Imagine and Teach

It has been a while since I have written in this space. Certainly not for lack of desire to write, but as happens to so many of us, life gets in the way.

This post is more personal than educational. While the year featured my first ever ISTE conference, and while I have learned so much, I need to reflect a bit here on this last day of 2011. So bear with me and read on!

In many ways, this has been a challenging personal year.  The most significant event was the end of my marriage.  The year started with the awareness that life was going to change dramatically.  And it has.  The groundless nature of 2011 for me has of course, caused pain, but has brought strength.

The strength has come from family, friends, and colleagues. It has come from reflection and prayer. It has come from a mindful awareness that this is my life, and I need to live it.

I don’t know where I would be without my family, who has helped me, driven me, listened to me, (even when I am sure I was repeating myself) and loving me. From dry cleaning to endless trips to the supermarket, they have been there.

My friends have been incredible. The amount of rides they have given me cannot be counted. The endless stories they have listened to shows the great patience that they have. They have seen me anxious, sad, peaceful, stressed, energized, disconnected, hyper connected, tense, fun, and happy. And some of that was all in one day!

So here we stand on the edge of a new year. And while I have learned that the present moment is truly all that we have, I will take a chance and think about the future.

2011 has been tough for me. But it has also been a learning experience, and I have made some great new friends in the process. So here goes.

I start the year with an open mind and heart. I want to work to show compassion and kindness in all that I do. I want to do whatever I can to bring peace to others. I truly want to be grateful, aware, and patient. I want to be present to every conversation and situation.

While I still feel pretty groundless, I am peaceful. I am also hopeful. I look forward to the great possibilities that the New Year brings personally and professionally. I truly believe that the great way that the year is ending for me will continue, so I am very curious and open to the newness of a new year.

So if you are still reading, thank you. I plan on writing here more frequently, and I am sure that some educational reflection will be here soon.

Happy New Year to you. I wish you Peace, Happiness, and God’s blessings.

Of course, you are welcome to leave a comment.

Peace.

I am a visually impaired person. That is something that I cannot change. Not yet anyway. I am a passionate educator who loves to read. I have an iPad, it reads to me when I need it to. I love to read books on it.

So I should also be able to enjoy the Kindle app as my sighted friends can. After all, having the Amazon library available to me would certainly expand my options. Don’t get me wrong Apple, the iBookstore has been great and it is growing. But the Kindle app will not work for those of us with visual impairments. So much for universal design.

I just purchased a new book on the iBookstore for $12.99. It is a book that I really wanted to read. Having just returned from the ISTE 2011 conference, I want to read Dr. John Medina’s Brain Rules. It is on the Kindle app for $2.99, but it might as well be free, as it does me no good at all. And the audible copy is $24.99!

I did contact Amazon about this a few months ago and was told that if I wanted the text to speech option, I should buy a Kindle. Interesting. So because I have this disability, I need to spend more money. My chosen reading device, the iPad, will work with everyone else that uses the Kindle app, but not people, including kids , like me.

As IOS devices become part of everyday life in so many schools, why would Amazon not make their store accessible to all?  That certainly would not affect their bottom line.  And oh, yes, I know some publishers don’t want their books to be TTS enabled. And as you can imagine, I find this thinking very short-sighted (no pun intended). But why make the app not be compatible with voiceover on the iPad, and other IOS devices?

Sure, the entire visually impaired community could buy Kindles. But since we really want the TTS option, the rest of the great features on the device really aren’t that useful to the visually impaired. But TTS is. And the IOS devices allow us to access the web and all of the apps, check and send email, tweet, find directions, read train schedules, and check the baseball scores, read the news and so much more.

So Amazon, can you find it in your heart to make that app accessible to voice over? Most apps are these days. You see universal design for learning is a real and necessary concept. Technology is leveling the field for so many people with disabilities, and isn’t that what we want as a people?  I think it is just a few lines of code. Come on, make it happen.

Thanks.

I welcome comments. Thanks for stopping  by!

Recently I was given the honor of being a regular contributor to a new blog called Voices From The Learning Revolution. This is a blog started by the great people at Powerful Learning Practice. I am one of 10 voices in the group and it is humbling to be among these great educators.

My first post on the Voices Blog was called It’s Always Opening Night-The Arts and 21st Century Learning. If you get the chance, stop by and leave a comment. And be sure to check out the other posts on the blog. We will all be posting regularly there.

Of course, I will continue to write regularly here at Imagine and Teach, my personal blog home.

Thanks for stopping by!

Since arriving home from EduCon 2.3 I keep telling myself that I need to blog about the experience in great detail. But as I have read from many others, that will take time to sink in. I think I need much more reflection on what was an incredible experience before I can properly detail it here. But I feel the need to post a brief reflection anyway.

It is through connecting and networking that we learn. That is plainly evident to anyone who attends Educon in the true spirit of the unconference experience. I attended the weekend with 4 other innovative educators from my school. We had all attended last year and couldn’t wait to get to 22^nd and Arch where The Science Leadership Academy is located.  And we were not disappointed.

We teach in a traditional school. But we are lucky to have the support of our school to attend EduCon and to support our 1 to 1 pilot.

One of the incredible things about Educon is the opportunity for everyone to meet the people that we have been connecting with on Twitter and on blogs in person. When you already have a connection with someone, meeting them in person deepens that connection and lets you know how tall they are! (Those twitter pics are small)

I will discuss the sessions that I attended in the next post and will certainly drop some names as well. But I can say, as I did in, my last post that the conversations in the halls, the library, the café, and just about anywhere were almost as good as the conversations in the sessions. I am already looking forward to next year, which will be my fourth.

So more to come.

Thanks for stopping by and feel free to leave a comment. A conversation is always welcome!

Tomorrow, my favorite PD adventure of the year begins. EduCon 2.3, the annual conference in Philadelphia is this weekend and I can’t wait.

Three days of conversation, inspiration, collaboration, learning, and connecting can’t be beat. The “unconference” is held at Science Leadership Academy, an outstanding high school in Philly. One of the best parts is that the event is a community undertaking, with the teachers, parents, and yes students making it all happen. Seeing this great community come together to handle about 500 of us crazed tweeting educators is impressive in every way.  They make us all feel welcome, and we really do.

So I am looking forward to the conversations, both the ones on the schedule and the ones that just happen. I am looking forward to seeing friends that I get to see rarely thanks to geography, and the chance to meet other friends for the first time in person.  I will attempt to blog over the weekend and will, at least, blog some final reflections when it is over.

I will be with a team of 5 from our school. Two of us are admins, and three teachers will be with us. So here we go. See everyone at EduCon.

If you are on twitter, follow the #educon tag. There will be tons of backchanneling.

As of today, 1/16/11 the new location for Imagine and teach is http://imagineteach.org.  Don’t worry, my blog is still with Edublogs.  If you are kind enough to have this blog on your reader, the feed will work, you don’t need to change anything. Thanks for all who stop by here. I am hopeful that in 2011 I will post more regularly, and with luck, add some value to the conversations on teaching learning, and more.

One of the joys in my day is that I teach kids vocal music at second period. As an administrator, I treasure the time that I get to teach each day. But I already did a post about that here.

So as we approach the end of the first semester, it was time to think about a third quarter project for the class. So I posted a topic on the class ning site to get it started. And after reading the kids posts about how they want to be creative perform, and have fun, I got to thinking.

And I kept thinking. And then this struck me as a working idea that I would share with the students. I called it Mashup -20. Here is the outline of what I was thinking:

1. Groups of 3 or 4, selected by the students themselves
2. Choose 2 songs that were released at least 20 years apart.
3. Create a three minute mashup of the two
4. Use whatever tools you would like.

• play music yourselves
• use a karaoke track
• Go on your voices alone

5. Perform the piece for the class

6. You can add video as well if you would like

So that is the idea. The students are sounding off on the Ning with their ideas, and they seem to love the idea. Once we settle on what we are doing, I will have the students create the rubric for me to guide how I will assess them along the way.

Should be fun and a great learning experience for all of us.

Thanks for stopping by, and please leave a comment if you have any suggestions, ideas, or just want to be in the conversation!

Tonight marks the official beginning of a tremendous journey of learning. The rehearsals begin for Cardinal O’Hara’s production of The Phantom Of The opera. This is the start of a 14 week schedule leading us to our opening night which will be April 8, 2010.

In addition to being an Assistant Principal and a teacher here, I am the producer/director of the show. As we move along the production process I will post here regularly to share and chronicle the progress the students and their teachers make.

This is likely the most ambitious project we have ever undertaken. Every aspect of the show is challenging, and I truly believe that our kids are up to the task.  We have so much to imagine and create along the way. And no, I don’t have the complete concept of how we will make the chandelier work, the gondola move, the stage transform and tons of other things. That will become apparent once the adult and student imagineers get all of the ideas rolling. But trust me, it will all happen.

This is true authentic learning. And you can’t get much more project based than this.  So along with all of the other educational topics that I like to write about, this running story of our show will be a regular blog post here.

As always thanks for stopping by. More to come. Feel free to add your thoughts below.

Today, I observed our band director and his band, which is a credit class in our school. They meet every day at the last period of the day. The class includes students from all four years and all academic levels as we track at our school.

The O'Hara Band

So as I entered the band room, I saw our band director, Nick Corvino, about to conduct the band playing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. The approximately 75 musicians in the room sounded great. That is not unusual. But what Mr. Corvino was doing was truly innovative.

On a music stand behind him sat his iPhone. He was recording the large band using the voice memo app. After recording the piece, he connected his iPhone to the sound system and played the piece back for the band. Before doing this, he asked each student to take some notes, and constructively critique the performance. He then played the track.

I watched the students intently listening and then when the track ended, some of the students offered their insights on what they heard.  Their observations were specific, constructive, and well worded. The teacher listened, asked some follow up questions, and then had the band review the sections that were pointed out by the students.

I could hear the improvement and sense the learning. To me, this simple exercise brought the students to reflection on their playing as a group. It helped them to listen and hear the other players, and understand their role in the piece in a much more authentic way.  In a way, everyone in the room was a co-director.

Student centered, project based, reflective, collaborative, and creative. Congrats to Nick and his kids for a great class. The arts do matter.

What would this practice look like in other subject areas?

These words are used all of the time in the constant discussion of what is wrong with our schools.  Politicians, billionaires, and TV pundits use the phrases “21^st Century” and “College and Career Readiness” interchangeably, as if they are synonymous.

Don’t get me wrong, I want our students to be prepared for college, if they choose that path, and the adult world of a career, but is that the chief goal of K through 12 education? Are we simply preparing kids for the next stop on the ladder of life? Or are we preparing them for now, and for actual life.

The expression of “college and career readiness” sounds great in the press. No one can deny that kids should be ready for this. But shouldn’t that readiness be a result of learning rather than the driving force of learning?

I believe that our schools should be caring places where we focus on our students being given the opportunity to learn in a way that best suits them. To open our schools to their connected life. To teach and learn in a way that truly prepares them for life as citizens, parents, neighbors, and coworkers.

How are we preparing kids for their future in this highly connected society by pushing standardized tests as the sum total of their and their teachers’ achievements? By using 19^th century models of teaching and testing, can we expect them to be better prepared? If we simply try harder to make a tired old model of learning work, can we really expect better results?

So they blame the teachers. They blame the administrators.  But I have yet to hear someone in a position to do so blame the model of education that we are perpetuating because we believe that it worked for us when we were kids. But isn’t the world different now? And if we really ponder things, for those of us who graduated high school more than a few years ago, was our experience truly good enough for us?

And if you say yes, think about it. What made your education ring true to you? It was likely that caring teacher who saw the possibilities that existed in you. In many cases it was simply that teacher who acknowledged your existence.  And 10, 20, 30, or more years from your high school graduation you will remember them. They inspired you. They helped you and encouraged you to find your passion. How much do we remember about any standardized test we took?

So my question is: is college and career readiness our goal? If so, how do we measure that and who gets to measure it?  Or should we be aiming higher? In an environment where everyone wants us   to try harder, shouldn’t we, in the words of Seth Godin, try different?

Thanks for stopping by.

Ed Allen