It’s great to see the news media giving students in our programs credit for their wonderful work. Our Innovation Expo is only 3 weeks away!

View more videos at: http://nbcconnecticut.com.

One of the most important factors learned by students and reported to us time and time again is time management. I recently saw this presentation and it resonated well with me:

With tears in my eyes . . .

WFSB 3 Connecticut

Every year in February becomes the “crunch” time as students prepare their long-term research for presentation at a fair or symposium.  For many years, I’ve run presentation workshops for students.  This year, I decided to make some videos instead, based on other obligations.  Check them out!

Oral Presentations

Visual Aides

The Sandy Hook Elementary Community has been invited to participate in several forums to discuss the future of the school. I attended the first and, based on shear volume, was not able to comment.  I am unable to attend tonight’s forum and have submitted a letter.  Here is a copy:

7 February 2013

E. Patricia Llodra, First Selectman
Town of Newtown
3 Primrose Street
Newtown, CT 06470

Dear Pat,

I want to thank and commend you for your amazing leadership during these trying times.  As a Sandy Hook Elementary father (3^rd grade daughter at the school), next-door neighbor to a victim (Daniel Barden), and an educator, I have struggled to deal with the ramifications of this tragic horror.  I also want to add that I do not envy you and your position and will do everything in my power to support you once a decision is ultimately made.

I wanted to write because I will be unable to attend the meeting tonight for Sandy Hook families and wanted to give you my input.  I did have my hand raised most of the night at the last meeting, but totally understand that there were many individuals who wanted the opportunity.  I also want to add that the conversation did help shape my opinion.

I asked my daughter her thoughts about Sandy Hook.  She indicated how important the school was to her and how she didn’t want anything to happen to it.  However, when I pressed further and asked if she wanted to go back, she was uncertain, at best.   It got me thinking that, really, she is a young child and doesn’t yet have the executive functioning to understand the ramifications of her choices.  I’ve also thought back to Columbine and how the students really wanted to return to the school.  After some reflection, I realize that these are uniquely different situations.  As a community, Littleton wanted and needed to empower their emerging young adults to be key players in the decision-making process.  Our children are not developmentally in that place.

I am most concerned for the faculty and staff who care and educate our children.  I would defer much of my opinion to theirs.

What I value most is the Sandy Hook Elementary community.  I want that to stay intact more than anything else.  We are an established community of families, interdependent and deeply intertwined with one another.  This “family” was an important part of our community long before the tragedy, only now even more reinforced, and I would hope that factor would ultimately drive the decision.  To me, the school is the people – our children, the faculty and staff, and the parents.  The structure on Dickenson Road is just that – a building.  While the building might hold memories for some, it is not the community.  The Sandy Hook tradition will live on if we maintain her community.

The above represent my opinions prior to the forum.  Initially, my opinion was to keep the community intact, but I did not have a strong opinion towards keeping the location of the school at its current site or a new site.  Based on the conversation, I now strongly feel that a new school should be constructed at a different location.  At the forum you used the phrase “do no harm,” and I think it strongly applies here.  The implications of bringing young children (and for that matter faculty and staff) back to the site of a tragedy potentially have the risk to emotionally harm them.  This, to me, is unacceptable.  While I recognize that some want to be back at that building, this emotional attachment does not outweigh the potential harm.  And most important to me, it doesn’t change my opinion that the school is the people, not the building.

Thanks you for your consideration.  I welcome any comments or feedback.

Sincerely,

Frank LaBanca, EdD
Father • Educator

A friend recently forwarded a link to a wild twitter hashtag #overlyhonestmethods.  For those involved in research (whatever type) – this is great for a few laughs.  Check out this album for a collection of highlights.  As I gear up to begin dissertation supervision with two new students, this one seems appropriate.

I wrote a guest blog post for Bob Slavin’s (Success for All) Blog – Sputnik.  Please check it out and if you are on Twitter, I would really appreciate a tweet from the site!

Here’s a brief excerpt:

The real question, ultimately, is, “Does technology help our students become better independent, self-directed learners?” That’s the game-changer. It’s not about the latest fancy device, hot off the shelf. That device is just a tool– it’s not knowledge and it’s not a skill. Just because we haphazardly give students technology tools doesn’t mean they are going to learn better–the evidence definitely supports that. Learners purposefully interacting with the tool and using it for production, facilitated by thoughtful, forward-thinking educators, is the way to get to a student-centered learning environment that improves engagement and achievement.

My sister-in-law, Jessica Poyer, is a fabulous 2nd grade teacher with the Hamilton Central Schools in Hamilton, NY.  The teachers there recently produced a video for their school spirit week.  It paints the teachers in such a fun, human way for the students.  I also love the fact that the district has its own Youtube Page. Kudos to them!

Ethnography,

Ethnography (from Greek ἔθνος ethnos = folk/people and γράφω grapho = to write) is a qualitative research design aimed at exploring cultural phenomena. The resulting field study or a case report reflects the knowledge and the system of meanings in the lives of a cultural group.^[1][2][3]An ethnography is a means to represent graphically and in writing, the culture of a people.

is an approach often used in qualitative research.  Recently on the “Cop in the Hood” blog, the use of the iPhone was discussed as a tool for data collection.  See the post HERE.

Here’s what caught my attention:

In an attempt to stay true to my ethnographic forefathers, I had been jotting down notes in shorthand. Deep in the recesses of countless seminal ethnographies, one can usually find a footnote or appendix detailing the experiences one has collecting data. Everyone from Whyte to Venkatesh [ed note: and Moskos], it seems, has shared personal anecdotes on finding odd moments to jot down notes of what they observed, heard and felt. What these texts seemed to gloss over, however, is just how conspicuous one can look with a pen and pad in 2012.

Not wanting to make the situation any more uncomfortable than it was already becoming, I fumbled around in my pocket and pulled out my iPhone, opened the “notes” section and began typing. In an age when most teens and 20-somethings remain glued to their i-devices, checking mail, or texting, I found that my fiddling with a phone while talking to Chaz was no longer “curious” behavior. In fact, it was seen as quite normal.

The National Academies Press is releasing a new book (report): Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century.  As I am sitting at the National Science Foundation’s Advanced Technological Education’s Principal Investigator’s Conference listening to a discussion, a concept, which came up in my dissertation work has come up.  I really like they way it is conceptualized.

The term?  DEEPER LEARNING

Deeper learning is the process of LEARNING FOR TRANSFER.  Transferable knowledge includes both CONTENT and PROCEDURAL knowledge.

When I wrote my dissertation, one of my major codes was DEEP UNDERSTANDING.  This is how I defined it at that time in the appendix (p. 264):

Having a deep understanding. This understanding usually goes beyond scientific knowledge, which would be coded as ‘specialized understanding.’ This is more of a conceptual understanding with scientific, social, political, interpersonal, theoretical, and/or practical realizations. It is seeing ‘the big picture,’ beyond the scope of the scientific aspects of the project.

And isn’t this what we want for greater engagement?  Learning that goes beyond the four walls of the classroom . . . Learning that has value.