Remote Access

When Lunch Becomes an Event

I've had the good fortune of spending time over the last few days with some of my favourite people; even though I have not met several of them until very recently. Andy McKiel and our provincial edtech organization, MANACE, deserve great kudos for pulling off the Manitoba Edubloggercon Thursday night. A few short presentations, some visiting and thee hours later out the door. It was well put together, well attended and well organized. Friday afternoon was something else. Friday at lunch time we had the "mini - bloggercon" that we originally started with before it turned into something much larger. Darren Kuropatwa, Dean Shareski, John Evans, Chris Harbeck and I met for an extended lunch. Not surprisingly, the conversation soon rolled around to education and the debates were on. Dean decided we needed some help with our ideas, fired up his laptop on the hotel's free wireless, posted a call out to twitter and on came ustream. Soon the four of us (John had to leave) were having lunch in a hotel in Winnipeg with about twenty other people from as far away as New Zealand, Argentina, Montreal, Detroit, and Jacksonville Florida. While I have in the past sat in on such productions as the Jakes - Richardson - Vrotny bar evening, I was comfortably at home, never on the camera end. It was fun and interesting to watch the chat roll by. We answered some questions from the crowd, lamented over Dean's dressing habits, and had a detailed discussion about communities and networks. In the end, after a bit more than an hour, we thanked everyone for joining us for lunch and signed off. Global professional development from your lunch table. While the lunch was great and the company was amazing, it still astonishes me that we can do these kinds of things that simply. How do you go back to your school and explain to people how you have spent your time over the last few days? How do you talk about the amazing professional discussions, the global community you feed on for support and understanding? How do you explain the difficulty you have finding good conferences to attend when the best professional development you can have is possible at your table in the restauarant? By the way, while we didn't archive Friday's lunch conversation on ustream, Thursday nights Manitoba edubloggercon episodes can be found here and our chat session from lunch (all 18 pages of it) can be downloaded here:

Download lunch_chat.doc

Tags: manace, Kuropatwa, Evans, Shareski, Harbeck, ustream, manitoba edubloggercon

Kids and Digital Identities

Like many people, my email address is my lifeline. Also, like many people, I have constructed a digital identity using as few different aliases as possible. Just about everything I do online is centred around the tag "glassbeed" (my email address, my Skype ID, MSN, etc.). I also use "cfisher" when glassbeed (yes, I know it is spelled wrong, and if you are wondering where the whole glassbeed thing comes from, you really need to read this and buy this book) isn't available to me.

Knowing these several things about me, you can probably track me down on almost any service I belong to.

I had an interesting experience with the kids in my class the other day. At the beginning of the year, as the students were signing up for various accounts to use in class such as for their blogs, iGoogle, etc. I was collecting their user names and passwords. I believe this is a safety and accountability issue for both me and them so I expect them to hand these things over to me. I also asked the students for their email addresses in case I needed to get in contact with them via IM or email. They willingly gave them to me.

Last week I was setting up a wiki to use in our thinwalls collaboration and I wanted to add all of the students to it. I pulled up my spreadsheet with all of their contact information on it and began adding kids to the wiki. I then pulled up my MSN, found a few kids in the class who were online at home and told them to let everyone else know that they needed to check their email and get these accounts set up before school the next day. The next morning arrived and we headed into the computer lab to do some other work. Asking the students, approximately seven or eight of them told me that they never received their invitation. Strange I thought. Going through their email accounts, we found three of them had been caught by spam filters and were sitting in junk mail boxes, but about four of them seemed to have disappeared.

In the end, after doing all of the detective work, one of the students asked me where I had sent their invitation. Replying that I had sent it to the account they provided me with in September, they laughed and said they had already moved email addresses, twice, since then. This ended up to be the case with all of these students. None of them had received their invitation because their address had already changed. This was interesting and significant to me. The kids are trying things on. They are changing their identities as time passes. They need a new password, or a new user name, or a cooler address so they simply move. For us it would be a huge burden of missed mail if we moved often, but for them, it was not an issue. It was expected.

What does this say about them as users compared to us? What does this say about fluid identities and expectations for online behaviour? It also seems to be a continuing trend. In discussions with them about this, the kids in my class have stated that almost all of them have changed email addresses several times in the years they have had one (remember, these kids are approximately 12 - 14 years old) with some kids changing very often while others have changed fewer times. As well, the kids who spend a larger amount of time online are more apt to change their identities more often, making it more personal and fitting to them as time passes. It was an interesting thing to catch and something I will definitely be keeping track of over this year.

Tags: digitalidentity, change, email, classroom, technology

Was it Always This Difficult?

The classroom I am teaching out of this year used to be my mother - in - laws. She taught for 32 total years, 27 of them in the same building where I went to school and now work in as an adult. As I push long hours day in and day out, as I wonder about preparing the students in my class for some amorphous, globally connected future where they may work in occupations which don't even yet exist, I wonder if it was always this difficult to be an educator.

We feel pressure from many different directions: local and provincial (or state) standards, parents, administrators, change issues, internal and external assessments, and sometimes pressure from the students who we spend critical hours with. As I said at the beginning of my K12 keynote, education used to be about preparing kids for working in their local community or region. No more. Now we prepare kids to compete and cooperate on a global playing field. We work with constantly changing tools within a structure that is antiquated and far too cumbersome to meet the needs of its clients.

But did teachers in the past feel pressure like this as well?

It certainly may have been different as the forces of networks, the importance of change, and the pressure of global forces were even less understood in the past than today, but teachers in past years were pressured to ensure their students met their standards and were prepared to enter the workforce or proceed along for further education.

But I do believe that it is different today. I do believe that we feel more pressure from a greater number of external forces and that the importance of education is growing. Notice I used the word "education." I could have used "learning" instead, as long as the difference between these ideas and "school" is drawn. I also believe that the fact that the future is much more of an unknown now then it was in the past, with the pace of change accelerating so greatly, and that this places us in classrooms in a different space than educators in the past were.

But this is also a unique opportunity for us to position ourselves, our classrooms, and our students in a space that is new. I am thinking about change again and about what the next steps for myself and my classroom may be. I'm not sure what those are right now. I'm having trouble finding my way out of the box I'm in as I don't think I've settled into it and gotten comfortable yet, but the pace of change wants to keep pushing me into new areas that haven't been explored yet.

Education and classrooms often suffer from what I call a failure of the imagination. Its hard to create the future if we can't even imagine it. Time to put the thinking cap back on.....

Tags: change

Tech Skills and Project Management

One thing I have been paying attention to since the International Teen Life project last year is the importance of the many types of collaborative, networking, and project management skills as compared to technology skills that often determine the success or failure of any type of international project.

While certainly as teachers we need steady technology skills and the importance of our understanding of networked pedagogies is vital, what causes problems sometimes is not having a firm grasp on project management skills.

With the thinwalls collaboration occurring long - term, over the course of the entire year, we are finding it a very different matter to direct than working on one single project for a few weeks. A project is like a sprint, where all efforts are concentrated on solving problems and finding work arounds for troubles that arise. Sometimes we work in these ways hoping that our lives, our schedules, and all of our technology can hold together just for one more day so that we an get things finished and "return to normal."

For us, that really is not an option.

At this point in the year, the technology is mostly in place. Certainly we are adding new tools as time goes by (twitter and meebo coming up), but the kids have the basics, the communication channels are open, and exploration is well under way. Our comfort level with learning and teaching in these ways are rising.  But what absolutely needs to be constantly reinforced and massaged is scheduling and calendars. All of the educators involved in this project have a constant string of email, Skype conversations, and moodle posts underway to ensure that we are all sure of where we are and what we are to be concentrating on with our students. This is tougher to emphasize with students. They are used to coming to school and information being pushed at them and their role being that of passive recipient. Students are used to education meaning worksheets, tests, and memorization. Many are pushed out of their comfort zones by a classroom that requires them to be an active planner, organizer, and participant.

This is also a new role for teachers. We are used to working with the kids in our classrooms and worrying about today and next week. But the organizational skills required to ensure tools are in place and working, time is scheduled for planning for both teachers and students, that the steps to success are clear, and that contingency plans have been made to support students who struggle with not only the content, but with the networking and collaborative components takes us into whole other levels where teachers are often not used to being. It is teacher as network administrator, but also teacher as human resources manager and teacher as workflow consultant.

Ideas:

- Plan, plan, and then plan some more
- Use group collaborative calendars and scheduling tools
- Make plans for emergency contingencies
- Plan the large scale project, but think also about the micro pieces and the troubles that might arise
- It is essential that real time lines of communication are open

New places and new possibilities require new skills of us and our students.

Tags: technology, classrooms, project management

Comments and Advertising

Does anyone else have any type of "policy" (even if it is only in your on mind) regarding companies posting advertisements as comments on your blog?

Lately, every time I post something that details trouble we have been having a specific tool, or detailing a problem, in jumps one or two companies who, of course, are just trying to be helpful (feel the sarcasm?) by leaving suggestions that we try their products.

In my mind, it is different when the recommendations come from other individuals, but when the companies themselves begin posting what are basically advertisements masquerading as comments, I've been deleting them.

It's my space. It's my right. But I do want to ask if anyone else has thoughts on this issue.

Tags: comments, advertisments

Is there a Killer App?

When I started using technology with kids in a classroom it was all about Office. We typed, we made PowerPoint presentations, and we fought with spreadsheets. Over the years I changed to where it was mainly about Dreamweaver and Flash. Two complex tools, but they turned us more into creators of original content.

Over time, as my understanding of the purpose of technology in classrooms has changed, and the technology has changed as well, I've come to believe that there is no such thing as a "killer app" for education. A killer app is basically one tool that changes the game completely and does away with many others. Just as I believe there is a larger benefit to be gained from a larger network, I also believe there is a greater benefit to be achieved from using many different tools in the classroom.

Some people believe that students should not move from one tool to the next until they have completely explored it, wrung it out for possibilities, and they are an expert in its use. Instead, I believe that we need to explore many tools with students in our classrooms. They need to be required to try all of them in order to find the ones that fit them best, but I do not expect all kids to be expert, power users with all of them. Knowledge and choice requires exploration and attempts, but not at the expert level. I believe that kids must be able to use tools that allow them to express themselves in as many forms as possible (text, video, audio, animation, etc.) but I also believe that they need to be comfortable with, and often, given the choice, about how they will present themselves and their understandings to the world.

Don't get me wrong, I would not allow a student to focus on one tool they are comfortable with. I think students (and teachers) need to be challenged and pushed out of their comfort zone, allowing them to see new possibilities. But as we move through the school year, students need to be given more and choice and control over their learning. We are arriving at this first point in our thinwalls collaboration. With our final projects coming up for The Outsiders, we are beginning to give students more choice. At this juncture, they will still need to be heavily guided into their choices and pushed to see possibilities, but they are being given an opportunity to choose a topic from the novel they are interested in, they are being allowed to think about the form of representation they are going to be working with, and they are also going to be allowed to choose a tool they believe will fit their project.

There will be no "right" way for them to do this. There will be no "right" tool or "correct" representation. Students need to become comfortable and proficient working in a network of learners and they also need this same skill set working within a network of applications and choices for their learning.

Choice. Application. Authenticity.

Tags: killerapp, education, learning, classroom, technology

Twitter in the Classroom

As part of our thinwalls collaboration, we are getting ready to begin using twitter in our classrooms.

All of the kids in each classroom have been reading the book The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton and posting responses on their blogs every two chapters. As well, we have been taking this time to try to teach commenting skills to the students and asking them to write more comments as part of this process.

The time is drawing near for us to complete the novel and head into a final project. We have decided to draw out the themes of this novel (youth and family violence, friendship, heroism, etc.) and ask the students what topics they are interested in working with and what they would like to do for a form of representation. This is similar to the International Teen Life project from last school year. The groups they are designing will have students from both Snow Lake and Los Angeles in them and planning will take centre stage for some time as students make decisions about what they would like to do. We will approve their plans or send them back for clarification or change, but one requirement of their final project is that their representation will have to be accessible by all students in both classes. We have decided that this will leave us wide open enough to allow the students freedom with their learning and the tools, but will require high level collaboration and networking skills.

In comes twitter.

All of the students in both classes have iGoogle accounts so we have been thinking about getting each of them to sign up for twitter accounts and simply pull the RSS feeds of those people in their network (five? six? kids working on the same topic) into their iGoogle homepagest. This would allow them to stay in touch with each other and also give them a tool to ask questions of those who they are working with, post suggestions, share resources, etc. But now I am worrying about the effect of being in a network with only a few other people. As those of us who are heavy twitter users can attest to, a small network often gives small benefits and does not achieve critical mass easily. Five or six kids working together and using twitter as a communication device will be closely connected and able to see what each other is doing, but it will not allow others who may not be in their group to contribute resources, help when trouble arises, or drive forward the conversation. But the 54 kids total we have involved in this collaboration are certainly enough to be a network.

This will all still need to be "OK'd" by my teaching partners in LA, but I believe that if we get all of the students and teachers who are involved in this collaboration into twitter, and get them following each other, we will produce a stream of thought that will be beneficial to their learning. It will have to be monitored as does any tool that we use with students. I am worried about the "signal vs. noise" ratio that may emerge, but I also know that my own network is sometimes used for serious learning, and other times to cajole, laugh, and make general contact with each other. We are human. That is our reality. Their network will be the same. I wish their was a way to subscribe to this feed to allow it be archived and categorized by user. This would give us much more data in the end.

Another experiment in collaboration and networking across several thousand kilometres.

Tags: twitter, classroom, thinwalls, collaboration, networking

Changing Models

I'm working this week in Winnipeg, our provincial capital, and about a 7.5 hour drive away from home.

Our provincial government has mandated the implementation of a new literacy with ICT curriculum and school divisions across the province are scrambling to meet its demands.

In the past, when we would run training sessions for teachers, we would often carefully schedule as many different sessions as possible, trying to cram and pound as much software knowledge and hands on time as was possible. After 3+ days of this, teachers would often walk away dazed, overwhelmed, and very, very tired.

This time, we are trying something different.

We are spending more time "marketing" to teachers, trying to show them that even though many of them live and work in small, remote communities, they, and their students, are inter-connected with the world already. We are trying to show them that global changes cannot be ignored and that it is vital that they work with their students to become both globally cooperative and globally competitive. We are talking about information and literacy, and about connections between the kids in their classrooms, their communities, and the world. We are using Did You Know?, the Cisco Human Network commercial, and the Dove Evolution video to talk about the need for change.

As well, one thing that has often frustrated both us and the teachers we are working with is software. We would work hard to ensure teachers had a solid understanding of even basic tools such as Office or the video editing tool of the day, often to hear later that people did not have the tools they needed in their classrooms or that different versions were being used, leading to frustrations with simple things such as commands when they returned to their home environments. This time, we are concentrating more on web-based tools such as Twitter, Skype, Voicethread and wikis which are much more 2.0 in philosophy and which everyone has access to.

We seem to be having more success. People seem more comfortable with concentrating on their teaching and thinking about making changes to their classrooms rather than pounding in as much software knowledge as is possible in a short time period. This comes back to the absolutely essential concepts of pedagogy and changes needed to effectively integrate technology into classroom life. As well, my division is introducing real time classroom help for teachers through IM for technical problems and also promising release time from classrooms to ensure teachers have the time they need to effectively plan.

A changing model of professional development for teachers that is hopefully thinking more about what they need in their classrooms on many levels to promote and, more importantly, support and sustain change.

Tags: LICT, professional development, teachers

I'm Going To Boston!

I was both honoured and frightened when Darren from the K12Online organizing committee asked me to be one of the keynote speakers for this years conference. I was impressed in its first year with the creativity that was shown in the presentations and I knew I was going to have to give a lot of thought to what I was planing on presenting.

Now I've been fortunate enough to have been asked to present at November Learning's Building Learning Communities 2008 summer conference.

I've watched this conference for a few years as the agenda unfolds and the session descriptions are uploaded. It has always looked phenomenal, and this year looks to be no different. I've managed to get myself in the middle of quite a crowd including such people as Ewan McIntosh, Will Richardson, Bob Sprankle, and Brian Mull.

This institute is not until the beginning of July but I think I will have my work cut out for me and I'd best get to work now on a session...

Tags: blc2008, november learning, will richardson, brian mull, bob sprankle, ewan mcintosh, k12online2007

Manitoba Edubloggercon

The details are settled and the ideas are in.

Manitoba Edubloggercon is officially an event.

On Thursday, November 22nd at the Academy Bar and Eatery in Winnipeg (414 Academy Road) beginning at 7:00 PM any and all are invited to an evening of unconference.

That means no official presentations.

No keynote speakers.

No poster sessions.

Think; more like open mic night. The wireless will be there, there will be data projectors for those who want to get up and share an idea, a plan, a project they have going. (5 - 7 minutes maximum). If not, fine. Sit. Talk. Eat. Drink. Be merry.

An evening to get together with others who are bloggers, blog readers, and those who are interested in 2.0 technologies in classrooms.

A wiki is up here if you feel like leaving your name, and so is the "official" invitation from ManAce, who is the main sponsor of this event (and a huge thank you in advance goes out to them). Space is limited so please contact Andy McKiel at: preSAG2007@gmail.com if you want in.

We also take non - Manitobans (like Dean Shareski, a former Manitoban) who is going to be in town that night!)

Hope to see you there!

Tags: manitoba, edubloggercon, dean shareski