K12 Online Conference – The conference that never ends …

2009 K-12 Online Conference Overview

The K-12 Online Conference invites participation from educators around the world interested in innovative ways Web 2.0 tools and technologies can be used to improve learning. This FREE conference is run by volunteers and open to everyone. The 2009 conference theme is “Bridging the Divide.” This year’s conference begins with a pre-conference keynote by classroom teacher and international educator Kim Cofino the week of November 30, 2009. The following two weeks, December 7-11 and December 14-17, over fifty presentations will be posted online to our conference blog and our conference Ning for participants to view, download, and discuss. Live Events in the form of three “Fireside Chats” are scheduled on our conference events page, and live events will continue in 2010 through twice-monthly “K-12 Online Echo” webcasts on EdTechTalk. Everyone is encouraged to participate in both live events during and after the conference as well as asynchronous conversations.  Over 120 presentations from 2008, 2007, and 2006 are available, along with archived live events!

Infinite Thinking Machine – Education in the Digital Age: A Tour of FRONTLINE’s Digital Nation

Date: Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Time: 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern / 12am GMT (next day) (international times here)
Location: In Elluminate.http://tinyurl.com/pbscr20 If you haven’t used Elluminate before, you can make sure your computer is configured correctly to enter the room by going tohttp://www.elluminate.com/support.

PBS Teachers and Classroom 2.0 are hosting a free webinar for educators on Tuesday, December 8th at 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern with Producer/Director Rachel Dretzin from FRONTLINE’s “Digital Nation” project. Rachel will share her insights and findings from the year-long, multi-platform project exploring the impact of the Web and digital media on life in the 21st century.

The Digital Nation Web site will include online video reports on how the Internet and technology are changing cultures, reshaping workplaces and creating new approaches to the way we solve problems. Issues to be examined include the Web’s impact on education, how social media has changed the way individuals interact, and Internet safety and privacy. Central to the site will be a mosaic of user-generated content designed to let visitors participate in the documentary process. The site also will feature a producers’ blog, embeddable video and other sharable content, and a schedule of live online events with expert guests.

Moby

I attended a session from Steve Hargadon from Elluminate He reviewed some of the trends in technology and their impacts on education. Some of his conclusions include:

• Must use Linux to afford the OS for ubiquitous computing.
• Must start using collaborative tools including open source software.
• Must provide real world authentic audience environments for students.

Steve Hargadon

I also attended a session from David Thornburg who brought his depth of historical perspective to provide us with the insight that we need to be preparing for the transition from smart devices to smart networks. We’ll need a lot more bandwidth if we want to provide our students with the sort of access and tools they will need, not necessarily an expensive laptop and individual computing power. The computing power will come from the network.

David Thornburg

One of the reasons for the cost effectiveness is that mimio does not rely on providing a board. There is a bar that attaches to any existing white board, so no need to remove an existing board, or retrofit a complicated room. The capture bar can be attached with simple picture hanging tape strips, so there isn’t any cost for installation either.

The training I received makes me excited to bring what I’ve learned back to the teachers in my district. And now that I’m certified, I can!

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.

• 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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.