Category: student voice

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Update on Maine Learning Technology Initiative

The post Students raising funds and technology awareness in Maine got a lot of comments and interest on this blog. Here’s an update from one of the participants:

First of all, our students are committed to this project! All of our students in Wells, Maine, had to get out of bed and to the school bus by 5:15 AM for the 3 hour bus ride to Orono. They all had planned their presentations with their teachers and then practiced for 2 weeks. Once at the University, they all attended the opening session, then walked quickly across campus to a variety of classrooms and within 10 minutes they were on stage, confident and presenting to students and teachers from around the state.

read more at: Tech Learning TL Advisor Blog and Ed Tech Ticker Blogs from TL Blog Staff – TechLearning.com.

Hope we see more from these motivated students!

Sylvia

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Eisenhower School Internet Safety Project

The Eisenhower School Internet Safety Project began with Tech Team teachers, Angelo Bonavitacola, Marc DeBlock and Harold Olejarz, joining forces to develop a sixth-grade Internet course to address these issues and to encourage students to be active learners by using the latest technology to learn about the latest technologies. To produce the videos, the students view online videos, visit web sites and discuss Internet safety topics. The students begin by developing a storyboard in ComicLife, a MAC OS program designed to create comics. Students then use digital cameras to capture images that are added to their comics. When the comics are completed the pages are exported to iMovie. In iMovie the students add voice-overs, sound effects, titles and transitions to complete the Internet Safety project.

Many of the student videos have been or will be shown on ETV, Eisenhower’s morning TV show. ETV is broadcast to the entire school and the town of Wyckoff, NJ. In addition, the videos are posted on a resource web page that includes links to sites with information and other videos on Internet safety. This Internet Safety web site was also used in a presentation to seventh-grade parents. During the presentation it was suggested that parents watch the videos with their students and use the experience to begin a dialog on the issues raised in the videos. (via LearniT-TeachiT)

This is a great example of the “technology ecology” that I’ve been talking about. Sure the students could have learned to make cartoons in Comic Life or how to use iMovie. They could have gotten lessons on Internet Safety. Parents could have been invited in to hear a lecture from an expert on cybersafety.

But instead, all these came together in a way that is greater than sum of the individual parts. They used an authentic problem to build internal capacity and learn how to learn.

In this school, students learned about Internet Safety AND how to communicate it to others, reinforcing the lessons and making them more relevant. They learned to use a technology tool for an authentic purpose – to teach others and engage the whole community in the complex issues of Internet safety. They learned that they have the power to learn new things and transform their community. They learned that their voice is important and that their parents and community will listen to them if they know their stuff.

Way to go Eisenhower!

Sylvia

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Students teach tech to superintendents

Last month at AASA (the American Association of School Administrators annual conference) in Phoenix, Arizona, several GenYES students from nearby Paradise Valley School District were invited to participate in an Apple itouch/ipod workshop for the attending superintendents.

Apple ipod Conference AASA from Debbie Kovesdy on Vimeo.

GenYES students from elementary, middle and high school presented the devices, circulated through the audience as the superintendents learned about educational uses, and provided help throughout the workshop.

And when you watch this video, notice that these students care deeply that these adults grasp how important using technology is for them. The good news is, there are students like this in every school, just waiting for an opportunity to put their passion about digital communication to good use to improve learning.

These students are part of a district-wide vision in Paradise Valley that students are a crucial part of integrating technology into every classroom. GenYES classes teach students technology, mentoring, and leadership so they can assist teachers and fellow students with technology.

As you can see, Paradise Valley is a leader in student-centered technology. They were the first K12 institution in the world to make content, lessons, and student work available on ITunes U/K12. Their pTUNES portal is now available to schools and districts statewide through a partnership with Apple, Arizona IDEAL, and Arizona State University (ASU). For this innovation, pTUNES was awarded the 2009 Cox Technology in Education Award. More about PTUNES…

Oh, one more thing – the video was (of course) produced by the GenYES team at Shadow Mountain High School in Paradise Valley.

Congratulations to the students, teachers, and administrators at PVUSD!

Sylvia

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The Youngest Speaker at TED Advocates “Kid’s Eye View”

During her time on the stage at TED, Adora advocated a sort of “Kid’s Rights” sentiment, arguing that adults should take young people more seriously and be more interested in learning from kids to foster a more reciprocal relationship between age groups. She says that because kids tend to be less constrained by social norms than adults as we get older, young people can often offer a unique and perhaps more creative, out-of-the-box approach to problems.

via The Youngest Speaker at TED Advocates “Kid’s Eye View”

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Citizenship is a verb

US K-12 students aren’t getting adequate instruction in “cyberethics, cybersafety, and cybersecurity,” according to a just-released study sponsored by the National Cybersecurity Alliance and Microsoft released today. The survey, of more than 1,000 teachers, 400 administrators, and 200 tech coordinators, found that – although over 90% of administrators, teachers, and tech coordinators support teaching these topics in school – only 35% of teachers and just over half of school administrators say the topics are required in their curriculum. A bit of pass-the-buck thinking turned up in the results too – 72% of teachers said parents bear most of the responsibility for teaching these topics  while 51% of administrators said teachers do.

via Connect Safely |How to teach Net safety, ethics & security? Blend them in! | NetFamilyNews.

Check out my quotes later in this article – I was thrilled to be interviewed by Ann Collier, one of my heroes in the effort to address Internet safety and ethics in a sane manner. We had a long conversation about digital citizenship and what it means. To me, citizenship is a verb, an act of participation in a community. To be a citizen means more than being told rules, it means having the rights and responsibilities of membership. So it’s simple. If we want students to be “21st century citizens” or “digital citizens” or ANY kind of citizen, we have to give them responsibility and include them in the actions of the community. This, of course, should be guided, gradual, and mentored, but it should not just be telling them the rules of a game they aren’t allowed to play.

Otherwise, it’s digital dictatorship, not digital citizenship.

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Why Education Reform Will Work This Time

This is a remarkable piece of video from 1998 unearthed by Gary Stager. In it, Ryan Powell, then a GenYES middle school student, interviews Seymour Papert and John Gage about the model of students learning technology in order to help teachers in their own schools. Both of these heavyweights of educational technology say some really interesting things about the model, including Dr. Papert saying that it’s the best thing the US Department of Education has ever funded! Pretty nice to hear that.

As further background, Dr. Papert is the father of educational technology, a colleague of Jean Piaget, and an internationally renowned educator famous for the theory of constructivism. His advocacy of student laptop programs extends around the world including the XO laptop for developing nations, and he invented the Logo programming language for children. John Gage, one of the founders of Sun Microsystems, started the NetDay movement to wire schools and originated the phrase, “the network is the computer.”

About halfway through this clip, Dr. Papert talks a bit about why he believes that education reform can happen now, even though decades of reform efforts have not had much impact.

He says there are two things that are different now. One is that school was designed to fit the previous “knowledge technology” of chalk, blackboards, paper and pencil. These technologies match quite well with the prevailing pedagogy of the last century, which relied on instruction, teacher as the center of all knowledge, and delivery of content. So criticizing it was a bit idealistic and theoretical. But now we have new technology that directly enables construction, connection, and distributed expertise. These new knowledge technologies tip the balance and as a result, new pedagogy can become reality.

The second factor is what he calls “Kid Power.” The technology amplifies the voices of people who are traditionally without voice or representation in our society.

For more explanation of Papert’s view on why technology will power education reform, check out this speech: Chlld Power: Keys to the New Learning of the Digital Century.

In Gary’s post about this video, he also recalls some of the early days of Generation YES, when Dennis Harper had this “crazy idea” of kids being at the center of changing education with technology. Seymour Papert on Generation YES & Kid Power : Stager-to-Go

By the way, Ryan is now a college graduate serving in the Peace Corps in Benin, West Africa with his wife Kimberly.

Sylvia

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They aren’t broken… 7 rules for adult allies of youth development

From Adam Fletcher: 7 Rules for Adult Allies

  • If you don’t experience discomfort every time you’re listening to Youth Voice, you aren’t listening right.
  • If you can’t stay engaged enough to simply sit and listen to young people talk, you aren’t being an adult ally.
  • If you can’t speak your truth to young people you aren’t in a youth/adult partnership.
  • If you can’t expect and accept not having closure when young people share their voices you aren’t being an adult ally.
  • Listening to Youth Voice means listening for understanding, rather than to support your own conclusions.
  • If you’re an adult ally to young people you’ll engage, support, and challenge them, and not try to fix them. They aren’t broken.
  • If you aren’t taking risks you aren’t being an adult ally.

More resources for adults working to empower youth at Common Action Consulting.

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Students say teachers limit technology use

Last week posts from two popular edubloggers hammered home the same point – that technology is going to make an impact on education whether we are ready or not.

These horses are out of the barn – Doug Johnson, Blue Skunk Blog

There are some educational “truths” that we can’t change, even if we wanted to. These educational technology resources, annoyances, and conditions are here to stay despite some educators denial, resistance and fast grip on the status quo.

I Don’t Need Your Network (or Your Computer, or Your Tech Plan, or Your…) – Will Richardson, Weblogg-ed

When do we stop trying to fight the inevitable and start thinking about how to embrace it?

As usual, the students are way ahead of the curve. They don’t need a blog to tell them that their access to learning technology is being denied, meaning not just Internet access, but access to personal technology.

I blogged about this yesterday based on student focus group data, but here’s the qualitative data from over 280,000 K-12 students supporting the same thing. (Data from Speak Up 2008)

Student response to: Besides not having enough time in your school day, what are the major obstacles to using technology in your school? (Check all that apply) Grade 6-8 Grade 9-12
School filters or firewalls block websites I need to use

34%

51%
Teachers limit our technology use

34%

36%
I cannot access my personal email account or send email or IM to classmates

31%

29%
I cannot use my own computer or mobile devices

30%

32%
There are rules against using technology at my school

25%

26%
Internet access is not fast enough

18%

22%
None of the above

16%

14%
My assignments don’t require using technology

12%

11%
Software is not good enough

12%

15%
Computers or other tech equipment are not available

11%

11%
Teachers don’t know how to use the technology

8%

13%
I am unable to access the Internet

8%

7%
I don’t have the skills I need

6%

5%

When 34% of today’s 6-8th graders say their teachers limit them from using technology, what does this mean for the future? I think what children are learning is that teachers are out of touch with the real world, and worse, that school is where you literally power down and wait to be told what to do.

OK, granted — not every student has visions of exemplary learning when we ask them about technology. BUT, we simply can’t ignore this either. Many of these students ARE interested in learning.

It means we are telling them that they must achieve, but preventing it at the same time. And there is no one wiser to hypocrisy than a teenager. We run the risk of losing a generation of young adults who are taking a good hard look at the way the real world works and comparing it against the artificial limits placed on them in school. And when we tell them “it’s for your own good” we simply lose all credibility.

According to the student Speak Up 2008 data, only one-third of high school students who participated in the poll think their school is doing a good job preparing them for the jobs of the future. Think this is just kids whining? Nope – even fewer numbers of their parents think that. Yet, a majority of school principals (56 percent) say their schools are doing a good job. Who is kidding whom?

So this is straight from the horse’s mouth, not edublogger ponderings … what are we gonna do about it?

Sylvia

PS And do you know what YOUR students would say about this? Find out! Sign up for Speak Up 2009 (survey open until Dec 23, 2009.)

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Professional development that hurts

Yesterday I wrote about a report on What Works: Effective Technology Professional Development. Today, unfortunately, I have the other side of the story. Yes, it’s possible to do professional development that actually decreases the chance that teachers will integrate technology into the classroom.

This is from the Student Speak Up survey project, where students, parents, teachers, and administrators answer questions about technology in their academic and personal lives.

Julie Evans, CEO of Project Tomorrow, who runs the Speak Up project sent me this input from a focus group of 40 high school students in California in March 2009 (and gave me permission to publish it.)

Students told me that they had better access to technology at school before we (meaning education agencies and groups) trained all the teachers how to use technology.  The students said that their teachers were very fearful of the dangers of Internet use in particular and concerned about their own liability.  The perception of the students is that their teachers were therefore making conscious, deliberate decisions to use technology and in particular providing Internet access less than what they had done previously.

This is not that teachers don’t have technology skills. This is a deliberate stance taken by teachers who LEARN about technology, but are so confused, scared, or disempowered that their practice retreats to use LESS technology.

Professional development that doesn’t empower teachers is no solution at all.

Sylvia

PS Registration is still open for the 2009 Student Speak Up until Dec 23 – share your voice!

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Children who use technology are ‘better writers’

From BBC News – Children who use technology are “better writers”.

“Our research suggests a strong correlation between kids using technology and wider patterns of reading and writing,” Jonathan Douglas, director of the National Literacy Trust, told BBC News.

“Engagement with online technology drives their enthusiasm for writing short stories, letters, song lyrics or diaries.”

Mr Douglas dismissed criticisms about the informal writing styles often adopted in online chat and “text speak”, both of which can lack grammar and dictionary-correct spelling.

“Does it damage literacy? Our research results are conclusive – the more forms of communications children use the stronger their core literary skills.” (emphasis mine)

Sylvia