ISTE 2014 at ISTESIGVE in Second Life!

We're getting set up to share our portions of the ISTE 2014 experience in Atlanta, Georgia with educators around the globe at our ISTESIGVE headquarters in Second Life. Beginning Saturday, June 28, I'll be streaming SIGVE events into Second Life on the rooftop of our beautiful HQ building.

 

 

 

 

 

Come join us, whether you're in Atlanta or in your jammies at home.

There's a notecard in the sign that details events, dates, and times proposed for streaming and this information will continue to grow as I plan the conference. I'm very excited this year because my only real presentation (that I'm time-committed to) is the SIGOL Ignite session, which should be cooler than grits and lasts only an hour. The rest of the time I'll be your cameraman on the scene, and I'll be in SL and in Atlanta and in the action's thick. Plan to plop down on a rooftop "comfy cushion" and join us! The Playground this year is organized and run by our own Bluebarker Lowtide and should be worth the cost of admission alone (if there were a cost of admission). See you there: Life(s) is good.

fundamentalrelationships, a videoem

I am lucky to live on the west side of Nashville, in a neighborhood where all the mostly ranch-style homes are backed by steep ridges that run like beef-steak marbling through the landscape. While the tops of the ridges closest to my home are technically not a part of the Conservancy proper (see the map at the Conservancy's website), they are attached to it by virtue of their undeveloped woodsiness and steep remoteness. My own property line contains a triangle of the woods, and just above it is a high ridge that if I follow it up to its highest point, connects to the "Ecological Corridor" protected not just by its elevation, but by law. If I could backpack in a boat to get me across the Cumberland River, I could hike to my favorite fishing lake, Marrowbone Lake, just northeast of Beaman Park, at the north end of the Corridor.

Geese and bobber at Lake Marrowbone

The other day, the last day of Winter, in order to get out of the house for a bit, I hiked up the back yard an onto "my" ridge. (Coming back down my neighbor caught a glimpse of me and phoned to make sure that it was me coming down "her" hill with a mandolin on my back.) I took a trash bag up, because I have for a while been bugged by the amount of beer cans and such up there. Here's the trash I collected, leaving "my" ridge now pristine and uncluttered by the man-made (unless you count the two deer hunter motion cams strapped to trees):

While I was up there, I headed over the overgrown jeep trail that leads up the top ridge north to intersect with the Conservancy and down into what I like to think of as "my" hollow, where there's a horizontal downed tree down into it a bit that serves as a perfect church pew for me to meditate and take in the relative silence. I have achieved such stillness there that I have been able to perceive the swaying of the trunks of trees 3 feet in diameter. But that day, I had packed in my mandolin, which as you will hear I don't play nearly enough these days (you can hear my licks from when I did play nearly enough on my Alaska band's live record at CDBaby. That said, I've long been experimenting with a single or double string technique with the open strings played to creating an often slightly discordant drone, and I ended up choosing a song I originally composed on a McNally Strumstick, "The Morning After," to record on my iPhone's QuickVoice app.

Walking back down toward home, I noted some natural compositions in the woods itself (there are many more), and I filmed a few of them and put together the following film. It's a little video poem. A videoem? Please enjoy:




I keep a Dropbox folder of pics I take when I walk, and you can check into it as you will at that folder's online location. Hopefully, I'll continue to explore and to note more fundamental natural relationships. I feel privileged to live in a city where some nature has been so thoughtfully protected, and I hope the deer, owls, and other critters who inhabit that Corridor and its abutting wild spaces do too.

Getty Images Goes all Social Media Friendly and Such

Very cool: Getty Images just implemented a decision to make its images watermark free and embeddable in exchange for a mandatory link to its site. This is a huge boon to bloggers, students, and teachers who are creating content. I'm just passing it along here, discovered this morning in Facebook shared by Wesley Fryer and Sharon Duffy Elts. they, in turn, got the skimmy on this sea change at The Verge. To find your own images by searching the Getty Images site, simply use the search tool and click on the open/close tags icon beneath your resulting picture. It looks like this:

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Copy the code and make sure you are in your html edit mode. Paste it in, formatting as you wish -- I notice the image below, embedded in that way, has a scroll bar which I could noodle around with (likely the size parameters) to make disappear.  I'm thinking that the mandatory link is a citation in and of itself, voila! Auto-citation! At least in online documents. You may need to do an internet citation in a printed document, so be sure to check with your teacher(s) before thinking your academic integrity is in tact for a paper or project!

 

MNPS Initiates "PD of the Future" with MNPS All-Stars Training

Roughly 6,000 public school teachers will all be consistently exposed to a rigorous online self-paced course in Blackboard over the remainder of Spring semester and through the summer. In all schools in the district this week and ongoing, All-Star "Lead Learners" are introducing this program to their full-time certificated charges of 50 or fewer teachers along with the District expectation that they complete it by what I like to call "August the Oneth."

For the first time in my own 4 year employment with Metro, every single teacher will be on the same page with important concepts, policies, and resources--including Education 2018 (MNPS's plan "to become the highest performing school district in the nation by 2018"),  Common Core State Standards, PARCC testing, District hardware and software, Response to Instruction and Intervention, Teaching for Understanding, and what the district is calling it's "Lever of Change," Personalized Learning.

from http://www.mnps.org/AssetFactory.aspx?did=86150

Ever since I heard David Warlick speak for the first time, likely around 1996 or 1997, I have been on board with the concepts underlying this change. I honestly never thought I would hear support for it coming from any administration. I couldn't even really get support for it in the private school sector. It seemed idealistic and revolutionary. Do you know why? it IThis, my friends, is huge.

I was lucky to have been chosen as one of those Lead Learners and to have undergone a two day training at Martin Professional Development Center last month. When I heard our Assistant Superintendent Jay Steele explain that he believed that there was still to be too much testing going on but "that's the world we live in," even that element glimmered with hope for the future. All through the training, my dear friend Dr. Kecia Ray, Executive Director of Learning Technology and current President of ISTE, and others reminded us that we were blazing new trails and emphasized that any new ideas we had for improvement would be heard and acted upon if deemed appropriate. Again, this is a public school district, the largest in the state, serving well over 80,000 students in an amazingly culturally diverse county, with demographic and socio-economic statistics that should scare anyone attempting to do the right thing by all its constituents. I'll throw one at you: "72% Economically Disadvantaged." You can see them all here.

Expect to hear more about this. We are on the move. I'm proud to be a small part of it.

Grades and...

Okay. I'm a parent who has two high school graduated children. One is a college graduate and who knows if the younger will ever get to that thang.

With both of these kids, we have been unconventional parents, or at least so I think.We encouraged them to pursue their passions, to explore the arts, and we did not ride them or micromanage their grades or their academic performance. My dear wife and I are not academic people; or rather, a part of me is but it's not a major part.

We set them free in many ways. They might argue that, but when our daughter went to college she was the one in charge. She figured out her path, made decisions about changing it, and did so with our support and blessing.

When our son entered his Freshman year at a Nashville arts school, we backed off and worked to let him manage his high school work. Until Fall semester of his Junior year all went well. He failed four of his classes that semester. He had never failed any class, ever, in the history of his schooling. We all went into triage mode. This past December, my dear son graduated early from an alternative school here in Nashville, where he found teachers who cared about him and also who held high expectations for his work.

Heavy sigh. So. Looking back I hear my brother's sing-songy voice "Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda Shoulda, Woulda." I somewhat resentfully sort of wish that I had bought in more to the academic thing.

Why?

Well, take a look a last week's release of a Pew Foundation study that compared incomes of high school graduates with those of college graduates. It's profiled in Feb. 11th's "Is college worth it? New PEW study says yes" and I heard it discussed several times on NPR this week, with the repeated tagline "The only thing more expensive than going to college these days is not going to college." According to that article, there has never been more of an income gap between college graduates and millennials with a high school degree or less. Get it from the horse's mouth at https://selectra.co.uk/sites/selectra.co.uk/files/pdf/SDT-higher-ed-FINAL-02-11-2014.pdf if you're the sort of bloke who needs to bypass the synopsis.

After looking at all of this, my rational mind wants to keep on developing this train of thought. What if I had been more positive with my children about the benefits of high grades? What if I had more encouraged academic learning and performance? But I have a confession to make. My heart wants to go "yay." Both of our young adults are going to figure it out so that their lives work best for them. I believe that their experiences in the performing arts and their love of artistic expression (and more importantly and more subtly, the understandings they gained pursuing those paths) will serve them far better than any externally applied assessment or any paycheck. They will struggle and they will figure it out: Heck, so did their mom and I. The big difference, I have to admit, is that it's a much more dangerous world that it was when we were figuring it out.

They are golden, and if we've given them anything, it's love and support, and a healthy skepticism about how things are said to work in the world. Screw PEW. And screw the worship of the dollar. Life is about more than that. Listen to this live recording of a song I wrote on this topic -- God I do love Dana's harmonies.

What a Week--No ISTE Board Run

There is a lot happening. So much, as a matter of this post, that I have reluctantly decided to abandon my plans to run for the ISTE Board this year. I am pulled 9 ways to Sunday in my sort of made-up role at an 80,000+ student Public School system. I'm a Lead Teacher, responsible for supporting and monitoring the work of half of our 25 adjunct teachers and supporting their students and parents; I am a Support Specialist, the "house geek" for my school and its community; I am the only part-time Academies Coach in the system, imagining and building the first "Virtual Academy" in the world after-work-hours; and now I am the "All Star Teacher Trainer" (I prefer "Lead Learner" and I intend to use that) for my school and two others: My district is rolling out a model of Professional Development on February 28 that will become just that for the nation. I can't imagine that serving as a Board member for ISTE, no matter how much I would like to do that, would add any effectiveness to my work. Maybe when I retire ("as if") I can work on serving in that capacity. Meanwhile, anyone reading this, if as dedicated to ISTE and its mission as I am, should consider doing so. The deadline is February 7, 5PM EST.

I am so very proud of my School and its District administrative support for this new initiative. When it works, not "if it works," we'll have paved the way for other districts and we will have done so much good that we could walk away from it all, though we, thankfully, will not.

Last week, the President of the United States visited our district to speak at one of our schools, and he focused his remarks on many of the things in which I am involved. Watch this:

If the embed doesn't work for you, click here.

Great Award Up for Grabs for Online Educators Making a Difference!

Friend, colleague, and President of the ISTE Special Interest Group for Online Learning, Michael Gormans, today posted a wonderfully descriptive account of a free webinar coming up in just a few hours. Please join us at the link below to learn how you might be the recipient of this prestigious annual award. I highly encourage you to read Mike's blog post in its entirety and I hope to see you online. Here's the brief skimmy:

There will be a special free webinar on Thursday, January 9, 2014 at 4 PM to highlight the competition. It will also include a special guest appearance from last year’s winners. Learn about their project and get some great tips involving online collaboration for your students. This webinar will also be archived and available on the ISTE SIGOL Site. Consider attending and learning how you can be part of a great program and also be a part of SIGOL at ISTE! You can also learn more about how to enter the competition for the award at SIGOL Online Learning Award.  You will find Webinar registration information below. Please send this post on to others who might be interested, and give a retweet!
ISTE SIGOL Online Award Webinar

• Thursday, January 9, 2014
• 4:00 PM EST
• Link: http://iste.adobeconnect.com/sigol2014/

 Learn more about the fine work SIGOL does at our wiki.

And also check out ISTE Connects info on SIGOL!

Some Family Ties

From Merrick Villa in Nashville, Tennessee on this third day of January, 2014 I send greetings, a promise to post at least once a week this year, and some family links.

First of all, in honor of Colin's birthday, number 18, a link to the work he's doing with songwriting, production, and performance. These are demos mostly created by him at his MacBook Pro and all written and performed by him, every voice, every harmony, all of it. Click to visit and LIKE his new Facebook brand for all his music, then visit the Dazeless SoundCloud:

Miranda is working at Brilliant Sky Books and Toys over in Green Hills and coordinating their online branding efforts (it's a VERY cool store) and burning up Instagram and Twitter. It's been a while since she blogged but her observations are consistently insightful and thoughtful at "Words for Faith." Check out her Pinterest site, "Truth & Wisdom," and her erstwhile boyfriend Tim Buell is out on the road with his band, Remedy Drive, who garnered a Dove Award nomination this year.

Lee Ann, love of my heart, is burning up the epicurean domain with TinWings, her artful, ambitious, and joyful venture with her partner Ursula Norris. Visit (and LIKE) their amazingly successful startup at their TinWings Facebook page.

Finally, the best kept educational secret of Nashville Public Schools is about to be let out of the bag. See why at the "About" page at MNPS Virtual School.

I rest my cases.

Wait, I guess given the title here I should share an old poem, still one of my favorites:

Family Ties

Most of my ties are dead man's ties.

Real doozies, all, hanging in my hall

closet, inherited sans will, from my father

and the father of my wife, given new life

by my own need, or by my need to own.

Did I need to rescue clichéd neckwear?

Or did I need instead a piece of cloth

to perform a job my memory ought?

Some come from vintage clothing stores:

Skinny, woven thinly, these create within

me something of a false nostalgia,

a longing for a time I never knew.

If I were you I'd be wondering now

what is his point? Does he intend to

share some kind of insight here? Is it fair

to assume that ties to the past indeed survive?

Of course knot, you say.

But maybe sew, says

I. Some say each time an entity, alive,

recalls the aspect of one dead, the dead one lives.

Spirit, called, responds in kind: a re-animation born of mind.

When I touch a tie it cries out to me,

and its former owner stirs, is realized.

If in that lifelessness re-creation be, then pardon me:

I only mean to tastefully accessorize.

It's quiet at the blog. Too quiet.

Up early on an icy winter Sunday morning I realize I've neglected my blogging, perhaps unforgivably. While blogging may now be considered passé by some these days I do still believe in it.

This belief may not be apparent for anyone who took note of the closure of the Bloggers Hut at ISTE SIGVE in Second Life this past July, after five years of monthly updates at Oh!VirtualLearning! and inside the little hobo shack that had been its home since moving to ISTE SIGVE from ISTE Island after its own demise. As explained at the blog post just noted, I am just so busy these days with my virtual school, an online public school in the creation of which I'm so immensely proud to have had a part, that I've yielded much of my advocacy for virtual worlds to other more capable hands.

I do continue to support their efforts when I can, by attending inworld events like the Virtual Education Round Table, by microblogging via Twitter and Facebook, and by attending weekly SIGVE Office Hours and events when I can. But it's a measure of my distance that I completely missed this weekend's Minecraft and More Unsymposium online all day yesterday and the day before. I hope to catch up on its archived glory this week, and I'm thankful for all who did participate, as we seem to see more and more activity in virtual worlds with the advent of Minecraft and the continuing success of the World of Warcraft teacher community. Still, it seems we continue to stand at the upward curve of the adoption cycle eternally looking up at the spike to the apex which we've been predicting for so many years.

I'm just rambling here, but I hope to keep this blog alive and sometimes rambling is just all there is in this complicated world. Why keep it alive? There is so much to celebrate, and as my dear sister-in-law Amy once commented, "Your blog is your masterpiece, your book."

I'm hearing Dylan in the background.

Coming up soon: Wainhouse Research Virtual Summit

I'll be coming in for Q and A toward the end of the presentation of a recorded discussion between me and friends Jan Zanetis and Lance Ford, hosted by Wainhouse Research's Alan Greenberg. We had a lively chat about disruptive technologies in education and I hope the attendees enjoy it!

Join in as you can, from 1-5pm today!

Join us online for the next Wainhouse Research Virtual Summit focusing on the education market and how colleges, K-12 institutions and corporate trainers are changing the face of instruction through the implementation of new technologies. To be held 1 p.m. – 5 p.m. ET on November 12, the Wainhouse Research EDU Virtual Summit offers users the chance to watch informational webcasts and collaborate with others seeking to broaden their understanding of technology’s evolving role in education.

To learn more about the event and to register for free to attend, click here:

http://engage.vevent.com/rt/uccsummit~edu

 

The Perfect Media Trifecta for Spring Registration

Metro Schools touts success, flexibility of virtual school ran live on Channel 4 News last week and is available to watch online now. We are so proud of our MNPS Virtual School students at Nashville School of the Arts, who are profiled in the piece; and that pride extends to all of the over 350 students taking a class or classes with us while enrolled in their MNPS school of choice or zone.

We're also very proud of our nearly 100 full-time students, and you can hear more on that right here, on Nicole Cowan's wonderful Nashville by Nicole show at Lightning100 Radio.

These two share-outs come at a great time for us. We opened the enrollment request window just this week, for Spring 2014, and it will remain open through December 6. Read about that at the third share, MNPS ChildrenFirst blog's announcement of the sign-up process!

Thanks to WSMV Channel 4, Lighting100, and ChildrenFirst for noticing, caring, and sharing!