Only a Gen S Kid...

Sent today by a student...

Thank you very much. I have no technical abilities so this online course is hard for me to navigate.

Sent from my iPod


OH the irony!

Generation S

Generation S

Every few years someone comes along and tried to define the current generation.  My Generation was Gen X.  There have been several generations since then to be sure.  Today I would like to define the current generation of my students. 
Generation S.

Why S?
The generation I am referring to covers the late 90's to today.  They have never lived without an internet.  The result is that they are defined by the fact that they have never lived without Social Media, Streaming Video, or Satellite Television.  They are unlikely to ever know or have to deal with Social Security.  They do not phone they SMS or Skype.  When they want information, music, reading material, homework help, or pizza they don't need to ask anyone, they Search.  



What Gen S means to teachers...
Gen S will...

• post, tweet, or otherwise publicly discuss their lives and you.
• ignore the books which you hand out in favor of a searchable, easily manipulable, media rich multiple source website.
• read more in a day than most adults.
• read and write in fragmented but interwoven short prose.
• read at a complexity level far higher than our current testing procedures cover.
• think in webs and linkages, as thought thoughts "friend" other thoughts.
• expect instant relevant feedback.

 Gen S will not...

• handle the frustration of waiting with grace.
• have native exposure to grammar and spelling through their sources of reading.
• feel secure and safe when limited media sources or cell service are available.

In the dawn of electricity, we feared the dark.  In the dawn of information, we fear disconnection.

• be held back.

How to Cope with Gen S
The Good News is that good teaching really hasn't changed much, only the tools of delivery.

1. The local fourth grade assigns reading for 15 minutes a day and then asks students to make a concept web of what they read-
• Gen S version-Read Social Media or RSS Feeds for 15 minutes, then turn the web of what you read into prose.
2. A high school teacher assigns a timeline
• Gen S version-Assign a Twhistory
3. A Teacher posts work to a website
• Gen S version-post to a twitter or other RSS feed.

Wanna assign a vocab list-do it

Wanna assign a book-do it, and make the e version available.

How NOT to Cope with Gen S


A) Don't tell them to put their cell phones away, disconnection is one of their biggest turn offs (if not THE biggest).  Tell them to keep them out.  How many times do I hear teachers lament the lack of computer access in their schools when a large number of their students have handheld computing devices set to silent or cricket mode as they pretend not to use them.If they don't have phones, no problem.  Put students in to groups and have the ones without phones be the recorders and reporters who have to turn what the phone wielders find into deliverable material.


Example-Bell ringer assignment:
Describe the relationship between Genghis Khan and yogurt in 3 sentences.  Provide sources for your answer.

B) Don't give too many fixed ended assignments. The answers can be easily looked up.  Instead temper fixed assignments with choice assignments which have connections.

Example-Math problem set:
Choose 6 of the 10 problems to do, then write four similar new problems and solve them. Finally write a single sentence description of the key idea you have been practicing in this problem set.

C) Don't completely go high tech.  Create opportunities to go old school.

Example-Form an arguement
Tell students there is a debate on bringing faster better internet service to your area.  The city council will accept written arguments only.    Choose a side and write an argument.

Example-Reasons to see the world
Take 10 pictures of your school, town or surrounding area. Create a print collage for display.

Good Luck Teacher's with our Gen S friends.

 

The Existential Extension Policy

Due dates?

It would seem, dear readers that our lives have become lost and the meaning of due has been blurred to the extent that the concept of due may diminish and cease to exist.

It is an interesting pondering really given that due dates themselves only became established in the last half of the last century.  Historically dues dates were not only not necessarily dates, but they most certainly did not involve a time stamp.

Consider the conscripted soldier of the US civil war. In 1862 the President called for the raising of 300,000 more troops.  However a year later, in 1863, Wisconsin districts were given a number of men by the state and "urged to meet their quota."  So after a year, these men still had not reported.  But at the time to be fair, this was not an official draft, just a call to arms. Out of the 19 thousand some requested at the federal level from Wisconsin, only 4,537 men were actually further requested by the governor, of these 19 deserted and 1,622 just didn't come.  Many sited the statement about arrival time which read "as field and traveling conditions allow."  That was it for a timeline
[Source: THE CIVIL WAR DRAFT IN PLOVER AND STEVENS POINT: A STUDY IN EFFORTS, ATTITUDES, FRUSTRATIONS, AND RESULTS By David Ellison (UWSP)]  In other words, by gubernatorial order, you could show up when and if you could.


Now let us consider the baby due date, nominally considered until quite recently to be nine months after conception.  However, more recently stated as 40 weeks after conception, 280 days from the last menstrual period, and 266 days from conception. World health organizations made an attempt for a universal lunar months method to measure pregnancy length i.e. 28 days = 1 month x 10 = 10 months pregnant but this was not accepted world-wide. This has just made the confusion worse, with some health care providers using the 10 lunar months method now, while others do not. [Source: WHO]

Once timekeeping in the country was limited to dates punctuated by the common time frames of  dawn, noon and dusk but the advent of industrial transportation (train schedules), radio, and television systematically began to inform the public.  The final hurdle is often proclaimed to be the space race which demanded an ever more delineated time schedule for implementation.  Business is now timed to the minute and second.

But....BUT

have all of these deadlines really helped anything?

Enter the decline of the due.  In education the trend would seem to show that due dates are on the decline in favor of extension policies, IEP's, 504 and plain old good sense.

Is it important that a 4th grade know his times tables?  YES.  That is a fundamental skill which other ideas build upon.

Is it important that a 4th grade know his multiplication tables on Tuesday? 

or can he know them on Friday?  

Does it matter if the next skill is not yet being taught?

What lesson are we teaching? Multiplication tables or schedule tables?

To be fair, I understand the inconvenience factor for the face-to face teachers of the world.  But having taught now in online rolling enrollment, I have to say it is time to give it up.   Due dates are a thing of the past.  The ultimate deadlines that still exist are related to course end and beginning of teaching the next school alone.  So all of you lesson planners out there...sorry...but you need to relax.

Twitter with a brain.

OK as much as I enjoy Ms. Lohan and Mr. Sheen's tragically twisted exploits for their entertainment value, I cannot help but feel a bit dumber for having seen them.  Twitter, and other social posting options, give us up to the minute detailed exploits, some of which probably should have been kept private if only the poster had thought about it first.  But, lest you think I am maligning the medium, I would like to take a moment to discuss the merits of social media in education.

Take TwHistory for Example:

TwHistory from Marion Jensen on Vimeo.

You can get in on TwHistory by going to  http://twhistory.org/

If you aren't using social media to teach, you probably should be.

Hey you're on the "Wrong Mountain!"

Hey so yea, my last post or two have a few people wondering- 

What's wrong with Mrs E?

I would say nothing...that is to say nothing but the usual, or what I have come to know as usual mid winter funk.  Now in the past when I was a brick and mortar gal I experienced the funk, but the truth is I did not give my administrators enough credit for what they shielded me from.  It turns out that modern public education is not about what is best for students.  This was a pie-eyed belief that I held for years.  Turns out that in fact modern public education is a lot about politics, history, relationships, nepotism, and a little about making ourselves feel better that we are doing what is the currently acceptable best for kids.

I feel naive for not having noticed before, but I really didn't.  I mean how did I miss that "new math" was less about teaching math and more about making it seem like our government was making our kids better.  "Whole Language" was just English as a second language retooled for native slang speakers because they just don't speak the way their elders did.  I think I missed it because I believe.  Notice I didn't add a "d".  No past tense for me baby!  I believe that kids deserve my best every day.

So funny thing about realizing that education is about fashion as surely as kitten heels and the next "it" bag.  Turns out that like fashion, it all gets reused, whats old is new again, And earnest individuals like myself are not wasting our time when we collect our bag of tricks. 

E teaching is no exception.  Man it is a roller coaster of funding debates and politics, fads and fancies, fashion dos and don'ts.  I am happier and more fulfilled in this job even dealing with the same struggles.  I fight the good fight FOR KIDS with more success and less entrenchment.  And wow is that marvelous.  So I am happily climbing a new mountain of learning.

Perhaps Chuck Lorre said it best in vanity placard #62 

 

Poor Dave, who like so many teachers balks at the advent of the online ed era,  I understand your plight.  I once stood at the top of your mountain, and I can now say without a shadow of a doubt that no sir, it is you who is on the "wrong mountain" for me.  

wishing you find your mountain

~E

seriously I am now torn by whether to play the sound of music soundtrack or miley cyrus :(