• In fact, many of them don’t love it. They just know they are supposed to.
• If they don’t have an account, they are pressured into having one by their peers and sometimes, even their teachers.
• Kids who don’t have a Facebook account are often made to feel less sophisticated and cool than those who do, particularly by friends, parents, and yes….teachers…who are fans of social networks.
• When they do have one, they are pressured into friending everyone, including those who may have less than friendly intentions toward them.
• If they don’t friend everyone, including those who may have less than friendly intentions toward them, they are harassed.
• Even if they don’t friend everyone, those who want to stir up trouble use accounts that are not their own to infiltrate the pages of those they want to get to. This is common practice.
• The internet provides a comfort layer that emboldens kids to say and do things they would not otherwise say or do.
• This has led to increased tension, bullying, and violence inside of schools and neighborhoods.
• Kids claim to be hyper-vigilant about checking their pages and those of others to see who is posting what about them. This has made several of the Facebook users that I spoke to very anxious.
• When face-to-face conflicts heat up, Facebook makes it challenging for kids to take a breather or engage in a cooling off period.
• Many that I spoke to noticed a marked decrease in their happiness that they attribute to engaging on Facebook.
• Some of the kids who have admitted to the realities of Facebook tension are treated as if they are ridiculously over-sensitive or merely ill-equipped to deal with conflict.
• Teachers who admit to the same realities are often treated the same.

“We’re all just learning how to get along with each other yet,” a high school student explained. “There’s still too much drama and a real lack of impulse control. Yeah, it makes sense to teach us those things, and yeah, we’ll get there eventually. But not soon enough to prevent a lot of damage from being done. We’re given free reign inside a space that allows everyone 24/7 access to everyone else and no one knows how to treat each other just yet.”

In an ideal world, we’d be able to teach kids how to use tools like Facebook responsibly and how to manage the fall-out when conflict occurs. We’d find teachable moments. We’d begin equipping everyone better. I get that this is important work, but the kids I am talking to tell me this isn’t enough and that it never will be. Some who have the courage to say to no to Facebook are closing their accounts and taking the heat for doing so. Many others have told me that they are glad their school blocks it.

“I almost wish I could tell my friends that we don’t have internet access,” someone told me just last week. “If I close my page, there is going to be all kinds of fall-out and drama, but leaving it open is making me feel really anxious. Every day, someone is saying or doing something there that is mean or really inappropriate. Half the time, I don’t even know if it’s really them or just someone who has their password and is pretending to be them.”

“At what point do you stand up and speak out about this stuff, then?” I asked. “I mean, what do you say to these people who are saying and doing lousy stuff?”

“Not much,” one girl admitted, and I winced a little. “It’ll only make it worse. I just keep my head down and hope that they don’t stir up trouble with me next. It’s not just the ‘bad kids’ who are doing this stuff, you know. It’s just about everyone.”

“Last week, this one girl was using her friend’s account to surf profiles and start trouble with other kids for no reason at all. She was just bored,” someone mentioned.

“Do you think anything would change if kids started calling people out on their bad behavior?” I asked a few different groups of kids.

“Seriously–like we even have the time!” One boy laughed.

“It’s constant,” someone else chimed in. “If we were going to take that on, we’d spend all day dealing with those messes.”

“Last time I checked, I was supposed to be spending my days learning,” one girl pointed out.

Yeah.

It’s been an education.

Perhaps this post won’t win me any popularity contests, but it’s a good reflection of current reality in quite a few places across our region. I’m thinking we’re not alone.

How do we respond?

They either dismiss the potential learning opportunity altogether, allowing the filters to stand in the way, or they delay the learning opportunity until they are able to visit with an administrator and get the filters removed.

So much learning and creating is happening outside of school though, and many of the people that I work with are beginning to realize that there are other pathways around the filters. Yesterday alone, I listened to no less than six different people share stories with me about how their kids were using a variety of web tools to design something interesting or do something fun over spring break. Because they wanted to, not because they had an assignment to complete. Examples:

• Joe’s son and his friends created a new interpretation of Romeo and Juliet, incorporating a air-soft gun battle that they subsequently filmed with a Flip video camera.
• Monica, a high school fellow in the WNY Young Writers’ Studio finally worked up the courage to share a very powerful piece of her writing in Miiba over break. She explained that asking for feedback there first was less overwhelming than asking her friends to provide it.
• Middle school writer and tech geek Andrew cobbled together his own version of a surface table.
• His little brother Luke, who is in second grade, worked on several revisions of his own poetry and emailed them back and forth to others get feedback on them. His mom widened his audience by posting on Facebook.
• Abby, a sixth grade student, started a collaborative Google docs story and is managing to keep a group of very busy middle and high school students sustaining their work together, even though they attend different schools in different towns.
• Laura posted a story in our Studio ning, in order to receive help brainstorming titles.
• Tay shared a slice of a novel there as well, eager to know if it would be coherent enough to publish in our anthology this spring.
• And I’ve been shown so many new apps from so many young people, I can’t even count them at this point. My head is spinning.

Filters are definitely a constraint in a thousand different ways, but these stories reinforced something I’ve felt strongly about for some time: kids are already using tools they value because they are aligned to purposes they care about. If we invited them to do the same as teachers, they would often be able and more than willing to learn and create on their own time. After all, they are already developing a deep fluency around a slew of resources from home. We don’t necessarily have to know how to use them ourselves or wait until they are accessible in our classroom to make room for their use. We simply have to invite kids to learn and create to their full potential, using whatever they do have access to. And yes, I know that this will vary, but isn’t that a good thing?

One of the most important reminders that I was given over spring break and in the day after our return was that our students and our own children have much to teach us. I’m really grateful to work with so many teachers and administrators and parents who are willing to let them do just that.

Like most, I believe that technology is best used to enrich the creation of ideas, our abilities to share them, and our opportunities to learn with others. Those purposes are primary, and we choose our technologies based on them. I also believe that while we might introduce people to these tools inside of schools, they can only be of real value if they are the kinds of tools that many people are able to access outside of schools too–for their own reasons. I don’t know how many people will be running out to purchase an IWB for their home or for recreational use, so I can’t quite understand why we make them a focal point inside of our schools. I’m not sure how they can sustain us in our learning, our creativity, or in our connectivity outside of the classroom. They are crazy expensive too. As a result, whenever I’m asked to share my personal opinions about IWBs I offer up a half-hearted shrug. This certainly doesn’t make them useless, though. In my mind, it just makes them what they are–tools that serve a limited number of purposes. They are things that can also do a bit of harm if they are used without considering the unintended effects of doing so.

Miguel posted a great question in the comments section of Bill’s blog yesterday. He wanted to know what people should do if they’ve purchased IWB boards without considering the questions that Bill posed first.  My first thought as I read Bill’s post and caught Miguel’s reply? These are questions we could and probably should be asking our students now, prior to purchase. And when that doesn’t happen? Maybe we could try this kind of dialogue on for size:

Hey kids–guess what? We are already swimming in technologies and tools that have been sent our way at warped speed. Why? Because it’s possible, and as Americans, we dwell in possibility. That reality provides much food for thought, and perhaps we can dig into it further at some point. In the mean time, here is our current challenge. I expect it’s one you’ll find yourself confronting often in life: we’ve been given some stuff that we are finding ourselves underwhelmed by. Given that reality, how do we proceed in a responsible way without wasting what we’ve been given? How can we use this stuff best, given our different purposes? And what can we do to ensure that the stuff we get is better aligned to what we need in the future?

I agree with Bill-we need to begin the work that we do and the purchases we make with very clear and common vision. I’d like to hope that the vision created was a collective vision too. Considering unintended consequences wouldn’t hurt either. When this doesn’t happen though, perhaps asking our students to align the resources that they are provided to their greater purposes might ensure that we don’t squander what we’ve been given. Maybe this could help kids think and plan and problem solve in ways that will serve them well in the future too. I guess I think this issue is one they will be dealing with for a long time to come.

What about the teachers who wouldn’t dream of leading learning in this way? Well, they’ll use their IWBs in much the same way they used to use their chalkboards…..or not at all. My guess is that any new resource would receive a similar sort of reception. When they’re ready to change, they will. Particularly if they’re blessed with the kind of support they will need to attempt it. In the mean time, I don’t know that IWBs are reinforcing bad practitioners any more than they are helping others move forward.

Sometimes, I wonder if we’re missing a far greater point. Every teacher has tremendous expertise to share……even the ones that aren’t particularly tech-savvy. In fact (I dare say)…especially the ones who aren’t tech-savvy. I’m with Claudia here: teachers are professionals whose current perspectives, practices, and expertise count. They are the ones who are creating current reality. And that’s where we need to live and work. When we don’t recognize and appreciate this as leaders, we’re the ones who miss out. We’re the ones who are out of sync. If we listened and learned from everyone else more often–especially the kids,maybe we would accomplish a lot more a lot faster for a greater number of people. It might not be what WE want or what WE envision. But it might be reflective of real learning. And that might be even better.

Or maybe I’m just being crabby because even though I swore I’d never blog about IWBs, here I am doing that. And on my spring break, no less.

In short, if you’ve acquired a bunch of stuff that looks a lot less dazzling on the ground than it did during the pitch, maybe all isn’t lost after all. This is a very real problem that we and our students will  probably be confronting forever. Fortunately, inside of every school there are hundreds upon thousands of learners with different dreams and passions and needs. Ask them how they can use that stuff. I’ll bet that some of them can come up with some great ideas.

My big take away from this entire experience took shape during a conversation with a parent, who mentioned that her son (who dislikes writing very much) was loving this project.

“He gets to move around,” she marveled, excited to see the boy (who is all boy, by the way) enjoying himself and learning at the same time.

Writing doesn’t have to be about sitting still and quiet and putting pen to paper. In fact, for many people, it often isn’t. My hunch is that the more we embrace this notion, the better we might be able to engage the writers we assumed were “reluctant.”

Want to learn more about digital storytelling? You can begin by perusing some of these fabulous resources:

• Jennifer Dorman shares an impressive set of digital storytelling resources (and much more) on her wiki, Grazing for Digital Natives.
• Wesley Fryer published these exemplars from his own work with writers.
• Silvia Tolisano has recently gifted all of us with this free resource. Click on that link! You will be glad that you did.
• Jon Orech fueled my learning and provided us some support at the start of our process earlier this year.
• And some of that learning was enriched by these resources, compiled by Dr. Alec Couros at the Open Thinking Wiki.

• Jenny Luca and Jackie Gerstein have launched Students 2.0 and are opening dialogue around the potential for this exciting new space for kids.
• Heidi Hayes Jacobs has invited everyone to join her and other curriculum-minded folks at Curriculum 21.
• WNYLIT is a forum for local and global literacy leaders and coaches.
• Nina Davis has launched the Instructional Rounds ning

Several of the teachers that I work with have begun using Ning to enrich the learning that is happening in their classrooms. If you would like to learn more about how to do so for your own purposes, you might want to visit Jen Dorman’s amazing wikispace.

• VocabGrabber enables users to see how words are used in context.
• Confusing Words highlights the biggies that so many of us misuse.
• Save the Words is kinda beautiful, although I’m struggling a bit with its utility.
• IdiomSite.Com may become a quick favorite of some teachers I know…..
• RhymeZone is a rhyming dictionary and thesaurus
• Visuwords is an online dictionary that graphs word relationships

I know that I may be a bit late to the table here, but I’m loving this tool.

Lately, I’ve been teaching with StoryCorps almost as often as I’ve been teaching with TED. So much potential for the classroom……

Been playing with Firefox add-ons—simple ways to download YouTube videos here.

Had the chance to create a few new Sir Ken Robinson fans last week. The Future of Education is featuring him in a free webinar next week!

And check this out–a tool that allows you to print a wall-sized poster with a standard printer (and if you aren’t subscribed to Free Technology for Teachers, you should be….that’s where I learned about this!)

And last but not least……AnyClip helps users locate slices of scenes from thousands of films.

Happy Tuesday! Hope the sun is out where you are today!

I’m wondering how to engage students meaningfully with literature using tools like 60 Second Recap and Cliff’s Notes. Is it possible to have learners develop their own, around the texts they enjoyed and understood the most, so that others could learn from them? Would it be a good thing if users were invited to contribute their own works to these sites? Or is it enough to allow or even invite students to make use of them as-is, in order to enrich the meaning they are creating?

Apps that include Cram Plans have the English teacher in me recoiling–I’ll admit it. Perhaps it makes more sense for me to consider the potential and the possibility of the things that feel most threatening, though. The reality is that these tools exist, they aren’t going away, and kids are using them. Maybe we could make that work for all of us in better ways. I don’t know. At the very least, it challenges all of us to design learning experiences that transcend the meaning that can be distilled from resources like these. After all, they are out there and more accessible than ever. What are your thoughts?