January, 2008

Since my trip to EduCon and SLA, I haven’t been able to sit still. I am
filled with an energy I can’t quite describe. This week alone, I’ve
worked on/helped with/logged into/twittered with/discovered…..

• our history teacher’s project where students research, upload powerpoint to Voice Thread, embed on a wiki with rest of the research, and share

• interesting new voices online-more people to follow on Twitter and more blogs to read
• a new presentation for our juniors and seniors about their online presence and how to create a positive one
• Mr.Mayo’s students’ sites–powerful
• Be Very Afraid, thanks to David Warlick.
• conversations
  with my "skeptic," whom I took to EduCon. He has changed his American
  History class as of today. And I enjoy his challenging questions; they
  make me think
• the fourth grade Voice Threads with Kim Cofino’s group…we are commenting away
• questions from a language teacher about wikis
• online PD with Robin Ellis and Darren Draper
• Tweets to new found friends that I can now picture
• my new computer–more memory and lighter:)
• twitter with my colleague Jennifer (jclarkevans)

I
am so grateful for the opportunity to learn and share. Mostly it was
the opportunity to hear new voices, re-focus my own goals, and plan for
this semester in a meaningful way.

Connections.

Wooooooosh.
The last several days have been filled with exciting learning moments for me. I spent much of the time working on proposals for Will’s and Sheryl’s Powerful Learning Practice program. We hope to be the contact/organizing school for Virginia and surrounding locations, but that means I need to find 19 other schools to join us. I’ve been writing and phoning, posting on lists and nings, and talking to teachers at my school in hopes of making this work. I want this!
Yesterday, I also met with several new teachers to begin projects, good projects that use technology in meaningful ways. For us, it’s a great start.
Then, last night, two colleagues came to my house around 6pm to set up for some online professional development a la Darren Draper and Robin Ellis at Open PD. Sue Waters chimed in as well as Jeff Utecht–wow–that’s all I can say. Spending time chatting online, watching Darren and Robin teach, and figuring out Skype was invigorating for all of us. (Next time I’ll remember to actually exit Skype instead of minimizing it when I hook external speakers to my laptop so others can hear!)
Today I spent time in three eighth-grade classes working on wikis and research. They jumped right in, and I loved looking around the room to watch learning happening.
After school, I met with the history department. And, although I was hit with some challenging questions about our vision of student learning and where we are headed with all this, I felt like it was a good start to a much-needed conversation about 21st century learning.
Tomorrow. Well, tomorrow, I am going to EduCon.
I hope to join conversations and learn more about how best to work with faculty and students. Plus, I’m taking two teachers with me: my favorite skeptic and a new teacher who is eager to learn. Should be fun!
I’ll live blog and Twitter as much as I can, so stay tuned!

Seth Godin, author of The Dip and other great business books, says schools squash curiosity…
I think that’s often true. One of the greatest gifts we can give our students and our own children is a desire to learn, to be curious, to ask questions and find truth.
I love this.

Powered by ScribeFire.

From seth godin’s blog, an observation: why aren’t there such things a digital coaches?
“Here’s what I haven’t found: people who charge $100 an hour to hear what you do and how you do it and then show you how to do it better. People who organize data and put it in the right place. People who overhaul the way small groups use technology so they can use it dramatically better. People who use copilot to take over a PC and actually rearrange it so that it works better.”

Powered by ScribeFire.

Some interesting statistics from Anastasia Goodstein’s blog YPulse:

Ypulse: Media for the Next Generation via kwout

Powered by ScribeFire.

I am enjoying reading The Faculty Room, where there is an ongoing dialogue on the question above.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Danah Boyd, PhD student who blogs about social networking, responds to The Economist debate between Ewan McIntosh and Michael Bugeja. After writing that she believes social networking has little or no value in the classroom, she says:

"I’m not saying that social network sites have no value. Quite the
contrary. But their value is about the kinds of informal social
learning that is required for maturation – understanding your
community, learning the communicate with others, working through status
games, building and maintaining friendships, working through personal
values, etc. All too often we underestimate these processes because,
traditionally, they have happened so naturally. Yet, what’s odd about
today’s youth culture is that we’ve systematically taken away the
opportunities for socialization. And yet we wonder why our kids are so
immature compared to kids from other cultures. Social network sites are
popular because youth are trying to take back the right to be social,
even if it has to happen in interstitial ways. We need to recognize
that not all learning is about book learning – brains mature through
experience, including social experiences.

Yes, there are problems with technology and with technology in the
classroom. Anyone critical of capitalism has a right to be critical of
commercial social network sites and the economic processes that got us
here. But don’t blame the SNSs – they didn’t create the obscenities of
the market, but they are bound by them. Also, don’t forget that the
current educational system was structured to meet the needs of the
market, to create good consumers and good laborers. It ain’t pretty,
and the privatization of education and educational testing is downright
scary, but it’s a systems problem, not a technology problems."

I
wish I could remember who first tweeted this or shared the
document (sorry). The book, Nine
Shift, appears to be an interesting look historically at what causes shifts
in our working and learning. Although written in 2003, the book makes
predictions that are, in fact, true today. Here’s a passage from the website:

"In just twenty years, between 2000 and
2020, some 75% of our lives will change dramatically. We know this because it
happened once before. Between 1900 and 1920, life changed. We moved from an
agrarian farming way of life to an industrialized way of life. Now it is all
happening again."

Now, much of this is not new. Edubloggers have been predicting some of this for quite some time. But it’s interesting to see the list. The
authors predict nine shifts by the year 2020.

Shift
One. People work at home.

Commuting to an office
will become a rarity, a thing of the past. A significant part of the workforce
will work from home or telecommute.

Shift
Two. Intranets replace offices.

Offices will diminish as
primary work places. Intranets will replace physical offices for most
businesses, companies and nonprofit organizations.

Shift
Three. Networks replace pyramids.

The basic organizational
structure of life in the last century, the organization chart or pyramid, goes
into steep decline. It is replaced by a superior organizational structure, the
network.

Shift
Four. Trains replace cars.

The automobile, the
dominant mode of transportation in the last century, loses its dominance and
becomes a peripheral and supplemental mode of transportation. Trains and light
rail become the dominant mode of transportation.

Shift
Five. Dense neighborhoods replace suburbs.

Suburbs, and suburban
sprawl, come to a halt and then recede. Towns and cities are reformulated
around dense communities composed of shops, stores and homes within walking
distance of a light rail station.

Shift
Six. New social infrastructures evolve.

The increasing
inequality in wealth between the rich and the rest of society comes to a halt.
The issue of inequality of wealth in society is addressed and a variety of
social reforms are implemented to restore more of a balance in income
distribution.

Shift
Seven. Cheating becomes collaboration.

New values, work ethics
and behavior of the 21st century take over. Boys are leading the change in
values and behavior, just as they did 100 years ago.

Shift
Eight. Half of all learning is online.

The traditional
classroom rapidly becomes obsolete. Half of all learning is done online,
changing the nature of how we learn and how we teach.

Shift
Nine. Education becomes web-based.

Brick and mortar schools
and colleges of the past century become outdated. All education becomes
web-based, providing a better education for both young people and adults.

Image: ‘I drive blurry‘
www.flickr.com/photos/90732224@N00/43869408