It was a good discussion that talked about how the conversation is changing. That at a point in time we use to actually take time to read and leave comments on blog posts. Now we read, and retweet blog posts. We talked about how Twitter is the new aggregator and is replacing RSS as a way people are getting their information. On this blog for example, I have more readers that come via Twitter then I do via the RSS feed. Because of Twitters live constant scrolling feed, we also talked about how the “life span” of a blog post is shrinking. I use to get comments on a blog post lasting weeks. Now I post a blog, it gets a comment or maybe two in a the first 10 minutes, gets retweeted for about 20 minutes and then it’s old news.

To me, it sounds a bit like Jeff is seeing the end of blogs as a dominant Web 2.0 technology and I’m sure he speaks for no one but himself in his assessment of where things seem to be going. I don’t disagree that connected conversation is changing but I’m not ready to write off blogs as a major platform for communication just yet. So, I’m using this “dated” technology (tongue firmly planted in cheek) to provide a alternative perspective to Jeff’s statements here in the sort of slow type-out-loud way that I personally find hard to express in 140 characters or less.

…at a point in time we use to actually take time to read and leave comments on blog posts.

Well, I don’t comment as much as I used to but I’m personally still reading as much as I ever have. There are some bloggers in my aggregator who have slowed down but new voices are there, ready to mix into the daily flow of connection. For me, there is still something exciting about opening up the Reader and looking into my Must Reads folder to see if anyone has posted since I last looked. I’d rather read about Dean Groom’s experiences in the US in my aggregator than the hit’n'miss tweet possibilities. Twitter doesn’t get you inside some one’s mind like a blog post can.

We talked about how Twitter is the new aggregator and is replacing RSS as a way people are getting their information. On this blog for example, I have more readers that come via Twitter then I do via the RSS feed.

I’m not a big fan of checking out blog posts as they are tweeted. I’d much rather wait until I browse my reader - the tweet that announces a new blog post is a bit like the mobile phone ring tone when you’re engrossed in a task but its urgent tone doesn’t mean that it is more important than what you are currently focussed on. Obviously I’m not “people” but it could be just that I find Twitter to be much harder work than blogs for tracking, initiating and participating in conversation.

Because of Twitters live constant scrolling feed, we also talked about how the “life span” of a blog post is shrinking. I use to get comments on a blog post lasting weeks. Now I post a blog, it gets a comment or maybe two in a the first 10 minutes, gets retweeted for about 20 minutes and then it’s old news.

I’m not convinced. I think it tells a story about Jeff’s readership in particular but it is a bit of a sweeping generalisation overall. In my case, comments can’t be influenced by Twitter because I’m not broadcasting there. So maybe this blog attracts readers who operate in a similar fashion to myself or my content isn’t based on breaking “new stuff” so it really can’t get old, so to speak.

Some of this gets down to the purpose of the chosen tool. My blog is a personal opinion piece, a repository of my classroom and professional practice, a creative outlet, an idea clearinghouse and whatever takes my fancy. I like the fact it is my piece of cyberturf, a bit like staying home instead of going to hang out with others at the pub. If my blog posts have a shorter life expectancy, so what? The people who I’m interested in communictaing and connecting with will still take the time to leave me a comment or a pingback, especially in a personal network where edtech heads are not the only nodes. If you’re too busy tweeting or plurking, and can’t see that different technologies serve different purposes, adding to the array of communication choices not replacing them, then I guess I’ll leave you to your #hashtags, your DM’s and RT’s, and your twitpics. And just in case I get mistaken for a Twitter basher, I use Twitter but probably in the same way someone like Jeff will. For me, it is an information stream that I dip into from time to time, and even more occasionally throw a bit into as well. For me, it just a lot of hard work to get to the level of power user, when other avenues are still extremely rewarding for me.

Hmmm… maybe I should tweet this blog post out to see if it does make a difference. Just kidding.

Cartoon from Geek And Poke.

PARENTS hope new minimum teaching times for maths, English and science in South Australian primary schools will bring Australia in line with top-performing countries and lift student test scores.

Figures reported by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) show Australia lags behind countries such as the Netherlands, France, Mexico, the UK and the Czech Republic in teaching time committed to core subjects.

On average, students in the 30 countries in the OECD spend 50 per cent of class time on reading, writing, maths and science, compared with 24 per cent in Australia. In contrast, Australian teachers have the flexibility to dictate what is taught in 59 per cent of class time, compared with just 4 per cent of flexible time as the OECD average.

Now, I have a foot in both camps here - as a teacher in the public school system that is often under the critical gaze of the SOUTH AUSTRALIAN ASSOCIATION OF STATE SCHOOL ORGANISATIONS (SAAOSSO) and a parent who is represented by the same organisation. I do find it interesting that SAAOSSO’s method seems to be criticising the public school system equals improving it. Anyone can cherry pick OECD statistics to present a favourable argument - I’m wondering if all of those countries who spend that time exclusively on core subjects are all out performing Australia in their literacy and numeracy achievements. Actually an actual link to the statistics being quoted in the news article would have been useful rather than assuming that the reader should take the article at face value.

And as a teacher who sees the benefit of covering SACSA outcomes in “flexible” time in the guise of Inquiry Learning, I wonder why we’d even want to strive for the OECD average of 4 %. This perception that we don’t spend enough time on the “basics” is very interesting. I have heard that this call is usually because the government (or in this case, the parents’ representative body) don’t really have a clear vision of the future, so grasping for the past is the usual response. Just for the record, I have no problem with the State Government’s call for minimum times for English, Mathematics and Science. My own timetable for my class matches those requirements pretty well - but I sense that “flexible” equals “undesirable” in this new initiative. Improving our own education system needs to focus on what is relevant for our students, not as Greg Carroll puts it so eloquently, following the ball around.

Image adapted for review purposes from the OECD Document titled ENHANCING EDUCATIONAL PERFORMANCE IN AUSTRALIA.

But the interview process has been very interesting - by this time tomorrow, we will have held over thirty earnest conversations with parents and caregivers. There have been promises to strive for goals, observations shared, disappointments voiced and just occasionally that golden moment when a student shows that real sign of a self motivated, initiative seeking learner.  Thank, to Darren Draper, I re-discovered Christian Long’s “Future of Learning Manifesto” (wow, I wish he was still  blogging) with my favourite extract that describes my role with these students:

Keep in mind, I may be young so I may have a hard time with that “r-tickle-a-shun” thing. That’s your job. Give me the words. Give me the tools. Give me the examples. And then get out of my way.

But the second you see my passion start to go from curious lit match to smoke-jumper forest fire, stop giving me handouts and worksheets and become my Jerry McGuire.

I’ve got to remember to not be the wet blanket.

I personally feel excited looking at Kim Cofino’s workplace, the Learning Hub at ISB, Thailand and see that is an attractive learning environment that holds what is currently good about school libraries (fiction books, magazines etc.) blended with new media areas and comfortable seating. Kim explains:

You have to give them something different. The Learning Hub (library) has to offer a physical environment that is different than other spaces teachers and students regularly use.

Not that their design doesn’t need a bit of tweaking from time to time:

In our efforts to make a 21st century learning environment, we had mistakenly recreated a standard, formal classroom space at the very front of the Learning Hub, assuming that teachers would want to use it as an expanded classroom:

I’m thinking that a few things need to go - a traditional computer lab isn’t really needed in a school that is trying to go wireless and get technology out into the classrooms and why do we need any reference books that are not digital? I suppose one of the greatest challenges about a blank slate (aka the empty shell of a building) is prioritising the possibilities and actually picturing how it all might fit together.

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/superkimbo/3536973387/

“I can see a future where handwriting is an irrelevant skill.” (This is guaranteed a rapid response with junior primary teachers who see that sentence as an attack on the skills of literacy and the development of fine motor skills.)

Ann also threw this gem out to our Assistant Principal and teacher-librarian: “Won’t things be great when we change over to our paper-less, digital library?” They both knew that she is only half-joking.

I’ve also contemplated out loud about the demise of tree-based newspapers or the day our school our school has 1:1 laptops. It’s not as if they don’t know that these things already exist but I certainly detect an unwillingness to acknowledge that their school and their established way of work could be affected and move in these directions.

I’ve been told as much by my colleagues that paper will always prevail in classrooms, that our system will always need face-to-face teaching and libraries stacked full of books. A few have learned to try and bait me back with references to Susan Greenfield or similar. I just wonder what many of them thought when they heard Mark Treadwell talk about us being in the initial stages of the Internet Based Paradigm.

Schools have been the way they are for quite a while. There are plenty of teachers who believe that the slow change we’ve been used to in the education sector is just the way things are, that we are somehow immune to the rapid changes in society and all kids need to make their way into the future are the same tried and true basics.

So I’d like to keep my colleagues on their toes, keep niggling away at their certainties and get them to consider the bigger picture beyond their own classroom and help shape the changes that will inevitably crop up a lot sooner than anticipated. But I’m running short of provocations - do you have any to help me out? Or am I the one who needs to be challenged?

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/will-lion/2782069277/

Ahhh, I feel so much better now … I mean, I hope that this (ahem) helps some other edubloggers feel at peace with themselves and their place in the learning universe.

I reckon my readers will have enough context to enjoy these…

Hey, this cartoonist has even got his own blog.

This year, everyone in the class reads what they want to read, and they read without interruption for 30-40 minutes each day. They tell me about their books when I go around the room asking how it’s going. I write down what we talk about. They read short passages quietly to me. They write in journals about their books. They meet with partners or in small groups, and they give oral “book reports” written on sticky notes. They make book recommendations to each other. They read at home and before school without being told to, and they tell me they love to read. I even saw one of my students reading a book walking down the hall the other day. It’s going viral.

I emailed the link to our teacher-librarian and she agreed that this had all the qualities of a switched on reading program. This week, Doug put the icing on the cake with feedback from his kids about their reading and writing program. Being able to reflect on one’s own learning is the mark of a successful learner who values what they are doing and the kids’ comments certainly do that well. It’s a skill that my teaching partners and I want our own students to have as well.

But what I struggled with was the connection with Doug’s switched on atmosphere and the much touted literature circles approach. I’m certainly not the only edublogger out there trying to get it right. So, a whole stack of teachers at my school headed off to an after school workshop on “Literature Circles” to get our heads around this concept. The facilitators talked a bit about lit circles but soon switched focus, talking about their modified approach which stripped some of the formalities away but kept the basic premise of a group of kids reading a common text and coming together to discuss the text through making connections and exploring questions. They called this approach “Book Clubs” and it had many of the things that Doug identified as being desirable outcomes for students when reading - engagement, increased appetite for more books, improved comprehension. This approach is one I think I can handle and while I wouldn’t adopt everything mentioned by the facilitators (snacking and guzzling while book clubbing is another time for feeding some of our kids don’t need, and carrot and celery treats are not that appealing to many kids), I reckon that I can see this being a successful way of re-engaging middle school readers. Perhaps the major problem will be having enough quality texts in bundles of five or six to form the groups. I really liked the suggested way to form groups - you pass the book bundles around the classroom and everyone views them and then ranks the choices from first until last, then the groups form around who has chosen what book. When a group fills, students then drop to their second choice and so on. I’m feeling enthusiastic about getting the Book Club approach which combines the goals and shared experiences of the literature circle approach with Doug’s less formal and peer-enthusing approach.

Good luck to all involved in this process. Let’s hope that standardised testing doesn’t mutate any further than its current configuration - what I read about other countries’ testing expectations does make me nervous about the future.

I’m still not sure who or where I first heard the idea of offering a Google search of one’s name as a form of presence and credibility - it was either Leigh Blackall or Alexander Hayes who suggested that their perfect business card would simply have their online blended lowercase name (google:leighblackall OR google:alexanderhayes) on it. The free ranger vs the DIY domain guru - where does Christopher’s nemesis fit?

Or is just a good example of Will Richardson’s clickability?