Non-Standard

After sitting through a webinar by an accomplished professor regarding Common Core Standards, I wished he had done the following research: gather a few hundred successful adults in a room from a variety of careers: law, construction, music... (and define "successful" almost any way you want -- salary, prestige, influence...)

Then give them a test that reflects the Common Core Standards. If any appreciable number of successful people answer a question incorrectly, then there's nothing standard about that parcel of knowledge; it would be removed from the standards -- and instead gently placed in a pile called "guidelines."

Seriously, would someone please ask Barak Obama to "know and apply the Binomial Theorem for the expansion of x + y)^n".  Has anyone ever done research like this?

Seven Tips for a Teen Power User

1. Be Mark Zuckerberg: learn to program. Start with Scratch, Game Salad, and Gamestar Mechanic. From there move on to Alice, Codeacademy and Codea.

2. Be a gamer, but with a purpose. Create a Minecraft server with your buddies. Start a clan/guild for a multiplayer game. Play quality multiplayer PC games (Blizzard, Valve).


3. Read biographies of interesting Silicon Valley titans. Start with Steve Jobs, The Accidental Billionaires, and The Google Story

4. Start a Youtube channel. If you need ideas, make a screencast featuring a play-through of your favorite video game, or make a tutorial about anything you are good at. Promote it on Twitter to get views.

5. Go to summer tech camp like ID Tech and TIC

6. Read the best tech blogs, start with The Verge and MacRumors 

7. Follow smart tech writers, start with David Pogue, Walt Mossberg and TED.

The 8th Grade Video Arcade

‎So here is the 8th Grade Video Game Arcade part one: This was the semi-final project -- students created a "fun" video game, -- try one, some are pretty fun and offer 30+ seconds of entertainment (these games use a java plug-in and take a while to load). Scratch is the most fun software I've taught in 15 years. More fun than Flash or iMovie or Google Sketchup.  Programming hurts your brain like know other activity I know of.


‎And here is 8th Grade Video Game Arcade part two: This was the final project -- students created a "fun-icational" video game that tied in to content classes. The good news is that you'll see there was some core knowledge reflected in the games. The bad news is the games themselves are *way* less creative that the "fun" games. Making an excellent "fun-icational" game is challenging.

Show and Tell

Seems like there are at least four ways for a teacher to have a classroom see and interact with a single computer screen:

1) Promethean/Smartboard solution where you buy a screen and a projector at around $3000 installed, I've read a lot of the value is in the software -- it's easiest to make the highest quality lesson plans using their software (and they have the largest selection of lesson plans to borrow from other teachers)

2) Mimeo/eBoard solution where you buy a doodad and a projector for around $1500 installed. The software for this is apparently not that great.

3) An interactive projector solution where you only buy a fancy projector for around $1500 installed. Again the software is supposed to be not that great.

4) And there is a different solution where you don't have the big interactive screen at the front, but instead you do the interaction remotely from a tablet the teacher holds. So you buy either by a PC tablet and a projector or you get iPad/Android tablet and a projector:

I started a conversation on ISED to see what others thought. My initial opinion is an interactive projector is the best short term solution for my school; if we are 1:1 eventually then I lean toward iPad+FlatscreenTV which seams like the sexiest solution. But I have no idea, I've never even seen most of the stuff I read about.

Integrated Tech meets Current Events

Here's a can't miss formula for integrating a current events unit with animation. Most every joke on the Daily Show has the same formula: set the joke up with a straight recounting of the current event, then follow with the punchline by answering the question, "What could happen next?" So Rick Perry botched the legal voting age, what hilarity could ensue? Here's what a few in my class came up with bit.ly/xEyZ7G. I used Flash, but it could work with Xtranormal.com or paper and pencil cartoons.

Working as Lintended

Yeah, yeah it's an edtech blog. Who cares. If this isn't a teaching moment, I don't know what is. I really don't care much for pro sports, but this is shaping up to be the greatest come-back sports story of all time. I just read some of the backstory: best player in Cali but no college scholarship; best player in college but undrafted in the NBA; cut by two of the worst teams in the NBA, sleeps on his brother's couch, and the first time he is EVER allowed to start a pro game, he takes a sorry team on a four game win streak and scores more points in his first four starts than any player in recent history... Quick let's pool our money and get the movie rights...

My One Big Idea

I have exactly one big idea.

I spent the first seven years of my career teaching every level from of math from 7th grade through calculus. I've spent the last five years teaching integrated technology. I only recently started to teach Scratch to students -- which is basically great big training wheels for programming.

It was really easy to teach Algebra II badly. I could help students learn to turn cranks and get the answer. And they had no idea why they were doing it, or even remembering that X was a number, not a letter.

It's really, really hard to teach programming -- it's so abstract. But Scratch does an amazing job of turning abstract programming concepts literally into something concrete: building blocks. It's the most brain-stretchiest piece of software I think I've ever used, and the most rewarding piece of edtech I've ever used. Someone please give Mitch Resnick's team (another) award.

I can't be convinced there's anything standard about mathematics beyond geometry.  That's the point where math gets so abstract, and the majority of students really don't get it. I was a "math guy" and did not begin to understand trigonometry until I was well into calculus.

So here goes: let's teach people to be software engineers instead of doing higher level math. It will be harder but more rewarding in the end. Let's make mathematics beyond Geometry an elective, and replace it with a year or three of compulsory computer science. You could easily spend a year on Scratch, and it would be time well spent -- more fun, an easier sell to students, and in the end it would teach abstract concepts far better than mathematics would. After Scratch, I'm not sure, maybe a year of Javascript, Codeacademy style.

Not gonna lie, some students are really struggling with the very basics of Scratch. And my one big idea is wildly disliked by some people whom I've mentioned it to. Oh well. In my heart of hearts I'm certain that transforming some math requirements into computer science requirements is the right thing to do.

**update... this is definitely not my idea *** (thanks Patrice Gans for the link)