Older versions of two of my favorite programs are now available for free downloading:
Dean Shareski got me thinking after reading his blog post “Thinking About Audience Matters.” I assume that readers of my blog are mainly educators from Michigan who I work with. However, my personal learning network is growing, mainly due to my participation in the Webcast Academy, EdTechTalk shows, and from using Twitter. I decided to add a ClustrMap to my blog to see if my assumptions about my blog audience are correct; you’ll see it in the left column.
TOMORROW, the House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on overriding the President’s veto of the FY08 Labor, HHS and Education Appropriations bill, which contains $272 million for Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT) program. The Senate may vote soon, as well. Please email your Senators and Representatives immediately and urge them to override the President’s veto and support passage of the FY08 Labor, HHS and Education spending bill. Click here to go to the Ed Tech Action Network - A draft email message is available for you to modify, and the whole process takes less than five minutes. Do it now.
An article, written by HIROKO TABUCHI, Associated Press Writer, was published on Nov. 4. It states that computers are becoming less needed in Japanese homes. Instead, gadgets such as smart phones that act like pocket-size computers, advanced Internet-connected game consoles, and digital video recorders, are doing the tasks that previously were done by a laptop or desktop PC.
More than 50 percent of Japanese send e-mail and browse the Internet from their mobile phones, according to a 2006 survey by the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
I read this article on the same day that I learned about the $200 ”gPC,” which will be available, beginning today, from Wal-Mart. The g stands for… what else?… Google, and the operating system is Linux. It comes loaded with Google applications and Open Source software.
I wonder if the trend of decreasing PC sales in Japan will also begin to show in other countries. I cannot imagine life without my PC. I simply cannot envision doing all that I do on my laptop today on a cell phone. Of course, I know how quickly technology changes. I used the Internet for the first time in 1995, just 12 years ago!
Will the gPC be successful in the US market?
Technorati Tags: gPC Japan technology
I just learned that Ning is now offering ad-free social networking sites for teachers/students. This is great news! A classroom Ning would be safe, easy-to-use, and would enable students to foster learning by connecting and collaborating with others, using an on-line communication tool that is motivating and fun. Learning is a social process. Teachers, set up a Ning for you students today! Also, sign up to be part of the Classroom 2.0 Ning social network, and see what social networking is all about.
For directions on setting up an ad-free classroom Ning, visit Steve Hargadon’s blog.
The new AASL Standards for the 21st-Century Learner are now available for download from the AASL site. The standards are based on the following beliefs:
In order to provide services at school library/media centers to meet the new standards, do operating procedures need to be changed? Resources?
Technorati Tags: AASL 21stcenturyskills
I often find myself having to explain why we should use Wikipedia in the classroom. Using Wikipedia is vital as students are learning informational literacy skills. Students need to be taught to check ALL sources to determine the validity of information. Sure, you can find articles about your local high school where students have added lies to the truth. That leaves a bad taste in your mouth for sure. However, the benefits far outweigh the negatives.
You cannot beat Wikipedia when you are tracking an event that is occuring now. For example, the devestating fires in San Diego are spreading. Take a peek at Wikipedia and learn more about the fires - you can learn way more than watching the news, and the newspaper won’t get here until tomorrow morning, and it will be outdated by the time it reaches the mailbox. There are photos submitted by people living in San Diego just 24 hours apart. The smoke and soot in the air you see in the photos brings realness to the situation for those, like me, living far away from the fires.
The first entry was on Oct 21. Two days later, there are over 500 entries. You can see what has changed, and that there are folks there checking to make sure the info is accurate.
Teachers MUST allow students to use Wikipedia!
Technorati Tags: wikipedia informationliteracy
I just finished listening to Steve Hargadon’s interview of Arthus, a 14 year old student. Notes from the podcast is available on Steve’s blog. Arthus developed an interest in the educational aspects of web 2.0 tools. A few weeks ago, during a WOW Webcast on EdTechTalk, I noticed Arthus was in the chat room, bringing the student voice into the conversation. I Arthus is an advocate for educational technology, due to all the educational benefits. He joins the ed tech leadership community in many arenas: he is a member of Classroom 2.0 on Ning, he joins webcasts on EdTechTalk, and Twitter.
Arthus has his own blog. I spent some time reading some of his recent entries and it is evident that he wants to make a difference in how schools are structured for LEARNING. I think the voice of this one student will soon be the voice of many more. Listen to the interview and see if you agree.
A new report from the Partnership for 21st Century Skills reveals that American voters believe that the United States is not preparing young people with the skills they need to compete in the global economy.
The poll’s findings come at a time when debates over the future direction of the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law, which is up for reauthorization, as well as the focus that education will receive during the 2008 presidential election cycle. NCLB focuses on narrowing the achievement gap for economically disadvantaged and minority students, and improving underperforming schools. Stopping there denies U.S. students the expanded skills set they now need to succeed in the globally interconnected society and workforce of the 21st century. According to Ken Kay, the President of the Partnership of 21st Century Skills,
The public strongly supports more rigorous expectations for students that integrate 21st century skills into core academic subjects. Educators want to equip students with these skills, but they need the public policy, professional development, assessment and curricular tools to accomplish this.
The Partnership for 21st Century Skills is an organization dedicated to promoting a new vision of what students need to be successful in a globally competitive economy. Please visit www.21stcenturyskills.org for more information. Better yet, listen to Ken Kay’s January 2007 speech from the FETC Conference, where he addresses the question of why students need new (additional) skills for the 21st century.
The K-12 Online Conference has begun! I just saw the opening keynote by David Warlick, “Inventing the New Boundaries.” Warlick dreams of the days when our classrooms are rid of the boundaries of classroom walls, textbooks, schedules bound by bells, etc. He realizes that classrooms need boundaries, but new boundaries that have yet to be invented. Warlick speaks of many things that I’ve been thinking about myself lately, due to my experiences in my own social learning network. Over the past year, I have learned so much from others, many of which I have never met face-to-face. We “meet” on Twitter, Ning, their blogs, my blog, Second Life, etc. We share experiences, resources, strategies, and challenges. Just this past week, I learned about Animoto and Ustream from folks in my personal learning network. I have met most of the people in my personal learning network by my participation in the Women of the Web 2.0 weekly webcasts, the Discovery Educator Network, and the Classroom 2.0 Ning network.
Our students have their own personal learning networks. They stay connected with blogs, IM, cell phones, online games, and text messaging. Warlick contents that much of what kids learn happens because they are connected. They ask others for help when they need it, and learn together. He states, “When they enter our classrooms, we cut off their connections, and this is an insult to our children.”
There is much work to do…. 57% of teenagers are published authors of creative works - blogs, videos, photos, etc. What percentage of teachers and school administrators are published authors? This relates to a grant I’m writing for helping teachers develop their own social learning networks. I’ll write about this soon!
Join the conversation! Take advantage of the learning opportunities by participating in the K-12 online conference!
Technorati Tags: k12online07 k12onlinetag warlick
Download the flyer for the K-12 Online Conference, going on between October 8 and 26. You can attend as many sessions as you like from anywhere there is an Internet connection. I attended several sessions last year and found it to be one of the best learning experiences ever! I connected with others from all over the world and learned about new online tools. Some of the sessions opened my mind to new ways of thinking about how technology can impact student learning. AND IT IS FREE!
There are 2 minute session “teasers” posted on the website, http://k12onlineconference.org/?cat=15. Please visit and plan to attend at least one session. The schedule can be found at http://home.alltel.net/lanihall/k12online2007schedule.html. If you cannot make it during the live broadcast, they will record the sessions and you can learn at a more convenient time.
Help spread the word!
Technorati Tags: k12online07 k12online07tag
The “K12 Online Conference” is for teachers, administrators and educators around the world interested in the use of Web 2.0 tools in classrooms and professional practice! The 2007 conference is scheduled to be held over two weeks, October 15-19 and October 22-26 of 2007, and will include a preconference keynote during the week of October 8. The conference theme is “Playing with Boundaries.”
The conference website has posted presentation teasers to give viewers a glimpse of the learning opportunities that will be available at each of the sessions. The teasers are short and very creative! The teasers worked for me…. I want to attend as many of the sessions as I can. Check out the teasers and plan to attend this on-line conference!
I received an invitation to check out Scriblink from a colleague, Renee. She was one of the teachers who participated in one of my web 2.0 usergroups last year, and has discovered Scriblink from one of the blogs she now follows. Yeah! The two of us explored this cool web 2.0 tool - wrote notes, typed notes, and chatted. We thought about how teachers and students could use it in and outside of the classroom - quizzing each other, collaborating on projects, brainstorming ideas, etc. Check it out!
If you receive an email invitation to join a new social networking site called Quechup… even from someone you know and trust… do not do it! As social networking websites continue to increase rapidly, the need to be tech-savvy and aware of online scams grows more important.
This is how it works: Unsuspecting folks receive an invitation from someone they know to go check out this new social networking site, and they register. As part of the registration process, they are asked to enter their email address & password to “find out if any of their friends are also Quechup users.” Well… Quechup, in an effort to get more users, sends an invitation to everyone in that person’s address book without them even knowing. The email appears to come from that person, not Quechup.
This site has serious ethical problems in how it recruits new users. Don’t go for it, and if you already have, delete your account and change your email password.
Would you be able to say no? I used my new iFlip video to shoot this short clip. I’m thinking that an iFlip could really help a busy classroom teacher who wants to have students record significant learnings to post to the classroom blog.
I was listening to NPR this morning and caught an interesting segment. China is attempting to limit on-line gaming to those under 18 by requiring software developers to install “anti-addiction” software to their programs.
According to an article in the BBC News,
The Chinese government has clamped down on the amount of time youngsters can spend playing online games, according to the official news agency Xinhua. Under-18s who play for more than three consecutive hours a day will have limits imposed on the amount of points they can score, the agency reported.
Gamers playing for more than five hours will get no points. A teenager was interviewed for the NPR segment, and said that they have already figured out how to get around the software - they register with someone else’s name who is over 18.
All of this makes me think of the discussion about filtering in schools here in the states. I read Steve Dembo’s TechLearning blog post last night, since it relates to the message he delivered to our Walled Laked teachers during his keynote address at our Spice it Up Technology Conference. One of his main points that I heard is that we cannot block all the social networking sites to protect our children…. they know how to get around the filters and restrictions that we set. They use on-line social networking sites at school and at home. The key is EDUCATION. Since Steve’s keynote, I have been thinking about strategies to employ to make on-line safety education a part of what ALL teachers do in Walled Lake, K-12. The students who spoke at the Spice it Up Student Panel agreed that on-line safety has not been addressed much by their teachers. Awareness is the first step, so I suppose broadcasting Steve’s message (that we taped) so that all the folks who did not hear it should be a priority. Then what? How do we ensure that the education is not done in a “hit and miss” fashion? Yes, all 8th graders have on-line safety instruction as a part of the NCLB 8th grade tech literacy requirement. This is obviously not enough! Please add your ideas as a comment to this post. Thanks!
I have had the pleasure of working with several people from across the state of Michigan on a professional development project for the 1:1 Institute. We have used Moodle (for file upload, wiki, and chat), Ning, Skype, and email to collaborate over the past several weeks. I found that I was able to closely connect with these folks using these on-line tools, something that I didn’t think would be easy to do. Now I feel even more strongly about the need to give our students more opportunities to use on-line communiation tools for educational purposes.
The school district where I work in Michigan held our 3rd annual “Spice it Up” Technology Conference. It is conference for teachers, put on by our own TALENTED teachers. We had a great start to the day with a virtual presentation by Discovery Education’s Steve Dembo. Can’t get much better than that. Some of the teachers really missed being able to see Steve’s face (although they did get to see a photo of him in a Star Trek outfit), but they listened intently and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. We also had a student panel; a mix of high school, middle school, and elementary students. The students were candid about their experiences growing up in the digital age. One high school student said “Technology is here to stay. We really need you teachers to jump on board and use technology with your students.” Another student wanted us to know that teenagers really can read email and study at the same time.
I facilitated workshops the entire day. The teachers in my MovieMaker video created a “I am a Teacher” video, following the same format as the “When I Become a Teacher” video that is posted on YouTube. That was a lot of fun! I’ll load it on TeacherTube and link it up here sometime in the near future.
The day was exhausing and invigorating at the same time. The turnout was good and the teachers who attended were appreciative and are anxious about putting into practice some of what they learned today.
The National School Boards Association published a report in July, 2007, to communicate their stance on social networking for education. The report, called “Creating and Connecting: Research and Guidelines on Online Social - and Educational -Networking,” is posted on their website, http://files.nsba.org/creatingandconnecting.pdf. All educators need to read this report.
81% of the students surveyed (1,277 students ages 9-17) have used a social networking website sometime over the past three months, and almost 60% report discussing educational topics on social networking sites. Yet the vast majority of school districts ban social networking during the school day, even though students and parents report few problem behaviors on-line.
The stance of NSBA is “Safety policies remain important, as does teaching students about online safety and responsible online expression….but students may learn these lessons better while they are actually using social networking tools.” NSBA is seeking a balance between protecting students and providing a 21st century education.
From my experiences working with teachers, I find that the general perception of online social networking is that it is bad, scary, and has nothing to do with education. However, I find that this thinking is due to having had no experiences with social networking. The 60 teachers who joined me in a Web 2.0 usergroup have now had positive experiences with social networking for their own professional development and learning. Once teachers discover the fun, exciting, motivating, and powerful learning that can result as a result of online social networking, they hopefully will take the risk to allow their students to learn using social networking tools. There are safe tools to use…. Moodle comes to mind.
Does anyone have other ideas about how we can keep our students safe while allowing them to use the social networking tools that are such a huge part of their lives? How else can we help teachers and administrators overcome their fears about social networking?
I learned about this collaborative video from Langwitches, who learned about it from A Teacher’s Life.
http://mail.google.com/mvideo
Help us imagine how an email message travels around the world. Take a look at the collaborative video we started, and then film what happens next. Post your clip as a response to this one. We’ll edit a selection of submissions together to make a final video, which will be featured on the Gmail homepage and seen by users worldwide.Respond to this video with your own clip by August 13, 2007 to be considered to the final collaborative video. Learn more about the project at http://mail.google.com/mvideo
This looks like fun to me!
The how-to videos for using Vista and Office 2007 are now available from Walled Lake’s Tech PD webpage. Hopefully they will be helpful to teachers and students (and anyone else) as they learn to use the new software.
Linda Criddle was the guest on the WOW chat tonight. She has written a book called Look Both Ways: Get Smart About Internet Safefy. Her philosophy is not to scare kids into being safe on-line. Instead, they need to LEARN safe on-line practices. The WOW chat was lively and thought-provoking. Linda’s book is available for purchase from any book store (2 chapters are available on the web site provided above).
Dr. Hamilton, Superintendent for Walled Lake Schools in Michigan (the district I work for), is presenting at the Laptop Institute Conference in Memphis. Wish I could be there! He will talk about 1:1 research, and its implications for modeling a collaboratiave, process-oriented, student-centered learning environment. Dr. Hamilton understands the importance of administrative leadership, teacher leadership, technology support, and instructional support for 1:1 initiatives. Walled Lake has had a 1:1 laptop program since 1999.
WOW! The Conference was awesome. The best part was meeting/connecting with with others I have only known on-line. The climate of sharing and helping each other to try to change the way we do business in schools was evident everywhere.
Many people took notes at sessions and posted them immediately to their blogs to share with those who could not make it to Atlanta. My laptop is just too heavy to lug around all day, so my goal for next time is to have a lightweight tablet PC with me so that I can do the same!
The Discovery Educator Network(DEN) hosted a dinner and showed some videos that teachers made at a pre-conference event. They were given a digital videocam and used Adobe Premier’s green screen feature to place themselves in the videos. The videos came out very cute… teachers kissing gorillas, running with lions, etc. I HAVE to learn how to do this!
After attending the conference, I know that I need to intentionally focus on strategies to help teachers provide students opportunities to be CREATIVE…. using video, images, and sound to convey a message.
Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod just created another remix of the famous “Did You Know” video that has been circulating around the world. This version, about 8 minutes long, has more visuals. It also includes some important questions to ask ourselves, our school leaders, and our legislature. All of us need to do what we can do to change the way we do business in US schools to successfully prepare our students for the future. Karl and Scott have set up a collaborative workspace to share ideas.
