Teachable Moment…Blocked?

"Isle of the Dead" by hkoppdelaney

A quick little note: my students are looking for words inspired by the names of the Greek/Roman gods and goddesses. One student wondered if “hate” was derived from the name Hades (seems to fit, I guess). As I often do, I avoided giving him a direct answer and said he should look it up. But when he Googled “hate,” we discovered that searching explicitly for this term was blocked by the school’s web filters.

While I understand the rationale the powers-that-be would share about this example (avoiding hate sites, for example), I’m not sure I agree with it. It’s hard to teach students how to find informationand evaluate sources when something is so swiftly blocked – especially when it’s a general search term. I would think that seeing the daunting variety of results to his search would be a good opportunity to talk about how to refine searches. Instead, the web filters block both the search results and a teachable moment.

Of course, I’m just a lowly teacher; what do I know?

Virtual Whiteboards

One of my colleagues got me interested in a fairly new web 2.0 technology: virtual whiteboards. Imagine sitting in a room full of people, all of whom have a marker. Together they all make changes to a plan or illustration, add comments, etc., and all on the big whiteboard at the front of the room. Now give that picture a web 2.0 spin – a site where any group of people can get together and mark up ideas, documents, and/or pictures with insightful comments, helpful pointers, or even just silly little mustaches. This is a virtual whiteboard. Virtual whiteboards combine the best element of wikis (collaboration) and the best element of chat rooms (real time conversations).

Of the several that I’ve tried, probably the best to date is called Twiddla. I found the link via the great people over at ReadWriteWeb. What’s so useful about Twiddla is that, unlike other Whiteboard sites, Twiddla allows you to surf the web within the site and collaboratively mark up websites. Similarly, you can upload images or documents (Word, Excel, and PDF files), insert mathematical formulas, even open your email, and use Twiddla’s features to mark up the medium of your choice.

I can see a lot of great uses for this technology in the classroom:

• Virtual study sessions for just about any subject area – English, Math, Social Studies, Science, Foreign language, health, you name it
• Group editing a classmate’s (or teacher’s) writing
• Getting feedback on the design of a class website or blog
• Visually demonstrating reading skills, like using context clues to understand vocabulary
• Visually demonstrating writing skills like paragraphing or editing
• Visually demonstrating research skills, such as identifying site authors or using topic headers in Wikipedia
• Playing tic-tac-toe

OK, so maybe the last one isn’t totally “educational,” but you get the idea. Twiddla has the potential to be an impressive classroom tool that I’m already finding ways to use in my classroom. Now if only I had a classroom full of laptops…

Government and Education

What is the government’s role in education? A recent post at AssortedStuff got me thinking about this question by critiquing a comment from Arnold Schwarzenegger about prescribing curriculum, then adding his own critique on mandated testing.

I decided I didn’t know enough about government’s role in education and felt like doing some research, so I pulled out one of the texts from my MAEd program: Teachers, Schools, and Society: A Brief Introduction to Education. I began my research, however, with our nation’s most important document: the U.S. Constitution. On the topic of education, the Constitution is notably silent. It does not guarantee any right to an education, nor does it specifically imply that government has any role in education. Of course, this does not mean that the founding fathers didn’t value education – Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were both actively involved in establishing schools with broader, liberal arts focuses.

If the constitution didn’t say anything, however, at what point does the government become involved in education issues? According to the US Department of Education’s website, “Education is primarily a State and local responsibility in the United States. It is States and communities, as well as public and private organizations of all kinds, that establish schools and colleges, develop curricula, and determine requirements for enrollment and graduation” (US Dept. of Education). Then how does the federal government become involved in school affairs?

With the Land Ordinance Act of 1785 and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, the government mandated that states and cities were required to set land aside for education purposes. As quoted in Article III of the Northwest Ordinance (which incidentally follows guidelines on the freedom of religious worship and the right of habeus corpus), “Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”

Breaking, for a moment, from the quotes, I can’t help but look at that last statement. I can’t help but notice the last word: encouraged. Because there is nothing in the Constitution regarding education, there is essentially no reason for government involvement. However, because it is so clearly an integral part of a successful nation and culture, the government likely decided it needed a say in education. Thus, instead of mandating or requiring anything, the government began to find ways to “encourage” education in certain directions.

So how does the government “encourage” the education system? A quick read through that same DoE page ought to give us a pretty good idea: ”[The Department of Education] works hard to get a big bang for its taxpayer-provided bucks by targeting its funds where they can do the most good.” In addition, “The Federal contribution to elementary and secondary education is a little under 9 percent…”

For an even better picture, look at the history of federal legislation regarding education: the Morrill Land Grant College Acts, which donated public land to establish colleges; the Smith-Hughes Act, which provided funds for teacher training; the GI Bill, which paid for veteran’s tuition; the NDEA, which launched big-time funding for education; the Elementary and Secondary Education act, which gave financial assistance to school districts; and of course, No Child Left Behind, which imposes conditions for federal funding of schools and districts.

So how does the government “encourage” education? By using money. Based on what I’ve read of NCLB, it does not by any means “mandate” that states, districts, and schools do anything. To say otherwise, I believe, would be incorrect. Instead, the federal government attaches requirements to federal funding for education. This means that, if a state so chooses, it can turn down federal funding and not have to meet the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act. Of course, many will argue (and justifiably so) that this simply blackmails states into doing what the federal government wants, as no person or entity can simply turn down a tenth of its income – that would simply devastate the local education system.

Returning back to the question at hand, however: what is the government’s role in education? From what I can tell, the government’s role is like that of George Steinbrenner, the iconic owner of the New York Yankees. Steinbrenner is renowned for requiring certain things of his players – clean shaven, businesslike, and so on. However, Steinbrenner was the man who signed the checks, so players did it  – much like the states follow through on the requirements of NCLB and other federal legislation.

The question I pose to you: what’s so bad about NCLB? Why should the government not be involved in trying to improve the national education system when education is generally accepted as a national issue (for evidence of this, just talk to John McCain or Barack Obama)? What changes would you like to see in federal education legislation?