Remote Access

I Guess I'm Still a Punk......

This is my first post from NECC.

I've been in a few interesting sessions so far but I've just returned from a trip through the exhibit floor and I've got to say something that will completely ensure that I never get any kind of sponsorship from any ed tech company: I don't get it. i simply don't understand how a lot of these companies stay in business. Who buy's their stuff?

I admit that I usually love exhibit floors at conferences. I love the NCTE conference. I've had to buy a whole new suitcase to get all of my books home from different cities. But I took one (admittedly quick) tour around the floor today and left with not a single thing in my hands.

I get it. I understand that Dell, HP, Toshiba, Smart, etc., etc. are trying their very best to convince us all that they have latest and greatest things which we just need to buy. I also understand that there are many smaller companies where people are trying to make a living and break into what must be a massive, global, multi billion dollar market.

But it leaves me wondering why the market even exists.

Why do people pour their thousands of dollars from school budgets into these tools when there are a myriad of options that are online or open source, and available for zero dollars? What do their products do differently? How do they change the learning that is possible? I always take pride in the fact that I can say that for my entire classroom technology budget, I spend about $25. While my school certainly has had to buy me tools such as laptops, cameras, etc., they pay nothing for our blogs, our wikis, our hosting services for video and audio. We use Skype, Google docs, and RSS which cost us nothing. I pay for a pro flickr account to give us more upload space, but besides this, we don't pay for any services. As far as I'm concerned, a solid internet connection and some cameras and recorders leave you able to access any of the latest global content and produce any type of product that you could want.

Are all of these companies pumping out skill and drill software? Are people still buying that stuff? Even if you want to use something like that in your classroom, there's enough of it available online for free that you should not have to part with a dollar. I saw several companies today selling Google Earth curricula for example. Google has designed a beautiful resource that really has the ability to change our knowledge of lives and geography which they give away, and people build a bunch of photocopied worksheets for it, turning it back into something that it just should not be.

So I'm with the edupunks. The anti - corporate, DIY people who would rather build something themselves, that fits their space rather then trying to shoehorn a photocopiable program into their classrooms.

Tags: NECC08, edupunk, exhibit floor

Final Day

This is it.

It's 5 AM and as usual I'm up early.

Today is the final day of the school year. The students come from 9:00 - 10:30. During this time we have a school wide assembly where all the various academic, sports, etc. awards are handed out. After this, they get their report cards and head home. The long bliss of summer begins. Today my wife and I drive down to Winnipeg, our provincial capital, where we'll be staying overnight before boarding a flight tomorrow morning for San Antonio. Our flight arrives at around 1:30 on Saturday afternoon so I hope to be at the bloggercon for the last few hours anyway.

I've really been looking forward to this July. I'm lucky enough to be attending both NECC where I'm getting to meet my thinwalls partners for the first time and November Learning's BLC conference where I 'll be giving several presentations. It's always about the people, the new ideas that arise, and new possibilities. I'll be hanging around with a lot of very smart people this summer so I'm hoping that some of it will rub off on me.

And don't even get me started about September....

Tags: iste, necc, blc, november learning, learning 2.008

The Things I Carry

Kathy Cassidy hit a nerve with me on twitter last week. She mentioned that she was making a list of things she was going to give up in her classroom for next year. You can't do everything. I've long been a believer in this. Working in new ways, looking for new results requires a new pedagogy; new ways of approaching and acquiring information and new ways of actually teaching. If global collaboration and network formation are important to you, your classroom life and activities need to support these priorities. Basically, you need to be willing to put your money where your mouth is.

Kathy said she was making a list and I think this is a great idea. What have you given up? What has changed in your classroom to support it becoming a 2.0 space.? Here's some of the things I've given up in my classroom over the past few years:

1.) I don't run any type of spelling program. I believe kids are better served talking about spelling patterns and issues when they arise in the class and that their time is much better spent actually writing and reading. My anecdotal research using a standardized spelling test several times over each school year supports the fact the spelling abilities of kids in my classroom are still growing.

2.) I've given up trying to plan all possible interactions that occur between kids and learning materials. While I definitely have teaching goals planned and outcomes to get through, I am much more open to allowing kids and my class as whole a large amount of freedom pursue ideas and concepts that come up during our time studying whatever topics we are involved with. This has brought us out into whole new ideas that there is no way I would have thought of us pursuing on my own. As well, it makes our classroom much more responsive to needs and opportunities that arise as we go through the year.

3.) I assign far less reading and writing then I used to. While I believe that the kids in my class read and write far more than we used to, less of this comes from me in the form of "this you must read." While we certainly have novels in common, some shorter fiction pieces, and textbooks that we use, probably less then 40% of the reading that is done in my class is something that I've assigned. More often, kids find blogs and blog posts on topics we are studying. With fiction pieces ( we ended the year with a small unit on conflict for example), I gave them a a wide range of choices of reading material and asked them to work with a certain number of them. They are far more interested in the reading material if they at least have some choice.

This year, I'm looking at a few other ideas to give up:

1.) This year I'm starting off the year with having the kids look at the required outcomes for the ELA (english language arts) curriculum. There are a whole lot of them and I've decided to start with this one document since it is the one I am most comfortable with. I have placed all of the outcomes onto a spreadsheet, and in the fall I plan on having small groups of kids take one or two outcomes, write it up in kid friendly language, make up a rubric for assessing this outcome and then make a work sample that would meet it. Once all of this documentation has been produced, it will all be assembled into a binder which kids can access. But this is all background work. The purpose of it is to give kids choice about what they are learning. For example, if we are doing a unit on present day societal issues, at the beginning of this unit, I plan on having the kids choose possibly four or five of these outcomes that they want to pursue over the unit. They will then have to collect evidence and conference with me, showing me they have met the outcome. By years end, they should have spreadsheet that shows they have completed all of the outcomes. Done on a Google spreadsheet, we will be able to see its revision history, make comments on it, etc.

2.) The second thing I'm giving up on is trying to set up an arrangement in my classroom. I admit it, I'm a neat freak. I hate a messy classroom and I honestly think that a disorganized space makes it harder to learn for some kids. So I'm not saying anything goes by any stretch. I have shelves on two sides of my room, one with a 300+ book library on it and the opposite side of the classroom has a countertop that runs down it. On this space we put our laptops, projects underway, extra books, displays, etc. This space will remain neat and organized. But trying to use the floor space wisely in the room is always a challenge. Like most teachers, I wish my classroom was twice the size it is, giving us more room for large, small and individual work spaces. But this will not be so I need to make wise use of the space I've got. So I'm giving up trying to make a classroom arrangement and keep it. This means that desks, table and chairs will be moved around a great deal more. It means moving kids and their spaces throughout the day as needed. I would like to throw up some temporary dividers, but with kids of this age, I wonder about safety issues. I would like to create different spaces for kids to work and this is something I really need to spend some time envisioning.

I'm wondering if we've changed classrooms as far as we can without involving the kids more. How do they like to work? How would they like to see the day and the space structured? What can we do to help them learn more comfortably and in different ways?

So these are my thoughts. How about you? What are you giving up for next school year?

Stay Calm picture: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/184/420978199_0aa78b6fa4.jpg?v=0

Watermelon picture: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/71/154412033_3c284c48d4.jpg?v=0

Tags: kathycassidy, change, classroom,

Ending the Year with Wordle

I always give the students in my class an end of year reflection. I figure its a time for them to sound off about things they have like and disliked. It also an opportunity for me to get their opinions about things that have happened over the year.

The reflection I gave them this year included these six questions:

1.) What did you like about being in this classroom this year?
2.) What did you not like?
3.) What assignment or project have we done this year that you think I should keep? Why?
4.) What assignment or project have we done that you think I should not keep?
5.) What would you like to see changed in schedules, seating, classroom design, etc.?
6.) What advice would you give to students who are coming in here next year?

11 students chose to type their responses to these questions. (which just happens to be all of the computers I have in my classroom). Seeing as you we have a cool new tool in Wordle, I copied all of their responses into it and generated this cloud:

I'm happy with this cloud for a few reasons:

1.) Being a junior high teacher, who deals with 13 and 14 year old attitudes all year long, I'm happy not to see this reflection filled with words like "boring" and "sucks." Sometimes the absence of things is a sign of success on its own.

2.) I am happy to see words like "interesting," "projects," "think," "fun," and "learn" on here. These are some of the key words in my classroom. We spend huge amounts of time on long term projects, allowing kids to build up there concepts and understandings of things. I'm glad to see some of that come through in this cloud.

3.) Some of the smaller words have interesting stories behind them. Although they have been mentioned fewer times by students, things like "playing," "video," and "games" paints a clear picture for me. I'm also pleased to see words like "design" and "couch" on here as I've tried to do something different with the square concrete box that a classroom can be.

More tools to give us at least a peek at new insights in our classroom. This would be interesting to have students do at the end of a unit of study to see which words they  are using the most. What has caught their attention?

Tags: wordle, classroom, reflection

Are You One of the 16%?

16% of people are "hyperconnected."

This is the result of a new Nortel sponsored whitepaper on connectivity and information. That 16% is expected to balloon to over 40% in the coming years. The hyperconnected have a few traits:

- the boundary between work ad personal time is virtually non - existent.
- they use many more devices, channels, and tools then "regular" people.
- hyperconnectivity among employees has the potential to increase security risks due to lost hardware, software, internet transfer of files, etc.
- they are generally early adopters of new technologies and consider themselves to be global people. (Interestingly though, only 1/3 of hyperconnected people see themselves as early adopters)
- they are generally always on, always connected and see this as a good thing.

This probably describes you or many people that you know. Simply by the fact that you read a weblog, use RSS, and a few other technologies such as Skype are probably good clues.

But as always I need to ask: what does this mean for our classrooms?

First of all, it means that probably 40% of the students in our classrooms fall into this category. WE may have the latest laptops sitting on our desks, but what do they have? How are we capitalizing on their laptops, cell phones, black berries, etc.? Are we locking them out of communication channels or opening them up and teaching them to use them in the bast ways possible?

Second, it means that more and more of these kids and their parents will need to see change or they will see themselves as alienated from our systems, schools, and classrooms. If they do not see themselves in our spaces, we will lose our credibility. As argued over and over again: why do kids power down when they come to school, losing their networks and connectivity?

Finally, this also makes me think about administrators. In the war for global talent, what are you doing at your school to make it an easier place for hyperconnected teachers to work there? How are you easing restrictions and putting structures in place to allow your teachers to be networked global learners who can lead this charge? How are you supporting and promoting them? How are you finding ways for them to be creative and remove their roadblocks. Talent pools are now global, deep and wide. A changing practice in education compared to many industries. What are you doing to find the best teachers on the planet for the kids in your school?

The entire paper is only 16 pages long and is worth your time.

Picture from: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2191/2455267502_e4da563318.jpg?v=0

Tags: hyperconnected, nortel, education

Learning: Here, There and Everywhere

Alexander, my ten year old son, given the opportunity, would play a whole lot of video games.

Each of my two sons has a Nintendo DS and we also have a Wii in our house and both of my kids would play it a lot if they didn't have mean parents who set times limits on them. But what has been amazing to me is the intersection of Alexander's love of video games and the emergence of his internet literacy skills.

It started this winter when Alexander was stuck playing the game Legend of Zelda on his DS. Talking to a friend at school one day about this game and a riddle that he couldn't solve, his buddy suggested that he look on YouTube. That is where his big brother went to look things up about video games. Home Alexander came from school, onto YouTube, and there he found videos that other kids had made giving him the help he needed. This soon became his favourite source of information.

Alexander's birthday was in April and his auntie bought him Super Smash Bros., a game for Wii that recycles many older Nintendo characters in new situations. Many of these characters have histories and timelines that stretch back into the late 80's or early 90's so Alexander knew little about them. A vast learning campaign has ensued. He has spent hours cruising wikipedia articles on Nintendo characters such as Mario and Luigi. He has watched dozens of videos teaching him how to get past certain spots in the game. He has completed online quizzes testing him on his knowledge and questioning him about which character he is most like. We've ordered books from school filled with charts of information in them about hundreds of Pokemon characters. Alexander and his friends will take the manuals that come with the games and test each other on their knowledge of certain characters and of course all of this factors into their imaginative play as well.

Now this weekend, he hit the motherlode: Mario Wiki. This information source, a wikipedia about Nintendo characters, has almost 9 000 articles on it and an impressive depth of information. Some of the articles have been revised almost 3 000 times with a total of over 400 000 edits and over 65 million page views. I was amazed with this and spent some time sitting with him going through some of the information on these pages. He also proceeded to tell me about bulbapedia, another wiki that is the same thing for Pokemon. He was curious when I exlplained to him what a wiki waand s showed that we could edit it ourselves if we found articles that were incomplete or had errors on them. But more importantly, he got it, telling me that a lot of people know a lot about Nintendo characters and that it really just seemed to make sense if they produced this resource together.

This is all about learning. About the resources in all their forms, from people through books, video, and community produced information that can all be brought together when learning happens from a passion.

Now what about our classrooms?

Tags: wii, nintendo ds, learning, mariowiki, bulbapedia, youtube

Wordle Cloud

Here is the cloud that was made by Wordle, another cool little online application that makes clouds from the tags in your del.icio.us account.

Thanks to Bryan Alexander for the link.

Tags: wordle, del.icio.us, tag cloud, Bryan Alexander

Connectivism and Connective Knowledge

After the great success of Alec Couros' EC&I 831course which he opened up to all people, George Siemens and Stephen Downes will be teaching a course beginning in September on Connectivism and Connective Knowledge.

From the course wiki:

"Connectivism and Connective Knowledge is a twelve week course that will explore the concepts of connectivism and connective knowledge and explore their application as a framework for theories of teaching and learning. It will outline a connectivist understanding of educational systems of the future. George Siemens and Stephen Downes – the two leading figures on connectivism and connective knowledge - will co-facilitate this innovative and timely course. This course will help participants make sense of the transformative impact of technology in teaching and learning over the last decade. The voices calling for reform do so from many perspectives, with some suggesting 'new learners' require different learning models, others suggesting reform is needed due to globalization and increased competition, and still others suggesting technology is the salvation for the shortfalls evident in the system today. While each of these views tell us about the need for change, they overlook the primary reasons why change is required."

In an interesting departure from traditional courses and of the way that universities do business, and similar to with Alec's course, the Learning Technologies Centre at the University of Manitoba has opened this course up to all people. If you want to take part in all parts of the course, you can do so for absolutely free. If you wish to take part but also earn credit towards fulfilling a degree requirement, you can do that as well and only then will they charge a fee.

A forward looking course and a departure from the traditional way that universities look at design, you can sign up on the wiki and look forward to bending your brain in September.

Tags: connectivism, connective knowledge, stephen downes, george siemens

Idea Hive Logo

Earlier this year, Graham Wegner wrote about the idea of a classroom logo. This struck me as it is something that I've been thinking of for awhile. Mainly to tie things together. Over the last several years that we have been posting things online, my class has videos, podcasts, pictures, wikis, blogs, voicethreads etc., etc. scattered from one end of the net to the other. The small pieces loosely joined model gone mad.

So I sat down and did some thinking about my classroom and about what I want it to be like. I didn't necessarily think about now, I thought about vision, about where I want to be and about my priorities. I came up with a list of words like: knowledge, create, global, learn, change, design, network, connection, innovate, information, thought, idea, etc.

I then also thought about different kinds of words for spaces and came up with another list: shop, factory, studio, laboratory, plant, hub, works, campus, outpost, station, mill, lounge, study, again etc., etc.

In the end I was down to three:

1.) Simply calling my classroom "Prototype." I like this. I thought it was about change and about trying out new things. I thought it was about making mistakes, coming up with new ideas, challenging and revising. But in the end, I thought it was a word that would not have enough meaning for kids. It may mean something to us, but I though kids would not be familiar enough with it.

2.) My second choice was "Innovation Outpost." This goes along with living in a small town in the middle if nowhere. I thought this also got to ideas of geography being irrelevant and was also about change. But I also worried about the word "outpost." I didn't want images of this lonely place in the middle of no place that only get reprovisioned very occasionally and was surviving out all on it own. The word was just not networked enough for me.

3.) So in the end, I went with "Idea Hive." I liked the focus on ideas and thinking. I liked the idea of a hive, of people (or bees!) working together to achieve something. I liked the idea of busy-ness and different people having distinct talents.

So far I've only used it on our wiki. I put it up yesterday and asked the kids what they thought. They were impressed. They thought it was clean and neat. I've also worked up some buttons and stickers on cafe press that I am going to order to hand out to kids when they come back to start school in September. I want these ideas and ideals for the kids.

I hope to also get a short audio piece of 5 - 10 seconds worked up that can be inserted at the beginning of classroom podcasts. From now on, everything we make will be tied together with this piece. If it stands the test of some time, hopefully this will give us a way to tie together all the pieces that we make and kids from yar to year can take pride in adding something to the hive.

Tags: GrahamWegner, classroom logo, idea hive

Canadian Copyright Reform - The DMCA Comes North

Looks like we will be getting a Canadian version of the disastrous Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This is the law in the US that has allowed music companies to sue anyone with a pulse (and a few without one). According to pre release rumours, this bill will put massive restrictions on everything from data copying, to the time shifting of television shows and the unlocking of cell phones. Further specific details from the National Post and the Globe and Mail.

Form months this has been rumoured to be coming. Even though the Facebook group protesting these changes has now grown to over 40 000 members. Even though Industry Canada minister Jim Prentice insisted he would consult with Canadians before doing anything (and has done nothing); we are about to see massive changes made by a minority government.

(sigh)

Tags: copyrightreform, Canada, Jim Prentice, DMCA