Mrs. Murray also shared a story from the Financial Times about the project: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/64923fa8-9665-11dd-9dce-000077b07658.html

I think this has some great potential.

Technorati Tags: class2.0, learning

What does this have to do with TechCrunch50? Lets look at one technology that will shake up schools if or when it comes on our technology. How will Swype make what I taught on Wednesday obsolete or at least very outdated. I was showing the 5th graders how to keyboard using Master Key and of course I do a whole story about the QWERTY keyboard layout and why the layout is the way it is. Kids love it and I really enjoying talking about the levers and the smashing of the keys through the ribbon into the paper. This year I asked the students why are the keys still in the QWERTY layout if we no longer need to worry about levers getting jammed. The most honest answer came from a new student in the back row, who said “old people would not know how to use it”. Is this true, absolutely!

Today students use Thumbboards on cell phones and even Predictive Text along with Virtual Keyboards on iPod Touches or iPhones.

So, someday we will be having Swype classes and instead of WPM (Words Per Minute) we will do SWPM (Swyped Words Per Minute). I have an application on my iPod Touch called Writing Pad that uses similar technology. We are closer then anyone thinks to this technology being in the backpacks or our students. When will we pull it out of the backpack and put it to work in our Moodle Courses? For more background on Swype check out http://www.crunchbase.com/company/swype:

Of course we also have MacSpeech Dictate which is a whole other story.

Technorati Tags: class2.0, learning

The technology we used to interact is Wimba which is used by a growing number of schools to conduct online teaching and training. I had looked into it for our school but found the cost too high. I was very impressed with how well it worked from setup to how efficiently we were able to communicate and learn while 3000+/- miles apart. The only glitch came when the crew called into the wrong land line and the operator either could not or would not transfer the call.

A personal highlight for me was when Alice as able to say hello to her mom. The whole experience reminded me of the time at Grey Culbreth Middle School when I brought my telescope to school so students could observe the solar eclipse (with filter). The line stretched around the school as teaching stopped and observing took place. Tools like Wimba and Moodle allow the world to be smaller and classrooms to be global.

This is the view of the students and teachers participating. I used a Snowball Microphone for audio. Worked well on the microphone stand.

Technorati Tags: class2.0, learning

I use this log as a teaching tool since it contains IP addresses and other important user data just like every other web site they visit. It helps get the awareness raised to the need to keep private information private and how web sites gathered all sorts of data from visitors. There have been stories on how some technology companies allow this data to be “screen scraped“. Awareness is the first point of the process of changing a behavior.

As we went through the presentation I could see the eyes of the attendees (along with their heads shaking) that they were seeing the power of it. Last Friday I taught the 5th graders about Cyber Security regarding passwords and user information and how there is a big difference between private and personal information. Private is meant to be kept off line while personal information like what cookies I like and how many dogs I have will give a viewer some information but will not let them triangulate where I live or will be at 3:30 today.

I constantly see the value of Moodle and do not know what I would do without it. In fact tomorrow all 8th grade students are taking a Computer Competency Exam through Moodle. While I will have them in the lab through their Science, Language Arts or History courses, they can do a review course now via Moodle. The exam covers Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Information and Digital Literacy. I wish I did not have to administer it as I think the skills that need evaluation are not measured by an exam. I do very little if any instruction on Word, PowerPoint or Excel but do a lot on using Discussion Forums, Journals, Podcasting, Images and other creation type tools. I know it is important to know how to use a word processor, presentation software, and even spreadsheets, but Microsoft is not the only game in town. I have students who use only Google docs as they do not own copies of Office. Until I figure out a better solution, I will evaluate students to make sure they at least know the skills tested. If a student does fail the exam, the only result is that they need to take a computer course in the Upper School before the end of their sophomore year. If they pass it, then they are exempt from taking any computer course in the Upper School. This actually is a bigger concern for me as in the age of information overload, knowing more is better then knowing being done. I think this is an example of a straddle effect.
Update 2/26/08: I had a meeting with the Middle School Technology Committee where we discussed items of interest and out of it came the need for instruction for students in how to send email, write email, and other uses of current technologies as feedback from professionals students contact is that they do not know how to write an email or letter. Maybe if we give students email accounts we could model and teach this curriculum. I remember learning how to write these documents in the dark ages of no computers.

New tools abound and one I am learning today so I can be in 2 places at once is called ScreenFlow. I am working at purchasing it since the demo mode is splashed all over the finished video unless I purchase it. This may seem easy enough, but the company is in England and they will not take American Express unless I use British Pounds instead of US Dollars for American Express due to the exchange rate. Get the idea! A global economy affects my learning and teaching here in Durham. Flat World indeed:)

Parents and students are great sources of links as well. Here are some I have been looking at lately:

http://www.2mminutes.com/ This is a movie about the life cycle of a learner in high school. There are about 2, 000, 000 minutes in a high school student’s career. How best to use it? This video will definitely provoke discussions and disagreement. I think like most things in the world, it all depends on the lens you view it with as to how you react. The video came about after Bob Compton visited India.

Futures Channel Jessica P. was finishing up her Independent Science project and wanted to embed the video on the Wind Farm. She had done her PowerPoint and has a link to the site, but wanted to see if she could just show the section of the film she wanted to show during her presentation. Since the video is a Shockwave file and because it appears that they hold all rights to the work, there was no way to do this mashing up or repurposing of the video. I was intrigued by the site and the tag line: “Connecting Learning to the Real World”. I think her use of it to support her presentation is great and I would have loved to of talked with her more about how she found it “I was looking around for resources”. This is where we need to be teaching and not how to insert a table into a Word document.

This post feels scattered and I guess it is as I have been teaching podcasting to 6th graders, helping a student get their Google Presentation Offline (No luck yet) and other duties that come up as I straddle each day with one foot in the future and one foot in today.

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I am working with one group and a student named Chess wants to show me something that will help save electricity for all of the computers in the lab. I said, I would be interested in something like that for sure. Blackle is where he took me and told me how we could do little things that can make a big difference. Research I have done does refute some of the claims since CRT and LCD monitors have different energy use, but what I think is amazing is that here are a group of students talking about saving energy by using a different color.

I think this demonstrates the power of a personal learning network and also how students can shift change in their life due to their access to information. I have watched how students in the labs will do vocabulary in order to send grains of rice.

Student Engagement has lower barriers then when I was in school with the tools of today. Durham Academy is a member of iEARN as Tina Bessias travelled to Egypt for last years conference. TakingITGlobal is another student engagement site for global awareness.

The times have changed where student voices could not gather into a force to affect change. I think it is wonderful and look forward to being supported in my senior years by students who were empowered in their youth to affect change.

Technorati Tags: class2.0, learning

He identifies 6 key components for Authentic Learning
It needs to be:
1. Contextual
2. Connected
3. Collaborative
4. Change-Directed
5. Conversational
6. Continous

A screencast for framing change for students

A podcast on Discourse about Discourse

His blog

His supporting documents are invaluable.

Technorati Tags: class2.0, learning

As a co-chair of the Technology Task Force at Durham Academy that is charged with developing a 5-year plan for technology, it is the thinking and writing of many of the folks who presented at this conference that have influenced my suggestions. While I have not heard Alan speak in person, I do want to attend his November Learning Series of workshops someday. Wesley, Jamie McKenzie and Will Richardson are folks who I have had the pleasure of hearing in person. All are dynamic and would be great folks to have come to Durham Academy to help us map our future and our current as well. David Warlick would also be good and he is in Raleigh. However, it is Alan that interests me the most as he is a speaker who has consistently pushed me in my thinking and challenged me in ways that I both dislike and know I need to grow. The sign of a great teacher.

Topics he brings up in this podcast that are of critical importance are:

Grammar of the Internet: The information today is too much! Most of it is messy or as Alan states: Misleading, Overwhelming and Ill conceived. Alan affirms that teachers are great at putting together well conceived information. The trouble today is that our students have access to growing amounts of ill conceived information so we must teach them how to organize it. We need to teach them the syntax, grammar and punctuation. Check out his Grammar of the Internet to learn more. Take the Quiz and then work on the follow-up activities.

Legacy and Publishing for a Global Audience: “Students from 3rd grade on should be taught the rigors and discipline of writing an encyclopedia article”. In addition, they should publish it in wikipedia or other online wiki resource. Good news is that some of our students are already doing this with in our DAILE Moodle. 5th graders have worked on a CSI wiki while 3 7th grade students have worked on creating a metric wiki for their Science class. The Pitot House is an example of an elementary classes work. Our students need to be writing in wikis so hats off to those teachers who are starting to do this skill. In fact, I will wager that in the future, students will use wikis more then they will use application based word-processing software. Not much of a statement, when you realize that most already are doing it, just not in school.

Problem Solving Process: Schools should have a set of problem solving process that is known by all learners and is used across the curriculum. What is ours? Is it Big 6?

Give it a listen and see if you are motivated to seek change. You can listen to it on the web or in iTunes

I liked his comment: “Teachers do not need to know how to podcast, they need to know WHEN to podcast”.

Cheryl talks about colleagues that she has worked with or listened to who have helped her move forward. Many of the people she listed are folks I have followed as well. I met Will Richardson in Memphis this summer and he felt like an old friend. Reading her article brought up a great link called VoiceThread.com that allow users to upload an image with narration. Once done, users can share it will parents or friends. Teachers can use it for free with their classrooms. While it is still beta and I see no revenue stream, it is a powerful tool.

This also brings up the use of Moodle over proprietary Virtual Learning Environments. Open source gives me 10,000 of developers who are committed to creating parts of a product better. I see the road map for Moodle and am impressed. Mahara will be built into Moodle version 2.0 due out next summer. This is a solution for our learning community as well.

Would we have this roadmap with a closed proprietary system?… Maybe, but at what cost?

The University of Adelaide’s Center for Learning and Professional Development’s Allan Carrington has designed a learning module in going from Podcasting to Learncasting. This is a free learning cast that can help anyone learn how and why we should think about including these resources into our teaching. While the focus may seem to be higher education, it is no less applicable to k-12 schools. Allan shares his Del.ici.ous bookmarks for module 1. They are using Articulate to create the lessons. While it is Windows only software it is pretty cool how it creates Flash lessons with embedded audio, images, etc..

Podagogy is a site that is connected to Allan although it is the work of Randy Meredith at Spring Arbor University in Michigan.

I plan to spend more time investigating this site and the many resources linked from here.

Wikis, Blogs, Podcasts, Vodcasts, and other forms of disruptive technologies are here to stay and they are indeed changing the way businesses work. As a school we need to be prepared for these changes which is why I am so glad that we have started to use The DAILE Moodle as it represents peer production since it is open source software that thousands of schools and universities are helping to write and perfect daily. I love the fact that there are nightly builds of Moodle done to fix or patch problems discovered.

Some believe that open source software is done by people who have long hair and live in their parents basement. While there is nothing wrong with having long hair nor living in your mother’s basement, if you so choose, it is important to note that the authors of Wikinomics note that at present, IBM and Intel are the two largest companies that donate time and resources to the further development of Linux. What companies are realizing is that there are more people outside of an organization that can solve problems then they have inside.

I think teachers should start to use wikis with their classes as a way to create content. Imagine a wiki report on Dovey Coe? What would that look like?

California Open Textbook Project is trying to create textbooks using wikis. Curriki is a wiki global learning community attempting to create a knowledge and learning platform for all learners around the world. There are some big names behind this organization.

A must read for all of us in education as change happens here after industry but we are preparing students for their future, which is being created as we speak.
“Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything” (Don Tapscott, Anthony D. Williams)

Here is a short example of the book on WikipediaWikinomics Snippet on Wikipedia