Let's start with a simple truth:  Schools have limited budgets and every time that we make careless spending choices, we tie our own hands behind our backs.

As
a result, I've worked HARD over the past several years to encourage
both teachers and school leaders to think systematically about just what
they want to see happening in classrooms before they spend ANYTHING on
technology.

To that end, I've whipped up a set of
stories that are designed to start conversations about just what good
technology integration is supposed to look like in schools.

You can download the stories here:

2. Handout_TechnologyScenarios

What I plan to do with the stories is ask audiences to engage in Carousel Brainstorming -- moving in small groups from story to story and answering the reflection questions found on the final page of the packet.

My hope is that every participant will see themselves -- both who they are and who they want to be -- somewhere in the stories. 
More importantly, my hope is that the conversations started in small
groups will help participants to wrestle with the rationale behind their
own technology spending choices.

Whaddya' think?

_______________________

Related Radical Reads:

Developing Technology Vision Statements

Making Good Technology Choices

Buying Teachers Chainsaws

Over the past few years, I've become convinced that today's kids are
best motivated as learners when they are tackling a real-world issue in a
meaningful way.  That's why my #sugarkills blog and my classroom microlending project have been so successful.

As Marc Prensky says,
technology gives today's students power that they've never had before. 
It's our job to help them learn to use that power to change the world
in meaningful ways.

To that end, I spent the day
whipping up a new cause for my kids to tackle during a school-wide
enrichment period that starts next year.  

 Our
cause will be called Speak Up Salem and our goal will be to push for a
school culture where bullying isn't tolerated by generating influential
Public Service Announcements that pair provocative images with
interesting quotes.

Here's a sample:

The notion of creating influential visuals ties directly to several of the language arts goals in the sixth grade curriculum
-- and learning to use visuals to be persuasive is probably one of the
most important skills for grabbing attention in today's
information-soaked world.

I'm also excited about the fact that this lesson will give me a chance to introduce students to the Creative Commons
-- a new form of copyright where photographers, musicians, writers, and
artists are granting other users permission in advance to use their
content.

If this sounds good to you, here is a simple
overview of the lesson that is designed to help other teachers get a
sense for what I'm going to do:

Lesson_SpeakUpSalemSlides

And here are the materials that I'll be using when we start the project:

 Speak Up Salem Quotes and Statistics - http://bit.ly/speakupsalemquotes

This
link connects to a Word document with several statistics and quotes
about bullying that students can use when creating their Speak Up Salem
slides. 

Encouraging students to select a quote or a statistic from this
collection will save time in the creation process simply because they
won’t have to find their own statistics and/or quotes connected to
bullying.

Speak Up Salem Slides - http://bit.ly/speakupsalemslides

This
link connects to a PowerPoint presentation with 67 different Creative
Commons images that students can use when creating their own Speak Up
Salem slides. 

Encouraging students to select an image from this
collection will save time in the creation process simply because they
won’t have to find their own CC images to use in their final products.

Speak Up Salem Directions - http://bit.ly/speakupsalemdirections

This
link connects to a set of technical directions on using PowerPoint to
create an influential visual.  At a minimum, it can help you to better
understand the kinds of things students will need to be able to do when
using PowerPoint to create an influential visual. 

You may also want to
share one set of directions with each student group OR train a few
student leaders that can provide technical support to their peers.

Speak Up Salem Scoring Rubric - http://bit.ly/speakupsalemrubric

While
I don't plan to grade the work that my students do on this assignment
-- honestly, I get sick of living in a world where everything has to
have a grade tied to it to be considered worth doing -- I DO plan on
having my kids evaluate the overall quality of their final products with
this scoring rubric.

Hope this helps -- and more
importantly, hope you'll stop back and give me feedback if you use this
lesson with YOUR kids!  I'd love to know about any changes that you
make.

#alwayspolishing

______________________

Related Radical Reads:

 What Do YOU Know about the Creative Commons?

Using Google Docs to Create Digital Kits for Student Projects

More on Using Digital Kits to Structure Student Projects

As a guy who has written two books about using technology in schools (see here and here) and who regularly delivers two-day workshops on teaching with technology (see here), one of the questions that I'm asked all the time is, "So what digital tools are YOU using in the classroom?"

read more

One of the lessons that teachers working in digital spaces HAVE to
learn is that a complete reliance on any ONE digital tool and/or service
is a recipe for disaster.

This video by Erik Qualman explains why

The moral of the story is a simple one, isn't it? 
Technology is constantly improving and advancing and changing and
adapting -- which means those of us who rely on technology need to be
constantly improving and advancing and changing and adapting too.

Need an example from my life? 

I've spent the past few years madly in love with RSS feed readers -- simple tools that automatically check my favorite websites for new content and bring that content back to me.

My
RSS reader is LITERALLY the first place that I turn every time that I
want to learn something new simply because it makes me more efficient. 

Because my reader is automatically collecting new content from my
favorite sites, I know that every time I log in, I'm going to find
something that is interesting and professionally challenging -- even if I
only have five minutes to explore.

Here's the hitch, though:  The first RSS Reader that I fell in love with --- Pageflakes --- went out of business about two years after I started using it, and NOW the replacement service that I found -- Google Reader -- is being killed off in July of this year.

Talk
about frustrating!  I literally spent months tinkering with both
services -- figuring out just what they could do, customizing settings
so that they acted just the way that I wanted them to, and finding ways
to incorporate the lessons that I was learning into the work that I do
with teachers and with students.

And now I've got to
start all over again. I've got to find ANOTHER feed reader and
experiment with MORE settings and learn NEW lessons that I can share
with teachers.

But that's the nature of living in a digital world, y'all. We have to be digitally resilient.

We
have to understand that our lives are not over when our favorite tools
and/or services go belly up.  Instead, we need to see the death of
trusted tools as opportunities to experiment with something new -- and
quite probably, something better than we ever could have expected.

 Any of this make sense?

_____________________

Related Radical Reads:

New Slide - Digitally Resilient

Openly Sick of Being Digitally Resilient

Epic Tech Fail Day

Epic Tech Fail Day Summary

As some of you may know,
I started a new classroom blog with my students that is designed to
raise awareness in tweens and teens about the amount of sugar found in
the foods that they are eating.

It's called #SUGARKILLS.  Check it out:

http://sugarkills.us

So
far, the project has been a remarkable success.  We've literally posted
a new bit every school day for the past month -- and my students are
straight jazzed about the notion that THEY have the power to make a
difference in the world.

Need proof? 

Then check out this quote from a recent interview that we completed for Middleweb:

A couple weeks ago, Mrs. Swanson left us a comment
about how her dad has diabetes and our blog is really helping him.  It
makes us feel great to know that we’ve made a difference in someone’s
life.  

What
if Mrs. Swanson’s father made the decision to say “no” to one candy
bar, because of us?  Then he would keep making healthier choices, and
that could eventually save his life!  We would have made a huge
difference.

We’ve also discovered that other teachers are actually sharing our work
with their students, which makes us feel like we really matter to other
people.  How many 12 year old students can say that they are changing
people’s lives around the world?  

The fact that we can is amazing!

So how can YOU get a great student-driven blog up and running in YOUR classroom? 

Here are three of my favorite tips.

Tip 1:  Create ONE Topic-Focused Blog

A
lesson that I learned early in my work with blogs is that they are far
more vibrant -- and attract far more attention -- when they are updated
regularly.  The challenge for student bloggers, then, is generating
enough content to bring readers back for more.

The solution in my
classroom is to always START classroom blogging projects with ONE
classroom blog that EVERY student can make contributions to.  Doing so
takes the pressure of generating content off of individual students
simply because there are dozens of potential writers who are adding
content at any given time.

I also tend to create blogs that are
focused on a specific theme or topic rather than general blogs that
contain content across several domains and/or interest areas.  By
focusing my blogs on a specific theme connected to a cause that my kids
are passionate about, I can tap into the desire of students to "do work
that matters."

Tip 2: Train Student Editors to Lead Your Blogging Project

I'm
going to be honest with you:  Student blogging projects take a TON of
time and energy and effort.  Posts need to be written and revised and
edited.  Images need to be found and cropped and inserted.  Schedules
for creating new content need to be created and maintained and
monitored.

Sounds exhausting, doesn't it?

Here's the good news:  YOU don't need to be the one that does all of the drafting and coaching and revising and posting!

Instead,
work to train a small handful of student editors.  Give them the
username and password to your classroom blog and turn them loose. 
You'll find that they are JUST as capable as you are -- and probably
MORE motivated!

Our #sugarkills team currently has two fully
trained student editors -- Andy and Daniel -- and four other kids who
are "editors in training."  They handle the VAST majority of the nitty
gritty details of generating content for our blog.

Training
student editors makes classroom blogging projects WAY more manageable
for classroom teachers.  More importantly, training student editors
reminds students that THEY can be powerful WITHOUT needing the help of
their teachers.

#beautiful

Tip 3: Recruit Readers and Commenters to Your Blog

For
any blogger, the ultimate reward is crafting a piece that actually gets
READ.  Every page view and comment left on a classroom blog is proof
positive to your students that they DO have an audience and that they
ARE being heard.

Just as importantly to classroom teachers, every
page view and comment is an opportunity for a student blogger to have
their thinking challenged -- and the tension that results whenever
thinking is challenged ALWAYS leads to new learning as students are
forced to refine and revise and polish their positions on the topics
that they care about.

The challenge, however, is that classroom
blogs won't AUTOMATICALLY generate enough attention to receive page
views and comments automatically.  The simple truth is that in a digital
world where there are thousands of new blogs created every hour, "being
heard" isn't nearly as easy as "getting published."

To address
this challenge, I always recruits volunteer readers and commenters when
my students are working on a blogging project.

Most of the time
these volunteers are parents or PTA members who want to help at school
but can't find the time to get away from work during the day.  I ask
them to monitor the blog for a month at a time and to leave two or three
comments a week that are designed to challenge students.

Other
times, I turn to my own professional friends and family members --
pointing them to specific posts that I want to generate traffic for. 
Doing so generates momentum, ensuring that students feel the reward that
comes along with having an audience.

If you are interested in
establishing relationships with other classrooms that are blogging,
spend some time poking around the growing collection of blogs at the Comments4Kids website.  And if you are trying to generate traffic  for individual blog entries, consider sharing a link to the post in Twitter using the #comments4kids hashtag.

Any
of this make sense to you?  More importantly, do YOU have any tips for
teachers interested in starting classroom blogging projects?

_____________________________

Related Radical Reads:

Introducing Our Newest Cause: #SUGARKILLS

Technology Gives Kids Power

Are Kids REALLY Motivated by Technology?