Looking back at public school as a rite of passage

At the end of this month, many high school seniors around the country will complete their twelve years of formal and mandatory education. Ahead will come a series of new decisions about career and identity. This rite of passage can be invigorating, illuminating, and illusory.

To the high school seniors who read this blog, you are a child no more. You are an adult who’s made many initial decisions about your life and future. You’ve traveled a very long path to be at this sometimes tenuous, sometimes wonderful moment in time. Before you take that last step off your high school campus, I’d ask you to take a few moments to think about life as it was for you as one of America’s children, especially in your former role as a student. You can also help those of us in the field of education to know your generation a little bit more, if you will. (Please note that the comments to this blog are pseudonyms. Anonymity offers a certain freedom.)

Consider the Native American proverb, “No river can return to its source, yet all rivers must have a beginning.” How do you look back on the twelve years of formal education? Are you nostalgic? Relieved? Reticent? Why? Do fond memories of simpler times resonate? Or was life never really simple? Do life lessons that once seemed traumatic now seem just an awkward stage, even cathartic? What was it like for you to be a learner at the cusp of a new millennium?

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American poet and essayist, said, “Not in his goals but in his transitions is man great.” Life when Emerson wrote surrounded small New England community enclaves; discourse rose primarily from family and religion. Your life is very different. How did the society and culture in which you were nurtured create pathways for your academic integration into school culture? What is life like when you are ready to graduate high school? Pesky calls you “a digital native” due to the ubiquitous technology in which you have been emerged. He says:

It is now clear that as a result of this ubiquitous environment and the sheer volume of their interaction with it, today’s students think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors. These differences go far further and deeper than most educators suspect or realize. http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf

Do you agree with his statement? What advise to you have to offer to educators? If you were given the power, what institutional changes would you incorporate for other students in public schools who follow you? To what degree do you feel that school has been a microcosm of society? What were the best parts of school? What challenges continue even though you will no longer be a participant?

Dr. Michael Welch, a cultural anthropologist and digital enthnographer from Kansas State University, recently uploaded a short video to YouTube called Web 2.0, the Machine is Using Us. The video discusses how the Web is changing how and how fast humans around the globe communicate. After you view the film, offer a socio-cultural critique of Wesch’ argument. Is his view accurate? Why or why not?

As you think about your answers to these questions, I’d like to thank you on behalf of educators in the United States everywhere. You have offered us vicarious links to the energy and enthusiasm of our own youth. You’ve also introduced us to many new ways of knowing our own worlds. A part of you will live on with us and in the students we’ll help to grow as learners in the future to come.

Blogging as part of classroom learning

What is a blog?

The word “blog” is short for "Web log." A blog is a specialized site that allows an individual or group of individuals to share a running log of events and personal insights with online audiences. (www.pvt.com/oth/glossary.htm) It offers readers the opportunity to reply to opinions and link to their own blogs. (www.iab.ie/FAQs/DefinitionofTerms/) Some blogs have definite authors who disclose their names, and some has anonymous authors who use a nickname.(www.searchenginegenie.com/search-engine-glossary-b.htm)

Why am I requiring students to post on a blog?

As part of a “Society, Issues, and Identity” unit, two of my classes will post occasionally to a classroom blog. Because it is important for them to be safe and protected when using the Internet for classroom purposes, they are posting on the classroom blog using pseudonyms.

What is a pseudonym?

A pseudonym is a "false name" or alias used by a writer desiring not to use his or her real name. Sometimes called a nom de plume or "pen name. (home.cfl.rr.com/eghsap/apterms.html) A pseudonym serves many purposes. An assumed name protects the anonymity of an author.(www.reddeerbookexchange.com/terminology.htm) Fictitious names are often used when the person performs a particular social role. (wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn) In this situation, students are using a blog to publish their classroom learning experiences.

Do all students have to post to the blog for every assignment?

No. Several windows for extra credit opportunity will open and close for students to post. In a privileged community where grades are intertwined as status and pathways to academic capital, grades are very important to my students. They like extra credit opportunities.

Periodically, however, all students will be required to post as part of scaffolded learning events. Upcoming, for example, is an assignment called, “Citing Your Sources: Ancient Greece Society and Life.” Each student will submit a post in conjunction with a self-selected Issues Group.

Who is the moderator for our sophomore blog?

I am the moderator for the blog. This means that I review and sometimes abbreviate posts from the students. Some posts that are submitted to the blog may not be accepted, and yet other posts may be accepted without any editing. It is likely that most submissions will get posted with some editing.

What is the address for the blog?

http://societyissuesidentity.blogspot.com/

What has been the reaction to the blog so far?

In the week since the students have become aware of it and its potential for digital discourse, nine students have posted on a voluntary basis. Several of those students have sought me out in person to ask, “What did you think of my blog?” The blog has invited conversations around topics that a teacher might not freely address in this era of restricted teacher freedom of expression.

What do you think about incorporating blogs as part of classroom instruction? Add your own ideas.

Submit a comment to this blog in which you describe your own experiences using blogs in the classroom. Did you seek administrative approval, like I did? Was it approved (my questions were never answered, so I went ahead, anyway)? Have students or families resented the requirement to publish their work for a wider audience than teachers or classroom peers? Have students who live in a Web 2.0 world embraced the opportunity to reconcile their inside/ outside school personas, at least to a small degree? Has manipulation of form ever exceeded unveiling of students’ learning content and making links among ideas? If so, what did you do to streamline that learning process?