TechIntersect

I recently heard on NPR that the school library at Cushing Academy, Ashburnham, MA has completely done away with books in favor of digital texts. From the NPR story:

Dean of Academics Suzie Carlisle says school officials had noticed the trend. She says surveys they conducted showed students weren’t turning to printed materials for research. Instead, they were immediately going online.

The kids of Lunchtime Leader Podcast recently asked me a question about this trend. If I would have known about the Cushing Academy story I could have looked like I was really on top of this, but I just sort of hemmed & hawed my way through it. What I had completely forgotten about was that I have previously taken a stand on this issue.

Too often, students rush headlong into cyberspace without considering what wealth of information they might be missing in printed form. The truth of the matter is the vast majority of the world’s knowledge is still not publicly available in digital form. This notion was driven home to me last spring as I slogged my way through the papers of the Eisenhower Library for a History of American Education research assignment on the National Defense Education Act. There’s simply no way the information I found could be discovered anywhere online. Maybe I’m not tech-savvy enough, but I challenge you to find the full text of the NDEA law online somewhere… I couldn’t. I found it easily in a book.

A couple of years ago, I taught a Humanities through the Arts course, and a major research project I assigned was called the “Dead Artist’s Project”. Students were to study up and prepare a research presentation on an artist of any artform (literature, drama, music, art, etc.) but the catch was it had to be an artist who died before the researcher was born. (Originally the only requirement was the artist be dead, but I kept getting Michael Jackson, Heath Ledger and Anna Nichole type stories.) It was fascinating, and forced them to consider the creative genius of a generation who came before they were alive. In addition, I required that at least two print sources be cited as references.

We spent time in the library, browsing the stacks, and seeing what we could discover. I can’t tell you how many times I serendipitously discovered related reading materials using this method and you simply can’t have a similar experience in a database-the search methodology is so different.

I think it’s a mistake that libraries are keen to yank all of their printed materials. Am I just getting old?

It seems that a young teacher in Georgia was pressured into resigning her job because of her online activities on Facebook. A parent complained to school administrators about Ashley Payne’s Facebook profile, which included vacation photos of her consuming alcoholic beverages and also contained profanity in some of her status updates.

Here’s the local news coverage:

One of the reasons cited for the pressure to resign was that she worked in a small town. Those of us from small towns know exactly what that is all about, with everyone knowing everyone else’s business– precisely the reason this story is ridiculous to me. If the young lady drinks and cusses, everyone in town probably knew before she publicized it on Facebook. She kept her updates private and had no friend connections with students, so I’m wondering how the information became public in the first place?

I’m keenly interested in the training and professional development of teachers. Would love to hear your thoughts on this case. What mistakes were made by the teacher? The school administration? Facebook? What do you think?

In no particular order here are some of my thoughts:

• Putting anything online that you wouldn’t want to see on the evening news is stupid (And being young and being stupid often go hand in hand).
• The opinion of one parent should never be cause enough for dismissal.
• You ought to know your rights and seek legal counsel before signing anything like a forced resignation.
• You really don’t want to work in an environment where you are not wanted.
• Since when did adults of legal age drinking beer and wine on vacation become a problem in the classroom?

Is there anything else I’m missing here? I would especially love to hear from teachers & school administrators on this.

Thanks to @Holtsman on Twitter for the lead on this story.

This video was sent to me by a colleague at work.

I was immediately reminded of Daniel Pink, author of “A Whole New Mind” and frequent writer about emotionally intelligent design. Let’s face it, no amount of cajoling, criticizing or high pressuring can compete with sensitivity to the feelings of the intended audience. As a teacher, I prefer trying to find fun ways to communicate ideas, rather than badgering, lecturing and otherwise intimidating my students into learning what I think is important. To me, it just makes sense.

In 2007 Vinton Cerf, a founding father of the Internet wrote that what this country needs is another Sputnik to reinvigorate science education. After reading Cerf’s article, last spring I did a research project on the National Defense Education Act. The NDEA was the US response to the launch of Sputnik, hoping to improve schools and better compete with the perceived Soviet threat.

Today, on Daniel Pink’s blog, I find another interesting reference to this landmark event. This time it was a video of James Paul Gee discussing education reform. A few of the highlights I picked up on in the video include:

• Global competition will be the new Sputnik, and American education has a 50% chance it will experience the first real reform in 100 years as a result.
• Teachers have become de-professionalized, letting textbooks, testing and politicians make curriculum decisions rather than teachers making professional decisions about what and how best to teach. (Not an indictment of teachers, just a statement of current reality.)
• Innovation and creativity are not emphasized enough because many schools are simply test-prep academies.
• Social media helps to create “passion groups” through which people with similar passions can come together
• Teachers learning to use new digital tools are model learners for students

If you have 11 minutes or so, why not enjoy the entire video?

It’s hard to believe that it’s already been two weeks since Grandpa & I left on on our adventure to the USA nation’s capitol. He and I took a trip to Washington D.C. sponsored by Central Prairie Honor Flights. All WWII veterans travel at no cost to them. If you think this is a worthy cause, why not consider making a donation to help keep the movement alive? If you know a WWII veteran who has not made the trip, don’t delay… apply to get their name on the list right away! If they are physically able to travel at all, they need to do this!

Last week I wrote about getting to DC and our first day in the area. In this post I will give a little detail about what we did during our only full day in Washington.

We had an early Reveille on the day of our tour. Breakfast was served at 6am and the bus departed around 7:30. We arrived at the WWII memorial shortly after 8 am and we were among the first visitors there. We spent a great deal of time posing for a group shot. My camera couldn’t fit them all in, so this picture is a composite of four photos that I stitched together with photoshop.

I figured the Kansas marker would be a popular spot so we hurried over to the north end of the memorial & took a picture there first.

Then we moved to the center of the memorial and enjoyed the view.

Grandpa was in the Pacific so we headed over to the south end to see the Pacific battles. Grandpa was wounded on Biak, New Guinea, so he posed for a picture near the New Guinea marker.

All of my four years of sea duty were served in the Pacific as well so grandpa & I posed together near the MacArthur quotation made on the USS Missouri at the WWII surrender.

My other grandpa, Claude Rickley, served in Europe during WWII. He traveled with us to the memorial in spirit. I made a photograph of his picture & burial flag at the Battle of the Bulge, where he fought. I wish he could have gone with us, he would have loved this trip. I miss him.

After the WWII memorial, we visited the haunting Korean War memorial. Grandpa commented that the statues of the soldiers were quite real to life, down to the smallest detail. Even the carbine rifles looked like the one he carried.

Next was the unforgettable Lincoln memorial. So much history in this place, and what do my kids think of when I came home with this picture? Of course it was Night at the Museum, Battle of the Smithsonian.

The Vietnam memorial is also unforgettable. So many names, so many young men lost.

After our tour of the National Mall, we had time for a museum tour before lunch. We chose the Smithsonian Air & Space museum. Our other choice was the Holocaust museum. Grandpa had no interest in seeing that. He’s witnessed enough tragedy in his lifetime.

I was glad we went to the Smithsonian, because we saw the Apollo 11 command module.

The original Wright Flyer, the world’s first aircraft.

And an honest to goodness moon rock. I wanted badly to touch it, but it is encased in plastic.

Afterwards, we ate lunch and headed for the Iwo Jima memorial.

And the tomb of the unknown soldier.

Finally, we returned to the WWII memorial for one last look. It is quite beautiful at night, well worth a second stop. There was a moving memorial service to remember those who sacrificed everything for our freedom.

Afterwards, we were visited briefly by Kansas representatives Jerry Moran and Lynn Jenkins. They arrived late and we were freezing by then so they had to visit with us on our tour busses.

It was a long day, but unforgettable for as long as I live. We slept well that night I can assure you. We were fortunate to have an afternoon flight home the next day so we were able to take our time getting on the bus to the airport. It was a long trip home. We drove from Dulles Airport Hilton to the Baltimore Airport. Flew from there to Kansas City. Drove from there three hours to Clifton, KS. As we drew near to our home, we saw this sunset just outside of Clay Center, KS. Probably the most amazing sunset I have ever seen.

They say that we remember an experience by it’s high point and by it’s ending. You can bet with this kind of ending, we will have nothing but fond memories of our trip to Washington DC in the Fall of 2009.

One of the things I should probably understand more than I really do is website search engine optimization or SEO.

I have known for a while now that blogs play a powerful role in influencing the search engines. This was illustrated to me quite vividly recently while doing some prep work for my visual literacy class. We were doing my familiar old pixel pointillism project and I did a quick  Google image search for pointillism.

What’s this? My little blog is the first item returned for a pointillism image on Google? It’s a detail image of a Seurat painting I found on Mark Harden’s Artchive. Check it out!

Anyone who doubts that blogging is important to getting exposure for your website is missing the power of web 2.0.

My visual literacy students have been kicking hind-end this fall. I have a bunch of hardworking and talented students this year. You should check out some of their blogs.

• Rick – http://apps.facebook.com/liveblog/user/1494194154
• Natasha – http://minenatasha.blogspot.com
• Trista – http://tag91.wordpress.com
• Will – http://willyj16.wordpress.com
• Brandon M. – http://bmobes.wordpress.com/
• Savannah – http://srobeson.blogspot.com/
• Kristin – http://thoughtsofadrifter.blogspot.com
• Brandon S. – http://mydigitalbliss.com/blog/wordpress/
• James – http://thanos2469.wordpress.com
• Bryant – http://bwilvisualliteracy.blogspot.com/

This week they did a new pixel pointillism drawing. We’ve been doing these drawings every year. I described the process in a previous post so I won’t go into the details here.

This time we did Rihanna. I guess I have a thing for troubled pop icons. I suppose we should have done Michael Jackson, but I felt he was too obvious. Part of the fun is passing out the different pixel squares and letting the puzzle take shape.

Also this week, we did some drawings with Illustrator. I had them do contour line drawings and also portraits using nothing but shape. Pretty amazing results, don’t you think?

The last thing that educators need on the first day of school is a big, hairy brouhaha but that is exactly what many started the year with this year.

Hurry on over and check out how the Obama speech debacle proves Arne Duncan does not know how schools work by Edward Hayes, it’s a great read. (I heard about it via Larry Ferlazzo on Twitter)

Personally, I never saw what the big deal was anyhow. This is a snippet of a Facebook conversation we had earlier in the week:

Me: Don’t see what all the flap was about in the first place. As if my kids can come home and change my political opinions based on what they heard in a speech at school.

Robert: Or, as if what your kids hear one day in school when they are seven or ten is going to have any impact on them at all tomorrow–if you don’t want it to.

Audrey: Another example of parents getting hysterical over nothing.Just concerned about their own politcal views. I assure you, kids would not have thought twice about listening to the president speak, if not for all this bickering.

Over the years, I’ve developed a love of art and visual communication. When I am able, I love spending time viewing art in galleries and even creating my own small works of art. Yesterday I attended the opening of a new show at the Salina Art Center. I will write more about that in a separate post when I have more information to share, but let me just say that the current show has lots of kinetic sculptures with motors and electronics incorporated into the work. Very worth checking out.

I haven’t always paid attention to art. When I was in the Navy, I visited some of the most amazing cities in the world, but I was primarily interested in checking out the pubs, not the galleries. In fact, the only gallery I ever set foot in was in Hobart, Australia, and that was by accident. I was eating a nice Italian meal with some shipmates. I mentioned to them that I would really enjoy going fishing while we were in Tasmania. A gentleman at the next table spoke up, telling me that he knew of a young man who might like to take me fishing.

Over the course of the next couple of days, the gentleman (I’ve forgotten his name, this was back in 1991) introduced me to Josh Nester who at the time was around 14 and an avid fisherman. He also took us on a tour of the art gallery he owned. I’m sorry to say that I remember more about the fishing than I do the art. Josh & I each caught a nice lake trout at the Great Lake after freezing our bums off in the highlands of Tasmania.

Of course I took Josh & his family on a tour of my ship, the USS Missouri. Over the years, I had lost track of Josh and his family but I had never forgotten their hospitality. That is until recently, I reconnected with Josh through Facebook. Think whatever you like about the pros & cons of Facebook, some people are fleeing it, but for me it has been an amazing way to reconnect with people I have known in my life that I have lost touch with.

Even though I was only there a few days, Josh and his family provided me with an unforgettable experience in Australia through their kind hospitality. That is why I was pleased to reconnect with Penny, the mother of Josh who drove us to the lake where we caught those fish. I was especially intrigued to learn that she now operates an art gallery in Hobart called Detached. What is even more interesting is that the gallery currently has an interactive exhibit called 8 Months of War by Australian artist Brook Andrew. It is ironic that the 1991 Persian Gulf War was what brought me to Hobart in the first place.

I am continually amazed at this communications-based world in which we live. I was able to reconnect with people I met only briefly eighteen years ago through the power of the Internet, and now I am also able to interact with a new media artist half a world away. You can too. Why not check out 8 Months of War today?

A strong effort is being made to raise the standard of teaching in our public schools.

Wow, does that ever sound familiar? The more things change, the more they stay the same. And get a load of the teaching certificate requirements in Kansas in 1911. They had three levels of certification back then. They were starting to crack down on teachers that hadn’t completed high school.