Teach42

I’m kicking off the BLC06 conference over at the MIT Media Lab. After an early start spent fighting traffic caused by collapsing tunnels, we finally made our way over to MIT. The moment you walk through the doors, you know where you are. This place simply reeks of creativity. I won’t bother to describe any more about the room itself, you’ll just have to browse through the photos to understand what I mean.

The lab focuses on “creative uses of new technologies”. It all revolves around innovation, particularly learning in education. Mitch is saying that they call their program Lifelong Kindergarten because for the most part, Kindergarten works pretty well. Kids spend a lot of their time building, creating, experimenting and collaborating. They believe that’s what should drive the bulk of educational experiences throughout school. In the process of designing things, kids learn about the rules of the world. Often the spirit of kindergarten dissipates as students move into the older grade levels.

Froebel, the person often credited for inventing kindergarten, created specific tools to be used in kindergarten to promote development. “If Froebel were alive today, what tools would he be using with kids?” By using technology, they hope to apply the principals of kindergarten to learners of all ages. ‘Frobel’s Gift’s for the 21st Century’.

One thing I find very interesting is that everything in this room looks like it was just recently hacked together. There are no fancy shelves (they use the same wire ones that I used to have in my kitchen growing up), half the computers don’t have outer cases on them, and very few of the computers or monitors seem to match. The lab is a marked difference from most computer labs were everything looks 100% the same and great care is taken to maintain identical standards.

The Media Lab helped to design Lego MindStorms. For years, people have been using it to create robots in a variety of settings and in competitions world wide. Mitch is showing off something called Cricket, which is similar but very different. For example, there’s a birthday cake with candles that have blinking lights on them. When somebody blows on the candles, it plays Happy Birthday. Not exactly a robot. Same sort of idea, but different in execution. I’m pretty sure that he showed this off last year at the conference, but it seems to be on the market right now, being sold by the Playful Invention Company. Typically, they’re for children eight years and older, but he showed us an example done by a six year old.

The software looks like a simplified programing visual programing language. Very module, almost like assembling something with Legos. Just build your program block by block.

The other program we’ll be playing with is Scratch. Looks a little bit like Logo. It’s similar, but this one isn’t quite as ‘cute’. For example, it throws a cat onto the screen. You can drag over a command, such as “Take 10 steps forward”. Then you can add other commands, like “Turn 90 degrees” and so on. However, this can get pretty darn sophisticated. It can apply simple Photoshop type filters based on things like the location of the mouse. Mitch used the ‘swirl’ as an example. The closer the mouse gets to the center, the more the picture swirls. Most of the time I’ve found that computer and art teachers want to move right on past the filters in Photoshop so they can get to important things like using layers to make students appear in a rain forest or on the moon. This turns a flat 2D piece of art into a multimedia masterpiece. Essentially, you can create an engine that end users can use to create their own artwork of sorts.

Scratch is still in beta. Later this year, it should be available to the public. Cross platform as well, which is always a good thing. I wonder if it’ll work in Linux.

After a short presentation, we split up into two groups, one half playing with Scratch and the other half playing with Crickets. I do say play because that’s exactly what we were doing. However, we were also learning plenty.

I hunt out with the Crickets group. I have to admit, the software made it easy to get rolling. There were about six groups of people doing Crickets, and everybody went off in very different directions. I wound making a digital Menorah. When you touched two clamps together, a light started flickering. Touch it again and another light started flickering. Touch it a third time and it started playing “Dreidel Dreidel“. At the very end, the lights would gradually flicker off into darkness. The program to create that sequence was actually much more complicated than it sounds, but the software made it really easy to experiment. I kept taking out pieces and putting in others to see what would happen. There was one other project that really stood out to me. Two women made a ‘friend finder’. Basically it just beeped and blinked until two units got within a few feet of each other, and then they both started playing “Oh My Darling, Clementine”. It used IR to determine when another unit was close, so it had to be pretty exact. But they got it working really well and I have to admit it was pretty impressive.

After everybody had demonstrated their projects, we formed a circle and had a round table discussion exploring the applications for these programs in education. People are pointing out that since there’s so many points of entry, and the projects are so open ended, students of all levels can be successful. I think one thing that everybody took away from this was how important the process was versus the product that they created. Regardless of what the final result looked like, everybody learned something about programming, logical process, cause and effect, and sequencing. One person said, “I’m not a math person, but I was astounded by the math implications that were in this project. I was kinda of growing with it. I kept adding to my toolbox of knowledge of how this worked.” Everything was very simple, yet it could become extremely sophisticated based on your needs and efforts.

In New York, they have some groups of students using Crickets to try to explore ways that they could improve the subway system there. While they may not have created inventions that could directly be implemented, the ideas that they came up with had potential that could actually be developed. For example, one group came up with the idea of having air swirl around the tunnel when the train was approaching, in order to give some warning to people with disabilities. Someone who may not be able to see or hear the approaching train could still feel the increased air activity.

While the software itself (Scratch) is going to be free, I was a little disappointed to hear that it wouldn’t be open source. They said that they wanted to make sure it was free so that students in third world countries could still get equal access to it. However, I look at the software and I immediately think that it could very easily be ported to a totally on line version using something along the lines of AJAX. Of course, I say it could easily be done because I’m not a programmer and wouldn’t do it myself, but the front end looks like it could be web based. So why not give somebody who DOES know what they’re doing the opportunity to continue to develop it? Also, I would love to see more programming commands created for Crickets. For example, there is no way to have it loop back to a specific part of the program if a specific trigger is tripped. So why not allow somebody outside MIT to code that them self so it could be worked into a future release? It wouldn’t affect the business model, because people still need to buy the Crickets hardware, so that’s a non-issue. It’s a lesson that Lego learned as well with Mindstorms. By allowing the community to develop their own plugins or add ons, Mindstorms really took on a life of its own.

Interesting note: Mitch obviously loves his work and greatly enjoys sharing it. The only time I saw him lose his smile the entire morning was when somebody suggested that they align some of the demo projects to state standards. I know that doing so sort of takes some of the ‘open-endedness‘ out of it and sort of feels like it’s diminishing the creative aspects of it, but at some point you do have to face the reality that schools live and die by their standards right now. It may not be pretty, but that’s just the way things are. So how do you address specific standards within the curriculum while still maintaining the freedom to be innovative? It’s a tough one that isn’t too much fun to address.

On the whole, it was a perfect way to kick things off at the conference. A little bit of instruction, a little more play time, and a whole lot of learning. More than anything, it really got everybody thinking about a subject that often gets left out of the curriculum: innovation. And let’s be honest, where would this country be without innovators? It’s easy to teach someone how to scan objects in the checkout line, but teaching people to be innovative is an entirely different challenge.

technorati tags:blc, blc06, mit, medialab

Blogged with Flock

On the bus right now heading back to the hotel. I’m typing on my PPC so forgive the grammar and terse writing style.

This has been quite a learning adventure, and an international one at that. We just heard about the new bombings in London, and I’m trying to remember who I met this week from London. I feel a much greater connection with the UK after spending so mnuch time with people from there. I hope their friends and families are ok and my thoughts and prayers are with them. This conference really emphasizes how we’re all part of a much larger world community.

I don’t know what the name of the software is yet, but it definitely sounds interesting. It’s an online tool, Free and Open Source, that provides you with your own URL, 100mb of storage, public and private aspects, blogging, polling, links, chat, discussion, WYSIWYG web page creation, and more. Oh yeah, and it’s ad free.

So, what exactly is it? I still don’t know! I have to tell you, if he’s really trying to hook us in, he’s doing a great job of it. Definitely piqued my interest.

Ok, the list of what it does isn’t done yet. It can do a formative assessment against all state standards throughout the year. I’d make some sort of snide remark along the lines of “all that and the kitchen sink” but the title of the session is Better Than Baking Soda, which seems to describe it pretty well. I would imagine that we’ll get to the actual tool sometime soon

Bah, I had to step out to use the restroom and missed him getting started on it. So I just stepped back into the room and everyone in the room is ooo’ing, aaaahhh’ing and whispering amongst each other. Definitely sounds like people are digging this so far. Looks like the site is MyEdesk Reference Desk.

Ok, a few quick links to samples. Bakerstrail.rwlo.org, pstudent.rwlo.org, polarissda.rwlo.org, mbaker.rwlo.org, germanexperience.rwlo.org What does RWLO stand for? Real World Learning Organizer? I still don’t have a great feel for what exactly it is, but like I said I missed out on a small but important chunk.

Here’s the blurb from the main page:

The PT3 Pathways Project is funded by the US Department of Education through its Preparing Tomorrow’s Teachers with Technology program. This project adapts a proven set of P-12 training materials and Internet-based curricula for use in math, science, language arts, and educational technology in community college courses taken by pre-service teachers. This site will house an online library of technology-based learning objects to promote constructivist learning in the community colleges. Faculty from thirty community colleges are to participate in a face-to-face/online training and development program and will be supported by mentors in an online learning community to promote institutionalization.

Ok, now he’s saying that this e-desk is basically like iDisk on steroids. iDisk??? What the heck IS this thing??

This is pretty amusing. Right now he has Skyped in somebody in Utah who is also sharing the screen via Breeze. So he can see what we’re looking at and talk to the crowd. He’s taken over the presentation at this point and is doing the presenting. Every once in a while, he asks the actual human being in here and says, “Can you flip me to the next slide?” It’s cracking me up.

We just took an IQ test that was created using this tool. Sounds like Utips.org is a new version of e-desk. Or something like that. This seems interesting, but everything is really confusing which kind of undermines the effectiveness of the presentation.

We’re looking at the results of the IQ test. You really can pull up the data in every way possible. You can see how everyone did in general, in raw data or as a chart. You can drill down to individual questions and see how each individual student did on any given question. It’s a pretty decent interface, very intuitive. You can even align the questions to standards, so you can see how students did against certain standards throughout the test. I’m assuming that with multiple testing opportunities, you can track them over time as well.

You can create your own tests as individuals, or the school/district/state can do it as a group.

Let me reiterate, the software is Free and Open Source. The backend is SQL, so you if you already have your questions and standards, you can import your stuff in. I like the way they put it, “If you have a big enough geek, you can certainly do it”.

They did a nice job with Javascript, making the pages pretty quick and dynamic. He’s demo’ing how one goes about creating a test and it has some nice options, like the ability to make it “open book” meaning you can try an answer and if you get it wrong you can guess again until you get it right. He just built a test in about 3 minutes. They already had questions created that were aligned to standards. Basically, he said I want 5 questions addressing this standard, 5 questions for that standard, put in a few options and voila! You have a test.

I do want to point out that this is a very high tech way to do very traditional testing. In that sense, I feel a small sense of disappointment. I bet it will also make a killer worksheet. I’m not saying the tool isn’t cool, because it is. But I don’t think that it really pushes us forward. However, we do have tests, we do have quizzes, and this is the type of thing that teachers do on a regular basis. So this tool would definitely be valuable to teachers and schools. Considering how many sessions I saw this week that emphasized moving forward and changing the way we educate our children, this session stands out markedly as not following suit. This is an innovative tool to do something very traditional. Ideally, we want to make drastic changes to education. This is something you can use in your classroom tomorrow, and every day until we get there.

If you want your own copy, you can email cody@myedesk.org. It’s Free and Open Source, did I mention that? So you can host your own copy if you want. If you want to do it on their server, head to rwlo.org and sign up for a free account. They have tutorials there as well.

Beginning on September first, e-desk and utips are merging. That explains some of the confusion.

Unfortunately, I have to catch a plane now so I won’t be able to see the demo.

This is a very cool, practical tool that you teachers can take right back to the classroom and start using from day one. The presentation was a little confusing and I’m still a bit confused by it, but I definitely see a lot of potential here.

Final keynote is Sowing hte Seeds for a more Creative Society by Mitchel Resnick. Started off by asking us to identify which of the three don’t belong: Television, Computers, Paintbrushes. Most people might say paintbrushes, but he’s saying that it should be televisions. People need to be using computers to express themselves more, to be creative and innovative in their use of them.

Some of the best learning experiences occur when education is about more than just information delivery.

In his mind, computers are not just about information, but they’re really about a new medium to let us express ourselves and communicate with one another.

His research book (group) is called Lifetime Kindergarten Group. He’s talking right now about the history of kindergarten, how it came about and how it was originally designed by Froebel. The new technology tools of today are able to take the ideas behind kindergarten learning and apply them to more advanced learning and concepts. The original materials and manipulatives in Kindergarten were called Froebel’s gifts. What would be 21st century Froebel’s gifts?

According to Alan, Mitchel was one of the people who created Lego Mindstorms, you know the legos with motors, processors, and the ability to program them via computer. We used to use those in school, the kids loved working with them. I’ve seen some really innovative projects. He showed a hilarous video of a few robots battling over ping pong balls, a predecessor to Mindstorms.

Side note: I am so tired today that I’m having trouble getting decent notes taken. It’s not that I’m not paying attention, but I’m getting wrapped up in what he’s saying and showing us, to a point that I keep forgetting to write things down! Oy vey. That’s what happens you when you stay up late drinking and talking about tigers, haggis, soccer, football and why North Carolina is attempting to recruit every good teacher at the conference.

This stuff really is interesting, but very visual. He’s got a slide up right now showing a six year old, the hat he created that spins a propeller when a person puts it on and the page he wrote to describe what it is and how it works. Six years old. That’s amazing.

Wow, he has a ‘birthday cake’ with some sensors in it and light up candles on it. When you blow on it, the lights go out and it plays happy birthday. He also has a cat that has a “cricket” inside (programable processor) that is connected to a light sensor. When you pet the cat, a shadow goes over the light sensor and the cat meows.

He’s really emphasizing how kids are much more creative and motivated when they are working on projects that really mean something to them. For example, a student created a device for measuring how fasat she roller bladed. Not how far, but how fast. It wasn’t too hard to figure out relative speed in RPM’s but she really wanted MPH for her own personal reasons and figured it all out.

It’s not just about the technology, it’s about being creative and trying to find ways to make a difference in the world.

Four guiding principals
1. Learning through designing
2. Following your intersts
3. Encouraging emergent community
4. Respect and trust

They’re going to be webcasting this session at some point. Quite simply, if you find any of this interesting you have to watch it. He’s showing a program called scratch that is a descendant of Logo and the Mindstorm programing language, but also has some photoshop elements to it. It’s called Scratch, and believe me when I say, it’s really wild. Doesn’t look like it’s publicly available yet, but I want it. Simple, intuitive, powerful, interactive, collaborative, and creative. Very very cool stuff.

Bringing all around, this sort of program is one more way turn a computer into a paintbrush.

Let me say this one more time. You have to see this webcast. I’ll post a link once I have it.

Unfortunately, today is the last day of the conference for my little posse. Last night was a great way to sort of cap things off. About 300 of us invaded the Star of Boston dinner cruise ship for an evening of schmoozing, drinking, schmoozing, dancing, and taking digital photos. A lot of digitial photos. Perhaps it was in part due to the martini I quaffed at the beginning of the cruise, but I found myself mostly snapping pictures of people taking digital photos. Sort off a modern art statement for people who have no idea what modern art is, like myself. I did bring my iPod and microphone along and captured a bunch of mini-interviews with people for a podcast. You can see all my cruise photos here, but here’s a small sampling of some of my favorites.

I went to the blogging drop in center to do a little reflecting and type up a few blog entries. Unfortunately, I was so busy talking with people like Jim Wenzloff, Jack McLeod, and Will Richardson that I never got a chance to! Then I went to the afternoon reflection time and was going to do some serious blogging there, but I got into a conversation with Alan and got wrapped up in the discussion, so I didn’t get a chance to do much there.

Heh, isn’t that an awful problem to have? Too much great social, live, real interaction to have time to blog much.

What a wonderful problem to have! Like Will said, “The blogosphere is great, but it’s also a lot of fun to get to spend some time with people who I read on a daily basis. And to learn with them as well…”

The moral boys and girls? Don’t forget the truly social part of social networking.

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Christopher Tan, Tamil Selvam Chareston, and Mohd Paruk are presenting Learning Communities in a Singapore Primary School. I’m looking forward to hearing some more about what they’re doing, Chris really piqued my curiosity yesterday.

The school is called Shuqun primary school. The main focus was the pedagogy, the process itself of the project. In order to get there, he wants to start off describing education in Singapore.

Think Schools, Learning nation. A vision which will ensure that Singapore will be a nation of thinking and committed citizens who are cable of contributed towards Singapore’s continuing growth and community. Education can no longer be build upon purely domestic foundations. Computers and IT literacy are as important as books and traditional learning.

Because Singapore is such a diverse culture, they believe in Unity in Diversity. One people, one nation, one Singapore. Sounds similar to the US, but at the same time very different. Singapore has no natural resources, the only resource they have are people, which is why education is so important. They have National Education. They want their pupils to learn to be friends, to not make fun of people who are difference, people should be trated equally regardless of race and religion, they should do the same. “how do we build bridges across cultures, races, religions, and nationalities?”

Their answer is a Problem Based online Discussion Forum.

They are trying to move away from “making cookies”, they are trying to move forward to “designing cookies”. They promote innovation and enterprise. Teach Less Learn More.

Teach Less Learn More.
Teach Less Learn More.
Teach Less Learn More.

Forgive the repetition, that one just really resonates with me. The teachers teach less, the students learn more. That phrase was worth the price of admission alone.

The project itself was Ehanncing thinking skills through a problem-based online discussion forum using the contrsuctivist approach. The target group was a 10 classes of 40 fifth graders, total of 400. They had four months to work on this. Training was 2 periods, or one hour. It was an asynchronus project.

Constructivism: Students construct USEFUL, as opposed to inert, knowledge. It should be inherently interesting.

Objectives: OT create learning environment, that ehances ciritical thinking skills and cognitive development. To create challenge learning environment, to expose pupils toa future mode of communication, and to foster understanding and communication: racial harmony.

For the project itself, they gave the pupils a sort of real world problem. I’d say it isn’t truly real world, but it’s a very realistic problem. Basically your friend is having a birthday party and 2/3 of the people invited declined. Why is that so and what changes should you make? They were also supplied the invitation which listed the date and menu and such. So, for example, a third of the people invited were Indian and the menu included beef and pork. Then the students took over the problem.

One of the objectives was to enhance critical thinking skills. Using the tool they’ve developed, the child first has to choose their thinking type “I agree, a theory, opinion, illustration, etc”, and then choose their scaffold, “Someone said, Reason, My Experience, I need to understand, I need evidence”. It forces them to consider what they’re doing carefully, to reflect as they’re going along. Doing so encourages higher order thinking skills.

Constructivism demands persistent questioning throughout the process on the part of the learners, in particular “Why” questions. As he’s showing us more and more posts that these kids wrote, you really see some interesting lines of questioning. Somebody said in an opinion that muslims don’t eat pork. Somebody else asked for proof of this and a link. A third student looked that up, copied and pasted in a few pertinent passages, and links to their source material.

Teacher did point out that students needed to provide evidence, couldn’t just state an opinion. Had to provide their reference materials, sources. The teacher did intervene a few times, but mostly let the students work, figure things out. Sometimes if a group was way off in their information, or had a significant misunderstanding, the teacher might step in as well.

Reconstruction/Peer correction: Students read through each others comments, questions, opinions, and respond to them with their own personal experiences. In this way they reconstruct their own mental models.

They wound up creating a spreadsheet of sorts with new suggestions for the menu. They chose to avoid beef and pork out of respect for all religions. They brought in a separate caterer for the muslims, but made things as common as possible. They did have a budget as well, and found creative ways to work within it.

When you go to analyses, you can see how many notes people have read, how many they have written, and just about every other stat you could possibly want. He’s pointing out a child who only wrote 37 notes, but read 389. They might not have been typing up a lot, but they’ve been actively participating. You can also separate out the types of posts they’ve done, and so on. Reflections are also incorporated.

Interestingly enough, this would also be a great way to practice basic reading and writing and research, simply because the vast majority of the communication is in written form. This is an incredibly fascinating project. I have got to find a way to get involved. The more I hear about education in Singapore, the more it sounds like exactly the sort of system I have been trying to find.

He does admit that this pilot was done with high level students. Can’t fault him for that. I’d love to see how low income, inner city students handled a project like this. I think it could be incredibly effective. It could really connect them to a world far beyond their own neighborhood.

There are some aspects of the program that are still a little hazy to me. Students are put together in groups of 4. The do work as a group, but they do post invididual.

Wow, one of the ‘rules’ was that they are not supposed to communicate at school. In fact, ALL communication occurred on the site. No IM, no email, no phone, no face to face. Online ONLY. So this was done 100% from home as well.

Wow. Now it’s really starting to sink in. So in the international version of this, you might have two students from the US grouped with two students from Singapore, working in exactly the same way.

This is incredible. It’s the same type of collaboration that people are doing in the business world. While the problem itself was sort of fictitious, or artificial based on real world situations, the method which they worked it through is incredibly authentic, just skewed to emphasis on the education involved to learn the skills necessary.

Link to the school is www.shuqunpri.moe.edu.sg

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Mike Lloyd, Education marketing Manager Microsoft UK. The tile is expanding minds for a shrinking planet. I didn’t realize when I came here that he was working for Microsoft, but I won’t hold that against him. It does explain why he was one of the only people who asked to hear the clips I wanted to play for the podcast prior to publishing them.

He says he’s not here because of Microsoft, but because he’s passionate about education and he feels the education system is broken.

Side note: Looks like something about my WordPress comments page was bringing down the servers at Bluehost. They reinstated my account, but said that I had to upgrade to the newest version of WordPress. Looks like I know what I’m doing after the cruise.

Heh, it always cracks me up when people warn me that they’re going to be controversial. Usually it means that they aren’t but think they are. We’ll see whether he really is.

“It is not the strongest that survive, but those that are most adaptable to change” –Darwin.

The background for his presentation is a graphical representation of the internet, sort in a neural net sort of way. Very cool way to grab us in. Dig it.

Another side note: I’d like to pull together a workshop called “Famous for 15 people” that discusses the evolving meaning of fame. Maybe a write a paper that explores the emergence of niche communities, and the inherent strength of them.

He’s going into a little history of globalization. Phase one was when the European countries starting projecting their power overseas for resources and conquest. The second phase was about companies globalizing for markets and resources. The third phase is about individuals and small groups collaborating (think niche markets and communities).

He’s talking about how in this next wave of globalization, loosely knit teams can work on projects together for brief or extended periods of time and then disband, go off their separate ways and then either reform with new members or entirely new groups may take up the same projects.

Moving along to the Long Tail, specifically as it relates to music. There’s more money to be made in “Misses” than in hit songs. Rhapsody has a top 500,000 chart. Yes, you read that number right. Who needs a top 50 when you can have a top 500,000?

This is a great slide. In 1940, cake from four and sugar cost $1, raw materials economy). In 1955, Cake from a mix cost $2.00 (goods economy). In 1970, a bakery made cake cost $10.00 (service economy). In 1990, a party @ Chuck E Cheese (cake included) costs $100 (experience economy). Think about that one for a minute. . . . . . pretty powerful stuff.

Due to modern science, the average age of people in this world is rising. In terms of %’s, a far smaller portion of the humanity pie is under 15, and a far greater portion is now over 65. I’ve said it a few times before, there’s no way 65 year olds are senior citizens anymore.

“In order to stay in place, workers will have to produce 2.5x more per hour than they do today.” Hmmm… I’m not sure I agree on that one. It’s not about being more productive. Productivity is a relative term and expectations change based on resources available and needs. Someone challenged what he meant by productivity, and Mike said that it’s basically about money and gross national product. As I was saying, if someobody told me two years ago that I would be updating a web site several times per week as well as maintaining a regular internet radio show, I’d have said that there’s absolutely no way I’d have time to do that sort of thing. However, times change, technologies change and you could easily say that I am much more ‘productive’ now, perhaps even 2.5x.

Side note: I’ve now seen four presentations by folks from the UK. Their presentation style is incredibly different from ours here in the US. I’d to say that they aren’t as dynamic, but that’s not the right word. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they’re more subtle. They let their slides to the talking, and for the most part are incredibly well prepared. I think you could get a lot more from the Powerpoint presentation of a UK presenter than the typical American presenter.

On the changing nature of work, lifetime employment is simply over. There is no such thing as stable employment, particular at large corporations. Most people will have two or more occupations and more than 6 employers. Many people will spend at least some time self-employed.

Are kids naturally thinking globally anyway? Are they doing it in spite of schools? They’re using the internet as a primary means of communication, playing online games, many find new friends on the internet.

He’s talking about Project Entropia and how someone spent $26,000 to buy a virtual island and is actually making a profit on it. Sounds exactly like what I did in Diablo on a larger scale. Diablo online had a virtual marketplace as well as a ‘real’ marketplace on ebay where virtual items were bought and sold. I traded for items on Diablo, sold them on eBay, used that money to buy other items, and then traded those for items that I could then resell for a profit. I made a few thousand dollars in about a month or two by doing it.

Here’s a scary quote. “We seem to be reinventing everything – except schools” — Tom Peters. We may be trying to adapt them a bit or tweak them, but we aren’t reinventing them. There’s no serious reinvention going on, just little pockets here and there. “If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.” — General Eric Shineski Amen.

A little sneak preview of what’s going on in Microsoft Labs. Interesting. Something that goes through your mailbox and determines what you’re an expert in. Not sure how much I like that, but the technology sounds interesting. Once it determines where your areas of expertise are, it helps connect you to people you need to address your needs. Actually, that could be useful. So when you have a project, and you need someone who’s an expert in a specific area, you can find the people you need. When I wanted to find an expert in PHP for my site, I was unable to do so. Some sort of social networking technology that could have connected me to those people would have been incredibly helpful.

Alan chimed in saying that there’s a school in England that has 17,000 students social networking together. It’s not unusual to see a 14 year old helping an 18 year old out with math activities, if the 14 year is an expert. I really have to ask Alan for some more information about that one. I’d love to do some research along those lines. I’ve toyed with the idea of getting a Ph.D. sometime soon, and that’s definitely an avenue I’d be interested in traversing down.

Wallop, it’s a blogging technology that shows you graphically the connections between blogs and people.

He pointed out that both of these are internal just to Microsoft. In my mind, very shortsighted. Make a small public beta and they generate hype, get valuable input, and give people an opportunity to try to take it farther, extend it in directions that the original programmers probably never thought of. By showing us that little preview, I think more people were disappointed that they couldn’t participate and see it for themselves, than were excited by what might be coming down the pipe.

Mike’s talking about whether your presence online is an advantage to you or not. Will a Google search for your name help you or hurt you when you try to find employment? John Pederson and I have been discussing this back and forth on our blogs a bit. John really put his money where his mouth was and encountered a spectacularly successful failure (you have to read his post to understand that). Too bad this room doesn’t have wifi or I’d link up to it right now.

Key ingredient for successful education in the global economy: A willingness to “radically re-think”.

He has a slide up right now that says “Ok- so we know what to do.” I’m at the edge of my seat waiting to see what comes next… Is this the realistic, “how do we get there” answer that I’ve been anxiously waiting for???????? The bottom of the slide is “What next”. Hmmm… Onwards, “How to put a convincing strategic plan onto 2 slides”. How do you get the attention of administration/board members to try to change the way we do things.

Ok, I dig this slide. I took a photo of it, but let me try to explain it. Think four qudrants, one with strengths, one with weakness, one with opportunities and one with threats. You can really provide a great overview of a project this, quickly, easily and effectively.

Next slide is GOST. Three colums, Goal/Objective, Strategy, Tactic. There are four rows, from the previous slide, (strength, weaknesses, opportunity, threats), and then you identify the strategy and tactic for achieving them. Strategy is what you want to achieve, tactic is specifically you you’re going to do it.

He had us work in small groups to try this out for ourselves, but the activity kind of fell flat. Great presentation up to that point. I guess controversy is a relative term. If you haven’t been active in the ed-tech blogsophere for the last few years, I could see how some of that stuff would have been controversial. Personally, some of it felt like more the same, but communicated in a very effective way.

blc05