Cloudy Tag Thoughts

Edubloggercon08 in San Antonio (just one many stories)

I arrived at the Edubloggercon 08 session start late and the room was not quite what I had expected with many rows of chairs facing the riser area where Steve Hargadon was facilitating a discussion on which sessions would be presented based on the pollster voting. There was also what looked like a professional video team whom I later found out were from Pearson and had posted on the NECC Ning their intentions to capture Edubloggercon with professional cameras and boom mikes as well, which added to the effect. I was a bit distracted as I was meeting people and trying to deal with my computer's inability to access the wireless. I spent most of the morning recognizing and introducing myself to people who I have only met virtually.

I went to two sessions before lunch. The first break out session I saw was on social networks. It was great getting to hear the many voices from people who shared their varied thoughts and experiences. The second session by the time I reached it was discussing Here Comes Everybody and was very animated. It doesn't seem to matter in some ways what the topic is because the discussions in trying to find the essential questions and problems begin analyzing road blocks to moving ours and other teacher's classrooms into a collaborative student centered environment. I noticed several times participants and one instance in particular Chris Lehman standing up for teachers whenever a discussion was moving towards accusing them of resisting and being unwilling to change. I have to agree because I don't know any teacher who when asked whether they enjoy and embrace this age of testing and multiple choice state tests wouldn't support change.

During lunch I met several more educators and took some pictures including my favorite of the day, Maria Knee who because she has done amazing work with Kindergarten students with such things as her classroom blog, holding up both her award for the Kay L. Bitter Vision Award but also balancing on her shoulder Trixster (hope I have that right) who has traveled to many different locations including several NECC conferences.

After lunch I was sitting working in the Blogger's Cafe when several folks walked over and because of the participants I wanted to hear what was being said. After a certain point several things happened simultaneously, smart phones started being brought out and an open fun exploration of the technology occured and Bud Hunt started streaming on Mogolus. Because it has the ability to stream and capture several sources at once I quickly set up an account and sent him my permissions. What Will Richardson and Steve Dembo were asking people to share on the edstreamtv wiki which was what and when they were streaming and to be able to coordinate, Bud was essentially doing in a spontaneous fashion. I think this is something I realized today that every time someone tries to organize and centralize some element of the edtech learning network that it sort of goes against what we are trying to do in the classroom which is to create more of a decentralized messy learning environment.

After the spontaneous gathering at the Blogger's cafe I set up for some more streaming with Alice Mercer and the Edtech Talk show It's Elementary. Unfortunately the wireless was cutting in and out and we couldn't set up the simultaneous video Ustream, chat room projection, speaker, and Skype conference call. What a fun and amazing day and there are still many days to go including attending for the Constructivist Consortium tomorrow (bad news is there is no wireless where it is held).

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: ebc08, necc08, edubloggercon, edtech, necc

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

Waiting for an Orientation Session

I decided to go the orientation session to see if I can figure out the best way to approach everything. I looked at David Warlick's latest post and noticed he was in the Gaslight district at the same time I was. How great to have all these amazing people around, just hanging out. If I can see David that will be one more person on my list to meet. So besides looking at all the faces of people, scanning name tages and trying to recollect if I've seen their blog or website before, what else could I do but dust off the technology and have some fun. The wireless is great and I uploaded my video to youtube without a problem. Now if I could make this into a game of Where's Waldo then I might do this type of video again. Beware chances are you won't recognize anyone, but who knows. I'm on vacation but learning, gee what if the kids always felt that way in the classroom.

Technorati Tags: necc06, necc2006, warlick

Come Fly With Me and My First NECC Podcast

I walked from my hotel to the conference center to start my experience of the NECC and felt like I was at an airport, something about the gates with big numbers I guess. Last night I walked around the marina and was feeling a bit blue being here by myself, but once I walked in I felt ready to fly. People were rushing about in preparation for the days to come but there were was plenty of help available at the same time. I haven't posted much this year and part of that besides my health was the feeling of not working within a system which is ready to embrace these new tools of the 21st century. But today I felt great being around people who share the same passion. It was perfect seeing Kathy Schrock, after all it was her weekly email newsletter which got me into using bloglines and blogging itself. I'm not feeling very articulate, but I can say I'm just enjoying the vibe of being here.

Podcast

Technorati Tags: NECC, necc06, necc2006, podcast, edtech, podcast, schrock