Cloudy Tag Thoughts

End of Summer Meanderings

With one more week before I begin putting together and formulating lessons for this coming school year, little did I imagine thinking about my art history theories of my college days with implications of where my students will be as they grow up in this evolving cyberspace. I have always been amazed at the idea of typing a web address and seeing a major corporate media outlet and then with a few key strokes looking at someone's homepage. I should warn the reader I don't intend to step through a logical article here because I'm still on vacation and I'm not writing for some scholarly purpose. I'm merely connecting up a few glass beads that have been rolling around in my head. What if the Long tail is a realization of the Situationist's vision of creating a spectacle and history for oneself which was originally by the artists but now has been transposed to the everyday person? The spectacle not lived vicariously through old media forms but now individually within the network of connections or social networks. I wonder with the passing of DOPA are those of us that use social networking tools part of the counter culture? (A good site with information on what to do is here and to read more try here. ) I have this fear that those within education who are resistant to these social networking/web 2.0 tools in the classroom, and change in general, will feel relieved that they may not have to deal with them anymore with the passing of this bill.

Can we draw lines in the sand and simplify and polarize these issues even further? With mashups and content being reappropriated and downloaded online for free (in a virtual fulfillment of the Yippie dreams proposed in such books as Steal This Book) students are not paying for the content, but taking it and using it for their own means. The tools to do this are free and the content is free. How will congress look upon open source if the powers that be decide to label the tools as anti-capitalist? After all I just set up a Moodle site to use and I wonder what will happen now that Blackboard has been granted a patent on all things involving LMS or CMS? Do you look upon those who are hackers in a positive or negative light? I thought this video that I came across at youtube and posted below was a funny implication of what our students will be doing when they grow up and how this will frustrate the media powers. But now it seems to me to have a more sinister tone as if some people might really begin to think this way. What are the perceptions of our congress that would pass such blanket laws as DOPA, decide issues such as internet neutrality without understanding the implications? When Douglas Englebart looked down the avenues of Menlo Park and envisioned a computer of the future could he have envisioned how these tools in the hands of everyday people would be used? If the individual is creating their own spectacle (photos, video, podcasts, blogs) and distributing the work through the long tail has this not fulfilled so many avant-garde movements such as Surrealism which strove to connect up art with everyday life. My students using iLife to create content are constructing their own tower of Taitlin, dreams and constructions about their world, not some corporations vision to be consummed passively. And how powerful is the communication as the students' perceive it as available around the world. The urgings of these art movements was to free the individual of false overlays created by the societies' meaning makers or corporations, the rationalists who wanted to maintain the status quo for personal ends. Hopefully the students will inherit an internet that dreams are made of. We must help them learn the dangers and appropriate behaviors and learn with them how to best prepare them for the future, but we will not be able to if we cannot use the tools in the classroom.

Technorati Tags: edtech, dopa, education,

I'm learning to Moodle

After giving it some thought I've decided to set up a Moodle for the teachers I team with. I've had such difficulties getting across the importance of using the read/write web tools into the staff that maybe just beginning to build a centralized learning community on line will be a good first step. This is certainly a detour from using all the various learning tools online in a loose and fluid manner, but just building connections and seeing practical applications of lessons and organization would be a good place to start. So far I've been intrigued with the thought of how this tool integrates the philosophy of constructionism and constructivism in a virtual environment.

Technorati Tags: edtech, education

Do We Need a Mashup Camp with our NECC?

After reading about Jeff Utrecht's frustrations about what didn't happen at the NECC for him and Will's response which was measured and well thought out. I do feel as if I am still as a teacher looking at the tools meaning technology and trying to wrap my head around all the possible ways to use them. The first time I used a wiki I felt disoriented and lost not knowing what to do with a tool that could be almost anything I could think up for open communication. But now I'm looking for growth in how to use them. So for me, I have to say that the NECC was for a large part about the technology. I looked for solutions to specific problems in the classroom and hopefully the technology has become easier or more transparent to what I may have dreamed or not dreamed is possible. The meetup that so many people have praised was not the ideal setting for communication. The waitress that kept telling us to sit down, the live band which caused David Warlick at a certain point to say he couldn't hear. It was the idea of meeting with like minded passionate people coming together to have a conversation that we thrived on. But what if people presented what they have learned or information that they have acquired in a more systematic way? I certainly didn't get to meet and ask questions of all the people that I had wanted to.

An alternative for next year's NECC might be a mashupcamp or an unconference perhaps to run concurrently or as an offshoot in a designated area at the conference site. Here are three links to an event that is happening today from Wired, San Jose Mercury News, and Dave Winer. There is certainly enough organized information about what a mashupcamp is, how they work, and what the goals of doing them are. What if we looked at the mashup camp and changed it to meet our needs as teacher/technologists? What would have happened if after seeing all the open souce information this past conference we could have had a meeting to discuss it? There were several ideas that I became exposed to that I could not have planned ahead to learn about but wanted to learn more about and process as I was at the conference. With the accessibility of information on the internet aren't many people just as informed as the presenters? The style is called open space conferences and one of the guiding ideas is to document the session with a conference wiki. David Warlick has already successfully shown the value of integrating these wikis, such as the one he used at the conference for Telling the New Story, into the presentions.

Much of what is happening involves the idea that small companies or individuals can take the available free internet sites and use them for new ends. Isn't this what we are trying to do in using all these disparate parts and recombining them for use in our classroom. An article in Forbes that the mashup blog linked to caught my eye when the writer said, "Mashup Camp, aimed at programmers and software developers who want to create businesses out of combining free Web technologies from companies such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Amazon.com, seems like the perfect place for a wee startup to make connections." But what if we replace the word programmers with teachers and businesses with classrooms and modify the list of companies a little (sound familiar). So this now reads:

            "Mashup Camp, aimed at teachers who want to create classrooms out of combining free Web technologies from open source, flickr, delicious, blogging creation companies, wikis etc. seems like the perfect place for a wee individual teacher to make connections."

Reminds one of the Cluetrain Manifesto when it was modified for schools doesn't it? The mashup wiki gives not only background for the event but also has links for more info.  Aren't we saying that our students have reached this point with all the communication tools such as IM, web accessing video games, etc. that we don't use them or are novices compared to our students? Could students participate in the mash up camp and teach the teachers how to use these tools? How do the students perceive these tools? How much more powerful would it be to have a panelist of students discussing their use rather than a powerpoint slide of statistics? It requires that participants be willing to participate in a more active role. Are we accepting of the traditional presenter model because we all come from a passive participation in media i.e. we sat and watched TV. Should we be modeling what we expect of the classroom? That if the students are changing in their needs that we should try to play the interconnected video games as David said, set up a my space account as Will recomends, and attend conferences in which the conference room is more like the model of the classroom that we percieve will be in the future with the students needs and students personality.

Hopefully if nothing else we can have daily meetings at the next NECC in a room, well lit, without live music. Do we want to be serious about this as a real exchange of information or as in this last blogger meetup should it stay more of an informal haphazard affair to unwind after the more formal day time events? Perhaps we need to worry about more districts shutting down and out, and centralizing information.

If I understood Siemens arguments in Connectivism with his June 27th article :

"When people first encounter distributed tools, the first attempt at implementation involves “forcing” decentralized processes into centralized models. We then end up with LMS for learning, learning object repositories to manage our content, corporate lock-downs on instant message, and district-wide bans on social networking tools."

He is saying that learning management systems are a step in the wrong direction (meaning centralized) for how to potentially use these tools (decentralized). If this is true then we need more solutioins on how to combine them in as effective a manner as a Moodle or Blackboard. If we should want to avoid being stuck with centralized learning modules and to truly take advantage of the decentralized tools than a radical solution other than the traditional conference model, (mashupcamps?) will be needed. Perhaps then teachers such as Jeff Utrecht will leave a confernence like the NECC wanting to come back, feeling that it is an extension of what we have tapped into with the tools we ourselves are using daily, rather than leaving with memories of what might have been.

Technorati Tags: necc06, necc, reform, education,warlick,

How Does the Earth Feel in Your Hands?

When I was a young boy the astronauts were traveling in space and eventually to the moon, and one of the images that helped me understand what the earth meant to me was the shot from Apollo 8. Trying to shift my perspecitve on what it means to only have the earth as our living and finite resource is not something that I could easily internalize. Certainly the scratched and defaced globe that I had access to in the classroom did not achieve this. Later my parents bought a book, I guess because I grew up in the Bay Area, called the Whole Earth Catalog. It sat in a pile of magazines along with the National Geographics and Popular Science. I would just thumb through it and marvel at all the things I had no idea what many of them were for other than that they were for the entire planet. All these media helped prepare me for the perhaps now common perception that social political activities must be considered from a global perspective. Now the students we teach must not only internalize a global perspective on the needs of the world, but they will also compete on the global stage. They can begin accessing infomation from a global source, and they can also begin manipulating models of the earth and move from a macro view of places and things to a micro view in a matter of seconds.

How does the earth feel to you as you spin and zoom and change your viewpoint? Whose view point is it? Will our children become more attached to the planet or will the interface for globes such as can be seen through Google Earth, Earthbrowser, 3d Globe, or ESRI GIS become just another tool losing the metaphysical perspective. One critical element that I'm fascinated with is the real time updating of information compared to the quickly outdated and frozen globes we grew up with. I have a feeling that Google Earth will eventually be more popular with teachers if it hasn't already with the amount of lesson ideas people are sharing online and allowing teachers to download.

Two sessions at the NECC related directly to Google Earth. One session with Hall Davidson had to be changed because of licensing issues that are soon to be resolved with teachers using the program on more than one computer in the classroom. Here is the link to download the session guide when it is available. I also went to a BOF (birds of a feather) session with Scot McAdoo and other teachers from Oklahoma City. They have a web site called destinationgooglearth.com which will have lesson plans, links, and ideas on implementing the software into the classroom. It is not up yet, but it looks like it should be a great resource. They also gave a handout with other resources which I went ahead and tagged. There are so many possible uses of the program that I wonder what my perspective will be by the end of the next school year.

Technorati Tags: necc06, necc2006, googleearth, edtech,

Schrock Rocks the House Gets a Cell Phone Salute

Before I seriously try to digest all the notes, business cards, web addresses, software, CDs, DVDs, books, brochures, handouts, ideas, and marginalia that I accumulated this week, I just want to have a fun post and revel in all the glorious visual stimulation that made being here in person special.

Kathy Schrock was the keynote speaker to end the conference. She presented a fun and memory filled journey through the PSAs of our past but also the amazing student examples from today. I can't remember when I last saw the 1971 PSA with the Native American getting the trash thrown at his feet and then with him turning to the camera with a tear running down his cheek. The idea of students producing them really covers several areas involving not only technology but socially purposeful and relevant messages for other students. At the end of her presentation she repurposed everyone's cell phones like lighters at a rock concert.

Earlier I strolled through the exhibitors hall and walked by the Department of Education and took a picture of the School 2.0 poster that was created to show how technology can be integrated into the classroom. There was no lack of post-its for suggestions on how to follow through on the Web 2.0 technology now renamed School 2.0. I took an online survey and made my suggestions. I'm not sure how the School 2.0 fits into the NCLB initiative.  The person at the help desk said that the poster should be available sometime in August on line. What a powerful example to those administrators, board members, or superintendents who prefer to bury their head in the sand and block accessibility  to blogs and podcasts. If someone at the DOE gets it what further proof do the district powers that be need to see that if they don't change they will make the classrooms in their district irrelevant to their students. I had met Steve Hargadon and he has started a web site called supportblogging that those of you who are struggling with this issue might want to also check out.

Lastly I still don't understand what Microsoft was trying to do with their setup on the exhibitors floor, but those sure were large lava lamps. I can't say that I ever really equated surfboards and a Hawaiian theme with lava lamps but it's true they do have lava flows in Hawaii on a regular basis, so I guess it sort of makes sense. I think of surfing as the last popular more innocent activity before the counter culture arrived and with it the desires for retinal, hypnotic stimulation i.e. the lava lamp. Oh well I guess you could call it a mashup of nonproductive recreational activities. The couches they provided were certainly bland and corporate looking. I guess they forgot to go retro in that department, but maybe they exceeded their budget with the other decorations.

Technorati Tags: NECC, necc06, necc2006, schrock

Another Amazing Information Packed Day

I decided not to take my laptop to the conference today. My back was sore this morning after lugging my backpack around for so many hours yesterday. The day started off with Nicholas Negroponte. He gave an informative keynote address about the $100 laptop that we have been reading about for quite a while. The information can be found on a wiki . If ever there was a project which has far reaching importance this is it. We talk about equity in my school district all the time, but this is so much more. Always being interested in the history of computers and multimedia I was interested to see the connection between this project and Seymour Papert which I didn't know about. Afterwards I walked up stairs and looked at the current prototype. When the demonstrator closed it I thought of the math speak and spell because of the color scheme of orange and yellow. There was quite a bit else that I saw and learned, but my day is not through and I need to get going.

Technorati Tags: necc06, necc2006

Telling the New Story By David Warlick

I'm late to David Warlick so I missed his opening on what ways of learning in the 21st century relate to "Telling the New Story."

He gave instruction as I was entering on logging into his wiki to take notes and so I figured it out by myself but it took me a little while. I've been waiting to see how this works. Cool!

He's discussing Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat. The story is of how Friedman learned of how his computer came to be put together.

Discussion of his son and the way he handles information

The story must fit the marketplace.

Children have no barriers or walls with which they can interact with others. They are using laptops, pdas, video games, and cell phones. However we are ignoring the ways they communicate and learn about their world.

Example of IM language and how it is suitable for this way to communicate.

Shows how children enjoy neopet

Globalization 1.0 nations globalize

Globalization 2.0 corporations globalize

Discusses Rollarcoaster Tycoon and how his children loved playing the game. Design and than edit to at attract users

John Beck Got Game - good book on how people have new skill and workplace needs to be restructured just like the classroom.

Use of video games falls into usage by age.

Students: are competitive
               are risk taking
               are sociable

People 35 or younger are good collaborators, team player. They have become heros through video games. They problem solve until they succeed and become heros

New Story - must be compelling. Children through playing video games overcome a barrier at the end of each level. Just like the boss or could be the teacher. "The teacher should be the strategy guide." Create the next place or thing that they want to become or be.

We have become information seekers with more questions than we had before.

The Long Tail - study that looked at new media industries versus old media models. They counted the number of products sold. The one part of the graph is products which sold well enough to be sold in stores. The long tail is what didn't sell enough copies to be available at a stores. But there is a market for the materials just not large enough to be sold in a traditional store. He discusses his own personal experience with his book which fits within the long tail. We are no longer limited to purchasing the high volume materials. However this means that we need to train the students to understand how to process the materials of the long tails.

When we have questions where do the answers come from? Now information may come from blogs or wikis. Companies that cannot solve problems use outside users to solve problems and come up solutions which they are paid for. Many of these people are not the experts in the field but come up with solutions from new angles.

Vinod Khosla/CEO Sun
"Children believe that everything is clickable including their parents."

Traditional model of teacher above and children below. Both physically and metaphoricaly. Content goes down to learners. Our classrooms are flat. Gravity cannot drive learning. The future of content: "Content today is the dominant thjing But one thing that I can say is that... Company that can grow and maintain audiences not content.

How do we turn our classrooms into learning engines?
Tapping into student energy:
- curiousity
- intrinic need to communicate and influence
- grounding in heritage

We received our heritage from TV. Children are different today.

Friedman says that four types of people will succeed:
1. special
2. specialized
3. highly adaptable
4. anchored

Bottom Line Stories
- Future is no longer secure.
- Instead, we should prepare them for a future of opportunity...

Education is in a quiet crisis

Technorati Tags: necc06, necc2006, warlick

Alan November and the Critical Need for Information Literacy

Alan November's Web site

This was a hard session to follow. Alan is an amazingly animated, articulate,  and divergent thinker. Please forgive the abrupt transitions. I could barely keep up. Much of the information can be found at his website above. 

Alan has begun casually referencing his own children and that his daughter was assigned the same lessons that he had when he went to school. He feels that she missed out on information and lessons that need to be designed differently than what she had.

He then went on to say we need to redefine reading through a new information literacy. There is too much emphasis on print. 75% of students use the internet for homework even if the text book is available. They use a search engine and if a web site can be in the top 5% for a search than that data will be used. He thinks that teachers are not thinking critically about how we teach in the new information mediums. Marshall McCluhan and the "medium is the message" starts his argument. Most people who learned a first medium do not bring critical thinking skills to a new medium (internet). There are educators who believe they can read text and print without knowing that they are not addressing the needs of the new medium/internet. He is showing a web site on a tree octopus; and the extinction of this animal because women prefer hats made of octopuses. It is very humorous, but we know students who would accept and believe the information without thinking critically about it. The next example is on Martin Luther King. He shows that a white suprematist site is the third link down that children would find on Google if they typed "martin luther king." We need to help children understand the source of information, which as he points out teachers do with print resources.

Finding who has ownership of domains and helps readers understand - this is like a title page for books.

Who controls information? Why aren't we doing it? Very smart people cannot apply common sense when they go to a new medium (print to internet).

www.stormfront.org is the web site which created the Martin Luther King site.

He is showing how the white supremitist group is traced - source is web site Stormfront white supremitist  site. The site used podcasts, forums, birthday cards to push their content onto users.

We need to get into an emergency mode because we are not feeling the urgency yet.

Who controls the infomation they access - this is what is most important and must be taught to our students.

He showed that out of 2 million hits his own web site is number four. Children only use the first few hits to access infomation.

Uses the analogy of using a library and only looking on the first shelf.

If someone understands the structure of infomation they will be empowered.

Assignment design - powerful tools for compare and contrast need to reduce assignment so students are given a limited number of sites and then only use those to compare and contrast information.

One tool archive.org - Wayback Machine. Shows history of sites even if they are no longer available. Once info is on the internet it is always available or there.

He showed again the martin luther king site from 1999 At that date it shows a email link back to stormfront. the site was very different back then.

Information on the interent is in constant movement unlike books. For books there is no equivalent.

Lesson might involve comparing sites from different times. This site originaly appealed to adult and then the emphasis was changed to teenagers.

Went to Altavista and showed backlinks

typed "link:martinlutherking.org/ "    link: "any domain" shows sites linking to this site

then typed "link:martinlutherking.org/ host:edu"  - shows links from edu's to this site

host only works with a proper extension just k12 will not work but "url:k12" will work because it is anywhere within the web address.

Teahcers cannot check every link but children need to be taught this. so if a student is asisgned to find three sources most students will just use google for the top three hits and just cut and paste.

Need to teach cross referenceing.

There is any version of the truth. - teachers need to be web savvy and teach that there are multiple versions

Alan showed how "Forward links" work
type "host:www.martinlutherking.org" - shows every listing on the site with linking. By looking at links on a site then the students will begin to see where the content goes. It is like using the index of a book, which we don't teach.

Moved on to syntax
typed again in Altavista
"host:www.martinlutherking.org" - showed all links on that site with this as part of the domain

This only works in Altavista not in Google.

Searchenginewatch.com run by Dana Goodwin shows how search engines work. The site is  not for education but for general web designers interested in how to make searchs for their company or product effective.

Important search terms to teach and learn are.
1. link
2. host
3. url

Must use space between commands.

Students need to learn alternative histories from another source. Example students create powerpoint on the American Revolution and then with Skype exchange information with students from England and then record the debate and then podcast the debate on the blog working with students from all over the world with commentary on the blog. All these tools should be integrated information tools not considered separate.

I asked about tools for elemantary school students. He recomended two search engines. One is:

 

ask.com

for elementary helps students narrow search for info can also expand search

The second one is:

answers.com

pulls from reference materials also gives cites for students shows biography and citations

 

Every teacher should expand authentic audience (worldwide) review presentation of material or information

He went on to demonstrate Skype and the potential uses of connecting all over the world with other classrooms where infomation or resources are available and in common.

Teacher needs to understand how to publish student's work and be a presenter by using the same tools that the students use

apcalc.blogspot.com

Great math sight showing how content meets the needs of math students by allowing them to post their notes on lectures and access information in ways that they are comfortable with. 

This is about critical thinking on the internet and assignments need to be more challenging and global, teach students how to access the free and global sites.

FWent to England and asked failing students what they did and their least liked class which was English.

Students used:

IM

blogs

downloading of music

He recomended that when students studied Macbeth by Shakespeare they could use wikipedia to find recorded versions of Macbeth and the teacher had not beeen taught to change his/her assignments to meet the need ot the students

Great session!

Technorati Tags: necc06, necc2006, alan november

Bernie Dodge and QuestGarden 1.0

I'm at Bernie Dodge's presentation on the webquest tool Questgarden. He's addressing the problems with the original webquest tools (hand coding), too much skill required, and the need for resources that teachers don't have. He's addressing the pedagogical skills that teachers don't have (constructivism, higher level thinking, coherence). Some of the other problems include lack of peer support or feedback and server storage. Webquests also tend to be never updated. Teachers also are scared by the time demands. Also there are excellent teachers who will never make a webquest.

On to Questgarden, uses a metaphor of a community garden for everyone to share information and resources. He debuted the tool in 2005 and opened it to everyone in September. It started with 300 users and now has about 29,000 users. There about 14,000 webquests that have over 500 words.

The features of Questgarden include step by step prompting, and it is browser based (preferably Firefox). It emphasizes the sharing of resources and advice. It is a WYSIWYG tool. Has the ability to upload pictures and supplementary files. Based on design patterns.

Dodge is going on the demonstrate the tool. webquest.org There are five stages to creating a webquest.
1. goals and context
2. task and assessment
3. process
4. final details
5. polish and publish

There are many tools to assist in creating webquests maybe most importantly there are links to many examples that have been already created with the same pattern or basic design as the user has chosen, and there is even a chat room for real time interaction with other teachers.

He is now showing some examples of finished webquests. The overall design is fairly straight forward and easily navigable for students. Several examples are making students move away from the computer and go out into the community to achieve some positive ends usually with an environmental or political problem. Another area of webquests incorporates TV themes (CSI Macbeth). Lastly he's showing an example in which the Great Gatsby is incorporating a wiki to have the students collaboratively great a guide to studying the book. Some webquests are now also incorporating podcasts.

He was surprised with the extent in which there are kid created webquests. So far however they have not been successful.

Ultimately all good webquests in looking at Blooms taxonomy use the higher level thinking skills. The tool will be free until September 2006.

The new future features will include the ability to port the webquest to another server. Sites will be translated into other languages. Also there will be a peer rating and feedback. Integrated quiz/drill/game experiences. Also the ability to download someone elses's Webquest into one's server and the ability to tweak it to meet one's needs. Also the two main sites webquest.org and webquest.edsu.edu will be merged into Drupal. RSS feeds for newly uploaded webquests. Lastly new design patterns will incorporate Web 2.0 tools including blogs, wikis, and podcasting to guide the user to use the tools in a way that makes sense. He will also for the next revision (after September 2006) incorporate new or recent tools including timelines, concept maps, and surveys.

Technorati Tags: necc06, necc2006, warlick

Started out fun...and then was relevant again

The orientation started out fun with various frivolous gifts and audience participation activities, mostly chanting about San Diego and the next NECC at Atlanta in 2007. It's close to 30 minutes in and no one has mentioned the NECC. They are speaking mostly about ISTE. I've used the materials before including their web site and their books. Finally they are discussing issues specific to the conference. Oh well at least it gave me a chance to upload the pictures to Flickr and the blog. They are discussing not only the handouts that we received but also the online planner that they've created. It works with iCal and I've integrated it my calender. They have an online program search as another tool and this one I think I'll definitely use later. The speaker is also giving a good overview of the different content types in which they are trying to meet all the different ways that we can learn about the information and tools that we are interested in. I guess I've not tried to tackle any serious edtech issues, but then again tomorrow is another day. I have to decide tonight which spotlight speakers I want to see.

Technorati Tags: necc06, necc2006, warlick