What do should we do in the classroom?

One of the biggest takeaways that I have been formulating at the Virtual Schools Symposium is that the hybrid model is not fiction. When students have access outside of class hours (and this is not a given by any means), shouldn’t we be expecting that they be connecting and collaborating during this time?

The more that I work with my new 7th graders (the students who I have only known under the Academy of Discovery Model), the more I realize that productivity is something that comes from having the ability to work at your own pace and schedule. I keep seeing the majority of essays being written at home even though I feel the obligation to give them time in class. I keep seeing my students make more meaning out of the emails and instant messages outside the classroom.

My real question, I guess, is what activity is so well suited to face-to-face contact that it can’t be replicated online? Whatever the answer to that question is, is what I need to be doing in my classroom, every day.

Here are my thoughts on what can’t be replicated online, yet:

• Debate – In its truest form, debate is a refined series of verbal arguments that require many people talking in rapid succession. Although you can do debate in an elluminate session, the passing of the mic is awkward at best and the visual separation of the competing sides is not possible.
• Networking – It is why we still come to conferences. Finding great people that you want to work with and that will challenge you is something that is lacking in the online world. A social network does create a sense of community amongst many people, but it the bonds forged are not immediate. They take time and tending. In face-to-face communication, it is easy to see the worthwhile. It is easy to recognize excellence. That is what classroom time can be: the search and recognition for excellence (in writing, in math, in science, etc.)

What are the things that you think are so essential in the classroom that they can’t be outsourced to a virtual space? (Do they still exist? Will they always exist?) I really want to know.

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I was not the only one with this idea, however.

I just so happened to sit next to Kathryn Knox, Ph.D. (Senior Director of Curriculum and Instruction at the Colorado Virtual Academy) and we struck up quite the conversation about online learning.

My favorite part of the discussion was when we stumbled upon community as a tenet for a successful online school. She put it this way: “Without community you don’t have a school. You have a program but not a school.” This idea really caught me and it hasn’t let go yet.

Are we trying to create programs that are viable and sustainable, or are we trying to create communities that constantly need tweaking and guidance. The first is easy: Set up the systems, install the software, write the content. The second is terrifyingly hard: engage all stakeholders, listen, change.

I really need to keep looking at the Academy of Discovery to make sure that I am not just creating a program, I am creating a community.

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Some students blog because they have to. Some students blog because they enjoy using the technology. Some students blog because they like their choice of topics, but very few of my students blog because it is the life-blood of their communication. They don’t see it as their primary or even secondary way of putting ideas out into the greater world and getting validation for those ideas. This saddens me as much as it sobers me. I have been putting off thinking about it for a while because I believed that this kind of community would exist out of my classroom eventually if left alone. Unfortunately, I don’t think that a laissez-faire approach is going to do it.

That is why I now believe that every student blogger need to find a niche, a type and style of writing that best fits them and draws in a larger audience. This niche should not just be an understanding within the blogger him or herself; it should be a well articulated part of their writing.

So I say to my student bloggers:

You cannot create an audience from thin air, you must go in search of an one. You must write about things that make sense for you, that you are passionate about. You must go and find your niche. Subscribe to other’s blogs about sports. Find those interesting voices that you would like to become a part of. Link to them in your blogroll and in your posts. Start commenting on things that are outside of our small writing community. Break out of the repetitive storytelling that can lead to feedback loops within small groups of friends. Use Google Blog Search or Technorati. Use Netvibes or Google Reader. Work to find what you are looking for in your own writing. It may take longer to write your next post, but once you find your niche, you will be able to work within that framework that you have set up and never again be at a loss for words.

I can’t take any credit for this idea, though. I was inspired to try to make my blogging community a part of the greater conversation by two presentations at the K12 Online Conference.  If you haven’t checked out Sustained Blogging in the Classroom  or Initiating and Sustaining Conversations: Assessment and Evaluation in the Age of Networked Learning, you really should. The latter may be the best presentation on blogging in the classroom that I have ever witnessed.

Although I believe that my classroom blogging community is working, it has a lot more potential energy than kinetic at this point. I think only now am I really able to admit that to myself. I have found one of my own niche again: reflecting upon what goes on in my classroom.

For the Ripe Environment to exist, we have to have better (and more simple) reasons for doing what we do with technology. So, I was struck with the simplest of all reasons for using blogs in your classroom: It’s the content, stupid. (I believe this is the one and only time that my mind has blatantly stolen from Bill Clinton and his 1992 presidential campaign.)

The following is what I shared with my students after I shared my rather abrasive reasoning for blogging in the classroom.

That is why we use blogs to communicate, not because they are easy, not because they are more collaborative, it is simply because they let the content speak for itself. Without content you are nothing. Without great ideas there is no hope for the future. It is the content that matters, not the format. That is why we do blogs, to pull content up through the rss straw, roll it around in our mouth-like readers, tasting each smooth milkshake post and swallow it down, totally satisfying our desire to fill our bellies with content.

Now, content can be anything from stories to videos to embedded PowerPoint. The only crucial element of content is that you are proud enough of it to consider it yours. That means that content does not exist in an answer that was just done to get it over with. Content does not exist in the unrealized half-wonderings of a before school speed post. Content exists in thought-provoking ideas. It exists in well-worded prose or original poetry. Content is the torrent of inspiration that is created when authenticity is the goal, and you actually have the time to do something.

I actually wrote the preceding piece on my Palm Treo while I was eating cereal. I didn’t start writing it as a way of addressing The Ripe Environment, but this piece really gets at prerequisite number 6: Students and Educators should know that their products and ideas as valuable. If we are concerned with content, students will know that we genuinely care about what they express and teachers will know that their ideas will have some impact. If we focus too much on adding more features or tools to our toolkit, we will never get to the act of content creation. And that would be a very sad thing.

The social network that many of us have come to love, Classroom 2.0, is a space for teachers to come together and share ideas for and stories about teaching in the 21st century. Yet, so far, it has not been an avenue for turning on “would-be advocates” to social media. It has basically been a way of aggregating all of the great minds that are already engaged in the authentic use of technology. Although we may be able to see Classroom 2.0 as a living example of collaboration, most other people won’t. They will see it as a teacher-based myspace, a place where work and play blend into this muddy mixture that can not possibly pay attention to the details of an individual classroom.

So, if Classroom 2.0 isn’t it, then what are the Living Examples of collaboration that The Ripe Environment requires?

Well, I don’t have to look to much further than the hour and half I spent with these eight teachers. In fact, I don’t have to much further than the first few minutes I spent with them. In those beginning moments of our time together, I asked the following question: “How would your writing (and writing instruction) change if the form and content of your writing were separable?” Now, there is nothing very special about this question except in that it demands an answer. Most teachers cannot resist a question about how they will or will not change their teaching in light of a new idea. Better yet, this question does not ask for a generic answer that could have come from anyone, but a real answer that only the individual teacher can provide.

I realized, perhaps too late to make my presentation as good as it could be, that the only thing Living Examples require is action on the part of the newly initiated. If the example of collaboration can go on existing without the new teacher, it isn’t Living in the way that it should. If the type of collaboration is revolutionary but requires no revolutionary step on the part of the person seeing it for the first time, then it is just another piece of noise that can be filtered out.

There are too many collaborations going on in our edublogosphere that require only minimal thought and effort on the part of the observer. Classroom 2.0, for all of its merits, will continue to be an edubloggers’ paradise until new users are made to feel challenged by the very notion of collaboration. Where are the engaging questions that will bring new bloggers into our spaces? Where are the wonderful memes that grab a hold of our attentions? Why aren’t we reaching out with inquiry rather than answers?

We seem to simply accept that everyone should want to use blogs, podcasts, wikis, social networks and all of our other wonderful tools, but we really don’t ask other people if they agree. We need to let others poke holes in our logic/pedagogy. We need to ask others to contribute, not just to the periphery of the conversation, but to the hearty core. We need to let them change our spaces, to create the Living Examples for a new group of teachers, teachers that can get along fine without technology in their classrooms (or at least think they can).

So, those are the things I learned today. Throughout my presentation, the most engaging moments were when I was asking my fellow teachers to think about how they saw blogging working in their classrooms or how they envisioned a shift in their instruction.

The Living Examples, therefore, are time sensitive. They only exist for the moments in which a teacher feels challenged enough to act and collaborate with either the challenger or others who feel the same way. If they do not take advantage of the opportunity they have been confronted with, the same question or line of thinking will never engage them in the same way. They will need another Living Example of collaboration in order to get them into the Ripe Environment, and we need to create it for them.

So, I guess my challenge to anyone who reads this is as follows: What are the questions, ideas for inquiry, or memes that will get teachers and students to create Living Examples for one another?

“Honestly… because my friends will hear it.”  – Sam Altman

I’m pretty sure that this can become an analogy for why creating blogging and collaborative writing communities are so much more engaging than writing in a journal, writing an essay for a teacher, or taking notes in class that are only for a test. Students aren’t willing to put forth the equivalent of 99 cents of effort if only they (or only their teacher) is going to see it. However, if their content will be seen by many other students, they will put forth $5.00 worth of effort.

I want my kids to always put forth $5.00 worth of effort. I want them to continue to come back and purchase more and more content from the ideas that my classes provide. Are there any other ideas other than giving students the ability to broadcast/syndicate their content that will make sure that we receive that level of engagement and effort? What is the specific value of expression that engages students? How can we capitalize on it in our classrooms?

This woman really gets the kinds of environments that kids crave. She told the story of a character dying on Degrassi and students needing a place to grieve. She created that environment, gave kids the tools, and then let the kids talk. I find this anecdote to be extremely compelling. For the most part, I don’t do this in my classroom.

For the most part, we don’t show students compelling content and then let them recreate it. We don’t give them the tools and set up the environment and let them go. Why? Are we interested in what they would come up with, or are they more interested in seeing the kind of knowledge that they can amass?

I hope that we start to focus more on creating the environment and finding the best tools (ideas, resources, collaborative values, etc.) that will allow them to create or recreate learning. What are the standards for that?

His response was quite interesting. He first started talking about reassuring the teachers that they are working with turnitin.com and other anti-plagiarism sites, but then he started going on the offensive. He put a challenge out there for teachers: “We need to teach kids how to cite sources before fourth grade.” He said that most students are not trying to cheat; they just don’t know what qualifies as plagiarism. He also calls into the question the line between plagiarism and collaboration. We need to explain, expand, and explore this line.

Where is this line for you?

Should we respond to his challenge?

Clearly, this man is going to be a star. We need to watch his projects because he is going to move the debate, whether we are with him or not.

His research into fan fiction has helped him to think about online communities that create mentorships and opportunities for continual advancement. He talks about how kids start writing harry potter fan fiction one day and then two years later they are helping other writers to edit their work and get it ready for publication. This is an amazing process for creating mentors. Why aren’t our educational communities like this?

We need to create online mentorships between adults and students. This needs to not be a weird element that borders on child predator activity. How can we set up these connections so that the mentorships go both ways. The digital native/immigrant debate is counterproductive. It doesn’t allow these groups to blend and change. It doesn’t allow students to indoctrinate teachers. It doesn’t create the kind of hope that is possible when communities cross-pollinate.

How can we do this? I really want to know.

“It isn’t about pushing ideas down their throats, but rather letting them pull what they find useful.” -Music and Social Media

How can we let students pull content rather than pushing content upon them? How can we create an environment where there is so much content that students have to heavily explore and interact with the concepts in order to create meaning.

They must be able to access information at all times.

But, we shouldn’t be too eager to let them pull the answers out of the white noise of content. We should be helping them to craft the questions. There is no way that students will pull the right music, text, movies, concepts, skills, etc. unless they have crafted the right questions. We need to help them pull what will produce the most change, the most creation, the most higher order thinking skills.

We need students to pull, but we need them to pull well.

The first of the 10 prerequisites for The Ripe Environment is “Educators and learners must have a genuine need to be heard by others and, in one way or another, receive feedback for contributions.” This need for input and feedback equates to a continual longing for connection. Our ideas must be connected to other’s for them to have value. They must be experienced by someone out there somewhere who is intrigued, disgusted, embarrassed, or in some other way affected.

Connection is different in The Ripe Environment, though. It is no longer sufficient to meet someone and shake his or her hand. This is not a connection; it is merely a coincidence that both of you happen to be in the same room. A connection is something that is felt when ideas/personalities/beliefs meet one another and are challenged, bettered, or assimilated. Two people can be talking about the similar ideas or completely opposite opinions, but until a link is made between the two, neither are aware of the similarities and differences. That means, that there is no value held within either. And truly, connection is all about creating value for the the two people doing the connecting.

The three types of connections that create the most value are as follows:

• The 1:1
  • Definition: Two people with the same aims. A friend. An adversary. A person who encourages you to do your best work.
  • Examples: A twitter friend. Someone you e-mail/IM regularly that asks you exchange questions and answers with. A collaborative document (i.e., Google Docs)

• The autograph (aka 1:many)
  • Definition: A fan or follower of someone else’s ideas. An inspiration. A person that creates (or attempts to create) a movement.
  • Examples: A twitter follower. A blog that you read or write. A podcast. A comment on a blog post.

• The frame (aka many:many)
  • Definition: A builder upon other’s ideas. A new context for established content. A collaborative network.
  • Examples: A tweet. A Meme. A trackback. A Wiki. A webcast. A social network.

All three of these connections are essential for the culture of collaboration to occur. If we stop at merely 1:1 interaction, collective intelligence is wasted. If, on the other hand, if all we are doing is framing other’s ideas out in the open, there is never any time to develop personal relationships with those that can directly benefit from our ideas and help them to grow.

So, we can blend the three types of connections. A link within a blog is both a 1:1 and a 1:many, as is a comment. Blending personal and public connections is a way of introducing our own contacts to our greater network; it is a way of getting rid of the apprehension that people have about putting themselves “out there.”

For example, a colleague of mine writes great e-mails. They are concise and beautifully written. They are based in both theory and practice. They ask amazing questions and beg me to go deeper with everything I am working on. So, I tell him to start blogging the e-mails, and I ask him if I can podcast about them. What I am doing is introducing his ideas to some of the other people I am connecting to. These are the connections that make sense in The Ripe Environment because they don’t allow any good idea to stay archived in an e-mail folder, never to be heard from again.

My hope is that we start honoring these types of connections for the inspiration and passion that give to our daily lives. We cannot settle for an atmosphere of acquaintanceship in our learning communities. We must strive for an culture of connection.

This post is in draft form. My hope is that it will expand to include better definitions of each type of connection as well as examples. Please feel free to comment to that affect, or if you would prefer a more 1:1 connection, please e-mail me at benwilkoff@gmail.com. I would also like to thank those of you who are already interested in expanding upon this idea (Patrick Higgins, Chris Lehmann, Alec Couros, TechKnow, and Christian Long) . Please write as much about as you can. It is the only way that The Ripe Environment will actually occur.

I am tired of talking about the tools. Many of us have been talking about the tools for a long time now. We have said that using technology for technology’s sake is counterproductive. We want to use technology as a tool, right? But the tools for collaborating and creating are the largest sticking points for others. Teachers get caught up on jargon, on the basic skills of one program or process. They are still so focused on “podcasting” or “dreamweaver” that there is no room for creating the environment in which people will actually want to go beyond the tools, into true learning (you know, what we want our kids to be doing). What, then, is beyond the tools? What should we really be reaching for? The Ripe Environment. The simultaneous personal and public experience of using all of the tools at the teacher’s disposal to tear down walls, collaborate with each another, and question the traditional role of technology in the classroom.

So, how do we get to The Ripe Environment? Well, I have started to reflect on how I became a constant-learner and contributor to this thing I am more and more reluctant to call School 2.0. I want to replicate this process for others, and showing people my flickr account, my del.icio.us account, my blog, my podcast, my pedagogy, my wiki projects, and my twitter account just doesn’t seem to work very well. What does actually work is making sure that they have the right environment so that they can explore these resources on their own, through their own creation.

I am now proposing the 10 prerequisites for collaboration as a way of creating The Ripe Environment in the classroom, in a school, and in a district. There will be quite a few follow-up posts about this topic, but I wanted to get some feedback on what I have already written before I go too far off the deep end. Please leave a comment or e-mail me at benwilkoff@gmail.com.

Here they are:

In order for the environment to be ripe for collaboration, educators and learners must:

1. Have a genuine need to be heard by others and, in one way or another, receive feedback for contributions.
2. See living examples of collaboration (not case studies or projects from a few years ago) that they can become a part of.
3. Have the time to connect more than two dots together. (Rather than connecting: “My students need to know this” with “here is the information” they need to have time to connect “My student needs to know this” with “my students need to evaluate this for validity” with “my students need to know how to use this resource to find the information” with “my students need to create new information for others to use.”)
4. See collaboration as an extension of their natural instincts as a teacher (opening possibilities for learning).
5. Find the backchannels relevant to them (these backchannels must be encouraged and honored as vital sources of learning).
6. Know that their products and ideas are valuable.
7. Understand the marks of successful collaboration. (They have to know what it looks like.)
8. Accept that questions are both for interdependent and independent learning. (All questions are serious points of inquiry in The Ripe Environment.)
9. Believe that personal and professional change can never be institutionalized. (Individuals create change, not schools or districts.)
10. Know that meetings, conferences, and workshops are not the places where the most powerful learning and change takes place.

I will be writing more about each one of these 10 prerequisites, but please let me know what you think about them as stand-alone ideas.

This phenomenon, although real and slightly annoying, is not what I want to concentrate on. I don’t want to plumb the depths of why it is that people around the world will comment on your blog and give you feedback on your work, but it is maddening to just get a coworker to check out a great resource. I’m not interested in figuring out why the parents of your students are less inspired than the parents of other teachers’ students. In fact, I really don’t care that the recognition for doing online presentations and creating learning objects that are widely held as groundbreaking is seen in local circles as an affront to the organization from which you hail.

All hyperbole aside, what I would like to focus on is creating collaborative opportunities in your “own town.” How can we go about making sure that the great types of conversation and feedback described above are going on in the hallways in between classes?

Well, I think I have come up with three things that will help:

1. Wear your passion on your sleeve.
2. Reach out on a consistent basis.
3. Find a way to incorporate what others are doing already into your vision.

I have been e-mailing quite a bit about my podcast on this topic. There are a few teachers out there that are wrestling with the use of technology in their teaching. One such teacher, Jason Hando, said that he worked with a “flat world” project initially without applying all of the technology. After he had worn his passion on his sleeve for a while, he applied some web 2.0 technology in the form of a blog and received positive feedback from his school administration, including his principal.

This is not the only kind of passion that I think we can wear on our sleeve. We can be constantly talking about the great resources that we have found in our feed readers. We can be showing off the authentic products that our students are creating daily. Eventually other teachers will start to ask us how we are doing this. We can let our students and their parents become the advocates for the kind of learning experiences that are abundant in our classrooms. They will start wearing our passion on their sleeves too.

We should also be sending feelers out every once in a while for anyone who is ready to incorporate School 2.0, even to the smallest degree. Hold a class on blogging in the classroom even if you know only 5 people will show up. Send an e-mail tell others what you are doing that you know will only be read and trashed by the majority of your staff. Pull other people into a project that you are working on if they are on the outside looking in at your technology realization. Be the one teacher that “gets it,” but isn’t angry that others don’t.

The last thing that I have found for working collaboration with the people around you into your hectic global collaboration schedule is to honor what the teachers in your school are already doing. I am a big fan of looking at a project that is already in place and just making it 2.0. A great example of this was when my team decided that we were going to go on a field trip to Denver. Most of the other teams in the school were having the kids to a scavenger hunt of key places in the downtown area and answering questions on a sheet of paper, which was to be turned in and never to be heard from again. My way of making this trip into a “2.0″ experience was to use Mapwing so that my students could make interactive tours of downtown which could be looked at by anyone from around the world to find out more about our fine city.

Each teacher on our team was able to contribute their expertise to the project, but we were showing the kids how to collaborate and create in an authentic way. My hope is that more of these types of cross-curriculum projects start to happen organically because we have opened up the door by using what was already in existence.

What do you think? Are there other ways to create collaboration in our own towns and become, if not prophets, at least teachers with advice and experience worth sharing?

1. This is way too technical for me. It is fine if you want to try it out (and fall flat on your face when parent/administration/other teachers find out what you are up to), but I am just fine to live in oblivion. Wikis (did I say that right?) are too complicated for my kids. There is no way that they would be able to handle that kind of organization on their own. Your kids are different. You have more access to the technology. You were born into this stuff. I am too far into my career to start learning something new.

2. We tried something like this back in the 70’s/80’s/90’s/a few years ago. It didn’t really work then, but feel free to give it a try now. I was pretty excited about it before, but I think my interest petered out around when I realized that I was doing more of the work than the kids were. I think there are a few teachers in the school down the road who are doing this kind of stuff, so I’m not really sure that it is new or different. I will just sit back and watch you put effort into collaborative tools, but I will not put my own support behind it.

Now, #1 I have made my peace with. If a teacher has decided that they are not ready to try something new yet, I will reframe it as many different ways as I can think of in order to get them on board. At least they accept that working with students around the world, getting instant feedback on authentic writing, and infinite choice in assignments are things that are truly different than the traditional goings on of education.

#2, on the other hand, does not even acknowledge that working with web 2.0 tools is something that is a transformational step. They are so used to educational jargon and methods being repackaged and renamed that they have come to believe that School 2.0 is just a big facade that houses the likes of Project Based Learning or Cooperative Learning Groups. I can’t blame them for thinking this in the light of all that public education has taught them, but for them not to be able to see the drastic difference between writing an essay to one teacher and writing an essay to an entire school (and beyond) to be critiqued and linked to and built upon is something that I just will never understand.

Case in Point: After presenting The Academy of Discovery to a high-level technology coordinator in DCSD, he said that there were pockets of people who were trying this out elsewhere in the district. I was shocked. It was news to me that we just might have the most progressive district in the US and I just don’t know about it. Or, perhaps the problem is that he is having trouble distinguishing between an authentic collaborative student-directed wiki (receiving 50,000 hits in 6 weeks) and doing iSearches with google in order to make posters to put up in the room. Perhaps this is an exaggeration, but I really think that this is an important roadblock to advancing our vision of education. Many educators, administrators, and parents believe that all technology integration is created equal. This is just simply not the case.

So, I guess what I am saying is this: We need something that will distinguish us from mundane “technology in the classroom.” We need to be seen as going beyond what has been done before, not something that is untested or fad-like, but rather something that is essential. How do we make sure that people get that we are not doing something old in a new way? We are doing something new, something that you would never be able to do without the tools of online collaboration and rss.

This is a challenge that I am willing to take up because if we can’t even explain what is going on in our classroom to other educators so that they realize the potential of a school 2.0 environment, we will never be able to explain it to the rest of the world.

Creating an educational movement based upon technology integration, student-directed authentic learning, and anywhere/anytime collaboration. However, this show is not merely for educators, rather it is an easily accessible look at what 21st century classroom are capable of. The show will be grounded in practice rather than theory, so as to convince all of the students, parents, teachers, and bystanders who may still be clinging to the ways in which they have been taught. The show will have an interview-based format, in which I will be probing the experts on what can be done to create change. I will be searching for ways to cultivate School 2.0 in the minds of all who are interested in seeing our children meet their true potential as thinkers, leaders, and doers.

Sounds pretty exciting, right? Well, here is the rub. I have no idea what to call the thing. All of these really terrible names are jumping around in my head asking me to use them for a project that may go on for years. I can’t be tied down like that. I need something clever, something with hope and promise. Not something like the ones I have already written down:

1. The EdTech Vision Podcast.
2. The EdTech Community Podcast.
3. The Open Education Podcast.
4. The TEACH Podcast (Technology in Education through Authentic Collaboration and Heuristic learning)
5. Technology in Authentic Education Podcast
6. The Next Generation of Education Podcast
7. The Education Collaboration through Technology Integration Podcast
8. The Education 2.0 Podcast (This one was Cameron’s)
9. The Educational Technology Collaborative Podcast

None of these will do, mostly because I don’t think that any of them really encompass what we, as a community of teachers and learners, are trying to accomplish in transforming education. So, I put it to you, humble readers. What should a podcast be called that is trying to spearhead an entire movement into a weekly episode. If I am going to envision so much collaboration in the classroom, it had better start with me.

Without too much further exposition, the fallacy is as follows:

Professionals create more valuable content than amateurs.

By calling this statement a “myth” I am not aiming to devalue the work of people who have a lifetime of experience or that I would like to declare that students officially know more than their teachers. Instead, I would like to analyze the way that we define professionals and amateurs, and the kind of respect these kinds of definitions can and should provide.

In our stereotypical understanding these two words, we seem to glorify the professional and vilify the amateur:

We value all that the professional can do for us. He gets the job done. Although you pay a premium for his services, it are always worth it. He has the credentials that tell us he can do what he advertises, and he packages everything so nicely, presenting us with just the right amount of content as to not over or underwhelm. We feel safe with the professional in charge.

Now, the amateur on the other hand, works on his own schedule, according to his own interests. He gives us more information than we need, and more specific details than we could possible comprehend. His excitement is annoying when you consider that he doesn’t have the experience to back up his work. Sure, he is willing to collaborate with you, but you don’t have time for it anyway.  The amateur makes connections to others’ work by remixing it, sometimes by breaking intellectual property laws. The amateur is dangerous.

I would like to now enumerate the actual traits of each worker/learner. This is not an exhaustive list, but I think it gets the point across.

A professional is:

• Someone who has experience with marketable skills in a given discipline.
• Someone who has achieved accredited education based upon standardized performance measures.
• Someone who requires compensation and/or credit for products and ideas.
• Someone who’s work must remain consistent and thematic.

An amateur is:

• Someone who has specific skills that allow them to create a specific product.
• Someone who has achieved personalized education based upon self-assessed interest and achievement.
• Someone who does not require compensation and/or credit for work.
• Someone who’s work can be sporadic and follow inspiration in any field.

I may be oversimplifying things a bit in making these statements, but I believe that this dichotomy is the way we encounter the entire field of education. Each student we encounter is an amateur, and we see them through the stereotype. We should, instead, give them the respect that that word really commands.

My examples of amateur wisdom do not come from wikipedia or from digg. They come from my classroom. I would like to show you what my amateur students are capable of.

• The Great Remix Debate
• Iwthswtl Avenue for the Rich
• Thinking about Thought Cont.
• The Putsal Super League
  

Professionals would never have created these. No one would have paid money for them or said that they are achievements equivalent to 1400 on the SAT, but they still have great value. Their value is in their their amateur status. Their value is in their passion and authenticity. Their value is in the fact that each one of the students involved in these projects are learning for themselves. To me, that is amazing.

Professionals will always be among us, and I think that they deserve credit for their work. But, real learning happens in the realm of the amateur. Real challenge and job satisfaction happens there to. The real challenge of School 2.0 is incorporating more amateur moments, encouraging all students to become true amateurs.

This year I chose to think about next year that seems to be approaching so rapidly as to be nearing terminal velocity. All last week, I said what I have always said about next years, “I am determined to get it right next year.” But this year the “it” is different. This year I am not referring to classroom management. This year the “it” is not referring to teaching a book or unit the right way. The “it” this year is that I am going to get the next generation of my classroom right. I am going to make sure that I have all of the research and ideas in place so that I know and everyone else knows what the Discovery Team will look like when it comes through this fundamental change.

So what will change next year? Well, it is my hope that teaching will become a more collaborative process and learning will become more student-directed. This may sound far-fetched and somewhat hollow, but I have outlined everything, down to the assessments (much better than CSAP if you ask me) in a wiki. The fact that it is a wiki means that it can change. This vision is malleable by anyone who is interested in taking a stab at making thing better for teachers and students.

The Academy of Discovery is more than just a vision, though. It is a gauntlet that is being thrown down. It is a statement that says education will not be effective without collaboration, context, conversation, change, connection, and continuous support. This ultimatum, however, is more for students than teachers. It means that once we provide you with all of the infinite resources, creativity, potential of a connected classroom, it is your responsibility to be amazing. It is your responsibility to direct your engagement. It is your responsibility to learn.

Digital Writing is:

•    Dynamic.
•    Multi-dimensional.
•    Infinite.
•    Pluralistic.

With these things in mind, all writing should be:
•    Infinitely editable
•    Inherently clickable
•    Continually discussed
•    Focused on revisions and the history of revisions.

Dave Cormier turned me on to the idea that we are still writing for the technology of paper, even if we have moved beyond it in terms of its capabilities. I found intriguing and more than a little frustrating to think that we are still formatting our ideas to be read in a linear and static text form. We have put so much investment as a society in the technology of paper that very few people are ready or able to move past it. Yet, in order to fulfill the potential of a fully connected society, we must start to think in new ways, read in new ways, and especially write in new ways.

First, the idea of ownership must be changed. All writing should have the ability to be edited at any time. Just by clicking on the letters, you should be able to add your own piece of understanding. Anyone should be able to see the original iteration, but they should also be able to see any additions, subtractions, contextualizations, or expansions. This is the only way to have true collaboration. If we stop setting up boundaries for ideas—yours vs. mine—we will all become better writers and visionaries.

All words should blue and underlined; they must be clickable. There is no reason for a story, a poem, an essay, a blog entry, a novel, a biography or even a letter to lack context. Each word should take us to someplace new. Each word should let us explore the web of thought that caused it. Now, if one person were trying to accomplish this, it would never happen for want of a real life. Yet, if each user can add his or her own contextual links, the writing context would grow, the webs of knowledge would spin themselves, and reading and writing would change forever.

If there is anything that blogs have taught us it is that writing should not exist in a vacuum. Ideas that are not read and discussed are of no value. So, logically, we should share all of our writing, discussing each aspect of our discourse and getting instant feedback on our vital work. Comments focus us upon revision, but they shouldn’t be at the bottom of the page. They should be attached to the words, never separated from the context of the ideas. Paper doesn’t allow us to hyperlink our comments, connecting them to the words that made us think of the comments in the first place, but digital writing can allow this if we can move beyond our vision of the internet as Digital Paper.

Digital Paper does not allow us to push writing to what it can become. It limits us to think of writing as a singular and static process. Things like Google Documents are great resources, but they lack the pervasive nature that digital writing needs to have. The entire Internet should be editable, discussable, and clickable. Only then will we be able to shrug off our dependence upon paper as a substance and a metaphor.

Teacher 2.0:

Impassioned secondary teacher wanted to create high-level small-class learning environment in a diverse school dedicated to reflective pedagogy, thoughtful technology integration, and teacher leadership.

General Job Responsibilities for all teachers at our school:

• Collaborate with team, department, and greater teaching community via both synchronous (essential question directed in-person discussion, Google Documents-style collaborative lesson planning, real-time chatting) and asynchronous methods (wikis, non-mass e-mails, Personal Learning Network reading and linking).
• Maintain a reflective teaching blog, podcast, and/or wiki which is focused upon finding solutions for classroom problems, creating more student engagement or acheivement as shown through authentic assessements and teacher anecdotal evidence rather than state-wide assessement scores, or generating new ways to connect to students, teachers, or other members of the education community.
• Read and interact with a Personal Learning Network made up of a few administratively selected educators and a vast majority of personally selected teachers, authors, and students who challenge you to become a better teacher.
• Create your own professional development objectives for the year based upon your passions and your readership of your PLN. The majority of the professional development time throughout the year will be based upon your own objectives.
• Create curriculum that can be shared, edited, and reproduced through creative commons licenses.
• Use non-graded e-portfolios as the exclusive means of assessment and personal student reflection.

Specific Job Responsibilities for the English Language Arts position:

• Create and maintain a digital authentic writing community, in which students are responsible for reflecting upon their own work, linking and commenting on others’ work, and understanding and controlling the direction of their own writing progress/process.
• Conduct project-based learning that asks students to address real-life issues through authentic writing and media creation.
• Use inquiry-based lessons to teach the conceps of textual analysis, considering all types of text (visual, auditory, and performance.)
• Model the creation of touchstone-texts and resources that produce well-balanced viewpoints of our world, and help students to do the same.
• Ensure that each student can question the validity of statements made in writing or in speech by verifying sources constantly.
• Cultivate each student’s unique writer’s voice so that the intentions of their writing meet the impressions of the reader. This process must include constant feedback, grammatical and conventions mini-lessons, and constant question asking as to the purpose of the choices that the student author has made.
• Conduct in-depth digital and conventional discussions on the nature of read and writing, user-selected texts, and thematic issues related to other curriculum.
• Model higher-level thinking skills in writing and verbal remarks to the class and expect the same high-level thinking from students.

I know that I will be adding to both of these lists quite a bit as my thoughts keep coming, but I thought that I would start off with these. Please let me know what you think of they way things truly should be in schools. Oh, and if anyone knows of a job like this out there, please let me know. I would love to be a part of a school that is this perfect. (I know that this doesn’t exist yet, but I suppose I can dream.)

1. Choose one of the following to respond to in your writing (to be discussed as a whole class after 5-10 minutes of writing):
   • Why do you think that people act differently online then they do in real life?
   • How can we create a safe environment for everyone on our blogs besides setting up rules or guidelines?
   • What are the inherent risks of posting to a blog at least once a week?
2. In groups of 2-3, explore the Discovery Blogging Rules websites and brainstorm your own rules ideas that fit into the following categories (to be used for creating our official Discovery Blogging Rules for 2006-2007):
   • Creating a blogging environment without fear (of insult, of reprisal, of dishonesty).
   • Creating a scholastic blogging environment.
   • Creating a blogging environment based upon protection (of personal information, of identity, of unique thoughts).
   • Creating a creative, non-restrictive, tolerant, and sensitive blogging environment.
3. In groups of 2-3, write down approximately 5 Blogging rules that you think should be a part of the Discovery Blogging Rules.

We discussed and debated the student generated rules, especially those that further explored the concepts originally outlined in the four resources mentioned above or those that were noticeably absent from those four resources. Here are our results:

Discovery Blogging Rules

2006-2007

1. I will not give out any information more personal than my first name or post pictures of myself.
2. I will not plagiarize, instead I will expand on others’ ideas and give credit where it is due.
3. I will use language appropriate for school.
4. I will not insult my fellow students or their writing.
5. I will only post pieces that I am comfortable with everyone seeing; other pieces I will keep as drafts.
6. I will not be afraid to express my ideas, while not overgeneralizing or making derogatory/inflammatory remarks; any posts on controversial issues must be submitted to Mr. Wilkoff for consideration before they can be posted to my blog.
7. I will use constructive/productive/purposeful criticism, supporting any idea, comment, or critique I have with evidence.
8. I will take blogging seriously, posting only things that are meaningful and taking my time when I write.
9. I will try to spell everything correctly.
10. I will not use my blog posts or comments as a chat room. (No IM language.)
11. I will not bully others in my blog posts or in my comments.
12. I will never access another student’s account.
13. I will be proactive in monitoring the comments that others leave on my blog, utilizing the comment blacklist if necessary.
14. I will personalize my blog and keep my writing authentic, while taking responsibility for anything blogged in my name.
15. I will not provoke other students in my blog posts or comments.
16. I will use my blog as an extension of the classroom, and in doing so, I will leave anything that unsaid in the classroom unsaid on my blog.
17. I will only post photos which are school appropriate and either uncopywrited or correctly cited.
18. I will not spam.
19. I will only post comments on posts that I have fully read, rather than just skimmed.
20. I will not reveal anyone else’s identity in my comments or posts.

Infractions of these rules will lead to the following consequences in order of severity and number of offense:

1. Letter of apology to those offended by the infraction (individual students, one core class, or whole blogging community), warning by teacher, and editing or deletion of offending post/comment.
2. Letter of apology to those offended by the infraction (individual students, one core class, or whole blogging community), temporary loss of blogging privileges (duration of quarter), editing or deletion of offending post/comment.
3. Letter of apology to those offended by the infraction (individual students, one core class, or whole blogging community), permanent loss of blogging privileges (duration of school year), editing or deletion of offending post/comment.

The process by which blog posts violating rules 3, 10, or posts of a controversial nature may be used:

1. Students present the idea/draft for Mr. Wilkoff’s consideration.
2. Mr. Wilkoff will either accept or reject the writing based upon its merit on a case by case basis.
3. The student will post the piece of writing with this warning: “This piece of writing is authentic in its use of controversial language/topics.”
4. Mr. Wilkoff will post a heading: “This blog post was accepted by Mr. Wilkoff for use as a Weekly Authentic despite its controversial nature.”

These rules have already started to work their magic. This past week, one student violated rule #18 (spamming). The letter of apology for this infraction, which has shown me that these rules are workable, is as follows:

I hope that my classes and I have added something to the discussion of blogging in the classroom. Please let me know if you have a better way of doing this, or if you think we have missed anything.

A man is fully understands his biases, abilities and shortcomings. A Man thinks. A man never uses his strength to make others feel weak. A man knows that there are differences between himself and a women, but sees them only as the completion of everything he can’t do. A man can see the truth in everything. A man is confident enough in his masculinity to not have to prove it every chance he gets. A man is tolerant. A man works hard and knows how to play with every thing he “has to do.” A man gets what makes him unique. A man is always trying to make himself better. A man is the manifestation of hope. A man is honest about personal needs and emotions. A man, from time to time, wears a devilish grin. A man is aware, both socially and personally. A man cares about what is important.

This is what he wrote in response for his English class:

As always Mr. Wilkoff gives an answer that makes me feel stupid in comparison, I really liked his. I think I agree with just about everything on his answer. I did note that he did not say a man has to have a penis or testicles, which maybe was just implied. I do think that most things stated could be done by a woman, but maybe that shows that men and women aren’t so different. Men and women obviously aren’t the same but we have our similarities. Really the question is really hard since it is so vague and everyone really has different and correct opinions. By definition all it takes to be a man is to have the biology of a man, but just looking back at our day shows us that men act different then women and it’s probably not a coincidence. Maybe it is just nurture over nature and we act like men because we were taught to, but it would take a hell of a experiment to prove that right. And lawsuits would come through your ears for trying to do a social experiment on a kid and give him make-up and purses.

I really like the fact that this teacher has now turned writing into a conversation. It strikes me as incredibly authentic and fun. I hope to do something like this when I come to my Study of Race and Gender.

When I got the first comment of dissent, I started to think about what I was really putting across with my 50 theses. I realized that much of them could be seen as a grand plan for revolution in modern education. Now, I see that as a good thing, but some people would say that most revolutions either don’t work or are revolutionizing the wrong things.

The other aspect of these comments that really caught me off guard was the way that they were reacting to the title: “Progressive teaching.” Do I mean that I am a liberal democrat when I say this or do I mean that I simply want things to change for the better and not have us become either complacent in our successes or lost in our failures. I was hoping for the latter.

Are we so polarized in this country that even the words we use must either be in support of republican or democratic views? I had always said no. Words are how we enter into debate; they are how we strengthen our communication so that things can actually get done. I was not trying to throw fire onto tradition, and I was certainly not trying to align myself with a hopeless pedagogy.

Now to address the specific concerns that have been raised:

The first firm disagreement from another representative of the Edusphere came from Darren. In picking apart my first four theses, he said,

1. Teachers should be the change they want to see in their schools. What the heck does that mean?
2. Teachers should constantly reinvent the wheel to make it ride smoother and faster over any type of terrain imaginable. Why? There’s another sensible saying: if it works, don’t fix it. This doesn’t mean that teachers shouldn’t practice a critical pedagogy to determine if their instruction is meeting the needs of the students, but change for its own sake seems a tremendous waste of time to me.
3. Teachers should never teach the same things the same way twice. See #2.
4. Teachers should see tradition for what it is: the hope that things will stay the same forever. This is the most insidious. Tradition isn’t the hope that things will stay the same, it’s a link between the past and future. It gives us a foundation, a rock, something upon which to build. Graduation exercises are a tradition we have–should we get rid of them out of some belief that they’re stale or out of date? That’s not progressive, that’s destructive.

I would like to address each grievance individually.

1. I stole “being the change we wish to see” directly from Gandhi’s mouth. It was shameless, but I had a good reason. I believe that teachers should never preach a particular way of doing things and then not put them into practice themselves (not walking their talk). If modeling is so important to students, it should also be that way for colleagues. You should be able to walk down the hallways of a school and notice the teachers who are really trying to reflect and collaborate. You should be able to see the change in them.
2. I do not advocate change for change’s sake. I advocate change because things can always be better. It is hard for me to understand not wanting things to run more smoothly in a classroom, or your teaching to be more effective eveen when 85-90 percent of your students made at least one year’s growth last year. I can never be perfect at what I do, but I want to get at as close to that ideal, as close to reaching every kid as possible. That is why change is so important. If you keep going as you always have, those 10 percent of kids will never get what they need out of education.
3. At the very least, you have to admit that you will never have the same students twice (they change their minds from day to day sometimes). How can you teach two different groups of kids the same way? I get anxious when I know that I am not engaging the group in front of me. When I know that a lesson isn’t working or could work better, it is my duty to make sure that I make the correct adjustments. Getting better at what I do is so important to me that it literally keeps me up at night.
4. You are right. This one is probably the most insidious thesis of all 50. But maybe it is just in the way that it is phrased. What I mean is that tradition for the sake of tradition doesn’t make sense. I actually like traditions. I like going out with my wife on our anniversary. I like going out to my grandmother’s house and watching the parade every 4th of July. But these are traditions that make sense. These are ones that are authentic and have purpose for the individuals involved. The traditions that I am trying to change are the ones that lack all of these qualities. Traditions like “Social Advancement” (passing a failing student in elementary and middle school so that he/she will be with age-similar peers) must be changed because they are not helping students to succeed. The traditions that may have been a good idea at one time, the ones that made sense when we didn’t live in a global community and economy, the ones that aren’t focused on helping students to learn, these are the ones that must be changed. As for graduations: I spoke at my high school graduation, and I loved every minute of it. From writing the speech to practicing it endlessly to getting up and showing everyone what I had done. I do not want to eliminate tradition, just the stance that all traditions are necessary.

The second comment that really got me thinking was by another man named Jeff:

Let it suffice to say for now that any random five of these items gives ample reason why my wife, my son and I commute over two hours each day to his modest private school. His school is a cornucopia of diversity; each class in his three years there has been filled with students from across the globe. At the end of first grade he was reading at a fourth grade level and he was by no means the best reader in his class. They are busy mastering subject matter while their public (and many private) school counterparts are being subjected to “an environment that encourages life-long learning”.Our nearest public school is 600 yards away from our house.Public education has been in the stranglehold of the “progressives” for what…about 100 years now?And this is what you have to show for yourselves?

I can’t think of a better way to ask for a community than to create one and hope that other people join up. I have already run this idea by a few, more experienced, Edubloggers, Bud Hunt and Karl Fisch. They have both responded pretty well to the idea and are willing to help me get it off of the ground.

After my initial e-mails to my administration and these two great teachers/resources, I thought that there would be no way of stopping such a mammoth idea. My principal loved it, and the feeder area coordinator thought it would work well with some of our other goals. But last night, I received an e-mail from the Web Services manager of my district. In it he said that I should consider using two semi-crippled technologies (Firstclass and SchoolCenter) that teachers in my district are already fairly comfortable with (and the district has already paid for). I say that these are crippled technologies because they have real holes in their capabilities. They just can’t do everything that I want to do with this community.

Even with this minor setback, I have decided that I will not compromise (at least initially) my vision of the “Perfect Online Professional Development Community.” I would like to see just how collaborative, easy to use, scalable, social, and reflective I can make this experience for other teachers. So, without any further explanation, I would like to unveil what I think are the essential pieces of a new generation professional learning community.

A central portal will give you access to the following (I am thinking about using protopage):

1. A master blog that would guide discussion.
2. Blogroll
3. Recent Blog Articles (a la SuprGlu)
4. Archived Blog Articles (in a newsletter type format)
5. A Google Earth Mash-Up of all of the school represented in the community
6. Bios of the teacher bloggers (if they wish to include them) done in a social way so that collaboration is easier (an Elgg.org-type personal page)
7. A calendar for event planning (Skypecasts, Classroom Demonstration Webcasts, Classroom Picture Flickr Stream)

The other aspects of the community that will not be directly shown on the portal’s front page except for simply linking to them:

1. A Q+A section for both teaching questions and technical help questions (Ning.com has a great set-up for something like this).
2. A Digg-Style Article/Website recommender.
3. A Wiki for success stories of technology integration or improved practice (a little like David Warlick’s Telling the New Story Wiki)
4. Walk-Throughs (screencasts) for how to create blogs, collaborate, etc.
5. A way of dealing with comments both attached to and unattached to their original posts. (co.mments.com has a pretty great strategy)
6. A professional development bookshelf (akin to either this one or this one)
7. A way of signing up for an e-mail RSS system for new posts (most teachers check their e-mail religiously)
8. A belief statements wiki about technology or teaching in general for certain collaborating members or individuals (this could be a running list of belief statements and/or a running list of questions that these belief statements beg to be answered. I also like the idea of using standpoint.com somehow).
9. A system for sharing lesson plans and ideas (both formatted and unformatted) including a collaborative document center.
10. A cross-school project starter (partnering up similar teaching styles)

Questions I still have about how to get this done:

1. How do we get as many different positions represented in this community (principals, core teachers, librarians, elective teachers, etc.)
2. Should we try to protect anonymity on the blogs?
3. Just how much do most people know about these technologies? Will it be like starting from scratch for most people? And if so, should I send out a formal (or informal) survey about these ideas (What have you done in your classrooms with technology? Do you like to create you own lessons? How much do you enjoy reflection? Do you want feedback on your classroom ideas from other teachers? How worried are you that this is going to take too much of your free time? How many of you already blog?)?

Well, that is pretty much it. I would like to make this project as appealing and voluntary as possible, so that everyone who is in the community has a lot of buy-in. Let me know what you think of this grand scheme. What is possible and what is not possible?

• Authentic Writing (aka Real Writing)

Authentic Writing at its most basic is writing that has a real audience and a real purpose.

Now to define the two new terms I have just created. A “real audience” is one that is not only the teacher. The teacher and the self can be part of a real audience, but rarely do they make up it entirely. A real audience is made up of people who are genuinly interested in the writing for what it has to say not because they are forced to be interested. A real audience is one that is likely to listen to, comment on, or attach value to a piece of student writing. Equally likely for a real audience is the posibility of using the writing to create something new. Finally, a real audience is one that does not require perfection to find importance.

A “real purpose” is one that has some intrinsic value to the writer. Getting better at writing can be a real purpose, but it is not (and should not be) the only one. A real purpose is determined by the context of a student’s life. It is made up of what the student wants to do or would benefit from doing (making a grocery list, writing a passionate eulogy, getting out some teenage angst) rather than what he/she has to do. Writing with a real purpose is a social act; it is connected to the self and to others without any educational manuvers or imagination on the part of the writer (i.e. Write a letter to your congressperson about spending a million dollars).

To further illistrate the point of Authentic Writing, here is a chart of what constitutes Inauthentic Writing versus its Authentic counterparts:

Authentic Writing	Inauthentic Writing
A grocery list	A CSAP prompt
A blog post	A research paper on a teacher-selected topic
An intelectual passion paper	A form poem that is only seen by the teacher
Student-selected creative non-fiction	An essay that does not relate to the student or the current curriculum

Here is my idea:

I will develop a quiz on new technologies that will help my students throughout the year (blogs, wikis, rss, podcasts, thinkfree, glypho, etc.). They can either follow the links and find each of the answers individually. Or they can search and follow their own path to a file (or website) with all of the answers to the quiz in one place. I need to work out the logistics, but I can imagine finding a way of hiding the file (or website) so that my students will still have to use all of the skills that they are being quizzed on.

Do you think that this is possible or a good idea?

These are the assumptions about the two competing orientations of Language Arts department:
Anti-Change Orientation:

1. We are a leading department in the district and we are doing the best that we can.
2. The main objective of the department is to follow the directives of the district and the school administration.
3. Reflection is touchy-feely and therefore unnecessary.
4. There is no time in the regular meetings for talking about the specific lessons and resources we are using in class.
5. You must go through drudgery and organizational hoops in order to accomplish anything worthwhile within the department.
6. Striving for change is either a hopeless endeavor or completely unnecessary.
7. All issues involving students and teachers can be looked at through a black and white lens and are therefore easily solvable without debate, nuance, or further research/intervention.
8. When you find something that has worked in the past, there is no reason that it shouldn’t continue to work in the future.
9. Technology is simultaneously unnecessary in the classroom and too hard to learn to make the effort worthwhile.
10. Young teachers cannot add significantly to a department until they have had sufficient experience and have adopted the teaching styles of veteran teachers.

Pro-Change Orientation:

1. Unnecessary social and pedagogical differences hold us back from really fulfilling our roles as master teachers and supportive colleagues.
2. The main objective of the department is to create a unifying voice of all of its members so that we make sure that all students can learn in all classrooms.
3. Teachers (members of the department) know what is best for the classroom (in terms of assessments, lessons, programs, etc.).
4. Reflection leads to a greater depth of learning, higher retention rate, and greater buy-in from all participants and is therefore an essential part of the department.
5. The only way to make sure that our department stays student-centered is to bring the classroom into the department via easily digestible, highly engaging lessons that have worked well with our population of students.
6. Striving for change is courageous, filled with promise, the inevitable result of looking at where we are and where we need to be.
7. Passionate ideas, candid discussion, and a safe environment that allows teachers to freely mentor and seek help can circumvent most of the unpleasant tasks and red tape associated with the process of creating worthwhile/useful materials.
8. There is nothing that works so well that it should never be revisited, reflected upon, or bettered somehow.
9. The student issues surrounding reading and writing and teacher issues of development and interpersonal clashes are inherently complex and should be met with understanding and appropriate action to bring about lasting resolutions.
10. Technology is an integral part of any classroom that aims to engage our savvy student population and prepare them for a 21st century world.
11. Young teachers should learn as much as they can from veterans who are continuously improving their craft. These young teachers should not have a qualified voice in the department because they are the ones who will either continue teaching if they are fulfilled by it or leave teaching if they find that serving students has taken a back seat to logistics, assessments, or tradition.

I’m not sure how I am going to bring these two viewpoints together, but I think enumerating these viewpoints may lead to some good discussion amongst our department’s members. I have visited the Classroom Change Wiki, and I think that a lot of these ideas are congruent with the ones that are already there. It may be of use to the Edusphere to start another section of the Wiki devoted to change at the department level. Please let me know what you think about any of these ideas. I am particularly interested in refining these points so that we can discuss them as a department and not have people throwing chairs at one another.