Best of 2006: Resources for Teachers

For the past few years, I have been publishing a weekly list of links for educators and this fall, I began using Google Groups to manage this listserv. Because I spend a fair amount of time each week perusing various web sites and resources for teachers, I thought I'd share a few of my favorites this week. There's quite a variety here!

1) U.S Geological Survey

This site contains a mindboggling amount of scientific data and there's a section especially geared towards educators. My favorite part contains RSS feeds and downloadable Google Earth files of recent earthquake activity around the globe.

2) Room 132 Video Blog

Last school year, Room 132 teacher Bre Pettis made some pretty amusing and informative videos on events in his classroom. Bre has moved on to bigger things now, educating adults at Make magazine. These videos convey a sense of fun and enthusiasm for learning and help me remember why I am teacher.

3) 100,000 Wikis in the Classroom

My favorite word as a teacher is FREE, and Wikispaces is generously donating 100,000 free wikis to educators. I plunged into the world of wikis this year with a sixth grade collaborative computer science research project, and I was pleased as punch with the results. I'm excited to learn more about wikis through other ITM bloggers and from Adam Frey of Wikispaces, who will be presenting at the Illinois Technology Conference for Educators in March. I serve on the conference committee for this annual event, and Adam has offered to create a wiki for the conference!

4) Google For Educators: Global Warming Student Speakout

Google For Educator's inaugural project (co-sponsored by Global SchoolNet) was another hit with my students. They mastered spreadsheets, both in Excel and in Google Spreadsheets and Docs, found relevant videos on Google Video, worked collaboratively in teams, and learned a bit about global warming in the process. I'm looking forward to other projects that Google may cook up for us in the future!

5) Apple Learning Interchange 2006 - Rethink. Global Awareness.

I've been fortunate to be a part of the Apple Distinguished Educator program for the past year or so, and my participation in this education community has changed my professional life in so many ways. Many ADEs, along with representatives from EF Educational Tours, traveled last summer to Berlin and Prague to create a global awareness curriculum. My view of the world has broadened and deepened because of this project, and I now understand how vital it is for teachers to bring the world to their students via technology, if not through actual experience.

The resulting project is housed in the Apple Learning Interchange which was redesigned in the past year. Now, any teacher can upload lessons and digital objects to share, rate and comment on projects of others, and subscribe to RSS feeds showing new additions to the collections. Additionally, any media in the ALI can be downloaded to your iTunes library.

Please feel free to point out any favorite web sites or projects of your own choosing by posting information in the comments section of this post. Stay tuned for my next ITM entry in which I suggest some ed tech resolutions for 2007!

I should add that I took the above picture in Berlin at an exhibition of Buddy Bears. Visit this web site to learn more about this international project. In July, 2006, the bears were on display in Bebelplatz, a square near Humboldt University.

Today's Tech Savvy Students are the Best

Time Magazine's recent announcement that the 2006 Person of the Year is YOU – is right in line for my pick for BEST of 2006 --Today's Tech Savvy Students! The first generation to be born and raised in the digital age has received several aliases ranging from the Internet Generation to the MYSPACE Generation, but the moniker they prefer is “The Millenials”.



According to Howe and Strause, authors of Millenials Rising, "Today’s kids are on track to become a powerhouse generation...”. Unfortunately many feel that the school environment forces them to “power down”. Several resources to help schools gain more insight into today's students and how to equip them with 21st century skills continued to emerge throughout 2006. My top picks include some new (along with old favorties) resources to help educators advocate for 21st century changes to meet the needs of 21st century students.

1. As Time Magazine's 2006 article, “How to Build a Student for the 21st Century”, suggest -- today's schools “..need to bring what we teach and how we teach into the 21st century.” Just because we find today's students “IMing while listening to iTunes while socializing at 'virtual hangouts' like Myspace.com with the TV running in the background” does not mean they have the skills necessary to use their increased access to tech tools to “make the grade in a global economy.”
   
   
2. Marc Prensky's challenge for us to Listen to the Natives (a.k.a. today's students) suggest that "Schools are stuck in the 20th century. Students have rushed into the 21st." Prensky ask "How can schools catch up and provide students with a relevant education?" For educators trying to understand the changes brought by the 21st century, MIT Open Courseware audio and video of Tom Friedman lecture provides valuable insights in just a little over an hour.
   
   
3. Forward-thinking educators like the folks on the ITM have blogs full of insight that can help you understand both today's students and how to prepare them for the 21st century. Articles like Chris Walsh's “Fear the Fear of Cell Phones” , or Bryan Alexander's article on M-Learning, help us understand how the presence of “Mobility” is more imortant than the “Absence of Wires” in the way today's students learn.
   
   
4. Visionary organizations such as I-Earn, Global Schoolhouse, and GenYes offer educational opportunities and model projects where today's students use their tech savviness to develop valuable 21st century skills. In today's high-stakes testing environment, these organizations serve to remind us that good 'reading' and 'math' scores are NOT enough for our students to thrive in a global economy. Check out NetDay Speakout, Doors to Diplomacy or the three models for student tech leadership for a fresh view to the power of student voices.
   
   
5. But perhaps the best insights comes directly from the voices of today's students with self produced video and an evergrowing amount of self-published web content.

"Over the next decade, the Millennial Generation will entirely recast the image of youth from downbeat and alienated to upbeat and engaged--with potentially seismic consequences for America." ..

Millenial Rising

2006's Top 5 Interesting Bits for School 2.0

G'Day fellow Year-End Revellers,

In the spirit of re-capping 2006, I'm weighing in with quirky twists that I think portend the end of "school-as-we-know-it." Certainly the biggest story of 2006 is the emergence of Web 2.0 (audio discussion) and the flourishing that followed Tim O'Reilly's What Is Web 2.0.

But I like to get a feel for the littler moments within the grander sweep to sense which way the wind might be blowing for education. With that in mind here are my top five interesting bits for 2006.

1) Early in the year the Wikipedia vs. Britannica battles began. The skirmish was well-documented with a little fudging room on either side of the debate, but the key point for me was not the 162 versus 123 flaws in Wikipedia and Britannica, respectively, but that within a week, Wikipedia's errors had been corrected. How long before the next edition of EB?

2) Biting the hand that feeds them... When a UK security firm discovered a high frequency tone that drove away teen-aged loiterers, the teens turned the annoying sound into the Mosquitone, a ringtone that only youths can hear. When asked what schools should do about the scenario of kids phones going off in class and teachers not being able to hear it, one said, "hire more young teachers." Ouch, but true?

3) Corruption as a sign of maturity... Most commentators are anointing You Tube as the big story of 2006. I'd point to a sign of its maturity even within its short lifetime. As Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth gained traction world-wide, a PR firm working for energy producers got caught when they used YouTube for “Astro Turf”, the false presentation of what appears to be a "grassroots" up-rising. To me this is just one more padlock on the gates of the Factory School. Inquiry always trumps "information."

4) Mashup as Art... Another popular sensation this year has been the emergence of Mashups. The most well-known examples often include Google Maps and other databases (wikis, classified ads, etc.). One that is close to my sensibility is Jonathan Coulton’s “Flickr”, a song that seems to begin like any other alternative folk song and then morphs into a post-modern collage of images drawn from people's Flickr galleries. Here's the kicker for education: what grade would you give this song if a student turned it in?


5) The New WWW & addiction... Finally, I've been predicting / watching the development of new forms of addiction as we enter into an era of the New WWW (Whatever, Whenever, Wherever). An archetypal example this year wasn't when a hardcore World of Warcraft leader abdicated, but the 234 pages of heart-wrenching comments that followed the post. No wonder some call it “World of WarCrack”. Our task isn't to bemoan, but to model what it means to be happily human. Not always easy, is it?

That's it for me. I hope you all have a great holiday season and a terrific 2007.

Tom

Best of 2006: The Read/Write Web in Education

It's the winter break for many educators (at least in North America). Email has slowed to a trickle and most educational blogs are not being updated. During this time of reflection and rejuvenation we'll be celebrating the new year (along with the rest of the world). We at the ITM have discussed posting several "best of 2006" (or "predictions for 2007") posts to mark the occasion. For my part, I've identified five trends in the educational use of the read/write web that I've felt had a significant impact on my work - and ultimately, the work of teachers and students. In each case I discuss a free (and teacher-friendly) service.

For the sake of brevity, I've posted my predictions separately.

1. Educational Blogging at Edublogs.org (and learnerblogs.org): Though blogs and educational blogging have been around for several years, and though James Farmer's Edublogs.org was created in 2005, the impact of these tools grew a great deal in 2006. In February, I switched from using Blogger to using Edublogs when leading blogging workshops for teachers. In addition to being able to post text and pictures (and being able to receive comments), teachers could now post Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and PDF files, too. There were no random links to embarrassing or inappropriate blogs, and teachers could set up various levels of permissions for comments and for participants in team blogs. To boot, the tools were free and open source. Also, in June 2006, ITM blogger (and open source advocate) Steve Hargadon created supportblogging.com, which quickly became a valuable resource for teachers interested in these ideas. Read my predictions for 2007.

2. Educational Podcasting at podomatic.com: Podcasting began in 2004, and in 2005 my colleagues and I began leading workshops in which we helped teachers jump through many technical hoops in order to "easily" post a podcast. Podomatic was founded in 2005, but it wasn't until 2006 that we started using the service to help teachers and students. Now, teachers can create a new podcast episode by simply uploading an audio file that they've created using a free program such as Audacity. Or, for even greater simplicity, they can record directly into Podomatic over the web. The hosting of the audio files is free and the system takes care of most of the back end technical issues, creating a blog-like website complete with comments. Read my predictions for 2007.

3. Educational Wikis at Wikispaces.com: Though wikis have been around even longer than blogs, they are arguably behind blogs in educational adoption. But, in January 2006, Wikispaces.com started offering free (and add free) Wikis to teachers. Ten thousand wikis later, the company was so impressed by the work teachers and students were doing on their free wikis that they launched a campaign to give away 100,000 wikis to teachers. Today they are nearing the 20,000 mark. These wikis not only allow teachers to create collaboratively edited online resources, but also to post images and files as well. (I've written about educational use of wikis on the ITM before.) Read my predictions for 2007.

4. Google in Education: When we look back on 2006, this may very well be the biggest impact. This is the year Google began working in the k12 arena (an effort now headed up by Cristin Frodella). They launched the Google for Educators site, and played an critical role in the launch of this blog, the Infinite Thinking Machine. Google also released several new products that benefit educators who use the read/write web... particularly the easy to use RSS aggregator, Google Reader (for keeping up to date on news, blogs, and other "feeds") and the web-based word processor Google Docs (for creating, sharing, and collaboratively editing documents online). Though they existed prior to 2006, free desktop applications such as Picasa and Google Earth have been heavily used in education this year as well. (Of course, the newly updated Blogger is also still used by many educators.) Read my predictions for 2007.

5. The Deleting Online Predators Act of 2006 (DOPA): This may be the biggest change that didn't happen in 2006. Call it the biggest disaster averted (at least in the United States). Introduced in May 2006, the bill proposed to protect students from online predators by limiting their access to "social networking websites," which could have potentially limited student access to a wide range of websites, including everything I've mentioned above. In July, the house of representatives passed the bill by an amazing 410 to 15, and it seemed as if the Senate would quickly follow suit, thus placing an additional burden on many schools receiving federal funding - and placing a significant obstacle in the path of enterprising teachers using these tools with their students. Happily, organizations such as SaveYourSpace.org rose to the occasion and opposed the bill, which has languished in the Senate since before their August recess. Read my predictions for 2007.

Please feel free to discuss these read/write web trends (and predictions), and to leave ones of your own, in the comments. I look forward to reading your reactions.

PS: The image above was taken by Alan Levine and generously shared under the Creative Commons Attribution license on his Flickr account. Read his prediction about Creative Commons licensing in the comments for this post.