It would be like China or Iran or . . . the average American school.Maybe it's time we advocate for open Internet in every context.-John T. SpencerJohn T. Spencer is a teacher in Phoenix, AZ who blogs at Education Rethink. He recently finished Pencil Me In, an allegory for educational technology and A Sustainable Start, a book for new teachers. He also wrote the reform-minded memoirs Teaching Unmasked: A Humble Alternative to Waiting For a Superhero and Sages and Lunatics. He has written two young adult novels Drawn Into Danger and A Wall for Zombies. You can connect with him on Twitter @johntspencer

By Noah Geisel I still hear people asking, often in a disgusted tone of voice, "Why would you use Twitter?" They say it’s just for people to see what celebrities are saying. They say it’s just a way for people attracted to the Me Generation ethos to transmit their self-centered Facebook musings to a wider audience. They say what they believe and I respect that, for them, it is the truth about Twitter. For me, Twitter is another story altogether.The last 7 days have served as a shining example of how Twitter significantly impacts my teaching, learning and professional development. A sampling my week’s Twimpact:I attended an inspiring TED Talks salon event that I found out about via Twitter. Had I managed to learn about it through other means, it would have been after the tickets were sold out.I read dozens of articles and blog posts that were shared by the people I follow, 22 of which were helpful enough that I bookmarked them for future use. I copied the links and shared via email 3 of these articles with certain teachers and administrators in my building.I read 12 tweets that I thought could be valuable to others and were worth Re-tweeting (sharing) to my followers. I learned about 2 apps that I downloaded to my iPad and believe will be very helpful.I learned a new trick for the Promethean Board that I never would have known was possible.I reconnected with a teacher friend and brilliant education mind with whom I had not spoken in 18 months. It led to a phone call and awesome conversation that I already know will impact a lesson for my students later this week.I had conversations with 16 other educators, many of whom I’ve never met in person.I had two former students reach out to share with me what is going on in their lives.I found out about a webcast hosted by an MTV VJ in Mexico, from which I discovered two new bands whose music I could share with my students. I connected with the lead singer of one of said bands who has agreed to Skype with one of my classes about life in Lima, Peru.I connected with a Venezulean baseball reporter who has also committed to a Skype conversation in which he will provide a season preview of the Colorado Rockies and take my students’ questions about the team in Spanish.And, so as not to leave out the celebrities, I favorited 8 tweets by Spanish-speaking artists that used the same vocabulary that my students were studying so as to provide them with examples of Real World, in-context use of our target learning. I get it that Twitter is not for everybody. In my teaching and learning however, it makes a huge difference. What is the #Twimpact for you?

John T. SpencerJoel approaches me timidly. It's a rare weekend where I have no other choice than to work on school-related projects. He senses my frustration, so he whispers his request, "Dad, can we pick oranges and make orange juice?""Maybe later. I have to get this done," I respond.He comes back five minutes later and I tell him, "Later means really later, okay?"Christy calls him aside and says, "I'll help you. Daddy needs to work."Something in the gentleness of her tone and the emphasis on the word "need" that pulls me from the office. I shut the laptop and put on my tennis shoes. It takes me a few minutes to adjust to the sun on my face and the cold air on my hands. But with every orange we snatch from the tree, I am forgetting about the website I need to develop or the videos I need to edit.Brenna joins us. She picks thirteen oranges, but each time she counts, she stops at eleven. "I have eleven," she says to anyone willing to listen - to me, to Joel, to Micah, to the dog and to Micah's Papa Bear.It feels like magic when the twirling machine converts each orange into juice. Joel is obsessed with technique and Micah is trying to figure out the mechanics, but Brenna is simply delighted to press down on each orange and watch the juice flow from the spout.*     *     *When I think about the skills I want my students to acquire, I often say things like, "think globally and act locally" or "recover a sense of the terrestrial reality around them."  Or sometimes I talk of sustainability and organic learning and growth and . . . what I really mean is I want them to learn what it means to shut off the devices, walk outside and pick oranges or plant a garden or study a sunset.I want my students to figure out what matters in life and then have the courage, patience and endurance to live accordingly. The greatest twenty-first century skill is simply this: to learn to live well.Mumford and Sons say it best:Where you invest your love, you invest your life.photo credit

by John T. SpencerI'm bothered that Google has a profile on me. I've known it for years, but something about the new Terms and Services (I'd go Google it and add a link there, but I'm too lazy) seems like a creepier step closer to Big Brother.  Which I think is the problem. I already view Google as a Big Brother - a giant android there to help me, adding the training wheels to life and pushing me on my way so that I can function.I make the assumption that my data is safe and that this profile is somehow different from the real me that taps away at a machine. But if the online me is still me, a part of me, full of interests and ideas and questions and drives - then I'm making a bold assumption about the inherent benevolence of Big Brother Google.To illustrate the power of this codependent relationship, I'm thinking about what it would look like if I had a falling out with Google.  This has already happened in real-life with my twin brother and the lasting effects are that I'm a little more insecure relationally and I deeply miss the man who shares such a long history with me. On a relational level, the impact is subtly present. However, in terms of functioning, I'm doing okay at life without him.Now, consider a falling out with Big Brother Google. In one day, I would lose all my contacts. I would lose my calendar, both in terms of what I have already done and in terms of what I need to do. I would have to ask sheepishly for people's birthdays. I would lose my ability to communicate with distant friends through e-mail. I would lose my blog, the domain name that goes with it and the community that has stuck with me for several years. I would lose whole manuscripts of books I wrote and books I'm trying to write. I would lose our family's budget and critical work documents and the fragments of spiritual journals that I started and then abandoned out of boredom. I would lose important things like the PD site I am developing right now and insignificant endeavors like the sketchy videos I've added to my blog.In other words, I would lose a chunk of life. I would lose a sense of place. I'm sure I would find the manuscripts on my backup hard drive and I would find a way to go to Wordpress and I would hope that people still find me on Twitter. Still, I would instantly break relationships through lack of organization. I would feel lost.There's something unnerving about how much I depend upon one corporation in order to function in this world. I still have a voice, but I'm willingly filtering it through the white noise of Google, hoping that when they claim "don't be evil" as a mantra, they'll stick to it.

By Shelly Blake-PlockWhile there has been a lot of discussion recently in the news about making the school day longer, a group of us here in Baltimore are working instead to create a new kind of after school experience for city kids.I'll be posting the specifics of what we're working on soon enough, but for today I'd just like to know about the kinds of after school activities your kids have benefitted the most from.From sports to internships to outreach to chess club to team debate to drama club: what after school program have you seen make a difference in the lives of young people?- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

by Shelly Blake-PlockMy car was totaled in a wreck a few months back and I'm just now getting into the car-buying state-of-mind you have to be in to go to a dealership to find a replacement. Looked up the handful of models I'm interested in online -- the VW Jetta, a couple of Mazdas, the Ford Fusion, a Toyota or two, a Civic -- and did the "build your own" to figure out what I could get in the price range I had set for myself. Been to a few places on Sundays (when they were closed) just to look around the lots and see the cars in person.Perhaps not surprisingly, the dealerships I've been considering are places that presented well online (the place just outside Baltimore that literally cut and pasted all of its inventory descriptions from a Canadian online magazine without so much as credit -- but whilst retaining phrases like "here in Canada..." -- well, they aren't getting my patronage).Today was my first attempt to actually go in to a dealership to talk about getting a new car. It was a VW dealership on the west side of town where we were greeted by a man in a three-piece suit named Hans. A thirty-year veteran of auto-sales (most recently selling Porsches and picking up $6K a pop in commission until the economic downturn tasked him with selling Suburus and VWs, Hans had me hooked as much by his demeanor and great stories of racing 150mph on the Autobahn and his side project as a clock repairman as he did by anything he could tell me about the cars.I knew all about the cars. I'd done my research online. I knew I liked VWs. I knew what a Jetta was going to cost me and I knew what that would run me per month. I knew all the available options and I knew what each trim offered. I knew how the car compared to others in its class and I knew what it's crash safety ratings were. Hans didn't have to tell me any of that. He just had to compel me to enjoy the car.Not that I'd exactly equate car salesmen and teachers, but I think there is something for us to learn here. When we went for the second of two tests drives, Hans told me to accelerate hard at a certain point and, as I did, he explained the mechanics of the feeling I was getting from the accelerator pedal. As I blew passed a pickup on Route 40, he explained how best to sense all of those things -- torque, horsepower -- from the point of view of the driver's seat. Not once did he tell me the price of the car or ask me if I wanted to buy it. He just allowed me to experience it and helped me tie my experience into the engineering of the vehicle itself.It was as much a master class in physics as it was a test drive.As teachers, we're usually pretty good when it comes to content. And we're also pretty good when it comes to designing lessons. From a purely pedagogical standpoint, the most crucial part is linking those two things with the motivation and experience of the student. Because like any car buyer, they already have access of one sort or another to the facts. But the facts alone don't sell cars. And the facts alone don't sell education. It takes a guy like Hans who can give a master class in physics from the backseat of a speeding Volkswagon to make the sale.Do you have a little Hans in you?As postscript I should say that I didn't buy that car today. And I think I may have annoyed Hans a bit. But I did learn a lot and now I'm going to take that experience to the other shops I visit. And it just might turn out that I return to Route 40 and that I buy a car from Hans. We'll see.From a teacher's perspective, however, I feel like I learned another lesson: sometimes it's not apparent that we've "made the sale". But we shouldn't assume. It's our part to impart knowledge and let that lead where it may. For all we know it will come back to us sooner or later. The challenge is to keep going out there for those test drives, riding in the backseat, and encouraging that kid with the hands on the wheel to really understand what they are doing.- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

by John T. SpencerI'm not saying we have to give 110%, but . . . I'm reading Trust Me right now and realizing, yet again, why John Updike was a brilliant author. I realize that he has grown less trendy in the last decade or so. Not postmodern enough. Too realistic. Too bold in crafting beautiful prose that is neither poetic nor particularly provocative. And yet every time I sit down  with his work, I am amazed by phrases like "the chemical scent of a pool always frightened him: blue-green dragon breath."I have a hunch that Updike will be criticized for the sheer volume of his work. People like a tidy list of seven or eight really good works and let's be honest, Updike produced a few works that will be forgotten (and rightfully so). However, the only reason that he continued to write well was the simple fact that he kept writing.  He understood that the only way to refine his craft was to continue to push himself to produce more. Instead of worrying about running out of ideas, he recognized that one only grows stagnant by slowing down.It seems counter-intuitive, but Updike's legacy suggests that burnout isn't caused by hard work as much as by a slowing down induced by fear and shame.  When I look at creative types who "burned out," I don't think it was laziness or lack of interest or the sense that they had nothing left in them. Instead, it was fear. I think Salinger, after writing Catcher in the Rye, realized that it was good, perhaps too good to be repeated and so he fled to mediocrity.That was me last year. I worked really hard, had some great results and then fled into a teacher-coach role this year out of fear that I wouldn't be able to do it again. I ran away respectfully. I refused to admit just how scared I was that I would not repeat the kind of year I had last year. I allowed shame and fear to determine my self-concept as a teacher. And the hard part, the scary part of it, was that I loved teaching. I simply couldn't allow my success to depend upon standardized test scores. In other years, I almost hit the burnout point because of the dissonance between what I believed about education and what the system was asking me to do.The issue was never hard work, but rather work that I was afraid I couldn't repeat combined with work that did not fit my identity. Hard work made me tired. Fear and shame led me to flee. I'm still teaching part-time, but I'mTeaching is exhausting. I get that. A teacher spends hours in a passionate, emotional, sensitive state and on some level, that simply isn't natural. However, I have never seen a teacher burn out from hard work. Instead, a teacher is more likely to burn out by checking out, slowing down and giving themselves the permission to be less passionate and to care less in the name of balance. And that's me right now. I have more free time than ever before. I am not working anywhere near as hard as I did last year. I slowed down and now, as I teach only part of the day, I am dying to be back into the classroom full-time. I would rather be tired than spend my time doing something that doesn't fit who I am. I may not be able to repeat the success of last year, but I would rather fail trying than continue to slow down.This isn't to suggest that balance is bad. Teachers need a personal life. There is nothing wrong with working fewer hours than in the past. However, when I watch teachers burn out, it is almost never because they were working too hard. In fact, the opposite is true. They often slow down as a result of burnout. Slowly, subtly, shame beats the passion out of them and they are left with a shell of a vocation. They don't burn out in explosion. They vaporize so slowly that you don't see it until it's too late.*     *     *John T. Spencer is a teacher in Phoenix, AZ who blogs at Education Rethink. He recently finished Pencil Me In, an allegory for educational technology and A Sustainable Start, a book for new teachers. He also wrote the reform-minded memoirs Teaching Unmasked: A Humble Alternative to Waiting For a Superhero and Sages and Lunatics. He has written two young adult novels Drawn Into Danger and A Wall for Zombies. You can connect with him on Twitter @johntspencer

by John T. SpencerLast year, I allowed my story to slip into the Superman Narrative. My students were scoring well. The Clipboard Crew visited often. I wrote blog posts about what I was doing; beginning to believe I had more answers than questions. I tried to hide the imperfections. I yelled at kids a few times last year. I failed miserably at teaching science. I had to apologize at least once a day for something.I took a job as a teacher-coach, believing that I had a duty to share my expertise. It was arrogant, I know. However, it was more about fear than anything else. I wasn't sure that I could repeat what happened last year. I had slipped into the wrong story. Outward, I look "successful" in this current position. But inside, I'm dying to be teaching full-time. I left the classroom when I still loved being a teacher and now, as I teach during part of the day, I get a taste of what I missed everyday.So, as I think about my return to the classroom full-time next year, I want to go back to the story that I had believed before:Character: I want to be faithful, courageous and wise. But more than anything, I wanted to be someone who loves people well. If my students are engaged mentally and feel safe, I'm off to a great start.Antagonist: The real antagonist was the system of standardization and the lie of perfectionism. Failure isn't the enemy. It's a chance to grow. Low test scores won't kill me. Really. Plot: It doesn't have to look exciting. My actions might look impressive (a mural or a documentary) but often humble (a debate, a project, an in-depth discussion) and that’s okay. It's not about the credit, the glory or the sense of superiority I feel when I am noticed. Setting: The real setting has to be my classroom. It isn’t about what the world sees or how I am noticed within the entire school. It's not about the Twitterverse or the Blogosphere or any other catchy name we have for the echo chamber of what's working. In my classroom, I'm broken and vulnerable . . . and yet, amazing things happen. Conflict: The true conflict is mostly internal: Will I be faithful? Will I remain true to my convictions? Will I be bold enough to fight against the standardized system? Will I get suckered into the wrong story?Theme: It’s about providing authentic learning for all students. It's always been about thinking better about life. Period. If I can remember that theme, I'm better off for it.*     *     *John T. Spencer is a teacher in Phoenix, AZ who blogs at Education Rethink. He recently finished Pencil Me In, an allegory for educational technology and A Sustainable Start, a book for new teachers. He also wrote the reform-minded memoirs Teaching Unmasked: A Humble Alternative to Waiting For a Superhero and Sages and Lunatics. He has written two young adult novels Drawn Into Danger and A Wall for Zombies. You can connect with him on Twitter @johntspencer

by Shelly Blake-PlockSpending the morning at my high school alma mater today discussing pd and teaching styles. It's an interesting position to be in. Wondering what you all would say given the opportunity to talk with your alma mater about what effect they had on you (for better or worse) and where and how you would want to see them go into the new.

Baltimore (and nearby) Folks:WHAT: BALTIMORE EDTECH FORUM on THE FUTURE of SCHOOL ARCHITECTURE and LEARNING SPACES in the DIGITAL AGEWHERE: Digital Harbor High School, 1100 Covington St., Baltimore, MD 21230WHEN: March 14, 2012 // 6 to 8PMFEE: Free and open to the publicFeaturing a panel comprised of Baltimore City Public Schools CEO Andres Alonso, architect and principal of Cho Benn Holback and Associates -- David Benn, and artist and UMBC professor Callie Neylan, the evening will be dedicated to conversation and discussion about the Future of School Architecture and Learning Spaces in Baltimore's Digital Age.On July 1, 2007, Andres Alonso became CEO of Baltimore City Public Schools. During his tenure, Baltimore City students have reached their highest outcomes in state exams, across all categories of students. City Schools saw its enrollment climb, following four decades of steady enrollment decline. It posted its best-ever dropout and graduation rates, driven largely by attention to all students, a focus on adult performance, the promotion of choice and school autonomy for all schools, and intensive efforts to engage parents and community.The recipient of the Cornell University Eidlitz Traveling Fellowship Award, David Benn practiced architecture in London, Teheran and New York, and taught architectural design at Cornell University before joining Cho and Holback in Baltimore. He has won design awards from the Maryland Society and Baltimore Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, the Maryland Trust, the Waterfront Center, and the Maryland Chapter of the American Planning Association.Callie Neylan is an interaction designer, researcher, and writer. She is an award-winning designer, with work recognized by Communication Arts, AIGA, and I.D. Magazine, and featured in the New York Times, Fast Company, and Gizmodo. Callie’s research interests include designing for the disabled, wearable computing, and the intersection of interaction design and the urban space. She is also exploring aesthetics in interaction design and is a contributing writer about design and technology for NPR.org.The Baltimore EdTech Forum is an event designed to provoke visionary thinking and conversation about the future of education and technology in Baltimore. The event will be moderated by Andrew Coy, co-founder of the EdTech Forum and teacher at Digital Harbor High School.