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July 18, 2008
Advice from Google
Today is the last day of a 2 week graduate course I'm teaching. Right now, it's 10 minutes before the "final" presentations. The students are clicking away and consulting with each other. They are using technology and collaborating, so I feel happy!
Meanwhile, the Google blog has this to the point post today, Our Googley advice to students: Major in learning. This is a great finish to a class that started by looking at the now-classic "Shift Happens" and then a wander through The World is Flat, Everything's Miscellaneous, and Rainbows End.
Hopefully, they will all remember that while most of the tangible things I taught, they learned and we discussed will be old news by September, the core value is to continue learning and to inspire that in their students.
Thanks to Google for adding to my class!
And then keep on challenging yourself, because learning doesn't end with graduation. In fact, in the real world, while the answers to the odd-numbered problems are not in the back of the textbook, the tests are all open book, and your success is inexorably determined by the lessons you glean from the free market. Learning, it turns out, is a lifelong major.
Posted by Pat on 9:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
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.
- 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.)
- 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.
- 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
June 28, 2008
Edubloggercon and NECC
Almost the first day of NECC and I'm attending the Edubloggercon. This is an "unconference" which is supposed to be very unstructured. This has been "organized" on its own wiki for several months now.
But this one has over 200 people attending so we drop back to the way conferences get organized more traditionally. We've all voted on what the schedule of discussions should be using polleverywhere.com.
So, the folks here have twittered out and the world is discussing whether this is really an "unconference."
Good to get the conversations going! This alone is enough to validate the worldwide connections that are possible and empowering for everyone.
Posted by Pat on 12:28 PM | Comments (1) | 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!
Posted by Pat on 7:44 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 4, 2008
New Knowlege...Collectively
This snippet came from Will Richardson's blog.
From "Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace" (600+ page .pdf) comes this passage by Robert Steele in his essay “Creating a Smart Nation:”
"Published knowledge is old knowledge: The art of intelligence in the 21st Century will be less concerned with integrating old knowledge and more concerned with using published knowledge as a path to exactly the right source or sources that can create new knowledege tailored to a new situation, in real time."
So much of interest here:
- Of course, the notion of the new intelligence is very compelling. This thread just goes on and on in the lesson reviews and training we all do, but just doesn't show up enough in the classrooms.
- Also, the whole 600 pages turn out to be a link to the entire book, available freely as a PDF, and licensed through Creative Commons.
I'm planning for my summer course this year and grazing for new ideas to really challenge the teaching of the inservice teachers. This one will certainly be part of the raw materials.
Posted by Pat on 11:57 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
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.
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
May 1, 2008
Finally Getting Twitter...
Last night, I think I finally started to "get" Twitter! I had my window open and just randomly commented on whoever I saw say something interesting. Kind of the "bull in a china shop" approach. Had some wonderful exchanges with Mindelei (who I only know from last night's conversation), DMCordell (who I've followed on Twitter and worked with online), and many others.
The conversation was all around David Jakes' recent blog post, Tragedy of the Commons, and a blog post commenting on this from Al (no last name), Special Twitter Message.
Okay, I'm not going further down that path, but it did get me thinking and tweeting.
The question everyone seems to be grappling with is how to balance followers and following.
- Should you follow everyone who follows you? Is that a question of sociability or building your source of information?
- Should you expand your list of folks you follow and graze widely or should you prune your list to those who say something you find useful?
- What's the right number of each?
Besides my ed tech RSS feeds and podcasts and Twitter friends, I have a number of technology-focused feeds, podcasts and Twitterers. Among my favorites are Leo Laporte's collection of podcasts and GeekBrief.TV They are both Twitterers with many followers. (Check the list at Twitterholic) For them the whole point is really to get lots of followers so they can tweet out updates to their products...their blogs and podcasts which have the advertising that pays their bills.
BTW, the Twitterer with the most followers is BarackObama who is following more people than follow him ( 27,746 - 27,393). Hillary Clinton only has 3554 followers and only follows 0, not even Bill! And who knows this is the real deal....after all one of my MySpace pages is this one.
Posted by Pat on 12:24 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
March 30, 2008
How do we know?
A few weeks ago, I put in a proposal for our state conference called "How Do We Know?" My intent was to focus on how we glean truth from the information we find online. This is a burning issue for teachers as they plan research assignments in this age of Wikipedia.
As I gather my thoughts and my resources, I'm finding that the question is reforming around three new themes that really contribute to the way I find myself dealing with information as I do other parts of my job: overseeing a team whose duties include managing a network, developing for the web and supporting hundreds of laptop and desktop computers.
All of these require access to an ever changing ocean of information available through Google, endless access to unknown folks who offer support but lie along a continuum of expertise, and the varied skills of our team.
So, the real questions for "How Do We Know?" revolve around 3 questions for me.
- How do we know when the amount of digital information now exceeds 281 gigabytes?
- How do we know when we have to separate "truth" from outright false information and myriad shades of truth?
- How do we know what to know next when we can pursue seemingly infinite paths to knowing more about the areas of our careers?
I think these are the real 21st century challenges today. I suspect that for our students some will get much easier an some will get harder, but I don't think any of these will really go away. What do you think? I'm looking for comments here and on my presentation wiki.
Posted by Pat on 9:07 PM | Comments (2) | 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
