Is it possible that the blur of school is on us already?  I don’t mean school itself, I mean the endless cycle of Monday, garbage day, Friday, NFL game, Monday…I am guilty.  I have a fascination with crossing off dates.  But sometimes that’s not good enough.  I cross off months, weeks, days, and I even find myself crossing off class periods.  You can become so consumed with time that time dictates your teaching. 

How will I fill this time?  Where will I find the time?  Let’s not do that because there is not enough time.  You and your students could be missing out on great experiences when teaching becomes consumed with time.  My unqualified advice, let go.  It will get done or it won’t.   The odds of deep understanding are actually better if you fully explore an idea than if you scratch the surface of 100.  If you model the thinking and learning process well, then you can put ownership of the rest of the content into their hands.        

That said, I want to be better this year.  I myself want to let go of education being a function of time.  I want to be a more thoughtful, more reflective learner and I hope by being conscious of that, I will help others around me do the same. 

Have a great year,

I’ll tell you the Russian story next time I get a moment to type.  It has to do with 21st century tech and one student placed here in good ol’ DuBois PA, that only speaks Russian.  Let the wackiness ensue.

One anomaly that puzzles me is in the response to questions #3:  What types of training is provided most often?  Behavioral, Pedagogical, Adminstrative, Technological

It is entirely possible that this question is poor, but if 70% of the participants feel they are being provided with pedagogical training then where is the disconnect?  My district is obsessed with behavioral issues.  We do not have a behavior problem per say, but we often find ourselves in program after program focusing on the “proper” way to “deal” with the children of today.  In no way am I discounting any of these programs.  Some of them have teachers raving; I am just trying to illustrating my point.  My district spent the entire 2006-2007 school year on behavioral issues and, in my mind, sacrificed teaching skills.  (I suppose were supposed to already have that down already, right?)

I do find some clues in the 5th question that was an open ended response to:  What would encourage you to participate in more PD?  The answers range from more money to small group collaboration, but the common thread that runs throughout 90% of the responses is relevance.  Relevance to “my” classroom, “my” situation, or dealing “real” classroom issues.  I believe these teachers are asking for more pedagogical training and, of course, that coincides with the overwhelming feeling the 75% of of feel disconnected from the professional development process. 

Although, quick and dirty, I feel this survey has merit.  Teachers are not engaged in professional development the way it is offered today.  They want choice, they want personal relevance, and this should be to know one’s surprise, they want more. 

I look forward to taking this information and applying it to my situation as a new technology integrator at my district.  I will differentiate, I will use small groups and online collaboration, but most of all I heed the words of one participant and provide refreshments, numerous breaks…and treat you like adults.        

Punch and pie anyone?

Eliciting participation is the key to a having a reliable network.  Without participation you have a stagnate web space full of old pictures and fragmented comments.  My question is how do you gain prolonged interest and participation without constantly going to hot button issues?  I believe anyone can gain a spark of interest by publishing an angry rant about teacher salaries, or internet nerds killingAmerica, but what keeps an individual engaged and willing to spend time deep in conversation with others?

Over the past few weeks I have been actively engaged in action research.  My subject is professional development.  I see a huge contradiction in the way we are asked to teach (MI) and they way we are taught (in-service).  I envision a future of on-demand PD that is available to the teacher when they need it, at the time of their choosing, but I digress.  It is summer and in order to gather necessary data I needed a different approach.  I called upon my network.  I have access to 1000’s of teachers across the country.  Granted the majority of them are tech savvy, progressive, educators, but I thought that I could gain a relatively large and diverse sample for the simple needs of my paper.  I was wrong.

This is in no way intended to be mean or angry and I want to thank, from the bottom of my heart those of you that have helped me.    It simply raises a point that I am sure others have toyed with before.  How is it possible that one person posts a picture of an airport and receives 30 comments while another asks a serious academic question and receives 4?  I blame it on blog ADD.  Very few stick to one topic (including me) and explore it in the depth that it deserves.  Or could it be that the 3% (on a good day) of people that are willing to participate force us to change topics on a weekly basis just to gain interest?  I don’t know.   

I have to think seriously about these matters because I am introducing a professional network to my teachers in August.  And while the initial excitement will prove fruitful how will we manage to prolong serious discussion over a period of time?  Projects?  Action research?  Do I have to constantly have something prepared to make sure everyone is participating? 

I am sorry if this has offended anyone, but I get a real sense of a hierarchical structure to edublogging and it is off putting.  I do want to take time to thank my personal network that I now believe only consists of a few handfuls of people but those people are amazing.  You folks truly inspire me and always make me feel welcome.  I suppose it’s my fault for drastically over estimating the size of the network, but optimism got the best of me.  I urge you all to take the time and go answer a question.  After all there are no stupid ones, right?

Okay, back to the paper.  I will fill you in on the data when it is complete.  I believe you will find it interesting.

The data will be used in a graduate research paper for Walden University.

Click Here to take survey

I would love to hear any thoughts and feelings you all have reguarding professional development and they way it is provided in your district.

Please provide me with name, experience (yrs), and location. 

Here is my problem statement:

Educators in the DuBois area school district need to provide a relevant education to their students.  Currently, few teachers are demonstrating 21^st century applications or skills in their classroom.  We believe that this is a result of inconsistent professional development and a lack of technical support.

Therefore, we will make a concerted effort to provide quality in-service training that is relevant to the educator’s aptitude and follow up with consistent skill reinforcement.  Furthermore we will make a concerted effort to provide adequate resources to educators whenever and where ever they choose to use the new knowledge or skill they have acquired.  

Research Questions:

1.  What are the 21^st century skills we want our teachers to model?

2.  How can we provide consistent and relevant training to 200 teachers?

3.  Will adequate resources encourage teachers to integrate technology into their curriculum?

I believe that feelings are relevant to atmosphere or environment so I encourage you to let it out.  If you would like to keep anything private, please note it so that I do not publish the comment or include you name on the paper. 

Thank you network.

Take Care.

Yeah! It’s finally here and I can open my mouth.  Pageflakes, the RSS aggregator and now so much more, has released it’s new edition.  I had the distinct honor, and advantage to be among the first group to demo the Blizzard Edition.  I gotta tell you it was a blast.  Dan and the pageflakes team were absolutely dedicated to getting it right.  So much so, they delayed the release by close to a month.  Was it because they were slow and unprepared?  No, it was because they took every piece of feedback we gave them and addressed it. 

Enough smoke, check out my pagecasts and play with it yourself.  I think you will find a huge amount of personalization that is only limited by your imagination.  Be sure to use the anything flake and the web page flake.  It may become your one stop on the web.

Be Good

In Jeff’s post, Pedagogy Defines School 2.0 (revisited) he speaks of connectivism, a theory that, I must admit, I had never heard of.  In fact, I just had a conversation with my super about using technologies to support constructivist practices.   Oh boy…

Fortunately, George Siemens, the mind behind connectivism (Jeff please correct me if I am wrong) acknowledges that it is impossible to know every angle on a given piece of information.  Even better for us, he advocates just letting some things be until all of the connections can be made to achieve a perspective. 

George Siemens authored Knowing Knowledge in 2006.  I haven’t finished the e-book (pdf download), nor have I been able to get a good grasp on how to articulate the information it contains, so I suppose this is more of an advertisement than an original thought.  

E-books, like Knowing Knowledge (Siemens) and Coming of Age (Freedman et all), represent an interesting shift in what is considered text.  These “books” are authored by experts, but they are not products.  The authors are setting up the content so that it can be current and continue to flow.  By attaching blogs, wikis, and in Terry’s case a ning, the authors have started the learning process from their point of view and are allowing the information to evolve as more perspective is introduced.

Is this the responsibility of the expert in our age of information?  You present information, allow others (trusted individuals) to process it, re-define ideas based on new perspective and present again.  Meanwhile ”the others” are presenting the information in their networks allowing their members to add perspective.  (Okay, I am working it out, I think.)

Bottom line in a world flooded with content, the process becomes more important than the content. 

Here are some interesting quotes or ideas from Knowing Knowledge.

“The problem rests largely in the view that learning is a managed process, not a fostered process.” 

“Conversation is the ultimate personalization experience.”

“A product is a stopped process.”

“We have become the filter, the mediator, and the weaver.” 
 

Okay, I need a break.  I will come back to this as I mull through it…hopefully with Jeff’s help and now yours.  Connectivism anyone?

With the wide spread use of collaborative web application the question should be why isn’t everyone involved in school curriculum?  Using a wiki or Google Document a district has the power to offer business, industry, universities, and the community at large a chance to make their voice heard.  The real selling point, all of these groups can participate at their leisure. 

I am in the initial stages of trying to use this technology to accomplish similar tasks.  I have authored several Google Documents inviting the key players to collaborate.  Currently I am only dealing with administration and educators with a stake in this particular project, but I am excited about the possibilities.  Wouldn’t it be beneficial to have a virtual mentor that is an expert in the field you are writing for?  How about a representitive from the state agency to explore grant possibilities while making sure that you have the updated standards?  

Will education ever open up enough to let this happen or is this just another idea that would take too much effort?      

I had a great conversation with a professor that will remain nameless.  From this conversation came the realization of what is actually missing from online universities. How about personality?  We mow through class after class, never really getting to know the highly educated mind behind the grades.  I think that is a shame.  What good is an all-star faculty with PhDs if all they really need to do is grade papers?  I am sure there is a program that will check for APA citation. 

Online universities are slaves to their own system.  It’s their books, their curriculum, their method of learning and assessment.  There is no room for creativity on behave of the faculty or the students, just a regurgitation of their resources.   I am currently on the tail end of a technology integration degree from WaldenUniversity.  Overall I am pleased with what I have learned, but after talking with the professor I have realized how much I have missed out on.

We learned at NECC that the company or persons that embrace new technology the quickest are the ones that survive.  Here’s hoping that the online institution takes a hard look at it self and realizes how far behind they are falling.  In my opinion, if you want to change, you need look no further than the qualified professionals that already populate your ranks. 

In the words of William Wallace (okay, Mel Gibson) “FREEDOM!”    

Clarification – In the past year I have learned a great deal about how learning occurs and that is thanks to Walden University.  I think they do a wonderful job in connecting MI Theory and Learning Styles.  I am a better professional because of continuing my education with Walden.  I just wish I had more opportunity to learn from the experience of the faculty employed by Walden.   

You can PM me at kpruitt@dasd.k12.pa.us.

If you are creating your own, please forward your public “pagecast.”  It would be great to see this come together.  

Check out the page:  http://www.pageflakes.com/kpruitt/11201963

Read what was behind the idea:  http://kpruitt.edublogs.org/2007/06/07/aggregators-as-communities/