"Life is good" these days.
Kiddo's solo eating big-boy apples like gang-busters as of late. No need for the quaint days of easy-to-handle applesauce no more!
My 8th grade boys soccer team is on a 5-0 streak going into the final 2 games of the season. Even better, they took me seriously yesterday when I told them that any ball that they kick "off the carpet" (i.e. in the air) -- pass or shot -- would cause them to immediatly be put on the bench. Focus was on crisp, intentional passing. Even if they were up 8-0 (as they were). NO exceptions. At one point, I had 9 of the starters sitting on the bench because of that rule. All being said, they played brilliant ball day, making coach very proud of 'em.
Geting to live-blog with Karl Fisch's students/colleagues today via his striking collaboration with Dan Pink (yup, he's gonna be working with Karl's kids directly) to explore the 6 senses from A Whole New Mind. We'll be tackling "story" today. Been looking forward to this for a month now.
Oh, and after the afternoon faculty meeting, I'm jumping a plane to Philadelphia to take part in Chris Lehmann's/SLA's first-ever "EduCon 2.0" weekend-long shindig. Remembering to a cold afternoon in Philly last winter when Will Richardson, Chris and I walked the streets to head to a Radio Shack for some geeky tools to make something geeky-cool, and we talked about the "wouldn't it be cool if there was a 'TED for ED' conference" somewhere, at some point in time. Well, Chris and his SLA community took that idea really seriously. And all of us that are flying in or just walking down the street to join the event this weekend are really blessed by that. On a personal note, I'm looking forward to staying over at Chris' house and seeing his kids and lovely better-half...since at the end of the day, the human factor always trumps the technology factor for me.
And man, oh man, oh man, oh man, I'm just giddy that my 10th grade students have already jumped so gracefully into the blogging waters this week as I finally get a chance to beta-test the 4 class blog projects I just unwrapped this week. Truth be told, I have little to no gumption to force this into the default "global, flat, transparent" classroom game. Nope. Maybe one day we'll open up for outsiders in Bangor, Maine or Bangladesh to add their voices. For now, however, this is just about their own collaboration. We're using a blog platform simply as an expedient way to help us develop a 24/7 writing workshop mindset. Each student is being graded on the quality and quantity of their 'responses' (i.e. comments) based on a collection of weekly prompts. Assuming all goes well at semester's end, we'll do a deepthink as to what it opens the door to in terms of expanding the classroom walls a bit in the year(s) to come. For now, however, this is about writing 24/7. And my kids are already submitting some bang-up submissions...and we haven't even really gotten serious yet (he smiles).
l
I love the soccer rule. I know a coach here who tells parents at the start of the season that any one of them that yells out "kick it!" during a game will be told to leave. His don't kick the ball, they dribble, shoot, or pass.
Posted by: Matt Langdon | January 25, 2008 at 11:35 AM
I too love the soccer story. I know nothing about sports but was in charge of a school league for elementary schools around the campus. There were two Catholic schools, one predominately Italian Americans, St. Regis and one predominately African Americans, Hill District. The St. Regis kids were all bravado, and really good. But the coach of the Hill District team over the season stressed skills. Skills won out in the end.
Here's a study for liabraians looking to the future of the Google generation:http://www.bl.uk/news/pdf/googlegen.pdf something I take from it is we can't assume young scholars will learn to be facile using technology without teaching them skills.
Posted by: John Powers | January 25, 2008 at 03:16 PM
Great to meet you at SLA/EduCon. Story and the transformative power when you can find and tell your own story(ies) to an audience that affirms you--is your community--wow. Love to compare notes as our blogging projects unfold.
LD
Posted by: Laura Deisley | January 27, 2008 at 09:59 PM
Great to meet you and chat at EduCon/SLA, fabulous conversation. Love to continue it.
Posted by: Laura Deisley | January 27, 2008 at 10:01 PM