Question 44 of 365: What parts of us are fragile, perpetual and renewable?

What winning looks like.

I have been quite energized by a lot of the basketball games that have been going on during the playoffs this year. There have been a lot of tight games and quite a few overtimes. As with anything that I am engaged in, I bring it back to learning.

It is my contention that there are a lot of really “close games” in education at the moment. With the amount of budget cutbacks and lack of consensus on what the best technology investments are for education, it is hard to see anything as coming out as a clear winner. The conversations are all happening (Online Learning, Technology Integration scaling, Netbooks, Cell Phones in the Classroom, Blended Learning, Student ePorfolios, Interactive Whiteboards, and a few others), but it remains to be seen whether any of them will make for long lasting changes in education.

So, what does winning look like?

When will we know that the inroads that Interactive Whiteboards have made are enough to change who controls information in the classroom?

Does winning look like the “No Cell Phones” Signs coming down?

Does winning look a 1:1 netbook program where the kids actually own the laptops?

Does winning look like every student having an ePorfolio filled with artifacts from their required elearning or blended learning class?

I really want to know.

(By the way, I do get the fact that “winning” isn’t really an appropriate metaphor for the kind of change we are looking to create. I understand that there are lots of competing factors, and not just two simplistic sides. But, my hope is that it will create some discussion at least.)

Strategy Matters

I really appreciate all of the talk recently about how a district can use strategy as a way forward with connected learning. The conversations around losing Web 2.0 tools (or losing their “free” status) is warranted, especially with how much we have come to rely on them for our daily learning fix.

The two that I am the most interested in, at the moment, are:

Miguel’s articulate questions:

• Can we sustain this solution if it goes district-wide and everyone starts to use it?
  
• In the time it takes from start (one school) to full implementation (everyone), will our technical support staff have the opportunity+time+desire to learn how to support it?
• Will Curriculum and Instruction Dept’s choose to embrace these solutions as part of our core mission, or it will have the equivalence of a firecracker in an open palm (noise but minimal impact)? And, even if it’s clasped tightly, will these technologies help or damage the organization?
• If “minimal impact” from the initiative results, what are the resulting consequences for staff morale, perception of negative innovation quotient (i just made that up with apologies if some else did already)?

And

Bud’s wonderful podcast about how long and where we need to keep student creations:

As a language arts teacher, I rarely asked for something that wasn’t precious. What kind of schools are we providing if all our students do is throwaway busy work?

And if we are only asking kids to do meaningless stuff, then I want that documented, too, so that we can change.

Our kids deserve that. And so do our societies.

While I think that both of these posts are much better at handling this conversation. Here are my two cents:

Web 2.0 has never been about free stuff for me. Wikispaces was just a way to understand the power of wikis. Blogger was a way to understand the power of blogs. Podomatic was just a way of understanding podcasting. I didn’t think that any of those places were “district solutions”, but I needed them in order to see what was worth keeping and what wasn’t.
I moved on to a hosted wordpress solution, with podpress plugin, and a Google site. All three have backup plans, exports galore and solid business plans behind them (i.e., me and Google)
We need people to try out “the free” in order to figure out “the good”. But, I don’t think that districts can do these kinds of pilots. Individual teachers and other innovators have the flexibility and the direct contact with students to try things out, but the responsibility (and the part that is missing) is the communication with “the district” after those pilots actually happen. When a teacher figures out what “the good” is, the district needs to be able to analyze and see if it is scalable, responsible, and frugal.
Strategy should come from research… in the classroom.

Who are “they”?

In a post from a few days ago, a reader of this blog asked a very simple question:

I would ask why are they less willing and who are the “they”? You often refer to asking the right questions and so I would encourage you to ask Who and Why before How.

This was in reference to my need for non-power-users to pilot the online learning spaces that I am creating. So, Jamie, I would like to outline exactly who I am looking for whenever I plan a pilot for a new learning space. I would like to do so in the form of a classified ad, just for fun.

Wanted: Beginning Teacher-Learner for long-term learning commitment

1. Must love students and all of their quirks. Must love talking to them and wanting to make sure that they are getting the most out of their education. Must know that they have something to teach you.
2. Should be afraid of at least one button on the computer.
3. Not having administrative rights to your school computer, a plus.
4. Doesn’t mind engaging in active reflection on personal habits and teaching habits.
5. Must have taught or been taught before the invention of computerized grading programs.
6. E-mail should be a second language.
7. Needs to be comfortable asking questions.
8. Is not immediately interested in blogs, wikis, twitter, or social networks.
9. Finds traditional PD boring, but has had at least one good PD experience in the last 2 years.
10. Must read for pleasure.

These are the factors I am most looking for in teachers who are going to push the limits of online spaces. They are wise enough to know that not everything is important, yet they are still thirsty for the knowledge of how to do things better. I would like to turn it back on you, Jamie. What do you look for in partners that push you to be better?

How do you take attendance (or engagement)?

When the students are directly in front of you, it is easy. You count up the number of kids and see just who they are. There you go: attendance.

When you use wikis and blogs, but the kids are still staring at you during the day, it is still pretty easy. Count up the kids. Measure the contributions. Viola: attendance and participation.

When you do not see the kids every day (or at all) and your class IS the wiki or blog. How, then, do you measure attendence? If you had to report out on whether or not a student was present on any given day, can you turn to the edits that they made on the wiki or comments on the blog and say that they attended? If we start to measure the quality of the edit or the level of thought behind a comment, then we are starting to measure something different entirely. We are measuring engagement.

But, perhaps that is what we should be measuring anyway. Perhaps we should not have information systems that measure whether or not your body was there physically or your eyes were scanning the material, but if, instead, you were truly engaged and making substinative contributions to the classroom environment.

The reason why I am thinking about this right now is I have to decide if an LMS is truly worth the effort to set up for adult learners. Is it important to have courses held within a place that requires a login and allows for a lot less co-creation, or can I have a course held entirely in a wiki, producing a network of learners that are continually making the course and the learning experience better?

I came across this course the other day and I think that it describes quite  a little bit of what I am talking about. In this course, all participants go through the wiki’s activities and discussions as they co-create knowledge. But, who is to say that anyone actually attended? Would we be able to say to a learning institution (school, state department of education, university) that this list of people underwent professional development of the caliber that would advance their degree, their continuing education credts, or is it just a nice experience.

So, I guess my question is two fold:

1. Can we take attendence on a wiki/blog or do we need an LMS?
2. Do we need a different paradigm for tracking learners that focuses on engagement rather than attendance (and how do we get there)?

A question

This is a really interesting question.

First, if you are looking for engaging videos to show for professional development, I would look here:
http://www.speedofcreativity.org/resources/videos-for-pd/

As for introducing the subject of engaging students with technology, I think that you would really have to find a good itch that you think all of the teachers want to scratch. What is the one thing that they can do with technology and students that they couldn't do before? Why should they care about technology?

Places like http://classroom20.com, or http://supportblogging.com, or even something as specific as http://voicethread4education.wikispaces.com/ would work well to figure out just how deep the topic goes with your teachers.

As for an article, I like http://blog.futurestreetconsulting.com/?p=94, many of the posts from http://weblogg-ed.com, or any of the presentations at slideshare about educational technology.

If you are really interested in starting this conversation, I would recommend that you start up a discussion group over at Google Groups or set up a wiki for this purpose. Or, simply get an e-mail group going if that is where your teachers are at. Creating an avenue for this kind of conversation is the only way to make it last. Let me know where you want to go from here. Creating change is not an easy business.

Posted via email from olco5′s posterous

A list of tags…

The EdTechTalk delicious site has a wealth of relevent tags. It has so many in fact, that it may be THE resource for tags about Educational Technology and learning in general. I love being able to select different tags and find out what other people are categorizing within this rather large community. However, what if you wanted to use those tags somewhere else? What if you wanted to add those tags to the choices in your own blog or search according to those terms?

What if you wanted to categorize all of your ideas according to what the community has deemed worthy of their time? Well, I did want to do that. I wanted to use the common tags of our community, so I have made all of the tags in EdTechTalk (at least up until today) into a comma separated file for easy import into anything I would like to use them for.

Here is the file: edtechtalk-tags

Pedagogical implication: I think that it really makes sense for us to start using the same words to talk about learning. Coming together on a group of tags that we would like to use for aggregation purposes is something that we have neglected too long. The community is far enough along to put get into a discussion about just where we want our folksonomies to go. We need to take ownership of terms like elearning and make them more specific. We also should be teaching our students to come together on terms to use so that all of their work can not only be found later, but also grouped according to topic, theme, or even skill level.

Think about if we had a way to group student work according to a self-reflected score (of effort, of achievement, etc.). What if we could use exemplars and organize them according to the tags that they have self-selected.

Where else should we go with our community of tags?

The Ripe Environment: Collaboration as Instinct

I sat at the over-long table, as I always do on Mondays and thought about the next time I would meet my students for Extended Learning Time (our version of a multi-discipline course without any set curriculum or standards to give guidance or restrict us).

“Well, it is earth day in a couple of days.”

Immediately, my colleague and I started a Google Document called Earth Day 2008. We started dropping in links to pages we found.

“Oh, I did hear something about an event on the National Geographic Channel. Did you hear about it. Something about the human footprint.”

We were pushing hard now, 25 minutes before kids arrive. Link after link being proposed as a starting point.

“What is the question we are really trying to get our kids to answer here.”
“Is Earth Day important and why?”

And we we started writing out a discussion, a plan of attach. We eventually came to the conclusion that there were others who were interested in asking this same question, experts even. And yet, within 30 minutes we created an authentic question and activity around it. Our instinct was to create and collaborate, rather than offer worksheets as an attempt at lesson planning. This is our Ripe Environment, and the class that the students came into that day was Ripe too.

They couldn’t wait to see who had the bigger footprint. They couldn’t wait to collaborate on their own weekly or monthly collection of soda cans or milk jugs. This process of not waiting to be told, of instinctively knowing that it is the right thing to do, that makes it truly authentic.

So, how do you foster this instinct for collaboration. Well, by saying yes to it as often as possible. It is my personal belief that there is never too little time to create, too little time to collaborate.

If you have only a minute:

1. Put a request for a resource out on twitter.
2. Do a delicious search instead of a google search (it is a community of people waiting to help).
3. Link to someone who is talking about it.

If you have a half-hour:

1. Start a google doc and invite a few others to join in.
2. Search technorati for new blogs, videos, and people who are interested in the same thing.

If you have a longer:

1. Start a wiki and get people to contribute.
2. Start a blog and get people to contribute.
3. Start a movement and get people to join.

Learning 2.0: The Colorado Conversation (The Reminder)

My anticipation is rising. The time is drawing near when Learning 2.0 will be here. I will not attempt to recreate Karl’s amazingly concise post (if you have read my blog for any length of time, you will know that brevity is not always my first priority).

The purpose of this post is just to keep the awareness at an all time high that things are happening in Colorado. We aren’t trying to be the EdTech mecca, just to have a unified (whatever that means) voice for change. Let’s see what happens.

“Just a reminder for those of you attending – either physically or virtually – that Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation is coming up this Saturday, February 23rd, from 9:00 am – 2:30 pm MST. If you registered, you should’ve received this email a few days ago with some updated information. And here’s the schedule for the day’s activities.

For those of you interested in attending virtually, we will be attempting to Ustream the seven sessions – channel info here.
Please keep in mind that our first priority is pulling off the physical
conference, so if the Ustream happens it will be a bonus, but we’re
going to give it a shot.

We have about 170 folks registered,
although I imagine a few will change their minds at the last minute.
The weather looks like it’s going to cooperate, everything is planned
out and we think (emphasis on think) we’ve thought of everything. It’s going to be interesting . . .”

links for 2007-11-26

• Install WordPress on Your Own Hosted Server – Beyond School | Beyond School
  (tags: WordPress MakeYourBlog/WikiBetter)
• H I T – Hokanson’s Instructional » home
  A fairly extensive wiki for educational technology resources in all subject areas.
  (tags: edtech Wikis TechnologyTeacherResources)
• Clive on Learning: Don’t blame PowerPoint
  Interesting blog post on powerpoint.
  (tags: Powerpoint LearningTheory)