Teach42

Chris Dede is the first keynote of the IL-TCE conference.  His focus seems to be on the evolution of education.  Technology is changing the ‘characteristics of learners’, quite simply, students are fundamentally different than they were several years ago.  Kids today have instant access to cell phones, portable game systems, instant gratification permeates their very existance.  Consequently, slowing them down to the speed of chalk really goes against their natural learning styles.

He mentioned that he does understand the idea of learning styles, but the reality is that he teachers to groups.  If he was tutoring, then he could really cater to a visual learner, or an auditory learner, or a physical learner.  But when you’re teaching to a large group of people, like most teachers do, he has difficulty gearing his content to specific learning styles.  However, he feels that some newer learning styles really hit an entire generation.  Media based learning styles. 

Great quote: ‘Millennial’ learning styles – The "web rewards comparing multiple sources of information, individually incomplete and collectively inconsistent."  "Digital media and interfaces encourage multitasking".  Something to chew on. 

Did you ever get midway through a presentation and realize that you’ve seen it before?  At first I thought it was just Deja Vue, but then specific comments that he was making were really connecting and resonating.  So I tried to figure out where I might have seen him.  Building Learning Communities?  Nope.  NECC?  Nope.  I couldn’t quite place it.  Then it occured to me that I do actually keep a running record of the vast majority of the conference presentations that I’ve attended before.  Perhaps you’ve seen it, I keep it at Teach42.com.  So I did a quick search of my blog for Dede and came up with a blog post from Tech Forum last year.  Incredible eh?

Think about that, the notes I made from a keynote almost a year ago are quite simply at my fingertips from the internet, anywhere, any time.  Wouldn’t it be nice if my lecture notes from that astronomy class were so easily accessible the other night when I tried to figure out if that reddish star I was looking at was really Mars?  And wouldn’t it have been handy to be able to just pull up that short story I wrote in middle school so I could use it as an example in a presentation I was doing the other day. 

When my child is born, they’re getting a permanent web server for their webased portfolio of their entire life.

This is a fantastic keynote, and it does look like he has updated it some since the last time I saw it, but I think I’m going to duck out and check out the conference schedule.  This conference I’m actually going to hang out and *gasp* attend a few presentations!

It’s 8:00am in beautiful, historic, St. Charles Illinois (I’m not sure what specifically is historic about it, but there must be something). It’s quiet right now, but in half an hour this convention center will be buzzing with the sounds of keyboards clacking, mice double clicking and most of all, educators learning.

Today kicks off the first pre-conference day of the IL-TCE conference. I’ll be presenting a full day workshop about getting started in the world of blogging. This is actually going to be my first time on the ‘other side’ of the projector, as a presenter rather than an attendee. Considering how many years I’ve been going to ICE and how much I enjoy it, I can’t help but wonder why I never signed up to present before. Regardless, this will be a rather fun way to kick the conference off. An entire day devoted to blogs, aggregators, RSS and a few surprises here and there.

What’s also amazing is how well the blogging community is represented amongst the keynote and spotlight speakers. David Warlick, Will Richardson, Tim Lauer, Tony Vincent and the team of Susim Munshi and Susan Switzer are all highlighted speakers who are either well known for their blogging endeavors or addressing blogging directly in their presentations. Certainly a timely subject.

Enjoy the conference, more to come!

Keven Schouten actually has this session online. So now I’m free to just provide amusing commentary instead of trying furiously to get the details down.

Sounds like he’s basically going to introduce free ways to create alternatives to Bloackboard and WebCT. First one that he brought up was Moodle, which is obviously the most well known Open Source solution. He also mentions Bodington, which I haven’t heard of before. Another site to look into! New information makes me happy.

Interesting. He has a list of steps/activities detailing how to go about a ‘thematic content page’, which sounds basically like a educational home page.

He’s got a list of online collections of resources for teachers. He suggests going to those instead of using search engines. While I agree that these sorts of archives are great, I’m also a firm believer in teaching people to fish rather than giving them fish. Pure and simple, it doesn’t take long to go through a directory like that. And rarely are they ever really up to date. They may be good starting points, but I think learing to search well is more important in the long run.

Onwards to online groups, and he’s reccomending yahoo groups and msn groups. He said that he thought about adding blogs to this section, but that free blog engines don’t have the security he would want. Methinks he hasn’t looked into it quite enough. He mentioned that there was no way to make some content private and other content public. WordPress definitely supports this, and has pretty decent security options. Blogmeister definitely has fantastic options for teachers, I’ll have to reccomend it to him afterwards. Additionally, pmachine pro is now completely free and has tons of features for security and user control.

He has a few links to sites that provide free online storage space. I’ll have to look into those. Can always use free online storage space

Here’s a prime example of what I was talking about a few sessions ago. He says that once you have your space, and you’ve created your fields, you can just login to the server using ftp and upload the files. For a person who has never done this sort of thing before, that’s a HUGE over simplification. FTP is not intuitive to someone who has never been exposed to it.

Had to chip in a bit and plug Dave Warlick’s stuff. Mentioned PiNet Library and Blogmeister. To be honest, after watching this presentation so far, I really have to say that blogs seem to be to the best way to create online content for free.

This session is presented by Joe Brennan, well known for his Guerilla Graphics presentations, and is about where we’ve been to help us deal with where we’re going.

Bah, unfortunately the only power outlet in the room is right next to the kitchen, so it’s really noisy over here. Thankfully he allowed me to record it so I’ll be able to relisten to it. He has a great style of presenting, so I’m definitely going to relisten to this one in its entirety. That’s definitely a commentary about presenting in general. Some people are strong enough presenters that they’re worth listening to regardless of the topic.

I really want to take notes on this session, but it’s not really that sort of workshop. He’s basically detailing a history of Toledo back in the 700′s and 1000′s, what education was like and what reform looked like at the time. It’s a fascinating history lesson that draws some insightful parallels to current trends. Hopefully the recording captures it

This workshop may not provide me with any revolutionary information, or material that I can take back to the school, but it really is a blast. He’s comparing current trends historical events. He’s also cutting in clips from movies like The Name of the Rose and The Time Machine in a pretty creative way. This will be interesting to listen to later.

He says that we might be on the verge of another renaissance, possibly a digital serfdom. I love that phrase. Several decades ago, they used to say that knowledge doubled every 7 years. Now it doubles every 6 months or less. He doesn’t people are actually talking about knowledge, rather information. It doesn’t become knowledge until it is absorbed, synthesized and somebody finds a use for it.

Joebre@niles-hs.k12.il.us
memembers.ieberg.org/brennan

New seeions. Interestingly enough, it’s being held in Zanies, the comedy club that shares space with the conference center. The session is supposed to be about how to use digital productions to enhance instruction. That’s the key reason I’m hear, to see how to improve the education we provide to students.

The primary presenter is Darlene Andre’ from Northbrook, Illinois. She started off asking how many people have made a movie. I’d say no more than 10% of the people raised their hand. Interesting, but not too surprising. I know that it’s fun, I know the end product is impressive, but does the educational results really justify the time investment?

She’s definitely honest about how long these things take. Definitely not glossing over that issue, which is refreshing. So many people make their workshop subject out to be so much simpler than it really is.

“It will take at least five minutes to film each minute of video.” Astute remark. Other tipes include using a tripod and using a microphone. Nothing worse than taking an hour of video and realizing that the camera didn’t pick up the sound at all. She also suggests having a firewire drive to put your video on so you can bounce from computer to computer. I can definitely vouch for how important this one is. It keeps the video off the server (which causes tech people no end of grief) and it keeps you from being tied to one computer. She mentioned a website called Freeplaymusic.com which is appearantly all Open Source music. File this one under Podcaster Resources as well! Free music makes podcasters happy people. Another tip, keep your media resources organized. Keep in mind where you’re saving your video, your project file, your music, your backgrounds, etc. Also, if you’re exporting your imvoie to a video tape, add about 10 seconds of black to the beginning and end so you don’t lose video to the leader on the tape.

She also reccomends looking into local cable channels because they’re often willing to broadcast student projects. Students would definitely be way into being able to see their projects on TV.

Resources are available at www.greenbriar28.net/digital/index.htm

So far, lots of tips and tricks, but not a lot of how we bring it back to the classroom. Hopefully that was the introduction and we’ll be getting to that. Unfortunately, right now we seem to be getting mired in details like “How do you erase a tape” and stuff like that. I understand that there’s an ebb and flow to a workshop, but I really prefer when people save those sorts of questions for after the session is over or for email. Yeah, now we’re on camcorder reccomendations. Yes, it’s good enformation to have, but we have limited time here and we still haven’t gotten to how to use this stuff to enhance instruction.

Ok, now we’re getting somewhere. She’s showing a rubric that uses for movie projects. She has specific cretieria for each movie project htat she does. Definitely would help students stay organized and provide them with some input regarding how important each piece is. I like the way she organized it. Bet she has a few samples on the resources site.

Now she’s showing a project where someone used for differnet pictures to make an animation. Very simple, but a very cool idea. Something simple to do with voiceovers. Another project showed a classic painting, and then substituted the students in for the subjects and had them talking through a report about the artist. Definitely cute and a very cool way to present the information. They did the same thing with another painting where they blew up the painting and used it as the backdrop for filming. Looks fantastic.

She’s done quite a bit with digital storytelling. Static pictures with a student doing a voiceover. I think that’s a much more effective use of class time even though the end result isn’t quite as compelling as doing a full video.

Fun project on the screen right now. She has her class in a circle on the class with the camera in the middle of the circle on a tripod. She’s basically spinning hte camera in a slow circle and the students around the edge are acting out a story about a catepillar becoming a butterfly. Each student was acting, and the camera just circled and took it all in. Then they put some music behind it and had a student do a voiceover telling the story.

Once again, fantastic looking project, but I still wonder how it enhances instruction or improves learning. I know students really get jazzed up about projects like this and love making them, but is it really a more effective use of time?

The projects were incredible, and extremely creative. Definitely got a few ideas that I want to try out when I get back to school. I was just hoping there was going to be more of a direct tie in to how this can actually improve learning and I’m not sure we got to it. We circled the idea, but never quite addressed it. Definitely some good ideas though. She seems like she’d be fantastic to work with.

I had taken a whole bunch of notes at this workshop about data driven decision making, and then accidently closed the window. I have to remember to save more often or use word with AutoSave on and then paste it into the blog.

At least I found a power source. I have to remember to tell the people who run this conference to provide more power strips.

elearing.cps.k12.il.us is the site for the workshop that I have nothing written about right now. Very dry, very technical, and yet it was also very thorough and deliberate. In a nutshell, gathering data simply isn’t enough. You have to use the data to draw conclusions and then make changes.

Sort of a group presentation for this one. Doug Pratt, Jim Kidston, and……?

Open Source protects the person using it from being accused of infringing on tellectual property, patents or copyrights.

Going through a brief history of Open Source, Linux, FreeBSD, Apache, etc… Point is, it’s not buggy software, fly by night, it’s well established and constantly improved upon.

Car analogy: WOuld you purchase a car with the hood sealed shut? The only way to service the car would be to take it to the manufacturer.

Nobody making money on Open Source, so there’s not a lot of advertising. How do schools find out about it?

Participating in OS (Open Source), you create a relationship with a global community rather than just a vendor. Online education communities: School Forge, K12 Linux Project, Squeak.

Why? Cost/license, quality, service, modularity, independence, community.
Why note? Cost/training, legacy issues, migration, specific applications, uncertain future.

Very low initial cost, some extra expenses in migration, but overall cost is less in the long run. According to software vendors, the cost ot support Open Source more than makes up for the initial buy in. I’d be curious to read more research on this.

Vendor Lock-in: Dependence on a specific program can lead to issues.

Open source has been around for 30 years, rapidly growing. major corporations are incorporating Open Source in their business plan. Sun comes to mind immediately because they recently made their operating system Open Source to try to generate more interest in it.

More interest in Open Source outside the United States than inside. Is this true outside of third world countries? Research?

Hmm… I wonder what program he’s using to do this presentation? Open Office or Microsoft Powerpoint?

How do you support Open Source? Little vendor support but many communities available. Seems to me that you basically have to fend for yourself. Definitely a valid concern.

Making the change to Open Source is low risk because cost of entry is practically non existent. Having students help out with it can ease transition.

Mozilla Compose, is that an alternative to Dreamweaver? Have to look into it.

Case Studies
Business Skills and Development Centre: Students were trained in Open Office and had no problem using Microsoft Office in the actual work environment. Their students also are more comfortable experimenting and ‘looking under the hood’ when things don’t work.

Canada: School in Saskatchewan, created Open Admin, used by most of the schools in the area.

Question: How many people actually “go under the hood” and tweak code if necessary? Not many, but they know where to find the resources they need to figure out issues and get things fixed. Perhaps they’re more adept with online networking?

District 45 in Dupage County uses Open Source almost exclusively. Have to drop them a line and see what resources they have.

IMSA (Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy): Lab school for grades 10-12 with 650 students. Why do students mess with Linux? Because they can! It’s easy to get at, it’s free, they can mess around with it. IMSA uses Samba for file sharing, Postfix for mail, Open Directory for LDAP, moving to Linux only server room.

There’s a great slide up right now that has a chart with non commerical versions of commercial software that they’re using. I’d love to take a photo of it, but I think that would be distracting. I’ll see if I can get a copy of the presentation to post a screenshot. They’re using FreeRadius for authorization, authentication and accounting. Didn’t know that it was that robust! They use tripwire, syslog and snort for security.

Bah, the battery is ticking down. I don’t expect to get too much more life out of it.

He’s pointing out that even though the software is free, and it’s usually easy to get it installed, there’s still a learning curve to deal with. Don’t expect it to be painless.

In response to a question about Open Office, he mentioned that the PowerPoint piece of it is probably the weakest component of the suite. I think that probably answers my earlier question.

DaVinci Academy: Has the students install Linux, download Apache, use Talk for chat. Sounds very experiential. Is planning on installing his own chat engine. Will be able to turn it off during school hours and then turn it on after hours.

Elgin Aacademy: (Note: Jim Kidston is doing the talk, very intelligent guy that I see often at the LMAIS meetings) Just put a Linux box in the server room. Playing around with it right now. Experimenting with Open Office, NView (?), (web page creation program), Moodle. Learning by jumping right in and seeing how it all works.

www.pjassociates.biz:
Sounds as though they’re basically willing to provide a computer to any school who wants to give it a shot. Very cool if that’s seriously what they’re offering.

Interesting.

Had a fantastic discussion with someone from DaVinci academy after the workshop. VERY cool stuff happening at that school. Think apache being set up by 6-8 graders.