At the beginning of the school year I took the section on mobile devices in my classroom and made a significant change. Originally it began with the change from “Cell phones, mp3 players, and other electronic devices are not allowed in the classroom to removing the word “not”. I told them to take out these devices on day one and had these looks of worried shock that I would be confiscating these things (and with full disclosure, until last year, I did just that). Once they were all out, I told the kids to use them. They look around the room confused. I then explained how we would use iTouches, mobile phones, smart phones (e.g. BlackBerries), etc… in the classroom daily.

This began rockily as they didn’t think to use them for research, but we began using phrases like “Use your technology to…” or by modeling on my own mobile phone use. I would say safer several weeks the students began replying to problems that emerge in classes in new ways, and I suddenly realized these questions were coming from further online research by the students at their desks. I’d be discussing something and wouldn’t be able to answer a question, but then suddenly one of their peers would raise his or her hand and explain to the peer what they hoped to know. By doing so, he or she is now teaching others (which has a 90% retention of information rate).

I continued this exciting usage in class through out the fall semester. At the beginning of the spring semester I asked the students to procure a copy of Twelfth Night and mentioned the full text could be found online, and then I told them when the text was due. The next week when books were due, several people were sitting at their desks with just BlackBerries, iTouches or iPhones. I was disappointed that they did not bring their materials to class and began to call role and ask for their plays. When I hit the first students without a paper book in front of them and asked where his play was, he held up his mobile device: “right here, Mr. Adams”. He flashed his screen at me, and I quickly went over to his desk and there was Twelfth Night open on an ereader app on his device. Oooops. My fault.

This kids took what I’d been teaching them and flipped it to a need from their own, but I didn’t realize it because I hadn’t thought that way yet. As I went around they all had their play, and I would say more than 30% of them did not have any paper copy at all. Two students had laptops, one had a netbook, and the others had mobile devices. And not every device was expensive. Some people had basic phones where they could save “notes”. Here they had note #1 which was Act I. Note #2 was Act II. And so forth. (My question still revolves around annotating these files!)

Last week my students were finishing up this Twelfth Night unit and building a poster (yes, yes, paper and markers). Many students had out their mobile devices and frankly there were probably a few people responding to questions of when work will be over or when the peer groups for Mr. X’s class will be meeting. Looking over one girl’s shoulder, she was looking up the use of the literary device “place” in the play so she could use that on her poster.

While this activity was occurring, I was observed by a district evaluator. In part, the comments on the informal write up were “why are so many students texting during your class when they should be learning”?

cc licensed flickr photo shared by The Pylon

I felt the need to explain my pedagogical processes (especially since these evaluations are worth $6k+), so I wrote a response that I sent over to district. Hours later I was called to my administrator’s office. She had the email I’d sent to district in front of her and wanted to know what I was doing in my classes.

I explained about the pedagogical approach to mobile technologies in my classes, how the students synthesize the materials, teach each other supplementary information learned online, and present that information to the class and students. I discussed how there will always been people who abuse the situation and when it’s reflected in grades, that discussion is between me and the student separate from the classroom. She seemed relatively interested but hesitant; I then mentioned briefly that it was in my management planned approved last July. She relaxed a bit, turned, picked up my plan, and asked me to locate that section. I showed her the paragraph disclaimer that delineated my classroom objectives for mobile pedagogy. She smiled widely and, I think, was relieved it was there.

She said she was eager to hear what I find but even being called in and even getting the evaluation in the first place, really shows how far we need to go and change the philosophies of schools’ administrations.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by jk5854

(c)2009 Devon Christoper Adams

Tonight I was subbing at MCC for a colleague and conveniently immediately beforehand, Chris Crutcher, author of several young adult novels, was speaking here in the library to kick off banned book week.

He opened with a story about two penguins attempting to nurture a rock that was egg sized. The zoologists realized that it didn’t matter to the penguins so they took an abandoned egg and gave it to two male penguins to nurture. That egg succeeded and hatched, and those two male penguins raised that chick. To them it didn’t matter if there were two men or no females, etc… It was two penguins raising a baby. He segued into how this story was not about homosexuals and had nothing to do with that, and now, in today’s culture, book banning has gone to the extreme. Then he moved into a discussion about book banning.

It the 1950s and 1960s some books were banned, but then it continued to get out of hand. Conservatives argue that “If kids read stuff that they shouldn’t read yet IN THEIR TERMS, then they’re going to be bad.” Who’s to say what the terms should be? Crutcher grew up in the 1960s and after he graduated, he went to Spokane to work as a therapist.

When he wrote Chinese Handcuffs and toured about the book a young woman came up to him and asked “how did you know about my life?” The girl’s English teacher gave her the book and he had the two of them talk. Crutcher said it doesn’t matter that some people were offended by the book, but in this case, this girl was able to get the help she needed.

As a licensed therapist for over two decades, as a teacher, and as a novelist with over ten books, he understands how to skim the truths off the stories he hears; as a therapist, he knows he cannot tell their real stories, but over and over again these truths emerge from writing. “They are pockets where the author just elbows up against people’s beliefs.” Something about books get people going.

Now Crutcher is talking about Deadline, which is the book by him that I own, and about the young man who is living on borrowed time. In this book he makes education and school important; he also makes this about life and living it to the most. Crutcher read chapter 1 of Deadline about Ben Wolf discovering he is terminally ill and choosing to tell no one about it. He made the book mysteriously engaging and those in the room who’ve not read this before sat enrapt.

Crutcher thought it would be easy to write Deadline after the first chapter. He wanted to write a novel about life not about death and how a person who has a short period of time left can make his mark on the world. These “nuggets” or challenges that are thrown at Ben are how he reacts to these situations through that year. Crutcher uses people he knows and in dealing with families, he has come across sex offenders in his work, and he wanted Ben Wolf to meet and engage with this sort of person, so we can see how mankind relates to other people, including people like this who are the bottom of the barrel in prisons, people who are destroyed by the people around them and regret their own illnesses more than anyone. And Ben Wolf meets this sort of person, and by bringing up hard issues and dealing with them in his novels, of course, Chris Crutcher’s books have been banned.

Without addressing the hard issues, without pulling them out into the open, without discussing them, then these issues will continue to fester. Instead of standing up for books we DO like, we need to stand up for the books DON’T like.

Chris Crutcher ended with the paraphrases comment here, and then he opened it for Q&A.

Recently Kids Need to Read blogged an article on the wiki-wire work we did through the high school with the students building the lexicon for The Softwire Series by PJ Haarsma. PJ works closely with Denise & Sherri with Jim Blasingame, but I’m excited from the line that reads “this is what great teaching is all about – combining challenging, creative thinking with resources that drive kids’ passion”; I am honored to be grouped with PJ Haarsma as two visionary teachers who fight to find new ways to engage our students. Here’s a link to the article (with pictures!).

Last year my friend Kerri Mathew contacted me regarding finding a way to hook up a science fiction writer, PJ Haarsma, with students eager to read his book, play his online game, and connect in new ways with young adult sci-fi. Having just come off a year project with Kerri working with wikis and fanfiction, I immediately saw wetpaint.com as an outlet for the kids, and we we’re all a little excited about the author himself being part of the project. To get the kids excited about the book series, Jim Blasingame, professor at ASU and ALAN/NCTE guru, schedule PJ Haarsma to hit two local Arizona high schools including Basha. The kids seemed a little starstruck, but they quickly realized that PJ is a man just like they could be and he has a vision that could be anyone of theirs.

In the late fall semester of 2008 we encouraged the students to move towards an online official lexicon of PJ’s first two Softwire books and his online video game. I was able to procure an advanced copy of the third book at NCTE in November and used it to bribe the students into working faster and more efficiently. By Christmas they had a large chunk of text in the wiki, edited and put together. Two students stood out beyond the others as the shining stars for this project.

Jim’s goal was to present the wiki as a “premier” by the end of the spring semester at ASU. That was tonight. Tonight Jim invited Kerri Mathew, me, PJ, several of my students, Book Babe, media, professors and others to join him in discussing a summer project PJ and his good friend Nathan Fillion of Firefly/Serenity fame are producing, briefly introducing book #4 of The Softwire Series, and then a conglomerate of social media meets literature project of PJ’s.

I spoke at length in this showcase about the wiki, collective intelligence, social media in traditional pedagogical settings, and what the kids accomplished. Two of the students discussed some as well about their role in everything and how they put it all together. PJ explained what he wanted us to still accomplish, and then Jim presented me with consent forms from the publishers who want to publish the lexicon text in the back of the third book’s paperback form. The student and I are very excited about this, and I’ve discussed briefly with Jim how he can showcase some of this at AETA this fall at ASU and my plans to begin to write up and publish my side of this experience.

After a photo shoot and interviews with press and the media manage at ASU’s decision theatre, I headed home. Now the wiki isn’t public yet, but we will be discussing that move shortly between me, PJ and Jim. As for now, I am waiting to get my hands on the manuscript for book #4 this summer.

Found this interesting article today on how high school students are borrowing out banned books from their lockers.

In spring of 2006 while I was at a conference in Baltimore, MD my colleague wanted to go out to dinner with her daughter who’d been living in the area at the time. She invited us to go along, and the conversation was amicable. Eventually it circled around to our reason for being there (Education conference) and the daughter brought up a new book that was just released about school shootings called Nineteen Minutes. As an educator, this fascinated me since I am in the classroom all day every day, and I was just preparing my journey into the classroom when Columbine struck. I returned home a day or so later and went to Barnes & Nobles.

As soon as I got home I started reading. The first page grabbed me, and then I turned to page 2. Each section of the book has dates and this one said March 6, 2006. My blood ran cold as I realized that was today. This day. I continued to read and within a few days, finished the book, and I was hooked by Jodi Picoult.

Over the course of the last two years I’ve read over a dozen of her books, and my mother, sister and I pass them around the country so we can all enjoy them. I’ve read her books in Central Europe and I bought Keeping Faith in a small bookseller in Vienna, Austria.

Nineteen Minutes is still my favorite, but some of the others I really enjoyed included Plain Truth, Salem Falls, Tenth Circle, (obviously) My Sister’s Keeper, and Keeping Faith. My less favorite was The Pact, but maybe it was because the relationship failed and I hated (really hated) the girl’s mother by the end.

When my friend and colleague, Erica, told me Picoult would be speaking in Phoenix I was excited to attend, so the two of us trudged downtown last week. In hand I had a copy of every Picoult book that was on my shelf and not traveling around the country (including my own copy of Nineteen Minutes), and I convinced Erica to buy Nineteen Minutes at the signing. When I got there I kicked myself for not bring my laptop to liveblog the event, but I did have my camera. I shot probably three dozen photos over the 90 minutes she spoke.

The discussion was about separating the fact from the fiction in her writing and how she spends more time researching that writing, and how she enjoys learning new things. She was animated and funny, told stories, and kept our attention. She then had a Q&A, but she said she would come down off the stage and beat anyone who gave away the end of her books. Most of the questions were pretty good except the idiot who asked her how much money she made. She announced that Hollywood had changed the end of My Sister’s Keeper for the film coming out next summer and that Jesse, the brother in that book, would come back and appear in later novels. After several minutes, the librarian announced the book signing.

From where I sat I was able to get close in line with my four novels. I told her I taught English and had blogged about Nineteen Minutes. I told her it was my second favorite book of all time. She asked what my favorite was and I said Girlfriend in a Coma by Coupland. She responded “Well, I can’t really compete with Coupland. Can I?” I also told her my former student teacher’s cousins were taught kindergarten by her mother, and that was kind of fun. I thanked her, and we left.

After school today we had a meeting about summer reading. In our district, we cannot really call it “Summer Reading” so we make it due 2-3 weeks into the school year. This really isn’t feasible anymore given all of the higher ed institutions who require summer reading for incoming freshman. Ladies & Gentlemen, get with the program. How do we keep minds fresh and continue to learn if we don’t require our students to use them? When was the last time you didn’t read something over breaks? Come on. Give me a break! Seriously, our district believes breaks are breaks. No work. Now this is an issue for me, a life long learner who reads voraciously (this past weekend I read the 464 page Change of Heart by Picoult), and how do we model this good behavior for our students if we tell them to just shut down over summers. No work. Just veg out. Ha! Not me! So we had a meeting about books today. I will admit I have never read Cry, the Beloved Country. But I need to. We picked it for our AP Language summer fiction read, but Ron Bromund and I realized that that book wouldn’t work for American Studies, so Ron came up with a new book: Jeff Shaara’s Rise to Rebellion, which floored me. I read several reviews, and I loved what I saw. I immediately talked with a colleague who read this book while walking the Minute Man Trail outside Concord. I bought it after school.

…. ok I think I rambled enough. I will get to the title of this email. Wikipedia. The last four years my perspective when it came to my students was DO NOT USE WIKIPEDIA. If my students cited it, they got a zero on that. It was a do and die situation. Last year I began to realize perhaps the students who began there and went off to other places was ok. Then today, someone in our meeting asked if we should put a note on the summer reading instructions that says no Wikipedia. I didn’t believe I did it, but I stopped them right there. Um… Wikipedia isn’t the best source (I can write that Abraham Lincoln is our school football coach if I want!), but if you go there and scroll down, then use the citations and links to get elsewhere, then fine. Use it. Ugh. I said it. Wikipedia isn’t evil. It’s a good repository.

The AP English course is completing an Independent Reading Project for quarter 4 based on a select number of non-fiction titles, on of which is Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone. The other day a former student sent me an article from an Australian newspaper entitled “Beah’s credibility a long way gone” about the anachronistic nature of Beah’s nonfiction experiences being forced to become a child soldier in the rebel armies at the height of the blood diamond trade. The book has been well received, has been a Starbuck’s book, and has come under littel scrutiny thus far regarding these issues. Some of the concerns are that the dates don’t match up and some information suggests they are as much as two years off. The priest from the village during the time period has been interviewed and Beah’s school records have been located from grades he received after the village was supposedly attacked.

I ask myself and you, does this matter? Did Frey’s A Million Little Pieces matter that it wasn’t all true. Tom Barone, a famous narrative researcher out of Arizona State University once old me a story of a narrative researcher interviewing a woman in a diner. In the final write up of the interview, the researcher wrote of the fire flies flitting around the car in the parking lot. Well, there were no dragon flies. He added them. Does it make the interview any less real? Does it change the final artifact? I would suggest that it doesn’t change things. Just like the dates don’t change the fact that atrocities happen in places like Sierra Leone every day, kids are recruited with drugs and guns, and African genocide runs rampant in today’s world.

Tonight I was sitting with my daughter and wife and across came the 400+ Twitter text of the day. This one was from @soul4real, and I’d been tagged. I wasn’t sure what it wanted me to do, and I was use to the list of four things this or that, but this one wanted me to grab a  book near by and:

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences (sentences 6-9).
5. Tag five people.

Cooper actually changed it, but I am in the living room, I bought a book today that’s sitting here, and I ain’t movin’ m’am! So here it goes.

The next morning, when Daisy and Jasper are at school, I go into Nic’s room, where he still sleeps soundly, his face relaxed and peaceful. A sleeping child. Then, as I watch, he twitches and grimaces and grinds his teeth. 

Most of the people who I typically bug on Twitter are tagged along with me from Cooper, so here are the people I am tagging.

1. Lizbdavis – who I found on YouTube, then followed on Twitter and her blog.
2. Andrew Petros – who I found through Twitter because we leave near each other.
3. Veronica Belmont  – a cool SanFran Mac Geek who I use to listen to on Cnet.
4. Tom Merritt – from Cnet TV who I listen to almost daily via podcast.
5. Kix – I get that she’s not really real but don’t tell @befitt I said that.

I guess I now wait to see if they reply, comment here, etc… #2-4 never met me, so I wonder if they will reply. Hmm…