You can find out more about the program by visiting the CAP wiki.

We implemented Maplewood this year and it caught us by surprise with the amount of work involved in getting it going.  I thought I would be part of it for a couple weeks and then get back to my regular position.  But unfortunately I’m just now getting back to in December, after many miles on the road supporting secretaries and principals.  There’s a metaphor in the video for it, so I thought I better explain it.

My major project for this class was a wiki of math lessons with the new 3,6,9 implementation.  I am currently in the process of getting teachers involved in filling in the content.  But the structure is there.  You can find it at hzsdmath.wikispaces.com.  There is an allusion to it in the video as well.

Well, here is the video:

Hello Russell,
I have a question for you.  I was wondering what is your take on the use of Facebook in school, I am pretty strict making sure the students are not using it.  Today I had my principal come to my classroom and ask me why I do not let the students on Facebook. I said that a school isn’t a place for students to acess social network sites (unmonitored at that) I also said school computers are for educational use and Facebook has no educational value.  What are other school doing with this issue?

Here is my response:

Thanks for the great question.  First, I’d like to direct you to Protocol 6-60 Acceptable Use of Computers.  The following two sections come the closest to dealing with this issue.

Appendix “C”

GAMES/MULTIMEDIA:
Using the Horizon School Division and CNET EDUVPN infrastructure to access games or multimedia services for non-educational purposes is an unacceptable use of a valuable resource and is not permitted.

Appendix “J”

PERSONAL WEB SITES
Personal Web Pages will be limited to students in grades 10, 11, and 12. The student must have parent and administration/supervising teacher’s approval before they post their web page to the Internet. These sites must conform to the acceptable use policy and to the Horizon School Division Communication Protocol – 1-50.

As you can see, Appendix C is very clear that the computers are not to be used for non-educational purposes.  Appendix J states that students will not be allowed to post personal websites without prior parent and teacher approval.  Since Facebook is a type of personal website, that means the student would not be allowed to update their status without first consulting their parents and their teacher.

This protocol was written a few years ago, and the way we interact with others via the Internet has changed drastically since then with the advent of Web 2.0.  However, it is the protocol in place that is to guide our decisions as educators.  It is my understanding that this protocol is under review, and may be changed at some point in the future, but for now, I would advise you use this protocol in it’s entirety when deciding if you should allow students to access Facebook.  It can be found in the Protocol Manual on the Horizon School Division Website.  You may also want to have a look at a few of the items in Section 4 of the Admin Manual, namely the Internet Usage Agreement procedure and form.

I would also like to give my personal take on things.  The following comments are my own, and do not necessarily reflect division policy.

There is a great debate surrounding the use of Facebook, Youtube, and other “social” sites in schools.  Some want them opened up wide, others want them locked right down.  And there is pretty much every opinion in between.  For now, I will set aside the (in)appropriateness of the content and focus on the educational value side of things.  For me, it’s more so about “on-task behavior” than it is about whether Facebook has educational value or not.  Whether it is Facebook or a comic book, teachers need to decide how much off-task behavior is acceptable.  Should we ban comic books because they distract students?  Perhaps a better analogy to facebook would be a letter from a friend.  Would we tell a student they shouldn’t bring a letter from their friend to school because it will distract them from their studies?  I don’t believe we would.

I don’t feel it is efficient to work non-stop all day, and I think most would agree with me.  Short breaks are needed throughout the day to give the mind and body a chance to rejuevenate.  That’s why we have recesses.  The amount of time and frequency of breaks needed vary by the individual.  So I guess the question becomes WHEN is Facebook appropriate.  During recess only?  For only a couple minutes during a class?  If a student had a letter from their friend out and was reading it all day and not focussing on their work, then I would ask them to keep it at home.  But if they read it during recess, I wouldn’t have a problem with it.

So I guess for me it isn’t a question of whether Facebook has “educational value” or not.  There are many things that happen in schools that cannot be linked directly to curricular outcomes, and I don’t see a problem with that.  The focus of schools still needs to be on the curriculum, but we can’t expect students to shut off the rest of their lives and only think about the curriculum from 9:00-3:30 everyday.  Monitoring the amount of off-task time a student spends is the key, whether that off-task time is spent on Facebook, visiting with their friends, or doodling.

So now comes the question of the appropriateness of the content.  I see many more shades of grey in this area.  We all recognize that pornography, violence, vulgar language, and hate are content we want to keep out of our schools, whether they are entering the school through the Internet or some other medium.  The problem with Facebook, Youtube, and other social sites is that the site itself does not define the content.  Social sites are, by definition, sites where the content depends on the people using them.  Whether Facebook brings in that inappropriate content or not depends on what the students’ friends post.  For this reason, many schools have banned social sites.  The content is just too unpredictable.

We owe our students a certain standard of care, and must execute our due diligence in preventing inappropriate content from entering the school. However I think we would be fooling ourselves if we thought we could be 100% successful in this effort 100% of the time.  It is my personal belief that in educating the whole child, we must teach them what is socially appropriate and what is not.  In the computer room, where every aspect of the world is just a click away, this requires our presence, physically and mentally, in the room with the students.  Due to staff numbers and building size, it isn’t always possible in every school to have a teacher on supervision in the computer room at recess and noon hour.  And in these cases, I think it is quite appropriate to not allow students on Facebook, or even on the Internet.

In the case there there is direct supervision, the question becomes what do you do when something inappropriate is posted on Facebook and they read it (or view it).  Do we simply tell them to close the browser window?  Do we discuss with them why that post was socially inappropriate?  Or do we block Facebook so students can’t go onto the site anymore and pretend that part of the world isn’t out there?

The interconnectedness of the world, vastly due to the Internet, has really muddied the waters of what is and is not the responsibility of the teacher.  I’ll try to write another post on this in a few days.

That being said, I will try to give some reflection on why the use of games could become a hot topic in education.  When I think of the word education, in simplest terms, I think of learning knowledge and skills which I could employ to create a product or service which could be traded for other products or services I will need or want in my life.  In other words, something I use to get a job (work) so I can make the money that I need to buy things.  When I think of gaming, in simplest terms, I think of something I do for entertainment (fun) but which does not provide me with any product or service I can trade.

Although it is obviously much more complex than that, I think many people would see at somewhat agree with those definitions.  It seems to come down to a dichotomy of work vs fun.  So when someone suggests incorporating games into education, they tend to think of it as just entertaining the students (fun), and not providing them with a worthwhile opportunity (work).

But what if it isn’t a dichotomy?  What if work could be fun?  What if fun could be work?  Some cynics might say this is just a childhood dream, but I do think it is possible.  Especially if you consider successfully meeting a challenge fun.

The portion of the article that caught my particular attention says:

“…the value of traditional expert authority is itself being diluted by the new incentive structure created by information technology that militates against what is deep and nuanced in favour of what is fast and striped-down.

The result is the growing disintermediation of experts and gatekeepers of virtually all kinds.  The irony is that experts have been the source of most of the nuggets of knowledge that the crowd now draws upon in rather parasitic fashion – for example, news and political bloggers depend heavily on a relatively small number of sources of professional journalism, just as many Wikipedia articles assimilate prior scholarship.  The system works because it is able to mine intellectual capital.  This suggests that today’s ‘cult of the amateur’ will ultimately be self-limiting and will require continuous fresh infusions of more traditional forms of expert knowledge.”

This reminds me of a question that has been posed at a couple conferences I’ve been to; “If we can google it, should we be testing it?”.  At the root of this question lies the importance of having “traditional expert authority” in the future.  It would seem that if we don’t test things we can google, then we don’t create deep and nuanced knowledge and we don’t build expert authority in the future.  This would seem to stagnate the knowledge pool.  Nicholson goes on to say, “For now, the just-in-time approach seems to be narrowing peripheral intellectual vision and thus reducing the serendipity that has been the source of most radical innovation.”  However, he also writes that, “…Plato, in Phaedrus, suggested that writing would ‘create forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it.’  This is a striking example of a particular kind of generation gap in which masters of an established paradigm can only see the shortcomings, and not the potential of the truly novel.”

So, will we be able to adapt and evolve to a way of creating new knowledge using the power of many minds giving small amounts of attention, or will innovation cease in a world where we don’t test the things we can google?

My second question surrounds the value of unstructured blogging.  In other words, can blogging lose its educational value when you don’t ask the students to blog about something specific?  Conversely, can it increase it’s educational value when you give them freedom over their blog topics?

My third question is about using the writing process in blogging.  Sue offered us a diagram that included 4 parts to a blogging cycle.  Unfortunately I can’t find that image anywhere on her blog to link to.  However, for those who attended the class, you may remember some back channelling about using the writing process in blogging.  Here’s my question(s).  Does using the writing process in blogging improve the quality of blog posts?  At the same time, does it stifle the conversation nature of blogging?

oh, and I think I am supposed to link back to her post so she gets a pingback or something.  I hope I do this right!  :S

So in this next project we are working on with teachers, we will be asking them to keep a blog.  I think we can get around the typing speed issue by using video or audio blogs.  However… the problem I am now anticipating is teachers’ “shyness” in their blogs.  In the previous project, it was a struggle to get teachers to open up and give authentic reflections because they new we were collecting these reflections as part of a report to the board.  I am concerned with a blog that has a global audience (much broader then just a report to the board), we will only get superficial reflections.

So my question to you is, how can we create a culture where teachers feel comfortable posting authentic professional reflections for the world to read?

I see the teacher having a role in recess time.  It is important to give students some play time without structure, but that doesn’t mean the teacher isn’t still a part of recess time.  Often very important teachable moments are brought about through interactions on the playground.  These may not be specifically tied to the written curriculum, but they certainly are tied to the unwritten curriculum involved in ‘educating’ the whole child.  A teacher needs to be vigilant on the playground and watch for these moments, because they often pass by quickly.

Can that perspective on recess time be applied to the non-formal aspects of online learning?  I don’t think we should be ‘vigilant’ of all their online activities though social media used outside of class purposes, but we certainly should be for those we introduce and use in classes.  For example, if we want students to engage in collaborative learning through the use of wikis and blogs, we definitely need to be observing their interactions in those spaces and watching for teachable moments.

Thoughts?