Life In The Fast Lane

President Obama’s Speech to School Children – whitehouse.gov

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary
___________________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release                                                        September 8, 2009

REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
IN A NATIONAL ADDRESS TO AMERICA’S SCHOOLCHILDREN

Wakefield High School
Arlington, Virginia

12:06 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT: Hello, everybody! Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. All right, everybody go ahead and have a seat. How is everybody doing today? (Applause.) How about Tim Spicer? (Applause.) I am here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, from kindergarten through 12th grade. And I am just so glad that all could join us today. And I want to thank Wakefield for being such an outstanding host. Give yourselves a big round of applause. (Applause.)

I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now — (applause) — with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little bit longer this morning.

I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived overseas. I lived in Indonesia for a few years. And my mother, she didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school, but she thought it was important for me to keep up with an American education. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday. But because she had to go to work, the only time she could do it was at 4:30 in the morning.

Now, as you might imagine, I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. And a lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and she’d say, “This is no picnic for me either, buster.” (Laughter.)

So I know that some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I’m here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I’m here because I want to talk with you about your education and what’s expected of all of you in this new school year.

Now, I’ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I’ve talked about responsibility a lot.

I’ve talked about teachers’ responsibility for inspiring students and pushing you to learn.

I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and you get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with the Xbox.

I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, and supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working, where students aren’t getting the opportunities that they deserve.

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, the best schools in the world — and none of it will make a difference, none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities, unless you show up to those schools, unless you pay attention to those teachers, unless you listen to your parents and grandparents and other adults and put in the hard work it takes to succeed. That’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education.

I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself. Every single one of you has something that you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide.

Maybe you could be a great writer — maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper — but you might not know it until you write that English paper — that English class paper that’s assigned to you. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor — maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or the new medicine or vaccine — but you might not know it until you do your project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a senator or a Supreme Court justice — but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.

And no matter what you want to do with your life, I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You cannot drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to train for it and work for it and learn for it.

And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. The future of America depends on you. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical-thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents and your skills and your intellect so you can help us old folks solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that — if you quit on school — you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.

Now, I know it’s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.

I get it. I know what it’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mom who had to work and who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us the things that other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and I felt like I didn’t fit in.

So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been on school, and I did some things I’m not proud of, and I got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.

But I was — I was lucky. I got a lot of second chances, and I had the opportunity to go to college and law school and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, she has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have a lot of money. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.

Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right.

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life — what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home — none of that is an excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude in school. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. There is no excuse for not trying.

Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you, because here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.

That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.

Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Neither of her parents had gone to college. But she worked hard, earned good grades, and got a scholarship to Brown University — is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to becoming Dr. Jazmin Perez.

I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s had to endure all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer — hundreds of extra hours — to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind. He’s headed to college this fall.

And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods in the city, she managed to get a job at a local health care center, start a program to keep young people out of gangs, and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.

And Jazmin, Andoni, and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you. They face challenges in their lives just like you do. In some cases they’ve got it a lot worse off than many of you. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their lives, for their education, and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same.

That’s why today I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education — and do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending some time each day reading a book. Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all young people deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, by the way, I hope all of you are washing your hands a lot, and that you stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.

But whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.

I know that sometimes you get that sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work — that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star. Chances are you’re not going to be any of those things.

The truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject that you study. You won’t click with every teacher that you have. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right at this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

That’s okay. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. J.K. Rowling’s — who wrote Harry Potter — her first Harry Potter book was rejected 12 times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team. He lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, “I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that’s why I succeed.”

These people succeeded because they understood that you can’t let your failures define you — you have to let your failures teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently the next time. So if you get into trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to act right. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.

No one’s born being good at all things. You become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. The same principle applies to your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right. You might have to read something a few times before you understand it. You definitely have to do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength because it shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and that then allows you to learn something new. So find an adult that you trust — a parent, a grandparent or teacher, a coach or a counselor — and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you, don’t ever give up on yourself, because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.

It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and they founded this nation. Young people. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google and Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask all of you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a President who comes here in 20 or 50 or 100 years say about what all of you did for this country?

Now, your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books and the equipment and the computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part, too. So I expect all of you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down. Don’t let your family down or your country down. Most of all, don’t let yourself down. Make us all proud.

Thank you very much, everybody. God bless you. God bless America. Thank you. (Applause.)

END
12:22 P.M. EDT

The post below is a press release from the CT Assoc.  of Public  School Superintendents. CT’s 2 year budget is still in flux after Governor Jodi Rell vetoed the latest budget proposal passed by the legislature last week. In the last two months the Governor’s version of  the budget has included changes to the funding of the Connecticut Education Network (CEN).  The proposal will defund the CEN at the state level and shift the funding back to local governments.

The CEN provides a fiber optic connection and Internet access to schools and libraries in CT.  I do not pay for Internet access for my schools.  I just connect to the CEN and we are connected. In theory the law that established CEN says that they need to deliver whatever bandwidth I can pull. As a practical matter we have never exceeded their capacity to deliver, but it is nice to know that where ever I can dream to grow they are supposed to be there for me. CEN also provides a content filter that I can tweak for the district. It is not perfect but it is an easy trade. Free Internet w/ a free filter to conform to NCLB (as imperfect as the filter can be) or figure out what to build at the local level and pay for it out of local funds.

As you school techies can imagine there is great incentive to leverage this system. For example in my district we invested in building a municipal fiber infrastructure. If we could get all of our schools connected by fiber to the central CEN connecting point then every school would have virtually unrestricted bandwidth to the Internet.  The only limits are our capacity and wiring.  When we did this we were able to leverage on top of that infrastructure a number of ancillary services – VOIP phones, security systems, a virtualized server farm, heating and cooling management, time clocks, and public/school library loaning. Every school year as technologies get better and our knowledge of VLANS gets more sophisticated there seems to more things that we can do to increase services or lower costs for our district.  It only happened because the brass ring of connecting schools to the CEN was the starting point.

There are a number of consequences that fall from shifting payment for CEN to local governments. There are equity issues, and there are funding cycle issues from local budget adoptions and Universal Service Fund contracts. In short, it will be an absolute mess.

These are trying times for budgets of all types. CEN is not the only item on the Governor’s chopping block. The politics of what stays and what goes in the battle between a Democrat General Assembly and a Republican Governor will ultimately decide what happens to CEN. I am not naive enough to assume that a plaintive outcry for electronic equity or call to honor previous committments will be the deciding factors in this fight.  And yet if CEN goes down, it is just stupid.

PRESS RELEASE

FUNDING FOR THE CONNECTICUT EDUCATION NETWORK (CEN)

JOSEPH J. CIRASUOLO, ED.D.

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

CONNECTICUT ASSOCIATION OF PUBLIC SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENTS (CAPSS)

The Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents is concerned and disappointed over Gov. Rell’s recommendation to reduce funds for the Connecticut Education Network (CEN).  Schools and libraries statewide depend on the CEN to equitably provide Internet access, software licenses, telecommunications and Internet filtering.  Without this funding, it is not unreasonable to say that many of Connecticut’s schools and libraries would be unable to maintain access to information critical to today’s learners.

In addition, Connecticut would lose the federal matching support it receives through the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) for this effort, if the Governor’s recommendation is accepted.  Dr. Brian Talbott, USAC Chairperson, reports that since 1998 Connecticut has received 224 million dollars from this fund, part of which supports the activity that the Governor proposes de-funding.

These are difficult economic times, but it is hard to see how removing support from local schools and libraries from internet access and technology support makes good education or economic development sense, particularly when that effort is matched by the federal government. CAPSS, therefore, urges the members of the State Legislature not to approve this recommendation from the Governor.

CAPSS has represented the perspective of school system leaders for 103 years. Its offices are located at 26 Caya Avenue in West Hartford, CT. Dr. Cirasuolo can be reached at 860-236-8640 and at jcirasuolo@capss.org.

Well, who would have thunk it. I have a few posts here about the ins and outs of this CT based Internet free speech and schools case. I invite you to take a look at my past posts to catch up on the details as this case wove itself through the courts.  The courts did hold that even though the speech took place off campus, in a blog, the school was correct in applying consequences to student Avery Doniger because the speech had the potential to disrupt the school.  In reading up on President Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court in The Harford Courant it was interesting to see that indeed Sonya Sotomayo was one of the judges on the three judge panel that ruled in favor of the school.

• Ricci v. DeStefano: Sonia Sotomayor’s Critics Focus On Ricci v. DeStefano Discrimination Case Involving New Haven Firefighters — Courant.com

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  • Last year, she was a member of the three-judge panel that ruled that Lewis Mills High School in Burlington did not violate a student’s rights when it disciplined the student for an Internet post written off campus. The panel wrote that the post “created a foreseeable risk of substantial disruption” at the school.

    Jon Schoenhorn, the student’s lawyer, said he disagreed with Sotomayor on the First Amendment case, but supports her nomination because she “appears to be progressive” on most issues.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Google CEO hints Google/Linux netbooks may be coming – Computerworld Blogs

  tags: no_tag

  • People have been speculating about Google getting into the desktop business ever since Good OS, an Ubuntu-based Linux built around online Google applications showed up in 2007. Then, the rumor-mill really got churning when it was shown that Google mobile operating system, Android, would work just fine as a desktop operating system. Just because something can be done, though, doesn’t mean a company actually going to do it though. On March 3rd, though, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said, "What’s particularly interesting about netbooks is the price point. Eventually, it will make sense for operators and so forth to subsidize the use of netbooks so they can make services revenue and advertising revenue on the consumption. That’s another new model that’s coming."

    Making money from online advertising. Hmm… Now what company, with a name that starts with ‘G’ and ends with ‘e,’ do we know that’s the absolute tip-top at making money from online advertising? Could it be Google!? I think so.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Seth’s Blog: What is school for? – Annotated

  tags: no_tag

  • What is school for?

    Seems like a simple question, but given how much time and money we spend on it, it has a wide range of answers, many unexplored, some contradictory. I have a few thoughts about education, how we use it to market ourselves and compete, and I realized that without a common place to start, it’s hard to figure out what to do.

    So, a starter list. The purpose of school is to:

    1. Become an informed citizen
    2. Be able to read for pleasure
    3. Be trained in the rudimentary skills necessary for employment
    4. Do well on standardized tests
    5. Homogenize society, at least a bit
    6. Pasteurize out the dangerous ideas
    7. Give kids something to do while parents work
    8. Teach future citizens how to conform
    9. Teach future consumers how to desire
    10.  Build a social fabric
    11. Create leaders who help us compete on a world stage
    12. Generate future scientists who will advance medicine and technology
    13. Learn for the sake of learning
    14. Help people become interesting and productive
    15. Defang the proletariat
    16. Establish a floor below which a typical person is unlikely to fall
    17. Find and celebrate prodigies, geniuses and the gifted
    18. Make sure kids learn to exercise, eat right and avoid common health problems
    19. Teach future citizens to obey authority
    20. Teach future employees to do the same
    21. Increase appreciation for art and culture
    22. Teach creativity and problem solving
    23. Minimize public spelling mistakes
    24. Increase emotional intelligence
    25. Decrease crime by teaching civics and ethics
    26. Increase understanding of a life well lived
    27. Make sure the sports teams have enough players

    • A place to start the discussion. – post by stevesoko
  • 
    • I agree a place to start the discussion. – post by stevesoko

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Today’s Hartford Courant reports on legislative action to deal with the backwash of the recent court decisions on the case of Avery Doninger, the now graduated student in Burlington, CT who was disciplined for posting comments on her blog about school officials and advocating actions to protest a school administration decision. Trust me, the case has many twists and turns, and it takes a full reading of all available sources to make the full picture emerge (hindered in no small part because the case has become a cause celeb on a national level).

The latest court decision allowed the school administration’s decision on discipline to stand, with the judge saying that the school administration has the right to take action on disruptive speech on campus, and that these days off campus speech can become on campus speech “at the click of a mouse”.  The CT legislature is looking at the case and what it means, especially in the context of other recent national cases.

One piece that is of interest is the notion that off campus Internet speech can quickly become cyberbullying.  And again, current events and national context gain the attention. We all are concerned about the disastrous effects of cyberbullying among teens. Yet the characterization of some teen Internet speech as cyberbullying, which is a legitimate concern of school administrators,  that allows them to investigate and apply sanctions, does seem like a slippery slope.

When I was more active in local politics, we had an issue where a local Boy Scout Camp was offered for sale to the town. To me, it was a no brainer, 150 acres of woodlands and a lakefront swimming area. However,there was a group deeply opposed and characterized it as a pet project of the First Selectman. All over town, on telephone poles, in lawn signs, on bumper stickers, the message – STOP CAMP WOODWARD sprang up, using the selectman’s name to polarize the electorate. I always thought it was an unfair tactic to point the finger at one man. It was largely anonymous, and in many ways a pointed attack at one person. A form of bullying wouldn’t  we say?

What if it was a school issue? What if it was a decision based on budget woes (closing a health clinic, cutting the guidance department in half, dropping support of sports or extracurricular activities, cutting arts or music or trimming world languages back to just Spanish)? What if signs sprang up throughout the town using the Superintendent’s name or the Chairman of the BOE? For example – HONK if you want to fire Supt Smith instead! Or  – Stop the Cuts By Jones – Go to the meeting!

What if it was a student organizing the protest? Could the school apply sanctions for bumper stickers and signs? What if that student was 18? Many of my child’s senior classmates will turn 18 before graduation. Could the school impose sanctions on legal adults? I think we would have some problems with that.

What if the student made the protest effort electronic and centered it around a blog, or MySpace or a Facebook group? I guess there is a difference between a personal cyber-attack and political speech in reaction to a public official, but it can be a murky line to draw. The CT Court relied on earlier decisions to say that the school administrators had a right to disciplne a student because her Internet speech could be characterized as disruptive campus speech. Yet her protest (while clumsy in a 17 year old way) was about a policy decision that could have gone another way. With a bit more savy, a pointed protest about the decison being made by one particular Superintendent and Principal could have been a cyber attack but with clear political overtones. When does Internet speech leave the arena of political speech and become cyberbullying? I am not sure lawmakers will be able to get their arms around that.

Links to Feb 1 – Hartford Courant article:

http://www.courant.com/news/politics/hc-freespeech0201.artfeb01,0,1140812.story

Archive of stories on the case:

http://www.courant.com/news/politics/hc-doningercase-sg,0,4385483.storygallery

The Hartford Courant is reporting this AM on the latest rulings in a CT "Internet Free Speech" case. Follow the links to the full story which does a good job in outlining the basics of the incident with the student and the school’s administration (in contrast to other media reporting which was amazingly inconsistent and IMHO incorrect).

For me the key piece in article was the description of the judges ruling on the motions before him. His point that since a landmark case in 1979, "times have changed significantly" and that "off campus speech can become on campus speech" at "the click of a mouse" is the heart of the matter. The ultimate ruling was that the administration was right in apllying punishment.

If Web 2.0 tools have the power to make a fundamental changes in education as they have made fundamental changes in society, does it also point a dagger at the very political structure of schools? I don’t mean to go overboard here but as I have comtemplated what Web 2.0 learning looks like in schools, it is clear that it can look very different than 30 seats and a desk at the front. That classroom structure is a subset of school structure. Much of  what teachers end up doing is crowd management and social engineering.

"Nice quiet line please, others are working"
"Line leader stop at the corner"
"You can get a drink at the fountain but lets make it 1,2,3 that’s enough for me"
 "That’s the bell, you should be out of the hallway and into your rooms"

Much of school structure is a traditional top dowm management with information and control flowing from administrators, to teachers to students. In so many ways the school is the agent of social norms and cultural transmission. We carry out an important mission of socialization and societal normalization.
I heard a phrase way back in my college days – the massage of culture. There is a lot of what schools do that is the massage of culture, the good and and the bad of it.

The recent election is just one of a series of examples of how to use the Internet and social tools to go "outside the system" to influence the hoi poli directly. Viral videos, twitter storms, and the explosive growth of Facebook for the bayboomer set all point to the growing use of social media to influence, change, exploit and cajole the multitudes to action.

What happens when those techniques are used by students to go outside the systems of their schools? In some ways student unrest and protest has always been possible but never so much as with the tools we have at our disposal today. At some level we cannot stop it, the revolution is all around us, it is here. As we take advantage of the power of the tools and transform our classrooms and champion the roles of social media,  to "disrupt" traditional classrooms and teaching, do we also not lay bare the path for true social disruption for our students?

Some of the administrators in the Burlington school district have moved on, some in part because of the fall out of this incident. Like it or not, for better or worse, Avery Doninger made school change happen with the click of a mouse and teh use of a Web 2.0 tool. The judge is saying that the administrators were within their rights to apply consequences to those actions.

It may be a moot point.

• Internet Free Speech Ruling Favors Burlington School Administrators — Courant.com – Annotated

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  • But in a ruling on several motions for summary judgment Thursday, U.S. District Judge Mark R. Kravitz rejected Doninger’s claims that administrators at Lewis S. Mills High School violated her rights to free speech and equal protection and intentionally inflicted emotional distress when they barred her from serving as class secretary because of an Internet post she wrote at home.

    Kravitz’s ruling relied in part on the ambiguity over whether schools can regulate students’ expression on the Internet. He noted that times have changed significantly since 1979, when a landmark student speech case set boundaries for schools regulating off-campus speech.

    Related links

    • Doninger Free Speech Case

    Now, he wrote, students can send e-mails to hundreds of classmates at a time or post livejournal.com entries that can be read instantly by students, teachers and administrators.

    "Off-campus speech can become on-campus speech with the click of a mouse," Kravitz wrote.

    Kravitz cited previous rulings and held that school administrators were entitled to qualified immunity, which shields public officials from lawsuits for damages unless they violate clearly established rights a reasonable official would have known.

    Kravitz reasoned that because the nature of student speech rights on the Internet is still evolving, the officials could not reasonably be expected "to predict where the line between on- and off-campus speech will be drawn in this new digital era.

    • This is the key piece in the article. – post by stevesoko

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http://www.dapperstache.com/index.php?contenttype=ptoa

This blog post borders on self serving and self aggrandizing but to me there is a kernel of truth here. Are teachers who are comfortable in the Web 2.0 world leaders, who understand that tagging is significant and are a threat to incumbents?

• The rise of the meta-teacher «

• tags: mansfield20, metateacher

  • I see the rise of the ‘meta-teacher’. A teacher who understands that as information spews out of our desktops, laptops and phones – it sticks to the internet and potentially has to be navigated. These teachers are different. They have skills and understanding that makes them critical in the classroom, and the global ‘edu’ community. They lead, mediate, inspire and collaborate. More importantly they understand how to read, use, integrate, technology, and ‘meta-language’. They understand how ‘things’ get connected to other things. They are aware that ‘tagging’ is significant.

    The non-meta teacher who thinks that a website address and Google will do this is enough,.  In fact the ‘universal resource locator’ stopped working correctly as soon as we stopped hand-writing html and turned on our data-base driven interwebs. Meta data, and meta language is now how we tie information, people, ideas, resources and communities together – not links or search engines.

    These teachers are power-influences . They can integrate web technology into the curriculum,  interpret, aggregate and organize information to help other’s do it too. Meta-teachers are seen as a ‘problem’ to the incumbents, and despite the enormous goodwill and passion they have – struggle to engage the laggards (who are too busy). When will parents start saying ‘enough’. Is it possible that we could blend face to face with online and rethink schools?

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• 50 Things Everyone Should Know How To Do | Marc and Angel Hack Life

  tags: lifehack, lifehacks, coolthings4school

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.