Ideas and thoughts from an EdTech

I've moved

2006-11-29T09:20:00.000-06:00

I've long sinced moved to my new site...in case you're snooping around here...Shops closed.

Learning

2006-10-03T21:23:00.000-06:00

My creation,
originally uploaded by Mrs. Cassidy's Class.

I've moved

2006-04-02T22:44:00.000-06:00

Depending on how you come to my site, you may have to change your bookmarks. I've moved my site to my own domain, ideasandthoughts.org. Please update your bookmarks. If you subscribe to my feed, you likely aren't here anyway. If you are, let me know and I'll see what I need to fix. Hope to see you over at my new site.

Martha is Podcasting

2006-04-01T18:11:00.000-06:00

Martha asked me about recording her voice for her blog. So now she's a podcaster! I showed her Audacity and a few basic controls and she recorded her first podcast. We placed some music as a background track, uploaded the file to ourmedia, installed a little player and voila! I submitted her podcast to itunes so soon it will be subscribeable.

The content likely won't shake your world too much but it's her space and she's quite pleased.

If you have 4 minutes to listen to her recording, do so and perhaps even leave a comment.

Vlog testing

2006-03-31T10:43:00.000-06:00

I've been trying to figure out how to create either easy enhanced podcasts on Windows or else simple v-logs. I know I haven't discovered anything new for many but this may be helpful to others.

Thanks to Miguel's love of open source and time spent with VLC, he showed how to rip audio from a video. I also realized from this demo you could easily transcode any video to the .mp4 format and thus make it part of your podcast subscription.

Here's the credits clipI stick on the end of my videos as a sample.

Another one of those, "I'm not sure how this will work but it's interesting".

Update1:
I'm having some trouble getting the video to download as an itune subscription. First issue was my feedburner feed was invalid. Discovered that copying and pasting from Word, creates major issues. Fixed that, now it's still not downloading the video. Posted a message to Feedburner Forum and will await their response.

Update2:
Thanks to the good folks at feedburner, they let me know the following was wrong with my video:

So, looks like your mime type is incorrect. The mime type for the video should be set as video/mpeg rather than text/plain. This is something that needs to be done from the server where the media file is hosted. You may need to contact your hosting company for help depending on how familiar you are with changing mime types. It isn't a time consuming process though once you know where to look. It's basically one click!

As soon as you get the mime type changed you will need to go into your FeedBurner account and head over to the troubleshootize tab. You'll need to scroll down until you see the "resync" link. Click the resync link and you'll be good to go.

I wouldn't have a clue how to change the mime so I'll upload it to archive.org. Hopefully it will work now.

Podcast 15....Blogging in High Schools

2006-03-30T14:52:00.000-06:00

Drive home reflections of my first time introducing weblogs to high school students. Lots of questions and frustrations.

4.9 MB
11:31 minutes

Show notes:
learner blogs
Student blogging policy
Secret Life of Bees
Bike lock blog
Gary Stager
Miguel Gughlin post on Flickr

Smart Stories Smart Locations using Google Earth...John Kuglin

2006-03-29T13:42:00.000-06:00

I heard John Kuglin last year at FETC and allow Google Earth wasn't available then, he was demonstrating some other satellite technology and sparked my interest and love of geography. This year, John spent his session demonstrating Google Earth. While there wasn't much there I didn't already know, I was enjoying the "oohs and aaaws" of the several hundred attendees many of whom had never seen or heard of Google Earth.

I liked the title of his session: Smart Stories Smart Locations. The word "stories" and "conversations" may well have been the most used words at the conference which is fine by me. John not only showcased the amazing power and features of Google Earth but laid out an invitation to use it to tell stories. It might not seem like a natural fit but it really does have that potential. John continually pointed out the ability to discover tools and features not listed in any manual and that much of the potential of Google Earth is yet to be discovered but will be discovered by those willing to hack.

Today I discovered a video podcast by the School of Geography in Southampton University. They have already produced 9 episodes which are great little tutorials on using Google Earth. You can subscribe to it through itunes.

Technorati Tag: FETC2006

Grade ones are podcasting

2006-03-28T18:41:00.000-06:00

Kathy Cassidy is a grade one teacher in Moose Jaw. She continues to demonstrate how primary students can utilize all the tools of the Read/Write web to demonstrate their learning. Her latest venture is using the podcasting tool built into David Warlick's classblogmeister.

Podcast 14... Dinner with Bloggers

2006-03-27T21:58:00.000-06:00

I think I understand how competitive the news business is in trying to get out stories before the other guy. As far as I can tell I'm at least the 4th one to talk about this event. But I have something the others do not; Audio. Although the quality is not your Savvy Technologist standard but if you want to sit in with the likes of Wes Fryer, Will Richardson, Tim Wilson, Rob Mancabelli and others this might be for you.

23 MB 1:06

My only regret is that I didn't have more time with Steve Dembo and have him in on this conversation. Steve was sitting down from us and was busy having his own great conversation.

Let's ban the laptops...another lame response to disruptive technology

2006-03-27T14:42:00.000-06:00

I'm working hard here at trying to introduce laptops in the classroom. This does not help.

In the article, Professor Entman says:

"My main concern was they were focusing on trying to transcribe every word that was I saying, rather than thinking and analyzing,“ Entman said Monday. "The computers interfere with making eye contact. You’ve got this picket fence between you and the students.“

Sounds like a management issue here. You can argue all day whether students should be more focused, whether they should be handwriting, the reality is the notebook is here and by trying to ban or restrict technology you are not addressing the more important question of how to take advantage of it. It's often about engagment. If the professor is not engaging, students will find things that are more engaging. If the concern is about thinking and analyzing, there are many ways to facilitate that online as well.

Banning technology is always the easiest solution but it's usually not the best.

Here's a response from one student:

"If we continue without laptops, I’m out of here. I’m gone; I won’t be able to keep up,“ said student Cory Winsett, who said his hand-written notes are incomplete and less organized.

I believe that changes in education are going to arise more from student action that administrative decisions. Good for you Cory.

Don't call it a laptop project....Gary Stager

2006-03-24T08:13:00.000-06:00

Last year at FETC, I came to one session early to hear the tail end of a session by Gary Stager. I remember thinking he was quite different from the other presenters. I'm not sure what his presentation was about but he certainly had a unique delivery. Quite irreverant and refreshing. Add to that his New Jersey accent, and you've got someone worth listening to. I remember one line he used. Paraphrased somewhat,

"there's always one blowhard in the crowd that says, "it's not about the technology", then I say why are we at at technology conference instead of a Montessori conference".

Something like that. So this year I was happy to hear what he had to say about one to one computing. He's been doing it for 16 years. He's passionate about using it as an "imagination machine". Here's a few of my rather scraggly notes.

It’s not a project. This is not an experiment. The laptop computer is the primary learning instrument of the day. Failed ventures often focus on increased usage and continuing with the same old curriculum. Must offer emotion and excitement for buy-in.

We should be as concerned about future students as our current ones.

What’s the world like for students coming into our schools?

“Technology is anything that wasn’t there when you were born”

Most students touch a computer less than an hour each week.

Laptops matter because they are personal and portable.

3 types of Laptop Schools

Pioneers…want to make a difference

Marketers…want their picture in the paper

Their neighbours

The point is that kids should take them home. Give kids laptops so that the teachers have the chance to figure it out before they bring them anyway in the next 5 years.

-if the predominant use of the internet is to “look stuff up” kids will look up inappropriate stuff

-the laptop should be about sharing stuff

The real power of the internet

Democratizing of publishing

Unprecedented opportunities of collaboration.

Technology matters. It allows you do to things that are otherwise impossible.Stager had some other great points. He showed some videos of some great collaborative, innovative projects and talked about assessment. He hates testing. Actually I think he said he despises testing. When parents see the powerful learning taking place in these classrooms, it never crosses their minds to ask about test scores. The learning is palatable. He described a failed laptop program in Georgia where one educational leader stated proudly, "that although we've invested in these laptops, we will not change the curriculum." Laptops are distruptive and should change the way learning happens. One video showed a girl from Australia who had the opportunity to compose her own music and is now an award winning artist. Stager was careful to point out it's not necessarily about acheiving this type of success but to enable students to pursue their passions in ways they otherwise could not. It's Not a project or experiment, it's the primary instrument of the day. On a personal note, having a laptop has been critical in my development as a learner. Not being tethered to a desk allows me to write this blog post while listening to another session, which I'll blog about later.

Coffee with David Warlick

2006-03-23T21:15:00.000-06:00

I had the privilege of spending some time today with David Warlick. (We didn't actually have coffee, we just sat on the floor and talked) David as most of you know is passionate about helping teachers understand the changing world and telling the new story of learning. As David stated to me, it's really old stories.

We had a great conversation ranging from blogging to our kids, to our work, politics and the differences between our countries. We've been part of many of these conversations online, it was nice to do it face to face. We were able to discuss things like old friends. Perhaps that's presumptuous of me but because of this thing called the blogosphere, it really did feel familiar. Later David presented to a large crowd. From there he jumped on a plane and headed back to North Carolina to finish up another conference.

Thanks again David for the talk.

Harnessing the New Shape of Information...David Warlick

2006-03-23T15:35:00.000-06:00

These are my notes from David Warlick's session.
The fact that this session is very full tells me people are hungry for ideas about the Read/Write Web.

David’s presentation is all about the way these new tools are changing information. As a preliminary, David explained how his material is all online and in addition, has a wiki available for global editing and collaboration. A note taking feature is also attached to the wiki so anyone can include their notes. Will Richardson, who is sitting right in front of me is already placing notes on the wiki. A good number of people didn’t know what a wiki was.

David shows us 4 gray scale images and us if we can recognize them. Most couldn’t recognize more than 2. He asked everyone to share what they knew. “How many learned one by asking their neighbour?” Most said they did. A simple but great activity for demonstrating the power of collaboration. I might steal that one.

His son plays the Euphonium. He shows us the article in wikipedia and poses the question about whether or not it should be used. Classic responses around trust, credibility, authorship and censorship are elicited. Vandalism is fixed within 2 minutes. David talks about gate keeper issues and suggests using it with 5^th graders and having them verify the validity of the article. Wikipedia now boasts 1,000,000 articles compared to 65,000 with Britannica. Nature magazine research concluded that the average wikipedia article has 4 errors compared to 3 with Britannica. Students can now be part of the global discussion. We need to teach students to prove the authority rather than assume it.

Mash-ups are web based applications built to import data from other sites. One of those visually demonstrates news stories that occur globally on a world map. David captured the daily map over the summer of 2005 and created a movie to show where news happened.

The long tail illustrates a growing market for everyone. David was able to publish his book 2 hours after it was written. He doesn’t plan to get rich but has been able to put his daughter through college.

Blogging began in the 18^th century with pamphlets. The printing press allowed many people to publish. RSS allows you to keep track of blog entries and subscribe. He also shows how to subscribe to news feeds. We are training the information to find us.

Online bookmarking also incorporates RSS and tagging. Only 10 people have heard of del.icio.us.

David talks about the Personal Learning Network and his process of discovering others he can learn from. The idea of finding others through links and comments and finding powerful professional development.

The after the London bombings someone created a weblog and invited others to post. David shows some of the 2,000 photos that were submitted.

There weren’t many ideas here new to me but I appreciate the way David puts it together. I could tell many were quite amazed at the new landscape of learning. David and I entered the blogging world at roughly the same time and along with a host of others are experiencing many of these things together from an educational perspective.

What Students Will Need to Know and be able to Do...Willard Daggett

2006-03-23T06:53:00.000-06:00

Willard Dagget makes a number of excellent points. He says we need to spend more time helping parents and the public understanding why we need to change. The data he uses is a combination of his own research team and a number of references from Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat.

Globalization refers to the world wide competition that now exists in most of the working world. Since the information work now makes up 71% of all jobs, this is more critical than we thought. What this also means is the emphasis we've place on science and math must be increased. In the near future 90% of all engineers will be Asian. To me, this simply is a result of a society that was forced to change and recognize where the future lies. He provided some more statistics and concepts related to nano and bio technology. The concept of DNA computing replacing binary computer was something I'd never heard of. According to Daggett, this will replace everything....scary thought.

He then talked about his model school conference as a solution to this changing world. Ideas like looping, paring down curriculum and teaching technical reading. All these things are valid ideas. I'm not sure about the relationship between the first part of his talk and his solutions. I'm always a bit fearful of using the Asian explosion in technology as motivation. It almost comes across as a we/us mentality.

This is the third time I've heard him and was one of my first posts in my blogging life. His message is quite similar to the one from last year. His research team seems to keep him up to speed and it's helpful to be able to have some insights into what's ahead.

Note: I'm writing this beside Will Richardson who I think has some less than positive impressions of some of the speakers including Daggett.

Shopping is like your newsreader

2006-03-22T22:13:00.000-06:00

Will posted about being an RSS fraud.

Yesterday, in three straight presentations about the wonders and potential of RSS to rock our eduworlds, I kept getting more and more embarrased at the fact that when I showed my Bloglines account, which has ballooned up to 197 feeds, it was obvious that while I might be subscribed, I'm not keeping up with my reading. In fact, if you totalled up the number of unread messages in my list, it's a very audience appealing 3739.

He goes on to say:

I made the people in attendance yesterday swear that they would take a time out if they ever got up to 20 feeds in their aggregators. Hopefully that will keep them from feeling like a total RSS failure if they should "get behind" in their reading.

I've been hovering around the 250 mark for quite a while. Currently I'm at 260. I clean house from time to time but always add a few, espescially when local bloggers get going.

So why is a newsreader like a shopping? Recently, a friend of mine took our sons to Minneapolis for a sports weekend. We also hit the Mall of America. My shopping style is to do a quick cruise of the entire mall and then focus in on the stores I'm particularly interested in. I knew we had a few hours before the game and used my time accordingly. I like the fact there are other stores there that I may or may not go into. I'm aware they are there and given time, I may go in there because you never know if there's something that interests you. I like malls. Lots of choice. I don't feel like a failure if I don't hit every store. Many stores I just peek in, get the drift and I'm out.

That's why I have 260 feeds. I don't get to them all but I like the choice.

Will sounds like a big box store guy. Fewer choices but lots of depth. Fortunately, there's room for both. I just don't see how you can get by with 2o stores/feeds.

Early Impressions of FETC 2006

2006-03-22T21:41:00.000-06:00

I just wanted to make a few comments on my first impressions of FETC. I had a quick walk through the exhibits. Obviously the sheer volume of vendors provides quite an experience. Yet so many of them focused on the administration of education. I suppose that's where much of the big dollars is to be made. Certainly coming from a school division of 7,000 students can't compare to some of the school districts in the US of hundreds of thousands. These vendors are interested in making big deals with big districts. There's nothing wrong with this but the majority of these do not have a direct focus on information literacy or the great tools of the read/write web. Is that because many of these tools are free?

Rudolph Crew spoke about some very important ideas including civic literacy and personal literacy. Civic literacy, as he describes, refers to the way students respond to the world. In many cases our students do not have the social understandings and appreciation to cope in the world. His explanation went deeper than this but basically he argued that while schools may be improving in some test scores and achievement, many students are graduating without the necessary interpersonal skills and awareness of civic issues to be the successful citizens we'd like to have. Although he didn't explicitly state it, the relationship between this and information literacy is quite evident. Even though we know students are smart and have many skills and knowledge, they often struggle with people skills. Just as students bring many technological skills and understandings, they often don't understand the implications or have the analytical skills to manage information.

I like what he had to say. Without having a indepth understanding of American education, I still wonder how he justifies the continued emphasis on testing and the less than adequate testing measures. But I'll take away his ideas about not going along for the ride and being proactive in our quest to make the best use of technology and preparing students for the 21st century.

March Madness in Moose Jaw

2006-03-16T02:33:00.000-06:00

Moose Jaw is hosting Hoopla, the provincial High School basketball tournament. There are over 50 teams representing boys and girls in 6 different school size groupings.

I've been involved in setting up streaming video from 2 of the 5 locations. You can watch your choice of 2 games live Thursday evening beginning at 6PM CST and again Friday at 4PM and all day Saturday.

The streams can be found here.

Update:

Casey asked up set up, I don't have the total technical understanding but here's what I know:
Our technicians set up a Windows Media Streaming Server. We then are using Windows Media Encoder to encode the stream and also create an archived recording locally for future download. Camera is connected via Firewire to the laptop and the laptop runs Windows Media Encoder. We had a bit a an issue running a network cable to the gym but figured it out and now it's there permanently for future streaming. The software I believe is all free.

Why don't you/they blog?

2006-03-14T13:19:00.000-06:00

Will Richardson points to comments made by some promienent educational technologists and their description of blogging.

What got me going was when Hall Davidson said “Blogs are online journals when done right” and then added that it’s “not a format that going to pull anything else out of you” compared to more traditional tools. David Thornburg had an equally lukewarm assessment, and while Peter Reynolds I think got it more than the rest, he didn’t get the chance to articulate it very well. (He also said that he considered MySpace a blogging site.)
Ok, I know. Let it go. The thing that gets me is that none of these three are bloggers of any consistency, at least that I can find. Hall does blog at the Discovery Educator Network, but not very often. And I guess I just wish they wouldn’t opine about the usefulness of technologies that they don’t fully understand. Blogs are much more than online journals when done right. They offer much more than the traditional tools in terms of giving voice, building community, enhancing learning not just from a writing standpoint.

So the question I have is why don't they blog? I'm not suggesting that this is the only form of communication but right now this is the best tool for engaging in global conversation. I'm guessing they'd say time is an issue. That simply tells you where it fits on their priority. I'm guessing they understand blogging but without really experiencing it, it's difficult to appreciate the real professional development that occurs. The conversations that I'm involved with and the resources that have been shared with me cannot be overstated.

If it's valuable, you need to be involved and you need to be blogging. On the question of time, I'm responding to Will's post when I've got a meeting in 22 minutes, 10 unanswered emails and some other paper work. I'll get to those things but this is important too. Maybe more. If a post like this attracts the likes of David Thronburg, and Hall Davidson to write more, great. I've heard David Thronburg speak and he's got lots to say. I've heard others talk about Hall Davidson but I don't know him because he really doesn't blog. I'd love get into conversations with them.

I'm a small blip on the edublogoshpere but because of my conversations with David Warlick and his willingness to be part of the global conversation, he's agreed to sit down with me next week at FET C. I got to spend 2 hours with Stephen Downes in November. That's powerful and not that I'll be able to meet everyone who I subscribe to but this likely would not have occured if I weren't involved in the global conversation.

I'm talking to our directors and superintendents about blogging. I think I've got them interested and excited. There are many in our local school division who want to be part of big conversations. We want our leaders to blog. Please Mr. Thronburg when can I subscribe to your blog?

Blogs are like Sharks

2006-03-13T10:21:00.000-06:00

If you make presentations, you need to be subscribing to Presentation Zen. As part of a recent post on using clear visuals, this example of an effective visual was used.

Meaning? Blogs must keep moving or they die. Constantly in motion. As someone who has gotten a lot of blogs going for people, I'll use this image/analogy as part of my routine. When I say to people, I can get you up and running with a blog in a few minutes, it seems almost too easy and it is. The hard part is maintaining it. Finding something to "feed" on.

Life in 2015

2006-03-09T00:20:00.000-06:00

As we try to help our students and teachers understand the importance of information literacy, it's often a difficult task to visual the future.

Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson have created a history of media video from 2015. It begins in the late 1980's as the internet as a public media begins. It proposes some interesting possiblities about the future including the demise of the New York Times to become a print only form for the elite and elderly. David Warlick used the 2014 version for a recent presentation. Viewing this will hopefully raise a number of questions, concerns and meaningful dialouge about the changing nature of information.

Martha Blogs

2006-03-06T20:11:00.000-06:00

When your seven year old wants her own website, what do you do?

Check out marthastories.blogspot.com

Grade one blog mentors

2006-03-03T18:56:00.000-06:00

Kathy Cassidy and her blogging grade ones are working closely with another grade one class to get them started blogging. Be sure to head over to Kathy's class and Keith's class and leave a comment to encourage these young writers.

First graders helping other first graders drink the blog koolaid..."that's what I'm talkin' 'bout!"

Take a look at Bubble Share

2006-03-03T00:06:00.000-06:00

Bubble Share has been making the rounds throughout the blogosphere. While it's tough to beat flickr, it rivals SlideStory. The ability to add narration and doing it so easily makes it a worth a look.

Made this one in about 5 minutes.

This album is powered by BubbleShare

Blackboard may be worth a second look

2006-03-01T22:17:00.000-06:00

Not that I've extensive experiences with CMS but my reading and limited experience has turned me off of Blackboard for a number of reasons. In particular its lack of use of web 2.0 tools including RSS.

Our province has purchased its rights for any teachers. Many have taken advantage of it both for online classes and for traditional class webpages. I haven't encouraged its use like some would like but now things may change.

"...We have worked year after year with our clients to create powerful networked learning environments for instructors and learners at individual sites. Now, with the Blackboard Beyond Initiative, we are taking a critical next step by fostering a network of networked learning environments. The potential is tremendous, but it will take a lot of collaborative hard work to make the vision a reality."

They aren't there yet but this looks promising.

Creative Commons for teachers

2006-03-01T22:12:00.000-06:00

After my presentation on storytelling, I touched on Creative Commons as a resource for teachers. Wes Fryer does a great job simplying its benefits for students and teachers.

Copyright and intellectual property issues are complex and often ambiguously defined. Unfortunately, it does not appear that copyright law in the United States is going to change substantially in the early 21st century. Before despairing and resolving to give up on student multimedia projects for fear of legal reprisals (or at least the ability to share projects over the Internet via the school website, a blog, or a podcast) teachers as well as students need to learn about Creative Commons. Creative Commons (http://creativecommons.org) “is a nonprofit organization that offers flexible copyright licenses for creative works.” Everyone involved in education should be familiar with Creative Commons both as content consumers and content producers, wanting to legally access and use digital content. Whether someone is creating a digital story with PhotoStory3, an enhanced podcast with Garageband3, a PowerPoint presentation, or a narrated online slideshow with BubbleShare, Creative Commons licenses and website search tools can provide clear guidance about acceptable and legal uses of digital content to create and share “derivative works” using these materials. These digital resources can include images, music audio files, movies, or any other type of media.

Read the rest here.

Podcast 13

2006-03-01T09:59:00.000-06:00

This episode deals with my reflections on time spent in a Tablet PC classroom.

11:40

Show notes:
Anne Davis
The Write Weblog
Grade 5/6 Classroom (at post time only one student had posted)
Kathy Cassidy's weblog

This is the view outside the classroom.

After listening to the podcast, I realized I overdid one particular phrase. In light of my annoying mistake, I've created a contest that I explain at the very beginning of the podcast.

I helped Einstein

2006-02-28T14:52:00.000-06:00

I couldn't resist...via Alan Levine

Make your own

MySpace hits home

2006-02-20T19:09:00.000-06:00

There is so much out there on MySpace that it's hard to ignore. This weekend I spent sometime and discovered the following:

There are 403 people between the ages of 18-21 within 5 miles of my house. (Moose Jaw is a town of 35,000)
Most don't actually blog, they only post photos and receive comments. In that sense, I hope we stop calling MySpace a blog site when for the most part it's simply a social networking site.
My daughter has a space.... as someone who considers themselves fairly in touch with my kids, this might seem shocking. In my defence she set up a site in the fall and has not updated it. We had a chat.
The "f-word" is pretty common place.
Most of the conversations, while not what I would consider appropriate was not malicious but mostly encouraging
Some sites are used to post their personal music and video productions.
I'm not opposed to the concept of myspace.

The overall experience felt somewhat voyeuristic but at the same time, while they may not be aware of how or who is reading their stuff, I'm sure they realize it's not a private environment. I encourage all educators to spend some time browsing around your neigbourhoods.

So what do I do now? I'm sure most teachers and parents have no clue what's going on, just like many of them have no clue about what these kids do outside of school. Obviously the discussion about privacy and appropriateness needs to happen both at home and at school. Yet I wonder with some students if this would change their online persona and actions. Many of these postings I feel are done for their shock factor and the more that read them the better.

So do we just let kids be kids and consider it a non-school issue?
Do we invade their perceived privacy and expose them?
By pointing this out, do we risk creating more of an audience for the inappropriate?

As Will writes,

I'm in no way condoning the harassment or the cheating, but I still think trying to take away from kids the technologies they communicate and learn with is the wrong approach. We can clamp down and ultimately fail as the kids and the technology overwhelm us, or try to educate and model and repurpose our curricula to take advantage of what these technologies offer.

I hope I can come up with a good strategy for creating meaningful conversation among teachers and parents that would help address the issue at a local level. I hope I can come up with a good strategy for creating meaningful conversation among teachers and parents that would help address the issue at a local level. It may even begin with Alec's video suggested from the Daily Show.

I call it a bit weird but maybe there's more to it

2006-02-18T20:30:00.000-06:00

I'm a sucker for things on the web that are just plain weird. Case in point my furl account has a separate topic called "A Bit Weird". The lastest two are courtesy of Clarence.

Their Circular Life

The Thought Project

At first glance the only word I could think of to describe them was weird but I knew there was more to it. There are stories here. Thousands of them. As we try to tell students, almost anything can make a good story. Look at Seinfeld, it's a show about nothing. Not really but the point is there's good and interesting stuff in everyday life. Nothing new, but these sites help to illustrate that well.

On Tuesday, I'm giving a presentation on digital storytelling. I'll talk about the need for digital stories, show some examples, consider tools and include some resources. I need to add these sites as inspirations for stories as well. I did a photo essay a few months back that reminds of this, though not nearly as interesting.

Oh, one more weird site from Google Maps.

SlideStory

2006-02-15T21:58:00.000-06:00

As I prepare for my presentation on Tuesday on Digital Storytelling, I came across SlideStory. SlideStory is a Windows only program that offers a simple photo story creator and even a podcasting tool.

I've used Photo Story 3 for windws and will continue to use it as it is a more powerful tool but this one is not only simple to use but offers direct publishing/hosting and the ability to use cue cards. Here's an example I created in about 15 minutes.

It offers RSS feeds for authors, tagging and comments. A true Web 2.o tool. Leave a comment on the site about the slidestory.

Technology Coordnator or Supporter

2006-02-15T17:59:00.000-06:00

Tim Eirich posts this on the difference between a coordinator, supporter and integrater. Tim is a consultant??? in a neigbouring school division. Always exciting to be able to read a local edublogger. Are there any others lurking in the shadows?

Conversations about gaming and technology in schools

2006-02-13T15:44:00.000-06:00

Often good conversations aren't documented or available for others to witness. This conversation began live with a colleague and shifted to email as my colleague's spouse got into it with me. So here's the transcript of our discussion.

Dean: I sent this article to Joyleen who passed it on to Dan.

Dan: Joyleen shared the info with me that you sent her. It was an interesting read... This would be the counterpoint...

http://www.cfah.org/hbns/news/video03-17-04.cfm

http://www.apa.org/science/psa/sb-anderson.html

I think there are better ways to develop hand-eye coordination such as hockey, baseball, etc. This would also help combat the obesity epidemic in our society. I fear that many of our young kids are going to develop into a generation of people that can think about things a great deal, but can't do anything.

thoughts?

Dean: Well taken, here’s another argument.

http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,67868,00.html

It seems to be another issue of moderation. There are many who are “anti-games” or “anti-TV” and take the position that it’s an either or argument. I think the majority of educators take the stance take this view. My approach is to recognize that some video games are of an extremely high level of thinking and strategy and as such we should be promoting this type of gaming. No different from TV in that few would say all TV is bad. Too much TV is bad and watching certain programming has negative effects as well.

I think we need to recognize that just like TV, video gaming is not going to go away so given that fact, what do we do as parents and teachers to promote healthy, balanced lifestyle? Simply dismissing video gaming as a totally negative experience is neither realistic, true or helpful.

I’m just looking for balance.

Dan: agreed... all things in moderation. Where I am coming from is that too often the kids get the games and the parents are happy because they are quiet. We sit down as a family and play 'scene it' Disney. That is a much more productive activity in my eyes. I am a firm believer that we need to decide what we need to accomplish before we buy things. I am sure you are familar with Alan November. He talks about going to the store to buy a drill because you need to make a hole in your wall. You can't buy holes at the store, so you buy a drill to make holes. Likewise, we should first decide what we want to accomplish and then go out and get the correct tool. The correct tool for hand eye coordination and critical and creative thinking skills may be something other than video games. To go out and buy a gaming system because your three year old's friend has one seems like a bad idea. If a child wants to communicate with somebody in Russia for a good reason, one now has the impetus to go shopping. Finally, I have no doubt that you can get positive results from playing countless hours of video games, but at what cost? I am not convinced that the positive effects warrant the results of the negative effects. Like I said, all things in moderation. The problem is that it is very difficult to moderate. Kids are quickly addicted to the games, and moderation is tough to enforce. I guess I just think that to allow my kids to use video games at the age of three calls into question my judgment as a parent.

Dean: So having said all that which is hard to argue with, what should our response as educators be?

I’ll give you an example of why I think this is a critical question. An educator was asking me the other day about some of the new web technologies that are out there and some possibilities for his school. I mentioned podcasting as a possible way to harness the use of the ipod and other mp3 players that many students already have. He said, “We’re trying to keep the ipods out of our school”.

To me that’s wrong. Obviously at this point, schools have not addressed how they can properly deal with this type of technology so the easy answer is keep them at home. Same with cell phones. So the message we send kids is those type of technology have no place in schools. The ipod, cellphone, computer, TV, video games all fall into the same category as far as I can see. They are tools that serve different purposes. But all of them, if used correctly can be powerful learning tools.

We are not as teachers going to promote balance and wise use of technology if our response is simply to state or infer that these tools are bad. That’s the message we give when we tell kids to leave keep your technology out of the schools. Most of these tools are as communication tools and often misused. We need to get in there and utilize all these tools as learning opportunities. Not at the expense of real world experiences and activities but as part of our world.

Thanks for engaging.

Dan:I couldn't agree more. Schools are about maintaining the status quo. For example: School in 1915 was guided by bells. All students went to one building where one adult led the activities. A bell ended the day. Sound familiar? Ever wonder why educators got computers in their classes before phones? We need to get the message out that the status quo is not on. Teachers need to let the students run with what they know. The days of checking your brain at the door are over. Students need to learn how to manage information rather than knowing everything since information is changing daily. We need to focus on communication rather than technology. If the technology helps you to communicate more effectively, then you should use it. Herein lies the problem. What if the students begin to question our all-knowing attitudes as teachers???? Finally, there are some issues with phones, cameras, ipods, etc at school. What if indecent pictures are snapped in a locker room without anyone knowing and then they are posted on the net? But, what we need is ethics education on the use of technology rather than banning the technology.

see... we're on the same side after all...haha

Dean: Beautiful

Picture Cloud

2006-02-13T10:47:00.000-06:00

Thanks to Alec for this link, this particular picture cloud took me all of 5 minutes to shoot and upload. Not the greatest since I should have taken twice the number of pictures but in interesting application and of course if it comes from Alec, you know it will be free.

by picturecloud.com

Thank you Bernie Dodge

2006-02-11T00:11:00.000-06:00

If you read my blog this weekend, you would have found a post I wrote in response to Bernie Dodge's rather candid, and in my mind, somewhat unprofessional post regarding a presenter at a conference he was presenting at in Texas.

I posted a comment on his blog expressing my concern and posted here in regards to my fears that we as educators were not modelling the kind of conversation and dialouge we want our students and other teachers to engage in.

I checked back tonight to see that Mr. Dodge has retracted his post to now exclude the name of the presenter to which he was referring. He is still upset with the presenter but now his post addresses a greater problem that is worth writing about. I'm sure it wasn't my post that changed his mind but rather, as he stated, a wiser wife.

Bravo Bernie Dodge.

Asking the hard questions

2006-02-07T08:51:00.000-06:00

On the 1 year anniversary of my blog, I thought I should try and write something so deep and profound that it would shake all my readers.

Okay so that's not likely to happen so I'll just throw out some thoughts around relevancy and communication.

When I think about our provincial language arts curriculum it seems to cover the 6 basic strands of communication: reading/writing speaking/listening viewing/representing
Most would acknowledge that we've over emphasized the reading/writing aspect and definitely are working towards incorporating more of the viewing/representing strand. The thought that occurred to me yesterday was about relevancy. If you asked the 10 adults if they did any writing in the past few days, I wonder how many actually did any writing other than making a list or a quick email or text message. While there are definitely a number of vocations where writing is part of the daily routine, my instinct tells me this is the minority. Most people do not engage in much writing. In fact, of these 6 strands, it is definitely the consumption strands (reading, listening and viewing) that we engage in. Speaking is obviously right up there as well but writing and representing do not really have a regular place in the life of your average adult.

So if this is true, why do we continue to spend the time we do helping students to write? I suspect the initial response to that is to help them communicate and also be better readers. I agree. David Warlick often talks about the future and how our students will be asked to create movies and other multimedia projects. Many of our enlightened educators are helping students to be contributors of this new read/write web. Creators not just contributors. It seems that we believe because of the new tools and openness of the web, all can be creators of content.

All can be but my feeling is few will be.

I say this because of two observations. One as I've alluded to earlier was that few adults communicate with writing or representing (ie. video/imagery). Even if they were given an audience, most people aren't interested in sharing with a larger audience. This number is obviously growing as evidenced by the number of teenage blogs. But it still is a small percentage of the total population.

The second observation is that just because the tools are there, doesn't make the creation of content and less stringent. I do a lot of video editing. I love it and appreciate the advancement of hardware and software to make the process almost as easy as it can get. But creating a quality video is hard work. My son spent 5 hours last night working on a short video for school. That doesn't include the pre-planning and actual filming. Anyone who has created video understands this. I think teaching kids this is important more because it helps them better view the media they see everyday. I don't think the majority of citizens will be creating video. It's just way too hard. Same with writing. Although it's easier than video, crafting a well written, readable document takes time; more time than most people are willing to give.

So after all that here is the hard question...

Should we be teaching the creation aspects of communication in equal proportion to the consumption, if indeed very few will be regular contributors?

Weed the Feeds

2006-01-30T23:42:00.000-06:00

How many feeds is too many? 50? 100? 200? I've got 250. To be fair, probably half of them aren't very active and so they really don't create much work or time to read. But I do have a number of feeds that rarely offer anything of value. My most useless feeds are:

Boing Boing....very popular but total fluff. They usually have 20 or so posts per day and maybe I've found 5 posts mildly interesting. Not necessary but amusing. Can 39,392 subscribers be wrong? Change that to 39,391.
Tech Bargains.... nice if you spend alot online or are an American but for me I think I've only taken advantage of one offer.
NY Times Op-Ed...since they've moved to a pay model for most of the columns it's a waste. I originally subscribed because of Thomas Friedman but he's not free anymore
CBBC Newsround....I started a folder called Kids Feeds which was intended to find RSS feeds for kids. This is one I thought might be suitable but I'm not sure anymore. Still looking for a good kids news source. I'm still waiting for yahooligans to offer a feed.
"Classroom Blogging" news feed. I have this coming in from Google and Yahoo. In general I'm not happy with most news feeds. They tend to repeat too many stories from various sources and also the same story seems to reappear about 58 times before it dies.

Okay those are my top 5 worst feeds. I'm going to go and remove the subscriptions. I'm still frustrated by the number or times the same post gets republished. I know I've done it a few times after correcting or updating a feed but it seems that it happens more than it should from my other feeds. Maybe there's a technical issue I'm missing here.

Anyway, maybe I should weed more often. Now I'm down to 245.

Assignment for a Geography Class

2006-01-30T10:18:00.000-06:00

I think Google Maps and Google Earth should be incorporated into virtually every classroom on a daily basis. Rarely does a day go by in my routine where I don't do a quick look up of a location or directions.

But here's what I'd love a classroom to do:
Take this link filled with Google Earth/Map hacks and tools and sort them and categorize them. There are so many incredible applications. As a fan of 24, here's a neat little application that plots the various locations of each episode. Not only that but most of the applications provide photos and links to additional information.

As Clarence wrote,

One thing I have seen this year is the kids grow and respond to certain tools. Some kids have turned in to great prolific bloggers. Other prefer our wiki. Some kids have made great use of their Bloglines accounts while others have hardly touched them. Now we are moving on to Skype. I have been discussing it with the kids in my class and now at least half a dozen of them have set up Skype accounts. I have learned this year valuable lessons about exposing kids to tools, teaching them how to sue them safely and ethically, and then allowing them to use those which suit their purposes best. While I expect them to be able to use any of the tools, I need to allow them choices and responsibility in their communication channels.

So there's the challenge. Get your kids to dig into these tools and their value and post the findings.

Encouraging Student blogging

2006-01-27T14:47:00.000-06:00

This is a bit of a guilt post.

Darren just Skyped me about talking to some teachers on Monday as he's doing another one of his great sessions on the tools of Web 2.0 (at least I think that's what he's doing). He asked me to talk about folks that I've been helping and the impact it's had on their students.

I have a little folder in my aggregrator called PS 210 bloggers. These are all the teachers that I've worked with in starting a weblog. There area about 50 or so bloggers in there. Of those, perhaps 15 have maintained there blog. Most use it as a classroom announcement/information site which I've always encouraged but also tried to promote the more reflective/connective aspect. That's been tougher. I'd say I only have 2 really reflective bloggers. Here's where I really feel guilty, none of them at this point have introduced blogging to their students. I have worked with a few classes and got them started but not very successfully.

So when Darren calls me on Monday (I'm sure Darren, you'll read this before then) and asks about the impact with students, I'll have to confess it's been minimal. The teachers who use them as classroom portals/sites are happy but it's been slow in moving beyond that.

So in light of that, I dug around my clippings in Bloglines and found 3 posts from the past that may encourage teachers to start student weblogs.

Now if any Prairie South teachers are interested, I'd love to work with you and your students in discovering the power of blogging.

Confession is over.

Laptops for all Florida teachers

2006-01-24T20:33:00.000-06:00

This is interesting.
Laptops for teachers.

"This initiative to provide a laptop to every teacher will be a critical catalyst to ensuring that all of Florida's teachers have the opportunity and the ability to harness the benefits of technology.".

You might be cyncial of the motives or question the initiative itself, but at least they are doing something to change instruction. If not to change instruction at least to state clearly the importance of technology in teaching and learning.

A little reminder to us all

2006-01-20T14:54:00.000-06:00

I don't want to be these guys...

Curriculum Actualization of Authentic Learning

2006-01-17T10:02:00.000-06:00

Curriculum Actualization is a term used in our province to indicate the completion of implementation of a curriculum.

Miguel has been having some great discussion about curriculum and its worth a read.

I spend a lot of time reading and writing about the way things ought to be in terms of creating an authentic, relevant classroom. Bob Sprankle, if you aren't aware is a grade 3-4 teacher in Maine. He's been podcasting for some time now and if you visit his classroom site, you'll get a sense of what he and his students are doing.

I listened to his podcast last week where he talks about his students investigation of a false accusation on wikipedia. That in itself is powerful stuff. David Warlick did a session last week and used their podcast as an example of K-12 podcasting. During the session, he had participants comment on what they heard. One person questioned the validity of the students work and wondered if Bob Sprankle had done the writing for them.

In the most recent podcast by Bob Sprankle, he records a classroom discussion where students respond to the accusation that perhaps they aren't doing the writing. Listen to their response.
I like this exchange, when Bob plays devil's advocate and says:

"How would you even know a word like 'false accuation'."
"I read books"

I love how Bob let's the kids hammer out their ideas and simply offers leading questions. This is great teaching and even greater learning.

Miguel said,

So, although we may perceive that students are developing skills more efficiently as they "wikify" knowledge, we could still achieve the same results with other approaches.

Really? What other approaches could match this learning?

If you can find a better or comparable example of authentic learning that doesn't incorporate technology, I'd like to know.

4 Cool Tools

2006-01-16T10:03:00.000-06:00

Here are three free tools that I've discovered this week. I haven't had the chance to fully explore them all but my first impressions are good.

ProtoPage....based on AJAX technology, this page allows you to create, edit and customize your page. I haven't paid much attention to ajax but know it's used with other services like Netvibes and others. This might be a great application for and teachers and students to create temporary spaces. Here's one I created for our consultants. Try either of these web apps, it's quite cool.

FreeMind...this one comes courtesy of DanToday. I might be one of the only educators not to use Inspiration. At first glance this might be a nice alternative. Probably not as easy to use but for quick graphically maps, it seems quite powerful. I work with a number of people who like graphics/charts/maps as products of discussion.

YackPack...thanks to Wes Fryer for this one. Web-based voice messaging allows you to create groups and leave voice messages. I like the simple interface. I've already started using this one with the Posse and Wes had open invitations to his disruptive technology group.

Pandora...Not sure if this is a tool persae, but certainly is interesting. You can create your own personal radio station based on an artist or song. It analyzes songs based on its musical components so making recommendations are more likely to match your taste. You also decide whether or not you want a particular song included in your station. There have been other services similar to this but in terms of matching your musical tastes, this one seems a cut above.

What's in Your Bloglines?

2006-01-12T22:53:00.000-06:00

Due to the busyness of starting a brand new school division, my time to fully absorb and analyze my feeds, has been diminished.

So instead, I check the "Keep New" box and wait until I've fully considered the post. In some cases I even read the post but haven't had enough time to wrap my head around them all.

So I thought I'd show you the articles that I'm thinking about. If you've written, written about or thought about these topics, please consider leaving a comment.

So in no particular order....

More Loose Change
Discussion about assessment and educational change. I just completed a presentation on assessment and I continue to struggle with presenting assessment ideas beyond the first impressions of standardized testing. David Warlick warns that one day students might say:

"No!". "I'm not going to take your tests any more. I'm not going to read your ancient textbooks any more. I'm not going to listen to your boring lectures, fiddle with your ridiculous worksheets, or worry over your irrelevant grades any more."

I addressed this somewhat in my last podcast on WYWWYW.

Merit Pay
Miguel's post on a Houston school district offering incentive to teacher's who have improved test scores. My first reaction is YIKES! Once again it seems to me that policy makers resort to the lowest common denominator in order to easily meaure something. Wesley Fryer's recent podcast mentions "sucking the joy" out of learning with testing.

Student Laptops as a Menance
Recently I've become a strong advocate for one 2 one computing. I'm hoping to pilot some projects in my new division. This article addresses how one study questions the effectiveness of laptops since they cause so many distractions. Wesley counters the arguement with asking the question of pedagogy. Laptops without a change in traditional teaching and learning won't make a difference. Laptops for students are for classrooms where students are empowered learners and teachers are smart enough to get out of the way much of the time.

Questions about Coffee and Education
I like this:

What drives us to pay $2 - $4 for a cup of coffee?

Is there something wrong with Folgers?
HereÂs a secret. At the successful shops, coffee isnÂt their business. Experience. Conversation. Networking. Quality. Story. Meaning. Design. Play. Service. Wireless. Comfort.

What does this mean for education? What can we learn?

These are a few of the things rattling around my brain.

WYWYW Podcast 12

2006-01-11T12:34:00.000-06:00

Today's podcast comes from my van travelling through southern Saskatchewan. I talk about WYWWYW (What you want, when you want) and how it changes in the way we receive audio and video and may impact education, specifically in my new school division Prairie South

Google Earth File of Prairie South Schools (choose save link as if you're using Firefox)

More photos are found here:

Posse Talk with Stephen Downes Part 4

2006-01-08T18:02:00.000-06:00

This concludes the longest breakfast ever....cheque please.

Show notes are found here.

How does Santa do it?

2005-12-21T09:42:00.000-06:00

Here's an insight into how Santa covers the earth and delivers all those gifts in such a short period of time.

You'll need Google Earth. If you don't already have it you need it. Even Alec has it now...I think.

Merry Christmas!

WikiSpace and Blogger Integration

2005-12-20T12:39:00.000-06:00

This might be interesting.

I haven't used wikis alot but mostly because it requires collaboration and some training. I did a workshop on wikis a while back and showed folks wikispaces. It seemed to offer the standard tools and was fairly intuitive. Now they've added blogger and typepad integration. So I'm following the instructions to export this entry.

First, make sure you have integrated your blog on Wikispaces as described above.
When creating a blog entry, put the following text at the bottom of your post: [ [wiki:spacename:pagename] ] e.g. [ [wiki:adam:politics] ]
Post the blog entry
Within half an hour you'll see one or two things happen
1. The blog post will be appended to the wiki page you specified
2. If you're on blogger, the text you entered will be converted into a nice looking Wikispaces reference with the Wikispaces logo and the text "This entry is linked to a Wikispaces page" and some other detail

Okay so instead of a comment, go to the wiki and play around.

This entry linked to &amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a&amp;amp;amp;gt;Wikispaces page (Blogger Export)&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;gt;

Are Wikis Worth the Time?

2005-12-19T23:18:00.000-06:00

The latest issue of Leading and Learning with Technology features an article by yours truly.

In it, I go toe to toe with a teacher librarian on the merits of using wikipedia as a research tool. You can take a wild guess on which side I take. There's also a poll you can take after you read both sides.

Just so you know, I'm married to a teacher librarian so it's nothing personal.

Posse Talk with Stephen Downes part 3

2005-12-19T13:05:00.000-06:00

Although the eggs are probably cold by now, the conversation still is warm. Join us for our discussion.

The highlight for me was our talk about potholes and education. Sounds weird but it works.

As usual, Rob has done a great job with shownotes.

Where will it lead?

2005-12-15T10:00:00.000-06:00

After our posse talk last evening, a number of very random thoughts are running through my head. Allow me to ramble...

Alec wonders about all the "stuff" that's out there such as blogs, podcasts, et al and is concerned that the good stuff we talk about and create may not last as technology changes.

I don't have a great response but in the spirit of rambling and randomness, I check my feedburner stats today and was taken back a bit with this graph.

So sometime from September to now, my readership has tripled. As I listened to the EdTech Talk Podcast about the edublog awards, they were talking about the best individual awards and mentioned that those bloggers (Will, Stephen, Barbara and Ulises) have been doing this for a while and have found not only an audience but a voice that is distinct. I'm finding this to be very true for me, not that I'm anywhere close to their league but this space has allowed me to experiment and play and thankfully, folks have been kind enough to comment or better yet, link to me from their space.

So where does it lead? I hope Alec's fear (you'll have to listen to the podcast when it comes out to get his exact thoughts) that all may be lost is unsubstantiated, but I don't know. Yet, even if all of this stuff is lost, there has been great learning and fun in creating. It reminds me of my lego days. Most of the fun was building stuff. Even if someone kicked it over that was fine because I'd just build it again and even better.

PS. Although initially I had mentioned to vote for us, I think the Dave and Jeff really deserve this one. The work way harder than us and offer some outstanding discussions.

Chalk one more up for Wikipedia

2005-12-14T15:30:00.000-06:00

This article would indicate that wikipedia is on par with Britannica and others. Although I've thought this, I've never known for sure. I like the concept of wikipedia and would certainly use it as ONE resource. Perhaps as an equal resource.

...the resource is almost as accurate as the online encyclopedia Britannica, at least when it comes to science.

The article goes on to say that of 42 randomly selected topics, there were no distinguishable differences in either encyclopedia.

Terry Freedman may not agree, but I'm sticking to my guns. Perfect knowledge is tough to find. Weinberger suggests at times all we need is "good enough". Wikipedia is better than good enough and if you don't think so, change it yourself!

UPDATE: Here's a interview with the Nature study and also Jimbo Wales.

RSS Toilet Paper

2005-12-13T20:43:00.000-06:00

I love RSS. But I'm not sure this is for me.

Then again as my late grandfather once said, "Everyone's got to go sometime."

via Jack McLeod

Posse Talk with Stephen Downes Part 2

2005-12-13T11:29:00.000-06:00

Here's the second part of the our talk with Stephen Downes. Rob's done a great job with the show notes. I especially liked the wikipedia link to the "more cowbell" reference.

Collectively I believe we drank 56 cups of coffee but there's no documentation on that.

Wayne Gretzky on educational reform

2005-12-12T22:57:00.000-06:00

The one to one computing issues has been around a while but until recently has not captured my full attention. Now it has.

I am realizing more and more that we must do as the great one says, "I skate to where the puck is going, everyone else skates to where it is." Thanks to Governor King for resurrecting that gem. But it's true. Although many see the value in a one to one initiative, few are convinced or determined enough to see this to fruition. However, you can add another state to the list. This means the idea is not as radical as it used to be. I'm more hopeful the students in my new division may be part of a new revolution.

After reading Mark Prensky's Adapt and Adopt article, I sent it out to all our technology people and our superintendents and prefaced it with it as "my technology vision" I received some interesting comments. I'll include them here without names just because I didn't ask permission but want the ideas to be part of the dialogue.

Customization of every computer would create many, many more systems that simply stopped working and were no longer functional. Who would maintain these systems? IT resources (human resources) are extremely limited as it is, the costs for this model would be much higher than it currently is. The initial cost of a computer is very small when compared to the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) over time. Here is a link to a case study of TCO at the Texas School District, http://classroomtco.cosn.org/texas.pdf. It is true that TCO will continue to decrease, but at this time one-to-one computing is still a VERY expensive model. MIT is currently developing a sub $100 notebook ($100 Laptop Initiative)
By definition, the kids would have notebook computers as opposed to desktops. Notebook computers as a shorter life span are VERY limited in capacity and are not readily upgradeable or expandable (i.e. if new, innovative technology comes out you may end up in a situation where none of the notebooks can take advantage of it. TCO of a Wi-Fi enabled notebook alone is pegged at 3 to 4 percent per year higher than non-enabled notebooks which equates to $197 - $325 annually (Gartner Group).

These are challenging issues. Can someone address these? I can't. But I still think there's a way. There is no doubt that cost is a huge stumbling block. But are we still able to provide students with the same education with a lab setup or even pods? What is reasonable access?

Once a week?
Once a day?
Anytime?

Here's another response to the Pensky article.

I agree that we need to do new things in new ways in education and technology is one force of change which should be used to its advantage. I've learned not to get too uptight about not knowing everything about working technology because the kids help me. What I try to do is get them to think about what they are doing. We have gotten kind of lazy about thinking and problem-solving independently. We are creating a non-thinking generation and a lot of that has to do with the power consumerism has in/over our lives. We are all considered items that can be bought and sold and the marketplace would have us believe our minds should be consumed by thinking about how we are going to "get" things or decorate our bodies. Unfortunately this takes up a lot of our time. And a lot of people like to be told what and how to think whether it is through media, religion or politics. We are seldom open to true debate or thought anymore. We are all supposed to be the same. This is something I think we need to address in education and if technology can do this that is great.
Some kids will be more engaged learning through technology; others are engaged by art or music or words or other people. Don't you think? I know all children need to have access to technology and know how to use it to their benefit. I don't think it is acceptable that some people of my generation don't even try to enter the computer age, but I suppose as with everything, one has to have patience. My generation does seem to be becoming more computer literate.

There are a couple ideas here. One being the need to emphasis literacy in varying levels. If indeed students are developing literacy in an online environment, as educators, we are compelled to be involved in their understanding. The ideas mentioned here have little to do with technology but a great deal about learning in general.

One to one computing is simply about recognizing this is where so much of learning occurs. Like it or not, this is the world we live in. Tim Wilson mentioned in his podcast that he talked to a group of 6th graders and mentioned that 10 years ago when those students were still in diapers, the internet was brand new. Consider the changes in technology in the past 10 years. Now consider the changes that will occur in the next 10 years. Is your head spinning?

To paraphrase Governor King, "Michael Jordan didn't become the greatest basketball player by going to the basketball lab for 45 minutes a week".

It's just nice to be nominated

2005-12-05T22:37:00.000-06:00

The Posse has been nominated for an edublog award in the best audio/visual category. I noticed this idea milling around the blogosphere but didn't pay much attention. The site states that 60 nominations were submitted which hardly qualifies as global pulse but again, it's just nice to be nominated. If you are so inclined, you can head over and cast your vote.

Rick, since you're used to receiving awards, you can start writing the acceptance speech.

Creative things to do with a Camera phone

2005-12-04T23:34:00.000-06:00

I've often wondered why someone would bother with a cameraphone since the quality is so lousy. I don't have a camera phone but do have a camera on my Palm which again, doesn't shoot a great picture.

Here's a list of neat ways to use your camera phone.

My Theory of Relativity

2005-12-04T19:19:00.000-06:00

My recently adopted criteria of "Relevant, Engaging and Ownership" as a criteria for learning is definitely in its infancy. I've been saying that teachers need to address the ever popular question of "why do we have to learn this?" as part of how we do business.

But in examining my theory of relativity, two things have recently challenged my thinking. First of all, in a prior Posse Podcast, Rick Schwier discussed a university course on folk tales which has never had any relevance to his life. However, he remarked much he enjoyed the experience both because of the content and obviously the engaging nature of the course. So he makes the case for those things that are not entirely relevant.

I can agree that some things we learn may not completely link to our lives but offer a rich experience that will in some way enhance our lives. Appreciation of other cultures may not seem relavent but certainly enriches our lives. So this example helps to guard against a learning environment that dismisses anything outside our current understanding. Right now our curriculum is in no danger of being overly concerned with relevance but I'll keep this concept in mind.

The other challenge was a discussion that occured in our car today. As our daughter attempted to negotiate quitting her viola lessons, we assured her that she would not be happy with us if we let her quit. While she may not appreciate the relevance of music lessons now, I am living proof of someone who wished my parents had been more diligent in keeping me in piano lessons.

As you can see in the photo, our front window was in clear view. Although in this shot, the drapes are closed, usually they were open and I could plainly see my buddies outside playing street hockey or football. That was relevant at the time. My negotiation skills were quite good and I was able to convince my parents to allow me to quit my piano lessons. While they did make me pursue music (trombone lessons) in later years, I regret not having continued with the piano.

So there are times when students may not see the relevance but we need to. So if you believe Calculus is going to be important for kids, make sure that at least you know why it's relevant. Stephen Downes says he's still waiting for it to be relevant. Not sure it will ever be.

So my theory is now slightly modified...but I think better.

Overview of blogging tools

2005-12-03T21:10:00.000-06:00

Danny Maas has put together a nice video which provides an introduction to several blogging platforms. It's about 16 minutes long. He plans to create 3 more. Thanks for the great work.

Starting from Scratch

2005-11-30T21:56:00.000-06:00

Being part of building a new school district is pretty exciting. Our director has made it very clear that we are building something from scratch and that new ideas are welcomed and expected.

With Christmas coming up, my kids have submitted their lists and we have the duty to examine these lists and determine which requests are feasible and which may have to wait. So in the spirit of Christmas and a new division, here's my wish list for our new division in no particular order.

1-1 computing. Be it a laptop, handheld or whatever until students stop having to make trips to the lab to access technology, we remain in the old world. Many of our schools have 5 computers in the room, this still isn't enough. We wouldn't expect kids to share pencils why computers? What about cost? Ever heard of the $100 laptop?
Connected students and teachers. Not only connected with technology but a sense of connection among each other. Technology enables us to connect with others in our classroom, school, district and the world. We know this but does it happen? Every teacher, administrator and student should have a learning space online. A weblog, a wiki, a podcast, whatever. Parts of everyone's learning needs to be public. If you want to get into the whole privacy issue, head over here. My point is students need an audience for their work, we're obligated to give them that much.
No more teachers. What? Teachers need to be replaced by directors or faciliators. In short this means transforming classrooms from silos of knowledge distribution to horizontal collaboration and exploration.
Blended learning environments. Our district has some major geographical challenges and declining enrollment. The possibility of school closures is real. We need to provide students of all ages the opportunity to learn independently at home. This may not be the solution for everyone but combined with some face to face schooling, this may offer those living in rural areas and even in the urban centres an option never before available.
Increased time for teacher reflection and collaboration. The advent of Professional Learning Communities has sparked some great conversations about learning. The potential is huge. However, unless teachers are given ample time to reflect and examine new ideas, this may only appear as an add on. I'm not sure exactly what it looks like, but teachers need time every day to step away from the students and develop learning strategies.
Balance Assessment and Creativity and Innovation. Assessment is an important issue for teachers and students. Using assessment correctly has proven to be a powerful factor in improving achievement. My concern is that at times, assessment attracts the lowest common denominator and we return to rote learning models in order to pump out data. Creativity is not always possible or necessary to measure. Innovation requires time to explore and fail. Establishing environments where these three concepts are at work is critical in the flat world.
Seamless Learning. If we truly believe in the idea of life long learning, we need to demonstrate that learning that happens outside the school day is valuable. Offering credit for activities such as music lessons, participation on sports teams and self directed learning should be recognized by our schools.
Relevant, Engaging and Ownership. This is my new mantra. Not mine but remixed from others. These three criteria should be at the heart of every classroom.

Okay, that's the start of my list. I realize that some of these wishes will require wholesale changes from various agencies but I think it's time to start thinking big. Our director told me today she wants to create a vision and figure out how we might get there. This is my vision.
This entry linked to Wikispaces page (Ideal School)

The Tablet PC Project Podcast 11

2005-11-28T20:50:00.000-06:00

On my journey through the new Prairie South School Division, I spent some time in Evelyn Sillers Grade 5/6 class. They've embarked on a Tablet PC project. Evelyn has a great attitude and has placed herself in the vulnerable position of creating a new learning environment. Evelyn's in her 29th year of teaching so don't tell me technology isn't for our veteran teachers. Listen to Evelyn's story.

Posse Talk with Stephen Downes part 1

2005-11-27T17:15:00.000-06:00

Rob has posted part one of our conversation with Stephen Downes. Grab a coffee, order up some bacon and eggs and give it a listen!

Confessions of a New Edublogger

2005-11-25T21:57:00.000-06:00

One of the teachers who attended my workshop last week has written a great piece on her barriers to blogging.

After spending a day with her and others, it was easy to see she would be considered a teacher with a high level of technical skills. But her honesty in explaining why she hasn't implemented the tools of social learning illustrate a real problem with today's educators. Technology was not the issue for Lona, it was largely her fear of risk taking and transparency.
As much as we talk about risk taking for our students, as adults we are pretty fearful of making mistakes. In order to get students to take risks they have to be in an environment that encourages that and offers a sense of community trust. I'm realizing that when I take time to build relationships with others, they are better able to forgive my shortcomings...and believe me I've got short comings, just ask my wife!

I know we all read way more than we write and certainly more than we comment and that's natural and understandable. But we do have to make a point of commenting on each other's work. That's how we learn.

So let's continue to model the idea of public learning and encourage each other with our ideas and thoughts. Let Lona know she's on the right track.

Podcast #10

2005-11-22T10:35:00.000-06:00

On my way home from work I took advantage of the time to record my thoughts on privacy and the idea of public learning.

Show notes:

Educational Techknowledge Conference
Mousing Around
Bud the Teacher
Darren Kuropatwa
Share Point

Flickr Nation

2005-11-20T18:05:00.000-06:00

I've been subscribing to Thomas Hawk's photos for a while now and appreciate his quality and hopefully I'll become a better photographer as a result.

He's now begun podcasting on a site called Flickr Nation. He plans to do a weekly podcast updating new features and cool things to do with flickr. As a bonus, a 90 year old woman phones him via Skype during his podcast who's obviously called the wrong number. Thomas humors her for quite a while and works very hard to sway her to learn more about flickr.

Breakfast with Stephen

2005-11-19T23:15:00.000-06:00

I was privileged to spend 2 hours with Stephen Downes and Rob Wall on Saturday. The talk ranged from education, DRM, politics and music. The interesting thing is that all of these topics ended up pointing back to concepts of distributed learning and the openness of the read/write web.

It's not often you get to sit down with a keynote for 2 hours and basically fire questions and ideas at him and listen to his responses. Not only did I feel privileged but guilty that I was getting this kind of time and other participants at the conference were not. Yet because of the technology and Rob's time, we'll be able to share the same ideas with everyone. You won't taste the eggs or smell the coffee but the ideas will be there. Hey Rob, why didn't one of us think to take a picture. Duh!

I listened to a podcast from Steve after he attended NECC and he questioned why every session of a technology conference wasn't recorded. This really isn't a difficult process. Stephen had his session that ended at 10:00 a.m. online before lunch. My recording was uploaded a few hours after it finished and it could have been sooner. I would ask conference committees to not only ask their participants to have a link to handouts but also create some type of recording of their session.

Maybe it's just too radical.

Radical ideas and Useless Conferences

2005-11-18T21:46:00.000-06:00

Two ideas have come together for me today. I'm in Regina, SK at the Educational Techknowledge E-Conference. This morning Stephen Downes talked about being Radical. The message being simply that since technology changes everything, we should be looking at ways to radically change the way learning happens.

Then I read a post on "How to Run a Useless Conference". I'd hate to infer that this is a useless conference and since I used to be on this conference committee, I know the challenge behind running a conference. The article talks about how conference tend to be safe...not radical. And since they are safe, they do little to change behaviour. This concept, I think applies to me since I do a lot of workshops and inservices. I've felt disappointed at times with my workshops when although I've presented to my best, it's done little to change behaviour. (i.e. Maximizing Microsoft Word last week. I only did it since it was requested but could not muster up enough passion to make it interesting...who could?)

The idea that emotion changes behaviour should drive conferences, presentations, workshops and teaching in general. Not a new concept but one that often is missed. My love of video/storytelling is something that touches emotion. It's an easy sell. I tried to include more of an emotional content in my RSS talk and would be thrilled to see some behaviour changes. I know many of the people at this conference. I wouldn't consider many of them average as the article says. So I'm hoping that in the next few months we will see some more Saskatchewan folks rummaging around the blogsphere, reading the good stuff, remixing ideas and learning more than ever. '

There were some radical ideas floating around this hotel and the challenge is to provide a forum for them to be explored. Stephen started it, hopefully the rest of the conference will continue it to become something useful.

My RSS talk

2005-11-18T16:30:00.000-06:00

I've just completed my session on RSS to an audience of about 30. All in all, I think I was able to convey the message that RSS is not a geeky idea but a tool designed to connect to people and manage information.

Here's a link to a screencast of the first 20 minutes. I used a modified "lessig" approach...very modified.

The audio quality is quite poor on the screencast since I used the built in mic on the laptop. So I've added an mp3 of the whole session. It's about 50 minutes and I'll call it my 9th Podcast

Two highlights

Having Posse members Rob and Alec to "spur" me on.
My brother-in-law Skyping me in the middle of my presentation. Got to remember to change mode to unavailable.

Social Software Workshop

2005-11-17T11:43:00.000-06:00

I'm blogging from Regina and working with nine great teachers. It's kind of like preaching to the choir. These folks get it and are already asking how to get other teachers interested, connected with social software. Still don't have all the answers but am enjoying good conversations. The coffee arrived late but other than that, things are good.

As the day went on it was clear that:

some were overwhelmed
some couldn't get enough
filtering came up several times (read Darren's thoughts)
the real issue is not about these tools, it's about our beliefs about teaching and learning (read David's thoughts)

I've probably done a half dozen workshops on these things and this was the first time I had the whole day. As usual I tried to cram a bunch of stuff in one day. That's okay but I'm wondering about spending more time getting to understand the implications of teaching and learning. We did talk about this at various times but this kind of discussion needs time and work to get at the big issues. But I did suggest that they spend a good deal of their time in their bloglines reader to get to know some of the people writing the good stuff.

After showing them a myriad of things that Flickr can do, one person said, "How do you know all this stuff?"
My answer was that I don't but because of the good folks that help me out, they find much of the good stuff and just share it. That's a major concept I was trying to present.

It's Winter

2005-11-15T23:50:00.000-06:00

elgin park in November,

The view outside my office window. Winter is here. I don't like it but that's the way it is.

Remix in action

2005-11-14T11:34:00.000-06:00

Further to my "friends" post, this is a great example of remixing and relying on each other to construct ideas.

I had a somewhat frivilous post the other day on Weird Stuff. Didn't think much of it and really couldn't make much of an educational connection. A week later Steve Brooks over at edugadget spent some time with one of the "weird items" and remixed it and gave a very compelling idea for educational use.

None of us will have time to do everything but thankfully each of us have a little time to contribute and develop good ideas. This idea isn't even done, I'm waiting to hear from someone who will now follow Steve's idea and use it in the classroom.

Meet my Friends in my aggregator

2005-11-13T19:11:00.000-06:00

I'll be doing 3 sessions in the next week on RSS. These are introductory sessions to 3 different audiences. I'll do the typical basics of feeds, XML, bloglines, search feeds, etc. but somehow it lacks the personal touch and doesn't get to the conversational aspect and connectivism that veteran bloggers enjoy.

So I'm going to try the analogy of a party to introduce folks to those people I've met and read over the past year. I'll group people in the folder they occupy in my bloglines account. We'll see how it works.

"Come on in, don't worry if you're late, you'll find most folks very friendly and helpful. Let's go into the living room. "

EDTECHS (don't ask me how I label and sort my folders, it's just the way I've organized them)
"Sitting on the couch is David and Will. They've been at this for a long time. David dabbles in a lot and always bring some unique items to the party. Will's kind of the center of attention but he's constantly pointing out the good stuff of others. Barbara doesn't speak as often as some but when she does, it leaves me with a lot to consider. I really got to know her the other day when she was talking with Jeff and Dave. Alan is also very innovative and sometimes is a bit over my head but talked about some stuff I've really enjoyed. George is a new friend of mine. I kind of enjoy that he's Canadian and will challenge you to think. Rob, Rick and Alec are friends I talk with fairly regularly. Then there's Stephen. He's got more to say that any of them. Never talks for long but talks about a lot of different stuff."

"Let's go into the kitchen"
TEACHERS
"I'm amazed these people have time when they're so busy preparing. Yet I know they'll talk to you. Bud, Clarence and Konrad live in different countries but both are very transparent with what they do. Just watching them will show you a lot. If you want to know what's happening in the trenches, these are the people to talk to. Darren is another Canadian who can take a topic you might not think would be worthy of conversation but makes it engaging. Anne does some neat things as well. She's pretty busy. I've known Kathy for years and she will do whatever it takes to get the job done. Very adventurous and works with people you might not think can handle much. She makes it work. Oh Steve's just leaving the kitchen. He's a great guy to listen to who will make you feel like you've known him your whole life. I'm not sure exactly which room he's going into now.

"I actually have many more friends than this. These are just the ones you should start talking to first. Find out what they think and they'll also introduce you to others you might like as well. And when you meet someone you find interesting, let me know so I can talk with them as well."

"Enjoy the rest of the party."

To be clear, many of these people might not even know who I am but have shaped my thinking over the past year. This is part of the nature of the new web.

Videoblogging...still don't get it

2005-11-12T12:39:00.000-06:00

I'm not sure about this whole videoblogging or videocasting trend. Podcasting was something that I got right away. Whether it was downloaded to my mp3 player or whether I listened to it on my computer, the best part was it meshed so well into my multitasking world. I could listen, keep working or walking, and it was another way to learn that mixed in nicely with my world.

Videoblogging is pretty new but now with the new ipod video, it's going to get pretty popular I imagine. Alan Levine wrote about this back in June and has the same questions I have.

I see David Warlick is testing it out as part of his Connected Learning Podcasts. I subscribe and enjoy his podcasts but I must say, the episode about the Marching Band, lost me. Partly because I felt compelled to watch and wasn't sure how much the video added to the message. Yes, it's nice to see the kids in action but given the time it takes to produce one, is it worth the time? Even the one from the conference in Minnesota, tended to be more of a talking head style. It's not a knock against David and I applaud him for being somewhat of a pioneer. I'm wondering if it's the same as podcasting.

Probably not.

Podcasting is naturally mobile. That is its main advantage. It also allows for multi-tasking. I wonder if videocasting (not sure that's what its officially called but I'll go with that for now) will find a different identity. I think podcasting and blogging are distinctive and serve different purposes. Videocasting will likely do the same, I just don't see what it is yet. Since it involves the most combinations of media that is, audio, text, still and moving images, it requires much more attention that a single communication mode. Don't get me wrong, I love video and work hard to include it as part of instruction but since it's so time consuming to produce quality, coherent video, (you'll have to move down the page to see the video list) it doesn't seem well suited to the easy publishing, suscribeable nature of weblogs and podcasts.

As always, I welcome comments from those who see things differently.

PS. One major frustration I was having was the inability to keep either quicktime or itunes on top of all windows. Is there a way to do this? I couldn't find this in the settings. This made me feel compelled to focus on the video rather than continue with other tasks.

Banning pencils and blogs

2005-11-11T00:34:00.000-06:00

Safety on the internet is and always will be a huge issue.

While we definitely have to protect kids, we are much better off tackling much of the questionable content with the students as part of this discussion. Will's recent post on this presents it very well. This is an issue being dealt with in San Antoino, Colorado, New Jersey and right here in Moose Jaw.

Our school division has been reluctant to implement any policy on filtering content. At present we have a content filtering system that filters sites based on a numberical score. For example if a site contains certain words from a pre-populated list or custom list, the site will receive a score. If for example the word "breast" is in the site, it might get a -3. However if the word "cancer" is also in the site, it may get a +5 giving it an overall score of +2. All these settings are customizable. We're testing it over the next few months to see if/how we'd implement it.

We've got to stop trying to create a ban everytime a new technology comes along that causes disruptions. After all the internet itself is a major disruption. It's unorganized, full of inappropriate material, very little on it is directly related to curriculum or education. Let's go back to textbooks as our only source of information. That would be safe. Pencil and paper only. No wait! Doug Johnson's already figured out why pencils should be banned as well:

A student might poke out the eye of another student.
A student might write a dirty word with one. Or even write a whole harassing note and pass it to another student.
One student might have a mechanical pencil making those with wooden ones feel bad.
The pencil might get stolen or lost.
Kids might be doodling instead of working on their assignments

So the issue for some teachers is not only is a site like Myspaces inappropriate but it's also a distraction. So let's address both these issues. Will's post address the first part and to the second part I'd say I hope that after dealing with part one, most students will begin to realize the danger of a site like myspaces and start to look at sites like Clarences' as examples of not only safe, but meaningful expression.

Again, if you didn't read Will's post, you should read it now.

Posse Podcast #8

2005-11-09T23:34:00.000-06:00

I thought this one might have been lost in the archive but Rob revived it. It may be a few weeks old but if I recall, we talked at least at one point about????? I can't even remember so why not just listen.

The Flat World for Administrators

2005-11-08T14:12:00.000-06:00

I've been given the opportunity at our district's administrator's meeting to take 20 minutes and provide some type of Professional Development. That's not a lot of time but understandable given their agendas.

I decided this week to present some ideas from Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat . I used these key sections from his MIT lecture:

11:10-12:10 Comparison with Columbus
15:30-18:25 Globalization 3.0
35:34-42:00 Vertical to Horizontal
46:00-47:39 The World our Kids will Grow up in

This isn't as powerful as the whole lecture or obviously the book but I hope it begins to challenge our thinking around an education system that is largely based on old world standards and hierarchy.

Those days are done. We do have a good number of teachers that realize this and have begun to change. But we need more. I hope that as leaders, we can provide the constant push to see change happen.

Weird Stuff

2005-11-01T22:33:00.000-06:00

Here's a collection of weird stuff I've come across over the past few days.

Animated stereograms. Remember those 3-D pictures from 10 years ago where you had to look cross-eyed to see the image behind the pixels? Here's a video version of the same thing. You'll have to watch it a few times to see it. via Dave Weinberger
Million Dollar Homepage. I only wish I thought of this one. Alex Lew, a college student thought he could sell a million pixels of webspace a dollar at a time. He started 2 months ago and now has over half a million dollars. I'd say his education is now paid for. via Alan Levine
250,000 Bouncy Balls. A new commercial for a plasma tv sees a quarter of a million bouncy balls relaesed in San Francisco.

The Drive Home videoblog. I've done a podcast from my vehicle which makes sense when you commute. I don't, that's why I've only done it twice. This guy uses a video camera during his daily half hour commute in Massechussets.

Clusty for Kids instead of Google

2005-10-31T10:30:00.000-06:00

Like most people, I use Google as my primary search engine. It is arguably the best meta search engine available. The problem with Google is that it takes some experience to understand how to search effectively.

For students, this is difficult. Instead, try a search engine called Clusty. Clusty categorizes searches for you. This can help a student narrow results as well as show them how topics are organized. This is especially helpful when beginning research.

What other search engines do you like for kids?

Maybe you prefer email

2005-10-28T20:10:00.000-06:00

I love RSS. But after looking at my blog stats, I'm certain most/many that visit haven't figured out the RSS deal. So I'm going to try using FeedBlitz to provide email subscription options. If you read this regularly but don't use RSS or don't yet really know what it means, you can subscribe via email.

Workshop blog

2005-10-28T14:12:00.000-06:00

I've decided to move all my new workshops to a weblog. Although some of my presentations may call for a PowerPoint, many are better suited to a weblog format.

I haven't abandoned PowerPoint as a presentation tool as some may have, espesically in the light of Dick Hardt's captivating use, but for most of my stuff, the weblog seems most appropriate.

You can subscribe to the weblog as well.

Who needs web design?

2005-10-28T00:19:00.000-06:00

The need for teachers to learn web design in a traditional html editor has certainly been lessened as a result of the weblog. I try to advocate in favour of the weblog as a web presence for teachers and students. The Bionic Teacher just posted a question in regards to technology training and I commented in a similar way.
Our school division is about to merge with 5 other divisions on January 1, 2006. This will include some big changes. Our new director has asked a colleague of mine to design the new division site. I designed and basically maintain our present site but am more than willing to pass this task on to Jeff, who is a master web designer. He and I have talked about the use of a CMS as the backbone of the site. I know he'll do a great job of creating a functional and powerful site.
Our current school sites have all been designed by willing teachers who have taken various training sessions with Dreamweaver. The issues that constantly arise is who maintains the site? How often is it updated? What happens if the web designer changes schools? In an effort to address these issues, we had Tim Lauer of Portland talk to our school support teams via Skype recently to talk about his school site. Tim discussed his purpose and some functions of his site. All our schools recognize the need to make some changes and we'll begin by installing a news script inside their existing pages to alleviate the pressures of a single webmaster as well as create a site with updated information.
This represents a first step in developing a culture that embraces communication and makes better efforts to connect to parents and the community. Our new division will likely take this a step further with fully functional blog or CMS back end.
Is web design dead? For most teachers yes. Html and CSS are all still needed but we're starting to understand its limitations.

It's always a balancing act

2005-10-27T14:29:00.000-06:00

In general, life is a balancing act. This hardly can be describe as a new or profound thought. Two posts particularly resonated with me about balance.

Susan Sedro set the stage for me by confessing, she should have been doing other things. Thanks for being honest. The first post was from Wired News where they write about cracks in Web 2.0. I've been using this term a lot lately simply because I haven't found a better one and it's one that many are now familar with. For many of my local colleagues, it's a new term that likely doesn't have great meaning. Anyway, the article talks about the inevitable problems surronding new technologies. In this case wikipedia is cited as an example of how the openness of access introduces the possiblity of inaccuracies and even pure garbage. True enough. Here's the part that adresses balance:

"Online, free media is one of the contributing factors to the shrinking circulation of good newspapers," he said. "Now, traditional media is shifting away from large investments in bureaus and hard reporting, and towards cheaper content and opinion-making. It's hard for me to imagine participatory media devoting investments to hard, investigative or overseas reporting. The healthiest scenario would be one in which both kinds of media thrive."

The second post was from George Seimens who talks about the joys of shallow thinking. I'm all for that. Actually his post looks at how we need to be able to read in different ways.

What happens when we change how we interact with information? We "ramp up" our processing habits. Instead of reading, we skim. Instead of exploring and responding to each item, we try and link it to existing understanding. We move (in regards to most information we encounter) from specific to general thinking…from deep to shallow thinking. Shallow thinking, in this sense, isn’t as negative as its connotations. Shallow thinking (perhaps I need a better phrase) involves exploring many different sources of information without focusing too heavily on one source. Aggregating at this level helps us to stay informed across broad disciplines. So much of education intends to provide “deep learning”. Often, however, “shallow learning is desired” (i.e. we want to know of a concept, but we don’t have time or interest to explore it deeply). All we need at this stage is simply the understanding (awareness?) that it exists. Often, learning is simply about opening a door…

As an example, today while skimming my Bloglines feeds, I formed a general awareness of lawsuits against Apple, developments with Google Base, blood tests for determining anxiety, etc. I’ve grown in my skills at rapid reading and aggregating information. I’ve also learned to quickly recognize information that is important for deeper exploration. The bulk of this work still happens in my head, but I’m encountering more software tools that assist the process. I don’t think it’s too ambitious to say that we are still very much at the beginning of a new era of learning – one defined by confusion in the abundance of information…and the accelerated need fro determining which information is valuable, and how the pieces fit together.

So it's not that deep thinking is not necessary, but we need both and my sense is that everyone needs to think about how they and their students are balancing both the material they are reading, and how they are reading it.

What if the STF did this?

2005-10-24T00:24:00.000-06:00

When I first entered into using RSS, blogs and all the tools of Web 2.0, I remember saving a couple of posts from Will Richardson in my Bloglines clippings. One was called Shaking Society to the Core and the other was What if I did this as a teacher. These posts spoke to the new nature of the web and how the potential for change is within reach.

I had a conversation this weekend with a friend of mine for the STF. He is one of the administrative executives and was discussing some of the frustrations of the provincial body regarding communication and specifically the last round of provincial negotiations. A recent study on the process revealed that the voting habits of each local was a direct reflection of the position and attitude of their local president. During this round of bargaining, there was some level of misinterpretation and confusion regarding some of the key issues. In addition, the bargaining committee and administration was accused of not being transparent with all teachers.

So we talked about how these new tools might make things different. We wondered what things might have been like had all 11,000+ teachers had direct access to the information and more importantly had direct access to the discussion. While they may have had access to information, most of the information required explanations and discussions that seemed to be different in different jurisdictions. In collecting information traditional surveys are usually the form. If this information was posted, others could respond and react and engage in equal participation. There seems to be a desire on many to control the information. (If you haven't already read the links to the two posts, now would be a good time to read them).

As it was, there was an email sent out to many that included a number of communications with the minister of learning. While this provided some unique and somewhat transparent information, without the ability for me to engage in the conversation, it was just information , not conversation. This is a clear picture of why the web is different now. This conversation takes place on many of the blogs I read. Even though I don't comment on every post, the ability to do so is part of what makes it a conversation and community.

Locally, our school division just spent a full day with Richard and Rebecca DuFour talking about Professional Learning communities. I created a moodle site with a discussion area. I've asked teachers to comment on their thoughts and opinions engage in conversation. Teachers are beginning to understand they can speak freely and have professional conversations based on equal access to the information, in this case a day long workshop. This is one way to get a pulse on the feelings of our teachers. In time, more and more will participate and we'll hear from a variety of teachers, not just the ones who tend to be vocal in public settings.

I'll wrap up with a quote from the Cluetrain Manifesto, which is freely available online. Dave Weinberger talks about how the web changes the way business works but I think you can apply these principles to any organization.

It is a public place. That is crucial. Having a voice doesn't mean being able to sing in the shower. It means presenting oneself to others. The Web provides a place like we've never seen before.

We may still have to behave properly in committee meetings, but increasingly the real work of the corporation is getting done by quirky individuals who meet on the Web, net the two-hour committee meeting down to two lines (one of which is obscene and the other wickedly funny), and then -- in a language and rhythm unique to them -- move ahead faster than the speed of management.

The memo is dead. Long live e-mail. The corporate newsletter is dead. Long live racks of ezines from individuals who do not speak for the corporation. Bland, safe relationships with customers are dead. Long live customer-support reps who are willing to get as pissed off at their own company as the angry customer is.

We are so desperate to have our voices back that we are willing to leap into the void. We embrace the Web not knowing what it is, but hoping that it will burn the org chart -- if not the organization -- down to the ground. Released from the gray-flannel handcuffs, we say anything, curse like sailors, rhyme like bad poets, flame against our own values, just for the pure delight of having a voice.

And when the thrill of hearing ourselves speak again wears off, we will begin to build a new world.

That is what the Web is for.

So I issue the challenge to the STF and other organizations, try opening things up and allow the web do what it can easily do to build trust, community and conversation. I'm not suggesting we burn the organization but the principle of openness and breaking down barriers to reveal our uncertainties and questions will be necessary for satisfying 21st century communication needs.

Top 10 Rated Digital Cameras Under $100

2005-10-21T20:04:00.000-06:00

It seems I get asked about digital cameras on a fairly regular basis. My answer usually includes something like, "stick with something fairly basic to start and then you'll discover the features you'll want to upgrade.

Everyone should have a digital camera. Here's a way everyone can get started.Top 10 Rated Digital Cameras Under $100

Kids credited for making connections

2005-10-20T21:59:00.000-06:00

USATODAY.com - Online phys ed takes hold in Minneapolis:

"'I would've had to go to gym class and take up an hour every day,' the
17-year-old said during a break from tossing a Frisbee with a few
teammates. 'I would've had to give up orchestra. If I'd taken it last
year, I'd have had to give up German.'"

Physical Education may be the last course you would think lends itself to online learning but the concept here is pretty powerful. Allow students to get credit for physical activities they are already doing outside of school. I also wrote about this for our in-motion blog.

If a student spent hours a week writing, wouldn't it be nice for them to get credit for that? After all, if our goal is to help kids learn, doesn't this consitute the most important learning of all, learning that goes beyond the classroom walls and is applied. The morphing of academic and every day activities should be a worthy goal. We are spending a great deal of time developing learning that is relevant and meaningful. And we should continue our efforts to make our curriculum as relevant as possible. In this case, the kids already figured it out for us. Why not acknowledge that.

Now, to take that beyond this example and permeate all subject areas would be a great help in our quest to narrow and focus the curriculum on essential outcomes.

iPods become music to teachers’ ears

2005-10-19T20:06:00.000-06:00

iPods become music to teachers’ ears
"At Jamestown Elementary School in Arlington,
Camilla Gagliolo took another approach. Rather than fighting the fad, she's capitalizing on it by giving students iPods and re-imagining them
as a learning tool."

Podcasting reintroduces not only an old technology but I think an area of our curriculum that has been overshadowed by our emphasis on writing. My experience is that speech writing and making have taken a back seat in the classroom. Even as it relates to technology, students use of IM has become a major form of communication. We all knew that as technology evolved it would include increase use of audio and video. With podcasting and portable audio devices, this is now reality. The ease at which we can not only record and edit audio but more importantly subscribe to audio makes this form of communication one that teachers need to embrace.

This article should get us all excited to begin to get our kids to talk and listen.

The Best of the Blogosphere for New Bloggers

2005-10-17T12:59:00.000-06:00

I'm doing a session this afternoon on Weblogs and just want to highlight a few edubloggers that everyone should read. I've got over 200 feeds so I certainly can't include everyone. This list represents bloggers that new blogging teachers can best get a sense of the potential of weblogs.

Remote Access....Clarence Fisher, grade 7/8 teacher in Manitoba.
Clarence's classroom blog

Bob Sprankle...Bob is a grade 4 teacher from Maine. He also does a weekly podcast with his class.

Bud the Teacher....Bud Hunt is a high school English/Journalism teacher who does some great reflective work.

A Difference...Darren Kuropatwa is a High School Math teacher from Manitoba. Many don't think Math is a very good subject for a blog. Darren proves otherwise.
Darren's AP Calculus Class

Kathy Cassidy... Kathy is a grade 1 teacher here in Moose Jaw. She uses it as a daily update for her class.

Weblogged....Will Richardson might be the most well known educator who has been blogging for a number of years and does a great job emphasizing the importance of quality blogging.

While I'm sure I've left out some great ones, these will give people a sense of how they might want to format their blog.

If you're interested in developing a family blog. Check out:

Eamon's Family Blog
My Family Blog

We Need to Play More

2005-10-16T22:52:00.000-06:00

David Warlick points out some critical ideas here including the value of play and imagination.

My theory is that we were creative because we were one of the only societies that gave their children a childhood. We played. I couldn't wait for school to end, so that I could go out and play and playing mostly meant pretending.

While I know David is advocating children's need to play and explore outside of school, I think we need to provide this opportunity inside school as well. Even though we in Canada and specifically Saskatchewan have resisted the standardized testing craze and measurablele outcomes as the focal point of teaching and learning, we're moving that way in some respects and that worries me. Play and exploration sometimes seem to contradict targets and SMART goals. I don't have anything against setting targets but we can't align everything to targets.

A couple of weeks ago, the edtech posse, got together to chat. No agenda, no topics, just talking about stuff we were thinking about. Rick has done this and will be doing this later as part of his IBM fellowship award. He made the comment that he wished all his students would "do this." Just get together and talk and explore. No lesson plan, just hashing through ideas. Playing. We/I really need to get a handle on this. We need a balance of structured learning with free play both inside and outside of school. My sense is that that scale is still tipped to far away from play.

We people ask me about my job I usually tell them I have the most fun of anyone I work with. Part of my fun comes from the opportunity I have to play and explore and then try out stuff with teachers and kids. Since I'm not in the classroom everyday, I have to be respectful to teachers' daily grind. But there are many good ones who allow their students to play. They are probably our best teachers.

Waste Not Want Not

2005-10-15T23:58:00.000-06:00

I hope this doesn't offend anyone but this one reminds me of the stuff submitted to Leno or Letterman. This photo is in a local golf clubhouse to demonstrate their eco-friendly plumbing system.

As the flickr note ponders...."is this all from him?" Maybe I should go back to being explicit?

Podcast #7 Two Frustrations

2005-10-14T15:55:00.000-06:00

Need to get a couple of frustrations off my chest. These aren't new ones, just my recent take on them.

The slow rate of change:
Will Richardson
Darren Kuropatwa

Too many choices:
Writely
Writeboard
Elgg
Moodle
WordPress

From 6 year olds to 60 year olds

2005-10-14T00:19:00.000-06:00

I've agreed to teach a basic computer introduction class to largely seniors at one of our schools. I've taught technology to six year olds with a fair bit of ease. Sure, they'll run around a bit, maybe push something the shouldn't but for the most part learn pretty quickly and easily.

I've never taught seniors. I have shown my dad a few things but that's it. I have taught many reluctant adults but usually with a very specific purpose. Now I have carte blanche and want to give them the best bang for their six hour investment (3 nights/2 hours each).

So I'm asking for your help. I'm sure I'll cover file management, email, internet and searches but I'm not sure of the depth or focus of these topics.

If you had this time to teach seniors about using computers. What do you think are the critical skills they should have?

Posse Podcast #7

2005-10-12T01:41:00.000-06:00

This is our 7th podcast. Thanks again to Rob who does all the behind the scenes work. This one touches on a number of themes that I've been dealing with over the past couple of years. Enjoy.

I'm not explicit...not that there's anything wrong with that

2005-10-11T13:06:00.000-06:00

I've discovered that those who find my podcast listing using iTunes or Yahoo, will see the little explicit warning beside my feed. Not sure how that happened but I'm wondering if upon my itunes submission I checked the "adult" box when I clearly meant adult not adult....you know what I mean.

So for those of you tuning in to hear me rant like "fitty cent", sorry but you'll be quite disappointed.

Now if anyone knows how I can modify my listing with itunes, I'd love to know because I tried but couldn't figure it out.

UPDATE: I figured out how to remove it within my feedburner feed details. No I'm no longer explicit. I'm assuming my viewership will drop.
As usual, I really have no idea what the techie stuff means, I just fiddle around until it works...Hey that should be my tagline..."I just fiddle around until it works!"

Photo Essay...A Day in the Life Remix

2005-10-04T22:28:00.000-06:00

Way back when, I posted a little piece on a typical day for me. So I got this idea from Scott Hodge and decided to put my own twist on things. I think this would be a neat activity for kids. I haven't done much with photo essays so this is really my first attempt.

Basically the premise is that I take a photo at the top of every hour and photograph whatever it is I'm looking at at the time. It begins at 8:00am and finished at 10:00pm. Here we go.

8:00am Finished bowl of Special K.

9:00am Organizing Learning Team Webpage (maybe I should clean my screen!)

10:00am Meeting with Barry and Jan regarding Community Use Policy

11:00am Returning email

12:00pm Driving home for lunch

1:00pm Looking at note for Administrator's meeting

2:00pm Elementary Administrator's meeting

3:00pm Meeting with Barry, Ryan, Jeff regarding Thursday's meeting
Forget to take a picture!

4:00pm Checking my newsreader

5:00pm Picked up daughter from volleyball

6:00pm Taking the dog for a run

7:00pm Watching my son play High School Volleyball

8:00pm Picked up youngest daughter from Gymnastics

9:00pm One more trip out to take my son to piano lessons (which is dirtier, my van or screen?)

10:00pm Uploading photos, encoding video, watching the NFL Network

You can view all the images in larger size by clicking them or going to this page.

Even John Mayer's into social networking

2005-10-04T11:18:00.000-06:00

I hate John Mayer. Actually I really like his music but last year, my daughter and friends went down to hear him in Bozeman, Montana with our van and the transmission blew. $4,000 later and two trips down to Bozeman and I had my van back. That's the short version. It also doesn't include the tickets I bought for my daughter to hear him in Toronto tomorrow night. I wish I could go.

Anyway, it looks like John Mayer is looking to collaborate with anyone who can write some music for his lyrics. He's opening up his lyrics for anyone to write and wants to hear what they've come up with. He says:

I'm inviting all aspiring songwriters to write their own chords and melodies around my lyrics. Go ahead, I'm not using them. You can tell people that we wrote a song together.

So social networking isn't just for geeks or educators. If only I could write music.

A messy conversation

2005-10-02T22:46:00.000-06:00

This could be a difficult post to follow but I think there are some ideas here that might be interesting to explore so try and stay with me...

It all started with a post by Will Richardson. In it, he quotes Dave Weinberger, who has had me thinking since his keynote at NECC. (I wasn't there but watched his keynote 3 times). Will has a number of good thoughts and I also was challenged by quotes like this:

This [ideas around tagging and multiple viewpoints] makes a mess of your site's organization. But that's a good thing. In the digital age, messiness is not a sign of disorder. It is a sign of a successful order. Messiness is a virtue.
Links, not containers: A page is what it points to.

Multiple tags, not single meanings: A thing gains more meaning by having multiple local meanings.

Messiness, not clean order: The best definitions are ambiguous.

That doesn't sound like the idea of a good classroom. Yet, it's very freeing, especially if I think about my office. But this scares many of us.

First I send off the article to all the administrators in our school division and as them to be prepared to talk about it along with a podcast by David Warlick about a middle school principal. This will take place on Tuesday.

Next I invite my boss into watch a clip of Weinberger's keynote. She's been exploring for a long time new approaches to learning and will engage in conversations about these types of issues with great fervor. So we actually watched the whole clip and once again impressed by his recognition of new knowledge, especially his example of wikipedia. (I even emailed Dave Weinberger about our discussion and he responding later that evening to continue the conversation.)
Wikipedia is a great representation of Web 2.0. Here's Jimbo Wales, the founder of wikipedia, explaining why it might be better than Britannica:

Wikipedia invites critical dialogue with the text in a way that Britannica never could. I mean this not only in the metaphorical sense of "dialogue" --in that you can review the history of a Wikipediaa article, and the discussion page, and thus come to a more informed understanding of theeditorial choices that were made. But I also mean this in a literal sense: with Wikipedia, you can simply click to ask the authors aquestions, and they will actually answer you. You can leave a note on individual author pages, or on the talk page of the article, or you can even edit the article itself.
What encyclopedia in history ever supported the notion of critical analysis so thoroughly?

Okay, I realize, it's not the only authority, there are errors, this has been discussed before.

So after that, I read Andy Carvin's blog to discover he's polling educators on their hostility toward wikipedia. His perception is that many teachers do not value wikipedia and don't see it as a resource beyond the typical validity exercise. Jimbo Wales, however, feels that most educators support wikipedia. I think that very few teachers have used it much less heard about it.

Finally I check my EDTECH listserv to see a posting about why not wikipedia. Here's the comment I reacted to:

Anyone can edit the articles in the Wikipedia free online encyclopedia at any time. That is its great flaw.

After all I had been reading and discussing throughout the day, I kind of flipped and wrote a somewhat passionate response. Since then there have been a few responses, both for and against.

I'm not concerned that some don't agree. But the very fact this conversation is happening, encourages me and I think in some ways validates my beliefs. My belief, like Dave's and Will's I think is that the power is in the conversation and the ability to see multi-viewpoints. Make up your own mind but the opportunity that now exists is what is key.

I still don't have it all sorted out. Trying to track this entire conversation with about 10 people is tough enough. It is messy. I can live with that. Can you?

Podcast #6 Blogger Add-Ons

2005-09-30T12:20:00.000-06:00

You may have noticed my blog sidebar filling up with all kinds of "stuff". Today I'll talk about some of those tools and let you know how they work. Some might be useful for you!

Show notes:

Blogger Templates
Sun-Burned Theme
Skype Buttons
My Guestmap
My (Dean Shareski's) Guestmap
Furl
Furl code
Dan Today (It's actually Dan Weinstein, for some reason I thought it was Taylor or Mayor, sorry Dan)
Big Contact

What blogs do

2005-09-27T16:59:00.000-06:00

George Siemens says it about as well as anyone. This post is more of a bookmark for me as anything. But well worth the read for anyone.

Good teachers working to get better

2005-09-27T14:19:00.000-06:00

I'm bias but I believe we have the best group of 300 teachers around. I had the privilege of visiting all the schools to talk, but mostly listen to their attitudes and concerns around professional development. Our school district has embarked on the journey into assessment and evaluation and are using learning teams (aka: professional learning communities) as the vehicle for this change.

As with any change, it never comes easy, especially if it's at all meaningful. What I was most impressed with was the degree to which teachers balanced skepticism and concern with a true desire to do what's best for kids. As educators we have been witnesses to many a bandwagon and that may never change. This time it seems different. With teachers taking ownership of their own learning, they are willing to make sacrifices and put themselves on the line by working together with their peers. The days of isolation are over my friend and the "new shape of knowledge" needs to be addressed.

With this group of teachers, I like our chances of success.

New font for dyslexics

2005-09-26T22:21:00.000-06:00

I have a lot of teachers in primary grades looking for fonts that best replicate written work. They often use comic sans as it best reflects student writing, espescially the "a".

Here's a site that claims it will help students with dyslexia.

There has been growing innovation to combat dyslexia, especially
for children, in the form of computer software. However, relatively
little design research has been done in the area of typography
and type design that might support dyslexics. Read Regular is
a typeface designed specifically to help people with dyslexia read
and write more effectively.

The basic premise is to create suddle differences in "b" and "d" for example to create distinction.

It's not available yet but there is contact information for those interested.

One Computer, Two Computer, Three Computer, Four

2005-09-26T21:45:00.000-06:00

I've had a go around or two with Todd Oppenheimer. Here we go again. His latest article calls for the advent of the one computer classroom. Not two or more but one.

Schools will get the most out of digital technology with students in junior high school and above. In the younger grades, computers usually mean lots of mechanical hassle and wasted time, often spent teaching students to do things on a screen they can more easily accomplish with paper, pencil, and crayons.

The "mechanical hassle and wasted time" is not as much linked to age as it is to the experience of the teacher and the level of school/district support. Having one computer or five in a classroom will not be the determining factor for good decision making on the part of the teacher. It simplies provides more choice.

Letting young children be captivated by the allure of the screen can distract them from the tactile, imaginative activities.

That's the reality of the world we live in. I'm not sure why it has to be all or none. Having students experience both the "tactile, imaginative activities" and the digital activities go hand in hand.
Side note: My 6 year old daughter spent most of yesterday creating a book with crayons and markers based on a website she visited earlier in the day.

The issue here goes well beyond test scores. Consider Tom Snyder's big fear: In time, he believes, employers will increasingly ask whether applicants have been computer trained or teacher trained. The machine-trained ones, he suspects, will be left out, because "they won't be able to make sense of the world."

I'm not sure if Mr. Oppenheimer is taking Tom Synder's comments out of context but again, the point Oppenheimer seems to be making is an all or none arguement. This certainly goes against many of the initiatives to see one to one computing. I don't think this will be the last time Mr. Oppenheimer and I disagree. I wonder what he'd think of David Warlick's vision of the ideal classroom.