This was a busy ISTE to say the least! While normally I make a point to hit at least a few sessions, this year it was all work. 3 presentations, 1 workshop, combined with booth time and a Wilkes grad course wrapping up made for a crazy hectic week. The one thing I refused to sacrifice though was face time with my network. It was an absolute pleasure seeing so many of you. Even 30 seconds face to face makes all those 140 character communications so much richer. As always, I wish I could have spent more time in the Blogger’s Cafe hanging out, but such is life. On the whole, it was a fantastic conference, and major Kudos to ISTE for organizing yet another incredibly well run event. Unlike many tech-conferences, bandwidth was never even a topic of conversation. The wireless was stellar, and the wired connections for presenters was the fastest I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t have been happier as an attendee and as a presenter.

Overall, the sessions went incredibly well. The big surprise to me was that the Policies presentation packed the room. Typically it’s a small, dedicated, hardcore group of people attending that one. This year, it filled the room up. Does this mean that we’re finally starting to turn the corner when it comes to making our policies fit the practice we know in our hearts is right? I’m starting to get cautiously optimistic!

For some reason, I seem to have Presenter Upload Deficiency Syndrome. Even when I have everything done in time, I always seem to screw up URL’s, preventing people from getting to my resources quickly. So here’s the links to the sessions I did at ISTE. Hope they help in a small part. I believe the Perpetual Learning Machine and Extreme Makeover presentations were recorded too. If I find them, I’ll link them up later.

Enjoy!

The Perpetual Learning Machine - ISTE/TIE Leadership Bootcamp
Policies Safety and Social Networking
Extreme Makeover – Education Edition (Note, this is a simplistic ‘deck’. Mostly live demo’s done during presentation)

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Saw this while hunting for a post on Darren Kuropatwa’s blog. You can see the complete article here, but I think the ‘ticker’ speaks for itself. And really drives home the need to teach information literacy. The amount of content being created and consumed on a daily basis is pretty unreal.

Don’t forget to click on the tabs, so you can see the stats they have available for Mobile and Games as well.

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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.

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Augmented reality is one of the few technologies that have come out within the last few years that really have the ability to simply drop jaws. Primarily, it’s hung out in the marketing field, and been used in car ads and recently on the cover of Esquire magazine. Home versions include a DIY lightsasber and Addidas has announced plans to include an AR code into several of their upcoming shoes, allowing people to actually use the shoe as a controller for a video game. Seriously. I really couldn’t make that one up.

The big question of course is, does Augmented Reality have a place in education, and if so… what is it? At FETC, the folks over at SMART had a small corner of their booth devoted to Augmented Reality. The person there said flat out that they have nothing in production right now, they really have no idea where it’s going to go, they just think it’s neat, has potential and wanted to hear what educators thought.

Well, I got an email about a month ago from a company with a product called Imaginality, and they’re much farther along the path of figuring this stuff out than anybody else that I’ve seen yet. They’ve taken the ordinary webcam, combined it with images that you print out and created some pretty dynamic modules. Basically you download their software, choose which modules you want to purchase, and setup your webcam. Then, when you hold the ‘paddles’ in front of the camera, it displays various 3D objects. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. What’s really interesting is the way the paddles can interact with each other. For example, check out this video of the Solar Explorer module.

As you can see, each paddle representes a different planet. The planets spin at the correct proportional speed, and have some bars in the corners representing various stats about them. But what’s interesting is when you move the planets within a few inches of each other. They resize themselves proportionally. The most dramatic example of that is when you move any planet next to the sun. Pretty powerful effect, much more so than holding up the pumpkin and a marble.

A few other examples. The video below is about the human heart. One paddle shows a beating heart, and by rotating it around you can see it from any angle. But the next four paddles display each of the four chambers. By holding up the ‘info’ paddle, you can make it translucent and see how blood flows through it. But when you start moving the paddles next to each other in the right combinations, the chambers actually connect to each other to create a complete heart.

Is this all you need to teach a student about the heart? Absolutely not. But you do have to admit that it’s a pretty amazing demonstration of the direction technology is moving. I mean, this isn’t something that you find in a museum, it’s being done with ordinary webcams and bar codes you print out. Pretty amazing.

The big question is, where does this belong in education? What kinds of AR should people be building? Science seems to be the most obvious application, and everything from biology to chemistry could make use of this. Think about the building blocks of matter, and how atoms interact with each other. But Imaginality also has a math module, using blocks to demonstrate how multiplication works. It’s more of a proof of concept right now, but it really does show some great potential.

I’d love to hear your thoughts about this one. Where does Augmented Reality fit in? If you could ask them to build a module, what would you want them to create? How would you use it in the classroom?

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While the results of this survey by the National Literacy Trust are hardly conclusive, students who engaged in higher levels of social networking tending to consider themselves better writers.

A survey of 3,001 children aged nine to 16 found that 24% had their own blog and 82% sent text messages at least once a month.

In addition 73% used instant messaging services to chat online with friends.

Of the children who neither blogged nor used social network sites, 47% rated their writing as “good” or “very good”, while 61% of the bloggers and 56% of the social networkers said the same.

The results seem to be positive, but there’s a difference between believing that you’re good at something and it actually being true (see American Idol). However, you can’t downplay the role of self-confidence and peer recognition in education. If the student believes in themself, they’ll try harder which certainly can lead to improvement.

One note. David Worthington makes a great point about this article.

I would like to see any cross tabs that detail their income levels, and whether their parents (or caregivers) were college educated. We’ve all heard about the digital divide, where lower income students lack Internet access. This could be just another example of it manifesting itself.

Very valid point. That being said, we’ve all heard wonderful anecdotal stories of the benefits of blogging and social media when used with students. It’s nice to hear the beginnings of some people attempting to quantify it. Something to keep an eye on.

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Via @TerryFreedman:

Looks like Notre Dame high school in the UK is taking the bull by the horns and moving forward with an initiative to allow the use of mobile phones for educational purposes during class time.

Assistant headteacher Paul Haigh said mobiles, MP3 players and gaming devices were “untapped resources” for teaching and learning.

“We realise as a comprehensive state school we could never afford to buy every student all the IT and mobile devices we would like them to have.

He added: “But most students own many of these devices anyway – they’re just hidden in their schoolbags. What’s more they’re experts in using them, knowing all the short cuts and characteristics of their own equipment as they use it every day.”

Mr Haigh said there was little logic in allowing pupils to use a netbook in school while banning mobile phones, many of which could access the internet, record sound and take digital photographs.

This new school policy is running contrary to a nationwide ban of cell phones in schools. What’s interesting though is the source of the opposition. That the teacher’s union is against it isn’t all that surprising, but the other group that is currently opposing the change is…. the parents. While there isn’t much in the way of details on this front, it does say that parents are worried phones will be a distraction.

Whether you’re in agreement with the new policy, or with the opposition, it will certainly be an interesting story to follow. Hopefully they plan to publish the impact of this change throughout the year.

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In the past few years, I’ve been pretty darn lucky to be able to speak at quite a few conferences. I’ve also been blessed enough to include in my network dozens of people that do the same, whether it’s for a living or ‘on the side’. I’ve found that for the most part, presentations tend to fall into one of two categories.

1) What we (educators) should be doing.

2) What you can actually do right now.

I’ve always gravitated towards sessions in the former category. I like the ones that make me think, that encourage me to breakdown my ideas about what education means and h ow we do it, and then to rebuild them with new ideas and information. But rarely does that make much of a concrete difference in reality. When I do keynotes of this nature, I truly hope that I’m inspiring educators to reach farther, think bigger, and to become the very innovators that they currently look up to. But I always through in at least a few concrete ideas that people can do ‘on Monday’. Why? Because more often than not, those are the things that people scribble down and actually come back to.

I hear the same conversations on Twitter again and again. ‘We don’t need tools, we need pedagogy, we need understanding, we need new policies, we need leadership, we need political reform.’ And at the same time, I keep thinking to how many emails and comments I’ve received from people along the lines of, “Thanks so much for showing me Blabberize, I used it with my students and they were more engaged than they’ve been all year!” Will that change the education system in America? No. But for one classroom and one teacher on at least one day, it made a difference.

I’m not saying Blabberize is the most wonderful thing in the world. It just one of hundreds of Web 2.0 tools. But what is wonderful is that it made an old lesson new, that it energized a teacher who was then able to energize her students. To me, it just doesn’t get any better than that.

I’ve heard so much criticism of ISTE over the past few days because so many of the sessions at NECC are what many consider to be ‘low level’. They’re discussions of tools, of toys, of websites and widgets. That won’t create any systemic reform in education. But if even a fraction of the teachers who attend learn a few new tricks and perhaps hear about a network like the DEN, Classroom 2.0, Plurk, or Twitter… isn’t that enough?

I like to think that my Top 10 Web 2.0 presentation has more in it than just a list of websites. I try to really focus in on why it’s important for teachers to delve into that world, how they connect together, and how to change their mindset it the way they use them. But more than anything, I hope to make them look simple, accessible, and within their grasp. And if a roomful of teachers see that presentation and leave thinking, “Wow, I really believe that I can do that stuff he was showing” then I’d consider it a success. Maybe I won’t be the one making broad sweeping changes to the US Education system. I can live with knowing that in a small way I’ve helped a group of teachers look at their lesson plans through new lenses, and maybe inspired them to do just one thing differently. If they can use some of these new technologies to make learning exciting again for the students, then I couldn’t ask for anything more.

Is that such a bad thing?

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Matt Monjan let me know that the Simpsons spoofed cell phones in the classroom this past weekend. Yes, it’s funny, but it’s also frustrating because there’s so many hints of truth in there. Give the segment a watch before continuing. For visitors outside the US, visit FOX to watch the full episode. Clip I’m referring to is from about 1 minute in until the 3:30 mark.

Yes, it’s a comedy, but comedies are only funny if there’s kernels of truth in there. The kids are distracted by the phones. When asked what they’re using them for, they know the stock answers and can rattle them off without thinking. But there’s a big difference between a student rattling off an answer that they think will satisfy an inquiry, and a teacher actually using a mobile device for educational purposes. And all too often, the solution is pretty similar to what you see in the clip… lock it away and pretend it doesn’t exist.

Fact is, they aren’t going away. If anything, they’re only becoming more and more prevalent. School budgets are tight, and here we are with millions of dollars in technology that’s being paid for by the parents VOLUNTARILY… and most schools refuse to leverage it because of outdated policies and teachers that don’t want to modify their own classroom management strategies.

I’ve heard it thousands of times it seems, “cell phones are a distraction in class.” That’s great. So is the class pet, a window, a paper clip and pencil/paper. Isn’t teaching students to overcome these distractions part of what we do in the classroom? Heck, I used to focus on that in kindergarten! “Maybe you should put that toy behind you right now because it’s circle time. You can play with it again during choice time.” Saying that cell phones should be banned in schools because they’re ‘too distracting’ is a cop out. If your current classroom management model can’t incorporate mobile devices…. well, then it’s time to do some unlearning and relearning.

When I saw Jeremy Davis recently, he told me of an educator who uses cell phones in the classroom. In fact, this teacher requires that the cell phone be out and ON the desk. In plain site. Not hidden in a pocket or backpack. So if the student is using it, the teacher KNOWS. And if the student is using it when they shouldn’t… Well, that’s when there are consequences. Phone is confiscated until the end of the week, or the parent can pay a $25 fine to get it back for their student. Sure, there were plenty of students who lost their phones, and plenty of fines paid. They used the money to pay for a field trip before the end of the year. But the point is, the students learned when it was ok to be using the phone as a learning device, and when it was inappropriate. Believe me, no student wants to go to his parents and let them know that they need $25 to get their phone back… and explain why.

Sure, we can keep fighting to keep cell phones hidden or banned in schools. But it’s a battle that schools can’t win. Life progresses, things change. Like it or not, these devices are here to stay, and adoption rates are racing towards 100+%. I suggest teachers be proactive. Because there’s a tidal wave coming and you can either ride with it, or have it crash into you.

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While doing a Discovery webinar with Scott McLeod today, I noticed that he’s engaged in an aggregation project that is well worth contributing to. He’s calling it “The PUSH” and attempting to gather together a current, comprehensive list of high quality content specific for people who are new to blogs to use to fill out their aggregators.

Every single day for at least the next two weeks, we will work together to identify excellent subject-specific blogs that are useful to P-12 teachers. Why? Several reasons…

* To identify blogs that P-12 teachers can use to initially seed (or expand) their RSS readers
* To create a single location where P-12 educators can go to see excellent subject-oriented educational blogging
* To highlight excellent disciplinary blogging that deserves larger audiences
* To learn from disciplines other than our own and get ideas about our own teaching and/or blogging

You can view what has been gathered together here, but I encourage you to contribute as well. Consider it an opportunity to pay it forward, a direct deposit to the next generation of bloggers and members of the EdTech community.

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I’ve had several requests via email for my Top 10 presentation from NECC, and realized that I should probably post it here. Of course, if it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing!

So here’s a link to the presentation slides, such as they are. Most of the presentation is live demonstrations, so they’re only of limited value by themselves.

Here’s a link to the ISTE broadcast of the session. Video looks and sounds great, but they didn’t record what I was doing on the screen until 20 minutes in.

Then there’s my own personal broadcast of it using Procaster and Livestream. It has what’s happening on my screen throughout the entire presentation. However, the camera angle isn’t exactly the most flattering one I could have chosen

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