Mark's edtechblog

Saturday, September 02, 2006

A different kind of class

Steinway 1
Originally uploaded by mahlness.

It's not often, even at my age, when you say, "Well, this will be the last _______ we'll ever buy!" Two days ago we were lucky enough to find a Steinway we could afford, sort of - in sweet condition. Today we had it tuned, and our little house sings.... until I sit down just to see if the organ solo from "Light My Fire" is still in my muscle memory (it is - the neighborhood groans - yes, I was a rock and roll keyoard guy in the late sixties).

Friday, September 01, 2006

Fighting filtering

I just posted this response on tictech, a list I moderate on my own for folks interested in technology in the Seattle Public Schools:
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Justin, Amen! Thank you for saying it so well.

The Seattle School District currently blocks Technorati. Interesting that Wikipedia makes a special note in its entry on Technorati - that it is blocked in China. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technorati

Edublogs.org is blocked in the Seattle School District.

David Warlick is blocked in the Seattle School District.

Anyone who participates in and sees the potential in web 2.0 would shake their heads in disbelief hearing such things. I have mentioned it to a few people, and they thought I was joking. Why this has happened in Seattle is a mystery. If the above three examples do not mean anything, I would suggest a crash course on web 2.0 with one or more of the following. Will Richardson's book is amazing http://weblogg-ed.com/book-info/ There's a downloadable pdf pamphlet put together by some of the truly genius minds in educational technology: Coming of Age: an introduction to the new world wide web - http://edu.blogs.com/edublogs/2006/04/coming_of_age_a.html And people are probably tired of hearing this, but check the blogging of my third graders last year http://classblogmei ster.com/blog.php?blogger_id=5655 The latest edition of Interactive Educatorhttp://education.smarttech.com/ste/en-US/Ed+Resource/Community/I.E.+Magazine/Current+issue.htm has two wonderful articles about web 2.0 stuff - and mentions my class and school.

Dozens of domains carrying millions of web sites, blogs, and wikis - with incredible educational potential - are blocked in Seattle Schools - whitelisted, as Justin says. Saying a site can be unblocked if you request it is not necessarily true. My school's wiki is blocked within the district, and with the current whitelist policy, it cannot be unblocked. What do I tell the parents who have put in tons of work on their school wiki over the summer? http://arborheights.wikispaces.com/

I second Justin's suggestion that educators be actively involved in decision making on district filtering. It is about education, after all. There are a few of us educators who also happen to know a few things about technical stuff.

I can punch down a cat 5 cable with the best of them, break down and reassemble a computer, roam around in DOS, explain the difference between a switch, hub, and router - write in html, xml, javascript, and I know the difference between blacklisting and whitelisting...

... I also happen to know what a wiki is... and rss... and a blog (that it is NOT just a journal, for goodness sake)... and tagging... and a mobcast... and a Skypecast... and so on... - and I have seen what they can do in a classroom.

I would hope educators involved in decisions on district filtering be directly involved in the revolution that is sweeping through the education community worldwide, web 2.0. You know I am available if somebody asked. I bet Justin would be too. Anybody else? - Mark

Sail on!

I just posted this to the classroom blog for my third graders from last year:

Sail on! 09/1
Congratulations to the 2005-06 third graders in Room 12! You all did such an absolutely AMAZING job with your writing on your blogs! You made a difference not only for yourselves, but you also inspired many, many people all over the world!

Student writing on this blog has now come to an end (I just changed everyone's passwords).

Roomtwelve.com now goes to a new location, the third graders in Room 12 for the 2006-07 school year.

So goodbye, you great bunch of kids in room 12. You were an incredible group to have in the classroom. I feel very lucky to have been your teacher. Keep on blogging!

Your third grade teacher,
Mr. Ahlness

Thursday, August 31, 2006

Caring too much

It is a dangerous thing when you allow yourself to get so involved, so invested in something you believe so very passionately in.

Nothing wrong with caring - but when others are in control of whether you get to share it, when promises are made, when hours are spent, when money and time comes out of your own pocket because you BELIEVE (and all the while you think that you have an incredible chance to make a difference, to influence thinking, to inspire people) in what you are doing, that you finally have a golden opportunity to really nail it... well, maybe you can see this coming...

I did not do my 12 minute tech presentation today. No time, sorry. The handouts went into a shockingly large pile of my presentations that have met the same fate. I was crushed.

Thank goodness the kids are coming next week, I've had enough of all the rest that goes with being a teacher.

I will get over this. My wife will kill me if I don't dump it quickly - it is Labor Day weekend, for goodness sake. By the time the kids walk through the door in 6 days, I will be ready to care again - and my caring will make a difference this time.

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Back to school tech intro

Here’s what I hope to cover in 12 minutes of a staff meeting at Arbor Heights on Thursday:

1) hold up Tom Friedman’s “The World is Flat”, suggest it is required reading for any teacher

2) pass out copies (for people to read on their own, later) of two articles from the Autumn 2006 edition of “Interactive Educator”:
- Building Online Learning Communities, by Diane Curtis
- To Blog or Not to Blog? You Decide, by Wesley Fryer

3) show Did you know, by Karl Fisch. I have mentioned this before here, but Karl has since updated the presentation and added sources

Monday, August 28, 2006

Salmon tank

Salmon tank 2006-4
Originally uploaded by mahlness.

Just one of the many special activities we take part in every year at Arbor Heights Elementary School - the raising and releasing of salmon into our local Fauntleroy Creek. I'll get this up on our Wikipedia entry asap.

The original artwork displayed below the tank is a gift from Wes Felty.

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Worse than DOPA - the Whitelist

Yes, this is worse than DOPA being enacted into law, because it is already here, strangling the Internet pipe into our classrooms down to an infinitesimally thin strand of exclusive, hand picked sites. This major shift in approach to Internet filtering in our schools is effectively shutting down access to web 2.0 in our classrooms.

Whitelisting.

From Wikipedia:

A whitelist is a list of accepted items or persons in a set. This list is inclusionary, confirming that the item being analyzed is acceptable. It is the opposite of a blacklist which confirms that items are not acceptable.

For the last ten years or so of providing web access in schools in the US, school districts have relied on a blacklist, a list of identified inappropriate sites to which computers within a district were denied access. Districts commonly contracted with software vendors who constantly updated that list with inappropriate sites. Staff members in that district were asked to report inappropriate sites that they or their kids happened upon so that they could be added to the database.

An example of how a whitelist changes everything:
Say a district whitelists blogger.com (very common practice). All blogs that end in blogspot.com are then blocked from within the district, effectively blocking the .06% of inappropriate blogs from blogger (I made up this stat - just bear with me). This effectively shuts off access to 99.94% of the appropriate blogs on blogger. If anyone wants access to a blog on blogger they must request an "unblock", along with rationale for the unblock. One unblocked site still leaves 99.94% (the appropriate ones) blocked.

The onus is now on the teacher. There is no wide open door anymore. If you want to see what's out there, you have to go looking on your own time, from home, jump through hoops, and cross your fingers. Teachable moments? Forget it.

There are hundreds of companies out there with blacklists that school districts could plug into their filtering software. Why is blacklisting not used anymore? It costs more. It's more work. It's not perfect. Why are districts whitelisting? It's cheap. It's relatively easy. It's safe. No kids will ever see anything inappropriate.

Heck, kids won't see anything. This approach is so obviously unethical and plain out wrong, that I cannot believe nobody is saying anything about it. Maybe nobody realizes it is happening. I've been using the web as a part of my daily classroom instruction - with third graders - for the past twelve years, and I can say this is by far the most repressive and restrictive access to knowledge that I have ever seen. I guess what sticks in my craw the most is that those in charge of school Internet filters are giving teachers absolutely zero credit - or responsibility - for being able to watch, teach, and look out for the safety of their children on the Internet.

Worrying about DOPA at this point is ignoring the elephant in the living room.

Thursday, August 17, 2006

Inspiration

I'm still a week and a half away from going back to school (with a week of meetings and planning time). But ideas to get staff inspired on web 2.0 are already being shared:

Doug Noon, at an elementary school in Alaska, writes in The Community Writing Project about having an opportunity to get his staff on board, and maybe participating in something similar to his Tell the Raven student blog from last year. Interesting how the use of the term "blog" is shied away from - see the comments for an extension of a good conversation.
Karl Fisch, from a high school in Colorado, shares in Did You Know? a powerful PowerPoint presentation he put together for his staff. He looked at making a difference with his staff in a totally different way. It's a serious, sit up and listen to this, big picture approach.

I'll be using Karl's presentation in my elementary school, with his permission. And I will also be having those sharing, this is how you do it, hands on kind of sessions that Doug talks about. Big picture, little picture - we have to remember put them both out there to really inspire our colleagues. Thanks to Doug and Karl for sharing.

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Getting mentioned

When you are a third grade teacher in the public school system, you are a worker bee, a drone, even a flea (no, that's something else). Anyway, when you get noticed on the Internet, mentioned in big time blogs or publications, you stop and take notice.

If it's a good thing, you pour yourself another cup of coffee, maybe print out the post, read it over and over, underline the extra good stuff, send it on to folks... until you realize you have gone way beyond the acceptable limits of pride, and then you stop... and glow, but very quietly, in a corner...

If you get mentioned in a not so good way, or a way that makes you cringe, think whatever was I thinking when I let that one fly, I wish I could crank that time machine back a few days... well, you lose sleep, plain and simple.

...at least that's if you're a classroom teacher who grew up in MN, ND, and SD in the 50's. Garrison Keillor really does tell the story of my life (he's 8 years older, though)

Here are two mentions of stuff I've written, both come my way in the past couple weeks. See if you can figure out which is the good and bad mention:

Re: Arbor Heights - a dozen years on the web! - Stephen Downes
Photo-Sharing Web Sites - in District Administration (yikes, they've changed the online version - I have to get my hands on a hard copy)

never mind.

Monday, August 14, 2006

Arbor Heights - a dozen years on the web!

(I just posted this to several lists)

Today is an important anniversary. Twelve years ago today, August 14, 1994, the Arbor Heights Elementary School web site appeared on the Internet. Below are a dozen items to remember and celebrate:

1) Our first page looked like this: http://www.halcyon.com/arborhts/ahold1.html

2) Ours was the 9th elementary school with a web site. It is the only one of those schools still at the same URL: http://www.halcyon.com/arborhts/ - or these days, just head to www.arborheights.com

3) Take a virtual tour of the evolution of our home page at http://www.halcyon.com/arborhts/history.html

4) The Arbor Heights Elementary School web site was featured via screenshot in Bill Gates' "The Road Ahead".

5) The site hosts the complete archive of The Random Thoughts of Louis Schmier, a collection of the writings of one of the Internet's visionary educational philosophers for more than a decade: http://www.halcyon.com/arborhts/louis.html

6) The Arbor Heights web site originated, was the host for several years for, and is still the physical coordinating center for, the largest educational activity coordinated on the Internet, The Earth Day Groceries Project: http://www.earthdaybags.org/

Not resting on its laurels, the school is pushing out into the world of web2.0 with the last six:

7) a PTSA blog: http://ahptsa.blogspot.com/

8) six rss feeds on its home page at http://www.halcyon.com/arborhts/

9) a PTSA listserv: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ahptsa/

10) a school wiki, just starting out, at http://arborheights.wikispaces.com/

11) podcasts of and pdf versions of the Jr. Seahawk Newsletter, "The oldest continuously published elementary school student newspaper on the Internet" at http://www.halcyon.com/arborhts/jrseahaw.html and http://nlcommunities.com/communities/mahlness/

12) home of http://roomtwelve.com - a classroom of third graders helping to redefine 21st century literacy.

It's been an exciting dozen years. - Mark

Friday, August 11, 2006

Telling our story, again

Spurred on by the thoughts of Brian Crosby in Where are the “Best Practices” Examples!???! and Ewan McIntosh in Does blogging affect attainment? Yes!, I've been thinking more about my blogging experience with my third graders this past year at roomtwelve.com. Brian wrote asking where the great stories are, why they are not shared, etc., and I started wondering just how often I had blogged about blogging with my class. So I'm going to go through my blog and list below the postings where I wrote about the experience. I have no idea what I will find, how many, etc. This may be interesting.

There it is, a list of all the posts on this blog where I wrote at least in part about blogging with my third graders this year. It was a good exercise, and I didn't cringe at my own writing as much as I thought I would. It also confirms my feeling that I have indeed put my voice out there, have at least tried to spread the good news. It was surprising to note the number. I had thought 15, maybe 20, before I started compiling. I also looked at total numbers - I had over 150 total posts during this period. I don't know where this goes or what it means, really. More later...

technorati tags

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Understanding the power of the blog

Here's a little story of something I take very much for granted now, but I know simply must take the time to go through the whole thing again, to explain how it works and what it means.

It's midsummer here in the US, but for some of my last year's third graders and me, school is still in session. They are still writing. I'm no longer their teacher, but I am teaching them. I am still editing, offering them feedback and congratulations. They are also getting feedback from others all over the world. My kids from last year are still blogging. Seven of them, a third of my class, have posted articles on their own blogs.

We use Classblogmeister, a wonderful, free, safe tool for blogging. Every word that they write on their blogs is approved by me before it appears there. Every comment goes by me first as well. I am their safety net, their set of training wheels. But regardless of these safety precautions, we have also talked relentlessly about online safety and being a responsible Internet citizen. They have learned lessons that will keep them safe, give them a degree of understanding, and hopefully give them an edge towards success, that other 8 and 9 year olds do not have.

This is unprecidented, something I have not seen or experienced in 25 years of teaching. My kids still want to write - how wonderful is that?! The difference is that now they know they have a global audience, that their writing will not just be stuck up on the family refrigerator for a few days and then taken down or replaced with something else. We blogged this past school year, and I was constantly astounded at the effort that went into their writing. They were motivated to write like I have never seen before. And of course as their teacher I found I had this incredible tool to shape and hone their writing skills. The writing curriculum was rewritten. If you look at their blogs, look from the bottom up - from their first writing, in November of 2005, to August of 2006. I can make no stronger case for the power of the blog - as a teaching tool.

http://roomtwelve.com

Also check out the summer writing of Jackson, Danielle, Ming, Isobel, Jacqueline, Camden, and Gus. I have a feeling there will be more before the summer is over...

It is so easy, in this edtech blogging echo chamber, to forget that most people still do not know what is going on here, that a few educators and a few more students have tasted from the web 2.0 cup, and cannot turn back. We have seen the power, we have seen the results in our classrooms. Once you've been around the block in a Porshe, you do not want to get back in the family beater.

technorati tags

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Feed2JS saves the day

I have not written anything here for a week. After daily posts about DOPA and filtering, I had had just about enough. Dead end. How can you shout any louder, anyway? I was exasperated, both with the national scene, and with the dead zone locally, in terms of acceptance of web 2.0 technologies. Not just acceptance, but just understanding. Not just understanding, but willingness to even have an open mind. Anyway, I certainly had plenty to say. But it was all so negative, so downhearted, in such a deep down funk. No way I could write about anything in that mood. Leave it to solving a problem to brighten the road ahead.

The rss feeds on the sidebar here had not been responding for some time, and as a result this page would take forever to load. I'd been using this incredible service developed and offered free by Alan Levine, called Feed2JS (Feed to Java Script). It is a remarkable javascript rss generator that can transform a boring, static web 1.0 web page into a dynamic web 2.0 place to be... it is an amazing tool. Plop the code on any web page, and you have rss content dispayed however you'd like it. I am surprised it is not used more.

The server that I had referenced had not answered for about a week. So tonight I did some digging and read something on Alan's blog about "leaving Maricopa", eventually finding the original server. I'm still not sure how this all works - there were mirror sites at one point....

Anyway, there are now six rss feeds on this blog, again delivering pretty much up to the minute updates from Doug Noon, Graham Wegner, Clarence Fisher, Brian Crosby (all classroom teachers), roomtwelve.com, and the Writer's Almanac. Nothing like solving a problem to bring the funk to an end. There's a little icon over on the side bar. Thanks Alan!

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Fresh air

An incredible breath of fresh air blew in from Wesley Freyer today. Introspective and inspiring, it is the first of his seven (so far) posts for August 2, 2006. When you've had about as much as you can handle on DOPA, read If I had...

Food for thought, you can't help but read through his lists without mentally adding to them or making your own lists. It is important to dream, to keep all possibilities open. Thanks, Wesley.

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

DOPA Button

(update: if you put this applet on your site before July 31, please be aware that Internet Explorer on the pc - quite a few use this :) - will not display it. Get the revised code here)

The latest cool way to make it easy for folks to email their senators about DOPA comes from Brian Grenier at Bump on the Blog. Place a piece of code on your blog or web site and you get this Flash applet:

Get the code here.

After the user clicks on the icon he/she is prompted to fill in name, city, choose a state, and "Click to send". The computer's default email program then launches this message (I filled out Mark Ahlness, Seattle, and chose Washington). It can be customized before sending. It is of course addressed to the two senators from the selected state. Thanks Brian!

- click to enlarge -

Sunday, July 30, 2006

DOPA - a six-pack strategy for change

I've been very much a part of the wild arm waving, hand wringing reaction to the passage of DOPA. Fine. Lots of energy expended by thousands like me, and, if you look at net results, who has heard? Well, nobody who will make a difference. Nobody who will directly influence a US Senator to vote nay on DOPA. Here's the question, in my mind, at least today: who will they listen to? I've come up with a six-pack:

1. lobbyists and unions

NEA: National Education Association - not a word on DOPA, contact your local office
AFT - American Federation of Teachers - not a word on DOPA, contact your local office

2. colleagues (of the senators)

The fifteen US Representatives who voted against DOPA - write to them, thank them, ask them to contact senators...

3. state departments of education

Listed by state - contact your state, ask about DOPA

4. Margaret Spellings, U.S. Secretary of Education

Her home page
Teachers ask the secretary - fill out the form, ask about DOPA

5. large city school districts and school boards

Listing of states - click on state > Education > School Districts > find your city!

6. library organizations

The American Library Association
ALA DOPA - the response so far from the American Library Association - they have it together - thank them, help them...

This of course runs counter to all the energy currently being expended at the grassroots level, to "tell everybody you know". This is real swell, but we are absolutely deluding ourselves if we think blogging about how bad it's going to be will change the mind of a US senator before a vote on DOPA - which could in theory happen within a week. The flat world is indeed here, but just because we can speak to everybody does not mean anyone will hear us, never mind listen to what we are saying. We are just an army of fleas trying to change the direction of a rampaging herd of elephants.

I think we ought to take another tack, encourage and support 1-6 above. This is not even web 1.0, it's more like 0.0, as Will Richardson pointed out. At least one library organization is already all over DOPA. I have not heard a single peep from any of the first five. They have the power and influence to change a US senator's mind. If senators start hearing from any/all of the above, they WILL notice. I'm putting my energy there, starting with my local school district and school board.

technorati tags

DOPA

Saturday, July 29, 2006

Melville in July

happy hops
Originally uploaded by mahlness.

So why in the world would I be outside on a beautiful summer afternoon in Seattle, admiring my incredibly prolific hops - reading Herman Melville? I mean what are the odds? The only thing of his I ever read was Moby Dick, eons ago. I wasn't an English major, I read exciting stuff like Freud and Jung as an undergrad... Why would I start reading Melville?

Well, because the world has changed, is changing, so very fast. And when politicians make decisions that punish and cripple the communities they are in theory trying to help, those communities know instantly, and respond with almost one voice in outrage. It has to do with DOPA.

I am part of the community affected by DOPA, just passed overwhelmingly by the US House of Representatives. I am a third grade teacher. This past school year I have seen and tasted the promise of what web 2.0 can bring to our classrooms - IS bringing to classrooms all over the world. The US already is woefully behind nations like Canada, the UK, and Australia in embracing these new technologies. DOPA will essentially shut the door on web 2.0 in US schools and libraries. The reaction of educators and librarians is resounding; the blogosphere is ringing with our anger and disgust.

Those who are in favor of DOPA seem to feel it is the job of parents to teach online safety. This is simply not going to happen. The ONLY place it will happen is in the classroom. I know. I teach, and I have eyes and ears. I have 25 years of experience teaching, working with kids and their families. It will happen at school, or it wll not happen at all.

Where should Internet tools be used on a daily basis, as part of regular instruction, integrated into everything that happens there? In every single classroom of the 21st century. I cannot believe the number of blog comments I've read in support of DOPA that question the very existence of computers in schools. Some folk would have our students using nothing but slates and wooden benches, giving kids a "good, solid, fundamental education".

Which brings me back to… Herman Melville. Writing back in the days of slates and benches in schools, he painted a tale of fear and panic. Count on an elementary school teacher to go all literate in the middle of the summer (well, he always is), and basically force me to read Melville’s "The Lightning Rod Man" to see the connection. Doug Noon posted Too Safe to remind us that the reaction which produced DOPA is nothing new. We need to use our common sense to see through the fear - and remind others to do so.

technorati tags

DOPA

Friday, July 28, 2006

DOPA - kids get it, grown ups don't

Vicki coolcatteacher Davis posted a wonderful piece about DOPA. What I found the most compelling was the quote she included from one of her students. Here is what that student wrote, in its entirety:

I first heard about DOPA from my computer science teacher, who made us pick which side we were on and blog about it. Even intially I disagreed although I didn’t really know what DOPA was I knew it wasn’t a good thing. After digging a little deeper I found out that DOPA, which stands for Deleting Online Predators Act, esstenially is trying to ban the use of social networking sites like Myspace, Facebook, etc. along with things like IM and blogs from schools and public libraries, because some lawmakers feel that by taking away these sites children will be safer from the horrors of the Internet. Children will still have access to these sites at home unless the parents’ take it into their own hands like they should and prevent their children from doing foolish things out of ignorance. The only way to protect children from online predators is to arm them with the information to protect themselves. In fact, probably the best place for kids to have access to these sites is in school where they can be monitored. Not to mention all the educational benefits that come from these sites these lawmakers are trying to ban. Wikis are the new way to do classroom collaboration. Blogs are the new way to do classroom discussion. So no, DOPA is not protecting the children, in fact, all it is doing is hurting them by continuing to promote the idea that ignorance is bliss. These kids are ignorant of how to protect themselves from Internet predators. These lawmakers need to ban ignorance not promote it.

Vicki has since been picked up by CNN and Techcrunch - fantastic! However, at this writing, some of the comments left on the Money site display well, not as much understanding as I would hope. There is so much more work to do. As always, it's about education - but it's not the kids this time - they get it. It's the grown ups who need to go back to school.

Vicki has just posted What's Wrong with DOPA, an in depth look at the bill, with plenty of commentary, of course.

technorati tags

Thursday, July 27, 2006

DOPA - the battle begins now

OK, so DOPA passed the House of Reps. and it's now on to the Senate. A couple of ideas for fighting back have surfaced in the last couple of hours:

Andy Carvin has set up an aggregator for reults on DOPA drawing from Technorati and Google News: Dopa Watch. Andy also has a more public forum, a blog on PBS, where he is trying to get the word out. Send him comments there - he has a big readership, more mainstream than the edtech blogosphere.
Will Richardson has posted a bit of a rant about this. For now, anybody should read and circulate this. Does he have anything organized? Not yet, but stay tuned. I think the best bet is for Will and Andy to get themselves on Oprah. Maybe then public opinion (which is how our legislators vote anyway) might experience a slight shift.
My thought is to contact the folks who opposed DOPA. Ask for their support. Tell them how important it is and how grateful you are that they opposed it. The fifteen smartest members of the House of Representatives are listed at the top of this page. Start with people who think like you, and ask THEM to change their colleagues' minds. They stand a much better chance than you or I. I am very proud to say my representative, Jim McDermott, is among those 15. Not that it was a tipping point for him, but it personally makes me feel better that I emailed him an impassioned plea last night...

technorati tags

DOPA

good grief - House overwhelmingly passes DOPA!

This just in, from Andy Carvin, on wwwedu:

Last night the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the
Deleting Online Predators Act, 410 to 15. It would seem that educators
had little to no impact on the outcome. Perhaps this is by lack of
numbers, or because the MySpace panic that's overtaken this country is
so overwhelming that no amount of rational pleas from educators would
have stopped it.

The battle moves on to the Senate. I'm not hopeful. Thoughts, anyone?

technorati tags

DOPA
carvin