Year 6: Team Shift Happens on Kiva

This is the sixth year that I'll be microlending through Kiva. Here's the basic idea:

I lend $25 to an entrepreneur ($25 is the minimum they accept). But I also purchase two $25 gift certificates that I then email to two members of my PLN. I’m asking those folks to then do two things.

First, they can choose which entrepreneur to loan the $25 to. Then I’m asking them to consider doing the same thing – purchasing two $25 gift certificates and emailing them to two members of their PLN (with the same request that those folks continue the cycle, sending two Kiva gift certificates to folks in their network - a Kiva Pay It Forward plan). It would also be great if they blogged about it and left a comment on this post.

Since I’m apparently always going to be connected to the phrase Shift Happens, I thought I’d try to use that to do some good, so I created Team Shift Happens on the Kiva site:

We loan because Shift Happens, and we want to be the change we want to see.

So, those email requests will also ask that when they make those loans they consider adding them to Team Shift Happens so that we can keep track of the total. They still direct where the loan goes, it just gets aggregated under the team. Joining Team Shift Happens is completely optional, and is not the point of all of this, but it's just an interesting way to try to keep track of the lending spurred by the original blog post.

Team Shift Happens has (as of this writing) 133 members who have made 1108 loans for a total loaned of $33,125. You don't have to join the team, but please consider giving. I'll be sending out my gift certificates next week (Thanksgiving here in the U.S.), but these obviously make great gifts for many of the holidays coming up.

There are many worthy causes out there, this is obviously not the only one. But, if you're like my family and you already have more than enough "stuff," perhaps you could dedicate some of that disposable income to this cause.

For those of you interested in possibly doing this with your students, Bill Ferriter has compiled some nice classroom resources you can use with students around microlending. I'm also asking my Algebra students to consider contributing. William Chamberlain is also jumping in this year with his school.

A Sublime Disruption

This is a short story about openness. And connections.

Our Biology students were working on a project related to ecology. The niece of one of our Biology teachers, who's currently a senior at the University of Virginia, posted a video to her Facebook page and suggested people watch it - it's called A Sublime Disruption (original link on Vimeo, we used the YouTube version because Vimeo is blocked by our filter, YouTube is not blocked anymore). Her aunt did, and thought it would be a good accompaniment to the ecology unit they had just started.


Our Biology team decided to show the video to our students and have them blog their reactions. Mr. Craig's class was up first - here's their blog post (Ms. Dinmore's - the aunt's - blog post came a little later).

Here's what happened next in the words of Mr. Craig (part of an email he sent out to parents of his Biology students):

Last weekend I received an e-mail from a 2006 graduate of Arapahoe that had been reading my Biology students' blog comments. She was impressed to say the least! She also had a coincidental connection to the video. She currently lives in Dublin Ireland and her boyfriend happens to be the brother of the individual that made the video "A Sublime Disruption." His name is Gareth Nolan, a film-maker who lives in Dublin as well. Gareth was also very impressed by the students comments and sent me an email thanking the students for their insight into his video. He mentioned that they found connections in his video to this planet that he never thought of.

We sent him a couple of questions: 1. Why did he take the trip? 2. What was one of the biggest environmental issues he saw while traveling the world? (This is of course what our Biology students are currently researching) His response is listed below:

1. I am from Dublin, Ireland where I currently live and work. I've lived in a few different places in my life, including Italy, Norway, London, and a brief time living in New York City. I currently work as a film maker and editor. In 2009, my mother passed away and left me a sum of money. She had multiple sclerosis and had a very difficult life. The journey was something I always wanted to do, but for family responsibilities I never got round to doing. I used the journey as a way of resetting my life and gaining a fresh start and perspective. It was largely unplanned other than a dream I'd always had to take the Transsiberian railway to China. Everything after that I made up as I went along, depending on who I met or what next took my fancy. In short it was life changing, and most importantly life reaffirming. Believe it or not the film was an after thought. I had camera with me that had a video function and I used it from time to time, but it was only when I got back that I decided to edit it together into what you see today. 

2. I'm certainly no expert on ecology or environmental issues, but I'd have a layman's grounding in either - and am more than happy to talk to your students about what I saw. I have to say, one of the most pressing issues I saw was deforestation - especially on the island of Borneo. Borneo is the third largest island in the world and is a hotspot of biodiversity akin to the Amazon. It is divided between three countries - Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei. I was once on a plane there flying over palm oil plantations which stretched as far as the eye could see - this would have amounted to 100 miles or more - in any direction. Sometimes the cities there are declared disaster zones because there is so much smoke in the air due to the slashing and burning happening in the forests beyond. These forests are home to species of rhino, elephants, leopards and the iconic Orang Utan, not to mention thousands of plant and animal species - some of which are just mind blowing - giant bats, spiders, moths, frogs, flying lizards and the Rafflesia which is the world's biggest flower. I was lucky enough to spend time in forests in both the Peruvian and Bolivian Amazon, and nothing felt as exotic as Borneo. Frankly, seeing the destruction was heart breaking and brought home to me a complex issue which I never fully appreciated before.

How cool!!! Your student is impacting people from across the world. I think my students were amazed that others were reading what they wrote! Yet another example of the powers of extending the walls of our classroom! 

Now that Ms. Dinmore's class is also blogging, she's been in contact with Gareth and he's going to respond to some of the questions her class had.

What opportunities are available for your students if you become both more open and more connected?

Year 5: Team Shift Happens on Kiva

This is the fifth year that I'll be microlending through Kiva. Here's the basic idea:

I lend $25 to an entrepreneur ($25 is the minimum they accept). But I also purchase two $25 gift certificates that I then email to two members of my PLN. I’m asking those folks to then do two things.

First, they can choose which entrepreneur to loan the $25 to. Then I’m asking them to consider doing the same thing – purchasing two $25 gift certificates and emailing them to two members of their PLN (with the same request that those folks continue the cycle, sending two Kiva gift certificates to folks in their network - a Kiva Pay It Forward plan). It would also be great if they blogged about it and left a comment on this post.

Since I’m apparently always going to be connected to the phrase Shift Happens, I thought I’d try to use that to do some good, so I created Team Shift Happens on the Kiva site:

We loan because Shift Happens, and we want to be the change we want to see.

So, those email requests will also ask that when they make those loans they consider adding them to Team Shift Happens so that we can keep track of the total. They still direct where the loan goes, it just gets aggregated under the team. Joining Team Shift Happens is completely optional, and is not the point of all of this, but it's just an interesting way to try to keep track of the lending spurred by the original blog post.

Team Shift Happens has (as of this writing) 126 members who have made 878 loans for a total loaned of $27,050. You don't have to join the team, but please consider giving. I'll be sending out my gift certificates next week (Thanksgiving here in the U.S.), but these obviously make great gifts for many of the holidays coming up.

There are many worthy causes out there, this is obviously not the only one. But, if you're like my family and you already have more than enough "stuff," perhaps you could dedicate some of that disposable income to this cause.

For those of you interested in possibly doing this with your students, Bill Ferriter has compiled some nice classroom resources you can use with students around microlending. I'm also asking my Algebra students to consider contributing.

Ideas I'd Like My Future Principal To Consider: Putting the 'L' Back in PLC

My district went to the Professional Learning Community (PLC) model several years ago. I really like the concept of scheduled, on-going, sustained staff development with time carved out of the regular school day. (We have ten two-hour late start days a year. Not enough, but a beginning.)

My concern, however, is I feel like our PLC's have become too narrowly focused. To be clear, we've done lots of good stuff in our PLC's, so I'm not saying they've been all bad. They haven't, but I worry that instead of a PLC we too often look at them as a PAC - Professional Assessment Communities. We spend a tremendous amount of time trying to figure out how to measure how our students are doing, and not enough time talking about learning.

Folks with more experience than I have with PLC's might argue that based on what I've described we've failed to effectively define our essential learnings. There is probably something to that, but I think - for the most part - our PLC's have done a decent job of defining those essential learnings as they are described in the PLC model. The problem, I fear, is that more and more I find myself disagreeing with the basic tenet of essential learnings, namely that there's a fixed curriculum that all students should master, and therefore there are essential learnings within that curriculum that our PLC's can define, focus on, and successfully teach.

I wish we could spend more time as learners ourselves, more time talking about what that's like in 2012. I would like our PLC's to look more like a PLN (Personal Learning Network) and less like a PAC. Now, to be sure, they must be somewhat different from a PLN, as by definition there's a group instead of it being personal, and it probably needs to be somewhat more focused than a PLN has to be, but I believe that we need to radically rethink how we are structuring schools, and we can't do that if we're more focused on assessment than we are on learning. We need to experience the world of 2012 as learners ourselves, and discuss that with other teacher-learners in our PLC's, before we can figure out how best to help our students.

So I'd like my future principal to ask us to put the 'L' back in PLC, to be learners first, and assessors . . . well, I'm not sure where, but not first. I'd like my future principal to be the Lead Learner, and model that for our staff, our students and our community. Perhaps then we can not only put the 'L' back in PLC, maybe we can put it front and center in everything we do in schools.

Tools I'd Like My Future Principal To Consider: Twitter

From the article Meet Your New PD Tool in Scholastic Administrator magazine:

"I really think anybody who doesn't spend a little time building a personal network is doing themselves and their school a disservice. If we're not modeling this stuff for our teachers and students, then I don't think we're doing our jobs."
                                                             (p. 31, quoting Patrick Larkin, @bhsprincipal)

I'd like my future principal to consider that statement and ask themselves if they are modeling what it's like to be a lifelong learner, a connected learner, for our students if they aren't actively using and harnessing the power of social media. I'd like my future principal to not only have an active presence on Twitter, but I'd like them to engage their administrative team and the entire faculty in a discussion of how best to leverage these new tools (as well as the possible negative aspects that are indeed present). I'd like them to lead a discussion about how the staff could use tools like Twitter for their own personalized professional development:

For Sheninger, tweeting is like directed Googling. "Instead of doing a Google search, you're harnessing human power, a human-generated search engine driven by education professionals who are passionate and have determined that having an online presence will have a dramatic, positive impact on their professional practice."
                                                              (p. 31, quoting Eric Sheninger, @nmhs_principal).

I'd like them to lead a discussion not only about how to leverage tools such as Twitter to broadcast information to our community, but how to also use those tools to engage our community as learners. I'd like that discussion to extend to ways to have our students engage with other passionate learners around the globe - safely, meaningfully, and effectively.

I'd like my future principal - and their entire administrative team - to know what #cpchat is, and what folks are referring to when they talk about the Connected Principal's blog, or CASTLE. I'd like them to know not only Patrick and Eric, but Chris and Lyn and George and Josie and . . . the list goes on and on (including lots and lots of folks that I don't know . . . yet, or perhaps ever, it doesn't matter as their network will be personal to them.)

I'd like them not to be surprised by some of the things Eric says in this video:



Video credit: http://www.scholastic.com/administrator/

"24/7. When I need it. From anywhere in the world. To me that's power. It's helping my students see a new world. It give me goosebumps every time I think about it." - Eric Sheninger in the video

I want my future principal to help our students see - and participate - in this new world.

Year 4: Team Shift Happens on Kiva

This is the fourth year that I'll be microlending through Kiva. You can read these four previous posts for even more detail, but here is the basic idea:

I lend $25 to an entrepreneur ($25 is the minimum they accept). But I also purchase two $25 gift certificates that I then email to two members of my PLN. I’m asking those folks to then do two things.

First, they can choose which entrepreneur to loan the $25 to. Then I’m asking them to consider doing the same thing – purchasing two $25 gift certificates and emailing them to two members of their PLN (with the same request that those folks continue the cycle, sending two Kiva gift certificates to folks in their network - a Kiva Pay It Forward plan). It would also be great if they blogged about it and left a comment on this post.

Since I’m apparently always going to be connected to the phrase Shift Happens, I thought I’d try to use that to do some good, so I created Team Shift Happens on the Kiva site:

We loan because Shift Happens, and we want to be the change we want to see.

So, those email requests will also ask that when they make those loans they consider adding them to Team Shift Happens so that we can keep track of the total. They still direct where the loan goes, it just gets aggregated under the team. Joining Team Shift Happens is completely optional, and is not the point of all of this, but it's just an interesting way to try to keep track of the lending spurred by the original blog post.

Team Shift Happens has loaned $19,050 so far. You don't have to join the team, but please consider giving. I'll be sending out my gift certificates today (Thanksgiving here in the U.S.), but these obviously make great gifts for many of the holidays coming up.

There are many worthy causes out there, this is obviously not the only one. But, if you're like my family and you already have more than enough "stuff," perhaps you could dedicate some of that disposable income to this cause.

For those of you interested in possibly doing this with your students, Bill Ferriter has compiled some nice classroom resources you can use with students around microlending.

A Quarter is More Than Just a Fraction

I just posted this on my Algebra class blog, but I thought I'd share it here as well. You're welcome to play along with your classes as well (or do something similar). Or, if anyone out there would like to join me in matching what my students raise, just contact me.

---

Arapahoe, as you know, puts our collective might behind several causes throughout the year. Currently we are asking students and staff to bring in a toy for Toys for Tots (pdf). I encourage you to participate in that, not just by bringing in a toy, but also attending the wrapping party and going to Schmitt Elementary on December 15th to help distribute the toys.

But I also want you to think more globally in this class. If you happened to read my blog over Thanksgiving break, then you read about Kiva and Team Shift Happens. Here’s a brief description of Kiva:

Kiva's mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty.

Kiva is the world's first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs in the developing world.

And here’s part of what I wrote on my blog about Team Shift Happens:

I lend $25 to an entrepreneur ($25 is the minimum they accept). But I also purchase two $25 gift certificates that I then email to two members of my PLN. I’m asking those folks to then do two things.

First, they can choose which entrepreneur to loan the $25 to. Then I’m asking them to consider doing the same thing – purchasing two $25 gift certificates and emailing them to two members of their PLN (with the same request that those folks continue the cycle, sending two Kiva gift certificates to folks in their network - a Kiva Pay It Forward plan).

Over break I also read this post by Chris Harbeck, a teacher in Canada, and I thought I would challenge you guys in a similar way – challenge each of you to bring in $0.25 a day for each day our class meets between now and the end of the semester. Conveniently, our class meets ten times before the end of the semester, so that’s challenging you to donate a total of $2.50.

I want to be clear – this is not a requirement. This has no effect on your grade. There’s no extra credit, nor will I berate anyone who doesn’t participate. This isn’t about you. Or about me. This is about helping empower people who haven’t had the same opportunities that we enjoy. Some folks think teenagers won’t do this kind of thing if there’s not a payoff for them in it – we’ll see if they’re right.

I wrote a couple of years ago:

Poor people in impoverished communities often don’t have access to financial institutions and capital, and microfinancing addresses this problem. It is especially helpful to women, who often are the key to raising families – and communities – out of poverty. It’s also my opinion that this is one of the best ways to help achieve peace in the world.

So I challenge you to bring in what you can. If that’s a quarter a day (or $2.50 total), that’s great. If it’s less, or more, that’s great as well. You can bring money to class each day expressly to donate, or you can simply find me during the day when you perhaps have some change in your pocket (after lunch?) and donate (no amount is too small – or too large). You can choose to participate yourself, or you can cajole your family and friends to donate some change as well if you want – it’s up to you.

Then I’ll match whatever you donate (up to $100 – I’m not completely crazy). So I’ll take the total of whatever you guys bring in by the last day we meet (our final is on Tuesday, December 14th), and match it with an equal amount, then I’ll take the total and lend it out on Kiva. (If you’d like to help me pick which entrepreneur to lend to, start looking around Kiva and let me know who you think we should fund.)

So, if you occasionally visit Starbucks, consider skipping it once in the next couple of weeks. Or perhaps you could skip that overpriced, not-really-very-healthy-for-you “energy” drink I see some of you drink in the morning. Or if you go out for lunch, skip the soft drink a couple of times. Not only will you be doing your body a favor by skipping one or all of these, but a minor deprivation for you could turn into a possibly life-changing loan for someone else.

It might only be a fraction of a dollar to you, but to someone in the developing world – it’s priceless.

Year 3: Team Shift Happens on Kiva

This is the third year that I'll be microlending through Kiva. You can read these three previous posts for even more detail, but here is the basic idea:

I lend $25 to an entrepreneur ($25 is the minimum they accept). But I also purchase two $25 gift certificates that I then email to two members of my PLN. I’m asking those folks to then do two things.

First, they can choose which entrepreneur to loan the $25 to. Then I’m asking them to consider doing the same thing – purchasing two $25 gift certificates and emailing them to two members of their PLN (with the same request that those folks continue the cycle, sending two Kiva gift certificates to folks in their network - a Kiva Pay It Forward plan). It would also be great if they blogged about it and left a comment on this post.

Since I’m apparently always going to be connected to the phrase Shift Happens, I thought I’d try to use that to do some good, so I created Team Shift Happens on the Kiva site:

We loan because Shift Happens, and we want to be the change we want to see.

So, those email requests will also ask that when they make those loans they consider adding them to Team Shift Happens so that we can keep track of the total. They still direct where the loan goes, it just gets aggregated under the team. Joining Team Shift Happens is completely optional, and is not the point of all of this, but it's just an interesting way to try to keep track of the lending spurred by the original blog post.

Team Shift Happens has loaned $10,375 so far. You don't have to join the team, but please consider giving. I'll be sending out my gift certificates today (Thanksgiving here in the U.S.), but these obviously make great gifts for many of the holidays coming up.

There are many worthy causes out there, this is obviously not the only one. But, if you're like my family and you already have more than enough "stuff," perhaps you could dedicate some of that disposable income to this cause.

For those of you interested in possibly doing this with your students, Bill Ferriter has compiled some nice classroom resources you can use with students around microlending.

The Myth of the Echo Chamber

This topic deserves more than what I'm going to write today, but I wanted to quickly share this thought. On a regular basis on Twitter and on blogs and in books I read, people warn about not getting stuck in the echo chamber. In fact, I've said it myself more than once. While I value diverse and opposing opinions, and think they are necessary and critical, here's what I think:

There is no "echo chamber." It's a myth.

Do you follow at least one person on Twitter? Then you're not in an echo chamber.

Do you have someone's blog other than your own in your RSS aggregator? Then you're not in an echo chamber.

Do you teach/work in a building with at least one other person that you talk to? Then you're not in an echo chamber.

Do you have a family? Friends? A neighborhood? Then you're not in an echo chamber.

Yes, if you look at the folks I follow on Twitter, or the blogs I read, or the friends I associate with - they probably share some characteristics in their views about education (just to narrow this down a bit). But echo chamber? No way.

• I learn from people that believe IWB's are a huge waste of time and money. And folks that think they are very useful.
  
  
• I learn from people that think PLN is a term that is essentially meaningless and does more harm than good. And folks that think PLN is a powerful organizing concept for how we can learn in a networked world.
  
  
• I learn from people that think if you can't measure it, it's not important. And from folks that think that if you can measure it, then it's not very important.
  
  
• I learn from people that think standards-based-grading is a powerful way to provide meaningful feedback to students. And from folks that think that "standards" and "grading" are the antithesis of what education should be about.

And, at different times, I find myself agreeing with both "sides" of the above supposedly-there-are-only-two-sides-of-the-argument issues. As I continue to search for the "truth" (lowercase 't', capital 'T', I don't know), I expect that that will continue.

Not only do I think there is no echo chamber, I think there is also tremendous power in having discussions with people who do think in a similar (although not exact) way to you. Communities of similarly-minded people, passionate people, working in concert, can accomplish amazing things. We shouldn't denigrate that, we should celebrate it.

So, by all means continue to bring in diverse and opposing viewpoints into your PLN (or your not-PLN if you don't like the term). And continue to stretch yourself and your thinking by reading and tweeting and talking to new people. But please don't ever apologize for associating with other folks who passionately believe things similar to you, and please don't buy into the myth of the echo chamber. It doesn't exist.

Feel free to disagree in the comments.

One Toe Back in the Classroom

My school district, like just about all school districts in Colorado (and many across the U.S.), is facing a severe budget crunch. I won’t really comment much on that other than to say that we are losing many good staff members and our students will be the worse because of it.

Due to the reduced staffing in my school, I will be teaching at least one section of Algebra I next year. This both excites me and makes me a little bit nervous. It’s exciting because I miss being in my own classroom with my own students. I’m in classrooms every day helping teachers and students, but it’s just not the same as having my own classroom and really getting to know kids.

But I’m also a little bit nervous, primarily for two reasons. First, it’s been over ten years since I’ve had my own classroom, and I’m worried about getting my teaching legs back under me. Second, and probably the more worrisome reason, is the fact that this is in addition to all my current duties. (In fact, I will have more to do next year because we’ll be adding netbooks for all of our 10th grade Language Arts classes as part of the next phase of my district’s Inspired Writing project. This is a really good thing, but it still adds up to more to do.)

I’m estimating that teaching one section of Algebra equates to at least two hours added to my day, figuring one hour of class itself plus at least another hour of prep and working with students outside of class each day. Given that I’m doing a fairly good job of keeping busy all day and late into the afternoon (and often more learning in the evening) as it is, I’m worried about what’s going to get missed. I’m worried about balancing the needs of my students in my Algebra class and the needs of my staff (and all of “my” students in the entire school). I’m worried that I’ll treat both parts of my job as “full-time,” which in a way they are, but the return-on-planning time ratio for teaching just one section is not in my favor. (This problem of time is nothing new for educators, of course, but since this is my blog I get to occasionally make it all about me.)

Okay, now that I’ve got those worries out of the way (thanks for indulging me), I’d like to look forward in a more positive fashion. Over the next few months I’m hoping to do a series of blog posts sharing my current thinking of what I’m going to try in my classroom next year. I’m going to put some ideas out there and then ask my network to provide me feedback and new ideas to consider. (Crowdsourcing Algebra – works for me.) My hope is that the result will be a better learning experience for my students next year.

So, in hopes that you will actually take me up on that, let me briefly describe some of the parameters of my Algebra class. (See how I worked the word “parameters” into that last sentence? I feel like a math teacher again already.) My high school operates on a variable schedule, which is similar to a college schedule with some classes meeting five days a week, others meeting MWF, others TR, and still others four days a week (see page 5 of our pathfinder (pdf) for more). My Algebra class will meet four days a week (MWRF) for 59 minutes each day.

To try to segment my day a little bit, I’ll be teaching first period, which is from 7:21 – 8:20 am. My students will be primarily freshmen (9th grade here in the U.S., generally fourteen years old at the start of the year), although I could have a couple of upperclassmen in my class, and I will most likely have between 30 and 35 students in class. We schedule for an entire year at one time, but because our classes are one semester and students often move things around in order to take the electives they want, I won’t necessarily have the same students all year (I’ll probably have more than half of my first semester students second semester, but will have a fair amount of turnover). We have a six period day, and freshmen typically have two to four unscheduled hours each week, where they can work in the library, visit teachers to get help, see their counselor, or choose to hang out with friends in the cafeteria. (We also have an open campus, so they can leave campus if they choose.)

Because of our semester-based courses, we have a fairly well-defined curriculum in terms of the standards that must be covered each semester (since many students will switch classes at semester). So while I have tremendous flexibility in terms of how I teach in my classroom, I’m somewhat restricted in terms of what must be taught each semester. And, of course, I have our state mandated testing (up through 10th grade, plus ACT mandated for 11th graders) in March (this testing will be changing soon, however, as Colorado is developing revised standards and assessments).

Students at my school are generally great. They mostly come from middle to upper middle class families who value education, and many of them open enroll in our school because they want to be there. Having said that, they are still fourteen years old and I’m tasked with sharing the joys of Algebra with them at 7:21 in the morning :-).

So, that gives you enough background to play along if you’d like in subsequent posts. I hope you do.

Giving More Than Thanks

Last year I wrote a couple of posts about Kiva, so I'll keep this one fairly short (please go read those two posts if you want more context).

In a nutshell, this is the time of year when lots of folks in my neck of the woods are celebrating holidays, and many of us have lots to be thankful for. So, here's what I did last year and am doing again this year:

First, I’ve donated $25 to an entrepreneur ($25 is the minimum they accept). But I’ve also purchased two $25 gift certificates that I then emailed to two members of my PLN. I’m asking those folks to then do two things. First, they can choose which entrepreneur to loan the $25 to. Then I’m asking them to consider doing the same thing – purchasing two $25 gift certificates and emailing them to two members of their PLN (with the same request that those folks continue the cycle, a Kiva Pay It Forward plan). It would also be great if they blogged about it and left a comment on this post.

Since I’m apparently always going to be connected to the phrase Shift Happens, I thought I’d try to use that to do some good, so I created Team Shift Happens on the Kiva site:

We loan because Shift Happens, and we want to be the change we want to see.

So, those email requests will also ask that when they make those loans they add them to Team Shift Happens so that we can keep track of the total (they still direct where the loan goes, it just gets aggregated under the team).

Team Shift Happens has loaned $3900 so far. You don't have to join the team, but please consider giving. I'll be sending out my gift certificates tomorrow (Thanksgiving here in the U.S.), but these obviously make great gifts for many of the holidays coming up.

There are many worthy causes out there, this is obviously not the only one. But, if you're like my family and you already have more than enough "stuff," perhaps you could dedicate some of that disposable income to this cause.

Update: Bill Ferriter has compiled some nice classroom resources you can use with students around microlending.

Linux on Netbooks and Whiskers on Kittens

This is going to be a long post, but I think (hope?) it will be worth it to many of you.

I’ve blogged previously about the Inspired Writing project that began this summer in my school district. Briefly, all 5th grade classrooms, all 6th grade Language Arts classrooms, and all 9th grade Language Arts classrooms now have ASUS EeePC 1000 netbook computers. (We hope to expand it to grades 5-12 eventually.) Those teachers also went through staff development this summer based around improving reading and writing skills through the use of technology.

At Arapahoe this means that we have 198 new EeePC 1000’s this fall. This gives us a 1:1 ratio in our 9th grade Language Arts classrooms (we have a few sections using Dell laptops that we had previously purchased with grant money), plus we purchased an additional twelve for our Special Services Department, four for our Study Center, and twenty-four for our media center for student check out. (For now, students can check out a EeePC for use in the media center for a class period at a time. Once we get settled in, we’re hoping to expand that for longer time periods and not restrict it to the media center.)

Our district settled on the EeePC’s for many reasons, two of which were licensing costs and imaging issues. We ordered EeePC’s with Xandros Linux, and they utilize our PODnet wireless network to connect to the Internet, meaning that we don’t have to worry about Microsoft licensing costs (they’re running Open Office). And the Eee’s have a built-in restore mechanism that will reset them back to factory condition, thereby minimizing technical support issues (which is critical as my district, like most these days, has had to cut positions).

So one of my self-assigned jobs this summer was to learn more about Linux in order to both support and hopefully improve the implementation of this project. So at NECC I approached Steve Hargadon, who is my go-to person in my PLN for all things open source. For those of you who know Steve, you won’t be surprised that when I finally tracked him down he was running from one presentation to another, but he kindly gave me several names to contact that he thought could help me out. They all did, but one in particular ended up helping me out more than I could’ve expected.

Jim Klein is the Director of Information Services and Technology for the Saugus Union School District in the Santa Clarity Valley in Northern Los Angeles County. When I contacted Jim with some questions, he answered them, but then also mentioned that he had an imaging process I might want to take a look at. Well, not only did he have an imaging process, but he had extensive, step-by-step documentation for how to do it. This documentation is so good that even I, pretty much completely new to Linux, could figure it out. (Jim and I did end up trading well over fifty emails over a variety of questions, which was way above and beyond the call of duty on Jim’s part, but that was mostly due to one typo on the documentation that we eventually figured out and my apparently inexhaustible capability for asking questions.)

So why am I blogging about this? Because I think this is a process that many of you should take a look at for your schools. Basically, here is why I think this image is so good:

1. Jim (and his team) have created a custom Ubuntu Netbook Remix image that's optimized for battery life and made it available for anyone to download and use (with step by step directions). You can use their image or modify it for your own needs. (For my school, this included customizing the launcher to add the apps and shortcuts we wanted available to students on the main screen, changing the default save settings in Open Office, changing the homepage and security settings in Firefox, adding the Diigo toolbar to Firefox as well as the Compact Firefox extension, adding the right printer, and running a script at startup to change the keyboard settings – more on that below.)
   
   
2. This image installs from a flash drive in about six minutes.
   
   
3. It uses open source software, so less of your limited dollars are going to licensing costs. Linux is also a relatively "thin" OS, so it runs pretty well on netbooks even though they have less horsepower.
   
   
4. The image has a built-in, 10-second system recovery option on reboot (adds 10 seconds to the normal reboot time). Yep, I said 10 seconds. Wait, it gets better. The recovery preserves user documents. (You can also choose to wipe out user docs, but that process takes a little longer.) And, unlike the built-in recovery option in the ASUS Xandros distribution, this doesn’t restore to factory settings, but to your image – with all changes, settings, and printers preserved. This is also a recovery process that a teacher can do, without having to track down a tech support person or wait until they have time to troubleshoot it – they can restore on the fly in the classroom (assuming it’s not a hardware issue), so it minimizes impact on instructional time.
   
   
5. It uses the Netbook Launcher interface, which I think is more productive for students and also looks nicer. (IMO, the Xandros interface doesn’t look as professional, which I think makes a difference for high school students, and also requires more clicks to get to what you want.)
   
   
6. It doesn’t lock things down (although you could if you really wanted to) – students can make modifications as they need to. And the beauty is that if students make a modification that causes a problem, you’ve got that 10-second restore option. To paraphrase something Jim said to me, instead of trying to lock everything down, let’s allow students the flexibility to do creative things with their devices. We protect our servers and infrastructure with solid security, but instead of locking down their devices we focus on quick recoverability. (This fits in well with my school’s overall philosophy of having high expectations of students and trusting them to do the right thing most of the time.)

So, what did this mean at my school? After tweaking Jim’s image I then put that image on sixteen 4 GB flash drives (the image would actually fit on a 2 GB drive). Creating that initial set of flash drives did take several hours, but now they are ready for any subsequent image I want to put on them. (And you can quickly add two files that Jim calls “Simple Updates” that I used for adding the printer I wanted for each cart.) We have 32 in each of our carts, so I then imaged half of the cart in about 10 minutes, then the other half in another 10. After about 20 minutes, I had a cart of 32 done, with all the apps, shortcuts, printer and settings I wanted, and with a built-in recovery option. Compare this to the Xandros distribution, where I was looking at 30-45 minutes per machine out of the box to get them ready to go, and without a recovery option that kept my settings. (Plus the Xandros by default doesn’t have things like Audacity or Gimp that are part of my image.) When I went to the next cart all I had to do was replace two small files on each flash drive to add a different printer to the image. I was able to have all 198 netbooks ready on day one with students, with the apps, interface and settings we needed.

Here are some screenshots:







Now, full disclosure, it did take me longer than twenty minutes per cart, but that’s because I decided to do one more thing – switch the functionality of the right-shift key and the up-arrow key. On the Eee 1000’s the up-arrow key is in the place where you naturally press when you try to shift with your right hand. During our staff development, that meant that every time someone tried to capitalize something on the left side of the keyboard, they ended up arrowing up instead of capitalizing. So I went out and found a script on the web, figured out how to modify it for the Eee 1000, and that’s now part of my image. It runs at startup and switches the functionality of those two keys. The reason it took me more than twenty minutes per cart is that after I imaged them, I also took the time to physically switch the right-shift and up-arrow keys on the keyboard. This is not difficult, but it is a pain, and about every ninth or tenth one I messed up the little connector and it would take me anywhere from two to twenty minutes to get it fixed. But, if you chose not to do this, it’s about twenty minutes a cart.

If you have netbook computers in your district, or are considering them, I would urge you – or your tech folks – to take a look at the wiki documentation Jim and his team have created (which includes a ready-to-go image you can download). Also, keep in mind that his image should work on most netbooks, not just Eee’s, although you may have to do a little tweaking. Thanks Jim and team, for making a difference for the teachers and students at my school (not to mention for me personally), and for being willing to share your hard work.

With apologies to Rodgers and Hammerstein . . .

Linux on netbooks and my great P-L-N;
Jim Klein, his wiki and Steve Hargadon;
Meaningful learning tied up with (virtual) string;
These are a few of my favorite things.

When NCLB bites,
When the filter stings,
When I’m feeling sad,
I simply remember my favorite things,
And then I don’t feel so bad.

It’s Who You Know

This post is only about halfway conceptualized, but I thought I’d throw it out there anyway. As always, my blog is a place for me to think out loud and have you guys help me clarify my thinking.

One of the things I struggle with is helping other folks understand why I find the concept (and reality) of a Personal Learning Network so powerful. I think it’s difficult to sum up in a brief conversation what a PLN really is and what it can really do for you, and it’s really one of those things you have to experience for yourself before you begin to see the possibilities.

As I was thinking about this the other day for some reason an old phrase popped into my head.

It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.

Now, I’ve never really liked that phrase because it seemed to elevate connections over competence, but I’ve also always realized that there has been some truth in it (whether I liked it or not). But for some reason my brain connected it with my musings about an “elevator pitch” for PLNs, and what came out was:

Who you know is what you know.

Let me be clear, I’m not saying that there’s no need to know things – we all still need to know quite a few things, and how to do quite a few things. But I think that phrase is increasingly becoming true, that who you know – your PLN – more and more defines what you “know” and are able to do.

If you have a well-developed, well-nurtured learning network, and you have the access and the skills necessary to utilize it, then you “know” more than someone who does not. You truly have the ability for “just in time” learning. You can reach out to your PLN with a question, with something you want to know more about, and they can help you learn about it. Even if someone in your network isn’t an “expert” on the topic, more than likely someone in your network knows someone who is (not-completely-gratuitous Kevin Bacon reference here).

So, like I said in the beginning, this isn’t a completely developed idea yet, but I’m thinking that perhaps I will use this idea as a springboard for further conversation when talking with people about PLNs. I still think the only way to truly “get” PLNs is to experience it yourself, but my hope is that folks will be able to connect it with their background knowledge of the original phrase and perhaps be able to use that to help them segue into beginning to see the power and the promise of PLNs.

Maybe.

What's in a Name?

Update: The conversation continue here and here.