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July 9, 2008

Think...Work Hard...Enjoy: My Rubric

I'm now two days into my graduate class for the summer, K-12 Technology Integration. I'm also part of the team on a 6-week program for inservice teachers to learn about how science and math are done in the lab and how that might inform what they do in the classroom, the NISE-RET Program.

Yesterday and today, I'm doing about 6 hours each day between the two groups and it got me thinking about what I'd really like them to walk away with. So, here are my 3 personal objectives every time I teach.

1. THINK -- Did the participants think about things that they had never thought about before? Or think about things in a completely new way because of their experiences? (This one is a short- and long-term goal so I'd like this thinking to happen in class, that evening, three months from now, etc.)
   
   
2. HARD -- Did the participants leave thinking they worked hard? I truly believe that learning new things is hard. That's not bad at all. Witness the energy that people put in to learning about their hobbies or sports or new video games. I hope that participants realize that hard doesn't equate with bad and that true learning usually is hard at some level.
   
3. ENJOY -- So the third one is a bit of a twist on things. Once participants figure out that they are thinking differently and that they worked hard, I hope they also realize that they enjoyed the experience.

If all three of these things happen in our classrooms, life-long learning is possible. Participants (adults and kids) can begin to internalize and manage their own learning and seek out new opportunities.

The dirty, little secret is most of our classrooms is that what we teach on any given day probably doesn't matter much. (Take a look at the Fr. Guido Sarducci 5-Minute University.) But the experience everyday in the classroom does matter and that's what I hope happens when I teach.

Posted by Pat on 8:51 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

May 10, 2008

Saga of the Wiimote Whiteboard

Been having a good time this week really being a geek again!

My project has been to make my own Wii Whiteboard as developed originally by Johnny Lee of Carnegie Mellon and featured at the 2008 TED conference. This let's you use your $40 Wiimote, a homemade <$10 IR Lightpen, and any surface in place of a commercial $1000+ whiteboard system. You bring the computer and the projector and here's the rest of the story.

The basic idea here is to use the Wiimote's infrared camera to point at an infrared light source and relay that information back to the computer via Bluetooth. As with so many other projects, the Wiimote projects have had most of their development on the Windows side and there are many variants of the software around the web. Although there are fewer choices, the ones I found did the job just fine.

So, what's needed.

First, you need to connect your Wiimote to your computer via Bluetooth. On the Mac, that deed is done quite simply through the System Preferences. Fire up the Blootooth control panel and add the Wiimote by pressing both the 1 and 2 buttons simultaneously when it's time to have the device discovered.

Second, let's just try to use the Wiimote as a remote mouse. For this task, the best software I found was Darwiin Remote. Again, a few little tricks. Although the directions tell you to press the software's "Find Remote" button and then the Wiimote's 1 and 2 buttons simultaneously, I found it worked more reliably if you do it the other way around. So, press 1 and 2 and your 4 LEDs will be flashing. Press the "Find Remote" button and you get confirmation that the Wiimote is all hooked up.

One more thing to take care of here. You'll need to open the Darwiin Remote buttons and define the left click and right click. I used the A and B buttons since that felt most natural.

You could stop right here and have a remote mouse and amaze your friends! But let's get to the really interesting stuff!

Third, you'll need an Infrared Lightpen to turn the whole setup into an interactive whiteboard. The complete directions can be found on Johnny Lee's site but there are variations all over the place. The best directions I found were on Youtube. This will give you a good grounding in the electronics, even if you are as much of a novice as me! This other Youtube video gives a simpler version, but you need to find the right pen. I found it useful for the closeup of the diode.

Coolcatteacher, Vicki Davis, blogged about this and found a nice Flickr image. Here's my first attempt. (I know...but it works!)

Fourth, you need the software to turn that funky IR pen into a true Interactive Whiteboard tool. That's the Wiimote Whiteboard software. In this case, the Mac version. The simplest way to get this running is to press the 1 and 2 buttons on your Wiimote and then launch the software. You'll now be able to calibrate the pen and from there it can be used as a your Whiteboard mouse complete with left and right mouse buttons.

The biggest hurdles from here are tuning your setup of the projector, screen and Wiimote considering all our options.

For an educator's journey through all of this, you can read this post from Tom Sextro, the Technology Director for Holton USD 336, who is using these in the classroom. He does a great job of chronicling their journey.

Okay, it's not exactly simple, but it's $50 and a few hours or $1500. And, it's fun!

Posted by Pat on 8:10 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

May 6, 2008

Learned Helplessness

Just finished reading an interesting post from Liz Davis expressing her end of year frustration about the slowness of change called Dealing with Negativity. She did a Twitter poll and collected responses from her followers that range from consolation to commiseration. Funny, nobody said that it doesn't happen in their lives.

Then I started listening to Tech Therapy, a podcast that deals with using and supporting educational technology in higher ed. Basically, the same topic. What they decided was that it was an example of "learned helplessness."

I'll use the definition they used, from Wikipedia.

Learned helplessness is a psychological condition in which a human being or an animal has learned to believe that it is helpless in a particular situation. It has come to believe that it has no control over its situation and that whatever it does is futile. As a result, the human being or the animal will stay passive in the face of an unpleasant, harmful or damaging situation, even when it does actually have the power to change its circumstances.

That's an interesting way to look at the way teachers approach our approaches to introducing technology into their current practice. They haven't learned that technology is hard, but they've learned to believe that technology is hard.

I'm not sure just how to apply this to working with teachers, but it gives another way to look at things. For me, on those most frustrating days I remember that at worst, it lets me keep working at a job I love!

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May 2, 2008

Conference Attendance -- Real and Virtual

I've been sitting in a wonderful session today at Princeton called The Future of Children. This is all focused around the latest edition of the journal Children and Electronic Media.

Besides the presentations, there are many laptops around the room. Many of the attendees are participating in backchannels. Some of the sessions were Ustreamed. The people in the room contacted friends and colleagues around the world who couldn't attend and they are all in the chats as well. Note, that this is all the work of the conference attendees, not the conference conveners.

All of the people I see clicking around me are engaged and exchanging interesting insights in the chats. And they are all concerned both about their own learning and that of their colleagues. The chats are posted -- by the presenters and participants -- at various blogs.

• CoolCatTeacher, Vicki Davis


• Kristin Hokanson at the Connected Teacher


• maybe others

Of course, I'm also checking email and I come across this headline.

University nixes web access during class: Officials see internet as a distraction for students in eSchool News

Banning internet access in classrooms, Levmore said, would restore basic rules of politeness and professional etiquette between students and professors.

The people I see are using their computers to check figures, to collect links and readings for themselves and others (like Ann Oro's del.icio.us links tagged 08Princeton) , and amplifying their own learning by actively discussing the presentation as a way to get the information into its proper context in their own minds.

This was a great day, enhanced by the informal interaction with a great group of caring educators!

Posted by Pat on 8:36 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

March 26, 2008

Personal Learning Networks and You

I just finished reading an excellent article by Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach reflecting on her own use of the network for learning and on how teachers can become more involved. Her latest blog posting is entitled So Much to Say-- So Little Time.

She says a lot of what I've been experiencing as I continue my use of Twitter. Right now, I have switched to using Twitbin, which is "an extension for firefox that brings the power of twitter right in your browser." It works by keeping a constant stream of tweets running down the left side of my browser.

This constant companion now provides me with lots of links, including Sheryl's blog, as well as entrée to lots of additional twitterers as the folks I'm following converse with the folks they are following. (still with me??)

Her post goes on to talk about collaboration and how her personal learning network enables that. In fact, I see that all day long in my twitter stream. Will Richardson will tweet about some question and the answers come rolling in. David Warlickannounces that he's doing a presentation and will all his twitter followers please say hello and the audience responds. Are they collaborating or harvesting the twitterverse? Conversely, I, with my 35 followers, ask a question and get one old friend responding to see if I've gotten any responses. ;-)

I'm enjoying the whole thing and am certainly getting a lot out of this. However, I'm sure it looks different for everyone in the twitterverse. Right now, I'm wondering if this kind of networking tool can work for classroom teachers. And, how do we use the tools so that the everyone has access to good information through their participation. Or is being there enough?

Posted by Pat on 4:53 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

March 21, 2008

Preparing my next presentation

I'm starting to really think about my conference presentation for this year's Delaware Instructional Technology Conference. My topic and blurb as submitted.

How Do We Know?

When we were in school, the question was "What do you know?" Now, for most of us, the question is "How can I know this?" and "how do I know it's true? " This presentation will go beyond searching to discuss some real-world dilemmas in Knowing in the 21st Century.

Of course, that was when I only needed 50 words and a catchy title!

When I started out, what I really wanted to focus on was how we help students "know" the difference between what's true and what's not on the web. I really liked the article from TechLearning by Kathy Schrock and it made clear a lot of the issues in learning on the web. I also want to include the powerful words of Bob Sprankle's third and fourth graders from a few years ago about using Wikipedia. Of course, the latest story along this vein is the tale of the college study group via Facebook at Ryerson University.

But with my recent use of Twitter, I'm finding another dimension of this topic. I've been "collecting" a number of local experts who help identify useful or interesting new bits of information. I'm also learning to look at other experts through the eyes (or tweets) of those I'm following. For example, David Warlick's tweet today led me to a great post More Twitter types from Martin Weller, a Professor of Educational Technology at the Open University in the UK.

I'm thinking this is a different kind of "knowing" that consists mainly of a kind of swimming in the knowledge base that is constantly swirling around me.

I've set up a wiki to collect other ideas for my presentation and would love folks to post their del.icio.us links for me.

Posted by Pat on 1:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 19, 2008

Twitter???

Over the course of the past year, I had been trying out del.icio.us in an attempt to see just what it was that everyone thought was so wonderful. Happily, I too now see the value and use del.icio.us all the time to manage my bookmarks. In fact, I am finding new uses all the time and am much better prepared to share it with the teachers I work with.

This year, I'm setting out to find out the same thing about twitter. Last week, I attended PETE&C and heard everyone talking about the value of tweeting on Twitter. (Yup, that's the jargon!) I have had a Twitter account for quite some time but I just don't get it yet. I've spent the past few days finding some interesting people to follow. So far I've added David Warlick, Vicki Davis, and Steve Dembo. I've seen a number of interesting things, but mostly I've been distracted from doing "real work." I also get the feeling I'm not in with the "in crowd" here.

Hopefully this post will attract some comments that will help me understand this better. I'll be back!

Posted by Pat on 4:08 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

December 18, 2007

Hats Off to Delaware Students Who "Rocked Our World"

Today I got a chance to really explore the contribution that the kids from Cape Henlopen school district made to this project. You can start your exploration at the home page. Then check out the Family Night video where the kids participated in an international chat.

Their entry into this world was a video that is now posted on Teachertube.com. Although there are several hits on a search for "horseshoe crab at YouTube, this is the only one at TeacherTube.

Bravo to all involved!!

Posted by Pat on 2:50 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

November 1, 2007

Thinking about Web 2.0 Tools

The Sept./Oct. 2007 issue of the Educause Review has an interesting article called Wikis and Podcasts and Blogs! Oh, My! What Is a Faculty Member Supposed to Do? by Patricia McGee and Veronica Diaz. What particulary caught my eye was a chart which relates the new "web 2.0" applications to the kinds of work that goes on in every class, the function or purpose for the task and the tools to get the job done.

Web 2.0 Applications

from the article

Type	Function	Tools
Communicative	To share ideas, information, and creations	Blogs Audioblogs Videoblogs IM-type tools Podcasts Webcams
Collaborative	To work with others for a specific purpose in a shared work area	Editing/writing tools Virtual communities of practice (VCOPs) Wikis
Documentative	To collect and/or present evidence of experiences, thinking over time, productions, etc.	Blogs Videoblogs E-portfolios
Generative	To create something new that can be seen and/or used by others	Mashups VCOPs Virtual Learning Worlds (VLWs)
Interactive	To exchange information, ideas, resources, materials	Learning objectives Social bookmarking VCOPs VLWs

In working with schools and teachers, we get such a limited amount of time and so few opportunities to do professional development that we fall into the trap of talking about the tools and training on the skills for those skills. What we really need to do is to focus on the problem to be solved and then apply the appropriate tool. Of course, the ideal would then be to have the teachers be able to get support in using the software as they need it...

Posted by Pat on 2:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 17, 2007

But what will they do?

Today's eSchool News brought two interesting items to my attention today.

First, Low-cost school computing set to take off talks all about nComputing which is selling computers to Macedonia to enable 1-to-1computing. There are already 770 of these installed at one school.

California-based NComputing announces it will provide multi-user virtual desktop software and inexpensive computer terminals to 400,000 students in the Republic of Macedonia by the end of 2008. The move, the company says, is a step towards its goal to see every person and organization that wants 1-to-1 access to a PC be able to afford it.

The second article, Push for ‘net neutrality' stalls, outlines the Sept. 6th decision of the US Justice Department (DOJ) that internet service providers should be allowed to charge a fee for priority web traffic.

DOJ said imposing a net neutrality regulation could hamper development of the internet and prevent service providers from upgrading or expanding their networks. It also could shift the "entire burden of implementing costly network expansions and improvements onto consumers," the agency said in its Sept. 6 filing with the FCC.

Doesn't seem like we're all rowing in the same direction!

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August 22, 2007

Why WebQuests are so 20th Century

For many years I have been a great fan of WebQuests. They were really the hot ticket in the Wild West days of the Web back in the '90's. However, I think the time has come to move on and here's my reasoning.

First of all, the large number of educators who I meet still believe that a WebQuest is an online scavenger hunt. That was never true and the definition from 1995 bears that out.

Second, the benefits of WebQuests in the late '90's have largely been overcome in the wake of Web improvements.

• WebQuests were a great way for teachers to organize resources, but we now have del.icio.us accounts which are far richer and offer tag clouds that encourage broader thinking. We also have Wikipedia which predigests a lot of this for us and sends us off to great resources.
• WebQuests were a way for teachers and students to become more familiar with the Web...'nuff said.
• WebQuests provide a framework for scaffolding higher-order thinking...uh oh.

So now that we are in 2007, WebQuests no longer really do scaffold higher-order thinking.

• In most cases, the task is laid out for students right from the start so they are robbed of the higher-order thinking required to solve some problem set out for them and which the resources presented might support them in that thinking. To be fair, I looked at the WebQuest page and found these exemplars, which still have these problems. Tom March, one of the co-creators, tried to move the concept forward with his BestWebQuests.com and provides The 7 Red Flags: Warning Signs when Sifting WebQuests.
• The rich resources and search tools available on the Web now offer great opportunities for students collect, evaluate, and share resources. We'd be much better off helping students find resources that solve problems if the goal is to scaffold higher-order thinking.

If any more convincing is needed, just take a look at Instant WebQuests which encourages you to "Create a WebQuest in 15 Minutes." So much for thoughtful curriculum development.

But, I do believe (and taught for many years) that WebQuests were a great model for teaching with technology. I still believe that was true only now I think we've moved on by learning from these. Thanks, Bernie Dodge and Tom March! (BTW, both are still doing great work and a look at Dodge's Blog gives a hint that he might be sharing my point of view ... One Trick Pony!)

Posted by Pat on 12:10 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

August 13, 2007

Keeping Up to Date

I've been asked many times for suggestions on how to stay up-to-date with what's happening in technology. Here is a combination of what I use and what I'd recommend to get started. If these aren't your cup of tea, they will lead you to others that might suit you better.

1. K-12 online conference -- This is a great place to see presentations by educators about how to succeed online. The conference was first held in 2006 and is now accepting proposals for 2007. Follow the links on the right side to browse presentations that fit your needs then sit back and enjoy a presentaton.


2. Teachertube.com -- In the course I taught this summer, we used Youtube every day for videos that illuminated or extended what we were discussing. Unfortunately, this is blocked in most schools. You can find much of the same valuable content at teachertube.com, as well as many teaching specific videos. It also uses the same easy to search and view software.


3. Edutopia -- This site is funded by the George Lucas Educational Foundation and is an online magazine. Its main focus is on how schools are meeting the challenges of the 21st century, but this also involves a does of technology. There are lots of great articles and videos of real classrooms in acton.


4. EdTechWeekly -- This is a weekly discussion of the latest news and resources of interest to the EdTech Community which you can access either by subscribing to it as a podcast, by participating live via Skype, or simpl


5. Del.icio.us -- This is a more general site for sharing bookmarks, but it is a great way to ride the coattails of any educator you might be interested in. To use it, first get a free login. From there you can add experts to your network. My bookmarks can be found at http://del.icio.us/sine. But I also take advantage of the work of a few expert and heavy users of del.icio.us. They are David Warlick, Will Richardson and EdTechWeekly. Even with just these three, I have an overwhelming number of links to follow at my leisure, but it makes the web so much easier!

Posted by Pat on 10:53 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

July 16, 2007

Search Goes Back to Being Human

For years I taught about the differences between directories (Yahoo, DMOZ) and keyword search engines (Google, Altavista). Then last week I did a presentation about searching and declared that the world of directories was pretty much dead. Everyone goes right to Google or Wikipedia these days. I've already blogged about how much more productive (or distracted) I feel since I added the googlepedia plugin to Firefox.

So today I heard about something new...Mahalo This is only in alpha now and is planning a full release about a year from now. All of the search pages are hand-crafted by humans. So, how can it possibly start doing collecting now and still be viable a year from now? The answer is by including a variety of technologies. The site is built in a wiki (although it doesn't look like that on the outside) and the pages are populated with RSS feeds.

This one will be fun to watch!

Posted by Pat on 8:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 3, 2007

IPod or No IPod?

The month of June brought two stories that are hard to hold in your head at the same time.

Schools banning iPods to beat cheaters

From eSchool News staff and wire service reports

June 1, 2007—

Banning baseball caps during tests was obvious--students were writing the answers under the brim. Then, schools started banning cell phones, realizing students could text-message the answers to each other. Now, schools across the country are targeting digital media players as a potential cheating device.

Devices such as iPods and Zunes can be hidden under clothing, with just an earbud and a wire snaking behind an ear and into a shirt collar to give them away, school officials say. ...

Prepare for the SAT Test, or Play With Your iPod? Have It Both Ways

By MARIA ASPAN

Published: June 25, 2007

High school students cramming for the SAT test have traditionally relied on thick books full of practice exams, sharpened No. 2 pencils and intensive tutoring sessions. But now a traditional test preparation company is offering some options for the iPod generation. ...

To me, all of this underlines the fact that we, as educators, really need to be doing things differently within our schools, while the rest of the world changes so much around us.

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June 21, 2007

How do we know all that stuff???

One of the questions that I always get is how do you know about all of that stuff? I confess, I'm a hopeless geek who watches all TV and movies on my computer and syncs my podcasts as the first thing I do every morning.

Okay, so how do real people do this?

As I think about this, I always come back to the idea that we teachers have professed for years that we believe in "lifelong learning." Well, that's a noble goal, but with today's world we have more opportunities than ever before. Witness Ray's Personal Learning Environment. If we really are lifelong learners, then we should be building these kinds of networks for ourselves. I think the challenge for educators is to realize that we have those networks and to make them visible to our students. I also recently read Rainbows End, based on a recommendation from Mark Prensky. In this world, the personal learning environment is always accessible because the whole world is networked and searchable.

So, what happens in the classroom? It seems like we need to find a way help students think broadly and focus on a problem. One approach we've used in class is to employ a Google Jockey to model broad thinking and personal blogging to focus.

Here's the big payoff...It's way more fun to teach this way!

Posted by Pat on 11:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 5, 2007

New Internet Safety Wrinkles

This week, I'm updating my presentation called "Social Networking, Internet Safety and the Collision called MySpace" to present at the Delaware Instructional Technology Conference 2007. Since last March, I have been delivering versions of this presentation to various faculty and parent groups. With last year's news blitz of scare stories, many of them true and many of them staged, I tended to emphasize safety over networking. But this was hard for me since I really believe in the value of networking for authentic learning. Hopefully, I hit a balance.

As more study has gone on, it seems that, just like in real life, kids that engage in risky or promiscuous behavior are the ones that are most likely to get approached by predators. What that really means is that parents should incorporate a digital version of "don't talk to strangers" into the usual repertoire. What it also means is that kids who use the social networking sites intelligently can do so intelligently.

Okay, so now that we've got MySpace and FaceBook pretty much under control, two new sites may give some pause. Right now there are two big deals in the tech community. Twitter.com allows anyone to do real-time blogging from their computer or cellphone. Each "tweet" is limited to 140 characters. What is interesting is the frequency that these come at you. There are also new mashups that incorporate tweets in realtime. The most famous of these is twittervision.com.

The second one is justin.tv. This fellow has committed to wearing a camera and microphone 24-7 for the rest of his life! Currently the tech community is wondering about his prospects for marriage and dating.

Posted by Pat on 10:17 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 5, 2007

Moving All Our Apps to the Web

Over the past several years, more and more apps are moving to the web. This year, we've seen Google put both a word processor and a spreadsheet on the web. These have gotten some bad reviews because they don't have enough power for business users. For our purposes, though they are just what the doctor ordered! The apps are free; they are always available as long as you have Internet connectivity; and they are built for collaboration. The only thing they are missing for us is the label "educational."

This week, I've found the two missing apps to make a complete online and free suite for education. First is empressr.com. This is an online PowerPoint application. It is pretty bare-bones at this point, but it's got the other attributes.

The second find is bubbl.us. This is a free online concept mapping tool. Again, it's got room for improvement but it is always available and it's free.

With these kinds of free apps and the announcement that we will be able to buy the $100 computer in the US by this summer, looks like we are getting closer to one-to-one and the real breakthrough in integrating technology.

Posted by Pat on 10:35 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

January 17, 2007

Geography is Cool Again!

I came across this today as an example of something that is just cool – geogreeting.com. When I got there I created my own GeoGreeting.

My original career was as a middle school social studies teacher and, of the social studies, my favorites were and are geography and economics. I'm old enough now to have lived through the laments of kids not knowing where they were in the world. With GPS-enabled phones and now GPS locator information on Instant Messaging clients, perhaps we are turning the corner.

At any rate, this is just a fun thing to try and to imagine the possibilities!

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December 21, 2006

A Gift of Information and Time

One of the things I stress to teachers that I work with is to "walk the walk." In this case, we continually preach about "lifelong learning." Then we set up 2-hour inservice training sessions or offer summer courses that are over and done. The biggest complaint I hear from teachers is "not enough time" to keep up with all the new developments.

Well, here's a gift from the The New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI). Each year they create the Horizon Report which highlights six technologies that the underlying research suggests will become very important to higher education over the next one to five years. Of course, those same technologies will be equally significant to all educators and indeed any of us interested in improving our own learning.

The reason it is such a gift is that it provides a synopsis of each of the technologies to enable anyone to begin learning about them, great examples of the application to learning with links to online articles about the products. But the piece I found most valuable was a very short reading list on each technology that allowed me to really hone in on particular technologies and things I didn't understand about each one.

So here's a gift of information and time, the 2006 Horizons Report.

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