Good morning! It’s interesting that I feel obligated to lead off with greetings dependent on time for some odd reason. We’re just getting started at the opening session. The conference does seem to have a podcast, but I couldn’t find the feed last night (of course, I didn’t look TOO hard) and I asked Alan if he was going to be recording this session. he said that he was, but I did ask him while they were having some technical difficulties, probably not the best time to pester him. So I have my trusty iPod out and I’m recording it myself anyway. I’ll talk to Christopher later and see if I can release it in the feed.
Alan is plugging The World Is Flat. Well, maybe plugging isn’t the right word, but he’ll definitely sell a few copies for Friedman. Sounds like that’s going to be the general theme for the keynote.
Christopher is on stage. You can find his site here.
What is a knowledge community? Web based collaboration tools. It’s a learning community. Scaffolds and graphic organizers. How to analyze learning processes using tools like e-portfolios.
ICT started off being used for information in education, then it started being used for communication, and now it is moving toward knowledge building. It’s a critical difference between raw information and knowledge building.
Wow, he has four year old’s working in knowledge communities.
www.3iproject.net (interdisciplinary, interschool, international). The link takes you to a place where you can download his latest book for free. Gotta love the online books. I need to transfer them to my palm so I can read them on the go. The Cluetrain manifesto is available online for free, and I think you can get Lawrence Lessig’s latest work too.
He’s saying that the main problem with project based learning is how you monitor and facilitate the learning process when they are collecting and analyzing information. Once they begin turning in work, it’s much easier, but during the actual process it’s a challenge. If we only base our knowledge on their final reports, we are missing huge chunks off information. In particular it’s an even greater problem if the students are working in a group.
He’s looking at a specific project, where they take their main topics and sub topics and move them into a forum, so they have their conversations online. They have a multimedia notepad, where you can insert audio, video, or still pics, hyperlinks, and so on. Interesting, when you go to save a note, you have to provide a title and a note type. The types are example, an idea, I agree, I do not agree, a theory, opinion, a case, question. Teachers choose the types for the projects depending on the objectives. Depending on which type you choose, there are difference “scaffolds” available. For example, if you choose “I do not agree”, you’re scaffolds are Reason, Extend and Where. So you can highlight part of your note, click on the scaffold and it will tag it like in a blog or HTML. So instead of putting a passage in italics or bold for emphasis, you can put a passage in “Reason” to emphasize that it’s the reason you do not agree with the topic. VERY cool idea.
There’s also a KWL template built in as well. You can put up a table for KWL’s with a single click. There can also be a worksheet for comparing similarities and differences, there’s a way to do concept maps, classifications (venn diagrams), cycles, flow charts, analysis, etc… Wow, this seems like a really powerful way to document learning.
Side note: This is why Wifi is so important. As he is showing an example, I did a little exploring of his site. In the conferences section of his site, I found a few research papers of his that I’ve downloaded and started previewing. They have some other examples and charts that are providing some additional insight into the presentation.
There’s an interface for following a student’s learning process. You can see all of their questions, other people’s responses, the student’s theories, opinions and so on. He’s joking about the fact that you can see people stating opinions and taking them as facts. By monitoring the learning process, you can step in before conclusions are drawn, before the students begin turning in final results.
One more side note: I use words like really, fascinating, interesting and incredible way too often. I guess it’s just because I get really jazzed up by this stuff, but overuse of those words cause them to become watered down. I need to learn to be a bit more succinct in my writing.
He just showed a Powerpoint created by a group using this method to research how twins are formed. They had the classic Powerpoint problem of overusing sound effects, but the content was pretty rich. I’m not sure that the final project (the presentation) was any better than having students research it the traditional way, but as a teacher you are able to go back and view individual students’ learning processes, instead of assuming that all students worked equally on the project (a big assumption). That’s a huge difference. Just because the final project is the same, does not mean the type processes are equal.
Interestingly, students seemed to avoid using “I do not agree” because they were afraid of offending their peers. That’s a listen right there in itself.
Moving right along to the 3i Project.
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Key Concepts and Practices
Knowledge/Project building with world-class ICT practices.
Interdisciplinary learning culture & higher-order thinking skills.
Scaffolds to facilitate learning and formative assessment.
Constructive learning community among teachers, pupils and parents.
Attitudes, value & world vision change through international collaboration.
School leadership development through international collaboration.
You can download the entire report here.
Quite a bit of this is based on Bloom’s taxonomy and Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development.
Bah, apparently my batteries were low in my altoid’s battery pack. Looks like the iPod stopped recording 45 minutes in. Maybe I’ll have some decent parts to use. That’s it, I need to get a real voice recorder, one of those Creative Muvo’s that plugs straight in via USB without a cable and run off a single AAA battery. The iPod is way too flaky and sounds like garbage even when it does work. My cell phone can do it, but I can’t afford to waste the battery life on it. Bah and bah again.
He’s showing a video about the 3i project. There’s a few videos on the website, but I don’t know if this one is there. It’s pretty informative though, if I can get a link to it I’ll post it here later. It identifies the process they went through well.
Whoops. I just turned off the sound on the 3i site so I could try to preview the videos and find an online copy of this one, but it looks like all the videos are dead links. I would drop someone an email, but that link is dead too. Ouch. I’ll mention it to Christopher at some point.
That’s it. He didn’t mention if the site/tool they were using was free, open source…. waitaminute, Alan is saying that if you attend his session on Friday morning, you can get an account to work with them in Singapore. Hmm… I won’t be there on Friday, I wonder if there’s any other way to participate?
Rock solid way to start off the conference.
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