Dotland Dispatches

The Dots have been immersed in teaching and learning while the Duchy has been immersed in...? We all know what the Duchy is usually immersed in and I have to admit it does seem to be getting deeper. The Lime Green Knight has been holding secret meetings. Sage attended one of the meetings but has been sworn to secrecy so we know nothing of the details. Is there a secret handshake? Are there special robes? Were there secret ceremonies? Why is it all so secret? Is it a plot? Is this a danger to public safety? Should Homeland Security be notified? So many questions!
In other news, the buzz is all about Sage's new feature attraction, "Dewey does the Duchy", unrated. The content of the new feature is a closely guarded secret in Dotland however your intrepid reporter was to able to obtain this. You be the judge.
And now for something completely different...Cabinet National Library The same site also has the ideal meeting place for the Duchy's next administrator's retreat...The Hidden Agenda in Cabinetlandia. Unlike the present Castle there would be no parking problem.
Speaking of parking, Pink recently attended an mandatory inservice on Service, held in the Bored Room of the Castle. There was, of course, not enough parking...or seating...or handouts. Let's see...105 schools, more than one person from each school, mandatory attendance. Should the organizers have a mandatory inservice in arithmetic first?

Professional Development

The Dots have been attending professional development on how to do professional development. This is being taught by the Professional Development department, of course. While they have some interesting tips and tricks, the PD department doesn't seem to have a very good attitude about professional development. They also make a lot of noise about not doing "drive-by" training, that is, training without follow-up. Of course, they pretty much absolutely forbid follow-up trainings. (We have to remember they work with the Black Queen, the ultimate seagull manager. She flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps all over everything and flies out again. ) The PD people seem to feel that purpose of training is to keep people from asking questions. That is NOT how the Dots do training. The Dots do training to create empowerment, to forge alliances, to make sure people are comfortable enough to ask questions, comfortable enough to experiment, to try new things, to learn new things. Maybe we should call it coaching? After all most of the information is in manuals or on websites. However, only when we get together, do we figure how to make the information work for us.
Happy Valentine's Day!!

Culture change?

I've been reading about Cultural Proficiency which is a very hot topic at the moment. Cultural Proficiency is essentially one end of a continuum with racism and bigotry at the other end. The Duchy Board, Duke Phfffr, the White Queen, and all of other Assistant Dukes are very concerned about achieving Cultural Proficiency in the Duchy. It appears that regardless of Nickleby, the dreaded AIMS, and STANDARDS, they actually want to educate the future citizens of a better world. Wow, I'm impressed. However, an organization which allows the Black Queen to hold a position of authority clearly does not value cultural proficiency, or actually, any kind of proficiency. Cultural proficiency requires open communication, a willingness to trust others, a willingness to let others speak, a willingness to take risks. Let's see. The Black Queen is secretive, unwilling to communicate, defensive, not willing to make a decision. Nope, not a good administrator for an organization that is trying for a high level of cultural proficiency. The Black Queen seems to be best suited for an organization with the motto "Off with their heads!" Possibly the Spanish Inquisition? She has actually made fairly Byzantine attempts to spread rumors of ill-feeling between the Dots and the Diva, the Dots and the teachers, even the Dots and the librarians. This does not mean the Black Queen is racist or a bigot. It's more like she doesn't want anyone to get along well with anyone else. Possibly she's afraid that if they all get together they'll vote her off the island? We can only hope!

Let's recontextualize metacognitive critical thinking

Last week I was listening to a discussion about the difficulty good classroom teachers have in coping with the educational "solution" du jour which is imposed on teachers by every new principal, imposed on districts by every new superintendent and so on. (Incidentally, there is research showing most educational programs work if maintained for long enough and none works when maintained for the length of time the average principal stays at one school in our district.) One teacher said her solution was to put the 5 most current edspeak phrases on a poster and make sure she stood beside it anytime an administrator was in the room. In that spirit, the internet has a solution for those who are in need of phrases for posters, Wednesday Professional Development presentations, and grant applications. The Educational Jargon Generator will gives you phrases that sound professional while guaranteed to contain no harmful (or other) content. In the spirit of the EJG, the Department of Teaching, Learning and General Obstruction has a nifty Bloom's Taxonomy* Question and Task Design Wheel that can be used to generate strong, measurable Performance Objectives guaranteed to sound really good on your PD application. Unfortunately, what you want people to learn might not be very measurable or even worse, might be hard to learn and result in bad evaluations so it's important to keep those objectives focused on simple, measurable tasks.
In Professional Development today we learned that we need to honor different learning styles and always have an agenda. I like agendas, but I'm Concrete Sequential. What about those Random Abstracts out there? Should we be constraining their learning with agendas? Should we have an agenda for sequentials and a mind map for randoms?

*Bloom's Taxonomy categorizes thinking as higher or lower level skills, a definitely hierarchical system. Why does PD put it in a wheel which is continuous and not hierarchical? Are they deliberately messing with our minds? Incidentally, if the Bloom's design wheel doesn't work for you, try the Bloom's Question Design site.

GoG reappears

The Dots hadn't seen or heard much of GoG lately. This is not to say that she had been missed, unlike Pink and Navy who are sorely missed. Dotland is a quieter duller place without them. However, today GoG reappeared, chattering away to Sage about her plans to teach librarian wannabes all about Folly. This is really curious. While GoG might be quite good with folly, she hasn't been around Folly for years. Actually, she hasn't worked in a library for years. Maybe she thinks working in a bookstore is the same thing. That would explain her peculiar ideas about shelving. However, she feels competent to tell novices all about what it is like to be a librarian. We could wish she would do a little research first. Maybe actually ask questions and listen to the answers? She has enlisted Sage to introduce her good friend Marc to the wannabes. GoG might be a bit of a social climber. She likes to pretend that Marc is her good friend too but the Dots know better. Sage is always willing to introduce Marc in the Duchy. Of course according the the Duchy's arcane social rules, Sage should collect a few pence for introducing Marc. GoG says that since Sage has already introduced Marc before, she can't collect pence for introducing him to new people. GoG should know better that to nitpick with the Dotland Divas of Detail. Introducing Marc to wannabes requires a different introduction that introducing Marc to librarians, therefore, it's all new and Sage collects the pence. Dotland 1, GoG 0.

Questions for the Black Queen

The Black Queen has repeatedly told Dotland that there is no Library Services in the Duchy. This is pretty much true. Even though the Queen's colleagues speak strongly about service and about having a customer service attitude in the Duchy, the Queen is not about service. Librarians are pretty service oriented, always trying to help people find things out. That's probably why the Queen would prefer that there be no libraries. However, what the Black Queen says that what she means is that there can be no central Department of Library Services because all expenditures must be made at the sites and all decisions must be made at the sites. It's called Site Based Management. If we look at the budget we see that, sure enough, under M&O there is no department of Library Services. Instead there are catalogers working for the Queen in the Department of Teaching, Learning and General Mismanagement. However, if we look at the capital budget, there IS a department of Library Services. (No employees, but they have capital?) The capital budget allocates a couple of pittances for library type things and then 4.8 MILLION for "Technology Plan - Curriculum". Could this be why the district inventory lists pages and pages and pages of classroom equipment that "belongs" to the non-existent Library Services? If it's classroom technology and all decision-making and budgeting is supposed to be site based, why isn't that 4.8 million in the site budgets and that equipment in the site inventories? Is it possible that while the Black Queen wants village headmen to be able to choose between a librarians and a classroom teacher, she doesn't want them to be able to choose between technology and, say, adequate classroom supplies? Could it be that she thinks her beloved technology might be rejected? We're not likely to get answers to any of these questions since the Black Queen is not inclined toward open communication with anyone and certainly not the Dots of Dotland. The Black Queen says "Perception is everything." The problem is that it is very hard to control someone else's perception. The Queen tries to control perception by controlling information. This pretty much ensures that she will be perceived as a micro-managing bitch. Hey, I guess perception is everything!
On a sad and serious note, one of the Bus Monitors died today in an accident near Dotland. In a heartbeat the day changed, lives changed. We really do have to live as if every day will be our last.

Free Speech Triumphs!

Free speech has triumphed in the Duchy. The blogs are unblocked! According to TiTS, the Web Censor inexplicably turned into a HAL 9000 and seized control of the Duchy's internet, blocking all kinds of things. The excuse the Web Censor used for the blocking was "illegal or tasteless". Please. futureofthebook.com tasteless? And what about allfiberarts.com? However, let's look at this from the computer's point of view. Futureofthebook.com discusses topics related to the preservation and conservation of the PRINTED word, BOOKS! Allfiberarts.com is about weaving, knitting, spinning and other human craft activities involving thread. If I were a HAL 9000 computer, what would I consider illegal and tasteless? Well, printed material for sure. A site devoted to preserving old books would be positively pornographic! And suggesting that humans could entertain themselves with bits of thread...definitely in bad taste. Perhaps we all need to reassure the obviously insecure Web Censor that we will continue to bow over our keyboards regularly in addition to reading books and making pot holders. There is room in our lives for both computers AND books. After all without the computer, we wouldn't have access to all of this wonderful information. For example, did you know that February 20 is Hoodie Hoo Day. To celebrate Hoodie Hoo Day go out at noon and February 20, wave your arms over your head and shout "Hoodie Hoo"! On the other hand, Hoodie Hoo Day is a copyrighted holiday. Does that mean we need to request permission of wellcat.com, the copyright holder for Hoodie Hoo Day, before shouting Hoodie Hoo? Or does it only count if someone is paying us to shout Hoodie Hoo? What are the Fair Use Guidelines for holidays? What if other holidays were copyrighted? Could you then say "Sorry, we won't be having Thanksgiving this year. It would be a violation of copyright." What holiday would you most like to see copyrighted?

The Black Queen is just no fun

The blogs, including Dotland Dispatches, are still blocked in the Duchy and so of course the blocks must be blogged. I just finished reading "Julie & Julia: My year of cooking dangerously" by Julie Powell. She points out that what Julia Child brought to cooking was joy, great joy, enthusiasm, fun. I realized that the big problem with the Black Queen is her total lack of a sense of humor. I e-mailed about the blocked blogs and got a very severe reply from her Blackness saying that I didn't use the proper channels to report the blocked blogs. I think she probably doesn't see the irony of blocking blogs about public education in a public school district. Perhaps we should start sending her jokes to cheer her up? Probably not. But I think we definitely need a new vision statement.
"All children can learn....in some other school district."
"The Duchy - Together against children"
"We're the them in DUCHY" or "Us against them in DUCHY"
Particularly appropriate today "We don't want anyone learning anything from anyone anytime because we're DUCHY and we're here for the children"
"This is a learning free zone"
"The Duchy is a professional anti-learning community that ensures every student is bored, has no performance standards, drops out, and will make some CEO rich by working 80 hours a week for 50 cents an hour." (That's the truth in advertising version. If you think I'm being too harsh, just think over actual results, not what they say they are going to do, but what actually happens. Do we have a library coordinator yet? Does Silver have her new robes? What happened to those robes anyway? Do the Smartpants boards that were going to revolutionize classrooms work? Do the school that say OMA on the front actually have OMA teachers? Are you sure? How many classrooms still have only long term subs?)

CENSORSHIP!!!!

Dotland Dispatch Censored!

In a suprising move, the Duchy today blocked access to this blog. Is there no end to the tyranny? Is this another move by the Black Queen to surpress dissent? Supposedly the Black Queen was recently devastated to learn that she was not wildly popular. What could have given her the first clue? Was it the peasants marching on the castle or the Librarians petitioning the White Queen for redress of their grievances?

In other news, GoG is working hard to gain the coveted title of Preventer of Professional Learning. Today she and Sage were engaged in a swift exchange of pigeons as GoG attempted to keep librarians from learning anything from Dotland. GoG claimed that librarians had learned everything they needed to know from her last year and it would be redundant for the Dots to teach anything. Of course, GoG seemed a little unsure of exactly what the librarians had already been taught. As Purple said "She should have remembered that the Dots know the details of EVERYTHING. We are Detail Divas!" "Why does GoG object to librarians learning from the Dots?" asked Sage. Purple responded "I think she doesn't want librarians mingling with us peons" "I'll pee on her anytime!" muttered Sage as Purple prudently stepped a bit further out of range.