My last post, Research: One of the Hardest Things You'll Ever Do, was a reflection on a lesson with my 6th graders about evaluating sites.  I shared it with my network on Twitter and was met with some dialogue about my choice of "Is it a blog?" as an evaluation question.

Here is some of the conversation:

My 6th graders are about to embark on a journey for the next few weeks. While it may seem like an exaggeration, I tell them that "research is one of the hardest things you'll ever do."  Even as an adult, I find this statement is only a slight exaggeration.  They will be completing their first research project with me and I am really excited about it.

Research is one of the hardest skills to teach, and, in the past, my efforts have had limited success.  This year, I have rethought my approach and have broken the process down into (hopefully) easily digestible steps.

I asked them how many of them had done a research project before, and fewer than half raised their hands. I was expecting this, mostly because of the school's lack of resources for facilitating research (no library and no functional computer lab before this year). I told them that we would be taking it step by step to make the process easier for them.

My students will be creating Google sites about their topic that they chose, so I explained how important it is to make sure that their website is factual and contains accurate information.

After we used Schoology to post our research questions and topics, installed our Diigo toolbars and learned how to bookmark sites, we spent a class period learning how to evaluate sites.  I provided them with four sites and gave them a chance to review the sites for about 5 minutes, deciding which ones were real and which ones were fake. This is the page for the activity.



After they had a chance to view the sites, we grouped together and, using the criteria, explored whether each site was real or fake.

• is it a blog?
• can anyone post here?
• is it an educational or government site?
• who is the author?
• can I find this information anywhere else on the web?

Sometimes, we made it through all of the criteria, but when we searched the web, we found that the site was fake or the information was false.  Students suggested that we "Google" to see if we could find more information about the topic. Each time I pulled up one of the sites, they easily moved through the steps, scrolling down to find the author and, in the case of the Tree Octopus, we discussed 'gut' feelings and that they can be a valid reason to mistrust a site.

Using the criteria list, my students created an acronym to help them remember the criteria for evaluating sites. They came up with one that, to an outsider, might not make a lot of sense, but I know will be helpful to them. The beauty of it is that it was created by them, for them.

Anyone post?
Who is the author?
Educational?
Blog?
Information somewhere else?

I am excited by their engagement in the lesson and I believe that this activity, and my deliberate attempt to move slowly through the research project will ensure successful websites and a successful research process. 

I will keep you posted.....

 

As if I don't have enough to do, I have decided to do the 365 Project, a global project whose participants take and upload a photo a day for an entire year. I'm already going strong on Day 4.

You can subscribe to my Posterous below to follow my adventures throughout the year.

Here's hoping I can do it!

image credit

As this year comes to a close, I decided to look back at some of my posts from this year. A lot has happened for me, my blog and educators. I have grown as a teacher and a blogger and I have learned much from my colleagues across the globe.

Here are 5 of my posts that received the most hits this year. I think they speak for the many of events in my career and the education world this past year.

1.) Reflections on Waiting for Superman

2.) My Top 10 To-Do List for Administrators

3.) Should We Ban Fiction from the Curriculum?

4.) I Miss My Old Brain

5.) EduPunks

Thank you to all of my readers for a year of growth and reflection.  I look forward to many more.

Have a wonderful New Year!

photo courtesy of FreeFoto.com

I recently read an article entitled, "Education's Status Quo to Parents: How Dare You Use the Parent Trigger and Make Decisions!" on the blog Dropout Nation.  I won't get into the details of the article, which was about the uproar over a private company helping parents in California use the "Parent Trigger" to call for the closing of a failing elementary school.  Rather, a comment by the author of the post grabbed me.

We had been engaging on various points back and forth in the comment area and one of my comments claimed that many of these privatized charter schools are not scalable. They cannot replace traditional schools on the larger scale. To which the author, RiShawn Biddle replied,

The obsession with scale, both among traditionalists and school reformers, from where I sit, fails to consider what actually happens in the real world. Which leads to another point: Your concept of a “corporate” approach is rather false. In the corporate world, there is rarely full standardization; companies will approach their operations, markets and array of products and services differently. Proctor & Gamble is different from Colgate-Palmolive and from Unilever. All are successful in the space in which they compete and satisfy the needs of their customers. Same is true for Apple and Microsoft. What these companies do have in common is what all successful companies share (including strong talent development, and clear focus on product, service and customers). What each company does that is particular to its corporate culture and historical development will not work for others.

I stopped to think for a minute.

While I find it heartbreaking to think of students as customers and schools as customer service--first of all, this applies only to private schools with tuition, second, it's a team effort so the road goes both ways.  I wonder about the argument, "it's not scalable."

We are constantly talking about how learning should be individualized, how we need to teach students, not subjects, how what works for one student may not work for another.  So why are we constantly seeking that one model that 'works?'

As I stated in my comment on the post:

Privatized charter schools are not scalable. What IS scalable is giving ALL schools the freedom they need to educate students. Give ALL parents the power to make changes in their schools not because they are privately run charters, but because their school has the freedom to meet the needs of the community rather than bow down to district mandates.

There are a lot of 'franchise' type charter schools out there right now (Mastery, KIPP, Harlem Success and others), and I won't expound on my feelings for some of them, but these kinds of school networks ARE trying to scale their model by taking over more and traditional public schools.  Whenever a traditional public school is taken over by a charter school, in my experience here in Philadelphia, the 'no excuses' environment and high expectation for parent involvement often causes huge attrition rates.  Where do these students go? Back to a traditional public school.

It seems that the more control the government wants to have over schools the worse off everyone is. In a district as big as Philadelphia, with over 200 schools, we have the federal government telling us what to do thanks to Race to the Top, and we are run by the state rather than an elected school board. We have programs that are mandated across the board for all low-performing schools (usually scripted programs) and decisions are made for sometimes all elementary schools across the board no matter what part of the city or what population the schools serve.

This is what scalability looks like.  And, as Biddle states, it doesn't work.

So when will politicians, teachers, unions, parents and edreforms galore stop looking for the magic solution and understand that any organization that deals entirely with people is complicated and defies the logic of scalability? We need schools that serve the communities and children in which they stand, not the blanket mandates of districts and large network franchises.