I always start professional development sessions with a video clip if I can find a good one that fits. I just saw this one and am wondering how teachers would react to it. What do you think?
I have a question. Should all students have the option of getting an equal education? (Equal does not mean the same). Does anyone really need to think about this? If so, what is there to think about?
The 6th largest district in the state of Ohio, nearly 21,000 K-12 students, failed another levy this week. Attached to that failure is the loss of teachers, athletics, high school busing, band, theater, all after school activities. For some students they lost the reason they come to school in the first place. Some can claim the failure was due to the economy. I don’t because two-thirds of the levies in central Ohio passed the same day. I put part of the blame on sections of the community not putting a value on a quality education for the students who live in the neighboring homes. The big question is, do those people have the right to choose the quality of education our children will receive?
I put the majority of the blame on a broken system. A system that give individuals who feel little or no tie to the local schools the ability to choose the fate of its students. All students deserve a quality education. Not just the ones coming from a community that backs it schools because they know the value of a quality education. While a high school teacher in Southwestern City teaches 155 students a day, teachers in neighboring districts will teach 120, 100 and even some as low as 80.
So, what is the solution? We need to stop relying on property taxes to fund schools. There needs to be a solution in which a set dollar amount is guaranteed to be spent on every student in the state. This amount needs to figure in reasonable loads for teachers based upon university research on class sizes. It needs to include technology. In the 21st century, technology should be ubiquitous in our schools. In Southwestern it is just old and dusty (Some labs have 10 year old computers). This money should include choices for our students. High schools should look more like colleges because of the vast experiences that are offered.
I know life is not fair, but should we be teaching that lesson to our youth through an unfair education system? Only a voice as loud as thousands can make a change to this reality.
As I work toward the future (or catching teachers up to the present), I struggle with where to start. The day to day tasks of emails, meetings, etc… sometimes move my focus. I am now trying to refocus on the question, how do we get teachers into the 21st century. Some are already on their way. Those are the early adopters. Many are interested, they just don’t know what direction to take. Should I focus solely on these folks right now. There are enough of them to fill my days. The dilemma I run into is, what about the kids who don’t have these teachers? Is it fair? A student could luck out and get all the “21st century teachers” and live an engaged life. Another students could sit through 6 hours of lecture a day. The only engagement they would get would be lunch conversations.
My goal today is to figure out what the focus of my work is. Do I target groups? Do I fight the fight to change the entire system? Do I keep spending my time with the teachers who come to me (the good news is there are enough of these to fill the majority of my time)? Oh, my brain is already aching and I haven’t even started?
I am furious. I just received an e-mail from a counselor in our district that her wiki is blocked. I then tried to go to my wiki, blocked. Seriously? We are blocking wikispaces? We use a consortium for our filters. Many of the schools in central Ohio use this same filter. This means that at least on of these schools has asked for wikispaces to be blocked. When will this ignorance end? When will our students and teachers be aloud to enter the 21st century? I’m so mad at this moment I cannot even formulate intelligent solutions.
Lucky for me, we have override power. I’m confident that our district will have their access back before the end of the day. What about the other local districts? Do they have people inside who are educated enough to know these sites shouldn’t be blocked? What about the great collaborative learning experiences their students are missing? Words cannot tell how sick I feel right now.
Today I had the great experience of presenting at the Ohio eTech Conference with my wife. I have presented at conferences before, but this was special. I want to thank her and everyone who attended for making it a great experience for me.
For those of you who attended the session, I hope you enjoyed it. I appologize that we didn’t get to share more ideas for using wikis. All of the great questions guided the session in a direction I didn’t expect. All of the ideas I was going to share are on the website. If you didn’t attend the session, the website should be a good resource for learning how to use wikis in educational settings. I will also be adding a few more resources to the site when I get back to my building Thursday.
Feel free to let me know what you thought. If you have a wiki, or go out and start one, post the address on here. I would love to see what everyone else is doing with wikis.
One thing I didn’t get to mention at the conference is I have a free 1 year upgrade for pbwiki. The first person to post their pbwiki address on this blog will get the upgrade.
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