SpeedGeek Learning Version .1

Why Google Docs should matter to Schools:

I wrote this impassioned e-mail in response to a discussion about using Google Docs within our district. You may be able to sense the passion, but I hope it is at least somewhat of a restrained response:

I only know that I have seen and experienced for myself, my students, and for the adults I have worked with closely (in both real and virtual environments), but I thought that I would share a few thoughts.

I do not believe that we should consider Google Docs as a replacement for Word or as a competitor for OpenOffice. It just can’t compete, and I think that telling teachers and students that it is a good replacement for those tools would definitely blow up in our faces.

The only reason why we should be considering Google Docs is because of its collaborative toolset. It isn’t about creating the same thing in a different space, as OpenOffice or StarOffice would be. It is about changing the paradigm of creation. Although having things stored in a cloud is nice becasue you can access them from anywhere, this is something we could do in a decent way when Universal Content Management is up and running.

Although sharing a single document/presentation/spreadsheet and working on it together does not seem like a game changer, my experience has been just the opposite. When I introduce the idea of live-collaboration on documents, both adults and students shift their thinking. They no longer consider doing everything by themselves. They start to have an instinct of clicking on the share button first, even before there are words on the page.

Concretely, when students have access to this tool, they plan their own projects. They are able to own their learning much easier than with trading files and keeping things separate. For example, before I left the classroom, I used to do a National Novel Writing Month project where each student tried to write a novel in one month. We wrote these on google docs and then shared them with one another for commenting. We also had a single document for planning and keeping track of numbers of words (a short novel being 50,000 words). It was a terrific success, but that isn’t what I found valuable. After I left, my kids wanted to do it again the next year. Although they had no class that was asking them to do this, and no formal after school club, they set up the organizing document and started linking their own novels into it. They were able to organize writing a few hundred thousand words simply by having the tool to do so. (Although this may sound like wikis would fit the bill here, but on many occasions, students would use the Google Docs as a defacto meeting place when they were at home or in different parts of the school. They would ask questions of one another and make comments while 3 or more people were looking at the same thing.)

As for adults, the shift comes in when work is actually done. Putting Google Docs (or a similar synchonous collaboration tool) into the mix allows the work to get done in the meeting, rather than after the meetings. It allows for teachers to collaboratively lesson plan. It allows for the best ideas to come together without having to wait until “you do your revision”. To include a real-world example, when our Language Arts department was trying to come together on non-negotiable verbage in the classroom, using a Google Doc allowed us to all put our initial ideas on the white space (including the shy members) and then publicly comment on them. It shifted our conversation from debating words on butcher paper, to actually crafting the best language to use with students.

I know you can all tell that I am pretty passionate about collaboration. However, I also believe in the security of data surrounding that collaboration. If it takes longer to get a Google Docs integration right, so be it. But, I am not interested in having adults or students create in the same ways that they always have. We need to move them forward because these are the tools of the modern workplace. If we are not teaching them to collaborate as an instinct then I’m not sure that we are doing the job we are here to do.

I just want to say thank you to **** for “throwing these things out for discussion”. The best plans I have been a part of are when smart people get together and debate things out. I think that there needs to be a lot more serious discussion on whether or not other collaborative tools could perform the work of Google Docs for sure.

Thoughts?

“Hope Online” Professional Development 11.14.08

Do Not turn off your cell phones and laptops.
If you have them, use them.

(Throughout this workshop, you can ask questions via text message by texting hopeonline and your question to 41411. You can also add to our questions without a cell phone by going to http://www.textmarks.com/HOPEONLINE)

I am not here today in order to introduce to you a brand new initiative that will require extensive amounts of training and make your life busier before you see any real benefit. I am also not here today to say that there is any one tool or strategy for making the ways in which you work actually work.

Rather, I am here to ask you a lot of questions, mostly about what you are spending the most time with in your job. What are those things that take away from what you would rather be doing, the rewarding experiences of working with kids and other adults who are working with kids.

In order to do this, let’s get one thing straight. Information is infinite. Attention is finite.

You gather a seemingly insurmountable amount of information every single day from e-mails, voicemails, web sites, student data paperwork and many other sources. It can be even more daunting to think that there is more information out there about how to organize that information. With your attention stretched so thin, it is hard to think that there are ways of getting any of it back. We are still going to try, and for the most part, we are going to look at solutions that are already in your workflow.

Well, I would like to present you with a few possibilities for a different way of organizing information.

The first is I would like to use my voice to listen to my e-mail, create e-mail, put an event on my calendar, send myself a reminder, create a text, and post to my blog. While this service has a name, I would much rather you think about the strategies that I am using in order to create more time for other things. Because I am able to use my voice to do these things, I can make efficient use of my drive time (of which, there is a lot).

Dial2Do – A way to use your voice to get things done on your cell phone.

An example of using this strategy to create something.

I would like to next highlight the use of short messages to capture information. Many times, I need to be able to capture information from myself and others, but there is no time in order to send out an e-mail. I need to be able to capture it now. So I send a text message to a service that aggregates the information for me and for everyone else who I invite:

TextMarks – A way to both capture information and share information through SMS.

An example of using this strategy to create something.

I use e-mail a lot. Well, perhaps that is an understatement. I am available by e-mail about 20 hours of any given day. With that in mind, I would like to be able to use e-mail in order aggregate archive the most important things that I am sending out. I want to be able to attach anything I want and have the archive understand it.

Posterous – The e-mail blog that don’t even have to sign up for.

An example of using this strategy to create something.

Now, if I am on my computer and I want to capture information on a topic. I want to capture it as I am doing my research, not go back afterwards and document what is going on. I want to be able to simply highlight text and pictures and have them all simply show up in a webpage that I can e-mail to someone or share with somone for them to add to.

Google Notebook – Collect text, pictures, and movies from webpages in order to be shared later with others.

An example of using this strategy to create something.

Well, what if I want to show others exactly where to go on a webpage using my voice. I would like to guide people through a series of webpages that I think are important. I want to do this in less than 5 mintues too.

FlowGram - Create a screencast of webpages and archive it to send to others.

An example of using this trategy to create something.

Now I would like you to figure out what you would like to be able to do in terms of aggregating and storing information. Brainstorm things that you don’t know are possible. Think about how you gather information now and how you would like to change that to be less attention heavy and more information heavy.

Now that we have all of our information gathered and stored, we will want to collaborate and talk about that information. The easiest way to do that is to meet face-to-face, but for much of the time, that requires significant driving and serious scheduling.

So, I want to come together with a few others to talk something out. I want to be able to see, hear, and write with them. I don’t want to have to set up log in to anything. I just want to hit a power button.

Tokbox – Always on Video Conferencing.

An example of using this strategy to create something.

I would like to work on the same spreadsheet with someone else so that I don’t have to send e-mails of the same document back and forth and get lost in the versioning. I would also like to be able to have information be entered into the spreadsheet via a form that others can fill out so that I don’t have to do as much data processing tasks.

Google Docs – A truly collaborative version of office

An example of using this strategy to create something.

NaNoWriMo(2)

Finally, I really want all of this stuff to be accessible in one place. I would really like to not have to remember exactly what all of these sites are. I just want one place to go to where it makes sense to find all of these things. Almost like a well-maintained professional development environment for hope.

Our IQity classroom - A one stop shop for learning tools, collaboration, and further professional development.

Now I would like you to figure out what YOU want collaboration to look like at Hope. Brainstorm
things that you don’t know are possible. Think about how you collaborate now and how you would like to change that to be less
attention heavy and more information heavy.

The Ripe Environment for Authentic Learning: TIE 2008

The process of creating a Ripe Environment for Authentic Learning is one that must be experienced rather than explained, so it is my most sincere hope that you experience The Ripe Environment today and that you take ownership enough of it to take it with you when you leave today.

Let’s start with the basics, though: defining our terms.

Authentic Learning: Learning for a Real Purpose and with a Real Audience.

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6. It’s the Content, Stupid.

• That is why we use blogs to communicate, not because they are easy, not
  because they are more collaborative, it is simply because they let the
  content speak for itself. Without content you are nothing. Without
  great ideas there is no hope for the future. It is the content that
  matters, not the format. That is why we do blogs, to pull content up
  through the rss straw, roll it around in our mouth-like readers,
  tasting each smooth milkshake post and swallow it down, totally
  satisfying our desire to fill our bellies with content.

7. The Marks of Collaboration

• The Digital Literacy Toolbox (521 revisions at last count)

8. Independent and Interdependent Questioners

• Ask a question here.
• Create something new here:

9. Change Cannot be Institutionalized

• Edupunk heroes

10. The Most Powerful Learning

• The typewriter vs. the fully connected blog post.

The Ripe Environment: Change cannot be Institutionalized

Well, when I first started blogging about The Ripe Environment, I didn’t know that I was being edupunk, but now that I have read the powerful thinking behind the theory (Students 2.0, Stephen Downes, Bavatuesdays, D’Arcy Norman) and I believe I was. I don’t know that I really want all of the baggage that goes along with labeling myself, but I truly believe in the idea that change is about people not processes.

It takes a person to create change because vision isn’t enough. It is great to create documents and blog posts and do research projects on creating change, but unless a teacher in the classroom does something differetly or a student asks for more in the classroom, there is no way that things will shift one iota.

I happen to love the nitty gritty.

I like talking about working through significant roadblocks to change. I like convincing others that change is worth their time, that it is important.

And not just any change, we need to be moving toward Authentic Learning with such passion and ferocity that it cannot be boiled down a powerpoint presentation. Passion doesn’t come from such things. Passion only comes from a place of specific experiences, not a generic goal of creating change.

The Ripe Environment should not be about creating a hope among people that there is a movement afoot, that technology is the silver bullet or that golden jargon will save us all. The Ripe Environment is about personally expressing a need to do things better and focusing on what better really is.

I have to constantly tell myself that learning is sacred. I do it for myself. I do not share because I know what is best. I share because I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is only through this act of rebellion that change will occur within others.

(I may be abstract in talking about this concept from time to time, but I really do want to talk about the personal stories and experiences that create change. Share yours in any way you know how.)

Two New Documents

I have been working on a couple new documents that make sense for the development of pedagogy and the future of education. You can find the links to them at the k12online conference: http://k12online.wm.edu/AuthenticLearning.pdf

http://k12online.wm.edu/101Resources.pdf

Researching School 2.0

In creating a wiki for my vision of School 2.0 within a school, I have found that there is quite a bit of research out there supporting 1:1 computing, constructivist teaching practice, and engaging technology usage in the classroom. What is even more amazing is that I didn’t know that this research existed because it has been so universally ignored by much of the proponents of this kind of reform. We must have this kind of research on the tips of our tongues, and we must be ready to spout off both the anecdotal evidence and the numbers to anyone who wants to know more about where education is going. We must also create our own research from our own classrooms. This podcast describes three different ways of achieving this goal:
1. A malleable research model that can assess new types of technology as it becomes available.
2. Survey and reflection of what is working in our classrooms.
3. Comparisons of certifications of mastery.

Show notes:

• 00:00:00: CSAP and the Academy of Discovery
  The Academy of Discovery

• 00:02:25: The Research
  Rockman Et Al

• 00:05:53: Is technology realization too new?
  Google Documents Research…

• 00:07:44: Informal Research
  Paul Allison’s Gcast

• 00:10:52: Proficiency and Mastery
  Geek!Ed!

• 00:13:59: Wrap-Up
  My Blog