David Jakes' Tech Learning Blogpost--Frustration!

For a really nice example of how blogs can spur discussion, I discovered a recent David Jakes post at the Technology and Learning blogsite. Returning there to look for it today for shareshare, I couldn't find it. I googled me man David (whom its been my pleasure to meet on a couple occasions at conferences) and found his new blog, "The Strength of Weak Ties," with the post I was looking for: "Under Construction."

In it, Jakes, a prolific proponent for Web 2.0, says, "The idea that teachers should build Web pages doesn’t work, and it’s a classic and representative example of why technology has not delivered on its potential in schools. Here are my top five reasons for this failure, and the failure of technology to alter the learning landscape…" He goes on to list and explain those five reasons, which include:

* Reason 1: Using technology to create and support learning opportunities in most
schools is not considered mission-critical.
* Reason 2: Most administrators have failed to understand technology and how it
applies to the learning process on the most fundamental level.
* Reason 3: Schools have not provided teachers with the proper tool(s),
infrastructure, or support to get the job done.
* Reason 4: Teachers are too comfortable.
* Reason 5: Teachers have not seen the benefit.

I highly recommend the read, especially for readers who are technology coordinators or curriculum experts. Most importantly, read the comments. It's an excellent example (is that redundant?) of how a blog can spur thinking and conversation amongst parties interested in the topic.

Cheerio!

U.S. Students Below Average in Science and Math

From THE Journal*, a favorite source for current trends, a report that I'll add to my resource bank for an upcoming presentation in San Antonio about university outreach to K12 schools. Go read the article, and what's up with Canadian science education that places it in the top 5? Mind you, results are based on one of my favorite whipping-boys, standardized testing. But still...

And in math...

See the line at 500? That's the international median line. Clearly, something's wrong with the long-running argument that the poor performance of our students in science and math is "urban myth."

We clearly need some work here. My sense is that there are a passle of well-meaning educators out there working as hard as they can with out-dated tools and restrictions to teach kids content and skills, but if they were to be set free to innovate and energize the imaginations of their students, engage them, draw them into the larger context, "performance" would follow. What we need is teachers who are knowledgeable in both the current collaborative learning technologies and in ways to make sure that new ones don't fly under their professional radars. Wheels turning again...

*Nagel, Dave. "U.S. Students Below Average in Science and Math." THE Journal December 200712 December 2007 1,2. 12 December 2007 .

NYSACTE Video from Brian C. Smith

Here's a video from Darren Draper, a colleague of Brian C. Smith, who posted it at the NYSACTE ning.com site. The piece compiles a whole lot of current thought about education into an enjoyable, thought provoking set of comments and questions. It's resident on Brian's NYSACTE (New York State Association for Computers and Technologies in Education) conference ning. See what I mean:

Free Choices Thanksgiving Break Week!

The bar graph above illustrates (in order of their appearance in the lab) self-reported free choices exercised by my students in the Lower School Technology for Learning Lab this morning. It's the one day of classes this week, and as such I'm offering the full class session for free choice, as long as each time a student makes a selection it's noted on the board.

The graph was created in Google Documents, which we'll be using soon in the upper grades!

Everyone have a safe and fun and thankful break!

Video from Common Sense Media and the Macarthur Foundation

Just got this from friend Kevin Jarret in one of my listserv group emails. This video, archived from an intense panel discussion hosted by Common Sense Media and others, is long, but if you have an hour and 15 minutes or so to listen (the video is mainly panel discussion and audience, but you'll want to pull back to your computer and watch the examples of student work--WOW), I highly suggest you do so.

Included in the panel is USN alumna Stacey Goodstein, who spoke to our parents and faculty in an appearance on campus just last month. I'm hoping to include some audio from that talk in an upcoming Snacks4theBrain!

Here's the video:

Innovate---Journal of Online Education Redesign!

I'm pretty proud of my very first peer-reviewed professional journal paper, released in the October/November volume 2, 2005, issue number 1 of innovate-Journal of Online Education; and this exraordinary resource for educators K-20 (and learners of any level) has gone on since then to release issue after issue of valuable research driven papers and webinars. It's just this month released a GREAT site redesign. Hence this post. See my paper, "Videoconferencing K-12: The state of the Art," at the new site. Check out the one hour webinar (a condition of publication, and a free archived continuing resource for both authors and audience) I subsequently delivered. If you're not impressed yet, check out the "About this Journal" page.

Bookmark this site! And sign up for the listserv for once-a-month receipt of new publication announcements; I've just been approved to submit an article for a future special issue on education in Second Life--more news on that later...

"sledupotential"

If you're not aware of what's going on with Second Life, the huge online MUVE (Multi-User Virtual Environment), you may be surprised to know that educational opportunities abound. I maintain a fairly oft-accessed blog about education in Second Life and usually keep my posts about that area of interest at the "Oh Second Life" blog. However, I want to encourage anyone interested to visit a wiki I set up over this past weekend, one I'm calling "sledupotential."

Since ISTE's annual NECC (National Educational Computing Conference) issued a call for proposals this past month, I've been wondering what sort of offering I might make for the 2008 conference in San Antonio. I've been going to these things since 2000, and I began presenting at the 2002 conference in San Antonio, helping design and deliver a half-day session on Interactive Videoconferencing put on for the then "Office" of Science Outreach at Vanderbilt University. Since then (with the exception of one year, NECC in Seattle, when I spent my time attending rather than presenting workshops) I have presented on various topics in New Orleans, San Diego, and Atlanta, missing only Chicago in 2001 and Philadelphia in 2005. See a history of past NECCs here.

These conferences have provided some of the most pivotal experiences in my adult learning life, as well as helping me establish collegial bonds and friendships of long duration; and I look forward to the conference every year. This year may be a landmark, though.

I'm going collaborative. Seriously collaborative.

See the wiki, which explains the process better than I can here. "sledupential" promises to be the most learning-loaded and thought-provoking session I've ever had the privilege of helping facilitate. I'm smiling now, smiling wide: Maybe it has something to do with the nine other colleagues from all over the country (haven't gone international yet but chances are we will be so by the end of the day) who have signed on as co-presenters. Maybe it has to do with the way this idea developed from a more-or-less casual chat at an ISTE "social" in Second Life.

Maybe I'm just crazy!

Time, as it always does, will tell. :)

Online Conference October 15-19 and October 22-26

Mark your calendars and peel off some multi-tasking time during the work-weeks October 15-19 and October 22-26 for the K12 Online Conference 2007. It looks like it'll be ripe with learning and sharing opportunities for anyone who can stop by. I'm also very interested in the tools that will be used for the mega-shareshare. If you see me there, say hi!




Learn more...

The official conference website has Wes Fryer asking bloggers to post three things they hope to gain by attending this year (remember, this is all online--all virtual--all digital).

Here are mine:

1) Making/renewing friendships with educators who are interested in making education better

2) Seeing how all this works, when facilitated by some of the best practitioners in the field, and discovering new tools or at least valid new use for tools I already know about

3) Adding one more thing to my already overwhelming to-do list!

Okay, the last one might be a little sarcastic, but since number 2 is really two things, I feel covered :)

(4)Hundred Dollar Laptops to be Sold in US for Two Weeks Only

eSchoolNews reported today that the much-media'ed "Hundred Dollar Laptop," the product of Nicholas Negroponte's long crusade to level the global computing playing field, will be sold in the US for a two week period in November, ONLY.

Negroponte, as we know, is famed for thinking out of the box, some would say, "off the planet." I much admire this strategy, which offers the US public to purchase the $188 retail machine, running a souped-down Linux operating system, sporting built-in wireless, and chargeable with a hand-crank, for 400 dollars. The additional revenue from each sale will be applied to the purchase of one of the little laptops for a child in a third world country.

All the details are at the eSchoolNews article and I highly recommend the read. Now who's gonna pop me 400 bucks so I can buy one of these things!? If nothing else, it can keep my Kaypro 2x machine company as a collector's item. And, hey, that little 64K, 5 1/4 inch dual floppy driven machine cost me two grand! Moore was right!

There's a great pic of the device here!