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September 20, 2006

IT Doesn't Matter...in Schools 2006

IT Doesn't Matter

Last week my class Planning IT-enhanced Projects in the Public & Nonprofit Sectors discussed the article from Nicholas Carr that made such a stir two years ago. At the end of the class everyone was agreeing with Carr’s argument when refined by other commenters to emphasize that business processes utilizing IT are what matters. However, when I asked them to come up with a computer replacement plan for their hypothetical agency, very few tied their arguments to the business practice involved.

Today an article in our local paper talked about the new Philadelphia School of the Future. The students found this interesting enough to bring to the class listserv and to comment on; some are even blogging about it. Trouble is their conversation has been about the kids getting laptops and issues of the digital divide. While that's not to be ignored, it decidedly is not what this school is about. Much more important is the focus on collaborative, student-centered, critical thinking, problem-solving curricula. The principal is known as the "Chief Learner."

This really is about reinventing the business process of schools and is way overdue!

Posted by Pat on 12:54 PM

September 18, 2006

Faster Webpages

This weekend I uncovered a few shows that might make life a little easier for busy folks. One of the big things we’ve all been pushing for years is webpages for teachers. These are touted as a great way for teachers to stay in touch with parents and to keep parents informed about things going on in the school and individual classrooms. But many of our solutions have been hard or require more regular attention. I’m thinking here of true website development in something like Dreamweaver or even of making regular entries to a blog even when it’s well supported as in Edublogs.org.

Here’s something even easier.

Protopage – On this site, you can get your own page for free. The page looks like a selection of sticky notes and are just as easy to create and edit. You can include ready-made items or make an unlimited number of your own. A little warning, you can start right away on the sample page but it will expire quickly. Instead, go ahead and sign up. Then all you need to do is to give out your URL to all of your students and their parents.

Portaportal – This is like Protopage but just for bookmarks. Make sure to sign up for your account and then start adding links. Links can be organized by topic or by class or by project. Some can be permanent and others could come and go throughout the school year. This makes a great place to start your students.

So, no more waiting around for a webpage … Just do it!

Posted by Pat on 8:30 AM

September 15, 2006

Concert Time .... All Digital

Last night I tried something new. I attended a concert. But this was a bit different. This concert was held in Second Life and performed by the avatars of musicians and attended by the avatars of fans.

Second Life is a virtual world where you can be anyone you like and participate in all of the things you might ordinarily do or might just want to try. My avatar is pretty ordinary and I do pretty ordinary things. Except I can fly from place to place!

But let me take you back to the beginning. A few weeks ago I first listened to a podcast from Popular Science magazine. I really like the theme music and noted on the web site that the writer/performer, Jonathan Coulton, had another podcast called Thing A Week. He’s been using the podcast to keep him on track with his creative output. Some weeks the songs are very good and others they are fair. Then he announced this concert and I figured I’d attend.

Yesterday, earlier in the day I got into Second Life and found the right venue. I didn’t know how to make things work, but there was another friendly avatar nearby who offered me all the help I needed.

When I got back last night, almost every chair was filled. I went in and sat down and swayed along with the rest of the crowd as we watched the stage and listened to the concert.

What amazes me this morning is that every bit of the experience was digital and I can speak and write about it and other people get it. This is sooooooo 2006!

Posted by Pat on 8:03 AM

September 11, 2006

"That government is best ..."

I started off on this tangent as I was listening to a podcast about biking. They were covering a news story in which a town council in Texas was trying to pass an ordinance to require all cyclists, of any age, to wear helmets. This led to a very loud protest and the ordinance was at least tabled.

So that roused my usual knee-jerk reaction that "That government is best that governs least." I knew if I wanted to include a quote like that in a blog entry I’d have to attribute it. I had always remembered this as Thoreau, but I wanted to be sure so off to trusty Google. By putting in just the first phrase, "That government is best," I got an interesting return.

Now, of course, I know better than to take the first entry so I scanned through a few. The collective wisdom of the Internet is that this was probably from Thomas Paine with a few attributions to Thomas Jefferson. I was suspicious, though, that none of them could give any exact citation.

I ended up at the source, On Civil Disobedience by Thoreau, which is freely available on Project Gutenberg. He opens with "I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically." And doesn't attribute anyone!

Posted by Pat on 8:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 8, 2006

Digital Divide... A State of Mind?

Is the Digital Divide also a state of mind? My first assignment in the graduate education and public policy courses I teach is to have students begin a blog. The population is about evenly divided between recent grads and experienced professionals. However, almost universally, the first blog entry says something like “I’d heard of this before but never tried it. I hope I can cut it with the technology.”

Now, blogs have been around since 2001, at least. I know I suffer from “first kid on the block” syndrome and my first entry was in 2001 with sketchy additions since then. But blogging is a pretty simple technology now. We read about the influence blogs have in changing the outcomes of elections or in moving public opinion, so how come these educated individuals aren’t living in the blogosphere? Or are they in it and just don’t know it?

On the other hand, the class wiki is going great guns. I did a 2-minute introduction, gave out the URL and password and haven’t had a question yet. I would have expected that to be tougher!

We live in interesting times!

Posted by Pat on 7:54 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

September 7, 2006

Wikis in the Classroom 2006

I've gotten a request from some advice on my use of wikis in the classroom so this seemed like a good thing to update here.

1. I've got an entry about wikis on my old blog. Most of that information is still good. I would add that a good place to set up a wiki for free is wikispaces.com. As educators, we can also get an ad-free wiki by signing up for a blog at edublogs.org. Just be warned that this wiki has a little bit non-standard editing options. Also, while wikispaces.com has been quite responsive, the edublogs.org server can be extremely slow!

2. I've got a couple of completed courses that used the wiki for display and conversation.
From summer 2006, EDUC 639: K-12 Technology Integration
From summer 2005, UAPP 667: IT Topics for Non-profit and Government Managers (a distance course)

3. I've collected some advise on best uses of Wikis. One is a blog entry from the Cool Cat Teacher Blog called Wiki Wiki Teaching- The art of using wiki pages to teach The other is a brand new article in Technology & Learning http://www.techlearning.com called Wild about Wikis.

Posted by Pat on 1:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

"Lively Internet Debate"

This morning I was listening to the 2006 highlights of Wait, Wait…Don't Tell Me, the NPR weekly news quiz show. Of course, I was listening to it as a podcast. In response to one of the questions, one of the panelists remarked that the topic had sparked a “lively Internet debate” in the past week. This sent the rest of the panelists off in peals of laughter. One of them even called it one of the great phrases of the 21st Century. In fact, they thought it was so funny that they chose this segment as a highlight of the year.

It seems to me that this may be another example of the growing separation between “digital natives” and “digital immigrants,” to use Marc Prensky’s terms. It’s very hard to convey the sense of place and physicality that the Internet provides to people who use it all the time. This is really at the crux of the divide between the kids on MySpace and the adults on the outside.

On a related note, Apple seems poised to announce a movie download service on iTunes. Many of the pundits can’t figure out why anyone would want to view a feature-length film on an iPod or spend the time to download a movie on the network. These are probably the same digital immigrants, but I can’t wait!

Posted by Pat on 8:17 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 6, 2006

An Oldie, but a Goodie

Over the past few months so many new sites have appeared on the Internet that it’s easy to forget about the earlier ones that were good then and are still good. The one I stumbled back across today was the National Library of Virtual Math Manipulatives.

This site contains online, Java applets to illustrate and allow exploration of just about any math concept at any grade level. The front page gives an easy access grid divided into five math strands and four grade levels.

Now, these were always useful for one-on-one work or small group work, but they take on a new life with the introduction of SmartBoards to so many classrooms.

So I guess that even though I got to www.wwwdotcom.com, I can still go back and see what I missed.

Posted by Pat on 8:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 5, 2006

Wendy's Smart Wants to Be Your Friend

I spent Labor Day weekend preparing my Urban Affairs and Public Policy course: Planning IT-Enhanced Projects in the Government and Non-profit sectors. This seemingly takes me away from my primary area which is K-12 educational technology. It’s always interesting to me, though, how much they intersect.

One of the big issues right now in the K-12 world is how to handle social networking. In K-12 this amounts to keeping naïve kids from exposing too much. In the business world, it’s about leveraging these tools to make the best possible contacts and get the most exposure. In fact, MySpace is dealing with how to balance the number of ad-based personas within the space. Wendy’s Square Patty now has 81,000 friends. Take a look.

On the flip side, one of the sites I turn to for much of the information and advice for the non-profit agencies is TechSoup. While there is a strong professional community, the driving force here is really the international network of contributors. Many of these people are revealing exactly the kind of information that we warn K-12 kids about, and that’s what makes the site alive and rich.

Interesting to ponder how to facilitate the crossover.

Posted by Pat on 8:46 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 1, 2006

Linux on the Education Desktop??

I’m still working my way through the NECC podcasts and today I listened to March of the Penguins: Linux Comes to Student Desktops by David Thornburg.

Thornburg makes a very convincing case that all of education should be moving to an open source platform and especially endorses Edubuntu, an education friendly version of Linux. Thornburg goes through a whole list of cost savings ranging from the operating system to the basic apps to educational apps. He cites numerous companies, including Sprint and Microsoft, who use Linux for many central business processes. Brazil uses Linux exclusively on all government computers. Recently, the state of Indiana has adopted Linux for all of the public schools. This rollout is in progress for the 06-07 school year.

Although all this sounds good, it will be most educational to see how schools and districts make the transition Linux from their current comfortable positions with Windows and Mac OSes. Perhaps the trip point will be the Microsoft release of Vista.

Posted by Pat on 3:26 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack