We live in chaotic times. They are the best of times and the worst too. Students need our help as never before and traditional models of education don’t seem to fit the bill. Technology is touted by some and while I find that fascinating I’m troubled that in itself that is not enough. I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately and much of the direction is how mindfulness could be useful and transformative for our students. I’m interested to know who else sees this need and who might be interested in forming a charter school where mindful education could form a basis for such an institution.
4th & Walnut
“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race … there is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all of the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed…” — Thomas Merton
(Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander,
Teaching & Learning
Teaching and learning get a lot of attention in the country. There has been a concerted effort in the last 30 plus years to cast a pall of uncertainty on the process and to infer that somehow today’s students aren’t getting the best of what they deserve. From “Nation at Risk” in the 1980′s followed by No Child Left Behind a decade ago and now Race to the Top we have had politicians of all stripes insisting we need to improve. Conveniently no one seems to notice that it is not our educational system that has put our nation at risk but our policy makers who have shipped all our jobs to the Pacific Rim. As important as those issues are they are not the focus of what is on my mind tonight.
Education comes from the Latin word, “educere” which means literally to lead. Are we really teaching our children to lead? I believe that the answer ought to be yes. Free and public education in this country was designed to create an informed electorate that could foster the republic. The current educational trend foist upon us from the statehouse and the federal government is to provide a “cookie cutter” sameness that precludes thinking. The test driven agenda does not educate at all. Its only real purpose seems to be the confounding of real education.
To be sure we as educators must always be reflective practitioners who regularly examine both our content and our methods. We must always seek new learning and look for new ways to guide young minds to think. Children need not be told or taught what to think, but how to think. The testing agenda produces sameness not excellence. I’m a product of both private and public education and all of my teachers encouraged me to think. They formed me and informed me. My education was as much about transformation as it was about comprehension of concepts and facts. Many of the schools I was educated in didn’t have the latest gadgets but instead had the inspiration to think and to think differently than my parents and even my teachers. We do our students and our society a tremendous disservice if we do not give the gift of education to our students.
Our country and our world need learners and leaders who will inspire and respond to a changing world.
iBooks and the future of publishing
Yesterday Apple Computer announced the iBooks Author software and a program that invites content creators to create books that can be viewed in Apple’s iBook 2 software app on iPads everywhere. If you want to use this new tool you have to have OSX Lion installed on your Macintosh computer. Luckily for me I bought Lion and Lion Server in August of last year. I was eager to try out the new software and downloaded it from the App Store on my MacBook Pro. The software is easy to use and books can easily be created and published to Apple’s iBook Store or shared locally with colleagues and classmates in your own school. There are even templates in the software that make content creation very easy. I created a demonstration book last night after some reading and shared it with two colleagues who loaded it onto their iPads from link I sent them.
I’ve been a proponent of open source and open educational resources for a long time and this product is neither open source nor truly an open educational resource, but it is innovative and will push the envelope. Traditional publishing companies will be forced to move in this direction or face a shrinking market. Educators in K-12 and higher education will be able to author their own content and share it with their students easily and affordably as long as those students have iPads and iPods.
I have recently been working with 7th grade students to publish their own e-book using Lulu.com and the ePub format. That has been a great learning experience and it revolutionizes opportunities for students and others to publish their content without all the hassles of traditional publishing. A middle school student equipped with a MacBook and iBooks Author could easily create content that could be sold in Apple’s iBook Store and that student could easily become an overnight sensation. It’s not unbelievable at all. I have been encouraging my students to entertain these possibilities. Thank you Apple for providing yet another tool that revolutionizes education.
Moodle & iPad
I’m a Moodle using educator and for the last couple of years the idea of interacting with Moodle using both iPad and Android has provided me food for thought. Both Android and IPad using their native browsers can support forums, chats, & quizzes but when it comes to uploading files from mine or any other iPad I get stumped. One of my colleagues has used MoodlEZ to download Microsoft Word documents but is unable to edit them and then re-upload them. I’ve also done some searching on Google but without any real success. Since Safari and iOS are not open source there is really no way to address the issue. I’m interested in solutions if you have one.
Apple text books
There is no doubt that e-books have revolutionized my own reading experience. I own nearly forty e-books. Most are from Amazon, a few from Barnes & Noble, one from Google and although I own an iPad I don’t think I have ever purchased books from Apple. Apple made a major announcement today about their new textbooks for the iPad. I’m wondering how many schools are going to go out and purchase iPads to get books that are available elsewhere for a fraction of the total cost of ownership. My bet is that many schools will purchase iPads and get these new e-books but will save no money in the process and will instead waste thousands of dollars at a time when money is tight in education.
There is little doubt in my mind that e-books are here to stay but no one has come up with a really good way of disseminating them at a cost that rivals their paper predecessors. From what I read today on a couple of blogs Apple will sell your book as long as it’s less than $14.99 and they get 30% of the proceeds and you have to sign a fealty oath that you won’t sell the book anywhere else. That’s not really a good deal and especially for young publishers. I’m currently working with a small group of students to produce an e-book from our class. We don’t expect to make money. It’s primarily a keepsake and since it’s going to published in ePub format it will be viewable on the iPad or any other device that supports ePub.
Schools in New York State receive $43.25/per student/year for textbook aid. Refer to this link from the NYSED website. If you factor in New York State Aid for computer software you add about another $15/student. To make it easy let’s round that number to $60 per student for textbook and software aid. In a school with 1500 students that means you’d get about $90,000 in state aid. Assuming you need fifteen hundred iPads to make this work that will be another 1500 x $499 = $748,500.
This isn’t exactly a Gutenberg moment! I’m not anti-Apple. I purchased four iPads this year. I’m composing this post on a MacBook, but I am saying there are less expensive ways to get engaging text to students and even those using iPads.
A new model
We need a new model in education. Instead of top-down, we need bottom-up leadership. We need a paradigm change. K-12 education is just about the only place in America or the world where we still support the industrial age model of leadership. We need flatter organizations where everyone has leadership capacity and it gets utilized. We need more transformational leaders and less managers. We need people who empower each other and their students. I’ve read a great deal in the past couple of years about those models, but seen very much implementation in practice. What will it take to change the direction. I’d love to have a chance to find out.
Hospitality
For the last dozen years I’ve been a member of the Mount Irenaeus community. My affiliation with “the Mountain” as we call it has provided me with a laboratory as it were to observe the behavior of all who come there. Everything about Mt. Irenaeus bespeaks hospitality and most visitors return. Some like me come regularly because I live nearby while others who live at some distance return less regularly. How often do educators and especially educational leaders realize the importance of hospitality. Schools have become increasingly less hospitable at a time when it is most counter-productive to be so.
Rigorous standards, increased testing and accountability have brought considerable strife to most schools, the children, teachers, administrators and parents associated with them. As a graduate student in educational leadership I became interested in the idea of community building and how communities can transform learning. How can we create community in institutions that have become inherently in-hospitable. In my classroom I make it a point to greet each student usually with a handshake and a verbal “welcome to class.” It has become such a habit that the students themselves welcome me when I forget to greet them. Hospitality has become an earmark of our class culture.
I believe that hospitality ought to be a part of all school cultures and that a concerted effort is needed to maintain an atmosphere of hospitality. We need less barriers in schools and more bridges to learning and each other. Hospitality is an invitation to community and never has community been more important in education whether public or private. The social fabric of our local communities has been torn asunder by the economic and cultural cataclysms of the recent past. More than ever we need schools to be communities of learning and the best way to do that is to begin by greeting our students and their parents when they come to school.
Reinvent your organization
I love this short clip from Seth Godin by way of Opensource.com
Still waters
Image
I have come here to sit in silence in a busy place that us far from silent. Sitting beside still waters always quiets my soul. Today is no different from any other day except I’m here rather than there. I like it here in a city and place I used to fear. The past two years mark a delightful transformation in my perception of the City of Buffalo and it’s parks. I find myself wishing I lived here and worked here too. I used to dread cities with the host of strangers and though I’m still an introvert I find community, acceptance and peace here. The Olmsted Parks in Buffalo, New York are beautiful works of art and this contemplative garden near the museum is just another fine example of that artistry.