Sorry for the lack of posts recently! I've been hard at work trying to get the NEW TEN ready. Any day now!

I've also been busy preparing for Golden Apple's first-ever digital storytelling seminar, which I'm teaching alongside Golden Apple Fellow and award-winning storyteller (and my dad), Syd Lieberman.

Interested in finding out more about digital storytelling? Below you'll find some of the best resources I've come across in preparation for the workshop. Stay tuned for more!

GENERAL DIGITAL STORYTELLING (OVERVIEWS, THEORY, GUIDES)
Overview of one classroom's process.
Evaluating digital storytelling.
Comprehensive list of resource, relevant articles, examples, etc.
Comprehensive list of resources.
Really good four-part intro. Parts 3 and 4 (technology/legal issues and assessment) are particularly practical.
eBook with tons of links to examples of digital storytelling. (free registration required).

EXAMPLES OF DIGITAL STORYTELLING
Great collection from the Center for Digital Storytelling.
Capture Wales digital stories: a major BBC initiative to collect stories in Wales.
Digital stories by teachers.


TECHNOLOGY TUTORIALS AND HOW-TOS
Screencast tutorials for iMovie, Moviemaker, and PremierePro, as well as overviews of key digital media concepts.
Screencast Audacity tutorial.
How to use a Mac if you're a PC user.


IMAGE/VIDEO/AUDIO RESOURCES
Creative Commons. A gateway to materials with "some rights reserved" that are intended to be shared and used.
Flickr for images and photos. In the advanced search, make sure to check "only search within Creative Commons licensed photos."
ccMixter for sounds and music. Creative Commons licensed.
United Streaming for video. For use in digital stories, be sure to use the advanced search and choose "include only editable titles." Free 30-day trial.
PacDV for sound effects.

Labels: resources

A cute op ed from a New York Times education reporter on the many strange and amazing skills teachers have that nobody really thinks about. Like giving great instructions:

One of my all-time favorite moments covering the New York City public school system occurred just before Christmas in 2003, at Public School 28 in Harlem. About 50 or 60 second graders, onstage in the school auditorium, serenaded Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein with a perfect rendition of "Feliz Navidad."

When the singing stopped, Mr. Bloomberg applauded. "Children, that was beautiful," he said. "Now, what I want you to do is say 'Merry Christmas' and 'Happy New Year,' first in Spanish, then in English."

The problem was not a language barrier - nearly all of the children at P.S. 28 are bilingual - but rather the mayor's notion that he could give four simultaneous commands to a group of 7-year-olds, as if they were his aides in the bullpen at City Hall or executives at his company, Bloomberg L.P.

Still, the students who had just finished singing so sweetly in unison dutifully tried to grant Mr. Bloomberg's request.

"Meyeow, weow, eowah, eiwash, iwah," they mumbled. Or something like that.

Working with children looks easy. It is not.

Teachers, much like doctors or other highly trained professionals need to be methodical, careful, and thoughtful. It's not magic.

This reminds me of a favorite family anecdote. Some of you know my father, Syd Lieberman, who is a Golden Apple Fellow and storyteller. Well, he was in the hospital many years ago, because he'd had a heart arrhythmia. The medication hadn't worked to reset his heart rhythm, so the doctor said they were going to have to shock him.

Syd: Oh cool! It's going to be like ER, with everyone running around and yelling "CLEAR!"
Doctor: Mr. Lieberman, you're a teacher right?
Syd: Right.
Doctor: Have you seen Dead Poet's Society?
Syd: Of course.
Doctor: Well, is teaching like that?

Labels: conversations

Wow, things are really not getting better for the state budget. The governor and the legislature are at a stalemate, and it's not clear when or how it's going to get resolved. The impact on the state's education system is up in the air.

It looked like school funding reform was off the table for this year after the crushing defeat of the governor's Gross Receipts Tax proposal. But the IEA and IFT are still working with lawmakers on another proposal. Said IEA president Ken Swanson, "It ain't over till it's over, and we don't believe that the fight is over."

Some groups are still fighting for a "tax swap" where a slight increase in income tax would allow for a decrease in school reliance on property taxes, the primary cause of school funding inequality in Illinois. Vocally opposed to any general tax hike, the governor has already vowed to veto any plan involving a swap. That leaves the most likely outcome to be "a simple bump in the numbers, which school officials say easily gets eaten away by rising costs."

Meanwhile, Illinois school districts are left scrambling:

So far, area school officials say the slowdown hasn't affected their revenue streams. But if legislators don't approve a budget soon, some districts will enter the school year with very shaky numbers.

"I don't think it allows us to pass our budget. We're going to have to do something else unless we have firm numbers (from the state)," said Russell Pietrowiak, chairman of the East Aurora School Board's finance committee. "(State funding) is too big of a chunk of our budget. It impacts our actual operation."

This is a critical time. If you're interested in becoming more active on school funding reform, one very vocal group is A+ Illinois. They're circulating a petition that churches and organizations can sign and encouraging everyone to call their representatives.

Labels: conversations

The National Council on Teacher Quality comes out swinging in its 2007 State Teacher Policy Yearbook, looking at state progress on teacher quality. They looked at each state and Washington DC, evaluating its progress on a matrix of 27 goals related to teacher quality for a total of over 1,300 separate analyses. What did they discover? "States as a group meet or come close to meeting just 21 percent of the goals, with no state meeting even half of the goals."

These goals include equitable distribution of quality teachers across the state, professionalization of teacher training and licensure, value-added teacher evaluation, accountability for teacher preparation and alternative certification programs, and improvements to the preparation of special ed teachers.

Some of the specific shortcomings the report sees nationally:

STATES ARE NOT PAYING ENOUGH ATTENTION TO WHO GOES INTO TEACHING. States provide significant funding to teacher preparation programs, particularly in state-funded universities, yet there is little oversight of candidates’ academic caliber.

This is interesting vis-a-vis the IERC study from a few weeks ago that found that new teachers with strong academic backgrounds were likelier than others to leave the profession quickly. Could this be related to another shortcoming seen in the NCTQ analysis--that states aren't doing an adequate job of monitoring the quality of teacher preparation these students are receiving?

The report berates states for not relying on their own licensing tests and allowing teachers to teach for months or even years before having to show competence on a licensing exam, something no other highly trained profession allows. If states don't rely on the tests and don't trust them to measure whether someone is minimally qualified to become a teacher, what is their purpose?

Most damning, the report argues that in most states:

THE INTERESTS OF ADULTS FREQUENTLY COME BEFORE THE NEEDS OF THE CHILDREN. Far too many accommodations are made for teachers in the areas of testing, tenure and evaluations, risking the possibility that too many children could suffer significant academic harm from a bad teacher.

This is a BIG report (and this is just the summary! There are full-length state-by-state reports, too), but there's lots here to think about. To keep it manageable, I suggest focusing on pages 6-11 and then popping over to page 29 to see about Illinois. Hungry for more? Pages 68-121 go through each of the 27 goals in some detail, including listing which states are meeting each goal. (The website also has a neat interactive map that shows a summary of this info).

Labels: conversations, resources

It will likely be years before the full impact of the Supreme Court's latest school integration decision is clear. In the meantime, there's plenty of commentary to keep us busy.

Just have time to read one thing? My recommendation is NPR senior correspondent and biographer of Thurgood Marshall, Juan Williams, who takes the controversial position that "it is time to acknowledge that Brown's time has passed" in his New York Times OpEd "Don't Mourn Brown v. Board of Education."

Desegregation does not speak to dropout rates that hover near 50 percent for black and Hispanic high school students. It does not equip society to address the so-called achievement gap between black and white students that mocks Brown’s promise of equal educational opportunity.

And the fact is, during the last 20 years, with Brown in full force, America’s public schools have been growing more segregated — even as the nation has become more racially diverse. In 2001, the National Center for Education Statistics reported that the average white student attends a school that is 80 percent white, while 70 percent of black students attend schools where nearly two-thirds of students are black and Hispanic...

...Racial malice is no longer the primary motive in shaping inferior schools for minority children. Many failing big city schools today are operated by black superintendents and mostly black school boards.

And today the argument that school reform should provide equal opportunity for children, or prepare them to live in a pluralistic society, is spent. The winning argument is that better schools are needed for all children — black, white, brown and every other hue — in order to foster a competitive workforce in a global economy.

Want to hear Juan Williams instead of reading him? Try his NPR conversation with Renee Montagne.

Looking for balanced television coverage of the decision? Try NewsHour.

Have hours and hours? Google News is your source for EVERY. ARTICLE. EVER. WRITTEN. It's overwhelming, but a great resource.

Labels: conversations, resources

Last week I had dinner with a former colleague, and we caught up on all the gossip: who was doing great at college, who had had a baby, who had come out of the closet, who had won a scholarship, who had suffered a great tragedy. Finding out where life has taken my former students is a great joy, especially for being so rare.

My favorite run-in has to be the year I took a few students to the Rainbow/PUSH conference downtown. At lunch, they handed out the NAACP scholarships for that year, and who should be on the list but Darius, a boy who was possibly the greatest challenge of my challenging first year teaching 8th grade. This was a boy who had impersonated his mother when I tried to call home, whose mother had threatened to sue me, who threw temper tantrums in class, who wrote inappropriate essays just to see what I'd do. And yet, when I saw him after the awards ceremony, he was so happy to see me and we had a wonderful talk. He had grown up, had found ways to survive the chaos at home and no longer take it out on those around him, had channeled his energies into getting a full scholarship to college.

I was reminded of these conversations when I was referred to these fascinating articles, which Alexander Russo refers to as time-lapse journalism:

• Young and Restless: Follow the 13-year journey of 23 Harlem kindergartners.
• Pieces of an educational dream: Twenty years ago, a stranger made a stunning offer to an entire class of sixth graders: A free college education. Some triumphed, others faltered.

So, how about your students? Where are they now?

Labels: conversations

A recent New York Times Magazine piece unpacked the increasingly common practice of "redshirting" kids who would be young for their grade, sitting them out for another year so they'll be the oldest in their grade.

An interlocking set of motives are guiding this trend:

• Parents are increasingly concerned with self-esteem as a primary goal for their children.

[According to one development psychologist,] "We used to revere individual accomplishment. Now we revere self-esteem, and the reverence has snowballed in unconscious ways - into parents always wanting their children to feel good, wanting everything to be pleasant." So parents wait an extra year in the hope that when their children enter school their age or maturity will shield them from social and emotional hurt. Elizabeth Levett Fortier, a kindergarten teacher in the George Peabody Elementary School in San Francisco, notices the impact on her incoming students. "I've had children come into my classroom, and they've never even lost at Candy Land."

• With high-stakes testing in 3rd grade occupying the minds of parents, teachers, and school officials alike,

many parents, legislatures and teachers find the current curriculum too challenging for many older 4- and young 5-year-olds, which makes sense, because it’s largely the same curriculum taught to first graders less than a generation ago...

...In a report on kindergarten, the National Association of Early Childhood Specialists in State Departments of Education wrote, "Most of the questionable entry and placement practices that have emerged in recent years have their genesis in concerns over children's capacities to cope with the increasingly inappropriate curriculum in kindergarten."

Some states are considering countering this trend by pushing back their kindergarten age cutoffs so that all kindergartners will be older. But this is not a solution, because it highlights one of the primary troubling effects of this trend:

one serious side effect of pushing back the cutoffs is that while well-off kids with delayed enrollment will spend another year in preschool, probably doing what kindergartners did a generation ago, less-well-off children may, as the literacy specialist Katie Eller put it, spend “another year watching TV in the basement with Grandma.” What’s more, given the socioeconomics of redshirting — and the luxury involved in delaying for a year the free day care that is public school — the oldest child in any given class is more likely to be well off and the youngest child is more likely to be poor. “You almost have a double advantage coming to the well-off kids,” says Samuel J. Meisels, president of Erikson Institute, a graduate school in child development in Chicago. “From a public-policy point of view I find this very distressing.”

Education bloggers Alexander Russo and Joanne Jacobs both commented on this article, and Russo even introduced me to a neat tool to see what all the bloggers out there are saying about it.

Labels: conversations