Remote Access

Can Everything Really be Miscellaneous?

First of all, disclaimer up front: I love the ideas in David Weinberger's book Everything is Miscellaneous. While I've only recently bought myself a copy, I've been reading and listening to everything of his that I can find online since last spring.

While not simple, his premise is that digitally accessible information at its best is a huge pile that we need to develop the tools and skills to search through. He discusses how we have historically organized our information (the Dewey Decimal system for example and the inherent prjudices and biases that are built into such systems), about how things such as tags on blog posts and flickr can change everything. He discusses the economic consequences of tagging things incorrectly on ebay, and how you can sort through hundreds of cameras in dozens of different ways at shops online, sorting by a number of different factors until you find exactly what you are looking for.

One of his major points is that online, all information is really miscellaneous. It all carries the same "weight" and much of our relationship with it depends on its structure and our ability to sort through the enormous pile and find what we want.

But can this really be true in classrooms? Can all information really be called miscellaneous? Is any fact just as important as any other fact? Is it just as important to know that the Confederation of Canada occurred in 1867 as knowing the various uses for commas? Is it just as important to know the dates of the Second World War as knowing about the electromagnetic spectrum?

When it comes to knowledge, hard facts that are easily accessible through a variety of sources, bascially instantly Googleable information, this premise I believe is true. The curricula that is in place in many schools by whatever political body is mandating it, is most often, a set of facts that have been chosen, selected out of the entire wealth of human knowledge. And by simple fact, when something is chosen to be included, something else, (in our day and age, probably hundreds and thousands of something elses) have been left out.

So if all basic information is accessible, Googleable, and quite easily findable, what is the purpose of schools and classrooms?

Our spaces need to be about teaching kids to access information, to sort through it, to form morals and values, to help them determine the wealth, meaning, and weight that individual pieces of information have. To establish context and continuity between ideas.

The information is out there. How do students get it, use it, measure it, and create something new from it? Making sure they can tell the difference between what is and what is not miscellaneous is our new job.

technorati tags:david, weinberger, miscellaneous, classroom, information, connections

Education, Networks, and Informatics

Two years ago we talked about tools. We heard educational bloggers say: wikis, blogs, podcasts, and flickr. With these things we will change the world.

Last year we talked about pedagogy. We wanted to re-learn how to teach. We talked about empowerment, about lesson design, and about international projects. We learned how to change our own worlds.

This year, we need to talk about networks. The topic has come up as we learned about personal learning networks (PLNs), about using RSS in classrooms, and about establishing projects that involved students from places around the globe. But this year we need to go far beyond this and learn about the theories behind how networks develop, expand, are strengthened, and die. We need to learn about informatics, about information aesthetics, information science, and viral movement.

If we can agree that learning is best accomplished as a collective effort, and not as the individual accomplishment of building an unconnected repertoire of discrete facts; our learning about how teaching and learning is best accomplished must broaden beyond the domains traditionally associated with education. We must broaden our research and our understanding in to new fields.

How can we help students to become accomplished and trusted nodes in a network of learners? How can we help "good" information to spread quickly throughout a network, while slowing or purging information that is untrue or unwanted? Who gets to decide what is unwanted? Do we have tools to track the movement of ideas across nodes and the interconnected networks of classrooms? If we want information to move or spread, how do we best accomplish that? Are some nodes more important in the spread of ideas than others? How do we measure that? How do we strengthen weak nodes?

Eight questions to begin with and far too many more to follow.

technorati tags:learning, informatics, classroom, pln, karl, fisch, clay, burrell

School Begins.....But Not Here

Grade eight.

Day one.

Van Nuys California.

I video skyped into Lucy Martin's grade eight class yesterday morning and met the kids that my class will be working with this year. We are trying to send a powerful message to the kids in both classes by jumping in right away. This was their very first day of school and I spent about 30 minutes with them, introducing myself and my tiny little community. I could hear the sucking in of breath when I said that Snow Lake has only about 800 people living here. I could here it again when I tried to explain where we actually are on a map compared to them. I could imagine the dinner conversations happening in a few houses when they returned home form their first day of school.

My class starts school next Wednesday, and on Thursday we are setting up a call between the two classes. By Friday the kids in both classes will have their own blogs set up, the links here will be live and they will have an introductory post written. From there we are moving into using Voice Thread to have the students get to know each other and their communities a bit more. We are searching for literature around the theme of power that we will be using after that. We are hoping to host common assignments between the two classes and have our discussions live.

We want these kids to quickly get used to working across the continent. We want this to be business as usual. We have a common time period built into our schedule (11:15 - 12:15 L.A. time / 1:15 - 2:15 Snow Lake time) where our two classes will have the opportunity to work together live each and every day. We will be exploring how to open a window between the classes during this hour. I'm looking forward to trying to teach a lesson to junior high kids across the continent using Skype (I'm trying to find a wireless headset I can use with Skype on my Mac so that I can be teaching my kids here in Snow Lake, wander around my classroom and be teaching Lucy's kids as well).

We are creating a thin walled classroom and team teaching without walls.

Let the fun begin.

technorati tags:team, teaching, thin, walls, network, learning, st., elisabeth

Personal Homepages vs. RSS Readers

I've spent the last few days at school, trying to get my new classroom organized before taking one last trip before school begins. Yesterday I spent most of the day getting tech things organized. Cleaning out my Google docs account, setting up a new del.icio.us account for my classroom, and beginning a new blog for the thin walled classroom project that will be the focus of a lot of my time and energy this year.

The other part that is new for me is going to be using iGoogle and having students design a personalized data portal for themselves. While I've written about this several times before, I spent yesterday thinking about the advantages or disadvantages of using one of these pages as a replacement for an RSS reader.

Relatively speaking, students have few feeds to look after. Typically I will give them four of five to begin and ask them to locate another five or six bring them to a total of approximately ten. Using iGoogle, these can be quickly organized into several tabs that might be titled "required reading" and "student bloggers." Students can flip between these two tabs, seeing, at - a - glance, what is new in both of these areas. As well, when needed, they can add more tabs focused on a specific project that will showcase all of the information they will need.

I've been thinking that for many students, a page like this will be more beneficial than using a reader. An RSS reader is not very visual or customizable (except for Bloglines new AJAX start page). As well, using a portal page, a student could add other things such as calendars, a Twitter feed, a photo - of - the day, a feed for a podcast, etc.

While readers may be a necessary option for users of RSS who have dozens or even hundreds of feeds to read and organize efficiently, I'm beginning to believe that a page like this has the possibility to work well in a classroom where students have few feeds to look after and where information can be presented visually or as MP3s instead of only as text and where they have a lot of control over how their feeds are presented to them.

 

technorati tags:RSS, igoogle, classroom

Sustained Attention or Multi - Tasking?

As I get my classroom organized for the beginning of a new school year, I find that I'm spending a lot more time thinking about possibilities. I think that we've gotten stuck in the idea of what a classroom "is" and "should" be rather then what it can be.

As we think of new language to describe the changing roles of classrooms and teachers such as my obsession with classroom as studio and teachers as network administrators, it opens us up to new things that are "acceptable" in classrooms. We move from spaces where we "do" things that are educational "to" kids, towards becoming spaces that allow students more control, and empower them to become independent, globally concerned learners.

As we rethink classrooms, we question many basic premises of the purpose of education. For example, we've always wanted student to "dig deep" into issues and spend a lot of time with them; but is this the model of attention that we should be helping students to develop?

In their careers and in their role as citizens in a changing society, what will serve learners best? Of course I am not naive enough to believe that one model will serve all purposes, but I also wonder if one has been privileged above others? Learners will need the skills to multi- task and direct their attention into multiple streams as projects progress as an essential skill. Will international project management skills become a basic skill?

Thinking of how projects might progress in a learning environment, with a customizable, personalized page becoming an at - a - glance information portal, containing everything from RSS feeds to twitter updates, project calendars and updates from a del.icio.us account that everyone on a project network has access to, the technology is here to support the project infrastructure, but how do we support students to work in these ways?

This makes me think of what happens when people play games such as Simcity or Caesar or countless other world - building simulations where they are asked to balance the progress of multiple factors. Watch Will Wright's TED Talks video to get an idea of the complexity that becomes possible.

As I rethink and re imagine what the role of classrooms in our society is, I need to rethink the very basic foundations that we often build on.

technorati tags:classroom, learning, will, wright, spore, studio

Nuts and Bolts #4 - Personalized Homepages in the Classroom

This is a new piece of the puzzle for me this year. In the past, I've never required students to keep or design a personalized homepage. But I think the technology has advanced far enough to make them useful for classrooms.

I've spent time thinking in the past about iGoogle and Pageflakes and I wasn't sure which I was going to use. Pageflakes seemed easy to use and design and I liked their idea of pagecasting, where I could design a page that people could subscribe to. But thinking about how much I would use this technology, I've decided to go with Google. As well, as I get into using Google documents and spreadsheets more in my classroom, the chance for my students to have one single login page which will let them access these office applications, an RSS reader, and a personalized information portal for themselves is just too good to resist. Google wins.

My plan for the beginning of this year is to have the kids in my class register for a Google account, allowing them to access online documents, set up feeds for their reader, and then also set up a personalized homepage. As the year progresses and we find ourselves involved in a series of enquiries, I want each student to use their homepage as an information portal for themselves. For example, if we are involved in doing a project on current scientific issues, I could first locate several information sources for my students which they could subscribe to using RSS and then place these feeds on their homepage. They could also find their own sources of information to subscribe to and add. But as well as these things, the students might be working with students from several other classes around the globe on a single topic. To help them communicate, the students could place the RSS feed for a wiki they are working on  with their partners on their homepage allowing them to see all of the updates. They could subscribe to the feed from a del.icio.us account, allowing them to see all of the resources their entire network of learners has collected. They could place the feed for a Technorati watchlist here, feeds from the blogs of their partners, a project calendar designed by all of the students working on one topic, as well as Twitter updates to keep current on what each member of their group is doing that particular day.

This page would basically become an at-a-glance portal for the students and the current project they are working on. As well, if they are involved in more then one inquiry at a time, they could simply add another tab to their homepage, allowing this same thing to occur as many times as needed. I'm hoping that, over the course of the year, just as a blog becomes a writing portfolio, this page will serve as an artifact of their research processes.

A new technology in my classroom, but one I'm hoping will be valuable.

technorati tags:igoogle, homepages, twitter, del.icio.us, information

Nuts and Bolts #3 - Blogging in the Classroom

Along with wikis and RSS, blogs form a central part of redefining the classroom's relationship to information. While wikis are often used to produce communal and collaborative information as a group, and RSS is used to access the latest information on almost any topic you can imagine, blogs are often used in a classroom as a space where information is created by individuals.

There are commonly three different types of blogs that are used in classrooms:

1.) Comment blog - This type of blog usually features posts that are written by the classroom teacher who then asks the students for their thoughts and comments about an issue.

2.) Scribe Post - This type of blog is a communal effort where often one student (or a small group of students) each take a turn recapping what happened during a specific subject or lesson each day. Over time this develops into a perfect resource that can be used for review or as the textbook for the course. It is a valuable way to use a blog for a content heavy course.

3.) Mother blog and kids - This is what I call a central blog, usually developed by the teacher, which has links to all of the individual blogs kept by the students. The student blogs in turn may be used as scribe blogs, as learning logs, as reflective spaces, as research dumping grounds, etc. There are many different ways that individual students may use blogs.

In my classroom, I use a mother blog approach. The mother blog for my classroom is here and the links to all of the kids in my class (well, last year's class anyway) are there as well. Some of my contacts and classroom resources are also linked off of here. I use this blog as a portal. I post general information about classroom happenings, remind kids about things we are doing in class, and sometimes ask kids for their comments and concerns on issues. As we do not use a learning management system (LMS) such as Moodle, we have a lot of different pieces that we need to coordinate; this is one of the reasons that I put all of the links on this blog, so that the kids do not need to remember all of the URLs we use; they know that important links are on my blog.

Much more important than my blog are the blogs written by the kids. We use Learnerblogs and love them. Based on Wordpress, they are free, easy to use, very customizable, and James Farmer is awesome if you have any troubles, he is always willing to help.

In my classroom, the students are expected to write at least two posts each week that are related to what we are doing in class. Sometimes I give them a direct subject or topic they need to write about, other times I will tell them that they need to write about a certain project we are doing in class, but give them a lot of freedom over what they choose to write. Other times I will leave it much more wide open and just ask them to write about school to see where their questions and concerns are.

I have four computers in my classroom and the kids in my class can sign up to use them during our daily silent reading time. They can write their own posts, they can read others and leave them comments. I also usually dedicate one 80 minute period a week to blogging where again they are also free to read the blogs of others and leave them comments. I still find though that the majority of their writing is done at home after hours.

As I want kids to learn to blog safely, we have a very simple set of guidelines for blogging which basically say keep yourself safe, do not give out personal information in what you write, and know that what you write will have an audience and will be read by others; write appropriately.

I choose to mark what my kids write. There has been much debate over whether it is appropriate to mark this form of writing; I believe it is. I usually give out 10 marks each week for their blogging. I mark these posts based on the writing itself (style, grammar, spelling), but worth as much weight are things specific to writing online such as formatting (small paragraphs, sub-titles, colours, fonts), use of appropriate graphics, and links provided to outside information sources people can go to learn more about the topic.

As a teacher, I subscribe, using RSS to all of the blogs of the kids in my class, allowing me to see everything they have written. This makes it easy for me to keep up with their work and allows me to head off any potential problems. I make it a regular habit to comment of their blogs and model giving valuable, helpful comments.

Blogging is a central prt of life in my classroom and in the relationships and voices that devlop over the year.

technorati tags:blog, classroom, wordpress, learnerblogs, james, farmer

Is 82% a Passing Grade?

82%How Addicted to Blogging Are You

Jeff's got me beat with a 90%

technorati tags:random, stuff

Learning Collectives

I've just finished reading a post from Will about how we are currently "in between stories" of society and of education. This resonates strongly with me.

One statement he wrote came out of his time at the Future of Education earlier this week. He quotes Tom Carroll as saying “quality teaching today is a collective effort, not an individual accomplishment."

I also want to add to this the idea that quality learning today is a collective effort, not an individual accomplishment. The tools are about collaboration, about network formation, about learning what we can through the perspectives we gain from others.

Imagine a group of classrooms around the globe working together as one unit. Closely interconnected through all of the tools we know: Skype, Twitter, MSN, wikis, Google docs, podcasts, flickr, and blogs. A collective of classrooms, teachers and students pushing themselves towards accomplishing the learning goals they have set and designed.

Our learning can only be as powerful as the network we have access to. The globe is filled with millions of teachers and students and yet, often, our students only have access to those in the immediate room, and to us, one single teacher. Seems unfair and unfortunate. Forming communities of learners where each person realizes that their own learning is enhanced through contact with others and where we all bear some responsibility for each other's knowledge advancement is a different story to tell and one that is a powerful statement of connection for our time.

technorati tags:will, richardson, connection, classroom, change

Twitter in the Classroom

Here's my contribution to the million dollar question:

"How can we use Twitter in the classroom?"

This question has been raging since late June when NECC and then BLC brought Twitter to the masses. Even though I wasn't lucky enough to attend either of these conferences, I gained a lot through the backchannels of Twitter and Skypechatcasting.

But I've been reluctant for some reason to think of Twitter as being an educational tool. Even though I've capitalized on it a lot and have gained a lot of great resources by using it, I wondered about using it in a classroom. But then today, Kyle Lichtenwald, one of my favourite new bloggers, posed the question on Twitter about using it in the classroom and I realized it was time to give this more thought.

I can see its largest benefit coming from being used in a classroom that has a 1:1 laptop program. To gain the most benefit from a tool such as Twitter requires access, basically constant "presence" and the time to dedicate to its stream of consciousness. In many classrooms, where students are allowed online, at best, for a portion of a day, the effectiveness of micro-blogging tools fades away.

But in a 1:1 classroom, students could gain the same benefit from Twitter that I do as a hyperconnected professional. Think of a 1:1 classroom that is hooked up with one (or more) other classes located somewhere else on the globe and each of these students having subscribed to the Twitter feeds of the students in other classrooms. These classrooms could function as a single learning unit even though they could be separated by thousands of miles geographically. Now imagine these classrooms working on a single project or novel together. Students could pose questions on Twitter about the novel they are reading. They could ask for help on projects. They could post what they are currently working on in order to keep group members informed of their progress. It would draw students much closer together and keep each other deeply informed of questions, concerns, and thoughts they have, something that is often a struggle in international projects.

In "regular" classrooms with few computers, or where students only have access to machines for part of the day, some benefit could be derived from Twitter in the same fashion, but it would be less. And lets not kid ourselves, when kids free themselves from school and the technological shackles that are imposed on them inside of our buildings, they sit on MSN at night and do their homework together anyway. We wouldn't be teaching them anything new allowing Twitter to be used this way in the classroom, just learning from their experience and strengthening the reach of their network.

Twitter at your own peril.

technorati tags:kyle, Lichtenwald, twitter, classrooms, connections