Teach42

Sometimes having no time at all is an absolutely wonderful problem to have. I have notes from several workshops that I just don’t have time to post. I have a podcast recorded that I still need to upload. I have drafts of two or three blog entries that need to be finished off.

But there’s also people to see and a few more sessions to attend before I take off at 2:30pm. I’m trying to squeeze every last minute out of this conference and will be racing direclty from Warlick’s podcasting session to the Taxi stand at the Marriott in order to make my flight. Because of this, i just realized that there’s no way I’ll be able to post anything else before I get back to Chicago.

So this is my fond farewell to NECC 2005. It’s been a great conference. My memories really revolve around the people I’ve met and the conversations I’ve had, although some of the sessions were notable as well.

If you aren’t a regular reader and have just been tuning in for NECC, thanks for hanging around. It’s been a pleasure sharing this little journey with you.

Erin Beth at the information both was extraordinarily helpful and aided me in finding a place for our little get together. We will be meeting at Tir Na Nog, an Irish pub about four blocks away from the convention center. It’s right up Arch street so it should be real easy to find. I’ve pulled up a map at Google Maps. It has some outdoor seating, so many we’ll be able to get some fresh air while we hang out and chit chat. Since the ticketed evening events officially end at 9:30, that’s when we’ll get started. I’ll probably be there early, so if anyone wants to join me, please feel free to swing by ahead of time!

Please, if you know of anybody else who might be interested, let them know. Like I said before, this is for anyone who podcasts, listens to podcasts or will start listening to them once they get back to their home computer! Also, if you’re blogging at NECC, a mention of this would be greatly appreciated since we’re trying to make sure people who might want to attend are able to hear about it on very short notice.

Hope to see you there!

After a brief, but intense session of returning emails and blogging, I’m ready for the next session.

Whoa. Hold the presses. This is absolutely astonishing. I’m in room 204B, one of the general workshop rooms, and I actually have <>gasp<> working wifi! Something must have gone terribly wrong, because I know I’m not supposed to be able to do this, but I’m not complaining to anyone! So if there happens to be anything to link to, I can actually do so now.

The presenter is John Crick, he’s the founder of Crick software. They make a piece of software called Clicker that we sort of used at my old school. I really like the idea of it and think it could be a very effective instructional program, but we had all sorts of network issues with it that got in the way of us using it on a larger scale.

There’s a new version of it that just came out a few days ago, version 5.

Bah, I was so excited about the wifi thing that I actually forgot to start the iPod recording! So I didn’t get some of the introduction recorded. C’est la vie.

Clicker is sort of a word processor for elementary students but so much more. You can have it speak what they’ve written, and when it speaks the words, it highlights each word or every letter as it’s saying it. You can always click on any word and hear the individual word spoken aloud. The speech engine sounds pretty good too.

The bottom half of the screen is called Clicker grid. It has large bubbles with words in them that can be used to construct sentances. When you add the final piece of punctuation, it reads the sentance back to you. When you click on one of the words, you can also preview what it is by having it spoken aloud. You can use pictures as well as words. If you click on a picture, it inserts the picture, the word or both in the sentance.

By clicking on the arrows on either side of the grid screen, you can navigate to new grids with different sets of words and pictures. It’s immediatley clear just how valuable this would be to struggling students. They can write, truly write, even if they have problems constructing sentances. They can keep checking to make sure things make sense by having their work read back to them as they create it.

Teachers can quickly and easily change the bubbles in the grid (if a child wants to go off the grid) but shift-clicking on a bubble and editing one of the existing words. The rapidity and ease of this process is invaluable to teachers.

It’s just as easy to create your own custom grids. File -> New grid, choose your template, type in the words. Piece of cake, upside down. He just brought up a great idea, brainstorm words with the students and then create a grid from those words that the students can use immediately for their assignment. As he is filling in a custom grid based on suggestions from the audience, the words are being checked against a database of images that they have and are dynamically being assigned images. So when he typed in the word milk and hit enter, it added a picture of a carton of milk to the button. Very nicely done. Couldn’t possibly be easier.

You can also browse through the picture library to grab images for your grid. By default, it adds the words along with the picture, but you can always customize it. Of course, you can always use your own images from your hard drive if you want.

Wow, he’s demonstrating how easy it is to download new grid sets from their web site and use them within Clicker. Incredibly easy. I wonder if they have a way for people to submit grids that they have created. That would be useful for collaboration.

Side note: One more reason why we need Wifi available everywhere. Right now in iChat, Tom Hoffman, Tim Lauer and David Warlick are all online at the same time and available via IM. Anybody who has Bonjour turned on would see them locally. Too cool for words.

Back to Clicker. You can have a pop up sentance that the students either need to copy or respond to. Of course it can be read aloud, but it does have to be closed before they respond. So you can’t just copy it, you need to remember it and create it yourself.

You can also put in animated .gif’s, videos and just about anything you might want. When you put an animation in a bubble and click on it, it runs it. When you add it to a sentance, you also see the animation. Nice, simple, elegant.

You want to talk about forethought? The pages you save in Clicker are HTML based. That means that they are essentially web pages. You can save them, upload them to a web server and have them be available online! That’s the default. Wow. Brilliant idea and definitely forward thinking.

There’s also a way to force students to use different parts of a sentance. Hard to describe, but I”ll try. Imagine three columns. The first column has phrases like “The boy”, “The girl” and “The child”. The second column has verbs like “builds”, “paints” and “makes”. The third column has phrases like, “a sandcastle”, “a picture” and “a model”. The student clicks on a bubble from the first column. When they do, it adds the word to Clicker writer (the word processor) and then locks out that column and the third column. Essentially, it forces the child to choose from the middle column, and then to choose from the third column. So they have to write from left to right. Every sentance is a winner, it’s impossible to not make a grammatically correct sentance. Very cool.

Someone is asking about using Clicker in a foreign language. It really would be perfect for second language instruction.

The Mac version hasn’t been completed just yet, should be available in September. The files are all cross platform.

Next up is making ‘Talking books’ with Clicker (side note: I keep trying to write it as “Clickr”. Flickr has invaded my writing and is causing me to want to drop those e’s!). File -> new Talking Book, choose your template and get started. Very easy to add a title, a picture, even record your own voice to annotate the page.

This really is a great piece of software. It’s not a replacement for Micrsoft Word, it’s what elementary teachers should ahve been using as a word processor all along. Although calling it a word processor is really doing it a disservice.

One last thing, you can also create hotspots that link to other grids. I would assume that you can create hyperlinks to internet sites as well. I don’t know for sure, but if I were a betting man (and I am), I’d put money down that you could. Hot spots can also play audio, so you could have a map of the school, click on classrooms to see photos of the room and then click on students in the picture to hear those students saying something about their class. Neat, eh?

Wrapping up now. I normally dislike exhibitor sponsored sessions, but this was worth it. Great piece of software. I’ll link to audio from the session once I get it uploaded and edited.

Buenos dias! Just sat down in the ballroom, getting ready to hear Joel Barker’s keynote about the Five Regions of the Future: A New Way to Think About Technology. I hadn’t sat down for more than five minutes before people around me began talking about how frustrated they were by the lack of WiFi during presentations. It really is a shame. It’s a technology conference for Pete’s sake. As I’ve stated before, I learn more efficiently when I have access to the internet while I’m typing my notes. Yes, sometimes it can be a distraction (email, IM, eBay), but I feel incredibly frustrated that I’m not able to pull up web sites or look up information throughout the course of a given session. It’s my learning style. You talk to reach auditory people, you have PowerPoint to reach visual people, give internet to the digital people.

Onwards, keynote is starting. Joel Barker also write the book Paradigms. I read somewhere that he coined the term Paradigm Shift, so hopefully he won’t send a cease and desist to Eric Jeffcoat (host of the show formerly known as Teachnology).

His website is www.FiveRegionsofTheFuture.com. Gee. Wouldn’t it be nice to check that site out right now and bookmark it?

“It is imperative that we become more precise in our descriptions of what our technologies accutlly do. We cannot be clear about our economic direction unless we are clear about our technological direction”.

Def of Technology: Tools, techniques and knowledge that can be used in combination or separately to solve problems. Technology is all about solving problems, I do dig that. I’m not 100% sure I agree, but I like the idea.

We live in a society with more solutions than problems, and tech is behind most of these solutions. Hmmm…. When someone wants to present information to someone, there are that’s a problem. There are a bazillion solutions. Makes sense. Problem: I want to build a house. There a bazillion solutions as well. I’m not quite sure I agree that technology is behind most of them. In fact, I think that statement could apply 200 years ago just as well as now.

Technological ecoysystems, “TechnEcologies”. Each TechnEcology offers a different vision. General characterstics of an ecosystem: a diversity of elements, diversity of interactions, self-organizing and dynamic stability. Has the ability to hold itself together in the face of adversity.

Regions
SuperTech: Mislabed as ‘high’ tech. Dominated 20th century, best known region. Superabundance is just around the corner. “Everyone will have a handheld tomorrow”. Given enough time and money, science and tech will solve all problems. Given the choice, humans will always choose leisure over work. Robots are a big theme because they take care of the work. Slogan: “Bigger is beautiful” He’s listing off many other characteristics, you can fill in the blanks. Take anything to extreme and you have the SuperTech field. Still dominates the news stories.

Limits Tech: Started as a criticism of SuperTech. Points out issues with taking everything to extreme. Believe scarcity is right around the corner. We’ve been using science and tech for short term benefits and the expense of long term issues. “Mother Nature knows best”. Humans are going to have to work hard just to survive. Slogain, “Efficiency is beautiful”. All about reducing what we use, trying to be more efficient. Where SuperTech would try to ‘fix’ the Ozone problem by addressing it with technology, Limits Tech is about reducing the things that we do to cause the Ozone problem. L.E.D. lights, half the energy, no maintenance, last 35 years. (is that true? I’d love to look that up right now). Argon labs has designed a house made of Styrofoam pallets, spray on grancrete (granite concrete), and it’s only $15 per square foot. Health, prevention, education and wellness. Avoid unnecessary chemicals. Interestingly, they want large array computer simulations so that they can be careful before moving forward. Education is a huge focus of this group.

Local Tech: There is enough in the world for everyone. Science are tech are alright so long as they are ecological and to scale. Humans need to work in order to be fully human. Work isn’t about money, it’s about the growth of the person. Work is a spiritual activity. Small and local is beautiful. Energy: Windmills, Wave power, solar power, geothermal, depends on the area that you’re in. Tech is specific to the local. Housing depends on what you have in the area. You should build your house with your friends and neighbors. Food should be grown locally, home greenhouse, fish ponds. Health, community hospitals, shamans, midwives, indigenous plants and medicines. Computers are more simple, used to monitor ecosystems. Denmark, Kirala India, Mondargon Spain are all doing this.

Nature Tech: Oldest and newest region. All human needs can be fulfilled using Nature’s systems. Since nature has already solved all our problems, the job of science is to find the solutions that nature has created. Our work is to learn to live well with nature. Slogan is “Natural is beautiful”. Energy, ethanol, hydrogen producing bacteria, diesel tree. There’s a tree in Africa that can be tapped and it’s sap can be poured directly into a diesel engine and it will run. Food, caffeine, amaranth, ostrich, insects. We can grow colored cotton. Ok, here’s a new one. He’s saying that we have the tech to take the DNA from Spider Silk, throw it in to a goat and milk from the goat material that is almost exactly the same as spider silk. Very strange. I really really really wish I had wifi right now. Communications, trees communicate with each other somehow. When an insect attacks a tree, within 72 hours trees on the other side of the forest begin producing a toxin that will protect them against that very same insect. Somehow they are communicating very efficiently. Computers, DNA computing. Using living material for computing tasks.

Human Tech: WE have only recently begun to understand human technology. The real needs of humans are not material. You don’t care whether you live in a straw house or a condo on a spaceship. God/Nature has endowed humans with extraordinary powers. The real work of humans is to know ourselves. NO genetic manipulation is necessary in order to maximize our potential. Energy, mother’s milk and enthusiasm. Pupoluation, all about quality of individual life. Communications, pheromones, facial symmetry. Health, laughter makes you healthier, stem cells, the effect of placebos. Human Tech is at the base of all the other regions.

Universal Technologies:
Computers, every region will make use of it in different ways.

Wrapped it up with a quote from William Blake and some semi-inspirational words.

Presentation is over, I’m now in my usual spot: sitting on the floor in a hallway outside the exhibitor hall that has great wifi reception and an outlet. Ahhh, the glamorous life of an educator!

Just a few quick impressions from the presentation before I go check out the student spotlights. It was a solid presentation. He is a very skilled public speaker and his PowerPoint accented his presentation well. No demerits on that account.

However, I wasn’t that impressed with what he had to say. Basically he broke different aspects of technology and humanity down into his regions. He never got into what the implications for doing so were. What are we to do with that information? As an educator, how does this information impact me? Why should I care how he classifies technology? To me, the entire thing felt like an introduction that never led anywhere. Now that I’m armed with knowledge of his five regions, I am at a loss as to how I am supposed to use that information.

He really pushed his book big time as well. I understand, it’s a major source of income for him. However, one of the slides in his PowerPoint was direction to where people could buy the book from when the keynote was over! Wow.

I might be in the minority though. As I left the ballroom and went down the escalator, there was a huge line just to buy copies of the book. Then once you bought it, you would be able to stand in another line in the exhibitors area to have him sign it. No thanks. I’ll wait for the movie. I found the idea interesting, but woefully incomplete. It seemed to set the stage for a play that never got written. Let me know if you picked up on something that I’m missing there.

They’re both part of some fantastic educational blogs that I had never heard of before an hour ago! On my way back from the panel discussion I swung by the poster sessions. Jon (a colleague) had told me that there was a blogging one that I thought I would check out. I had no idea that it would just blow my mind.

We’ve all heard about Will Richardson’s Secret Life of Bee’s project, right? Well, this school took that idea and RAN with it. They got a grant and had an author visit every single month last year. After the visit, they hooked the author up to a private blog on Blogspot.com and allowed the students to ask the author questions. One author answered over 100 different questions from students. Teachers also blogged discussion questions that students answered through comments online. The project sounded so fantastic that I couldn’t believe I had never heard of it before. Turns out, they kept the entire thing password protected and private. It’s really too bad, because it sounds like such an amazing project, any school or teacher would benefit by being able to follow it along throughout the year. I grabbed a business card from the person I spoke to, but unfortunately it just has an email address and not a web site. Great idea though and fantastic project. I’ll write more about it once I have some links.

I was just walking away from there to check some email and grab a soda when I the title to another Poster Project caught my eye, “The Eleanor Rigby Project.” I’m a slight Beatles fan (I have a tattoo of Jon Lennon on my arm), so I thought I’d see what it was all about. The project itself looked incredible. Basically it was a project dealing with social conscience, in particular homelessness. Learning about it, reading about it, and trying to do something about it. Students wrote letters to newspapers and magazines and created some incredible displays that she had at the booth. I’m looking forward to learning more about it from their web site. The project itself sounded fantastic, but it turns out that she also employed blogging as a means for reflecting about what they were learning. The blog was completely public and one day that had a comment from someone who was homeless! They had the opportunity to ask him questions and he took the time to answer them honestly. EXTREMELY powerful stuff that can only occur when a blog is public.

Two fantastic ideas that I’d never heard of before. Just when you think you’ve seen it all, you realize that you’re only seeing a few of the trees in a much larger forest. I got both of their information and definitely plan to try to bring aspects of those programs to my school.

One thing that Yvonne mentioned right at the end of the panel discussion is really resonating with me. Enough that it probably warrants a podcast as well as a blog entry. She mentioned that at tech conferences, she usually feels as though she’s preaching to the choir. Talking about how things should be to a group of people that already agree, who see many of the same issues in the same light. It’s not a new thought, but for some reason that idea has bounced off of a few brain cells and has my mind buzzing.

I’m still blogging about how more teachers and students should blog. I intend to put my money where my mouth is and to try to get students and teachers at my new school to be online and active. I want to see them collaborating with other students around the world, not just as part of a special project but for their nightly homework assignments!

The thing is, I’ll be reaching a very small part of the educational community at large. Don’t get me wrong, getting my school going would be an incredible accomplishment in itself (changing the world one life at a time) but we also need to address the thousands of schools that may not have an advocate pushing their school forward. How do we reach those teachers and those students? If we haven’t moved very far in 20 years, what are we going to do differently to ensure that we do move forward in the next 20. More of the same is not an option.

I don’t believe that blogging is the answer, nor is podcasting, nor is vidcasting. I do believe that teaching students new ways to learn and collaborate with people worldwide is. Blogging will come and go. The ideas that blogging represents (reading, writing, publishing, collaborating, creating conversations) will stay on.

I think the biggest issue standing in the way just might be the traditional teaching model. It’s easy to say that, but what I’m not sure about is what should replace it. One teacher standing in front of the classroom with 20 passive learners just doesn’t make sense on any level. It used to be efficient. It isn’t any more. It’s more efficient to teach students to take charge of their learning and then to guide them along the way. The learning is more in depth on a number of levels. In particular, it becomes more authentic.

So let’s boil it all down to the most basic question: What should the 21st century classroom look like? I’m not talking about what technology will they have, but rather what would an average day look like? What will the learning model be? And considering that we’re in the 21st century now, how do we create that today?

I’d love to provide some answers, but the more I think about it, the more questions I have. I wish there were time for more round table discussions.

UPDATE: At the exepense of sleep, Andy has uploaded the audio from the panel discussion. I highly reccomend you throw it on the iPod to listen to on the airplane home.

Celebrating a Decade of the Web in Education: Connect, collaborate, learn, lead, transform.

There was a different session that I was going to attend during this time slot, but when I saw the list of presenters I figured I had to come here. First of all, Andy Carvin is moderating the group and I’ve been a big fan of his for quite a while. He’s a fantastic blogger, educator and thinker and has been a champion of podcasting forever (meaning for almost a year now). He also coined the phrase “mobcasting” and his Gates of New York mobcast website is a project that everybody should know about. It has huge implications. Among the other presenters are Dave Warlick, Yvonne Marie Andres, Dennis Harper, Bonnie Bracey, Patsy Wang-Iverson and Ed Gragert. Just a rock solid group of people and I’m really curious to hear what they have to say.

Andy is giving a brief introduction right now. The internet has been around for about 40 years, but 15 years ago it became accessible to more people than just geeks.

A few quick notes while he’s doing the introduction. No wifi again, which is way too bad. Andy is recording this one, so I’m not doing double duty. He has a better recording device anyway. I’ll link to his file when he posts it.

Every person on the panel goes back at least 10 years, some of them much farther than that. Andy says that he’s been on the internet for over half his life. Hmm… Let’s see, first computer in 1986 or so, about 20 years ago. So I’ve been online for around 20 years, and on the internet for about 13 years.

Andy started WWWEDU back in 1994 (I really need to read that list more often) and the fact that they are celebrating their 10th anniversary prompted this session.

Yvvone is showing a photo from 1984 with her in front of an Apple Iie with a floppy drive, 300 baud modem, doing an online lesson. Absolutely fantastic, but also kind of scary. Has anything really changed? That photo could have been taken yesterday. She is about to show a video clip created 10 years before the web.

This is frightening. Student benefits from online learning: information age skills, write more, enjoy writing, decrease the isolation of the classroom, increased problem solving, learn cultural similarities and differences. “Telecommuting is like taking a field trip without ever leaving the classroom.”

What’s so different about what she showed us in that video versus what’s going on today? Not too much. Wow, that’s really depressing. The more things change, the more things stay the same.

Her final point was that the internet is really all about people, making connections and using it to collaborate.

Bonnie Bracey is up there now. She works for the Outreach George Lucas Educational Foundation. Apparently Lucas recruited her way back in the day. She’s talkinga bout how many of the people who really SHOULD be here (or wherever here is) simply can’t get there for financial reasons, or otherwise. Although technology has been wonderful, the people who get the least support are the teachers who are training for technology.

Side note: These notes are going to be woefully incomplete. You have to hear this one.

Dennis Harper, founder and CEO of Generation YES. Great program, if you work in a middle or high school, you have to check it out. I wonder if you can do it in elementary? As a tech director, he had all the students create the district’s web sites. Even today, students do all the posting to the web on behalf of the school. What went wrong with technology today? It staff’s and lawyers took over. He just told a great story, you HAVE to hear this one. Another problem, NCLB. You can’t use the internet to take the test, so why do it? NCLB de-emphasizes technology. Use of the web by schools is mostly for propaganda (excuse me while I clear my throat). Ed-Tech community itself is not doing the job. We know how much the web can do, but we’re not leading. Wow, he just got controversial. Technology shouldn’t be a tool, it should be leading and dictating the curriculum. Fourth point is that kids are not really involved as much as they should be in education. Providing prof devel to teachers, wiring schools, training other kids ot be tech literate. He’s hoping that our kids in technology can help with the humane aspects of life, not just be able to pass reading and math tests.

Patsy Wang-Iverson, Research for Better Schools. Timms: Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study. She’s showing a few charts detailng by country how many families have computers at home, and more. I have to admit, much of it went over my head. This was a bit heavy for a 5 minute overview. I feel a little embarrassed, but I think I needed Cliff’s notes.

Ed Gragert known for iEARN. From ‘visitels’ to ‘Mali Dolls’. Back in 1988, they were trying to create global citizens, connecting people across oceans. He’s showing off a Visitel, which is basically a telephone where you could send still photos across phone lines, sort of like a really slow video conference. But it was about connecting communities. Web pages did not build community though, they weren’t sufficient. Countries are connecting their schools to the internet at an almost exponential rate, but they aren’t investing nearly as much into professional development. Interesting stat, for every dollar you invest in technology, you need to invest 8 dollars into professional development. I can believe that. Hear that Mr. Vallas? People are still airdropping in technology. “What’s important is how do I make it sustained and relevant to what I’m teaching?” Sustainable is a key point. Suggests changing KISS to KIHS, Keep It Human, Stupid (well, he said Silly). I like that.

Dave Warlick’s time. Landmark Project. Telling a story. 1995, joined ThinkQuest. Went to different countries talking about the internet. Thinkquest: Students teaching over the internet, building web sites. Winners were invited to a major city and awarded scholarship money. In 1997, the event was held in D.C. When he was reviewing projects, saw one that had a sign that said “Middle Ages”. The student shared an incredible amount about the Middle Ages, more than a middle schooler would normally know. He said he learned it from college professors. He would email them questions and he would never tell them how old he was, or he would say he was a grad assistant and got the information he wanted. The teacher told Dave that he was not a successful student typically, at risk and behavior problems, but he blossomed when using the internet. He learned how to make himself an expert. The best thing we can do is teach them to teach themselves.

Oh good, the powerpoint slides are going to be available along with the audio on Andy’s site. Unfortunately, my PowerBook is about to die so I won’t be able to blog the question and answer part.

Definitely download a copy of this one, well worth the listen.