25 students and their parents attend the first of three ninth grade laptop orientations. We take advantage of this opportunity to provide training and advice to our students. We balance a broad overview of laptop use in courses with specific technical tips and advice on appropriate use. It's an exciting time for the kids, many of whom are receiving their own, individual laptop computer for the first time.

Presentation Slides

Training Notes

I made a full week of the Building Learning Communities conference this year. I started with EduBloggerCon East, an informal gathering of local educators and technologists to discuss tech issues on our mind. I spent Tuesday at The Met, the "unschool," in which students learn through internships and independent study. The formal conference ran from Wednesday through Friday and included one keynote and several breakout sessions per day.

EduBloggerCon was a success. I am a big fan of participant-led events, which bring a level of authenticity and spontaneity often lacking from more carefully planned professional development. I took the group through a workshop to explicitly connect technology-rich activities with underpinning learning theories. I participated in a discussion of extending special education technologies to the entire school and a review of people's favorite new tools (mine was NanoGong). I was disappointed by what I saw as overemphasis on tools and relatively weak discussion of pedagogy. Does this mean that educational technologists need to develop stronger dialogue around pedagogy? Yes. Can I better structure my workshops on this topic? Definitely. It may be time for me to narrow the discussion to constructivist teaching with technology rather than trying to cast a wide net over a number of pedagogical constructs.

I had a tremendous time at The Met. I had heard and read about their model for internship-based education -- a school without classes or courses! However, this was my first direct experience speaking with teachers and students about the model and reviewing their planning and explanatory materials. Running for over a decade now, The Met staff has continued to deepen its understanding of what works and enrich the details of their program. I kept a series of notes on the a-ha moments of the day and hope to refer to them often in the future.

I am pleased that the Big Picture Company now boasts a network of 50 schools nationwide (and a few abroad) that have adopted their principles and model and participate in their network for professional development and planning materials. Given all of the talk about authentic learning environments, student interest in learning, and 21st century skills, this seems like one obvious direction to explore when considering new models for effective education. One of their schools is located in my backyard. I hope to pay a visit to expand my local professional network in Portland and see how the Big Picture model translates to one of their newer schools.

To tell you the truth, the first two BLC keynote addresses were disappointing. Ewan McIntosh and John Davitt focused too much on currently existing technology applications and their effects on social dynamics and power. The dominant educational technology discourse has been enamored with these possibilities for a few years now. We are ready for a more detailed exploration of the intersection of new technologies with specific pedagogical strategies. Give us lots of specific examples from schools -- by now, they should exist, right? Explore both successes and failures. Teachers and school technologists have already bought into the vision. Now give us the tools and wisdom to implement well.

The third keynote exemplified a great address to 1,000 people. Ironically, Pedro Noguera did not talk at all about technology! His classic talk on the case and problem of school reform resonated well with much of the audience both at the conceptual and practical levels. Full of detailed examples and specific cases, Noguera interwove the conceptual and moral imperative for school change with many different views of each concept, data from research studies, and individual schools implementing specific strategies, to great success.

Interestingly, McIntosh scored a hit with me during his breakout session titled "We're Adopting: One Year On." I had read about his introduction of a large professional learning environment in East Lothian last year and was excited to get an update on the progress of the network one year along. Not only did McIntosh deliver the promised update, but he also revisited some of the concepts from the keynote in much more detail and to far greater effect. I found the second presentation much more compelling and useful than the first. Most effective was his step-by-step analysis of a FlashMob performance at New York's Central Station. The idea was creative and original, but it was also planned to a very fine level of detail, and many individuals departed from the script in ways that made the experience even more high-quality.

Ewan also delivered several nuggets to remember as we facilitate school change. Emerging technologies have impact because many people share awareness of the tool at the same time. Small, passionate groups make things happen. And I remember one of Ewan's nuggets from last year: forget the pilot. Come up with a great idea and launch it well. This year, that idea surfaced with the selection of a unique, memorable name for the initiative. In East Lothian's case, it was "EduBuzz." Let evangelists evangelize, but then turn them into trainers. People need training, not evangelism (I could stand to remember this sometimes.) Support bottom-up and emergent behaviors through informal structures -- meetups, gatherings at bars. Don't think. Try.

'Students teaching students' was a recurrent theme. Over and over again, speakers highlighted the value of exposing students to content, providing time for analysis and reflection, and then having students present content back to the group. Darren Kuropatwa described his everyday practice of students creating Smart Board presentations and then posting them to the class blog, demonstrating their mastery of topics in mathematics and building the 'textbook' for the course. Darren also makes great use of imagery and metaphor to get students excited and build real-world relevance. Note that this is a far cry from the applied education of The Met, but it has a far better chance of reaching all learners than direct instruction. Watch video of Darren's presentation.

Bob Sprankle enlighted us with his use of blogging and podcasting over the years. Again, the dominant message was the high educational value of students producing content, demonstrating their understanding, sharing their knowledge with family members, and even receiving comments from people around the world. I have not yet had the opportunity to gain public visibility and interaction around student work, but we come closer every year. I would probably get a lot more Sprankle in my life if I listened to his podcasts, but I prefer to read.

Clarence Fisher delivered a presentation on international collaboration as the norm, essentially the story of his classroom. Given Clarence's recent reminder to U.S. edubloggers to refocus on teaching and learning, I knew I would enjoy this session. Clarence opened the door to teachers everywhere to navigate blogs around the world and get their students more globally connected. He also made direct links to the pedagogical usefulness of such an approach -- authentic audience, writing the "textbook", and seeking experts outside of one's organization. Clarence's nuggets: design a logo for your classroom, subscribe to Global Voices Online to find the latest international content (he found AfriGadget this way. The most important job as a teacher is to hook up individual students with information tailored to their interests and learning goals. Clarence built his global network by Googling for "grade 8 teacher," finding teachers with blogs around the world, and then sending dozens of emails seeking collaboration. Clarence does not allow his students to link from their school blog to their personal Facebook pages and such. Clarence's sites: Thin Walls (collaboration with Los Angeles school) and Studying Societies (class wiki).

The New Technology Foundation promotes many of the same ideas through its national network of "new tech" schools. Starting with New Tech High at Sir Francis Drake in Napa, Bob Pearlman described their emphases on group work, collaboration, and generative work. Again, many of the same ideas, facilitated with technology, starting to form a blueprint for a vision of school reform. They also have a school in Portland.

I learned of several online professional development/school management environments. Check out EduBuzz from Scotland, where 1500 school administrators and teachers reflect online about their practice; PeBL, the online portfolio and learning application from the New Technology Foundation; and Big Picture Online, the online sharing/working/school leadership portal for the Met schools.

For a change, I attended a session that was more about content than pedagogy. The National Archives promotes learning through the critical examination of source documents. The presenter brought several examples, including a military register showing John Glenn and Ted Williams serving in the same unit and a letter that 12 year-old Fidel Castro wrote to President Roosevelt introducing himself and asking for a $10 bill! If you search their Archival Research Catalog (ARC), be sure to click the full Search button and then click the Digital Copies tab in order to most directly access the source documents themselves instead of just the descriptions! My only complaint about this session was that the presenter focused exclusively on analysis of the source documents. Any real lesson would combine this with other pedagogical techniques. My curiosity was piqued by the military document, I Googled for Ted Williams' military service and found a wonderful summary that enlightened me about several other fascinating aspects of his military experience that one could not infer from the primary source material. Heck, a colleague at Catlin Gabel informs me that every time he wants to view a speech from any possible historical figure, he finds it on YouTube.

I even presented my own session at this conference, titled "A Window Into Gaza." I was delighted to present to a full room and elicit three individuals particularly interested in either starting a club at their school or helping put the program in touch with more possible funding sources. See my presentation handout and blog posts right after the event for more information or to get involved.

I can highly recommend this conference for educational technologists focused on teaching and learning. As I hope I have demonstrated above, all of the presenters I saw had a strong grasp of the connections between pedagogy and technology and could provide both wisdom and examples with their presentations. The conference design was superb. Following on the heels of NECC, the contrast is clear. Building Learning Communities keeps the scope of corporate sponsors, vendors, and salespeople to an appropriate place. The vendor "floor" was tiny, and company representatives were genuinely helpful and interested in teachers' questions and issues. For me, it was easy to steer clear of the vendors and not feel accosted. EduBloggerCon retained the grassroots feel and spontaneous organization that so dramatically failed at NECC. I was able to attend (even sit) at every session I entered, and they even served a sit-down lunch two of the three days! Kudos to the November Learning team for superb organization. I only suggest that they get the proposal submission process and logistics submissions online next year. I was surprised at the number of times I was asked to respond to a question by email instead of an online form. That could not have been easy to collect and organize! I also appreciated ubiquitous wireless access but found it variable in quality. I know it's very difficult to accomodate the hundreds of laptops that participants brought to the session, but it was a bit hard to lose connectivity periodically, once while presenting! Next year, the conference will be at the Park Plaza hotel in downtown Boston instead of suburban Newton, so pencil in July 27-31 right now!



tags: blc08, learning, professionaldevelopment, techintegration

Here is the handout from today's presentation. Thank you to all who attended!

A Window Into Gaza

tags: blc08, globaled

I just finished facilitating a session that aimed to make explicit connections between technology activities and specific pedagogical theories of learning. It went okay -- we struggled a bit with the challenge of speaking about pedagogy in sufficiently specific terms, in the context of technology activities. Two or three people invoked multiple pedagogical constructs for a single technology example. While this might authentically reflect the real complexity of actual classroom work, I also feel that we would benefit from at least narrowing the conversation to one pedagogical construct at a time in order to truly understand the reason for its effectiveness.


Participants expressed interest by posting stickies under the session description.

Here are our notes from today's session:

Pedagogical Constructs
- Behaviorism: rewards, grades, stars, stickers, reinforcements
- Cognitivism: intellectual complexity, Socratic method, programming, debating
- Constructivism: building meaning based on experience, building knowledge base, socially, based, Montessori, project-based learning, not one authority
- Connectivism: working in a highly connected environment, using your network, blogging, lurking on backchannel (sidebar convos, perhaps) chat
- Engagement, joyful participation
- Differentiated Instruction
- Inquiry model, studio
- Understanding by Design
- Universal Design for Learning: multiple representations

Examples

Internet Safety -- 5th and 6th graders
- Lecture, poster or comic about one safety rule
- Build a web page and publish it, demonstrating that they can follow the rule
- Connectivism, Understanding By Design: project is available for any student to be successful with, every student completes the task; more than constructivist, because of group work, connected to all teachers, working with and supporting each other

Art/music collaboration: history of silent films, background in nonverbal communication, drama, what it takes to create a movie
- students created storyboard, ideas for how they would create a silent movie
- how can we make this more open to different kinds of students? break students into groups? not so product driven?

Podcast project with ninth grade
- vignettes, write about an experience in their lives, added music and sound effects
- extraordinary podcasts in terms of writing and expression, correcting themselves as they were speaking it aloud
- one kid in particular related his experience with parents getting divorced
- very personal, not shared outside of the class
- differentiated -- being able to express themselves in a different way
- kids who had decided they were not good writers
- read vignettes written by other people

Digital Storytelling -- fifth grade
- kids had a personal narrative, Macs, iMovie, Garageband
- music, sounds effects, parents made up the audience
- blogged and podcasted so that relatives far away and teachers could also enjoy it
- behaviorism: rewarded for their work
- constructivism, engagement, personal narrative
- can add to story by including random elements, discussing how that impacts the story
- using photos may not be easier, especially if gathering other peoples' images
- visual literacy: how are images interpreted? How do you tell a story well with images?

Google Tools: teachers investigating tools themselves and thinking about how they could use them in their classrooms, present the tool to the rest of the class
- larger group response and feedback to the tool
- greater opportunity for creativity -- more ideas about how tools could be used

VoiceThread: bridging podcasts and vodcasts
- focus on the up-front preparation before you get to the technical tool
- could also have value to throw kids directly into the tool to explore it (e.g., Scratch)
- teachers didn't think that one would be allowed to submit a research paper as a VoiceThread
- when is the purpose of the lesson exploration? (especially when it is something new). No matter how teacher-directed an activity is, learners find the opportunity to explore.
- exploration is highly constructivist -- building your own representation of the tool based on your toying around with it
- power of exploration when there is a direction to it: e.g., "build a house" "build a bicycle". Need to have some kind of goal, allow the time to explore, fewer projects, more time per project.
- Able to accept as research once you set the bar high for product expectations

Simple repetition: elementary school students record own stories and then, on their own, decide to re-record over and over in order to improve them.



tags: ebce08, blc08, techintegration, pedagogy

Thankfully, edubloggers are writing about the lack of classroom representation in the most widely read online conversations about educational technologies. Brian Cosby and Clarence Fisher bemoan the lack of teachers at NECC and classroom examples in NECC presentations. He draws attention to the Educational Technology Professional Development Manifesto, which urges presenters at ed-tech conferences to get specific and provide enough detail that others may implement one's ideas in their schools.

Nancy Bosch suggests that including classroom examples in ed-tech presentations may not be sufficient. Bosch writes:

I spent ten years presenting (as a full time teacher) around my state and district. I also presented for 5 years at NECC and IMHO I was very good at it, bringing hundreds of examples and projects from the classroom to share with the participants. I then suffered from tech overload and frustration because, no matter how much they “oh-ed” and “ah-ed” at workshops, I saw little technology integration in the classrooms throughout my large district.

At the same time, Chris Lehmann feels that edubloggers need to start an organization in order to effect educational change, Will Richardson wonders how to broaden the impact of powerful learning with technology that he and others have witnessed.

On the positive side, Gardner Campbell acknowledges that critical mass grows slowly but offers one institution's history as a light at the end of the tunnel. Campbell writes:

I was struck by the commonalities with my own experience, as well as with the stories I’ve heard from similar groups: early adopters, early resistance, the slow growth of a critical mass, the difficulties with communication and cooperation and resource allocation that come with all large organizations, the successes, the professional networks, the immense satisfactions.

This leaves me to wonder: what will it take for teachers to more widely teach effectively with technology? I don't have a single answer, but I think I can see one important missing piece. Edubloggers and teachers are not involved in enough discussions together that address teaching and learning with technology in ways that serve both populations. I have participated in so many discussions with teachers in which we spend a lot of time just to move beyond the idea that teaching with technology means trying a new tool in the classroom. It takes a substantial effort to move the discussion back to the teaching and learning objectives for a unit of study and to bring pedagogy to the forefront. If we really believe that technology is a tool, then the discussion must center about pedagogy. Changing the tool is most the most effective way to improve curriculum, but it does directly change how students interact with curriculum. Pedagogy addresses the creation of learning environments in which students interact with curriculum. Technology tools make it possible to differently implement time-honored pedagogical strategies (group discussion, for instance) and sometimes make possible new pedagogical frameworks (e.g., connectivist environments).

As I enter a new academic year, I hope to collect and present more examples of effective technology integration in the curriculum at my school. Some of it lives within the curriculum integration category of this blog, but if you want to go further back in time, you have to select an archive first and then select the category again -- not the best way to navigate this content repository. I would like to draw particular attention to technology uses that are particularly effective at supporting progressive, constructivist pedagogies at our school. For example, our lower (elementary) school Spanish teacher has students creating and revising their own presentations by sitting alone in front of an iMac with video camera. In the middle school, English students write a song about post-Civil War Reconstruction, share it with their classmates to hear, transcribe the lyrics, and then have a discussion about it, all online. In the upper (high) school, a history teacher plans a new Election class for the fall, hoping that students will create their own theories about the roles of new media in this election, using new media tools to investigate the question. The best example from my past is the ChemSense project, in which students create simple, 2D representations of chemical processes and structures and discuss them in an online space. In each case, students construct their own knowledge, and the technology tool makes the process easier and more powerful.

I am convinced that theorists and teachers having more conversations about effective technology support for specific pedagogies can only lead to greater adoption in the classroom.

Our lack of a common vocabulary for new, technology-infused pedagogies works against us. Other new educational ideas, such as small schools and learning differences, have developed this common vocabulary and more quickly make sense to more teachers. In educational technologies, the only common understanding is a false one: that educational technologists simply want teachers to use more technology in their classes, and that this alone will lead to better teaching and learning. Unintentional, unplanned technology integration that uses loads of resources is counterproductive.

The lack of common vocabulary hurts us in another way -- Google searches. A teacher using Google to search for technology in the classroom will easily find 'blog,' 'podcast,' or 'Web 2.0.' She won't just stumble across a discussion about 'constructivist uses of technology,' for example. Our good writing about effective technology integration gets lost in the vast pool of ed-tech buzzwords that exist out there. Teachers find plenty of support for the misconception that technology integration is just about the gadgets.

We need more cross-pollination between educational technology and teacher conferences, but we also need new, more clever strategies to make this happen. This year, I succeeded in encouraging our middle school world cultures teacher to submit a proposal to the K12 Online Conference. Now, I hope that the selection committee will accept his proposal, and both ed-tech theorists and classroom practitioners can benefit from viewing his ideas applied to the classroom.

I plan to start a small, professional learning community at my school this year to more frequently engage in regular discussion of the pedagogical applications of computer technologies in the classroom. I hope we will meet both in person and online, and that enough teachers will be sufficiently interested in the concept to give it momentum. In this way, I hope to reclaim the dominant conversation about educational technologies.

I also need to build my own personal collection of web sites that present examples from the classroom in a way that clearly explains the pedagogy underlying the technology. Nancy Bosch has done so. The Apple Learning Interchange, notwithstanding the corporate organization, seems to churn out podcasts and videos on this topic every day. Subscribe to their RSS feed. (I wish they provided more of this content as text.)

Some of us eagerly anticipate the start of Building Learning Communities this week. Others have already begun their work at the Lausanne Laptop Institute. I hope that the recent surge of interest in teachers and classrooms in widely read educational technology discussions continues and becomes permanent. We have completely addressed the broad justifications for this movement. Now, it's time to get specific and applied.


tags: edtech, techintegration, blc08, ebce08, laptopinstitute08

A post from D'Arcy resonated with an effort I am thinking of starting next year to promote the sharing of classroom technology activities among teachers from different grade levels. D'Arcy links to the Viral Professional Development project, where Jennifer Jones writes:

The primary goal of VPD is to grow a culture of sharing, where instructors learn from each other and spread the knowledge throughout the organization.

This is exactly what I have in mind. While our school is tiny compared to a university, teachers nonetheless work primarily within their own division (elementary, middle, high school). Yet, we have teachers at all different grade levels investigating technology in a similar manner. What potential exists for the use of multiple media, small handheld recorders, and social web tools. We even have one who has carried his technological toolset from the high school to the elementary.

Teachers do not have a lot of common time to spend talking face-to-face, especially across school divisions. They have a lot more opportunity to interact online, to complement and enhance occasional in-person meetings. As I learned from Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, I need to find a half dozen or so who will form a committed core group to keep the momentum going. Ewan McIntosh stresses the importance of getting the technological part right the first time.

I'll give this a try in the late summer and early fall. Building Learning Communities ought to build my enthusiasm to put some effort into this.

Postscript: July 6, 2008

A recent presentation by Konrad Glogowski well articulates the online portion of this.



tags: professionaldevelopment, learning, community

A high school teacher is seeking international partners for an election class he will teach next fall. Do you know of anyone who is thinking along the same lines, especially in Central or South America (fewer time zone issues)? Do you have other good election sites with an international focus to add to the following list?

When History Happens

Taking IT Global

Global Education Collaborative Ning

ALA Election Web Sites

Skewz: All Sides of the Story

Voices Without Votes

tags: election, globaled

I am considering activities to run with our faculty at tomorrow's end-of-year meeting. Do you have any thoughts about which might be particularly effective? What other ideas do you have?

1. Tech Showcase: A few teachers each highlight a successful, technology-rich activity and explore the connection between the medium and teaching/learning. This could help promote sharing of ideas among departments.

2. Top 10 Disruptive Technologies: We may lead off with the article, to provide context to breakout groups and frame one aspect of the challenge facing us.

3. Theories of Learning: Behaviorist, Cognitivist, Constructivist, Connectivist. Framing T&L within these four theories may help teachers design new activities that incorporate technologies. I can provide an example of each one, rooted in subject-specific curricula. Some points of emphasis: teachers typically incorporate multiple theories of learning to provide curriculum to students. Over the years, educational theorists emphasized each of these theories at one time or another. Increasingly, student learn through their networks: a high degree of connectedness to resources and peers characterizes their learning landscape (provide examples). Schools that do not take acknowledge and take advantage of this may appear “artificial” or “irrelevant” to students. Teachers may design new, technology-rich learning activities by: 1) identifying a curricular objective that they would like to teach better next year; 2) choosing the learning theor(ies) that would best support this learning objective; 3) designing a classroom activity or project that would help create this learning environment; 4) Taking advantage of new literacies in our students: personal learning networks, visual information. This presentation could preface departmental discussions.

4. Tech survey results. We have at our disposal an upper school parent laptop survey, upper school student laptop survey, and eighth grade student technology survey (blog articles coming soon). Our middle school head has particularly recommended that the upper school teachers should take a look at the responses of their incoming students for next year.

tags: techintegration, connectivism, disruptive, technologies

The PNAIS TechShare planning committee would like each member school to articulate its technology philosophy and future plans. They hope that answering these questions will inform the technology planning efforts of other member schools. The committee asked us to think about where we are now and where we are headed. I responded to their questions as follows:

1. Describe your school's technology philosophy.

Catlin Gabel technology resources support the educational mission of the school. We aspire to a high standard of excellence, delivering systems that work reliably and with high quality. We anticipate and plan for new opportunities and empower users to investigate new applications of technology, solve computer problems, and collaborate with IT staff. We carry out our work with a support orientation and high integrity. We make decisions in order to minimize the environmental impact of computer use.

2. What is your vison for classroom technology five years from now?

To continue to deepen its application to teaching and learning in a variety of forms. All teachers will list their curricular and pedagogical goals for their classes, consider how technology could help meet these goals, and regularly attempt new, technology-enriched activities. The forms will cover the range of available technologies, such as touch surfaces, the social web, data-collection devices, audio and video publishing, and so on. Teachers will feel fully supported by IT and empowered to design and attempt new, technology-rich activities in their classes. Teachers will participate in an active community of practice with their colleagues both within the school and beyond.

3. Do you have teachers willing to adapt curriculum to utilize technology innovations,or asking for technology so that they can?

Yes, though I would use language such as “employ technology to support curricular goals in their courses.” I would say that a large minority of teachers change curricula as they employ technology in their classes. We will know better after the completion of an upper school laptop program survey next week.

4. Explain how you support teacher innovators.

We consider all teachers to be potential innovators and therefore approach them about the same. We respond quickly and definitively to teacher requests for advice and support, including appearing in their classes to assist a teacher with technology-rich lessons if desired. We encourage all teachers to thoughtfully consider how technology could support teaching and learning in their classes. Often, innovation comes from surprising sources — not necessarily the most technically advanced individuals. We encourage all teachers to share their work with technology with their colleagues in both formal and informal settings. We encourage all teachers to actively seek professional development opportunities here and outside the school.

5. Describe your technology professional development plan for all employees.

The school offers three sources of funding for professional development: individual, department/division, and schoolwide. Individuals have an allotment of funds to spend where they prefer. Divisions and departments have funds to undertake professional development efforts for some or all of their members. Schoolwide initiatives such as All Kinds of Minds are also available. The school does not have a separate plan for technology professional development nor specific requirements for how much technology PD individuals should undertake.

6. Define the infrastructure (wiring, traffic capacities, switches, severs, wirless) changes you will need to make to support the five-year vision you described above.

We feel that we already have in place the baseline infrastructure to support this vision. We will continue to make incremental changes, such as introducing a wireless controller to enable better management of our wireless network, piloting small form-factor laptops such as the eeePC and 2Go to assess their potential for the classroom, and investigating social web site tools for our intranet and public-facing web sites.

7. What changes in human resources will you need to make to support that vision?

We are meeting our needs for the immediate future. We will continue to assess the workloads of our employees and request increases as appropriate.

tags: technology, curriculum, integration

Isn't this more consistent with the pursuit of learning? Thanks, Stephen. danah will be pleased.

In a move that will disseminate faculty research and scholarship as broadly as possible, the Harvard Law School faculty unanimously voted last week to make each faculty member’s scholarly articles available online for free, making HLS the first law school to commit to a mandatory open access policy.

Under the new policy, HLS will make articles authored by faculty members available in an online repository, whose contents would be searchable and available to other services such as Google Scholar. Authors can also legally distribute the articles on their own websites, and educators here and elsewhere can freely provide the articles to students, so long as the materials are not used for profit.

source: Harvard Law School

If more schools of higher education do this, then we may have some hope of bridging the research-practice divide. Practitioners do not have the funds or the time to subscribe to expensive academic journals and the proprietary databases required to search them. Most researchers spend precious little time alongside schoolteachers, and when they do, it's primarily to collect information, not share wisdom. What if teachers could Google for research studies that inform their practice? What if teachers set a standard for themselves to ground their pedagogical strategies in research? Yum.



tags: openaccess, research, highered

Many thanks to SEGATech for their review of 3D Cell Explorer. They write:

If you’re teaching anything about cellular functions or know of students who are trying to gain a better understanding of the subject, speed on over to Richard’s site. The 3D Cell Explorer has instructional videos that explore topics such as:

* the cell membrane,
* mitochondrion,
* mitosis,
* meiosis and more.

This site provides a great means of demystifying the workings of living systems by helping students visualize what’s going on at the cellular level.

(source)

Also note that you can embed the movies on your own site, putting the power for teachers and students to make use of the videos in their own work.

SEGATech is a gem, recommending a steady stream of useful technology resources for education. One of the first blogs to land in my aggregator, they have stuck.


tags: 3dcellexplorer, cellbiology

This week, 25 students begin their "senior projects," volunteer internships around town in environmental, bike, journalism, and many other types of organizations. The senior projects coordinator asked me some weeks ago whether students should blog about their work. I replied, "of course!" First, I asked what the students used to do in past years and attempted to determine how well that would translate to blogging. Students had before completed weekly reflections and sent them to their advisors for comment. The coordinator wanted these reflections to be more visible within the school, so that other students could gain ideas for their work. Blogging seemed like an excellent fit.

I had been waiting for an opportunity like this. We run both Moodle and Drupal on our intranet, both within a "walled garden" -- restricted to our students, employees, and parents through authentication. Moodle is for discrete groups within campus (classes, clubs, committees), whereas Drupal is for community-wide content. This clearly fit the description of "community-wide," and Drupal automatically provides a blog to each user. It seemed ready to go.

I provided a how-to article to explain blogging to new users. I was pleased to include blog writing tips gleaned from a variety of sources.

• Write a distinctive subject line.
  
• Use a conversational tone.
  
• Keep paragraphs short.
  
• Vividly describe your experiences. Which of your experiences are most compelling?
  
• Link to organizations or articles you reference.
  
• Post images when you can. They really do say a thousands words.
  
• Invite your readers to comment.
  
• Determine a writing schedule and stick to it.

I found it a little tricky to explain to teachers how to directly find the blog of a specific student. Drupal's default search looks for content, not users (does anyone know how to modify this default behavior to include user names?). Thinking that most people would miss the Users tab in the search results, I created a new menu item that links directly to user search. I didn't want to use the node profile module, which would take on a lot of overhead and unwanted features just to make users searchable. At our school, students don't need to modify their profiles much -- they don't rely on the intranet to describe themselves around school!

Nearly all teachers prefer to find out about new student blog posts by email notification. We use the subscriptions module to add "subscribe blog" and "subscribe post" links to each post. This also permits the author of each post to automatically receive email notifications of comments to their content. This is essential in this environment, in which blogging is new and people are unlikely to check the web site frequently to notice new blog posts and comments.

If blogging takes off here, RSS subscription may increase in popularity. Given that our entire site is login protected, we require the HTTP auth module to use HTTP instead of web authentication for specific URL paths. This allows RSS readers and "podcatchers" such as iTunes to subscribe to login-protected Drupal feeds.

I didn't require students to tag their posts with particular keywords to separate them from other types of blog posts, mostly because no one else is really blogging at this time. I don't really see an easy way to do this, as requiring people to select from a list of tags would seem too strict. Does Drupal have a group blogging feature other than Organic Groups? It would be great if blog posts off a specific link automatically gained a particular tag.

A half-dozen students have posted in the first day. One challenge is completion -- the system does not have a strong disincentive for those who do not post regularly. After all, the students have volunteered to undertake a senior project in the first place. The writing itself has been pretty lively and interesting so far -- one student even included an image! I will watch closely for the development of each student's blogging voice and look for signs of impact from writing to the community in this fashion.

Reflective blogging occupies the middle space in the senior project, between proposal and final project. We may extend the online support for senior projects by collecting proposals and final projects online as well and linking all three content types together for others to review in the future.

Do let me know your lessons learned from similar student blogging or Drupal configuration experiences.


tags: blog, internship, pbl, drupal

Should document cameras be ubiquitous in the classroom? A colleague pointed me to the following article, to which I penned this response.

I take away three significant uses of document cameras:

• Magnification: in classes that work frequently with very small objects, a document camera may show more detail/be more convenient than simply passing the object around the class.
  
• Sharing student work: in classes that frequently share student handwritten/drawn work, a document camera may increase the convenience of making the work of an individual student visible to the entire group.
  
• Manual manipulation: you can project a piece of work as you draw on it.

Playing devil’s advocate, a document camera would provide little advantage in the following situations:

• The class shares objects of larger size (can be easily seen or too large to fit under the camera).
  
• Holding the object, not just seeing it, has high pedagogical value.
  
• Students complete work to share with small groups, the teacher, parents, or themselves, not the entire class at once.
  
• The teacher doesn’t spend much time teaching from the front of the class.
  
• The teacher prioritizes aural or text-based instruction over visual.
  
• The class is primarily organized around student-led projects.
  
• The depth of the object is important (3D vs. 2D).
  
• The classroom is physically organized around “activity centers.”

I guess I find document cameras a good fit for the teacher-directed or whole-group classroom, not for the project-based, small-group, or student-directed classroom. Your thoughts?



tags: elmo, visualpresenter, documentcamera

I spent a productive and exciting day at Marin Country Day School, attending one of the occasional meetings of the Bay Area Independent School Technology Network (BAISNet). The day focused on Web 2.0 in schools in two sessions, a morning group meeting and then several breakout groups. You'll find the meeting outline and notes at WikiSpaces.



Edward (Bay School, formerly of KQED) and Michael both focused on student and teacher use of wikis at their schools. Michael referred to wikis as "bulletin boards" within his school, a helpful use of an old metaphor to explain the function of a new technology. I regularly wrestle with the competing values of reducing our intranet to a small number of tools and providing the best tool for each purpose. Both WikiSpaces and MediaWiki do a better job of keeping the discussion forum close to the wiki than do either Moodle or Drupal.

Barbara focused on VoiceThread, which I was happy to see for the first time. MCDS elementary students posted photos and drawings of themselves and various subjects and then commented on them with audio. I like how Voicethread supports multiple source media, so that users may post content in the media they happen to have or best fits the subject matter. The Voicethread team also seem to have paid very close attention to adjacency in their user interface. They cluster the icons for submitted comments closely around the original post and display user tools just underneath.

Hoover, Joanne, and Tracy from Sacred Heart focused on their use of Moodle. SacredSF has over 200 Moodle courses, an impressive rate of participation in taking courses online using this platform. Hoover also demonstrated that they have teachers using Moodle at a high level -- one was making use of at least six different types of Moodle objects. Discussion forums at SacredSF also seem very active.

Barbara encouraged people to join the Independent School Educators Ning (ISENet) as a way to extend our network beyond the friendly confined of BAISNet to an international audience. It's quite possible that the launch of ISENet will answer my longstanding question of where are the independent school bloggers. Though still small in number, it is helpful to forge connections with the leading national figures in one place. I have great hopes for this social network, even while no relishing the need to judge whether to post a blog entry to my blog, the Ning, or both. Perhaps I will use it only when seeking feedback on specific questions.

I also hope that the new BAISNet Wikispace that Barbara started will really take off. It is well past time to build documentation and hold certain discussions in a wiki rather than all via email. It's time to end the practice of starting the annual email-based discussion on "topic x."

I was pleased to receive positive feedback to my use of connectivism to demystify the appeal of Web 2.0 tools to a small number of wildly enthusiastic educational technologists. Hoover questioned whether connectivism is just a different word for social constructivism, and I pointed him toward the idea that constructivism, even within a social context, finds the source of learning within the individual. Connectivism posits that learning takes place beyond the individual, within the network itself. The network learns, primarily by taking over the functions of information storage and retrieval from the individual.

I was also pleased that a dozen attended a roundtable discussion entitled "Take your web site to 2.0 with Drupal." In a complete shift from three years ago, we now have a critical mass of school technologists frustrated with the limitations of commercial school web site providers and seriously considering open-source alternatives.

BAISNet meetings happen serendipitously, usually when email discussion on a particular topic reaches a new high, or when someone realizes that the group has not held a meeting in many months. Flying down from Portland for the meeting was totally worth it, both for the specific knowledge I gained today, the feedback I received on my new ideas, and the reminder that the Bay Area has a truly valuable concentration of independent school technologists who understand how to share information for the good of the group. Kudos to Barbara for organizing this meeting and Hoover for shepherding this group for many years (and driving me from the city to the meeting and back!).


tags: edtech, techintegration, drupal, moodle, connectivism

Web 2.0 Adoption In Schools

Presentation given at BAISNet Web 2.0 meeting


Who Participates?

Poll: Who reads the NY Times online? Uses Blogger? Wikipedia? Facebook?

Slide: Five-year trends

Slide: Total known Moodle sites



Top 10 U.S. web sites

1. Google

2. Yahoo!

3. Myspace

4. YouTube

5. Facebook

6. Windows Live

7. EBay

8. Wikipedia

9. MSN

10. Craigslist




Slide: Who Participates



Introduction

Why does a small, wildly enthusiastic group embrace Web 2.0 for teaching and learning, yet the majority do not? A growing club of international edubloggers seek to redefine education using Web 2.0 tools. Students have quickly adopted Web 2.0 to meet their social needs. Yet, only a minority of teachers have embraced Web 2.0 to support teaching and learning in their classes. Almost none employ Web 2.0 in their own professional practice. Why is this so? There must be good reasons, right? Seeking to understand these apparent contradictions may help us better understand what Web 2.0 actually is and what long-term potential the tool has for education.



Connectivism (George Siemens, 2004) may help explain the difference between observing Web 2.0 tools from a distance and embracing them.

• A new theory of learning impacted through technology


• Knowledge continues to expand exponentially and at an ever-increasing rate


• Learning happens in a variety of means, some informal and some through personal learning networks -- what some have termed "School 2.0"


• Focus on the process of knowledge acquisition rather than knowledge itself.


• Challenges the notion that all learning takes place inside the individual



• Technology takes over the tasks of information storage and retrieval ("Hold on while I Google that.")


• Emphasizes skills of acquiring knowledge, making connections, seeing patterns, and making decisions.


• Leadership: highly-connected individuals who help facilitate knowledge flow within the organization.

Potentially Connective Technologies

• Learning environment, learning community


• Blog, wiki, podcast, forum, social network, (video) chat, microblog (doesn't have to be web!)

Examples (focusing on enhancement)

• Summer Reading, Sustainability/Recycling



• Trip Planning Project (kmz file?)


• Reconstruction and Civil Rights Songs


• Pirates of Penzance


• Image galleries


• Becoming a World Class Negotiator


• Knowledge I gain through blogging: school Drupal sites, Riffly, Web Site Baker, K12 Online Conference, EduCon 2.0, connectivism



• The importance of reflective practice in professional improvement: forum diaries, A Window into Gaza

Conclusion

• Still seeking to understand

Suggestions

• BAISNet


• Kassblog blogroll


• Independent School Educators Ning


• Powerful Learning Practice


• Mercy Corps in Gaza

tags: web20

part 3 | part 2 | part 1

Some students wrote on their Skype video chat experiences.

I shook with excitement as I sat down in front of Richard Kassissieh’s laptop to talk face-to-face (via skype video chat) with students from the Gaza strip. I had the opportunity to talk to the deputy chief of affairs for the Palestinian president, as well. We even interviewed with Craig Newmark, the founder of Craig’s list. All of these conversations left me with an unshakable feeling that I have finally left the darkness of ignorance and illuminated the reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I can hardly believe that every day we as Americans wake up unaffected by the events occurring daily in Palestine, and one can only imagine the thoughts running through my head when I had to respond to a Gaza student’s question: “How does this conflict affect your daily life?” It hurt to answer truthfully, and I felt sick to the core of my morality. Winterim of 2008 left me enlightened to something that the world community must stop turning a blind eye toward. I thank the organizers of the Winterim program for allowing me to have these experiences.

The moment I remember most from my winterim, is when we had a live
video conference with teenagers from Gaza. Getting to school at 7:30 in
the morning was a small price to pay for such an opportunity. Our
questions were pretty scripted in the beginnning, resulting in an
expected conversation. Then, all of a sudden, the questions started to
get more spontaneous. The discussions gained passion. A moment that
stuck with me is when one of the adult leaders in Gaza stepped in. We
had asked about their relationships with Israeli students and they had
claimed that they knew none. The teacher said that she had Israeli
friends when she was a child and that times have really changed. That
moment definitely stuck with me and I was quite moved by that
experience. If the only Israelis the teenagers ever see work as guards
at check points and harass them, of course they are going to have some
amount of hatred towards the other side. They were not able to
sympathize with both sides as we were in our safe Catlin classroom.
Even though everyone preached messages of compromise and peace it was
quite clear that those kids felt the Palestinians had gotten the raw end
of the deal. They felt their people had lost their dignity. I feel
like I'm an educated teenager who knows more about the world than an
average one, but hearing the emotion from another my age on the issue I
studied in a history book, brought a new facet to my understanding. The
limitations in those children's lives, in many ways being trapped in a
small arid portion of land, Gaza, and the electricity restrictions made
me learn more about my freedoms and opportunities and how I should jump
on them. It was definitely a memorable experience and I strongly
suggest having a similar winterim next year. It does not have to be
about the Israeli/ Palestinian conflict, but to learn this much about
any conflict in the current world is an enlightening opportunity.

Although I really enjoyed the mock peace conference the highlight of my week was talking to to a group of young Palestinians in the Gaza strip. Getting their perspective on the issues surrounding the conflict was a real eye opener for me, however I think the greatest part of that experience was being able to see that they have hope for a situation that seems almost hopeless.

What would it be like to converse with your nation’s supposed enemy? Are you supposed to support your nation’s beliefs, or are you supposed to empathize as a human? During my time in the Winterim How to Become a Better Negotiator, I experienced the thought process and emotions that occur when one views an especially disturbed and convoluted conflict through facts and reason. This Winterim not only helped me improve my modest grasp of the middle-east conflict between a western influence with questionable but subtle primary intentions and a collectively strong desire for Muslim independence, but it taught me how to rethink a conflict without personal beliefs or culturally based conceptions interfering, filtering, or muddying. To rationalize a vicious clash that intertwines religious and emotional aspects with economic and political desire seems generally unthinkable, but the easily understandable content we reviewed and the impressive array of powerful speakers that joined us proved to our Winterim body, as a whole, that the capability of conflict resolution through negotiation is generally eventually obtainable. While I sat in Vollum with Richard, Peter and my negotiating companions, it became apparent to me that this topic was not grudgingly presented as a hopeless view on middle-east conflict, but influenced the teachers as much as it concerned and affected the students. By the end of Winterim, our group, including the teachers, had unconsciously opened up and bonded over the intensely intellectually stimulating discussions regarding Palestinian rights and Israeli opinion. Our group connected over an influence that changed all of us. At lunch, we conversed and laughed together as if we had been together for at least months. Most Winterims rode roller coasters or ate sushi downtown. While they may have simply enjoyed a nice temporary break from academic inspiration, my assembly bonded over a serious conflict, and even though this bond may not be permanent, I believe that this Winterim I attended, How to Become a Better Negotiator, is the type of experience that changes mindsets and creates individual passion. This knowledge and comprehension defines what a Catlin student yearns for, and this experience, although not as "fun" as watching movies in hollywood, will stick with me and my Winterim-mates for the rest of our lives.

A teacher asked me for help with her desktop slide show the other day ... which included shots of her family and friends. What did this have to do with teaching and learning? Nothing at first. However, once we got the desktop slide show sorted out, the teacher described how students love to learn more about her family by looking at the rapidly changing slide show (a new pic every 5 seconds) and asking questions about the subject of each shot. Next, the teacher said that she would love to create a similar slide show of shots from her classroom. Then, I explained how we had created an online photo gallery for school community members to post photos. Within a few minutes, we had posted a number of field trip shots online! It didn't take long for our work on family photos to turn into a vehicle for sharing classroom work with parents and the school community!



tags: iphoto, techintegration

part 2 | part 1

The videoconference activity derived much of its power from its consistently student-centered qualities. The students spoke directly to each other for the entire two-and-a-half hours. As a teacher, it was extremely easy -- in fact, most natural -- for me to step out of the way and let the students do their thing. Other activities in the week required some teacher intervention to sustain momentum or remain productive. This activity, so captivating, rich, and authentic did not.

At times, students asked questions that made me wince, because they were potentially embarrassing or insensitive. However, these questions were always authentic, and our peers in Gaza responded to such questions both kindly and firmly, in a manner far more powerfully educative than I could have ever mustered. Students gushed about the experience afterward. Many commented that they were unaware how little they knew about the living conditions in Gaza. They showed a lot of courage asking questions and seeking to learn more.

part 1

Today, I would like to explore the visual richness of our online, distance interactions using Skype. How did video make the experience many times richer than similar interactions using discussion forums or audio? Perhaps the answer lies in the importance of body language in communication. Many times during the conversation, our students picked up subtleties from our guests through body language. When an individual was excited to make a comment, we could see hear leap from her chair, slide over to the microphone, sit upright, and take a sharp breath before beginning to speak. These visual cues communicated the energy behind the speaker's ideas before she even opened her mouth. Similarly, when our students asked really tough questions, we could see a slight slump of the shoulders, a downward gaze, and an awkward pause while they considered how to formulate a reply. When funny moments occurred, we could see smiles and laughter, even from a distance of 6,000 miles and one blockade.

We know that the brain simplifies the visual information our eyes take in so that we may make sense of it. In other words, our brains only process a fraction of what we actually see (can someone help me find a source for a study of this?). It may follow that, even though video is only a partial representation of a room in a distant location, it seems real enough to us. As the videoconference grew longer, we became increasingly accustomed to the dynamic and effectively communicated challenging concepts back and forth. The richness of the videoconference made a meaningful exchange possible.

This successful experience completely changes the rules for future global education initiatives at school. I used to think that virtual exchanges were the next best thing to international trips. Now I find that they are equally valuable, though different in nature. When we think about our lower school students, who are unlikely to travel as a class to any faraway land, we assume that their experience is going to be less rich than that of our middle and upper school students. Now, I imagine a curriculum in which students would Skype each other weekly, at a predetermined time, building deep relationships and exploring meaningful curricula over the course of a year or longer. The nonexistent cost, immediacy of contact, and regular scheduling give videoconferencing at least equal potential as short international trips to support meaningful learning. Of course, virtual exchanges may also enhance actual trips, as students get to know each other before traveling and keep in touch after the trip is over.

I can't wait to get started ...


tags: videoconference, globaled

This morning, we successfully held a 2-1/2 hour discussion between students at Catlin Gabel and in Gaza City, Palestine. Mercy Corps runs a program called Why Not Youth, an Internet-based curriculum to facilitate greater understanding between Oregon and Palestine. I entered the activity with two uncertainties: How familiar could students get with each other through Internet video? Would the technology even work, and what would we do if it didn't?

The experience far exceeded my wildest dreams. At first, the technology teased me with hints of success. We showed up at school at 7:00 a.m. (5:00 p.m. in Gaza). For a good 45 minutes, we watched the Gazans' Skype status flicker on and off. What could be going on there? Power outages? Internet connectivity issues? Would the lesson be a bust? We got video first, to murmurs of excitement from our people. Then the audio clicked in ... and out ... and in. We were off and running!

For a distance of thousands of miles, using free Skype technology, the quality was absolutely amazing. We must have been getting at least 5 fps video rate and telephone-quality audio. Every 20 minutes or so, we got completely disconnected but reestablished contact within about a minute. In a way, the interruptions helped remind us how remarkable this connection was. If you don't have it yet, get the latest Skype upgrade. The video compression is far superior.

The students on both sides prepared questions in advance, mostly so that the Palestinian students could find the English vocabulary needed to clearly express answers to complex questions about freedom, elections, and the press. For the first hour or so, the conversation proceeded in relative formality. Each group asked a question, and the others responded.

In the second hour, the magic really began. To my amazement, the students on both sides demonstrated a growing familiarity with each other. They laughed at jokes and awkward moments. One student played the oud. Our students admitted they didn't know anything about the Oscars. They challenged each other with serious questions. Our students came to grips with how little they knew about life in Gaza. They sympathized with the plight of being virtually imprisoned in a 39 km strip of land.

Hyperbole thrives in the blogosphere. I truly try to avoid it. Today, I need to make an exception. The connection we were able to make between Oregonian and Gazan students today far exceeded my expectations. I truly believe that this represents a new frontier in global education. The technology is finally accessible enough that we can make exchanges between people in very different life circumstances, connections that truly challenge assumptions and teach in the most powerful manner. It is going to take me days to fully process what we experienced this morning. I can't wait to plan the next one.

Also read part 2 | part 3 | part 4


tags: videoconference, globaled

A few weeks ago, I set up a Drupal forum for an eighth grade language exchange and invited students from Martinique to create accounts on the system. Over that time, students have posted 58 "getting to know you" comments in French. Already, they have decided to take the next step -- incorporating audio and video! It startles me how quickly the teachers have taken this step, which a few years ago would have been considered quite a leap. I realized partway through class that Drupal comments do not accept attachments by default, but thanks to Drupal's simple modular system, I was able to Google for a solution to this problem, identify the comment_upload module, and install it -- all within three minutes' time in the middle of the lesson! I (heart) Drupal.

Today, I walked into class to teach the students how to record themselves in Garageband, create a snippet of their favorite musical artist, and upload the resulting MP3 to the Drupal forum. To my pleasant surprise, they had already learned the Garageband part in electronic music class! That made my task a lot easier. Unfortunately, their version of Garageband doesn't export MP3 files, so we had to send the files to iTunes, convert them to MP3, and fiddle with the import settings to keep the files under 1MB. Why the strict file limit? We wanted to make it easier for the students in Martinique to download and listen to the files. It's also good for our students to learn how to change file sizes when needed. If file uploads are unlimited in size, then they never learn this!

On a technical note, it's too bad that the Audio and Forum Drupal modules don't appear to integrate with each other. Audio produces a terrific Flash-based player that handles audio file playback, whereas just linking a MP3 file requires the browser to handle the MP3 file and launch the appropriate audio player. I would like to see these two projects coordinate in the future.

A handful of students were able to record, edit, and post their audio files by the end of the period. Others will likely finish next time. I hope that the students from Martinique will be able to return the favor. We wouldn't want a situation to develop in which we sent all of the fancy advanced media, and our counterparts there were only able to reply in text. Then again, as the students will be visiting in person, perhaps they could help set up this capability while they are there!

The next time I lead a class of this sort, I will structure the lesson more specifically. First, introduce a conceptual overview of the technical task. Then, ask students to write a short script of the comment they will record. Next, open the laptops to Garageband and record their audio once or twice. Finally, convert to MP3 and post to Drupal.

Audio followed on text quite quickly. Video is rushing up to be the next task! The teacher of this class would already like to record short video snippets and post them. Of course, this is possible in Drupal, although the production time and system requirements become even greater with video than with audio. Luckily, we have MacBooks with integrated video cameras, so we get to eliminate the step of transferring video from a digital camcorder to a computer. That alone makes it much more possible to pull off this project.

EduCon 2.0 has heralded the beginning of a new kind of conference, conceptualized by bloggers, hosted at an innovative school, videocast by students, costing only $50 in-person, and attended for free by at least a couple hundred more online. The conference sessions consistently focused on the interplay between school reform, innovative curriculum, and web tools that support teaching and learning. Most school employees I know can only attend one or two conferences a year. If more conferences offer a rich online component, more education professionals will be able to enrich their knowledge and practice.

Now I need to figure out how to carve time out of the week to watch more sessions. Amongst the weekend's demands, I only really watched three sessions, yet there are at least 45 more archived online! I caught Tom Hoffman's discussion on Coalition principles and School 2.0 -- a lively discussion carried on while Tom listened and summarized. I was briefly dropped in on Using Moodle, and Extreme Makeover: Library Edition while juggling children but then watched an entire session in which student playwrights shared their collaborative online writing practice.

Guilty pleasure: being able to sample different sessions until I found one I liked best!


I will contradict myself immediately by challenging some of the presenters to focus more on learning and less on technology. A couple of sessions succeeded in talking about new models for schooling without mentioning technology at all, but those that did talk tech gave it a lot of time. I realized this weekend that many teachers resist Web 2.0 tools because the tools do not yet offer a sufficiently rich learning environment. We have experienced successive waves of technology innovation, but each time the medium changes, we start building new learning environments from scratch. It takes years before video collections, interactive multimedia, and Web 2.0 tools evolve to provide tools to match the richness of a master teacher's classroom strategies. Only through focus on pedagogy and curriculum will School 2.0 conferences advance the development of increasingly immersive, interactive, structured electronic environments for learning.

Many thanks to Chris Lehmann for hosting EduCon 2.0 -- it must have required a lot of work. I know that the virtual conference was a tremendous success and gather that the in-person conference also went very well. Chris set the bar high by broadcasting eight strands on uStream -- who knew that it was going to work so smoothly? Sure, the video streams stalled frequently, especially on Saturday, but I felt very lucky to be able to view sessions from 3,000 miles away and engage in conversations with other remote attendees. The technology is only going to get better, and a critical mass have embraced the concepts. Bravo!


tags: educon20

1. Visit IT office/helpdesk
2. Request a training session
3. Attend an internal workshop
4. Invite IT to a department/grade level/faculty meeting
5. Request that IT visit your building weekly
6. Buy a book
7. Search the school's knowledgebase (if exists)
8. View an online training resource
9. Take a class
10. Browse the Help menu
11. Join an online network of peers at other schools

Others?

I am engaged in a project at school to reproduce the functionality of DIWE, the Deadalus Integrated Writing Environment. Our English teachers used this superb piece of desktop/server software to structure writing activities for students but find themselves unable to use it any longer, because it does not handle a mixed-platform environment well or have a web component. We aim to determine the best way to make DIWE or another interactive writing environment available to teachers and students here and at home. At one level, this involves discussion of Terminal Servers and dual-boot Macs, but we are also considering replacing the entire system.

It may intrigue my fellow edubloggers that this writing environment far outstrips blogs, forums, or wikis in its richness and support for student writing activities. While I have seen many terrific examples of student work in our favorite ubiquitous online technologies, reviewing DIWE makes me understand that our favorite Web 2.0 tools, still in their infancy, have a long way to go before they provide the level of sophistication that many teachers expect from classroom learning tools. DIWE embraces the concept that "writing is thinking." Writers engage in the cyclical process of guided critical inquiry -> prewriting -> drafting -> guided peer reviewing -> guided revision. Effective bloggers may learn to incorporate some of these traits into their writing, but DIWE provides a more effective tool to learn how to write.

Blogs, forums, and wikis all start with a single container. DIWE provides a set of writing prompts that students may use either during prewriting or reviewing activities to kick off their compositions. Students here do not encounter the problem of writer's block, because the prompts stimulate critical thinking about the selected topic, providing the raw material for a student to begin writing. The tool then combines the student's responses into a single document that the student may use to begin their first draft. Teachers may use a "prompt manager" to create new sets of prompts that may vary in number. I have seen nothing like this in the world of Web 2.0 writing tools. Sure, one could list a set of prompts above a single text field, but DIWE provides a much deeper level of age-appropriate structure and direction.

Similarly, this richness extends to commenting. The system provides collaborative peer review, in much the same manner that a group of bloggers would form a community of practice through commenting on each others' blogs. However, DIWE even structures peer review through a series of prompts, providing far more support to students writing reviews of their peers' work than a simple comment box.

DIWE provides a live chat tool that a number of existing Web 2.0 services should be able to replicate. Students engage in real-time discussion about an idea or piece of writing. DIWE automatically saves each chat as a separate object and preserves all transcripts by default. At first blush, Drupal's Chat Room module looks like it could replicate this functionality, because it creates a separate node for each chat room.

DIWE provides some course management features similar to those in Moodle or DrupalEd. Teachers and students meet online in a shared course web space, in which teachers may publish a plan for the week and students may upload files or post online text to posted assignment objects. DIWE allows teachers to determine whether the assignment submissions are public or private.

Outside of DIWE, these English classes also WEDGE (Writing Every Day Generate Excellence), similar to blogging but usually private to the writer.

Does another structured, collaborative composition system exist out there that we should consider adopting? Has anyone else tried to build a web-based system that replicates the functions of this terrific piece of desktop/server software? Would anyone like to work with us to develop these tools in Drupal? I wonder whether a standalone Drupal site could do the trick. If one provided teachers with the ability to administer content types, they could create a series of prompts and text fields to make up each structured activity. Better yet, we could contract the creation of a new Drupal module to provide this function, and we should be able to use existing Drupal modules for everything else. Would anyone like to help fund the authorship of a new Drupal module or Moodle activity?






tags: writing, composition

EduCon 2.0 reminds me of the BAISNet meetings in which I used to participate in San Francisco. A group of educational technologists developed an extremely active network of professionals sharing ideas and helping each other out, and the whole thing grew up organically, through the impromptu messages and initiatives of its members. EduCon 2.0 represents the next logical step, a conference with 48 sessions that grew out of a blogger meetup at NECC last year. Even better, a school is hosting the conference -- Science Leadership Academy, which many think has set the standard for "School 2.0," progressive educational principles greased by a heaping dose of Web 2.0 technologies.

I publicized the conference to the faculty and staff at our school and got little reaction, but I am still hopeful that people will participate in the sessions and share out. One challenge of the virtual conference model is that it's really difficult to carve 16-some hours out of a typical weekend, and to top it all, I am going to be home alone with the kids! Thank goodness for the archives.

What could we learn through EduCon 2.0? The greatest benefit may lie with the new connections that especially those who attend in person will make with each other. School 2.0 is about making connections, and in-person meetings fuel higher quality online interactions later on. The sessions themselves look promising, albeit slightly homogenous. I'm all for school redesign, but how about some practical aspects of open-source adoption, curricular integration, low-cost laptop programs, or old-fashioned network security? The best part -- if the chatter on a particular topic catches fire after the conference, you can always go back and watch it after the fact! I am pleased that the SLA staff will present a number of sessions on their educational model and school experience.



tags: educon20

I feel like I have just taken in a new harvest of social, multimedia resources.

TakingITGlobal
TakingITGlobal.org is an online community that connects youth to find inspiration, access information, get involved, and take action in their local and global communities. It's the world's most popular online community for young people interested in making a difference, with hundreds of thousands of unique visitors each month.

Macaulay Library - Animal Sounds & Video Catalog
The Macaulay Library is a principal source of sound recordings for basic research, education, conservation, habitat assessment, media, and commercial projects. The collection is strongest in New World species but also has substantial holdings from Africa and Madagascar, Europe, the former Soviet Union, and South East Asia. The Library archives and preserves an exhaustive sampling of the behaviors of each animal species using digital video and audio recordings.

International Children's Digital Library
The mission of the International Children’s Digital Library Foundation is to excite and inspire the world's children to become members of the global community – children who understand the value of tolerance and respect for diverse cultures, languages and ideas -- by making the best in children's literature available online.

Modern Foreign Languages Environment
... a site which unashamedly emphasised new technologies that allow people to share stuff themselves, without the need to even visit the site (a bit of reverse psychology that paid off), leading to one of the most burgeoning teacher blogger and podcaster communities in Europe (second now only to the eduBuzzers!) and a 'traditional website' that boasts some fantastic content based on some real highlights of teaching and learning practice. (via Ewan McIntosh)

World of Chemistry Videos Online
A classic set of Annenberg instructional videos now available for free.

NYSAIS Unconference for Managers of Information Technology and Librarians
A conference turns itself upside-down by putting the "hallway discussions" front and center.

JCMC Special Theme Issue on "Social Network Sites"
danah boyd and Nicole Ellison, Guest editors
Research, meet practice. I enjoyed the introduction tremendously. The many articles in this issue promise to go beyond glossy blog entries to deeply probe the Big Phenomenon. Let's try to gain some real insight into the social network movement.

Elfing It
Treasure trove of swanky gift recommendations for your favorite elf.

I enjoyed two global Skype experiences today. The first, with a colleague in Botswana, concerned the recent accomplishments in technology and fundraising at Maru-a-Pula School. The degree of immediacy attainable in a 30-minute Skype call had immense value for me, much more vivid and interactive than a dozen newsletters and third-person email accounts. I would like to make this a regular occurrence if more people there are willing to spend the time online with me and can pull it off technologically. We started with video, which was a real treat, but downgraded to audio when the bandwidth had difficulty supporting both without breaking up. I still can't believe that I introduced the school to email thirteen short years ago, and now we can practically hold a video chat.

Lucky me, I got to have a second Skype call today, this time with Spencer, who is conducting an exploratory trip to Guatemala. After some difficulty finding a decent Internet connection, Spencer and I had a short voice chat via Skype. Unlike the Botswana experience, we didn't even try video, because the quality of audio was shaky enough. Nonetheless, it was remarkable that a small city like Chajul, Guatemala (pop. 11,000) would have enough Internet connectivity to make a Skype voice call possible.

One interesting result of today's conversation was that Spencer figured that we should not attempt a conversation between kids in Chajul and Catlin Gabel without video. It would not have the same impact without the visual, Spencer figured. This caught me by surprise, but in retrospect, it makes perfect sense. What if we went to the trouble of gathering two groups of kids in these two locationsm, and then they could not understand a word of what the others were saying? Without the visual, it would all hinge on auditory comprehension. On the positive side, Spencer went equipped with all sorts of digital gear, and he interviewed a number of people on video to bring back to school with him. Next time, we may try a cellular modem if the airtime charges are not too high and it will support the video that we want to transmit. Cellular phone access was easy to come by, but this was with an American cell phone that will likely cost a lot to use down there.

Lots of potential here -- we're pretty excited. I know a lot of other people have been down this road before, but it's cool to experience the immediacy of global contact for the first time and think of what impact it could have on kids who are stuck here or lucky enough to be planning or have just returned from a trip abroad.

Video has captured the imagination of many teachers at school this year. Using videos in class or homework caters to students who better comprehend video content than text. It often introduces content that is more current than your average text. Teachers may encourage students to exercise their media literacy skills. Last year, we had some success with YouTube. This year, we installed ceiling-mounted data projectors in twelve more classrooms and rolled out two new video services: TiVo and United Streaming. Both are currently in pilot phase -- running but not widely rolled out.

The amount of enthusiasm present during the pilot phase may provide an early indication of the ultimate schoolwide success of a new service. The early returns are very encouraging. A handful of teachers have excitedly requested TiVo recordings, and another handful have explored United Streaming on their own. Teachers have used the systems to present documentary programs on heredity and environmental degradation, Spanish-language content, and even the Latin Grammy awards.

Setting up the services has been easy so far. For TiVo, I found a secure location where cable, network, and power were present and connected a tiny TV monitor and DVD recorder. For United Streaming, I purchased the license and publicized the URL and school code. So far, I have provided no training, and support has been minimal. Ultimately, I will move the TiVo to a classroom location that teachers may access and write up some documentation. I will offer a couple of training sessions that cover all three video services that teachers may find useful in their classes.

Installing as many ceiling-mounted data projectors as we can helps contribute to the success of these services. Dedicated projection facilities make for higher-quality presentation, easiest setup, and fewer connections that can go wrong.

We also plan to use video to support our training efforts. Sites such as Atomic Learning, Lynda.com, and VTC.com provide application support to users through video. We hope to sign a contract and roll these out soon.

I had a great conversation with Carter, our sixth grade language arts teacher, about the writing assignment he has organized in a Moodle wiki. Carter described in the clearest terms I have heard in a long time the advantages that wiki has facilitated for his students. I won't remember them all now, but this is a start, and then I will ask Carter to edit this post.

Carter has taught this writing assignment previously, without computer assistance. Each group of students writes to five required aspects of The Hobbit: setting, characters, conflicts, climax, and theme. Within each group, students must write to different aspects of each required aspect. For instance, two students could not write about the same character. The entire exercise serves as a precursor to a set of group presentations in class.

Last year, when the project was on paper, it did not effectively attract students' attention. The kids wanted to move quickly to the more interesting class presentations. This year, on the wiki, this phase of the project has held students' attention on its own. The wiki has provided several benefits, mostly through making it possible for students to read each others' writing. In a classroom with writers of different abilities, some students have become writing models for other students. Students are improving their comprehension of the text by reading what their friends have figured out. The wiki has made it easy to ensure that students write on different topics. If one student has already posted on a particular character, the next student who posts needs to write about someone else! To top it off, much of the work took place on days when class did not meet! Carter especially appreciated the ability to comment on students' work without having to first meet them in class to collect a printed paper.

Other ancillary benefits: keeping the project online reduces paper consumption. Students learned a new, web-based technology. They wrote online. A few found creative workarounds when the wiki failed them (see previous post).

This collaboration between Carter and me met many of the criteria that can lead to successful technology integration efforts. Carter first identified his pedagogical objectives, and then I suggested a technology we had that matched them best. Carter carved out time to introduce the students to the technology and wrote up detailed instructions for the students to follow. Carter invited me into the first class of the day, and then he taught the rest by himself. The students demonstrated enthusiasm, adaptability, and supported each other when working with the new technology. Carter called me back quickly when some students encountered a Moodle bug that stopped them from completing their work.