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More education. Less schooliness. Open Invitation to Join the Conversation at Our AP Literature Ning without commentsPrint This Post Print This Post Last week, I mentioned reading Jeff Wasserman's post about how schools teach bad writing (the 5-Paragraph Essay and other abominations). I mentioned how it made me "want to make my AP Lit class Ning public. We're having forum discussions about Organic Form v. Mechanical." The more I thought about atomizing those Ning walls and welcoming the world of people who like to talk about reading, writing, and how schooliness creates lifelong non-readers and non-writers, the more attractive the idea became. So whoever you are, if conversations such as the one below entice you to share your thoughts with my students about literacy in schools versus the literacy so many of us adults managed to grow into despite them (okay, maybe you were lucky and had good teachers, which would be interesting to hear about), then come on in. My students gave me permission to invite you.

"I stumbled across Classroom 2.0 after reading an interesting article in the Village Voice on innovating learning efforts in the New York City Public Schools. These schools, instead of keeping kids out of social networking spaces and prohibiting the use of cell phones, were teaching kids how to use technology in an effective and relevant way."

blog post about why nings are a good thing in schools

Classroom strategies backed by research and ongoing teacher development are helping to narrow the achievement gap at this Title I school. See the infographic below for more details.

"special education, SPED, Special Needs, iPad, Apple, Schools"

"special education, students, SPED, functional skills, high school, teachers"

In the midst of explaining my decision to Jim Bouchard, Senior Program Development Specialist & OLLI Coordinator at CSUDH, the creative light bulb went off in my head and electrified my brain with a solution. I pitched Jim on the idea of letting the Crenshaw High School Digital Media Team teach the class.

"If you're a teacher, what are you doing to foster collaboration among your students? And I'm talking more than putting them into groups of four and having the students create a PowerPoint presentation together. What are you really doing to fundamentally change the structure of your classroom from one of isolation (do your own work), to one of collaboration (work with others)? What are you doing to build their skills to succeed in a corporate environment that requires them to collaborate on a global scale? If you're a student, what are you doing to improve your own collaboration skills - and those of your peers? What are you demanding of your schools, your teachers, your administrators to help prepare you for the collaborative marketplace that is your future?"

Interesting interview with Brad Bird of Pixar that might have implication for how schools are designed.

An effective classroom-based program of differentiated instruction, called Reteach and Enrich, kicked off eight straight years of success at Mesquite Elementary.

Mark Pesce's blog post"...these educational institutions assert that the lectures themselves aren't the real reason students spend $50,000 a year to attend these schools; the lectures only have full value in context. This is true, but it discounts the possibility that some individuals or group of individuals might create their own context around the lectures. And this is where the future seems to be pointing...."

"...The network is acting like a universal solvent, dissolving all of the boundaries that have kept things separate. It's not just dissolving the boundaries of distance - though it is doing that - it's also dissolving the boundaries of preference. Although there will always be differences in taste and delivery, some instructors are simply better lecturers - in better command of their material - than others..."

Exploration of team teaching and it's challenges.