Gary Weisserman - Home

Drew's Room Map and Simon's Big Boy Underwear

2008-05-15T15:10:00Z

Two "kid moments" yesterday worth noting:

First, Simon decided that yesterday was when he wanted to get serious about potty training. Unfortunately this was five minutes before Dolly was going to take him to day care, and she was already running late. This is, mind you, a kid who has only used the potty sporadically in the past. But he was absolutely insistent that he would ONLY wear underwear, NOT diapers, and NOT pull-ups. Exasperated, Dolly threw three or four outfits into a bag and brought them to the very gracious and helpful day care staff ... and would you believe it, he had one accident very early in the morning, and then went on the potty the rest of the day. You go, Momo! We'll see how it goes today, but it might be--dare I say it?--time for a Big Boy Bed!

Then, at about 7:00 PM, Drew reminded us he had a big project due at school ... this morning. Oops. It was actually a pretty involved mapping assignment. He had to draw a picture of himself in his room, then a detailed map with a map key, and then a descriptive essay that he'd have to present today in class. Being the nerds we are, after he drew his picture, we used Icovia's terrific Web 2.0, 2-D interior design app and sketched out his room:

That was a lot of fun. Then he wrote his descriptive essay, which was actually pretty good (he even did most of the typing himself). I'm excerpting it here, simply because it's pretty cute, but also because it's much more descriptive and detailed than what he usually does in school (it's something we've been working with him on). Note, especially, his use of mathematical expression. Not bad for a kid who's only five ...

My Special Bedroom, by Drew Weisserman

My Dad and I did my map on the computer because I like to do things on the computer. We used a program called Icovia to do the map.

We also did it on the computer because it didn’t say we had to do handwriting.

My room’s walls are yellow and light blue and dark blue. My room’s theme is space. There are stars on my walls, and a moon that lights up with a remote control. The moon is above my closet on the west wall.

When you walk in the door you go straight to Big Bear. He is about 3 x 1 feet tall. He came from my Dad. He was my Dad’s when he was little. Big Bear is white, soft and very dirty.

Next you see my night stand. It has about 4 x 5 books on it. 7 are chapter books. 5 are puzzle books. 8 are geography books like atlases.

If you go south you will see my bed. It’s sheets are white and it’s blankets are blue and soft.

On my dresser is my fish tank. In the fish tank are eight fish. Their names are Dorothy, Lefty, Speck, Al, Charlie, Lola, Cocoa, and Crisp. There are also books on the dresser. There are about 15 x 4 books.

When you go west you will find my clothes stand. It is yellow, blue and white.

On my desk I have a globe that talks, a computer and a geography collection. My geography collection has a country box and a state box. I don’t keep states in there, I keep things I get from states and countries.

Then you see my toy box. It is full of stuffed animals.

My bedroom is special because it makes me feel comfortable and unforgettable. I like to play in my room. I like to sleep there too. When Mom is looking for me in my room I can jump out and yell BOO!

GEC in the news

2008-03-25T21:19:00Z

It must be Press Week here ... Governor Granholm came to visit Genesee Early College today, so there'll likely be a bunch of media coverage. Here's a snip from the Flint Journal's pre-visit article:

FLINT, Michigan -- Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm will make a brief stop today at the Genesee Early College at the University of Michigan-Flint campus.

Granholm participated in the ribbon-cutting celebration of the early college when it opened in fall.

The program offers high school students a chance to earn a high school diploma and 60 transferable college credits.

The early college curriculum focuses on health careers, and Granholm has touted the early college for helping transform the economy by creating a work force that's in demand.

Update: Here is a link to the full Flint Journal article. Very nice! And here is a PDF version of the article.

OEC in the news

2008-03-25T10:41:00Z

Good article in the Freep today about Oakland Early College (OEC). Snip:

Ines Gonzales came prepared. The application was filled out, the essay was carefully handwritten, and recommendations were in hand. And she was succinct in explaining her reasons for wanting to enroll in Oakland County's first early college.

"It's free," Ines, 15 and a freshman at Brandon High School, said of the school that will allow her to earn high school and college credit.

She and her mother, Irma Moran-Gonzales, were among several dozen people who last week attended the first of three open houses to promote Oakland Early College, a new school that is the result of a partnership between the West Bloomfield School District and Oakland Community College.

PDF of article is here.

Draft of my talk at MACUL

2008-03-03T20:39:00Z

FWIW; may change it later:

It's sometimes hard to believe that just a dozen years ago or so, the web as we know it was just a blip on the cultural radar. Sure, the date we usually assign to the birth of the commercial web is 1991, but consider that in 1995 there were fewer than 20,000 websites. (To put this in perspective, our best estimate today is that there are somewhere between 45-50 billion.) Certainly, the web hadn't begun to make much of an impact on education. There had been a few brave attempts to use other aspects of the internet for education in meaningful ways, of course (my own initiation into the field was with the venerable Arab-Israeli Conflict simulation, back when it used the old text-based Confer system) but by and large, the web was still largely uncharted territory.

Now, just a decade later, the very concept of "online learning" has become so thoroughly ingrained in K-16 culture that we sometimes don’t reflect as much as we should on what online learning MEANS. Or, more precisely, what online learning COULD mean.v
When you think about it for a moment, “online learning” is actually quite a problematic phrase. It’s easy to forget that the operative word is “learning,” not “online,” which in this case serves as a modifier. Our attention is drawn not to the noun, but to the adjective. Alas, the online portion hasn’t yet impacted the way we approach learning much. We could just as easily say: "Learning, but, you know, online."

Even more problematic is that when we say "online learning," we almost always actually mean "online TEACHING." It's a small distinction, but an important one. Almost all of our efforts have been focused on how to put fairly standard teaching activities online--rather than on how students might learn better or differently, given the endless possibilities created by the web. And because our focus has, up to now, largely been devoted to moving traditional schooling to the domain of our web browsers, we've managed to avoid substantial investigation into a far more promising area of potential innovation.

What we need is for "online" to genuinely modify "learning," and in a much more powerful way than we’ve previously considered. I don't mean to downplay the very wonderful work that's being done right now by groups using Blackboard and Learningspace to bring opportunity, access, and, yes, efficiency to our K-16 institutions. Online classrooms can be powerful tools, and the work that's being done in this area is rewarding and important. I simply mean to say that we're just now beginning to scratch the surface of what's possible. We’re just now beginning to think less in terms of "schooling," and more in terms of "learning."

In particular, I'm excited by the prospects of how technology might be used to help us make a major pedagogical leap, so that we're not just thinking in terms of "what is to be taught," nor even in terms of "what is to be learned." Instead, I hope to find us thinking about questions like, "How can we set up innovative environments which maximize the likelihood that students are likely to learn something valuable--perhaps even something we as teachers haven't worked through in advance ourselves?"

That's a scary and revolutionary thought--because while we can usually control what we teach, we really have only a very general, probabilistic influence over what our students actually learn. What I'm proposing is that we embrace, rather than fight, this fundamental truth.

This would represent a major pedagogical and ideological shift. Among other things, it would require us to take a leap of faith: to take our students, regardless of age, seriously as learners. We'd be allowing them to explore, and to experiment, and to be creators of knowledge, not just consumers. For all our talk about constructivism and inquiry-based education, we don't really allow young people to experiment much. We're far too busy asking them to recite what we already know, or in our better moments, to pretend to uncover something we’ve intentionally buried.

Part of the web’s potential in education lies in our ability to construct environments where teachers can provoke inquiry, but limit consequence. That is to say: let’s take advantage of the fact that activity on the web can be, in a weird and important way, both real and unreal. I'm reminded of a colleague's declaration that no high school science teacher, at least not one in her right mind, has ever allowed a student to conduct a real chemistry experiment. (Think about that for a moment. Sure, they use lab equipment, but we're asking students to follow established procedures with clearly articulated outcomes. That’s probably a good idea, unless you want that kid at the back table to blow something up, or to supplement his income on the black market—because it’s the “real world” and we want to limit consequences.) In civics classes, sure, we hold discussions and debates--until a student experiments with an idea we find vaguely uncomfortable. As adults we have a moral and legal obligation to ensure that the real-life consequences of our students' learning opportunities aren't too risky. But the strength of thoughtfully constructed online environments--simulation games, virtual worlds with special physics engines, social action networks—lies in the fact that if we're wise, we can create opportunities for experimentation without undue risk. We can, in other words, create opportunities for real surprise.

A significant challenge, however, is that taking our students seriously actually means taking ourselves less seriously. It requires us not to pretend that we have all the answers. We have be prepared to admit that on any given day, we may not know what students are going to learn—only that there’s a strong possibility it will be of value. It requires us, in fact, to take an ironist approach to what we do know: that what passes for privileged knowledge is thoughtful but contestable; and that an important test of our skills as teachers is how well our students are able to join us in learning.

OLPC with Ubuntu

2008-03-02T17:12:00Z

I haven't tried it yet, but evidently there's now directions for installing Ubuntu on an OLPC. Doesn't look too hard, either. Might give it a shot. Love the hardware, but Sugar--eh.

Oakland Early College launch

2008-02-27T21:27:00Z

Hey, cool: even before any press releases have gone out, there was a brief blurb in the Oakland Press about the new OEC website launching:

I gather there'll be a front-page article early next week, and then a likely media flood in the other papers. More later ...

Video clip of dunk contest

2008-02-18T14:27:00Z

Posting this mostly for Dolly, so she can see it--if you happened to miss the greatest dunk contest ever, here are the clips via ESPN (I know, I know, I'm the billionth person to embed this, so sue me):

Dots: the basic rules

2008-02-12T21:25:00Z

I've posted this about a billion times before, but it got lost in the last site upgrade--and of course tonight is our monthly games seminar, so ... here's a copy of the basic rules for DOTS. (And somewhere, Quazie's trembling with excitement ...)

Expanding the Community of Activists: Technology, Activism and Design presentation

2008-02-12T14:44:00Z

Here's a PDF copy of the talk Jeff Kupperman and I are giving at Central Michigan University's 9th Annual Communication and Social Action Conference, entitled "Expanding the Community of Activists: Technology, Activism and Design" ... and here's a link to the Google Docs presentation version.

Update: if you're looking for it, here's a link to the Michigan Student Caucus site.

Either this is a hoax

2008-02-11T19:17:00Z

... or--well, it hurts my head if it's not. Check out these illusions, especially the eleventh one.

Charlotte's Birthday Party

2008-02-04T00:49:00Z

Hither some pictures from Char-Char's fifth birthday party:

First, some older pictures ...

2008-02-04T00:35:00Z

Cleaning out my camera this evening, I came across a couple of funny sets of pictures.

First, a few cool shots of the boys on Halloween (yeah, it's been a while since I've cleaned out my camera's memory stick). Drew went as a Ninja Warrior; Simon was a Ninja M&M:

Next on the hit parade, a funny story. Over the holidays, Jeff Kupperman and I met at a local coffee shop to work on some tech stuff. The barista had what I decided was the geekiest (in a cool way) purse I'd ever seen: a gold "Legend of Zelda" classic cartridge rip-off. I complemented her on it, and she said: "You think that's cool? Check out my Tri-Force tattoo!"

It's a dynastic thing

2008-01-29T12:28:00Z

This is really a quick aside to David, but worth a post anyway.

Think about this: since 1980, a Bush or a Clinton has been on the presidential ticket every single election. Imagine, for a moment, Clinton wins the nomination this year, prevails in the general election, and is elected to a second term four years hence. In the following election, in 2016, if my math is correct (and bear with me here since I’m posting this entry via cell while waiting for a meeting to begin), a voter would need to be 58 years old(!) to have voted in the last election without either family dynasty as an option. That’s remarkable … And to me, at least, profoundly disturbing.

If you add the Dole and Nixon names to the list–well, I’d have to double check this (again, top of my head here), but I believe that takes us to 1948 … if you were 18 years old in that election, you were born in 1930, meaning by the 2016 election, you’re statistically more likely to be, well, dead than voting.

UPDATE: See, this is what happens when you post by phone: 1964 was LBJ/Humphrey v Goldwater/Miller. But you get my drift …

Neat MSC chat going on right now

2008-01-28T17:19:00Z

Very interesting (live) chat going on right now the Michigan Student Caucus: we're being joined by John Bracey, Executive Director of the Michigan Council for the Arts and Cultural Affairs; Karen Gagnon, Director of the Cool Cities Initiative; and--I love this!--a new program associate from Cool Cities, Ashley Aidenbaum ... who holds the important distinction of having been the first (and to this day only) president of MSC, way way back in its first session when it was the Michigan Youth Caucus. Very cool! Two other interesting chats this week, both focusing on education: at 4:00 PM on Tuesday, January 29, we'll be joined by Susanne Chandler, Dean of the School of Education and Human Services here at UM-Flint, and Linda Thompson, Superintendent of Flint Communty Schools. Then on Thursday, we'll be joined by MaryAlice Galloway of the Michigan Department of Education. You can join the MSC, then login to join us if you'd like ...!

Hey, cool

2008-01-27T18:27:00Z

Posting from my new baby, as I've joined the Crackberry masses ... So let me take this opportunity to make a strong recommendation: if you have one of these bad boys, check out IM+ for Skype. Best. Software. Ever.