Intrepid Teacher

You will notice that there is a now a Most Influential Blog Post First Runner Up badge lodged in the sidebar here at Intrepid Teacher. Although the post in question was never actually posted here, This, This, That was written my daughter Kaia and me.

Both Kaia and I would like to thank you for your vote. We were up against some big names in the Edtech world, and it is an honor just to have been nominated, but to come in second was pretty amazing.

Read the post here and more about it here.

You can see the results of the voting below:

I love ongoing online stories that chart a series of connecting events and people. On September 24, I wrote a blog post called Singing Hearts, in which I highlighted a photo essay created by my three-year-old daughter Kaia and the reaction it elicited from @wmchamberlain’s class in Missouri.

I am happy to report that  the story has continued in a dramatic way. After reading the story or becoming familiar with it through @wmchamberlain, Dr. John Strange, @drjohnhadley, a Professor of Professional Studies at The University of South Alabama, decided to make my daughter’s blog and experience an assignment for his students.

Shortly after, I began to see a deluge of comments come pouring into Kaia’ blog, which led me to google the term: Kaia Edm 310. I was pleasantly shocked to see over 50 blog posts written about our work.  I also set up a Google Alert to try and filter all of the blog posts that were still being written.

Unfortunately I haven’t the time to comment on each individual blog, so I have chosen to write one comment to be shared collectively with the students in EDM: 310

Dear Students,

It was such a pleasure for me to see your reaction to Kaia’s and my experience. I never would have thought that our simple afternoon activity would elicit so much attention. It just goes to show that people are looking for ways to connect. We so often here people comparing “real” life and “virtual” life as if there is really a difference. When in fact we are all simply living our lives and hoping to share them in whatever meaningful ways we can.

That was the real aim of posting Kai’s pictures online- I was hoping that someone somewhere would find our experience relevant, engaging, human. And by the range of responses it is clear that our story was all of those things.

As we share the daily minutia of our lives, we are able to see how small the world really is, and how similar our experience can be, when we stop and look at what we are all doing. People often criticize social media as a vain and narcissistic way to flood the world with the meaningless details of our lives, but I refuse to follow that route. It is in these very details where we are most human and open for connections.

I think Kaia’s blog is a great example; what started off as a simple way to share pictures with family, has blossom into a portal where students in Missouri are connecting with students in Alabama.

I think this episode demonstrates that using technology should not be some kind of administrative mandate. We can all use technology in various ways. Another misconception of technology is that its user are only interested in various ways we can be digitized. Where as I only see these tools as methods of sharing and documenting my non-digital life. I use these tools to help my daughter understand how a camera works. We speak to our pictures to begin learning about story telling and metaphor. I am simply using these tools to slowly teach her to be aware of her world. We would have gone outside and taken photos with or without social media, but social media has allowed us to connect with you.

We should not want our students to learn to blog, use wikis or go on Facebook for sole purpose of using tools. We must teach them to look critically at reality and find ways to share what they see with others so as to have a better understanding of the human experience. I see the Internet as the new novel, except that we are all authors and we are all constantly writing the chapters one blog post, one tweet, one Facebook update at a time.

So what did you write today? How will you teach your students to be open and brave and connected? How will you help them see that their lives are worth sharing?

Regards,

Jabiz Raisdana

In closing, I would like to add that one of the students from Alabama sent me this great clip of her daughter reading Kaia a book.

Here is our response.

It has been a while since my last post, and man have I been busy. I was quite pleased with the reaction that, There’s No Such Thing As Virtual: It Is All Teaching, received, so I wanted to write a follow up on the progress we have made thus far this year.

Let me start by saying that we have been in school for nearly eight weeks now, but have only had three complete weeks without some sort of interruption. First we dealt with the Swine Flu closure, then we had a week holiday, then I was out for a few days since my wife had a baby, and now because of some government licensing issues we have been asked to teach at another campus. Needless to say, we have had a difficultly time establishing routines and consistency.

Having said that, the work my classes are doing online has been progressing very well. I was going through my spreadsheets today tracking who has done what, and I am pleased to announce that the majority of the students have:

1. Created a Blog
•    Written and published their first post
•    Created links
•    Some have uploaded images and some video
•    Learned the basics of Creative Commons images and citing

2. Created a Gmail account
•    My 8th graders have been working with collaborative Google Doc assignements
•    Completed online Google Forms

3. Begun work on note collection and group work on our class wiki

I have also invited parents to join our community and while it is still early, some of them shown interested and curiosity during our parent teacher conferences this week. So although we are still not operating in a comfortable reliable setting- poor internet connections, unreliable laptops, and overcrowding these kids are learning how to use these tools to extend their learning where they feel most comfortable.

It is strange because of the poor quality of the gadgets and tools at my disposable, I feel most of my best work is being done when the kids are at home. I physically cannot do the things I want in my classroom, so I train them to do them at home. Like I told the parents this week, I figure if their child is spending time online at home, I want that time to be productive and exciting, because they are using different tools to learn.

I want them doing research and posting the info on a wiki. I want them to be reading and reflecting on our blog. I want them to be commenting on each other’s work and really communicating instead of chatting on MSN. I want the first thing that they do when they log in and start their homework to be to see if they “missed” anything from our blog.  I am realizing that the more comfortable they become, the more these contagious these interactions and excitement for our collective work becomes.
This is exciting because we are still learning how to interact within our own small community. I am looking forward to the time when they are ready to branch out and meet some of the schools we will work with this year.

Of course there are the stragglers. The students who still can’t log into their blog, or still only have the generic “Hello World” post from edublogs,  or do not have a Gmail account,  but I have identified those kids this week, and want to mandate that they  come in during break or lunch, get help, and get connected. For most of them all of these tools are still only designed for school,  but I can’t wait until they start to see that they can use these tools to explore, connect and create with a much larger world.

Feels great to be back in the Middle School and able to get back to the work I love.

It has been an interesting week in Doha. The government Supreme Council has decreed that all schools stay closed until October 4th in an effort to curb the spread of Swine Flu. What makes matters more complicated is that this announcement came on the tail of a weeklong holiday for Eid, so I haven’t seen my students in over two weeks. The decree caused a lot of anxiety for all the schools here in Doha, because no one was sure how long it could last. People began to speculate and spread rumors that Qatar may follow the examples of other Gulf states like Kuwait, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia who will remain closed until November, but it looks like we will be back in school sooner than that. This temporary closing of schools, however, has brought to light some very interesting aspects of distance learning. (E-Learning, “virtual” learning)

Because my school does not have a virtual school platform like Moodle or Blackboard, we have opted to simply asked the teachers to post pages, links, .pdfs and .doc to our school’s CSM run website. While this presentation of worksheets and online activities is limited in scope, it is still better than nothing.

The American School, where my wife works, is fairing a bit better and has even received some press for their use of Blackboard. For years they have been encouraging teachers to use Blackboard for such an emergency, and while teachers have begrudgingly posted a few assignments here and there the tool has largely been unused till now. Now that the emergency is upon them, however, teachers are scrambling to quickly learn how to become “virtual” teachers, and in doing so are finding the limitations, not only of Blackboard as a tool, but they are also realizing that teaching using online tools is more than simply posting assignments on a web storage space.

Teaching online, or being a virtual teacher, is more than a skill set; it is a mindset and a philosophy. Teachers who are well versed in a variety of tools, not just Blackboard will fair much better in times of crisis and will be better prepared for finding ways to reach their students than say teachers who rarely use technology at all. Teachers who themselves are connect and use many tools for their own learning will barely miss a step. While I understand the unease these teachers are experiencing, I think their apprehension speaks more to the limitations offered not only by blackboard, but of school philosophies when it comes to technology use and pedagogy.

This crisis has clearly illustrated that creating a valuable web-friendly ethos/community of teachers well versed with technology, is the first step in creating a sustainable system to deal with not only emergencies, but in helping to maintain strong ties between teachers and students beyond the classroom. Communicating with students outside the classroom whether through Blackboard or other free online tools must be an ongoing activity for the entire school. If students are used to checking a blog for assignments or working on a Google Doc with a peer, then not being in school will not impact their schooling as much as say a student who has no way to contact their teacher beyond email.

I am not writing this post to make teachers feel bad about their or to discredit any schools. We are all doing the best we can. I just want to point out that using technology is not something that schools can force their teachers to do only in times of emergency. Teachers who are not familiar with a variety of tools that will help them connect with their students will stumble and become anxious when forced to change the way they teach. Schools must imagine different possibilities:

We need to imagine a school where everyone blogs- teachers, students, parents, and administration. Imagine a school that has its own youtube channel and podcast space. Imagine a school that uses chatzy as a back channel even when school is in session. Imagine a school where students are constantly working together using Google Docs and wikis. Imagine a school where almost every knows how to use several tools to connect, communicate, and collaborate. Imagine a school where the school day never ends, and the work can be done anywhere any time. Imagine a school where the teacher uses class time to coach and guide and not lecture or “teach.”

This is the type of school I am trying to build. You can use Blackboard, but the beauty of the Web is that it is all free and available to us all. We simply must be able to take some risks and trust our students to learn from their mistakes.

Here are some examples of what is possible:

I had planned to use this week to get my students started on our online 2.0 journey. I already have two classrooms, one in Canada and one in Thailand, waiting to meet us. We have sketched out some rough ideas of how our three classes will interact, but I needed to start showing my students the tools and skills they will need to make the kinds of connections I want them to make throughout the year. I was going to walk them through each step in class, but due to Swine Flu we were forced to “just do it.”

I was actually a bit excited when I heard we would not be in school. Rather than fumble around with how I would deliver my traditional material, I began instead to think about how I would help my students quickly learn about and use a variety of tools that would help them connect and stay tuned with our class community. I was not interested in posting worksheets for them to complete. I wanted to recreate our classroom online, so we could have conversations. It is this sense of community that I feel is missing from Blackboard.

The first thing I did was launch our class blog. I had planned to start blogging soon anyway, so it was perfect timing. I used the blog as the central place to communicate with the kids. Unlike Blackboard where individual classes are closed and hard to access, a simple blog allows me to share information, media, and much more in an environment that inspires commenting, conversations, and community. The hope was to quickly create an area where we could meet and move onto completing a variety of tasks.

Once the blog was published, I had to find a way to direct the kids to it. Out of 50 students I had the emails of about 29; I started there. I posted a link on our school website under the page for English work, and on the first day I had 81 visits to the blog. Because my students are not yet familiar with RSS, I had to find a way to let them know when there was going to be new posts.

I decided to create a Facebook Fan Page, (I have asked that adults not become a fan of the page yet. I want my students to feel safe and really understand what we are doing, before I introduce our network to the bigger global network.) In three days already has 23 fans. I embedded a Facebook feed in the sidebar to allow students who do not have Facebook a chance to stay tuned with announcements. I can now also send the group updates straight from Facebook. I now have an easy way to share class announcements with the kids in the place where they spend their time online. Instead of hoping that they would check Blackboard, I know that they can simply get an status update telling them to take a survey on the blog as they chat with their friends.

For the first task, I asked students to create Gmail accounts. Later in the year I want to use Google Docs and Google Reader, so I felt that this was a crucial first step. With little help from me, I now have 23 students created Gmail accounts. A few students had problems so I set up a chatzy chat room to answer questions. I experimented with various video conferencing sites and dodged a major bullet and didn’t use Tiny Chat due to some inappropriate material on their site, but found TokBox to be very useful and I hope to use it in the future.

I’ve used Youtube as a way to create videos for my students who are not native English speakers and may not be able to read all of the text on the site. As the students perform each task, I give them a little more to do. They have in three days: created Gmail accounts, commented on a blog, signed up to be a Facebook Fan, responded to some quotes and images, and finally answered a survey I posted from a Google Form.

Not only have I not fallen behind this week, I have actually helped my kids learn real life skills by doing and not just talking about it. By quickly building our online community, I think the kids will better understand the power of these tools and how they can use them to help their learning.

I hope you will stay tuned to what we are doing throughout the year. I have big plans for the year and this is a great group of kids. We will create individual blogs next week, as well as set up RSS on Google Reader, begin to think about tagging bookmarks with Delicious, and we will set up a class wiki and Flickr page. Why have I chosen these tools? I see them as the most vital for my own learning. I use them often, feel comfortable using them, and I really understand their value in creating a network.

Empowering teachers to use these tools is a huge first step in creating a school that can function on or offline without missing a step. Swine Flu or no Swine Flu, I know my class will be connected and ready to learn, share, and teach others. The question now is how do we get other teachers on board and feeling comfortable using these tools?

If you are interested and want ideas on how to be a more effective virtual teacher join us on our journey. We are learning as we go, but would love the company. What do you think? How has Swine Flu affected your teaching? What has worked for you? What has been hard? Do you find Blackboard useful? Do you use any other tools to connect with your students? Let the conversation begin!

I was going to beginning by saying that I have another Twitter Tale for my readers, but really when I look at how the following events played out, I realized that Twitter was but only one of the tools that allowed for a group of eighth graders in Missouri to connect with my three year old daughter in Qatar.

Like many stories of connections made across time zones, cultures, and age groups this one involved some risk taking, some curiosity, some opened minds, and I hope some learning. Let me lay out what happened:

A few days ago I started reading The Last Child in the Woods. It sparked in me a sense of panic and guilt about the amount of time my daughter spends outdoors connecting to nature, getting fresh air, and exploring. I decided I wanted us to begin exploring our surroundings together. Even if our immediate surroundings was an empty dry desert field covered in garbage and construction refuse.

We went outside with our cameras in hand to see what we could discover. I wish I had a field recorder, so I could have recorded her excitement and enthusiasm. We spoke of the wind, the setting sun, and how plants can grow with little water. We spoke about the power of art to make the ugly appear beautiful. We asked questions of each other. We guessed at answers. The two of us were a mobile outdoor classroom. Father and daughter in an empty field in the desert.

When we came home I asked her if she wanted to see her pictures on the big screen of the computer and talk about what she had seen. The result was a very simple photo essay. Being the proud dad that I am, I decided to share the experience with my Twitter network. I thought that was the end of it, until last night when I noticed several comments come pouring in. After a quick request as to who was responsible I found out that @wmchamberlain had shared Kaia’s blog post with his class. I suggest you go and read some of the 43 comments.

I immediately got in touch with him through Twitter, and he told me that a few of his students were curious if we had electricity in Doha. I told him, if he was interested, I could Skype into his classroom and answer some quick questions. So there we were, a small classroom in rural Missouri and me in my kitchen talking about our surroundings. We were following our curiosity. We were discovering new things. We were learning, beyond classroom walls, because we had all decided to take risks and be open with our lives. I told wmchamberlain’s students that since Kaia is only three she may have a hard time reading their comments and really grasp what is going on. I suggested they create some video comments. Which they did:

The next day Kaia and I sat in our kitchen and watched their video. She is still too young to really grasp the connections that she is making, but in a few years these connections and this type of interaction will be ubiquitous in her life. I hope that her teachers are ready to help her continue on this journey.

Later I found another comment from a teacher in New Zealand and a Tweet from another teacher in Alaska who was impressed by the work she had observed unfold on Twitter. This story would be pretty cool if it ended here, but I hope that other teachers and other classroom will share this story with their classrooms and parents communities. I hope that this story could not only be a springboard for starting discussion about open pedagogy, taking risks, and connected classrooms, but I also hope that it will open people’s eyes to the themes presented in The Last Child in the Woods. I would love to see people share their stories about how they are taking their kids outdoors. I hope that classrooms will begin to share how they are reconnecting with nature. The irony being that they are using technology to weave their stories together.

In closing and on a different note, this experience was also eye opening for me as a parent, because having Kaia exposed like this made me hyper aware of how vulnerable I am making her. I am sure many of you read Alec Curosa’s post a few month back about his Flickr stalker. I started to think about how much trust we ask that parents put in us as teachers. Kaia’s blog started as a way to share photos with family, it has quickly become a way that we are documenting her life. And now, it is becoming a way that she is connecting with people throughout the world. This is scary. Part of me wants to pull back and keep her our little secret. But if we want our students to feel comfortable and be cautious online, we must be able to do the same with our own children.

As teachers and technology evangelist it is easy to ask parents to allow us to expose their children to a variety of experiences online, but as a parent it can all seem so scary. I agree with many people that if we choose to live open lives online, we must trust that the positive experience will outweigh they dangerous ones, but there is nothing like seeing pictures of your daughter on a youtube video created by someone else to spark up the paranoia. Where can this go? Will I always be able to control it? Should I be able to? These are all important questions to ask as we push the boundaries of our lives and our learning online.

What do you think? What is the value in this experience? Is the risk of exposing ourselves and our children online worth the connections that will be made and the lessons that will be learned?

Several people over the last few years have insisted that I read A Whole New Mind-Why Right-Brainers Will Rule The Future by Daniel H. Pink. While I am usually wary about reading books by business gurus sitting atop best-sellers list, I gave in, much like I did with The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman, (a man I cannot stand) and read Pinks book. I was disappointed in both books and much for the same reasons.

I did not hate it as much as Gary Stager, but I was not overly impressed. As a language Arts teacher I saw nothing new in this book that would help me with the way I teach kids. The ideas and “skills” he is trying to help the reader hone are what English teachers do out of habit and necessity. I don’t need a book to tell me that I need to be playful, empathetic, and creative. These are the very reasons I became an English teacher, perhaps some in a more “left-brained” field needs to be reminded that smiling and laughing are good, but I could do without the pedantic sermon.

The book made some interesting observations, but I was never invested enough to make strong statements either way. This is a typical airport bookstore book, intended to tell people what they already know and make them feel better about this knowledge.

I will say that I really did like his chapter on Design and the importance that good design can and should have on our lives, but the rest of the book reads like a simple self-help book for people who are not aware they can be creative.

Perhaps some corporate square who has wasted his life pursuing material happiness, finds comfort in learning that he too can draw, but this epiphany was not new to me. You can read the book for yourself if you want to, but let me summarize the gist:

Be empathetic, love others, be playful, and synthesis instead of analyze. As a self-proclaimed right-brainer this book was too obvious and repetitive for me.

I did, however, take away this one quote:

When facts become so widely available and instantly accessible, each one becomes less valuable. What begins to matter more is the ability to place these facts in context and to deliver them with emotional impact.

Sitting at the blogger café unable to get online. The situation is dripping with irony, but I digress. People I should be connecting with surround me, but I find myself retreating back to where I feel safe. In words.

I have been plagued by a sense of bitterness and apathy since I arrived at NECC, and no matter how I try to shed my prejudices I find myself asking: What is all this hype? Surrounded by snake oil salesmen and product pushers, it all seems like it is too much, too big.

Ironically, I find it easier to make connections swimming the waters online rather than making connections than sitting face to face with someone and discussing yet again how kids learn differently today and need a new set of skills to succeed in the 21st job market. I see my role as an educator as bigger than this. How much longer do we need to discuss these ideas? I am only thinking out loud here, and I hope I do not offend, but I am ready for a new discussion. I am not sure what this conversation will look, but perhaps that is what we should be talking about.

I can quip about how it is not about the technology but the teaching, but then again that platitude is neither original nor progressing the issues. If anything this conference so far has made me less evangelical about educational technology.  I don’t need a session sponsor by Cisco telling me how to use technology in my classroom.

Connection may be the name of the game here, but I still find myself the awkward teenager in a room full of cool kids pontificating about ideas that I would rather simply do than talk about.

For me, it all boils to down to a simple axiom, and while I feel like broken record and a bit of a simpleton when I express it, but learning need not be this complicated. Yes, there may be new skills. Yes there are new tools, but ultimately we simply need to be engaging students by creating authentic learning communities built around honest open relationships. These tools, these ideas are mere ways where we can create these communities. Students could careless about any of the ideas at NECC. They just want a teacher who is willing to be honest with them, respect them, and willing practice what they preach and learn along with them. The rest is all hype.

I have only been here for a day, but as a student here at NECC, I have not seen any communities like the ones I have described. I want to collaborate with others. I want to create a product. I want to use the tools, that so many companies seem hell bent on selling my school, to lean something new. Where is this happening at NECC? If these secessions exist, please show me the way.

On June 4th, I gave a talk called Life as an Open Book at Qatar Academy for the first ever Tedx event put together by Julie Lindsay.

I spent quite a bit of time planning the talk, but the execution was not exactly what I had in mind. I was plagued by repetition, false starts, and a general sense of incoherence. I have attempted to piece together as much of the original talk as I could.

The main idea is:

How can we encourage teachers to look beyond their fear, follow their passions and begin to create open honest online identities that reflect their true selves in order to better connect with their students for a more authentic learning environment. Eventually creating a system that not only allows for teacher creativity and expression but actively promotes and encourages it, so teachers are not too busy or scared to express themselves online, and actually given time to reflect, create, and share.

Life as an Open Book from Intrepid on Vimeo.

I would appreciate any and all comments.

The school where I work is currently only a Primary School this year, but like most schools in Qatar, we are rapidly growing. Next year we will expand to offer lower level Secondary classes as well. Seeing that I will be teaching Year 7, 8, and 9 (read Grade 6,7,8 in the American system) English, I have been given the “opportunity” or is it “task” of creating a curriculum based on the National Strategies from the UK. Perhaps, curriculum is not the exact word, I need help finding content and material to supplement and help teach my curriculum.

While creating an absolute brand new curriculum and finding resources to make it successful from scratch has its appeal, it is a monstrous task for one person. That is why I am recruiting you to help me. I am hoping that the group brain, the network, or communal learning environment I am a part of will help where they can by: suggesting texts, readers, schemes, resources, and any other ideas that may prove to be useful.

I have created this wiki in hopes of making this a very simple process for the people who can help and  spare some time. If the wiki proves difficult you can just leave me a comment on this post, email me, or send me a Tweet. I am sure everyone is beyond busy this time of year, despite this time crunch, however, I was hoping that you could take ten minutes to look over my document and fill in what you can.

Here are some sample questions:

• Which novels do you teach in 6th grade?
• What is the best writing program you have seen?
• Do you use an anthology or a grammar book? Why or why not? Which one?

You get the point. Any help will be greatly appreciated. If you are reading this post and you are not an English teacher, I would appreciate it if you could share the link with anyone in the English department of your school.

Thanks in advance Learning Network; let’s see what you got! If Web 2.0 is truly what we hype it up to be, let’s see how she runs when put to the test!

After reading many of the comments on this post, I have realized that I was only looking for content and not really thinking about curriculum, so I have begun thinking about essential questions and narrowing things down a bit on this page. Feel free to contribute in either space.

I was going to start this post with the line, “I hate to toot my own horn but…” instead I decided to start it with, “To toot my own horn…” Sometimes, the affects of our work comes back in ways we could never imagine, and it is in these waves that we can feel reassured and confident that we are on the right track!

I received the following emails from a woman I used to wrok with at my former school. The same school from which I was forced to resign:

Hey Jabiz!

I am teaching a new elective this year, called “Be the Change.”  I recently asked students to respond to the Wiki prompt: Who inspires you, and why? This was the response from (insert name of student), currently in 8th grade:

I am going to have to go with my 3rd quarter 7th grade social studies/ language arts teacher, Mr. Raisdana. Mr. Raisdana was an amazing teacher. He really made us think about how we were learning. He taught us not the skills to join the workforce of today, but the skills needed to be a learner so we can learn to be the workforce of tomorrow however different they may be. He helped us create networks of learners through blogging. He was an activist, a supporter of global peace. Sadly, he was fired. I do not want to bring into this place any discussion of whether or not he was fired justly but I will say that I miss him. We lost a creative teacher who helped make learning fun. (After all, how many teachers do you know who keep a bowl of dried fruit on their desk for everyone to enjoy?) He encouraged us to use our brains to a fuller extent, for a project on ancient Rome, a parody of the song Beautiful Girl is acceptable. And he keeps working, even with a new full time teaching position, on is own learners network. I hope I can learn from him and am able to adopt some of his qualities in my self.

This is why I teach. Period. To get through to kids. To get them to think for themselves and question the world around them. I am sharing this because I am proud of the work I do and felt the need to spread the joy!