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Archive for January, 2009

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Net Generation Education Project and Book Club

VERY excited to share with you the latest monstrosity to come from the Davis/Lindsay labs. As you’ll see, they’ve come up with a fantastic collaborative project, and I’m thrilled to be a part of it. Read, soak it in, and then apply to become a part of it…. and join the book club!!

Net Generation Education Project

Written by Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay

As announced at the Flat Classroom conference this past Monday, the Net Generation Education Project is the replacement for the Horizon Project and will include approximately 10 schools with 300 students.  The application process is now open for schools who wish to participate in the project.

Last year, Don Tapscott keynoted the Horizon Project 2008 which focused on having students envision the future of education via web collaboration and video.  The reading documents include the Horizon Report 2009 from the New Media Consortium and Educause.  Don Tapscott went on to include this project in his new Book, Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World.

So, the next level of “flattening” is to not only have classrooms connect but to have the classrooms connect in new and more far-reaching ways with the authors of their books. Recent examples of connected classrooms and authors include Karl Fisch’s Whole New Mind Project as they work with  Dan Pink and such as Will Richardson and Anne Davis did with Sue Monk Kidd, author of the Secret Life of Bees.

In the same genre students in this project will interact on a Ning jointly created with Don Tapscott. Don will post weekly questions to the Discussion forum and leave video messages to the students.  It will be a read/write project.  He will also interact LIVE via a webinar.  Don has a vision for improved educational outcomes and is reaching out to interact directly with students through his challenge and this project.

Additionally, the Discovery Educators Network is going to be providing and sharing tips and information on effective video presentations and how-to’s and a book club group for educators.  Don Tapscott will keynote and the student keynotes are award winning virtual worlds educator Peggy Sheehy and her middle School students from Suffern Middle School using machinima from their Island in Second Life.

We will be studying this year’s Horizon Report (released January 2009) but adding to it the intro and Chapter 5 from Don’s book, Grown Up Digital:  (Rethinking Education) to the reading assignments for students.    Students will be divided into groups to analyze some of the key trends in reworking education to create collaborative report written with other students from around the world.  Each team will have a project manager and assistant project manager to help facilitate the work on the team.  These “managers” will be students with teachers working as facilitators.

Each student will cast their vision for the future of education with a video to be uploaded on our project ning.  All videos will be automatically entered into Don Tapscott’s Net Generation Education Challenge competition and could win scholarship money for future educational pursuits. 

You do not HAVE to be a part of the project with Julie and I to join the Ning and participate in Don’s challenge competition – so go ahead and do that.  But if you are ready to have your students collaborate globally and follow the best practices as used in the award winning Flat Classroom, Horizon, and Digiteen projects fill out this form before February 9th and applynow!.  

Our tentative timeline: 

  •   2/1- 2/9 – Application process for classrooms

    • 2/1 – 3 pm EST – Information Meeting
  • 2/2 – 2/7 – Selection Process (classes will be notified as soon as they are selected)
  • 2/6 – Ning, wiki, and google group are “live” by this date
  • 2/10 – Final announcements of Classrooms
  • 2/11 – Greeting from Don posted to the Ning via video – this may be his “author keynote” or he may choose to have a challenge each week and have it be small pieces.

    • Weekly- discussions posted to the forum (can we pick a day and a time for this to happen?)  Will Don have a blog on the site as well?

  • 2/11-2/18 – “Handshake process” – Students join Ning – post introductions

    • 2/18 – Teams announced
  • 2/18 – 3/2 – Research phase of project

    • 3/2 – Wikis complete
  • 3/1 – Suffern Middle School Student Keynote

  • Some time in March, there will be a live session with Don Tapscott

  • 3/3 – 3/31 – Movie Artifact phase of project (note that there will be some overlap between Research and Movie Artifact)
  •    *Storyboarding 3/3 – 3/8
  •    *Outsourced video requests posted to the Ning by 3/10 (we would like students to be able to do this with a blog post on the Ning and tag it outsourced – we can then add a menu item for everything tagged outsource_request and students can sign up with a reply and post a link in the comments, this is a change from the last project but will work better)
  • 3/31 – Final Deadline for All Movies to be posted
  • 4/1 – 4/8 – Post project reflections, student summits

Net Generation Education Challenge

Written by Kasi Bruno


A crisis is emerging in our schools and universities.

Traditional, one-way broadcast models of education are out-dated. Schools have not evolved as quickly as other institutions, and students are becoming disengaged as a result. Why are connected students at home suddenly disconnected at school?

How can we reinvent education for relevance and effectiveness for the 21st century?

Inspired by the work of Don Tapscott and Grown Up Digital, the Net Gen Education Challenge offers everyone an outlet through which to express their ideas and opinions about their ideal model of education. The challenge community will connect engaged participants all around the world, bringing educators, students, parents and professionals together in a global dialogue on learning. In partnership with the CBC, Flat Classroom Project, the Discovery Channel’s Educator Network and Classroom 2.0, Don Tapscott invites you to share your ideas and help make education engaging, inspiring and relevant.

Discovery Educator Network/Net Generation Book Club

by Steve Dembo

In conjunction with the Net Generation Education (NGE) project, the Discovery Educator Network (DEN) will be hosting a weekly book club for Tapscott’s work, Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World.  While the NGE project will be focusing just on the Intro and Chapter 5, we will gather together weekly to discuss the ideas within the book and their implications for education.  Best of all, the author himself, Don Tapscott, will sit in on the final week to share his thoughts in a candid conversation with everyone who participates in the book club. 

There will be both live and web based discussion options for participants.  The live component will take place Monday evenings, 2/9 through 3/23 at 7pm EST. We will be looking for people to lead the weekly discussions as well.  If you would be interested in volunteering to lead the discussion for one of the weekly meetings, please mark it on the registration form.

If you are a DEN member and would like to be a part of the book club, please register here.  If you are not currently a DEN member and would like to learn more, please contact me !

Don’s publisher has been gracious enough to offer the book for only $18.45, a generous discount, to everybody who participates in the Book Club.

There are three ways to order:
Order directly from website http://www.800CEORead.com
Email Aaron at and let him know you are participating in the DEN / Net Gen Book Club Aaron@800ceoread.com
Call Aaron at 1.414.274.6406, ext. 204 and do the same.

Schedule

Part One: Meet the Net Gen
    Chapter 1 & Chapter 2 – 2/9
    Chapter 3 & Chapter 4 – 2/16
Part Two: Transforming Institutions
    Chapter 5 – 2/23 (chapter on Education)
    Chapter 6 & Chapter 7 – 3/2
    Chapter 8– 3/9
Part Three: Transforming Society

    Chapter 9 & Chapter 10 – 3/16

   Chapter 11 – 3/23 

Click here to register for the book club

Net Generation Education Webinars

by Steve Dembo
To support teachers and students who are participating in the Net Generation Education Project, the Discovery Educator Network will be hosting four webinars with two of the country’s foremost experts on digital storytelling; Hall Davidson and Joe Brennan.  These webinars will be intended for teachers to attend WITH their students so that they may learn ways to create digital stories from the very best.  To learn more about Hall Davidson and Joe Brennan, visit the Discovery Education Speakers Bureau.

Webinar 1 with Joe Brennan: Wed, March 4, 1pm EST
Webinar 2 with Hall Davidson: Wed, March 11, 1pm EST
Webinar 3 with Hall Davidson: Wed, March 18, 1pm EST
Webinar 4 with Joe Brennen: Wed, March 25, 1pm EST

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1/30/2009 2 Comments
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Is joining a PLN bad for morale?

Resized image of Ritalin-SR-20mg-full.png; squ...Image via WikipediaA legal blogger I’m friends with, Dennis Kennedy, once stated that within 18 months of getting a blog, most people will have a new job (here’s the link to Dennis’s actual blog post on the topic).Sort of a spoof on Moore’s law, but I haven’t found it to be too far off. I landed a new job within a couple of years of starting Teach42, and owe the blog 100% of the credit for me being hired. I’ve seen many many fantastic educators transition to technology facilitator positions, or go off into consulting, and more often than not it’s because of the exposure they received from their blog. Bigger and better is a wonderful thing.

There’s a flip side to that though. I also know quite a few educators that are becoming more and more disillusioned with their jobs and are leaving teaching, and I can’t help but wonder how much of the blame falls on being part of an open network. Allow me to explain.

Example #1. Teacher A works in a decent district. It isn’t a dream job, but nor is it a slum. She does her job, does it well and loves working with the kids. Then she joins Classroom 2.0 and Twitter and other related sites. She reads about Chris Lehmann and SLA, she hears the great things that Eric Langhorst is doing with students in Missouri, she watches the amazing projects that Vicki Davis comes up with in Georgia… Then all of a sudden her school doesn’t look so great anymore. Why isn’t her school as tech savvy and ‘with it’ as those other schools? Why aren’t her administrators more on the cutting edge of educational theory, and why aren’t more teachers upset by this? Gradually, she starts to realize that her school is just behind and always will be. It’s not worth the time and effort to make the change there, perhaps she’d be better off trying to find a new school to teach at that ‘gets it’. A school where she can really spread her wings with like minded colleagues. Time to dust off the resume.

Example #2. Teacher B goes to a conference and attends a session about forming a personal learning network. He loves the idea and jumps on board. He registers for Twitter, joins a few communities, creates his own blog. He starts getting all these crazy ideas for doing things differently with his students. However, whenever he brings up an idea to his department head, he gets shot down. The DH is ok with blogging, but wants it to be behind the firewall. He doesn’t understand that you miss out on the ‘magic’ if you don’t do it publicly. Podcasts get shot down entirely, and most Web 2.0 sites that he wants to try are blocked. He requests that some get unblocked but nothing seems to happen for days. Gradually he gets more and more upset that most educators are able to take advantage of these great tools, but he isn’t. He is frustrated with his department head’s lack of support, the IT departments lack of response, and can’t figure out why more teachers won’t raise their voice at the injustice of it all. He feels like he has a better grasp of the needs of technology in education than anyone else he works with. Consequently, when a position opens up for a technology integration specialist, he starts giving it some serious thought…

Those are just two examples cobbled together from several conversations I’ve had with people over the past few months. In a nutshell, the newly-gone-natives are getting restless. Being close to people who are amazing examples of the best integration success stories in the world has led to mountain sized feelings of the grass being greener elsewhere. It’s leading to a great many people to think to themselves either, “Surely other schools are more ‘with it’ than mine” or even worse, “Education is doomed because nobody gets it besides we few.”

These are people that were happy, productive, and doing right by students before they got connected. Could it be that the PLN like the Matrix? Once you’re connected, you can never go back. And education is a lot dirtier than most people realized.

Take The Blue PillImage by dullhunk via FlickrTake the red pill if you want, but once you go down that rabbit hole, you may wind up depressed, disillusioned, and with a strong desire to seek greener pastures. Is being hyper-connected bad for morale?

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1/7/2009 96 Comments