Anthony Chivetta

Innovate, or die.

2008-08-31T00:00:00-04:00

This is a crosspost from the Students 2.0 blog. You may comment on the original post there.

You cannot ignore this. You cannot ignore us. The revolution has begun and we have tasted the power.

In contrast to the consumer generations before us, my generation is growing up a generation of producers. We are the YouTube/LiveJournal/Facebook generation. Mass media which has long been a one-to-many institution, allowing only the big and wealthy to transmit their messages, is turning into the many-to-many world of the internet and cheep consumer devices.

Whether it is posting videos taken on cell phones to youtube or photos taken on pocket-sized cameras to facebook. our generation expects to be able to broadcast their messages. We expect to be able to create and to share.

And, it is this expectation that makes our generation different. We are no longer content to be consumers of information. That is, we are no longer content to consume an education. To connect with today’s students, you must not only teach them, but encourage them to teach back.

It requires a flat classroom, one where students are first class citizens and are engaged in the activity of learning, not simply an audience.

Project-based learning, one-to-one programs, insert education buzzword of the month here, aren’t enough. The change has to be deeper.

Failure to innovate around this new structure will cause education to take an increasingly marginalized role in the lives of our students.

But, I don’t need to explain this to you, you already know it. So, what’s the wait?

Godspeed.

Never stop doing

2008-06-24T00:00:00-04:00

This is a crosspost from the Students 2.0 blog. You may comment on the original post there.

Recently, Arthus treated us to the importance of nothing. He wrote:

My favorite thing of all is to do nothing at all. I do nothing all the time: I walk nowhere, I think about nothing, I work on nothing.
…
Doing nothing is the same as doing anything that strikes your fancy, or not. Doing nothing is getting a crazy idea, then forgetting it.

I compare Arthus’s “doing nothing” with the time that I spend thinking and tinkering. Such time is of critical importance to any creative individual; it is when we find new directions for our ideas and explore the breadth of the intellectual realm. The world would be a very boring place if we never allowed ourselves to wander in new directions.

However, one must wander somewhere. I believe that our lives are nothing more than the sum of the actions that we take. If we only wander through the intellectual void that is doing nothing, nothing is all we will be. Life isn’t about meandering through our thoughts, it is about grabbing a thought by the horns and running with it.

I believe that a fully lived life is without boredom. You should always be doing something: pursuing some new idea, trying or learning something new, working towards some end, building something, never losing momentum.

Every experience we have provides us with new information that we use to make sense of the world around us, expanding our schemata. This understanding of the world, the one that comes from experience, is what separates the knowledgeable from the wise.

Our thoughts are nothing without the actions that make the best of them. Arthus may have started his blog while doing nothing, but he had to do something to make it a success. We must move from thinking to doing. Only nothing has been accomplished by thoughts alone.

So, with all due respect to Arthus’s philosophy of doing nothing, I would challenge you instead to do everything that you can, to live your life fully and never let a moment go to waste. Never be bored, never wonder what to do, just do something. Go write a book, learn how to paint, act in a play, install Linux, write a blog, start a company, study religious texts, learn a new language, volunteer with a new group, connect with an old friend.

If you are not exhausted, you should be asking yourself: what else can I be doing?

It should be the same in our schools: are we giving students the opportunity to do everything in life that they can?

Experiential Learning: The Day of Silence

2008-05-06T00:00:00-04:00

This is a crosspost from the Students 2.0 blog. You may comment on the original post there.

I would like to share with you an experience that I have found to be deeply rewarding. For the last two years I have participated in the GLSEN’s Day of Silence. While I had heard of it three years ago, I started participating last minute and on a whim two years ago when I was offered a “Day of Silence Participant” button by a member of our school’s Gay-Straight Alliance.

The stated purpose of the day is to call attention to hate speech and its silencing effects on GLBT students. In this sense, the event is an activist event. For me, this is a noble cause and it takes the admirable form of self-sacrifice. Even if this was the only reason to participate, I would gladly do so.

The Day of Silence is founded on the premise that the ability for GLBT students to express themselves is restricted by hate speech. And so, we voluntarily restrict our own ability to express ourselves to symbolize this silencing. However, the Day of Silence isn’t just an opportunity for activism, it is an exercise in understanding for the participants.

There are some experiences that are simply eye-opening and I count participating in the Day of Silence among one of those experiences. Before participating, I had no idea how incredibly frustrating it is to not be able to express oneself. I had taken my ability to interject through speech for granted and giving that ability up made me see the value that it holds. We, quite simply, do not fully appreciate the value of verbal expression.

While I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the reproduction of hateful oppression found in participating in the day of silence, I can say that it is simply an indescribably educational experience. I learned something that cannot be expressed in words and cannot be taught, I learned something intimate about my relationship with the world around me.

A Day of Silence is something I wish everyone would experience, regardless of the cause. It is an opportunity for learning experientially that I feel no one can afford to miss.

We should always be on the lookout for opportunities where students can learn by experiencing: not only by doing, but by feeling.

Three Lessons from High School

2008-04-27T00:00:00-04:00

This is a crosspost from the Students 2.0 blog. You may comment on the original post there.

I recently gave a talk to my high school titled “Three Lessons from High School”. As a senior who will be graduating, I took the opportunity to share with my school the things I learned during my journey from a freshmen struggling to stay in school to the reasonably successful senior I am today. I hope that you might enjoy my video of the presentation below.

(If the video below does not play, try refreshing the page or clicking here to view/download just the movie.)

Twitter: Twiterbates

2008-03-11T00:00:00-04:00

One of the great flattening aspects of Twitter is that it brings people of different beliefs and backgrounds together for spontaneous communication and discussion. Sometimes these turn into Twitter debates, or Twitterbates (as I have just now decided to call them). Take the following example:

I was remarking (to no one in particular) on a recent incidence of theft at my school.

5 Laptops were stolen from my school today, one where students feel totally comfortable leaving their bags in the hall unattended
— Anthony

Theft has happened before, and before as a community we have always resolved to work against the breach of trust and united around that
— Anthony

If a student: we condemn, make an example of -> strengthens community; if faculty/staff: we fear those we are supposed to trust
— Anthony

if thief is an outside party: we have a big problem, students don't feel like they are safe in school, not sure how to recover from that
— Anthony

And, before I knew it, Kevin Walter had decided to chime in with his own comment.

@achivetta: That's one of the things that struck me about [your school]. But students need to learn to deal with the real world. People are bad.
— Kevin

@kevinwalter it is about creating an environment where people are comfortable, one of fear doesn't facilitate learning, one of trust does
— Anthony

@achivetta: Not fear, but not ignorance either.
— Kevin

@kevinwalter I don't think we are ignorant, we don't leave our laptops on street corners. But, for us, school should be a safe space
— Anthony

And then, Arthus decides to join the fun. Let the twitterbate begin!

@achivetta @kevinwalter I don't buy the whole "fear" thing; the world's a scary place, students have to, basically, deal with it.
— Arthus

@achivetta: Me, an outsider, walked right into your school last month. No security checkpoints
— Kevin

@arthus Fear impedes learning, our community prides itself on being a trusting environment, dealing with it doesn't mean we have to live it
— Anthony

@achivetta What happens when students hit the real world and have to learn/work in "dangerous" enviroments?
— Arthus

@achivetta I suppose it would be easy to be trusting when you can throw anyone you don't like/trust out.
— Arthus

@kevinwalter and, that is an issue, sort of. we have been a pretty secure campus, the community is small. I worry this threatens that
— Anthony

@arthus exactly, last theft incident...expelled, that is the advantage of an independent school.
— Anthony

@arthus we aren't ignorant of the dangers of the real world, we are just aware of context and take advantage of the close knit community
— Anthony

@achivetta: You say you don't leave your laptops on street corners. Do you ever go to street corners? Or only stay in the safe zone...
— Kevin

@achivetta Each to his own; I prefer learning to deal with the "real world" when I don't have to worry about $$$....
— Arthus

@kevinwalter and there lies the rub. I think we do, but that is the facing challenge ind. school education, creating diversity of experience
— Anthony

@achivetta Don't give me this "independent school" stuff... it's a private school. Shall we call private business "independent business?"
— Arthus

@achivetta: The stereotypes do have some basis in fact, my private-schooled friend. :-)
— Kevin

@achivetta: Oh, sorry. "Independent" school
— Kevin

@achivetta Honestly, how much diversity can your school claim? (This coming from rural whitest state in the nation)
— Arthus

@arthus It depends on what kind of diversity you are talking about! it isn't all about % of "people of color". no state approved courses...
— Anthony

@arthus: I think the fact that your school has no diversity has twisted your own meaning of the word. ;-)
— Kevin

@achivetta Not just racial: how great is disparity in grades? intelligence? income? etc.
— Arthus

@kevinwalter lol. maybe. but atleast we have to accept everyone who wants to come...
— Arthus

@kevinwalter I'm sure the economic diversity is far greater than @ @achivetta's "independent" school.
— Arthus

@arthus diversity has it's advantages, yes, but it can also be limiting, why do we have "honors" level classes? my school strikes a balance
— Anthony

@kevinwalter @achivetta @arthus My big, rich, private school's motto is "A private school with a public purpose."
— Lindsea

There wasn’t a point to this. None of us planned to debate these issues. It wasn’t at times easy to follow or well ordered. But, we all shared our unique perspectives and participated in a spontaneous sharing of ideas. What a powerful (and dangerous) tool!

METC Presentation in Podcast Form

2008-03-08T00:00:00-05:00

I have recorded my presentation from the Midwest Educational Technology Conference as a podcast. The presentation is titled Student Technology Leadership Program: How Students Can Lead a School to 21^st Century Learning and discusses the MICDS Student Technology Group (StuTech). If you wish to hear me stumble through my slides, you can watch it here (QuickTime Movie, H.264/AAC, bandwidth/hosting courtesy MICDS/StuTech).

Mini-Term: Dropping the Schedule

2008-03-05T00:00:00-05:00

This is a crosspost from the Students 2.0 blog. You may comment on the original post there.

A few weeks ago, my school embarked on a grand experiment entitled mini-term. Rather than have 6 classes per day, rather than divide learning into 45 minute blocks, we opened the schedule and challenged teachers to engage students in their passion. The experiment was, for most, a success and provided students wonderful opportunities to learn about and explore topics off the path of the normal curriculum as well as complete projects that could not be handled in a traditional classroom setting.

The Hard Details

Mini-terms were taught by teams of two or three teachers. These teachers were encouraged to teach their passion and were free to design their courses around topics of their choosing, with an emphasis on cross-departmental work. The only guidelines for teachers were broad such as a required reading and writing component. The classes ranged from 18 to 25 students each from all four grade levels and met all day, every day for a four-day week. Students selected their top 6 choices, and were sorted into classes accordingly. Teachers were encouraged to take field trips, and engage in hands on projects.

My Experience

The class I participated in was called “Zen and the Art of Furniture Design”, it was taught my a science teacher (Mr. Skinner) with an independent passion for carpentry and an art teacher (Mr. Huber) with years of experience in scenic design and construction. Our class was one big project: design, build, and paint an Adirondack chair, bench and table. Our class was split into two groups of nine to each build one set of furniture.

The first day was spent on the design phase: modifying the stock chair design and planning paint schemes. For the design of the chair, the two groups took different approaches. The other group drew their modifications on the teacher provided plans and then built a scale model of their design. My group took advantage of my CAD skills to modify the original design and produce new drawings and renderings. For paint, each group was required to choose an artist and paint the furniture to resemble that artist. Part of my group spent the day researching and picking an artist, finding work by that artist, and finally tracing that work onto a scale plan.

As we were working through the process, we found many opportunities for incidental learning. One student taught another student drafting skills that were learned in our architecture course so that the original plans could be annotated. Another student experimented on the Wacom tablets in the art computer lab, learning how to control pen size in Photoshop using pressure, then tracing printed artwork into the computer. This learning was spontaneous, not assessed and in some cases not even visible in the final project, but it was learning through doing and the students left with a new skill.

The next day we moved into the shop and began the actual construction. This included ripping lumber, cutting boards to the correct length (and determining those lengths from the plans our group produced), sanding the boards, and assembling them into actual furniture. Due to my technical theatre background, I was right at home in the shop, but still I saw something that surprised me: 18 students all working — no breaks, no “we don’t have anything to do”, no “watch and criticize”, but 18 students all working towards common goals, and enjoying themselves at the same time. It was a truly breathtaking sight, students who had never touched a power tool in their lives were ripping lumber on a table saw and screwing boards together.

Finally, we were able to get dirty and begin painting. The artists in the group went to work tracing the outlines onto the furniture so that we could paint them in. With three students to a piece, we were all busy turning bare wood into a tribute to our artists, and learning about those artists at the same time by both reproducing their work and studying it to produce our color pallet.

We finished with about an hour left in the day. Just enough time to admire our work. After three days of hard work in the shop, we were all tired. But, I have never seen a prouder group of students. We moved the product of our hard work into the chosen spots on campus, and patted ourselves on the back for a job well done.

Why Mini-Term Was Powerful

I can honestly say that I have never had a more immersive learning experience in school. By allowing students to only focus on this one project they weren’t distracted and were well rested. The students were able to enjoy the Zen of the project - the beautiful, in the moment, experience of hard, dedicated work.

By giving students one overarching project, learning was able to happen through experience. Some of us learned about different artists while researching our paint scheme. Some of us learned about paint mixing and color pallets. We all learned how to solve the problems the project presented and the skills to face those problems in the future.

There was no grade, there was no homework, there was no test — the assessments were thrown out of the window. But, it was a stronger experience because of that. Students didn’t fear failure, they weren’t scared to learn something for the experience of learning. There was however a final product, and one that the students could be proud of. Every day, I experience the immense pleasure of seeing students sitting on the chair and bench that I helped build. And, that is something that I can be proud of. How often do our students get to be proud of their school work?

What I Would Change

I was fortunate to be in of the most successful mini-terms. The less successful classes seemed to be those that didn’t embrace the new format and attempted to fill the time with traditional classroom instruction. Students simply can’t sit at a desk for 6 hours a day learning about the same subject matter. Those mini-terms that realized this and used project-based learning to keep students involved provided the best learning experiences. I would work to ensure that this was the case across the board.

I would also include students in the planning and teaching of the mini-terms. One of the best things about my mini-term was that once the initial instructions were given, a large portion of the learning was student-to-student. Each student was able to bring their own skill set to the table — whether it be in design, drawing, CAD, painting, or construction — and students taught these skills to each other. I would work to encourage student involvement in instruction earlier in the process. Students with an interest in teaching and passion for a topic could be provided the opportunity to work with their teachers on the design and execution of a mini-term.

Finally, and this is the smallest issue by far, I would work with teachers to eliminate the pre-break crunch that occurred before mini-term. With students over-burdened the week prior, they entered mini-term tired and resentful. While no other homework was assigned that week, fear over losing their students for a week caused many teachers to assign stealth homework in the form of overdue assignments created by the crunch.

Mini-term was a powerful experience for students and while many of them may not realize it yet, they will be able to build off of their experiences for the rest of their lives. The project truly embraced the kind of experiential and project-based learning we need to produce 21^st century students who can think creatively.

Twitter, answering your rhetorical questions

2008-02-01T00:00:00-05:00

I tend to use twitter as a place to dump interesting thoughts. Many of these thoughts take the form of rhetorical questions or statements with implied questions such as:

That blog post you just wrote: does it lead us to an end? Or, is it just reaping the money to be made in deepening the problem?

trying to get the gap filler residue off my hands, stuff sticks like none other, and I couldn't find the turpentine

The beautiful thing is when people decide to answer these rhetorical questions, such as this one:

What are those ideals, however few in number or limited in nature, that you strive to live by and to die by? How do they define you?

Shortly after posting that, lo and behold, I began to get responses:

God, country, family. Take a knee each day, stand up when the anthem plays, and blood runs deep.
— Patrick Woessner

I value loyalty, trust, faithfulness, to family and friends, above all.
— dmcordell

Give your best +10% and look yourself in the eye with honesty everyday, hug your family members, support &laugh with your friends
— Elizabeth Helfant

treat the land that we live on and the planet we call home with the utmost respect. Be kind to mother earth...
— mjmontagne

Stay true to those I care about, above all else. Be honest with myself. Do what is necessary, for the above. My actions make me.
— Kevin Walter

Each of these answers, completely volunteered, provides a slice of a human face to these internet personas. It is a brief, but warm, moment of connection. These are the moments that make twitter, and many other pieces of social software online, so cool.

21st Century Education: Thinking Creatively

2008-01-22T00:00:00-05:00

This was originally written for publication for my school’s newsletter’s edition on “21^st century learning”. I present it to you here not as an attempt to present any new ideas, but in the hope that it might help to pull together many of the ideas that are floating around in online education discussions. Those familiar with Dan Pink might see some of his influence here. Enjoy.

Twenty-first century education won’t be defined by any new technology. It won’t be defined by 1:1 laptop programs or tech-intensive projects. Twenty-first century education will, however, be defined by a fundamental shift in what we are teaching — a shift towards learner-centered education and creating creative thinkers. Today’s world is no longer content with students who can simply apply the knowledge they learned in school: our generation will be asked to think and operate in ways that traditional education has not, and can not, prepare us for.

Education has long tried to produce students who can think (and at times, think critically) and it has, for the most part, succeeded. As we move into a world where outsourcing, automation, and the ability to produce a product, physical or intellectual, at the cheapest cost, become the cornerstones of our rapidly evolving global economy, the ability to think critically is no longer enough. The need to know the capital of Florida died when my phone learned the answer. Rather, the students of tomorrow need to be able to think creatively: they will need to learn on their own, adapt to new challenges and innovate on-the-fly. As the realm of intellectual accessibility expands at amazing rates (due to greater global collaboration and access to information), students of tomorrow will need to be their own guides as they explore the body of information that is at their fingertips. My generation will be required to learn information quickly, use that information to solve new and novel problems, and then present those solutions in creative and effective ways. The effective students of tomorrow’s world will be independent learners, strong problem solvers and effective designers.

If we accept the above to be true, I would argue that there are two types of education that will prepare students for the world of tomorrow: experiential learning and project-based learning.

Experiential learning can be best seen in extracurriculars and in some schools, senior projects. These experiences give students the opportunity to face first-hand the challenges that arise when applying the theoretical knowledge provided by traditional classroom learning to real-world challenges. Light designing for MICDS Theatre has taught me how to take my technical knowledge of lighting and apply it to a creative and artistic end. As issues arise, I must problem-solve within the constraints provided by my technical knowledge and my creative vision — I must think creatively.

Project-based learning is the in-class complement of experiential learning. The concept behind project-based learning is simple: give students the basic tools, then ask them to go above and beyond on their own projects, exploring the information in their own way, and on their own terms. The effect can be awe-inspiring. Our students are diving deeper into subject matter than ever before, and doing so on their own terms in ways that they enjoy. Whether it is through producing a movie on burlesque dance or deriving Kepler’s laws using calculus, students are not only learning, but they are learning how to learn.

Traditional-rote learning has its place too, as a jumping-off point for our intellectual endeavors. We are, however, crippling our students if we don’t give them the tools necessary to be life-long learners.

Teaching the Process of Design (or, making student videos interesting)

2008-01-07T00:00:00-05:00

This is a crosspost from the Students 2.0 blog. You may comment on the original post there.

As I watch students (myself included, as always) work on video projects for their foreign language, English, or other classes, I see a striking similarity between those videos and my family’s home movies. Just like home movies, most of these student videos are lacking a thesis and a design to support them. As technology allows us to integrate creative projects further into our curriculum, we need to give students the tools to funnel their creative efforts into an effective and cohesive whole.

The need to teach students how to design is not a new idea. Dan Meyer has been posting wonderful lessons from his class on Information Design. Scott S. Floyd in his year-end photo post writes:

While we focus on design being important in educating our youth (or their learning), I have begun to pay particular attention in how things look around me. I think that giving our students the opportunity to understand and appreciate the elements of design will allow them to create better finished products to display their learning.

There are many ways that one can approach design. Practitioners of the visual arts might look at it in terms of the principles of design. My background, however, is in theatre and video production. I will also add that my teacher/mentor Mr. Patrick Huber gets full credit for instilling this process in me.

If you asked a director of a theatrical or video production for the thesis of their production, you would surely get a cogent statement of purpose. It might be as simple as “My production is historically accurate” or a more grandiose theory about the world we inhabit: “by allowing ones’ ambition, not rationality, to take control of the choices we make, we lead ourselves into our failure” (That Scottish Play) or “our perception of our environment is a function of the people in it and our relationships with them” (The Zoo Story). Once a thesis is decided on, a concept for the production is formed that expresses the thesis and every design decision made during the production serves the thesis. This gives directors (or designers, or actors) a basic structure on which to base their production. Used correctly, a thesis can be the most powerful tool in a designer’s arsenal.

I would argue that the reason watching student videos can at times be excruciatingly painful is that they lack a cohesive design. Often, they represent a hodgepodge of ideas strewn together with very little thought to creating a unified whole. However, when students begin with picking a thesis, and then work from that thesis, a pattern, a design, begins to emerge. When the question for every single decision is “what supports my thesis?” those awkward transitions, strange cuts, and random effects begin to make sense.

Let us take, as an example, foreign language video projects. In my school, it is not uncommon for a foreign language student to be producing a short three- or five-minute video to demonstrate their mastery of the curriculum. Normally, the first production meeting starts with the question: What can our video be about that makes it easy for us to use the required tenses and vocabulary?; And so, a script is written and design decisions are made with one goal in mind: satisfying the requirements. The problem is two-fold: While the video satisfies the requirements, it does so only minimally, and while the students are using the class’s language, they may not be fully expressing an idea with the language.

Rather than simply asking our students to combine video technology with their foreign language, we need to be asking them to use both their foreign language and video technology to express an idea. Asking students to reach beyond the requirements is where the real gold lies: it is when we really start to see how well students can use the tools given to them.

This isn’t, of course, limited to foreign language videos. I would classify student video productions into two categories: (1) videos demonstrating mastery of material (such as the above foreign language example), and (2) videos demonstrating the material (such as a video one might produce for a history class explaining some historical event). In this second case, the purpose of a thesis is simple: to make the video interesting. If students are trying to convey information in a video, they need to hold their audience’s attention. Structuring their video and design decisions around a thesis is a powerful tool for creating a cohesive and powerful piece.

I leave you with a series of questions: How and when do you teach students design skills at your school? What types of design skills do you teach them? Do they have the design skills to effectively utilize the creative mediums you provide them? What attributes have you found make student designs particularly effective?

Student Technology Leadership: Collaborative Learning

2007-12-10T00:00:00-05:00

This is a crosspost from the Students 2.0 blog. You may comment on the original post there.

If students or teachers fear an inability to support technology used in classrooms this can become a major hindrance to adoption of technology in teaching and learning. Tech-savvy students, however, can help alleviate these fears.

This is the first of a series of posts about my school's Student Technology Group, also known as StuTech. The idea for the group came from a meeting in March of 2006 during the ISACS accreditation process with the hope of taking advantage of student resources we had available. StuTech currently provides support for over 300 student laptops on campus (students may bring any computer they choose and no staff support is provided) and works closely with teachers to support their use of curricular technology and tech-intensive projects.

There are a number of ways that StuTech provides support for students but its primary responsibility is the student helpdesk, the StuTech room. This was an underutilized but central space in the school that has been turned into stutech’s ‘home’. It is located across from the flat panel that shows student pictures and adjacent to student publications (for whom we installed a blue screen). We keep a collection of PCs and Macs around so our members can both get work done and help others.

The real magic begins when the nine or so ‘stutechies’ begin spending their free periods in the StuTech room making themselves available to help others. We usually get one or two student requests per period (45 minutes) and more during lunch periods. We see problems ranging from trouble connecting to the school’s wireless network or VPN to questions about iMovie.

Watching students help their peers is inspiring; it is collaborative learning at its best. The stutechie might not know the answer to the student’s question, but working together it is rare that a solution can’t be found or a future course of action plotted. Each question turns into a learning experience for both the student in need of help and the stutechie.

There is often more than one stutechie at a time in the room providing an additional collaborative learning opportunity. United in our common interest in computers, we often share interesting facts or techniques and tech news with each other. Each week we place questions on the board in the room for the rest of the group to research and attempt to answer (e.g. “How do you troubleshoot DHCP related errors?” or “Why are bugs in device drivers so dangerous?”). These questions often lead to discussions from which students routinely gain new insight and understanding into aspects of technology.

Beyond the obvious education in technology, the stutechies also have a wonderful opportunity to practice communication skills. The stutechies must learn how to work with each other to solve problems, they must learn how to explain solutions to students in an easy to understand way and how to calm panicked students. During rush periods StuTech may have twice as many people with problems as people to help them, so we must practice managing the load so that all can be helped.

Stutech uses a copy of RT to track student issues and make sure that no issue brought to us is overlooked. Because a student may have his problem looked at by more than one stutechie we place a strong emphasis on documenting the problems we see in RT, giving the stutechies an opportunity to practice their written technical communication.

StuTech is on the surface a very outward-facing, community-oriented group, but that is not where its biggest benefits lie. The learning opportunities that (groups like) StuTech can create for students can not be under-emphasized. StuTech is the ultimate in self-directed learning, a group of students sharing a common passion and learning about it together. The strong student led nature of StuTech means that there is no required learning, just exploring of passions. As much as I love helping students as a whole, it is the opportunities that StuTech offers its members that makes it such an amazing organization.

Extracurricular Learning

2007-12-01T00:00:00-05:00

I'm thinking that during school needs to be more like after school...

David Jakes on Twitter

This is a point I really like and thankfully one that I do hear on occasion. But, it seems even people who do understand it fail to place the appreciation on extracurricular activities necessary to take full advantage of them as learning opportunities.

Extracurriculars provide wonderful learning opportunities, however many of these are intangible. I am a much better person due to the leadership skills I gained in the theatre. I can troubleshoot a light blindfolded, and react quickly to a wide range of athletic injuries. These are things that I learned outside of the classroom. And, these skills (among others) are not just limited to those activities. The ability to work through a problem systematically (e.g. troubleshoot a light) is something that I will use for the rest of my life.

The problem (from the 20th century education perspective) is that these skills aren’t testable; they don’t show up on any transcript, there is no grade assigned. This, it seems, scares educators.

Does that fact that it is difficult to test a student’s ability to systematically think through a problem mean that it shouldn’t be the focus of our attention? We give students the tools, why not also focus on how to apply them logically?

There is no doubt in my mind that my GPA is lower due to my high level of “after school learning”. This is a fact that I have accepted because I know that I have learned more than my peers who did not take advantage of these additional learning opportunities. The question then becomes: how do I get colleges, my parents, all of the people who will be reading my transcript to acknowledge what I have learned, not only my documented performance? (Having a resume helps, but I don’t think the cultural understanding necessary to get credit for my extracurricular learning exists, yet.)

We need to learn to value the learning that can’t be tested before these additional opportunities for learning can be fully explored.

Pictures in the wall: fostering peer appreciation

2007-11-20T00:00:00-05:00

At my school, MICDS, we have a large TV mounted to the wall in one of our common areas. The TV was installed this summer and we have been using it to show photos or video of current school-related events and information. For example, we put the RamReport on the screen following the week of its premier. I have found myself in the lucky position of being in charge of its content.

To be brief: it has been a wonderful experience to walk past and see groups of kids stopped watching a video or pictures scroll by. It has proven to be a novel, ad hoc, way to publicize the achievements of various groups (sports teams, the cast/crew of plays, etc.). Without forcing knowledge of these achievements on students (as ‘announcements’ often do), it allows students to come to appreciate what their peers are doing on the student’s own terms – creating a deeper understanding than “boy’s swimming will travel to state next week…”.

A few weeks ago, our Field Hockey team (of which I am very proud to be the Student Trainer) went to the “Midwest Championships”. So, the following week we placed pictures from the game (taken by student Chris Franklin) on the screen. I have included a sampling of the pictures below. Enjoy.

nbSMTP and GMail

2007-06-03T00:00:00-04:00

If you are trying to set up nbSMTP to work with GMail (for example, to get mutt working on OS X), you can use the following in your .nbsmtprc file:

relayhost=smtp.gmail.com
fromaddr=__YOUR_GMAIL_ADDRESS__
auth_user=__YOUR_GMAIL_ADDRESS__
auth_pass=__YOUR_PASSWORD__
port=587
use_starttls=True

Those of you who are interested in getting Mutt working on OS X might find Using mutt on OS X to be helpful.

If the above also works for you, please leave a note in the comments below.