Collaborators Sought
Normally, I do use this blog to advertise for connections. However, we were hoping to connect one of our Senior History electives with another school via the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) Challenge 20/20 project. The Challenge 20/20 project creates connections between classrooms around one of the 20 problems outlines in J.F. Rischard's
High Noon: 20 Global Problems to Solve in 20 Years. We are looking for a school(s) who would want to collaborate on a unit project with our Senior Economics class which will be held in the second semester. We were unable to submit this project, since the Challenge 20/20 projects need to be completed by January 2008 and this class rums from January 2008 to June 2008.
Our economics teacher, Tim Curren, initially wanted to pursue the War on Drugs challenge in his course, although we may be able to negotiate a different problem to have the students collaborate on.
Please contact me if you would be interested in such a collaboration.
Technorati Tags: global, collaboration, globalcollaboration
Another Great Resource
At the Global Collaborations session, there was a librarian who was with a team from her school, the University School in Normal, Illinois, who created a wiki for the team to capture their notes from the conference. I had the chance to meet with her at lunch and found out how to access their
Memphis Musings wiki. Thank you to the librarian, whose name I forgot to ask, for creating this great resource.
[Live Blog] - Global Learning and Collaboration
[Live Blogged - please ignore misspellings and awkward phrasing][Simul-blogged on Multi-faceted Refractions - my home blog]Julene Reed
Why Global
Referenced
World is Flat and
A Whole New MindStudents need to be global communicators
Workplace requires global collaboration, project based activitities
Engages and motivates for authentic experiences. Promotes creativity and empowers
Use Challenge 20/20 from National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS)
Global relationships are important in the classroom of today.
Educators want to know:
1. How do I find projects?
2. How do I find partners?
Referenced her del.icio.us resources
How do you use networking tools to develop personal learning networks
Resources
My Wonderful World - National Geographic
The Globe Program - science focus
iEARN
Global SchoolNet
Think.com
Kathy Schrock
Global Voices
Global Awareness
Kidlink
ePals
Gloriad - Tennessee focus
Kids World
Kids Around the World
Create Websites for Creative Blogs
GRIST - blogs about
Google Apps
Highlighted Rock Our World
Used Polycom for video conferencing, now using simpler conferencing over IP using web cam
Jane Goodall Institute
Apple Learning Interchange - Gayle Berthiaume with an early education focus
Roots and Shoots - about $25 per year
Second Life
Global Education Ning
Laptop Learning Ning
One World Youth Project
KarmaTube - Great things for the world
Flickr
Resources -
homepage.mac.com/julenerDel.icio.us - del.icio.us/julener
[Live Blog] - From Hubs to Spokes
Jonah Howland
English Department
Urban School of San Francisco
[Live Blogged - please ignore mispellings and awkward wording][Simul-blogged at Multi-faceted Refractions]Was a skeptic, but now sees many more advantages than the problems that they had.
Skeptical that students are not as different, maybe more changes in media.
Students practice acquire knowledge and make sense of it, just the media has changed. Subject is the same. Geometry, Languages, History have been around for a long time. Enterprise of teaching and learning remains the same.
The online written conference
Has used for five or six years.
The Hub and Spoke Humanities Class
Most of learning is transacted to inward, radial, teacher very much in the center.
Teachers model, prompt, tease, interrogate, and direct traffic
Good enough for Socarates
Students as acolyte.
Builds rigor and accountability.
Safe and contrived, like fishisng a stocked pond with a guide
Other problems occasioned by the conventional architecture
Primary on quickness, extemporaneity
Solution - group projects
problem - accountability and balance of effort
Schism between the relative informality and structuredless verbal schange and what is expected of students in writing
solution - in-class writing, journal writing
problems - futher entrenches hub and spoke structure
generates mounds of material for teacher's one-on-on assessment and response
Solution - Online Written Conference
Example (American Romantism) - need to slow down, observe, and reflect and respond. Facilitating goal.
Record an observation. Read and respond to all classmates in the group. Rethink and rewrite their own piece. Want to have conversations of information not discussed in class and interests them. Make connection between seemingly disparate parts.
Advantages
Primacy on reflective staying power, appetite, and insight
Students are accountable to one another in the building of an end-product
A kind of intermediate practice in composition - neither discussion nor essay writing but helpful practice for the latter.
Standards for strong work are set and communicated through the exchange.
Teacher's function - combination of Adam Smith and Alan Greenspan
Allows for development of their own voice.
When students need guidance, teacher can give
Uses First Class - Use of conferences
Has course expectation - all online.
Similar to threaded discussion or forums at various other products.
Asking student to take risks with help from their peers.
Showed examples of student work.
Howard views the conversation as little as possible and as much as necessary. Will look at the paper turned in at the end.
Does build in time to bring in important threads brought up by the students. almost every week.
Big books hard to teach with demands of students. But use conference as a support group to help students get through the book.
An espirit de corpes that is built between groups.
Challenges and complications:
Timeliness and accountability to each other - ease of access is helpful.
Works best organically, it should generate its own momentum
Setting and maintaining reasonable expectations
Hard to summon authenticity, light social engineering is helpful [ seprarating friends to create mixed groups of grade level and ability
Monitoring if you make it too much of your job. Have to find balance
Key - What are the Learning Goals?
This is the key to success in all aspects at the Urban School
has given domain evidence of provocation.
Clear informed, purposeful writing
Grasp of larger meanings and implications of the essential questions and concerns of the material
an openness to the ideas, concerns and needs of others
Advocacy
A less teacher-centric classroom. Was in-class and individual, now a third
Student testimony tends to favor this activity, but is a lot of work
Richness and range of inquiry in formal essays and projects is greater
Authenticity of learning and propriety ethic
A democratizing and metastasizing experience
Useful axioms
Play with the prospects - try it out, see how it works
Attend to the effects as well as the affects
Student feedback is telling
Keep your eyes on the learning goals while making adjustments to your pedagogy.
[Live Blog] - Laptops, Libraries, and Collaboration
[Live blogged using note taking capabilities of the new tablet. Really excuse the spelling errors and awkward phrasing]
[Simul-blogged at Multi-faceted Refractions]
Alice Bryant
Harpeth Hall School
Presentation (old school)
Has done presentation
in Photo Story
Has created a PowerPoint
Has attended Internet
for Libraries
Rutgers presentation
and research. she will shave.
Has.
Past
-students go
through.
Present
Now work with teachers
Future
Student Focus
Main focus.
Meet the needs of our students.
old model -Create a
web quest. Librarian
did work, handed
off and didn't get
to interact with
students or teachers
huge gap with
many problems.
Not a baby sitter.
Now just teach
students and teachers.
More than a single
perspective.
Authentic assignments
allow for greater learning
Use a constructivist
approach
knowledge building
Reflection is critical
Need to develop an
assessment cycle
as part of collaboration.
Rutgers asks, Do they
learn anything? -Ross-todd
two kinds of students
Additive
Integrative
Working transformative's
More kids additive than
integrative (reflect, assess, monitor, and guide)
Showed example How to change
%ography to Bio Poem put on board then forgot
Tried it again, with
guiding questions.
Created a Bio poem
lots of description
retained more
Shared
Goals
Vision
Trust
Respect
Assessment
Reflection
What is different now?
Time
Respect-knowledge
A Team approach
Acknowledge don't know everything
Collaboration
-Meet the person
where they are at
-Develop relationships
-Take the Time
-stress skill Development
-use Technology to help Integrate
Not much work with
web 2.0
5th grade -Biomes project
Ecology project
States Projects
take something from
nature. Find web site
use Noodde tools for
citation.
Then work on photo story
6th Grade Geography Project
AGirl Named Desire
Created powerpoint
challenging books
information. Use
Follett Destiny
library resources/
Web resources from card
catalog.
Noodle tools changing
on July 25th
7th Grade.
Used one note to
organize. Can
Share notes with others
Us -Japanese Gardens
Read Samara's Garden
Most made Gardens
Had to defend garden design.
Make connections with "public library
Important to create relationships
Now for my Next Trick
In the next session that I am going to sit, Laptops, Libraries, and Collaboration, I am going to run the new tablet pc I am using through its paces. I am going to handwrite my notes, the old fashioned way, and then post them after I convert them to text.
How cool will that be?
Developing a 1:1 Program
Jim Heynderickx
What age do you start a laptop program? Jane Healy suggested 7th grade, since are ready to make a better leap to symbolic understanding.
Classroom size? Early results suggest 15.
What type of Demographics is best? Do laptops address digital divide issues for all students?
Does it level the playing field? if so, then want to have a great opportunity?
Early adopters are girls sections
What type of campus would be best for this brand new school? Early adopter in rural setting to support remote learning experiences.
What type of funding would you have in the new school of the future? May not be able to answer until other decisions are made.
What type of School Workspaces would you want? Laptop represents a virtual workspace that does not limit spaces.
What type of classroom design, what type of furniture? Don't want it to be comfortable in the classroom. Would they be more home like, business like, or school like?
It would be nice to have choices for different environments. Would be helpful. Not enough research to deal with ergonomic issues. A school has built ergo-nomic educational.
What is in the classrooms? Outlets, projectors, SMARTBoards, scanners, cameras, printers.
Some schools do not allow adapters, and have a charge during the course of the day. Reduce cable clutter. Wireless projectors with IP. Cleaning supplies for keyboards and screens. Should there be external mice and keyboards.
Does a laptop school have a media center, or in classrooms.
How does the library change? What would be the role of the librarian? What kind of support would there be.
XThink for tablets - mathematical equation building.
[Live Blog] Understanding Digital Kids:Teaching and Learning in a New Digital Landscape
[This session is live-blogged. Please ignore misspellings and awkward wordings][This session is simul-blogged at Multi-facted Refractions]
Kids today are different.
(Referenced two new
Time magazine articles
.)
Evidence is emerging that screens are not for passive dysfunction. Students are native and wired differently. We are immigrants, we speak digital as a second language. We retain some kind of an accent.
Children's brains are chemically and neurologically different. They process in parallel, not sequential like us.
Used to be assumption that by age of 3, we all had fixed memory and intellegence. What you had, you were stuck with.
Long standing assumptions are changing with research over last 3 years. Highly adaptive and malliable brain. This is huge. Brain reorganizing and restructuring based upon inputs and intensity of the inputs.
IQ raises and falls based upon the simulation we are exposed to. There is neuroplasticity, brain is creating new thinking patterns throughout our lives. It doesn't do it by itself, requires intensive, progressively more intense, over an extended period of time.
Watching TV over several hours a day, 7 days a week, will reprogram the brain's wiring. The impact of technology, via social networking and gaming. Now games have moved from solo experiences to networked experiences. Students pay to play (Everquest, WOW) to compete against each other. Xbox and PS3 are trying to develop this.
Brain is like a tree, early, a flury of growth. The pruning keeps fresh. Use it or lose it. Pruning, not raging hormones make teenagers what they are.
Mylian boost transmission speeds in the brain and bandwidth. If only doing one thing (academics, arts, athletics) these are the ones most developed. Argument for teaching the whole child and having regular exposure to these experiences, including technology, is crucial.
Students have greater visual processing, doing it differently.
Referenced the Human Brian Project. Neuroinformatics. Using FMRIs, researchers can research which paths are used in brain.
How different parts of the brain do simple tasks and processes information. Done more in past two years than previous 100 years.
Scientific American - The Teen Brain. (need to review)
If take different generations do same task, different pathways are used. For many tasks, different pathways, especially in visual cortex, 15% larger in the last 20 years.
Game takes 40 hours to master. Visual processing increase with 10 hours of gameplay.
3M Study- 100 photographs, digital natives will remember 90%, we would remember 60%, dinosaurs (text and audio) will only remember 10%
Eye processes images 60000x faster than text. Visual 30%, touch 8%, hearing 3%.
Eyes of students move differently, Immigrants -1/3 down and 1/3 in, the goldn mean, with a z curve, left to right.
Natives - bottom, then the sides, the the upper left hand side of the page (new layout). Unless motivated, will ignore lower right if motivated. What is the impact to the teaching of reading.
Immigrants - black on white background. Colors are not.
Natives - Blood Red, Lime Green, then burnt orange. Black least favorite.
87% of students are not auditory or text learning. Because of digital bombardment, they are digital kinestetic learners. Most exams are based on text and vocabulary.
Prensky - when reaches 21, will have played 10,000 hours of games, 20,000 hours of tv, 250,000 text or emails. These are not experiences that we have had.
How will this impact students learning? Less than 9000 hours of school, 4000 hours of reading, most of it unengaged. What need to acknowledge, think and process differently.
With younger children (teens, tweens, and younger) there is an acceleration in this process between these groups. Will help explain why they do what they do and differences in generations. Almost nothing is being applied in classrooms today.
What are the implications for schools. Talking and teaching is not the correct model. Need more inductive and constructivist methods.
Four items that need to be done:
1. New information must connect new idea to what they know, otherwise will only stay with student for 10 seconds.
2. Previous knowledge and experience defines what they learn, where they learn, and why the learn. Most school work does not interest the students. Good at real-life examples, may have problems with theoretical. Learning is personal to learner, not hte teacher.
3. Learners have to be given repeated, differentiated learning experiences. Have to practice and exposure to materials, from different perspectives and in different contexts.
4. Have to have consistent feedback and need reinforcement. Has to tell what is doing right, and then what can be done to improve.
Information without context is only like having one side of the velco. Can only occur when can make significant connections. Edgar Dales's learning cone. After two weeks, 10 % of what read, 20% of hear, 50% of hear and see, 70% of discussion, 90% if teach to someone else, immediate application of that skill in a real-world or simulated experience. Not that ADD or ADHD, not interested and tuning us out.
Not short for interest, but the way we teach and learn.
Don't understand how different students are. Not learners for the way the space has been built and the way we learned to teach. Who has learning problem? Not the kids.
50% of population is under 25 year old. What percentage of teachers are under 25? Part of the problem we are facing. Slow and dumb down interactions with teachers.
If we want kids to be successful, need to go beyond theory towards application. No way that we will be able to go back to basics.
Read/Write Web - Will Richardson
[This session is being live blogged. Ignore the misspellings and awkward wordings][This post is simul-blogged at Multi-faceted Refractions]The Read/Write Web - Conference Handout (
willrichardson.wikispaces.com)
Refer's to Karl Fisch's
Did You Know presentation.
It is about teaching children to become life-long learners.
Connectivity and transparency will become more acute, not going away.
Other entities reacting to the change - Election 2008 is beginning to change how politics is changing - used Obama Social Networking site. Don't need physical space, limits connection of passionate individuals like never before.
Went to mySpace - but it was blocked. Every candidate has a page on mySpace - first caucus will be on mySpace in January 2008.
Journalism and media is changing. 70% of traffic is file sharing. Digital Rights management is dead.
Every story on USA Today online is a blog post and can be commented.
Business is going to change. IBM has 20,000 wikis, 400,000 are using a social networking networking.
Refers to
Wikinomics and
Cluetrain Manifesto. Not about the product, but conversations around the product. Everyone changing, but education is stuck. Not responding quick enough.
15% of attendees have mySpace or Facebook, nearly 75% of students have accounts.
Expectation is that we share. Students don't look at privacy the way we do. Creates a disconnect. 1:1 schools have more opportunities.
Last few years, students have diverged from the teacher's paths and they are not coming back.
How do we bridge the gap?
What has transformed Will's learning is his ability to connect and create networked of passionate learners. Need to create personal learning networks which will sustain and help them make sense of the world, help them forge new ideas.
Huge shift in number of bloggers. What is disconcerning to Will is that teachers simply publish them in a different way and not understand the shift of pedagogy. It is a lack of understanding of how networks work. Used current post about
raw food to show example. Currently, there are 30 comments, to help push and shape the message. Look at thread, there is a huge amount of learning.
Will is findable, which is extremely important for his learning. Six on Google search of "Will". Students are building networks on their own. Shows Fan Fiction site. They are figuring things out, while we are not. Learning is 24/7/365, if you want it to be.
Showed a mySpace page and then Meg Cabot's mySpace. Can connect, but we block hese sites. The upside is not being recognized by teachers, they are not going away.
Showed Clarence Fisher's class blogs (
had to play imagine that) Did a post on the Nata Village in Africa and she got comments from the villagers.
It is not about what is in the texts, but who is in their networks and how they constuct them.
Nowhere in curriculum are students learning how to access information via cellular technology. How to find using a variety of different tools.
Showed OpenCourseware at MIT and the $100 laptop program. Need to find mentors (teachers) and make them smart consumers. They will learn about subjects not just in our classroom, but now have many different approaches.
Wikipedia is one of the most important web site in Will's mind, but most don't visit the history tab and discussion tab, where the conversation is occurring.
Shared the Google doc example - plagiarism is a conversation we are going to have to again and again. Showed wikipedia changes - 500 changes in last 3 minutes. Have to figure out how to teach.
More and more of what we read has not been edited in the same way as before? Who edits the blog? Everyone needs to edit everyone. We need to model editing and be skeptical consumers of information.
Need to teach to read and write in hypertext rich environments. How do you teach this literacy and do it well. The world is linked. If students are not writing with links, connecting with conversations, they will not be prepared for the future.
We have to change our practice of teaching. If you have an Internet connection, job shifts to connecting students to the smartest people, may not be you.
We can connect our students to mentor who can motivate and engage our students in ways which we cannot. This can be powerful. Showed example of the
Flat Classroom Project.
Can't deliver curriculum, teach how to create networks to support life-long learning. Connections are the transformation. It is not what I know, but what I learn. Need to teach the literacy so that they are not duped and misled.
Most examples are digital replication of analog practices. This is very different. Need to talk about these tools with the adults. What is stopping you from bringing this into your practice? Who are your teachers? Are you a life-long learners? How are you connecting? How are you growing your networks? You have to become a participant. How are you modeling your learning?
I Get It
This morning, while rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, I realized the why the laptop conference was made to be held in Memphis. More later
Technorati Tags: laptopinstitute, laptopinstitute07
Laptop Institute Tags Set
Thanks to the efforts of
David Warlick, who has encouraged and inspired many of us to take the leap into blogging and who has created one of the better tools,
hitchhikr.com, which allows those unable to attend conferences an aggregator so that those who are cannot attend a conference a peek into what is being said and seen. It is a virtual view, like hitchhiking to the conference. I know that last summer, I hitchhiked to NECC, the Laptop Institute, and the Building Learning Communities conferences.
The tags for the conference this year are:
laptopinstitute
laptopinstitute07
For those of you unsure of how to tag a blog post, check for me a the BlogByte Cafe and I will show you how easily this can be done.
Four Essential Questions that Need Answers
[Simul-blogged on Multi-Facted Refractions]Like many, I am intrigued by the promise and potential that integrating Web 2.0 tools provides for learners, both students and teachers. I know that in many instances, that I leading the charge full bore down that path because I believe that it is imperative that we provide experiences for our students to begin to construct their learning environments using these new collaborative tools.
But as we delve further and further down the path, there are three questions that need to be answered before completely committing to these tools.
1. Who owns the dataI will admit that I do not read the terms and agreements of the new tools that I am experimenting with. If I create something, do I retain some kind of ownership of the idea? Are my ideas protected by Creative Commons or am I giving my intellectual property away?
One of the challenges for us in education is to teach all of our learners, faculty and students, how to use the best tool for them to communicate their message, so that it can rise above the rest of the "white noise" of information that surrounds us and is growing daily. But we also want our learners to be able to retain ownership of their ideas, for that alone may be what defines them. No one should be able to co-opt an idea. Enhance it, synthesize it to create a better idea, but the kernel should remain.
2. Who owns the curriculumOne of the questions as teachers begin to modify and create new curricula to meet the needs and demands of the students is who owns it? Is it the school or the individual. In business, the answer used to be crystal clear, it was the business that had ownership of new ideas, especially if an individual left. This may become a bigger issue, especially if the teacher shortage that continues to be forecast in the next seven to ten years occurs and the demands for the excellent teacher who is getting results with the new tools.
3. Who owns the experience?If the face to face classroom experience is what differentiates the experience, who owns the experience. Prestigious universities such as MIT, Stanford, and Cal-Berekley making the experience, by posting podcasts and videocasts of courses freely available. As schools begin to use the tools and share the classroom experiences, who owns the content, the school, or the creator of the content, the teacher?
4. What will draw students to your physical learning space and environment?With the whole of knowledge is being made digitally available, what will bring students to your physical space? Or how will your school be defined, by physical location, by time, by content?
I do not profess to have any answers, only questions. I do feel that these questions will help define what we mean by School 2.0 or beyond and am actively trying to synthesize my answers.
Technorati Tags:
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Deja Vu All Over Again - Laptop Institute Opening Keynote
[simul-blogged on Multi-facted Refractions]This evening, I live blogged Ian Juke's keynote presentation at the Laptop Institute in Memphis, Tennessee. To use one of my favorite quotes from that great philosopher and ball player, Yogi Berra, the message was "like deja vu all over again." Ian recited a message that I have been hearing and am beginning to discuss on this blog, that due to the exponential growth in computing power, the exponential growth in bandwidth, the emergence of the Internet and Web 2.0 tools in the last 18 months, and the fact that we live in an age where information overwhelms its meaning is changing the scope and acceleration of change towards light speed.
Using information from Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat, Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind, and many of the statistics that Karl Fisch put together fall spring in his Did You Know presentation, Ian created a narrative that maybe for many was a dizzying and overwhelming set of questions that we as schools have to wrestle with. Questions such as, what are our goals and how are we going to starting moving the glacial pace of change in schools to move our faculty, parents, students, and government entities so that they keep up with the change.
For many, the approach may have been new. Going by the audience reaction, the number of people who are using the tools were the minority of the users at the conference. By my estimate, about a third of the users had heard or used Skype, which Terry Friedman (England) used to chat with me on Friday and Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach contacted me to confirm my participation in a "speed dating" workshop Tuesday. Concerning Second Life, of which I have only dipped a pinky toe into, less than 10% of the attendees admitted to having an avatar. Looking around, I can only find Will Richardson, Jeff Whipple, and Jim Heynderickx whose blogs I that am aware of.
But if one has begun to immerse themselves using the new tools to create personal learning networks, blogs, podcasts, twitter, and nings, these are the questions that we have been asking. For me, these are conversations I have been having for the past three weeks, since EduBloggerCon and NECC. The conversations we began are important and it is through the development of these networks which will help us shape an answer and direction.
For myself, Ian is reinforcing in me the need to heed the personal call to action towards leadership to help move things forward. It is not about the computers, bandwidth and the growth of the Internet. As confirmed by my summer reading list (The Fifth Discipline, The Starfish and the Spider, Wikinomics, Wisdom of Crowds, Gaining Digital Citizenship, Five Minds for the Future, Cult of the Amateur, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) but it is the way we use the tools to collaborate and extend our networks so that we can begin to develop solutions to questions that Ian posed.
To that end, I will be rushing down to the BlogByte cafe between sessions to share how I am using these new tools to creating a learning community where all constituents of my school community, faculty, parents, and students are active participants.
And in the fall, you can join me at the K12 Online Conference during my session on Extending Horizons - Developing Personal Learning Networks sometime between October 22 through October 26.
Technorati Tags: laptopinstitute, lil07, lil2007, laptop2007, laptop07, ianjukes, ian, jukes
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Living on the Future - Ian Juke's Keynote at Laptop Institute
[This is being live blogged - please ignore mispellings and awkward wording]
[Also simul-blogged at Multi-facted Refractions]
Talk about the issue of change.
Easier to change a cemetary than curriculum - Woodrow Wilson
Easier to change the course of history than a history course - Lou Salza
State today - pile higher and deeper
Any wonder that teachers have problems dealing with change
Business, if take someone who retired 10 years ago - different landscape, a teacher would find no changes in past 10 yests.
Hard to get a handle on what change has happened - is slippery and hard to determine.
Hard to stand back and put finger on what has changed.
Change is subtle and slippery - hard to step back and understand what is going on. Scope and speed is hard to get a handle on.
Change today, tomorrow, forever - overwhelming change.
Overnight - find it is being done differently
Four exponential trends that each and everyone needs to understand.
1. Moore's Law - in 1963 that processing power was going to double every 24 months while halving the price. Has held for nearly 50 years.
1979 - 8k, 128k storage, 2 Mhz, cost $5000
1984 - 128 k, 400k storage, 10 Mhz, $3900 - changed law to processing power doubling every 18 months
2007 - 512oook, 80000000k storage, 200 Mhz, $800
Dealing with exponential times - what does the future hold? Wired asked Moore what the future brings. No indication that it isn't going to continue for another 12 - 15 years. IBM and HP have talked about continuing for 50 - 100 years.
Concerned about kindergartener, class of 2019, what technology will be common to them:
208,000 GB, 40, 060 GB, 1224 Mhz, $1.38
Timeframe is shifting to a year or 6 months as it doubles.
This is the anti-long tail. Students are now taking for granted the change.
Showed pen sized cellular phone, with virtual projectable keyboard. Technology has been invented, just can't buy it yet.
Need to read The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil.
What is common sense today is not going to be common sense in 10 years.
What implications does this trend have towards your classrooms and instruction? (Discussion time)
Bandwidth is changing
bandwidth is changing from 1200 baud to 10 Mbs. One strand of fiber optic cable can work at excess 10 trillion per second.
From Telecosm by George Gilder - bandwidth speed is tripling exponentially every 12 months upped to 6 months - four to six times the rate of Moore's Law. Today are in stone ages of optical communication.
Not just WiFi, but WiMax and another I didn't catch. Question for educators - where is this going to take us. The Internet is everywhere.
Required Friedman reference about Flatting of the World, students will need different sets of skills. In third revision - 50 % of the book has changed. Friedman now refers to Pink's Whole New Mind. Need to develop creativity, etc. (Watch for blog posts comparing Pink and new Gardner, Five Minds for the Future). What are we doing to prepare our students for a world that is fundamentally different?
(Discussion time)
Two previous trend led to the third exponential trend - the Internet
1996 -48 million regular users
today - 1.2 billion users from 175 countries - 113 per minute, 4,000,000 new web pages
Last year 36 trillion emails sent.
The growth of MySpace. 5% of traffic is to MySpace. Repeating Know You Know statistics.
Move to YouTube - video replacing email, texting and blogging.
The Wikipedia movement - Scientific American report from before.
The growth of eBay - engaged in auctions. 1 million people make living on eBay.
Skype has grown to 100 million users in past two years.
Second Life - allow to interact and socialize in a virtual space. Buy and invest. How significant. IBM has purchased 31 islands. They see this as new virtual business.
Podcasting - 2004 - 11 hits, today 120 million hits.
Digital Music - Apple has sold 2.5 billion songs sold. Apple sells more music than everyone but WalMart.
What are the implications for education? iTunes University has classes available for free within 5 minutes of presentation. Maine and Alaska are trying to move to 1:1 computing.
The blogosphere. New blog every one half second. Have access to really neat tools.
Leads us to Web 2.0 - moved from passive medium to a constructive model - Richardson calls this weapons of mass communication.
Everyone is beginning to use the Internet. Right now, sometimes like sucking peanut butter through a straw.
Over 1 billion cell phones purchased in the last year. Increasingly, this is a computing device over a wireless infrastructure. Have hi-res screens, web browesers, download books. Phones will replace an ATM cards. What is the price and who is the focus market? Could they be used as a learning tool?
Using continous voice recognition. Using CVR, can speak 70 words per minute and have it translated to text. Next step, automated telephony, automatic translation of language during call. Cost - under $100.
What is going to happen to Internet usage? Go up, down, or through the roof. As bandwidth continues to grow, this will be unrecognizable. Envision a full immersion virtual reality (VR), what will draw students to school?
This is coming at us like a freight train. How can we recognize what the future is going to look like. In past, had to go to different devices, now it is converging to one device and in one place. We expect services come to us, not us going to the service. Think banks and ATMs, on-demand video.
If world is experiencing such a dramatic shift, what steps can you take to reorganize your curriculum to ensure it algins with the world of digital learning?
Trend Four - InfoWhelm
Knowledge built upon facts becomes less durable, since the foundational knowledge is changing as quickly as it has.
Live in an age of disposible information. Information has value, but is perishable as fruit.
Google has collected maps, web sites. Google is working to create an book search and get a summary and read book page by page. This is just the beginning. A transformation of what we can access - implications for libraries, textbooks. Checking a library book will move the way of using a travel agent. Using new video glasses with the iPhone - now have access to all types of information (text, music, and video).
Sony has developed an eBook reader.
Imagine where this going to go. Students will be able to carry a device with the sum total of all knowledge from the beginning of time, downloaded in less than a second.
What are the types of skills to use information change?
Richard Wurman - if take knowledge as a ball of twine, with the three trends, the ball of twine has grown over 20 times. More Did You Know statistics. Information is doubling every two weeks and moving towards every 72 hours.
For engineers half life of information is 5 years. Bio Chemists every year, Doctors every six month.
Need to invest in life long learning and develop personal learning networks (last thought mine).
If we put technology into the hands of teachers and administrators, nothing changes. It comes down to the passionate, engaging teacher who uses this technology. We have to think about what we want to accomplish. What are skills and habits of mind that we need to develop. Align learning with technology.
Question - what steps can you take to ensure the refocusing of legislative priorities from 20th century that we currently see in schools to the skills and standards that reflect the changing reality of the 21st Century?
How many are experiencing stress?
The primary focus in schools is not technology, they have to become informationally and media fluent, have to ask good questions, access both high tech and low tech, synthesis ideas, apply, and be reflexive. Has to be taught in every subject at every grade level. Role of librarian is not to work just with kids, but have to work with teachers (my addition and parents) to use these skills so that they can help guide.
Long term is no longer measure in centuries and decades, but now weekly, daily, and hourly.
Need to comprehend the acceleration of change, need to let go of view of the world,
Eric Hoffler - in the times of radical change, the learners will inherit the earth while the learned are prepared for a world that no longer exists.
Need to stretch the rubber band, break the comfort zone of the mindset. How do get a rubber band to stretched and stay stretched? Break the mold. Cut the band to keep from reverting to old models.
Where do you start? Go to ianjukes.com which has handouts including Living on the Future Edge. Also, access the committed sardine blog. Email ijukes@mindspring.com with a message "I need to be committed" and access it via RSS.
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Contemplating the Graceland Experience
Since Mike Peccia, our MIS Director and I got to Memphis so early (9:00 a.m.) so that we could attend the Laptop 
Institute at the Laussane Collegiate School, we decided to make a pilgramage to Graceland to kill our time. It was quite an experience that will take a few days of reflection to figure out what the experience meant. Here I am, beginning to mediate to determine how to communicate what the experience means, over the King's favorite meal, a toasted peanut butter and banana sandwich. When at Graceland, you have to do what Elvis would have done.
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Book Review - Digital Citizenship in School
[Simul-blogged on Multi-facted Refractions]
While at NECC, ISTE was promoting its newest volume,
Digital Citizenship in Schools by Mike Ribble and Gerald Baily. Yesterday, I received my copy after ordering it at the conference and have had a chance to give it a first reading.
The authors argue that it is essential that school districts and schools to take stock and begin to create their definition of digital citizenship. Once defined, they present example activities that will help all members of the school community, students, faculty and staff, and parents gain a better understanding of the definition which was created by the community.
With the author's goals of wanting to improve learning outcomes and prepare students to become 21st Century Learners, the authors outline nine elements which define digital citizenship:
Student Learning and Academic Acheivement
- Digital Literacy
- Digital Communication
- Digital Access
School Environment and Student Behaviour
- Digital Security
- Digital Etiquette
- Digital Rights and Responsibilities
Students Life Outside the School Environment
- Digital Commerce
- Digital Law
- Digital Health and Wellness
I feel that authors have done a great job of defining the elements and providing the framework for schools to begin to have the conversations about how their district or school will deal with these issues. One of my takeaways from this volume are new ways of thinking about updating of our Acceptable Use Policy. As we continue to develop the changes, we need to be mindful of making sure we cover all aspects of each of these nine elements. The more that we work on our AUP, it is becoming apparent that we need to come at the problem as an information service provider. Education of all groups is essential.
I especially like the inclusion of health and wellness in the list of elements. It provides credence to this important aspect. One element which is not included in the published volume is where social networks fit in. They do provide guidance about podcasts, wikis, and blogs, but social tools, like Facebook, mySpace, or Nings is absent. I am going to have to check the online resources to find these materials.
But overall, a great job of providing a framework to begin the conversations, especially for those who are not regular users of the new tools.
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Book Review - Spider and the Starfish: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations
[Simul-blogged at
Multi-facted Refractions]
Upon the recommendation of
Joyce Valenza, in her NECC presentation
Information Fluency Meets Web 2.0, I reserved the following book from my local public library. Picking it up last week, I got a chance to read it and was amazed how quickly I got through the reading (two evenings) and how thought provoking it is.
In this book, the authors, Ori Brafman and Rod Breckstrom outline how a decentralized organization can be stronger than an centralized heirchy. Using examples from history (the Apaches vs the Spanish) through modern technology (the emergence of wikis and craigslist), the authors use the metaphor of the five legs of the starfish to describe the five aspects of a decentralized organization:
- Circles
- Catalysts
- Ideology
- Preexisting Network
- Champion
Focusing on the role of the catalyst, the authors then describe strategies and rules for becoming a starfish organization
In thinking about the impact towards education and what I would like to implement at my school, I am taking away from this volume is that although a there needs to be a central authority at the top (superintendent or principal), that you have to allow for more teacher autonomy in order to allow students to have the best learning environments. Teachers should be guides within their classrooms, like the Apache Nant'an who provide a vision and then allow the rest of the tribe to meet the vision. At North Shore, I think that we do a reasonably decent job at providing this within each classroom, but like with the conversations surrounding classroom 2.0, we need to have further opportunities for students not to feel like they are being forced into a local centralized classroom.
Also, it is important for teachers to be able to have time to get together, organically, to share best practices with each other. Like in many schools, we acknowledge the need to do so but do not always prioritize the practice as being essential for our own learning.
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Back in the Saddle
[Simul-blogged at Multi-Facted Refractions]
I have returned to the work after an eleven day mini-hiatus since I have returned from NECC. Unfortunately, the projects that I left undone did not complete themselves, so this week, I am playing a bit of catch-up.
I have five work days in which to complete a number of these projects before I travel to the
Laptop Institute which is being held in Memphis. I am looking forward to this conference and have been in contact with the organizers to see if there is a way that an area, similar to the Blogger's Cafe, can be set up in order to facilitate reflection and conversation. I am looking forward to learning and thinking about a transition to a more technology rich environment. I will be sharing my schedule in the next few days.
I also look forward to following the Building Learning Communities conference in Boston. Both of these conferences look great and it was difficult to make a decision as to which to attend.
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Honored to be in the Team Picture
[note:simul-blogged at Multi-facted Refractions]It was last Saturday, that I recieved a message from Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, that a proposal that I created for the
K12 Online Conference was accepeted. I am honored that I was selected for this conference. As many of you will soon learn, it was one of the catalysts for my own professional learning. Looking at the lineup of presenters, I have to pinch myself. I look forward to experience.
Technorati Tags: k12online02 k12online2007
Summertime - A time for Reflection, Relaxation, and Looking Ahead
[note - simul-blogged at Multi-facted Refractions]
I really enjoy summertime. Even though I am on a twelve month contract (six weeks vacation) and I should be taking four consecutive weeks away from work, this summer is like most summers in that there is simply too much to do in order to be away that long. But I enjoy the pace of my summertime work, where everything is project based, so once I knock two or three items off of my list, I can simply call it a day at 1:30 p.m. in order to get away. That is until crunch time near the end of August.
Since I have been back from NECC, I have taken some time just to be. My wife and I have taken the dog for longer walks, I shirked aside the task list and got involved in a 4+ hour Monopoly game, I took my eldest daughter to a Cubs game, where the most important thing going on was not the action on the field (although, the game was one of the most exciting capped off by a game-winning homerun in the ninth inning), but rather the conversation and interactions that I had with my teen-age daughter. Today, we are going to be headed to the local outdoor mostly classical music venue for their Summer Music Celebration and then later this evening, we will be packing the whole family, including the dog, and going to the nearest drive in theater to catch Ratatouille and Pirates of the Caribbean 3.
Also, since it is summer, I be sharing stories on this space. The stories will be reflective and demonstrations of projects that we did last year. Based upon the transformative success that we had last year, I will be sharing the planning processes we are going through, to get your feedback and to potentially connect with many of you. I will also use this space to tease out ideas about the role of the integration of technology towards the aim of the changing classroom experience, many of the ideas which were discussed in length at EduBloggerCon and during NECC. Lastly, I will review my summer reading, some work related, some fun, just because it is summer and I have more time to do so.
I hope that you will come back, visit, and take the time to reflect and share.
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