"Innovator" Reflections Part 3

So, okay, I'm going out of order. Sort of. But one of my most exciting and magical innovations was devising and implementing SLedupotential at NECC 2008. That, of course, was back when ISTE called it's conferences the "National Educational Computing Conference."

All right, I'm lying again. I'll be a good boy and save SLedupotential for another post in this series.

Did I mention Snacks4theBrain? Yes I did, last post. Working one day a week for the Vanderbilt Center for Science Outreach, I produced and published 84 (or maybe more) podcasts, each of which you can still access at iTunes, and I've spent a little time looking for references to it. Here's one in an article at the Vanderbilt Register from 2006: http://news.vanderbilt.edu/archived-news/register/articles/index-id=28948.html.

How did I even get into this? Well, as I recall, I had been listening to podcasts from the early days, from the irreverent "Soccergirl" to Richard Vobes' "The Vobes Show," a daily online offering from a glorious madman in England. I also subscribed to Adam Curry's podcast, where the early MTV vjay held forth from his Netherlands expatriat residence, earning him the moniker "the podfather," because he claims to have invented the genre. Podcasts, of course, are online resident audio files, and after some time listening to my favorites I thought, well, how about one dedicated to emerging science? And let's make it entertaining. And let's add some music. I used

One of my favorite podcasts, The Goodbeershow, featured folks sitting around a table at a watering hole in Muncy, Indiana talking with Jeffrey T. Meyers about the beer(s) they were sampling that night, and he featured live or recorded music along with the ribald discussion. As it turned out, I was able to sit in and contribute to two shows in Muncy and to host one at Yazoo Brew here in Nashville when Jeffrey was passing through town. What fun all that was.

I proceeded to establish a format. I would open with a standard recorded intro, describe what was to come, play some independent (read: "free") music, interview a working scientist about her or his work, play some more independent music, and mess around a bunch. I would plug the Center for Science Outreach and their good work, reference the website, and play around with sound effects like a crazy person. I worked first in CoolEdit Pro, then Adobe bought that software and I moved to Adobe Audition. Eventually I was working with the freeware Audacity. And eventually, after all that work, I called it quits when I left the CSO (described in the last post).

I was "in the Cat Bird Seat," as my father-in-law would say. I'd invented something, was able to produce it mostly at home every Monday whilst working for the CSO, run in for meetings when necessary, and everyone was happy. Best of all, I interviewed a bunch of brilliant people, pretending that I knew what I was doing and, almost unimaginably, getting away with it.

You know that Vanderbilt scientist the national news always breaks out when there's any kind of viral outbreak? Dr. William Shaffner? I interviewed him about the Swine flu. Check. You know David Warlick, brilliant front vanguard for change in education? I interviewed him and we became friends. Peggy Sheehy? Of Second Life Teen Grid reknown? Check, and dear friend. Steve Spangler, the modern-day Mr. Wizard? Check. It's all there at Snacks4theBrain. Still and always. They are archived in the Vanderbilt University Discovery Archive. Go listen to one and help keep the series alive. I'd appreciate it. Hint: The best way to do this is to "Save File" and listen locally. You may need to rename it, taking out some weird characters, before it works. Looks like they need to do some maintenance on their 2008 archives. Ha. The direct link in http://discoverarchive.vanderbilt.edu/handle/1803/3186 but I've already renamed it and made it available for you at the following:

Here's a link to one episode, my replay of an earlier Dr. William Shaffner interview, so if you have 30 minutes for some weirdness and fun, go for it. 

http://abcnews.go.com/meta/search/imageDetail?format=plain&source=http://abcnews.go.com/images/Health/FLU_Snapshot_William_Schaffner 

So yeah, that's something I'm proud of. Something else I made up. More "innovation," though I was just making things up. It's what I do.

So SLedupotential next post? Maybe. Maybe not...

Stay tooned.

"Innovator" Reflections Part 2

Even though I didn't label the last post "'Innovator Reflections' Pt. 1," I'm going with it henceforth . Yesterday, in connection with the upcoming release of my selection as "Innovator of the Month" of June 2014 with THE Journal, I said I'd post daily until I ran out, or at least until Thursday of next week, when my webinar entitled "Starting and Maintaining a Virtual School" will hit the 'netz live and then be archived. I have been reflecting on the innovations I'm most proud of and I'm going to lump two into this post at the risk of running out soon.

From 1999 to the middle of 2010, my main work took place in the computer lab at University School of Nashville, after having taught 3rd grade for 3 years there. In 2001, I was asked by Vanderbilt University to leave USN to work full-time as "Teacher in Residence" for the Vanderbilt University Office of Science Outreach. I had been recruited by Dr. Susan Kuner, with whom I had done some work in the then very infant stages of videoconferencing at Vanderbilt Virtual School (not really a virtual school, but rather its own videoconferencing outreach, a very early iteration from which I learned bushels).

I loved my job at USN and my beautiful daughter Miranda was attending school there, and with my amazing son Colin just starting there as well I didn't want to leave my kids, or my students, all ~360 of them, whom I saw each week in the lab. We worked out a deal--I would work Mondays at the OSO, and my classes at USN would be compressed into the remaining four weekdays. It was doable, and we done it. This went on through 2008-2009, when the grant funding supporting the position ran out and I was let go, gently and with genuine compassion, by the Director of the by then Center for Science Outreach, Dr. Virginia Shepherd. Ginny explained that with the newly minted School for Science and Math taking off so solidly, priorities had changed, and I silently added in my mind that they had discovered that they needed the funding they had been allocating to supporting a rogue, independent, innovator for their new project and more classroom teachers for this amazingly innovative project. Learn more about it at theschool.vanderbilt.edu.

All this to say that I had a blast working with the CSO, all the way from its foundations as the OSO. That's where I first met and worked with dear friends Dr. Kecia Ray, now President of the  International Society for Technology in Education, and Jan Zanetis, now CEO of the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration). Ginny Shepherd more or less let me make up things, and the two best things I made up were the "VIA Dyer" Interactive Videoconferencing series and "Snacks4theBrain," an 84 episode podcast from the Vanderbilt Center for Science Outreach. Let's briefly detail these.

VIA is an acronym I used to describe "Videoconference Interactions with Astronomers and the "Dyer" is simply Dyer Observatory at the top of a hill just outside of Brentwood, Tennessee. The double entendre, in that the interactions came "via," or "by way of" Dyer Observatory, was indeed intended. I do not recall how I first got hooked into Dyer, but I believe it was that the OSO had placed one of a couple dozen grant-purchased high-end videoconferencing codecs (hardware) in school around the MNPS school district and also one up at Dyer, and I first went up there to help them get it set up. There I met with a man who has become one of my closest friends, Rocky Alvey. He's a story unto himself, then Superintendent and now Director of the Observatory and truly a Renaissance Man.

Long story short, over the course of a couple of years I helped design the website for the Observatory, upon which they have built nicely, and we served up a couple dozen weekly and then bi-weekly interactions with students around the country. A classroom would sit together in front of their own codec, wherever they were, and I would set up the videoconferencing camera on an expert in the field of astronomy, and they would do a little presentation, often a PowerPoint that I would operate as the "next slide" guy, then answer questions from the remotely located peanut gallery. Here's a snapshot from the Internet Wayback Machine (a great resource) from 2004 and here's a pic of one of these interactions featuring former astronaut and then-Director of Dyer, Dr. Rick Chappel:

Producing VIA Dyer was as much a learning experience for me as for the students. That's why I did it, really, trying as I have since I became an educator to push the technology into the service of learning and teaching. Building that program, then reluctantly letting it go (though Rocky has not--see a 2013 videoconference video from Dyer!), was a learning experience for me that prepared me for what I'm doing now. I am thankful to Dr. Ginny Shepherd for believing in me enough to let me innovate, and for Rocky Alvey for being open enough, and innovative enough himself, to support and help develop VIA Dyer. Maybe THE Journal needs to hit up my man Rocky!

Okay, that's enough for this morning: I lied. I'll share "Snacks4the Brain!" tomorrow. It's a doozy of a story that requires more description than I have time for this morning. Got to shower and get in to today's work at MNPS Virtual School, where "We Never Close."

See ya (that will mean more when you hear some S4theB!: heck, if you're an auditory learner and want a preview, head on over to iTunes and grab some Snacks before checking in here tomorrow. It's a body of work, don'tcha know.

Swordswallowing

As reflected in my previous post, I had the pleasure of meeting Dan Meyer the other day. Dan's got a lot of things going on in his unconventional life. He's president of the Sword Swallower's Association International, he's been on a plethora of talk shows, and he's been the recipient of the coveted IgNobel awards, which I featured on an early Snacks4theBrain! podcast. Dan's agreed to permit me to podcast his presentation at HealhCamp Nashville yesterday, and I'll take him up on it, assuming I can get clear audio out of the hi-8 videotape of it that he so graciously loaned to me.

Watch for Snacks4theBrain! episode 84 to feature some pretty neat swordswallowing! Meanwhile, here's a teaser, video I snagged in his presentation:

Snacks4theBrain! an iTunes Featured Science Podcast!!

Well it only took 72 episodes of Snacks4theBrain! to land it on the front page at iTunes U in the "Featured" category when one searches the term "Science." Yayyyyyyy! though! That will hopefully drive more traffic to the Vanderbilt Center for Science Outreach to gain more attention for their untiring work to further science and math teaching and learning in our world.

Billy Hudson's "Aspirnauts" Program--Laptops for the Rural Schoolbus Ride!

I mentioned recently my jaunt down to Memphis for the Tennessee Association of Independent Schools' annual Technology Institute, but it's been bugging me lately that I didn't share out a particularly interesting coincidence. The closing keynote speaker, Nashville educator Jim Kelley shared out several great videos. One in particular struck a note that sounded like home: the NBC News feature coverage of Vanderbilt's own Billy Hudson and his "Aspirnauts" program, the fantastic initiative he's brought to his small Arkansas home county to bring laptops to children on rural school buses. I gather that rural communities struggled for years to keep their local schools, finally succumbing to the urbanization of their counties and thereby losing the tax base needed to support local schools. As a consequence, students in Arkansas often spend up to 5 hours a day riding school buses.

As I reported quite some time ago (June 2007) in my Snacks4theBrain! interview with him, Hudson thought to himself, hmmmmm, what if they had internet connected laptops and media devices that would let them put that previously wasted time to productive use? The NBC video says much more than I might about his project, and I humbly offer it here. To read more about it, visit the story's archive at MSNBC.com.

Enjoy, and if you happen to know any corporations looking to make a really significant contribution to the future of education, what if school buses all over the nation were outfitted like this? Take a look at the difference it's making in its pilot group:

Vanderbilt's iPhone Content Portal!

Very cool, I must say. Just came across Wes Fryer's notice of Vanderbilt University's recent release of its iPhone content portal, expressly designed to efficiently deliver web content to that device, and went and checked it out. The front page, gold letters on a black background, obviously designed for fast delivery, includes the text,

Download coursework, lectures, news, music, sports, special events and more.

Play on your iPod, Mac or PC, or burn a CD.

Stay connected anytime, anywhere.

Explore a world of knowledge at Vanderbilt.

and links to content, including the extensive offerings of Vandy's iTunes U, podcasts also available via iTunes. I looked a little further, into iTunesU and found Community Content, and here's a screengrab of that page. Look what's on top! Yippee!!! If you've been the interview subject in any of Snacks4theBrain!'s now 69 podcasts, zip on out on your iPhone and give yourself a listen!!!

Snacks4theBrain! is up!

Wow, I spent much of the last two days, when not relaxing with my family, painting doors for our house, or watching DVDs with my wife, putting together Snacks4theBrain! episode number 69, a nifty little number with music from friend Ross Falzone and Rocky Alvey and a very fascinating interview with the Vanderbilt Center for Science Outreach's Dr. Jennifer Ufnar. Go listen.

This looks like a most interesting day of networking with other podcasters here in Nashville, Tennessee. I'm planning to to see what I make of it. Anybody else interested in attanding? Click the image to check the "unconference" out!

Happy New Year--It's Gonna Be a Good One!

Been spending little time online this week, much time painting a sorely needful room in our house, the extra one over the garage we call "the wii room" for what I hope are obvious reasons. Much time hanging out with my wife and daughter and missing my son, who's in Colorado learning how to snowboard with his cousin and his "other family;" a bit of time fleshing out and publishing an all-indie-music Snacks4theBrain!; and a tad bit just relaxing and reading and movie viewing.

Reading: WIRED Magazine, "David Byrne and Thom Yorke on the Real Value of Music" and All the Pretty Horses, the first of Cormac McCarthy's "Border Trilogy."

Byrne and Yorke summarize nicely the changes which the bizness of music has seen and break down a musician's options for earning a living into a tidy set of five options. Certainly worth a read for anyone participating in the field in any way.

McCarthy's this year's Pulitzer Prize winner for Fiction, and there's a reason why. My wife and I went to see the movie "No Country for Old Men," (wheeeeeeeeew) and I just had to experience more of this author's perspectives on the American West. I feel our children are missing out on the rich narrative experience this topic has to offer, btw, much because of the media's general confusion over the historical nightmare that was our Eurocentric ancestors' genocidal treatment of Native Americans--sigh. I really enjoy a good Western, whether it's movie, fiction, or history. Another great writer in the field, just as a li'l bonus for ye, is Elmore Leonard, whose sort of "greatest hits" short story collection came out in 2004 and which I discovered after viewing the fab movie "3:10 to Yuma" last year.

Cinema: We took on "I am Legend" yesterday, and I'm glad we did so on the big screen. I really enjoyed Will Smith's tour de force, though I'm not sure all the Oscar talk is on target (and not sure why I'm not sure). On the small screen we watched "Waitress" last night and that's more up my alley, quirky love story that it is, with a nicely optimistic ending that isn't schmaltzily predictable (maybe that's part of my issue with Legend). And we watched "Rescue Dawn" earlier in the week, a movie that was absolutely great until the throwaway "war-movie-turned-sports-movie" ending. We've also started the DVD collection of "Dexter," the not-for-the-faint-of-heart Showtime series about a serial killer who only kills people who need killing (now there's an ethical-dilemma-filled theme for you). Michael C. Hall did such wonderful work in "Six Feet Under" and seeing him in a very different role in Dexter is a treat.

I also spent a little time to put up a brief video tour of the Blogger's Hut at ISTE Island in Second Life. You can see that at my SL blog.

Well there it is, my version of the annual family letter.

I guess all this leads me to say that I've realllllllllly enjoyed my week of down time over the Winter Holidays, at times actually thinking how nice it would be to be this uncommitted to work schedule all the time, as in "retirement." Since that's not an option, mainly for financial reasons, I'll be back at school Monday (at Vanderbilt, where I'm helping friend Cathy Walker with her workshop session at an Arkansas teacher conference, popping into Second Life for a brief tour of ISTE Island--then trying to firm up plans for three weeks of teacher-teaching Web 2.0 in the summer). Then on Tuesday I'll re-greet my 3rd graders bright and early with a fresh set of plans for the remainder of the winter and spring. Life(s) is good, ya'll.

Hold close to what you love, and may it love you back.

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:

Second Life Cross-post

Check out my Second Life blog for news of an important event Wednesday night "inworld." Educators who aren't aware of the surging interest in SL as a pedagogical tool might be well served to open up a portion of their peripheral vision to the increasingly well-documented successes of the platform.

A quick googling of "'Second Life' 'Education'" might be a good starting place. Here, I've done it for you, saving you one more click :)

I was at the Conference on Information Technology Monday, cruising around gathering information for my Vanderbilt podcast, and though some of the hundreds of sessions available drew pretty good crowds, I have to say the only standing room only sessions I peeked into were those on Second Life (and one very interesting one on a 3D software platform for crime scene forensics education. I helped out a little in a session by John Miller, from Tacoma State College in Washington, about his NESIM (Nursing Education Simulation) Second Life site, and it was both fun and stimulating, not to mention enthusiastically embraced by the (yes, standing-room-only) attendees. That'll be the focus of my next podcast, due out in two weeks, with audio from the session and possibly even some video.

If all this picques your interest and you have a couple hours Saturday morning, there is a workshop inside Second Life for beginning educators hosted by Elven Institute, an association of real-world librarians. More info at the Elven Institute website.

Cheerio, ya'll.

Got the Winter Crud but...

Lying flat on my back with a chest cold today but it does give me a chance to catch up, inbetween nappies. I've been most active in my Second Life blogging lately. So much happening there, not a great deal happening here. Excepting, well, hmmmm...

Awaiting word on the proposal applications for NECC2008 in San Antonio. I put in three: two for the School for Science and Math at Vanderbilt and one for Second Life. The first two are similar, one a session with IVC and one a poster session with IVC capability. I've done several of the former but none of the latter and I'm hoping that if one is accepted over the other that the poster goes through. I didn't even make it to the poster floor last year in Atlanta but I recall from the year before that it can be a busy place; plus it'll be a challenge for me to put together something in a new (two hour!) format. I'm so proud of the work that's going on at the school that I'd love to get the chance to share it out face to face with fellow educators: It's a big task to implement a program that brings 100 public school high school students, 25 from each grade level (the ultimate goal), to a university research campus one day a week. The fact that such a small staff makes it happen is nothing short of remarkable. The use of Moodle as a LMS (Learning Management System) is going well, and everyone's learning, even the young and stellar faculty!

It's also delivering some great audio for my podcast, Snacks4theBrain!. If you haven't caught the last one, featuring portions of an interactive videoconference between School freshmen and the director of the National Ice Core Laboratory, do so post haste...

I've blogged about the SL 3-hour workshop presentation proposal but if you missed that you can find its meat, carved up and served to the reviewers' table by 9 chefs from 9 different states in the country, at the SLedupotential wiki.

Finally, my lovely wife has just completed a huge fundraising event for and at my school, and you can see something about that at artclectic.org, the event's website. Due to the work of many volunteers it was immensely successful (and I should say that it is a testament to her capable and untiring work all year long that it even happened!), raising let's-just-say a bundle of discretionary funding for my school, including funding for teacher professional development and for its exemplary need-based scholarship program. artclectic (no caps) is also what my school director likes to say a "friendraiser," this year achieving great mention and excellent review in the local press and nothing but superlative comments from everyone I talked to. For me, it was a chance to see artists who are both world-class artists and wonderful human beings, some of whom I consider friends from the long association over the years Lee Ann's been making artclectic tick. To watch the little ones move through the stunning gallery on Education Day, especially, was both heartwarming and encouraging. I've been working on a video from that day, and when it's done I'll share it here!

Sigh, going back to sleep now...

Practical Theory--A View from the Classroom

"We need school and district administrators to create a culture of innovation where teachers and students can bring new ideas, new tools and new ways of thinking to the subjects we have at hand and be rewarded for their innovation. When that happens -- when teacher learning through non-traditional means is valued -- then we can a) expect to really see change and b) hold teachers accountable when they don't. Until that day, we will see the early adopters and the risk-takers bring new ideas to bear on the classroom, but I don't think we'll see wide-spread adoption of any tools at any rate faster than general society."

--Chris Lehman, Principal of the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia.

Chris is an award-winning educational technologist who has taken his views on the potential of new teaching and learning tools to turn around the decline of our schools into his work at SLA. I will be spending this week catching up on his blog archives. Want to join me? Visit Practical Theory -- A View from the Classroom. Last one to understand it all is a rotten egg...

Web 2.0 Update

Just a quickie this morning to point you to a new blogpost at my Classroom 2.0 site. Why copy and paste here when I can simply link you to it!?

New Snacks4theBrain! Podcast Features NECC2007!

Hey! Just finished posting episode number 58 of Snacks4theBrain! and thought it might be good to let everyone know here. The 20 min. podcast features snippets from Peggy Sheehy, Kathy Schrock, and Chris Dede--all three of whom presented stellar talks at the National Educational Computing Conference in Atlanta, Georgia (Chris's excerpt is from his keynote the subsequent "online learning institute" tagged onto the tail end of NECC). Go visit the S4theB! blog to listen and learn more.

Oh, for those monitoring for news of the new podcast "uber-device" to which I alluded in my Windows Podcasting talk at NECC, the current news is that its release is set for October of this year. As soon as I have leave to let out more I promise I'll do so right here (though you'll probably hear of it elsewhere as well--it's too big an innovation to escape large press).

If you haven't already, check out and keep an eye on the developments that will blossom over at the Web 2.0 in Education's week-long workshop at the University School of Nashville next week.

Big Announcement for Attendees of My NECC Windows Podcasting Tools Session!

(part of the audience!)

I had so much fun sharesharing yesterday for the ~240 dedicated teachers, administrators, and technologists who packed my Windows Podcasting: Tools, Tips, and StraTegies for Success (ISTE dropped my internal cap on the last word in its title but I thought it was cute, don't you?) and want to thank you all for being there. Please feel free to add my feed to your RSS aggregator of choice for that podcasting device announcement I teased you with!

The winners of the two giveaway FlipVideo devices (THANKS, Simon at puredigital.com!!!) were Bruce Dale, Technical Support Specialist at Rabun County Schools in Tiger, Georgia and Brenda Thompson, teacher at Madison County School District in Flora, Mississippi. Congrats!

Seven other lucky winners took home items from FTC Publishing and some random other things from my office, including a Works Suite package and a 2003 Britannica Encyclopedia on CD (the boobie prize, to be sure but most likely a bonafide antique worth keeping). I want to sincerely apologize for the pandemonium that accompanied the prize drawing process (if you can call it that) but folks, I had NO IDEA that my session would be such a sellout, and had a process prepared for drawing prizes from a pool of certainly no more than 100...

Here's the announcement I want to make today: I have 100 magnatunes.com (remember, the cutting-edge independent music distributor website offering free music to podcasters?) to give away, courtesy of the generous John Buckman at Magnatune. You have to trust that I'll work out a good way to pick the first 100 emails I received in the mad rush to win yesterday, and winners will receive an email with an attachment to save that will have a gift card number to use on the website for up to 10 dollars worth of music. Most full albums at Magnatune average a price of 8 dollars, and John's hope is you'll "get" the unique service ethic there and come on back when you want new music that hasn't been filtered by the (all caps) MUSIC INDUSTRY musicmill.

Again, thanks so much and check back for more pictures here!