Several species of small furry animals

Big fish

2010-04-10T16:45:00.001+07:00

Course V, Final Post

2010-04-02T08:01:00.012+07:00

Nearing the end of the 5 course graduate certificate program I started sometime in 2009. Course five has been the project course in which we implemented the project designed in course 4.

Through the 5 courses, I've had some insights into how tech can be used in the classroom, though the best way to figure it out is trial and error and using 15 years of experience teaching middle school to get a sense of what's working and what's not. There has been very little reading, studying, and discussion on a scholarly level in these courses, possibly because it doesn't exist or might conflict with what the facilitators believe. Then again, rigorous research and thought doesn't really mix with the twitter and tweeting crowd; having the most followers and hits on your blog are what it's all about!

As my two humanities classes and I have made our way through the Hungry World project, we've used technology off and on. From a social studies perspective, a couple of things continue to be the most useful; first is blogging and responding about both current events and countries of study; second is the ease with which teachers can assign projects with a common theme or enduring understanding but with a wide range of topics. Right now the students are studying food security issues and solutions, but each is looking in depth and detail with up to the minute information about a different country.

I've had some very good discussions lately with my colleagues here and here. It's good to hear that most people are acknowledging the fact that we can't really multi-task all that well. Rather, we tend to flitter between one activity and the next, and I do it myself all the time. Email is constantly checked as is facebook, my RSS feeds, and maybe a quick look at skype to see if people I stay in touch with that way are there.

So at the end of these five course, I've learned much about how to use different programs and bells and whistles with my students, and I've seen much good come out of the use of technology. I'm cautiously optimistic that there will be some decent research showing how technology can be used to improve student learning. Maybe someday I'll do some of that research myself.

Cool

2010-03-22T07:08:00.002+07:00

Had to post this after wasting several minutes looking through "Google Reader Play"

Course V, Post IV

2010-03-21T16:57:00.003+07:00

Fantastic article: "National Ed Tech Plan Advocates Radical Reforms in Schools". This article give a commentary on President Obama's education plan, a plan that seems to offer bold, meaningful, rigorous change...and therefore something that probably will scare the stupid people who seem to be becoming by the day a large, loud majority in my home country.

One of the key concepts in using technology in education is the use of it BY THE EDUCATORS! Becoming educated in "educational technology" isn't just learning how to use different tech tools for the students to learn, it's how to use it as a teacher to help me become a better teacher. We've spent lots of time in this program learning some very useful tools, but a major "next step" the National Ed Tech Plan promotes is teachers using technology to enhance their own learning. And that can't just be personal learning networks. The PLN as they've been defined in these courses is a good first step, but we are educators, and there has to be a level of academic rigor and peer review in those networks. It is one thing to seek commiseration with a peer, it is an all together different thing to seek and accept meaningful peer guidance and feedback. Furthermore, the online collaboration must be an environment must be a place where people can disagree. If you look at many of the blogs linked to the everybody involved in these courses, the comments are pretty much exclusively, "oh, you're so amazingly correct!" While not to discredit that sentiment, there does, again, need to be a place for intellectual dialogue. I'm STILL struck by the "OMG! How cool" aspect to so many of my colleagues regarding technology. "What? You're SKYPING IN AN EXPERT?? THAT WILL SIMPLY BE AMAZING!!!!!!!" Of course that expert my be just as deathly boring and a "real life" expert...and his delivery just as useless to students' learning.

This article finishes thusly;

Recommendations for teaching include:

The development of collaborative networks and expanded resources for teachers.
Promotion of technological fluency among teachers through pre-service and in-service development programs.
Developing "career-long personal learning networks" for teachers using technology.
Making more learning resources available to teachers through technology, "especially where they are not otherwise available."
Developing "a teaching force skilled in online instruction.

The more I think about all if it emerges what seems to be an underlying paradox to connectivity: being connected to everything under the sun seems to, at the base, create independent learners.

Course V, Post Three

2010-03-21T16:06:00.005+07:00

"[T]here still is very little scientifically based research to gauge the effectiveness of technology," according to John Bailey, the Director of Educational Technology for the U.S. Department of Education
-From Technology and Academic Achievement by Les Foltos (http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/technology/foltos.htm)

I began to read with interest an article I found called, Technology and Academic Achievement by Les Foltos. It appeared on the New Horizons for Learning site. It immediately raised some issues that concern just about any teacher regarding the use of technology. That is--does it improve student learning? This article claims that though millions and millions have been spent to create, maintain, and upgrade the technology infrastructure in public schools in the US, there is scant, if any, real evidence to show improvement in student learning. All this from the first two paragraphs. But then on closer inspections, we see the dates of this article and the studies cited--pushing ten years old. I wonder if there has been any recent, scientific study to show student learning in relation to the increase in technology used in education.

Another question, though, that springs to mind, is HOW will that increase in learning be measured. Years ago as a public school teacher, a fellow educator was lamenting the increased onslaught of state-mandated testing. He put a sign up in the faculty room: "You can't make a hog fatter by weighing it ever day." In the vein of referring to students as barnyard creatures, I'd venture you can't measure increase in ANYTHING other than weight with a scale. So, if you want to see if your prized pig has fatter pork chops and leaner pork rinds, you can't gauge that with a scale. OK, that makes no sense. But what I'm saying is; does it make sense to try and measure student acheivement with the same old tests (eg, standardized paper and pencil ITBS types, or the glorified MAP version) if the use of technology can provide a fundamentally different learning experience? So, back to the pigs: we just might be making them "fatter" but we're using the wrong scale and we haven't yet agreed on what fatter means.

Further along in the article comes this about student achievement: [using] computers to teach low order thinking skills, '...[W]as negatively related to academic achievement….'" This resonated with me as a teacher who still believes in the importance of putting a warm body in front of students, and particularly if that warm body has a high level of training. As somebody who has spent 15 years teaching middle school students, it makes perfect sense that students will learn fundamental skills better from a caring, nurturing human being rather than a computer. In fact, this article goes on to state that the learned teacher uses technology for simulations and problem solving, whereas the less-well versed educator will use technology for "drill and kill" type low-level activities.

Another area of note from this article: "We find that when you put the two, (inquiry based learning and true technology integration) together there's a synergy created that really boosts students' learning" (Brannigan, 2002). I like this because "computers" is not a curriculum...nor is it anything other than a noun used to describe object that, uh, compute. But getting back to that original rant about pigs and making them fatter, I wonder how we can assess in some sort of standardized way (and we can argue all day about the necessity to do that, but...) if a student is capable of taking himself on a focused, guided learning journey or "inquiry" using a certain set of technology available.

Some reading...

2010-03-08T11:05:00.007+07:00

I did a google search of phrases like, "Educational Technology"; "Technology in the Classroom"; and "Challenges adapting technology in the classroom."

Of course, these searches resulted in thousands and thousands of results. I looked through several. Many of the first articles I perused were dated from the early 2000s. I laughed a bit at some of the major obstacles facing integration. As you might expect, those obstacles included hardware installation and adopting school/district policies about using email or websites for communication rather than paper or newsletters (http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/tech087.shtml)

It seems like most of these goals/obstacles to technology integration in the classroom have been achieved or overcome. For example, the four different school systems I've been with since the late 1990s have each used email and websites for communication. Parents and teachers are simply expected to be able to access these technologies.

So...if some of those early ideas for getting the world of education able to use technology were focused around practicalities and hardware, maybe an intellectual discussion could take us to the next step...goals to maximizing student achievement with technology. And perhaps the use of technology in education is so widely scattered and varied that doing meaningful research is impossible. What does it mean to do research about the learning results of a 1-2-1 school?

Digital Stories, Google Docs, and posters. Post #2, course #5

2010-03-08T07:02:00.010+07:00

Last week at school, I think my students ran the gambit of ed tech over the last 20 years. First, the digital stories from the Korat trip: this was actually more than a week ago, but with all the absences we've had in the middle school, technical difficulties, etc., it's only been within the last 10 or so days that everybody has successfully posted or at the very least turned a file in to my via flash drive.

The Korat Digital story assignment is constantly evolving. Three years ago it was a highly structured social studies assignment based around the five themes of geography.

source: http://pkab.wordpress.com/2008/07/26/peta-konsep-5-tema-geografi/

Over the last couple of years, it has evolved into a more personal reflection based on students' interests and "aha"s they might have had on the trip. Click here for some examples from a colleague's students. I've posted a couple from my own students below.

and

In general, I was satisfied with how this project went from beginning to end. What is not necessarily evident in the final product is the amount of "tweaking" that went into the directions. We (my team and I) are learning that if a visual story of some sort is to come to life, the student instructions must give the chance for them to investigate and display their own creativity and interests in a why that lends itself to visual production. Those instructions might well be different from what's given to students if the end result is to be a written essay, or even a PowerPoint.

That all probably gets at the heart of some issues involving technology use at school. Maybe we don't all realize, think about, or care about what a massive shift is taking place. Maybe frustration from some camps regarding technology is that an excellent, veteran teacher who motivates her students and creates fantastic learning activities suddenly tries to shift to students demonstrating their learning in "web twenty" way and then realizing the "web twenty" product is basically crap. Imagine if for years students in a critical writing class had been producing literary analysis essays of all sorts and then suddenly the students were asked to basically follow the same rubric and syllabus but produce a digital story comparing two short stories rather than writing a comparative essay. I've come to fully understand that the teacher, instruction(s), rubrics, discussions, the whole thing, needs to be different if students are to do something meaningful and demonstrate learning with technology as part of their regular classroom life.

Blog Post #1 Course 5

2010-03-04T12:00:00.004+07:00

I'm lucky to be working with such a dedicated group of teachers, and doubly lucky that we're all taking this ed tech program together. We've worked together on and off through the 5-course program, and of course we work together everyday. We know each others styles and strengths, so I'm hopeful that we'll create something very good using web twenty educational practices.

As 7th grade team leader, it's been my role since arriving at ISB to adjust and adapt the curriculum that was already in place. My team and I were asked to increase the depth of learning in the units and of course to continually implement technology stuff where and when appropriate. The 7th grade humanities program has been evolving for a while now, and this year (2010-2011 school year) is shaping up to be one during which we can solidify some curriculum issues. And hopefully if our team stays in-tack next year, we can go through the whole curriculum without having to learn it ourselves or teach it so the 50% + of team members who are new to the grade!

Final Project Reflections for course IV

2009-12-09T12:56:00.003+07:00

The humanities 7 team has just consulted again to create a meaningful revision/update/upgrade of the existing curriculum. I'm so lucking to be working with a team in which 4 of the 5 are taking this course--not to mention that we all work so well together! No complainers or blockers, and everybody pulls her own weight.

What we came up with is a natural extension of last year's project, based on the concept of Connected World. This year's final unit will focus around one of several work issues. Students will work together, hopefully develop a bit of a PLN of their won, and create a viable, actionable solution to a global issue that can be acted upon at a local level. Last year's guest speaker from Ryan's Well is the perfect example!

An assessment panel will decide which of the student-group's ideas are most "doable" and with any luck, the 7th graders will have time to get started.

How do you manage the use of technology peripherals with students?

2009-12-09T10:22:00.006+07:00

Other than when I've "taught" yearbook class, I haven't had much experience managing tech peripherals in my classroom. However, the one peripheral that I have used extensively with the students is the (hopefully soon to be formerly) ubiquitous flash drive or thumb drive. The seemed like such a great idea at the beginning, and there are some very good uses for them, though for many 7th grade students, the small flash drive is just too much of a hassle. Part is the size; small is good, but small is also easily lost or damaged or "forgotten at home." My best advice for using the peripheral is to not use it at all. With google docs and blogs, students have better options for storing and sharing their work. In fact, that's what sold me the most on using google docs in the classroom; I had begun requesting more and more work be submitted electronically, and this often meant having students line up at my computer and transfer files via flash drive. Sharing google docs is so much easier (though of course not without its own headaches!)

Back to teaching yearbook. The single biggest challenge with yearbook peripherals, mainly the digital camera, was that the yearbook department at my former school had purchased two rather expensive cameras--a couple grand US each. These were of course amazing cameras that took beautiful pictures in the proper hands; they also gave me the chance to teach a little photography (or more precisely, let those motivated students figure it out for themselves.) However, the questions were constantly: what to do with the cameras when not in yearbook use? Because they were so expensive, do we want to "share" them with other classes/teachers? Budget issues also arose since the cameras were purchased through yearbook funds.

So, other than that, I don't have much experience and therefore, not much to offer.

These two articles, particularly the first one regarding the "industry pitching" to the classroom really make me cringe. While reading the NYT article, I found myself thinking of how the US has stacked key policy making departments with corporate autocrats looking for nothing more than financial reward from the policies they help enact.

Check out this article.

Managing Laptops in the Classroom

2009-11-26T12:11:00.004+07:00

Seems like classroom laptop management needs a major upgrade. I've been working in schools for about 10 years now that having roving laptop carts available on a sign-up basis. In the last 10 years, basically nothing has changed: teachers sign up and hope that on the allotted day and time the laptops are there, they're working, and they've been charged.

Management issues here at ISB include making sure no students are injured when the doors inevitably fly open when the cart is being wheeled down the hall; not to mention avoiding the shower of sparks that come out of the plug when the whole thing is connected to a wall outlet.

Once the laptops are in the classroom and working, the real fun begins. I've had the most success with laptops when something new is happening, rather than the same thing in a different way. They can be a distraction, of course. However, I believe I'm seeing a changing attitude towards the laptop by students. More and more they are playing their games and other distractions on hand-held devices. Perhaps the computer is increasingly viewed as a learning instrument. Maybe not. As far as students not listening to direct instruction while the laptops are out, I follow the same "rules" as usual. If some students don't hear or pay attention to instructions because they're distracted, they will have to suffer the consequences, what ever that might be; like most things in middle school, it's simply a skill they'll have to build: realizing when it's time to take the eyes off the screen and put them on the teacher.

How relevant are the NETs for Teachers and Administrators to being a "Good Educator" today?

2009-11-23T14:23:00.006+07:00

For teachers:

1. Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity

Yes, of course this is important, and one that should be there with or without the technology component.

2. Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments

I'll go off on just a little tangent here. There is more than a little potential to be explored with technology in the classroom. In order to take the meaninful next step, ISB must adopt a 1-2-1 program. I feel, as a colleague recently articulated, that many teachers at the middle school have done what can reasonably be done technology wise using the current and somewhat antiquated computer-cart check-out system. To further my tangent a bit, I think a 1-2-1 environment offers a wonderful place for students to engage in everything listed here under number 2, and includes the important facet of meta-cognition.

3. Model Digital-Age Work and Learning

This is probably the crux of the issue, especially as it pertains to going 1-2-1, and maybe part of the hesitation. While I am wholly onboard with a 1-2-1 program and am convinced of its place and vitality in improving student learning, it is still hard to say flat out and beyond a doubt that arming kids with a laptop will provide each and every one of them with an more meaningful educational experience. And I can think of several teachers I've encountered over the years who are brilliant, inspiring educators who almost never used technology and would be lost/frustrated/angry if they were somehow "forced" to use it. Of course, on the flip side are plenty of perfectly bad teachers who don't use technology and come up with every excuse in the book not to bother; and finally there is the "park them in front of the screen" approach, which is just as disastrous. Anyhow, the school needs to model meaningful use of technology top-down, not to mention provide meaningful teacher-education regarding that meaningful use.

4. Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility

Yes, and again it must be a school-wide initiative, and modeled by all, and consistently so.

5. Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership

As I mentioned above, teachers who adopt the notion of a changed educational world and technology need to also adopt a mind-set that the change is on-going and probably will be forever. Just as the curriculum I have taught over the last 15 years has evolved, so to will the tools with which I teach it, and of course the line between the two will continually be blurred, or even erased.

For administrators:

There is a common thread here in the standards for administrators: technology infusion is an on-going process that requires constant monitoring, change, and awareness. There are the "stake holders" the admin must appeal to as well, as in the parent community as a whole, and of course the school board. Each stakeholder, including the teachers and students, must consistently and constantly see the learning benefits from technology infusion, particularly if a school is striving for 1-2-1.

How to ensure that students are learning what they need to.

2009-11-23T13:02:00.002+07:00

Well, I'd say that first of all, school should be striving to ensure that students are learning what they need to learn, irrespective of the school's use of technology. As with any other curriculum or initiative or whatever in a school, teachers must keep up-to-date with what's current, and the school must provide plenty of opportunity for the faculty to do so.

The first step is to define what it is that students need to learn regarding Information Literacy; a curriculum and scope and sequence must be in place, and regular assessment activities of all kinds must take place.

As I said with my previous blog post, if a school is going to do a good job with this, it must be a consistent, school wide effort with direct supervision and expectations.

Who's job is it to teach the NETs and AASL standards to students?

2009-11-23T10:13:00.004+07:00

I always think about the answer to most "whose job is it?" type questions in education very simply: it is all of our jobs. I can make an analogy to teaching writing. The very best writing program I've seen in action was way back in my public school days in Colorado. The school district had adopted the 6-Traits of writing program. While we language arts teachers did much of the technical instruction about the 6-traits, writing posters where hung in each classroom, including the gymnasium and industrial arts (aka Shop), and teachers were expected to refer to the traits in any sort of writing instruction they gave and any sort of assessment done on writing. Furthermore, each school in the district held twice-yearly writing assessments, and the marking day included the ENTIRE school faculty--all teachers from all subjects. This whole-school involvement led to a whole school consciousness about writing. Just like a language arts teacher wouldn't let two plus two equals eighty-seven slide, math teachers would let, "The answer be eigth dog" slide.

So, I believe it is each teacher's "job" to teach tech standards to his students and to model them consistently. I think this will become particularly necessary if/when ISB goes 1-2-1! Hopefully soon!

Final Project Reflections

2009-11-10T12:48:00.002+07:00

For the final project on this course, I had the wonderful opportunity yet again to work with my fabulous 7th grade humanities colleagues, most of whom are also taking this course.

As what has been a highlight of the Tech Cert program so for, we've been given the chance to take something we're doing in class and take it to the next level tech wise, and hopefully learning wise with the students as well.

7th grade is the only grade in middle school where the kids are exposed to geography and mapping skills, so our challenge as relatively newly hired teachers (three years now) was to take a curriculum grounded in those skills, yet lacking meaningful assessment tools and higher level thining tasks. Together with team 7, we created some new learning tasks for the students both using technology and hopefully also asking the students to go "deeper" with their thinking.

The result was extensive use of "SmartMovie" type software. Students each took on one land form (atoll, volcano, glacier, etc.) and created a short SmartMovie detailing the land form. All of the clips were posted on YouTube. This served as a wonderful study guide and learning tool for the students.

I can't say with certainty that the students learned more or in a deeper way. That of course would take legitimate research. The did however help each other create more easily accessible resources. We will definitely keep the project going, and hopefully build on it, for years to come.

How could screencasts be used in your classroom/department?

2009-10-14T13:30:00.004+07:00

As my department, specifically the Hum 7 group (7th grade humanities teachers, that is), moves more and more to Panther Net as our online curriculum storage depot of choice, I think setting up a simple screen cast as in introduction to Panther Net would be great. Along those lines, I think that more and more, many of the tech sessions the school puts on could be captured and distributed to faculty, especially to new faculty. Sure, there is lots to be said about face-to-face sessions, but for many teachers these days, we don't need to sit through an exhaustive and lengthy training session about, i. e., how to enter grades on PowerSchool. Many of us have an innate awareness of the basic way computer applications function and usually with only a little nudge about getting started or maybe a few insider tips or tricks about a certain program is enough.

Something Kim said on Saturday's class resonated with me: the idea of not being afraid to push buttons or "see what happens if I do this" when interacting with software. Nowadays, seems like if something drastically bad happens when you're experimenting with software, that makes that software faulty, not the user.

Anyhow, a little screen cast to got on Panther Pops and upload a file to the teacher share section.

Some interesting sites I stumbled across...

2009-10-08T08:37:00.004+07:00

http://www.stevehargadon.com/

http://www.classroom20.com/

http://www.futureofeducation.com/

http://www.bigpicture.org/

How has the explosion of web based video changed the teaching and learning landscape?

2009-10-07T13:51:00.004+07:00

I don't know. Has it?

" . . . truth is something you assemble yourself on your own screen": how true it is.

I've been thinking about this question for a while now, and I still come back to my original thought: "I don't know." Is there some sort of evidence or research out there that indicates whether web-based video has changed the "learning landscape"? And frankly, I'm not sure what "learning landscape" means, and perhaps it's a bit presumptuous to think that the few of us connected to the internet are really in touch with what teaching and learning is world-wide. So I guess I'll refocus myself by thinking, "How has web-based video changed classrooms that live a world were such things can be accessed." But again, I'm left with, "I don't know." I'm sure many teachers use web-based videos extensively, but I'm not sure how that might actually change what students LEARN. Perhaps if students are given the option of creating some sort of video it will give them more choices regarding demonstrating WHAT they've learned, but I've not seen much that shows the students are actually learning at a deeper level. I keep thinking of the PowerPoint days when parents and more than a few teachers were astounded by flying graphics and dancing fonts. We're not making commercials here. It's fine if you're trying to get students to create a video that will keep the audience's attention, but quite another if you're trying to get those students to demonstrate a high level of learning, let alone the use of video somehow taking that learning to another level.

So, all of the tech tools we've been learning in class are a part of our privileged world, and teaching students to use those tools and to consume the end result is significant, but I am weary of the potential impact on what we might actually call learning. I hope somebody has the initiative to do meaningful research about learning with technology. The "if it feels good do it" doesn't cut it, in my opinion, when it comes to the teaching and learning landscape.

Some thoughts about this New York Times article by Kevin Kelly. The article is certainly impressive in scope, covering topics from the invention of the printing press to the future of Hollywood cinima all under the rubric of "becoming screen literate." A few notes and quotes of interest:

"The overthrow of the book would have happened long ago but for the great user asymmetry inherent in all media. It is easier to read a book than to write one." It never really did become clear to me what this was supposed to mean. I can't tell if Kelly is intending that the only reason everybody isn't an author is because the actual act of physically producing a book is much harder than reading one, or is he trying to get at the obvious point that is significantly missing from the entire article: constructing meaning is more difficult that physically producing a book.

Another thought-provoking passage from the article: "After all, this is how authors work. We dip into a finite set of established words, called a dictionary, and reassemble these found words into articles, novels and poems that no one has ever seen before. The joy is recombining them. Indeed it is a rare author who is forced to invent new words. Even the greatest writers do their magic primarily by rearranging formerly used, commonly shared ones. What we do now with words, we’ll soon do with images." This is certainly true to the extent that the amount of images, both still and moving, is exploding rapidly. I just can't in my mind make the connection between how words are used to convey a thought and how images are. A picture might be worth a thousand words, but are a thousand words worth a picture?

Reflect on a presentation you have created in the past

2009-10-06T10:14:00.010+07:00

As a classroom teacher, I almost never (if ever) give complete presentations to my students. We do all sorts of visual image type stuff, ranging from SmartBoard slides:
The slide above is a journal prompt taken from the work of Dr. Jane Healy
The two pictures were swiped from Creative Commons

I've used the journal prompt for years, though this year was the first I thought to match it with pictures. The pictures definitely generated a lot of discussion. I spent a bit of time searching for the pictures I wanted, though I wasn't sure what I was looking for at the beginning. I settled on the to pictures mostly because neither one was at the top of the search list, and both capture the essence of the question without directing the conversation. Nobody talked about floating above their bed or being a hollowed-out bronze statue.

Another visual based activity I've done for the first time is an awesome activity that my wonderful colleague Robin put together. Here is a student's example.

So, I've definitely played around more and more with the idea of picking a few images carefully to represent my "message" and like the idea of "less is more." With those concepts in my, I dug up a presentation I have the MS humanities department at the end of last school year. On Saturday, 26 September, I worked with two colleagues to revise the presentation.

While I don't give presentations to students, I do give them to colleagues and parents from time to time. I think creating a slick, image-intense presentation will benefit when I'm explaining to my parent group what the school year will be all about. Of course most don't want to be burdened with slide after slide of edu-jargon. However, I now realize that a few powerful images will help capture the main ideas and will hopefully leave parents with a strong impression of what they can expect for the school year.

Still a work in progress, but below is the revisions we made to the original PowerPoint.

There is a link to it here

Digital Story and Reflection

2009-09-28T10:10:00.007+07:00

I played around with PhotoStory 3.

I also uploaded some Korat videos made by students. Much better than mine.

.

And......

I've been looking at this blog post for a week or so now thinking about what it means to tell a story digitally. I've been trying to think even what digital story telling means. Is a PowerPoint a digital story...I guess it COULD be. Is a picture book a digital story? How else are the pictures in the book produced if not digitally? The whole book itself...Kindle??? Are books on Kindle digital stories? Or maybe to qualify as a digital story all the "reader" has to do is push play? And the primary elements of the story are expressed in pictures?

In 7th grade humanities, we've just finished our first major novel study of the year. Half the classes read Mzungu Boy, and the other half read Before We were Free. One of the culminating assessment tasks included discussing how the author reveals character in the novel. We had the students write about the topic in a traditional way (traditional these days meaning typed on the computer and printed out.) I wonder how much more powerfully, if at all the students could have told their "story" of character development through a digital story--or maybe digital essay would be better. Not a photo essay, but a visual essay that might include images they find to represent what the author is revealing and how it related overall to a picture (ha!) of the character developed in the readers' minds.

Digital story telling certainly might get the students excited about creating a final product that is different then the norm, and maybe the "tech" hook would be enough to motivate many of them to strive to include the necessary elements, though maybe just as many would be put-off by the amount of "extra" work involved in putting together a digital story. And finally, humanities is in part language arts, as in writing, so we can't simply replace the traditional essay or short story with something "digital".

Find an appropriate image to use in at least one of the classes you teach

2009-09-21T09:32:00.007+07:00

The three images above represent the "Feeding a Hungry World" unit the 7th grade does second semester. I like these images because they represent so well the heart of the unit: 1) where does rice come from (the rice field picture...though I guess rather than such a pastoral photo I should choose one that represents actual physical labor involved); 2) The images of "fancy" rice represent the massive, staggering disparity of wealth and access to food we contemplate; and 3) the image of a plane bowl of rice represents how very important of a staple it is to this part of the world. I think the bird flying off with a few grains is a bit of a distraction from the meaning, but I don't dwell on it and it's a cool picture none-the-less. I think one of the early lessons to get the "Feeding a Hungry World" unit going will be for kids to take a look at the images and do a journal entry centered merely on the thoughts and emotions the images evoke. One of the things I struggle with as Language Arts teacher is what exactly visual literacy means, especially as applied to the art of writing. I understand how much of what we've studied relates to giving presentations, and when Jeff Utech came and talked to our 7th grade classes next year about using PowerPoint, I learned a ton right along with the kids. This school year I've already used those concepts and had the students give a "visual image" based presentations. But we still value writing and proper written expression, yeah? I wouldn't like to think that writing as a means of clearly expressing abstract and insightful thinking and learning could be replaced some how by something that's merely or primarily visual. So the question I grapple with is how can the two compliment each other?

I read through the Brain Rules: vision article, and while it was nice to see what appeared to be legitimate research, I couldn't help wondering about the purpose. Informative data about what remember regarding images vs. text and spoken word, but found the information about how the mind plays trick on the viewer somewhat baffling and alarming. How do we, or DO we, teach the kids to be smart consumers of what they're viewing. The slide with the random woman walking through the basketball game was particularly of note. I don't fully grasp its implications for me as a teacher of Humanities, even in the context of a tech-savvy teacher. I sort of thought of an assignment where I ask the students to read a poem and make note of the poet's use of simile then ask, "Did you notice the alliteration?"

This is what a sunset looks like...

A Sunset by Victor Hugo

I love the evenings, passionless and fair, I love the evens,
Whether old manor-fronts their ray with golden fulgence leavens,
In numerous leafage bosomed close;
Whether the mist in reefs of fire extend its reaches sheer,
Or a hundred sunbeams splinter in an azure atmosphere
On cloudy archipelagos.

Oh, gaze ye on the firmament! a hundred clouds in motion,
Up-piled in the immense sublime beneath the winds' commotion,
Their unimagined shapes accord:
Under their waves at intervals flame a pale levin through,
As if some giant of the air amid the vapors drew
A sudden elemental sword.

The sun at bay with splendid thrusts still keeps the sullen fold;
And momently at distance sets, as a cupola of gold,
The thatched roof of a cot a-glance;
Or on the blurred horizon joins his battle with the haze;
Or pools the blooming fields about with inter-isolate blaze,
Great moveless meres of radiance.

Then mark you how there hangs athwart the firmament's swept track,
Yonder a mighty crocodile with vast irradiant back,
A triple row of pointed teeth?
Under its burnished belly slips a ray of eventide,
The flickerings of a hundred glowing clouds in tenebrous side
With scales of golden mail ensheathe.

Then mounts a palace, then the air vibrates--the vision flees.
Confounded to its base, the fearful cloudy edifice
Ruins immense in mounded wrack;
Afar the fragments strew the sky, and each envermeiled cone
Hangeth, peak downward, overhead, like mountains overthrown
When the earthquake heaves its hugy back.

These vapors, with their leaden, golden, iron, bronzèd glows,
Where the hurricane, the waterspout, thunder, and hell repose,
Muttering hoarse dreams of destined harms,--
'Tis God who hangs their multitude amid the skiey deep,
As a warrior that suspendeth from the roof-tree of his keep
His dreadful and resounding arms!

All vanishes! The Sun, from topmost heaven precipitated,
Like a globe of iron which is tossed back fiery red
Into the furnace stirred to fume,
Shocking the cloudy surges, plashed from its impetuous ire,
Even to the zenith spattereth in a flecking scud of fire
The vaporous and inflamèd spaume.

O contemplate the heavens! Whenas the vein-drawn day dies pale,
In every season, every place, gaze through their every veil?
With love that has not speech for need!
Beneath their solemn beauty is a mystery infinite:
If winter hue them like a pall, or if the summer night
Fantasy them starre brede.

Write a reflective blog post on how the courses to date in this program have changed your teaching for the new year.

2009-09-18T18:31:00.010+07:00

The underlying theme of the first two courses has been "social networking." I believe social networking has its place in education, even in the 7th grade classroom. We've had the most success with blogging and wikiing. But really, what it has reinforced for me is that students can learn and gain knowledge from each other, from interacting with each others' ideas. I'm not sure how good at it they are just yet as 12/13 year olds, but it's a skill we can build with practice. That of course leads to the question why not practice with their classmates who are actually in the classroom rather than with students half way around the world? It's easy to say, "because they can!" or "because it's such a rewarding and enriching experience to interact with voices from around the globe." However, middle school is a time of phenomenal brain growth and I am of the mind frame as an educator that one of my primary roles is to carefully guide students through this period of growth. While I like the "mess around with this" when students are setting up their iGoogle pages or their blogs, that "mess around" mind frame shouldn't carry over to important developmental learning activities. If the middle grades are a time of massive growth in the "control center for 'executive functions' such as planning, impulse control and reasoning [emphasis mine]" then those middle grade students deserve a carefully considered set of learning activities to develop those functions.

So, while I can't say that the two classes we've had so far in the program have changed my teaching, those classes have given me lots to think about with the students and have also given me many new technology tools to consider. I think it's also imperative that we work collaboratively as experienced and professional educators to have meaningful discussions about how technology might best be used in the classroom.

Gaming in Eduction

2009-09-02T07:02:00.000+07:00

A segment from NPR is here.

Wolfram Alpha and Copyrights

2009-05-18T07:25:00.004+07:00

I know the course is over, but check out http://www.hippasus.com/rrpweblog/ for some thought provoking comments about copyrights and Terms of Service regarding the new search tool, Wolfram|Alpha. Scroll down a bit for the copyright paragraph, or read it here:

Now, all my complaints could be addressed trivially: if the "Source Information" link, instead of directing users to a generic page, revealed the exact data sources used, together with a general description of any additional processing applied, I would be perfectly happy. All the necessary info is in the database, and should be readily retrievable for any given query. As it is, I am not sanguine that this change will occur. Why? Well, reading the "Terms of Use" is a positively depressing experience in over-extension of copyright claims - for instance, Wolfram Alpha claims copyright over any plots, formulae, tables, etc. that might be generated as a result of your query. To put this in context, this would be not unlike Microsoft claiming copyright over any plots you generate using Excel. You are also forbidden from executing "systematic patterns of queries", and "systematic professional or commercial use of the website" is out of bounds. In other words, Wolfram Alpha is unusable for anything much more challenging than the occasional bar bet - I would have to warn any librarian that "systematically" using Wolfram Alpha to teach students about data sourcing might run afoul of the TOU, and regular use by a university research group would seem to be likewise forbidden. Of course, there is - you guessed it - a commercial license available as an option, although it's unclear whether this option would lift the veil of opacity I detailed above.
--from Ruben R. Puentedura's Weblog

Course 2 Final Project Reflection Blog Post

2009-05-06T13:13:00.002+07:00

I've recently completed my final project for course 2. It can be found here.

The final project turned out to involve a couple different aspects of the course. I created a "how to" .pdf file an introduction to making Google Earth Tours. This was a natural extension of what came out of the first course, the 7th Grade Humanities Connected World Project. We decided to split the 7th grade into four groups, and each group would learn about one specific tech topic (Google Earth, Wikis, Flickr and sound files.)

A great feature of the course two project is it's also a bit of a mass-collaboration project as well. Several of use are contributing to a "how to" wiki that other teachers would hopefully find useful. This "how to" wiki actually also models in a very small way the overall Connected World project in that it captures the main idea of a wiki and mass collaboration--many working together to create one thing.

I addressed the issue of Fair Use and Copyrights in my Google Earth Tour instruction set as well. I don't think teachers and students would run into much of a conflict making Google Earth tours, but there is so much available on Google Earth that I did find myself wondering what sorts of things are copyrighted on Google Earth and by whom. There are certainly lots of YouTube posts and also wonderful 360 degree panorama files that are amazing to look at and seem to reflect a big effort on the part of the creator.

I think the key issue of Fair Use and Google Earth Tours would be to of course not take credit for files of any type that are already there and you're pegging as part of your tour.

I quite happy with how the "how to" wiki is shaping up and hopefully it will be used. I think the fair use and copyrights issues will be ones teachers continue to think about and deal with, as we always have, but of course just now in a different way.

Craziness?

2009-04-22T12:25:00.001+07:00

http://homepages.uc.edu/secondlife2/

Check out this blog

2009-04-21T07:18:00.006+07:00

I stumbled across this blog and think it's definitely worth looking at...

If you go to that blog, maintained by Dr. Ruben R. Puentedura, and click on any of the podcast links, like this one, it will (hopefully, if you have it installed) open iTunes and you'll see a list of all of his podcasts. They are amazing! Very detailed and somewhat technical, but worthwhile checking out if you're already quite familiar with the topic and are interested in taking it to the next level.

1:1 Laptops....

2009-04-21T06:42:00.005+07:00

One of the blogs in my RSS is http://edinatech.blogspot.com/

This post about 1-2-1 laptops is worth checking out, and there is a good link to some lessons that call specifically for 1-2-1 computers.

The chart below gives a rather simplistic but meaningful continuum of tech use...I wonder where my classroom fits in....

The chart above was swiped from http://edinatech.blogspot.com/

It seems like sometimes we're talking out of both sides of our mouths. One the one hand, we say, "Use computers only if they enhance learning, add meaning to the lesson, etc." But on the other hand, we may say things like, "Don't buy text books because you can get it all online." I guess the point is that a "Level 1" lesson might still be pretty damn good--engaging, enriching, and meaningful for the students. And of course, I think a "Level 4" lesson that couldn't be done without 1-2-1 availability might be completely terrible.

I would like nothing more (well, OK, I can think of a few things I'd like more) than for our school to go 1-2-1 with laptops. This school year and the MA program I'm currently taking have really shown me the light regarding a 1-2-1 program. I think one of the fears many would have would be feeling obliged to use the laptops all the time, every day. What would be wrong with a whole week going by without using them? Probably nothing. I'm thinking of a poetry activity I do where students cut random "good" sounding words out of magazines, mix them all together, then take about 30 of the words and arrange them into a poem (using only those words) that may not have much (or any) meaning but focuses only on sound. Would I drop that activity because it doesn't use computers? No. Is there someway to do it using computers? Yes. Is that way using computers better???????????? I'll have to get back to you.......

Random Thoughts About the Newspaper

2009-04-19T14:11:00.009+07:00

I love reading a real newspaper. Holding the paper spread open and before you are 10 or more articles about a massive range of topics, and you can take it all in at a single glance, focus on the headlines, read the picture captions, and then decide where to dive in.

I've received the International Herald Tribune on and off for about 10 years, basically my whole overseas career. As I've posted elsewhere, I recently resubscribed to a trial subscription of the print edition and then after thinking I'd let it expire, decided to renew for a year.

Anyhow, the IHT has a very, very good section on technology that appears a few times a week. I've posted links to online versions of some articles that apply to this course, ISB Certificate of Educational Technology and Information Literacy, Course 2

Opposition to Google Books Settlement Jells
Four Convicted in Sweden in Internet Piracy Case
Patient Money: Some Caveats About Keeping Your Own Electronic Health Records
Putting Twitter’s World to Use

Understanding Web Connections

2009-04-19T13:25:00.003+07:00

The 7th Grade Humanities students and teachers at ISB have been making their collective ways through the new "Connected World" project for several weeks now. For "my" students (about 25% of the 166 total, and I put my in quotation marks because one of the teaching joys of this unit has been the several opportunities for students to move to other humanities teachers on a regular basis, which means all four of us Hum 7 (as we refer to ourselves) teachers are teaching all the 7th graders and each of the 7th graders has most likely visited each of the Hum 7 teachers at least once, and more likely several times) we had a big "aha" moment during the week directly before Songkran Holidays.

Specific details of the project can be found here, here, and here. Anyhow, during the week of 6 April students met in what is their fourth different grouping involved with this project (the other three are 1. Region Group, 2. Issue Group, and 3. (loosely related) Book Club Group) This 4th grouping was to learn one of four specific "tech skills" 1. Google Earth Tour, 2. Flickr or Photobucket type applications, 3. World Music Search and gathering, and 4. The Wiki (many already are familiar with using a wiki, but that group learned specifically how the wiki would be using with the Connected World Project.

Anyhow, as I was explaining all that to my class before we ventured off into the groups, I heard more than one "aha!" when they realized that all of what they'd been doing was going somewhere (on the wiki, and that once the wiki was completed, it would give an overview of the entire world and the specific issues facing the regions and countries.) I had of course explained this at the outset of the unit, but at the time it was a bit too far-flung, and I think many students simply didn't grasp the depth and breadth of this project.

So, what does that have to do with "web connections"? Well, within the very controlled (or mostly controlled) environment of a group of 166 7th graders spanning a total of eight humanities class sections, students were able to very clearly see how all of the work they'd been doing both as an individual and in small groups would all connect together to create one massive project!

I've also been very pleased to see my students reading and responding to each others blogs and going out there into cyberspace, mostly through globalvoicesonline.org and reading and responding to people's blogs from all over.

---------------------------

I also checked out this website and really 100% agree with this:

Learning is often a messy business. "Messy" learning is part trial and error, part waiting and waiting for something to happen, part excitement in discovery, part trying things in a very controlled, very step by step fashion, part trying anything you can think of no matter how preposterous it might seem, part excruciating frustration and part the most fun you'll ever have. Time can seem to stand still - or seem to go by in a flash. It is not unusual at all for messy learning to be ...um ...messy! But the best part of messy learning is that besides staining your clothes, or the carpet, or the classroom sink in ways that are very difficult to get out ... it is also difficult to get out of your memory!

It reminds me of a quote I posted elsewhere: "Education is a journal, not a dissertation."

Student Safety/Bullying

2009-04-12T12:57:00.003+07:00

So today's class topic was mostly CyberBullying. We went through several case studies and talked about what the person bullying did properly and what he might have done differently to help protect himself.

The case studies clearly involved situations that were very traumatic for the person being bullied. A school has the absolute responsibility to educate its students about bullying of all forms, including online. Parents must also talk with their children about it. The problem here, though, is just like with the copyright issues. It's not really anything different than has been happening since forever, it's just the scope that the internet allows. And also in the case of cyberbullying, there is the potential that the damaging videos or pictures or text messages may never go away. Once a picture is posted on for example FaceBook, anybody can copy and save it to their own computer and it will just never go away. It's not like a harmful handwritten note than can be torn up and thrown away.

Another point that the videos and case studies we reviewed in class missed is degrees of severity. The case-studies were so over the top and obvious examples of horrible behavior. But what about the occasional bullying, maybe posting a picture on your FaceBook of somebody you don't like...maybe you take it down after a week, but how many dozes have seen the picture? What have they done with it?

ISB's MS AUP definitely does not specifically address this issues deeply enough. And how deeply should it address the issue? If a student creates a FaceBook page at home that bullies another student, is it the school's place to step in? I think for sure it is, especially if that FaceBook page is accessed even one time on school property or if students are talking about it on school grounds.

I came across this website on cyberbullying, stopcyberbullying.org. I like how the website breaks down the message for different age groups, and also offers information for parents, teachers, and even law-enforcement.

I think the more students use social networking sites, educate themselves, and receive consistent messages from parents and teachers about proper use and cyberbulling, the more successful we will be at educating them to not only be good online citezens, but in general good people.

Copyright

2009-04-03T11:06:00.007+07:00

I came across this article on cnn.com about copyright and fair use issues. A couple of sentences jumped out at me:

" . . . current copyright laws make no sense in the Internet era" and
"If you come to the Net armed with the idea that the old system of copyright is going to work just fine here, this more than anything is going to get you to recognize: you need some new ideas," quoted from Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig's blog post about the main issue of this cnn article, namely Israeli producer and mash-up artist "Kutiman" whose album ThruYou has created a bit of a copyright stir, to say the least.

As could be expected from cnn-level of journalism, the article about Kutiman's album doesn't tax the brain too much...I guess they figure the reader is probably twittering and texting and skyping and just too busy ing-inging to give it all too much thought. Or maybe cnn is counting on the reader to be waiting in a stupor for the 149 character answer to all of life's problems.
I digress.
So, of course, the 149+ character mind is eager for . . . Well, if current copyright laws make no sense, THEN WHAT DOES MAKE SENSE? Professor Lawrence's blog post sheds a little more light, though I'm sure he'll be disappointed to know the link to his latest book in the first line of the post doesn't seem to work. Anyhow, he mentions something about a moose...well, I posted a link to his post, so read it yourself. I think the point here is that an album like ThruYou is the, as Tony Soprano has said, 500 pound elephant in the room (which would make it one small elephant). Copyright and fair-use laws are indeed a bit out of date. I don't think people are doing anything differently than they have been for a long time...copying music, movies, etc., to share with others. Of course, the issue here is the massive scale afforded by sites like The Pirate Bay. Speaking of The Pirate Bay, the April 18-19 Weekend Edition of the print copy of The International Herald Tribune ran an article under the title, "Swedish file-sharers convicted." Basically, the court found that four men involved with The Pirate Bay contributed to copyright violations--and on a massive scale. The article sites estimates that The Pirate Bay has 20 millions users, each of whom, presumably, is violating some sort of copyright law. However, the ruling, while sending the men to a year in prison and a big fine, did not shut down the site, and the four vowed to continue operating the service while they fight on.

So, anyhow...having lived in East Asia for a decade now, I am certainly well aware of the availability of pirated everything. TV shows, movies, music software (not to mention soft goods like shoes, luggage, purses, wallets, watches, etc., etc.) I have often found myself think about "why buy" an entire 6 season complete series DVD set of some TV show. I also keep coming back to the main thought, "Would I buy this massive volume of TV if it weren't 10 dollars?" The answer invariably is "no." All the music people download and share without paying for it, I wonder how much if they would really be interested in if they had to fork over some cake for it.

Of course, most of us look at the copyright and fair-use issues from the point of view of consumer. I bet many would have a different take on it if our livelihoods depended on royalties. It all comes down to money, of course. But then again, so does everything.

Is there such a thing as privacy online?

2009-03-28T13:21:00.007+07:00

No.

It's tempting to leave it at that. My initial thoughts are along the lines of home security or bank vaults. If the bad guys want in, they're getting in.

However, the online privacy goes beyond the "bad guys." Of course, if a bad guy wants access to your private information, eg banking numbers, credit cards, medical records, etc., he's going to get it no matter online or not.

At first glance, the concept of online privacy seems to belong to the realm of things like blogging and FaceBooking and twittering (I'll figure out how to blootnote to thusly emulate my literary hero, the late, great David Foster Wallace. So consider this a blootnote. And consider a blootnote on thusly, inthat I'm not sure it's a word, but it should be. And so too consider it a blootnote on blootnote to offer the blog/footnote amalgamation though that seems rather self-evident. On with the parenthetical: it seems that a blogging necessity of mine for this MA program is mention of vomiting at least once per course: that time is now. All mention of tweeting and twanging and chirping, burping, etc., makes me want to barf). But for things like that (the 21st century ing-inging listed above) it seems an obvious solution would be to just be careful. And that's where this course's focus on the AUP comes in. Nothing tells a teacher he's got the 13 year olds' attentions when it's 1:30 in the afternoon before a major 5 day holiday and the antithetical (yeah, work it out for yourself) pin drop can be heard as aforementioned teacher assigns the mental task of, "Imagine you're sitting in an entrance interview with (Harvard, MIT, your parole officer [BLOOT!!! I guess that would be an exit interview]) and everything is going just peachy and then comes, "Let's take a look at your FaceBook account" That part the kids get. I think what's lost (and probably misguided) in the "they [as in the kids] know SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much more than we [as in the teachers] about all this tech stuff" is that it's not really that the digital natives (heretofore know as "DN" [plus insert reactionary vomiting here. Plus insert cynical-I'm-reading-a-massive-tomb-of-Marureen-Dowd's-op--ed [an issue with smarmy use of the dash is what to do when one's actually called for] -NYT's-pieces-dating-back-to-President-George-H.-W.-Bush-and [tired of the dashes] thing of the U v. T [us versus them] mentality) know more, it's just that they're more used to it. I think the students have probably seen for themselves pictures, files, irrefutable evidence, of certain egregious acts, and they know it's potentially all right there, for everybody to see. And hopefully most of them think, "I don't want that to be me."

Again, all of those issues can be addressed in an AUP couched in specific terms about general online behavior rather than specific terms about specific online behavior.

So, for me, the real issue of privacy isn't so much who can see what, but what can they see. I'm been using google docs more and more lately, and the use of them has really shown me the light regarding the 1-2-1 laptop program potential. For whatever reason, I much prefer being able to read and respond to students' writings online v. onpaper (SB a W). I'm not sure why. After a couple years of getting my news via the screen rather than via the tree, I've recently resubscribed [as the perhaps one or two attentive readers of this blog will note...well, that might be a bit of a stretch as only one or two seem to have actually read any of it! {and I digress, though, really. Isn't that a fantastic part of the whole blogging issue and what it is that makes the whole privacy thing relevant? People might actually be reading you. A mind bender if you take the time to ponder it...7th grader writing for the world...all 7th graders writing for the world. Of course, the world may not care or even notice. But it's a different beast we're grappling with. It's the ultimate letting go on the teacher's part...the understanding that "you're not doing this for me." }] to the IHT. Anyhow, on an academic institutional level, isn't a primary issue of privacy "How much can/should/do they (the teachers) know about how I (the student) prepared for "project/test/essay"? Imagine if I the teacher could not only read the students' google doc essays but also see their online activty w/r/t the essay. Did the student access Cliffs' Notes online? Did the student refer to the study guide I posted on the wiki? Did the student . . . well, what did the student do online to prepare for essay. Does that matter?

Without too much thought, I think you can take questions like that to the next step...how much should the insurance agent know about my online practices (did I search for dieting tips, stop-smoking programs? Why, exactly, did I do research about heart disease?) Or what about a simple job interview. As I mentioned above, seems obvious not to post FaceBook pics of yourself writhing in a pool of your own vomit or sharing a crack pipe with...well, whomever. But imagine a possibility when the teacher (T) sits down (via Skype, no doubt) with the Head of School (HOS).......

HOS: So, what do you think about Howard Gardner's theory of Multiple Intelligences?

T: I think it's amazing! Your school's adaptation of Gardner's theories is an inspiration for all international schools. I've studied the multiple intelligences for a long time now, and I believe my classroom is one in which students thrive just because of that.....

HOS: Oh, really. And what, exactly, did you learn perusing the web last night for six hours about our school and multiple intelligences?

T: (...)

HOS (...)

T: (...)

HOS: Have a nice life...

So but anyhow....maybe someday you'll need a google account to access the internet. And everything you do and see online will be available to others, similar to FaceBook. Maybe you'll have to open up your iGoogle account upon request...but if you refuse; well then what are you hiding, and why would anyone let you into their University or hire you?

When and where should we be teaching students about their digital footprint? Does ISBs AUP take this issue into account?

2009-03-19T08:44:00.005+07:00

When should students be aware of their digital footprint. Hmmmmmm..........as soon as they start using internet or web-based applications? When they have their "real" name attached to stuff, or when their school's name is attached? Makes me think a bit about middle school health education: do you start talking about stuff like drug/alcohol use, sexuality, etc., before kids are entering the "experimental" age? during that time? I think the potential "thrill" of seeing yourself out there online might overshadow, at least initially, a school's efforts to teach students responsible online behavior. We all know the more you ask/tell/force/coerce a kid NOT to do something, the more likely he is TO do that exact thing. Unfortunately, sometimes for some student's, lessons are learned the hard way. Also, as with the above mentioned health-education topics, successfuly educating students about issues surrounding digital footprints should take place at home and at school. I think as the use of technology in schools expands both in depth and breadth, we as educators will need to develop plans for phasing in digital footprint awareness.

I imagine 50 years from now, the look of technology and how it's used in the classroom will be very different. But even right now today in my classroom at my school, the use of technology is rapidly increasing. So this brings up the main topic of this course, the AUP. I did a quick Google blogsearch of the topic "Middle School AUP" and got some good hits, including this one: http://teacherweb.com/CA/BigBearMiddleSchool/RobWilliams/ap1.stm It would be easy to go through this school's AUP and bascially pick it apart step by step, but that could probably be done with ANY school's AUP. The point is things are chaning so rapidly, and the change ranges from the software and applicaitons being used to HOW they're being used, and even when the programs are coming from. What I liked most about the Big Bear Middle School's AUP is this simple sentence:
"All users must be continuously on guard to avoid inappropriate and illegal interaction with the information service."

As I'm thinking through developing an AUP for ISB's Middle School, it seems the thrust of an AUP is building students' perception of what a digital footprint is and how to manage theirs, and what that management looks like in a school environment compared to an "at-home" environment...and really, thought, that since the technology exisits virtually (literally!) everywhere and at home and in school and at your friend's house, your digital foot prints follow you everywhere.

So, back to the AUP. Rather than focusing on rules of what students can't do (though I suppose that's somewhat inevitable), an AUP should focus on the student's responsibilities of awareness of the digital footprint.

At this point, I don't think the ISB MS AUP fully takes in to account the rapidly changing landscape of computer use at the school. Again, it seems like if we follow the current format of many AUP's the list of rules would simply grow and grow and grow.
I can imagine trying to create rules of using iGoogle in the classroom

school items should be in one tab labeled school
each school tab must contain sub-tabs for each subject
at each teacher's discretion, students may not click a tab for "class a" while currently in "class b."
Students must seek permission from the teacher to school tabs
personal items should be labeled in on tab labeled personal
Students are not to click on their personal tab during class time, but may do so during lunch, breaks, etc.
If students include tabs not appropriate for school viewing at any time, a sub-tab must be created that says "NSFS" (not safe for school)
NSFS tabs should never be clicked at school

And then mid-way through the year we'll change to netvibes and most of the above will be rendered obsolete.

So, again, the point is the creat an AUP focusing on awareness and responsibility rather than soley a list of rules. Students and teachers must get used to the idea of their lives being on one screen!

Connected World Week 2

2009-03-18T06:58:00.003+07:00

During the short week due to parent-teacher-student conferences, students had three days to spend on the Connected World Project (and of course all of the other wonderful things we do in humanities class.)

I'm enjoying reading the students blogs and learning so much about them! I was impressed with the level of reflection many of the students generated, particularly about how the whole project is working. It is so valuable to get feedback such as, "In our group we were sure how this directly connected to last week when we met with different students." I also had to laugh a little to myself about the student comment that basically directly contradicted a conversation I'd had with a fellow 7th grade humanities teacher. As teacher, we were questioning why we met in "issue" groups first rather an having them figure out all about their regions. We teachers went on and on about how the kids needs to have the place they're studying solidified in their minds, etc. However, more than one student commented on how much more they liked discussing the issue assigned rather than finding out about the region.

I wonder what's going through a student's mind as he's sitting here in Thailand and is asked to think about Bhutan or Colombia or Moscow. Though those are actual real places they could go and touch and see and in general have sensory experiences, it seems like for some reason the issues such as health care and global warming and "financial crisis" are much more real than those real places. Upon reflection it seems obvious that "human rights" would generate more interest and discussion than "find the total population of the Middle East."

I've also liked the students' blogging about technology. Though some of Week Two blogs weren't as thorough as week one, many were much more indepth and detailed about the project and how things are going with technology. We had some major slow-downs last week, and many of the kids commented on that, though we're all so used to interrupted connections being a part of our lives that nobody expressed much more than mild dismay and several simply said they typed their blog on good old-fashioned MS Word and then copied and pasted into their blog when it was back up and running.

The my.isb social networking program is working reasonable well, and given that it's new and this year's crop of 7th graders are probably using it the most, both content and feature wise, I'd say it's pretty amazing. I like the scaled down version of the blogging program, which we're currently using the most. My.isb has a "friends" feature as well. I'm not 100% sure what all happens if you're "friends" with somebody, as in what friends can access and what non-friends cannot. It seems like everybody logged in can read any one elses blog. I find the "friend" feature useful as a teacher. Once I've become "friends" with my students, I can organize them into groups, which is wonderful for the simple purpose of grading. So if I click on my "Humanities 7/8" collection of friends, all of those students' icons pop up and I can easily manage their blogs and keep track of which one I've read and which one I haven't. Another slick feature with some potential deals with blogging. On my.isb blogs, the blogger has to set the visibility of his post. The default is "private" which bascially means unpublished. The other options are "logged in users" which is anyone logged into my.isb, friend or not; next is "the whole world" (I think that's actually what it says) which is, well, anybody on the internet who happens to stumble across the blog (I think we're excluded from google searches, though not sure about that....) Things get fun though with the blog settings once you create "collections of friends." I can write a blog that I want only those in a certain "friends collection" to see... There could definitely be a few more "advanced" features with it all, but very, very functional as is.

Check it out.

2009-03-13T15:21:00.002+07:00

http://www.herdict.org/web/

Just stumbled across this........going to give it a more careful look.

Parent-Teacher Conferences

2009-03-13T14:55:00.003+07:00

Having just finished another two days of Parent-Teacher conferences, following basically the same one of two formats I've used over the last 15 years in four different school systems, I find myself thinking: are they SO last century? And the "they" is the conferences, not the parents or teachers or students. The more and more my students are using technology, the more and more parents could be checking out their kids' work anytime they feel like it. My school, ISB, uses PowerSchool, so parents can get an as-up-to-date-as-the-teacher-has-bothered view of their kids' progress. And one of the best features of PowerSchool is the ability for me, the teacher, to write an individual comment to an individual student about an individual assignment that only the student and his parents can view. So, for a teacher like me who actively and regularly uses PowerSchool, when parent-teacher conferences roll around or report card time comes, there are no unpleasant (or pleasant, for that matter) surprises in the grade department.

While face time with parents and students together is nice (and OK, I should have been refering to these conferences all along as "student-led conferences" or "parent/teacher/student/but/not/necessarily/in/that/order/conferences", it seems like more and more the feedback I hear from parents is along the lines of, "Oh, it's nice to see where my kid spends a chunk of his time everyday" or simply to put my face to a serious of dinner-table stories. Much of the "how's she doing?" is an on-going virtual dialogue composed of voices from the class wiki, the students' blogs, PowerSchool, my emails, etc.

With so much information about a student's performace readily available to parents, it seems increasingly unlikely that any surprises might take place at these semi-annual parent conferences.

Blog switch-a-roo

2009-03-10T08:34:00.000+07:00

I've decided to move my blog from edublogs to blogger. I was, frankly, a little ill-behooved by edublogs move to a "pay-for" features move. I wonder what others think? Seems like a bit of a step backward in the whole "internet is free" thing. I wonder what their reasoning is for asking customers to pay...maybe they simply can't compete with the power that is google???

I was reading an article recently about "what will people pay for online?" Mention was made of how the NYT experimented with a premium service to acess certain parts of the newspaper online, such as some of the more famous editorialists. However, that turned out to NOT be something people want to pay for. Anyhow, this article (which I read holding in my hand, as in a hard copy of the International Herald Tribune, a wonderful newspaper that I received for many, many years...then I let the subscription expire when I moved to from Vietnam to Thailand. A couple months ago I couldn't pass up the "four month special offer". It's delivered to my apartment six mornings a week before 6am. A renewal notice came a few days ago, and I just don't think I'll renew. I really love reading a real newspaper, not to mention doing the crossword puzzle....there is something about being able to see a massive spread of news stories from around the world about a range of topics....a visual appeal that isn't available on the screen (unless of course you've got one big screen!) Anyhow, I'll be moving out of my apartment and into a house this June, so at the very least, those dear copies of the IHT stacking up in the cupboard will be good packing insulation.....

Week One: Connected World

2009-03-10T08:33:00.000+07:00

We've made our way through the first one week++ of the Connected World project with the 7th grade humanities students. Last week we got together in topic groups and had the kids try to figure out what their topic is all about. I must say I was very, very pleased with the discussions in heard. I had the "health" group and the "human rights" group in my room. The students truly engaged in meaningful conversation, and I was surprised at the depth of understanding some of them already possessed about the topic. Many demonstrated an awareness of current events from around the world. The health discussions ranged from SARS to AIDS to Malaria and Yellow Fever. I gently guided this group to think about health issues in western and/or fully developed countries; this mild prompt led to a discussion of health care systems in the US, Canada, and Norway. In both class, the human rights groups inevitably wound up talking about government, arguing back and forth the ultimate purpose of government and where it came from in the first place. On another note, part of the Connected World Project student requirments is regular blogging. I decided to use my school's (International School Bangkok) new social networking site. The kids all automatically have an account created for them and they simply log in using the same user name and password combo as they do to log into any computer on campus. Anyhow, the school's social networking site is brand new. It is sort of like "Facebook lite." It does, however, include a blogging feature, so that's what sold me on using it (testing it out, really) for this project. The thing I like about it is once I become "friends" with my students, I can organize them into groups (classes) and easily sort through their blogs that way. On that note, my students are getting pretty good about identifying what it is that they're writing. We first really hit on that necessity when using google docs. There isn't any way to tell who is sharing a document with you if it's from "lunchladyposse@yahoo.com" and titled "My Essay". The social networking site takes care of that partialy because everything they post, no matter where on the site or in what format (blog, picture, message, comment, etc.) the student name automatically is attatched. Students can't change their user name or display name. Anyhow, as my wonderful colleague Robin pointed out on her blog, we've been having issues with the connection at school. It is very, very frustrating for many reasons. First of all, it's usually be quite good and not too slow, of course with the occasional bit of slowdown/hault. However, last week was quite bad with daily periods of lost connections and pages simply not loading. This is doubly frustrating when trying to present some ideas on the SmartBoard to a class. I know you can preload the pages and work around some of it to prepare for the presenation, but when trying to show kids how iGoogle works and the differences between the RSS on that service and google. reader, it's nice to have a live connection! It's double frustrating because if the intenet is down, they can't simply write something because most/all of what they should write for the project is at this point on a blog. A few times last week we had to resort to old fashioned Word documents!! Obviously there will be periods when the internet isn't working, but it does raise some concerns, especially if a school is moving to a netbook program.

Final course reflection on the process of creating your final project

2009-02-25T09:31:00.000+07:00

I thought I'd start by pasting the content of a couple emails about this project......

I have this little itch in the back of my head saying "too much". I wouldn't want to overwhelm any of us, teacher or student, with all of the technology part. We're still looking for them to create good content, yeah?

We are putting together a fantastic and exciting project for our 7th graders based on what we've learned and explored in this course. I've posted a more detailed description elsewhere, but the gist of it is that students will blog, create a wiki to be used as an online textbook for future students, and then create video showcasing their ideas for solving a global issue.

It's easy to get a little overwhelmed by it sometimes, though my personal worries are not so much about using the technology myself but rather following through with all the little details, teaching the students again and again and again how to do things (I've just been using google docs with my students and have just about got them realizing that they can't title their google doc "My Essay" and send it to me with their bizare, creative email address---since I don't have any easy (or any at all in some cases) of knowing whose document it is! (On a side note, it's interesting to note that people seem to be chaning emails much less frequently in the last several years. I can remember when people first started emailing 15 or more years ago on a regular basis....seems like everyday I'd get a new email from a friend with the subject, "NEW EMAIL ADDRESS" More and more though people are using that email for so many things and it's such a part of our online identities. Imagine, though when all of this is owned or controlled by one "thing" like google. You skype, amazon, google, blog, wiki, etc., all under the same alias or avatar or whatever.......and how many of us use the same password for just about everything?)

Another thought that occurs to me is are we differentiating? Aren't we expecting the kids to basically all do the same thing at the same time with this project, and perhaps often with computer or technology in general. What about multiple intelligences? The one thing I do like about this project as we're constructing it is the potential of the blogs, which we'll use for the kids to keep track of their experiences as they go through the process of discovering their topics and checking out what's available, explore others' blogs, etc. These blogs that our students create would be an excellent place for them to do some metacognative reflection. What better place for them to write about their learning...though of course it's all very public.

So getting back to the "create good content" concern in the email.......do we want them to create good content, or do we want them to be aware of the journey they're taking to uncover that content for themselves, the stuggle to synthesis all the information, interpret fact from opinion, build their own thoughts and the thoughts they read into a larger content, the juxtaposition of themselves as having a voice in the world and the billions of other voices, how to create meaning out of an existence that is, essentially, meaningless. I'm reminded of a bumper sticker a friend had from a small, western, breathtakingly liberal college. The slogan was, "Education is a journey, not a destination." We'd buy a couple of those bumper stickers, engage in a little crafty cutting and pasting old-school style (as in with scissors and glue) and arrive at the modified slogan: "Education is a journal, not a dissertation."

Another email........

There is just so much we should do with the kids...what would they think if we just said, "look at these links"? Are our students good consumers of info??????maybe some... THESE sites would be great ones for the kids to "mess around" on and get a feel for what blogs are if they don't know. I also like how the blogsoftheworld contains that key element of CONNECTED (as in literally) to the world. I keep getting back to what we talked about on Thursday or Friday or something....a lot of the tech usage skills seems quite developmental, especially as we're asking kids to keep track of sources from a variety of uh, sources, and make it all makes sense. It's all fantastic but it will definitely be a huge learning experience for us all. It's kind of good and bad in that the end result, at least as far as the wiki goes, is "write a report." The journey to getting to that report, and what it represents is the key part, but I wonder if that will show up somewhere...what will distinguish the pages of the wiki from a "write a report" assignment? None of this is to say I'm not 100% stoked about doing all of it!! I just keep coming back to a recent conversation with a parent--"It's amazing what he can do with PowerPoint! All those flying graphics!!! AMAZING!"

I guess the irony is we can use technology to make wonderfully neat looking stuff whereas the acutally educational experience with technology is wonderfully messy.

Random Thoughts III or so

2009-02-24T09:30:00.000+07:00

My teaching team and I went through the process of ording books for next school year. Seems like there will be a point when books as we know them no longer exist. Inevitable, I'd say. I wonder how many people sat around and complained when books started coming out in type set??? Who moaned over coffee that, "I just can't read the thing! I miss Friar Larry's hand-written scripts! What is the world coming to?"

Even writing on a blog is different than simply staring at a blank MS Word page...so many distractions on the screen.

I did see a website fomr plastic logic or something like that about a reader that actually looked a bit more like a pice of paper yet was really a large screen an some sort of computer device that could hold tons of document types. I was trolling through the website and couldn't tell exactly what it was or even if it is or will be real.

Back to my groups discussions about books....we'd thought about ordering a traditional anthology of World Literature for our students, one for each. This is of course enormously expensive...would be close to 10,000USD all in. As we talked through it, we all liked that there was one source with excellent literature (we have a sample copy) and a huge variety, too, from poetry to short story to drama, non-fiction, you name it. And of course a great fit in that it truly contained World Literature...

So yeah, of course we could probably find 100% of the stuff in the book on the internet--and then what? have the kids read it online? Download and print it out, and make a million copies??? Mmmm...I think we're just not at a place yet where reading on line is the best environment. I do think that as we carry thoughts about that forward and what is a good reading environment, the concept of what it means to read might change. How is meaning constructed visually? Other things than letters of course suggest meaning.

Anyhow, we've decided to preivew the anthology we liked by ordering a couple of "class sets" which include 10 student copies (a class of ten students? Only imaginable in the mind of a money grubbing publisher....so you have to order the expensive "class set" package and then order many more individual texts), a teacher's edition, and "software licenses" whatever that might mean....they're not clear on their website if the software license includes access codes, CDs to install on a certain number of computers, etc.

At the very least, I imagine we'll be doing a lot of photocopying. It certainly will be interesting to see how and what students are reading 30 years from now.....

Is it real?

2009-02-21T09:29:00.000+07:00

http://www.plasticlogic.com/index.html

I can't tell 100% what this thing is........looks pretty cool, though. A more "book like" way to read online content?!?!?? Anyone know more about this?

What are the implications for teaching & learning?

2009-02-20T09:28:00.000+07:00

"What are the implications for teaching and learning?"

by Marc Prensky

Within a few decades or so we'll begin 22nd century education. Using theories from quantum mechanics or physics or some thing like that, we'll be able to scan the brains of students to determine with alarming precision their future as learners. Computers will then spit out a life-long education plan for them and that will be that. This will begin with increasing use of MRIs. First, we'll hook all the kids' heads up to an MRI and monitor their brain activity while in the classroom. Maybe even give them a little zap when we notice they're drifting off, or that the anger center of the brain is activated when the word "grammar" is mentioned. Soon, however, rather than hooking each kid up to clumsy MRI machines, one giant MRI will remotely monitor each student in every class, both as an individual and as a whole class. The whole-class patterns will be used to determine teacher advancement and salary. Teachers will not only be zapped with a jolt of e-juice to the brain when they begin searching online for airfares while their charges are taking a test, the teachers will also be zapped when they even THINK about the next holiday or activate the anger region of the brain when little Billy has his hand up for the 80th time with another no-doubt idiotic comment or request to use the loo.

"This trend is important, but it's hardly new -- it will be new only when those courses, curricula, and lesson plans are very different and technology influenced, (WHY? This is begging the question at its best--or worst, I guess!") when they are set up so they can be found and mixed and matched easily, when they are continually iterated and updated, and when the kids have a big say in their creation." Yeah, give a kids a say in the creation, but what does that have to do with technology, other than that it's easy to do with computers?

".........................but the records and assessments we ask for and keep, for the most part, haven't changed." So??? Are those records somehow "bad"?

"These include buying school materials (clothes, supplies, and even homework) on eBay and the Internet; exchanging music on P2P sites; building games with modding (modifying) tools; setting up meetings and dates online; posting personal information and creations for others to check out; meeting people through cell phones; building libraries of music and movies; working together in self-formed teams in multiplayer online role-playing games; creating and using online reputation systems; peer rating of comments; online gaming; screen saver analysis; photoblogging; programming; exploring; and even transgressing and testing social norms. An important question is, How many of these new ways will ever be integrated into our instruction -- or even understood by educators" ********Actually, the important question is SHOULD THEY BE???????????????????? I mean really, what's the point of listing all of the crap above? To scare people, to turn off teachers who might have a glimmer of interest but are technophobes? Maybe the author here is trying to show off how cool he is? As I read I hope he will be able to tell me WHY a teacher should understand the applications he's talking about. Anyhow, it's not even about understanding or knowing how to use the applications, it's understanding why people use them, what the point of them is, and of course how they can be used to facilitate learning.

By the way, are we ever going to read articles about why technology is bad or shouldn't be used to facilitate learning? And again, I find myself coming back to all of those millions of classrooms and billions of people who are not "connected"

The Big Tech Barrier: One-to-One:

The more I read this article the more I want to barf. Where is the evidence? Where is even the WHY WHY WHY? It sounds like the author is describing his dream classroom. I completely disagree with the concept of having one-to-one computing when the main criteria is so kids can "customize" the thing and take it home. No no no. Should they be able to go to any computer, log on, and get the customization that way, is in through some of the stuff we've been talking about.....igoogle, google docs, etc., etc. What do they need to customize a particular machine for??????

"Many schools still ban new digital technologies, such as cell phones".............OK, but why should students have them? I think that problem here is definitely an "old school" thought in that why should a kid have a cell phone in class--because most teachers who've been around for a few years had as their first introduction to cell phone in the classroom constant ringing...

"First, consult the students. They are far ahead of their educators in terms of taking advantage of digital technology and using it to their advantage." I think we have to be very, very careful with ideas like this. Mainly because it feeds into the idea that "kids are so much better at all that tech stuff than I am." This is simply not true, at least not in a way that applies meaningfully to their educations.

As I read on, it became clearer and clearer that this was an opinion piece trying to pull itself off as hard fact. There is just now evidence in the article nor is there any how; it's all just "what you're doing is bad." There are just some many logical holes in the presentation and points to debate it's hardly worth mentioning more than I already have.

As I sit and think about this for a while, the one issue that springs to mind with all of it for me at least is trust, as in trusting our students to use technology appropriately. For example, if students are sharing a google doc and using that application's chat feature, what's to stop them from abusing the chat. Well, what should stop them is the students themselves and the teacher having created something meaninful enough that the kids don't want to waste time with too much mindless chit-chat.

White paper pp 35-39

"Rather than seeing socializing and play as hostile to learning, educational programs could be positioned to step in and support moments when youth are motivated to move from friendship-driven to more interest-driven forms of new media use."

Directly above is a key element: many of the students are savvy when it comes to tech applicaitons for social networking, file sharing, music downloads, etc., howerver, we will find success with all of these applications when we create an educational enviroment that foster the interest-driven motivation to use it.

2009-02-15T09:27:00.000+07:00

Below is a working draft of our project sketch as created by Robin. Her writing, which came from a day long meeting of 7th grade humanities teachers, is in blank, with some comment from me in blue.

Essential Questions:

How do places change over time?
What do we need to live a comfortable and healthy life?

These essential questions were created during a Hum 7 (as in 7th grade humanities teachers. 4 of the 6 Hum 7 teachers are taking this first course for the Ed Tech cert/MS) They will be used as part of the "Connected World" project were creating as part of this course and as a enhancement of the existing Hum 7 curriculum) They are also used with the novel the 7th graders read called Rice without Rain

(image from amazon.com)

The 3rd essential question to go with the novel is about the relationship between plot, character, and theme. On a side note, talking with the students about things like, "Well, what would have happened if character x hadn't done action y? For the novel Rice without Rain questions about the plot arise when considering, "Could the story have taken place without a drought?" Or, how might have things been different if the love interest was missing....For me, these are good ways to help students move away from an intense interest in "what's gunna happen next" to trying to wrap their heads around how an author successful puts together a novel...a first couple of steps into critical thinking. (and indeed they (as in the students) get pretty upset when I reveal some of the major plot events before even beginning to read the story...difference between reading for pleasure and academic or critical reading

Enduring Understandings:

Understand some key issues of least one world problem (hunger, poverty, environment, conflict & peace, etc.) I think I would add or reword this along the lines of "Hunger can be solved; poverty can be eradicated."
Make connections between that issue globally, regionally and locally. An enduring understanding might be something like "All countries/regions face problems" or ????
Recognize their roles as citizens of the world, their regions and their communities and to see how what they do affects others. All actions have consequences, both good and bad?
Understand that they can contribute to solving the problem, even in some small way.

The Connected World Unit consists of four separate but related projects.

1) Blog/journalling - Each of the 160+ students in 7th grade will keep a blog, using ideas inspired by Clarence Fisher. We will assign our students one of 19 regions of the world and one of 8 global social issues or problems. We will do this together because we want to make sure that among our 8 classes, we have the students divided into good working groups for the next phases of the project. Each student will work on a different issue for each region. Their blog work will consist of a series of personal reflections/journalling about what they are learning through globalvoicesonline.org and other good websites for MS students to learn about current events and blogs from other countries. This addresses Standard # 3: Research and Information Fluency

At a follow-up meeting and part of our on-going discussion of this unit, we talked through ideas about the structure of the blog. Do we want students to do one blog a week about a specific topic? Do we want the students to blog about their specific topic and region only, or also blog about the whole process--how they found using the websites suggested, trying to wrap their heads around the issues, etc. I think it will be a combination of both. Especially as the wiki starts to be developed I think students should have the chance to reflect about seeing their work in such a "public" place where they know their peers will be looking and seeking information.

2) The second phase of the project is also inspired by Clarence Fisher. Our 160 students will create a link/resource filled 7th Grade online 'hyperText' book about the regions of the world. This will be a resource for next year's students in their regional studies. Students will work online and collaboratively with their regional-counterparts in the various classes. They will work on their section of the wiki - each writing enough about their issues to put together a solid chapter on the region backed up with evidence, examples and sources. One of the sources students will be required to use is to communicate with people from the regions they are studying. This addresses Standard #5 Digital Citizenship. This also addresses Standard #4 Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making.

I think I'm most excited about this part of the project for a couple of reasons. First, my students are pretty good with using the wiki, though for class so for we've mostly only used it as a place to turn in individual work rather than cooperatively create documents. Second reason coorolates to my own "aha" with it all--the real power of this can be that what this year's students are creating are research sources for future students. It's not just a research paper that typed up, printed out, evaluated, returned, and thrown away. It's there in a public place that other can use as a resource--and also change!

3) The third phase of the project is based on one of the Flat Classroom projects. We would now group the students by issue, rather than by region. There could be as many as 8 students per issue, so we may divide them into smaller groups for this phase. Each group would be responsible for making a 2 - 3 minute video about their problem. Their videos will serve the function of educating others in the school community about their issues. Because they will now be working with students from different regions, they will be working together to understand the similarities and differences of how their issues play out in different regions. This will get back to the idea of making connections. They will present their videos to the 7th grade.Symposia? Standard #1: Creativity and Innovation & Standard #2: Communication and Collaboration & Standard #4 Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making.

4) The final phase of the project will have students working together once again to create a project or action plan that has the kids themselves becoming part of the solution. They will create project ideas/plans to help or address the problem (other than through education) and they will present those ideas at a project symposium to a panel of teachers (maybe experts as well) their fellow students and they will post these solutions or action plans on a publicly accessible website. This is when students will have made connections between the EQs and the EUs. They will have evaluated and synthesized research and information about complex global issues. They will have educated others and finally, they will have come up with a plan that aims to help solve the problem.

This addresses Standard #1: Creativity and Innovation & Standard #2: Communication and Collaboration & Standard #4 Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making.

Random Thoughts II

2009-02-14T09:25:00.000+07:00

Friday, 13 Febraury 2009 was probably about the most productive day I've ever had at school while not actually teaching. The 7th grade humanities team spent the entire school day working on a big new unit that we plan on doing later this school year. We are using a model we'd learned about in this first course (of the 6 teachers on the "Hum 7" team, four are taking the class) based on Laurence's "remote access" link.

As the "big picture" became clearer to all of us, I think the more into it we got. Also, for me, it really solidified the intended differences between blogging and wikiing (like skiing...two "i"s, right?) Though of course users can do whatever they may like with either "platform" but I did have the clear "aha" that a blog is a journaling thing with the possibility of back and for as a main intent and the wiki is where several people are working together to create one thing and depending how it's set up anybody can edit anything. There is of course complete cross over between the two formats depending on how it's set up and what access or editing rights people have.

We've also set up several google docs and all of us really saw the potential of a shared document like that (sort of the idea of a wiki but a little bit more controlled and all of us can be looking at it at the same time and if somebody else makes a change it will appear on my screen which is pretty cool.)

Does anybody else think the whole act of blogging is basicaly to feed your ego?

Random Thoughts

2009-02-12T07:59:00.000+07:00

The article on Connectivism was fantastic, especially in that it was academically engaging. I hope this program continues to be more about theory and ideas rather than a "how to" on using software. There really does seem to be a massive shift in the works with education. I like the inquiry mode and self-directed learning, which seems to be made all the easier with technology and some good guidance for students on how to use it.

I think it would be interesting to know peoples' (in this program) experience with computers from the beginning. For example, I first had a "computer" when I was about 12 years old--a Commador VIC20!

The bestially powerful VIC20 featured ZERO megabytes of anything. I would spend HOURS entering page after page of basic code into the thing, hit "run" then spend a few minutes shooting down the crudest of space aliens....then turn the thing off and the program would be gone. No hard drive-type memory what so ever. In fact, the first data storage device I had was basically a tape recorder that I could plug into the thing to save programs I'd typed in.

Jumping ahead about 10 years, in college I had my first "real" computer which had an at-the-time eye-popping 80meg hard drive and ONE meg of RAM...and a scary-fast 25 megahertz processor. I think for me the good part about having these early home computers (at least when they had become affordable) is that from the start I was always willing (be necessity, actually) to "mess around" with the thing. In fact, in my college days any time I got any sort of new program (bought on floppy drive from the computer store) I would almost always have to call the tech support line as the process of simply loading a program rarely seemed to work smoothly. And as often as not, tech support would walk me through a series of rather complex steps, including unscrewing the top of the computer and pulling out wires and re-inserting them in a different configuration. In those days the idea of "plug and play" was a long way off.

So, anyhow, though I'm too old to be a digital native, I have been using computers, albeit crude ones, since I was 12 years old. I don't know what that means, but there you go.

How are your thoughts changing? (Connectivism, New Bloom’s Taxonomy, Messing Around)

2009-02-09T07:58:00.000+07:00

"Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age."

"Over the last twenty years, technology has reorganized how we live, how we communicate, and how we learn." This, from the very fist paragraph of "Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age." It's that last clause that gets me, "and how we learn." Sure, we can agree that technology has changed how we live and how we communicate. But how we LEARN? And what does HOW mean? Are we talking about the obvious fact that students are using different learning tools, or trying to get at something more sublime...how students actually learn, as in what's going on in their brains. Now, for a rant: I've recently done the activity most are familiar with, "If the world were a village of 100" or something like that. Anyhow, only about 7% of the worlds population have access to the internet. So, that 90% percent of students who live their every day lives and go to school everyday without a computer or internet....has their learning remainded unchanged? Are the 10% somehow learning in a fundamentally different way??? Not just with different tools (eg computers, internet) but with something significantly different happening in their brains?

"Technology is altering (rewiring) our brains. The tools we use define and shape our thinking." What in god's name does this mean????????? EVIDENCE??? People never exposed to technology are what, unaltered? un-evolved, less than human? On the tract to becoming a different species??

"Constructivist principles acknowledge that real-life learning is messy and complex. Classrooms which emulate the “fuzziness” of this learning will be more effective in preparing learners for life-long learning." Wow, I'm sure this could generate volumes of discussion. The idea that learning is "fuzzy" flies in the face of what is much, much too often heard from US education these days, "I'm learning this so I can pass the standardized test of the week (and the school will therefore get more funding.") Using interent resouces, RSS, personal learning networks, etc., can DEFINITELY be a very messy and fuzzy experience. I think the epiphany here is something like this. Students always seem to do very similar things when using the intenet, as in go to google, type in a word or two, hit search, and then start reading the very first thing that comes up. Of course this is something that we're all familar with. A couple of things come to mind. First of all, students need to learn how to use search engines effectively, or just skip them all together and use RSS feeds. Second, and probably most important, is of course the need to make the content and there for the search for information MEANINGFUL to the student. Each one needs to WANT to suceed and find the best, most relavent and accurate information. Maybe a (completely wacko) comparison can be made to way back in the days of my youth there were three channels of TV and that was it. So, your interest in television was limited to three channels, not to mentioned shaped and dictated by those three channels. Not much of a choice, and the TV powers that be told you what your interests were at any given hour of the day. Now, hoever, with all that is technology and the internet, anybody with access has a gazillion channels to chose from, and really, nobody can dictate interest in any one of those channels, so why bother doing so as teachers?

"[Learning theories] also fail to describe how learning happens within organizations" Huh, now there's something to think about....studying how learning takes place within a group, how the group grows as a learning entity rather than how each group member grows. How does learning happen in Personal Learning Networks...

"...chaos states that the meaning exists – the learner's challenge is to recognize the patterns which appear to be hidden." Yeah, that's good. As educators we've the underlying belief that there is something to be learned, it is "out there" somewhere. Now, though, with technology, the path to finding that learning isn't a straight one. I guess the simple idea that there are many paths to the one. So for example we're studying rice cultivation in SE Asia now in my 7th grade humanities classes. We ask students to gather data such as population projections for e.g. Lao in 2050. My thinking as a teacher is, OK, find that information so you can do x, y, and z with it. I should shift my thinking to also include an expectation for the student that he is aware of the processes he's gone through to find the information. It makes sense in this world were there is so much "knowledge" out there to wade (or shovel) through that one becomes aware of HOW he find what he's looking for, and what it is that makes a) what he found significant and b) the significance of the steps taking to find a.

"The ability to recognize when new information alters the landscape based on decisions made yesterday is also critical." Yes. Vital. Learning shouldn't be thought of as something built on a core foundation of information, but a core foundation of knowing about knowing or learning about learning. The awareness of what the information is.

A lovely little paradox of quantum mechanics is that the more precisely you know where a particle is the less precisely you know where it's going; the more precisely you know where it's going, the less precisely you know where it is.

"Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known" is this supposed to mean that it is more important to learn new things than to learn what's already been learned (ie known). I'm not sure I really get that.....

"The starting point of connectivism is the individual." No. It's a circle.

"Our ability to learn what we need for tomorrow is more important than what we know today. A real challenge for any learning theory is to actuate known knowledge at the point of application. When knowledge, however, is needed, but not known, the ability to plug into sources to meet the requirements becomes a vital skill. As knowledge continues to grow and evolve, access to what is needed is more important than what the learner currently possesses." Yeah, I think I get it. What connectivism represents, though, is a wholesale change in the way we think about education and how we deliver the "content."

"Bloom's Taxonomy Blooms Digitally" by Andrew Churches

"This element of the taxonomy does infer the retrieval of material. This is a key element given the growth in knowledge and information." I'm unclear on what he means here. Retrieving information from your brain or the ability to retrieve information from some source?

To me, the whole thing, the article, the premise, is begging the question.

OK, I'm getting too caught up in the details of the "new blooms." How can actually using features of the software be listed below using software. Don't really get it.

I turned to others' blogs about this to try and sort it out. Robin's on my RSS so I clicked on that and immediately saw this: "It seems like the pyramid should be a circle or something." Yes, exactly.

When I was reading some of the "new digital verbs" (the ones in blue) I kept thinking that they were trying to force it too much. Also, I was thinking about the early days of "ed tech" courses, as in the one I took in the late 1990s as part of my first MA--they (the ed tech courses) concentrated almost exclusively on how to use the software as an "end user" rather than how to use it as a meaningful part of students' learning.

As have some of my peers, I'm uncomfortable with the creating being atop the pyramid. Some of the "verbs" they have listed are really just software applications to make producing meaningless, thoughtless garbage all the easier. Also reminds me of back 90s when everybody was so dang impressed when a student could put together a PowerPoint...and the impression came from the flying text, transition gimmics, etc., and not the actual content. It's that meaningful content as a demonstration of learning that's missing for me from the "New Bloom."

"Messing Around"

"The youth we spoke to who were deeply invested in specific media practices often described a period in which they discovered their own pathways to relevant information by looking around with the aid of search engines and other forms of online exploration." The part here I've bolded and underlined is part of the crux of the whole tech thing for me...the realization that if we are to accept that students these days are "digital natives" then we must also accept that they just might have their own way of figuring out what to do or how to get where we want them to be.

"These efforts can lead to more sophisticated and engaged forms of media production." And there is the key...the "messing around" CAN lead to something more sophisticated and engaging. Perhaps this is where the teaching steps in. So if we do a pre-test for some traditional academic skill like naming the parts of speech, maybe we can do a pre-test to determine how or how much students can "mess around." It all comes back to motivation, yet again. People do Facebook and on-line gaming and chat rooms, etc., because they are interested. I guess as it's always been, MOTIVATING students to do some meaningful "messing around" and create for example PLNs is the hard part. Just as it's hard to create motivation to learn the parts of speech. Merely plunking a computer in front of them isn't the answer.

"For example, Alison, an 18-year-old video creator from Florida of white and Asian descent in Sonja Baumer’s study, notes that her personal media creations help her to become reflexive about herself and her own work: I like watching my own videos after I’ve made them. I am the kind of person that likes to look back on memories and these videos are memories for me. They show me the fun times I’ve had with my friends or the certain emotions I was feeling at that time. Watching my videos makes me feel happy because I like looking back on the past (Sonja Baumer, Self-Production through YouTube). Although the practices of everyday photo and video making are familiar, the ties to digital distribution and more sophisticated forms of editing and modification open up a new set of possibilities for youth creative production." LIKE WHAT??????????????????????????????????????

OK, the long passage above realy bothers me. People of all ages have been "scrapbooking" for ages. So what? Maybe I'm missing the point of this article, but why is import to know about how often kids might change their background or profile information on a social network site? It it simply and attempt to understand how younger people interact with media. Does any of this have anything to do with learning?

After finishing this section I think I understand the main point. We should be dealing more and more with self-directed learners, and as a consequence that's how we should be creating out classrooms.

Finding information online: How do we address truth and bias in the classroom?

2009-02-01T07:56:00.000+07:00

Bias

1) Who is respobsible for the site? Do you know who the person is who published the site? What is the difference between a sit ending in .com and .org (there is none) However, most likely if it's a "legit" organization like The Red Cross and you go to redcross.org chances are it's a real Red Cross site. You do actually have to be an educational organization to get a .edu website so it's likely that the .edu site is legit or contains real information at least. People (students) should be aware of stuff like this. You should be able to find a link to an email where you can contact the person or people who are creating the site's content. If there is no such functioning link or contact info then beware!

2) How current is the site? Not only when was the site made but when was it last updated? Sites shouldn't really say "under construction" cuz by nature that's what it should be, particularly a blog. Some sites, however, don't necessarily need to be updated all the time as the content may not be time dependent.

3) Content and purpose. Why is the site there? How reliable is the information? Is the site trying to sell you something. If they are trying to sell you something then there is probably a bias about a product that they're trying to sell. For example, if you want to know about your aching back, look for something that's a .org rather than a .com because the .com is probably trying to sell you some back pain medicine.

4) At whom is the audience aimed? Kids? Adults, etc. Does the language of the site match the target audience?

5) Is it a good website--easy to use, well structured, etc. May not necessarily have much to do with the legitimacy of the sites content, but could be helpful in determining who created the site and why.

How could we apply this to what kids do in the classroom? How can we teach kids to evaluate what they see on the web? Are there any simple tools that aren't subjective? I think the search for contact information is a good place to start, but I do often find students who really don't have any idea even to go about looking for that, so that's something they would have to learn.

I like the idea about determining if there are any external links to the page or if it links to other pages. If the page is "stand alone" it might be a good indication to proceed with caution regarding the content.

I will definitely do the idea of students creating a completely "true sounding" story that is actually a hoax.

* What you hope to get out of this course

2009-01-31T07:53:00.000+07:00

I've been teaching now for 15 years and my technology experiences in the four schools systems in which I've worked have basically boiled down to "HERE'S MORE!"

However, I have yet to really see technology used in any sort of way that is clearly and without a doubt superior to student learning without the technology. I've seen technology (namely the internet) used in place of traditional school stuff, as in one school I worked at was relatively new and growing and didn't have much of a library at all, so we (students and teachers) relied heavily on on-line resources. This all worked just fine, but I'm not sure I could say with any sort certanty that the students somehow became better writers or thinkers.

So, out of this course I would hope to get an understanding of how technology can be used to help make students better thinkers, betters writers, better readers, and better consumers of information.

26 January - 1 February: Your thoughts on Personal Learning Networks

2009-01-30T07:52:00.000+07:00

My thoughts about using personal learning networks in the classroom, particularly in middle school.

--the fellow student you're talking to doesn't have to be sitting right next to you but could be half way around the world

Well, it definitely is an appealing idea and I think it fits in well with what we've been talking about a bit lately in 7th grade, inquiry based learning.
And I had to big "a-has!" during the 31 January class. The first "aha" was how to better use the RSS thing. I had used google reader to set up RSS feeds for myself (as in personal use) and was quickly overwhelmed with the amount of stuff that came in. I guess I got to "feeder happy" but it was tempting with all of the content-specific feeds available. So, I was a bit skeptical when we started talking about them for student use in class. However, I hadn't thought through the full possibilities of their use, particularly how specific you can get as in, from the example from Jeff, gets feeds not just from a specific source (ie The New York Times) but about a specific topic, and even a VERY specific topic--say articles about climate change based in China and having to do with coal mining. As an extension of that idea (a specific topic to "feed" off of) I'd also knew about setting up a feeder that my students can have access to. So I could set up a feeder page on my wiki that has categories and sub-categories that individual students could be interested in. Therefore, I could manage the feeds for the kids, at least for the first part of the year until they get the skills to create their own content specific feeds, and the kids could focus on wading through the information that comes up.

The second 'aha' was the discovery of the amazing website globalvoicesonline.org The blogs listed, the search engine for those blogs, etc., are simply amazing and so directly applicable to my (7th grade) students. I wish I'd know about this when we read a historical fiction and semi-autobiographical novel by a Kenyan man set in British-colonial 1950s. How wonderful would it have been for kids to have had access to blogs from Kenyans to help them access what life is like there now, or at the very least to get an understanding of what the current issues are in Kenya and (hopefully) make a connection back to the colonial era. I am definitely going to explore these resources for our current course of study, rice cultivation in SE Asia.

From the very beginning of class on Saturday (31-01-09) and that short video clip about how the student who used Personal Learning Networks I was thinking about the use of text books in our middle school classes. I teach humanities, which is a combo of language arts curriculum and social studies curriculum. students are not issued a textbook for either, and we (as in the humanities 7 teachers) were just last week tossing around the ideas of getting text books for the students. To text-book or not to text-book sort of boils down to two opposing issues. First, as the population of teachers at international schools is somewhat transient, there is the need to have a "fixed curriculum", as in a set (dead?) document that spells out very specifically what kids are to do and when. The main idea behind that being when inevitably new teachers come in, almost every year, they can be given a very specific set of....instructions?....for "how to teach 7th grade humanities.

What is more appealing, though harder to define and comes with a very much fluid and living curiculum can be based around the concept of Personal Learning Networks. I don't think the topics under study by 7th grade humanities students needs to change from any given year to the next, but I don't see why the exact resouces at the student's disposal needs to stay the same.

Last, all of this, the Personal Learning Networks, giving students a topic and sending them off on an inquiry based learning expedition, does represent a bit of a paradigm shift, and probably a threat to some teachers and parents, not to mention a possibly unwelcome challenge and responsibility for some students: the idea that each individual student must take respobsibility for her own learning. Just the act of finding reliable, meaningful resources for any given topic should be a rigourous academic thing. I remember way back when I was finishing up my BA in literature and doing my "major author" course (Willa Cather). One of the roughest assignments, much more tedious and time consuming than even the gazillion page essay I had to write, was creating a bibliography for that major essay long before even writing the first word of the first draft. However, I can remember will my professor looking over my list of 30+ potential topics with a fine toothed comb and deleting ones he knew to be useless of wildly off topicc and adding a coupel others he thought I might find useful. So for that assignment my personal learning network consisted of me, my professor, and a final list of 20 books. Now, if a sizeable chunk of those 20 resources could have been dynamic and online.........