Archive for July, 2007
Politics and Blogging
The session that kicked off EduBloggerCon for many of us has been on my mind quite a bit lately. Essentially, Will asked the room “What should we, as a community, really be trying to accomplish. And how do we go about doing so?” I don’t believe we found any answers in those 45 minutes, but I do think we started to see which direction the yellow brick road was leading.
We live in incredibly unique times. Much like when the paper press was invented, or when the telegraph and telephone were developed, or when we entered the industrial age, the world has taken an unexpected turn. Perhaps it has started spinning a little faster. The days and nights certainly seem a little shorter to me lately. But in my opinion, what makes this age unique is that it’s the first time that virtually every possible piece of information has A) become publicly and uniformly available to every individual with connectivity and B) available instantly.
The amount of information available and the speed with which we can access it fundamentally change the playing field. They are what make the world flat. They are what permit Wikinomics to exist. And they make collaborative networks easier to form and maintain than ever before, so easy that people don’t even need to meet, talk or even email directly to have a significant impact upon each other.
It sounds like a pretty radical shift, doesn’t it? And yet, let’s be honest, the vast majority of the world hasn’t changed a bit. Schools are the same. Politics is the same. Parents raise their children the same. We still bike, drive, jog, eat and sleep the same. As they say, the more things change the more they stay the same.
However, there are a very small minority of educators that feel the world of education can and should be different than it was even 5 years ago. Who recognize that work environments are changing. Not necessarily across all walks of life, but if one wants to be what we largely call ‘successful’, the skill set one needs to have is shifting. Tools are evolving quickly, information is moving quickly, and schools are slow to react. It is frustrating, but many teachers are used to frustration. It comes with the territory.
And then somebody drops a stone like DOPA into the water. Schools are forced to react quickly or be washed over by the tsunami like waves that ripple outward from it. While DOPA may not have passed, it served as a warning to educators that if we don’t take action proactively, we’ll be left to react when somebody else does.
Which brings us to the golden question: How does one enact positive change within the educational community? As people have been quick to point out, preaching to the converted does little to further the cause. And converting the uninformed, while worthwhile, is a poor way to enact systemic change.
So far as I can see, the key is going to be to follow in the footsteps of DOPA. No, I don’t mean try to shield our students from the very tools they need to master in order to succeed in today’s workplace. I mean that we need to draft formal legislation, get it introduced to a legislator and try to see it passed at the National level.
That may sound daunting, but it happens everyday. While the tools the EduBlogging community are so fond of raving about may serve for developing the initial plan, the best route to seeing it through is going to be traditional politics. The structures for doing so are in place. Essentially, we need a plan, we need funding, and we need lobbyists.
Regarding the plan, I recommend reading Illinois Senator Dan Kotowski’s Internet Safety Education Act. It may not be perfect, but it’s at least a positive place to start. The summary is as follows
Creates the Internet Safety Education Act to inform and protect students from inappropriate or illegal communications and solicitation and to require school districts to provide education about Internet threats and risks. Creates the Internet Safety Education Alliance under the authority of the Office of the Attorney General. Amends the State Finance Act to create the Internet Safety Education Fund. Amends the School Code to mandate the provision by every public school of instruction and discussion on effective methods by which students may recognize and report inappropriate, illegal, or threatening communications on the Internet on or before the start of the 2008-2009 school year.
Once we have created a bill to propose, the next step would be getting it in the hands of a representative. Pure and simple, it’s going to cost money. However, there are plenty of organizations that would be willing to champion such a cause. Personally, I know I would be willing to make a donation to ensure we do not need to worry about an offspring of DOPA being passed, or more importantly, to see school’s empowered to teach students the skills students need to know to succeed in today’s workplace.
Will’s rallying cry of “One more NECC before the elections” has resonated with me. I am determined this year to spend my time doing more than just writing, talking and dreaming. The key to effecting change is action, and I believe that as a community we can make a difference.
Are you up for the challenge?
SlideCasting – Another ‘cast, another virtual presentation
I thought Podcasting, Screencasting, and Vodcasting, were enough, but now we have yet another term to throw into the mix: Slidecasting. As shared by Crafty, SlideShare now provides you with the ability to upload an audio file and sync your powerpoint slides to it.
Voila, instant online presentation.
This won’t put presenters out of business, people still like seeing their experts face to face, but it will make it much easier for people to A) get some prior knowledge and B) share their info intelligently with people who weren’t able to attend. My PowerPoint slides don’t really stand up on their own. They’re little more than visual prompts for me and cues for the audience to make connections. Without the audio, they’re worthless. Which is why I haven’t bothered to share much on SlideShare. I might need to rethink that one now.
Of course, I’m sure some of you are asking what’s the difference between this and a screencast? You could always just record your screen and page through the PowerPoint while you narrate it.
There are three differences as I see it. 1) Bandwidth. A screencast usually takes up a good chunk of space and requires some creative editing and converting to shrink it down. 2) Accessibility. This can be embedded into a web page, which makes it much easier to share. 3) Ease. Much easier to just edit your audio and then time out the slides, than to try to get a 45 minute screencast recorded right. Audio editing is easier than video editing (of course, some will argue that I’m sure).
Of course, it does make me wonder just what this means for presenters. As I’ve asked many times before, if everybody can watch your slides in sync with your voice a few days before you present to them, then how could one better use the time you have in front of the audience? Instead of simply doing a knowledge drop, could the collective intelligence in the room be harnassed to actually accomplish something tangible, something that would benefit the entire educational community?
How could we be using these new tools to break the mold and do things differently?
Shiny Happy Tools
A blog post that I put up on Digital Passports has kind of boomaranged and struck me a second time around.
Basically the post described a few of the many many many websites that I check out on a daily basis that don’t quite make the cut. It really got me thinking about how much time I have spent trying to find sites that would really be valuable for educators and students. I don’t consider it to be time wasted, it’s kind of fun and somebody has to do it, but it really emphasized just how much the software landscape is changing.
Step back about 3 or 4 years and there were about 5 choices for blog engines, 2 choices for podcatchers, a ton of wiki platforms (but you had to install them all yourself), and if you wanted to edit photos, you had to do it offline.
Now, not only do we have video and photo editors online, we have tons of them. I dare say we may have too many.
Who can count how many sites we have for free photo hosting? How about photo editors online? Or sites where you can get a free blog? There’s too many to count, and certainly too many to survive. While a few die off with a rebel yell and wind up in TechCrunch’s deadpool, most die off with a whimper and are just never seen again.
The strong survive, get bought up by Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, and start driving traffic and ad-revenue for the big boys, who thankfully are content to keep them free or cheap for now.
So what does this mean for educators? Simply this: Don’t get married to the tools in your toolbox. A hammer is a hammer is a hammer. So what if you really like the steel one with the yellow handle? At some point that one might disappear and you better be ready to pick up a new one. Need to cut a board but can’t find a saw? Time to get creative my friend. If you are willing to concentrate on what your actual needs are, you’ll find plenty of tools at hand for about every project.
To me, that’s been the real value of the 2.0 world. When I have a need, I don’t look to see what I can buy to solve it. Rather I start flipping through the pages in my head of all the 2.0 sites I’ve seen, and read Twits on, or blog posts about. I ask friends for suggestions and 9 times out of 10, the right tool is just a registration form away.
Shiny happy tools, free and easy.
WikiMindMap – Mapping out Wikipedia
Whether you like it or hate it, you’ve got to respect Wikipedia. And while you can debate about the level of accuracy versus other sources, you can’t really argue with the fact that there’s an immense amount of information there. So much so that it can be rather overwhelming at times.
WikiMindMap attempts to make browsing through Wikipedia a touch easier but giving you a visual trail to walk through. It strips out all the content, leaving behind a map of all links out of an article, both internal and external. You can click on any link to have it pop open a new window with that article, or click on the ‘refresh’ icons to shift that topic to the center of the mind map. Table of Contents categories are collapseable, which does make things a little neater.
Would I use this when I’m searching for a specific nugget of information? No way. But it would be a good way to try to follow a trail around when you aren’t quite sure what you’re looking for. For example, if you’re searching for significant influences and events regarding a person in history, this might be a good way to explore.
Monday Morning Video: Feed Jakes
A touching tribute to a good ol’ local boy, David Jakes. And no, he’s not dead. Does someone have to die to share a tribute of them?
If you’d like to support the Feed Jakes cause, you can purchase a JakesOnline thong from CafePress. 20% of every sale goes to feeding Jakes. The rest goes towards an iPhone.
Speech to Text… For a price
I’ve tried to use dictation software before. I believe it was Dragon Naturally Speaking. I spent hours reading paragraphs aloud, repeating phrases and correcting it. During one attempt, I spent two hours a day training the software to recognize my speech patterns. The end result though, was that I still had to talk like a robot to get it to recognize even 2/3 of the ramblings coming out of my mouth. My speech patterns just don’t lend themselves well to dictation I guess.
That’s why CastingWords fascinates me. Submit your audio, and real human beings transcribe it for you! It’ll be delivered as basic text, perfect for inclusion into a blog or web page.
Of course, there’s a cost. $.75 per minute. That’s not per minute that they work on it, rather per minute that you blabber on. So a 10 minute podcast would cost $7.50. That ain’t necessarily cheap, but at the same time it’s a fantastic service they’re providing. It makes your podcast immensely more searchable and greatly increases the chance of people finding your content. Also, it would be incredibly valuable for podcasts of interviews and conference sessions.
They actually do have a rate for podcasters as well. If you have a regularly produced podcast, the price drops down to $.45 a minute. Ten minute podcast is $4.50 then, which while still steep is a little easier to get down. Of course, your one hour conference session is going to get mighty pricey.
Regardless, it’s a great service to add to the toolbox.
Policies getting in the way
Of all the big players in the social networking landscape, Facebook is the only one that I can honestly say that I actively participate on. After arriving home from NECC, I posted a question asking people to share their one ‘big’ takeaway from the conference. Alfred Thompson’s response was:
Bloggers will talk and talk and talk if you put them together in a room with other people.
Seriously though I took away that there are many more technology tools for education then administrative support to use.
He makes a great point that was one of my major takeaways too. With all the talk of Web 2.0, School 2.0, Teachers 2.0 and Students 2.0, who (besides Doug Johnson) is really talking about Policies 2.0?
With nearly every type of software being represented on the internet in a free, cross-platform, browser agnostic version, why aren’t more schools adjusting their filters and policies to encourage teachers and students to make educational use of these tools? If students using real world tools in a more organic fashion isn’t a good enough reason to make the switch, what about saving schools some major dollars? Wouldn’t that be a good enough reason?
I know that there isn’t any single sector that we can target that will instantly enact widespread change, but antiquated school policies can certainly serve as an inhibitor. If the tools are blocked, then teachers won’t even have the opportunity to make use of them.
Given that we’re still in the heart of summer break, this is a perfect time to start revisiting your school’s policies and see if they properly reflect the environment you want to your teachers to promote. Do they really address the needs your school has in 2007? Are they structured in a way that allows teachers to prepare students for the real world? If not, get the conversation rolling and start making some change!
Here are some links to posts and policies that you may find helpful:
How do we teach kids to cross a busy street?
Bud the Teacher’s Blogging Wiki - Examples, links and more. Contribute!
AHS Blog AUP Wiki
Youth Voices AUP
EFF’s page on Student blogging – Great info, well worth reading through.
Another NECC highlight: Meeting Roger Wagner
If you’ve been in computers more than 5 years, you know what Hyperstudio is. Hands down, one of the greatest programs for education ever. Of course, after it was bought out, it went downhill fast. Development came to a standstill, and they never wound up releasing an OSX version. Half the team left the product and created the company Tech4Learning, with their fantastic ‘blender’ series.
Well, at NECC I had the distinct pleasure of meeting the man who started it all, Roger Wagner. Turns out they bought it back and are developing a new version. They announced Hyperstudio 5 along with a bunch of other titles that they acquired as well.
Highlight of the night was when he asked me to autograph the booklet that had all the Discovery presentations and four of our pictures in it. Turns out he’d already gotten Scott’s, Lance’s, and Hall’s signatures and needed mine for the complete set. But I can still say that Roger Wagner wanted my autograph and have photographic proof!
How long do you think it’ll be before that booklet shows up on eBay?
