New Tool for SPS
"Similar to YouTube, the popular Internet video-sharing Web site, L3RN (pronounced simply "learn") is touted as a tool for professional development of teachers, allowing teachers in different schools to discuss ideas and upload lesson plans and other information.
But for students, it means they can comment on their peers' work and also show off their projects to their parents. According to Hale's Advanced Placement students, it also has proved to be a lot of fun."
Also from the article:
"Though many parts of L3RN are available to the public, at www.l3rn.com, only teachers can post to the site. They can designate certain files as private, so only other teachers and students can see them. To comment on students' work, visitors must have a login name and a password from the school district.""The district gets the software free, and Hale estimates that L3RN saves thousands of dollars in paper.
"The less paper, the better," Hale said. "It's almost heartbreaking when I had students write an essay and watch them put it in the recycling bin on their way out of the door. This solves that problem."
"There is no anonymity on L3RN. Student comments are permanently attached to their online-user names. They cannot be changed or deleted by the student, so teens must think twice before posting something inappropriate or hurtful."
There's also another network tool, Medley:
This fall, the district plans to add to L3RN by introducing another online system called Medley, a social-networking site comparable to MySpace.
"Medley will allow students to have personal home pages. They can create online journals and send messages to their friends and teachers.
"It's great, because it's safer than a lot of the social Web sites that are out there," Pierson said. "Kids will feel secure on Medley because we'll manage it and make sure there's no bullying." "
I'm more on-board with the 3LRN than Medley. I like the idea of teachers sharing ideas as well as students sharing their work (although I hope there is a filter so that kids don't plagiarize).I'm not sure I think it's worth the district's time and money to have Medley. Are kids really going to want to post to a site monitored by the district? Maybe younger students but I doubt if a lot of middle/high school students would (unless their parents wouldn't let them use FaceBook or MySpace). Frankly, why is the district getting into this business? It doesn't relate to academics.
Comments
If L3RN saves a lot of paper, that's great. The question is, does it also improve learning? That is not nearly as clear to me.
As far as Medley goes, I don't buy for an instant that teens will like it better because it is supervised. Quoting from this article in PC World about legislation for Myspace: One of the reasons MySpace has risen to such popularity with kids is that it's almost completely devoid of adult supervision. Some guy named Tom runs the joint--that's all members know. If the influence of authority starts seeping in, if the site starts feeling like it's being "policed", it might be the beginning of the end for MySpace.
Most teens want an environment with less intrusive adult supervision than many parents feel comfortable with letting them have. However, the result of denying them a safe space where they can be relatively unsupervised will not be safer teens, it will be teens that take more reckless risks in order to assert their own identity and sense of freedom. This applies, incidentally, to both online and real world environments. But I digress.
Melissa is right: Myspace, great as it is (and I rather like it myself) is not about education, and neither is Medley. The schools have better things to do with their resources.
The article seems to be the usual education article, take some new idea and make it sound really cool with a couple feel good stories. Where is the research and data to support creating such a tool? This is a typical education puff piece, sounds cool and no depth!!!!!
The post implies that she has a history of creating something without testing. Can someone fill in this post?
We have a laptop- but while we are fairly savvy, we just have one computer for our household and we have dial up.
I hate the reformatting of the districts website- it is very bandwidth intensive and I am less likely to look for info than I was previously.
If this district is truely concerned about disproportionality- why aren't they spending this time and effort toward getting more families up to date communication rather than bells and whistles?
We already have few teachers using the source and few who keep it updated when they do-lets use the tools we already have to greater extent rather than keep switching around every year.
http://www.tuttlesvc.org/search?updated-max
=2007-07-04T11%3A45%3A00-04%3A00
This brings up a great conversation as we all move forward. We are essentially functioning like a Dot com within a school district which has its benefits and its struggles. The benefits for a district is that we are nimble and capable of rapid development cycles and we are very customer centered. Our team spends a lot of time working with and listening to teachers, students, and other educators as we design and develop programs. The struggle comes from having a different cultural approach to development districts tend to purchase software solutions from large companies and are subject to vendors demanding tight controls on their source code; while we have approach development from a community/grassroots approach, which is comfortable being part of a larger open learning and open development community.
Unfortunately, one difference between a dot com and EdTech REA Seattle Schools, or whatever the official name of the people who have created l3rn is, is that a dot com does not operate in the crazy cone of silence which encloses a public school department. Why is this stuff such a secret? Why is there no web page describing this unique and important approach to developing software for schools? Or if there is one, why is it so well hidden? What they're doing should be a model for other districts.
Also, now with Medley students and teachers can contextualize content...for instance, imagine teachers can search the system for content/curriculum that is "tagged" with a state standard...now the assignments that students post will provide a demonstration of meeting that standard. This tool provides us the ability to see the whole student and transcend only viewing student data as a number on a WASL score. We can now enrich the learning in a system that values the community of learners...and see students bring a rich world of knowledge and expertise that is not easily quantified in a single moment in time.
Also, Medley was developed with the goal of meeting the state requirements for Culminating projects, and High School and Beyond Plans. This tool allows students to have a portfolio to share with universities, their family and even future employees if they choose to. Students and teachers will have an opportunity to create unique learning opportunities as a community of practice.
As a teacher at a high school in Seattle, I do not believe this statement to be true. I had to live through a terrible experience with this Ramona and the rollout of the Source. The Source is a decent tool. Parents like it because they get information from teachers. But we tried and liked Edline, which basically is a better product. The Source implementation process was horrible and painful. Changes were made without consulting or notifying teachers. Promises were made and broken. Feedback was repeatedly ignored. Yet, we kept hearing the same words in the news, "We are listening to teacher feedback."
In the next PR article maybe this Ramona could share some real data demonstrating how they are listening to teacher feedback, not empty words and a couple feel good stories.
Look for the Microsoft connection in the ed tech leadership of SPS.
We have a skunk works? That's so cool!
Is it just technology or is there one for academics as well?
http://www.halcyon.com/arborhts/mahlness/2007/08/fear.html
How dare you people put her down when you never were teachers in a class or a parent needing help in the middle of the night! We will all miss her!
Mark A. was right when he talked about fear. You people have created the fear.
http://www.halcyon.com/arborhts/mahlness/2007/08/fear.html
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