I Read the (Rocky Mountain) News Today, Oh Boy

The Rocky Mountain News will be publishing its last edition tomorrow, leaving Denver as a one (major) newspaper town. And, while I’m not predicting this, with the Denver Post having tremendous difficulties as well, it’s not inconceivable to think that 12-18 months down the road Denver could be a zero newspaper town. The demise of The Rocky should presumably help the Post short term, with additional advertisers and subscribers probably coming their way, but that may not be enough to overcome the recession and their current business model.

This is sad in so many ways, not the least of which is that I believe newspapers (not necessarily the format, but the concept) are critical to a democracy. And I felt that The Rocky was doing better than most newspapers at trying to incorporate the web into their operation (obviously not profitably, though). It will be interesting to see how this all shakes out here in Colorado.

In the meantime, this spurs some questions for me. I am not particularly knowledgeable about newspapers or their business model, so I can’t really comment on that. But I wonder what this means for K-12 education, particularly here in Colorado.

What should this mean for how we teach students here in Colorado?

How does this affect where and how they find news information, and how do we as educators help them do that?

Will teachers in Colorado make the connection to their own classroom practice? Both in terms of the way publishing and audience is changing, but also in terms of how the status quo is not guaranteed to continue – and that outdated models can and will be replaced.

And, in light of Kathleen Bates Yancey’s (and the NCTE’s) call for a reexamination of writing in the 21st century, how will all teachers (not just Language Arts teachers) respond?

Perhaps most important, seen historically this 21st century writing marks the beginning of a new era in literacy, a period we might call the Age of Composition, a period where composers become composers not through direct and formal instruction alone (if at all), but rather through what we might call an extracurricular social co-apprenticeship.

NCTE is calling for teachers and students to embrace writing “authentic texts in informal, collaborative contexts” where there “isn’t a hierarchy of expert-apprentice, but rather a peer co-apprenticeship in which communicative knowledge is freely exchanged.”

Does this describe your classroom?

We have to move beyond a pyramid-like, sequential model of literacy development in which print literacy comes first and digital literacy comes second and networked literacy practices, if they come at all, come third and last.

How are you developing not only print, but digital and network literacy practices in your classroom?

Yancey’s article helps us “understand an increasingly important role for writing: to foster a new kind of citizenship.” In an age when newspapers are failing (at least in a business sense), this is going to be critical not only for our students, but for our democracy.

We need to become serious about helping students becomes citizen composers instead of good test takers.

Are your students on their way to becoming citizen composers?

Your thoughts?

Update 2-27-09: The Rocky has a "Final Edition" video up, I'm embedding it below. Also, John Temple has an article where he tries to explain some of the economics of why Denver can't support two papers.



Final Edition from Matthew Roberts on Vimeo.

AWNM Video Conference: Tech Setup, Ustream Archive and Pictures

I just wanted to share the tech setup as well as the Ustream archive and some pictures of our video conference on Friday with Daniel Pink. (You can also view the two archived CoverItLive live blogs on my previous post.)

For those that are interested, here was the tech setup. To Skype (and then eventually MeBeam, more on that in a moment) with Daniel Pink, we had a Dell computer with a logitech webcam and snowball microphone connected to it. This was connected to a projector in our Forum that rear projects onto a large screen (we were in the forum because we had four classes with a total of 110 kids or so) so that all the students could see and hear him. Earlier in the week students had submitted their questions on a blog and then Maura Moritz and Anne Smith selected sixteen of them to be asked today (due to time constraints). Each student would come down to the snowball microphone and ask the question of Mr. Pink, and then ask a follow-up or respond to Mr. Pink's questions if he asked them.

Then over on the side we had an iMac connected to a second snowball microphone and a DV camcorder which we used to Ustream the event. The Ustream audience (folks who read about it on my blog or on twitter, plus we emailed all the parents of the students in the classes) could see the student asking the question, a decent shot of the projected screen with Mr. Pink on it, and then hear both of them pretty well.

Next to that we had two Dell laptops, each one moderating the two CoverItLive blogs we had setup. We had two setup because we had so many students live blogging we felt it would be overwhelming to have them all on one live blog. The ninety or so students that weren't asking the questions had the capability of hopping on the live blog (or they could choose just to listen) - we probably had around 50 to 60 or so laptops spread throughout those 90 students, and the students could hand the laptop to the student sitting next to them if they wanted to comment.

Overall, it went well, although for the first time in two years we had some technical difficulties. We've always used Skype for this and it worked well for a while, but then suddenly dropped the call. We reconnected once for a little while, then it dropped again and then wouldn't connect. After trying for a few minutes, we switched over to MeBeam which thankfully worked for us. MeBeam doesn't have quite the same quality as Skype (a little bit of a delay and the video isn't quite as crisp), but it still worked well.

We really appreciate how flexible Daniel Pink was. When we did this last year, we had talked about using MeBeam as a backup to Skype, but we really hadn't talked about any contingencies this year (my fault). When it became obvious that Skype maybe wasn't going to reconnect, I Skype-chatted to Mr. Pink that we should try switching to MeBeam, and then gave him the URL and the room name. He Skyped back that he would, and by the time I switched over and loaded it up, he was there. We had a brief moment when his audio wasn't on (by default when you enter a MeBeam room your audio is off and it's not completely intuitive where to turn it on), but we told him where to enable his audio and then we were good to go (well, after he put some headphones on as we were getting echo). Now, none of that is rocket science, but in my experience that's more than enough to throw a lot of folks, especially when we hadn't talked about it in advance. So I was very thankful that he handled it with aplomb and didn't get flustered with the tech stuff.

Unfortunately, I'd been sick all week and had to visit the doctor later that day so I didn't get to listen to the students reflect about the experience later that day. From my perspective, I thought it went well, and I thought the students did a nice job of asking thoughtful questions. As one person noted in the Ustream chat, they were polite and respectful but not overly deferential to Daniel Pink. And, as has been the case for the two years we've done this (so four times he's interacted with our students), Daniel Pink has been very generous with his time and tries to thoughtfully address their questions.

Here is the archived Ustream (it starts about 2:45 into the archive, I hit record a little too early because I didn't want to forget!) and some pictures that should give you an idea of what the room looked like.

Join Us for Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation This Saturday

This Saturday, February 21st, we'll be holding the 2009 edition of Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation. We're completely full in terms of physical registrants, but if you aren't coming in person you can still attend virtually. We'll have Elluminate rooms going for each of the sessions, with live video and audio from the physical rooms, and of course the chat and other features of Elluminate.

We'll be starting around 9 am MST (although the sessions themselves don't start until 9:30). Here's a link to a list of all the Elluminate rooms, and below is our schedule for the day (couldn't get the Gliffy to embed nicely in Blogger, so it's just an image below - follow this link for active hyperlinks to the sessions.) We're excited to have new faces leading the conversations this year (plus an old face or two), as well as a couple of folks from SLA in Philadelphia joining us. We're looking forward to some great learning conversations.

Join Us for the Daniel Pink Video Conference and Live Blog

Tomorrow (Friday, February 20th) our students will conduct their culminating discussion of Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind. This will begin at about 8:25 am MST and end at around 9:25 am MST. This will be similar to last year, but we've made a few adjustments.

First, since we only have him for one hour this year instead of two, we'll just have selected students ask him their question and then perhaps a follow-up (last year we tried to have a mini-fishbowl discussion as well, but we don't think that will work so well with our limited time).

Second, with that many students in the live blog, it goes a little too fast and furious, so we're going to create two this year. Mrs. Smith's 2nd period and Mrs. Moritz's 3rd period will be on one live blog, and Mrs. Moritz's 4th period and Mrs. Smith's 5th period will be on a second live blog. You can either follow those links or I'll embed both CoverItLive's in this post (not sure how well that will work in practice, so jump to the links if it doesn't work having them both embedded here).

We will also be ustreaming the event - basically you'll hear the questions the students ask and Mr. Pink's responses, and probably see a really badly angled shot of the projected screen with Mr. Pink on Skype and perhaps the students actually asking the questions (it's going to be a tough angle, so we'll see).

You are welcome to observe and/or participate in the CoverItLive blogs if you wish, but with a few caveats. First, this is the students' discussion, so please don't drive the conversation. Second, please make sure you enter your real name in the appropriate spot in CoverItLive so we know who you are. Third, the CoverItLive is a place for discussing A Whole New Mind, if you wish to discuss the pedagogy or the technical aspects of this, please do that with the other adults in the ustream chat.

As always, our priority is to make this work for the students, so if we have technical issues with the ustream or anything else, we will do our best to fix them, but our focus will remain on making this work in the room, anything else is gravy.

Here's the attempt to embed both live blogs in this post.

CoverItLive Smith 2 and Moritz 3

CoverItLive Moritz 4 and Smith 5

The Great Reset: A Crisis (in K-12 Education) is a Terrible Thing to Waste

Richard Florida has an interesting article in the March issue of the Atlantic titled “How the Crash Will Reshape America." He talks about how big, international economic crises typically usher in a new economic paradigm, and then speculates on what this economic crises may foretell:

Economic crises tend to reinforce and accelerate the underlying, long-term trends within an economy. Our economy is in the midst of a fundamental long-term transformation—similar to that of the late 19th century, when people streamed off farms and into new and rising industrial cities. In this case, the economy is shifting away from manufacturing and toward idea-driven creative industries—and that, too, favors America’s talent-rich, fast-metabolizing places.

. . . the economy is different now. It no longer revolves around simply making and moving things. Instead, it depends on generating and transporting ideas. The places that thrive today are those with the highest velocity of ideas, the highest density of talented and creative people, the highest rate of metabolism. Velocity and density are not words that many people use when describing the suburbs.

I would argue that “our [schools are] in the midst of a fundamental long-term transformation,” shifting away from a model that values standardization and conformity toward one that values creativity and differentiation. I would also suggest that “velocity of ideas” and “density of talented and creative people” is what we would ideally hope for in our schools, but I wonder if our schools – as currently structured – allow those talented and creative people to flourish and explore those ideas.

This interview accompanied the article and is what spurred this post. He reiterates his “the world is not flat, it’s spiky” argument, and argues for great urban centers of creativity and economic activity.

But as you mentioned, we have this kind of mythology going around that somehow the rise of new technologies—communication and transport technologies, which shrink the world—will spread out our geography. We always have this kind of romantic notion that technology will free us from the dirty, the pathological, the slum-ridden, the unhealthful city, and that the world will spread itself out.

. . .There are two tendencies in the world economy. There is a great tendency for low-cost, fairly standardized stuff to spread itself out, and that’s where people say, “Oh my God, the world is flat.” But there’s also this counter-tendency for things to concentrate—to take advantage of these forces of agglomeration and human capital. So what I tried to argue is that that second tendency is very important. And now we have all sorts of World Bank reports talking about how productivity and performance are so much higher in urban areas, even in the emerging economies.

What I tried to do in this piece is say, “I don’t think this great crisis—or great ‘reset,’ as I like to call it—will change this trend. In fact, my hunch is that, coming out of this crisis, our geography will end up more concentrated than it was before.”

While I think he perhaps underestimates the power of technology to allow that "agglomeration" and to bring together "human capital" in geographically dispersed locations, his argument for bringing together people in dynamic environments focused on creativity and innovation makes a lot of sense to me (whether they are geographically concentrated or technologically connected). How many of us would describe our school as dynamic environments focused on creativity and innovation?

And then he says:

Well, I am worried, and I think many people are worried, that we would waste public investment on bailing out the industries of the past—on things like automotive bailouts, which promise to simply prop up and breathe life back into industries that certainly show their share of problems in international competition. And that’s why I like to think of this as a “great reset” rather than a crisis. What economic crises do is reset the conditions for technological innovation and consumption and demand.

But rethinking infrastructure changes the institutional rules of the game and the way people and industries organize themselves geographically. What that does is create new patterns of living, new patterns of working, new patterns of consumption, and new demand.

. . . So it’s important to spend money on the right kinds of projects and the right kinds of infrastructure.

. . . If we take as a first principle that we really have to invest in the creativity of each and every individual—and give people the right to express their creative talents in ways that they find interesting and relevant—then I think we will end up with a better future than we otherwise would have had.

The phrase “great reset” really resonated with me, not only in the economic way he was using it but also in terms of K-12 education. He quotes Stanford economist Paul Romer, “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste,” and I think that applies directly to the current situation in K-12 education. The current economic crisis only amplifies and exacerbates the current crisis we are experiencing in our schools, and if we continue to “waste public investment on bailing out [schools] of the past,” then we will indeed be wasting this crisis.

Instead, we should be taking this opportunity to “reset” our schools, to “create new patterns of” teaching and learning and “spend our money on the right kind of projects and the rights kinds of infrastructure.” We need to “take as a first principle that we really have to invest in the creativity of each and every [teacher and student] – and give [teachers and students] the right to express their creative talents in ways that they find interesting and relevant.”

From the original article:

The United States, whatever its flaws, has seldom wasted its crises in the past. On the contrary, it has used them, time and again, to reinvent itself, clearing away the old and making way for the new. Throughout U.S. history, adaptability has been perhaps the best and most quintessential of American attributes . . . At critical moments, Americans have always looked forward, not back, and surprised the world with our resilience. Can we do it again?

At times of crisis, the eventual “winners” that emerge are those that are bold and seize the crisis to move forward, taking advantage of the altered landscape to achieve their mission in creative, innovative and powerful ways. Unfortunately, at the moment, I’m seeing very little evidence of bold thinking. So, in this time of multiple crises, I would challenge my school district, and all K-12 schools, to not waste this crisis but, instead, reinvent themselves and look forward, not back. If we do, then, like Richard Florida, “I think we will end up with a better future than we otherwise would have had.”

I Hear Arapahoe Singing

Last night Kristin Leclaire asked her American Literature class to write their own version of Walt Whitman's poem, "I Hear America Singing." Their poem is called "I Hear Arapahoe Singing," and each student in the class contributed his or her own verse using the class blog. In an email, Kristin shared that "in class today, we analyzed our poem, and many students realized that all of their verses emphasized the insecurity of the individual but the strong, driving force of our pride as a united school."

Please consider heading over to their class blog and leaving them some constructive feedback.

Twitter Me This

Anne Smith recently blogged about a student who was having trouble completing an assignment. She had asked her students to pick a profession they were interested in and interview 2-3 people about it, post their interviews and other information on their wiki, then write a summary response paper about what they learned. But one student wasn’t having any luck connecting with professionals in her area of interest, so Anne tweeted out a request on Twitter.

Once I found out that my student wanted to move into the FBI or secret service, I went to my computer and got on Twitter putting out a tweet looking for connections to these professions. From my tweet, two other friends (cgfaulkner and karlfisch) retweeted my request putting this student’s interest out into a much wider audience. Before I knew it, tweets were coming in from all over, emails were being fed to her and I by all sorts of people willing to help her in her quest for knowledge. I can’t tell you what that meant to me other than to say, it is good to know that all of you are out there. Thanks for showing me and my students the power of the web. Rather than walking away from a learning struggle, I hope she learns that the web can make learning possible- the web connects us.

So, how are you using your Personal Learning Network and real-time conversation/connection tools like Twitter to help your students? And how are you helping your students use the tools – and the network - to help themselves?

Singularity University

Today's Did You Know?/2020 Vision combo sighting of the day - Singularity University.

Singularity University aims to assemble, educate and inspire a cadre of leaders who strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies and apply, focus and guide these tools to address humanity’s grand challenges.

With Ray Kurzweil himself and Peter Diamandis (co-founder of Space Adventures and the CEO of the X Prize Foundation) on board, with support from Google and NASA, it combines both a graduate program and three and ten-day executive programs. These two quotes from the video stood out for me:

Every University needs a chief visionary.

I would add that every K-12 district and school needs one as well.

The most key thing you'll get is this global network. By coming to SU you are going to get connected with the top thinkers in this community.

Nice, but I would like to see them add an educator track, and hear how they are going to work with K-12 schools. Mr. Kurzweil and Mr. Diamandis, I'm volunteering (along with my PLN) to help with that. Seriously, please contact me. I think we could use our global network of educators to help get you connected to K-12 teachers and students.

What's the Purpose of School?

While I've certainly blogged about and around this topic before, I've run across a couple of interesting posts in the last few weeks that both address this question directly. I'm going to quote liberally from both posts, because I think it's useful to see them both on the same page.

First, David Warlick wrote after watching - and participating - in our videoconferencing with Daniel Pink:

On several occasions, lately, when working with teachers and administrators at independent schools, I’ve been asked, “What is the purpose of education?” It’s not a question that comes out of public school conversations very often. We already know what education is for. The government told us.

Education is about:

• Covering all the standards
• Improving performance on government tests
• Meeting AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress)
• Producing a competitive workforce

We don’t even ask any more — and even in this season of Change (http://change.gov/), we’re still not asking that question.

Now I generalize when comparing different types of schools, and to be sure, independent schools are also governed by testing, as many of their students attend so that they can get into Harvard, Yale, or Duke (Go Blue Devils). But, again, there is a palpable sense of confidence in the conversations I witness when away from public schools — a willingness to ask tough questions.

I’ve had a ready answer to the question.

“The purpose of education is to appropriately prepare our children for their future.”

There are some implied, but essential questions in that answer:

• What will their future hold? What will they need to know?
• What are appropriate method, materials, environment, activity?
• Who are these children? What is their frame of reference?

Today, I have a new answer. My old one is still good. I’ll continue to use it. But if you ask me, “What is the purpose of education?” today, I’ll say,

"The purpose of education is to make the world a better place!"

What drew me to this answer was Karl Fisch’s teleconferencing activity last week (see A 2.0 Sort’a Day: Part 2). As I thought more about the experience, it occurred to me that this was an almost singularly unique activity — beyond the fact that students were interacting with an internationally renowned writer, exchanging thoughtful insights, and the really cool use of technology.

What struck me in hindsight was that these students were earning respect. They were respected by each other, by their teachers, by the instructional support professionals, and by the internationally renowned figure, Dan Pink. Their engagement in that activity will continue to be respected by people, young and old, who will read the archive of those multidimensional conversations.

Those students were full partners in their learning, and they were entrusted to go beyond just what was expected. They were encouraged to freely extend and develop their own thoughts, skills, and knowledge, building on their own frame of reference, pushing and pulling through conversation, and being responsible for their part of the endeavor.

Then yesterday Seth Godin wrote:

So, a starter list. The purpose of school is to:

1. Become an informed citizen
2. Be able to read for pleasure
3. Be trained in the rudimentary skills necessary for employment
4. Do well on standardized tests
5. Homogenize society, at least a bit
6. Pasteurize out the dangerous ideas
7. Give kids something to do while parents work
8. Teach future citizens how to conform
9. Teach future consumers how to desire
10. Build a social fabric
11. Create leaders who help us compete on a world stage
12. Generate future scientists who will advance medicine and technology
13. Learn for the sake of learning
14. Help people become interesting and productive
15. Defang the proletariat
16. Establish a floor below which a typical person is unlikely to fall
17. Find and celebrate prodigies, geniuses and the gifted
18. Make sure kids learn to exercise, eat right and avoid common health problems
19. Teach future citizens to obey authority
20. Teach future employees to do the same
21. Increase appreciation for art and culture
22. Teach creativity and problem solving
23. Minimize public spelling mistakes
24. Increase emotional intelligence
25. Decrease crime by teaching civics and ethics
26. Increase understanding of a life well lived
27. Make sure the sports teams have enough players

Both David and Seth, coming from different backgrounds, have some fairly negative views of what some folks think school is for, as well as some more positive views of what school should be. If you've read my blog for any length of time you most likely know the general trend my thoughts take on this, so I'll spare you my own ranting and raving (for now, anyway). But I thought these were worth posting on the same page as a good starting point for discussion, as Seth suggests:

If you have the email address of the school board or principals, perhaps you'll forward this list to them (and I hope you are in communication with them regardless, since it's a big chunk of your future and your taxes!). Should make an interesting starting point for a discussion.

Please leave a comment or do as Seth suggests and contact a school board member, superintendent, school administrator, teacher, student, parent, state legislator (Colorado), community member, congressperson (Senate, House, or possibly this link for both), or President Obama and ask them for their thoughts, without the spin.

What's the purpose of school?