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Net Neutrality – It Still Matters October 25, 2009

Posted by Matthew Woolums in 21st-Century, Articles/Videos, Net Neutrality.
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I haven’t blogged about Net Neutrality for some time, but there seems to be more of an effort to get Net Neutrality codified by law under the current Whitehouse administration. Of course there are other priorities at the moment, such as the health care issue, that receive a higher priority. For those of you who are new to this blog, or just aren’t familiar with the term, I like to think of Net Neutrality as a freedom of access to Internet services. Those who provide the access should not determine what I can and can not access. Why is this important? Check out the video below to get a better idea of the issue of Net Neutrality.

My thanks to Open Thinking for pointing out this YouTube video

open thinking » Open Internet

Is Broadband Access a Legal Right? October 14, 2009

Posted by Matthew Woolums in 21st-Century, Articles/Videos, History, Opinion.
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TechCrunch is reporting that Finland has declared that broadband access is a legal right for all of its citizens. This might be a first world-wide. I’m guessing Finland won’t be the last country to declare broadband access a right. In an age where online participation in politics and access to government services is moving to the Internet, it only makes sense that we should all have access. Of course, how that is paid for is another question. How important is broadband access to you? To your country? What flavor of broadband access would you prefer? Wired, wireless, or cellular?

Applause For Finland: First Country To Make Broadband Access A Legal Right

Skill(s) + Community = Literacy July 18, 2009

Posted by Matthew Woolums in 21st-Century, Articles/Videos.
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I’ve always admired Howard Rheingold as an original thinker. As the education community continues to converse on the subject of literacy, or new literacies, Howard makes a case for defining 21st Century Literacies by placing skills within the context of communities. The July 2009 presentation is worth the 40 minute investment of your time.

http://blip.tv/file/2373937/

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

Posted by Matthew Woolums in 21st-Century, Articles/Videos, Opinion.
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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

Posted by Matthew Woolums in 21st-Century, Conference Sessions, Opinion.
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http://tieconference.wikispaces.com/3311

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

Rants and Raves

Examples

Who do we answer to? We answer to the kids. The only reason we have a job is to meet their needs.
We are the system. Pushbacks. Yeah-buts. In the end, we are the system that needs to be fixed.

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 – Create, Communicate, Collaborate – Howie DiBlasi June 25, 2009

Posted by Matthew Woolums in 21st-Century, Conference Sessions, Link Collections, Safety, Tools.
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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:

These skills are all analytical. Video: “We are sinking”. Overview of outline in distributed documents. Interesting, Howie is talking about using Google Docs, but distributed files as an outline. We used a blog as a form of assessment – collecting comments as an assessment. http://mytooltest.blogspot.com/2009/06/how-do-you-assess-you-students-teachers.html
Web site evaluations - http://www.wiredsafety.org/wiredlearning/Evaluation/evalcriteria/index.htm#slide=1 It is important to foster critical thinking on the part of the web surfers in our classroom.
Web 2.0 100 tools for teachers – http://snurl.com/web2tools (slow loading). AltaVista use of host: (limit the results by domain) and link: (who links to that link) as tools to validate web sites.
Short demo of Jing – screencasting. Scratch – simple programming environment. Audacity – podcasting (This I believe example). What are my beliefs?
  • Everyone is not the same
  • Conflict isn’t always negative
  • Learning is individual to each person
  • Naps are important
  • We all deserve the opportunity to share our stories
  • Failure is a powerful teacher
Don’t be afraid of the technology, give it to the kids.
Podcasting in Plain English. Leads into a curriculum review with Bob Sprankle podcasts as an example. http://www.eduhound.com and http://www.curriki.org. Freeplay Music and others for sources of music to include in presentations. Curriculum links exploration. Google Docs presentation adding examples of ’six words that describe me’. My six words? “relax, reflect, don’t let other restrict you”. Other tools shown: Wordle, VoiceThread. Howie has an interesting style where he brings up a ‘newbie’ to demo the tool and the ‘experts’ in the audience provide support in using the tool. VoiceThread only lets you have 3 free threads. Brain is getting full.
Online tools, 280 Slides, PhotoShow, One True Media, Moblyng, Animoto, Rock You, My Jugaad, PhotoPeach. Look for the Educator (sometimes free) options in many of these tools! ePals. We would have to find a way for ePals and Gaggle.net to work with each other. Anyone using both? Contributions to your community. Johnny Lee, Wiimote interactive whiteboard, video from TED Conference. Ask high school electronics classes to make these for every classroom. Contribute back.
Stay connected (communicate) with Twitter (Texas teacher Twitter Experiment). Creates a back-channel. Increases number of participants in any conversation.
Dreaming. Building planes in the Air video from EDS.
Reflection: There was a lot to digest if you didn’t know about any of this. It would be nice to see the document posted in an online version instead of distributed as a file. Where would teachers start? Is there one best practice to implement?

TIE 2009 – iPodTouch – Dan McCormack June 24, 2009

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

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

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

Daniel Pink
  • Design – moving beyond function to create something beautiful, whimsical, or to engage our emotions
  • Story – narrative added to products and services – not just argument
  • Symphony – adding invention and big picture thinking (not just the detail focus)
  • Empathy – going beyond logic and engaging emotion and intuition
  • Play – bringing humor and light-heartedness to business and products
  • Meaning – immaterial feelings and values of products
What can we do?
  • Make our work transparent
  • Creativity is what we want our students to do
  • Audience is important – students can and should self-evaluate
  • Connect the lesson to something personal
  • Break out of text books and work patterns
  • Learn with your students
  • Use real tools
What are our stories? Mine is linked here: http://villagegreen.edublogs.org/beliefs/
Trends
  • Students don’t have to go to school to get an education – MIT open courseware, University of the People, insight schools
  • Average life expectancy from under 50 in 1900 to over 76 in 2000 – more time to learn new things, work in more areas – fewer younger people in the workforce supporting retirement group
  • Migration trends – toward south and west, including Colorado
  • Generational changes – millennials: teamwork, technology, structure, experienctial, entertainment – these are children of Gen X parents: pragmatic, few alliegences
  • Economy – most of our money is spent from age 35 to 55 – greater concentration of population in urban areas
  • Globalization – they have more top students than we have students, ‘did you know’
  • Digital World – Moore’s law
  • Education – movement toward charters, homeschool
Outcomes – do we optimize the system, or re-invent? Do you move toward standards, or differentiated outcomes? Cross these two and have four areas, optimized-differentiated, optimized-standardized, reinvented-standardized, and reinvented-differentiated.
What are my critical uncertainties?
  • Too many directives working at cross-purposes
  • Not enough self-control over my individual or department work
Next activity asked us to pick our areas of uncertainty, and cross them, and see what each of those quadrant areas would be like. I’m not connecting well to this activity. First off, I’d need to know the end points, some information about these end points, and some actual tool to work with that goes beyond a sketch on paper. Are these quadrant scenarios exclusive or even credible?
Reflection: I’m feeling a bit like a magic eight ball. The questions change and the answer stays the same: outlook cloudy, future uncertain.