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Final session for me. We’re going to be flying out on an earlier flight so I can get to a wedding tonight. Actually, if this makes it to the blog at all, it will be posted sometime tonight or tomorrow. So I guess I should say that we flew out on an earlier flight so that I was able to get the wedding Friday night. Bah, I really wish that they had Wifi here.
Enough semantics, the first session this morning gave us a chance to try out some of the activities ourselves. They created 15 centers and we went around the room doing the activities. I always feel a little foolish doing that sort of thing. One of the activities is walking on a balance beam, heel to toe, with your eyes fixed on the wall in front of you. They had a card describing the activity. They had a photo of a child doing it. I got the picture. I really didn’t need to actually walk along the blue tape line to figure it out. I know, I know, it’s just to make sure that we understand what the students are going to be doing so we can provide clear instructions and concise goals for them. I still feel that the time might have been able to be used better though.
I remember when I was at the University of Iowa, we were trained in an unusual science curriculum. It basically involved handing the students a set of batteries, wires and lightbulbs and having them play with them for a week or two. There was little to no instruction, the students were just supposed to experiment and then record their results. I could see how the program might be effective. However, the way we learned the program was by doing the very activities that the students were supposed to be engaged in…. for the entire semester. We never really got into the theory behind the curriculum, we were never taught how to implement it, instead we just played with science projects for a few months. It didn’t take long before we all grew to despise the program. I don’t know if any of my colleagues implemented it, but I know I never did. I can’t say for sure whether it was solely because of the way it was taught to us, but I certainly have lingering negative associations with the program.
It’s really not fair to compare that science program to SMART, but doing all the activities this morning did remind me of it. Honestly, I think they could have the same effect by simply setting up all the activites, having them all available throughout the day and letting people check them out as they desired throughout the day. It would give us attendees the chance to experiment with them individually, and allow more time to be spent on instruction and learning new material.
I’m sure there were people who loved having a set time to do all the activities, different strokes for different folks. It just isn’t my cup of tea to spend an hour on something that I could read about and understand in about 10 minutes.
Back to the subject at hand, this final session is covering results of the S.M.A.R.T. program. In case you couldn’t guess, they’ve found some positive results to the program J I won’t bore you with the details, but they did say that they have some graphs on their web site, so maybe I’ll include a few links. Oh yeah, if you’re interested in that massive chart that details all the different developmental levels and areas that this program is designed to address, it can be found at www.actg.org under Neurological Physiological Rehabilitation. It’s in color too. I’ll have to get that printed out on a plotter or something and put that up somewhere.
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Disclaimer: One more time. These are my notes. They tend to wander a bit, because my mind often wanders. It’s not necessarily a good thing nor a bad thing. It’s just the way I’m wired. Since these are notes, there are probably a slew of spelling mistakes, and grammar simply does not exist at all. Many of these issues that I talk about in these notes will probably be blogged about again later in a much more polished form. So if I haven’t scared you off yet, enjoy!
Digital storytelling workshop and I have almost no battery life left. I’ve dimmed the screen on my laptop so dark that I can’t actually see what’s on there. I’m typing blind. Consequently, don’t expect there to be too many notes from this session!
David Jakes just brought up something very powerful. He showed a project that a student created called Acceptance. I’ll try to find a link so I don’t have to summarize it, but he brought up an incredible point. The student was already very tech savvy. The project was amazing. Dave asked what the student learned by doing the project. In reality, the student learned very little. But a more important question is what did the student accomplish? The project itself was a breakthrough for this student. It had a worth that simply cannot be measured by a test, or a grade.
If I’ve said it once, I’ll say it a million times more. Schools are about more than what a test can show. Show me the standardized test that proves students are self confident. That they are dedicated learners. That they can organize a research project from beginning to end. Education is about more than simply providing correct answers. We need to be assessing more than what students learn, we need to consider what they have accomplished.
Interesting. David is saying that the one thing students find the hardest when they create their projects is doing the voiceover. Students will do it over and over and over again. It never sounds just right to them. I know the feeling. That’s why I do my podcasts ‘live’, in one take. If I started editing it, there’s no way I’d ever be satisfied. I’d keep editing and rerecording it for hours upon hours. Shows would never see the light of day. So my podcasts are raw. They have extraneous laughs, coughs, sneezes, computer sounds, and annoying rattles from the rear of my car. However, I have something to say and I’m not going to let a rattle prevent me from saying it.
I wish I had more battery life. There’s a lot of things that I’d like to be writing about that I’m choosing not to because I know the computer is going to die any minute now. The only plus side is that I get to give Dave and Joe my undivided attention. This really is a fantastic workshop. Can’t wait to question them further about a few things later on at dinner.
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Disclaimer: Same as before. These are my notes. They tend to wander a bit, because my mind often wanders. It’s not necessarily a good thing nor a bad thing. It’s just the way I’m wired. Since these are notes, there are probably a slew of spelling mistakes, and grammar simply does not exist at all. Many of these issues that I talk about in these notes will probably be blogged about again later in a much more polished form. So if I haven’t scared you off yet, enjoy!
Bah, I left my power supply at home L Looks like I’m not going to have many notes from the afternoon session. Hmm… perhaps I’ll try to take some notes on the PocketPC. It does have a keyboard. Of course, battery life is a concern with that one as well and if that one dies, then I have a very different problem.
Matthew Brown is discussing GIS. He’s part of Inquirium. Never heard of it, another site to explore. Also have to check out myworldgis.org. GIS is becoming more accessible to schools, actual real world tools that scientists use. You can use actual data instead of creating artificial problems.
Maps consist of layers, geographic, historical, spatial, etc. You can add or remove layers dynamically and synthesize the information in a visual format.
Ok, because I’m never satisfied, I want to see this combined with NASA World Wind, to see real satellite photos of the world, layered with GIS data, and be able to view real photos through time depending on what is being studied. Imagine how fascinating that would be.
He’s talking about all sorts of different activities or problems students could engage in by using this data. No question, it would definitely make things interesting. In particular, the best thing about it is that it isn’t artificial. It’s real live data that has applications for beyond the classroom walls.
Tangent time. The biggest problem with traditional conference structure is that every session engages in the precise practices that we keep evangelizing against. One person, standing in front of a large group of people imparting information upon them. I wonder if this occurs because that’s the way it has always been done or because it’s the model that most teachers/administrators/adults are comfortable with. Could the conference structure be changed to accommodate 21st century learning? What SHOULD a conference session look like? There is an incredibly intelligent group of people sitting in one room together. I get the feeling that there has to be a way for the other 99% of the people in the room to be more than passive listeners. One person talking, a hundred other people sitting and listening. It doesn’t really make sense, does it? So how could things be different….
First of all, nothing personal against Matthew (it really is a fascinating topic), but his entire presentation could be vodcasted and distributed to everybody in this room ahead of time. There is absolutely no reason to see him doing this presentation live. In fact, I bet it could probably be even better if it was prerecorded. He’s rushing quite a bit because he has a lot of content and wants to get it all in before he’s yanked from the podium. If he designed a 15 minute presentation in the privacy of his own office and made sure that it was exactly the way he wanted it to be, I get the feeling he could really create something special. The 100 people in this room download it before hand, watch it, visit the sites he’s talking about, get a little experience with the material, head over to the conference wiki and pull up this specific session. Then people post questions, queries, ideas, issues, concerns, and discussion points. When everyone gets together at the conference, this group of 100 people can actually use their collective brainpower together to try to accomplish something significant. Perhaps create a model for integrating it into a school setting, perhaps try to figure out how to align activities to state standards, or perhaps simply explore it and talk about how interesting it is. May use the Open Space concept.
David Warlick is on the microphone. First time I’ve seen him speak, but I’ve listened to his voice about 20 times or so, for a total of around 600 minutes or 12 hours. It’s a familiar voice. He’s discussing blogging. It’s a familiar subject to say the least and he keeps bringing up screenshots that I’ve seen on his site before J It’s kind of fun to be honest. His powerpoint is pretty darn slick. Really exentuates what he’s talking about. He uses animation the way it SHOULD be used. It’s not just gratuitous text flying around the screen. I’m beginning to understand why people have him come to their school.
He’s talking about blogging 101 right now. RSS, aggregators, and so on. I’ve given a pretty similar presentation before to this point. But I do have to admit, I could learn a bit about the art of presenting from this so far. He’s used the same slide to talk about blogs, RSS, XML and aggregators, all visually and clearly. Very slick.
Moving right along to Podcasting. Wow, way more hands went up when he asked how many people had heard of podcasting than I would have expected. That’s incredible. Ok, I have to wonder how many people have heard of my podcast? Yes, I’m egocentric. I have long since accepted that.
He’s doing a live demonstration of XML right now. I have to be honest, I think he’s losing people just a bit right now. I know how simple it is, and it doesn’t look TOO complicated when he’s doing it, but it’s too many steps. Go to Weblogg-ed, click on xml, highlight the url (ignore the messy code on the page), go to bloglines, click on add, paste in the url, click subscribe, and then click on the blog itself. To someone that isn’t familiar with it at all, that’s a whole lot of someone who is unitiated. Of course, it’s the sad reailty that there aren’t too many shortcuts (yes, there’s boomarklets and plugins, but they don’t always work). It’s still too complicated a process for mass consumption. It needs to be easier.
Quick musing: Don’t you love the way I point out all the problems with the way things are and say that things need to be better without giving practical ideas for how they could be better? I have a knack for pointing out what’s wrong with a situation without suggesting how it could be changed or improved. Isn’t that useful? I’m an idea man who needs a group of people who listens to what I say, solves all the problems that I identify and then gives me 20% of the profits.
Back to reality. Even though it’s more complicated than I’d like it to be, I do like the fact that he’s showing a real life, live demonstration.
Dave just showed my site and had me stand up, and introduced me as the foremost educational podcaster in the world. Ok, that may be true, but I still live in relative anonymity. My audience is a faceless group of people that sometimes drop me an email or a voicemail. Standing up in front of a group of people and being recognized was pleasant but just a little embarrassing. You could have warned me Dave J I ‘ll have to return the ‘favor’ some way! One other note, he pulled up my site and my del.icio.us account. I’m glad that he showed the RSS tag and not the Vegas tag.
Syndicate Subscribe Send. He ended with this one. I really like the way this sums it all up. Information is no longer a one way avenue. It’s not even two way. It’s omnidirectional. You don’t send information to specific people. You send it out and allow people to latch on to it. The strength of the bond is variable (people can visit, subscribe, or even subscribe to subsets [categories/tags]). I’m back to the Strength of Weak Ties again. I really have to read that book.
Question and answer time. My favorite, audience interaction.
Is RSS powerful enough to change our current notion of Information Literacy? (David Jakes’ question)
Aggregators can become overwhelming. Are they just new file cabinets that are becoming packed with information that we can’t ever absorb?
Only two questions for the presenters? We’ve moved on to using Qwizdom to have the audience provide answers to questions from Judy Salpeter, the group leader of sorts. So far, it seems like a gadget. We could have just raised our hands. I love the devices, but I want to see it really used to ask something that couldn’t be answered by a simple show of hands. Next question was is your district cutting edge, getting there, or way behind. We got a bell curve, not much of a surprise. Follow up question is how receptive is your district to the idea of letting the technology have a transformative effect. (A note for the people who make quizdom, you should be able to see the chart without stopping the reception of responses).
Ok, one person brought up that the receptiveness of the teachers may be very different from the receptiveness of the administration. Someone else brought up that some schools may be receptive but not have the applications required. Personally, I get the feeling that the application piece could be greatly reduced with the advent of FOSS.
That’s all from this session. Boy I wish I had some sort of grand conclusion to write here, but I have to wrap up and try to do some networking. Surely some of the people here are looking for the most dedicated teacher on this side of the Mississippi.
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These are my notes from the keynote presentation at Tech Forum 2005. It was a fantastic one day conference. Unfortunately I didn’t take nearly as many notes as I would have liked to.
Disclaimer: These are my notes. They tend to wander a bit, because my mind often wanders. It’s not necessarily a good thing nor a bad thing. It’s just the way I’m wired. Since these are notes, there are probably a slew of spelling mistakes, and grammar simply does not exist at all. Many of these issues that I talk about in these notes will probably be blogged about again later in a much more polished form. So if I haven’t scared you off yet, enjoy!
Conference time once again. This time, I’m in Itasca, Illinois at Tech Forum 2005, which is presented by Technology & Learning. I would love to be blogging this live, but unfortunately there is no free wireless at this conference L You could buy it for 9.99, but who’s going to do that? Certainly not someone who has no idea where they’re going to be working next year.
Chris Dede is the keynote speaker, and he’s talking about the future of education. Right now, he’s showing a video by Panasonic which is depicting what life and learning is like for students in the 21st century. It has a lot of high tempo music along with kids playing video games, talking on cell phones, typing, instant messaging and so on. Then it has some really slow boring music and a nice shot of a teacher writing slowly on a chalkboard as the students fall asleep.
Moving right along, he points out that he’s never found Learning Styles to be too useful to him personally. However, he recognizes that students have different dimensions, and kids may be sensory based, personality based, and aptitude based. Perhaps there is a new learning style that is media based.
This is interesting, he’s talking about how his different aged children work differently. The 17 year old daughter opens her backpack, takes out her textbook, turns on her mp3 player, fires up the laptop, opens up word, pops open 3 browser windows and 7 chat windows.
He calls this a Millennial learning style. “Web rewards comparing multiple sources of information, individually incomplete and collectively inconsistent.” Another characteristic is “Digital media and interfaces encourage multi-tasking”. I love that first quote. Multiple sources of incomplete information. That’s a perfect way to describe the process I go through when I’m doing research. Rarely will a site have all the information that I need, but I tend to get a piece here, a piece there. It’s why I like tabbed browsing so much. I do a google search and before I read ANY of the results, I open up about 15 tabs with sites that look like they might have potential.
More about Millennial Learning Styles, the content and services are often personalized for personal characteristics and behaviors. ‘“Napsterism”: recombining others’ designs to idiosyncratic configurations’.
Oh boy, I like this next slide quite a bit. The title is “Evolving toward Distributed Learning”. Think about that one for a second. Distributed learning. I’m having trouble listening to him right now because I want to mull this one over a bit. Students creating content, ‘distributing’ it to other students and people around the world, creating other sources of incomplete information for even more distant students to grab on to. I have to come back to this one later. It has the potential to be a podcast in itself.
Moving right along to MUVE’s, Multi-user virtual environments. Essentially, a completely virtual experience that you share with other people. I’ve been involved in these for years, since Ddials if you think about it. From Ddials, to muds, to Xbox Live. He’s talking about how even though it’s a virtual experience, it’s still real life to these students. He’s sort of joking about how people are paying real money for virtual items on Everquest. I made almost 3,500 dollars doing this on Diablo back in the day J
He just mentioned that students are using 21st century processes to engage in garbage content. Ouch. Garbage is a harsh term. Was me spending an hour trying to figure out a trick in Halo 2 ‘garbage’? I also used those same skills to figure out how to do computer imaging.
Back to MUVE’s for a second. I remember that back around 1997, there was a big push towards moving to a Virtual World Wide Web. You had an avatar and wandered every site was like a storefront. You walked around from site to site and could get your content. I wonder if it’s still around. I’d check but there’s no free wifi L I doubt it is. While it was an interesting project, it was very clunky, and despite being 3D, it couldn’t allow for network navigation the way people do nowadays. I don’t want to walk into one store. I want to walk into 12 stores at the same time and be able to have them all open and jump back and forth between them quickly and easily. I think my biggest problem with all of these virtual world projects is that they’re trying to recreate the world we already have, sort of like the matrix. However, virtual environments don’t have to be bound by gravity, walls or distance. So why bother trying to recreate the Earth? It’s like reinventing the wheel. We already have an earth, we don’t need a virtual one.
What we do need is a new model for virtual experiences. Something interactive, flexible, something that can be destroyed and recreated as needed. Something that isn’t bound by the things we are bound to in real life. What would it look like? I have no clue. But I wouldn’t waste my time trying to figure out how to make a virtual person look like their really walking up a flight of stairs. I don’t want to walk, I don’t want to fly. If I want to be somewhere, then just put me there.
Wow, major tangent, back to the keynote. He talked quite about River City, a 3D multiuser game that was supposed to be educational. It probably is, but I’d like to take a look at it for myself. Ok, we’re on distributed learning communities. Sometimes they are face to face, but they are bound together from a distance the rest of the time. Sounds a little like the Strength of Weak Ties (go read David Jakes’ blog). Bah, slide when too fast. Did I mention that this conference provides ALL the slides from ALL the workshops in the conference guide? Love
that. Great idea.
Ubiquitous computer, one to one student to tool ratio. Often a laptop or PDA or high end cell phone. He doesn’t see laptops truly going 1:1 on a mass scale any time soon. Howeve,r handhelds have a huge amount of potential. He’s a fan of the PSP appearantly (I wonder if my free one got approved yet). A lot of power for around 10% of the price. “Wireless Mobile Devices”, WMD. Horrible acronym considering the war. Later it looks like he’s changing it to MWD’s. Much better.
Just asked an interesting question: How many motors do you have in your home? Most people have no idea because they’re essentially invisible. In the Victorian area, that would have been an applicable question. About 15 years ago, the same could be said of Microprocessors. But now, they’re essentially invisble in nthe home. Think microwave, thermostat, alarm clock, etc… They’re invisible.
Ooooo, getting into the idea of Smart Mobs. Strangers with common interests online connecting together through proximity recognition. I like that idea. Think about this. I’m stuck at the airport, waiting for a flight for a few hours. Being able to tell that the person a few seats over from me grew up in Glencoe and happens to be a huge Beatles fan as well. Voluntary information only of course, but could be cool.
Augmented reality. Computer simulation on handheld triggered by real world location. He just mentioned that you can no longer buy a cell phone that doesn’t have GPS built in and enabled. Not quite true. Just because it’s easy to recognize what tower you’re connected to, doesn’t mean that they know where you are. Although I suppose they could measure the strength of your signal to three different towers and triangulate that to get a pretty darn good idea. Hmmm… So much for privacy indeed.
Durnit, I just realized that I could probably use my phone’s GPRS to get internet, but I haven’t set it up to do so. Bah. Gotta remember to do that.
Children now see multimedia as a toolbox. There is little difference between flash, powerpoint, dreamweaver and iMovie. One is a screwdriver, one is a hammer.
We think of kids who are struggling as people who need simplfication, but at times they actually become more engaged and successful when put into more complicated situations that mirror what they’re doing outside the school setting. Interesting idea. Goes right along with the idea that there is no such thing as a fast learner or slow learner. It’s just different learning styles. Deal with it.
Here’s a great point. Teachers today didn’t start teaching and learning in this fashion. We now have a generation of learners who want co-design, co–instruction, situated learning and assessment beyond tests and papers. This is a huge idea that teachers need to wrap their minds around. It’s too big a world to confine learning to one classroom.
There are four levels of learning technologies, device level, applications level, medium level (web, interactive tv, muve’s), and infrastructure.
Unfortunately for you people who will read this, after this he started summarizing and looking forward, which required my full attention. So no more notes after this point L I really should have recorded this keynote. I don’t know why I didn’t record any of those workshops, I should have.
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