At the Inauguration, with 2 million of our closest friends

My brother got spare tickets to the Inauguration this week, and at the last minute I decided to take my daughter down for it. (My other child had to stay in Annapolis with family because he had a sprained ankle.) At work--I work in book publishing--we've been developing a series called Living History, and it's predicated on the idea that media distances us from our world rather than bringing us closer to it, and that it's on us to actively overcome turning into a passive citizenry. So, although there were a lot of reasons not to go--too cold, my son's ankle, better view on the tube, busy time to be missing work, bad time to be missing school--Monday night we climbed into the car and headed down.


My daughter, M, was very excited about the idea of being there. The reality was very different: I don't think either of us has ever been so cold--I didn't know at one point if our legs would work to get us back to the Metro at the end of the day! Neither of us had ever been in such a crowd--a crowd that compressed constantly, surging forward into funnels of security. I was so afraid somebody would stumble; the people behind them wouldn't be able to stop and help them up. I was so afraid M would be pulled away from me--I'd never be able to find her. M, who likes historical fiction and has been reading about the Holocaust, said that she felt like we were being herded into the gas chambers. And I knew what she meant! This went on for three hours--from 5am until 8am, when we finally made it into one of the ticketed areas. By then, the idea of being there had lost all excitement for her, and it became instead an arduous physical and emotional exercise in endurance.


And yet, the crowd was so...loving. There's no other word. Strangers helping one another--lifting each other, holding each other's arms, telling each other stories. At one point, in the crush, a woman called out that her child had to pee. The port-a-potties were about 100 feet away, on the other side of a barrier. And there was no way a person could move through the crowd between her and the potties. A cop near the potties lifted his arms, and the woman lifted her child, and the crowd passed that kid over their heads for 100 feet to the cop, who took her to pee and then lifted her back up into the crowd, who passed her over their heads into the raised arms of her mother. Where on earth--in what other circumstances--would you surrender your child to a crushing crowd in metro DC?? But there was such fellowship.


In the end, M didn't get to see Obama face-to-face. She saw the scene on the Capitol platform on a jumbotron, and the audio was off by a few seconds from the video because the sound ricocheted between the buildings and down the Mall. She didn't hear him take the oath--we were moving closer and had hit a sound vaccum--but she heard every word of his speech. She saw people crying, and people praying. She jumped for joy, and warmth. She listened, intently. She wrote in the dirt--"M was here, 1/20/09." And we talked, here and there through the hours, about the difference between witnessing history, the way we can through books and TV, and bearing witness to history, the way we only can by standing there, and feeling kinship with all those strangers who were, like us, honoring that day by showing up. "Someday you'll forget how cold you were, and you'll only remember that you were here."


She's still not there. But I'm so glad we went.

Blogging and the Online Textbook: 2009

Blogging and the Online Texbook

Hello Everyone,

Upon returning from our holiday vacation the students in our class have taken on two endeavors quite successfully. The first and foremost initiative has been our classroom blog. As mentioned in the previous post I introduced the blog format in the classroom with a round-robin writing activty using ancient Greek philosophical quotes. Students practiced reading a previous students' thoughts on an idea before developing his/her own and sharing it. Time in the school's computer room was spent reviewing previously established passwords and usernames for the blog found at classblogmeister.com. This particular site was chosen for its design for use in schools. Unlike the blog here at blogger.com, classblogmeister alllows teachers to establish a site and create passwords for students without the use of emails. The site also contains editing functions allowing teachers to preview posts, comment, and organize within the site for classroom use. While the shell of the website is not as intuitive as others, the students seem to have few problems navigating it. 

During our first round of postings I have told the studnets that our goal is to have each student post an article properly following the "Instructions for posting on the blog" found on our classroom site. Of particular importance is the need to create their articles in a WORD document prior to posting. As they have been warned, classblogmeister has a timer that will log students off after several minutes of inactivity. If students explore the web to research and idea, use a thesaurus.... they could be logged off and lose their work. Creating their article in WORD also allows them to edit and save their articles in a folder in case they need to resubmit. Your help in reminding them to do this would be appreciated.

The second technological endeavor I began last week was an instructed use of the online textbook. While I began the year showing the studnets how to access the online textbook, I sensed that not many of them had explored it for assignments involving the text. Found at http://my.hrw.com the online textbook offers some wonderful features for the studnets. Once the children log in with their username and password (given in class and on a handout in their binder) they can access not only the textbook digitally, but they can also play the audio recording, have hyperlinked vocabulary defined and read to them for pronunciation, use support links for further exploration on topics, take sample quizes, and so on. The audio recording of the sections of reading can also be downloaded as an MP3 file to your computer at home and then uploaded to their iPOD or MP3 player so they can "Rock Out" to some ancient history reading in the car on the way to grandma's house!

The technology and the learning opportunities it offers  the children is very exciting. It can also be overwhelming. Please email me if you would like to talk about the use of any of these devices, and most certainly I would love to have you comment here for others to read.

Have a wonderful day.

John Priest

Greek Philosphers - 6th Grade?

Greek Philosophy in Sixth Grade?

To introduce a proper format for blogging I employed an old teaching method know as "round-robin writing". Typically this collaborative writing is used in fiction writing and storytelling. A group of students (four or five) are given a sheet of paper and a brief prompt to begin their writing. At a prescribed time the students stop, slide their papers to the student to their left (right) and they continue the story. This process continues until everyone has contributed.

As future authors of a classroom blog the students will be logging into our blog with a user name and password, finding their social studies class from a list of five, and responding to a question, thought, quotation.... When they respond they will be required to address, respond to, agree with, disagree with... one student's ideas that may have posted before them. If they are the first to post, they will be forging the way!

In class this past week I arranged the students in group of four and five. Each student received a paper that had a short quotation from a Greek philosopher. Ask your child to see the paper they have in their binder. Below the quote were lines for responses. The quotes were thoughtful, thought-provoking, and for some, quite difficult to initially comprehend. Students were told to try and explain what they believed the philosopher was trying to state, cite an example of this from his/her life, and list any questions that come to mind. As I circled the room I often defined words from the quotes, reworded passages, and guided students towards meaning (scaffolding-link).  As the students switched papers the responses became easier, as they were able to "piggy-back" on the previous students' responses.

What was most difficult for the students was to connect meaningfully with a previous student's response. Often children would write, "I agreed with Sam and what he wrote." and leave it at that. I explained to the students that what they need to do is agree, but build. Tell about something that happened that reminds them of this idea. They can disagree, but build. Ask the previous student a question, or write about something that contradicts that idea. Go in a new direction. Acknowledge a previous student's thought, but interpret the question/quote in a new way. The key here is contributing meaningfully, not just lip service. This will be a challenge, but time well spent on teaching children collaboration, and creative thought. Blogging will begin after our holiday break... darn those snow days!

J. Priest

Visual resource

Let me know if you know about this site:
www.visualgeography.com

Pick the part of the world you're exploring, then click on a flag to see pictures of the country, currency, sports, food etc.

You can also click to hear a sample of the spoken language.

I came across it while helping my son Matt - an alum of Mr. Priest's class - find an image bank for a project he's doing on Haiti.

The site was mentioned in a teachers' site for technology education.

Parents: Model Good Practice

Parents: Model Good Practice J

          If you’ve made it this far in the blog I know that one of two things is true. Either you are deeply interested and invested in the idea of blogging and your child’s education, or you have a lot of time on your hands! Either way I am thrilled to have your attention. As I mentioned in my welcome page, I am a life-long learner. I share Socrates’ belief that those who continually question the world around them will achieve the highest levels of self-awareness. I imagine that many of you share this belief as well as the understanding that by having a dialogue about our ideas we can better understand each other and ourselves. To that end I again encourage you to post to this blog. Share with other parents and teachers the thoughts, concerns, and questions that you have. As your child ventures into blogging, model this meta-cognitive process for him/her. I look forward to blogging with you.

John Priest

Blogging Practice in Our Classroom

                Blogging Practices in Our Classroom

            I would like to give you an idea of how blogging will be put into practice in our class this year. Initially, blogging will be introduced with very little computer usage. The most important thing to do is to establish parameters, expectations, and learning objectives with the students. It is critical that they conditionally appreciate how the blog is a learning tool in the same way that I have described it here in our classroom blog. While discussing log-in procedures and posting instructions we will also be addressing security and appropriate responses. It is critical to distinguish between blogging educationally and social networking. Too often children view communication online in strictly social terms. The use of abbreviations, slang, and improper grammar overcrowd text boxes from iPhones to Facebook. Social networking is fun, but blogging in the classroom is meant for a different audience and more academic purpose. Blogging then will be discussed as a collaborative vehicle of communication .

            Typically, each month a group of six students will be required to post to our blog. The topic of discussion will be something thought provoking related to our present studies in class. For instance, if we are studying Egypt, there may be a question put forth such as, “Is the excavation of ancient graves sacrilegious and disrespectful?” If we are studying ancient Greece perhaps there will be a quote from Socrates that they must respond to. Students will be given a rubric that describes the criteria for which they will be graded. A premium will be put on self-expression, self-reflection, peer reflection (response to previous postings), and cited support (if assigned). In this way students will be exercising the skills that promote life-long learning, social awareness, and meta-cognition, all incredibly valuable skills.

            Watch Out

            For many of the students this will be a new experience. While some of the students have had limited exposure to blogging, few have had formal development of the skill for educational purposes. Last year only 12 of 113 students polled informally on our team acknowledged having used blogs for school assignments. Most students will take to the idea of posting naturally. Some may find it a little frustrating at first. If your child does not use technology they may need a little assistance, but for those of you who need to limit your child’s use of the computer, you may be surprised at the results. Often times many of those students who find it painful to elaborate on their writing take to blogging famously. What seems to happen is that the child realizes that she can not only express herself through a comfortable medium, but that she can also provide meaningful information, links, video, and various other support for their ideas. 

Blogging and Theory

Blogging and Theory

            Earlier in the blog I cited John Dewey, a theorist, psychologist, and educational reformer whose work on educational progressivism (amongst its various titles) at the beginning of the twentieth century still rings true today. Beginning with Dewey’s laboratory schools in Chicago in 1896 and continuing with his work at Columbia University, Dewey focused on the individual’s place within the larger social community. More important than that was the individual’s social interaction with the community. Some of the constructs and facets of educational progressivism that Dewey shared with other professionals in his field were;

Group work and development of social skills

Experiential learning(Link)

Understanding and action as the goals of learning as opposed to rote knowledge

Education for social responsibility and democracy

Emphasis on life-long learning and social skills

Dewey, John. Dewey on Education, edited by Martin Dworkin. New York: Teachers college Press, 1959

 

            The use of our classroom blog fosters the student’s role as a citizen in our community of learners. The student becomes an active learner with a voice, and as a learner allows them to appreciate and draw upon others’ thoughts. Learning in this way the student sees the process as dynamic and evolutionary.