Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech

So these three edubloggers go into a bar with a laptop and camera and begin to broadcast around the world…..

Trust it to Will, Jakes and Dembo to cook up some fun and learning at the same time. The three met in alocal establishment in Chicago tonight and tested out UstreamTV. This free, live streaming site allows anyone to broadcast live to the world. I used it a few weeks ago to watch my daughter’s new puppy when we aren’t home. Easy to set up. The potential of a tool such as this is obviously much more powerful than watching puppies. Remember when people used to (they still do but let’s presume some progress) categorize blogs as cat diaries? I think we’re better at understanding the power of these new tools as learning tools.

I had a conversation today with a principal asking how to make the next steps in using technology. I mentioned Ustream TV as a connecting tool. Her eyes lit up. Mine did too.

As I read a couple of posts today about blocking content I realize I’m blessed to work with an IT department that understands its role very well. They want to provide a great service for teachers and students. This means considering these tools in the light of both security, performance but more importantly quality learning. As a rather brash advocate of these tools, I work with them and they with me on understanding the issues. Not matter what the issue it usually comes down to, “How can we make it work?” But I digress…

So back to the streaming video. Many are going to look at this and say, “big deal”. I look at this and my mind is whirling with possibilities. Classroom presentations, personal tv stations, unconference learning….you fill in the blank. Will, David and Steve asked the same question, “How can we make it work?” The 30+ participants asked similar questions. Mixed with some good fun, this was a good way to spend part of an evening. Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach claimed it was better than anything on TV. You can watch it all here.

I captured a couple of minutes of this. The fun part anyway. If you want to know the awkward way I did this, leave a comment and I’ll reveal my secret.

Technorati Tags: willrichardson, davidjakes, teach42, streamingvideo, ustreamtv

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Last week I wrote about Konrad’s efforts to instill real learning from his blog he has for his students.  I think that speaks for itself as to how a teacher should blog with his/her students. But I still have a hard time convincing teachers to blog for professional reasons.  Statements like, “Why would I just blab my thoughts”, “Who would want to read about my experiences”, “What if I say something I shouldn’t”. 

All valid points but I recently re-discovered Dan Meyer. Dan is a young teacher who, just like most teachers, is full of great ideas,insights and is willing to share. I like the fact that Dan is honest which means, be prepared to disagree with him at times. But what’s wrong with that? Although Dan is a math teacher, his understanding of design and media has rekindled my interests in his work. Why does he blog? What’s in it for him?

His about page really tells the story.

I’m Dan Meyer. Three Four years ago I lucked into a job I love. I’m a high school math teacher stationed outside Santa Cruz, CA, and I get better at this job every day I keep at it and keep pondering my wins and losses. This is a documentary of all the fun I’m having. My purpose here is practice not policy. I’m leaving NCLB and charter schools to the wonks and ‘wizes. (For the most part.) This blog goes out to the classroom grinders, to the teachers handling the tough classrooms. Let’s figure out how to make this job better and easier. So no ads. This is for the joy of working hard at one of the hardest jobs there is. As much as I hope this is valuable to other teachers, I hope most for input from the outside. Please leave comments. The input of good teachers has always been valuable to me.

’nuff said.

Technorati Tags: danmeyer, blogs, teacher, classroom

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I had two interesting and challenging experiences the last couple of days. Experiences that cause me to consider my approach to supporting teachers and students.

I met with a small group of high school teachers who wanted to learn more about Web 2.0 and what they might be able to use in their classrooms. I was fully prepared to spend the day showing demos, and working through the technical issues of setting up a blog, wiki or whatever they wanted.What happened instead is we spent the first part of the morning grappling with the big questions of why. Why would we post students online? Why does it feel like asking us to change means that our current practice is all wrong? If this is so important, why aren’t we given time to explore and make change? To be clear, this group of teachers was not simply complaining or naysaying. They just wanted to be convinced and sure that investing time to use these tools would pay dividends. I’ve been telling teachers lately that if they have any hesitation, they shouldn’t bother to blog or use any tool because all it will do is add to the many “binders of guilt” that sit on the shelf labeled, “things I should really do”.I’m not sure that all these questions were answered but I know we moved forward on some. At lunch time, I fired up twitter and posed the question regarding posting online. Thanks to my network I received several key responses that I shared with the group after lunch. 

Again, not that those responses solved the conundrum but it clearly demonstrated that an online presence or network is a powerful thing. So we continued on and continued to deal with some tough questions but after providing some time for teachers to muddle on their own, they left the day feeling like they had some direction or purpose in using the tools. We’re moving forward in a positive way.I thank them for challenging me.

Thursday, I met with all our school administrators and shared our vision and focused on the idea of shifted learning. I showed Did you Know, used some of Ewan’s videos and ideas that focus on a shift in learning and challenged them to consider how learning is changing. In general they are a great bunch of leaders who truly want to make shifts that are good for kids but like many of us, are looking for a recipe, which although we know doesn’t exist, still want one. I challenged them to consider how they might support teachers and after some good discussion, felt like we have set the ground work for the work that lies ahead. The following are the slides I used with my notes embedded underneath…feel free to use this in whatever way you wish.

One school administrator approached me after and asked, “What is it we’re really trying to do?”He talked about an angst he feels about what he sees most kids doing with technology. Useless text messaging with the person right beside them, nothing seems to be interesting to them, jaded attitudes towards violence, and so on; all valid points. He was careful to say he didn’t want to appear to be out of touch but was truly concerned with kids who use technology in meaningless ways. I tried to share my feelings about our duty to .I’m glad he approached and challenged me and the kind of dialogue I had in these two instances does help us move forward. I’ve taught too many workshops where everyone comes happy and excited to be there and leaves happy and excited but never carry on with the ideas and never implement anything. They like new stuff but don’t deeply consider what the true impact of change might be.

I was further encouraged by spending time with two of our superintendents. Both men have been in education for over 30 years and recalled some of the reasons they got into education in the first place. As children of the 1960’s they were excited about the ideas of Summerhill and believed deeply in personalized learning. Somehow the system they entered took things into a more traditional model and my presentation triggered memories of the hope of what a quality, meaningful education can look like.

These conversations are what will matter. Allowing people to tell their stories, share their resistance and consider the change that’s necessary. I’m pretty good at telling my story and perspectives  but at times forget that others need to tell theirs as well. Chris Lehman has written lately about not forgetting the value of our teachers. Another great conversation ensues.  Again, this is not anything profound but once again, reminded me of the importance of those conversations. Conversations about change that lead to implementation.

Technorati Tags: blogs, assessment, prairiesouth, shifts, ewanmcintosh, didyouknow, summerhill

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Invariably when I introduce the concept of blogging to teachers, they want to resort to using it as a homework page. I understand that for many this is natural. After all, for many teachers, reflecting and sharing their work and ideas offline is not part of their practice, why would it be online?

So while I’m careful to point out that the power of blogging lies in the reading, thinking, writing process, I haven’t seen many evolve out of the typical homework thread. While the homework blog has its benefits, it hardly does anything to help students understand what blogging can be.

Konrad Glogowski is certainly a blogger every teacher needs to watch. Today Konrad writes a post called “Learning to be Myself“. In it he writes about his plan to be a blogger in the community of his classroom. Not a teacher but a learner like the rest of them.

My own blog in our class blogosphere has always been used to post updates, assignments, commentary on student work, and words of encouragement…I don’t think my students ever perceived it as a blog - a place where the author shares his thoughts, ideas, or experiences and engages in meaning-making. It was a place that my students would visit regularly to read their latest assignment or download a rubric. I don’t think they ever learned anything from my own blog.

So his plan is to write about things that matter, things that may not be curricular based. What? Not curricular based? I can hear it now, “I don’t have time for that”. We don’t have time to be people?  He continues:

If we are to be a community of learners, we need to know each other as individuals, not people who, for six hours every day, play assigned roles. In other words, I don’t believe teachers should engage in self-censorship. If we do, then our students end up interacting with an automaton, an actor performing a role. Our schools, administrators, and classrooms cannot demand that the richness that makes us human be stripped down because the students are only fourteen, for example, and should not read about human rights abuses, or because time in class should be used only to study the curriculum.

Konrad is one of those writers that I”m glad doesn’t write everyday. His posts regularly make me stop and reread two or three times. It’s that good and deep. To really see his full vision, you need to read the whole post.

Others and I have often wondered, “Should all teachers blog?”. Many think “no” since it’s not the medium for everyone. Should all students blog?  Many that would read any blog would think yes. Why? Because we want students to share their work, have an audience, connect with others, document and track learning, become global citizens, and communicate. So are we hyprocrites if we as teachers don’t do the same? Maybe it’s not a blog but it should be something. (If it’s not digital, how do you have 25 learners share their learning with each other in a 50 minute class, how superfluous would that be?)

Konrad embodies the belief of developing community of learners. So my question is, if you’re not blogging with your students about your learning, your passion and ideas, how are you demonstrating to them that you are a learner? How do they know?

Technorati Tags: blogging, konradglogowski

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StumbleUpon was something I played with over 2 years ago.  I really like they way it seemed to bring a greater sense of serendipity to my learning. I discovered some really cool things. Not sure why I left it but I rediscovered it a few days ago and have already found some neat stuff.  Here’s a sampling:

• Four Hands Guitar….I thought of Darren and Ewan and some of their presentations…I might use it as well.
• 52 Influential Photographs
• Death Clock…good thing I’m an optimistic…I’ll live till I’m 94.
• SkreemR.…The World’s Greatest Audio Search

The second old friend returning is ScribeFire, formally known as Performancing. ScribeFire is a blog editor built right into your browser. The reason I’m using it is because of my frustrations in finding a suitable WYSIWYG editor for WordPress that allows embedding of video and won’t conflict with other plugins.  So for fun I’m going to embed the youtube version of the four hands guitar video.

Technorati Tags: scribefire, stumbleupon, serendipity

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I’ve made some gains in my quest to improve my commenting. (See this post from January for background)

My commpost rating in January was 0.71. Since then I’ve written 107 posts and commented 155 times.

155/107=1.45

As well I’ve likely commented at least 50 more times that I did not use cocomment for whatever reason. Ewan Mcintosh and D’arcy Norman continue to be all star commenters at 246 and 163 since January as well. I’d like to track more people on cocomment so please let me know if you use this service. I had some of my students this year use this and it was great to be able to track the contributions they made on other blogs.

I know the recent changes in cocomment have made some people less than enamored but it works okay for me.

So my question is, what is your commpost rating and also if you don’t use something like cocomment to track your comments, what do you use?

Technorati Tags: comments, cocomment, ewanmcintosh, darcynorman

First we “googled”things, now we “youtube” videos. Youtube is now a recognized verb. From the urban dictionary:

Will has been advocating that blog be considered a verb for a while. (the hyperlink is over 3 years old). Recently I’ve learned to twitter. I’ve “youtubed” for a while. Many others have been youtubing as well. All these verbs make me feel more active than I really am (as I “blog” this from my couch). I wonder what new verb I’ll learn next?

Image: Youtube vs. Cicarelli
http://flickr.com/photos/pigatto/350600021/

Technorati Tags: youtube, verb, language, twitter

The previous post not only generated the most comments on any post I’ve written but also some interesting outcomes.  I came across as a bit arrogant and pushy but was simply trying to express a personal preference and tendency and yes maybe push some thinking.

Dr. Tim Tyson contacted me and without sharing the details, challenged me to consider why blogging isn’t always the best means of communication among other things. He pushed my thinking and I thank him for that.

Jennifer Maddrell tells us that Marc Prensky’s blog is now back with comments!  I’m sure he wasn’t influenced by this post but it’s nice to see him back.

So now I’m thinking so we go on a campaign to get those we’d like to see blogging to start?  Nah, I’ll leave it to Dembo to take over the world.

Technorati Tags: timtyson, marcprensky, teach42