It’s pretty cool that you are allowing cell phones in your class, but how do you get around kids wanting to chat and text during class? Um, well, that’s, like, kind of … the reason I’m letting them use it.

I made this Prezi to promote the use of Twitter by educators in our school board. Please reuse, remix, and recycle:-) Wanna use Twitter? on Prezi

When people ask me, "So how’s your class this year?" I usually say "Great!" (Depending on the day.) I suppose another way I could describe them is … well, um … what’s the opposite of blindly compliant? The current group of students I have right now are incredibly critical thinkers. They also have a reputation. They are not particularly well-liked by staff, and are the thing supply teacher’s nightmares are made of. Boundaries, in their view, are meant to be pushed, and they never let anything go. You know that one question you just wish your students wouldn’t ask because you’re tired today? Well, they always ask it. I think they are going to be immensely successful once they leave the bricks and mortar of The Institution. That is, if you define success as taking control of your life and realizing your destiny. There are copious reasons why I think this, but the one I’m focussed on today is actually their disdain for Rules for the Sake of Rules. The students in my class rarely take anything at face value. They want to see the underbelly, the implied meaning, the truth. They think in what you might call pre-Gramscian or Foucaudtian terms. Hegemony and ideology? They are ready to tackle this stuff. If we were still talking about a 20th century world based on a factory economy and devoid of tools for self-creation and publishing, I would be worried about this group. Some of them might have to take the rock star or starving artist route to achieve their dreams. But I don’t think that is the case now. It is the very fact that they so vigourously defend their right to blaze their own trails rather than seeking time-honoured paths set for them that, in my view, will ultimately put them in good stead as grown ups. Bad, my friends, may be the new Good. This isn’t to say that they aren’t a work in progress. Many of my students need a lesson in rethinking their level of self-entitlement, and a few of them need some explicit instruction in self-discipline. But, please, give them a break. You probably had similar issues when you were going through puberty as well. In fact, I suspect the most ‘successful’ (intrinsically motivated, adequately compensated, happy) people you know had major problems with this at a young age. For me, this school year has been a constant and perplexing dichotomy. On one hand, it is difficult for me to walk the halls of our own building without being stopped to discuss how, somehow somewhere, ‘bad’ one of my students has been. On the other, as an open learning centre classroom, and as someone who involves my students in leadership opportunities outside of the building, I rarely get anything but positive, sometimes amazed, feedback from educators and people about them. There is a deep lesson to be learned from this paradox. I am very optimistic about their future. (PS. I apologize for the cliched use of Che Guevara’s iconic image. I simply couldn’t help it.)

Dear Innovative Educators, Many of you have been talking about using Apple’s amazing mobile/handheld devices like iPods and iPads in your classrooms. I’m pretty impressed that you are so willing to take your programs to such a relevant and dynamic level. There’s only one slight problem. Let me introduce myself. My name is Digital Rights Management (my friends call me DRM); I’m the proverbial elephant in the room. I’m here to tell you that if you don’t address me, I may be the thing that stops true equitable change from being realized in our traditional classrooms. Really smart dudes like @Doctorow have written and talked on awesome shows such as @jessebrown‘s Search Engine (listen here) expressing concerns about Apple turning the open-internet into an ‘i-controlled’ world. Other wonderful bloggers such as @rdelorenzo ("Format Wars in Mobile Space") and @techieang ("Apps - What works? What Doesn’t?") have alluded to the practical issues we may run into in schools. In terms of logisitics, let me tell you, there are quite a few. Not enough to legitimize those that rail for the status quo in education, but enough to occasionally keep you up at night. The main logistical piece has to do with DRM. You see, when you buy a song, app, audiobook, or iBook to use on an Apple device, there are restrictions placed upon the amount of devices/accounts you can put them on. From wikipedia: FairPlay-encrypted audio tracks allow the following: The track may be copied to any number of iPod portable music players (including the iPhone).[2] (However, each iPod/iPhone can only have tracks from a maximum of five different iTunes accounts) The track may be played on up to five (originally three) authorized computers simultaneously.[2] A particular playlist within iTunes containing a FairPlay-encrypted track can be copied to a CD only up to seven times (originally ten times) before the playlist must be changed.[3] The track may be copied to a standard Audio CD any number of times.[3] The resulting CD has no DRM and may be ripped, encoded and played back like any other CD. However, CDs created by users do not attain first sale rights and cannot be legally leased, lent, sold or distributed to others by the creator. The CD audio still bears the artifacts of compression, so converting it back into a lossy format such as MP3 may aggravate the sound artifacts of encoding (see transcoding). When re-ripping such a CD one could use a lossless audio codec such as AIFF, Apple Lossless, FLAC or WAV however such files take up significantly more space than the original .mp4 files. At this time, it appears that the restrictions mentioned above are hard-coded into QuickTime and the iTunes application, and not configurable in the protected files themselves. Fairplay prevents iTunes customers from using the purchased music directly on any portable digital music player other than the Apple iPod, Motorola ROKR E1, Motorola SLVR, Motorola RAZR V3i, the iPhone and the iPad. Although the blurb above speaks specifically about music tracks, rest assured similar limitations exist for apps and iBooks. So here’s the scenario I want to posit to you: First of all, let’s assume that your school is in a demographic in which families cannot afford to purchase apps on demand, let alone a device for their child. It’s easier to lift a discussion off from this vista because, even if your school is in a high SES area, there are likely exceptions. Now let’s assume that your parent council, school, board, or a combination of the three is committed enough to mobile learning, and has the finances, to front the bill so that its students can learn in a relevant, dynamic environment using industry-elite technology. Even in this situation, we still have a problem in that we are forced to be creative in how we manage DRM in the building. We are pushed into thinking of ways around it (legally, of course) when there is a better and more equitable way. Apple needs to lead the way (as they so often do) to create a fair, reasonably inexpensive way for classes and schools to purchase apps, iBooks, music, etc. from the iTunes store so that there is a school account, and when an app gets purchased you can buy a multiple-device license. I’m talking bulk purchasing here. For example, if you wanted to purchase an app like Blogpress for your students, it is currently $2.99USD for one person to own. If you need it for, say, thirty or a hundred or eight hundred kids, are you telling me we’ve got to multiply that number by the amount of kids? Hmmm, my mama always told me that you gotta haggle when you’re buying in bulk. Or here’s a crazy idea: How ’bout DRM-free apps for schools? Apple needs to lead the way because they’ve always lead the way. They need to lead the way because they make amazing products for education that usually far outstrip the competition. They need to take charge because,like Spiderman … Is this too much to ask? Is there a better way? What are your thoughts? Sincerely, DRA/Elephant in Room/Not Exactly School Ready

What does it mean to be attentive? Hands in lap, straight back, eyes fixed on speaker? Perhaps a better question would be: What does it mean to be attentive in 2010? Just like the meaning of ‘literacy’ and ‘intelligence’ evolve over time, I think ‘attentive listening’ needs to be reconsidered. Believe me, you have to rethink it if you allow students to bring their own technology into class. Students need to learn that the old world which rewards compliance above all else is no longer waiting for them once they leave the bricks and mortar of schooldom. When you give someone your full and undivided attention, you usually do it because a) they are damn interesting; b) as a courtesy; or c) you are consciously or sub-consciously afraid of an external consequence if you don’t. As a teacher, there is a voice in your head that says: "Your class is disrespectful and will turn to chaos if students do not always fix their gaze on you when you speak, and take turns raising their hand if they wish to speak. That other teacher down the hall who is good at this is a way better teacher than you. If others walk into your room and see students looking visibly inattentive, they will think less of you." Nevertheless, perhaps you should also let this voice have a say: "Your students can’t possibly ignore everything else they are doing or thinking and stare at you quietly all the time. You can’t possibly be that interesting. If you do have a Mentalist’s power to achieve this you are a very skillful brainwasher but not necessarily a teacher of a student in 2010. This isn’t to say that the ability to command attention is not a vital tool of a classroom teacher. On the contrary, so much of teaching is performative. But you should know that it’s not all about you. But it’s hard. After all, we all have bad dreams. My wife, a former chef, often tells me about the classic chef nightmare where you’re getting order after order and everything’s falling to pieces. I used to have the recurring teacher dream where I am doing everything possibly to get to school on time, but absurdly disastrous events like elephants on the road and car keys made of jello keep stopping me (not funny while dreaming it). Still, if you were to survey 100 teacher candidates asking them to honestly admit what their #1 fear entering the classroom is, surely at least 99 would say, "I’m afraid the students won’t listen to me." The problem is that knowing whether a child is listening is a task fraught with so many variables. Culture, ethnicity, personality, disposition, the list goes on and on. That’s partly why we’ve suspended disbelief for so long by, well, forcing students to suspend disbelief themselves and act like good little teacher pleasers. We never even questioned the inherent defeatism in this goal, considering that in order to recognize and reward our teacher pleasers, by definition there must be ones that don’t exhibit this behaviour. It’s even hard for me, Mr. iPod Man, a guy who’s TOLD the kids they can type on their cell phone while the teacher is speaking. My first impulse is to admonish. "EXCUSE ME, WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE …" But I have to resist it. As for backchanneling, I’ll let you know how that’s going in my next post (I’m still trying to get my own head around it;-) On another note: The first official week of allowing students’ own tech in the room has been a surprisingly easy one. Not as capital-B Big as I anticipated. There are definitely some bitter students in the school who (understandably) do not comprehend why it is happening in Mr. Lee’s class and not their own. And I’m not sure how even I feel about my classroom being a living, breathing advertisement for Apple product consumption. But the challenges have been relatively minor so far in a logistic sense. I did have to remind some students the either day to not play the ‘I hid your iPod’ game as, and some are having difficulty avoiding the ‘OMG check this app out’ game as well, but let’s be a little understanding. I seem to recall that in the last workshop I went to teachers too were immersed in the same kind of iPhone fervour. I guess the biggest challenge will come if and when the first kid loses or damages their device. Funny, though. They take really good care of their electronics. Like this:Be the first to like this post.

I tweeted a version of the TED Commandments my class created as success criteria for Oral Presentations. Wow, it totally went viral and exceeded the Google Docs Bandwith. So here it is again for anyone to download: MINI TED COMMANDMENTS

Those who know me know that I am a freak for technology (or a ‘technology slut’, as my father-in-law so affectionately has called me). Considering this, I suppose I was rather late to online social networking and the blogosphere. I don’t really know what took me so long, but now that I’ve found it, I’m all in like someone playing with house money. I wanted to share this quick true story with you because it has become my new token reply to anyone, in my professional or personal life, who suggests that technology is inherently the tool of the devil. A few weeks ago I had to put in a warranty claim with Rogers on one of our iPhones. Anyone familiar with this process knows that Rogers sends you a package which includes: a) the new device; and b) a pre-paid UPS envelope in which you must dutifully return the device you are replacing. So, being the anal task manager that I am, I promptly scooted down to the nearest UPS Store to drop-off the returning package. Big mistake. From that day forward, said phone ceases to exist on the planet. There is no record of it ever being put into the UPS, let alone Rogers, system. I do not know what happened, but one can infer. So I waited a few days, even though I knew UPS usually delivers within the GTA quite promptly. More days passed and I started to get a bad feeling. I myself was stupid because all I got from the store was a little scrap piece of paper with a hand-written tracking number and a store stamp. I checked on the online tracking site. Nothing. Rogers.com. Nothing. I started getting worried. My next step was to go back to the store and ask what had happened. My Spidey senses spiked with anxiety when I walked in and found another man angrily talking to a UPS agent on the phone, demanding to know where his ‘lost’ item was. I asked one of the young lads about my package, and he shrugged his shoulders kind of like the way one of my grade 6 students once lied about stuffing an unwanted ham sandwich in an unused cupboard in the classroom. "It’s not our fault - it’s head office’s," was his claim. So I called head office. "I’m sorry but there is nothing we can do because it was never put into the system by the store". I called Rogers. "I’m sorry but this is really a UPS issue. We don’t see it in our system." (The Rogers customer rep even warned me to never drop-off at a UPS Store!) In other words, The Usual. That very day I also received a letter from Rogers warning me that if I did not return my phone soon I would be out 800 smackers. I didn’t know what to do. Write a letter? Wait? Just put a ‘trace’ in the system? No, I tweeted it. OMG I think the UPS Store stole my iphone #RobbedByUPS Ten minutes later I received this reply from the UPS head PR office: @r_o_y_a_n Please contact us immediately regarding this issue at the following number … I was stunned. The rest, as they say, is history. The saga did not end completely there, but people at UPS sure got very helpful very fast. Needless to say, and rightfully so, the iPhone with legs is not costing me a cent. If the head PR office rushes to the assistance of a mere speck of dust like me because I seem to have a voice I never knew I had, what does this say about Twitter and Web 2.0 as a kind of emancipatory tool? What about the Ahmadinejad Regime’s desire to literally stamp out tweeters during the Iran Election (or #iranelection, as it’s known in the Twitterverse)? And why is the NFL, the most powerful sports juggernaut in N. America, banning their players from tweeting? Hmm, one of the biggest courier companies in the world, an autocrat, and a multi-billion dollar sports league don’t like people speaking their mind on a little website? In my world, that’s something that is, at the very least, interesting. So the next time a colleague angrily calls you ‘A Tool’ (another true story) for giving PD around technology, or your kid’s high school decides (in vain, no doubt) to ban cell phones at school because, well, it’s just easier, tell them the story of how a corporation was concerned about, and acted immediately upon, the Twitter habits of a little Asian man in Toronto.

The best formal professional development (as opposed to my PLN, which I regard as informal) I ever received was in drama/dance education. There is no way I would be half the teacher I am without it. Drama education taught me the difference between seeing and thinking. It taught me how to make literacy learning about passion, not just mechanics. Basically, it taught me, and taught me how to teach students, how to look at cardboard boxes and not see a box. Our good friend @jenntwits got our son this gift for his 3rd birthday. What a wonderful little book it is. I read it to him again before bedtime tonight for what already feels like the umpteenth time in a row. In a few simple pages, we learn that, according to Bunny, ‘This is not a box! This is a rocket ship … and a building on fire … and a robot … etc." So simple, and certainly not the first children’s picture book to tackle this concept, but so effective. Jackson finds it utterly hilarious. If anyone asks me from now on what it is I am spending so much time tweeting about, or doing in my crazy classroom, I will show them this book and say, "I am trying to preserve children’s natural impulse to see that boxes are not really boxes, teach them to harness that understanding, and facilitate their eloquent communication/expression of their ‘not-a-box’ idea." Hey, I’ll readily admit it’s a work in progress:-) This blogpost can also be read on my Project365: http://www.flickr.com/photos/r_o_y_a_n/4497883145/

This photo is of Joe’s Burgers’ amazing chilli sauce which my family and I had for dinner tonight. Ya, ya, I know it kinda sucks, and I know there’s nothing worse than someone tweeting/blogging about the mundanity of their daily meals. This isn’t about that. I just wanted to tell a funny story. At the end of the day today, I had about 3 minutes to kill with my students so I invited them to line up and challenge the Grand Master of Rock Paper Scissors. They all queued up with great resolve. I surprised even myself when I discovered they could not beat me. One by one, I was whupping their rock-paper-scissor butts. It was so bizarre. The kids started looking at me as though I was a sentient being. In fact, the truth was that I had discovered a pattern in their behaviour. Most of the time, a student would observe which kind of fist the previous player lost with, and predictably use the opposite. So, if I had defeated one kid with a rock over his scissors, the next kid would inevitably try me on for size with paper, to which I would respond with scissors. Finally, after creaming about 9 kids in a row (I realize I am enjoying this a bit too much) I ‘allowed’ a student who I knew could use a confidence boost to beat me. He was elated. As the class roared with encouragement, I reassured them with feigned arrogance that it was likely only because this student enjoyed spicy food like me that he knew how to defeat ‘The Master’. The kid turned to me with the face of someone who has seen a ghost and whispered, "It’s … true … I do love spicy food". In about a span of 10 seconds, I had convinced the whole class that the key to rock-paper-scissor strength was a passion for chilli peppers. When one of my students pouted, begging me to explain how she had managed to lose to me when she was, in fact, a fan of the spicy stuff, I replied with my own question. "What kind of spicy food do you eat?" "I eat stuff like Doritos Spicy Nachos!" "Not spicy enough," I stated with the scornful face of Mr. Miyagi from the Karate Kid. "You need to eat kimchi soup or fresh jalepenos!" "You’re right, Mr. Lee," she replied as though resigning to the alignment of stars in sky. "But tonight I’m going to go home and eat a tonne of wasabi peas. You’re going down tomorrow." You should know too that my students are in grade 5 and 6. They aren’t kindergarten kids. They watch R rated movies on a regular basis, text each other while doing it, and there isn’t a swear word in the book they don’t know intimately. But, for five minutes today, they totally suspended disbelief with me. In fact, that’s kind of what it’s like for me everyday. I love being their teacher because they love learning. The reason I’m telling this story is because it was a pretty stressful day for this spicy food loving Literacy Teacher, planning for PD in the depths of teaching’s most wintery (figuratively and literally) season. This little moment with my students reminded me how awesome this job is after all. [This blog post can also be viewed on my Project365: http://www.flickr.com/photos/r_o_y_a_n/4329192916/]

I had one of my most memorable days of teaching ever last week. I didn’t plan it on paper, but to some extent I did in my own mind. I could never have predicted what would happen this day, but I did predict that something like this could happen when you use web 2.0 tools in the classroom. On Monday, a wonderful reporter from the Globe and Mail named Susan Krashinksy (@susinsky) came to my class to do a story on the ways we are using a web-based comic creation tool for literacy in the classroom. The students and myself were totally stoked by this. It was a great day. Susan hung out as we worked on our Social Studies / Language project, took some photos, asked some questions. On Wednesday, the article was published (check out the article here). I posted the link on our class moodle and Twitter, and sent it to a few colleagues and friends. Not that big a deal, but fun. Little did I know that it was in reading the article as a class that we would open up an exciting can of worms. The students in my class beamed as they heard their names being mentioned in our national newspaper. As we neared the bottom of the web page, we noticed that there were already quite a few comments posted. One of them was negative. (For some reason, the numerous comments that were on the site have been deleted. I’m not sure if it was crashed by my students going on and commenting, but, unfortunately, most of them are no longer there.) The essence of the negative comment was that a) we were dumbing down learning; b) we were not teaching writing; and c) kids today won’t be prepared for the future as a result. What’s more, the comment had a very sarcastic tone. If only you could have seen the look on my students’ faces as we read this comment together. It was a mixture of shock, excitement, and anger. My entire plan for that period was sabotaged. We had to deal with this comment. I was taken aback by the conversation it started. After calming my students down, I had them plan a reply to the comment in groups. Here are the ideas they came up with: We did hard, critical research for the project. It’s much harder to be creative and different in presenting information than just writing them in paragraphs. We don’t just comics. We use many other technological tools, and we work hard on our reading and writing. Working on fun tools like bitstrips gives us a voice. The teacher lets us show ourselves, not just pleasing the teacher. We are trying to address 21st century skills like collaboration and creative thinking. You have a narrow view of what learning is. it’s not just about paper and pen and essays? I nearly weeped with pride. I just couldn’t believe they were already so articulate in communicating what was happening in our class. Some other ‘teachable moment’ points we had to address: Why it’s important to be respectful in our reply, and not take a personal stance. Whether or not we should use or real/full names. So that’s what happened. It was one of my best days of teaching ever, and it could only occur in this crazy, constantly changing world we live in. Here are some of the replies from my students: Hi Mr.Allen I’m Dana from the article. I read your comment and i noticed that you think that when we were on bitstrips, you thought that we were just playing with comics. I just wanted to say that we were also doing work. Don’t believe me? well here’s what we did. First we took a few weeks to find information on what we were doing our comics on, then we had to put all of the information we had and put it all in 5 comics. most of the student had lots of information so it took them longer to arrange the information. we aren’t dumbing down, we also use paper and pencil and other programs to help us with our work. So…,what i am saying is that first did u try out bitstrips then write the comment? If not then why did you write the comment if you don’t know how good bitstrips is. try it out then think again if you think we are dumbing down the future. Bitstrips is not only for fun, it can be hard if you have to find alot of information and decide how to put all of your information into 5 groups for 5 different comics. so please try out things before you say if its good or bad. Dana Hello Mr. Henry Allen, I am a student in Royan Lee’s grade 5/6 class, the Nathaniel in the article to be exact, and I would like to thank you for the wonderful compliment. It got me to thinking: why do you have that opinion of our digital literacy? I settled on the fact that everybody has a different view of learning and school. Times have changed! It’s not all pen and paper anymore! Switching gears, I would like to inform you about our digital literacy. We also use YRDSB Moodle, a website used by many classes in York Region where you write in forums about anything, view your homework, access informational websites, and a whole lot more! Try it sometime! Finally, I would like to say that if you ever have any concerns, feel free to voice them anytime! But seriously! It is hard work! For example, we have to create characters, pick through your information, setup positions, sizes, props, shapes, furniture, backgrounds, and titles! It’s hard work being a critical thinker! Hello, I’m a student from Mr. Lee’s class. I sort of have to say that you are wrong Henry Allen. You have proved some intelligent points in your comment but 1 thing is that we have done hard research before making the comic on bitstrips. For example, I researched Japan. 1 worksheet we had to do was fill in an "ASAB" sheet.(Authorship, Sources, Appearence, Backup.) School isn’t always about writing big essays with a pencil and paper. If we all kept writing stuff like that, some people will only be doing a bunch of work for nothing. If we do comics on bitstrips, we will be having fun and learning at the same time. This will be easier for students like me to learn. It’s MORE frightening for us to think about going to school and only writing paragraphs and paragraphs EVERYDAY! This might even help us become a computer engineer! Or maybe an awesome literacy teacher like Mr. Lee!