Tons of practical ideas for K-12 teachers to get the most from innovative tools.
Saturday, December 30, 2006
Best of 2006: Resources for Teachers
For the past few years, I have been publishing a weekly list of links for educators and this fall, I began using Google Groups to manage this listserv. Because I spend a fair amount of time each week perusing various web sites and resources for teachers, I thought I'd share a few of my favorites this week. There's quite a variety here!
1) U.S Geological Survey
This site contains a mindboggling amount of scientific data and there's a section especially geared towards educators. My favorite part contains RSS feeds and downloadable Google Earth files of recent earthquake activity around the globe.
2) Room 132 Video Blog
Last school year, Room 132 teacher Bre Pettis made some pretty amusing and informative videos on events in his classroom. Bre has moved on to bigger things now, educating adults at Make magazine. These videos convey a sense of fun and enthusiasm for learning and help me remember why I am teacher.
3) 100,000 Wikis in the Classroom
My favorite word as a teacher is FREE, and Wikispaces is generously donating 100,000 free wikis to educators. I plunged into the world of wikis this year with a sixth grade collaborative computer science research project, and I was pleased as punch with the results. I'm excited to learn more about wikis through other ITM bloggers and from Adam Frey of Wikispaces, who will be presenting at the Illinois Technology Conference for Educators in March. I serve on the conference committee for this annual event, and Adam has offered to create a wiki for the conference!
4) Google For Educators: Global Warming Student Speakout
Google For Educator's inaugural project (co-sponsored by Global SchoolNet) was another hit with my students. They mastered spreadsheets, both in Excel and in Google Spreadsheets and Docs, found relevant videos on Google Video, worked collaboratively in teams, and learned a bit about global warming in the process. I'm looking forward to other projects that Google may cook up for us in the future!
5) Apple Learning Interchange 2006 - Rethink. Global Awareness.
I've been fortunate to be a part of the Apple Distinguished Educator program for the past year or so, and my participation in this education community has changed my professional life in so many ways. Many ADEs, along with representatives from EF Educational Tours, traveled last summer to Berlin and Prague to create a global awareness curriculum. My view of the world has broadened and deepened because of this project, and I now understand how vital it is for teachers to bring the world to their students via technology, if not through actual experience.
The resulting project is housed in the Apple Learning Interchange which was redesigned in the past year. Now, any teacher can upload lessons and digital objects to share, rate and comment on projects of others, and subscribe to RSS feeds showing new additions to the collections. Additionally, any media in the ALI can be downloaded to your iTunes library.
Please feel free to point out any favorite web sites or projects of your own choosing by posting information in the comments section of this post. Stay tuned for my next ITM entry in which I suggest some ed tech resolutions for 2007!
I should add that I took the above picture in Berlin at an exhibition of Buddy Bears. Visit this web site to learn more about this international project. In July, 2006, the bears were on display in Bebelplatz, a square near Humboldt University.
Friday, December 29, 2006
Today's Tech Savvy Students are the Best
According to Howe and Strause, authors of Millenials Rising, "Today’s kids are on track to become a powerhouse generation...”. Unfortunately many feel that the school environment forces them to “power down”. Several resources to help schools gain more insight into today's students and how to equip them with 21st century skills continued to emerge throughout 2006. My top picks include some new (along with old favorties) resources to help educators advocate for 21st century changes to meet the needs of 21st century students.
- As Time Magazine's 2006 article, “How to Build a Student for the 21st Century”, suggest -- today's schools “..need to bring what we teach and how we teach into the 21st century.” Just because we find today's students “IMing while listening to iTunes while socializing at 'virtual hangouts' like Myspace.com with the TV running in the background” does not mean they have the skills necessary to use their increased access to tech tools to “make the grade in a global economy.”
- Marc Prensky's challenge for us to Listen to the Natives (a.k.a. today's students) suggest that "Schools are stuck in the 20th century. Students have rushed into the 21st." Prensky ask "How can schools catch up and provide students with a relevant education?" For educators trying to understand the changes brought by the 21st century, MIT Open Courseware audio and video of Tom Friedman lecture provides valuable insights in just a little over an hour.
- Forward-thinking educators like the folks on the ITM have blogs full of insight that can help you understand both today's students and how to prepare them for the 21st century. Articles like Chris Walsh's “Fear the Fear of Cell Phones” , or Bryan Alexander's article on M-Learning, help us understand how the presence of “Mobility” is more imortant than the “Absence of Wires” in the way today's students learn.
- Visionary organizations such as I-Earn, Global Schoolhouse, and GenYes offer educational opportunities and model projects where today's students use their tech savviness to develop valuable 21st century skills. In today's high-stakes testing environment, these organizations serve to remind us that good 'reading' and 'math' scores are NOT enough for our students to thrive in a global economy. Check out NetDay Speakout, Doors to Diplomacy or the three models for student tech leadership for a fresh view to the power of student voices.
- But perhaps the best insights comes directly from the voices of today's students with self produced video and an evergrowing amount of self-published web content.
"Over the next decade, the Millennial Generation will entirely recast the image of youth from downbeat and alienated to upbeat and engaged--with potentially seismic consequences for America." ..Millenial Rising
2006's Top 5 Interesting Bits for School 2.0
In the spirit of re-capping 2006, I'm weighing in with quirky twists that I think portend the end of "school-as-we-know-it." Certainly the biggest story of 2006 is the emergence of Web 2.0 (audio discussion) and the flourishing that followed Tim O'Reilly's What Is Web 2.0.
But I like to get a feel for the littler moments within the grander sweep to sense which way the wind might be blowing for education. With that in mind here are my top five interesting bits for 2006.
1) Early in the year the Wikipedia vs. Britannica battles began. The skirmish was well-documented with a little fudging room on either side of the debate, but the key point for me was not the 162 versus 123 flaws in Wikipedia and Britannica, respectively, but that within a week, Wikipedia's errors had been corrected. How long before the next edition of EB?
2) Biting the hand that feeds them... When a UK security firm discovered a high frequency tone that drove away teen-aged loiterers, the teens turned the annoying sound into the Mosquitone, a ringtone that only youths can hear. When asked what schools should do about the scenario of kids phones going off in class and teachers not being able to hear it, one said, "hire more young teachers." Ouch, but true?
3) Corruption as a sign of maturity... Most commentators are anointing You Tube as the big story of 2006. I'd point to a sign of its maturity even within its short lifetime. As Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth gained traction world-wide, a PR firm working for energy producers got caught when they used YouTube for “Astro Turf”, the false presentation of what appears to be a "grassroots" up-rising. To me this is just one more padlock on the gates of the Factory School. Inquiry always trumps "information."
4) Mashup as Art... Another popular sensation this year has been the emergence of Mashups. The most well-known examples often include Google Maps and other databases (wikis, classified ads, etc.). One that is close to my sensibility is Jonathan Coulton’s “Flickr”, a song that seems to begin like any other alternative folk song and then morphs into a post-modern collage of images drawn from people's Flickr galleries. Here's the kicker for education: what grade would you give this song if a student turned it in?
5) The New WWW & addiction... Finally, I've been predicting / watching the development of new forms of addiction as we enter into an era of the New WWW (Whatever, Whenever, Wherever). An archetypal example this year wasn't when a hardcore World of Warcraft leader abdicated, but the 234 pages of heart-wrenching comments that followed the post. No wonder some call it “World of WarCrack”. Our task isn't to bemoan, but to model what it means to be happily human. Not always easy, is it?
That's it for me. I hope you all have a great holiday season and a terrific 2007.
Tom
Thursday, December 28, 2006
Best of 2006: The Read/Write Web in Education
For the sake of brevity, I've posted my predictions separately.
1. Educational Blogging at Edublogs.org (and learnerblogs.org): Though blogs and educational blogging have been around for several years, and though James Farmer's Edublogs.org was created in 2005, the impact of these tools grew a great deal in 2006. In February, I switched from using Blogger to using Edublogs when leading blogging workshops for teachers. In addition to being able to post text and pictures (and being able to receive comments), teachers could now post Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and PDF files, too. There were no random links to embarrassing or inappropriate blogs, and teachers could set up various levels of permissions for comments and for participants in team blogs. To boot, the tools were free and open source. Also, in June 2006, ITM blogger (and open source advocate) Steve Hargadon created supportblogging.com, which quickly became a valuable resource for teachers interested in these ideas. Read my predictions for 2007.
2. Educational Podcasting at podomatic.com: Podcasting began in 2004, and in 2005 my colleagues and I began leading workshops in which we helped teachers jump through many technical hoops in order to "easily" post a podcast. Podomatic was founded in 2005, but it wasn't until 2006 that we started using the service to help teachers and students. Now, teachers can create a new podcast episode by simply uploading an audio file that they've created using a free program such as Audacity. Or, for even greater simplicity, they can record directly into Podomatic over the web. The hosting of the audio files is free and the system takes care of most of the back end technical issues, creating a blog-like website complete with comments. Read my predictions for 2007.
3. Educational Wikis at Wikispaces.com: Though wikis have been around even longer than blogs, they are arguably behind blogs in educational adoption. But, in January 2006, Wikispaces.com started offering free (and add free) Wikis to teachers. Ten thousand wikis later, the company was so impressed by the work teachers and students were doing on their free wikis that they launched a campaign to give away 100,000 wikis to teachers. Today they are nearing the 20,000 mark. These wikis not only allow teachers to create collaboratively edited online resources, but also to post images and files as well. (I've written about educational use of wikis on the ITM before.) Read my predictions for 2007.
4. Google in Education: When we look back on 2006, this may very well be the biggest impact. This is the year Google began working in the k12 arena (an effort now headed up by Cristin Frodella). They launched the Google for Educators site, and played an critical role in the launch of this blog, the Infinite Thinking Machine. Google also released several new products that benefit educators who use the read/write web... particularly the easy to use RSS aggregator, Google Reader (for keeping up to date on news, blogs, and other "feeds") and the web-based word processor Google Docs (for creating, sharing, and collaboratively editing documents online). Though they existed prior to 2006, free desktop applications such as Picasa and Google Earth have been heavily used in education this year as well. (Of course, the newly updated Blogger is also still used by many educators.) Read my predictions for 2007.
5. The Deleting Online Predators Act of 2006 (DOPA): This may be the biggest change that didn't happen in 2006. Call it the biggest disaster averted (at least in the United States). Introduced in May 2006, the bill proposed to protect students from online predators by limiting their access to "social networking websites," which could have potentially limited student access to a wide range of websites, including everything I've mentioned above. In July, the house of representatives passed the bill by an amazing 410 to 15, and it seemed as if the Senate would quickly follow suit, thus placing an additional burden on many schools receiving federal funding - and placing a significant obstacle in the path of enterprising teachers using these tools with their students. Happily, organizations such as SaveYourSpace.org rose to the occasion and opposed the bill, which has languished in the Senate since before their August recess. Read my predictions for 2007.
Please feel free to discuss these read/write web trends (and predictions), and to leave ones of your own, in the comments. I look forward to reading your reactions.
PS: The image above was taken by Alan Levine and generously shared under the Creative Commons Attribution license on his Flickr account. Read his prediction about Creative Commons licensing in the comments for this post.
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Google Teacher Academy NY
50 educators from the NY Tri-State area will be selected to attend the Academy based on their passion for teaching, their experience as trainers, and their use of technology in K-12 settings. Applications for the New York event are due on January 21, 2007. NOTE: Each applicant is REQUIRED to produce and submit an original one-minute video.
Learn more about the program and the application process here. And please spread the word to anyone who may be interested in joining us!
BTW - My colleagues and I at WestEd jointly coordinate the Google Teacher Academy program with our friends at Google. Cristin Frodella at Google heads up their K-12 education efforts, and she's been fantastic to work with. It's her vision and hard work that make the Academy (and the ITM!) possible, and we're excited to take this professional development program to more regions in 2007!
ITM in the Top 100 Ed Blogs
The Online Education Database has listed us as one of
the Top 100 Education Blogs!
The list also includes a lot of our friends such David Warlick's Two Cents Worth, Will Richardson's Weblogg-Ed, and Steve Dembo's Teach 42, as well as our very own, Wes Fryer's Speed of Creativity, and Lucy Gray's A Teacher's Life.
For anyone eager to explore the Blogosphere, this is a great place to start!
Good thing you had nothing better to do over the Winter Break...
Monday, December 18, 2006
Cerf's Up: Design
Internet Pioneer Vinton Cerf shares his thoughts on the process of "designing" in the 21st century.
Downloads
> Quicktime MP4 (10 MB)
Windows Users:
right-click the link above and select "save link as..."
Mac Users:
"control" + click the link above and select "save link as..."
Show Notes:
As one of the original inventors of the Internet, Vint Cerf is widely recognized as a leading thinker on how 21st century technologies are transforming our daily lives. Learn more about Vint on Wikipedia.
For more resources on "design", see the entry for ITM 3: Living in 3D.
ITM Extra: SketchUp
Aidan Chopra from SketchUp gives us an in depth look at SketchUp and how it can be used in the classroom.
Downloads
> Quicktime MP4 (16 MB)
Windows Users:
right-click the link above and select "save link as..."
Mac Users:
"control" + click the link above and select "save link as..."
Show Notes:
Our interview with Aidan Chopra on SketchUp was so good, we thought we'd release the whole thing! Isn't Aidan great? He can work magic with SketchUp. Learn more about Google's FREE 3D modeling tool at sketchup.google.com.
Also see the full entry for ITM 3: Living in 3D.
Season's Greetings
Even though we are all probably in the midst of the holiday rush this week, I’d like to point out a few activities that might be fun for your students and families. Woodlands Junior School in England has posted an online advent calendar, which serves as a teaching tool for Christmas traditions around the world. Also, check out an activity at Google Earth called the Google Santa Tracker and Toy Hunt. Download the .kml file from the aforementioned site and during the 12 days preceding Christmas, you can launch Google Earth each day to receive a clue about Santa’s flight path. Of course, you can always also track Santa at the famed NORAD site. Find lots of cool things to download and watch some celebrity video clips. I don’t know who half of these people are; perhaps I am seriously out of touch. Anyway, the tracking fun at this site begins Christmas Eve, so make sure to bookmark this site and return to it often. Not everyone in the world celebrates Christmas, and to find out more about various celebrations, visit the Earth Calendar, a site where you can browse holidays by religion, country and date.
As for New Year’s resolutions, if you’re planning on making one, here’s an idea from last year that might be worth replicating. If you’re a blogger, make a resolution and tag it 2007resolutions. If you search Technorati with that tag (a keyword), you’ll be able to read all the resolutions of other bloggers using that tag AND track them in your RSS reader of choice. Maybe you’ll be inspired by the ideas of others! (If you have no idea what I am referring to in terms of RSS and newsreaders, check out this article by Wesley Fryer for more information !)
Along the same lines, one my favorite sites is 43 Things and you can see my list of things I want to accomplish. At 43 Things, people list goals and dreams, sometimes sharing goals with others. Online communities form around these goals and people can swap information. 43Things also has a tutorial on using the site for making resolutions, too. Again, tags make it possible to search for inspiration and you can subscribe to RSS feeds. While you are there, check out their sister site, 43Places.
While exploring these fun activities on a personal level, think about how they could be potentially used in your classrooms. I believe that once teachers find personal meaning while using technology, that transfer to the classroom naturally occurs. For instance, using the treasure hunt motif of the Google Earth Santa Tracker, teachers could design thematic hunts for students. If you’re inclined to design web pages, perhaps the Woodland Junior School advent calendar might serve as a model. And finally, 43Things and 43Places might be used for getting your students to focus on goal setting and dreaming big.
Finally, to ITM bloggers and readers, I wish you a happy and peaceful holiday season. I look forward to learning more from you all in the coming new year!
Thursday, December 14, 2006
The Infinite Wiki Machine
When is a wiki better than a blog?
Each blog is generally one author's voice. Others can leave comments, but the main posts are written by a single person (or sometimes a small team of people, which is the case with this blog). Comments usually don't even appear on the front page of a blog - you have to click a link to view them. Also, blogs are organized chronologically, and it can sometimes be difficult to find important information that appeared on the blog in the past.
When you want a website that allows truly collaborative contributions and is structured in a flexible way, a wiki is the tool you need.
Wikis (which were actually invented several years before blogs), are websites anyone can edit - and if you can use a word processor, you can use a wiki. They are ideal for collaboration, especially among large groups of people, and are generally easier to navigate than a blog. (Often wikis have a navigation section that resembles a more traditional website.) Because anyone can edit a wiki, they have a feature that allows users to view a history of revisions - and revert to an earlier version if necessary. (Permissions can be assigned so that only certain users can edit a wiki in certain ways; teachers might assign permission to ther students and not other visitors, for instance.)
The Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia that is collaboratively authored and edited by millions of users, may be the best example of a wiki. It can be both a great resource for students doing research and an authentic project that students can actually contribute too. Of course, because of the nature of it, it must be used with caution and it is a great place to begin conversations about information literacy with students.
Teachers and students are using wikis to create collaboratively authored online class text books, writing projects, and group projects. Wikis are perfect for sharing resources, whether within a student group or within a grade level or subject area teaching team. Like blogs, wikis have a place in effective professional development, particularly in professional learning communities.
Check out what Dan McDowell is doing with wikis in his social studies classes, or what David Conlay (pictured, with me above) is doing with wikis in his literature classes. My wife, Eva, uses a wiki to collect and share technology resources related to the state adopted Houghton-Mifflin reading series. I'm using wikis for almost all of my workshops now, and you can watch my video on the subject, Wiki While You Work, over at the k12onlineconference site. Visit the Educational Wikis site to explore many more wikis used for education. Know of any that aren't shared there? Feel free to add them!
Interested in starting a wiki? The folks over at Wikispaces are giving away 100k free wikis to educators!
Monday, December 11, 2006
ITM 4: Welcome to the Blogosphere
ITM #4 focuses on how teachers and students are using blogs in K-12 education. Ready to jump into the swirl? (8 min)
Downloads
> Quicktime MP4 (21 MB)
Windows Users:
right-click the link above and select "save link as..."
Mac Users:
"control" + click the link above and select "save link as..."
Show Notes:
The word "blog" is short for "web-logs," and Wikipedia defines a blog as "a website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order." So why are blog's so popular? First, they are VERY easy to create. Using FREE services like Blogger and Live Journal anyone can create a website in minutes. Second, they are collaborative. It's very easy for more than one person to be a "writer" for a single blog (just like the ITM), and your readers can quickly leave comments to tell you what they they about your ideas. Lastly, blogs are interconnected. The words, images, and links from one blog can be easily posted on any other blog, making it easy to spread ideas quickly.
To learn more about how Blog's are being used in education, check out these websites:
- Support Blogging - wiki on educational blogging
- Weblogg-ed - Will Richardson
- 2 Cents Worth - David Warlick
- Savvy Technologist - Tim Wilson
- Class Blogmeister - free student blogs
- Gaggle Blogs - free student blogs
"Ms. Cornelius" publishes a blog called the Shrewdness of Apes - which is a finalist for "Best Educational Blog" in this year's WebBlog Awards. (P.S. The ITM is nominated in a separate competition - the EduBlogs Awards. So you can vote for both of us without feeling guilty!) Be sure to check out her popular post that includes classroom setup advice for rookie teachers.
Teacher "Mike" writes the Education in Texas blog. His entry on the use (and abuse) of the word "dude" can be found here.
"Ms. Frizzle's" blog covers a wide range of topics and chronicles her life as teacher on a near daily basis. Be sure to check out her post asking: "What is education like in different countries?" Then follow her adventures on her new blog: Öğretmen - her insights on teaching in Turkey as a Fullbright Scholar.
Don Knezek is CEO of ISTE, the International Society for Technology in Education. ISTE is a non-profit organization that is a trusted source for professional development, knowledge generation, advocacy, and leadership for innovation. They also run the National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) - the largest ed tech conference in the world. This year's conference is in Atlanta in June 2007.
Here are some webcasts we did from last year's NECC Conference that you might find interesting.
ITM correspondent Wes Fryer (Speed of Creativity) reported from the rolling prairies of Oklahoma. Be sure to check out his Konza Prairie entry on Wikipedia.
Thanks to the students from Mr. Hernandez' class at Price Elementary School in Anaheim, CA, for helping us explain what the Infinite Thinking Machine is!
"Edublogging" and a Short History of the Edublog Awards
Josie Fraser, who now runs the Edublog Awards from the other side of the world (she took over from James after the first year), is getting very little sleep these days. She, too, holds a day job--one that has a serious commute--so running the awards is taking up any free time she used to have.
Josie talks about her background and the awards in a short (ten minute) interview here, discussing how the awards have been, and are, a way of showcasing the benefits of blogging technology in the face of educational filtering solutions, since these filters often block blog sites altogether. (This is very similar to the impetus behind the SupportBlogging wiki--which, by the way, has also been nominated for an Edublog award this year). Her passion for educational blogging becomes more and more evident as the interview goes on. The awards are also intended to be a resource for educators to draw on for inspiration, to bring educators and students together on a global level, and to help build a feeling of community amongst educational bloggers (there is an online party on the night of the announcement of the winners that Josie says is really fun).
It's well worth looking at the list of nominees for great blogging (and wiki) inspiration. The two previous years' nominees and winners are also posted at the official site. Anyone can vote (so call your "nana," as Josie says). Vote for InfiniteThinking.org here and SupportBlogging here.
Friday, December 08, 2006
Vote for the ITM!
If you love the ITM too, please take a minute to submit a vote for us! And tell you friends too! Voting ends on 12/16, so what are you waiting for?
Nominations and info on the EduBlog Awards are here.
Voting is only one-click away. So vote now!
Thanks again for all your support!
Chris : )
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
Flat Classrooms
Vicki Davis' 10th grade Computer Science class at Westwood Schools in Camilla, Georgia and Julie Lindsay's grade 11 ITGS class at International School Dhaka (ISD) in Bangladesh are in the middle of a two-week combined project to discuss topics from the Thomas Friedman book The World is Flat. The students are paired, with one student from each high school classroom, to work together. First they record an introduction to themselves, then they work together to produce a collaborative wiki, video, and podcast. There is even an amazing grading rubric. Wow.
Chris Craft, that innovative language arts teacher from South Carolina, has done it again. Using old computers and Skype, Chris brought his 6th graders into a direct videoconference with students at an American school in Lima Peru. To prepare, he had them work on a wiki and research common topics about Peruvian culture. They chose topics such as food, sports, and others. In their dry run, when they established video contact, the kids were wild with excitement. Click here to read this description of the actual day--you'll be glad you did! Talk about helping students become excited about learning. Double wow.
Vicki, Chris, and their students are the "Infinite Thinking Machines." Hear them describe their projects in a short audio clips here.
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Unleash Your Inner Artist!
Daniel Pink encourages us to nurture the creative side of our brains in A Whole New Mind, a stimulating book that draws attention to a new skill set possibly needed by workers in this age of globalization. Interestingly, Pink notes that MFA degrees are becoming more relevant than MBAs in the working world and he describes six concepts worthy of aptitude development: design, story, symphony, empathy, play and meaning. Pink gives practical ideas for developing facility in these areas and others have suggested that A Whole New Mind is the ideal companion to Thomas Friedman’s A World is Flat.
Teachers looking to develop these sorts of skills in their students might want to consider a truly unique piece of software called Art Rage 2. Art Rage 2 is a painting program developed by a New Zealand based software company, Ambient Design. It is unlike any other painting program as its tools mimic real painting tools. For instance, the oil paint tool employs a paint-like texture and runs out of paint as you drag the "brush" across the digital canvas. Other
implements include chalk, felt pen and crayon tools and each is adjustable in terms of color, width, and pressure. The most unique feature of Art Rage 2, however, is the ability to load tracing images. A digital image can be uploaded to appear underneath your painting canvas. This makes it a cinch to trace with the tool of your choice or to simply turn the image to blendable paint. Tools can be set up to automatically select the correct colors from your digital image or you can choose your own hues. Pictured here this blog posting is an example of a “chalk” drawing I did in Art Rage 2 and the original digital photo I took last summer while visiting Monet’s garden in Giverny, France. Perhaps Claude would be rolling in his grave if he knew of modern day technological advances!
Art Rage 2 is completely engaging for students. My students are currently finishing self-portraits, which we are publishing to an online gallery. Many kids have even downloaded Art Rage 2 at home as the basic version is free and available for both PCs and Macs. I recommend upgrading to the paid version ($19.95), which allows for layers and additional tools including glitter. What kid (or adult!) cannot resist glitter?
The classroom implications are limitless. I can see students using this software to create their own maps, label blank maps, trace Google Earth imagery, record scientific observations, and to create graphics for other projects such as digital slideshows and web sites. My eight year old daughter came home today from school with blackline mandalas to color today, and it just occurred to me that these pictures could be uploaded and colored using Art Rage. Try playing with Art Rage today and add other potential project ideas to the comments section of this blog posting!
Friday, December 01, 2006
Tomorrow's Leaders
If you are reading the ITM, chances are you are looking for new ideas and strategies for integrating technology in your school. While ITM bloggers and readers are excited to share tools and strategies we've discovered, I'd like suggest that you not leave untapped an important resource that's already an intregal part of your school --TOMORROW'S LEADERS.
Are you tapping into the your students as valuable resources? The National Education Technology Plan was developed with input from Student Voices. Ideas from students in Student Views on Tranforming Education and Training Through Technologies provide insights that a generation of "digital Immigrants" could not have envisioned on their own.
Why not include student input as you update your local technology plans? In his article "Vision to Action: Adding Student Leadership to Your Technology Plan", Dennis Harpers makes note that
"Students make up about 92% of people in attendance in any school. Most technology plans focus on the role of the other 8% (teachers, administrators, adult technical support staff).
It is no wonder that
“Students report that there is a substantial disconnect between how they use the Internet for school and how they use the Internet during the school day and under teacher direction. For the most part, students’ educational use of the Internet occurs outside of the school day, outside of the school building, outside the direction of their teachers.”' Pew Internet & American Life Project (2002).The investment we made in our Student Technology Leadership Teams ten years ago have produced a return many times its original cost. Not only has the school benefitted from the services, ideas, and energy students brought as we developed solutions for maintaining growing networks of computers, training staff, and designing innovative ways to integrate technology, but students gained invaluable opportunities to develop leadership skills. Dennis Harper's Gen Yes includes several models for integrating student leaders in your schools. States such as Kansas, Wisconsin, and Kentucky have developed state-wide student tech leadership initiatives. No need to wait until your state develops a program, programs such as TechSavvyKids and SWAT started as local initiatives. Examining these models can help you find strategies for including student voices in your school.
Today's students are "The Infinite Thinking Machine" - let's provide them with the skills and the opportunities to develop into tomorrow's leaders.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Tags and the Infinite Universe of Information
In fact, when I use the new googlepedia extension in Firefox to search both Google and the Wikipedia at once, I discover a general lack of clarity on the subject... at least at the time this post was written.
The Wikipedia article on Tags is, well, tagged for not meeting quality standards... the introduction is too long. How is one to explain the concept of tags succinctly when the Wikipedia article, which has been edited over 500 times, doesn't seem up to the task?
The top Google results appear little better at first glance. The excerpt shown from the top site, Technorati (which tracks updates to millions of blogs), seems to presume the reader already knows what a tag is: "Here you'll find the top tags, sized according to popularity. We're currently tracking 11.1 million tags." Whoa. That sounds overwhelming, not helpful, and it doesn't seem to help explain what a tag is.
However, if we click through to Technorati's Tag Page we actually find that "Tags are like labels that people use to categorize their blog posts." If we click through to the next result in Google, Flickr (a photo sharing service), we learn that "You can give your photos a 'tag', which is like a keyword or category label. Tags help you find photos which have something in common. You can assign as many tags as you wish to each photo."
So, tags are like keywords? Yes. By assigning a tag to a blog post, a photo, or any other piece of information, you can make it easier for others to search for and find that information when they need it. But tags generally have an important additional feature... tags are clickable. By clicking on a particular tag, you can find all blog posts or pictures (or whatever type of information you are searching for) that are associated with that tag. For instance if you click on the flower tag at Flickr, you'll see any picture that has been tagged with "flower."
At the next Google result, del.icio.us (a social bookmarking site... for sharing bookmarks or favorites online), we learn about a tag cloud, or "a list of tags where size reflects popularity." It turns out there is a tag cloud right here on the ITM... see it on the right-hand side of the site... under the video images? (This tag cloud is automatically generated by ZoomClouds.) Right now the most popular tag on this blog (by far) is "students," followed closely by "digital." You can tell at a glance that these are two important words or topics here at the Infinite Thinking Machine without having to skim all of the blog posts and shows. And, if you were only interested in posts about a certain topic, say... video, you could click on the video tag and see only those posts that discuss video. This saves time and helps you make sense of the mass of information here at the ITM, doesn't it?
So, there are a few ways tags might play a role in the way you and your students interact with information online. First, whenever you post anything on a blog, photo sharing site, social bookmarking site, or other service that supports tags... take the time to tag whatever you are posting. This will help you (and others) find it again later by either searching for the tag or clicking on the tag in a tag cloud. Second, of course, you can locate things that others have posted or shared by searching for or clicking on a tag. Finally, you can also use a tag cloud to learn at a glance what a given web site is about. These three things can save a good deal of time when searching for information and determining it's relevance to the task at hand.
Are you getting the idea at this point? Let's check your understanding, or rather, my explanation... how might you (or your students) use tags to make sense of information encountered while completing an assignment? Do you know of an example of students or teachers using tags? Share your ideas (or your questions) in the comments for this post. (The link for comments appears at the top of the post.) I look forward to reading your contributions.
What Happens When We Share
One model project, The Vermont Midi Project has been using the power of the Internet to connect musicians and music composers with K-12 students producing more than musical talent. Over the past ten years, this project has crafted the art of online collaboration and tested strategies for Reflection and Critique and Mentoring. The project website also shares authentic and concrete examples of the Online Mentoring Process in action, providing a glimpse into best practices for educators preparing to use online tools for sharing.
Along with examples of "What Sharing Looks Like," educators also could benefit from inspirational stories of "What Happens When We Share". Stories about the impact of online collaboration on students such as that of aspiring composer, Matt Podd, can provide tools to help address the "fear of using social software" which can sometimes be a barrier for innovative educators ready to use online collaboration tools. Sharing his music in the VT Midi Project's password protected site provided Matt with the skills and confidence he need to participate in the more global Sibelius Music Community. The power of the Internet to connect provided a student from a small rural town in Vermont the opportunity to have his music compositions played in four different countries and experience to compete with students from more urban cultural centers for limited slots in the college admission process for music composers. As your digital toolkit grows, don't forget to pack it with inspiration and best practices.
Monday, November 20, 2006
More on the Wide and Wonderful World of Wikis
Most people have heard of Wikipedia, the wiki-based collaborative and free encyclopedia, but don't really understand what wikis are, and are maybe a little intimidated by thinking they will need to learn a lot in order to work with wikis... Not true! For a simple overview of wikis, click here. And consider taking the plunge, because wikis are truly incredible and empowering.
Kim took the plunge, and helped the science teachers create a wiki for the 6th grade students across three different classes to model the creation of a medical clinic. The "Strings" (orchestra) class wiki has students researching different kinds of music to present to each other. She also has an IT wiki and a study skills wiki, both of which allow the students to become the authors of the material. And she is working on a wiki for IT teachers in middle schools to collaborate together on the use of technology, called The Tech in the Middle.
Listen to a "Take 5" short interview where Kim describes her work with Web 2.0 here. Get free educational wikis at Wikispaces. See examples of other educational uses of wikis here. Read Tom March's previous post on Wikipedia. And take the plunge!
Friday, November 17, 2006
ITM 3: Living in 3D
ITM #3 is finally here! In this episode we share tips and tools related to visual design. So put on your cool 3D glasses and let's go for a ride.
Downloads
> Quicktime (52 MB)
Windows Users:
right-click the link above and select "save link as..."
Mac Users:
"control" + click the link above and select "save link as..."
Show Notes:
NASA's team at the Lewis Center for Educational Research runs the Goldstone Apple Valley Radio Telescope (GAVRT) in a desert region outside Los Angeles, CA. They conduct a full educational program where students team with scientists to conduct cutting edge research leading to discovery. This is a great learning opportunity for kids to control and operate a deep space radio telescope. GAVRT provides training for teachers and detailed lessons plans, such as Mapping a Radio Source. And you can even see the live video feed of the GAVRT operation control center.
Since we're talking about space, you might want to check out NASA's education site, the NASA Kids Club, Space.com, and the xPrize Foundation.
The EVS-Islands website is produced by "Mr. Minton" - a teacher from San Diego, CA. With the help of his students, he is creating and sharing vector-based images of shorelines from around the world. Basically, he's combing basic shoreline maritime maps with real satelittle images and turning them into stunning, colorful maps that can be used by the rest of us. Much of the work is done with 20-30 students afterschool. His map collection is impressive, and you can download and use all his maps for FREE. He even gives us detailed map making techniques, so we can can join in the fun.
Sharing videos on the Internet is extremely popular with kids. If nothing else, you need to check out YouTube, MySpace, and Google Video, just so you know what kids are up to these days. While much of the videos are produced for fun, a growing number of teachers are using video sharing websites in the classroom. These websites make it extemely easy to post videos, and, in some cases, you can even control who sees them. How are you taping into this craze? Post your thoughts in our comments section.
And don't forget about sites like the Internet Archive, which houses thousands of PUBLIC DOMAIN videos that students can download and re-edit. Some of my favorites are Thomas Edison's news reel on the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the 1952 classic"Duck and Cover" , and a 1963 production on how to use film in the classroom.
SketchUp is FREE software that empowers students to be 3D designers. SketchUp is a great tool for easily teaching kids to construct 3D models of buildings, trees, cars, and anything else they can imagine. You can use it as a stand-alone tool or in conjunction with Google Earth and the 3D Warehouse. On the main SketchUp website you can find a gallery of student examples, case studies, tutorials on how to use the tool, an educators forum, and even a book on how to use it in the classroom.
As one of the original inventors of the Internet, Vint Cerf is widely recognized as a leading thinker on how 21st century technologies are transforming our daily lives. Learn more about Vint on Wikipedia. In this segment, Vint talks share his thoughts on how technology is changing how we design things.
Learn more about the convergence of design and technology at the Designing Interactions , a book, DVD, and website from Bill Moggridge, one of the founders of IDEO. Check out the other feature articles on design on the IDEO website.
ITM 3 Homework: See if your kids can help you find out what the image is and where it is located. It's tougher than it looks. If you don't have any luck finding the answer, let me know, and I may release a few hints in the comments section. : )
Thanks to the students from Mr. Hernandez' class at Price Elementary School in Anaheim, CA, for helping us explain what the Infinite Thinking Machine is!
Thursday, November 16, 2006
What’s in Your Digital Bag of Tricks?
The other Lucie mentions in her previous ITM post a web site called NoodleTools. NoodleTools, and in particular the tools NoodleQuest and Choose the Best Search for Your Information Need, have long been in my digital bag of tricks. Both of these services match digital search tools to the needs of the user, and I appreciate that guidance.
Another amazing resource has been ALTEC’s 4Teachers web site. Numerous tools for both teachers and students are available here including an online quiz creator, a floor plan designer, and a lesson plan builder. Because much of my teaching revolves around digital projects, I regularly use this site’s rubric tool, Rubistar, to create and store evaluation tools online. I also am a big fan of their customizable project-based learning checklists.
I also often find that comprehensive resource databases are helpful when looking for activities and lessons for my students. My personal favorite is the Michigan Teacher Network which contains annotated descriptions of educational web sites. Visitors are also able to rate and comment on these sites as well.
And finally, as a computer science teacher, I use a great deal of software. I recently found a nifty Web 2.0 app for cataloging the software I use and sharing it with others. It is called MyProgs and you can look specifically at some of my software mainstays here. Best of all, for my fellow RSS geeks out there, you can subscribe to this list of software in your newsreader and you will be able to track any updates.
The aforementioned sites are just a few of the resources I’ve incorporated into my professional life and I’d love to hear what you consider essential to your success as a teacher. Please share any ideas in the comments section!
Photo Attribution
Monday, November 13, 2006
Blogging to Learn English
Each class has a class blog, and he gives assignments to the class to write posts from home in English. One of his most successful assignments was to ask each of the students to post "10 special things you have done that very few other people have done," for which he got very enthusiastic responses.
Blogging can have an incredibly powerful, transformative effect for some students, and Craig describes the excitement when students realize that they can quickly have an international "audience." A great place to learn about educational blogging ("edublogging") is at SupportBlogging.com, a collaborative wiki built by "edubloggers" themselves, and that lists (and allows you to search) over 300 blogs, websites, and articles on educational blogging.
Listen to Craig describe his blogging experiences in a quick five-minute audio interview here, visit his own blog here, or visit one of his class blogs here.
Why Do People Share?
Along came - Creative Commons with the mission of "Enabling the legal sharing and reuse of cultural, educational, and scientific works.” Creative Commons has changed the way I teach "intellectual property". While I still use valuable resources like Kathy Shrocks's Copyright and Citation Resources as a reference and the free NoodleBib MLA account by Noodletools , I no longer start by introducing students and teachers to "what they can't do" because of copyright and the restrictions of Fair Use Legislation. Instead I start by introducing them to what they CAN do because of new ways to share and grant permission for others to use your work. Creative Commons new comics and videos make it fun and easy to help students understand copyright and also spread the spirit of sharing.
I still stress the importance of proper documentation and respecting copyright. I show them my email correspondence with author Tom Friedman granting permission for me to use some of his materials in my presentations as testimony to how the Web has made it easier than ever to contact authors of copyrighted materials for permission. But now I start my lessons with a different 'essential question' --- "Why Do People Share?"
We explore Yvonnie Kim's insight that "Some might share because it is more fun, some might share because they believe it is for social goodness, and some might share because they want more people to see what they have done. No matter what motivation individuals might have for sharing, it seems obvious that ’sharing’ is related to the issue of how people are motivated and eventually how they are rewarded.”
I have discovered that the approach to teaching intellectual property combined with the spirit of independence and sharing that is an inherent part of adolescent development makes the students desire and seek out legal resources instead of grumbling that they can't use "Green Day" as the music to their presentation.
Thursday, November 09, 2006
Cerf's Up: Writing
Internet Pioneer Vinton Cerf shares his thoughts on "writing" and communication in the 21st century.
Downloads
> Quicktime (22 MB)
Windows Users:
right-click the link above and select "save link as..."
Mac Users:
"control" + click the link above and select "save link as..."
Show Notes:
As one of the original inventors of the Internet, Vint Cerf is widely recognized as a leading thinker on how 21st century technologies are transforming our daily lives. Learn more about Vint on Wikipedia.
There are so many great writing resources. Here are just a few to explore:
- The National Writing Project
- NCTE Beliefs About Teaching Writing
- New York City Writing Project
- Ideas for Teaching Writing
- "The New Literacy" by David Warlick and Sara Armstrong
- Publish your own books with services like: LuLu, iUniverse, and Cafe Express.
- The Read/Write Web in the Classroom
- More resources on educational blogging
- Check-out these online word processing tools: Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Zoho Writer, AjaxWrite, and ThinkFree.
- Here are some other tools for writing and collaborating online: JotSpot, WikiSpaces, PBWiki, Blogger, LiveJournal, and Word Press.
- Safe email and blogs for students: Gaggle.Net, ePals, and Blogmeister.
- What is a wiki?
- What is a blog?
What's your favorite web resource on writing? Share it in the comments!
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
"The Human Factor"
My personal viewpoint is that technology enhances education and brings additional experiences to people. While there is no substitute for field trips, books and face to face conversations, these sorts of activities can be built upon and amplified for learners. The trick for teachers is to carefully think about how technology is being deployed in their classrooms. Are you using technology for technology’s sake within a lesson? Or, are you using digital tools to demonstrate a concept to your class in a new and exciting way? This can be difficult territory to navigate when trying to improve instruction.
An example of using technology just for its pizzaz factor would be the one I cited in my Jump In post. In my early technology adoption years, the glamour of technology enticed me to use it in pretty superficial ways. I’d like to think that I’ve evolved in my thinking and that my class projects have improved as a result. One such project of which I am particularly pleased was a result of a collaboration between my students at the Laboratory Schools and Steve Bergen’s students at the Chapin School in New York City. Using email as a communication tool, our kids were paired up to research various millennial terms. Each group compiled facts, cited their sources, and then Chapin students built web pages by hand using HTML. Lab students designed banners using Photoshop and critiqued their partners’ handiwork. We also talked about New York City and Chapin while viewing an image of the school's neighborhood using Google Earth. While the primary goal was to help students develop a sense of our digital world through the study of millennial vocabulary, these kids also learned to collaborate over distances and to hone their written communication skills. Additionally, they learned a bit about the lives of kids living in another city. This two week project worked for us because it was simple, purposeful, and had specific deadlines. And, I might add, the social component of interacting with other middle schoolers was certainly appealing to my students!
This year, I morphed this assignment and just kept the project in house as Steve was working with older students. Using a wiki I created in Wikispaces, my students worked in teams to create an encyclopedia of digital terms. They included hyperlinks to sources cited and relevant embedded videos from Google Video. My students used the discussion tabs of our wiki to communicate about their work and peer edited the rough drafts of the project. I surveyed the kids afterwards using Quia and the feedback was generally very positive. My point in bringing up these projects is that effective instruction should change and improve over time. No one should be teaching the same thing 25 times.
Clearly, as noted in this recent New York Times article entitled The Overconnecteds, kids are learning and communicating in different ways and I think we are doing them a disservice if we do not address their changing learning styles and interests. Good teachers make the material come alive for their students and technology can play a role in this. Let us not stay the Underconnecteds!
Thursday, November 02, 2006
The Power of Multiple Media, Including Video
I don't have much of a commute myself and I prefer to uni-task when working, so I have difficulty finding time to listen to podcasts. And even though there is something of a performer in me, I've never been terribly motivated to create audio (or video) podcasts. It is very time consuming.
However, I recently created three hour-long videos for the k12 Online Conference. It was time consuming and challenging for me, but regardless (or perhaps because of the challenge) I had a blast. Video can be a fun medium. (Check out Alton Brown's very fun - and very educational - Good Eats on the Food Network for an excellent example.) My experience was what Seymour Papert likes to call hard fun.
This experience refocused my attention on a recent Internet phenomenon, YouTube. According to the (hard to find) about page, "YouTube is a place for people to engage in new ways with video by sharing, commenting on, and viewing videos." For several years now teachers have seen the benefit of downloading audio-visual instructional media from sites like Atomic Learning and United Streaming, but unlike these fee-based services, the free service at YouTube also allows teachers and students to upload and share videos. This is a bit like Blogger for visual learners.
It might take a little bit more work to find content that is related to educational goals, but I thought I'd search for material on the pyramids in Egypt, for example, and I quickly found several videos like these two bite-sized clips that will bring to life the pyramids and the sphinx for students around the world. Check out the shadow of the man walking next to the sphinx - or the camels on the ridge behind it for a sense of scale!
A quick scholar search for articles on the use of video in education turned up this literature review about "the use of digital video and iMovie in k12 schools." The focus is on "pedagogical issues relating to the process of learners capturing, editing, and generating their own digital video... on the 'student-genreation' of these artifacts and associated outcomes and support structures, rather than the actual digital video products per se."
This, and my own recent experience, reminded me of the powerful learning process required to create a video; students must master the content (in the same way we learn content best when we have to teach it), plan and storyboard their video, execute the recording (while paying attention to the shot frame, lighting, sound, and many other variables of cinematography), assemble and edit the final product (to efficiently achieve their purpose), and usually all the while working as a team with other students. Add to this the ability to share their creation online (via YouTube for example), and students now also have an authentic purpose and audience for their creation - not to mention it might actually benefit other students elsewhere. It's clear to me that asking students to create and share a video not only addresses content standards, but several 21st Century Skills as well. Best of all, it can be hard fun.
Of course, video won't be for everyone either...
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Cerf's Up: Maps
Internet Pioneer Vinton Cerf shares his thoughts on the important role that "maps" play in the 21st century.
Downloads
> Quicktime (15 MB)
Windows Users:
right-click the link above and select "save link as..."
Mac Users:
"control" + click the link above and select "save link as..."
Show Notes:
As one of the original inventors of the Internet, Vint Cerf is widely recognized as a leading thinker on how 21st century technologies are transforming our daily lives. Learn more about Vint on Wikipedia.
There are so many great resources on maps. Here are just a few to explore:
- links to map collections
- historical maps for students
- the art of making maps
- geospatial technology and careers
- Green Maps: collaborative project for students
- U.S. Census maps
- FREE maps to use in your classroom