Dennis Harper – 5 Things I’ve Learned

Generation YES founder and CEO Dennis Harper is profiled in the latest post on 5 Things I’ve Learned, a collection of personal reflections from education leaders devoted to improving the fortunes of others through learning.

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Here’s #1: Kids are here now.

Yes, kids are our future but they are also here now. For the most part, schools ignore what students can do now. Take the case of three fourteen year olds: Jordan Romero scaled Mt. Everest and the highest peak on each continent, Alexander the Great ruled over the largest empire in history, and Anne Frank wrote a diary that has sold 30 million copies. Schools are full of students with similar capabilities but they are held back by “standardized” tests and “common” core. Schools that trust and empower students are the ones that will make all our futures better.

Read all five things from Dennis!

Sylvia

Six Myths About Service Learning

From Principal Leadership magazine: Six Myths About Service Learning by Scott Richardson and Michael Josephson.

Service learning is the Rodney Dangerfield of education. Students say that it’s an “annoying requirement.” Parents say, “My kid will learn more in the classroom than in the community.” Teachers say, “It won’t improve test scores.” Principals say, “It’s a feel-good mandate that kids aren’t capable of understanding.”

Read this article to find out about the six myths and the real facts about service learning. Done right, service learning benefits students both academically and socially, creates opportunities for learning citizenship, empowers youth, and benefits schools and communities. And that’s no myth!

Sylvia

Choices for Children: Why and How to Let Students Decide

Choices for Children: Why and How to Let Students Decide

An oldie (1993) but a goodie from Alfie Kohn. What does it really mean when when students have the power of choice instead of being powerless? Why is it important, and what kinds of things can students really decide?

To be sure, there is nothing new about the idea that students should be able to participate, individually and collectively, in making decisions. This conviction has long played a role in schools designated as progressive, democratic, open, free, experimental, or alternative; in educational philosophies called developmental, constructivist, holistic, or learner-centered; in specific innovations such as whole-language learning, discovery-based science, or authentic assessment; and in the daily practice of teachers whose natural instinct is to treat children with respect.

But if the concept is not exactly novel, neither do we usually take the time to tease this element out of various traditions and examine it in its own right. Why is it so important that children have a chance to make decisions about their learning? How might this opportunity be provided with regard to academic matters as well as other aspects of school life? What limits on students’ right to choose are necessary, and what restrictions compromise the idea too deeply? Finally, what barriers might account for the fact that students so rarely feel a sense of self-determination today? A close inspection of these issues will reveal that the question of choice is both more complex and more compelling than many educators seem to assume.

The rest of the article is well worth reading!

Sylvia

Students Reap Academic Gains from Community Service

Rural Students Reap Academic Gains from Community Service | Edutopia.

Yes, I know the title of the Edutopia article says RURAL students reap academic gains from community service, but really, there’s nothing here in this article that wouldn’t apply to any student service, rural, urban, or suburban.

The service learning examples in this article are terrific, and there is a nice video accompanying it. In this district, academic scores are up, attendance up, and all kinds of other good schooly information is connected to the service learning.

But really, it all comes home for me when the students articulate what service and learning mean to them.

James (not his real name), a student who received many Fs his freshman year and who was a chronic truant until he moved to the Fowler district, surveys his shed with pride. “We accomplished something for the little kids,” he says. James, who is graduating from Casa Blanca, attributes much of his success to service learning. “Every day, this is what I love coming to school for — doing projects and building stuff for the community,” he explains.

James also points out that it’s more critical to do work right the first time on a construction project than on a math worksheet, where he can easily rework mistakes. “If you mess up on the real project, you can’t just erase it. You’ve got to buy more wood. It’s not cool.”

James is pointing out something that should be such a obvious principle of education, but often gets lost in the achievement/assessment/accountability shell game: Learning only matters if it matters to the learner. Achievement can be measured in pride, not wasting wood, and helping little kids–not filling out worksheets. The only reason anyone would be surprised that a “chronic truant” cares about his work or about little kids is that we rarely ask students to demonstrate their human capacity for caring for others while in school.

Hope everyone reads this terrific article and congratulations to the profiled school district in Fowler, California!

Sylvia

Kids Use — and Teach — Digital Storytelling

Edutopia cover - Sept. 2009

California Kids Use — and Teach — Digital Storytelling

Veteran fourth-grade teacher Don Kinslow often hears colleagues say they would use technology if they had the time to get training. At Parkview Elementary School, in Chico, California, he has found a practical solution to this dilemma: He engages students as technology mentors.

This article appears in the September issue of Edutopia magazine as part of their stimulus funding series, “High Tech at Low Cost”, and is online here.

The story captures the essence of what many schools see when they include GenYES students in their technology outreach to teachers and the whole community. Don says, “It’s a simple idea, but it’s had huge outcomes.”

One of Kinslow’s students, for instance, was consistently reluctant to speak in class. For a book report, she narrated a digital story. “Her voice was clear. Her ideas were well organized,” Kinslow says. “For some kids, this was the first time they’d ever heard her talk.”

And we all know, this isn’t about saving money, it’s about giving kids experiences that change lives, either by being a GenYES student who finds her voice, or a student in a classroom where the teacher feels supported enough to try technology for the first time.

Part of the fun of this job is meeting teachers like Don Kinslow. He’s got great ideas and he tries things, lots of things. He’s given me some great stories to tell! If you’d like to read more about Don and his students, they are also one of the detailed case studies in my Student Support of Laptop Programs article. Their school uses laptops on carts and the GenYES students are part of the team a teacher can count on when they use the laptops for small student groupwork, digital storytelling across all grades and subjects, and special request projects for teachers.

By the way, don’t miss the article’s author, Suzie Boss, in the Edutopia blog lineup called Spiral Notebook.

Sylvia

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Successful, sustainable strategies for technology integration and tech support in a tough economy

This weekend I’ll be in San Diego as an invited speaker at the National School Board Association (NSBA) conference. I’m not sure I realized how relevant it would be when I proposed Successful, Sustainable Strategies for Technology Integration and Tech Support in a Tough Economy as my topic last year.

I’ll be focusing on 5 strategies that create strong local communities of practice around the use of technology. All of these strategies include students as part of the solution. They are:

  • Technology literacy for all – Creating an expectation that modern technology will be used for academics, schoolwork, communication, community outreach, and teaching. A key success factor is teaching students how to support their peers as mentors and leaders.
  • Student tech teams – The 21st century version of the old A/V club, this strategy expands the definition of tech support from fixing broken things to also include just-in-time support of teachers as they use new technology. This digital generation is ready, willing and able to help improve education, we just need to show them how.
  • Professional development 24/7 – The old idea that teachers would go off to one workshop or a conference and immediately start using technology has been proven wrong. Truly integrated technology use requires a bigger change than that, and it doesn’t happen overnight. Teachers require more support in their classrooms that they can count on when they need it. Students can help provide teachers with this constancy and supportive community.
  • Students as stakeholders – Whenever schools initiate new technology programs, there is typically a call for all stakeholders to be included. Parents, teachers, staff, board members, and members of the community are invited to participate — but rarely students. Even though students are 92% of the population at the school, and are 100% of the reason for wanting to improve education, their voice goes unheard. Students can bring passion and point-of-view to the planning and implementation of major technology initiatives. They can be allies and agents of change, rather than passive objects to be changed.
  • Students as resource developers – Students can help develop the resources every teacher and student needs to use technology successfully. These resources can be help guides, posters, instructional videos, school websites, or teacher home pages. Students of all types can use their talents to build customized resources for their own school. Artists, actors, and techies can contribute to this process.

Building a self-sufficient community of technology users means that whenever possible, you build home-grown expertise and local problem-solving capability. This is the high-tech equivalent of a victory garden, only with teachers and students all growing their own capabilities with each other’s help.

In this tough economy, no one can afford to ignore the potential students have to help adults solve the problems of technology integration and support. Students are there, they just need adults to teach them how to help, and then allow them to help.

And after all, aren’t these the 21st century skills everyone talks about? Like solving real problems, learning how to learn, collaboration, and communication? How real is the problem of technology integration, and how foolish of us to overlook students as part of the solution, especially when the reciprocal benefits to the students are so great.

Sylvia

PS – For a look at how these strategies can be applied in laptop schools, download my new whitepaper – Student Support of Laptop Programs. (16 page PDF)

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11-year old network administrator

Via Steve Hargadon:

When Victory Baptist School, a small private school in Millbrook, Ala., was struggling to keep its computer network together last year, an 11-year-old student named Jon Penn stepped in as network manager.

Eleven? Yes, eleven.

Jon not only runs the network, he fixed the virus and filtering problems, upgraded the computers to run faster and better, and helped write the school’s web policy.

The lesson here is not that Jon is a one-of-a-kind special kid. Of course he is. But he’s not THAT uncommon. The uncommon thing is that someone let him have this opportunity. Many, many schools have students with this potential. Given the opportunity, students can provide reliable, thoughtful help with school technology.

Suffering with a school network that lacks resources? The answer may literally be right under your nose.

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Preteen steps in to install security gateway, grudgingly agrees to MySpace blocking.

Jon Penn

When Victory Baptist School, a small private school in Sherwood, Ark., was struggling to keep its computer network together last year, an 11-year-old student named Jon Penn stepped in as network manager.


Slideshow: He’s 11…and it’s his network!


Penn did it to help his mother, Paula, the school librarian who had computer support added to her workload a week before the school year started when the existing IT systems overseer suddenly departed. For Jon — who says his favorite reading material is computer trade magazines — it’s been the experience of a lifetime, even getting to select and install a gateway security appliance largely by himself.

“This is kind of a small school, and I’m known as the computer whiz,” the sixth grader says.  “We spent $2,158,” says young Penn, describing how he picked out the McAfee Secure Internet Gateway Appliance after evaluating it in a 30-day trial. He also looked at the Barracuda box — a tad more costly — and tried the Untangle open source product, which he said didn’t meet the school’s needs as well.

His school needed a gateway to protect against attacks, filter viruses and spam, and block inappropriate sites. Keeping costs down is important since the school is operating on a shoestring budget to keep its 60 aging computers, a donation from years ago, working for the roughly 200 students permitted to use them, along with the teachers.

The first thing Jon found as he leapt into the role of network manager was that he had to map out the network to find out what was on it. He bought some tools for this at CompUSA and realized there was an ungodly amount of computer viruses and spam, so he pressed the school to invest in filtering and antivirus protection.

“These computers are so old they don’t support all antivirus programs,” Penn says. The school took advantage of a Microsoft effort called Fresh Start that offers free software upgrades for schools with donated computers, switching from Windows 98 to Windows 2000.

One reason to do this was the hope of one day centrally managing the school’s computers so Jon doesn’t have to change them individually. To install Windows 2000, he removed obsolete network interface cards, Ethernet, video, print and sound drivers with the intent of having a better computer base by next fall.

While Jon says he spent some time evaluating antivirus products — he admires Kaspersky Lab’s software especially because it’s “lightweight running.” In the end the decision was made to get a gateway appliance to filter and block viruses and spam.

For his technical recommendations, Jon has had to present his suggestions to the school’s management for approval (“Because he’s not an adult, I’ve been hovering around,” his mother says.)

Along with school staff, the younger Penn has gotten involved in contributing to school policy on Web access. While blocking access to social networking sites such as MySpace wasn’t popular with many fellow students, he had to agree the school really didn’t need it.

Penn is now the technical support much of the time on everything from printer jams to setting up an external drive to backing up the school’s most important server. He was allowed to give a few lessons to his class about basic computers, having his classmates pull out a few components from old machines.

His father, Dave, a civil engineer, says: “I knew when Jon was three and could boot up my laptop, sign in and open Paint, that he had a knack for computers. But I never dreamed he’d be a network administrator at the age of 11.”

Penn’s parents both believe that technical people must have “integrity and character,” and should use their skills for beneficial, not malicious purposes.

Her son is precocious when it comes to computers but Paula says in the final analysis she hopes the experience with the school’s network helps him realize, “It’s his job to fight the bad guys.”

As for Jon, he says he loves testing virtualization software like VMware and wants to obtain “A+ certification” by passing the computer-technician exam by that name developed by trade group CompTIA. “Hopefully, I can do that this summer,” he says.

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