MCDS at BLC08

Another Good Video

2008-08-05T11:01:00.001-07:00

Learning to Change -- Changing to Learn:

Choosing the Right Tool for the Right Reasons

2008-07-25T06:03:00.000-07:00

As we begin thinking about incorporating more Web 2.0 tools into Upper School, we need to constantly be asking the right questions -- and selecting the tools that work for our students, as well as for us. After our "Crustaceans and Conversations" meeting, it seemed like we all agreed that it'd be cool to create a shared space for students and teachers in an individual grade (7th, for now) to write, reflect, see assignments, post work, etc.

Then we moved into a discussion of which might be the right tool for the job -- iGoogle? Ning? Elgg? (as suggested by a Twitterer). I set up a test-Ning for us to play with, and after speaking with Jen yesterday, it sounds like she and Kathleen J. are playing with an English-only Ning. But I was reminded that the tool is far less important than the pedagogy after reading a recent post from Richard Kassisieh about BLC08 where he reflected that:

"I was disappointed by what I saw as overemphasis on tools and relatively weak discussion of pedagogy. Does this mean that educational technologists need to develop stronger dialogue around pedagogy? Yes. Can I better structure my workshops on this topic? Definitely. It may be time for me to narrow the discussion to constructivist teaching with technology rather than trying to cast a wide net over a number of pedagogical constructs."

So as we begin to create this shared space, let's keep students and teaching at the heart of the conversation. What will enhance, rather than hinder, learning and creativity? What tool will get out of their way, rather than in their way? Multiple spaces (easier for US to manage) vs. one space (easier for THEM to navigate?) Do we even need a space like this at all? Why? Here's a short vodcast from Dan Meyer, illustrating the point perfectly:

dy/av : 001 : earn the medium from Dan Meyer on Vimeo.

more tech help...

2008-07-24T22:22:00.000-07:00

so embedding photos? no worries, thanks, Barb

slide show is harder; I created a FLICKR account but cannot seem to connect it to the blog...any thoughts?

Question for the Upper School technology six...

2008-07-24T10:56:00.001-07:00

I am trying to get over my need to "control" output and who sees what. What if, in our quest to "spread the word," we make the technology world a little flatter by inviting in some other mcds folks to view our blog? Division Heads and Lucinda? Admin team? I am not ready to open it to everyone, but would like some portion of leadership to see what we have been humming on; this will also allow others to advance in their thought processes on a parallel track and get up to speed without us having to explain everything up front.

They could also ask questions and comment as we move through and as they read the blog...

Thoughts? Yeah or nay and who? Comment back...

Back on the "better coast" and reenetering slowly, after a four hour flight delay had me touch down in Oakland at 5:30am EST with a carbby, tired 17 year old...

:-)

KM

help with tools, please...

2008-07-23T06:17:00.000-07:00

Greetings from Brunswick, Maine.

It has been a long, strange trip.

Conference? Did we attend a conference? I forget.

I am knee deep in college campus visits, view books, tours, and engineering jargon I do not understand.

I am still processing the fact that a teacher resigned on Monday, and so now I have a few weeks (with friends visiting and a trip to Milwaukee) to hire a new teacher. Ugh!

Okay, enough of my own personal pity party, back to technology. I did have fun spending time with all of you and look forward to continuing "the work."

So as I chronicle the college road trip, I do not know how to embed photos or slide shows into my blog...

Jen and Barb, for the less tech savvy among us, please advise...

KM

Twitter in the News!

2008-07-22T09:17:00.000-07:00

I am atwitter with this article from USA Today. ; -)
Check it out!

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/2008-07-20-twitter-tweet-social-network_N.htm?csp=tech&POE=click-refer

What if Our Workspaces Resembled Kindergarten Classrooms?

2008-07-22T04:14:00.000-07:00

One of the best things about the full-day preconference day at the MIT Media Lab was exploring the physical space of the Lifelong Kindergarten Group. In the words of its Director, Mitchel Resnick:

"We are inspired by the ways children learn in kindergarten: when they create pictures with finger paint, they learn how colors mix together; when they create castles with wooden blocks, they learn about structures and stability. We want to extend this kindergarten style of learning, so that learners of all ages continue to learn through a process of designing, creating, experimenting, and exploring."

Here are some photos Jen and I took of the MIT Media Lab. With its plants and sofas, LEGOs and natural light, work hanging from the ceilings and interesting nooks & crannies, it felt so much like the Hickory, Sequoia and Holly Rooms! Imagine how the world of work might be different if we spent our days working in spaces like this. See for yourselves:

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Mark Prensky Presentations

2008-07-22T03:39:00.000-07:00

Several of us has an opportunity to hear Mark Prensky speak at BLC08. I had been looking forward to hearing him present for a while, because I knew that he was known for his view that we ought to embrace the idea of bringing elements of video gaming into the classroom as a powerful teaching tool. His latest book is, in fact, entitled "Don't Bother Me, Mom -- I'm Learning!" The main impression he left on me was that we need to talk to the kids more, to find out what they think of school, how our teaching methodologies are working -- or aren't working -- for them, and what they'd like us to do differently. He causes quite a stir, and managed to do so at BLC08 as well. For a peek at some sentiments about his presentations at BLC08, click on this blog post and be sure to read the comments as well.

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Kids teaching Kids: Empowering Students Through Screencasting

2008-07-21T14:51:00.000-07:00

Thursday, July 17th
Curtis and I went to hear Eric Marcos and two of his students show the power of screencasting. He spoke about how intrigued students were by this new tool, often hovering over the Tablet PC in a semi-circle. Class participation improved dramatically and he reminded us to actually "let the kids touch the computer."

One of his students told the audience that "kids learn better from kids because teachers think a different way."

Tools needed are simple:

Tablet PC or Wacom tablet
Microphone
Software: Camtasia Studio, Jing, VoiceThread, Tux Paint or Screencast-o-matic

Benefits of students creating mathcasts are:

Take an active role in their own learning
Have fun
Unscripted
Authentic assessment
Student-created
Kids teaching kids

Eric has created a Web site called mathtrain.com. This is a relaly useful site that is math video lessons by and for middle school students. Powered by Moodle, this interactive site offers homework help, student collaboration, forums/blogs, and a messaging system.

Once your mathcasts are created, they can be shared with your own class, the rest of the school, or the global community. You can export them to:

mathtrain.tv
screencast.com
iTunes
YouTube/TeacherTube
Google Video (can add closed captioning)

Curtis is enthusiastic to try this as a teaching tool in class, but would want to encourage kids to provide more detail in their explanations than we saw in the student demo.

Learning Scratch @ MIT with Mitch Resnick

2008-07-21T12:23:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, July 15th brought us an incredible opportunity to visit the Lifelong Kindergarten @ MIT and learn Scratch from Mitch Resnick! Scratch is a program that was created to allow students to create interactive stories, games, animations and share these creations via the Web. One of the key components of LLK's philosphy is that kids spend too much time interacting and not building or designing. Mitch explained the conundrum; how can we let kids build things they want to create and still learn the things they need to? He went on to discuss the four or five different ways one can introduce Scratch to kids (depending on learning styles) and then proceeded to systematically let us experience each of those ways. The creativity required and inherent problem-solving necessary for using Scratch means that it would be a terrific fit with kids in the classroom. I have no doubt they would eat it up. And according to Marc Prensky, we really ought to be spend more time teaching programming.

Anyway, the Scratch Web site was launched just over one year ago and since then 150,000 projects have been uploaded. Projects are now uploaded roughly every two minutes.

Two new features the Scratch team has been developing include Scratch Clubs and Scratch Ed for teachers. Scratch Clubs will have a more strict set of rules about what is appropriate as deemed by Scratch Club leaders. You can also sub-search by your own scratch club (a club can be an entire grade level, a single classroom, district, etc.) Scratch Ed will be a forum for teachers to share / download exemplary units and uses. See the example Barb and I created below.

Closing session July 18, 2008

2008-07-18T12:21:00.000-07:00

Alan November on the last minute...

Take all job titles and remove the word technology from them...

e.g "do you go to the grocery store and buy dead cow or do you buy prime rib?

technology = "dead cow""

Sara Kadjer, Writing for REAL reasons... Virginia tech!, Day 5 continued, by Kathleen..

2008-07-18T11:08:00.000-07:00

Sara says

No matter what anyone else at this conference has said, we need to teach students how to write. Writing matters...

Hallelujah!

Day 5 continued...Pedro session follow up post-keynote

2008-07-18T09:20:00.000-07:00

In the conversation with Pedro:

"tracking is good if kids' needs are being met and they can move when they are ready...then keep doing what you're doing. If you track them and they can never move, stop doing it."

yeah! we are doing something right!

Crustaceans, Conversations and Contemplations....MCDS style

2008-07-18T09:12:00.000-07:00

So five of the six of us met at Indigo yesterday and started to discuss some possibilities when we return.
I invite all of you to jump in and comment here about what we need to think about.

For me, a few things...

-we should each pick a tool(s) and start to implement in our own various areas

-I will build in SHOW & TELL at division meetings

-we should meet as a group throughout the school year to check in on how it's going (in addition to blogging)

-we should each target one colleague (quietly) about what we've learned and try to "influence" how he/she uses media

-build in some kind of tech tool showcase into the professional day schedules

to be continued...

digital voyeurism....

2008-07-18T09:11:00.000-07:00

It was interesting to follow all the replies about Marc Prensky...I followed the tweeter trail...he really did get under people's skin...

Mitchel Resnick at the MIT Media Lab

2008-07-18T09:02:00.000-07:00

Mitchel Resnick is the Director of the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab, and has worked closely with Seymour Papert, the grandfather of LOGO and constructivist education. He led our day-long session on Scratch, MIT's latest educational programming software. Here is his concise and informative introduction to the day:

'everything new is old again'

2008-07-18T07:38:00.000-07:00

hey team, 'everything new is old again' featured a wonderful and telling presentation regarding the global community we all live in, (regardless of how aware of it we are). Using Skype, Google Dox and Google presentation an entire piece was created by a number of presenters who were never in the same room. At the potential loss of face to face interaction, the product has begun to transcend the process, or at least change the way we perceive it. What was once 'scary' and foreign is now commonplace. Textbooks are not read by our students as much as they are written by them, and is that not after all a more empowering and ownership oriented way of learning,.....

adifference.blogspot.com
remoteaccess.typepad.com
dkuropatwablc08.pbwiki.com

check it out

Kathleen's post for Day #5 July 18, 2008

2008-07-18T07:36:00.001-07:00

I admit it,
I am dragging today,
and feeling like we have a lot of work ahead and I just want to process how to enter this conversation back at school.

The first part of the morning was packing and preparing to leave, finalizing the "college road trip details..."

I have arrived at the BLC, Final Day, for Pedro Noguera's keynote. I was not sure when I read the description about how relevant his topic was for Independent Schools and yet, as we sit at the nexus of Independent Schools and diversity, some portions of his talk are highly relevant!

Here are some quotables...

"Algebra is the pathway to college in low performing schools: take the time you need and give less homework to make sure they get it."

"Eliminate homework! Homework is an Equity Issue!"

"Who is the Guardian for Equity at Your School?" For us, it's Ann and IT, but I am worried...

Example of the robotics team.

"Who is in your basement?"

"Who is teaching code switching?"

"Too many high school teachers confuse teaching with talking"

"The best teachers do not expect kids to learn the way they teach, they teach the way kids learn!"

"Assessing, monitoring and learning all the time."

Good teachers go above and beyond.

Stop treating parents as irrelevant. What are you doing to enlist parents as partners? Most high performing students have parents who are involved...

Your background should not dictate what opportunities are available to you...

We need to have more courage in schools!!

This also make me wonder about how lucky we are in Independent Schools...
_________________________

He was pretty inspirational AND this was my first attempt at live blogging!

Friday A.M. Keynote - Pedro Noguera

2008-07-18T07:36:00.000-07:00

Re-Imagining Schools:
Creating School Cultures that Promote Academic Excellence
Pedro A. Noguera, Ph.D.
New York University

"If I told you that I know a doctor who’s very good, but only when you’re healthy, you wouldn’t like that. Same with schools. We tend to blame the kids. The problem is not the kids – it’s the way we treat the kids & limit them and conditions we put them under. If we can’t imagine schools that do that for all kids, then we’re in trouble and deserve to be." It's now been 25 years since “A Nation at Risk”. High drop-out rates – over 50% in some cities.

What's going on?

Slovenia, S. Korea are now ahead of us…blame the schools, blame the teachers, but we never ask what those countries are doing
Universal access to healthcare, childcare, parental leave. We keep ignoring that conditions outside of the school affect what’s going on inside. Canadians have shown that if you meet the basic needs of all children you can educate all children – can learn more than one language and start them off early. You can produce bilingual children and literacy and mathematics for all children.
Barbados has a 98% adult literacy rate – in US it’s 80%
Why is it that being poor and black in Barbados is not an obstacle to learning, but it is here?
NYC has to hire 6,000 teachers/year. No shortage of teachers, shortage of people willing to work in those schools. What we have isn’t an acheivment gap – it’s an allocation gap. Anyone who says “money doesn’t matter” usually has lots of it.
Permanent underclass. Latinos have highest employment rates of any ethnic group and the highest poverty rates. Illogical debate about immigration in this country today. Gap in achievement works under assumption that because of race or immigration status or poverty level, educational status is determined.
Used to think of educational reform like a recipe – mix the ingredients together and you’ll have a result. We keep pursuing reforms like this. Every school has its own culture and context and community and needs. Teachers are cynical of reform because it is done to us, not with us. “Common sense is really not all that common.” So much that’s happening in the name of reform that is not doing anything. Combination of good teaching, student engagement, good leadership, parental support, etc.
There are now large urban districts (Atlanta, Miami, Boston, New York, Denver, Abington PA) showing that you can have improvement even with poor kids. Willingness to do whatever it takes, to support innovation, to have strong, stable leadership with clear accountability.

Lessons from high performing schools -- there's a lot we know from them, and there are a lot of them out there:

Culture of high expectations – museum of the Bronx vs. locked up science equipment
Focus on the whole child
Strategic partnerships – real artists teaching art, novelists teaching writing
High standards – all 8th graders get algebra, but lower performing kids get 90 minutes instead of 50 minutes with no homework (homework = equity issue)
Countering race & gender stereotypes – robotics club instead of just
Staff understands external student pressures & devised ways to counter it
Adopts strategies to help students plan/think concretely about their futures
Commitment to Excellence & Equity
Code Switching is taught explicitly

If we know all this, what's getting in our way of implementing change?

Blaming students and parents
Treating teaching and learning as disconnected activities -- to0 many teachers confuse teaching with talking. "Cover" material rather than teach it. Focused on performance. Best teachers teach the way kids learn. This is now called differentiated instruction.
We group kids by ability in ways that reinforce stereotypes -- if you assign a slow teacher, you get slower kids. Longer a child is categorized, the further they fall behind.
Ignore morale and legitimate concerns of your staff
We don't treat parents as partners - neither of his parents graduated from HS, but they sent all 6 kids to top colleges in the country. When you look at your gifted and honors classes, do you see a variety of children from different backgrounds? If you don't, there's a problem.
School rules/procedures that are at odds with educational goals -- suspending a student for truancy!

New Paradigm

Schools focus on cultivating talent
Social and emotional intelligence, language sklls and creativity are encouraged
Resources allocated based on student need
Organization and schdule reflect priorities
Discipline used to reinforce school values and norms

Lessons in Leadership Taught Through The National Archives

2008-07-18T05:58:00.000-07:00

Jen and I spent the last morning of BLC08 in a session about The National Archives. They have recently redesigned their website and the physical building takes up 2 entire city blocks in Washington D.C. Many folks never realize that they have visited the building, which houses the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights and the Constitution

The speaker asked us to brainstorm the qualities and behaviors that make a leader, and then we had an opportunity to study several documents she provided for us from the Archival Research Catalog, including:

A photograph of the Uncle Sam "I Want You" poster with the artist posing alongside
Irving Berlin's draft card
A commendation for Julia Child
A letter written to President Roosevelt from a 12-year old Fidel Castro
Greta Garbo's Declaration of Intention
A squadron list from the Korean War including John Glen and Ted Williams
A letter written to Boston city leaders in 1960 with concern about a development project that would interfere with Minuteman National Park

As we went through the various documents, we looked for information about the people (Irving Berlin cared for his elderly mother), the times (what if Roosevelt had sent $10 to Castro in 1940?!) and leadership (we never knew who designed Uncle Sam, yet his impact and legacy certainly deem him a leader.) She talked about how the Castro letter was a great teaching document because it shows what he was like as a child.

How do we capture archives now that we are creating so many documents electronically, like email? Historians and archivists ask different questions than technologists do...they don't just want to capture the text, but the metadata, when it was sent, from which computer, etc.

She recommended checking out their new Digital Vaults site.

Peggy Sheehy's Second Life Session

2008-07-18T03:15:00.001-07:00

This session blew my mind. More later...

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Kenya Presentation Notes

2008-07-17T21:33:00.000-07:00

Here are my random notes from the session I attended about Educational Technology in Kenya -- I'm definitely doing my reporting now and plan to do my reflecting later.

The presenter was from the Ministry of Education. By the end of the presentation the question he was asked -- what is the per-pupil annual spending on education in Kenya? Answer: $60/year.

Primary & Secondary Schools

10.4% Internet penetration – 2,000 cybercafes
15% (3,000 schools) have electricity
500 Primary Schools have computers (mostly private)
180,000 teachers, each with a mobile phone
85% of Secondary Schools are in rural areas

Challenges

Power – 32% of Kenya’s population connected to national grid
Infrastructure
Lack of Computers
Lack of Connectivity
Lack of Digital Content
Enormous amount of E-Waste

Initiatives

Kenya e-schools program and NEPAD Initiative – Infrastructure
Capacity Building
Microsoft School’s Agreement
e-Pals

SEMA Initiative

Simple Text Messaging System – SMS Application through cell phones
Mobile telephony has rapidly grown – 12 million subscribers in ‘08
Changed many lives on the continent
Education Results –
Collaboration tool for teachers & administrators
Education Management Information (EMIS)
Use as a field instrument
Blogs for cell phone users – youth and out of school groups

Interventions and Options

Submarine cable establishment
Broadband connect6ivity, connecting cities and towns and lowering costs
Mobile telephony companies offering affordable Internet to community centers and schools

Administrators

Need to embrace technology in their administrative work
Integration of tech in ed assessment, training & quality control

BLC08

Forum for networking & sharing & best practices & success stories
Collaboration expected to increase access to education & learning
Access to info helps better decision-making
Improved quality of education

Dan Nijiriri – Kenya ICT Trust Fund

Partnership with Delta College in Saginaw, Michigan
Started 17 years ago with a grant, continued with friendship, internships
Rural Schools Computer Project
Raided funds for computers and books all over Kenya
Recycling through reuse
Ship 40-ft containers with thousands of books – around $4000 to ship -- $10/computer
Huge community response in terms of donations
Growing to include medical equipment & internships with medical students
Huge need in terms of things we just throw away
Seeks donations & develops partnership
Computerizing the police force rather than using manual system
Police communicated using blogs on e-Pals!
Rural Schools in Nakuru Town (4th largest town in Rift Valley)
Case Study – Emining Primary School
Located in Koibatek District in remote area
First step was to bring electricity to town
“Hey brothers, come and see mine works like magic.”
Communication was improved – mobile phones stronger
Improvement for whole community
Local leadership built a better school to support leadership -- Among first to connect with e-Pals (Samuel Staple School in Connecticut). Students interact and exchange information freely
School is now a registered member of e-Pals
From Grass (1997) to to Grace (2007)
E-Waste Issues -- Donate for re-use, repair & refurbish, recycling recovery of valuable components
Come to Kenya!

Kathleen's Day #4 July 17, 2008

2008-07-17T20:52:00.001-07:00

Yowza.

Where to start?

Keynote with John Davitt was entertaining and fun, not too worrisome. He did make me continue to wonder, though...

About how we serve toast, and learning and whether we are even asking the right questions...?

I am wondering about sheep, lord of the rings, "I dream of a world where learning is as important as shopping" OUCH, oh we ugly Americans...

What is the active/passive continuum of the digital native? Can we move our students from consumers to producers...?

www.newtools.com

Making things
Telling stories
Connecting globally

www.johndavitt.com

time to slither under a rock...

_________________________________

Joyce Valenza was ace...

www.informationfluency.wikispaces.com
the entire power point is here

Last year’s presentation was about Stone Soup
This year, it’s Pandora

Gettysburg address in powerpoint?
Darfur in Family Guy?
Hamlet as a cut out?

cool stuff; watch the powerpoint...

___________________________________

Is it clear I am weary and worried and watchful and wistful and still worried? (and alliterative?)

___________________________________

I anjoyed Eric Marcos and Math Train and Billy Billy and Bob

www.mathtrain.com

___________________________________

Marc Prensky was good and relevant and funny and got under some folks' skin....

yeah

it's all about programming...

__________________________________

Kathleen's Kwestions....

Faculty binders?
New faculty orientation?
Parent roundtables?
School calendar?
iGoogle, therefore I am?
What should I be doing differently...?

The five of us (we missed you Matt) started to work through possibilities and what we can bring back....

Everyone else needs to get on here and comment away...

KM

Kathleen Day #3 Wednesday, July 16, 2008

2008-07-17T17:38:00.000-07:00

So the day began with an interesting session by Ewan McIntosh. I found his style nice and his message? not too harsh.

Nonetheless, we at MCDS have much to ponder. Once I adjusted to his lovely Scottish accent, I was intrigued by the "power" of his "powerpoint", minimalist by ALL definitions.

His message, however, was not minimalist...the title of his talk was:

"It's Not All Native Wit! From creativity to ingenuity..."

He made me wonder about many things.

I am not sure I agree with his statement that there is no such distinction between Digital Native and Digital Immigrant. Jihad and I are surely and proven digital immigrants while our children are NATIVES in all ways. So I am not buying this one.

However, he is making me think long and hard about what I believe and what works.

In Upper School Division meetings, I have said more than once: "IT's NOT CONTENT, it's skills" so, overall, I feel we are moving in the right direction, but WHICH SKILLS? looms ridiculously large...

Here are things he is making me think about:

• the internet allows the barely motivated to become activists
• Teachers are all on Facebook and kids are all on Bebo
• We need to be learning from Their spaces
o "Saturate"
o "Incubate" leave it to settle
o "Illuminate" aha moment

(Right now I am in SATURATE!)

• Do schools encourage divergent thinking?
• Schools are about being convergent: getting everyone the same information, OUCH

We are not noticing the things right under our noses because we are too busy looking at the toilet paper

Obama: using the younger generation
Get out in front of social networking sites
Look to other countries for what they do in schools e.g. Britian, Australia

Cell phones are the wave of the future (this scares me)

Participation culture: how young people breathe

Identity 2.0
• Secret spaces
• Public spaces
• Publishing spaces
• Performance spaces
• Participation spaces
• Watching spaces
All these spaces need to be used to engage students today

What simple tools can help your learning become remarkable?
How can you create a “shared awareness”?
What changes would you make to get small passionate groups creating themselves?

"There are three sorts of people in the world:
Those who are immoveable, those who are moveable and those who move…"

That was that session...
_________________________________________

The next session was my own personal lovefest with KIVA; today I loaned money to two more merchants, both just starting.
I also invited every family contact I have on email to make a loan. Wahoo!

Jessica is terrific and her story is inspiring and she did a great job of explaining KIVA and its mission.

Right on!

_________________________________________

Session on Creative Intelligences was good and helped me sort out Twitter, TWEET, Bloglines, tagging, yelping and lots of other good stuff

(just kidding about the yelping!)

_________________________________________

Conversation with Artie intrigued me.

I think our students and young alums at MCDS are doing exactly what she is doing but it is all part of their online OUT OF SCHOOL life; their online IN SCHOOL life is restricted, tame and probably one dimensional to them.

This is where I see our work unfolding: undoing the taboo of bringing kids' online thoughts, ideas and creations into their school life.

hmmm...I think it is because we are fearful of what happens when they screw up...

Came back to my funky hotel, swam some laps, had some dinner and ruminated on where to go from here...

to be continued...

How to implement in US?

2008-07-17T09:24:00.000-07:00

So, where do we begin...

Do Barb and I start with supporting the teachers that are here at BLC? Do we schedule weekly meetings with Math and English Departments? (a la the model at Town School that Curtis mentioned) Do we maintain our grade level affiliations? Do we pick a few of the same tools to all implement across the board? Do we use it in teaching and presenting or do we live on the edge and put the tools in the hands of the kids and see what percolates?