The Stephens Group Blog

New Teacher Rules Hitting Classrooms

2010-06-13T17:55:00.001-05:00

http://www.jsonline.com/news/education/96228979.html

Cue

2010-03-04T19:07:00.001-06:00

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Cue

View more presentations from tstephens.

Web 2.0 Initiatives at the CoSN Conference

2010-02-28T07:45:00.001-06:00

We have a number of exciting Web 2.0 initiatives planned for the CoSN Conference this week.

CoSN Exchange

CoSN has a new social networking platform for CoSN Members called CoSN Exchange.
is a social networking application free for CoSN members. CoSN Exchange makes it easy for you to set up your own CoSN web page and have content of your choice delivered to you. It gives you the ability to network with colleagues, create special interest groups and discussions around topics that matter to you. CoSN Exchange also interfaces with personal social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and LinkedIn making it easy for you to connect.
.
You can access CoSN Exchange at http://tiny.cc/cosnexchange161 .

In order to use CoSN Exchange you need to log-into the CoSN Website. If you have never logged-in before you need to click on create an account.

If you have logged-in but have forgotten your username or password click on forgotten password and it will be emailed to you.

There will be workshops on CoSN Exchange in the vendor hall at 10:00am and 2:15pm on March 1st and 10:00am March 2nd.

Twitter

Follow CoSN at http://www.twitter.com/cosn .

Add #cosn2010 to your tweets at the conference.

We have set up a Twub (twitter hub) at for the conference that will gather all of the tweets with #cosn2010 in one place. You can join the Twub at http://twubs.com/cosn2010 .

Not a twitter user? No problem, you can also follow the twub via your email.

We will be posting the best tweets of the conference at the closing plenary at the conference on Tuesday.

CoSN Hub
This year we have an area next to the main registration desk set up for members to network with one another both face-to-face and virtually.

I’ll be hanging out in the hub and will be available to help with Basecamp, CoSN Exchange, Twitter and Twub. If you’d like to have your picture taken for your CoSN Exchange page, I’ll also have a digital camera there for you to use.

The hub has wireless access and computer email stations as well. Please stop by and say hi. I’d love to hear your ideas about how CoSN can further leverage Web 2.0 tools in our organization.

Some of the celebrities scheduled to be in the hub include:

Monday, March 1
• 7:30-8:30 am Donna Boivin, CoSN Board member
• 8:30-11am Joan Kowal & Katie Lovett, Empowering 21st Century Superintendents Initiative and Data-drive Decision Making Initiative
• 11-noon Linda Sharp, Cyber Security and Crisis Preparedness Leadership Initiatives
• 1-2pm Christopher Brown & Emerging Technology Committee
• 3-4 pm K. David Weidner, Small District Technology Leadership Initiative
• 4-5 pm Rich Kaestner, TCO, VOI and Green Computing Leadership Initiatives

Tuesday, March 2
• 10-11am Ed Zaiontz, CoSN Board chair
• 11-noon Judy Salpeter, editor CoSN Compendium
Marla Davenport, CoSN Board member
• Noon-1 pm Rich Kaestner, TCO, VOI and Green Computing Leadership Initiatives
• 1-3:30pm Bev White, past CoSN Board member

Google Moderator

This year CoSN will be using Google Moderator in the International Symposium to make it more participatory.

CoSN Exchange

2010-02-23T10:22:00.001-06:00

CoSN Releases New Social Networking platform called CoSN Exchange for its members.

More information is available on the CoSN Website

Building Community with Twitter

2010-01-31T18:40:00.000-06:00

Building Community with Twitter

Favorite 21st Century Videos

2009-10-15T01:12:00.002-05:00

A superintendent asked me what my favorite 21st century skill videos are. Here are my top ones.

http://www.schooltube.com/user/cosn_edtech

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9Wu2kWwSY&feature=player_embedded

http://www.edutopia.org/comprehensive-assessment-overview-video

What are yours?

Should FTC Regulate Blogging Content?

2009-10-10T14:18:00.002-05:00

Interesting article in the Financial Times today http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d922132c-b534-11de-8b17-00144feab49a.html?nclick_check=1

EETT Evaluations

2009-09-30T16:12:00.002-05:00

What I'm working on for the West Allis West Milwaukee EETT Evaluation.

Stephens Group September Newsletter

2009-09-01T19:47:00.001-05:00

'Click the Share button to create links to this email on popular social networking and bookmarking size like Facebook, Twitter, and Digg.'

Shared via AddThis

US Dept. of Ed Report on Online Learning

2009-07-14T11:56:00.002-05:00

An interesting study released by the US Department of Ed entitled Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies.

One of the interesting findings is Instruction combining online and face-to-face elements had a larger advantage relative to purely face-to-face instruction than did purely online instruction.

Constructivism in an Age of Non-Constructivist Assessments

2009-06-22T23:28:00.004-05:00

I'm reading a book called Constructivist Instruction: Success or Failure edited by by Sigmund Tobias and Thomas Duffy. It is like a debate in a book format. Different sets of authors present their case in a chapter and then those of the opposing viewpoint ask them questions in which the authors of the chapter respond.

Tonight I read an interesting chapter entitled Constructivism in an Age of Non-Constructivist Assessments by Daniel Schwartz, Rob Lindgren, and Sarah Lewis. One of the quotes I want to hang onto was, "Does instruction prepare learners to construct knowledge once we no longer orchestrate specific instructional conditions to target specific learning mechanisms and outcomes?"

PODetc Joins Twitter and Facebook

2009-06-21T22:35:00.003-05:00

PODetc now has a twitter account and a Facebook group (PODetc). We hope you will consider joining!

Tech Literacy 102 Tag Cloud

2009-06-20T09:47:00.004-05:00

This week I am finishing up another section of our online PODetc Course Tech Literacy 102: Building Knowledge Networks.

Its been a great group in which we've been learning about foramtive assessment strategies, iPod Touches and social constructivism (not necessarily in that order lol).

Below is our tag cloud from the course:

The next time this course is offered is August 3rd-28th. You can learn more about the course at http://www.podetc.com/PODetc/Technology_Literacy_102%3A_Building_Knowledge_Management_Systems.html

How do you define student engagement?

2009-06-10T23:33:00.004-05:00

Tonight I was reading an excellent site on social constructivism as part of my the Tech Literacy 102 Course I'm teaching.

I came across an interesting definition of student engagement: "Learning that occurs through interaction and reflection".

Global Achievement Gap

2009-06-07T15:18:00.001-05:00

Victoria Lovejoy, one of our online instructors for PODetc shared this with me this week~
Tony Wagner (2008), author of The Global Achievement Gap, describes what he calls the seven survival skills for the 21st century. These are critical thinking and problem solving, collaboration across networks and leading by influence, agility and adaptability, initiative and entrepreneurialism, effective oral and written communication, accessing and analyzing information, and curiosity and imagination.

Social Constructivism

2009-06-03T21:26:00.002-05:00

I'm taking a course on Moodle. I just listened to a fascinating interview with Martin Dougiamas, the founder of Moodle.

He talked about how Moodle is based on the theory of social constructivism. In his writings he defines to social construction as "Collaboratively creating a small culture of shared artifacts with shared meanings".

Moodle is about communication, learning and collaboration. In the course I've heard people call it a "tool box" or an "operating system for e-Learning".

Moodle “Allows both teacher and learner to construct environments in their computer within which they can construct representations of their understandings of the subject and share them with others in a variety of ways.”

Is Virtual Friendship different than F2F Friendships?

2009-05-27T04:52:00.002-05:00

Yesterday I read a great article in BusinessWeek entitled, What's a Friend Worth: Companies are Scrambling to Decode New Data About Our Online Relationships, Hoping for Profitable Insights by Stephen Baker.

"Decoding friendship many believe, could be key to getting consumers' attention"...Facebook, Google, and Yahoo hire leading sociologists, anthropologists, and microeconmists from MIT, Harvard, and Berkeley. Microsoft just established a research division focused on social sciences in Cambridge, Mass." (We spent a lot of time studying social learning theories in my doctoral program at Pepperdine).

One of the things researchers are looking at to determine the strength of an online relationship is whether or not communication travels in both directions. This is something I'm looking at in my dissertation where I'm looking at transformative communication patterns in 1-to-1 laptop programs.

IBM encourages their workers to be involved in social networks. "Each new friend plugs an IBM worker into another sphere of knowledge and human contacts".

This concept aligns with the underpinnings of an online course I teach entitled Technology Literacy 102: Building Knowledge Management Systems. You can learn more about this course on our professional development website.

In reference to the title of this post, Is Virtual Friendship Different than f2f (face-to-face) friendships I would say it depends. I just helped chair a committee that wrote a paper on social networking in education. One of the things our committee discussed is that social networking can be hard to explain because it is user defined. Each person determines their purpose for using it, so there in no one way to use it. In the BusinessWeek article they are talking about how businesses are trying to tap-in to online networks as a way to promote themselves. In other ways, using viral marketing techniques. I think one of the things these tools provide us with is the ability to expand our networks to people on a massive scale never possible before.

The Institute for Collaborative Education

2009-05-24T11:39:00.002-05:00

This week I had the great experience of visiting the Institute for Collaborative Education in New York City and WOW did they ever live up to their name! The school is made up of 6th-12th graders.

In the morning I attended a town meeting that was 100% student led. Students that are interested in leading the town meeting take a class in which they work on organizing and planning the town meetings. The town meeting is held once a week and the entire school attends. These students set up and take down all of the audio and technology equipment needed for the meeting as well. The town meeting consisted of announcements, students of the week, student created videos, and a live dance performance.

For the announcements the student MC said that anyone who had an announcement could line up behind the microphone and take their turn making an announcement. There was a whole range of announcements from a sixth grade student who introduced the other members of his band, to a woman promoting Vibe a hip hop vocal group for girls, to an upcoming baseball game in Central park, to the Spanish teacher asking others to come out and support students doing an oral presentation in Spanish afterschool. A parent volunteer who sat next to me busily typed up all the announcements as they were being made and uploaded them to the school website http://www.iceschool.net/group_profile_view.aspx?id=acc7e770-f6af-4ea9-9ea0-d874d0ffc45a.

The teachers picked a boy student and a girl student of the week. Teachers and councilors came up to the microphone and made comments about why they were chosen. The boy chosen for the week was a eighth grade student. When he was announced the entire eighth grade cheered. His Spanish teacher commented described how Spanish was difficult for him and how he started a study group of other students struggling with Spanish to help one another.

The most interesting part of the meeting for me was the student created videos. The school had received a grant that allowed them to purchase some video equipment. Any student that wants to create a video of one minute or less can email it to the assistant principal, Brett Schneider, who then reviews them and puts them on an external hard drive. Videos tended to be sort of public service announcements. For example two sixth grade boys made a video about how not to loose things. The older the students were that made the movies, the more technical and sophisticated they became and some of them had some real professional elements in them. A lot of them also had to do with academics. For example, a video might be Behind the Scenes in Room 581. The video had pop music and camera footage of students working on a roller-coaster experiment. When students saw themselves or their friends they cheered. It was really neat to see that students valued academics and chose to make movies about this. So often school assemblies seem to have a strong emphasis on sports, but this town meeting had a lot of tie-ins to what is happening instructionally in the school. It was also nice to see how much the older students included the middle school students and supported them in their efforts to be involved in the town meeting. As one of the girls doing the MC for the meeting said, “We are a family”.

The school has no technology coordinator. While the assistant principal acknowledged that this can sometimes be a frustration, I think it speaks to the fact that if you give students access to technology they will find a way to use it. So often I think schools and teachers avoid doing these types of projects because they themselves do not feel comfortable with the technology. Following the town meeting I went with the assistant principal to meet two teachers for lunch who wanted to incorporate some video into a social justice project they were doing using footage from a recent field trip to Washington DC that the students had taken. It was obvious that the teachers had never made a movie themselves before, but they didn’t let them stop them. Instead they asked the assistant principal to come in and team teach with their classes and show them how to do video editing. The assistant principal agreed to do this and to create some tip sheets that the students and teachers could use to help them as well. I think the collaborative planning that this group was doing reflects my favorite quote from AERA “The kind of community we set out to design and engineer is a reflection of the environments we set up for ourselves”- Leslie Rupert.

One of the 21st Century Skills our students need to succeed in thrive in a new economy is collaboration. The Institute for Collaborative Education is fully realizing this in their day-to-day instructional practices. How well is your organization or school realizing this goal?

Mobile Technologies

2009-05-14T14:12:00.001-05:00

Tracy DuBay sent this video from the TED Conference by Renny Gleeson http://video.ted.com/talks/podcast/RennyGleeson_2009_480.mp4

Early Registration for MDMC ends this Friday!

2009-05-13T23:06:00.003-05:00

Early Registration for The Milwaukee Digital Media Conference ends this Friday!

We hope you will consider joining us for this year's conference at the Milwaukee County Zoo on July 27th-30th.

About the Conference

The Milwaukee Digital Media Conference is a hands-on collaborative conference. Participants work with instructors from The Stephens Group utilize 21st Century Skills in order to create relevant real-world products. All instructors are real practitioners in the field of education.

In this year's conference we will be exploring the use of digital movie editing VoiceThread, Intel's Seeing Reason Tools, Skype and Google Maps to support learning. All comfort levels with technology are welcome to attend.

What's New at the Conference
Student Strand
This year we the student strand will be two days in length.

Students in grades 3-6 to come with their teachers on Tuesday, July 28 th-29th. Students will be creating a VoiceThread presentation with their teachers. In the past schools that have sent students with their teachers, have done so with the purpose of building capacity to do similar projects in their schools and having the students serve as technology leaders who can provide technical support on these types of projects. Teachers who are registering for the full conference should not register for the student track. More information is available on our registration page.

Social Networking Tools Breakouts
On Friday we have a series of breakout sessions on social networking tools. Presentations include Twitter,
Del.icio.us, Animoto, Pageflakes, Facebook, and
Wikispaces.

Apple Reception
On Wednesday, July 29th Apple Computers is hosting a reception on The Future of Mobile Technologies.

Brewers Tailgate Party
This year we organizing a tail-gate party to a Brewer's Game on the evening of July 29th.

Registration Information

More information is available on our conference website.

Early registration ends this Friday, May 15th.

Educators can receive two graduate credits for participating in the conference If you took the conference for credit last year, you will be able to retake it. The course is repeatable due to the fact that digital media is an emerging technology that presents new learning opportunities every year.

Moving from NCLB thinking to Arne Duncan thinking

2009-05-10T20:36:00.000-05:00

Just made a new Blog post moving from NCLB thinking to Arne Duncan thinking http://blog.edstimulus.org/

Creating a Strong Evaluation Component to Your EETT Grant Proposals

2009-04-26T11:09:00.001-05:00

Just posted a new article on the EdStimulous Blog at http://blog.edstimulus.org/

Favorite AERA Quote

2009-04-26T11:06:00.002-05:00

I was lucky enough to go to the AERA conference this year (American Educational Research Association) conference this year.

My favorite quote from the conference was, “The kind of community we set out to design and engineer is a reflection of the environments we set up for ourselves”- Leslie Rupert

The Time is Now!

2009-04-19T23:18:00.001-05:00

Read about this historic time in education at the Ed Stimulous blog at http://blog.edstimulus.org/.

Video of The Day

2009-04-19T23:12:00.001-05:00

This week The Stephens Group was featured on eSchool News as the video of the Day on Tuesday. Click here to view our video of the day.

Wisconsin Connects

2009-04-04T21:12:00.000-05:00

'Wisconsin Connects' Initiative To Drive Online Collaboration The state of Wisconsin has launched a new online initiative called Wisconsin Connects. The initiative aims to provide a safe learning environment for K-12 students and to enable students in Wisconsin to connect and collaborate with other students from around the world.
http://www.thejournal.com/articles/24189

WEMTA Conference Take-Aways

2009-03-25T21:33:00.005-05:00

This week I attended and presented at the Wisconsin Educational Media & Technology Conference in Madison, Wisconsin. Below are some of my take-aways from the Conference.

Educators Range of Use
I had a great conversation with Chris Longe after the banquet about professional development. She gave me permission to quote her, "Some teachers are really pushing the envelope on a lot of the Web 2.0 technologies being presented here, while others are still trying to find the mailbox". This really fit well with the Coaching Educators’ Use of Information & Technology session I presented on an EETT grant I'm evaluating. I think administrators are key in helping educators move ahead with technology. I think that administrators need a couple of tools in their toolbox to help teachers move forward with technology. (1) They need to have buy-in and a belief that technology is important for their students (2) they need to be able to recognize what effective teaching practices with the use of technology are and (3) they need a variety of coaching strategies to deal with the large continuum of teacher comfort levels with technology.

Web 2.0 Conference Strategy
This year's WEMTA conference was filled with Web 2.0 tools and the word "collaboration" was everywhere. Diane Dorsh, in charge of technology for the Neenah Joint School District, shared with me a strategy that she uses with her colleagues when going to a conference. They start a wiki and everyone who goes to the conference contributes to it. That way it can be shared with everyone in their district. What a great use of a Web 2.0 tool!

Adventures on Second Life
Another presentation I did was on Second Life. A lot of educators ask me how Second Life can be used in education. I chose to share a couple of videos to help the audience better understand the potential that virtual worlds provides.

The first video I shared was a video that gives a nice overview of the power of using Second Life as a simulated environment.

I also shared two videos of the Pacific Rim/ Project. One of the things that I challenged the audience to think about while watching these videos was what ISTE NETS Standards, AASL Standards, 21st Century Skills, and Content Skills this project would cover. When you think about this project from this perspective it is truly amazing how deep this project is!

Part 1:

Part 2:

After showing the videos one person made the comment that she was glad that I showed this because she always had sort of creepy idea of what Second Life was and this really helped to see how it could be used in education.

Next, we met Michelle Kowalsky virtually in Second Life. Michelle is Michelle is a professor at William Paterson University in New Jersey and teaches school library media specialists. She recently finished her dissertation in which she studied communication patterns among librarians in Second Life.

The audience found it humorous because I couldn't always keep up with Michelle and my avatar was a little slower and more clumsy than her. Some people came up to me after the presentation and said that it was nice to see me struggle and that they were having trouble or feeling frustrated learning how to move and interact in Second Life. I think part of that is because we as adults don't like to be unsuccessful at something, but failing is a part of learning and important part of learning and we've forgot what it feels like to learn something unfamiliar and new.

We suggested that you go to ISTE's second life island if you are a newbe educator in Second Life. Another person asked where you can find other schools on second life- http://www.simteach.com/wiki/index.php?title=Institutions_and_Organizations_in_SL

Emerging Technologies from a Student Perspective

2009-03-23T10:55:00.003-05:00

Last Friday I had the privilege to serve as a judge at the ACSI Annual Multimedia Festival hosted by Azusa Pacific in Orange County.

Students from private Christian Schools all over Orange County brought multimedia projects (websites, podcasts, movies, PowerPoint presentations, publications) to be get real world feedback on their work.

I was impressed by the students motivation to learn. They told me that they liked it when it was hard and I talked with students who even taught themselves html through self-paced tutorials on the Internet.

One school brought projects that were related to an assignment they had been given in which they were to research an emerging technology of their choice and analyze the pros and cons of using this technology. I was completely blown away with their ideas and deep thinking around this topic. A lot of the choices were centered around cell phones. For example Augmented Reality (which I had never heard of before) was one of the choices. There were also some presentations on the evolution of robotics such as in the use of The Crusher an unmanned vehicle being used by the military.

Responsible Use Policies

2009-03-23T10:39:00.005-05:00

A couple of weeks ago I had a great conversation with David Jakes, the Coordinator of Instructional Technology at Glenbrook South High School in the hallway at the CoSN annual conference in Austin. Mr. Jakes was proposing the idea that schools should have responsible use policies instead of acceptable use policies.

This was in line with some of the comments made by one of the panelists at the International Symposium who talked about the need for schools to share risk meaning that schools should not be the only ones responsible for risk management of the Internet.

I read another good quote this week that falls into this category when I was preparing for my presentation on How New Media is Changing the Way We Learn for the WEMTA Conference.

"The Web is not a babysitter, it’s not a friendly place full of rocking chairs and whittling, but with the right parenting and sensible precautions children and teens can use the Web safely” (“MySpace Deemed Harmful to Children...Well, Duh”, http://websearch.about.com/b/a/217893.htm).

I think we are going to see a lot of shifts in AUPs and school's approach to Internet safety in the next five years.

DDI Team Presents in Long Beach

2009-03-14T18:37:00.003-05:00

Yesterday, I flew in from Austin from the CoSN Conference to my home town of Long Beach, CA. Our Data Driven Instruction team presented at the California Charter School Conference at the conference center in downtown Long Beach. (I cannot tell you how great it was to present in my home town!)

Dr. Stanley and Dr. Tubbs did a wonderful job and really engaged the participants in some meaningful discussion on data driven instruction practices in their schools. We were really impressed by the exit reflections that the participants left with us. We have posted these on our DDI blog at http://data-driven.info/ .

CoSN Horizons Emerging Technologies Forum

2009-03-04T13:50:00.004-06:00

The Consortium of School Networking is hosting an online technologies forum on emerging technologies likely to have considerable impact on K-12 teaching and learning. Please join this exciting conversation by going to http://www.cosn.org/Communities/Forums/tabid/4432/Default.aspx and signing-up to participate in the forum. A username, password and directions on how to access the forum will be emailed to you.

Conversation, Community and Connection

2009-03-01T10:19:00.002-06:00

This weekend I came across two interesting pieces on Twitter.

The first was an article in the Financial Times entitled Sweet to Tweet.

I found the six secrets to online success interesting:

Immediacy- Real-time flow of comments and adaptability to mobile handsets makes it more immediate than blogging.

Brevity- Limiting messages to 140 characters makes them easier to produce and easier to digest.

‘Pull’, not ‘push’-The ability of users to choose whose tweets they follow makes it less random than e-mail.

Searchability- Messages can be searched, making the content more accessible than the comments on a social network.

Mixing public and personal- A user’s personal contacts are on an equal footing with public figures.

‘Retweeting’- By copying and retransmitting messages, users can turn the network into a giant echo chamber.

I also listened to a piece on NPR called Welcome to the Twitterverse in which Andy Carvin was trying to convince Daniel Schorr to sign up for Twitter.

My key take-away was "Twitter is the new “water cooler” ... where you read the things you have to know but wouldn’t find out otherwise".

I totally agree. Why do you use twitter?

Building Knowledge Networks

2009-03-01T05:21:00.004-06:00

This week I finished teaching the PODetc course Tech Literacy 102: Building Knowledge Management Systems.

One of the students, Ruth Timbrook, posted the following reflection on the course. I asked her if I could share this as I think she did a great job of capturing what the course was about.

This course has definitely changed the way I see my own relationship with technology in the micro and macro sense. On the micro level, I can now better grasp "good" ways in which to get information I need. Previous to this and other courses, I always went to Google to search for things, every time I needed them. Sometimes I spent hours looking through search results. This has been a great lesson in learning to cherry pick only what I need. It is a big sea of info out there, and the trick is to swim the the correct direction. On the macro level, I better understand my own (and everyone else) role in the "world" of technology. I understand how my own creations or edits will affect others information searches. It is really great to be able to tap into the minds of people around the world and learn from their experiences as well. Previous to these courses, I probably would have searched for "published" material to get info, and never would have looked to things such as blogs for help. The exchange of information between all users is an incredible opportunity. It makes me appreciate the knowledge of others much more, and I will implement this exchange with my students in the future.

Interesting quote to think about...

2009-02-22T20:23:00.002-06:00

I just went through a slideshow posted on slideshare by Steve Hargadon entitled The Future of Education. One of the points he makes in the presentation is that "Formal education will become increasingly irrelevant". Interesting quote. Do you agree?

Things I have been writing about...

2009-02-22T18:47:00.003-06:00

This weekend I was working on my dissertation. Here are some of the things that I have been thinking about:

Technology also makes it possible for multiple forms of communication to occur simultaneously allowing more people to have a voice in the discussion. Technology can also increase the size of collaborative networks than those provided in face-to-face environments because it gives users access to a larger networked community of learners (Pea, 1999). “The ease with which computer mediated communication connects friends of friends can also increase the density of interconnections among clusters of network members within communities” (Wellman, 1999, p. 203).

Technology can allow for a larger network of individuals and can make it easy for groups with similar interests to self-organize and have meaningful interaction around a shared practice.

The Internet decentralizes power and authority which conflicts with transmission pedagogy. Expertise is shared and this flattens hierarchical relationships.

Stimulus Package

2009-02-21T17:06:00.001-06:00

Edutopia had a nice article on what we might be able to expect from the stimulus package in terms of Ed Tech http://www.edutopia.org/economic-stimulus-education-school-technology

How is Twitter Useful?

2009-02-17T05:34:00.003-06:00

This weekend I came across two interesting blog entries that pertain to this class this weekend in my Twitter network.

The first blog entry was written by Carol Cooper-Taylor entitled 50 Ideas for Using Twitter in Education. This is a great article for people who are new to using Twitter. It helps you get your head around why you might want to use Twitter as a knowledge network and some tips on what types of things to post to get started.

The second blog entry was in the blog Kumegirl entitled Why Twitter is good for Qualitative Researchers. It sort of outlines the psychological stages people go through as the evolve their use of Twitter.

She outlines five stages of acceptance people go through when using Twitter. What stage of acceptance are you at?

Milwaukee Digital Media Conference

2009-02-15T13:47:00.002-06:00

Registration for The Milwaukee Digital Media Conference is now live! More information about the conference is available on our website at http://www.milwaukeedmc.com/.

National Test to Assess Student's Technology Proficiency by 2012

2009-02-12T10:53:00.001-06:00

http://www.eschoolnews.com/resources/measuring-21st-century-skills/measuring-21st-century-skills-articles/index.cfm?rc=1&i=55483

Diigo

2009-02-07T13:59:00.003-06:00

This morning I went to a live webinar put on by Classroom 2.0 on the social bookmarking tool Diigo. This was the first Classroom 2.0 webinar that I have attended and it was great! They have one every Saturday at noon Eastern Time. You can view their calendar at http://live.classroom20.com/calendar.html . (Next week they will be talking about Skype).

Here are some of the highlights:

Diigo does some things that Delicious does not do. For example, you can annotate. What they mean by that is you can highlight and add stickynotes to sites you bookmark and share this with others. One of the presenters said she requires her students to do this when they bookmark a site. That's kind of cool because it helps get at those higher-order thinking skills of evaluating what's important, and summarizing important concepts.

Another big difference is in how you can share your bookmarks. In Delicious you can add people's Delicious bookmarks to your network. However, Diigo has a lot more options. For example you can have certain tags posted automatically to a blog in a tag cloud or as a list of links.

You can also create groups. If you are a teacher, once you have a Diigo account, you can upgrade to an Educator Account. You will then have access to a Teacher Console which will allow you to manage your groups. You can make groups private and enter students in without having to have an email address for them. Traditional groups have advertising, but educational groups do not.

Another cool thing about the groups, is you can have a group dictionary of suggested tags the group use. When you go to bookmark something, the tags automatically appear as buttons to choose from.

You can also "mirror" your bookmarks in both Delicious and Diigo.

This fits great into the PODetc course I'm teaching on Building Knowledge Networks. This week we are working on using social bookmarking to start to organize information around a topic we want to learn more about.

As some of you know who have taken online classes from me before, I like to do the assignments along with the course participants. I have decided I'm going to research how social networking is being used in education and organize my information in Diigo and mirror it in my Delicious account.

I'll let you know how it goes!

Best Practices for Internet Safety

2009-02-01T04:31:00.001-06:00

number of school districts have asked for advice on how to handle Internet safety issues especially with the emergence of Web 2.0 applications. In response to the numerous requests we have been receiving we created a white paper of what we consider to be best practices for Internet Safety. Within the document we have included a number of helpful resources.

You can read our white paper at http://www.scribd.com/doc/11552925/-Best-Practices-for-Internet-Security .

Democracy

2009-01-30T19:27:00.001-06:00

"Democracy is the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people"~ Harry Emerson Fosdick

How do you learn?

2009-01-25T19:39:00.002-06:00

Which of the following technologies do you use to advance your learning? ( surveys)

Reflections of Survey of Emerging Technologies

2009-01-22T23:10:00.003-06:00

As I wrote in an earlier blog post, I am currently taking a PODetc course Survey of Emerging Technologies taught by Theresa Stanley.

The course has forced me to take some time to try some new emerging technologies that I have wanted to try for some time.

The first was subscribing to Google Reader. I have been a long time subscriber of Bloglines and use it as an aggregator for various ed tech blogs that I read. I have been meaning to try Google Reader for some time to compare the two. I am absolutely loving Google Reader. One of the really nice features is that you can embedd it into your iGoogle page. I decided to subscribe to some education sections of newspapers. It has been nice having it on my home base with all of my other widgets every day.

The second tool that was new to me was Delicious. I have been meaning to get an account for some time. It was so easy to set up. My favorite part is the social part. The fact that you can share book marks with your friends is really powerful. My Delicious Account is at located at http://delicious.com/tstephens12.

So far it has been a great class and I would highly recommend it to those of you who want to carve out some time to try new tools. Theresa's next class is starting March 2nd. You can visit our website for more information.

Registration Closes Monday!

2009-01-18T08:15:00.003-06:00

Registration for taking the following PODetc Online Courses for graduate Credit closes Monday, January 19th, 2009.

Creativity and Innovation in the Classroom

Description: This online course examines the ISTE standard "Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity" and how educators can apply and integrate it into their current curriculum. This course will give classroom teachers insight into how to balance their curriculum with integrated technology. Participants will design curriculum to be used in their classrooms and work in a collaborative environment to share ideas and build a surplus of useful strategies and ideas as determined by the community of practice.

February 2 - February 27 (4 week course)

Technology Literacy 102: Building Knowledge Management Systems

Description: This online course is appropriate for administrators, teachers, library media specialists, and technology leaders. We will focus on the examination of online tutorial sites, social networking tools, and knowledge management systems as sources of just-in-time support for integrating technology into the teaching and learning process!

February 2 - February 27 (4 week course)

Earn 1 Graduate Credit through the respected University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
or Participate in a noncredit option through the Online Professional Development Leader PODetc!(PODetc -- Professional Online Development from the Educational Technology Community).

Note you can register after January 19th if you are not taking these course for graduate credit.

My Favorite Ed Tech Blogs

2009-01-18T08:08:00.003-06:00

As part of the PODetc Course, Survey of Emerging Technologies I am taking we have been asked to find three Ed Tech Blogs to follow.

My three favorite Ed Tech Blogs are:

The Thinking Stick by Jeff Utect an Elementary Technology & Learning Coordinator International School in Bangkok

Some Tech Sense Blog by Amanda DeCardy who works in an International School in Shanghai.

Webblogged by Will Richardson author of Blogs, Wikis and Podcasts.

Reflections on my Blog

2009-01-13T15:24:00.003-06:00

This blog post is actually an assignment for an online course I'm taking called A Survey of Emerging Technologies, which is being taught by Theresa Stanley.

Our assignment was to set up a blog and reflect on the process of setting it up. I set up my blog in July of 2006 and I found blogger to be very user friendly. One thing I am continually evolving on is the use of widgets to make the blog more interactive. This has been fun. The next thing I want to learn how to do is to make an interactive poll on my blog.

As part of this assignment we also had to read a blog post by Henry Jenkins called Why Academics Should Blog. Some of the points that I took away from this blog entry was that blogging is indeed a committment. The more disciplined I am about posting the more readers I get. Also that it is a way to keep you writing. I recently read a book for doctoral students on how to complete your dissertation. The book talked about the importance of becoming addicted to writing. My blog has definitely helped me to want to write more and slowly become more addicted to writing.

Dick Diener Recognized by NMSA

2009-01-05T18:10:00.003-06:00

Dick Diener, a consultant for The Stephens Group and a teacher at Lake Shore Middle School, worked on several podcasts with students which were recognized by the National Middle School Association. Dick said that the ideas for these podcasts came as a result of participating in The Milwaukee Digital Media Conference.

Podcasts include:

Messenger of Friendship (Miss Ibaraki/Kasumi Tsukuba) Japanese Friendship Doll Podcast (2006-07). Megan Gray (currently a student at HHS) received special recognition for her work as the voice of the doll. This podcast is at the Milwaukee Public Museum:
http://www.mpm.edu/exhibitions/featured/friendshipdoll/podcasts.php

• Veterans Memorial Podcast Project (2007-08). Jacob Paulmann received special recognition for his work on the final podcast about the memorial in Belgium, WI. Jake read a piece titled, "The Flag Stands For...: A link to the podcasts is here:
http://mtsd.k12.wi.us/Lake_Shore/podcast/vet-mem/Podcast/Podcast.html

Congratulations Dick!

Ocean Challenge Live!

2009-01-03T12:59:00.002-06:00

Lorraine Leo sent me these links that she uses with her students:
Skipper Rich Wilson, a former math teacher, is the only US skipper competing in the Vendee Globe, around the world alone. You can follow him on Twitter http://www.twitter.com/Rich_Wilson
and through http://www.sitesalive.com http://www.vendeeglobe.org
also through http://ehrweb01.aaas.org/sail/
Also http://www.roythezebra.com if you work with anyone with early literacy...a great site and kid-tested.

Thanks for sharing!

Subscribe to CoSN Twitter

2009-01-03T10:30:00.003-06:00

CoSN now has its own Twitter account. To follow Twitter updates go to CoSN Twitter Feed on the Left Side of my blog and click "follow me on Twitter".

Stephens Group Words for 2008

2009-01-01T17:00:00.009-06:00

I recently added a cloud tag to my blog. It was interesting to reflect on which words I tagged most often in 2008.

21st Century Skills-- This year we added a new belief statements to our mission statement, "We believe all students need to graduate with 21st Century Skills". All of our professional development efforts have been aligned to support this belief statement.

MDMC2008- - MDMC stands for the Milwaukee Digital Media Conference. This year's conference was a huge success. We had 120 educators collaboratively work with us on real world digital media projects at the Milwaukee County Zoo. You can read more about the conference in an article published by The Milwaukee Journal.

One-to-One Computing- - This year The Stephens Group started a new division of our company on One-to-One Computing with four consultants who have experience working with one-to-one computing programs. We started a free social networking site around this topic and currently has 37 members from all over the country. One-to-one computing was also the topic of my comps paper and will be my dissertation topic too- so I'm sure it will be tagged a lot more in 2009.

PODetc-
PODetc is also a new division of our company. It stands for Professional Online Development for the Educational Technology Community. The online relationships that have been developed are truly amazing. We have had teachers and administrators from all over the world in K-12 and higher ed take our courses. On Monday we start our fourth session of graduate courses for educators. We currently have five courses aligned to the new ISTE NETS Standards for teachers.

Social Networking & Twitter- - As Tammy Lind, our director of professional development stated recently, "I have learned more from people on Twitter this past year than all of my professional development including my master's degree combined". Consultants need to be constantly learning. Social networking tools such as Twitter and CollectiveX have helped us reach out to our clients, share information with one another, get just-in-time support and brought us closer together. I'm sure we will be leveraging these tools even more in 2009 as we broaden our personal learning networks.

Ultraportable Devices- This year through an internship with CoSN I had the opportunity to work on a report on ultraportable devices. I have become really interested in this topic as it also related to my dissertation. In my consulting work, I have been surprised that school districts have been somewhat reluctant to go this route with their hardware purchases. If we are really serious about providing student centered learning experiences, I think these devices have huge potential for changing the teaching and learning process.

San Jose Digital Media Course- This year we held a course at the San Jose Museum of Art to create vodcasts (or video-podcasts) using a method of inquiry that can be used in any discipline. We will be holding the course again June 22nd-29th. More information is available on our course wiki.

Wiki- 2008 was definitely the year of the wiki for The Stephens Group. The Stephens Group has seven wikis. Some are internal for consultants to share information and collaborate. Others such as our Information Technology Planning Wiki are to share information with clients. We use this one a lot with our clients as a means of sharing research and best practices when developing strategic information technology plans. Our biggest wiki, however is the wiki we created for this year's digital media conference. Educators worked in teams to create multimedia wikis around exhibits at the zoo. We are very proud of their work! You can view their wikis at http://mdmc2008.wikispaces.com/Directory.

It comes as no surprise that the most tagged word in 2008 was Web 2.0. Many of the technologies we are using as a company have not changed from 2007. However, what is changing is how we use them. Our company has consultants and clients in multiple states. Web 2.0 tools has really allowed us to work more efficiently and seamlessly across multiple timezones.

I'm looking forward to seeing what new words get tagged in 2009!

Collaborationware

2008-12-26T09:57:00.002-06:00

I just read an article in which they referred to blogs, wikis, and podcasts as "collaborationware". What a great way to describe the importance of these tools.

Kamel Boulos, M., Maramba, I., & Wheeler, S. (2006). Wikis, blogs and podcasts: a new generation of Web-based tools for virtual collaborative clinical practice and education. Retrieved September 8, 2008, from http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6920/6/41/.

Technology Buzz Words of 2008

2008-12-21T08:53:00.003-06:00

In the Week in Review section of the New York Times there was an article by Grant Barrett and Mark Leibovich in which they identified new buzz words that have emerged in 2008. Some of them were technology related.

D.W.T. or Driving While Texting

edupunk- a style of hands-on self-education that benefits the student without concern for curriculum or the interests of schools, corporations or governments. In other words, an autodidactic approach that spurns commercialism, mas-market approaches and top-down goal setting. Coined by Jim Groom and "instructional technologist" at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Va.

Long Photo- A video of 90 seconds or less. Used by the photosharing web site Flicker, which began permitting videos this year.

tw, tweet, twitt- Combing forms all inspired by Twitter, a free nano-blogging service. It helps small groups share what they're thinking or doing in just 140 characters per message, or tweet as such a message is called. The service has generated new words an related Web sites. Tweet-up, for example is either a meeting of people organized through Twitter, or the WEb site that helps bring about the meetings.

Schools as Bricks and Morter

2008-12-21T08:49:00.002-06:00

"And throughout the country, as large failing high schools are replaced with small ones and independently run charters, the days when a school was defined by its building, with its principal as mayor, are starting to go the way of the slide rule and the card catalog". ~ Appeared in an article entitled Looking for Common Ground as More Schools Share a Roof, by Elissa Gootman in the The New York Times, Sunday, December 21st, 2008

Your Job Description

2008-12-20T08:20:00.002-06:00

I just saw this blog post by Amanda DeCardy who teaches at the Shanghai American School. She did a reflection on how she spends time in her day as a Technology Integration Facilitator.

Her job consists of:
*Professional Development
*Life Long Learner
*Plan and Go Teaching
*Teaching
*Personal Learning Networks
*Modeling 21st Century Skills
*And being a member of the School Technology Team

What would happen to education if every teachers job description looked like this?

Cascade Learning

2008-12-13T09:25:00.001-06:00

I'm in a workshop called "Using Digital Images in the Classroom" taught by Chad Kafka from The Stephens Group. We are talking about cascade learning- i.e. Miss Smith shows Molly how to do something on the computer. Molly shows another student and so on. Love it!

Engagement

2008-12-13T09:06:00.002-06:00

Another quote that I came across this week by Marc Prensky~ Engagement is more important than content". Do you agree?

MySpace: A Cultural Practice

2008-12-12T08:44:00.003-06:00

I ran across this interesting quote today:

My space is a cultural requirement for high school students. As one teenager said, "If you are not on My Space, you don't exist"~ Dana Boyd, Researcher

Office Live

2008-12-11T20:10:00.001-06:00

Using my first Office Live collaborative document and loving it.

PODetc Feedback

2008-12-09T15:10:00.003-06:00

I was just reading the online survey results of our last session of our PODetc course Introduction to Instructional Technology in the Classroom. I am so proud of the feedback we received I wanted to share some of the participant comments:

This course can be applied to my profession immediately and will improve options available for use in the classroom and in staff development.

This information will allow me to share many new opportunities to colleagues and give me greater insight for ideas and how to use for classroom use.

I thought the course was very good. It exposed me to a variety of new technologies, forced me to try them, and the feedback was excellent. The best part was being able to do the course work online as time permitted.

I have been able to discover and explore so many new tools/ideas - I now have so many new ways to improve my professional practice.

I shared some of the resources I learned about. My students will benefit by my having a broader background.

National Technology Literacy Assessment

2008-12-07T21:57:00.002-06:00

Saw this article in eSchool News http://www.eschoolnews.com/resources/measuring-21st-century-skills/measuring-21st-century-skills-articles/index.cfm?rc=1&i=55483

Top 100 Tools for Learning

2008-11-26T16:56:00.000-06:00

http://c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/top100.html

Ten Ways to Improve Student Learning with Technology

2008-11-26T16:33:00.002-06:00

This list comes from SETDA's action plan for national, state, and local education leaders. The list was created with input from more than 100 national policy makers and 50 state educational officers.

1. Ensure that technology tools and resources are used continuously and seamlessly for instruction, collaboration, and assessment.
2. Expose all students (pre-K through 12th grade) to STEM fields and careers.
3. Make ongoing, sustainable professional development available to all teachers.
4. Use virtual learning opportunities for teachers to further their professional development, such as through online communities and education portals.
5. Incorporate innovative, consistent, and timely assessments into daily instruction.
6. Strengthen the home-school connection by using technology to communicate with parents on student progress.
7. Provide the necessary resources so that every community has the infrastructure to support learning with technology, including assessments and virtual learning.
8. Obtain societal support for education that uses technology from all stakeholders--students, parents, teachers, state and district administrators, business leaders, legislators, and local community members.
9. Provide federal leadership to support states and districts regarding technology's role in school reform by passing the ATTAIN Act.
10. Increase available funding for the e-Rate so that schools can acquire telecommunication services, internet access, internal connections, and maintenance of those connections.

It is Time

2008-11-26T09:57:00.000-06:00

“It is time to realize the full potential of the technology investment we have made during the last decade. It is time to move beyond talking about the potential of technology to change education – we need to prove it. We need to study what technologies have the most dramatic impact on what types of students. We need to move our efforts, as the Web-based Commission said in its report, from promise to practice”.
—Education Secretary Rod Paige
quoted by John Bailey at NECC 2002

New PODetc Courses

2008-11-25T23:59:00.003-06:00

PODetc's 4 NEW spring online courses are now open for enrollment on our site and University of Wisconsin-Green Bay's Education Outreach. Our courses are closely aligned with ISTE's new NET-Standards for teachers. We also address the Partnership for 21st Century Skills framework in each course.

Our NEW spring courses:

* Creativity and Innovation in the Classroom
* Survey of Emerging Technologies
* Technology Literacy 102: Building Knowledge Management Systems
* Technology Literacy 103:Utilizing Social-Networking Support Tools in a
Leadership Capacity

More information is available at our PODetc Course Catalog.

Flat Classrooms Cont.

2008-11-16T13:47:00.003-06:00

We just finished our first PODetc course Introduction to Instructional Technology in the Classroom. It was a blast! One of the things that I was reflecting on is how online courses have the potential to flatten classrooms. I felt more connected to my students in this course than I often do in face-to-face environments where I am an instructor.

The instructors became co-learners with students and we tackled different issues related to the ISTE NETS standards for students. It was fun to see knowledge distributed and constructed between all of us.

We start a new section on Monday and I can't wait to start the process again. You can find out more about our PODetc courses by visiting our website at http://www.podetc.com/PODetc/Course_Catalog.html.

Cool Web 2.0 Tools

2008-11-15T15:56:00.006-06:00

Today I went to the LA CUE Tech Fair. The keynote was Robert Freedman. He shared a number of free Web 2.0 tools. They included:
1) Visuwords- free visual thesaurus
2) Poll Everywhere- allows you to create polls that can be taken from a cell phone
3) Gizmoz- alows you to upload your own picture and animate it
4) Tux Paint- free paint program for kids
5) Slide rocket- allows you to create cool collaborative PowerPoints online

The Power of Embedding

2008-11-15T12:22:00.003-06:00

I'm at the LA CUE workshops today. I'm in a session by Jacice Stearns on Voice Thread. She was talking about one of the power of Web 2.0 tools is their ability to embedd. This means that the tool gives you code that can be embedded in other applications. Some programs that allow you to do this are wikispaces, blogger, word press, Facebook, Voice thread. So for example, if you make a Voice Thread, you can embed it into a wiki or a blog so users can see it without having to go to the VoiceThread site.

Twitter a Teaching and Learning Tool

2008-11-13T23:30:00.000-06:00

Came across this great blog entry by Tom Barrett http://tbarrett.edublogs.org/2008/03/29/twitter-a-teaching-and-learning-tool/

Blikis

2008-11-13T22:33:00.002-06:00

Today I came across a new term- "blikis". According to wikipedia "A bliki (also known as a wikiLog, wog, wikiWeblog, wikiblog, or bloki), is combination of the two Internet concepts of a blog and wiki. It combines features from both: as with blogs, posts or articles appear in reverse chronological order on the front page, with the most recent one at the top; but editing is done in wiki style, with a version history for each page and special markup tags. As with wikis, the fact that a site is a bliki does not mean that any reader can edit any page; editing permission is at the discretion of the administrator(s)".

Anyone bliki-ing out there?

Microblogging and Relevancy

2008-11-12T13:55:00.001-06:00

Great article in The Journal about this topic http://www.campustechnology.com/articles/69158_1/

Project Management Tools

2008-11-12T11:37:00.005-06:00

We have been using two new online tools to help us with project management in The Stephens Group.

The first is Meeting Wizard. It allows you to set up a couple of dates and enter emails of people you want to attend. It automatically emails them and lets them check which dates and times works for them or lets them suggest a new date and time. When a common date has been reached it emails everyone with this date and time. It will also send an email reminder.

The second tool is Stixyboard. It allows you add dates for projects and will email the people on the projects reminders that the deadline is coming up.

Disruptive Innovations

2008-11-12T10:39:00.001-06:00

Today I responded to a post on a forum that described technologies as "disruptive innovations". Here is the response that I posted:

" believe that technology has the potential to change communication patterns in the classroom. Traditionally, communication patterns in the classroom have been mostly linear. Teacher lectures to students. Teacher asks question, student raises hand, is called on and gives answer.

In some of my consulting work I have seen that over time technology can change these practices. For example, some classes are starting to use Moodle an online course management system. The use of Moodle is not replacing face to face instruction it is extending the learning beyond the classroom. Students are assigned discussion boards to respond to questions. So instead of a classroom where only a few people can respond to teacher questions everyone can and rich asynchronous discussions can occur.

These types of learning opportunities also "flatten" a classroom. What I mean by that is they make teachers and students co-learners, instead of teachers always playing the role of the expert.

Usually changes like the ones above are evolutionary, meaning that they do not happen overnight. Also they challenge teacher identities. I think sometimes new technologies are looked at as disruptive innovations because they are getting in the way of traditional teaching methods. In order to fully utilize these tools teaching practices need to evolve to more constructivist forms of teaching that encourage higher order thinking."

Lessons from The Youth Vote

2008-11-09T09:16:00.002-06:00

Just listening to a NPR story on the youth vote for Obama. In the interviews the youth talked about how twitter, YouTube, and text messaging made them feel more connected to the campaign. We should be thinking about how to leverage this in education.

AUPs

2008-11-09T00:03:00.001-06:00

I've been getting some requests from clients lately asking for good examples of acceptable use policies.

Here are some helpful links I've come across:
This resource that came across my desk a couple of weeks ago may be helpful- http://www.ctap4.org/cybersafety/admin_resources.htm . The link on acceptable use policies also looks good http://www.ctap4.org/cybersafety/AUP.htm .

Also I kind of liked the simplicity of this AUP http://www.ashwaubenon.k12.wi.us/AUP/AUP.html

Anybody else have some good examples to share?

Leveraging Technologies

2008-11-08T23:25:00.001-06:00

Earlier today I spoke at the ACSA (Association of California School Administrators Conference).

I spoke on what I see as the five biggest leveraging uses of technology to improve student achievement in my consulting work. They include:
1. Technologies that allow users to obtain usable and accessible data to inform practice
2. Technologies that have the ability to personalize learning
3. Technologies that build community
4. Technologies that build efficiency and communication
5. Technologies that promote creativity, innovation, and higher order thinking

Workplace of the future

2008-11-08T22:34:00.004-06:00

I thought this article on office design of the future in Friday's Financial Times was really interesting. Much of it is about how designers are creating spaces to invite collaboration http://us.ft.com/ftgateway/superpage.ft?news_id=fto110620081803150698&page=1

Obama's Map to the White House

2008-11-05T16:04:00.001-06:00

I love this Google Map that shows Barak Obama's journey to the White House. It is a great illustration of how this tool could be used.

Flat Classrooms

2008-11-04T19:58:00.003-06:00

This is our second week of our first PODetc (Professional Online Development for the ed tech community) Course. The course is an introduction to the new ISTE NETS Standards for Students.

It has been so exciting to see real students enroll and participate after all of our hard work creating the course architecture, content, and getting our courses accredited. The best part has been the online discussions from teachers literally all over the world and the diverse perspectives that they have about teaching and learning in an increasingly global society.

This week we are looking deeply at globalization and how to incorporate that in the teaching and learning process. One of the assignments was to listen to a discussion between the two teachers who founded the Flat Classroom project. One of the teachers made a statement in the discussion that has really resonated with me. She said, "this project has really flattened the relationships between students and teachers". What she meant by that is that it is more peer to peer co-learners instead of the hierarchical expert disseminates information. I'm doing a lot of thinking about how I can work this into my presentation at the ACSA Leadership Summit in San Diego later this week.

Social Media Strategist

2008-11-04T19:50:00.003-06:00

One of the terms that I heard on NPR that has really caught me this week is the reference to someone who called themselves a "social media strategist".

We have heard that students entering kindergarten will have jobs we have never even heard of. I think this is one example of that.

This week I've spent some time thinking about myself as a social media strategist both for myself and other organizations I'm a part of. In some of my research I came across this article entitled 10 Social Media Strategies for the Fortune 1000 Corporations. Even though it is intended for Fortune 1000 Corporations, I think these principals can apply to any organization.

Social Networking and the Election

2008-11-04T19:38:00.004-06:00

I have been really interested in the role of social networking in the election. One great site devoted to this is techpresident.com.

In particular, there is a lot about twitter. On a personal note I have really had a lot more fun this election being connected via twitter. It has been fun to see my twitter friends from across the country announce when their going to the polls, what's happening in their state, and what coverage we are all watching on TV and how we rate it. It has really made me feel much more connected to people to twitter in real time about an event that has such deep importance to all of us.

Learning, Memory, and the Brain

2008-11-04T19:30:00.002-06:00

Last night I attended a lecture on Learning, Memory and the Brain by Dr. Erin M. Schuman at the University of Irvine, CA. Today I've been reflecting on two things.

1.) Graphs and charts are the language of scientists. Are we doing enough of this with our students?
2.) What is the difference between memory and learning, or are they the same thing?

Would love to hear your thoughts on this.

My Mad Men Addiction

2008-11-01T09:29:00.002-05:00

I have recently become addicted to the ACM mini-series Mad Men. It is about an advertising firm in Manhattan in the 1960s. I have been very interested in watching all of the technology in the show. Every executive has one secretary and the place is buzzing with typewriters all day. I asked my husband what in the world were they all typing? He said these people were the equivalent of email today. Executives would record letters into Dictaphones and the secretaries would type up the memos and letters and mail them off to the clients and file copies for their bosses. Most executives don’t have their own secretaries anymore and email has made the majority of what the 1960’s secretaries were doing obsolete.

Compare this to parody done by Microsoft on the Devil Wears Prada on how technology can be used in the work place today.

Trends

2008-10-22T08:25:00.003-05:00

Peter Schilling, head of the IT department at Amherst College in Massachusetts gathered the following data about the students who attend his college:
* only 0.3% have landline phones (compared to 82% of Americans)
* Half of the freshman own an Apple iPhone or iPod Touch
* In contrast to upper classmen, first- and second- year students were more likely to own a Mac than a PC
*89% of the incoming class applied online vs. 33% in 2003
*94% of email on campus is spam
*99% of freshman joined Facebook before hitting campus

Green, H. (2008). Campus Electronicus. Businessweek, October 27, 2008, 18.

Practical Tools for Tech Coordinators

2008-10-18T09:10:00.002-05:00

This week while at the ILC Conference in San Jose I came across some great tools for technology coordinators.

Often as I work with school systems, districts do not have a good help desk system. MyTech Desk http://www.mytechdesk.org/product/ is a help desk system that is free to schools in California. It is a web based work order management system. Out-of-state schools can also have access to this tool for an annual fee of about $450. There is a 60 day free trial you can use to evaluate the product.

Another problem I often hear about in school systems centers around software. In my opinion, part of the problem is there is way too much of it causing a multitude of problems: (1) One problem is teachers don’t even know what’s available to them and (2) the more you have the more difficult it is to support and (3) a lot of what district’s have is simply not that good.

I attended Antwon Lincoln’s session on Technology Implementation: Into, Through, & Beyond. Antwon is the author of Confessions of a Technology Leader. This is a great book that I’ve read and reread on several plane trips across the country. It’s been helpful for me in writing job descriptions for districts that want to hire their first technology coordinator. Antwon describes himself as an evangelist for technology and says, “I wanted to write a book that is the bible for the technology coordinator”. During his session he shared with us a process for evaluating software and planning a new software implementation. You can download the template from his site at http://tlconfessions.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=68&Itemid=133 . One of my favorite parts of this implementation model is the part that asks those considering a new software to think about and be able to explain how it fits into the district’s overall purpose. He also asks vendors to tell him about school sites where their product is failing and why when considering software. Another great tip he gave is to have students try and give feedback on software before purchasing it. Antwon’s website http://tlconfessions.com/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=64 also has a lot of great resources to support technology coordinators.

Grandma Proof

2008-10-17T18:57:00.001-05:00

Highlights from Chris Dede

2008-10-15T10:27:00.005-05:00

This morning I went to presentation by Chris Dede at the ILC Conference in San Jose. A couple of thoughts that I want to hang onto this morning's presentation are:

Handheld devices allow situated learning. Seems simple, but extremely powerful concept.

One of the biggest challenges of professional development is unlearning- “unlearning almost unconscious assumptions and beliefs and values about the nature of teaching, learning, and schooling”.

Community

2008-10-14T19:00:00.001-05:00

Quote I heard today at the closing session, "Communities can build amazing things, but you need to be part of the community".

NPR Spore Feature

2008-10-12T13:45:00.001-05:00

Great feature on NPR this morning on Spore http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95646896

Multiple Communication Streams Cont.

2008-10-12T13:35:00.003-05:00

Yesterday our face-to-face professional development team had a marketing meeting. Three of the participants met at a coffee house together in Wisconsin, and I joined the meeting virtually. They had to move to a second coffee house because the wireless wasn't working. Everyone had their own computer. It was interesting to see how we used a combination of Skype voice, Skype chat, email, text messaging and a Google Doc to communicate and collaborate. After the meeting we have our Google Doc to refer to, but also one of the members emailed us a transcript of our Skype chat. The meeting was very productive and I would argue in some ways more efficient for brainstorming than a meeting without these tools. However, even with new technologies there is still a lot of room (and possibly increases) for miscommunication as well.

New Data Driven Instruction Blog

2008-10-04T22:53:00.003-05:00

The Stephens Group has a new blog on Data Driven Instruction. You can view our blog at http://data-driven.info/ .

Multiple Communication Streams

2008-09-28T09:00:00.004-05:00

Typically one week a month I fly from California to Wisconsin to meet with our consultants and clients. This week was one of those weeks. One of the things that really stood out this week was the whole concept of communication and all of the multiple forms in which it can occur and how new advances in technology can facilitate this.

On Tuesday, I did a video conference for school principals on how to collect walk-through data in their schools on how technology is being used to enhance teaching and learning. We used Mediasite to stream the meeting to multiple sites. Participants were able to see me on one part of the screen and what was on my screen (i.e. PowerPoints, documents) on the other side. Mediasite also allows you to achieve the meeting, which is nice for administrators who couldn't make the meeting or want to review how to score the walk-through data. Because the other sites did not have microphones, in order to encourage two-way communication we used skype both for voice and for chat. Skype allowed me to keep tabs on how each of the sites was doing, answer participant questions, and keep it interactive.

On Wednesday, I did a presentation for the American Society for Training & Development (ASTD) E-Learning SIG Meeting on how Second Life is being used for training in organizations. As part of the presentation, I had a panel of speakers who from different parts of the country who joined me in Second Life to interact with the audience and answer questions. We were able to use the Voice over IP capabilities in Second Life as well as their real time chat feature. I believe that technologies such as Mediasite, Skype and Second Life are going to hit a tipping point in education and the workplace in the next five years because they allow people to cross time and space and meet together.

Some of the participants of the Second Life session invited me to attend the Art of ASL Festival (American Sign Language (ASL) at the Milwaukee Art Museum yesterday. I learned a lot about ASL and new technologies that are being developed around ASL. Jolanta Lapiak, an Ameslan literary artist, media poet, and textual catalyst talked about how ASL is about movement.

I also attended a session by Jason Hurdich, the team leader of Vcom3D Inc.’s Sign Language Division. Vcom3D specializes in creating multi-cultural, context sensitive, avatars for enhanced learning. Avitars communicate through body language (including gesture or sign language), facial expression and lip-synched speech. Their products are used in schools, families, corporations and government agencies in the areas of culture/language familiarization, training, and educational mentoring.
Jason showed us SignSmith Studio . This application allows you to type in text and the avatar will translate this into sign language. Jason explained that up until now most of the ASL resources were 2-D (printed materials) and how much more powerful it is to communicate 3-D as the language was created to be used. He also demonstrated how easy it was to make a change, just by swapping out the text. However, if you were producing a video of someone signing live it would be a lot of work to edit out a word and change it to something else. Another thing that I learned is the importance of facial gestures in ASL. This is referred to as “facial grammar”. When designing these avitars Vcom3D designers have to manipulate 2,500 polygons to get the facial gestures just right. There are even subtle differences in how a woman signs vs. a man and Vcom3D is also working on incorporating these differences into their avatar designs as well. I was amazed at how the addition of facial gestures and slight movements such as leaning back and forth slightly made the avitars much more life-like than the avitars in Second Life. The signing avitars can also be downloaded to iPods and touchtone phones like the iPhone so people can take them anywhere anytime.

What is the essence of Second Life?

2008-09-27T11:03:00.000-05:00

Last night at dinner I was asked to explain what Second Life is and how it can be used in organizations. Martin Heildegger (1953), a German Philosopher and author of the book Questioning Technology and Other Essays, advocates questioning the essence of technology. Don Tappscot, author of Wikinomics, talks about how technology is creating participatory platforms. Second Life definitely Tappscot’s description of a participatory platform. I would describe Second Life as an interface that allows global network that is sort of like a the capability to do webinars plus simulation. The non-linear experiential format of Second Life can be quite a bit different from a webinar or teleconference where the connection between participants in often limited to online chatting and communications. Gartner, Inc. warns that companies should not ignore the growing trend as having a virtual world presence will be a significant factor in businesses within the next five years.

The GoodPlay Project

2008-09-24T08:34:00.005-05:00

This morning I was doing some surfing and came across a Site called The GoodPlay Project. They study how roles that youth assume online and the ethical issues they face when using digital media.

They has some fascinating research posted on their site. Two papers I found really interesting where Developing Minds with Digital Media: Habits of Mind in the YouTube Era and Young People, Ethics and the New Digital Media.

The Developing Minds with Digital Media: Habits of Mind in the YouTube Era paper takes a look at the stages of development of today's youth and the influence digital media in today's culture has on this.

In the paper Young People, Ethics and the New Digital Media the authors explore how digital media is redefining five key areas: identity, privacy, ownership and authorship, credibility, and participation.

21st Century Educators

2008-09-18T23:13:00.002-05:00

I've been spending a lot of time visiting/thinking about/reflecting and designing learning experiences around the new ISTE NETS Standards for students.

I really like the quote on ISTE's web site made by Don Knezek, the CEO of ISTE because it describes what qualities today's educators need to have to deliver 21st Century learning experiences for our students.

"Teachers must become comfortable as co-learners with their students and with colleagues around the world. Today it is less about staying ahead and more about moving ahead as members of dynamic learning communities. The digital-age teaching professional must demonstrate a vision of technology infusion and develop the technology skills of others. These are the hallmarks of the new education leader".

Free Data Driven Instruction Webinar

2008-09-17T17:21:00.002-05:00

You are invited into a free webinar on Data Driven Instruction on Monday, September 29th at 1:00pm PST.

Many organizations purchase student management systems with the hopes of using data to inform decision making at the classroom level. However, sadly this never actually gets to this level in most school systems. This presentation will share assessment strategies that can be used to inform instruction at the classroom level.

Presenters: Dr. Cal Stanley & Dr. Michelle Tubbs

If you are interested in attending email Tammy Stephens at tstephens@thestephensgroup.com and we will send you information for logging into the webinar.

Mind Dancing

2008-09-16T23:08:00.003-05:00

One of my friends has the term "mind dancing" in the by-line of her skype account. I love it!

I was curious about this phrase so I Googled it. I found this great blog called a Dancing Mind which is about respect for diversity of learning styles at http://www.adancingmind.com/index.html. One of the quotes I loved on the blog was, "We need dancers in our world—dancers of the mind, of the spirit, dancers willing to move to the passion of being alive and to the patience of finding one’s own rhythms, and those rhythms and content that are needed by the rest of us".

New Communication Patterns for the Neomillennials

2008-09-15T18:48:00.003-05:00

Today I was exploring in Second Life getting ready for a presentation. One of the things I like I about Second Life is the multiple ways users can communicate. For example, users can chat with the whole group, instant message individuals, use voice, have their avitars use gestures, distribute movies, and text via note cards. This allows for multiple forms of communication to happen simultaneously.
Challenges ideas of how we have traditionally learned.

Dede(2007) talks about this in his article, Planning for Neomillennial Learning Styles,
“For example, by its nature the Web rewards comparison of multiple sources of information, individually incomplete and collectively inconsistent. This induces learning based on seeking, sieving, and synthesizing, rather than on assimilating a single "validated" source of knowledge as from books, television, or a professor’s lectures” (Dede, 2007).

I also liked what Dede said about these types of learning environments "needing a balance among experiential learning, guided mentoring, and collective reflection". New pedagogy for new tools.

Teaching Internet Safety

2008-09-14T11:03:00.001-05:00

Great blog post about teaching students to think about their online identities http://www.utechtips.com/?p=870#comment-143355

The Law of Mobility

2008-09-13T09:04:00.001-05:00

The Law of Mobility is a simple observation, made by Russ McGuire, that has significant implications for businesses. The law states that the value of any product or service increases with its mobility, where the value of mobility is realized as availability and contextual relevance.