Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech

10 years ago, if you asked the average person to name 10 fonts, it might have been challenging. Not today. Typeface has always been significant but until recently, it was only the job of graphic designers to really understand it.

But as we’ve now been giving more tools to create multimedia and graphical content, we need to have a better understanding of font. I recall discussions with primary teachers years ago, insisting on using Comic Sans in digital content because the “a” reflected the way students were to print it. Is that still a factor? (I actually have a font installed on my computer called , “I hate Comic Sans”) What other discussions should teachers have with their students about font and typeface other than not to use dingbats for their essays? I certainly don’t know a lot about it. I know that somewhere I read serif fonts are easiest to read. I know about Guy Kawasaki’s font rule .

But fonts are now more than just about text, they are art and they are used in a graphical context in much our digital work. I know I certainly pay more attention. I did not address adequately in my design presentation for K12, mostly because I don’t have enough understanding. I ‘ll have to work that. It’s become so much a part of how we view digital content that this video, courtesy Bill Mckinnon actually is understood. We get what he’s talking about.

Image:Font 006 by Stewf

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I’ve heard people claim that moving to digital learning can help eliminate “the dog ate my homework excuse.”

My daughter’s shar pei, snagged my 2.0 GB SD memory card and destroyed it. Let that be another lesson for all you kids out there.

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Other than having this commercial’s jingle run in my brain and our house, I didn’t realize its origins. This isn’t the first time nor the last time a kid will fool around with his computer, put together a video, post it and find audience. That’s old news for many. The shift is that the amateur is valued and perhaps equal.

Consumers creating commercials “is part of this brave new world we live in,” said Lee Clow, chairman and chief creative officer at TBWA Worldwide, based in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Playa del Rey.

What’s different is that although the tools are cheaper and very close to those of professionals, they aren’t even necessary; good ideas and design are. Dan Pink is on to something.  The kid didn’t even use a camera. He took a song he liked but more importantly a lyric in the song and crafted a short but powerful message. Just messing around. With all that’s available we don’t need a camera or much of a computer for kids to be producing some amazing things. It’s not about fancy tools or access as much as it is about ideas and communication. Like my post yesterday, with all the media we observed, we have examples of what works and what doesn’t.

So let that be a lesson to all you kids out there….Innovation and Design is the challenge not technology.

Technorati Tags: ipod, innovation, nickhaley

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With the advent of digitalstorytelling as more common place in our schools, often we’re so elated to get them to produce anything that the quality of work isn’t always there. We’ve been down this road with powerpoint, but now most are taken in by the the wow factor. With video, there’s still enough mystery in production for many teachers and students that we accept work that is less than exemplary. I think at times, we’re letting kids off the hook.
Last year, I showcased the work of a couple of local kids who did a great job with the lego format. My son and one of the contributors to the other video had an assignment to create a movie trailer on the novel Life of Pi. This is a fairly common assignment and one that does require synthesis and should incorporate elements of good design. But there work does many of the things I think make for a great trailer.

Simplicity, planning, innovation, constraints and whitespace all are used. Yes, they use some green screen but really, it’s about storytelling. My son played director and  producer and his buddy did the editing. When asking about ideas, he said it came from watching movies, playing video games and tv.  This is why demanding students to talk about movies like we ask them to talk about books is critical. Students should be as fluent talking about video as they are about writing. We’re so text bias as schools, that it makes it difficult to even understand what is a well crafted, design piece of multimedia. And while I think we need more examples of student work, I think there are so many in the real world, but we don’t look deeply at what makes them work. That’s what these guys did.

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From the “sharing continues” files, this just in,

Google now shows my friends shared items, my “friends” are my Google Talk friends. I just want more friends is all.

Also , I discovered that I can export my Jing captures to flickr. Sort of the Skitch for Windows alternative.  Unless there’s something else?

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The digital citizenship discussions have been intriguing and have been teaching me quite a bit. The issue I deal with is whether or not, digital citizenship be taught formally in schools. I”m more convinced that social virtues, as some might call them, are best taught in context. I’m not sure whether one can be taught these virtues or morales in isolation nor should they. While there is certainly an information piece connected to the technologies, it’s mostly about making wise choices and it’s difficult to do this outside of the real world. Just as technology ought to be used and taught in context, I think the same is true of character. The best context is a model of practice and lifestyle that is transparent.

Which is likely the reason for things like this and this. Because most teachers do not practice or engage in the same kinds of online activities which for the most part is social networking, it’s going to be difficult for them to model. In addition, they likely don’t consider it a relevant topic of discussion amidst the daily work load they already face.

Which leads me to my title, can a fat man teach physical education?  Perhaps, but if the goal is to help students lead healthy,active lifestyles, it seems like a hard sell. It would have the same result as a tone deaf music teacher or an illiterate English teacher. If we’re really concerned about teaching our students to make moral, ethical choices online, teachers need to have some experience that can at least validate discussions and suggestions. Stephen Downes recently chimed in on one of my discussions:

But I think even the students will see through the directed curriculum when taught by a teacher that has never set foot online.

So whether we choose to formalize the teaching or not, it may not even matter. You can go ahead and ask every teacher to teach these principles and the results will be limited, if not damaging. Without credibility we’re just blowing hot air. So rather than jurisdictions making these types of requests, I prefer this response from Regina Lynn of Wired Magazine:

All adults who work with youth should be aware of how young people communicate, fall in love and stay connected; I encourage teachers to try social networking services, to have a blog, to text message with their own families and friends. Experienced teachers will not only gain a better sense of the world their students live in — indeed, a world their students are creating — they will have a greater understanding of the young teachers entering the profession.

I think I answered my own my question.

Technorati Tags: digitalcitizenship, stephendownes

Social Capital has been a termed explored and pursued by two of my posse members, Heather and Rick. They both talk about it quite a bit. I may be butchering the definition so I hope they forgive me if I miss the purest definition or better yet, add to the conversation with some insights.

To me, social capital, or perhaps there’s a better term, is a quantifiable measure of contributions to one’s social network. So a few things have arose as of late that sparks an interest in this for me.

• Will’s recent post on Pocket Texting and the idea of “knowledge power” points. We have seen the use of ratings on sites like experts-exchange and other sites where the usefulness of one’s answers ranks them higher and in some cases produces economic benefits.
• Tweeterboard. I hadn’t even heard of this until this tweet a few days ago. So for the past few days I’ve tried to figure out how in the world this works and what’s the significance? First of all it appears to be a random sampling of twitter so that needs to be considered but the idea is basically a combination of quantity, shared links and exchanges with others.
  

  They’re calculated using some algorithmic mojo that resembles the link analysis algorithms used by search engines. Your reputation points are based on the conversations you’ve had over the last 28 days, which means your score can jump around a lot.

• A conversation I had with Ewan Mcintosh about a company, (maybe Ewan can add the link) that is developing their own algorithm that measures social capital within their business. He mentioned things like identifying writing and work that has been reused or tagged several times and looking at the usefulness, sharing,commenting of one’s work inside a company. Ewan’s thinking about how this might be used to measure the work and value of Scotland’s student bloggers.
• My continued pursuit of a higher commpost rating.

So while tools like Technorati provide some degree of measure, there’s so much more than comprises social capital. How might we assess, our total online portfolio? The fact that many are involved in dozens of communities from flickr, youtube,facebook,blogs,wikis, the whole sha-bang would require some fancy mathematical calculations. I’m guessing it would include things like: the number of communities you’re actively involved with (which means “active” must be defined) numbers of tagged pieces of content by others, number of other’s work you’ve remixed, comments, IM’s…the list goes on.

Teachers are excited when I show them simple things like the history feature of wikis that track student work. The sophistication of some of these tools to measure the depth of conversations and contributions seems to be increasing.  While in many jurisdictions the importance of standardized testing seems to preclude many discussions around the value of social capital I think there is some real ripeness for some of our schools to utilize tools that could measure social capital. I’m guessing that so would many businesses. Not that that is the ultimate goal but like Will watches his gas gauge on his Prius perhaps our kids could get excited about watching their social capital points rise. Or does that miss the point totally? I’m just wondering.

Technorati Tags: willrichardson, heatherross, rickschweir, edtechposse, twitter, ewanmcintosh

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Internet Saftey, Digital Citizenship, Information Literacy, all point in a similar direction. Helping kids be smart,safe and good. Remove the digital part and we’ve been doing this for years. But after the following exchanges, I’m a little confused:

• Alec Couros’ post followed by:
• Will Richardson’s take and
• Vicki Davis’ post responded to by:
• Tom Hoffman and
• Stephen Downes and
• Vicki Davis’ comment

In order to fully participate in this conversation,you’ll need go and read those posts.

So part of me thinks, “Hey, why do we need to address this in our schools anymore than we’ve addressed behaviour and morals in an offline context? Is it really that different? After spending time with Alec and the research he’s done, I do understand that digitally the implications and speed at which things travel does make some difference, but as Stephen Downes states:

The vile content - and it most certainly is vile - is neither new nor original. And it’s not the kids that are creating it.

As Stephen goes on to say, it’s kids modeling what they see. And even as I write this, I’m watching a story on 20/20 about meanness and completely validates Stephen’s premise about adults doing the vile acts. The media loves this and eats it up creating fear and uproar and has the public looking for scapegoats and something to blame.

I posted a while back that I wasn’t sure we needed to distinguish between bullying and cyberbullying. I still feel this way. We know that good and bad isn’t predicated because of technology. Like learning, technology simply accelerates it.

I remember a few years back schools were asked to teach kids Social Skills in a very contrived regimented format. Good and well meaning ideas but out of context and I’m not sure how effective it was. We don’t use that program anymore but we haven’t stopped talking about things like, how to speak to adults, how to respond when a fight breaks out, or how to join a game on the playground. We recognize many kids come to school with little or no social skills and schools hopefully do their best to address this along side academic goals. Many schools put this front and center and understand that learning may not matter if social skills aren’t in place.

So where does it leave us? As educator’s should we simply carry on and talk about the digital issues the same way we talk about offline issues and morals? Do we need something distinct? Should it be mandated? Even as Vicki asked Stephen Downes and Tom Hoffman, “what do we call it if not Digital Citizenship?” I’m wondering too. As a leader in my school district and teachers and administrators looking for answers and directions, how should we respond if at all?

One of the simplest suggestions I’ve handed out lately is talk to your kids. Whether you’re a parent or teacher, engage in conversations about behaviour, morals, ethics, compassion and social justice. Good teachers have been doing this for a long time

Technorati Tags: digitalcitizenship, aleccouros, stephendownes, tomhoffman, vickidavis, willrichardson, cyberbullying

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