Can Online Courses Enhance High School?

I haven't written much about this, but last Winter I was accepted into the Educational Leadership program at Niagara University. The degree will certify me to hold both administrative building and district leadership positions. I love my job as a teacher, but no one knows what the future may hold and I like the idea that I have the option to advance if that is something I one day choose to pursue.

Currently, I have the pleasure of attending classes taught by former New York Regents Chancellor, Robert Bennett. He is still active in Regents decisions which means I get the chance to hear weekly from someone at the top of the ladder when it comes to educational policy-making in New York State. It's like getting a behind-the-scenes look at education.

Tonight's topic in class was high school graduation requirements. Chancellor Bennett warned us that it was an area the the Regents Board was investigating, and would ultimately be changing in the reletive near future. These changes would most likely involve the credit hours needed to graduated and required seat time in class, but neither of these things will be quick or easy to implement. Both would require either hiring more teachers or increasing the pay of those who are already employed, and this seems improbable considering the state of New York laid off 58,000 teachers this September.

So how do we make high school more rigorous and expansive without further crippling the state budget?

I read an article the other day about a school district in Ohio experimenting with the idea of moving classes online in the event of a snow day. This idea is not without some serious flaws (what happens to kids without Internet access, for example?), but it has potential nonetheless.

Would it be possible to extend seat time, so to speak, without extending the school day?

How can this be mandated?

What will it look like?

What happens to students who do not have Internet access?

How will we prepare teachers?

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Knowledge is Obsolete

When I was about 15 years old I was the proud frontman and guitarist in a small-town rock band. In addition to these duties, I also took it upon myself to wear the hat of webmaster. This was in 1997 - before the days of Myspace and Facebook. Instead, I turned to free web hosting sites like the now useless Geocities and Angelfire. WYSIWYG editors were still fairly uncommon at the time so I printed off some tutorials and started hard coding my site. This is how I learned HTML.

More than a decade later, and I’m still up to my old tricks. I recently started another band, and knowing the importance of a web presence, decided to create a website for the project. After looking through some links saved to my Delicious account, I realized something very important. All my coding skills from 1997 mean almost nothing in 2010.

Knowledge is obsolete.

Instead of HTML body tags, it’s CSS now. Instead of fancy Flash menus, it’s all about jQuery. And what the hell is AJAX?!

Fortunately for me, I know where to go for help, and how to practice and master new skills on my own. At some point in my formal education, I learned how to learn.

This is what teachers need to impress on students. Knowledge becomes worthless surprisingly fast, but the ability to acquire new knowledge is essential.

Don’t teach knowledge. Teach learning.

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Teaching Irony

Last evening a six-year-old named Falcon Heene dominated the news and social media as the world looked on anxiously as a mylar balloon presumably containing the boy drifted across the state of Colorado. Turns out he was in no harm, having instead nested comfortably in a box tucked into the corner of the family's attic. Followers of the story are now singing a chorus of “Foul!” with rumors circulating that the spectacle was all an elaborate publicity stunt for a family who seems to love being in the spotlight.

Unlike countless other bloggers logging in to contribute their two cents to the story, I don't really have much to say about the family, their possible motivations, or the viral (and admittedly very funny) meme videos that are surfacing. Instead, I want to share something that one of my students said to me this morning.

A few weeks ago I began preparing my classes to read the O. Henry short story, “The Ransom of Red Chief.” It seems nearsighted to teach O. Henry without first discussing irony, so after taking a day to give the classes a definition and a few clear examples (none of them being the ironically un-ironic song by Alanis Morrisette), we were set to read. (If interested, here are some of the examples I used.) Students were able to identify irony in Red Chief, so I felt I did an adequate job.

This morning I had a student come to me with an exciting observation. While watching one of the major news outlets cover the story of the “Balloon Boy,” she had overheard the reporter mention that it was ironic that a boy named Falcon has been suspected of taking to the skies. My ever-observant student couldn't wait to share the reporter's error with me.

She eagerly explained that the reporter had mistaken a coincidence for irony. After all, the student noted, our class definition of irony is an outcome that is the opposite of what is expected. In this case, it would have been ironic only if the boy's name had been that of a land-dwelling creature. A boy named Turtle or Goldfish flying off into the Colorado skyline would have been ironic.

The true test of learning is the transference of knowledge. My students will soon forget the specifics of the story they read with me, but they will never forget what irony is.

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