One item bothers me a bit. The final Edublog Award Category is for “Lifetime Achievement”. Don’t get me wrong, those nominated are all certainly deserving of recognition for their contributions to the read/write/web/literacy discussion, and I look forward to many more years of their participation and direction. What bothers me is that lifetime awards are usually conferred to those toward the end of their careers. I certainly hope that is not the case for this distinguished group of educators.

Now get out there and vote!

The Edublog Awards

• Best individual blog
• Best individual tweeter
• Best group blog
• Best new blog
• Best class blog
• Best student blog
• Best resource sharing blog
• Most influential blog post
• Most influential tweet / series of tweets / tweet based discussion
• Best teacher blog
• Best librarian / library blog
• Best educational tech support blog
• Best elearning / corporate education blog
• Best educational use of audio
• Best educational use of video / visual
• Best educational wiki
• Best educational use of a social networking service
• Best educational use of a virtual world
• Lifetime achievement

Great categories to be sure, but I think we need to include a few more:

• Most laughter from a site that you can share at work
• New online tool you shared with others the most
• RSS feed you added this year that you think everyone should follow
• Best new open source solution
• Best new technology that you can put in the hands of your students

I’m sure there are other categories to consider as well. What would you include in your ‘end-of-year-awards’?

How an amateur historian rescued D.C.’s Wikipedia page – washingtonpost.com

Wikipedia

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

http://ebooktest.blogspot.com/2009/07/part-of-ebook-vision.html

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.

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.

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

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.

First on the list, a new student. Second day of testing, and a new student is brought in, with the expectation that he will take the test. What a way to start out at a new school. It sort of made me wonder if his parents did that on purpose, but I can’t figure out any reason why.

Second item was the teacher’s phone. It rang as we started the test. Talk about timing. I can’t wait to see what happens tomorrow.

On a related note, the students were genuinely glad to see me even though I was responsible for inflicting such an ordeal on them the day before. Students seem to respond well to having someone new actually spend time with them, even if it is while doing something less than optimal. This was reinforced at another school where I have videotaped teachers for their National Board Certification process. Today, one of the students actually thanked me for the time I gave the class, even though my total interaction amounted to little more than standing behind a camera at the back of the room for about 15 minutes.

Not so cool was the next morning proctoring our high-stakes state mandated test. First off, the teacher was absent, so instead of assisting, I ended up administering the test myself. I have to say this was probably the most discouraging experience I’ve had in a classroom, maybe ever.

Sixty minutes for a group of low academic students to plan and draft a written composition from a  one sentence prompt. For this test, there is no opportunity to teach, help, or deviate in any way from the script. These students started out well, with different approaches to planning out what they wanted to write, then moving on to writing a draft.

All went well for about 15 or 20 minutes when students started saying they were done. Pretty soon they were all done. And they really were. They basically gave up after 30 minutes. Instead of going back and reviewing what they wrote, striving to do something better or more creative, they all stopped. They spent another 30 minutes dying for the clock to run faster. And there really wasn’t anything I could do to help them. Any intervention would potentially invalidate the test.

I came away from the experience angry, angry that the students don’t see themselves as having any reason to try, angry that high-stakes tests do nothing to inform teaching, and angry that I can’t make any difference about the whole thing. I’ve never been a big fan of standardized testing. It does nothing to foster a better learning environment. Today’s experience only reinforced that assumption.