Week 6: Philosophical-21st Century Learning

Part I: Is the 21^st Century Movement the same thing as 21^st century learning?

I don’t think there is any question that changes in technology require changes in teaching. In the 20^th century some teachers might have ignored the influence of new technologies that led to such new mass media forms as movies, radio and TV, but they would have been as wrong as we would be to ignore the influence of the internet and other changes today. Many of these changes are also as much about mass media as technology.  

As educators, it makes sense to ask ourselves whether we believe changes are needed in how we educate our students, and if the answer is yes, how to adjust the way we teach our students. In my own mind I don’t think there is any question about the former, but I have many doubts about how to accomplish the latter. The Partnership for 21^st Century Skills (P21) believe they have the answer and many agree with what they say on their website. 

This week we were asked to read some articles by both critics and supporters of this organization’s prescriptions for change. I have delved into this before, and I have generally ended up with a feeling of “everything in moderation”. I am always wary of cure-all prescriptions, but I am also uncomfortable with the wholesale rejection of ideas. I am also leery of anecdotal evidence— either for or against. I don’t think it is difficult to find bad examples of implementation for any educational philosophy, and both sides have brought up their share. 

I agree with Professor Bigsby that, “Regardless of which movement you side with, the purpose of schooling has remained - preparing students with skills and knowledge.” I believe the debate is about both what best prepares students and what constitutes prepared. Until you decide on the what you can’t decide on the how.

I have already done some reading on this subject, and although there is plenty to ponder in the articles we were given, there are other’s I’d add, such as The Most Daring Education Reform of All by Diana Senechal, and New Jersey’s plan for implementation outlined in Creating 21st Century New Jersey Schools. 

I’m a fan of one of the “critics”, Daniel Willingham, having found his book Why Don’t Student’s Like School? (2009), to offer many insights into what makes for good learning. I was interested in what he sees as the flawed assumptions in the article Flawed Assumptions Undergird the Program at the Partnership for 21st-Century Skills. He is mostly critical not of the goals, but of their prescriptions for implementation. 

It’s not that the ideas are bad, but they clearly are not workable in the way that seems obvious: we want students to be able to do X in the world, so stick more X in the classroom. If it were that easy, it would have worked by now, because it has been tried many times before. That is the great danger of the P21 movement. To those unfamiliar with the history of education, the ideas sound compelling, and in fact, obvious. In the classroom, they are anything but.

Frankly, I don’t see any fundamental or idealogical differences that would prevent changes being made as new information and a better understanding of how people learn are incorporated. However, I don’t think this means we should accept the goals without agreeing on the methodology. Willingham criticizes what he sees as a lack of understanding of “how knowledge and skill work together.” In previous posts I have mentioned being bothered by what I see as a lack of appreciation for the importance of background knowledge to inform thinking, and I would be interested in whether there has been any modification in the thinking expressed by the advocates. I don’t see any reason why not, but I am often surprised when what I see as reasonable compromises are instead seen as basic idealogical differences. 

Willingham sees 3 mistaken assumptions: 

1. Knowledge and Skills are separate. “the 21st-century skills movement in general is too focused on skills (analysis, synthesis, critical thinking) and ignores the fact that knowledge is critical to thought”. 
2. Teachers don’t have cognitive limits. “The P21 group shows no recognition of the enormity of this problem, nor of the likelihood that teachers will end up not using these methods or having difficulty managing them.” 
3. Experience is equivalent to practice. “This means that 21st-century skills like ‘working well in groups,’ or ‘developing leadership’, will not be developed simply by putting people in groups or asking them to be leaders”. 

His conclusion is clear:

I believe [these 3 faulty assumptions] mean that states that adopt the recommendations of the P21 group will find they don’t work.

But are these really the P21 assumptions? I’m pretty sure that P21 would disagree.

I see as a weakness some aspects of the P21 coalition that other’s, I know, see as a strength. Much of the power is corporate or political. I don’t believe either of these groups have shown themselves to be good prognosticators of the future. I see education as being about preparing students for their lives as adults and citizens and not the preparation of workers to enter the workforce. It’s not that I think school should be so abstract that it doesn’t prepare students for their work future, but I do not believe this should be the primary (or even secondary) goal. I don’t think anyone really knows what the future will be. People should learn how to learn, and the duty of schools to corporations is to provide workers who are prepared to learn. As long as the P21 goals coincide with mine I’m all for it.

As you’d expect, I disagree with some of the conclusions of "The Workforce Readiness Report Card" from the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, The Conference Board, Corporate Voices for Working Families, and the Society for Human Resource Management. What is the schools role in preparing students to be future workers? Is “workforce readiness” the primary or even secondary role of K-12 education? How do you define ‘workplace readiness’? Employers can say what they wish new applicants knew, but can they know what will be needed in the future, or even what skills they take for granted that might be lost with wanton changes in the education system? 

My impression since my son entered school is that his education is much more rigorous than anything I experienced before college. More depth, more analysis, more group work. I’ve been pleased with this as, after I entered college, I found my own elementary education lacking. However, there were many in my college who obviously had been in better schools that prepared them better for college. I saw this as an indication of the weakness of my California educational, in general, and the two school districts I attended, in particular. The bottom line is that there have always been better and worse schools, and our goal should be to raise all schools up to as near the same high level as we can.

We can agree on many goals, such as fostering creative thinking and problem solving. However, what is the best way to do this? Children are frequently very creative. And, all too often, we do educate it out of them. However, they are almost never ‘usefully’ creative or innovative until they have learned what is possible. Being creative can include discovering things that are already known, but that you were never taught, but this doesn’t help someone be ‘usefully’ creative unless they learn enough to come up with ideas that have never been thought of before. What is needed to give students the tools they need to be creative and innovative? Is it just an exposure to opportunities? Is it just making sure they thoroughly understand what they are studying? I’d say it’s a combination of them all as well as creating an environment that both encourages this and shows what is needed, including background knowledge, to be creative.

Part II: Can school’s foster creativity?

I love the video of Sir Kenneth Robinson that I posted last week, and am glad to have a reason to discuss it. While it is not about the 21^st Century Skills Movement, it certainly is about 21^st century education. Sir Ken makes the case that while we can’t know where the future will lead us we do know that solutions to problems require original ideas and we can’t afford to squander our children’s capacity for creative problem solving. Near the conclusion of the talk he says, 

We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which we are educating our children… our task is to educate the whole child for the future. We may not see this future, but they will, and our job is to help them make something of it.

Sir Ken defines creativity as,

The process of having original ideas that have value.

This is not an “artsy-fartsy” definition. I believe whether children are educated to be creative, or to discourage their creativity, is one of the great equality questions of our time. It’s no longer accepted in our schools that we can choose groups of people and educate them for the jobs we believe those kinds of people are suited. We call that racism. However, when education fosters creativity in some and not others it can have the same discriminatory effect. 

As Sir Ken says, children start out creative— and then we educate it out of them. We may not be able to educate children to become creative, however, I do believe we can make changes that will keep from educating creativity out of them. One way we can keep from doing this is by expanding what we value in education. I believe the best part of the 21^st century skills movement have the potential to do this. It is that part that I (selectively) embrace.

Incorporating Audio into an Online Presentation

Back to school_night

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Wow, that was a lot of work. I tried to include what I, as a parent, would like to hear, but I’m not sure I hit the mark. I included information that fit the school I observed in Newark last semester, but added the kind of technology that I would like to incorporate. I tried to create a presentation that could realistically be presented to a back-to-school audience, but as I listen to it I’m not sure it would be right— or that I would have the nerve to present it. In any case, preparing this with the idea of uploading it for all to view, and re-view, is intimidating.

Sometimes a “picture is worth a thousand words”, and sometimes a video is worth much more. However, they are not without their disadvantages, and I believe video and audio recordings should be used with restraint and only when the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. I have watched many teaching videos online. These have varied from short YouTube videos, to recordings of live lectures, to full courses; and from topics I know little about to those I am more or less expert in. 

At their best these have been opportunities to experience a “live performance” when I could not be there in person, and where no “text” exists. Occasionally I have also found these videos to offer a degree of clarity than would be much more difficult with a more traditional presentation or written words and pictures. 

However, from my perspective as a “consumer” there are significant disadvantages to recorded videos and audios over print. Until fully downloaded it is difficult to skip around, and even then it is not always easy to find what you are looking for. To a large degree, the rate of information flow is fixed. It can seem unbearably slow if the information isn’t of interest to me or is presented in a way I do not find interesting, or is just paced more slowly than I would like. Being paced too fast can also be a problem. However, it is easier to go back and re-listen than it is to fast forward. Also, I sometimes find it hard to understand the material when I don’t know where the presentation is going. With print I can look ahead to preview the information, or skim to see if it is interesting enough to read fully. Also, without the ability to ask questions or the presence of others in the room to check for their understanding or reactions, it is hard to know if it is just me. Another disadvantage is the inability to skim on either first or subsequent viewings. If I haven’t made notes while viewing or listening it’s difficult to review what was said without listening to the entire piece all over again. Finally, taking notes from a recorded presentation is more difficult than from written text, and unless there are clear benefits to the video or audio presentation it does not have the advantages of a more spontaneous classroom environment. Perhaps that is why I find “boring” pre-recorded information more difficult to pay attention to than the same information delivered in much the same way by a live person.

The article “How PowerPoint is Killing Education” by Marc Isseks showed me that some of my complaints are with how PowerPoint and PowerPoint like technologies are too frequently used, and I was pleased to see that the article echoed some of my points. Key for me is that, whatever the delivery method, it is still all about the teaching.

I finish this blog with an example of how I, as a student, like to use technology along with written documents. I prefer if documents are provided in a form that allows me to place the text and images into my own notes. I can copy and past text from a webpage, pdf or word processing document and then add my annotations and notes. Below is a screenshot of a paragraph from this weeks reading along with my annotations:

A favorite new method of processing what I’m reading is to copy quotes (for example, the yellow highlighted sentence above) and then to reflect, or make comments and notes, below it (like the simplified comment in red). I have used this method to keep an entire course’s worth of reading notes in one place. I believe the ability to re-read information and to make notes and later reflect on and add to or change those notes has significant benefits. 


If we are going to make video and audio recordings a part of our teaching, I believe we, as teachers, need to ask, for each situation, if the benefits of a video or audio presentation method outweigh the limitations. In my own personal experience there have been times where I felt it was worth the presenter’s efforts and times when it was worse than if they had only given me an outline of what they wanted to say. I hope that I will be able to walk this line in my own courses.

As a final side note, Marc Isseks’ final prescriptions for good presentations … 

Remove many bullet points. Class notes should be derived from discovery and discussion, not a predetermined list of facts. Create presentations that are rich with images, videos, political cartoons, diagrams, and maps—presentations that feature questions rather than answers.

Don't waste time with fancy transitions and sound effects.

Perhaps most important, keep the classroom lights on.

… reminded me of a presentation I was pointed to a couple of years ago. I just Googled “Great Keynote presentations” and found it again. Although it isn't about teaching, I embedded it for anyone who is interested in seeing a really simple PowerPoint (well Apple's Keynote actually) style presentation which I think has been made immensely engaging and fun. Unfortunately, it also shows how much more difficult it is to do it right rather than filling a presentation full of bullets and built-in effects.

As educators (or future educators) you might like this video about creativity in education: 

Online “Back to School Night” Presentation.

As a parent, I’ve been to a few “back to school nights”. This year was typical where we followed our child’s schedule from room to room and had a 7 minute presentation by each of his teachers.  I’ve heard teachers say they try to pack the time with their presentation to cut to a minimum questions by parents, because these frequently turn into child specific questions more suited to a one-on-one discussion.

Generally, the teachers introduce themselves, try to convey how much they care about your child’s success in their class and gives some information about what the class entails and how to stay in contact. For this weeks assignment we were to include something about technology in the classroom. One of my questions included whether to treat this as a real back to school presentation or concentrate on the technology aspect? Some of our class made the presentation totally about technology, some included it in a general presentation. From my perspective it seemed to make sense to include some info about the class, but to concentrate on explaining how and why technology would be used in the my class. I do think parents today would appreciate this information. 

I do like the idea of uploading these kinds of presentations so that they can be viewed or re-viewed by parents and students. Of course, the fact that they will be available on-line increases the importance of expressing yourself clearly and being sure that School, District and State standards are accurately presented. This is not the place for making comments or promises that will come back to haunt you! 

I also found the idea of using Google Docs for my presentation appealing— at least at first. I found formatting to be frustrating, as some changes seems to happen- or not happen- randomly. I’m not sure that I won’t go back to using either PowerPoint or Keynote.

One concern I have is uploading a complete presentation and not just the slides. Any good PowerPoint type presentation should have just the key points bulleted. If all the information is on the slides why not just do a written document? There is an implied performance to the presentation— which is generally spoken. I know we will be recording a presentation to go along with our slides. I am concerned with how much practice I will need to record something that doesn’t make me sound stupid and/or confusing. My concern is not so much about this one assignment, as how realistic it is to do this on a regular basis as a teacher?

My son’s chemistry teacher puts her PowerPoint presentation on her website. She has told her students not to copy down the presentation in class, but to view it as homework and make notes and copy graphs, etc. from it then. I think my son has found this helpful, but it is just her presentation. It is assumed that the student has already seen the class lecture and is using the slides to help remember what was covered. Trying to record a complete lecture every day seems like a tremendous amount of work. Is that what is expected in the 21^st century classroom? 

I inevitably find it harder to create the content than to do the technology. Coming up with the content for this assignment was no exception. I hope some of the work that is unrelated to learning the technology will be adaptable for later “real life” presentations.

Part I: More Thoughts on "21st Century Education"

Sometimes I get stuck before I get to the start of a project. For this assignment we were asked to watch two video clips. Why did I hate the first one, Chatham High School, so much? The fact that I did hate it really bothered me. Does this mean I’m not 21^st century material? I don’t know why, but I found this very sad to watch. Maybe it was what I saw as the pomposity of the two men (Teachers? Administrators? I don’t believe it was ever said) who said things like:

We have to be interactive, because they are accustomed to sitting in front of a screen and having 5 windows up, and talking to 3 people at the same time. etc… 

We can’t possibly expect the learner of today to be engrossed by someone speaking in a monotone voice with a piece of chalk in their hands.

When would you have ever expected this? It’s true for me that some of my best teachers have also been very entertaining in their presentations, but it was the teacher and not the tech. I’ve had plenty of poor and boring teachers that tried to spice things up with bad, but flashy, presentations. I’ve seen some very engrossing presentations by someone with little more than a piece of chalk to create the visuals.

      To walk into a classroom that doesn’t have all the media must be like walking 

into a desert.

WTF, does this teacher have short term memory loss? He can’t remember what it was like a few years ago?

Or maybe it was the smugness of the student who was using SparkNotes that creeped me out.

I can’t remember the last time a read a book… I use Spark Notes… it’s a legitimate source. I can read the whole book in a few pages. I guarantee that if you ask 10 kids if they read, 8 will say they Spark Note it—  and the other two probably don’t even read. 

Some of what’s espoused in this video seems to conflict with the Common Core Standard Initiative referenced by Professor Bigsby: http://www.corestandards.org/. Maybe I totally missed the point and I wasn’t suppose to think this was being put forward as an example of good integrations of technology into a school? For example: From the Myths & Facts section:

Evidence shows that the complexity of texts students are reading today does not match what is demanded in college and the workplace, creating a gap between what high school students can do and what they need to be able to do.

With so much contradictory ideas I’m not yet sure where I stand. Is it possible that the smug student who is so self righteous in using Spark Notes instead of doing the hard work of reading really is as likely to fail in college and life as he sounds? If anyone has a totally different take and wants to share conflicting views I’m ready to listen, so feel free to comment. Perhaps I’m just jealous of a wealthy district that can afford technology that will put their students on the fast track to future success? Perhaps I react against it because I’m afraid I won’t be able to use the technology effectively?

I was relieved when I watched the second video, Integration of 21st Century Skills: Hydrology on the actual use of ideas from the 21^st Century Skills Movement. I did find this one really interesting. I’m always interested when I see creative ways that teachers have made the content come to life for their students. However, I believe the learning here had less to do with the use of technology and more to do with incorporating ideas such as: Students working cooperatively, doing lots of group work, collecting and working with real data, applying what they are learning to the real world, global awareness, scientific enquiry, coming up with hypothesis, doing authentic tasks, and applying them to new situations. In this lesson, the use of technology enabled the students to get more out of the lesson. It was used as part of a toolbox of techniques, which I think is what it should be.

I really liked what one female student had to say (not to mention the adorable adolescent way she expressed herself):

When you’re learning just to learn— like a group lecture style and taking notes and stuff— most people aren’t, like, exactly that interested, especially in high school. They’re just doing it to pass the next test and stuff, and ,like, people were really getting involved, they are really listening, really paying attention and really getting something out of it. We’re actually able to remember these things and apply them in different areas because we’re really remembering them and, like, able to make deductions.

I think this is a pretty cogent critique of what I find wrong with a lot of education (getting students to do the work just so they can pass the next test) and a description of what a good classroom feels like (students actively involved in their own learning). 

I also liked the teacher’s final thought:

When my students do real work, authentic kinds of tasks,where they’re doing something that is real for the school or the community they now understand why this is important, how valuable it is to their own lives and to the community… When you have students doing meaningless work you’re pretty much saying: they’re not really important. But if I give you something important to do you’re an important member of the community and I value you. It’s a different mindset of what schoolwork is about.

This reminds me of a discussions about competency in my Cultural Awareness course. Often we see students as lacking in something-- especially if their language skills or knowledge of the world is lower than ours. However, frequently they have areas in their lives where they are very competent and tapping into this and the interests they have to help them learn is much more effective than treating them like they have no existence outside of the classroom and teaching them as if they were empty vessels that for some reason were broken and don’t fill with our teachings the way they should. I think the effectiveness of this description of 21^st century education vs the 1^st video puts in stark relief the banality of too much of the so called 21^st century pablum.

However, on a skeptical note, the devil is in the details. How much of this can you realistically incorporate into each class?  Done well it’s very time consuming. Students need background information to understand. Only so many projects don’t require more background info than can be imparted in a short time leading up to a longer term project. How can this best be balanced? Is incorporating a bit of this enough? How much? Also, when all students are working with the same data, how much more “authentic” is their experience of this kind of project? Some have questioned the value of expecting students to act as “little scientists” when they don’t have the background knowledge to work with. I hope we will be exploring some of these questions in this course.

Part II: Implications of the new Technology CCCS

Now that I’ve wandered this byway of the assignment I can respond to the tasks of responding to the New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Technology Standards.

Although I’ve almost finished my teacher training, this is the first time I’ve heard of the Technology Core Curriculum Content Standards (CCCS). After reading this document I’m surprised that it hasn’t been mentioned. In two different courses I spent quite a bit of time deconstructing the Standards for Science (Standard 5: Science) and specifically my content area of biology; and other courses had me refer to it. However, as I read it, the Technology standard is unique in that is represents learning that is expected to be included by virtually every teacher in every class. The Introduction states the “Intent and Spirit of the Technology Standards”:

All students acquire content area knowledge and skills in: (1) Visual and Performing Arts, (2) Comprehensive Health and Physical Education, (3) Language Arts Literacy, (4) Mathematics, (5) Science, (6) Social Studies, (7) World Languages, (8) Educational Technology, Technology Education, Engineering, and Design, and (9) 21st Century Life and Careers. As they do so, they are supported by the ongoing, transparent, and systematic integration of technology from preschool to grade 12 in preparation for postsecondary education and the workplace.

I think that’s pretty much every subject. This is BIG. Perhaps my other teachers didn’t feel comfortable dealing with it, or felt it was implicit in their teaching (the use of technology was certainly discussed), or perhaps they just wanted to leave a little something to learn in this course?

My first impression is that the expectations for students are very high. For example, “in grades 3-4, students understand the purpose of, and are able to use, various computer applications.” And “In grades 9-12, students demonstrate advanced computer operation and application skills by publishing products related to real-world situations.” On the one hand, I’m glad the standards show high expectations; I will be very pleased if these goals can be achieved. On the other hand, in my experience many students today are nowhere near meeting these goals. Perhaps it depends on what is meant by words like “advanced”. I believe technology is changing so fast that what is most important is a firm grounding in the concepts and not the specifics of most programs. 

I am still confused as to how the Technology CCCS is supposed to work in the classroom. It is different than other CCCSs, such as my area of Biology, in that students don’t take a course in “technology” (at least every year, at least at this time). I thought all the different CCCS dealt with what students should learn in each subject area. For example, if I am teaching high school biology the CCCS tells me what I am expected to teach my students in the Content Statement and gives an idea of the kinds of evidence that would show their understanding such as described in the Cumulative Progress Indicators (CPI). However, while the Technology CCCS includes the same kind of Content Statements and Cumulative Progress Indicators I’m unclear who’s actually responsible for making sure that these are included, in what classes, and that they have been achieved. With each teacher being expected to take responsibility for including technology in their teaching, how do we avoid leaving holes in the students knowledge or repeating, for the umpteenth time, technology instruction that they have already been exposed to? It’s clear to me that it is important for today’s students to leave school with technological literacy, and it’s obvious that that means including it’s use in my assignments. However, I also think my content knowledge is vital for students to learn and I can only see including technology in a way that supports and increased their learning my content area. Does my responsibility also extend to training them in the use of technology for it’s own sake? If so, it’s not clear to me how I can do this while still maintaining high standards in the content area curriculum. 

Like the teacher in the Hydrology video, I’m excited by the idea of incorporating this kind of learning into my lessons. However, that is different than taking responsible for the students’ technology education. At best I can take responsibility for my own (continuing) technology education. In some ways I feel I have an advantage in that I’ve already taught myself a good deal about the use of technology and programs like Photoshop, InDesign (page layout), Illustrator (vector art), PowerPoint, etc. that I would like to share with my students. On the other hand, I am very insecure in my ability to come up with worthwhile authentic learning assignments such as the one described in the Hydrology video. I look forward (with some trepidation) to attempting to do just that, but first I’ll try looking at a piece of the Standard.

Part III: Incorporating a Technology CPI

The forgoing has been a prelude to the goal of actually incorporating technology into my future classes. To start exploring how I might do this, my task is to choose one of the Standards, then the corresponding strand, grade level, Content Statement and CPI. Then describe what students are expected to know and do. In my content area, describe a learning activity I could use with my students to accomplish what students are expected to know and do.

I have chosen CPI #8.1.12.F.1 Frankly it is one that lends itself most easily to having students use technology to do the kind of analysis of data that has traditionally been included in science labs, and hence may be easier to start with.

*Digital tools for grades 4, 8, and 12: For example, computers, digital cameras, probing devices, software, cell phones, GPS, online communities, VOIP, and virtual conferences.

Now we’re (finally!) to the heart of the issue. How do I identify something that can be incorporated into core content and that the use of  digital tools (as defined in the Tech CCCS*), will both add to the students learning and allow them to learn, or practice, 21^st century skills? The digital tools definition covers a pretty broad range of devices. Computer suggests to me either the use of computer programs to analyze data or the use of the internet to gather data. The use of digital cameras to document experiments is a useful skill for at least some to know. Probing devices sounds pretty scientific. It could include use of the old fashioned microscope, or a digital equivalent. I actually have a digital microscope that displays through my computer and can record stills or videos for later analysis or use in presentations. Its images aren’t very high quality, but the ability to share them on a screen and save them for future viewing is a pretty big advance over a traditional microscope. Probing devices could include things ranging from digital readout thermometers to gas spectroscopy instruments to gene sequencers. I may be at the mercy of what is available in whatever school I’ll be teaching at for these. Software seems kind of a softball pitch. Most assignments today require a knowledge of a word processing program, and most students have been exposed to PowerPoint or Keynote— it shouldn’t be too hard to fulfill at least the appearance of including software in assignments. It’s interesting that cell phones are included, as most schools have rules against their use in school. Is keeping in touch outside of school by calling or texting considered a 21^st century skill? If so, I’m not sure it’s one that we, as content teachers, need to concern ourselves with. However, I’ll bet there are some clever uses that I don’t know about, such as using the GPS function on some cell phones. GPS is given it’s own category, and certainly if I was able to do any field experiments there would be ways that GPS could be incorporated. Online communities is interesting. Besides how we are using this in our course, in group projects for other classes we have utilized Yahoo and Google Groups and Google docs to share information. I can definitely see requiring students to establish an online presence like this for some group projects. I don’t know how I’d incorporate VOIP and virtual conferences into any projects. I guess virtual conferences could be expanded to podcasts of classes or something like that. Perhaps when I see them used I’ll have a better idea how I might incorporate them.

The first thing that comes to mind is analyzing genetic data. For example, as part of a unit on genetics, I could give students a starting list of traits (which they could expand on) and have students analyze their own gene expressions and determine from online research whether the traits are dominant, recessive, or a combination of many genes; and use this data to determine the likelihood that their children will share these characteristics. I think that making this data personal and predictive of something that most of the students can imagine happening to them would make it more concrete and comprehensible to them.

Wherefore a School Website?

The 1997 article on school websites by Jamie McKenzie brought back memories of designing my first website. I did this in 2000, only 3 years after this article was written, but a lifetime in the tech world. It was all new to me and I can remember asking myself many of the same basic questions that McKenzie suggests. I visited many websites looking for ideas for my photography website just as he suggests for schools, just substitute ‘photographer’ for ‘school’ and his words still hold true, “Those schools just now venturing into site design would be well advised to begin their invention process by visiting several hundred school sites, building a list of features and elements which work and those which do not”,  and I frequently found the same thing he did, “Many of these early efforts were a bit like Hollywood movie sets . . . with large graphics but not much solid content.” 

I was determined to have a lot of content on my site, and found that creating content was extremely time consuming. In retrospect the site was butt ugly, but it was quickly followed by a better site (not hard), which itself was later followed by what I felt was a still better site.

Most websites these days are a lot more sophisticated and contain a lot more information. People just have a better idea what can be included and how to get it onto the Web. However, many still suffer from bad/confusing/inconsistent design. I have a pet peeve about websites with spelling errors, but it is poor navigation which will most often send me running to a different site. I believe a website is all about communication, and that the writing and the design communicate just as much as words and pictures.


I’m in a program that leads to teaching in the Newark Public Schools (NPS), and I like to take advantage of any assignment that lets me explore the resources in this district. Newark’s is both the largest and one of the poorest school districts in the State. As an Abbott district, it receives large amounts of state aid, however, it is still severely limited in its resources. It also has to be careful about the image it projects: competent, but not too free with its money. I think this is reflected in the NPS district website.

It’s not the prettiest or most elegant of sites, but it does contain a great deal of useful information. It is probably easy to do these days, but I was still impressed with the ability to translate the site into a wide range of languages. Unfortunately, this feature also brakes the slide show on the translated pages. I assume there are ways to fix this in the coding if the website programmer knows what they are doing. Speaking of bad coding, on some pages the font size changes with rollovers which causes the entire page to resize. There are also some coding glitches that cause the page to ‘flutter’ when mousing through rollovers. Now it’s possible that these are OS platform related issues. I use a Mac, and it’s possible to code a site that works better on a Windows machine than on a Mac. However, if a site appears wonky I’ll look at it in a different browser (such as Safari vs Firefox). When the glitches are identical with both browsers (as was the case here) I have generally found they appear on Windows machines as well.

However, ignoring the glitches, the site is rich in content. For example, it has a lot of information that would be useful for parents, including a separate section for “Parental Involvement.”

I was less impressed with the site navigation. It was both ugly, which is forgivable, and sometimes confusing, which is not. It was generally better to stick with the main navigation

and ignore the sitemap information, as in this screenshot where the navigation Home>District Information>District Information gives no clue as to why the same heading is used twice.

Finally, as a former professional photographer, I don’t feel the superintendent’s portrait shows him at his best and hence doesn’t instill the kind of confidence in his professionalism that I believe a portrait like this should convey. 

Overall I’d give the site a C+.

I was anxious to visit the website for the Newark school where I observed last semester: University High School. I had visited the school's website some months back and my memory was of a fairly amateurish site which was a bit long in the tooth. It is one of the smaller Newark schools with only about 400 students in the 7^th through 12^th grades. The school has some great students and faculty, but its emphasis is not technology and my impression was that there is not a large pool of tech-savvy students to work on it.

However, I was pleasantly surprised when I revisited the site and found it has undergone what a redesign. I find the new site pleasant to look at and easy to navigate.

Unfortunately, there are a number of pages still “under construction”. There is a section for teacher websites, however, it appears that only a two teachers have begun playing with it, and that neither of them is actively using it. It may be that some teachers have older websites that are not linked.

One feature I really liked are the Contact pages where Teachers, Administrators, Guidance and Support Staff are all listed with pictures, phone numbers, and email links. Here too, the site appears under construction, as not all staff have pictures. They get trippy spinning question marks instead.

Overall, I think the site has great potential, and I look forward to checking back to see what is done to finish the site and add the content that is promised by all the “Under Construction” signs.