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

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

Related Reading on Teach42

• Discovery Education, meet the Travel Channel.
• Podcast: My life, my feed
• Film on the Fly
• What I do when I’m not blogging, the Discovery Educator Network
• Open Book Meme

Let’s get the full disclosure part out of the way right up front. Yes, I work for Discovery Education. And no, they didn’t ask me to post this on Teach42. But I think it’s pretty darn cool so I’m going to anyway. This is semi-cross posted on the DEN Blogs.

Discovery Education and Wilke’s University are launching a new online master’s degree program in instructional media! This has been in the works for a quite a while now, so I’m thrilled to finally announce it.

The 30-credit instructional media program will prepare teachers to engage today’s students in learning through digital media. It will educate teachers to become specialists who can effectively blend academic rigor with the latest technology, from video to Web 2.0 to virtual field trips.

Courses will focus on topics such as digital storytelling, using digital media in the classroom, using technology to support creativity, and applying brain-based theories of how students process information to technology integration. Kathy Schrock, a nationally known leader in technology integration in the classroom, will design “Internet Tools for Teaching” scheduled to begin in spring 2009.

Yeah, that’s right. Kathy Schrock is going to be one of our teachers. Too cool for words.

I won’t be teaching initially, but I am working on putting together a curriculum for a Web2.0 oriented class. However, considering how much information is out there already, if I’m going to be doing it I want to make sure that it really embodies the spirit of teaching in the 2.0 world. So while I’m not 100% what it will ‘look’ like, you can be certain that you’ll be reading about the progress of it here.

This isn’t a partnership that was entered into casually. Wilkes University had to ensure that the quality of coursework would meet their incredibly high standards, and the folks here at Discovery Education were just as concerned with creating a program that provides teachers with the superior instruction that they deserve.

“The program is designed to help all teachers effectively integrate media-based technologies in helping their students reach new heights of academic success,” Speziale said. “This is one of those special programs that can have an immediate transformative effect in a teacher’s classroom.”

Wilkes University is currently accepting applications for the Fall 2008 semester. Prospective students are encouraged to visit the university’s website at www.wilkes.edu/instructionalmedia, where they can find additional program information and sign up to receive application alerts via email. All Wilkes University Graduate Education Programs are accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education.

If you’re looking for a way to jump up the pay school, maintain your certification, and get a superior education along the way, you should definitely check into it!

Related Reading on Teach42

• You say you want a revolution?
• Ok seriously, what’s the catch here?
• Students learning from Students
• NECC: He had me and then he lost me
• Free live webinar!

Pogue shared a letter that’s got me all riled up again…

I’m a high school teacher. Like all high schools, we are dealing with a problem that sucks time, energy, and resources like a black hole: cellphones. We waged a similar battle a few years back with iPods, and although stakes seem much higher now, the fundamental argument is the same. The argument is:

1] cellphones are a distraction
2] cellphones present a potential liability in terms of cheating on tests
3] cellphones are a distraction
…
So I’m asking for some insight on how to sell this to an administration that is overwhelmed with a hundred more important things, and to a school board that feels that two $500 computers are twice as good as one $1,000 machine. What’s the answer?

I’m so fed up with these arguments. Paper clips are a distraction. Spiral notebooks are a distraction. And as we’ve seen recently, students certainly do NOT need a cell phone to cheat on an exam.

So off the top of my head, I decided to rattle off a few things that cell phones could be good for.

Such as…
1) Check the spelling/definition of a word
2) Research a topic
3) Look up reference images
4) Pull up maps (even with satellite imagery)
5) Document a science lab with built in digital camera/video
6) Fact check on the fly
7) Mail questions to the teacher that they might be embarrassed to ask
Classroom response system
9) Take quizzes
10) Record and/or listen to podcasts

And that’s off the top of my head, spur of the moment. Give me some time and I’m sure we can come up with a much more comprehensive list.

So let’s stop exerting so much energy trying to ‘bust’ students for carrying the same devices the rest of us carry. Rather, let’s start focusing on how we can use them to improve education in the classroom. You know, prepare them for the world and such…

Related Reading on Teach42

• Cell phones in the classroom
• Researching a digital camera? Use Flickr!
• What can you do with a cell phone in the classroom?
• Mobiles to Help Learning? High School in UK says OK
• iPods in the Classroom, and the travesty in Chicago

So I posted a few days ago on TechLearning about how easy it is becoming for students to bypass school filters in a very wide variety of ways. Yes, in the post I did mention a few ways that people could bypass school or work filters. I didn’t do this to teach people how, I did it to raise awareness amongst educators and to point out that simply filtering the internet is insufficient. Filters don’t protect our students, educating them does.

It didn’t take long after I posted it for a student of David Jakes’ to leave a comment.

While our district users extensive filtering on web sites that we students can access, even the most basic users know how to get around them by using any one of thousands of web proxies …

Aside from a strict whitelist of web sites–which would be disastrous for a learning environment–there’s not much [network administrators] can do that students can’t get around with extreme ease.

Sorry to be so pessimistic, admins, but we’re just *that* clever.

Think he’s just bragging? Then take a look at this story out of Australia (credit to JINXIE for sharing it): Student cracks $84m porn filter. It seems that Australia decided to throw money at the problem. They invested $84 million dollars in a complex filtering system to try to keep students away from porn sites. It took a 16 year old 30 minutes to bypass it. So the government added another filter to take care of the security hole. The same teenager was able to bypass the new addition within 40 minutes.

So what did this hooligan have to say for himself?

“Filters aren’t addressing the bigger issues anyway,” he said.

“Cyber bullying, educating children on how to protect themselves and their privacy are the first problems I’d fix.

“They really need to develop a youth-involved forum to discuss some of these problems and ideas for fixing them.”

What a radical idea. I wonder whether they could have developed such a forum or educational program for less than $84 million dollars…

Related Reading on Teach42

• Students vs. Filters
• Podcast: Mothers, don’t let your babies grow up to be filtered.
• MySpace and Facebook Rock the Vote
• How can I cheat on the test? Let me count the ways…
• We could all use some free press from Microsoft