AHS Chemistry Podcasts

I first ran across the idea of podcasting Chemistry lectures about three years ago. Jean-Claude Bradley at Drexel University posted this:

A new way to teach. Having an archive of lectures available gives me a lot of added flexibility. This term I have assigned the archived lectures (podcasts and screencasts) and instead of lectures I run workshops during class time. I have the chance to interact one on one with every student who needs help with the specific problems that they have. I can use other modalities such as watch them play games or build molecular models from kits. In other words, I can be a teacher again, instead of a parakeet.

He also has a wiki with some links to his own and other university lectures that are podcasted.

I'm pretty sure I shared that with the folks in my staff development at some point and probably commented on how at least some university professors were trying to take advantage of some of the new technologies. And I recall a conversation with some folks where I mentioned this and talked about how it allowed the professor to offload the necessary (but routine) parts of his chemistry class so that he could get to the "good stuff" in class; the really interesting parts of Chemistry that he thought would grab the students' attention, but he often never had time for because he had to spend it on delivering the basics. And, as he blogged about, he wasn't worried so much about the attendance factor:

Attendance. It seems strange to me almost every article or comment on lecture podcasting assumes that a decreasing attendance is obviously a negative outcome. As educators we should be focusing on education, not counting bodies. If students are doing just as well and not attending class then that tells me that my multimedia channel is effective. This is exactly what I have observed in my online optional classes (using podcasting and screencasting), where attendance dropped to 10-20% by the last lecture.

Now flash forward to last year when Brian Hatak, one of the teachers at our school, came to me and said he had heard about these high school chemistry teachers in Woodland Park, Colorado podcasting their chemistry lectures and was wondering if we could do that. After some lengthy discussions about both the technology and the pedagogy, Brian decided to give it a shot this year:

Podcasts. Yes, chemistry podcasts.

For the past few years, I have felt frustrated with how my classroom was working. I would ask the students to read and they would act like they did, and perhaps some of them did, and then I would lecture over the material on the next class day. It seemed that the students were learning that they did not have to read since I would be covering the exact material in class. Then they would struggle on the homework problems and ask in class and earn average grades on the tests.

However, I felt as though I was doing a lot more of the problems then the students were. So, I started looking for a way to fix this.

Much like Jean-Claude Bradley at Drexel, Brian decided to try to offload the, umm, sometimes less than exciting (for some students) - but still very necessary - chemistry lecture/information delivery to outside of class. He found that he could "deliver" the necessary information in a relatively compact and cogent form via video podcast/screencast. He could take his time (and this does take some time up front) to fine tune it to make sure he hit all the points he wanted to, yet still take much less time than he used to in class (he's hoping most of the videos will be between 5 and 15 minutes, although a few will undoubtedly be longer). And, the students could watch it - or parts of it - multiple times if they needed to. Instead of frantically writing down notes in class and then later looking at them and understanding step 1 and step 3 but not having any idea of how he got from step 1 to step 3, they now could watch, pause, reflect, and re-watch until they felt pretty comfortable with the material. And, of course, they could come back to it as often as they needed to when they needed to review.

Previously Brian had been frustrated - like most teachers - with never having enough time in class. He felt like by the time he got done "covering" the material he didn't have enough time left to effectively answer student questions. He'd send them off to do homework on their own where he wasn't around to help them when they got stuck, and then feel frustrated when he'd have to go over it all again in the next class period. (Note: I think both Brian and I agree that it's not always a bad thing to struggle, but if the material is so difficult that students get frustrated and then give up - and lose their interest in Chemistry - then that's a bad thing.) So Brian decided to try to do almost the exact opposite of what he'd been doing before - have them do the lecture as homework and use class time to work with the students (much like Jean-Claude Bradley at Drexel appears to be doing). He could use class time to work with students in small groups or one-one-one, and also hopefully give him the time to explore some of the more interesting aspects of Chemistry. (Note: Our chemistry classes meet three times a week for 58 minutes on MWF, and then they have a two-hour lab once a week on either Tuesday or Thursday.)

Now, we just started school about two weeks ago, so we don't have any definitive results to share yet, but I think this shows a lot of promise. I've embedded one podcast below, but you can also visit Brian's TeacherTube channel to see all of them. He's just getting started, so still getting the hang of how to do this, but I think it's a good start.



As he progresses through the school year, Brian's also going to ask students to record some of their lab work and how they work out problems and share that out with the other students. He's really hoping to develop a community of learners, all helping each other - and future Chemistry students - learn the material.

I thought this was blogworthy in and of itself, but the story gets just a little bit better. Before the school year even began, Brian received an email from Ben, one of our students that was going to be in Brian's class. Ben had discovered what Brian had already uploaded:

I am personally very excited about the way you have decided to use technology to fundamentally change the way you run your class. The way you perceived an issue and saw how technology could be used to effectively address it is a prime example of how the expertise of teachers is key to effectively integrating technology into a class.

The screencasts you have a created are available on teachertube, which is a convenient way to view them. However, I thought that it would be even more convenient if your screencast was also a podcast. For this reason, I used several tools to turn the videos you post on teachertube into an iTunes subscribable podcast.

At this url, I have created a blog where the videos are reposted. It is the process of reposting that syndicates them into an XML format iTunes or other video podcast readers can understand. They are also available for download individually in a format that can be transferred to an iPod or viewed with Quicktime. The "PODCAST HELP PAGE" link on the sidebar goes to a website I quickly assembled that describes how to subscribe in iTunes, download episodes, or even view online with an iPhone or iPod Touch.

One of the reasons I am sending you this email is to make sure that this is acceptable to you. The screencasts are your intellectual property, after all. If it is acceptable, hopefully this will become a valuable way to access the content.

Well. Okay. Did I mention that it was still summer when this email came in?

Brian shared this with me and I suggested he email Ben so that Ben could teach us exactly how he was doing this (I was curious how he was getting the mp4 to be part of the RSS feed from Blogger so that iTunes would pick up on it) and so that Brian could give him the original mp4's so that Ben didn't have to convert them. Ben emailed us back with the details, and we are going to hopefully meet sometime next week to see what other ideas we might be able to brainstorm to make this work more effectively for the students. Ben has also given Brian rights to the blog so that he can post directly.

So give Brian some feedback on his post if you have suggestions (plus you can read about how he's having students use their cell phones instead of purchasing clickers). I'm also hoping Brian will blog soon about how he's modified a Wii to create a homemade - and much less expensive - whiteboard. As for me, I need to go mess up Ben's transcript so that he never graduates. At least he's only a Junior . . .

Shift Happens Updated Statistic of the Day

According to today's Rocky Mountain News, citing the upcoming Statistical Abstract of the United States, 2009, Table 644:

4: Median number of years workers have been with their current employer.

The statistic in the original version was 5 years. Looks like things are still shifting.

Wikipedia Knew VP Picks Before You

The Washington Post has an interesting story about predicting who Senator Obama and Senator McCain would pick as their running mates:

In the days leading up to Republican presidential candidate John McCain's running mate announcement, political junkies glued to broadcasts and blogs for clues of McCain's veep choice might have done better to keep a sharp eye on each candidate's Wikipedia entry.

It turns out that some folks were watching the Wikipedia entries for clues to both picks, and both Biden's and Palin's entries saw the most substantive action in the days before the picks were announced. The story doesn't say whether this is due to insiders updating the entries to get them "accurate" before the announcement ("some of the same wiki users [that were making changes to Palin's page] appeared to be making changes to McCain's page"), or whether this is another Wisdom of Crowds situation, but I suspect it's a little of each.

I also find it interesting that there's a company, called Cyveillance, that has analysts monitoring sites like Wikipedia.

Cyveillance normally trawls the Internet for data on behalf of clients seeking open source information in advance of a corporate acquisition, an important executive hire, or brand awareness.

Now that's an interesting phrase, "seeking open source information," that I'm going to have to ponder for a while.

By The Numbers: New York Times Visual Op-Ed Columnist

Charles Blow is the New York Times "visual" Op-Ed columnist. His column appears every other Saturday and he often includes visual representations to help him try to make his point. I find it very interesting that the New York Times has an Op-Ed columnist who focuses on statistics and visual representations, not just text, to try to communicate. I think it's another indication of the power of visuals - often, but not always, in conjunction with text - and the changing nature of both communication and literacy in the 21st century. It's also another example of the transformation of "traditional" newspapers and how they deliver content in a technological age.

He's also just started a blog, called By The Numbers, where he intends to discuss "all things statistical - from the environment to entertainment - and their visual expressions." Like many blogs, it appears to be designed to be more immediate and more interactive than a traditional New York Times column, and will definitely focus on the visual as much as the textual.

[Warning: Shameless self-promotion alert.]

Now, I don't know yet if this is going to be a blog that I'll stay subscribed to, or how well he'll make the transition from columnist to blogger. But one thing's for certain, he has excellent taste in videos.

Texting, tapping, clicking, tweeting, filming: The Rocky Covers the DNC

I've written several times before about how I think one of my local newspapers, the Rocky Mountain News, seems to be doing a fairly decent job trying to transition a traditional newspaper into the digital age. The first part of the title of this post is the headline for John Temple's article from Saturday's paper on covering the convention:

For Sen. Barack Obama, this could be the pivotal week of his long campaign.

We hope the same holds true for the Rocky in what has been a long journey from being just a newspaper to becoming a live source of news and information.

For the first time in planning for a major news event - and we've prepared in the past for everything from the pope's visit for World Youth Day to the Summit of the Eight - our focus has been first on what we would do on the Web, on how readers would experience our work on their computers and cell phones.

I find that an interesting choice of words, "just a newspaper." And while it makes perfect sense, I also find it interesting how they are acknowledging that they are producing for the Web first, and the paper second. And given schools' almost universal ban on cell phones in the classroom, it will be interesting to see how policy clashes with practice if major news organizations start producing for the cell phone first.

For us, the change is exciting. But it's also challenging. It's required many of us to learn new skills. We've been training for months, testing our new approaches to make sure we're ready to give you something different, something you'll value not just in the morning when your paper lands on your doorstep, but all through the day and night.

The Rocky will have about 150 journalists on the street covering every aspect of the convention. Their work will be featured on RockyMountainNews.com and on our mobile Web site, TheRocky.com. If you want to follow what they're reporting, you can sign up to receive their Twitter Tweets by going to RockyMountain News.com/twitter. If you want to see what's going on all over Denver, you'll be able to watch their video clips and see their still photos posted almost instantly on our Web site. If you want to comment on our Web site about what's happening, you'll be able to do that, too.

It's going to be a rich stream of content that we'll organize for you in real time to keep you atop everything from what the candidate is doing to which celebrities are in the Mile High City.

So a newspaper is going to be tweeting the convention.

The Rocky Mountain News uses Twitter in several different ways. Each reporter has a Twitter account they use to communicate breaking news from the field. When you see a Twitter feed embedded with a story, those updates are live and immediate. The Rocky also has Twitter accounts that act as news feeds.

If you go to their DNC page you'll see their embedded live twitter feed.

And posting videos. And allowing - and encouraging - comments. And providing a "stream" of content.

We'll have more people with cameras on the streets than any other news organization, from reporters with cell phone video cameras to sophisticated, award-winning videographers. Our goal is to immerse you in the scene.

In the past, we've published instant books to commemorate the most dramatic events in this city. Well, this time we're going to produce something we'll make available to a global audience - an instant multimedia retelling of the events of the week. Working in collaboration with MediaStorm, an Emmy Award-winning multimedia documentary company, the Rocky will have on its site next Saturday what we hope will be the definitive interactive account of an event that will be talked about for generations.

Their goal is to "immerse" us, and then they'll provide an "instant multimedia retelling" of the events of the week that they're going to make available to a "global audience." (Okay, could that have been written by an edublogger?)

Now, contrast all that with what's happening in many classrooms around the country this week. Anyone else see a disconnect? I'll close with John Temple's last paragraph (emphasis added by me):

You won't be able to be everywhere this week. We will be. I hope you'll join us.

Weather Channel Environmental Essay Contest

I get a lot of email. Even before this blog and that darned Presentation That Shall Not Be Named, I got a lot of email because I'm the technology guy at a large high school with over 2,100 students and about 165 staff members. Email is a natural way for most of those folks to get a hold of me when they need some help. Then when you throw in the email generated by this blog and that presentation, well, I get a lot of email.

I've also been getting quite a few email requests to post certain things on the blog, or offers of advertising, or press releases from various organizations (particularly political organizations trying to influence education policy). For the most part, I ignore all those, because it's hard for me to figure out when I might be crossing a line. (As an aside, I'd be curious about how other education bloggers deal with this - leave a comment or drop me an email.) But this one seems innocuous enough and some folks might be interested in it, so I'll pass it along.

The Weather Channel is hosting a Forecast Earth Summit, a conference for environmental experts and high school students in Washington, D.C. in December, and holding an essay contest to go along with it. From the email I received,

The Weather Channel’s Forecast Earth Summit is a conference for select future environmental leaders held in Washington D.C., December 5-7, 2008. The Weather Channel will provide free trips to D.C. for 20 high school students who are passionate about the environment. Share this widget to let them know about this opportunity while raising daily environmental awareness.

Here's some info on last year's summit in case anyone is interested in finding out more. Here's what that widget looks like:



AHS students, I expect at least one of you to be selected . . .

My Question for Senator Obama

As I posted about previously, the DNC is soliciting questions to be addressed at the convention next week. In that post, I suggested that edubloggers - and everyone reading the post - should submit a question. Well, I began to think that after suggesting that, I probably better go ahead and submit my own question, even if I still didn't feel like I had the perfect question. So, here's the video question I submitted:

Not the perfect question, but perhaps a conversation starter.

What question will you submit? Deadline is August 27th.

What's Your Story?

I came across this touching digital story via Jim Gates (who came across it via Alec Couros who got it via Josh Spear). I can't figure out a way to describe it that does it justice, so you just need to go read/see it.

I think this is an excellent example of digital storytelling in the best sense of that phrase. It combines text and images in a way that tells a powerful story that I just don't think could be told as well with either text or images alone. I also think the presentation style that the web allows, how it transitions from one screen to the next, also adds to the impact of the story.

I think this is a story that could/should be shared in a variety of our classrooms, from Language Arts to Social Studies to Consumer and Family Studies to Art to Photography to Theater and most likely others. It should be shared because it's important, because it's a story that fits well into each of those content areas, and because it should serve as inspiration to our teachers and students to figure out their own story and then tell it in a similarly moving and graceful way.

So, what's your story?

Did You Know? - Music Industry Remix

A while back Scott McLeod, Jeff Brenman (who did the Slideshare version) and I received an email from someone at Sony BMG Music Entertainment asking us if they could remix the various versions of Did You Know? for a meeting they had coming up. We said sure and they came up with this and gave us permission to link to it. (It takes a little while to load - sorry, can't figure out how to embed it. you'll have to follow the link).

Here's the written description:

The following adaptation of the original "Shift Happens" presentation was created by Sony BMG Music Entertainment. The video, presented by Richard Sanders, President of Sony BMG International, was shown on 4 May 2008 to 150 of the company's top executives gathered in Rome for Sony BMG’s annual Global Management Meeting. As part of Sony BMG’s mission to improve the music experience for consumers living in "exponential times", the video illustrates the demand for change.

No words of wisdom here, I just thought some of you might find it interesting.

Update: That link no longer works, but you can find it on YouTube, or download a high quality version (mp4, 41.9 MB). As with all remixes of Did You Know?/Shift Happens, it's Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike licensed, so you're welcome to use it under that license.

Follow-Up to Questions for Senators Obama and McCain

Thanks to Ben Nuebel in the comments, I wanted to include this follow-up to my earlier post about wanting to have a good question ready in case I ran into Senator Obama when he was here in Denver.

Ben points out that the DNC is at least making a show of soliciting questions from all of us:

As part of throwing open the doors to the Convention, we’re inviting Americans from around the country to contribute to the program by asking questions in America’s Town Hall. We want to hear your questions for our elected leaders and national experts. While your thoughts on any topic are welcome, we are particularly interested in hearing your questions and personal stories about how to change politics as usual, fix our economy, make America safer and restore our nation’s standing in the world.

Of the many submissions received, we will select a few questions to use at the Democratic National Convention from August 25-28. These questions will be answered by speakers, live from Denver in front of thousands of delegates in the hall and millions of Americans watching from home. We will also be answering questions online throughout the Convention.

Deadline is August 27th.

Now, they pretty clearly state that they will only be selecting a "few" questions to use at the Convention, so it's pretty unlikely that any of our questions will be addressed (especially if they don't match the message they're trying to deliver - see the four suggested topics above). But, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take, so - edubloggers (and others) - submit your questions (text, video file, YouTube link, or they may come make a video of you asking the question if you're selected).

Entrants Must Be 18 or Older?

The Rocky Mountain News is beginning an interesting series titled, "A Dozen on Denver: Stories to Celebrate the City at 150." John Temple, the Publisher, writes:

While I love great journalistic storytelling, I've got to admit that fiction has a special power to tell us truths about ourselves and our society that it is difficult for even the best journalism to touch. That is why when I began to consider how the Rocky Mountain News should celebrate the 150th anniversary of the city of Denver and of the newspaper itself, I was drawn to the idea of enlisting Colorado authors to mark the two occasions.

Too often when newspapers observe such events they spend all their time looking back at their own work over the years. Readers see nothing new.

Why not, instead, celebrate the cultural richness of our community by giving some of its most creative individuals a platform to share their work with a huge audience? Why not leave behind for future generations a new set of stories casting light on how we reached this day?

. . . The authors' stories cover the period from the 1860s to the present. And all have at least one thing in common: Larimer Street, the city's oldest, is at least mentioned.

But to reach a dozen, we're looking for one more fiction writer.

. . . Now we're holding an open competition to find the best story set anytime in Denver's future

So far, so good. This sounds like a really interesting idea and I was already composing this blog post and planning on sharing it with my Language Arts and Social Studies teachers. I was hoping that perhaps some of our students would not only read the series, be exposed to some great writing, and learn some Colorado history, but would also submit a story. After all, we have some very talented writers at our school and, since this is about their future, I figured some of them might have some interesting takes on the matter.

But then in the sidebar that describes the details of the contest I read this:

Entrants must be 18 or older.

Why? Why must they be 18 or older? What exactly is it about this concept that requires the author to be at least 18? The only possible reason I can think of is that they're offering prize money, and perhaps there's a legal issue surrounding that. If so, then surely they could've found a way around that if they had really wanted to.

Now, before y'all complain that I should just ask them why, I did. This was published in last Saturday's paper, and that afternoon I emailed the address that they said entries should be submitted to. Then I waited. I realize that they probably get a lot of emails, but after a week with no response I decided to go ahead and post this. Perhaps someone connected with the paper can find out and leave a comment, or perhaps some of you might also try emailing them and asking why. (Or leave a comment, which I just belatedly did, although it does require creating an account.)

But it seems to me that even if there is a legal reason, the paper could at least run a parallel contest for those "under 18" that they apparently aren't interested in for their main contest. Because this seems like not only a great learning opportunity for our students, but a perfect opportunity for the Rocky Mountain News to, oh, I don't know, actually try to increase their readership by appealing to a demographic that is currently not very interested in their product. I've written before about how I think the Rocky Mountain News and John Temple in particular seem to have a better handle than most on how to transition their newspaper into the digital age, but I think they missed it on this one.

I think I'll still suggest to my Language Arts and Social Studies folks that they share this series with their students, and encourage the students to write their own story to "celebrate the city of Denver," even if we have to publish it ourselves, since The Rocky doesn't appear to be interested in their voices.

Google Maps, Google Earth and the Summer Games

Just a quick post to point out this story from the LA Times:

From where do the most Beijing Summer Olympic medal winners hail? Despite Michael Phelps being well on his way to breaking Mark Spitz’s record of seven gold medals at a single Games, it’s not North America that has the most gold medals so far. According to the Google Maps’ Summer Games 2008, as of Aug. 12, 2008, China has won the most Olympic gold. The United States has won the most overall medals.

The Stadium page is my favorite of all the maps. Click on a stadium and watch a video as Google Earth zooms in. They also offer a photo and info about the venue.

Nothing major here, and probably no real educational relevance (other than curiosity, which isn't such a bad thing), just thought it was interesting. I bet there are more creative uses of Google Maps/Earth and the Olympics. If you know of any, please leave a URL in the comments.

I'm way behind in my aggregator (with no hope of catching up now that school is officially upon us), but it sure seems like somebody, perhaps dy/dan, should have a post coming soon with some great problems using current Olympic data. (I'm pretty sure he posted a while back doing some predictions with Olympic data, but I can't find it at the moment - somebody leave that URL in the comments as well and I'll update the post.)

Questions for Senators Obama and McCain

So, both the calendar and my jam-packed and very messy office tell me it’s August. In addition to the usual "It’s the beginning of the year how am I ever going to get all the stuff done that I need to get done before the students arrive?" panic attack, I had an additional panic attack. What if I bump into Senator Obama and I don’t have a good question ready?

Seriously, I’m worried about this. I live and work just south of Denver and, as you hopefully know, Denver is hosting this little thing called the Democratic National Convention coming up here at the end of August. While I know that conventions are pretty much completely scripted, Senator Obama doesn’t strike me as a man – or a candidate – who would spend the entire four days in his hotel/the Pepsi Center/Invesco Field at Mile High. So what if I’m at the grocery store and run into him, or what if he decides to visit my school? Hey, it could happen. George Bush (#41, not the current President) spoke at my school when he was Vice-President (before my time, but there are pictures to prove it – and we didn’t own Photoshop then), so I think it would be somewhat symbolic if Senator Obama stopped by.

I’m not very good at the "elevator pitch" - once a conversation gets going I think I get warmed up and can contribute, but put me on the spot for a serious and thoughtful question – not so much. So I’ve started trying to think of the one question I’d ask him if I did bump into him by the blueberries (or walking across our cafeteria).

I mean, there’s the obvious:

When are you going to name Chris Lehmann as your Secretary of Education designate?

Yes, I realize I already volunteered for this position, but sometimes you have to take one for the team.

Or there’s the standard:

Most educators think that NCLB has some serious flaws, and you seem to agree. What would you replace it with?

But then I’d just get the talking points.

Or I could reuse the question I didn’t get to ask Governor Richardson:

You have a statement in your plan about rigor, relevance and relationships. Too often in education I feel like rigor is defined as simply "harder" or "more homework." It seems like folks are saying that what we’ve been doing isn’t working, so let’s just require more of it. Instead, I think often what we should be asking is, "Are we doing the right things in the first place?" Can you talk a little bit more about how you define rigor and what are the key skills, abilities and habits of mind that our students need to be successful in the 21st century?

But I didn’t particularly like that question and it was directed specifically at a statement Governor Richardson had in his own plan.

You see, I’ve read the highlights of both Senator Obama and Senator McCain’s education stances, and looked more deeply at their web sites (Obama's Education Page, McCain's Education Page). And I’ve even listened to these three short NPR pieces on their personal tech literacy and how they would address technology in their administrations. (Apparently it’s a necessity to have a former FCC chair – from your own political party, of course - as a technology adviser. Hmm, if not Secretary of Education, perhaps I could be Senator Obama’s Technology Czar. I’ve never been a Czar.)

But I’d really like to ask that deep, meaningful, thoughtful question that gets to the heart of it all and allows us to really see his baseline, fundamental beliefs about education and what needs to change in order to meet the needs of our students. To help us understand if he thinks education is at a tipping point, and that it’s a different world out there, and schools need to adapt and change to meet it? Or if he believes that, while changes and improvements are always necessary, things are basically good as they are. And a question that gets beyond the usual talking points and helps explore all the ideas we’ve been talking about in our blogs for the last few years.

Now, I don’t mean to be partisan about this, I’d want to ask the same question of Senator McCain, but I just figure that’s it’s more likely I’ll run into Senator Obama here during the Democratic Convention than Senator McCain. (Although Arizona is just a long day’s drive southwest of here, perhaps he could come up for the day.) So, I said to myself, "Myself, you have a blog. Why don’t you ask for some help?" If you’re so inclined, please leave a thoughtful question in the comments for Senator Obama, Senator McCain, or both of them.

This is not a political blog, and I don’t want your "question" to really be a statement of political beliefs. So, if you comment, please honor this post in the spirit in which it's intended. I really want to know the one question you would ask either of these gentlemen that might help us better understand their beliefs on education. A question that hopefully gets away from the talking points and gives us a glimpse of the vision they have – or don’t have. This would help me out if I happen to run into either of them and, frankly, would help me out in case I find myself in an elevator with other important folks. (I’ve been having more of these "opportunities" than usual in the last few months, and have a few more coming up, it’s kind of weird - and I don't think "Hi, how are you?" is quite cutting it.)

Finally, if either Senator’s campaign staff stops by, I’d also like to formally offer to host a conversation between the two Senators regarding education. (Come on, staffers, Colorado may be the swing state, it's the perfect place to do this.) And I chose the word "conversation" very deliberately. I don’t really want to host a debate, at least not what passes for political debate these days – where each candidate takes whatever the question is and morphs it into the same old sound bites. I really would like to see both of these men have a thoughtful conversation about education. A conversation where, yes, we would indeed see the differences between them. But also a conversation where we could see the similarities, the common ground where we are most likely to be able to move forward together. A conversation where they were genuinely looking for solutions, not just trying to score points off one another. And, while I know this is terribly naïve of me, a conversation that perhaps actually generates some new ideas of how we can move forward together. Wouldn’t that be something?

(As a mostly irrelevant side note, I happened to mistype a URL on Senator Obama’s site while testing a link in this post and got the image below, embedded within the frame of his site. I gotta say, it seemed consistent with his campaign and made me smile a little. For the record, Senator McCain’s site gave me the standard 404 Page Cannot Be Found page, without the frame of his site around it.)