Practical Theory - Media

SLA in Scholastic Administrator Magazine

chris@practicaltheory.org (Chris Lehmann) — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 12:28:55 -0700

Science Leadership Academy is featured (along with High Tech High and New Tech High and Gary Stager and Jane Krauss, nice company!) in this month's Scholastic Administrator Magazine in The Power of Project Learning -- an article about project-based learning. In addition to some cool shots of Gamal Sherif and Matt VanKouwenberg (and a nifty one of me, I admit), there are some great quotes such as:

Sometimes the results surprise both the teacher and learner, says Zachary Chase, an English teacher at SLA. To learn about the oral tradition associated with Homers The Odyssey, students were charged with finding a family story, getting a first-person recording of the story, and preserving it to pass onto their children. When one student found a bunch of letters from an uncle who had left his family to go to California during the Gold Rush, he used GarageBand to record himself reading the letters. He altered the voice to make it sound like that of an older man, Chase says. This project not only outstripped the teachers demands, but the success of the final project even surprised the student, he adds.

But be sure to read the whole article.

Joe 1.0 -- Joe's Non-Netbook

chris@practicaltheory.org (Chris Lehmann) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 21:22:22 -0700

Here's Mr. Chase and SLA Junior Joe having some (meaningful) fun with video as Joe tries to interact with a non-netbook.

What is very fun about this is that it is an improv that started because Mr. Chase wandered over with the camera and came upon the kids at the table already having a conversation about the topic.

Enjoy.

Transparency, The Police and Youth

chris@practicaltheory.org (Chris Lehmann) — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 09:36:07 -0700

[Update: According to a local Arkansas news station, the officer has been put on administrative leave. Also of note, within a few hours of posting this, a reporter for a local Hot Springs travel magazine had posted a comment on the blog. Wild.]

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach pointed me to this. Watch it.

Here's the original posting.

Judge for yourself what you think of the officer's behavior. My two cents: I think that his behavior crossed a line. It was pretty obvious those kids weren't threats to anyone but his own sense of authority. And the kids YouTubed it. Good. Let the world see, and let the world judge.

If you are offended. If you think that this shows a real problem between youth and authority. And if you think it might be a good time to use the power of the internet to speak truth to power, then politely call or email or fax the Hot Springs Police Department. I have. For the record, the officer I spoke to says that they are not accepting comments on this, which is too bad and speaks to a larger problem because it appears that they have no feedback loop for the public, which I would say is a major issue. But that doesn't mean we can't call and let them know that we all are watching.

This from the original poster's entry:

Oh and just in case you were interested, the officers name is Joey Williams, and he works for the:
Hot Springs Arkansas Police Department
Phone: (501) 321-6789
Fax: (501) 321-6708
Chief of Police, Bobby Southard
Email: bsouthard@cityhs.net

The End of Productivity

chris@practicaltheory.org (Chris Lehmann) — Thu, 31 May 2007 21:22:19 -0700

Facebook now has online roshambo. So much for being a productive member of society.

(To make this an entry worth reading... it's moves like this that makes Facebook so well run. As opposed to MySpace, Facebook makes major chunks of its API available so that third-party developers can create apps for Facebook. It's not quite open-source, but it's close, and it means that Facebook will continue to add all kinds of functionality. It's a really smart Web 2.0 strategy.)

Getting YouTube in the Classroom

chris@practicaltheory.org (Chris Lehmann) — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 13:17:38 -0700

For all those folks who work in districts that block YouTube or GoogleVideo and therefore have been frustrated when they haven't been able bring that amazing video into the classroom, here's a post from Hackszine.com on how to download GoogleVideo and YouTube to your computer.

I'm excited about this in the short-term because it'll allow me to show the Web 2.0 video to students... but in the long term, I'm wondering about this.

On the one hand, this is good because it allows teachers and administrators to bring the content they view appropriate into the classroom. Now, anyone in charge of filtering can say, "Just download the video and bring it in... we trust your judgment to bring content into the classroom, but now we don't have to worry that the kids can view any of the inappropriate stuff on YouTube."

That seems like a good thing, prima facie. It's exactly the kind of hack that a lot of policy-makers would probably love. But I'm not sure it's a good thing because it sidesteps the larger question of how we, both as schools and as citizens, deal with the growing amount of information and content in the world. It feels like a 1995 solution to a 2007 problem. We need to teach kids how to make sense of more than just the content we present them with. We need them to make informed, intelligent decisions about what is and isn't appropriate, what is and isn't academic, what is and isn't true. YouTube is a growing source of information, entertainment and culture in our society... it's a bit of a muddled mess, and on a lot of levels, it is therefore the perfect place to ask a lot of these questions. But most of our schools can't even entertain that question because the site is blocked.

So yes, I'll use this hack, and I'll encourage SLA teachers and students to use this hack when they find content that they feel belongs in our classes, but I think it's a short-term patch to a much larger, much more interesting, much more troubling and much more thoughtful question.

The Machine is Us/ing Us

chris@practicaltheory.org (Chris Lehmann) — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 00:53:19 -0700

If you are an SLA community member reading this at school, read it at home or on a network where YouTube isn't blocked. It's a really interesting, provocative piece about Web 2.0 technology and some of the changes it may cause in our society.

I'd love to see a discussion start around this video and the questions it raises.

(And if you are a blogger who has seen this linked to four hundred other blog sites already, I apologize...)

Teacher Movies

chris@practicaltheory.org (Chris Lehmann) — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 19:15:05 -0700

So I read this post on Dan Meyer's blog today, referencing an Onion piece entitled "Inner-City Teacher Inspires Students to Stab Him", and I admit I was angry.

The Onion piece is what it is, meant clearly to poke fun at The Freedom Writers movie and Hollywood's tradition of making the Heroic Teacher movie (Stand and Deliver, Dangerous Minds, etc....) but it rubs me the wrong way. Here's the entire piece:

LOS ANGELES23-year-old Teach For America participant Jonathan Fitzsimmons remains in critical condition today at CedarsSinai Medical Center after he inspired some of the most troubled, hard-to-reach students in his 11th-grade English class to stab him Monday. "Before Mr. Fitzsimmons came along, nobody had been dedicated and hardworking enough to show us that we had the power to make a difference," said student and stabbing participant Gabriel Salazar, who added that Fitzsimmons' innovative teaching games and insistence his students do their homework were just two reasons the class sacrificed their free time after school to inflict nearly 20 wounds to his arms, chest, and side. "He motivated us to show himthe world, evenwhat we were capable of." According to a statement released by Fitzsimmons' parents, the "impact these kids had on our son's life will never be forgotten.

I don't know, I freely admit that I might be overly sensitive or wrong on this one. It might be that I was teaching in New York City when Jonathan Levin was tortured, shot and stabbed by a former student, and I remember how devastated all of us at Beacon were when he died. Maybe it's because I met his mother a few years later, after she had become a teacher to honor his memory. I imagine that the writer at the Onion might be young enough to not remember that, and perhaps Dan doesn't remember that either. And perhaps, I shouldn't conflate the two...

But there's something else too... teachers take it on the chin a lot. I mean... I must have seen a dozen "Teacher Sleeps With Student" cases this year. Much of the NCLB conversation feels to me to be really anti-teacher. And everyone who has ever been a student seems to think they know what schools need. And then, every now and then, a movie or TV show comes along and celebrates -- in its Hollywood way -- the accomplishments of a group of students and a teacher.

And yes, the movies can be cloying (full disclosure, I have read a TON about Erin Gruwell and her students, but I have not see the movie) but I'm glad they get made. I hope it's amazing. I hope Hillary Swank wins an Oscar. I hope teachers all over the country go see it for free this week, and most importantly, I hope a few thousand young people see the movie and decide to become teachers.

And let's step back here for a moment -- we hope we can change lives the way Ms. Gruwell did. We hope we have the kind of profound impact on students that she did. She had 150 kids in that project, and 150 kids went to college. I never did that. Not once. Not one year. The highest college rate Beacon ever had in the nine years I was there was somewhere around 95%, and we were pretty damned proud of that. She had 100% college attendance rate. Many of her students are studying to become teachers. Her life -- and the lives of those kids -- matter. And if that's worthy of a Hollywood movie production, I'm really o.k. with that. Beats yet another "Saw" movie as far as I'm concerned.

In fact, I think we need more inspirational movies. We've got YouTube now.. we've got vlogs. Let's make a call to arms. Let's ask every one we know to tell the story of a teacher who made a difference in their lives. Let's make a patchwork quilt of 10,000 videos of people taking two minutes out of their lives to tell the story of how a teacher made a difference. And let's make sure it's a two way street. Let's make a vlog of teachers taking a moment to tell the stories of the students who changed our lives.

And let's leave our cynicism behind when we talk about our profession. There's enough about our lives as teachers that can depress us, dishearten us, frustrate us. When the moment comes when we can celebrate what one of our colleagues has accomplished, let's do so.

Or maybe I'm overreacting.

Rocky Balboa, Nostalgia and Simple Messages

chris@practicaltheory.org (Chris Lehmann) — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 21:00:22 -0700

You have to understand... I grew up with Rocky.

I saw the first Rocky on TV. I saw Rockys II-V in the theaters, three of the four with my dad. I'm from Philly where we treat Rocky with more reverence than we treat real sports figures.

I loved the first two movies. I enjoyed III as a fun movie, I hate admitting that I stood and cheered (with my dad) with Rocky IV. I even watched Rocky V a second time when I saw it on TV.

And when I heard that Stallone was making Rocky Balboa, I cringed. Then I saw the previews. Then I got excited. I decided I had to see it, but that I'd go in with no expectations.

I saw it tonight. I loved it. Is it Stallone's metaphor for his own life? Sure... but hey, so was Rocky. Did I love it in part because there were scenes in the movie that were a block from the theater? Of course. Does it mean more to see this movie in Philly, yep.

And is it a totally unbelievable, hokey, silly movie? Of course. But it also is a wonderful coda to the character, and it returns to the roots of the story. It's a slow movie that cares about its characters and shows what we originally loved in Rocky, the character. He's an optimist, and he's a sweet, caring guy. And, let's face it, no movie has ever done the "inspiring training montage" sequence as well as the Rocky movies.

I saw the movie at the Roxy, one of Philly's more artsy movie theaters, and even in an artsy theater (and all you need to know about Philly is that Rocky Balboa was playing in an art-house theater), folks were cheering during the fight seasons, and everyone stayed for the credits.

And hey, everyone is allowed to believe that they've got one last great moment in them, aren't they?

Grass Roots Google-Bombing

chris@practicaltheory.org (Chris Lehmann) — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 05:58:29 -0700

As lots of folks have pointed out, the first Google entry for Martin Luther King is a racist, slanderous site run by a white supremacy organization. Tom Hoffman points out there's a solution here. Time for a good old-fashioned Google bomb.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Tom's got the HTML code on his page. Grab it (I added the last link, since it's currently second on Google and run by Stanford U.), paste it, and let's fix the problem ourselves. It'll give us one less obvious example of why it's important to check your sources on the internet, but it'll give us a better story to tell about how the internet can be self-correcting sometimes too.

Some Silly YouTube Fun...

chris@practicaltheory.org (Chris Lehmann) — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 16:40:32 -0700

Because sometimes we just have to have a little fun... Barry Manilow and Steven Colbert singing a duet of "I Write the Songs..." Enjoy.

SLA Faculty Podcast!

chris@practicaltheory.org (Chris Lehmann) — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 20:33:06 -0700

Thanks to Arvind Grover and Alex Ragone of 21st Century Learning for doing their podcast last Friday with the SLA faculty. A special thanks to Arvind who gave of his summer time and came down to Philly to help us learn moodle. He was a gracious and talented faciltator and trainer, and we got a ton out of the session. And then, after the session, he and Alex fired up the podcast and we had a blast talking with Alex and Arvind about SLA and 21st Century Learning.

So go give a listen to the podcast. I hope it is just the next in a series that we are able to do with Alex and Arvind about the progress at SLA. And I can't wait until our faculty aren't guests on someone else's podcast, but rather our teachers and students are creating their own shows!

Bruce Springsteen and Politics

chris@practicaltheory.org (Chris Lehmann) — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 21:23:54 -0700

(found on Eschaton)

Soledad O'Brien interviewed Bruce Springsteen, and she kept trying to hammer at Springsteen with questions about whether or not it's appropriate for musicians to have a political viewpoint. This, of course, as he has just come out with The Seeger Sessions CD, a tribute to one of the most eloquent and passionate musician activists of the 20th Century, Pete Seeger.

I do find it offensive that people think music should just entertain us. Music should challenge us - inspire us - make us think. And Springsteen has been doing that for going on 40 years. In the 80s, when Reagan appropriated "Born in the USA" for his campaign, Springsteen started playing a cover of "War (What Is It Good For?)" before "Born in the USA" just in case anyone missed that the song wasn't exactly a rah-rah Reagan-esque vision of America.

Watch the video -- Springsteen seems actually amused and on the verge of anger that he's getting asked these questions.

For those of us who grew up in the 80s...

chris@practicaltheory.org (Chris Lehmann) — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 20:20:42 -0700

I have the website for you.

I was an MTV kid -- I actually had a friend who had cable back when MTV launched, and I saw the second video they ever played. So when John Scalzi linked to a site with over 1,400 videos from the 1980s, I had to go look.

It's amazing how those videos really did capture the styles and sensibility of the time. For example, I remember thinking that Charlie Sexton (of "Beat's So Lonely") being edgy and cool.

Anyway... if that was your music "back in the day," go enjoy. I'm sure many of us could find our secret shame songs that we love on the list. I'm just sad that "Life in a Northern Town" isn't on the site.

And the Podcasts Continue

chris@practicaltheory.org (Chris Lehmann) — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 20:02:04 -0700

This coming Friday at noon, I'll be the guest on Alex Ragone and Arvind Grover's inaugural podcast on EdTechTalk. I've been reading Alex's blog for a while now, so I'm very excited about being a part of this podcast. We'll be talking about our plans to build SLA as a 21st Century school and about the state of educational technology in general. Should be a lot of fun.

Check out some of their earlier podcasts or check out EdTechTalk.com. There are some great conversations happening.

Interviewed at Media Snackers

chris@practicaltheory.org (Chris Lehmann) — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 09:17:37 -0700

Got to have a fun conversation yesterday with DK of Media Snackers and Phatgnat. You can listen to our conversation as part of his new Media Snackers podcasting project. It was a fun conversation that lasted about ten minutes (just a quick media snack) and we dealt with some SLA-specific topics as well as looking at the changing world of media, youth and schools.

Have a listen... (although, whenever I listen to my own voice, I'm reminded why I don't record podcasts more often...)