School change means different things to different people, but one of the things that I believe we have to change in schools, especially in rural areas, is a focus on entrepreneurship. If our rural towns are going to survive, and the kids who stay there  live a decent life, then we have to grow our own entrepreneurs, businesses simply aren’t going to move to small rural towns.

This morning I had the opportunity to visit the entrepreneurship school in Stafford Kansas. What a breath of fresh air! The kids at the Seed Academy, which stands for Stafford Entrepreneurship and Economic Development, are doing things that truly impressed me. Not only are they creative an innovative, but their work is of the highest quality.

Over 20% of all of the students at Stafford High School are involved in the Seed Academy. Most of them will never open a business, and even fewer will open a business in Stafford. But some will. And in the community like Stafford every business makes a difference. If only one student a year ends up opening a business in Stafford it will make a huge difference to the community and the economics of the area.

Even the students who never open a business are learning very important lessons for their future. And they are learning by doing, which is absolutely the way all learning should occur.

Their next step? I believe that their next step needs to be a system where students receive academic credit when they master academic skills in a real world setting. I saw numerous examples in the brief time I was there where students could demonstrate under real-world conditions the use of academic skills and knowledge. There is no reason for students to set through an English class when they are demonstrating all of the skills that they would be learning in the class. Give them English credit and let them move on!

I always enjoy visiting those rare examples where schools are truly authentically engaging students in real-world experiences. In my mind that’s what school changes all about. – Steve Wyckoff

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The Thirteen American Arguments: Enduring Debates That Define and Inspire Our Country by Howard Fineman.

I haven’t read the book but it is on my Shelfari list. I plan on getting to it, really. Sometime . . . soon. For sure before winter break. It looks like a great book and I’ve heard good things, so I’m all over it.

The bad news? The book’s been on the list for a while now.  I added it just over a year ago after reading about it on Mike Halsey’s Henricus site. And promptly got caught up in the crush of events and forgot about it. It resurfaced while visiting my son’s government teacher during this fall’s Meet the Teacher festivities. He has Fineman’s 13 Arguments up on his wall and plans to use them as a modified scope and sequence.

I really do need to read the book. Because from my quick skimming of the book and online reviews, it seems incredibly relevant. From the proposed mosque in NYC to the scheduled Qur’ an burning in Florida to immigration discussions to Supreme Court justice debates to the 14th Amendment to . . . well, just about anything.

These questions, in one form or another, have been argued and discussed since before 1776. What better way to tie current events to the past? The more I think about the questions below, the cooler they become.

I’m curious to know how you would use these. Would you pick just a few? Tie them to the Bill of Rights? Which ones could you ignore? Have kids reword them? Help students identify the folks on both sides of each question?

1. Who is a person?
2. Who is an American?
3. What is the role of faith?
4. What are the limits of individualism?
5. What can we know and say?
6. Who judges the law?
7. What do we do about debt and the dollar?
8. What is the balance between state and national authority?
9. What powers should the president have?
10. What should be the terms of trade?
11. When do we go to war and when do we use diplomacy?
12. What is the role of the environment?
13. What does a fair, “More Perfect” union mean?

I plan on following the discussion in my son’s class. Will keep you posted.

If you been around History Tech for a while, you know what I think of historian and author Sam Wineburg.

Class?

That’s right. He’s a stud.

And I recently ran across some work he did several years ago that I think is interesting. Sam and colleague Chauncey Monte-Sano interviewed 4,000 people – half of whom were juniors and seniors in high school and the other half over the age of 45. It was a very simple survey. Wineburg asked each participant to list ten names in response to one question:
Who are the most famous Americans in history, excluding presidents and first ladies?

Feel free to post your answer below in the comments. We’ll wait.

You back?

In today’s “fragmented society,” one might expect two very different lists – one consisting of rap stars and actors and the other listing a few of the Founding Fathers, Edison and perhaps Helen Keller. What the two researchers discovered was something very different.

Over the last 20 years or so, a lot of energy has been expended addressing the issue of what to teach in America’s social studies classrooms. Some like Arthur Schlesinger Jr., William Bennett and Lynne Cheney argued for a more traditional social studies education, one focusing more on Western Civ and less on multicultural topics. Others such as Gary Nash and Howard Zinn suggested a more inclusive approach, one that included women, minorities and lower economic classes.

One argument for a “traditional” social studies curriculum is that it will provide a sort of unifying force that would bind all Americans together and without it, the US would, according to Schlesinger, “disunite.” Wineburg also notes the actions of  Bruce Cole, former head of the National Endowment of the Humanities. Worried that students weren’t learning the kind of history that would give them a common bond, Cole spent millions creating laminated works of art and other materials for classroom use – including the famous but misleading 1931 Grant Wood painting of Paul Revere. When asked, Cole replied

Call them myths if you want but unless we have them, we don’t have anything.

While neither side of the argument can really claim victory, there has been a clear trend to include more of the “little people” of American history in social studies instruction.

So again, you might expect that the two lists created by Wineburg’s survey would be very different. One a product of “multiculturalism” and one a result of a more traditional curriculum. But you’d be wrong.

What we discovered was that Americans of different ages, regions, genders and races congregated with remarkable consistency around the same small set of names. To us, this sounds more like unity than fragmentation.

The common figures who draw together Americans today look somewhat different from those of former eras. While there are still a few inventors, entrepreneurs and entertainers, the others who capture our imagination are those who acted to expand rights, alleviate misery, rectify injustice and promote freedom. That Americans young and old, in locations as distant as Columbia Falls, Montana, and Tallahassee, Florida, listed the same figures seems deeply symbolic of the story we tell ourselves about who we think we are—and perhaps who we, as Americans, aspire to become.

Eight of the top ten in both lists were the same. And while the survey was not scientific in the sense of control groups and such, I think the results suggest that perhaps we’re not so “disunited” after all.

If nothing else, my takeaway from Wineburg’s survey is that Americans still do share a common bond, no matter what I hear from pundits and talking heads on both sides of the aisle. It also means that if I’m teaching in a social studies classroom, my job remains the same – telling the story of all Americans so that every American can learn it.

Student List

Martin Luther King Jr.
Rosa Parks
Harriet Tubman
Susan B. Anthony
Benjamin Franklin
Amelia Earhart
Oprah Winfrey
Marilyn Monroe
Thomas Edison
Albert Einstein

Adult List

Martin Luther King Jr.
Rosa Parks
Harriet Tubman
Susan B. Anthony
Benjamin Franklin
Amelia Earhart
Oprah Winfrey
Betsy Ross
Thomas Edison
Henry Ford

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Top 5 Activities for Counting Money

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Google makes its living by helping us find stuff. And with both new and old features built into Google Search, it’s doing a better job of that than ever before. I’m always learning new ways to search but continue to use old favorites that are still very effective in helping me find what I need.

Some strategies that I use everyday include:

Searching by Phrase

If you’re looking for something like the Battle of Gettysburg, you should use Phrase Search. Phrase Search tells Google to look for your phrase, exactly as you type it. If you type the words – battle of gettysburg – into the search box at Google.com, the first thing Google does is to ignore the word “of”. It then looks for any site that contains the words “battle” and / or “gettysburg” in any combination resulting in literally millions of hits.

Putting your phrase in quotation marks tells Google to look for the exact phrase “battle of Gettysburg” giving you much more exact results.

Searching within a specific site or class of sites

Some sites are so large and complex that it may be difficult finding exactly what you need even if you’re actually on  that specific site. For example, the Library of Congress has a huge site. To speed things up, do a Google search for just the LOC. If you’re looking for Battle of Gettysburg lesson plans at loc.gov, use the site search function by typing:

gettysburg “lesson plans” site:loc.gov

You can also do a generic site search by just doing search for certain URL extensions such as .org, .gov or .edu. Typing:

gettysburg “lesson plans” site:edu

will give results for Gettysburg lesson plans found at sites maintained by colleges and universities.

Excluding terms

Many times, I’ll get results that I would not have predicted that include terms that I don’t want. I simply search again but put a minus sign directly in front of those terms that I don’t want Google to search for. For example, a search with the terms battle and Gettysburg might return hits that include references to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. I don’t need that information so I can refine my search by typing:

“battle of Gettysburg” –address –lincoln

New strategies

Google is always adding handy, little search functions and it’s sometimes hard to keep up with all of them. I’ve gotten into the habit of visiting the Google Search Features page to find new tools.

Among other things, Google can give immediate weather reports, airline flight information, do math, display sports scores, find local restaurants, give current movie times, perform currency and other conversions and track packages. There are numerous cheat sheets around. One of the best can be found at GoogleGuide.

Together, these old and new tools can help you find whatever you need.

Have fun!

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Top 8 Ideas For Teaching One-to-One Correspondence

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I’ve recently been reading a lot about how traditional media are changing. I think there should be some parallels with school change.

It appears that listenership on radio is changing dramatically. First of all, satellite radio allowes individuals to listen to their favorite radio station whenever and wherever they are. Secondly, iPods allow individuals to listen to exactly the music that they enjoy most. In fact, iTunes with the use of Genius even helps you find new music aligned with your personal taste. And thirdly, some of the most popular radio is talk radio. So what does all this mean? In society today individuals want to listen to what they like, when they like it, and in many cases they want to interact, not just be passive listeners.

I think students in classrooms feel the same. It is just no longer acceptable, just because somebody is an adult, to stand in front of the room and spew information and expect the student to eagerly soak it up. Students want more say in what the content is, and more interaction.

TV today? I don’t know about you, but I think TiVo was one of the great inventions of the 20th century! It finds my favorite programs, records them for me, allow me to watch them when I want, and best of all, I don’t have to watch the commercials! And if that isn’t good enough I can go to YouTube and find darn near anything I want to watch, or even create my own, which I have done, and put it on YouTube! I can create my very own channel on YouTube.

So again, comparing it to the traditional classroom, I want the content that I want, in a format that allows me to consume it how I want, and the ability to make meaning of, and create my own, content!

Newspapers. Going out of business. Fewer and fewer people want somebody else to decide what’s important for them to read, and to dictate when they get it and in what format. Enter the news aggregators. I can set up a news aggregator, for example Google reader, and it becomes my personal assistance that 24/7 is searching for exactly the stories and news that I want to read. How does that compare to a textbook?!

And I don’t know about you, but I don’t have much time to read. So much of what I get in terms of news and information, is in the form of a podcast or an audio book. In fact, I haven’t read a book in years. But I listened to about 60 books year. I’m guessing that we still have substantial numbers of schools that don’t allow their students to consume information in audio format. In fact I can guarantee it.

So what does all this mean for school change? Probably nothing, schools seem to be impervious to societal changes and influences. –  Steve Wyckoff

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What I Learned Today - Lesson #1 - My Misconception.

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In this weekly idea, students explore fractions by using a geoboard to create several representation for 1/2, 1/4, and 1/8.  They then are asked to solve a real-world problem using this information.  See attached file below.

No.
I haven’t read it.

Yes.
I’ve heard all about it.

Both my teenage daughter and wife are deep into the third book of the Hunger Games trilogy and, right now, series heroine Katniss rules the roost in our house.

Inspired by the “blurring” between reality television and Iraq war coverage as well as the Greek Theseus myth, author Suzanne Collins wrote the first book of the trilogy in 2008.  So why should do we care? You probably need to know a bit of the plot first.

If you don’t know the plot but are still planning to go through the series, close your eyes for just a second.

Closed?

Basic plot – a post-apocalyptic North America is now called Panem and is ruled by a powerful government called the “Capital.” States and provinces have been replaced by a dozen official “districts.” Each district is forced to send a boy and girl to compete in an annual, and deadly, competition called the Hunger Games. Much distress ensues along with romance, oppression, heroism, courage and eventually a rebellion. Good conquers evil. Sort of. The end.

Okay, you can open.

And the so what?

The series seem like a great way to incorporate a variety of social studies concepts into your instruction. Rule of law, the establishment of governments, individual freedoms, Locke, Constitution, really all sorts of things. (It’s interesting to note that Kansas State University ordered 3,800 copies of the first book and passed them out to every freshman this fall.)

But I’m more intrigued with the idea of using the Hunger Games series to focus on geography themes. We often don’t ask kids to think deeply enough about the link between geographic space and personal identity, about how regions impact who we are and how we think. I think we could use the descriptions of people and place within the books to facilitate a clearer understanding of these themes.

You could start with having kids create maps of the 12 different regions based on descriptions in the series. (If you read the book, you know that there is really 13. Sorry . . . close your eyes. There are actually 14, if you count the Capital.)

Lead student conversations about why Katniss and other characters act as they do. How might where they live impact how they live?

You might also download this generic “Defining Regions” lesson plan and adapt it to fit the context of Panem.

I’ve heard from some that this sort of thing is too much like “entertaining” students. That we shouldn’t have to use pop culture to teach social studies. I disagree. I will use pretty much whatever it takes to engage kids in content. And if the relationship between Katniss, Peeta and Gale hooks students into a better understanding of civic and geographic concepts, we ought to be all over it.

If you haven’t visited the National History Education Clearinghouse site at TeachingHistory.org yet, what’s keeping you? It’s got lesson plans, teaching guides, web site reviews, instructional videos, educational research, history quizzes, professional development opportunities and best practice ideas.

What am I forgetting?

Oh, yeah. Free historical thinking posters.

The folks at NHEC are giving away very cool posters for use in your class. Simply sign up and they’ll ship them to you. And once you’ve ordered your poster, be sure to hang around and check out the other stuff.

“Whenever the people are well informed,” Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “they can be trusted with their own government.”

If that’s right, says Clarence Page, then we’re in trouble.

In a recent Chicago Tribune column, Page highlights some of his concerns:

• Less than one in four of us can list all five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment (freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly and petition for redress of grievances) but more than half can rattle off at least two characters from the Simpsons.
• Almost half of all Americans believe that the president can suspend the Constitution whenever it suits.
• According to a recent Time magazine survey, 25% of Americans incorrectly believe that President Obama is a Muslim.
• The percentage who correctly say President Obama is a Christian is at 34%, down from 48% last March.
• A majority of us still believe that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
• Page cites research suggesting that 20% Americans don’t know that there are 100 senators.
• Only two in five can correctly name all three branches of government.

Have we always been this stupid?

According to Rick Shenkman, an associate professor of history at George Mason University, probably not. But in his 2008 book, Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth About the American Voter, Shenkman suggests that the stupidity pace is accelerating.

He argues that American voters have become increasingly ignorant of politics and world affairs and are susceptible to political manipulation. Shenkman claims that we are incapable of critically understanding the subtleties of both domestic and international issues. So voters often lack the knowledge and ability to participate effectively in the political process and are often mislead into voting for leaders who are not in line with national or local interests. Part of his argument is that we also lack strong media literacy skills – thus ensuring that whatever happens to come across the blogosphere and twitterverse or arrives via text message is taken as absolute gospel.

In a conversation with Page, Shenkman said

people follow the news so loosely that they are susceptible to any wild idea.

Shenkman’s not the only one to suggest that new media is changing how and what we believe. In a February Miami Herald column, Leonard Pitts writes

To listen to talk radio, to watch TV pundits, to read a newspaper’s online message board, is to realize that increasingly, we are a people estranged from critical thinking, divorced from logic, alienated from even objective truth. We admit no ideas that do not confirm us, hear no voices that do not echo us, sift out all information that does not validate what we wish to believe.

Farhad Moojan argues for exactly the same thing is his book, “True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society.”

In True Enough, Manjoo basically says that Web 2.0 communication tools makes it easier for us to lie and harder for others to know the difference.

. . . when we strung up the planet in fiber-optic cable, when we dissolved the mainstream media into prickly niches and when each of use began to create and transmit our own pictures and sounds, we eased the path through which propaganda infects the culture.

So perhaps the question we should be asking is not are we stupid, but why are we stupid?

Lots of people, myself included, have been pushing for more “wisdom of crowd” types of tools – blogs and wikis and Ning sites and Plurk, for example. Manjoo calls these sorts of tools the “infosphere.” The concept being that the more we can share ideas, we all become smarter. I still accept that.

But I’m also starting to accept the fact that it can work the other way as well – that the more we can share ideas, the possibility exists that we can also become . . . well . . . more stupid. The infosphere pushes incorrect ideas just as easily as it pushes good ones.

And right now, I’m not sure if there’s a clean and easy solution. At the same time that Manjoo’s infosphere is becoming a stronger and stronger influence on how potential voters view the world, future voters are getting less and less instruction on the basics of citizenship.

States are de-emphasizing the testing of social studies and thus the importance of social studies as a part of instruction. K-8 buildings are reducing the amount of time spent on teaching social studies. And I know that many who do teach social studies often don’t have the background and qualifications to actually do it.

But I also know that we need to continue to advocate for strong social studies instruction. The recent issue of The Social Studies Professional offers a nice list of ways that we can use to support social studies on a variety of fronts.

We also need to be more accountable in our own classes to

• teach media literacy
• ask kids to think critically
• solve realistic problems
• encourage actual discussion skills besides simply talking louder
• develop a wide variety of information sources

So why is this such a big deal? Page ends with

When the elections are close, the deciding votes usually come from the least informed, least-engaged and most emotionally driven voters.

Heaven help us.

Heaven help us, indeed.

One of the stereotypes of high school classes, especially history classes, is that most instruction consists of dry, boring lectures. The teacher from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off as played by Ben Stein comes to mind.

In 1930, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, in an effort to alleviate the effects of the . . . Anyone? Anyone? . . . the Great Depression, passed the . . . anyone? Anyone?

The tariff bill? The Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act? Which, anyone? Raised or lowered? . . . raised tariffs, in an effort to collect more revenue for the federal government. Did it work? Anyone? Anyone know the effects?

And while direct instruction delivered this way has very little impact on long-term learning, we also understand that kids need to be able to gather and organize basic information so that they can apply that information in creative ways.

We also know that graphic organizers are great tools for this task. One form of graphic organizer that works very well is something called Interactive Student Notebooks. I was reminded of ISNs this week when I got an email from a teacher looking for ways to integrate technology into their use.

ISNs are the anti-thesis to the old style outline notes that we were taught as students and many teachers still use. Interactive Student Notebooks allow students to record information in an engaging way that’s based on brain research.

At a very basic level, an ISN is simply a notebook or binder with each page divided in half – a right side and a left side. The right side or “input” side should be used for taking class notes, notes from a video or discussion or from assigned readings. This can be done in a traditional outline format but teachers can also model a variety of visual models such as flow charts, annotated slides or other simple graphic organizers. Basically the rights side is where a student puts information that everyone in the class needs to know.

The left side or “output” side is where application of that information begins to happen and where students start the processing of new ideas. You should ask students to use illustrations, diagrams, charts, poetry, colors, matrices, cartoons, and the like. Have kids articulate their opinions, agree or disagree on controversial issues, ponder hypothetical situations and ask questions about new ideas. Early in the process, you will need to model what these activities might look like. These activities help kids understand that simply writing down lecture notes does not mean they have learned the information.

So what does it look like?

This example from the History Alive people shows a student taking class notes on late nineteenth-century industrialism on the right side of her notebook. Later as homework, she created a topical net on the left side using the information from the right side.

Why use ISNs?

• ISNs encourage students to use both the visual and linguistic parts of the brains.
• Note taking becomes a much more active process. Students become directly involved in constructing their own knowledge. Much of the work is actually doing something with the information.
• ISNs encourage students to become more organized in the learning process. Kids begin to see relationships in the process of doing history. Many teachers also ask that students use highlighters, subject headings, underline and colored markers.
• Over time, ISNs become a portfolio of the student’s work. You, the kid and parents can track progress throughout the school. ISNs also provide an excellent review tool.

There are tons of ways that you can use the left hand side of the ISN (courtesy of History Alive):

• Advertisements
  Design advertisements to represent migration, settlement, or the significance of a specific site.
• Annotated Illustrations
  Make annotated illustrations to recount a story of travel or migration, to represent a moment in time or to label architectural features.
• Annotated Slides
  Use simple sketches of powerful images, accompanied by annotations, to help students understand difficult content.
• Book / CD / Video Games covers – design the layout using information from the right side.
• Caricatures
  Draw caricatures to present the main characteristics of a group in history or how an individual or group was perceived by another group.
• Eulogies
  Write eulogies to extol the virtues of prominent historical figures or civilizations.
• Facial Expressions
• Draw facial expressions to summarize the feelings of groups who have different perspectives on a single event.
• Flow Charts
  Create flow charts to show causal relationships or to show steps in a sequence.
• Forms of Poetry
  Write various forms of poetry to describe a person, place, event or feeling of a moment.
• Historical Journals
  Assume the role of a historical figure to keep a journal that recounts the figure’s feelings and experiences in language of the era.
• Illustrated Dictionary Entries
  Explain key terms by created illustrated dictionary entries. Write adefinition, provide a synonym and an antonym, and draw an illustration to represent each term.
• Illustrated Outlines
  Use simple drawings and symbols to graphically highlight or organize class notes.
• Illustrated Proverbs
  Create illustrated proverbs to explain complex concepts.
• Illustrated Timelines
  Create illustrated timelines to sequence a series of events in chronological order.
• Invitations
  Design invitations that highlight the main goals and key facts of important historical events.
• Mind Notes
  Draw and label outlines of the heads of important historical figures. Fill in the outline with quotations and paraphrased thoughts from that person.
• Mosaics
  Synthesize information from a broad content area by creating mosaics. Use visuals and words to represent similarities, differences and important concepts.
• Perspective Pieces
  Design drawings or write newspaper articles to represent different perspectives on controversial figures, events and concepts.
• Pictowords
  Create pictowords (symbolic representations of words or phrases tha show their meaning) to help define difficult concepts.
• Political Cartoons and Comic Strips
  Create political cartoons and comic strips to provide social or political commentary on important historical events.
• Postcards
  After studying specific content, write postcards to summarize information about places or events.
• Provocative Statements
  Have students react to provocative statements to introduce historical themes or to critically assess a historical period.
• Report Card
  Use graded evaluations to assess the policies of leaders or governments.
• Sensory Figures
  Create sensory figures (simple drawings of prominent historical figures with descriptions of what they might be seeing, hearing, saying,feeling, or doing) to show the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of historical figures.
• Spectrums
  Place information on a spectrum to show multiple perspectives on a topic or to express an opinion about an issue.
• Spoke Diagrams
  Create spoke diagrams as a visual alternative to outlining.
• Venn Diagrams
  Develop Venn diagrams to compare and contrast people, concepts, places or groups.
• “What If?” Statements
  Use “what if?” statements to apply newfound knowledge to hypothetical historical situations.

Have fun!

Image handling is one of those things that it's easy to not think hard enough about, but that your users will expect to be able to add to their nodes and their experience working with them will have a dramatic impact on a user's experience with your site. It's a far thornier issue than you may think.

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