Remote Access

Are We A Virtual Organization?

This is going to be long, but please stick with me.

Arnold Wasserman from the Idea Factory made me mad the other day. That's part of his job I suppose, to challenge people and get them thinking. What he said was that for someone to be innovative, their entire organization needs to be innovative. As many of us know, this isn't true. Many people in our network work as lone wolves, being an only voice of change in their building. So this has me thinking.

Are we an organization?

Us. Our international network of teachers, consultants, administrators and Ph.Ds. We've got all the trappings of an education system, we just happen to be a geographically dispersed organization. There are plenty of models out there of virtual companies that only exist as a network of people working on specific goals. They have no buildings. They may only have email addresses and cards, conducting their business wherever they happen to be.

If we begin to think of ourselves like this, as an organization, an international network of educators who are all pursuing the same basic goals (educational change to meet the demands of the twenty first century, the infusion of technology into teaching, openness and transparency, etc) we are a group that is at least several thousand people who just happen to be spread out across the globe.

Darren Kuropatwa was musing about this yesterday and wondered about the political pressure we could bring to bear on an issue if we had a mind to. Now, I have never discussed this with him, but imagine if we, as a group, all had sent emails and letters to the authority in Australia who shut down Al Upton. Basically these letters could have explained that we are a group of international educators who advocate for educational change and who monitor situations like this one. We could have issued a press release to news organizations explaining the situation and musing about authorities stifling innovation in education. A similar model to what Amnesty International does: draw attention to a situation, publicize and promote.

Now stick with me, here comes the leap.

Now what would happen if all of the people in this group were to donate a sum of money to support this cause?

Here's what I was thinking:

If 500 people were to all donate $100 we would have $50 000. With a sum of money like that, we could hire someone to work on our behalf. I think this is a fair salary for a year's work. This person could serve as an education change advocate and lobbyist for part of their day, writing letters to political representatives, op-ed columns for newspapers, work on press releases, write form letters for us that we could use in situations like Al's. This part of their day could be spent spreading the message that we have all been working with. Given a certain budget, they could give presentations at conferences and even set up a booth at trade shows to recruit more members. For the other part of their day, this person would work as a resource person for the group. For example, if you were a principal, this person could locate original resources for you to use with your staff. As a teacher, this person could find you videos or tutorials to use with your class. Using the power of the group, they might even be able to get us bulk discounts of some type on technology purchases.

Obviously this group needs to be as large as possible. More people = more political weight and clout. So there could be a scale. You could donate as little as you want to the group and that money would be used for the advocacy / political side of things. But with a donation of lets say $100 or more, you would have access to the person who is hired as a resource.

I'm completely serious about this.

I've started a campaign at a website called The Point. At The Point, you can input your credit card information with the amount that you are willing to donate to this fund. But the great thing is, not one person is charged a single penny until we reach the tipping point I've put in of $50 000. Your information is safe and secure with this site. It would be great if we could get a group of people who would be willing to serve as a hiring committee and who could write a job description and set firm goals once we get close. All of the money collected would be administered in public and all people involved would be able to request information on finances at any point.

I'm interested to truly know what you think about this idea. Leave a comment or email me directly  <glassbeed@gmail.com> if you want further information. Please repost this or write your own posts if you think this is a good idea. The wider the audience, the better.

Here is the code that you can paste on your blog or site to insert a widget supporting this campaign:

<script type="text/javascript" src="https://www.thepoint.com/widgets/campaign/reinventing-education"></script>

I've started us off with a $200 donation.

Innovation and Learning Management

Are innovation and management of learning mutually exclusive?

Over the last few weeks, I've been at two different conferences where the focus has been on innovation. At both places, innovation and creativity have been described as vital, living processes in a variety of ways. But through all of these sessions, the idea of these processes being serendipitous and malleable have been at the forefront. Innovative and creative thinking often takes us out into areas we never considered or planned.

So the question becomes, in a classroom environment, where we are given hundreds of outcomes which we need to present in any given year with our students: are innovation and the management of learning outcomes exclusive? Is it a choice? Can we either manage learning, focusing on our government mandated objectives or: be innovative? When innovation processes and structures are brought to bear in classrooms, we often end up somewhere and with results that we never intended. Will these things make those in our ministries of education pleased? Will they be happy to hear classroom teachers saying things like, "I have no idea where this will take us."

Microsoft Innovative Teacher's Conference

I'm at the first ever Microsoft sponsored Canadian Innovative Teacher's Conference.

Strange feeling being an avowed mac guy with Linux machines in my classroom at a conference with Microsoft signs everywhere, but I gotta say; its pretty cool. We are in downtown Winnipeg at Red River College. A beautiful building designed that is sustainable and green.

Took us until lunch time, but we finally got wireless access so now let the flickring, and blogging begin.

This conference is about innovation. It's about change. We spent the morning touring different companies around Winnipeg and listening to speakers about their concepts of innovation. By far, the highlight of the morning was hearing Arnold Wasserman, the founder of the San Francisco based consultancy company, The Idea Factory talk about innovation and ideas that range from small scale change to rebranding entire nations. He talked about design thinking and human centred innovation vs. technology based innovation.

Much more to come. But I've got wireless (finally) and had to make some use of it.

Does Interaction = Learning?

This is a basic power law graph.

They are often used to demonstrate how something like iTunes has changed the music business or the number of blogs published versus the number of readers they might have. Mainstream, popular items are up at the top left of the graph, but good recommendation software drives us down the tail onto items that we may be less familiar with. Made famous by Clay Shirky and Chris Andersen in several books, my end of year paper work has me thinking about them.

While I still have approximately four weeks of school to go, my division requires that I complete reading and writing continua on each child that I teach. A basic task and one that I've been using my classroom weblogs a lot to complete. I pull up each student's blog, look through the forms of writing that are shown, think about the style, grammar, etc. and then wander through my files to see what else I've got that demonstrates competence. This is one reason that I love keeping weblogs with my class: instant writing samples all the way back to the beginning of the school year. But this year I'm finding different things from past years.

One of the largest differences is the discrepancy between the number of posts kids have placed online. While still requiring some things, overall this year, I have had fewer required posts in my classroom. This means that the kids who are truly writers have blogs filled largely with personal posts and reflections; much like a diary. While the kids who write because they have to, and few other times, have blogs that look more academic, but have far fewer posts on them.

Whose is better?

This is what has me thinking about power laws. The kids who have posted many things sit at the top of the tail while those who have written fewer are close to the bottom. The same is true with something like a wiki, I can track the number of edits kids have performed on our wiki and could graph and lay them out and I'm sure I would find a pattern much like this as well. But again, is one better then the other?

While the students who have written more posts and comments and performed more edits to the wiki have had more interactions with the curricula material, are they necessarily learning more? Might kids who write many posts and leave many comments not actually be interacting and reflecting on the material they are required to study as much as those who leave a smaller trail behind them?

We all have kids in our classrooms who are slow movers. I have several this year. They are always the last to finish their tests and exams and seem to always turn in assignments close to deadlines. But the fact is that these two kids in my classroom complete phenomenal work. They move slowly and carefully, reflecting and taking their time with things. The fact is that these kids are simply not able to rack up an impressive record of comments and posts, they simply move at a different pace. While as teachers we sometimes get frustrated with kids like these, you cannot deny the power of what they have done.

So as I wonder about needing to collect more stats on my kids and their net use: where they visit to read and write, I also wonder about adding time spent to their statistics. Is a great number of visits to blogs to read widely more worthwhile than visiting fewer places but reading carefully and deeply? Can we have both the speed and breadth of the net and the slow reflection of print text?

I am a test post.

Please ignore me.

Why We Love the Internet #269

Myself and 1 600 other people just sat in on a ustream channel and watched JPL as the Mars Phoenix lander come down on the northern pole of Mars.

Meanwhile, on twitter, D'arcy Norman is reporting that Canada's news network is showing a documentary on Paris Hilton.

This is why we love the net. The net is about us. Even if you aren't an astronomy geek, (I am) you can guarantee that whatever you are interested in, you are watching, listening, uploading, reading, and writing about it online toight. Meanwhile, the networks simply have no way to compete with this model of interaction and personalization.

And yes, writing 15 minutes after the landing, the Wikipedia entry has already been updated.

Tags: nasa, mars phoenix, ustream, d'arcy norman

Pariticipation in Digital Culture

I'm just starting to dig into this, but I felt I had to post it. The Social Science Research Council has just released this new book: Structures of Participation in Digital Culture that looks like it will have some valuable ideas in it. With chapters that focus on technology and childhood, participation in game culture and the ecology of control: filters, digital rights management, and trusted computing, I think this will prove to be a great read.

The great thing about SSRC books? You can purchase them online, or download the entire text as a pdf file at absolutely no cost.

Spore and Immune Attack - Two Games for the Classroom

Still not sure if video games are valuable in the classroom?

Yesterday I found this link to Immune Attack, a free downloadable highschool and college level game designed by a full team of biologists and immunologists from the Federation of American Scientists.

Today I found this interview with Will Wright the creator of the new game Spore that is being released in the fall. I can completely see this game being used in a classroom to study evolution, change, societal development, etc.

Check out this short video:
 

Gaming Videos

Solid content. Engaging.

Tags: spore, immune attack, will wright

Ustreamed Professional Development

While those like Dean Shareski in Saskatchewan seem to make a habit out of this, our LwICT team for Manitoba Education, Citizenship and Youth took a great first step today by usreaming a full day professional development session about an online portfolio program called epearl.

Manitoba is a huge province. I live approximately 1/2 way between the north and the south and it is an 800 km drive for me to attend something like this. The cost and environmental savings are huge for something like this.

41 people in the room live and 40 people in ustream as the day began. They were also brave and forward thinking enough to allow me to drop the link into twitter, bringing in a few other people with an outside perspective.

 I think it is different for an "official" group such as MECY to try something like ustream out. While many of us are used to ustreaming our own sessions, or dropping in on others, for a provincial organization to decide to try this is a great step. As travel costs rise steeply and considering the environmental benefits that can be achieved by people just staying home, lets hope platforms like ustream are used more and more.

Congratulations for to the LwICT group from MECY.

Tags: ustream, mecy, professional development

"Eventually, Even Revolutionaries Become Mainstream"

George Siemens told me this a few weeks ago, standing in the aisles of a theatre, waiting for a presentation to begin.

A casual comment that has been ringing in my head as I think about the coming end of this school year.Looking back, I find the changes that have happened over the last few years in education to be a small scale revolution. International networks of teachers and students are slowly emerging. We are learning new ways to express ourselves and new ways to teach. While we are still far in the minority of classroom practitioners, the truth is that our tools and our methods are becoming more mainstreamed. Four years ago, few people knew what a blog or a podcast was, and now, millions of people are much more familiar with these tools.

At what point does our "revolution" become mainstream?

At what point do our methods and tools become common, mainstream and not leading the edge of innovation in education? Have we learned enough about teaching using some of the basics: blogs, wikis, video and audio?

Where is the next "edge?"

Is it possible, now that we understand some of the value of voice and the power of connections, that tools are not the next places we need to look to for innovation? Might the next wave be in teaching methods and classroom design? In assessment, or in curriculum design which recognizes and validates the changes we have been seeing and working towards?

Where do we go from here?