Education is NOT a Business:

I should have been tipped off how much I wasn’t going to like this article when it starts with “Joel Klein’s title is New York City School Chancellor, but he’s really a CEO.”  Education is not a business and it could never be if it tried. [Sidebar: why would education want to be run as the business sector? Does anybody else remember the rampant corruption and giant recession we are currently in? Why would we want out students and schools to emulate that? How could a broken system fix another broken system.] Using business solutions in education doesn’t work because education doesn’t have the control and freedom of a capitalist corporation, as anyone who has read the Blueberry Story knows. Now, I have read some dissent of this story but I stand by the idea that the education of children should be the goal in public schools and the social, emotional, and physical condition in which students arrive at school impacts the success of all academic endeavors.

By: D Sharon Pruitt

Given that Klein wants to judge teachers based on student performance I would say that the businessman approach to education does view students as the product to be shaped and molded by teachers. Which ties in nicely to my second point of conflict with Joel Klein.

Teachers Performance based on Students Performance:

I was raised by a family of teachers so I was indoctrinated to believe that teaching is a profession to be respected. Until I joined the profession myself I did not realize this was not the case for most people.  Joel Klein looks at teachers an sees a group of  over-protected slackers who do the job for summers off or because they couldn’t hack it in the ‘real world’. While he does acknowledge that the success in schools comes from the teaching force motivating and encouraging student learning, he believe the way to inspire teachers is to pay them more. Now I am all for paying teachers more, as a profession we are underpaid. The national average educator salary is $49,530 while the LOWEST Major League Baseball team average salary is $420,000.  Teachers as a whole aren’t in it for the money or even for tenure; we don’t expect the crazy bonuses the business world feels due to them. You might get a couple of bad eggs, every profession has them, but really if you’re looking for an easy job with good benefits teaching sure isn’t it. I am particularly fond of Taylor Mali’s poem What Teachers Make.

In addition, Klein not only insults teachers by saying that we will be swayed by extra money but he proposes to pay teachers based on student performance.Klein ignores the impact of societal cultures and individual student interest, not to mention budgetary constrains, class size issues and program support and lays all the hope of reform on us awful teachers.

By: Daryl Cagle

Paying teachers for student’s performance, presumably on standardized tests – whose accuracy and ability to measure student ability is a whole other issue, just shows Klein’s a lack of understanding of the function and value of teacher.  Those motivated by money are not the ones you want in schools.

The Evil Tenure System/ Lazy Teachers:

Klein goes on to attack the tenure system and teacher unions saying “when teachers don’t perform well, we have to figure out ways to move them out of the system.” While Klein does address the leadership training given to administration, there is no discussion of teacher support system and professional development as a way to improve tenured teachers. The support available to teachers has an amazing impact on teacher performance. Teachers who teach overcrowded classes with limited to no supplies are not going to be teaching the best they can.

It is not just the students who are being failed by the public school system.

The tenure system is vital to the school culture The ability to take risks and expand curriculum in order to individualize education to a student interests isn’t possible without the job security that tenure provides. The new teachers that are graduating currently express the belief that they will have to toe the line until they get tenure and then if they haven’t been burnt out by the political agendas and bureaucratic red tape they can really start teaching. Klein assertion that “most people who came into public education think that if you show up on day one and just stay out of trouble, you can be there forever” is not a sentiment I have found rampant in the school cultures I have been exposed to.  This is not to say that their aren’t some teachers in the school who rely on tenure to get away with the least amount of effort, but I have found this negative stereotype to be fairly rarely, and I believe that this view of teachers comes from remembering the negative interactions with greater fervor than their positives interactions.

Global Competition:

The last of my complaints addresses this myth of global competition and the American school system failing. All education reformers have been screaming about the U.S. falling behind this country or that country in math or science since A Nation At Risk was published  during the Reagan administration.  Of course all of these findings are based on standardized testing with no investigation of the societal factors, such as China’s higher parent/adult family member to child ratio allowing for more adult involvement in education, or the longer school terms, or the general culture of valuing education and the teaching profession thereby leading to greater funding and support of the programs than is seen in American society. I don’t believe the main failing of our education is shown by test scores but by the difficulties with which our students face in life beyond school.  While some competition is appropriate in schools, the competition of standardized tests does not lead itself to collaboration and community, two qualities/abilities that American society is in desperate need of in its citizens which are also vital to student learning and development. Of course, these can’t be gauged on a standardized test and so fall by the wayside.

This reliance on standardized testing results in a system of subject hierarchy (which Klein suggests as a good thing- and it’s not) placing the core subjects at the top, with math and science at the very peak and leaving the arts, music, theater health and physical education at the bottom. In what world do American children need LESS exercise? Not to mention that by taking away the importance (and eventually funding) of the subjects that encourage multiple learning styles and modes of expression in students you are telling those students who learn best in non-traditional styles that they are of less value. In addition, in today’s world the industrial revolution’s dependence on math and science is over, and the creative problem solving championed in the ‘lesser’ subject areas are paramount for student achievement later in life. The way to compete with other countries that have more of a focus on education is to diversify not specialize on math and science. Not only will you engage more students in a natural, non-contrived manner, but you are preparing your students for a future in which they might hold more than 10 jobs.  But we can’t use standardized tests to measure them so how would we compare ourselves to the rest of the world thereby drumming up a false crisis?

Klein’s Success:

Much of the ‘new’ techniques Klein wants to implement (a.k.a. the ones I have just been trashing) he claims it is too soon to know if they are working. Of the successes that Klein does claim responsibility for, most have more to do with increased attention, financial support, and restructuring of schools resulting in smaller class sizes (allowing all teachers, good and bad, more time for individualized student attention). Klein even admits in the article that “politically this [changing the New York Public school system] was an enormous challenge, so it was great that we didn’t have to use public monies to do the retooling.” And yet, he doesn’t acknowledge that perhaps this political red tape might be something that is holding back education reform or that not all districts have the access to private funding the likes that Klein has procured. Joel Klein brags that he got a $150 million donation based on his persona but doesn’t acknowledge the fact that just maybe funds should be given based on need. Klein also acknowledges that having smaller schools with a lower student to teacher ratio is immensely helpful to student performance but doesn’t consider that a high student to teacher ratio might be a contributing factor to why some teachers are performing as well as they could. Maybe that’s too harsh, he has actually lowered the ratio in many of his school so he probably does believe in it however he doesn’t highlight this strategy for improving education half as much as his other misguided proposals.

In addition, Joel Klein has shown himself to be an ardent supporter of education reform, which I believe is good and important qualities in education leadership, however he ignores the Heisenberg principle which notes that the act of observation will effect the observed. The attention and esteem that Joel Klein is trying to instill in the culture of his donors is a pro-education culture. In a pro-educational culture, students will improve because they have the idea that education is to admired in their native culture. Why should children have respect for their teachers and their education when most of society views them as people who have followed a back-up plan because they “can’t” perform in their field. Ironically, Klein was actually raised to respect education by his parents and yet he does not admit this to be a factor in  American education reform’s ability to succeed. I leave this article with the conclusion that Joel Klein means well, but he is misguided when it comes to the issues of American teachers in the education system.

*All facts are linked to primary sources as much as is possible.

The idea of summarizing my learning from this course seems absurd. There was so much and it was all so diverse that I hardly know where to begin.  To create a summary that isn’t a novel I will have to generalize to extremes. I guess that there have been three key points that I have taken away from this course.

1.Technology takes time.

This may be the most obvious statement I have ever made in this blog but it bears noting. The hardest part of using technology is the time involved. Finding time to familiarize yourself with the programs/ tools, then time to plan what to do with them then time teaching others to use them. It is easier to teach with to old ways (at least to begin with). The course struggles because of the lack of time.  Having a maximum of two weeks but more often one week to learn new software/ tech tools and apply that knowledge is stressful and time-consuming.

2.Planning is important.

On the other hand, a strategy to improve time management is planning. Every step of the way needs to be planned when it comes to technology. Whether you are teaching it to others or applying it for yourself. If you have a flexible plan with baby step goals you are much more likely to succeed.

3. Technology needs to work for you.

Finally, learning to use technology you think is useless for you is extremely difficult.  Unless you can envision a future profit coming from you current input of time, there is no way to justify for yourself the time expense of learning a system. Now, in this class, there was the incentive of a grade however, when it comes to future usage, what I don’t value I won’t use.

As for the technology discovered and used in this class….

Top Three Technology Topics Covered in Class:

Blog: At Nazareth we have been using the Blackboard blog a handful of my classes however that is limited and impermanent as Blackboard only keeps records of the course for a handful of years. The ability to create a real blog that real people (not just my classmates)  could actually read was a huge motivational influence. I was excited to write in this blog whereas my weekly blog in my Art Ed course were not so inspired.

Wikispaces: I am a Wikipedia convert. I used to dismiss it as an unreliable toy but now I understand that the easy of use added to the collaborative power of the program make it a powerful educational tool.

Ning: I regret I have not had more time for this. But an online social network to share ideas is going to be very important to me as I transition out of graduate school and into the real world particularly as an art teacher who may be alone in my building.

Bottom Three Technology Topics Covered In Class:

Garageband: While I personally like this program, the implications for the art classroom art limited.  The requirement of a Mac in order for there to be a program with significant visual component is a turn off.

Smartboard: I do not feel like I learned anything about smartboards. I watched passively to others using smartboards and have resources to look up for future use but I still am missing the knowledge or why/ how I should be using this technology beyond the basics.

Dreamweaver/ Web authoring: I have made several websites prior to this class using free drag and drop type website creators/ hosts. However, despite being an art major I had never created my own website from scratch. Of the things that bugged me about this experience and none of them have to do with Dreamweaver itself the most significant was our professor proclaimed the uselessness. Please see point 3. Also, for those students who have never heard of free drag and drop website creators a list of options with a review of them might be nice.

In that vein, I personally have use weebly.com and webs.com. Weebly has limited theme choices and the best features require you to pay but there are no ads.  Webs.com has better visuals and tons of free features but puts ads either on the top or side of your webpage. Also, weebly.com only lets you make two webpages whereas webs.com lets you make as many as you want. But there are many more- see http://www.free-webhosts.com/free-web-hosts.php

I happened to be writing lesson plans for my Art Ed class this break and as I was writing them I realized that I just assumed my students would have access to computer and internet technology and that my classroom would have the presentation technology i had become accustom to at Nazareth. If nothing else this break has cemented for me that this might not be true. Going to Naz has given me a false sense of technology inclusion in classrooms. Especially in this Ed tech class, we work with best practice/ best technology and I have had a reality check that this will probably not be the norm where ever I end up teaching. This is not to say that we aren’t also presented with back up tech solutions it is just that I worry that I will get into the world and require things of my students that they can’t complete but might be too shy or embarrassed to tell me about. While I am not about to give up all technology, I think it is important to think about as I teach.

Let me explain:

1) Garageband stole hours of my life (and I want them back).

While in recent days I have become more familiar with GarageBand and can now anticipate when its going to freak out at me and more importantly I have developed coping strategies for when it does, I have had so many issues with the Podcast and exporting the file that it is ridiculous. The fact that Firefox (as of this moment in time) doesn’t show the images  for my podcast is highly annoying and leads me to feeling like I wasted a significant amount of time when I bothered to put them in the file.  On the other hand, in a side project (I will explain later in post) GarageBand’s audio mixing abilities have been extremely valuable.  The whole thing was much smoother when we moved from GarageBand to iMovie or iDVD. Actually, once we figured out how to do the Movie track aspect, Garageband kicked iMovie and Windows Movie Maker’s (cough*ahem) bottoms. The whole issue of updated software is just a nuisance. In truth, I’m not really anti Garageband- it makes good movie clips, I’m anti podcast exporting.

2) I never want to make a video presentation every again.

I had to make a video in my art education class about our professional development event back in October. My group was in charge of collecting the photos from the photographers and the video from the media center and creating presentation which outlines the night. We started in iMovie but the transitions were really cheesy and limited. So since I had just studied PowerPoint and knew that it could be saved as a movie file, I suggested we use that. Someone shoot me for that thought. We got the good transitions and effects for our images after hours and hours of work, many mistakes, really slow saving process,  slide transition time errors and issues trying to embed video. And timing the sound was a pain so we axed the sound in PowerPoint and we made the audio track in Garageband. Trying to get the video clips into the presentation in a way that flowed proved to be impossible and we eventually had to move to iDVD to make all of the parts come together and look remotely cohesive.

3) There needs to be one universal file format that works on every system that converts and encodes quickly.

Nothing sucked away more of my life than waiting for files to convert or save in a new format. Plus the handful of times I had to take files from a PC to Mac just about did me in. I have come to appreciate GarageBand but baring buying a Mac, and who has the money these days, I’m out of luck. As I type this, I am sleep deprived from the many, many hours that I spent converting files only to find that they were corrupted or some such nonsense. Explain to me why one  or two file format for each type of file, image, video, doc, etc can’t be established, please, because it makes no sense to me.  Or why can’t a computer come with a good, user-friendly file converter that doesn’t take my entire life to work? Is this a radical idea?

Sorry for the rant… but I feel better now.

McBride presents the idea of bias among traditional ‘valid’ source materials as making the ‘unvalidated’ reference material of open source online content equally beneficial. Everyone today acknowledges that because history is written by the victors there is going to be a bias in the materials promoted by those sources. McBride’s point is that the social norms that get passed down through the traditional material can be oppressive to groups of students whereas with open source materials, she specifically discusses Wikipedia, the ability to share multiple viewpoints negates those influences.

McBride also presents the interesting issue of sites that allow the public to rate content. With online content that has a ratings feature the number of people who can contribute to checking validity is immense whereas your traditionally peer reviewed materials pass through far fewer hands. Also, having something peer reviewed involves peers, people who more than likely share similar social biases. I know that in creating my PowerPoint when I was looking for optical illusion like the Canadian Flag

I showed in class, I always checked the ratings of the viewed on YouTube first because without fail, the ‘screamers’ and joke videos all had poor ratings or ratings turned off.

Overall, I’m still not sure how I feel about this questions. On the one hand I respect the diverse community input into online content but I don’t worry as much about bad information from traditional sources as I do from the internet. Which of course displays my bias. I think my opinion here is I don’t know.

In my coursework, I have always strived to incorporate different forms of educational technology and multimedia aspects to engage different learning styles because it is part of my own personal pedagogy to do so. However, since beginning Intro to Ed Tech, the amount of educational technology that I am using and applying has exploded. I must admit I am beginning to feel the strain of learning so much technology so quickly particularly because, as all teachers should know, the best learning comes from practice, and so I spend a significant amount of time practicing and applying these new assets.  Each week I attempt to use the new tools or new features of old tools in my other two classes. This happens most frequently in my Art Ed class because we are writing weekly project plans where I can implant bits and pieces of the technology I’ve learned. As a result I have been dubbed the go-to tech specialist in the class.

It seems like several times per class I am referencing some bit of technology we used or suggesting a website to go to. On my homework assignments and lesson plans I am continually added one to six weblinks or software hints and these have begun showing up on our blackboard page.  My Art Ed teacher gave me permission to use some of the materials she gave us in class on the wikispace I made and today she told me that in future semesters the wikispace will be featured in the course as a reference.  She even made a note of the course title and Dr. Ransom’s name (our professor for those of you not in our Ed Tech class) and is advising the incoming Art Ed majors to take the course because she sees how much I have gotten out of it.

This week we have been working with advanced PowerPoint features and nonlinear PowerPoints, so when I was assigned to make a movie from the photographs of the Art 21 teacher in service my Art Ed class organized, I turned to PowerPoint. If I hadn’t been taking Ed Tech I have no idea what I would have done. My group members love me for thinking of using it, as PowerPoint actually offers more transitions than iMovie and it is easier to move pieces around.  Not to mention the fact that we all have prior knowledge in using the program so it is not as intimidating as some of the other software out there. Plus, the ability to save the presentation as a .mov file makes it just about perfect.

So Moral of the Story, it is shocking how useful this class has been/ how applicable to the other aspects of my life it has been and the class isn’t even over yet.

It is Google Social Search (hence the post title, Yay Logic!). This search tool taps into your social network to respond to your queries. Google grabs info from all over including,

• “Websites, blogs, public profiles, and other content linked from your friends’ Google profiles.
• Web content, such as status updates, tweets, and reviews, from social services that your friends have listed in their Google profiles.
• Relevant articles from your Google Reader subscriptions.”

There is a nice introductory video you can watch (below) or you can go to http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer=165228 to find out more.

This tool is interesting because, just like Professor Ransom was describing in class about using Twitter to answer his questions, you Google Search can now gather content from you social network thus making (in theory) the responses to your queries that much more relevant to you.

Downside time, my search haven’t really yielded all that much helpful anything by people I know. I think if my social network was more Google equipped and techy it might help.  Also to find the social results was a little confusing (I think this is because it is a social experiment) But, if you decide to join this experiment (and you can only join one at a time remember) if you do a search and then click the option plus sign next to web under the google logo you can find a tab that says social.

Also, on a semi related note Google Music search has also been launched. Music play backs built into your search results. I really haven’t tried it much but i’m crazy excited at the potential.

The article is actually a blog post on LifeHacker called Get It Wrong Before You Google It To Learn Better by Adam Pash

This post links to a study that finds that “Trying and failing to retrieve the answer is actually helpful to learning.” (from Henry L. Roediger & Bridgrid Finn at Scientific American)

I find this fascinating and slightly alarming and then I disagree.

First, it is fascinating that everything teacher have been telling you is wrong.  How many times was I told not to memorize something wrong. Or as a teacher to make sure my students don’t learn it the wrong way first or they will always remember the wrong way.  I brief study of the way links are made in the brain completely supports the Scientific America findings and fits into constructivist theory nicely, so why the disconnect in the field?

Second, it is slightly alarming because who doesn’t go straight for Google first these days? Are we creating a damaged intellectual culture with our reliance on Googling? In relation to the dependence on just Googling, how do we teach students not to when it’s so much easier?

Finally, I disagree. The type of ‘learning’ that the students are typically doing when they Google is fact-finding. This is the case in the Scientific America article.

I propose that memorization is not the same as learning.

Let me explain, learning is not whether or not students can recall facts.  Facts mean nothing without context. What ‘learning’ (really memorizing) something wrong allows you to do is create extra links in your mind to that content. The difference is in the number of links.

If you just a reading factual tidbit in a book and highlighting it- you have created the memory of reading and highlighting – neither of which is a higher level thinking skill (Yay for Bloom’s Taxonomy!) which means you didn’t make any new connections to prior knowledge. The only links you have are to visually seeing it and the context of the time and place you read it at and your brain is designed to not specifically remember all of the details- not even ‘photographic’ memories work that way- they only recall an image. Googling a fact and reading it has the same level of thinking skill as reading in a book.

However, even if you do the same simple reading and highlighting and then get the answer wrong (because you didn’t make enough mental connections with the material when you read it) the fact that you got it wrong presents a second situation to link the material with and failure is a large preoccupation in life. The more links the better you will remember. But Moral of the Story – The act of getting something wrong isn’t the only way to increase learning (Again, Yay Bloom’s Taxonomy!).

Thus, the learning that happens is the forming of connections in the brain due to linking new information with prior knowledge and problem solving skills not the simple regurgitation of meaningly facts. Q.E.D.

P.S. I’ve always wanted to end an argument with Q.E.D. , Life Goal Number 187 fulfilled.

We have been discussing social networking among teachers and the educational benefits of doing so. (Warning: I’m going to go all art teacher on you again and complain about how tough my job is and I talk about this on the VoiceThread we were assigned this week as well.)  Art in modern schools is a marginalized subject, the same goes for music, phys. ed. and technology. There are one to three teachers, on average, per school building that teach each of these subjects.  Blame it on testing, a culture that doesn’t value art education, or whatever you like but the result is the same. It gets ridiculously lonely. And harder, one of the benefits of collaborating with others is that you don’t have to do all of the work. The core subjects have lots of peers teaching the same subject that can share things as simple as project ideas, HANDOUTS or PPTs. The amount of time you can save by sharing resources is amazing.  Even classroom management techniques and room structure ideas.  I promise you that the classroom management techniques for art are radically different from math, heck, classroom management for ceramics units versus painting units are vastly different. The ability to have peers to talk to is invaluable to me and  social networking allows for me to do this.

Ok, the second item I want to mention is sort of an anti tech thing.  I found a video of the World Science Festival where Bobby McFerrin (the Don’t Worry Be Happy guy) does a simple tech-free collaborative demonstration of the pentatonic scale with the audience which blew me away.  Just like we saw with the Smart board in class, sometimes tech free is the way to go.  I wanted to bring this up because of the integration of music and science. It’s a big part of art advocacy for art educators to apply and relate other subjects into the art classroom. I don’t know if everyone does this but I think it’s a good thing and the talk that the video clip is from is an exemplary connective piece.

Yup, that’s as short as I seem to be able to go, I’m too loquacious for my own good.

And, on a hey that’s cool note, GoogleDocs now has a template that can go full screen to make your computer resemble the old school minimalism of the first personal computer documents. Think back to those blue/ green/ black screen with one font in either black or white. I doubt our students will remember computers like that but I think it’s fun for those of us who do.