SLA

Podcast on EdTech Talk

Just got out of my Skype call with Alex Ragone and Arvind Grover on their inaugural EdTechTalk.com podcast — 21st Century Learning Webcast.

Wow. What fun. Arvind and Alex and the folks in the chat room (archive here) had some amazing questions that really put me in the space of having to talk deeply about what we’re trying to do at SLA. I’m really exhauasted after the conversation — it’s the Friday of a long week, but wow.

I’ll link to the specific download of the podcast as soon as Alex gets it online, but while all this is still fresh in my mind, I wanted to talk about the experience and how it might mean something beyond this one experience.

[Updated — The podcast is now up and archived — give a listen…]

Why wouldn’t we have our kids doing this? (Answer — we should have our kids doing this!)

With Skype and some good add-on software (and a quick google search of "Record Skype Calls" found several solutions worth trying), our kids can be up and podcasting interviews in no time. When our kids are researching, wouldn’t they want to use this technology to talk to experts in the field? When they are publishing their 21st Century research projects, now they can pull in audio clips of those experts into their final presentations. What does it mean that we can partner with other schools out there to create these podcasts with these tools?

We knew what podcasts gave us. And even though not enough folks are using podcasts in our classrooms, we have some models for what they can do. We know about kids publishing poetry and narratives and even publishing audio documentaries, but now, using Skype, we can fold in the social aspect of this. As David Warlick says, "It’s about the conversations." This is one more way to build those conversations out further, make them more inclusive, make them more authentic and share them with a wider audience.

Thanks to Alex and Arvind for inviting me into their conversation. I had a blast…

(And thanks to Abby Lublin and her students at Beacon for being an amazing example of what podcasting can be all about.)

SLA: Building the Portal / Learning Environment

Ten years ago, when we started building the Beacon site, there weren’t a ton of tools out there for us to use. So after a year or two of having an HTML only web site, we started using PHP and MySQL to build the tools that eventually became the full Beacon portal. Now, years later, everything but the email client is still homegrown software at Beacon, and the portal really is a powerful piece of software. To this day, I haven’t found any software that gives teachers the tools they need to communicate with parents, students and colleagues as well as what we wrote. And there’s a ton of pride in that the software was co-written by students, teachers and sys admins… and that we designed the tools in collaboration with the users who needed to implement them.

But the software really is Beacon-specific, and SLA isn’t Beacon. I always had a goal of trying to find the time to take all the "Beacon-code" out of it and create a public release. Time ran out on me for that project, and now we’re looking to build SLA’s web portal.

Fortunately, in the ten years since we built Beacon’s site, educational open source software has come a long way. We’re already using Moodle to plan the school, and it will be our Course Management software when we open in September. And today, Stephen Downes linked to an announcement that Elgg is now compatible with Moodle, so of course I explored that. Amazing stuff, that. It looks like a wonderfully integrated blog and e-portfolio software, and those are two pieces missing from moodle.

Now, I need to find the pieces of the puzzle that allow us to create the parent piece — letting parents have easy access to student homework assignments is a big part of what I think is essential to any school web site. I figure if I don’t find an easy way to integrate that with Moodle, that’s something I can take from what we built at Beacon.

I’m still waiting to see if we have to go with an OSX server instead of a Edbuntu server. If we get to install our server of choice, we’ll also be piloting SchoolTool, which will be a HUGE piece of the puzzle as well. (There’s a reason we might not choose Linux… but I like that OSX still allows us to use the vast majority of the Open Source tools we want to use.)

I’m really excited to create Portal 2.0. The hardest part for me, honestly, is that I won’t be the person putting all the pieces together (o.k., I’ll have a hand in it… but I really can’t be the point person anymore.)

So… here’s the reader participation part of the entry… what am I missing in my thinking? I’m going to list everything I’d love to see in a school portal… let me know what I’m forgetting.

Web-based email
Web-based file access / e-portfolio
All the moodle stuff (forums, peer assessment, online journaling, wikis, etc…)
Blogs
Teacher Reporting (easy ways for teachers to track student issues / progress across classes)
Online Anecdotal Report cards
Social Bookmarking
Dynamic front page w/ easy updating of content
Easy access to student academic information for parents
Attendance and lateness tracking
Online scheduling ability (o.k. — I can dream.)
Online lesson plan repository

What am I forgetting?

Family Night Wrap-Up

There are moments in time where what you do comes into crystalizing focus. Last night was one of those nights. We had over 80% of our families at Family Night at The Franklin Institute last night. It was a celebration of the choice they’ve made to come to SLA, and it was a chance for them to see the work we’ve done to honor that choice.

We got to make a few really fun announcements… one of which is that all SLA students will be receiving Family Memberships to The Franklin Institute, our cultural partner in this project… and the other… well, I’m saving that for another post. And after listening to me talk for probably far too long, the real power of the evening happened — the SLA faculty got up and spoke to the parents about how they are interpreting this vision and making it their own. For me, that was just such a powerful moment. These are brilliant educators who have come together to build a idea together. To say that it’s been a humbling process is an understatement.

Together, we created a thirty page Family Night curriculum guide (feel free to download) that we think really shows the work we’ve put in to create a school with a real common purpose. This document really is the next evolution of the Curriculum Summit book we published back in January, and I think the path we are travelling as we move toward September should be very clear to anyone who reads the text. And again, one of the great pieces of this whole planning process is now seeing how these wonderful teachers interpret the vision of the school together and create something unique in Philadelphia.

A group of the SLA faculty went out afterwards to decompress after the evening, and we all really felt a powerful connection to the families right away. This was the night that made the whole enterprise real. As Matt Baird, our history teacher said, up until now, this could have all been a really elaborate grad school exercise — "Design your dream school" — but tonight we were reminded who we are doing it for.

I think we had a good format for the evening. The evening started with a quick intro by me, and then Carol Parssinen, our liason at The Franklin Institute, made her remarks, and then I went over the pedagogy of SLA and gave an update on many of the projects we’ve been working on. Then the faculty spoke… and that took about an hour and fifteen minutes. Then, we broke the students and teachers out into their advisory groups, and I stayed behind with the parents for a Q&A. It gave the parents the chance to ask their questions, but more importantly, the advisors talked with the students about the school — about what they thought about starting a school… their role, their needs, their hopes. Hopefully, it was our first opportunity to live up to the pedagogy of empowering our students to have a voice in their own education. We are taking the notes that each advisory created as the basis of our next moodle staff meeting this week. We want to look at their vision as we craft our own.

One last thing that really made this evening special for me — I had the opportunity to thank these families for being willing to go on this journey with us. Think about it — many, many of these students had multiple options for high school, and they chose to start a school with us. I cannot really express how powerful that is… how much work we have to do to honor that choice. We really do have an obligation to exceed expectations.

Practical Theory

SLA

Podcast on EdTech Talk

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SLA: Building the Portal / Learning Environment

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Family Night Wrap-Up

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Chapter 4: Build Modern Schools - Re:Building School 2.0

Practical Theory

SLA

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Chapter 4: Build Modern Schools - Re:Building School 2.0