Posts tagged ‘Discovery’
The revolution has been canceled.
- Image by opensourceway via Flickr
While doing some brainstorming today, I decided to do a search for articles about digital textbooks. One of the results was an article from David Warlick. In it, he mentioned how excited he was that his son had the choice of “bringing home a traditional, 400 page, five-pound, paperbound book, and a one-half ounce optical CD-ROM.” Of course, reality came crashing down when he realized the CD was little more than over-glorified PDFs.
He goes on to describe several characteristics he expects to see from digital texts. Some interesting ideas, it’s worth reading.
But what troubles me is that the article was written almost exactly 6 years ago. And in that time, there has been almost zero progress towards this end in most schools.
Depressing to say the least. That’s not to say there hasn’t been any progress at all. At Discovery, we have a Science service that has been approved for use as a textbook and is purchasable with textbook funds in the state of Oregon. Without a doubt, I think it’s on the right track. It has all the text one might want, but also videos, interactives, simulations, multimedia, bookmarking, read alouds, and assessment built into it. One could never accuse it of being an over-glorified pDF.
What’s concerning to me is how slow this adoption process is. While we’re working on getting it approved in several other states right now, for the most part a school can’t adopt a digital text even if they wanted to.
Think about that. It’s the year 2010 and most schools still can’t spend their textbook dollars on a digital solution. 21st Century skills? Meet 20th Century curriculum.
So what’s a teacher to do in this situation? The only thing they can… Pray they have an incredibly enlightened administration or fly under the radar. I think that’s what upsets me most. I see teachers that are doing incredibly innovative things to provide their students the best education possible, and more often than not they feel they have to hide their actions from the administration. In order to do what they feel is best for students and learning, they have to become fugitives within their own buildings.
In the end, for anybody who is patiently waiting for the digital revolution to come to them…. well don’t hold your breath. Unless you just happen to live in Oregon… or can convince your school/district to change the rules. Otherwise, if you want to do right for your students, you better be prepared to start a revolution of your own. Nobody else is going to do it for you.
Related articles by Zemanta
- The 21st-century textbook (radar.oreilly.com)
- The Coming Digital Textbook Wave (downes.ca)
- Available for Free: 75K School Textbooks from Pearson Education (prathambooks.org)
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Net Generation Education Project and Book Club
VERY excited to share with you the latest monstrosity to come from the Davis/Lindsay labs. As you’ll see, they’ve come up with a fantastic collaborative project, and I’m thrilled to be a part of it. Read, soak it in, and then apply to become a part of it…. and join the book club!!
Net Generation Education Project
Written by Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay
As announced at the Flat Classroom conference this past Monday, the Net Generation Education Project is the replacement for the Horizon Project and will include approximately 10 schools with 300 students. The application process is now open for schools who wish to participate in the project.
Last year, Don Tapscott keynoted the Horizon Project 2008 which focused on having students envision the future of education via web collaboration and video. The reading documents include the Horizon Report 2009 from the New Media Consortium and Educause. Don Tapscott went on to include this project in his new Book, Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World
So, the next level of “flattening” is to not only have classrooms connect but to have the classrooms connect in new and more far-reaching ways with the authors of their books. Recent examples of connected classrooms and authors include Karl Fisch’s Whole New Mind Project as they work with Dan Pink and such as Will Richardson and Anne Davis did with Sue Monk Kidd, author of the Secret Life of Bees.
In the same genre students in this project will interact on a Ning jointly created with Don Tapscott. Don will post weekly questions to the Discussion forum and leave video messages to the students. It will be a read/write project. He will also interact LIVE via a webinar. Don has a vision for improved educational outcomes and is reaching out to interact directly with students through his challenge and this project.
Additionally, the Discovery Educators Network is going to be providing and sharing tips and information on effective video presentations and how-to’s and a book club group for educators. Don Tapscott will keynote and the student keynotes are award winning virtual worlds educator Peggy Sheehy and her middle School students from Suffern Middle School using machinima from their Island in Second Life.
We will be studying this year’s Horizon Report (released January 2009) but adding to it the intro and Chapter 5 from Don’s book, Grown Up Digital: (Rethinking Education) to the reading assignments for students. Students will be divided into groups to analyze some of the key trends in reworking education to create collaborative report written with other students from around the world. Each team will have a project manager and assistant project manager to help facilitate the work on the team. These “managers” will be students with teachers working as facilitators.
Each student will cast their vision for the future of education with a video to be uploaded on our project ning. All videos will be automatically entered into Don Tapscott’s Net Generation Education Challenge competition and could win scholarship money for future educational pursuits.
You do not HAVE to be a part of the project with Julie and I to join the Ning and participate in Don’s challenge competition – so go ahead and do that. But if you are ready to have your students collaborate globally and follow the best practices as used in the award winning Flat Classroom, Horizon, and Digiteen projects fill out this form before February 9th and applynow!.
Our tentative timeline:
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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
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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?
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2/11-2/18 – “Handshake process” – Students join Ning – post introductions
- 2/18 – Teams announced
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2/18 – 3/2 – Research phase of project
- 3/2 – Wikis complete
- 3/1 – Suffern Middle School Student Keynote
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Some time in March, there will be a live session with Don Tapscott
- 3/3 – 3/31 – Movie Artifact phase of project (note that there will be some overlap between Research and Movie Artifact)
- *Storyboarding 3/3 – 3/8
- *Outsourced video requests posted to the Ning by 3/10 (we would like students to be able to do this with a blog post on the Ning and tag it outsourced – we can then add a menu item for everything tagged outsource_request and students can sign up with a reply and post a link in the comments, this is a change from the last project but will work better)
- 3/31 – Final Deadline for All Movies to be posted
- 4/1 – 4/8 – Post project reflections, student summits
Net Generation Education Challenge
Written by Kasi Bruno
A crisis is emerging in our schools and universities.
Traditional, one-way broadcast models of education are out-dated. Schools have not evolved as quickly as other institutions, and students are becoming disengaged as a result. Why are connected students at home suddenly disconnected at school?
How can we reinvent education for relevance and effectiveness for the 21st century?
Inspired by the work of Don Tapscott and Grown Up Digital, the Net Gen Education Challenge offers everyone an outlet through which to express their ideas and opinions about their ideal model of education. The challenge community will connect engaged participants all around the world, bringing educators, students, parents and professionals together in a global dialogue on learning. In partnership with the CBC, Flat Classroom Project, the Discovery Channel’s Educator Network and Classroom 2.0, Don Tapscott invites you to share your ideas and help make education engaging, inspiring and relevant.
Discovery Educator Network/Net Generation Book Club
by Steve Dembo
In conjunction with the Net Generation Education (NGE) project, the Discovery Educator Network (DEN) will be hosting a weekly book club for Tapscott’s work, Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World. While the NGE project will be focusing just on the Intro and Chapter 5, we will gather together weekly to discuss the ideas within the book and their implications for education. Best of all, the author himself, Don Tapscott, will sit in on the final week to share his thoughts in a candid conversation with everyone who participates in the book club.
There will be both live and web based discussion options for participants. The live component will take place Monday evenings, 2/9 through 3/23 at 7pm EST. We will be looking for people to lead the weekly discussions as well. If you would be interested in volunteering to lead the discussion for one of the weekly meetings, please mark it on the registration form.
If you are a DEN member and would like to be a part of the book club, please register here. If you are not currently a DEN member and would like to learn more, please contact me !
Don’s publisher has been gracious enough to offer the book for only $18.45, a generous discount, to everybody who participates in the Book Club.
There are three ways to order:
Order directly from website http://www.800CEORead.com
Email Aaron at and let him know you are participating in the DEN / Net Gen Book Club Aaron@800ceoread.com
Call Aaron at 1.414.274.6406, ext. 204 and do the same.
Schedule
Part One: Meet the Net Gen
Chapter 1 & Chapter 2 – 2/9
Chapter 3 & Chapter 4 – 2/16
Part Two: Transforming Institutions
Chapter 5 – 2/23 (chapter on Education)
Chapter 6 & Chapter 7 – 3/2
Chapter 8– 3/9
Part Three: Transforming Society
Chapter 9 & Chapter 10 – 3/16
Chapter 11 – 3/23
Click here to register for the book club
Net Generation Education Webinars
by Steve Dembo
To support teachers and students who are participating in the Net Generation Education Project, the Discovery Educator Network will be hosting four webinars with two of the country’s foremost experts on digital storytelling; Hall Davidson and Joe Brennan. These webinars will be intended for teachers to attend WITH their students so that they may learn ways to create digital stories from the very best. To learn more about Hall Davidson and Joe Brennan, visit the Discovery Education Speakers Bureau.
Webinar 1 with Joe Brennan: Wed, March 4, 1pm EST
Webinar 2 with Hall Davidson: Wed, March 11, 1pm EST
Webinar 3 with Hall Davidson: Wed, March 18, 1pm EST
Webinar 4 with Joe Brennen: Wed, March 25, 1pm EST
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Day 25: Add a quick 1000 words to your posts
My blog posts tend to be fairly text heavy, but one thing I’d been trying to do in recent months is to add a little color to them by including images. Without a doubt, there’s no better way to grab someone’s attention than by incorporating an image that piques one’s curiosity. Considering that most of your audience is most likely going to be exhibiting more characteristics of digital natives than immigrants, it bears considering the fact that natives tend to prefer multiple modes of media, and will gravitate to visual media before written.
There are four types of images that you may typically use in a blog post: Screenshots, logos/icons, photos and mashups.
Screenshots are typically used for demonstration purposes. If you’re using a mac, it’s incredibly easy to get screengrabs as the tools are built right into the operating system. On a PC, you need to work at it just a bit more. You’ll need a third party tool to make it easy, and personally I recommend Jing if you don’t want to spend any money. If you don’t mind spending a few bucks, I think Snagit is one of the best, most comprehensive screen capturing apps out there. I’ve never regretted buying it. Either way, screen captures can be incredibly helpful when trying to describe the steps you’re taking to do something, or if you’re discussing a particular feature in an application. Why waste words describing it when you can just be more effective and just show it to them?
The second type is logos and icons, which can be useful when you’re referencing a specific tool, program or website. There may be times where people don’t recognize the name, but they recognize the logo or icon immediately. Even if they do recognize the name, sharing the logo itself in image form can raise all sorts of associations in a readers mind that may not be evoked by just the name. For example, some people get confused when I say I work for Discovery, thinking that it’s a brand of children’s toys or maybe even the Discover Card. However, if they see the Discovery logo on my business card, there’s no question in anyone’s mind anymore. Everyone knows exactly what I’m talking about.
Next up is mashups. I guess I’m using this as a generic term, meaning anytime you’re doing actual customizations of an image. This could mean that you’re creating a graph/chart like Kathy Sierra did, or just marking up screenshots for emphasis and direction like Sue Waters does so effectively. Either way, even when you can’t find the perfect image, you can’t go wrong by making one. If you want to create your own quick and easy graphs, one of my personal favorite sites is CrappyGraphs.com. Yes, I know the name is awful, but it’s a wonderful tool for creating a quick and easy graph when the point you’re trying to make is more important that specific data plots. As for marking up images, I’d personally go back to Jing. For both windows and mac, it does a great job of capturing a part of the screen, uploading it to a server and allowing you to mark it up before you embed it into your blog post. Highly recommended.
Which brings us to photos. Unfortunately, when most people want a photo, they simply go to Google Images and… well, for lack of a better term, ‘steal’ a photo. Even if you cite where you got it, if you don’t have permission to make use of it then you’re breaking the rules. This is such a shame, considering how many places there are to get high quality images that you actually have the rights to use!! I’m just going to share two of my favorites. Of course I’m going to mention Flickr, but not just Flickr in general, rather the Creative Commons section. There are literally millions of photos that you can use there that you can choose based on the rights you need. If you need to modify the image (crop, markup, recolor), then be sure to choose one that allows derivatives. If you need one that you can use for commercial purposes (incorporated into a fund raiser of some sort perhaps), be sure to chose images that allow commercial usage. But otherwise, there are nearly 30 million Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs photos for you to choose from. Not so bad at all. However, if that isn’t enough, one of my favorite sites for images, both for blogs and for presentations, is the Stock.xchng. This is high quality, stock photography that is available for the rock bottom price of… free. These images are truly professional photos that people have shared and are perfect for including into blog posts. The only trouble is that they tend to be rather large, so you’ll need to resize them if your blogging engine doesn’t do it for you (many do at this point tho).
So today’s challenge, in case you didn’t get the ‘picture’ yet (nyuk nyuk) is to incorporate an image into your next blog post.
Do you generally use images in your blog posts? Or do you know of someone who you think does this pretty well on a regular basis? If so, share a link!
30d2bbb image by Jason Robertshaw is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License
A NECC to Remember
I know most people have already put up their post-NECC reports, but I figure it’s never really too late and I’m glad that I had time to put some things in perspective and do a little soul searching before writing this. There’s so much to write about, both positive and negative, so I think I’m going to try to separate them into two different posts.
Without question, while the sessions are phenomenal, the most memorable parts of NECC often seem to be the networking. It seemed that every ten feet there was another person on my list of “People I Need to Meet F2F” and unfortunately there was never enough time to have a proper conversation. I truly felt humbled that I met so many people who consider me a part of their learning networks, personal or professional. Additionally, there were so many people that I’ve been a fan of for so long that it was an honor to finally meet them in person. I hate to do name lists because I always forget people, but among the most memorable were Miguel Guhlin and Bud Hunt. These are colleagues and friends that I have known for years, but never met face to face. It was truly a pleasure to finally be able to shake their hand, give them a hug and tell them in person just how much I’ve admired their work over all these years.
Of course there were so many others that I could say the same for, but this isn’t about name dropping. It’s about friendships, and making personal connections between nodes in our networks. And no matter how many names I listed, I couldn’t name them all. I can’t remember who said this, but someone at EduBloggerCon truly summed the networking side up quite eloquently: “Every single F2F conversation with someone makes the 140 characters that much more meaningful.” That’s not a direct quote, so if you said it, then let me know so I can get it right and give you credit.
Without a doubt, live video streaming was (as predicted) a big topic at NECC. I’m still trying to get a grasp on how many sessions were streamed. EdStream.TV was not as successful as I’d have liked it to be, but it was a spectacular learning experience that I think has huge potential. In particular, I learned that you really need someone dedicated solely to keeping the project organized and handle the video production, whether on site or off site is irrelevant. Unfortunately I just had too many other time commitments to devote the necessary hours to make it a true success. MAJOR kudos to Jen Wagner for her incredible effort aggregating the streams together here and making sure that virtual attendees had just about as rich an experience as physical attendees.
While backchannels and live streams were becoming commonplace in many sessions, the internet connectivity issues were always around to throw a monkey wrench in the works. During two of the panel discussions I participated in, I couldn’t stay connected to the backchannel to contribute there. Very aggravating. Even my cell-phone-as-a-modem solution failed me, despite the fact that we were in AT&T’s corporate home. However, most backchannels were archived and quite honestly are a wealth of information. That being said, I think it’s a bit presumptuous to assume that people know what a backchannel is, how to find it and how to participate. Vicki Davis has made it a priority to explain the fine art of backchanneling in some of her presentations, and I think she’s got the right idea. I’m going to make that a priority in future presentations.
Speaking of backchannels, while Chatzy and CoverItLive seem to be the hot ones right now, my backchannel of choice has become Plurk. Why Plurk? Well, for one thing, I think it could be the best successor to Twitter that I’ve seen yet. Instead of a series of loosely related posts, you get one threaded conversation with its own RSS feed and permalink. Check out Ginger Lewman’s live blog from Ian Juke’s session. Not only that, but it has a rock solid mobile version that you can use from a cell phone, iPhone or any other mobile device. Heck, on a PC it looks alot like Twitter for those that don’t like the timeline. So while I couldn’t get online, if the backchannel had been on Plurk I could still have participated actively via mobile.
On the subject of mobiles, I don’t think I’ve ever used my cell phone more at a conference before. I used it to keep up with Twitter. I used it to keep up with Plurk. I used it to check in with emails, both work and personal. I used Google Maps on there to find where I was going. I used it to read blogs and to look up people’s names and information. I used my phone as a camera and a camcorder. And as many saw in both Will’s and Hall’s sessions, I used it to do several live video streams. I broadcast solo from the airplane on the way to NECC, and interviewed Kelly Dumont, Bonnie Muir and Darren Draper (who had the misfortune of sitting next to me) on the return flight. Video of that one is embedded below.
While the videos may be a little rough and got cut off before the end, I felt that they were a great proof of concept and something I will definitely continue to pursue. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that I believe that live video streaming via mobile is going to play a crucial role in education within the next five years. These devices are just too powerful and diverse to blow off. I’m seriously considering upgrading from the Blackjack to a Nokia N95 just so I can improve my live streams and get a full screen browser.
I was pretty busy presenting in formal sessions, panels and in the booth, so I didn’t have too much time to attend many sessions. I did attend the DEN’s Second Life Leadership Council’s panel presentation about building out their personal learning networks which was absolutely phenomenal. A classic example of how you can never be over prepared. They knew what they wanted to say, had it timed well, and really did magnificent job of sharing the fine work they’re doing in Second Life.
Speaking of being over prepared, I did catch Hall Davidson’s cell phone presentation. It was easily the best presentation I saw at NECC, and I’m not just saying that because I work with him. I don’t think there’s anyone out there that understands the art of presenting better than Hall and watching him up on stage is like a magic show that you actually learn from. It was chock full of hands on demonstrations and it was a pleasure watching hundreds of educators break out their own phones and participate. If you missed it, they did record it. You can catch it at ISTE’s NECC On Demand website.
Of course, then there was the DEN Pre-Conference which was an absolute blast. Where else are you going to get to see your boss get thrown in jail, a friend get hog tied, participate in an Old West scavenger hunt and STILL have time to network, share ideas, and do a little presenting? The DEN’s 3rd birthday party was a huge “overflowing” success and with STAR Discovery Educators in every corner of the room it was more like a family reunion than cocktail party. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Howl at the Moon, the piano bar where I left both my voice and my dignity. I can honestly say it’s the most interesting place I’ve ever celebrated my *ahem* birthday.
All in all, it was definitely a NECC to remember. Next time I’m going to try to make a point to carve out more free time so I can actually spend more time chatting with people beyond the 10 minute, “Hello! I follow you! I read you! Thanks for all you do! Hope to see you again soon!” There were way too many of those unfortunately.
SO that’s the end of part 1, The Good. More to come.
Discovery Education and Wilkes University to offer masters degree
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!