2009 June | The Village Green

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

Posted by Matthew Woolums in 21st-Century, Conference Sessions, Opinion.
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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

Posted by Matthew Woolums in Articles/Videos, OLPC, Opinion.
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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

Posted by Matthew Woolums in Articles/Videos, Opinion.
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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

Posted by Matthew Woolums in 21st-Century, History, Net Neutrality.
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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.

human rights 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

Posted by Matthew Woolums in Articles/Videos, Tools.
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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

Posted by Matthew Woolums in Articles/Videos, Tools.
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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