Monthly Archives: November 2014

Reading for Relevance AND Fluency

classroom teachers, literacy, , , , , , ,

In the past, I (Clive) have posted about the need to teach for relevance. When recently re-visiting two of Richard Allington’s wonderful books on reading instruction – What Really Matters for Struggling Readers (2006) and What Really Matters in Fluency (2009) – I was impressed with his discussion of the link between relevance and fluency in reading. In his view, there are at least 4 instructional causes of reading difficulties:

  • Texts are too difficult
  • Texts are not interesting enough
  • Insufficient time is given for actual reading (as distinct from studying reading strategies)
  • Reading is interrupted for instructional reasons

Because of these factors, students don’t do enough reading to become fluent. Teaching reading strategies is important, but a balance is needed. Allington says:

[To increase their] store of at-a-glance words, readers need to consistently and repeatedly read a word correctly. [This requires] a lot of accurate reading…struggling readers [should] read at least as much as the achieving readers at their grade level. (2009, p. 38).

He cites what he sees as “one of the greatest failures of the [U.S.] federally funded Title I remedial reading and special education programs: Neither program reliably increased the volume of reading that children engaged in” (2006, p. 43). In fact, the amount of reading was often reduced.

But struggling students won’t read very much – either at school or at home – if texts are uninteresting to them. This is where relevance comes in. According to Allington, if we want students to read a lot they must see the point of reading. But if we force them to read books they aren’t interested in and bombard them with reading strategies, along with “comprehension” tasks that just require them to recall and retell, they may never realize that reading has a point. He comments:

I fear that we will continue to develop students who don’t even know that thoughtful literacy is the reason for reading. (2006, p. 116)

So relevance is valuable in two ways: it helps students learn about “life” and the real world, and it helps them learn how to read.

 

Responding Critically to Azalea’s ‘Bounce’

critical literacy, education, literacy, Literacy teacher educators, Social Justice, teaching, , , , , , , , , ,

In class this week my (Cathy’s) teacher education students were exploring indirect  instruction through learning centers.  One of the centers featured Iggy Azalea’s music video, Bounce, and the instructions to discuss the work through a critical literacy lens.   (E.g. What message do you think the artist wants us to get from this video? Based on the artist’s thoughts and actions (expressed in the song), how would you say she is portraying herself to the world?)

Most of the students had heard of the video but never actually viewed it until arriving at the literacy center.  (Perhaps you haven’t either).  Without revealing the content, I will reiterate the general tone of the reactions.   Most students were annoyed by the video content.  One student said she was disgusted (and this is not sexual content).  One group, however,  tried to take a broader view.  They said they could not judge the work until they understood Azalea’s intent.  So they took it upon themselves to look up an interview in which Azalea discusses her purpose for portraying her song the way she did.  After viewing the interview, they were angry.  Azalea explained that she portrayed herself thusly so she would be seen as “flashy”.  No message, just glamour.  After this insight, some wonderful discussion ensued about cultural ethics and hegemony.

One student spoke to me at the conclusion of class and confessed that she was surprised by her own reaction.  In her words, “I have changed.    Studying literacy education has given me a different perspective.  I see the world differently, especially things like music videos.”

Below is the link so you can view this content for yourself and decide.  The second link is the video in which Azalea discusses her purpose for making the video.

Happy critical viewing!

10 Jobs That Didn’t Exist 10 Years Ago

digital technology, , ,

In this blog we have had many posts about digital technology. I (Clare) found this article by Meghan Casserly so interesting. Times are a-changing so schools must be a-changing. Who knows what jobs will exist in 10 years from now. Here is the link to the article.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/meghancasserly/2012/05/11/10-jobs-that-didnt-exist-10-years-ago/

Employment trend watchers have been pinpointing the sectors where jobs are anticipated to increase forever—every five years the BLS projects its own outlook and sites like our list what’s become old news: that careers in a handful of sectors (most linked to technology, a growing concern about the environment and an aging population) are on the rise while others continue to falter. But are they new occupations or simply new ways of meeting existing needs?

“I don’t believe that new needs have been created,” says Charles Purdy, senior editor for Monster.com. “We’ve just created new ways and adopted new technologies to get them done.”

Still, each year as twenty-somethings leave college campuses in droves, industries on the rise offer something uniquely appealing: the opportunity to seize brand new positions where competition hasn’t reached critical mass. With that in mind, we scoured jobs data and career sites for the most promising positions in on-the-rise sectors that were only created in the past decade. They’re so new that they didn’t even exist a decade ago, which more than puts your parents out of the running.

App developers can expect an average salary of $93,000 (indeed)

App Developer

The iPhone was introduced in 2007, the Android shortly after. Since then, more than a IPhonemillion apps have been put up for sale in Apples App Store and Android’s Google Play. Consider this: in 2011, Apple AAPL +0.24% pulled in more than $15 billion in revenues from mobile applications, which shrink  programs that used to run only on desktop computers to make them work on mobile devices.

As demand surges for apps to run on iOS, Android and whatever operating system is waiting in the wings, companies are faced with a dearth of talent with the skills to develop for mobile. This means fresh opportunity for programmers and developers to break into a booming market. Currently more than 16,000 listings for mobile app developers are listed on job site indeed.com.

Market Research Data Miner

As customer information becomes more and more vital to the retail experience, businesses are compiling data in droves—and hiring experts to make sense of it. From different datasets including structured (transaction), semi-structured (user behavior) and unstructured (text) information, data analysts and scientists look for behavioral patterns to help retailers and businesses predict future trends or to build recommendation engines or personalized advertising.

“Library science is a really hot degree right now,” says Purdy, “And data-mining could be one of the reasons. It’s a helpful knowledge set for someone hoping to manage large amounts of data” Hopeful data-minded candidates can include library science majors, researchers, engineers or applied scientists.

Educational or Admissions Consultants

When a certain set of affluent parents watch their toddler stack his or her first set of blocks, they’re not lost in a moment of cute, they’re strategizing their child’s likeliness of getting into the right pre-school. These moms and dads will stop at nothing to secure the best education for their kids—which for many includes hiring an educational or admissions consultant to help ease the process of interviewing and testing into schools from preschool to college. Admissions consultants can be paid thousands of dollars for their skills—which often include personal connections with school administrators.

Millennial Generational Expert

Generational consultants help companies better understand the changing workforce—and who better to explain the Millennials than a living, breathing member of Generation Y? Companies in every sector and of every size face the challenge of recruiting and developing young professionals to prepare them to be future executives.  Companies can build loyalty in their workforce by engaging in practices that connect directly with their younger employees. All-hands happy hour, anyone?

But this isn’t a role that’s strictly for the young ones. Many generational experts are older employees, who’ve turned their experience with young people into an ability to advise companies on how best to engage, motivate and, yes, placate this often fickle workforce.

Social media manager average salary: $65,000 (indeed)

Facebook logoSocial Media Manager

Making the most of online communities– what we generally call “social” networks–has become an integral part of businesses from small-town coffee shops to behemoths like Amazon and Microsoft MSFT +0.61%, which both employ social media managers in their marketing and advertising departments. “There has been a great big shift in how companies communicate with their customers ,” Purdy says. On job site indeed, for example, there are currently over 11,000 listings for the title. But the term “social media managers” really covers all manner of tasks–from the social-savvy recent grad who mans the Twitter feed to the new wave of marketing strategists who help companies to leverage their social audiences through targeted marketing.

But don’t be fooled that your 10,000 Twitter friends are going to land you a job. “Young people may be more technologically savvy than their older colleagues,” says Purdy, “But technology in the workplace is evolving so quickly that a person can’t think that just because they’re great at Twitter will make them a desirable commodity long-term.”

Chief Listening Officer

One step up from a “social media manager,” (more on that later) the Chief Listening Officer keeps her ears (and eyes) on social channels and real life conversations to keep the company up to speed on what their customers are saying. “Before social media, business was a one way channel of communication. The company talked, we listened,” Purdy says. “Now we’ve become accustomed to two-way conversations. We expect them to listen, and so we see these kinds of roles.”

Beth LaPierre became the first ever Chief Listening Officer in 2010, and while she’s since moved on to other gigs, she spent her time monitoring the more than 300,000 mentions of Kodak on Facebook, Twitter, message forums, YouTube, blogs, and elsewhere on the Web each day, using software from Radian6 and PeopleBrowsr. Then she moved that information to the relevant department. As more and more companies rely on social streams and online exchanges for customer service reasons, the role of the listener will only increase.

Cloud Computing Services

In August 2006 Google GOOG -1.5%’s Eric Schmidt described the company’s approach to software as a service as “cloud computing” at a search engine conference, possibly the first high profile usage of the term. Because it was used in the context of describing Google properties (Gmail, etc. etc.), it became synonymous with online storage and sharing of data. These days, the term has adopted by everyone from Microsoft to start-ups that help moms access coupons in the check-out line. Companies are looking for database managers, engineers and strategists for storing and indexing massive amounts of data—we’re talking petrabytes (one quadrillion bytes) of information.

Elder care salaries average $51,000 (indeed)

Elder Care

As the population ages and baby boomers become grandparents, an increasing amount of attention is being turned to the care of the elderly. Between legal concerns, staffing at residential facilities or consultants hired to facilitate end-of-life issues, jobs in this area are expected to increase. People who have an understanding of the increasingly complex healthcare system in addition to an interest in comfort care are well suited for these roles.  Communication skills are also paramount—as elder care service providers are often tasked with communicating end-of-life issues to their client and his or her family members.

SustainabilitySustainability Expert

“There are obviously some very concrete reasons that companies00even those who aren’t in the green or alternative energy space—would be interested in sustainable practices,” says Purdy. Oftentimes hiring someone into an environmentally-conscious role could be a cost-savings issue, he says, both in terms of lowering power bills or to take advantage of increasing tax rebates for companies committing to sustainability.

A degree in environmental science or business management major would prove useful in these new “green” roles as they often require developing new workflows to increase productivity while lowering the carbon footprint of a business, but specific environmental leadership majors are on the rise.  Projects can include: recycling and waste reduction, supplier sustainability evaluation. Purdy thinks Millennials are a shoe-in: “Look at the next gen of managers and leaders,” he says. “These young people grew up in a culture that valued recycling, valued being green. They’re far more driven by those concerns because they’ve been hearing about it since they were babies. I think we’ll continue to see growth in this area for young employees.”

Sustainability consultants have an average annual salary of $83,000 (indeed.com)

User Experience Design

What is user experience design? Quite simply, experiences created and shaped through technology and how to make them happen. Case in point: the experience of waking up to an alarm clock is very different from the experience created by the rising sun and chirping birds. A user experience designer’s concern is how to mimic the birds-sun experience through technology (see the variety of alarm clocks on the market that grow louder and brighter to wake you gently). Would-be designers should be fluent in Photoshop, understand programming languages like CSS and HTML and feel comfortable taking an idea from sketch to prototype. As far as demand goes, things are looking bright: a recent indeed.com search returned 168,219 job listings.

The Power of Collaboration

Uncategorized, , ,

Social networking has shown us the power of collaboration. Through applications like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram we learn with and from one another at a speed like never before. Sir Ken Robinson reminds us of the need to foster collaboration:

Most original thinking comes through collaboration and through the stimulation of other people’s ideas. Nobody lives in a vacuum. Even people who live on their own—like the solitary poets or solo inventors in their garages—draw from the cultures they’re a part of, from the influence of other people’s minds and achievements….This is one of the great skills we have to promote and teach—collaborating and benefiting from diversity rather than promoting homogeneity.

Unfortunately, with the rise of standardized testing in many countries, collaboration is not being valued. Robinson explains:

We have a big problem at the moment—education is becoming so dominated by this culture of standardized testing, by a particular view of intelligence and a narrow curriculum and education system, that we’re flattening and stifling some of the basic skills and processes that creative achievement depends on.

Although comedic in nature  the cartoon below raises some important questions around assessment. Do high-stakes tests help prepare our students for the world in which they will work.  Why don’t we value collaborative learning/assessments in schools?

socialnetworking

Language and power: A well “articulated” analysis

critical literacy, literacy, literacy, Social Justice, Teacher education, Uncategorized, , , , ,

It is  a rewarding feeling when a student teacher from years past emails a link to an article, a video, or an image that is reflective of the messages we discussed in our teacher education class. The message it sends me is this, “I remember you. I remember your teachings. I learned and am still thinking about what it means to be a teacher and what it means to teach literacy”.  Today I (Yiola) received a short email from a student of four years ago. She sent the following link:

The link takes us to a spoken word presentation entitled “3 Ways to Speak English” shared on TED during a theme based session called “Examining Prejudice”.  Her talk as part of the series is described as:

Educator Jamila Lyiscott delivered an incredible poem called “Broken English,” in which she showed that she is a “Trilingual orator” able to speak fluently at home, with Caribbean parents, at school in “proper English,” and with her friends in a language that is as formal and rules-based as the other two. The poem raised a big laugh when she pointed out, “You may think it is ignorant to speak Broken English, but even articulate Americans sound foolish to the British.”

My favourite part is when she says:

So I may not always come before you with excellency of speech

But do not judge me by my language and assume

That I’m too ignorant to teach

‘Cause I speak three tongues

One for each:

Home, school and friends

I’m a tri-lingual orator

What stands out for me about the poem and what I will share with my students in class this week:

1) The power of language and how we associate language with power

2) Language and how it informs our identities — how many languages do you speak?

3) Linguistic profiling: the racial identification and discrimination of an individual or group of people based on their speech  and how that plays out in society and in the classroom

4) History — and how it influences our use of language

I was moved by her words as Lsyiscott describes:

These words are spoken

By someone who is simply fed up with the Eurocentric ideals of this season

And the reason I speak a composite version of your language

Is because mines was raped away along with my history

I speak broken English so the profusing gashes can remind us

That our current state is not a mystery

I’m so tired of the negative images that are driving my people mad

So unless you’ve seen it rob a bank stop calling my hair bad

I’m so sick of this nonsensical racial disparity

5) Awareness, ourselves and teaching — what do we as educators do with this knowledge?

Here is a link to a prezi that Lysicott has used at presentations:

http://prezi.com/_htjpqeom2js/how-broken-english-made-me-whole/

6) How to take our linguistic diversity and turn it into power:

This is a linguistic celebration

That’s why I put “tri-lingual” on my last job application

I can help to diversify your consumer market is all I wanted them to know

And when they call me for the interview I’ll be more than happy to show that

I can say:

“What’s good”

“Whatagwan”

And of course …“Hello”

Because I’m “articulate”

I look forward to my class on Friday and to sharing thoughts, feelings and ideas about what all of this means to children, their families and the learning environment in our elementary school classrooms.

 

 

Thinking Outside the Box to Save Our Schools

education, , , , , , ,

I (Clare) read this really interesting article, Transforming Schools into Community Hubs: Where’s the Spark of Social Innovation?,  on thinking outside the box to save our schools. http://educhatter.wordpress.com/
I was so impressed with the analysis of this initiative to create centres for the community – yes there may be policy to support this creative venture but school administrators have to embrace the opportunity. That is they need to think outside the box. Good for Nova Scotia Canada for attempting to support communities and to raise desperately needed funds.

Transforming Schools into Community Hubs: Where’s the Spark of Social Innovation?,

Sitting in the dimly lit, bunker-like Conference Room on a sunny Saturday afternoon in Canada’s last surviving Wandlyn Inn was a little depressing. Listening to a veteran Nova Scotia School Superintendent explain — with clinical precision– the new Hub School Model regulations released in July 2014 was almost too much to bear. The session title gave it all away: “The Operation, Opportunities and Challenges of the Community Hub Model.”  A funny thing has happened to an exciting idea on its way to implementation.

NSSSILogoSmall school activist Kate Oland, a veteran of several Cape Breton school closure battles, was rendered virtually numb. After fighting to save her Middle River School, co-founding the Nova Scotia Small School Initiative, celebrating the April 3, 2013 school closure moratorium, and welcoming the Hub School guidelines, it had all come down to this: the Superintendent in charge of advancing the project still didn’t seem to “get it”: open the school doors to the community and let social innovation in.

Community hub projects come alive with proactive leadership and the scent of social innovation.The founder of Toronto’s Centre of Social Innovation, Tonya Surman, speaking in Sydney, Cape Breton in April 2014, was right on the mark. “You’ve got to be able to dream about what’s possible, ” and she added “social change takes time.”

NewDawnErikaSheaA “New Dawn’ arrived for Holy Angels Academy in Sydney, Cape Breton, but three years after its closure as a public school. Today it’s a thriving Centre for Social Innovation hosting a lively mix of 20 commercial and non-profit enterprises.

That transformation, spearheaded by Rankin MacSween’s New Dawn Enterprises Limited, should be on the curriculum for the training of School Superintendents. It’s time to embrace economic renewal and social enterprise, particularly in a struggling economic province like Nova Scotia.  Founded in 1976 initially as a community development fund to combat plant and mine closures, New Dawn is now a beacon of light for faltering communities on the verge of losing their schools.

With the adoption of the School Hub regulations, the Nova Scotia Education Department is coaxing school boards into being more proactive in transforming emptying schools into shared use facilities and potentially revenue generating operations.

The Hub School guidelines, in the hands of reluctant administrators, may threaten to extinguish community spirit and enterprise. Developed by a faceless team of school administrators, it treats Hub School proposals as “business case briefs” and guides proponents through a virtual “obstacle course” of new approval rules. Serving existing students should come first, but why is the “protection of property” so prominent in the regulations?

Three Nova Scotia community-school groups in River John, Maitland, and Wentworth are fighting to save their schools and fully committed to supporting the “Hubification” process. Economic and social innovation thrives when it is welcomed, as in the case of the New Dawn success in Sydney. It perishes on sterile ground marked off like the hurdles on a high school track field.

Economic renewal and social innovation are possible under the right conditions. What’s the secret to unlocking Social Innovation and revitalizing our schools? What has happened to the Nova Scotia Community Hub School Model on its way to implementation? Is it still possible for small school advocates to clear the latest hurdles and transform schools into true community hubs?

Posted in Community Hub Schools, Education Bureaucracy, Educational Change, Parent Power, Rural Education, School Closures, School-Based Management, Small Schools Initiatives | 2 Comments »

What Your Students Really Need to Know About Digital Citizenship

digital technology, , , , ,

I (Clare) read with interest this article about digital citizenship which seems to be a new frontier in using technology. Thought others might find it interesting – for their own safety and in their work with students. The article was published in Edutopia http://www.edutopia.org/blog/digital-citizenship-need-to-know-vicki-davis?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=102914%20enews%20didgectznship%20ngm%20remainder&utm_content=&utm_term=feature1hed&spMailingID=9792002&spUserID=MTM5ODM0MTEwNjMwS0&spJobID=402556106&spReportId=NDAyNTU2MTA2S0

The greatest software invented for human safety is the human brain. It’s time that we start using those brains. We must mix head knowledge with action. In my classroom, I use two essential approaches in the digital citizenship curriculum that I teach: proactive knowledge and experiential knowledge.
Proactive Knowledge
I want my students to know the “9 Key Ps” of digital citizenship. I teach them about these aspects and how to use them. While I go into these Ps in detail in my book Reinventing Writing, here are the basics:
1. Passwords
Do students know how to create a secure password? Do they know that email and online banking should have a higher level of security and never use the same passwords as other sites? Do they have a system like LastPass for remembering passwords, or a secure app where they store this information? (See 10 Important Password Tips Everyone Should Know.)
2. Privacy
Do students know how to protect their private information like address, email, and phone number? Private information can be used to identify you. (I recommend the Common Sense Media Curriculum on this.)
3. Personal Information
While this information (like the number of brothers and sisters you have or your favorite food) can’t be used to identify you, you need to choose who you will share it with.
4. Photographs
Are students aware that some private things may show up in photographs (license plates or street signs), and that they may not want to post those pictures? Do they know how to turn off a geotagging feature? Do they know that some facial recognition software can find them by inserting their latitude and longitude in the picture — even if they aren’t tagged? (See the Location-Based Safety Guide)
5. Property
Do students understand copyright, Creative Commons, and how to generate a license for their own work? Do they respect property rights of those who create intellectual property? Some students will search Google Images and copy anything they see, assuming they have the rights. Sometimes they’ll even cite “Google Images” as the source. We have to teach them that Google Images compiles content from a variety of sources. Students have to go to the source, see if they have permission to use the graphic, and then cite that source.
6. Permission
Do students know how to get permission for work they use, and do they know how to cite it?
7. Protection
Do students understand what viruses, malware, phishing, ransomware, and identity theft are, and how these things work? (See Experiential Knowledge below for tips on this one.)
8. Professionalism
Do students understand the professionalism of academics versus decisions about how they will interact in their social lives? Do they know about netiquette and online grammar? Are they globally competent? Can they understand cultural taboos and recognize cultural disconnects when they happen, and do they have skills for working out problems?
9. Personal Brand
Have students decided about their voice and how they want to be perceived online? Do they realize they have a “digital tattoo” that is almost impossible to erase? Are they intentional about what they share?
Experiential Knowledge
During the year, I’ll touch on each of these 9 Key Ps with lessons and class discussions, but just talking is not enough. Students need experience to become effective digital citizens. Here’s how I give them that:
Truth or Fiction
To protect us from disease, we are inoculated with dead viruses and germs. To protect students from viruses and scams, I do the same thing. Using current scams and cons from Snopes, Truth or Fiction, the Threat Encyclopedia, or the Federal Trade Commission website, I’m always looking for things that sound crazy but are true, or sound true but are false or a scam. I’ll give them to students as they enter class and ask them to be detectives. This opens up conversations of all kinds of scams and tips.
Turn Students into Teachers
Students will create tutorials or presentations exposing common scams and how to protect yourself. By dissecting cons and scams, students become more vigilant themselves. I encourage them to share how a person could detect that something was a scam or con.
Collaborative Learning Communities
For the most powerful learning experiences, students should participate in collaborative learning (like the experiences shared in Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds). My students will collaborate with others on projects like Gamifi-ed or the AIC Conflict Simulation (both mentioned in a recent post on game-based learning).
Students need experience sharing and connecting online with others in a variety of environments. We have a classroom Ning where students blog together, and public blogs and a wiki for sharing our work with the world. You can talk about other countries, but when students connect, that is when they learn. You can talk about how students need to type in proper case and not use IM speak, but when their collaborative partner from Germany says they are struggling to understand what’s being typed in your classroom, then your students understand.
Digital Citizenship or Just Citizens?
There are those like expert Anne Collier who think we should drop the word “digital” because we’re really just teaching citizenship. These are the skills and knowledge that students need to navigate the world today.
We must teach these skills and guide students to experience situations where they apply knowledge. Citizenship is what we do to fulfill our role as a citizen. That role starts as soon as we click on the internet.
Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher’s Profile