Instructional Tech at Our School

Two nights ago, with a colleague,  I made a presentation to the parents of our ninth graders about our 1 to 1 computing program.

Once again I have found that I learn quite a bit by making a presentation on a subject.  Since our 1 to 1 computing program is six years old, we can now point to some very significant elements of technology that are now commonplace in our curriculum:

* Coursework and activities delivered online.

* Group Collaboration through shared documents and wikis.

* Multimedia presentations by students and teachers.

Without question, the one area which lags behind expectations would be ebooks.  While a couple of the courses have gone bookless altogether, our students still carry enormous book bags full of texts.  Primarily this is due to the  publishers dragging their heels. As ebooks become more commonplace we can move toward less expensive devices and enter a new phase of digital learning.

Here are some slides from my presentation:

Parent Night Slides

The Gonzo Election Project

As I mentioned in a recent post, I have been collaborating with my fellow American Government teacher on an election project. We just launched this endeavor with our sophomores. It is both ambitious and unscripted. Indeed, we are placing a great deal of faith in our students' imaginations. If this faith is warranted the project could be really exciting.

Here's the plan: Each of our four classes (total) will divide up into project teams.

1) An Election News Feed team which will provide up-to-date election news.

2) A Michigan Election Information Team which will research the candidates and issues.

3) A Fantasy Presidential Campaign Team which will launch an imaginary candidate's quest for the White House.

4) A Mock Election Team which will devise a school mock election from scratch.

Now, here's the wildest feature: The project teams will be linked to their counterparts in the other three classes and must collaborate online to construct one central project.

Believe it or not, Cindy and I have pretty clear ideas as to how the individuals can be assessed in terms of their contributions. But we have no idea as to how the four sets teams will operate on their wiki sites. More later!

Election Project Overview

In-Service: Six Months Later

Six months ago I conducted our staff in-service on Personal Learning Networks. It was a great experience, and I felt supported and affirmed.

So, what was the impact? Such days are notorious for fading quickly into the past. And its not like the staff was hungering for the information.

I can appreciatively reflect that the in-service has been sustained and supported by the school administration. They have called for all teachers to make building PLNs their "goal" for the school year, though I'm a bit unsure as to how this is being documented. But most importantly, the concept has remained part of the school's conversation at the top.

How this works "on the ground" is much more dubious. For example, when the "goals" for personal learning networks came up within my own department, not a single person could recollect what it personal learning network's were. I sat there stunned. It's probably a matter of jargon, but one can also surmise that I didn't exactly close the deal on social media with these folks.

Even more strange was the "shunning" I received from some staff members and in the days immediately after the in-service. This was particularly odd among some hallway neighbors. They simply did not talk to me about my day's presentation or even acknowledge it had happened. I'm pretty sure this had much more to do with their discomfort with the general topic of technology, rather than any particular insult I had delievered.

This is not to say that I have been discouraged by the lack of momentum created by my presentations. At the departmental level many new Nings that were created directly as the result of my presentation. Several teachers have also engaged their classes in Nings or wikis. Recently, many (including three administrators!) answered my call for M-Hub, which is based on the concept of PLNs. Furthermore, administration has asked me to continue promoting digital education in a formal way as part of my prep. I'm eager to do so.

I think it will take something big like M-Hub or to nudge the school culture. So I am hopeful that we can build upon the PLN foundation laid at the in-service. Only time will tell if it's been built on sand. Teachers are so incredibly conservative in their expectation and habits-- But that is a subject for a coming blog post.

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Flickr Creative Commons Photo by Luc_Legay

Give Swirrl a Whirl

If you have visited this blog lately, you know that my latest social media passion is something that I have named M-Hub. This stems from recent experiences with personal learning networks and Challenge Based Learning.

I aspire to create an online vehicle that would help students learn how to network. It would be a database of adult "experts" within the school community (parents, teachers, alumnae) which students could access for research on projects, careers, college, etc. M-Hub could help give them more autonomy over their own learning and lead them to authentic outcomes. And as Bill Roberts recently suggested to me, if set up properly, M-Hub "may be useful to put together 'topic pages' so that students can see the advice provided to others with similar questions."

Some very dynamic students, staff, and alumnae have responded with enthusiasm to the project, and we have moved forward at a faster pace than I ever imagined we might. One of our first quests has been to find a "platform" for the knowledge hub.

I quickly found out that "cloud" databases are few and far between. The wikis with which I was familiar were not helpful. There are plenty of cloud apps for word processing, spread sheets, and even slides, but databases are rare and most that might fit M-Hub's needs are prohibitively expensive.

But then I found Swirrl. It has many of the features that we are looking for:

*Ease of use
*Unlimited Users
*Search and Tags
*permission control
*revision history.

Swirrl is wiki designed as a database. Essentially each "page" of the wiki can store information, uploads, tags. And it's all highly searchable. What's more, the free version is rather generous-- 1000 pages and 100 mb of upload storage. I'm confident that teachers might find this useful for classroom or personal use.

I'm not sure that M-Hub will be using Swirrl, as our needs go beyond the "free" model, but I wanted to share this resource with my readers and also thank the Roberts brothers for helping me become acquainted with Swirrl and troubleshoot some of M-Hub's technical challenge.

Check it out and give Swirrl a Whirl!

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Screen Shot of Swirrl home page

Rewiring the Learning Networks at Schools

In my last post - Rethinking the Confines of Teaching and Learning - I argued for broadening our perspectives about how students should access specific information. I described my friend, Tom Schusterbauer, who recently retired. He still communicates with former students through Facebook and a book club, but despite his exceptional knowledge and teaching skill, he's now more or less off the learning grid of my students. If Tom and other retirees still love kids and are passionate about the stuff they know, why can't they be accessible to learners through the many powerful technologies that we have?

Even more perplexing is this consideration: Why aren't students urged to use these same technologies to connect with persons in their own school building? I have peers who are stone cold experts in a wide variety of topics. I don't teach Brit Lit or Shakespeare anymore, but I know more than a little bit about Charles Dickens and Elizabethan theatre. I haven't forgotten all that stuff just because my semester teaching assignments have changed. Several of our students are studying Dickens and Shakespeare this semester. Each one has a laptop, so her ability to communicate with me is literally at her fingertips. How many have contacted me? None. Why? Because to do so would be unconventional.

Convention dictates that a teacher is only an "expert" while teaching an assigned course to a particular set of students in a particular room at a particular time. What a dreadful way to prepare our students for life beyond school! Their careers are likely to require them to network, using mobile communication on a global scale. And I'm guessing that their employers will expect them to access information from folks who know things. Immediately. This is undeniable, isn't it?

Thus, it makes sense to me that we help our students learn to build learning networks. And rather than simply point them toward the Internet, why don't we teach them to pose good questions to real people in real time? Furthermore, we ought to guide them to begin networking within a familiar social community. I call this, working inside-out.

Case in point: When my sophomores conducted research for their challenge projects, I urged them to think outside of the box. Consequently, they ended up interviewing lawyers, judges, doctors, and military officers in order to learn about "equality under the law." One particular group chose a very tough topic to research-- equal rights for teens. They had developed some intelligent lines of inquiry, when they "googled" for answers they ended up with very squishy information. They did much better when they thought about what "experts" might be in their circle of acquaintances. When they interviewed a local insurance agent and one of our guidance counselors, they got right down to the brass tacks. I've included a video clip of the guidance counslor interview, which they ended up posting (with her permission of course) to their wiki.

Guess what. With this kind of "research" I don't run into "copy & paste" or plagiarism. Instead, it produces critical thinking and collaboration.

I'm leading up to a proposal for school "knowledge hubs", but jumping to that, I have more to say about networking inside-out. . . . In Friday's post.

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Thanks to Ms. Trisch Brown for giving me permission to use this clip.

Ruminations on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

When I saw the shirt last Saturday at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, I had to have it. And I had to wear it to school at the first opportunity. As reported in I Love My Digital Music:

On the first day of school this year . . . Each of us had to divulge a "secret" about ourselves. I told about my music collection and remarked that... I like my music LOUD. I've now taken this a step further. A good chunk of my music collection accompanies to school in my Macbook Pro. I arrive pretty early this year, and I play my music...loud.

Since posting this, I have gotten into the habit of playing my music pretty loud at every class passing, choosing a song that fits my mood or a theme for the day (e.g., "Taxman" on April 15).

So what does this have to do with educational technology?

Well, this is clearly a case where digital music offers a means of self-expression, while signaling to the kids that my classroom is different and our approach to learning may happen to a different beat.

Secondly, during my three day road trip with my son that ended in Cleveland was a total blast. And part of the fun was posting pictures on Facebook and Flickr, along with a daily reports to friends and family. It was a kick to get so much feedback during the trip and to be welcomed back, today, with remarks from co-workers commenting on my adventure. I love this kind of social media activity.

Finally, the Museum itself, is a wonderfully rich multi-media experience. Tomorrow, I will be talking to my sophs about using media tools to build their wikis and the museum trip has served as great inspiration. The exhibits at the Hall of Fame are so accessible. I saw little kids and old folks in wheel chairs enjoying the music, the films, the sculptures, etc. I watched a terrific 17 minute film that paid tribute to the blues, jazz, and country musicians of rural American who grew the roots of rock n' roll. Other exhibits offered opportunities to learn much more, but I enjoyed thinking of how many thousands of folks would get this lesson in such a vivid way at the museum. Of course the music business lends itself to multi-media exhibition. But think for a moment about how the industry has adapted with technology changes from vinyls, to tape, to CD, to music video, to mp3, etc.

I'm sure that many musicians-- like some teachers-- bemoaned each change as the day the music died. But the beat goes on, doesn't it? And imagine me trying to play a 78 rpm record (loudly!) on my Victrola between every class!

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Photos by Erin K. (3/1/10).

A Great Journalism Wiki

One of the key members of my PLN, Lynn Waldsmith, has been doing all kinds of cool social media things in her English and Journalism classes. You may recall that in December, she wrote a guest post (Teaching without a Safety Net) which described a Web 2.0 Canterbury Tales activity. She also described her Journalism class blog -- Waldsmith's Dispatch -- which is one of the best uses of a stuent blog that I have ever seen.

Once again, I think she has hit one out of the park. Waldsmith's Dispatch-- Student Online Edition is a simple use of social media technology that accomplishes an important function: it provides a wider audience for these aspiring writers. Lynn's students are sophomores, the majority of whom will seek to write and edit for the student newspaper as juniors and seniors. The Student Online Edition gives them an audience beyond the teacher. In my experience, this has consistently produced higher standards of communication.

Incidentally, I think the wiki also provides a neat slice of life of our school, issues on the minds of teens, and even contemporary American life. Take a look!

Congratulations, Lynn, and thanks for sharing!

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Screen capture of Waldsmith's Dispatch-- Student Online Edition (included is a magazine cover photo by student, Megan B.).

Best of 2009: An Assembly, A Career Day, A Suggestion

I am re-posting my greatest hits of 2009. This November post definitely drew the most feedback-- both in my building and on Twitter.

In September, we had the grand opening of our new science wing. There was reason to celebrate: the building project was completed on time, the upgrades were impressive as well as necessary, and even if most of the funds were raised before the Recession hit, it was nice to be spending instead of cutting on a project.

The ceremonies were quite conventional, right down to the giant scissors doing the ribbon cutting. Honored guests were invited and an alumna fromm the Detroit Medical Center was invited to make a keynote address at a school assembly. I confess that I expected boilerplate, but it was actually an outstanding challenge to the young women of our all girls school to find careers in science. Accompanied by some good slides and short videos, the speaker made science sound exciting, challenging and vital. As I was leaving the auditorium, I thought of everyone returning to the school day, and then their respective weekend activities, and wondered how long the great message we had heard would last. Now that it's November, of course the message has dissipated.

Now for a technoligy theme to which I continually return. Why, after our students have experienced a great face-to-face session like this one, aren't we plugging them into online resource centers which can connect them with information and professionals who could continue to feed the flames of their curiosity? Every two years we have a career "day". I think it's a fine concept. Alumnae come to the school, the students sign up for particular careers, and they attend three presentations. Usually included is an assembly (not unlike the one described above) featuring a career woman who urges our young women to set their sights high.

Wouldn't it be great if the academic departments, the counselors, the administrators, the parents clubs, and alumnae participated in a career wiki or Ning? With a decent effort on everyone's part we could have a fabulous resource in no time. I certainly would not want to replace Career Day, but such an endeavor would go far to bridge the 729 days between each one.
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"Career Fair" Flickr Creative Commons Photo by heraldpost

An Assembly, a Career Day, a Suggestion

In September, we had the grand opening of our new science wing. There was reason to celebrate: the building project was completed on time, the upgrades were impressive as well as necessary, and even if most of the funds were raised before the Recession hit, it was nice to be spending instead of cutting on a project.

The ceremonies were quite conventional, right down to the giant scissors doing the ribbon cutting. Honored guests were invited and an alumna fromm the Detroit Medical Center was invited to make a keynote address at a school assembly. I confess that I expected boilerplate, but it was actually an outstanding challenge to the young women of our all girls school to find careers in science. Accompanied by some good slides and short videos, the speaker made science sound exciting, challenging and vital. As I was leaving the auditorium, I thought of everyone returning to the school day, and then their respective weekend activities, and wondered how long the great message we had heard would last. Now that it's November, of course the message has dissipated.

Now for a technoligy theme to which I continually return. Why, after our students have experienced a great face-to-face session like this one, aren't we plugging them into online resource centers which can connect them with information and professionals who could continue to feed the flames of their curiosity? Every two years we have a career "day". I think it's a fine concept. Alumnae come to the school, the students sign up for particular careers, and they attend three presentations. Usually included is an assembly (not unlike the one described above) featuring a career woman who urges our young women to set their sights high.

It is obvious to me that we now have convenient tools for sustaining career education and networking our students with career women.

Wouldn't it be great if the academic departments, the counselors, the administrators, the parents clubs, and alumnae participated in a career wiki or Ning? With a decent effort on everyone's part we could have a fabulous resource in no time. I certainly would not want to replace Career Day, but such an endeavor would go far to bridge the 729 days between each one.

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"Career Fair" Flickr Creative Commons Photo by heraldpost

Baker Manifesto (part 2) -- Connectivism

As I indicated in part one, my interest in and authorship of Web 2.0 educational activities has led me to George Siemens' evolving model of "Connectivism".
Here's a sampling so that you get the gist:

*The strong reflexive and iterative aspects of learning contribute to its frequent misclassification as largely a content consumption process.

*Learning is not the content consumption process the formal education system perceives it to be.

*Instruction is currently largely housed in courses and other artificial constructs . . . Moving towards a networked model requires that we place less emphasis on our tasks of presenting information, and more emphasis on building the learner’s ability to navigate the information.

*Blogs, wikis, and other open, collaborative platforms are reshaping learning as a two-way process. Instead of presenting content/information/knowledge in a linear sequential manner, learners can be provided with a rich array of tools and information sources to use in creating their own learning pathways.

When I asked George to review the Staff Development Plan I submitted to our Technology Integration Committee (and administration), he responded with an incisive review that he said I might share. In my next post I will place this review in the context of what I consider to be a great divide between those who see learning as presenting information and those who perceive education as navigating the information flow. Stay tuned.

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"Connexions Digital Networks" Flickr Creative Commons Photo by cstmweb

The Old Guy Goes Multimedia

For want of the correct adaptor, I was prevented from showing my Keynote presentation on "Apple Solutions for the 21st Century" at Madonna U. last week. Instead, I improvised, going directly to the Web for a "show & tell" of some online concoctions I've whipped up for my high school courses. I took a more or less chronological approach. It made me realize how I had evolved over the past 18 months. My progression is outlined here:

It all started with podcasts by phone. I made mp3 lectures with Gabcast for my Government class, and I began to require my students to report by podcast as well.

About 14 months ago, I began to integrate hyperlinks into my film study guides, illustrating concepts with photos and YouTube examples.

Exactly a year ago, I began using the Flip Mino I received for my birthday. I turned the camera on myself and started to record video directions for absent students. More significantly, I loaned the camera out to my AP Government students, so that they could vlog opinion pieces. Then their classmates blogged about these vlogs. The blogging feature of iWeb was perfect for this little enterprise.

In November, '08, I began to edit video movies with iMovie. I was very intimidated by this great software, but once again Atomic Learning helped me out.

In February, 2009, I taught my sophomores how to use wikis so that they could host their own multimedia resources. Many groups conducted interesting interviews and created short video pieces. Using iWeb I began creating exhibition pages for my students' multimedia work. I then shared the link with the editor of the school bulletin, The Mercy Memo.

I began podcasting with GarageBand. What an upgrade over Gabcast! ( Thanks for the tip, Andy Mann). And thank you, Rick Strobl for suggesting at Schuste's retirement party that I animate jpegs with PhotoToMovie. This was the best $50 I ever spent on software. Combining GarageBand mp3s with jpegs and turning them into movies has been a fun summer pastime.

Discovering that I could search for Library of Congress public domain photos on Flickr, further enhanced my ability to animate jpegs for instructional purposes.

I finally learned how to use Keynote. I had no idea that what I took to be slide show software could present so many multimedia options. This is my July and August preoccupation-- making moves using GarageBand (for soundtrack) and Keynote.

While I can't prove that my students are learning more after being fed with this stew of media, I know that I have, and I believe that I am modeling communication skills that they will need in their careers.

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"Multimedia Message" (The cover of the May/June Communication Arts Magazine). Flickr Creative Commons photo by mwilke.

Negativity, Rigor and Revolution

This and that. . . .

*I've written in this space before about the passive-aggressive ways that negative educators derail change, so what Sean Nash had to say on the subject, really resonated:

negativity used as a strategy to push back from the table (whether conscious or unconscious) in order to avoid change or conflict is a very toxic thing. Life is too short and too difficult as it is. Stirring up extra negativity in such a challenging career field is more than a waste of time.

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*Based on conversations Tony Wagner had with "several hundred business, nonprofit, philanthropic, and education leaders," he new criteria for defining rigor in our schools:

1. Critical Thinking and Problem Solving

2. Collaboration and Leadership

3. Agility and Adaptability

4. Initiative and Entrepreneurialism

5. Effective Oral and Written Communication

6. Accessing and Analyzing Information

7. Curiosity and Imagination

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* Fred Wilson argues for "hacking education", calling for a "revolution of the ants." Powerful interests are dedicated to maintain the status quo, but Wilson convincingly argues that the old is successfully being subverted by the new:

The existing large institutions in the world of education are the public and private schools, the colleges and universities, the testing institutions that inform them, and the unions and political system that support them. I want to help take all of them down and build something better in its place. . . .

The tools to do this are right in front of us; peer production, collaboration, social networking, web video, voip, open source, even game play. I think we can look at what has happened to the big media institutions over the past ten years as a guide to how to do this. We will use a "revolution of the ants" to take down our education institutions and replace them with something better. We all have to start participating and engaging in educating each other. . . .

As always, comments are welcome!

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"Negative energy" Flickr Creative Commons Photo by darkwood67

Personal Learning Networks (ADE Institute Reflection)

The Apple Distinguished Educator Summer Institute was a profound professional development experience for me. Over the next few weeks I will share reflections on the experience.

Probably the most valuable take-away is how being an ADE impacts my own "Personal Learning Network." I am now connected to the fabulous resources of Apple Computer. and hard wired into a community of passionate and innovative digital educators.

As Karl Fisch points out, you are already in a PLN:

A PLN isn’t a particularly new idea; learning networks have existed for a long time. What’s new is the reach and extent that’s now possible for a PLN, with technology and global interconnectedness providing the opportunity for a much wider, richer and more diverse PLN than ever before.

I 've been drawing my professional strength from a more global PLN for a year or so. One of my first blog posts marveled at the way Web 2.0 was drawing information from outside my school. It is now much more clear to me that we must help our students use their social media skills to construct their own learning networks. This will help us break down the rigid restraints of desks, schedules, bricks, and teacher-at-student design.

One cannot help to guide students in this enterprise unless he or she has experienced the benefits of a broad and vibrant PLN. If this is new to you, here are basic suggestions for extending yours:

* Join professional social networks like Nings ( "free" online platforms for creating social networks). Start with large ones like Classroom 2.0 and EduBlogger World. Then be on the lookout for more specialized groups. I joined three Nings while at the Summer Institute. Similarly, wikis and listservs provide similar advantages.

* Set up an RSS feed of your favorite blogs. Ever since Will Richardson recommended Google Reader to our staff, I've used it. I try to keep a cap of ten ed tech blogs so that I don't become overwhelmed. Liz Davis provides a simple two minute YouTube tutorial on setting up the Google Reader. After this has become a comfortable part of your life, then begin to engage in the conversations on the blogs.

* Start blogging yourself, or set up a Ning around your own special interests and invite others to join!

* David Warlick suggests virtual worlds: Sometimes called MUVEs, [they] are places on the Internet where people can meet and work together, regardless of geography. Many educators consider their Second Life avatar as their primary node point for their PLN.

* Social Bookmarking offers fabulous opportunities for collaboration. I've enthused about the highlighting, note sharing possibilites of Diigo in earlier blog posts.

* None of my faithful readers will be surprised that I've saved the best for last. As I wrote in Why Twitter? , once you learn to filter who you "follow", Twitter can be a rich source of links, blogs, and easily digestible nuggets of professional reflection. It is extremely low maintenance, requiring less personal investment than Facebook. Twitter has been a key to my own professional growth by leaps and bounds.

Please suggest other ways for educators to build their PLNs!

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Screen Capture of ADE PLN Ning

Larry's Queries

Just in case, I seem to have grown to cocky while away from my students, I want to lay out some issues that are simmering away over the summer, unresolved. I’m hoping that my readership may have some ideas about my assorted challenges. Feel free to comment publicly or correspond privately.

Trickle Down Wikinomics

I teach an elective Advanced Placement U.S. Government to seniors and a required America Government class to sophomores. The former is a college political science class and the latter is more comparable to basic civics.

I usually require some kind of project from the AP class during the first semester. This time, I was thinking of assigning some wiki projects around different portions of the Constitution. I would like to give the seniors the aim of building a helpful resource for the sophomores. I’m comfortable assigning the wiki project. I’ve done that before with other classes. But I am not sure how to utilize this kind of resource with the younger students. Any ideas?

Blog Squad

I am very excited about the impending launch of the Blog Squad. The general aim would be to provide a way for students to help students when teachers launched tech projects. This will be a pilot involving a small circle The participating adults (six or seven) have helped me identify thirty prospective student participants. I have decided to try a Ning for facilitating this project. I am relatively inexperienced with Nings. Any suggestions?

Group Work

As I move forward into challenge based learning I still remain puzzled about achieving accountability with the groups. I can reflect on a number of great things that came out of the wiki projects I tried last year, but complaints about group members not following through dogged these enterprises. Any input will be welcomed.

Year in Review from the Trenches -- Making Headway

Part 1 of 3

I am pleased to reflect upon on a number of techy milestones this school year:

*I have integrated several new applications, sites, and tools into my personal and professional life. (Some listed at my new Presentations Site).

*Being named an Apple Distinguished Educator was the thrill of my career.

*I have been professionally enriched like never before from my Twitter and ADE networks (See Why Twitter).

*Facebook and this blog have generated , stimulating tech conversation with personal friends like @bridgers, Rick, aml, Katy. And Facebook has allowed me to begin lining up classroom visits from accomplished alumnae like Nadia and Monica.

*I launched three very stimulating collaborative projects: The Civil Rights/Liberties Wiki, the Congressional Simulation, and my favorite -- Blogs on Vlogs.

*I enjoyed delivering a number of in-service presentations (fully listed on my new presentations resumé). There is no better way to learn than through teaching others.

*In Resolved.... I announced the New Year's resolution to avoid checking a single "paper" at home for the entire school year. Resolution kept.

*Also Resolved.... was my determination to keep blogging. Forty-six posts since the resolution, I am still going strong.

*Rick Strobl and I have begun collaborating on Web Warriors, and the results have been gratifying.

But not all has been triumph in the trenches. Come back Wednesday for "Shell Shock".

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"Success" Flickr Creative Commons photo by aloshbennett

Ten by Ten Top Techs

As the end of the school year approaches I've been tempted to make lists of this or that, so why not go all out and make a 10 x 10 list?

My Ten Best Blogs this Semester:

Wrap that Red Herring in Paper

At Long Last...ebook Joy!

A Vast Tinker Toy Playland

Hyperlink Heaven

Techno Topsy-Turvy

Sage Schuste Seduced by Cyberspace?

Tooting Your Horn

To Leap Forward or Hunker Down?

The Digital Natives Aren't that Restless

Teaching Literature Unbound

10 Lessons I've Learned at Age 55

Tweetdeck Top Ten: @bridgers, @cultofmac, @englishcomp, @jackiegerstein, @markwagner, @Milw_Mac_Guy, @ScottElias, @mcleoud, @potsie, @TweetingTigers

10 Necessities of Education Reform by Judy Willis

The 10 Commandments of Power Point. How can people possibly think that reading PowerPoint slides to an audience is an effective way to communicate? This post by David Pierce is a must read for those who use (abuse?) PowerPoint or teach it to others.

My 10 RSS Feeds Knowing that I would just get depressed if I loaded more and more feeds into my Google Reader, I always limit myself to ten. Click here for my current feeds.

My 10 Largest Delicious Tag Bundles: finish, blog, tenthings, google, dadcalx, AP, mhs, 13, technology

10 Reasons to Tweet: The nine I wrote about in Why Twitter? plus this obvious one that I forgot: # 10 Twitter is perfectly suited for mobile communications.

10 Sites I Check Daily

10 apps or sites that I've enjoyed learning to use this year: GarageBand, iMovie, QuickTime Pro, Google Docs, Audacity, WikiSpaces, Google Sites, Twitter, Presentation.

10 Compelling Reasons to Teach with Technology

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"The 'Ten Truck' FDNY' Flickr Creative Commons Photo by stevejonesphoto

Real Projects with Real Challenges (and Kicks)

Nothing could be hotter in Web 2.0 instruction than "Project Based Learning". While neither one would satisfy purists, I have redesigned two American Government projects this semester loosely based on this approach. Relative to what I have offered in the past, they are much more student directed, collaborative, and packed with technology. And they were cool enough to submit with my successful ADE application.

I described the Civil Rights / Liberty Project in "Larry's Adventures in Wikiland, part one" and then evaluated it in part two. I am currently wrapping up my Simulation Project. At this juncture, I have some general conclusions to share:

* I am not remotely interested in hearing a guest speaker or curriculum coordinator taut project based learning unless they have designed at least one and come down into the trenches to guide a group of learners through the experience. If not, these "visionaries" have far more to learn than teach.

* Projects (if they are going to be worthwhile) are very labor intensive upfront. Naysayers will love hearing this as it serves as grounds for them not to go near the stuff.

* Both of my projects would have benefited from collaboration in the planning and execution stages. Project learning cheerleaders will love hearing this because they extol collaboration. (Which is fine if someone else in your department is remotely interested in project based learning).

* It is impossible to debug the project in the design stage. You simply have to go through the pain of a steep learning curve with your first group of co-learners.

* Anyone with an ounce of credibility will acknowledge the pluses and minuses of these projects.

The Negatives

* As I reported in The Digital Natives Aren't Restless, conducting projects with Web 2.0 technology doesn't assure participation. During the wiki project, groups complained about deadbeat members and during the simulation there were students who simply did not post content to web sites.

* The set-up and orientation for online work was far more daunting than I imagined. Keep this in mind when you launch tech projects. All kinds of little bugs appear forcing the teacher to be resourceful with work-arounds.

* Because I enjoy designing systems, I have a tendency to over-complicate in the planning stage. I am learning to simplify and allow the students to complicate with their own ideas.

*Due to my own curiosity and naivete I used WikiSpaces for one project and Google Sites for the other. Thus I went through the set-up headache twice. Next time I will probably use one application for both enterprises.

Joys

* You really do get to see another side of your students. I get so tired of English teachers who talk about the "good" kids (The avid readers who arrived to their classes with strong writing skills). With tech projects previously unseen talents for communicating emerge.

*It is quite possible to develop tech aptitude without "teaching" it per se. Once the applications are in place, the kids do a nice job helping each other with bugs and inventive solutions.

*Perhaps because it is new to me, evaluating the projects seemed less like work. The projects contain terrific variety and many are creative in terms of layout and design. The time did not drag as it does when I check "papers." Tonight I carefully checked thirty web sites. I've also come away with a vivid impression of each student's work.

*It's great to be able to switch into a one-on-one mode with students, guiding them and making suggestions. The process lends itself to email. The students who are engaged can take their ideas as far as they wish. I've shared a few tech tips along the way. I have a greater sense of guiding through a shared mission, like a coach.

I remain very enthused about the projects and have every intention of developing them and expanding their use into other courses. But I also wish to firmly communicate that this is heavy lifting. Teachers need more than encouragement and tools to engage in project design. They need time, modeling, training, and support. We don't need cheerleaders.

Three Sweet Shortcuts

Need a Quick Rubric? Talented ed tech consultant Andy Mann showed me Rubistar, which is quite useful for whipping up a quick evaluation rubric for student work. It is preloaded with dozens of templates and categories. It is also fully customizable. In an hour I created three very different and detailed rubrics for my wiki project. While using Rubistar is not exactly intuitive, I have found my way around without the tutorials. (Here is an example: Peer wiki eval). Get your rubric right the first time if you can. Later edits are somewhat convoluted and very slow.

Labels for Gmail Like so many other things in life, I am slow to move toward a trend, but when I jump in I go head over heels. Such has been the case with Gmail. Despite the fact that my daughter and wife have been swearing by it for months, I only recently made it my main account. But when I commited to it, I decided to go through the entire Atomic Learning tutorial so that I would become aware of all of its nuances. I then discovered that many users don't realize how easy it is to "tag" one's mail with a label. I find that these labels are particularly useful for short term purposes. For example, when I was developing my staff development proposal I contacted several academics about their research. Five of them replied at various times and we began different levels of correspondence. By tagging each response with a label, I could bring up all the mail with a click whenever I worked on my proposal. This was much more efficient than the typical folder system.

Cross Platform To Do List. This tip is the most idiosyncratic, but it has been a major change in how I go about my daily business. For years, I faithfully carried a Franklin Planner through the work day. I'm a compulsive list maker and my planner kept me quite happy making daily list after daily list. But now Google Docs serves that purpose. I have created a Google Doc titled "To Do". This document is published to a url and I have tagged it with my most commonly used Delicious bookmarks. The bookmark then appears on my Firefox toolbar at home and at work, on my Macs and my HP. It updates through the day. It makes me oddly happy.

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"Shortcut" Flickr Creative Commons photo by Wagman 30

To Leap Forward or Hunker Down?

I believe that political, business, and educational leaders should be advocating bold, broad strokes of policy change during this time of great economic stress. The alternative may be death by a thousand cuts to vital institutions. For tuition funded schools like mine this moment could be an opportunity for developing a revolutionary educational model that will prepare our graduates and the school itself to engage with the brave new world that emerges from this global economic convulsion.

This is no time for educators to cling to the American industrial model of education with its grades, final exams, "departments", lectures, "contact time", term papers, etc. The idea of learning revolving around "subjects" has already become as anachronistic as requiring 21st Century students to do all their research in a library, or the assumption that all important student learning takes place in a school building on a school's schedule. Our nation's future economic prosperity will require citizens who can think critically, problem solve, effectively collaborate, adopt the language of new ideas, and employ new technologies that mutate at ever more rapid speeds. the old model will not provide this need.

I have been examining the "leapfrog paradigm" that the The University of Minnesota has embraced to achieve a "Minnesota Miracle' which would radically transform its undergraduate school into one of the best in the world. The project currently exists in the form as a wiki where all stakeholders can contribute to change. I was startled by the general resemblance between Minnesota's call for action and the school culture projects I recommended in my Staff Development proposal. Of course the Minnesota plan was exceedingly more sophisticated and detailed than my fumblings, but still, when I read the the challenges articulated by Arthur Harkins and John Moravec, I mentally substituted my school (MHS) for U. of Minnesota:

• Can MHS shift from industrial/information-age models of human capital preparation to knowledge/innovation models?
  
  
• Can MHS seriously focus on recognizing and developing the uniqueness and variety of [students] through technology-supported, individualized learning services?
  
  
• Can the MHS focus more on student innovations as opposed to context-free testing and rigidly constrained paper topics?
  
  
• Can MHS become more experiential and experimental as it moves toward knowledge based, innovation-supportive learning services?
  
  
• Can MHS provide new subscription networking for its alumni, productively linking them to one another and to . . . students?

Sadly, like many organizations in this brutal recession, my school may be inclined to focus more closely on across the board budget cuts than developing its vision for the future. Our laptop initiative seems to have slipped into an autopilot mode, and I fear that we are losing our advantage to become leaders in educational innovation. During times like these, when it is tempting to hunker down, the leapfrog paradigm has provides me with some real inspiration about what new advancements could be achieved in my own school. What's required in this case is not a cash stimulus, but a major investment of conceptual capital. Let's not be so focused on funding the old that we miss an opportunity to leapfrog.


P.S. March 31 is the Special Olympics' "national day of awareness," a call to Americans to recognize and rethink their use of the word "retard," or as the organization would prefer, the "R-word." Consider clicking your moral support at their Change the Conversation site.
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"Escape from Fairy Tale Land" with kind permission of two very talented young photographers, nikki.jane & amina.be.free

Tooting Your Horn

WHY NOT?
In early February I shared MHS staff development recommendations with the Technology Integration Committee and school administration. Some of the proposals called for organic change to the school culture. I think I made a strong case, but experience tells me that this kind of institutional change of course is rare in an organization of any size.

Nevertheless, I can't for the life of me see why one of my recommendations hasn't been seized upon. I suggested that we take on the school-wide project of creating "a virtual exhibition space for student performance / exhibitions". Why not? Our students respond with exceptional motivation to performance. Parents and alumni would be pleased. And if we were even somewhat selective about quality, how could this not be an effective marketing device? I really can't see a downside. But rather than railing against the the lack of impact this recommendation has had on the school, I have decided to whip up exhibitions from each of the courses I teach this semester.

Wiki Hall of Fame
I recently sent a press-release of sorts to our communications coordinator with the object of getting my American Government classes' civil rights/liberties wiki projects published in the parent newsletter. After creating the wikis, students then taught this portion of the curriculum to their classmates. I created a web page attached to my course site for a Wiki Hall of Fame featuring three wikis. Of course the kids were thrilled to be photographed and selected. And less the others feel left out, all the other wikis were linked to the Hall of Fame page as well. So please check out the wikis and give us your feedback!

Shameless Self-Promotion?
Old school sorts may react to the school newsletter "press release" and web site as an exercise in Larry Baker self-promotion. Fine. I plead, "Guilty with premeditation." First, I am consciously trying to define myself as a "go to" educator whose practical classroom experience, creative curriculum development, and enthusiasm for Web 2.0 technologies give him a special skill set. I am certainly not going to let others define me as "techie", "traitor to Luddite cause", "Shakespeare lover", Washed up Basketball Coach" or whatever. (Schools are keen on slotting people that way). And secondly, as I expressed in "Geometrically Progressing. . . ., I am determined to seek multiple consequences from any project that I adopt. In this case, I am executing one of my own proposals (no hypocrite, I!) and doing some branding of "Larry the Consultant" at the same time. TOOT!

On deck?
I have asked my AP students (and their parents) to lift password protection of their Vlogs/blogs, and I am collaborating with another teacher on exhibition of work from Lit into Film students. If all goes according to plan, you'll be able to sample this fare before the school year is done. Stay tuned for more tooting.
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"Toot Your Own Horn" with generous permission of 11:30am