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I Suspected, But ‘Did Not Know’ For Sure June 30, 2009

I’ve admired the work of Karl Fisch, especially his contribution (Did You Know, a.k.a. Shift Happens) to the discourse on the role of technology and connectedness in education, but there was always one section of the presentation that bothered me. The section that show the number of students in China and India in advanced classes far outnumbers the total number of students in the US. I’ve always felt uncomfortable about that. Should the US always have the highest number of advanced students? Is that even possible? In a world where the US makes up less than 5% of the total population, I don’t think so. Should we be concerned about this state of affairs in the US? Are we losing our ability to compete? Will we become irrelevant because other counties are becoming more capable, better educated? Or does the reverse hold true? Should we instead celebrate and support better education around the globe? Is this a win-lose situation, or is there a win-win outcome? Watch the embedded TED Conference video below and be better informed. I know I was; better informed that is.

TIE 2009 - Shifting Literacies - Karl Fisch June 25, 2009

http://tieconference.wikispaces.com/3311

Something new: http://www.netvibes.com/theunquietlibrary#Iran_Election_2009

Rants and Raves

• It is important to continue to learn, and to share that learning process with each other and our students.
• Karl’s current cosmology comes from a dissatisfaction with a ‘good enough’ math classroom.
• 1994 computers came on the scene and so did student information systems. Karl began the transition from math to technology, motivated by bringing a better experience to the classroom.
• Money was a barrier to providing access to and integration of technology.
• Teachers wanted time. Cohort of brave teachers became a group of teachers teaching teachers how to use technology. Teachers developed the PD based on research, pedagogy, and (if time allows) technology.
• The Fischbowl was born.
• Lots of significant reading took place, Gladwell, Pink, Kurzweil, etc.
• August 2006, the conversation started with Did You Know? We get to see an updated edition for TIE.
• Presentation was posted to the blog and it started to spread from there. Scott McLeod posted new versions in new formats. Those spread to YouTube, I’m Bored, etc.
• System we use in education today based on an industrial model.
• Lots of questions:
  • Education system designed when information was scarce. Information is now abundant. Now what should students know how to do? Content and skills are both important. We need to learn and relearn.
  • What does it mean to be literate in the 21st century? We don’t know. Not yet. Reading and analyzing books is not the same as reading and analyzing websites. We have a lot more information and a lot more access to information. We can do our own fact checking. Previously we filtered prior to publishing. Now we publish and then filter. Everything gets published, and all of us have to filter, we all need to be a media specialist. Consume and produce the media of the day. Our students (as well as we do) need an understanding of our digital footprint. Are our students ready for co-laboratory learning, for a world where professional networking is the communications tool of the day? Google Mobile for iPhone, and WolframAlpha as examples.
  • Wisdom? What do we do with all of this? How do we help them create their own personal learning networks? A PLN is the new coin that separates those who are on the inside and those who are on the outside. Standards, but not standardized.

Examples

• http://www.lps.k12.co.us/schools/arapahoe/21c/21c.htm
• Use a fishbowl - outer circle of students taking interactive notes and live blogging the conversation. This can include students in and out of the classroom, outside observers, both when it happens, and whenever anyone wants to participate.
• Wiki-fied research papers. Discussion. Drafts. Links.
• Cover It Live posted in a blog - live text discussions with experts.
• Blog posts requesting comments to critical questions.
• Podcasting “This I Believe”.
• Commenting and editing with comments on documents.
• Google Groups for college essays.
• Scribe posting - assign a student to post to the class blog what happened that day.
• 2nd graders drew pictures, 6th graders composed music to fit, 9th graders wrote poetry, all from different schools, different states.
• Online projects - Flat World Projects.
• Reading anything school appropriate, with end of week oral report, podcasted, with feedback as comments on a blog.
• Language translations by students between classes for native speakers learning the corresponding language as podcasts and written examples on wikis.
• Email questions to an author, which turned into a Skype conversation.
• Ning, Moodle.

Audience Participation

What is the best way to ‘fix’ the system? Join tech dept.? How does 21st C. Lit. relate to math? Real world data-gathering. Is there any vocabulary that need adjusting like literacy? Writing is different. Local and global may also be changing. How does the general public respond to this presentation since there is no obvious consensus about what education is or should be? Once school parents can see the results of their children’s work, they become supporters.

Reflection: The very nature of change is changing. We are moving to a time, not of change, but of flow. We need to know how to stay on top and not be overwhelmed or marginalized by the sheer volume of information. I’ll probably blog more about this later.

TIE 2009 - Online Professional Development - Randy Stall and Dana Levesque June 25, 2009

• Monday Models - 3 hour sessions on variety of topics. Face to face hold my hand training. No prior sign-up, drop-in model.
• In-Building PD
  • whole staff
  • grade level teams
  • content teams
  • individuals
• Co-teaching
• Modeling

TIE 2009 - Create, Communicate, Collaborate - Howie DiBlasi June 25, 2009

http://www.drhowie.com

Started with Green Eggs and Ham. More statistics about jobs moving from the US to overseas, from Friedman’s “The World is Flat”. Also mentioned Pink’s “A Whole New Mind” and Jim Collins “Good to Great” - get the right people on the bus, get them in the right seats, get the wrong people off the bus. Howie says we also need to get a driver. Short video about people who failed before achieving greatness (lincoln, etc). Can we still reward kids for doing anything rather than allowing them to fail? If you want change, be the change.

Will change happen if we don’t change our classrooms? Short video “Is this what the future in the US looks like” from ScreamingFrog. Skills for success:

• creative problem solving
• critical and analytical thinking
• information gathering
• team work and collaboration

TIE 2009 - Technical, Wikis, Blogs, and Podcasts - Mike Scott and Frank Vretos June 24, 2009

Started with introductions. Podcast Capture is the client utility (included with all 10.5 Macs) to create or upload media to the Podcast Producer on the Leopard OS X Server. Podcast Capture uses 6 built-in scripts or workflows. You can make your own workflows. Web interface for the client is also available. Podcast Producer is highly scalable. Probably a good idea to start with a small group of dedicated content producers before it is more widely distributed.

From the server side, starting with Wiki server. Wiki services enabled on the OS X server. Create a couple of users to see how they can work differently. Group is created and the wiki and blog option is selected. From the client side, open a browser and view the wiki server.

TIE 2009 - iPodTouch - Dan McCormack June 24, 2009

Most of this session is done on touches. Positioning the touches as a device that improves the ability to collaborate, create, distribute, and access. It is not a ‘netbook’ or laptop lite. Starts with a review of touch basics. Turn it on, home button, bring up controls, swipe to navigate.

Watched a 7 minute video on the touch which outlined challenges in education, and how the touch addresses those challenges. Talked about the student as the CEO of their own digital brand. Karl Fisch cals this their ‘digital footprint’. Looked at audio books in ‘music’ as a podcast, and videos like the physics of baseball. Research from Escondido Union School District on the iRead project where fluency was improved. Apple’s solution is the Bretford PowerSync Cart ($2300 without the iPods). Charges and synchs up to 40 dock connector iPods. Other solutions are on the way.

The App Store. We are exploring apps that were synched on the touches. There are a lot of options.

iTunes and the App Store. Think of iTunes as an architecture. iTunes U is free, hosted by Apple.

Reflection: I’d like to see this used in a school. I also think the price for the devices and carts has to come down a bit. The free offerings from the App Store are very nice.

TIE 2009 - Education 2020 - Elizabeth Hubbell June 24, 2009

http://tieconference.wikispaces.com/2111

Incoming 2nd graders are, if the graduate, are the class of 2020. What kind of skills do they need? What can we do in school to help prepare them for a future we can’t quite see? What has changed since 1990? Not much in schools. Can a 1990s education possibly prepare our students for a 2020 world?

What are the barriers to change?

• money
• effective teacher use of technology
• change is hard for someone who has taught for 20 years
• change in technology is mercurial
• technology is not reliable enough
• we are not testing the way we should be teaching

What is the ‘low-hanging fruit’ we haven’t picked? Based on data from ‘walkthroughs’ http://www.mcrel.org/powerwalkthrough

• teachers are not actually using the technology in their rooms
• students are not actually using the technology in their rooms
• students are not assessed using the technology in their rooms

TIE 2009 - Design with Forever in Mind - Ben Wilkoff June 23, 2009

Authenticity done for a real purpose and a real audience. How do we capture learning?

Backchannel is set up using a hash tag in twitter. #forevertie09, viewable as an RSS feed from http://tieconference.wikispaces.com/1117

How do you created learning that lasts forever? Based in experience, grows with the learner, has an impact that is external, creates more questions.

Forever does not mean storage, nor password protecting the information, nor the work remains unchanged, nor that everything is preserved.

Forever does mean that done does not exist (foreverism), that everyone should teach (mathcasts), and exit strategies are not optional (jot and the web 2.0 graveyard). So how do you do this?

Capture student voices:

• vocaroo - http://www.vocaroo.com voice recording
• drop.io - http://drop.io/ file sharing, drop box, and also voice mail
• screencastle - http://screencastle.com screencasting

Aggregation:

• educhat - open discussion using twitter tags http://twitterforteachers.wetpaint.com/
• Google Docs collaborative documents, presentations

Reflection:
What learning will I capture? Aggregating hash tags in twitter - great way to collect discussions from people both present and virtual. How does this captured learning let everyone teach? Every participant in the back channel can be the teacher, can participate, can ask the important question. How will someone build on this learning? If the backchannel is posted as part of the learning, it can serve as a reminder of jumping off points for the next discussion, the next learning or presentation. What is my exit strategy? I’m blogging my notes about this session.

Linked here: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=rm5-Ie8Hss7MgxElepGuAyw

Distractions:

• The conference network is not behaving. It’s down, it’s up!
• Ben’s battery, is it charging or not? Will his laptop turn itself off in the middle of his presentation?

Other tools discussed:

• Tweetgrid.com - set up searching for hash tags in Twitter, near real-time RSS feed.
• Bubbl.us - mind-mapping or brainstorming

TIE 2009 Keynote - Dr. Tim Tyson June 23, 2009

http://www.drtimtyson.com

Starts off with survey questions collected using eInstruction Classroom Performance Systems. With about 600 people in the room, most ‘votes’ are not registering. eInstruction presenter mentioned a previous virus on her computer and interference from the wireless network as excuses. We are using radio frequency models.

Theme: Gifts

Discrepancy between our belief in the impact the work our students do in schools to change the world and our belief that students actually do change the world. Cell phones are mostly banned in schools, but that will change. Cited diabetes testing on the iPhone. Screencast (screenflow) of the presentation will be available. Also using an xTag wireless USB microphone. If you text “TimTyson” to 50500 it will respond with his business card. As a principal, every public meeting he had he created a podcast and posted it. Also Ustreaming at ustream.tv/channel/iupgrade-tv. Can he get any more wired than this? Yes, by texting questions to 99503 using PollEverywhere. Start poll with 29710 and then the question. Free for fewer than 30 students at a time, or for NCLB failing schools for free. Also using iPhone to control computer. drtimtyson.com/clients/TIE-09 user id and password are the same as the end of the URL.

Tim thinks differently. Recalls something from The Phantom Tollbooth. “Well, it all depends on how you look at it I suppose…” and continues on with the story of the family whose members are born with their head in the air and they grow down to the ground. We all know what school looks like. We’ve been there. Tim is going to challenge that presumption today. Maybe no one knows what school looks like with all the tools that are available to us today. “Everything is about perspective”. The challenge is to step outside out professional practice to view that practice anew.

Tim is telling us about his family, starting with a picture of himself sitting on the lap of his great-grandmother who was born just after the Civil War. Things have changes a lot. Industry has expanded. Parking has shrunk. Fewer workers controlling larger amounts of infrastructure. Every business on Main Street was closed. Pritchart (sp) Alabama has changed in 25 years from a great place to raise a family to the worst place to live in the state. This transformation is happening everyhwere. One third of our workforce (US) works as independent contractors. Do rules, rituals, routines, and right answers prepare our students for their future?

The impact of everything we do in schools will long outlive us. Long quote from John Dewey about what learning is and is not. The big question: who owns the learning? Who is doing all the work? Our students increasingly do not believe that school prepares them for ‘real life’. We have to figure out what school needs to look like.

School 2.0

• authentically engaged learners
• Self-directed learning
• prject-driven instructino
• empoered by technology innovation
• collaborative learning community
• relevant
• contribution

Let’s define what best practices look like. “Value the instructional capacity within our students”.

First priority for students on summer vacation? Sleep. Tells story of Conrad, student who called on first day of summer vacation who wanted to come in and work on his school project. He already got an ‘A’ on the project, but he wanted everyone in the world to see his project. We should say is, and fulfill throughout the year, that the best of the best work will be considered for global distribution. MabryOnline.org and on iTunes, distributes over a million files a month.

what would you do differently in your classroom if your students really wanted to learn? to create? to connect with people to share something important? Students want to learn, especially with their tools. The classroom no longer has walls, it is now the Earth, the whole world.

Grading kills learning. Replace with authentic assessment. What is authentic assessment? Conrad working on his project all day, every day, until it was ready for global distribution. Milking the cow doesn’t earn a sticker, it feeds the family. Survival required it. How old do you have to be before your life is meaningful? Age doesn’t matter, it can start right now. What do you as a (fill in the blank) have to say that is so important that everyone needs to hear it? What do they (students) come up with? Create a movie on embryonic stem cell research. Students arranged a 2 hour interview with a leading researcher in the field. Video won at a film festival. Does any of this have anything to do with the test?

In their words: Easier to learn from an expert in the field. Our reserach wasn’t random. Our motivation was to teach the world something important. We wanted more people to sign up to be organ donors. We wanted people to be better informed about purchasing chocolate (child and slave labor).

It’s not about the technology and connectivity, but that is where we focus our PD. Effective education collapses the distance between the classroom and the world around them. Students want to make a contribution to their world today.

Finished with a movie about disabilty. Are we experiencing the most exciting time to be an educator? Is this a once in a lifetime opportunity? How will we define the uses of these tools in education? “This is your destiny”.

Reflection: Great points. I’m pretty sure that ’school’ as we know it, will not provide the answer to these questions. For the most part, it can’t in this era of standardized tests. It can’t in this era of state curriculums. It can’t until we understand that the students are really the ones who are in charge of their learning.

Netbooks: Performance Review June 17, 2009

Nice article from CNET Webare testing out many popular free web applications on netbooks. Turns out they perform quite well with just one exception:

So is it worth buying one now, or waiting? As with any computer purchase, it depends on your needs. If you’re OK not viewing HD videos, it does everything else, and does it well.

So unless you need 3D imaging or high definition video, a netbook might be a reasonable choice, especially if it isn’t your only computer. For students? A dedicated lab for higher end work would be in order, but for most work in the classroom, where it should be about the learning and not about the technology, netbooks would work just fine.

How well do Netbooks work with Web apps? | Webware - CNET

Digital Impermanence June 12, 2009

I’ve been thinking about the issue of how the digital world changes information, and I find that, for myself, digital information is both more permanent, and less permanent. Much has been said about teaching our students about placing personal information online, and rightly so. On the flip side, we also need to teach our students how to make sure their work isn’t washed away like a sand castle with the next service interruption or lack of access to a particular site.

As a case in point, this morning I received the following email from Flowgram, a site that allowed users to create presentations from photos, web pages, and other files, along with audio and text annotations. This sort of sums up the idea that what I do, even in the digital world, may have a limited life span.

Dear Flowgram user:

Today is a sad day for us. We have decided to terminate the Flowgram service as of the end of the month (June 30th, 2009). The service received excellent reviews and had an enthusiastic core user base. However, we were not able to demonstrate (especially in these economic times) that Flowgrams would ever be prevalent enough for us to adequately monetize the business, either though ads or subscriptions. This is obviously very disappointing, but building the Flowgram platform was a lot of fun, and it was wonderful to see how many of you used our tool to express yourselves in a deep and meaningful way.

Although you won’t be able to play your Flowgrams after the end of the month, you can export them to video by clicking “share” from the website or “more sharing options” from the Flowgram player and scrolling down to the export to video section. It is very important, if you wish to keep your content, that you export to video and download the video by the end of the month. Please let us know at support@flowgram.com if you have any difficulties doing this.

Again, I would like to thank you for your support, for your Flowgrams and for your good wishes.

Best Regards
Abhay Parekh (Founder) and the rest of the Flowgram Team

I’ve heard the argument that we should be careful about choosing a tool that provides an option for permanence, a way to always save students’ work even if the specific tool goes away. After all, student work should be important, or we should be asking them to do something different. The linked podcast from Bud the Teacher was inspired by a conversation about the place for ‘free’ services in education. Free isn’t always the best option, and it isn’t reasonable to expect a free service to always provide access to our content, much like the Flowgram example above. It is a great point, but digital permanence is complicated, and not always desirable.

I think that digital permanence has a place, but I also think that digital impermanence does too. Change happens, even if we are not prepared for it, and that applies to the digital world as well. Temporary accounts, throwaway email, RAM, are all examples of impermanence. I think there is something to be said from approaching content as something that is fragile, that might disappear, that is special because it is here today and gone tomorrow. Sometimes the moment calls for being a moment, and not a permanent state. After all, why would a rainbow be spectacular and moving if it were always there?

I have an old computer in the basement. I’m sure it has some stuff on it that I should keep. I have a couple of hard drives in the closet. Probably need to check those too. But I also know that sometimes letting go of what I’ve created, what I’ve written, if it is truly important or moving, will come back to me. My content is a part of me whether it is etched in stone, or made from sand. Nature doesn’t like things to be too permanent. We need a season or process to break things down and start over. Sometimes we need to start over or growth isn’t possible. Wild fires seem terrifying when they happen, but the long-term health of a forest depends on periodic cleansing.

I think our digital footprint deserves a similar cycle of cleansing. I think there is a benefit to risking the loss of content by exploring a new tool, free or otherwise. Sometimes, like Flowgram, those new tools last only for a season, sometimes they become as big as Wikipedia. Getting in on the ground floor has its own rewards. Sticking with something that is safe and known can also lead to irrelevance, boredom, and end up as just another example of trying to control the learning process. Our learners also deserve the opportunity to fail spectacularly.

To sum it up, I think digital impermanence is okay, even desirable. I think we should encourage our students to try something new and unexplored, even if there is a risk of losing all the work. That which is learned becomes part of ourselves whether there is anything visible for others to witness. Learning is change, and I say embrace it. Dare your students to create rainbows.

France: Internet Access is a Fundamental Human Right June 11, 2009

According to a ReadWriteWeb post, France’s highest court has declared that Internet access is a fundamental right. Nice to see that. Maybe we should have the right to access everywhere. Next up we need our access to be neutral.

Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/aksdareflection/3097022791/sizes/o/

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/is_internet_access_a_fundamental_human_right_franc.php

From a tweet by Karl Fisch - http://twitter.com/karlfisch/statuses/2119924288

Word Web June 8, 2009

Seems to be a trend today. Lexipedia connects a word to a web of related words. Search results also include color-coded parts of speech. This one is fun to watch. This one is from Free Technology For Teachers which also links to Visuwords, a site which graphically depicts relationships between words. I can’t get it to load from home, maybe it is getting too much press.

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2009/06/lexipedia-webbed-word-connections.html

What’s in a Word? June 8, 2009

Wordnik is an interesting tool that aggregates information about words, definitions, pronunciation, etymology, etc. It also connects to flickr and most interesting to me, shows frequency of use through time. For example, education was ‘big’ around the year 1900. What is your favorite word? Interested in looking for some new ones? From a CNET article:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10258929-36.html

Tech Boot Camp June 5, 2009 - Blogging June 5, 2009

This is another Tech Boot Camp session on Blogging. Please copy and paste the address for your blog as a comment to this post.

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  Matthew Woolums:
  Classroom teacher, computer lab/library teacher, district technology integration coordinator for the Denver Public Schools (Denver, CO) and adjunct faculty member for Lesley University.

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