Right here, right now, there is no other place I want to be
Right here, right now, watching the world wake up from history

I sat in my eighth grade History class listening to Jesus Jones’ “Right Here, Right Now” blasting out of the teacher’s boombox. It was 1991 and the topic de jour was centered around how much the world had changed in the past 50 years. Pretty much everything has been invented already, I remember thinking as I sat there and listened to him drone on and on about “when he was a kid…” We were at the end of the age of newness, and I’d live the rest of my life with everything that we had right then.

I wonder if kids still think that? Sometimes I wonder if adults do?

So as I was teaching my eighth-grade class a little History of Technology last week, I cranked up the speakers and played them the same song. Other than enduring some harassment for choosing an “old” song, I think I was able to successfully facilitate the same discussion that I’d been a part of two decades earlier. Surprisingly, however, the students were probably more interested in the topic than I was – which completely caught me off guard. Most of the conversation that followed, however, was based around something that happened by coincidence while we were talking…

My TweetDeck popped up an #EdChat notification on my projection screen.

“What’s that”, one student asked. “It’s his Twitter account and he shouldn’t be using it in school”, replied another. The the barrage of comments started flowing; “I don’t use Twitter – it’s stupid. I use Yahoo! Messenger and send text messages”; “I use AIM”; “I use Facebook” “Facebook is stupid”; “All of my friends use MSN”; “MySpace is so much better than everything else”… I live for teachable moments, so this was almost too good to be true.

I could discuss every detail of the rest of that class, but it’s the epiphany I had afterward that I want to discuss here. Why, with all of the highly-developed communication programs that are (and have been) available, has Twitter taken off? Why does it seem like it’s the impetus for an educational revolution that’s gaining momentum every day? Why didn’t educators flock to an AOL Chatroom when it first came out? What was wrong with Yahoo! Chatrooms? MS NetMeeting? ICQ Chat? Orkut? Yuku? Freetel? (and the list goes on and on…) So why Twitter? Why here, why now?

In all honesty I haven’t got an answer to that question. I’m hoping some of you will be able to comment and help me out! Is this educational revolution relatively new? Has it been going on in certain private circles for decades? Am I part of something big, or is this all going to be a passing “fad” by mainstream educators? Will the education books look back at 2008-2009 and say “this is where the tide turned” – or will we simply be a blip on one of the waves? (no pun intended – although it was pretty good, eh?)

Why here, why now? Why Twitter, why #edchat? Why me and you?

Of course the location isn’t what I was supposed to be enlightened with this weekend – it was the content of the presenters and the myriad speakers. So in chronological order, here are some thoughts:

Thursday evening I missed the Wine Tasting Cruise on “Captain Bill’s” chartered boat, but when the boat returned I met up with everyone for a reception at the Harbor Hotel. What a beautiful place! During the hors d’ oeuvres hour I was standing in the lobby with a co-worker talking with my hands (I tend to wave them around an awful lot) and almost knocked a man over – come to find out that he is the new education commissioner in NYS. That would’ve been probably one of the biggest faux pas of my short tenure as a member of the NYSMSA (I’ve been a member for all of a week). So yes, I did “meet” David Steiner – although can’t say I actually spoke with him or shook his hand.

As we ate dinner, David spoke to the group about his nomination to be the NYS Education Commissioner and what some of his visions are. Of course he mentioned NCLB and standardized testing negatively (he knew what we wanted to hear!) while talking about making education meaningful and engaging. He also spoke about a state-wide (or larger scale?) curriculum being developed, since we in NYS have nothing to go by. Sure we have “standards” – but we haven’t got a curriculum guide. He also mentioned the need for a “computer class” curriculum – I almost jumped for joy as I envisioned schools all over the state needing instructional technologists for their local programs. He was a very good speaker, in my opinion, and said quite a few things that I hardly believe to be “the truth”. Even if he does have great ideas, perhaps I’m just too jaded to believe that he can carry some of them out.

By the way, before I move on… he did say that standardized tests and, more specifically, teaching to the test, were not good. But he also said at one point that our state is pushing the USA’s education standards to increase, as our assessment program is one of the best in the country. So… I’m not sure what to believe there…

It’s 7:15AM Friday morning and I’m sitting in a classroom in a foreign school waiting to hear the 6th grade team from my own school talk about their team configuration. It was interesting to see my principal and co-workers describing how amazing their schedule configuration is now so that they can collaborate easily and talk daily. I’m still longing for a chance to work collaboratively with someone in this school who is considered “core”. With that in mind I went on to my next session…

Building and Implementing a Flexible Schedule with Elliot Merenbloom was the next presentation that I attended. I knew his name due to our current school schedule being developed by Elliot a few years ago. This session was probably intended for guidance and administrative people and the attendees didn’t surprise me – I’d say over half of us in attendance had out administrative degrees. Anyhow, he had some good ideas on how to create flexibility in a school schedule to allow for better teaming and intra-team collaboration. Unfortunately all of the ideas that he presented kept the “encore classes” out of the teams – so technology, Family and Consumer Science, Art, Music, and Health are never really included in his flexibility formula. I have a few ideas about how to fix that and hope to float them by my principal before next school year’s schedule is started.

Since the NYSCATE conference happened to overlap this one, the most high-tech presentation that I was able to find was a session named “Virtual Worlds in Education”, facilitated by Catherine Norton-Barker of GST BOCES. I’ve got a bit of familiarity with Second Life, but had never had the chance to see the Virtual Worlds in action. The program itself was developed at Cornell University and was sold to BOCES a year ago to allow for continuing development. It’s somewhat of a Second Life-like program that’s closed (for security) and all about education. It was a good presentation, although I don’t see it as something that I’d invest a lot of classroom time working with. Sure it’s easy to use – but so is HyperStudio. And there’s a reason nobody uses HyperStudio anymore… Add some photo-realistic graphics capabilities, make it easier to integrate with back-end grading databases, and decrease the bandwidth needs and this would be one heck of a program. I might play with it a little bit and see if I change my mind – but right now that’s how I feel.

ePortfolios & Authentic Assessment was by far the most intriguing presentation that I made it to. Cheryl Muller and Nikki Cole from the Bath-Haverling district presented this topic to a room full of music educators (and me). A self-proclaimed “music lover”, I was able to follow the talk quite easily as they spoke about how they assess each student in their band and chorus individually and authentically – skipping the “A for effort” sort of grade that many music teachers give on the report cards. The actual assessment piece was extremely interesting, but even more interesting was their use of the district ePortfolio system. I’ve been a huge supporter of ePortfolios for a long time now, and this was the first time I’ve been able to see Bath’s custom-built solution being used authentically. I’d seen presentations and previews before, but this was the real deal. I have to say, I was not impressed with their system the way I was a few years ago. My belief is that it was coded by a developer for Bath-Haverling specifically and hasn’t been updated since. In the age of Web 2.0 and Ruby on Rails programming, I find it hard to believe that their system hasn’t been significantly upgraded. I’m still a huge supporter of one of these systems, but it’s got to be an open format that’s easily upgradeable and always backwards compatible. Kudos to these ladies for taking a once-arduous task and making it easier and more collaborative using new-ish technologies… They are certainly using the tools that are at their disposal as well as they can be used.

The last presentation that I was able to make it to was put on by the same group of CFA 6th grade teachers who I began the day with – Integrating Arts into the Core Curriculum. Once again I felt a bit disconnected from my co-workers as they work together on this initiative and have never included technology (or music, f/c science, art, or health). But overall it was a good presentation, and I learned a few things abut what’s happening in my building. Essentially the 6th grade team got a grant to work collaboratively with a local artist and a local museum to teach through art. All of our sixth grade students participate by taking pictures, editing them, and having them displayed at the museum for all to see. The process is long and extremely planned – the kids learn “Why they do what they do” through this project.

A few random thoughts:

• A ton of middle school teachers that are my age are getting their administrative degrees. I met at least 10 people who were either working on them or had just finished them up… and there are three, soon to be four teachers in my building with administrative certificates from the state.
• Panera boxed lunches are extremely good.