The Collapse of Complex Business Models

The Collapse of Complex Business Models by Clay Shirky discusses how complex systems collapse and relates this idea to industries being changed by the internet and technology.  He closes with this paragraph.

When ecosystems change and inflexible institutions collapse, their members disperse, abandoning old beliefs, trying new things, making their living in different ways than they used to. It’s easy to see the ways in which collapse to simplicity wrecks the glories of old. But there is one compensating advantage for the people who escape the old system: when the ecosystem stops rewarding complexity, it is the people who figure out how to work simply in the present, rather than the people who mastered the complexities of the past, who get to say what happens in the future.

Shirky doesn't talk about education but my thoughts have been on Scott McLeod's recent talk about education and the premise that schools are becoming irrelevant.  I look at the reforms and suggestions around me and they all seem to be aimed at making our educational system more complex. More rules.  More forms. More tests.  At what point does our educational system become too complex?  Too unwieldly? To the point where some group of different thinking folks just make an end run around "how things have always been done" and leave us cleaning the chalk dust off our trousers wondering what just happened.

[Image: "Theatre Entrance"; Flickr: Uploaded on October 19, 2007 by iamtheh; http://www.flickr.com/photos/iamtheh/1640228985/ (creative commons: Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic)]

Diane Ravitch on the American School System

Haven't read The Death and Life of the Great American School System yet but the following quote got me interested:

Over several decades, Ravitch says, American schools have essentially lost their way, forgetting to focus on giving students a solid curriculum and strong teachers. Instead, she says, we've bumbled through a series of crises that have left us with "vague and meaningless standards," an odd, antagonistic public-private competition and an "obsession" with test scores.

Just stumbled across this quote in a USA Today article.  Think it will go on my "to read" list.

Anybody else read it?  Like it?  Hate it?

Learning about Halloween

Larry Ferlazzo has a post called, "The Best Websites for Learning about Halloween". Bound to be something in here you can use.....or just enjoy on your own without ever sharing it with your students.



[Image captured from New York Times slideshow about Mexico's celebration of the Day of the Dead: "In Mexico, Celebrating the Day of the Dead": http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/11/03/travel/20071003_MEXICO_SLIDESHOW_9.html:

Ken Robinson on School Kill's Creativity

Wonderful TED lecture on how Schools kill creativity. Funny. Thought provoking. A few quotes to wet your appitite:

"Children starting school this year will be retiring in 2065. Nobody has a clue.....what the world will look like in five years time. Yet we are educating them for this."

"Creativity is as important in education as Literacy and we should treat it with the same status!"

"If you aren't prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original."

If you liked this talk, you might also enjoy this article, Transform Education? Yes, We Must

, by Ken Robinson.

Claymation and Comics 2009

I've enjoyed following the progress of this Claymation and Comic summer camp. Some good links to resources. Some great pictures. Lots of ideas if you are planning on doing something like this in your own classroom.

Wish I could remember how I discovered this? I had it set up in my RSS feed and it just started popping up this month. I don't remember putting it there. Must have been a late-nite find.

Anyway, worth a look if you are into this kind of thing.












[Image: Captured from http://claycomics.wordpress.com/2009/07/01/hello-world/]

Product Evaluation Videos

I've been toying around with getting my video students to do product evaluation videos. It involves lots of editing and mixing of canned with planned footage. Good practice of their basic skills.

I'd considered it as a project a couple of years ago and then it fell by the wayside as time constraints took my mind and my students to other areas.

Watching this video from Slate comparing two of the "late-nite" miracle machines is a good example of the kind video the kids could do. They could compare two products. They could test a single product to see if it performs "as advertised". It could be straight up or a parody of the genre. I think it would be fun. (Of course my idea of fun and my students are often at odds.)

[Image captured from video: As Seen on TV: Slap Chop vs Vidalia Chop Wizard]

Schools Out

My school district is out for the summer. I have no work related commitments this summer. I just sent my paperwork in for re-certification so I have some breathing room before I need to take any classes. There were some rumors of writing some curriculum materials for the district but since no one called me, I can assume that fell through or I am an unattractive candidate or they forgot me.

So for a change I get to spend a little time working on my plans for next year

• Not happy with my curriculum for web design. I need to improve my methods for remediating the students who don't get it while I keep the rest of the class moving forward.
  
• Experiment with Boinx's iStopMotion. Going to be adding stop motion unit to my beginning media class and this software came in just before I walked out the door.
  
• Watch a lot of movies so I have examples of various film techniques and shots for my media class. Want to start each class (or a majority of them at least) with a video clip related to that day's lesson.
  

Or.....I may just hike everyday and watch the clouds float by....

[Image: Boundry Waters: Al Gunn: Creative Commons (Attribution: Non-generic 2.0)]

Designing a brain friendly school

John Medina had this post recently on his blog, Brain Rules. He states the following about our work environment as it relates to our brain:

"The brain appears to have been designed to solve problems related to surviving in an outdoor setting in unstable meteorological conditions. And to do that in near-constant motion. That's what the brain's good at. So if you wanted to design a work environment directly opposed to what the brain was naturally good at doing, you'd design something like an office."

This got me to thinking about school design. How would a school be re-designed considering the factor of movement? How could we get our kids up and moving more often? First thing that comes to mind is breaking the campus apart. When I was getting my BA, the college I attended had classrooms spread over three separate campuses and several off-campus. Each was within walking distance. Add to that a dorm room that was even further away and I ended up walking a lot every day.

What about moving each of the subject areas apart with athletic fields between each building.

• The main offices, library, lockers and food in the center. The walkways could be covered (perfect place for solar panels). Even enclosed in colder climates.
• Teacher's offices would be in a building different from where they taught. (We could use the exercise too.)
• By splitting the buildings up we could also more easily create multi-use plans that involve the community using our library. Our athletic facilities. Our theater and auditorium.

I can hear the complaining now.

When are we going to start building schools based on modern thinking other than some archaic architects list that says how big classrooms should be and the width of the hallways. Both of which are never big enough anyway! If we are going to start building schools for the new century, lets get out of our nineteenth century mind set.

[Image: Flickr: "UNC Campus Map"; Uploaded on February 22, 2009 by Velnich: http://www.flickr.com/photos/velnich11/3302220323/ (CC: Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 Generic) ]

Video Book Report

My nephew Lukas and classmate Clair created this presentation as part of a fourth grade project on The Secret Garden. Dad helped with the camera work and special effects but it's the the two kids talking about the book that is special to me. Presentation of material doesn't always have to be paper and pencil.




I am reminded of a young man a few years ago with a disability who wasn't able to function well in a regular classroom. I had him for video production and he was one of my best students. Put him in front of a camera and he was a different person. He took chances. He practiced his presentations. He was creative. He researched his topics. Technology, and in particular, video technology can be great way to get kids into a topic.

[Image take from the video: The Me Show]

Principles of Kit-Based Learning

This short article on Principles of Kit-based learning from the Tinkering School has had me thinking about tinkering all morning. One of my biggest complaints about where tech ed seems to be headed is towards activities that are based on how easily they can be measured and evaluated. These "closed" kits tend to take the open ended possibilities out of a project and what I believe adds depth to the learning experience. So, I was pleased to see this list of criteria the Tinkering School uses in designing a learning kit:


1. Focus on the quality of the experience first
2. Allow for personal expression within the experience
3. Leave something to be discovered
4. Support failure
5. Focus on concept but connect it to the world and the sciences
6. Experience should transition smoothly to tangential or subsequent topics

[Image: Flickr: "Version 0.2 had Wheel Slippage Problems": Uploaded on April 30, 2009by gever tulley: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gevertulley/3489005209/in/set-72157617434361063/(Creative Commons: Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0)]

Learning by doing

Interesting post on the Adobe Education Leaders blog by Peter French. Here is a snippet.

As I pondered this situation I realized a few things. First –I have years of experience doing this type of work. The students have very little experience. I not only know the software I also know the role and importance of the planning process, the problems these projects will likely encounter and how to solve most of those problems. In other words, I have learned on many, many levels, all about these projects. And – I did a lot of that learning by doing projects. I did not learn by reading books, watching tutorials, or listening to podcasts, I learned by doing. I freely admit that these supports were used occasionally but for the most part, I learned the most by doing, by falling flat on my face and by starting over – a little bruised but also a little smarter. It took years to learn the required lessons. If this was my process, then why should it be all that different for our students? Add to that the element of the creative process by which we come to our initial ideas and this situation becomes even more complicated.

Open Source Textbook

Any of you who have ever served on the book committees of your k-12 schools know what a huge item this can be on your budget. Pick the wrong book and you are stuck with it for a long time before monies come available for your department again.

Any of us who ever attended college have experienced the sticker shock of buying our first set of textbooks. The cost of my books approached the cost of my tuition as an undergraduate.


As a student back in the 70s, a used bookstore opened in our college town, we flocked to it's cheaper prices. That bookstore mysteriously closed down after a year of brisk business. I was forced back to the higher priced college bookstore and was always suspicious of why that store closed. Sometimes I did without and tried to make do with the library copies. Understanding instructors tried to help out by picking cheaper books or putting a bunch of copies on reserve in the library.

The last few college courses I've taken have occured during the era of the internet and I've been able to get any books much cheaper. I heard of students going over the Mexican border and copying entire textbooks for themselves and their classmates. I also seem to remember some kids getting busted for scanning in their books and turning them into pdfs that could be shared with their peers. Advances in technology are coming. Access to the tools to easily copy or reproduce books are already here.

The way textbooks are distributed will change. The idea of textbooks online that you subscribe too instead of buy. Digital books that can be read by a device like Amazon's Kindle. Public domain books online. The change is happening right now. So, I found this article about an Open Source textbook fascinating. Virginia has released a physics textbook under a Creative Commons license. It was peer reviewed and put together in less than 6 months. It can be updated on a yearly basis and viewed online. And...the cost is much less than a traditional textbook.

I think radical change is going to come soon. The same kind of sudden change that came with digital music. I wonder if the textbook companies will be surfing that wave or be left sitting on the beach wet and obsolete?

[Image: Flickr: "revision/procrastination": Uploaded on March 26, 2008 by wenday :D: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wenday/2364373936/: Creative Commons]

The Edge

Doug Kelsey recently wrote a piece about Three things that make work and recovering from injuries meaningful. His focus was on physical recovery but I thought his comments about challenge and working at the edge were applicable to learning. He said:

"I refer to this as "edging". Push until you find the edge and then push a little more. Your body will not change on it's own. Sorry but every body is inherently lazy; always seeking the path of least resistance; spending the least amount of energy possible. Edge, edge, edge."

Isn't this also the space where learning takes place. As a teacher, I am constantly trying to get my kids to step up to the edge. I was demonstrating some simple animation principles in my multimedia class the other day. I was doing it old school, in that I was having the students draw in each frame within the program. One student had some previous experience with animation and knew about tweening or letting the program draw all the frames between two keyframes. This is a great time saver but used in it's simplest form, it looks like a ball floating across the screen. With a few animator tricks (squash and stretch for example) it suddenly looks like a ball bouncing. This young ma wasn't willing to go beyond his comfort level to try out my suggestions. Eventually he got angry that his results weren't as good as the folks on either side of him and he gave up.

My failure was not being able to get him to step up to the edge. To trust me enough to move beyond his comfort zone. It may be that he doesn't trust any teacher. His failure was not taking the chance. Maybe he has fallen off the edge one time too many?

[Image: Flickr: "Cliff Edge": Uploaded on June 19, 2007 by several_bees:http://www.flickr.com/photos/several_bees/571615016/Creative Commons-Some rights reserved]

Gever Tulley: TED Talk as a comic book

Gever Tulley, founder of the Tinkering School, gave a talk at TED recently and created a comic book to hand out to the participants. It is available here for download. I highly recommend it. I often feel like we've got away from the idea of letting kids learn by doing. It's too messy. It's too hard to measure. It looks too much like play and not enough like instruction. It can be hard to match to a standard.

I may be wrong. Old fashioned even. I still think it is a valuable way to learn. Not the only way but one way. And one way we shouldn't deprive our children from experiencing.
















I'll link to his new TED talk when it come available. Until then take a peek at his last talk: 5 dangerous things you should let your kids do!

Oh....and the idea of using a comic book format to present information. I am so going to use this!

[Update: I was inspired to buy Comic Life to help me create comic style documents after reading Tulley's comic book style notes. Probably write more on this program later, but I posted my first attempt.]
[via Make] [Images captured from TinkeringSchool: by Gever Tully: 2009: Creative Commons-no derivative]

Bill Gates TED Talk

Bill Gates talks about two problems that his foundation is working on. You may not agree with him but he is asking interesting questions.

1. How do we stop a deadly disease that is spread by mosquitos?
2. How do you make a teacher great?

Follow up discussion to this talk.

The Fifty United States and Their Mottos

This needlpoint of the United States and their mottos by Emily Wick is great fun. I was having a good time deciphering the phrases when the thought struck me that this could be adapted for a graphics project for my Multimedia students. They would get to practice several skills:

• Looking up information
• Inserting a graphic into a specific shape (they'd get to practice this bit 50 times)
• Making it pleasing to the eye (design)

Then I got to thinking (once I start it's hard to get this old rusty train of a mind to stop) that you could do a variety of things using a map of the states to represent concepts graphically. An activity could be designed to show the kids how to present information in a graphical way. I came up with several ideas.

• Census information (population/density/age/ethnicity/etc)
• Date each state became a part of the union
• Picture of a famous person from that state inserted into that state
• State Flower (oooooooo pretty!)

I also thought of creating two maps that show two different aspects and then let the kids pull out correlations like:

• wealth and murder rate
• population and environmental rating (how green)
• wealth and money spent on each student

I don't know what the correlation is but it would be interesting to find out. I might even let the students brainstorm their own correlations to test. I used to do this with blank maps and colored pencils back in olden times. Maybe it's time to update it?

What else could the kids represent graphically on a map of the states?

[Note: Strange Maps also had a post on this map and included a list of all the mottos and a history of their origin.]

[via Neatorama]
[Image captured from Two Eyeballs: http://www.twoeyeballs.com/]

Free Technology for Teachers

Stumbled on Richard Byrne's Free Technology for Teachers blog recently and I'm hooked. I appreciate how he first introduces an application and then clearly writes about the possible applications to education. I know that I have a tendency to enthusiastically promote something new before I've completely thought through how it might be implemented. I'll blather on about a new technology I've just seen or read about and my office-mate will smile and then politely ask, once I've stopped to take a breath,

"Yeah Al, that's cool, but when would I ever use something like that with my students."

He then slips out the door before I can come up with concrete examples.

Richard answers the question of usability before it is asked. I like that and I think you will too.

[Image: Original image captured "Discarded Computers Pose Risk to Groundwater": http://ag.arizona.edu/AZWATER/awr/septoct01/news.html: Modified by Al Gunn]

Using Google Docs in the Classroom

I've been using Google Docs in my classroom for a couple of months now and am still exploring how to best utilize it's capabilities. Saw this posting today and found several ideas I plan on trying including setting up a shared presentation like this one.




[via Google Docs Blog]
[Image captured from Google Docs Blog: http://googledocs.blogspot.com]

Google Docs Blocked

I was in a near by school district recently for a workshop. It was being held in a high school computer lab and when we broke to do our first assignment, I immediately went to Google Docs. I figured I could start the project in the class and then quickly pick up where I left off at home.

Except the district blocks Google Docs.

This lab was locked down tight. I couldn't use a thumb drive. I couldn't get to several sites I normally use every day. Other teachers couldn't access their school sites to grab information needed for the class. The instructor was at a loss at how to get her assignments from her portable drive to us through this school network. IT was called but it was a late night class and I'm pretty sure we were a low priority. Finally, someone suggested a proxy server to allow us to reach our email accounts. I'm sure it broke many school rules to use a proxy but it allowed us to continue on with our class.

I imagine this is the kind of wall of frustration many of our students hit when they try to work at school in the same way they work at home. We teachers resorted to the same thing that many of them do. Work around the system.

I was helping a student the other day in my school who was trying to grab some pictures he had stored on PhotoBucket which is blocked in my district. As soon as he discovered it was blocked, he pulled out his internet ready phone and went to the site where he then emailed the pictures to himself. He's not going to stop using Photobucket, he just is going to adjust his work flow.

I worry at the message we are sending our kids. I also struggle with trying to figure the right balance between protection and paranoia. Don't know the answer yet, but I am working on it.

[Original Image captured from http://www.apple.com/iphone/gallery/ and then altered in photoshp]

The Courage to Teach

I was corresponding with a young teacher the other day and decided to recommend a book that has inspired me many times in the years since I first had it handed to me by a fellow teacher.
It's called, The Courage to Teach by Parker J. Palmer. It is definitely a pro-teacher book and if you have had a bad week of being blamed by parents and administrators for the failures of education. Give this book a look-see.

Here are a two quotes.

"In our rush to reform education, we have forgotten a simple truth: reform will never be achieved by renewing appropriations, restructuring schools, rewriting curricula, and revising texts if we continue to demean and dishearten the human resource called the teacher on whom so much depends. Teachers must be better compensated, freed from bureaucratic harassment, given a role in academic governance, and provided with the best possible methods and materials. But none of that will transform education if we fail to cherish, and challenge, the human heart that is the source of good teaching."


"This book builds on a simple premise: good teaching cannot be reduced to technique; good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher.

Since I've pulled this book down off my shelf, I think I shall read it again. It's November. The kids are restless. I'm a little cranky. I could use some inspiration right about now.

[Quotes from The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life; Parker J. Palmer; Jossey-Bass Publishers: San Francisco; 1998]
[Image: Captured from Amazon.com]