Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech

I spent last night listening both to David Warlick’s opening keynote as well as the fireside chat as the K12 online conference begins.

David, as usual, uses his southern drawl and relaxed approach to bring you into the conversation. The method he used was very innovative, speaking and telling stories in various locations around his home in North Carolina. Just as blogs are designed to be personal and transparent, so was David’s keynote. While I’ve heard David a number of times and read his blog,(even had coffee on the floor with him once, remember David?) you can’t help be engaged.

I think for me the format was as much a part of the story as the content. Getting up close and personal draws me in. I’m glad the little old lady part and the joggers weren’t edited from his presentation. That’s life and also naturally illustrated David’s point about sidetrips and informal learning.
After listening to the fireside chat, a good deal of the time was focused on barriers and in particular on filtering. I’ll be watching with interest some of the presentations on Overcoming Obstacles.

So if you haven’t checked out this conference you need to and oh ya did I tell you it’s free?
Technorati Tags: k12online06 k12online davdwarlick

I got 2 really cool things from Tom Woodward, the bionic teacher. One that everyone should utilize and the other that falls in my “this is interesting but I’m not sure yet how I’d use it” category.

The first is his remix of the Karl Fischs’ presentation called “Did You Know”. Tom was kind enough to send me a larger version. I planned to do a remix of it but felt it stood well on its own for my purposes. I uploaded it to our new youtube group. and called it Education Today and Tomorrow.

The second thing from Tom is this link. Go ahead see if you can stay on this site less than a minute.

Thanks Tom.

technorati tags:flatworld, tomwoodward, karlfisch

Blogged with Flock

Will was worried his thoughts were murky.  His less than positive experience recently led him to some pretty clear ideas. I concur with them and can also relate to some remarks I’ve heard teachers make regarding professional development like, “just let us teach”. In other words, professional development is getting in they way of teaching. Will writes:

We teach teachers to teach, we don’t teach teachers to learn. Even in professional development, we teach them stuff they need to be better teachers, but do we give them the skills they need to be better learners? Do we evaluate them on what they’ve been reading? On what they’ve been writing? On their reflectiveness?

Tomorrow, I’m talking briefly to all our new teachers and interns. While my portion of the day is largely informational, I hopefully can share the idea of being a learner first.

We hire teachers based on how well they know their subject matter and how well we think they can deliver it to students….What if we hired learners first?

Planning has always been up to classroom teachers. Teachers decide what students are going to learn and how they are going to do it. I’d like to try something new and different. I’d like your ideas. Do have suggestions for assignments and projects? Do you have a resource that you think we should be using in class? Is there someone we absolutely need to talk to? Post it here! This space is for all of us to put our heads together and create the best possible space to learn in that we can. Anything goes. This is a brainstorming space, a planning space, a space for new ideas so anything you can think of can be posted here.

Clarence is at it again. He’s decided to start the year by having his students involved in the planning process. Talk about ownership for learning. Will every kid participate? Not likely but that’s not the point. Creating opportunities for students to participate is what’s important. As Prensky says, ENGAGMENT IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN CONTENT.  Clarence actually believes that. Some may be asking, “How will he meet objectives? What about the curriculum?” I know from discussions I’ve had with him that he is well aware of the curriculum. If you do have a question for him, just ask him.

Oh by the way, this wiki’s not just for teachers, he’s invited the world.

I subscribe to a Technorati feed for Moose Jaw. I’ve learned many interesting things about my city. Most of the postings are of travellers passing through my town.

Today I across this blog. It appears a single mom from Cincinatti is adopting a child from China. She decided to make a quilt called “100 Good Wishes”. She’s invited others to submit a quilt square with a message for this child. So far she has 8 squares with the 8th square contributed by a quilter in Moose Jaw. What an amazing connection between people of common interests! This is what we need to show our students. .  Reminds me a bit of one red paperclip except in my mind more important. Everyone in this project is making a significant contribution using their skills and experiences
Isn’t this what we want the web to be?

On Monday, July 24th I’ll be giving a workshop entitled, “The Joys of Social Software”. I’ll be working with a small group of teachers introducing them to many of the great tools and applications to design a Read/Write classroom.

Having done a number of these types of workshops, I realize I’m simply creating an awareness….exploration, application, immersion, and implementation is something completely different. I need to keep this in mind as I’m often overly enthusiastic about the possibilities only to realize that for many, it’s just too much to wrap their heads around and in many ways are not really ready for all the awaits them.
Given the basic advice of taking one idea and developing it, what advice would you give them about transforming their classroom? How would you encourage them to use the tools to create a new type of classroom? What should they pay attention to? What should they be weary of?
I will try and provide an opportunity to bring in those who wish to speak live via Skype. I haven’t completely set my agenda but there will only be 5 participants so we can be fairly informal.

So add your thoughts and I’ll be sure to pass them along.

Many of you may have heard of the fellow from Montreal who has been trying to trade a red paperclip for a house. This week he will accomplish his goal.
Will Richardson mentioned this at one of his sessions at NECC. I’m assuming he used it to illustrate the power of the internet to express and explore ideas and make connections. This experiment reminds me of two other recent web ventures. One is the million dollar homepage and the other is the guy who sold all his stuff on ebay. These rather obsure ideas illustrate the possibilities of the web. The ideas behind these innovative projects need to be examined by teachers and their students. Are these “new stories“? Perhaps have students do some research and reflection on why these ideas work.

On a personal note, the house he will be getting is in Kipling, Saskatchewan which is about 100 miles from my house. Before gaining permanent employment in Moose Jaw, 18 years ago, I interviewed for a job in Kipling.

Last Wednesday, Clarence, Darren and Kathy and I were joined by Cheryl Oakes as we put a wrap on our series about telling the new story. In reality, it’s hard to wrap up so the stories will continue.

My apologies to Jeff Utecht and others who waited patiently for the Skypecast to begin. Not completely understanding how Skypecast works, I went ahead and began the conference call as I usually have done only to realize that you need to login on the Skypecast website. My bad.

Listen to the podcast. (26MB 1:04)

Show notes: (courtesy of Darren…if there was a “Show notes Hall of Fame“, this would be in it!)

The New Story Podcast Series, What Came Before …
Part 1, Part 2, Part 2 - the video, Part 3

Darren Kuropatwa’s Blog

Kathy Cassidy’s Blog

Clarence Fisher’s Blog

Dean Shareski’s Blog

Cheryl Oake’s Blog

skypecasting conference calling info

Jeff Utecht’s Blog - The Thinking Stick

Bloglines

Excellence and Imagination
(Clarence’s Classroom Central Blog)

State of Maine Standards & Assessment

Cheryl’s Class Blog

BPRIME the new format

Bloom’s Taxonomy

Apple 1 to 1 Learning

Maine Learning Technology Initiative

Constructivism

Article from The Vancouver Sun: Boys exhibit high literacy skills with video games
(Registration required)

Sim City

George Siemens Blog

Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age

Fundamental Change
(Clarence’s post re: becoming a “network administrator”)

Kathy’s class saw a shark

Doug Noon’s Blog (Borderland)

DOPA - The Wiki
(Resources and community opposed to DOPA)

Finding a Voice - Fighting Peer Pressure
(Clarence’s post about his kids’ posts)

WorldBridges

Skypecast Directory

Dean’s Digital Storytelling Workshop

David Warlick - Blogging and the Flat Classroom

Dean’s RSS Analogy

Bob Sprankle

Also you’ll notice I’m linking to the file on Internet archive rather than the nifty little podpress player I used in earlier podcasts. This is because podpress files must be encoded with a sample rate in multiples of 11.025 kHz or else it sounds like Alvin and the Chipmunks. I tried for hours to get this done in Audacity but failed miserably. I did it with the previous podcasts but not sure what I did differently. If anyone can help, please let me know. I followed this tutorial but it didn’t seem to help.