.
But I'm not here to put down the book. I'm here to share an anonymous poem that's in the book. A poem about education technology! As George Costanza said, my world's are colliding!
I checked all over the Internet, and this truly does seem to be an anonymous work (Several blogs don't credit anyone for it, giving the impression that the blog writer himself is the poet, but there are plenty of other posts of the poem that pre-date those entries), so I feel safe sharing it here.
Competition
Let's have a little competition
and get ready for the future.
I will you a laptop
and you will use a paper and pencil. Are you ready?
I will access up-to-date information.
You have a textbook that is five years old.
I will immediately know when I misspell a word.
You will have to wait until it's graded.
I will learn how to care for technology by using it.
You will read about it.
I will see math problems in 3-D.
You will do the odd problems.
I will create artwork and poetry and share it with the world.
You will share yours with the class.
I will have 24/7 access.
You have the entire class period.
I will access the most dynamic information.
Yours will be printed and photocopied.
I will communicate with leaders and experts using email.
You will wait for Friday's speaker.
I will select my learning style.
You will use the teacher's favorite learning style.
I will collaborate with my peers from around the world.
You will collaborate with peers in your classroom.
I will take my learning as far as I want.
You must waint for the rest of the class.
The cost of a laptop per year? $250
The cost of teacher training and student training? Expensive.
The cost of well-educated U.S Citizens and workforce? Priceless.
I have to admit--as a teacher and a lover of poetry, there's not a whole lot all that poetic in the work. And I could argue that many if not all of the stanzas would be better if they were reversed so that the paper and pen example was first. Still, the poem brings up some intriguing ideas.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
A Profound Joke
A friend of mine emailed me the video below yesterday, and though I guess it's meant as a kind of joke (It's on a website called "Stupid Videos"), I think it actually says something pretty profound about the technology gap between adults and children. Watch it, and then I'll talk about it...
(I can't see the video.)
I think the point the video is making is pretty clear: Children today don't see the world with the same eyes that adults do. I'm pretty sure most people already knew that, but this video shows us that the difference is pretty profound. The children in the video understand computers and how to manipulate them BEFORE they understand how to read a book. We forget, because they've been a part of our lives since we were children, that books are a form of technology, too. Their use is not an instinctive thing, built into our DNA. They're a learned technology. And apparently, books are harder to figure out than an iPad is. If that's not the case for you, it's just because you've had a longer acclimation period to books than you've had to technology.
I used to wonder what it was like for old people who grew up without electricity. Those people, I used to think, grew up in a world without light bulbs and radio and TV, and in a world without telephone poles and electric lines strewn all over the landscape, and they watched this new thing come into their lives and change it so profoundly. Now I know how it feels. We're being changed just as much by computer networking. It didn't exist when I was a kid, and now it's everywhere, and we look at people who don't have Internet access in their house the same way people in 1960 looked at families that didn't have electricity. And though they're not as much of an eyesore as telephone poles, how many cell phone towers have you seen spring up in your lifetime?
I'm off task a little. I want to get back to that kid above. Or more importantly to me, I want to get back to MY kids. I've seen this technology gap in my kids, too. The first time I ever got out the ole 33 1/3 RPM record albums to play my kids some Beatles and some Michael Jackson, my older daughter, who was about 3 at the time, jumped up and down and screamed, "Wow! What a big CD!" This is the same daughter who learned to use a computer mouse when she was two years, three months, and 8 days old. I know exactly how old she was because she learned to use the mouse the day before my younger daughter was born. My wife was 9 months pregnant and not feeling well (Uh, she was in labor, but we didn't know that at the time!), and she asked to be left alone for a little while, so my older daughter and I went to the nearby mall for a while. We came back with a stuffed elephant from the Disney Store (not important) and a piece of software called Jumpstart Toddler's (important).
I installed the game on our computer and sat my daughter down in front of it, and in 30 seconds (no exaggeration) she'd figured out how to use a mouse. The software had a game in it in which the cursor on the screen was a dog bone, and in the corner of the screen was a talking dog who said things like, "Ruff! Ruff! Oh, I'm sooooo hungry! Can you feed me my boooooooone?" My daughter loved animals, and she wanted to feed that dog, so she figured it out without a problem. And after that, the sky was the limit. And that same daughter who, way back in 2000 referred to an LP as a "big CD," no longer is even interested in CD's. Everything's digital now, and if I gave her a CD of a favorite artist, she'd stare at me like I would if someone gave me an 8 track cassette. She wants iTunes gift cards! This morning she asked if she could load some of MY music on her iPod, and I looked at the computer and said, "Okay. Uh, I think I can figure this out..." I don't have my own iPod--I use my Simbian cell phone as my MP3 player--so this was all new to me.
I randomly clicked a few things on the screen before I heard my daughter sigh in disgust and say, "Dad! Just move and I'll do it!" And she did. She jumped in front of the screen and deftly started clicking buttons and in about 30 seconds said, "There! It needs time to synch, but I'm good to go."
She and my other daughter have grown up in this world of technology. It's not something they had to learn about later in life. It's as natural to them as it is for us to flip a switch and expect yellow light to come out of that glass orb in the ceiling.
It's a different world when we were growing up. I didn't grow up without running water in the house, and I didn't have to walk both ways through snow to get to school, but I WILL be able to tell my great grandchildren when I'm older, "When I was a kid, we didn't have the Internet! If you needed information on something, you had to use these things called books to look up things! And if the book you wanted wasn't around, you just didn't know!"
Something I can look forward to...
(I can't see the video.)
I think the point the video is making is pretty clear: Children today don't see the world with the same eyes that adults do. I'm pretty sure most people already knew that, but this video shows us that the difference is pretty profound. The children in the video understand computers and how to manipulate them BEFORE they understand how to read a book. We forget, because they've been a part of our lives since we were children, that books are a form of technology, too. Their use is not an instinctive thing, built into our DNA. They're a learned technology. And apparently, books are harder to figure out than an iPad is. If that's not the case for you, it's just because you've had a longer acclimation period to books than you've had to technology.
I used to wonder what it was like for old people who grew up without electricity. Those people, I used to think, grew up in a world without light bulbs and radio and TV, and in a world without telephone poles and electric lines strewn all over the landscape, and they watched this new thing come into their lives and change it so profoundly. Now I know how it feels. We're being changed just as much by computer networking. It didn't exist when I was a kid, and now it's everywhere, and we look at people who don't have Internet access in their house the same way people in 1960 looked at families that didn't have electricity. And though they're not as much of an eyesore as telephone poles, how many cell phone towers have you seen spring up in your lifetime?
I'm off task a little. I want to get back to that kid above. Or more importantly to me, I want to get back to MY kids. I've seen this technology gap in my kids, too. The first time I ever got out the ole 33 1/3 RPM record albums to play my kids some Beatles and some Michael Jackson, my older daughter, who was about 3 at the time, jumped up and down and screamed, "Wow! What a big CD!" This is the same daughter who learned to use a computer mouse when she was two years, three months, and 8 days old. I know exactly how old she was because she learned to use the mouse the day before my younger daughter was born. My wife was 9 months pregnant and not feeling well (Uh, she was in labor, but we didn't know that at the time!), and she asked to be left alone for a little while, so my older daughter and I went to the nearby mall for a while. We came back with a stuffed elephant from the Disney Store (not important) and a piece of software called Jumpstart Toddler's (important).
I installed the game on our computer and sat my daughter down in front of it, and in 30 seconds (no exaggeration) she'd figured out how to use a mouse. The software had a game in it in which the cursor on the screen was a dog bone, and in the corner of the screen was a talking dog who said things like, "Ruff! Ruff! Oh, I'm sooooo hungry! Can you feed me my boooooooone?" My daughter loved animals, and she wanted to feed that dog, so she figured it out without a problem. And after that, the sky was the limit. And that same daughter who, way back in 2000 referred to an LP as a "big CD," no longer is even interested in CD's. Everything's digital now, and if I gave her a CD of a favorite artist, she'd stare at me like I would if someone gave me an 8 track cassette. She wants iTunes gift cards! This morning she asked if she could load some of MY music on her iPod, and I looked at the computer and said, "Okay. Uh, I think I can figure this out..." I don't have my own iPod--I use my Simbian cell phone as my MP3 player--so this was all new to me.
I randomly clicked a few things on the screen before I heard my daughter sigh in disgust and say, "Dad! Just move and I'll do it!" And she did. She jumped in front of the screen and deftly started clicking buttons and in about 30 seconds said, "There! It needs time to synch, but I'm good to go."
She and my other daughter have grown up in this world of technology. It's not something they had to learn about later in life. It's as natural to them as it is for us to flip a switch and expect yellow light to come out of that glass orb in the ceiling.
It's a different world when we were growing up. I didn't grow up without running water in the house, and I didn't have to walk both ways through snow to get to school, but I WILL be able to tell my great grandchildren when I'm older, "When I was a kid, we didn't have the Internet! If you needed information on something, you had to use these things called books to look up things! And if the book you wanted wasn't around, you just didn't know!"
Something I can look forward to...
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