novemberlearning.com has resources for researching on the web
His new book is called Web Literacy for Educators

Opening story about 17 year old son- only people who are not connected are his teachers.  Schools have become the learning police.  We are so worried about children safety that we block learning possibilities.  In an effort to protect children are making them unemployable.

Alan is asking questions and ideas below are based on group poll:
Right now government regulations own the learning but students should own the learning.  Lack of leadership, type of curriculum, and lack of vision are the biggest barriers.  District filters big barrier to students working globally with other students because block IM, Skype, and blogs.

We are not doing a good job of teaching students how to facilitate their own learning.  Example, teachers do not allow tests where students can research answers using the Internet. Not utilizing “open source” ideas.

Step 1 in teaching kids to be globally competitive is to understand how Internet works and learn specific syntax and grammar. Examples below:

site: countrycode = for Google results from specific country
view: timeline = organizes Google research by dates
link: url = to find out how many links are going to a site

Recommends creating own customized search engine in Google with own reviewed sites.  Kids should do this, build it in class.  Schools can design and share with community.

Teachers shouldn’t be allowed new technology (pd) unless they bring 2 kids with them.  Kids will spread what they learned quickly.  For some children it might be easier to learn from kids rather than teacher.

We need more voices delivering content!
Kids need to own the learning, change the job description of children.

Collaborative web tools in class. Kids can all produce one presentation together (google docs), so all students have access to all the content all the time.

Wikipedia isn’t just an encyclopedia, its a publishing center.  Use it as a tool to get kids publishing.

Kiva.org, place where kids can make a contribution to online information.  Loan money to entrepreneurs.  Get money back later.

6 Jobs to Restore Ownership of Learning to Students

1.  Every classroom should have a student researcher, at least one.
2.  Every teacher should have a student led curriculum tutorial design team.  These tutorials should be available for Ipods and Dvds.  Ex.  Students create screencasts (jing) on how to solve different problems or teach how to do something in class.
3.  Can create podcasts that help teach class.
4.  Google Docs – Kids help edit writing or presentations together, official scribe team.
5.  Teach kids to add value to the world.  ex.  go to Wikipedia and add content.  Can have kids work collaboratively on an entry for an assignment, then can monitor the changes through an RSS feed of the history.
6. Teach kids mathematics of investment into global groups and link it to curriculum.  Have kids raise money for this.

There was a 7th job but ran out of time, so need to go to sites for complete notes on session.

I have been wrestling, rustling, brewing, and stewing over this conversation since yesterday morning.  We hear things like this a lot at our online high school and it’s time for that to change.  Students shouldn’t be treated “fairly” because that is inherently unfair.  They are not all the same.  We need to replace the mindset of ‘fairly’ with the mindset of ‘individually’.  

Every student comes to us with different background experiences, a different skill set, different goals for the course, different life circumstances that are dictating their actions at this moment, different futures, and different needs.  To bunch them all together under one realm is unfair. To say “rules” apply equally even though you are different is unfair.  Students need to be dealt with on an individualized basis, this goes for instruction, assessment, and course platitudes.

Schools are no longer about creating workers to run our industries.  They are about creating learners and thinkers.  They are about relevance, and what is relevant to one student is not relevant to all students. They should be exploiting creativity, not demanding cookie-cutter-one-size-fits-all products. 

Every road block we put in their way limits this ability.  Everytime we fail to look at the student as a whole, complex being, rather than as another name on the roll count is a disservice to education and humanity. 

I really wanted to get on here and just rant about something I saw at work a little while ago that was the ultimate insight to a problem we have had all year, but decided that there are a couple risks in doing so.  First off, you probably don’t want to hear me complain.  Secondly, I probably don’t want my work to hear me complain.  So I’ve been sitting at my computer with my blog open, and just thinking a little more in depth about why I didn’t want to write out exactly what has been bothering me about teaching at an online school.  I began having a debate. The debate consisted of three things:

1. Do I go into detail about a common problem at our online school, and possibly address a bigger problem in education?
2. If I do go into it, will anyone care since it’s a personal grumble?
3. If someone does care, will that someone be from my own school who happens to read this?

Lets clear one thing up, only a couple teachers from my school read this blog, probably any blogs for that matter, so the risk of them reading about a complaint that may alienate me from my peers is only a risk if they catch onto this down the road and go back through the archives.  But there is always that what if?

That led me to the realization that I have to pretend a little on this blog.  I have to wear a couple masks.  I have to oblige the persona that is more conducive to appeasing a broader readership.  The idea of keeping a professional presence separate from your personal presence online is something I dealt with and adapted to a couple years ago. However, I’m just now thinking about having to have multiple professional personalities if I want to be honest about the problems at my online school, which just might happen to be problems that other online schools, and other more traditional schools might also be having.

I’m sure many writers have had to worry about alienating themselves or coworkers in their blogs, and many have probably gone the easy route and just chosen not to say anything at all.  But I’m wondering if there is another way to handle this where you can still get your message out, still share your ideas, still be controversial, but not go down a path you wish you could take back later.