2¢ Worth

I’m sitting in the auditorium of the Old Saybrook High School in Connecticut.  I do not start for another hour, and since another computer is connected to the project, I have mine on my lap.  This is great, because I can keep rearranging my slides :-/

Also, scanning through my aggregator, I ran across a post (There is no need for a ‘Creepy Treehouse’ in using the Web in the Classroom) by my friend Bora Zivkovic, where he comments about an article that I read yesterday morning in the Raleigh News & Observer. 

After my talk in Chapel Hill last week, Susan Wells, the principal of Culbreth Middle School, came up and described their project to give students iPod Touches, and how excited they are about the opportunity to explore the possibilities.  The article (An iPod Touch for each Student?) emphasizes that the district is pursuing the 1:1 access to these technologies, without a full vision for how they will be used.

Bora mentions the creepy treehouse affect, which was a new term to me.  But I wonder if, going into an exploritory adventure with technology, especially if they give students an opportunity to share their insights, the affect might be more akin to a tree-based telescope.

The line that struck me from the Observer article was…

..an experiment that would challenge teachers and administrators to ensure the hand-held devices are used as learning tools, not toys.

I understand this concern.  But might we find that a learning tool can be a toy, and that a toy can be a learning tool.

From The Next Web’s Ernst-Jan Pfauth (Music Community Koblo Needs to Show Some Soul), a music editing software that I didn’t know about.  Koblo has apparently been around for a long time (1998).  But the Denmark-based company, Aarthus, is now bundling a recently enriched version of their software within a new social network, where musicians and bands can meet up, share their tracks, and talk.

Of course, anyone who’s done anything with music, such as listening to it, knows that the experience is social.  Think of all those Beatles and Monkeys fan clubs.  But music makers have also long been meeting and sharing online, playing their music and selling their old instruments.  What’s interesting to me about Koblo is that they are connecting the actual music-making with the community.

A similar service, which has been around for a time, is Berlin-based Hobnox.  It is also a music community with a music-making tool.  But their music software is web-based, further connecting the music with the community, nearly becoming one.

This really isn’t instructional.  But it is another example of community generating content for the community.

Can’t wait to get to my hotel room and play!

I started a blog post a few weeks ago about digital textbooks, and some of the wiki projects and customizable digital textbook projects going on out there.  Alas, I never got it finished and I’ve lost the notes now.  But I was reminded of the topic when a MEGA mailing list message came across my inbox, announcing a new North Carolina History textbook — that’s digital.¹

Developed by LEARN NC, a long-standing and consistent support agent for digital education in NC, Grand Visions, Rough Realities: The Development of Colonial North Carolina [flyer PDF, 95kb] is an web-based document that contains, among other things,

…67 pages of primary sources and background reading, plus guides for using the kinds of primary sources provided.

To collect content, LEARN NC worked with the North Carolina Office of Archives and History, the North Carolina Museum of History, UNC Libraries, Fort Dobbs State Historic Site, the North Carolina Literary Review, and other partners.
According to the e-mail, from Bill Ferris,

LEARN NC?s ?digital textbook? for 8th-grade North Carolina history provides a new model for teaching and learning. It makes primary sources central to the learning experience, using them to tell the stories of the past rather than merely illustrating it. Special web-based tools help students learn to read those sources and ask good questions of them. And because it?s on the web, this textbook relies on multimedia whenever possible to supplement or even replace text.

I found a chapter in the book about the German migration into North Carolina, a topic that I’ve not seen before in any NC History course I have taken.  It was an interesting read for me, as my ancestors on my father’s side were part of the early 1700s immigration.  I was intrigued by the circumstances in Europe, mostly religious wars, that forced so many German families to leave for the New World.

With this still in my head this morning, I coincidentally ran across this video (Sharing the Sights and Sounds of Europe!) from the EU, through an unrelated recommendation that popped into my Twitter client.  The YouTube video describe the Audiovisual Service of the European Commission, which appears to archive digital media related to a broad spectrum topics.  The media is “free of charge / free of rights.”

Content can be found by search engine, thematic classification, or via the Europe by Satellite (EbS) service.  Information is also streamed via vodcasting, podcasting, RSS feeds, and live and VOD streaming.

What got me thinking was a marriage of what LEARN NC is doing and a product like the Audiovisual Service, where the “textbook” arrives as an broad topic, multimedia encyclopedia that is not only searchable but also pluckable.  Teachers and students might have a chapter described to them via discussion or presentation of a problem, and then work toward identifying content from the encyclopedia, assembling it into a personalized study resource gear not only toward the subject or problem, but also toward the individuals learning styles.

In a sense this would cause the traditional consumption approach to education and the emerging emphasis on production to overlap far more effectively than simply asking students to produce a multimedia presentation at the end of the chapter.

Here is the very funny video (Chemical Party) that actually connected me with the Audiovisual Service, suggested by Seesmic’s Loic Le Meur. It is designed to promote interest in science and chemistry, also from the European Commission.

1. Ferris, Bill. “[MEGA] North Carolina History Digital textbook, Part 2 from LEARN NC.” E-mail to Author.20 Aug 2008. [↩]

[Written last night on the plane]

I’m on my way home, somewhere over Wisconsin, I suspect, but my head is still reeling from a day of conversations with technology, media, art, and science educators at The Blake School in Minneapolis.  We kicked off the day with a presentation to the faculty that wove in and out of the future (the Now), the kids, the new information landscape, and contemporary literacy.  That was followed by several hours of conversation among the key technology folks.

The issues included security and the place for new tools for learning.  One question that arose more than once was a time line for introducing new literacy concepts — when do you start introducing information evaluation, research, ethics, etc.  We tend to think of these skills as technology or digital skills.  It’s an unfortunate mistake, because it channels us down to thinking of these skills in terms of time-on-machine.

They are information skills that apply digital networked information to accomplish goals — and they can easily be modeled.  I often suggest that educators of primary level children model, as part of their lessons, the practices of researching, evaluating, processing,and expressing digital information, that they talk about what they are doing, and engage their students in conversations about the processes.  Teachers should be doing this all the way through.  It’s another way of convincing students that these are not merely skills, to be demonstrated, but habits to be embraced and adopted.

I was very excited to hear that they had installed OpenSim on an old server (actually it was one of their very talented students), and that art students were using the Second Life(tm) style virtual world.  The students are using the 3D immerse world as a palette for artistic and functional design.  I urged them to consider this as a sandbox for other disciplines.  They are looking at it for physics, because, evidently, OpenSim features the ability to adapt the physical laws, enabling users to alter gravity and other conditions.

One of the most intriguing discussions was on their struggle to incorporate new information environments and associated techniques, while reconciling them to the schools reputation as a liberal arts school.  The Head of School, John Gulla, very eloquently answer my request for a definition of liberal arts — and I sure wish that I could remember his phrases.  Essentially, he said that they wanted their students to understand their world and to care about it — and to be so filled with curiosity that it could never be fully quenched.  I suggested that in a liberal arts school, you wanted your students to walk out of the history classes thinking, “I’d like to be a historian.”  ..and out of the biology classes thinking, “You know, I think I’d like to be a biologist.”

I guess that what we have to learn is how historians use this new information environment and how biologists work together in a collaborative web.  We then went into personal learning networks and how teachers can connect themselves to people in the field of their study, and engage in conversations within that field and within its current avenues of conversation.

There were so many times during the day that I thought, I’ve got to blog about that — and I just can’t remember what so many of them were.

Starting our initial descent.  More later!

Adrian Bruce connected me with a recent blog post (Dropping into New York) of his, where he describes a very early (1:00 AM) morning presentation he did for me about his experience with student blogging.  He presented via Skype to teachers I was working with in Westport, Connecticut.  I have to admit that the Skyped conversations with Bruce, and Lisa Parisi and Brian Cosby were the hits of the day.

It never fails to amaze me, the power and quality of this utility, Skype.  So many of us almost take it for granted (though I don’t make nearly enough use of it), and yet, so many educators are completely unaware of it — and don’t even believe it’s possible until you show them.

The teachers I was working with in Kannapolis the other day were using it to organize impromptu staff development, learning about and how to operate new web apps.

How have you used Skype to enable and enhance learning?

I was just reading Lisa Parisi’s blog post about Wordle, and decided to spend a few of my very few and precious minutes at home, playing around with it. I produced at word cloud from the URL of my blog, and, guess what. I’m guilty. I talk more about technology than anything else.

I come from a century that was defined by its machines. It began without airplanes, and the automobile was a true rarity. Personal computers and the Internet happened after I started my career as a teacher. Tech is cool. It’s a huge part of my world. It continues to astound me that I can project my ideas in writing out to a global audience and with half-way decent spelling — and that people actually read it.

But still, where it counts, it’s really about the information. Where are students meet their world, it’s about the information. They tech is only the lens.

Today, I’ll be working with educators in an independent school in Minnesota.  There will be an opening keynote address for the faculty, but then I spend the rest of the day with technology, media, art, and science folks, helping them struggle with some issues of modernizing instruction, making it more relevant to today’s information landscape.

Why is it that we can’t get past the technology barrier.  It seems that no matter how hard I try, to make it about the future, the kids, and the information, people still compliment me on a wonderful technology presentation.  If you use a computer and projector, then it’s about technology.  If you put your handouts on the web, it must be about technology.  If you’ve made a web site, then you must be talking about technology. [Image¹]

Here’s a quote about my speech to the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools the other day, as reported in the local paper.

The keynote speaker was David Warlick, a 30-year educator who operates The Landmark Project out of Raleigh. Warlick shared many ideas on using technology and the Internet in the classroom to make learning more exciting for students and teachers.

Most of the article was about district initiatives that were presented by the superintendent, which is as it should be.  But I’m not talking about technology, like its something that you have to open your drawer and chose to use.  Technology is the drawer!  ..and it’s the paper and pencil! ..and it’s the voice and the conversation. 

I’m pretty sure that it was Alan Kay who said that, “Technology is anything that was invented after you were born.”  Does it have to stay that way?  At what point does it stop being the technology and become the medium — and become transparent?

This is a barrier for us, this sense that we’re striving to modernize classrooms by using more technology.  I still do not think that the kids do this.  When they go out and buy the latest game system, they are not buying the latest technology.  They’re buying better games.  They are buying better experiences.

Folks out there who are making valuable and sustainable uses of technology, do you still think of it as integrating technology?  If not, when did that stop?  When did it become sustainable?

I guess for me, it happened when I started thinking about my job as entirely about inventing and communicating, rather than helping people integrate technology.

“Stop Ranting!”

1. Svenwerk, "Nature and Technology." Svenwerk's Photostream. 3 Mar 2006. 22 Aug 2008 <http://flickr.com/photos/svenwerk/107267802/>. [↩]

As I may have mentioned before, I’m trying to get in the habit of sharing something with my audiences that I only just learned — in the last 24 yours. Today, in Kannapolis, NC, I’ll tell folks about Photosynth. As a concept, it’s not new. Blaise Aguera y Arcas, of Microsoft, introduced Photosynth at TedTalks in May of 2007, to near thunderous acclaim in the blogosphere. I just learned, from Data Mining’s Matthew Hurst, that this amazing tool has formally launched.

I went to the Photosynth site, and was, once again, disappointed that it won’t run on the Mac, and I’ve got too much going on right now to run Windows and check it there. So I went to the next best thing, YouTube, to see if there were any recent videos, and found this one, a walk through that describes how to take photos of an object or place that are condusive to Photosynth’ing.

It reminds me a lot of how I use to make Quicktime VRs. Photosynth stitches photos together into a wider and more revealing panarama of the subject. However, Photosynth remains true to what’s going on, a bunch of photos synthed together to produce a world of that thing or place.

I could imagine a synthed photo arrangement of a classroom, where the teacher has place clues to an assignment. Students have to explore the classroom (museum, forest, local workplace, etc.) to discover the answer to a meaningful question.

Not often that I have Windows-envy, but this morning, I crave that distinctive bootup tone!

I’m trying to focus on getting ready for tomorrow’s address for the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools convocation.  But taking a quick glance at my e-mail, I just had to pass this one along — a video produced by my friend Carrot Revolution author, David Gran, an art teacher at the Shanghai American School.  It’s entertaining and always eye-opening to see what a Photoshop master can accomplish, such as making David Jakes look good on the cover of Vogue Magazine.

It’s worth noting that the conference is only 29 days away and will certainly be a mega-watched event.

Yes we try and make the Learning 2.008 Educational Technology conference a little different each year. We don’t just talk about changing the ways we teach and learn, we try and model it as well.

I have to confess a bit of unease at this eagerness to stir things up, especially when conference organizer and Thinking Stick author, Jeff Utecht continues, “We don’t always succeed but it’s about taking risks and pushing ourselves as educators.” It is about pushing ourselves, and it’s what disruption is about — a willingness to re-think, re-act, and re-learn.

Being an international conference presents challenges.  Being in Shanghai presents challenges.  For instance, it becomes more difficult for schools to release teachers for extended on-site time, when they’re traveling up to 12,000 miles.  To address this, Shambles man, Chris Smith is building a site on International School Island in Second Life.  Scheduled appearances there include:

• 31 August — Alan Levine and David Warlick
• 7 September — Ewan McIntosh
• 14 September — Organizers of the conference (a forum)

Each event will take place at 06:00 SL time (09:00 East Coast, 06:00 Pacific, 14:00 UK, 20:00 Bangkok, and 21:00 Hong Kong).

I got a lot done, this weekend, hunkered down at my desk, typing out code for Son of Citation Machine (SOCM).  I’m re-programming major parts of the tool so that it will run faster and draw less of a load on the servers.  I’m also adding the ability to save citations for bibliography building — which adds more of a load on the servers :-/.  It’s competition.  There are other very good citation tools out there now and although I do not find SOCM all that interesting to work on, its Google Ads are paying for the two web servers that run Class Blogmeister, Rubric Builder, Landmarks for Schools, and all the other more interesting things there and that I’d like to add.

The mistake that I’m entering a new work week with, is having watched Rick Schwier’s interview with George Siemens on Connectivism as the last think I did last night.  My guilt is that my weekend of coding and the personal server load that a summer of on-the-road work has cost me, has all interfered with the connective opportunities that persist in my fairly stagnant personal learning network.  This was more clear to me this morning, as I dipped into Twitter, looking for the reference to the Siemens interview, and found so many other very sticky comments that left me with a big, “I’ve got to come back and read that!”

I leave at about 8:30 this morning for a drive up to Roxboro to speak at the convocation of local community college and later to talk about PLNs with the faculty.  So I have only four hours to re-connect — and to catch up on four days of e-mail.

The other thing that I can be thankful to the Schwier/Siemens conversation for is that I’m up at 4:00 in the morning, with their ideas rattling around in my head.  One thing that kept nagging at me was a glancing distinction that George made between Connection and Connective.  He stated that Connection is more about networks, and cited some smart person as a reference.

Having not connected so much with Siemens writings, nor of the writers he refers to, I’m left, in the early hours of Monday morning, to my own intuitive since of a difference, between education as connection and education as connective.

Connection, I learn from Merriam Webster, is a noun, and implies to me something that has already happened or is already planned.  From my little dictionary widget, I read, “The placing of parts of an electronic circuit in contact so that a current may flow.” Even though the circuits can be laid out in a variety of ways, the outcome has been pre-ordained — a buzzer, light bulb, or crystal radio.

Connective, on the other hand, is an adjective, “serving to connect”.  One is established or at least mapped out to be established, and the other is a potential for connection, or a condition that leads to connections.  One leads to, by function, predictable outcomes, while the other may result in surprising outcomes with unforeseen benefits. As I thought of this earlier this morning, I saw sticky tendrils or dendrites, reaching out into their environment of experiences and making connections with a wide variety of potentially related ideas, concepts, and people.  The key is going into the learning experience with stickiness rather than pre-defined circuits.

Of course, pre-defined circuits, on one level, are necessary.  There is a need for being connected with common languages (literacy & numeracy), and a cultural, societal, physical, and historical context.  There is a need for foundation.  Plus there was, at one time, a great deal of value for predefined circuits, when you needed a management workforce.  But when you need participants in a rapidly changing global economy who are inventive, adaptive, and compassionate contributors, then a certain amount of unpredictability in our learning establishments should be a goal.

So it seems to me, from my early morning mental wanderings, that it has become more important to make lessons sticky, than it is to make lesson plans.