Engaging Today's Digital Learners - Where Do We Begin?

Ashley had just returned from a skating practice preparing for tomorrow’s skating competition, when I met her. So of course, we talked about skating, school, the latest movies, and other things ten year old girls talk about, including technology. As an educator, I was interested to hear about how she used technology at school, but she was more interested in talking about technology in her world outside of school – and I’m so glad she did.

I wasn’t surprised that Ashley likes digital photography, and that Ashley has her own blog, or that she spends time in a social network called WebKinz. But what I was surprised at was that she spends time in WebKinz with her grandpa. Ashley bought and mailed her grandpa a Webkinz and then helped him learn to navigate the world of Webkinz so they can play together. They can go over to each other's Webkinz houses and check out the new room decorations. Webkinz also has game rooms where they can meet to play online games. They can even send gifts and notes to each other through Webkinz post. Now that they have Webkinz in common, when they have a chance to visit, they talk about the latest Webkinz games or items they have purchased. They usually spend time together at the computer doing Webkinz. Her grandfather wasn't very tech savy and this gave him a way to share in Ashley's world.


We all know that technology can help grandparents and grandchildren who live hundreds of miles apart stay connected. I’m fortunate enough to have face to face playtime with my grandson in my basement filled with toys he loves. But for many, technology is the way kids and their grandparents stay connected. My grandson could answer a Skype call from great grandma when he was two. My mom learned to use Facebook so she could stay connected with her teenage grandchildren spread across the country. But it wasn’t until I met Ashley that I thought about playtime with grandpa happening on line. For those old enough to have a Facebook account, there are lots of ways to replicate the checkers game with gramps we remember from our childhood. But who would have thought about inviting gramps to your online playground?

Ashley’s brilliant solution of using technology to solve a challenge in her life, sent me off thinking about how often we look for ways to use technology in our classrooms that is limited by our awareness of the technologies available along with limited understanding of how today’s learners are truly different than those of previous years. How many of us try to find technologies that FIT into our way of teaching, instead of increasing our understanding of new ways kids who have grown up digital learn and interact with their world. What is our responsibility as educators to understand our new audience and learn new methods to reach this audience? I remember the first time a young lady with Asperger's Syndrome joined my class; her special educator provided me with materials about teaching kids with Asperger's Syndrome and I took my professional responsibility very seriously to increase my understanding of what learning was like for her. Infinite Thinking blogger, Julie Duffield, enlightened me about how technology can help us understand learners with autism. Most recently I rearranged the computer lab and installed new software to make it more accessible for a blind student in one of our fifth grade classes. His teachers and I are learning many new techniques (including new technologies) to make learning accessible for him.

But where do educators begin to increase their awareness of new learners, and of new technologies available to engage and reach those learners? Where do we begin to blend our content knowledge, our understanding of good teaching, with increased awareness of new technologies and new types of learners? Where do we find the time admist a teaching day jammed pack teaching children and fulfilling professional duties? I know very few teachers who don’t want to better understand today’s students or new ways to make learning relevant to them. Can we take this challenge to our students? Ashley found a very creative way , that very few adults would have thought of, to connect with her grandpa – I bet she was lots of ideas about how teachers can make learning relevant for her. Have we asked her for help in solving this challenge?

(P.S. I’d like to do a follow up post with ideas from readers about ways we can work on this challenge)

My New Year's Wish - Let's Revisit COPPA

Happy New Year! Tis the season for resolutions, reflection, and renewals. Every year about this time, I spend some time reflecting on the past year and thinking ahead to the new year. What worked well? What are my wishes for the new year? What resolutions do I have to make for those wishes to come true? It’s also a time of purging, organizing and letting go. As I clean closets and drawers and remove things that no longer fit my lifestyle, I make room for the new toys, exciting adventures, and increased possibilities in the new year.

This year I have a wish that would involve some purging and cleaning out of outdated regulations that are barriers to access to some of the wonderful learning tools available in a digital age.

Ten years ago, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act was created to protect children’s privacy. One of its goal is to prevent websites from collecting personal information from children under 13 without parental consent.

Although the need for protecting children’s privacy and safety has not changed, the way we live and learn online has changed in the past 10 years. Ten years ago, many feared that online shopping was unsafe; today more and more of us are not only shopping online, but also banking online. Not so long ago, many feared putting any private information on line; today more and more of us are using Facebook and other social networking sites to communicate with family and friends. Security and privacy are still very important issues, but new security measures and increased awareness about privacy settings have increased the functionality of the Internet as a tool throughout society. Why not encourage increased awareness of privacy and use security features available in online tools to protect children, rather than a blanket statement aimed at keeping children under 13 away from these tools.

Could it be that ten year old regulations aimed at protecting our children's privacy need to be updated? Wouldn’t the first year of a new decade be the perfect time to remove one of the barriers to using 21st century tools in today’s schools?
Photo by Giuseppe Bognanni taken from Diane Cordell's Blog Post Beyond the Wall

Website owners’s fear of noncompliance with COPPA has resulted in terms of service so complex and restrictive that they block the doorway to 21st century learning possibilities. COPPA states that websites are not allowed to collect private information from anyone under 13. It does not state the site cannot be used by members under 13 years old, but it does prevent the owners of those websites from collecting private information from those under 13 without parental permission. Since the owner of a website cannot prevent someone using their site from sharing identifying information in a post or profile, the easiest way to comply with this part of COPPA is to include an explicit statement that prohibits anyone under 13 from using their site. This creates several barriers.

1. It discourages (and usually prevents) the use of many valuable learning
   resources from being used in today's 21st century classrooms.
2. It discourages teachers themselves from exploring and experiencing new ways of
   learning and including many 21st century resources in the design of learning
   experiences.
3. It stifles innovation in the design of learning. Few companies would invest in research and design of products that be challenged as noncompliant.
   

There are fabulous resources and opportunities for students to learn using online tools that are not available to children under 13 due to fear of non-compliance.

A group of middle school students and their teacher recently stumbled across the popular website Shelfari. The site allows you to “create a virtual shelf to show off your books, see what your friends are reading and discover new books”. The enthusiasm of students for reading and talking about reading is exactly what every teacher and librarian tries to foster in children. And yet, these children and their teacher’s desire to use Shelfari was met with a black and white statement on the sites’ privacy guidelines that prevented the teacher from moving forward her student’s request to create online bookshelves of the books they were reading. The statement “This Site is not intended for use by children under 13” was surely included by Shelfari’s lawyers to protect them from COPPA noncompliance. The children and their teacher looked for similar sites that would allow them access to similar 21st century learning tools for creating online bookshelves and discussions about reading. Two other similar sites, Library Thing and Good Reads included similar statements. Photo Credit: Mr. Allen's Class Blog

Surely COPPA was not aimed at sites that promote reading!

Even though, the law does allow children under 13 to participate with parental permission, many website owners do not have a vehicle for verifying parental consent, thus include the blanket (nobody under 13 statements) as the easiest way to comply with COPPA.

Considering the fact that research supports social learning, such as talking about books, and considering that we currently possess the technology to engage students using online learning tools, might it not be a good time to take a second look at COPPA and update it to allow website owners to make engaging tools available to K-8 students and still protect the privacy and safety of our children.

The Broadband Data Improvement Act S 1492 100th Congress Section 215 as already amended the legislation to require elementary and secondary schools with computer access to the Internet to educate minors about appropriate online behavior, including online interactions with other individuals in social networking websites and in chat rooms and cyberbullying awareness and response. Then why not also update legislations to make websites that promote learning a resource by which to educate our children.

Currrently a few websites have taken the lead in making their tools available to students. Sites like

• Glogster (digital poster making)
• Animoto (digital slideshows and videos)
• Diigo (online bookmarking)
• Voice Thread (digital conversations around artifacts)
• PBworks (wiki with classroom accounts feature)
• Google (k12 collaboration applications)

now offer features and classroom friendly acceptable use policies that support the use of their tools in education. They have turned the responsibility for verifying parental permissions and educating and supervising students to educators. They have added features that allow educators to monitor the behavior of their students and teach students how to be a safe and ethical digital citizen.

My wish for the New Year would be that we remove some of the barriers for students to learn using digital tools. Perhaps its time we take a second look at COPPA and revise it so it stops being a barrier to access to 21st century learning for our children. Surely this 10 year old regulations could use a facelift to reflect the realities of how we live and learn today. Could we not revise this regulation in such a way that would encourage website owners to create classroom friendly features of their website and encourage teachers to use exciting online tools to motivate student learning and shape the next generation of digital citizens.

Back to School in a Web 2.0 World

The sight of big yellow school buses and children with backpacks walking the sidewalks are emerging throughout the United States and several other countries. In many schools, teachers have already been working in their rooms for weeks preparing for children to fill their classrooms. But the preparation is no longer limited to an isolated teacher sorting through the bulletin board supplies alone in his or her classroom; more and more teachers have been using Web 2.0 tools to reach beyond their classrooms to prepare for a successful year.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cookipedia/ / CC BY 2.0

About a month ago, Steven Anderson, (aka as web20classroom on Twitter ) sent out a tweet looking for some great First Day Back activities. He also put this request on his blog. For those who have heard of Twitter but not tried it yet, check out this great Twitter in Plain English video from the folks at Common Craft.

Steven's personal learning network did not let him down. Within a few weeks over 50 people had filled out the simple GOOGLE FORM with wonderful tools, tips, tricks, resources, and advice for the first day of school. (It's not too late to add your own first day favorites.)

As soon as you fill out this form with your own advice, the results automatically appear in Steve's Google spreadsheet. With just a couple keystrokes Steve was able to share these suggestions with you by making his spreadsheet visible to the public over the Internet. This simple easy to use way of collecting information is being by used educators daily to collect and display data from their colleagues and students.

Steve used his blog to highlight a few of his favorite suggestions such as the way Ms. DeSilva uses
http://stixy.com/ to "post a welcome sticky on the board explaining to students that I would like each of them to drag a sticky to the board and on it to introduce themselves and tell us something about themselves that they would like to share with the class." Steve also shares the full list of suggestions with you by linking to the published Google spreadsheet.

Within minutes of exploring these suggestions I found myself gleaning lots of advice from educators from every discipline sharing their First Day Activities on a collaborative First Day Wiki set up by geometry teacher Dan Myer's (not to mention all the first day suggestions offered within the comments of Mr. Meyer's First Day blog post.

If your first days of school activities got your year off on the right foot, why not share them with other educators by adding to this wiki. If you've never contributed to a wiki before, here's your chance to share with others outside your school wall. Commoncraft video “Wikis in Plain English” offers an excellent introduction to the world of wikis.

And if your first day didn't quite turn out as well as you planned, don't despair, many of these suggestions can be used any day or even help you start over as suggested by Alice Mercer, Larry Ferlaza and others on the Starting Over Page of the First Day Wiki.

As we move beyond the world of Web 1.0 (the sermon) and surround ourselves with the tools of Web 2.0 (the conversation) , I encourage you to experiment with tools like Twitter, wikis, and blogs to join the myriad of educators who are changing the culture of teaching from one of the loneliest and most isolated professions to one connected with colleagues from all over the world and with rich resources provided by YOU using today's collaborative tools. For more information in creating this culture, check out Alan Novembers article "Creating a New Culture of Teaching and Learning or just jump in, reach out, and connect and get your school year off to a roaring start.

Sound It Out!

How often have you told your students to “Sound It Out”?

When Ms. Gottchalk tells her students to "sound it out" she is not encouraging students to use sound to SPELL the words of their story correctly, but instead is encouraging students to tell a story using only sounds. Students can either search for sounds online or create their own. Either way the activity develops several literacy skills.

They have discovered FindSounds.com to search the web for sound. The student friendly website allows users to search a growing database of sounds collected from the Internet. The folks from from Comparisonics comb the Internet for sound effects (excluding songs and speech) Not only does the search engine return sound clips that match using keyword descriptions, but they also allow you to do a second search finding “like” sounds using the Comparisonics “sound search” algorithm.

Ms. Gottchalk’s students quickly refine their search skills and literary skills as they seek the perfect sounds. When the word “walk” returns no sounds, they try “footsteps” and get a variety of options. Refining their search skills also helps them shape their writing to include stronger and more varied vocabulary. The students then use Audacity, a free open source audio editting program, to create their soundscape stories.

Later that year, Mr. Podd, used a similar technique to have fourth graders collaborate to write a group story. The story, ”A Boy Named Bob” was constructed by each student adding the next phrase or sentence. The students each recorded their section as a new Audacity track, along with a sound effect they created or discovered on FindSounds.com. The elements of writing became part of the conversation as the story progressed. Watching the sound waves and other parameters as they used Audacity to mix their story offered additional opportunity to integrate science concepts. Later in the week, students were working together to write the lyrics to a 12 bar blues, comparing the elements of songwriting to the elements of writing.

In the classroom next door, Mr. Allen’s students are using SCRATCH to tell their stories. Scratch, a free program, developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab, is a user friendly tool that can be used to write interactive stories, by creating characters (sprites) that can change costumes while they move on a stage with a variety of backgrounds. Scratch allows students to easily record or import sounds to help tell their story. Some students are using some of the advanced features of Scratch to turn their story into a computer game.

Down the hall, Mr. Galle’s younger students are using Windows free Photostory program and pictures he pre-selected using Flickr and Google’s Creative Commons search to create their stories. The students are getting ready to add sound, but first they brainstorm adjectives that describe the type of sound that matches their story. . They start using Photostory’s built in “create music” feature which allows even non-musicians to create musical soundscapes. Later in the week they expand their ability to use precise and powerful adjectives to communicate as they work with a guest musician who plays music based on their descriptors to help tell their story. Photostory’s built in narration recorder makes it easy for the young students to capture their new “film score”. The guest musician talks about film scoring and quotes George Lucas explaining that "Sound is 50% of the motion picture experience."

Later in the year, some students will have a chance to create their own compositions during music class. Ms. Jarvis’s students learn music composition using Sibelius Music software. Many participate in the Vermont Midi Project, which offers students a password protected online space to collaborate with real music composers. The Vermont Midi Project’s recent collaboration with the Young Writers project models yet another way to integrate sound with writing. Their recent 6 x 6 x 6 project yielded six 1 minute compositions to accompany 6 six word stories created by young writers using collaborative online environments.

A new online music composition environment, called Noteflight, promises to be an exciting collaborative tool students can use to create original music composition and save for a variety of multimedia uses. The free version of Noteflight can be used by anyone with Internet access to collaborate while composing music.

Noteflight has offers Noteflight Learning Edition, an online subscription program for schools. Individual teacher accounts allow up to 750 student accounts and do not require student e-mail addresses making this a perfect solution for elementary and middle level classrooms. This course management system integrates seemlessly with the Noteflight online notation program.

Programs like Garageband by Apple or MixCraft by Acoustica (for PC) provide additional tools for using digital music loops to create soundscapes. These programs are very popular and engaging, even for students without music notation skills.

Books like MixCraft for the Classroom available through Soundtree.com can help even teachers without music background to use Gardner's multiple intelligences principles to engage students in all subject areas using today’s new technology tools.

If your school doesn’t have access to these tools, students can search for free Creative Commons music loops online and use programs like Garageband or Audacity to remix their own soundscapes. Sites like Garageband.com has free and fee based music loops that students can download without login. Sites like RoyaltyFreeMusic offer some free sounds and loops to students with a classroom login. What free music options have you discovered?

The sound of creativity, collaboration, and fun coming from any classroom I’ve seen use today’s sound technology tools has convinced me that these tools are often an untapped resource to engage students across all curriculum areas.

Even before digital audio, the sound effects methods developed to accompany Ancient Greek theatre or the pianist or organist that accompanied talking films were integral parts of the storytelling process. And with today's technology, integrating sound into story has become an art mastered by musicians and sound designers and today's 21st century learner. Won’t you share creative ways you have made sound part of your classroom experience?

Teachers Without Borders off to Africa

While many educators use Web 2.0 tools to make global connections, some educators are actually making these connections by traveling directly to countries where resources are scarce equipped with XO laptops, digital cameras, Flip Cameras, and incredible commitment to bridging the digital divide. I've invited Sharon Peters to be a guest blogger for Infinite Thinking this month to share with you how she and fellow educators are making global connections through Teachers Without Borders, and how you and your students can participate in their efforts to bridge the digital divide.

---- from Guest blogger Sharon Peters ----

Teachers Without Borders is off to Africa

At 59 million, teachers represent the largest group of educated professionals in the world. If you are able to read this blog post, very likely you are NOT one of the millions of those teachers who lack access to professional development and enrichment resources. Teachers Without Borders (Canada affiliation) is an organization of teachers helping teachers in order to foster and promote adequate teacher training in areas of the world that desperately need it.

In my experience, teachers are also those with the biggest hearts. During the last 12 months, I have had the incredible privilege of working shoulder-to-shoulder with inspiring teachers from Canada, the U.S., South Africa and Kenya as we rolled up our sleeves together and shared resources, methodologies and practices. I have learned so much more from my new colleagues than I contributed and I can see a substantial difference in my own teaching approaches. Last July and August, I served with a team of Canadian teachers facilitating workshops for science, math, English and ICT (Information, Communications and Technology) educators in South Africa and Kenya over a period of six weeks. We were the first teams of TWB Canada to be deployed. My experiences profoundly changed my world view, my priorities and my attitudes about learning - and ultimately affected how I ask my students to consider becoming global citizens.

Frankly, I cannot imagine more effective professional development than to work cross-culturally with other dedicated teachers from around the world. We return to our own educational communities greatly enriched and empowered. To develop relationships with teachers in politically and economically challenging situations permits us to give voice to teachers we may otherwise ignore due to lack of media attention or awareness.

Over a period of nearly seven weeks in July and August, I will be returning to South Africa and Kenya as a team leader of ICT teachers who will facilitate workshops for educators ranging from newly appointed elearning specialists to teachers who have never touched a computer before . Our team faces enormous challenges and will be stretched to the limit in ways we cannot yet imagine. Our team of Americans and Canadians will be joined by in-country facilitators this year. Many of these educators have not yet had the opportunity to facilitate professional growth for their colleagues. Our model is to ask increased participation of in-country educator facilitators every year so that by the fourth year of our presence in a community, we can hand over the PD to the in-country educators.

As an educational technologist, I see the incredible potential that online tools and environments offer to educators to connect, collaborate and share on a global level. Many teachers may not yet have access to the technology or they may lack adequate instruction on how to harness and exploit the tools available to them. Meeting teachers face-to-face in their contexts and creating relationships with them greatly facilitates the possibility of sharing resources and approaches. I witnessed many educators who eagerly desired to learn more technology and computer skills when I was in Africa. There was a profound sense of a need to "catch up" to the developed world, in terms of skills and access to the Internet. My experiences have also forced me to recognize and question how culture and ideology is implicitly embedded in technology tools and approaches. These are very important issues that must be considered as we facilitate content for our workshops. We are in new territory here where there are few guidelines or "how-to" manuals. Fundamentally, though, I think we are on the right track through the model of partnering with in-country educators who provide cultural and historical interpretation.

We need your help!

Teachers Without Borders is a relatively young organization. We are working on a model to build capacity and sustainability. Not all teachers are able at this time in their careers to consider going abroad and working on an overseas team. There are certainly other ways in which you can help.

• Consider making a tax-deductible donation. TWB raises money through grants and donations to cover our on the ground expenses while we teachers are asked to raise money toward our travel costs to the host country. As you know, most teachers are not able to pay for this out of pocket. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation to help us cover our travel expenses. If you are in Canada, you can give donations here. If you are in the U.S., please go to this link and be sure to specify that the donation is directed toward the TWB-Canada team members.
  
  
• Consider making donations of used digital cameras, laptops or flash drives. I will be at NECC in Washington D.C. (probably hanging out at the Bloggers Cafe) in late June and will be happy to connect with anyone who would like to pass resources along to me. John Schinker, another team member, and I will be leaving from NECC to travel to Africa.
  
  
• Consider making a donation of a Flip camera (or similar camera) to kick off a classroom exchange between your students and students in South Africa. We are partnering with Edunova in the townships of Cape Town to establish classroom-to-classroom partnerships. If you pass along a camera, perhaps with some embedded content on it from your own students, we will give it to a committed teacher in South Africa who will establish and maintain contact with your class.
  
  
• Consider joining our TWB community to communicate with other global educators and to develop resources for teachers in other parts of the world.

For more information or for an American or Canadian address to which you can send equipment, you can contact me at speters at twbcanada.org and you can follow our blogs throughout July and August:

Jody Meacher:

Zac Chase:

John Schinker - http://www.tasteoftech.net

Lois McGill-Horn

Sharon Peters: http://wearejustlearning.ca

Noble Kelly: http://twbcanada.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?user=noblek

We Need Our Earth

A group of fourth graders from Thomas Fleming Elementary School have been busy rounding up signatures for their petition. The petition was not about getting to wear hats in school or extending recess time (all very worthwhile pursuits). This petition which includes a cover page of a hand drawn earth with a handwritten title "Google Earth- We Need Our Earth" has two goals:

• get Google Earth upgraded to the latest version in their school
• get more time to play with Google Earth
  
  
  

I learned about these marvelous and curious students while helping a colleague plan a workshop featuring Google Earth uses in elementary and middle school. I learned so much working with David Davidson, tech integrator in Essex Junction, I'm not surprised that the students in his schools are petitioning for more Google Earth time and resources.

The first thing most everyone does when introduced to Google Earth is find their house. But what next? Everyone needs time to explore a new tool, but with this Google Earth Scavenger Hunt, David has students looking for their school, a very tall mountain, a very long river, or the Egyptian pyramids. Using Google Earths "copy image" feature, the students copy and paste their "finds" right into their Scavenger Hunt worksheet as evidence. Not only do the students explore Google Earth, but the teachers take the opportunity to debrief about search techniques or geography concepts.

David helps teachers at his schools use Google Earth to introduce elements found in different physiographic regions. A simple worksheet like this helps their students make observations about population density, tree cover, urban vs. rural, physical features, elevation, etc of different regions of their state or country.

One teacher who has skillfully layered her overhead transparencies to show students connections when you add data to a map now enjoys using premade layers of volcanoes, earthquakes, populations, tectonic plates to create those "Aha" moments.

David, his teachers and their students do not limit their Google Earth uses to the classroom. Students at Hawiatha Elementary School recently completed a community walk with sketchbook in hand to draw sketches of historic buildings in their town. Completing a Google Maps and Google Earth Version of their Community Walk not only allowed students to complete their sketches after the tour, but also gave parents and community a window into the activity.


With the use of a camera and GPS and a pioneering teacher, David helped the students at Westford Elementary School create a virtual multimedia map of the trails in their backyard. Although, creating waypoints is probably not an entry level skill, with the right support the students made a significant contribution to their community.

David is exploring new features such as Google Earth Sky or Google Earth Ocean to expand the activities he helps teachers create to places below and above the earth's surface. He's also pondering the possibilities that Google Earth's TimeLine View will bring to the classroom as it allow you to move back in time.

About the only place David had not taken his students and teachers to using Google Earth, was to the world of make believe. "Finally I have something to add to the planning session," I thought as I described how a group of 7th graders used Google Earth to go beyond the boundaries as defined by today's political maps, and create their own country. After hearing Jim Moulton challenge students at a leadership conference to take on the role of bringing new tools into their classrooms, four 7th grader students in St. Albans Vermont asked their teacher if they could use Google Earth to complete their "Create a Country" assignment (create maps of a fictional country whose characteristics follow the laws of nature based on where you place it on the globe). While their peers created their fictional country using markers and construction paper, these students used Google Earth layers to create maps that showed the physical, political, climate, population, energy uses and more. Their teacher's appreciation of differentiation and the students practice of leadership skills resulted in a 21st century design for a project that's been part of the curriculum for years.

After sharing our own experience and examples and highlighting other fabulous examples such as the award winning Google Lit Trips or the inspirational San Francisco Project, Dave and I concluded our workshop by pointing to just a few of the many resources for educators wanting to use Google Earth in their classrooms. And if you don't find what you want by combing sites like Juicy Geography, Real Word Math, CIA Factbook, Google for Educators, Google Earth Education Community or Google Earth Gallery, you can always use Google's advanced search feature to search by filetype (kmz or kml) on practically any topic you can think of.



But don't wait until you find the perfect Google Earth Lesson or have mastered all the features of Google Earth to explore the power of Google Earth in your classroom. Find one idea that looks interesting and explore it with your students -tap their infinite thinking skills and turn them into curious 21st century explorers of our world using Google Earth.

Friday Five - Tools for Teachers

Sometimes as teachers we are so busy looking for the perfect resource for our students, that we forget to take care of ourselves. By nature, teachers are caretakers and we do often take care of others needs before our own. This week, I was at a face to face meeting with a regional group of tech integrators where we spent some time sharing some tech tools that help us be more successful at our job. I couldn't wait to go home and try some of them and have picked the top 5 I learned about today to share as this week's Friday Five (plus one more cool tool that is coming out of beta this week). And best of all, these tools will not only help you as a teacher, they are great tools for students, too. (Photo Credit: Flickr J O I D)

1 . http://mail.google.com/mail/help/tasks/

If you have not discovered Google Tasks, you should visit the Gmail Lab (under Settings) to turn on TASKS. When you read an email that includes a new item for your to do list, or important information needed to complete that tasks, just click on the Label button to assign this email to a task. Your task list will now contain items that are linked to any email related to that task. And the most satisfying part is being able to check off the tasks as you complete them. Learn more about how to use the Tasks feature in Gmail or on your mobile device in Google's Help Section.

2. http://www.sticky-notes.net/

Whether you use a ToDo list such as Gmail's Tasks or other program to stay organized, there is something about a Sticky Note that helps us with priorities. This little gem is the perfect tool to keep certain items on your radar anytime.

3. http://jingproject.com/

Jing Project is a very helpful program that can be used to make screen captures as still pictures or short 5 minute videos. A picture is worth a thousand words and taking a picture of what is on your computer screen and being able to add lines, arrows, highlights, and additional text really helps increase understanding or provides assessment documentation in digital format. I know some teachers who encourage students to take a screenshot of their work on a popular math game as evidence of learning. I use this tool all the time to create tutorials for students and colleagues. I've even seen some educators document a tech error using Jing and attach it to a help ticket. For $14.95 a year you can go pro which allows the movies to be saved in mp4 format and also saves the videos in smaller file format. This comes in handy when using Jing to gather assessment artifacts.

4. http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/

If you want a similar tool that does not require you to install a program, try Screencast O matic.

This tool allows you to create a video of your screen (screencast) without requiring you to install anything. The product is in beta right now.

5. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897434.aspx

Zoom It is a very small utility that you can install on your computer or keep on a flash drive that will allow you to ZOOM in to any part of your screen at the stroke of a key. Those with Apple computers have had this ability for a while; PC users can now enjoy this capability with Zoom It. You can also provide it to visually impaired students to facilitate their use of computers. There are tools that provide more features for work stations used by visually impaired students, but this handy program on a thumb drive gives them the flexibility of zooming in when using other computers.

6. http://prezi.com/

And for an even more spectacular zooming experience, you need to try Prezi. And starting April 5, you'll get a chance since Prezi goes out of private beta and will be available for you to try the free version of sign up for a Pro account. It allows you to fly around a map of an image, screen shot, and even videos. You can click on an image to zoom in on it or use the mouse to fly around to show different perspective (from big picture to minute details).

Enjoy these tools. Model how to use them effectively for teaching and learning for your peers and students.

Friday Five - Finding Ada (Role Models of Women in Tech)

How quickly can you answer the question "Who are the leading women in tech?"

This week's Friday Five will not only help you anwer this question, but will also challenge you to contribute to the number of female role models students and adults are exposed to as they explore the areas of science, technology, engineering and math. (often referred to as S.T.E.M.)

How many of you had Ada Lovelace's name at the tip of your tongue?

Ada Lovelace wrote the world's first computer program for the Analytical Engine, a general-purpose machine that Charles Babbage had invented. She also wrote the very first description of a computer and of software. Ada died an early death in 1852 at the age of 36 and never had a chance to explore her understanding of computing. The high level computer language "Ada" developed by the U.S. Department of Defense was named after her.

If you were not familiar with Ada's significant contribution to the computer world or had trouble naming at least 10 leading women in tech, this week's Friday Five will serve you well. It includes a list of sites where you can easily locate names, pictures, stories of female role models to share with your students or colleagues. And best of all the list is about to expand exponentially!

March 24, 2009 has been designated as Ada LoveLace Day, an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. On that day, thousands of bloggers have pledged to publish a blog post about a women in tech who they admire using the tag AdaLovelaceDay09 for Delicious, Technorati etc. or #ALD09 for Twitter.

The data continues to show that the challenge of attracting women into technology related careers continues. While the causes are complex and the solutions are many, everyone agrees that female role models have a huge impact on the career choices of girls.

“Outstanding women can function as inspirational examples of success,
illustrating the kinds of achievements that are possible for women around them.
They demonstrate that it is possible to overcome traditional gender barriers,
indicating to other women that high levels of success are indeed attainable”,
(Penelope Lockwood, University of Toronto)

One of the most rewarding activities I organize to provide girls exposure to female role models year are the Power Lunch with Women in Tech offered at annual TechSavvyGirls activities. The female role models who attend continue to talk about the value they feel being able to offer advice and inspiration to girls in their formative years. Not only do the girls leave the luncheon with enough pictures, audio, and video to create a webpage about their new role model, but they often refer back to the advice and inspiration they received that day in 'college applications', 'scholarship applications' or in their own mentoring of younger students.

If you desire to organize an activity that will connect girls to role models face to face, organizations like the Society of Women Engineers , AAUW, or other networks of women are great resources for role models. The National Girls Collaborative can help you get started by providing resources, a program directory of organizations and projects and mini grants to support collaborative projects between organizations. The Anita Borg Foundation Tech Bridge Program has compiled a fantastic guide called Get Involved to help prospective role models inspire girls in technology filled with practical suggestions and strategies.

I challenge you to consider how you might use this week's Friday Five Resources to design a classroom activity that introduces female role models to your students (both girls and boys). The images and stories of women in tech are beneficial to all students, and to society as a whole. The next generation of innovators will come from the curiosity and spirit of innovation we inspire in today's students. Helping girls see their future as women in tech will give birth to a more diverse wave of infinite thinkers. What can we as educators do to help?

• Perhaps you might display some of the photos on your school bulletin boards.
  
• Perhaps you might assign reading or writing assignments from the collection of stories featuring women in tech
  
• Perhaps you might brainstorm with your students ways to publish your own blog post for AdaLoveLace Day. If you don't have a place to post a blog, you can always post an entry in the comments of this section. Don't forget to tag it--AdaLovelaceDay09
  
• Perhaps you might introduce a lesson on using Technorati or the way "tags" can work to assimilate collective knowledge using the power of tagging.
  

So I challenge you to use the comments sections to share your ideas of how to use AdaLoveLace Day or to add to the collection of post that will be published. Looking forward to having you join me in fulfilling my #4 on my New Years Resolution post.

Friday Five - Sites with Role Models of Women in Technology

1. http://www.passionit.info/albums.php
   Probably the most impressive and global collection of role models were free albums from all 7 continents.



2. http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/132/the-most-influential-women-in-technology.html
   The most influential women in technology according to Fast Comapny is broken up into the following categories
   

   Women in Tech: The Executives
   Women in Tech: The Entrepreneurs
   Women in Tech: The Gamers
   Women in Tech: The Evangelists
   Women in Tech: The Activists
   Women in Tech: The Bloggers
   Women in Tech: The Brainiacs
   
   

3. http://www.fastcompany.com/articles/2008/11/influential-women-web.html
   Fast Company's 2008 picks as Most Influential Women in Web 2.0



4. http://www.pinkstinks.co.uk/role_models.php
   Although, this project appears to be a newcomer and has a smaller collection of role models in the technology area, it uses design elements with higher appeal to younger students.



5. http://www.sallyridescience.com/for_girls
   This collection of role models from the Sally Ride Science Web Site includes role models in several S.T.E.M. careers including
   -Contributions of 20th-Century Women to Physics Website:
   www.physics.ucla.edu/~cwp
   -Role Model Project for Girls sponsored by ACM's Committee on Women in Computing http://women.acm.org/
   -The Archives of Women in Science and Engineering Iowa State UniversityWebsite: www.lib.iastate.edu/spcl/wise/wise
   -Women of NASAWebsite: www.quest.arc.nasa.gov/women/intro.html

Friday Five from Wee Web Wonders

This week's Friday Five come from a group of stellar students from Sahuarita Intermediate School and their rock star teacher, Dr. Jackie Gerstein.






In my recent visit to Arizona, the colors of the flowering cacti, were a notable and inspiring contrast amidst the sparse and arid dessert backdrop- gaining my respect for all that not only survives, but thrives within the parameters of the Southwestern U.S. In a similar fashion, the vibrant classroom of Dr. Jackie Gerstein and her students, was exciting and inspiring against a backdrop of daily newspaper articles featuring stories of budget woes by surrounding Arizona schools, aging computers, inadequate bandwidth, and exhausted supplies where students are bringing in printer ink and paper from home to be able to continue using classroom printers.

Within minutes of arriving at Sahuarita Intermediate School, both Dr. Peggy George and I, we were greeted by two very poised 5th grade students who lead us to a classroom filled with evidence of constructivist learning- a fertile ground for nurturing the infinite thinking machine.

Every student was fully engaged in activities that challenged them to take charge of their leaning. One student was putting the finishing touch on a miniature piano made of craft materials, while her partner was busy programming Pico Cricket sound sensors to play the melody they had composed as part of an interactive digital story they were writing. Another was demonstrating how the hot Arizona sun could be used as solar power in a windmill created with legos. Two fifth grade boys huddled around an aging computer debating the plot of the digital story they were writing using Tikatok's online book publishing site. At other computer stations, students were exploring Tux Paint – an open source software. Others were using the forums in Think.com to critically analyze the potential of Web 2.0 sites for learning. Storyboards and backdrops made of legos, clay, science kits, and other craft materials filled tables and shelves, each to be used with student's original writing in a long term digital storytelling project.

One classroom wall was lined with student created newspapers as evidence that the students had developed interviewing skills to learn more about each other. Another wall was lined with colorful 3-D representations of FIVE word questions that was to guide a self directed research project. In the middle of it all hung a student created hand painted Wordle that captured the essence of the type of learning that filled their day and avatars of the students who drove that learning. The avatars were enlarged versions that the students had traced and colored of the actual avatars these students use to safely participate in collaborative learning environments outside their classroom using a variety of Web 2.0 tools made available to them through their classroom wiki- Wee Web Wonders. Here are just five of the many web sites we saw student using during our visit with Dr. Gerstein and her incredible infinite thinkers.

1. http://www.tikatok.com/

When we arrived in Jackie's classroom, students were using Tikatok to write and
publish their stories. Teachers can set up classroom accounts and manage their
own student accounts. The site includes story starters, prompts, and
collaborative options. Students can share the stories with coauthors, family,
friends. Parents can order printed copy of the students book in hardcover or
softcover.

2. http://www.shelfari.com/

Jackie's students proudly showed us the books they've read using Shelfari
bookshelves. They have become experts at putting widgets that display the books
they read on their project wiki. They also use the site to read reviews of books
or write their own.

3. http://atlantis.crlt.indiana.edu/

During computer time, some of Jackie's students collaborate with students all
over the world in a 3D environment helping the council of the virtual world,
Atlantis, solve problems impacting its water, air, health, and animal life. As
an active member of the Second Life Educational Committee, its easy to
understand how Jackie found Quest Atlantis a very compatible technology tool to
her constructivist teaching.

4. http://www.think.com/

As I walked around the classroom, I noticed one of my favorite sites, Think.com,
on some computer screens. The students were using this very safe social
networking site to post reviews about new web 2.0 links their teacher had
posted. The site is especially supportive of teachers, parents, and students who
want a more private place to collaborate. Oracle has very stringent rules about
participation and offers teachers a setting that allows their students to
interact ONLY with those from the same school. Oracle also checks each teacher's
credential and school affiliation before activating accounts. Teachers are
required to carefully monitor their classroom Think accounts.

5. http://www.mystudiyo.com/

One of the most impressive examples of learning and student leadership I
witnessed during my visit was students using the projector to lead their
classmates through group participation in student designed quizzes about the
topics they were studying. Students used My Studiyo to create quizzes, embed
them on their research wikipages, and then facilitated group decision making
about the answers to each question as they proceeded through the quiz using the
classroom projector. These student presentations were far from the traditional
student presentation. They had mastered the concept of “engaging” the audience.
It was obvious that they had witnessed good modeling from their teacher – Dr.
Gerstein who doesn't know the meaning of “sage on the stage” when it comes to
teaching. These students are defintiely in charge of their learning, and their
teacher is a superb 'designer of learning environments.

I wish I could share all of the great ideas and websites, I learned about during my visit to Sahuarita Intermediate School, but I think I will follow Jackie's philosophy of letting the students be the guides and leaders. Follow their evolving project pages at weewebwonders.pbwiki.com/
and see for yourself the evidence of student centered learning, and if that doesn't blow you away, brace yourself and visit their fantastic role model of self-directed learning by visting Dr. Gerstein's own learning space.



P.S. Thanks to my Personal Learning Network powered by powerful Web 2.0 tools like Twitter, I had the pleasure of meeting both Jackie and Peggy face to face and you have the opportunity to meet their students virtually. Special thanks to Jackie for inviting us into her classroom, and for Peggy to driving all the way from Phoenix to join me in this visit.

Friday Five: Create, Express, Learn with Primary Source Material

This week, I'd like to share some powerful web resources that use the increasing amount of primary source materials online and have the power to engage students using digital tools and their desire to express themselves.

As an educator who believes in teaching students to honor intellectual property, I'm always looking for sites that include materials students can use to create multimedia projects. Fair use guidelines gives us some flexibility in using multimedia inside our classroom. But in the world of Web 2.0, the audience for these media projects has expanded outside our classroom, with more and more interest in publishing for an authentic global audiences. All one has to do is look at the popularity of You Tube and other video sharing sites to know that young people are highly motivated to express themselves to audiences outside the classroom. Thanks to the Creative Commons license, more and more materials are available online that students can use to create and publish their multimedia productions for a global audience.

This week, I'd like to share 5 sites that go one step further than Creative Commons materials. These sites host primary source materials and encourage young people to use them to produce and publish their own creations. Some even include online tools to help students with the process.

1. http://www.remixamerica.org/

This site was created by a voter registration organization who wanted to keep the young people they registered involved and engaged. To do this, they provided them with free online tools and raw materials through “America Now” and “America Then” playlists. Remix America encourages students to draw parallels between the present and the past. They hope that viewing seminal speeches and events from American History will inspire young people to express themselves and take action on the issues that matter to them.

Teachers around America have stumbled across Remix America and incorporated the materials in their classroom. One teacher asked her students to take a quote from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and apply it to the 2008 election. Another asked her students to create PSAs on the issues that matter most to them – censorship, war, civil rights. You can browse through “Favorite Remixes” section to see some of these great remixes!

2. http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/diypodcast/
   
   NASA has done something similar to engage students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The NASA's Do-It-Yourself Podcast activity provides students with audio clips, video, and photos related to space. Students can use the NASA materials to produce their own audio or video productions.
   

3. http://www.primaryaccess.org/

PrimaryAccess is a web-based tool that offers teachers and students access to digital images and other materials that enable them to construct movies using tools provided by the web site.

Although many of the primary source materials are photograph and still images, the tools provided on the website allows students to add motions to create a movie effect. I first learned about Primary Access while listening to Glen Bull's presentation during the 2008 K-12 online conference.

4. http://take2videos.org
   
   This project is slightly different in that it not only provides the raw materials for students to produce a video, but also complete an advocacy event. The project requires schools to register and the topic is more focused. According to the project web site “Each year, Take 2 shoots 2-3 months of high definition footage in a different conflict region and creates extensive supporting and background documentation then licenses the package free of charge to qualified educational institutions. Participating schools will complete one small task to help grow Take 2’s infrastructure and undertake at least one advocacy event upon completion of their projects
   
   
5. http://www.kitzu.com/

   This website is not yet populated with lots of materials, but has promise in offering students free, educational, copyright-friendly media resources. According to the project website “Students and teachers around the world can access pre-made collections, or "kits," of various digital assets - still images, background music, narratives, video and text. Each kit is built around a common theme, or curricular topic. For students, this becomes the construction paper of the 21st century --allowing them to create reports and projects filled with rich, immersive media for communicating their vision of whatever subjects they chose. AS they master the technology, they will progress from building projects with supplied materials to projects where they find or create their own resources -- a strategy that results in truly authentic assessment as measured by the projects produced."

Have you discovered similar collection of primary source raw materials and tools that encourage students to create and express themselves? I'd love to find more of these.

Friday 5: 21st Century Skills

This week, it's my turn to come up with a thoughtful list of resources for teachers, and I have chosen the theme of 21st Century Skills. Recently, in the main stream press and in the edublogger/eduTwitter world,  there has been debate about the validity of such a skill set. This particular blog post will not do justice to this ongoing argument, but I do have one observation to add. 

I recently had the amazing opportunity to travel to Singapore to visit schools and assist with the 2008 Apple Distinguished Educator Asia Institute. A more comprehensive blog post about my experiences will follow one day (I'm still mulling over everything I experienced), but I was really struck by the attitudes of the people I encountered. It seemed to me, from my conversations with administrators and teachers from Singaporean and international schools, that many agreed with the basic idea that students and teachers today are require to employ a different mindset and set of abilities in this changing world. There was no ongoing debate; it was accepted that education had to change in light of this, and that this change happened through collaboration and exploration of global best practices. 

In my opinion, U.S educators need to stop arguing semantics on this topic and need to get down to the business of educating our peers about teaching and learning in the 21st century. Here we are, nearly 10 years into this new millennium, poised to start making meaningful, substantive change happen. Let's get on with it, people! We've got hard work to do!

That said, I'm off my soapbox and I recommend the following resources for investigating the idea of 21st Century Skills:

1) The Global Achievement Gap by Tony Wagner (Tony's website: http://schoolchange.org)

http://tinyurl.com/globalachievementgap

2) The Partnership for 21st Century Skills

http://www.21centuryskills.org 

3) 21st Century Literacies: Tools for Reading the World

http://www.noodletools.com/debbie/literacies

4) 21st Century Learning

http://tinyurl.com/21stcenturylearning

5) The Emergent 21st Century Teacher, Mark Treadwell

http://www.i-learnt.com

6) The Metiri Group: What's So Different About the 21st Century?

http://www.metiri.com/features.html

Feel free to offer any other recommendations in the comments here!

Lucy and Lucie's Friday Five - Cellphones in Education

Earlier this school year, I decided to follow in the footsteps of fellow educator, Lucy Gray, by posting a weekly list of websites, called the Friday Five, within my school. Lucy started the Friday Five tradition on her website back in 2006. This list has turned out to be one the most successful professional development methods I've tried this year. It seems like in a world where we are overwhelmed by choice, "more" is not always better. Just ask Barry Schwartz, author of Paradox of Choice. In a world, where the cookie aisle at your store has 285 types of cookies and Google yields millions of results for most queries, educators are welcoming a "short" list of websites related to a theme.

Therefore, Lucy and I have decided to pool our efforts to bring this Friday Five feature to the readers of Infinite Thinking Machine. We hope you will enjoy a 'short' list of five or so websites around a topic or theme related to using technology to help you shape your students into Infinite Thinking Machines.



This week's list comes on the heel of the Horizon 2009 report's predictions, and includes links ranging from broad predictions of the role of cellphones in our future, ways to use them in education, and reminders of the need for increased discussions about safety around their use.
Photo Credit: Flickr Creative Commons: Deeknow

1. 2009 Horizon Report » One Year or Less: Mobile
   wp.nmc.org/horizon2009/chapters/mobiles/
   
   The whole Horizon Report is a MUST read for anyone interested in technology, change, new media, and education. Take note of the biggest prediction for ONE year or LESS: MOBILE
   An accompanying web site focusing these issues on education is1.
   http://horizon.nmc.org/k12/Main_Page
   
   
2. From Toy to Tool: Cell Phones in Learning
   www.cellphonesinlearning.com/
   (and related interviews or podcast with the author of this site)
   
   Cell Phones in Education - An Interview with Liz Korb - Interviews -
   cellphones.org/blog/interviews/cell-phones-in-education-an-interview-with-liz-korb
   
   Cell Phone Books - Reading Is Reading :: The Education Business Blog
   www.educationbusinessblog.com/2008/02/cell_phone_books_reading_is_re.html
   
   
   
3. Good Web Post from Wes Fryer with thoughtful insights and resources
   http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2008/01/30/opening-minds-about-cell-phones-for-learning/
   
   
   
4. Guidelines and Instructional Uses for Cellphones in Education
   
   http://teachdigital.pbwiki.com/cellphones
   Explore reasons some school districts are embracing the use of cell phones for learning both inside and outside the classroom and examine specific guidelines school districts are utilizing for student cell
   phones.
   
   
5. E-School News article about risky behaviors by students related to cell phone use
   http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/news-by-subject/safety-security/index.cfm?i=54064
   A good article in Eschool News about how schools are handling some of
   the more recent riskier behaviors related to cell phones.
   

I hope this collection of sites is useful to those of you currently discussing cellphone use in your school community. And Lucy and I look forward to bringing you next week's Friday Five. Feel free to offer your own related websites in the comments, or suggest some topics for future Friday Fives.

Tuning into Educon 2.1, you can, too!

Last January, I had the privilege of attending and blogging about one of the most invigorating events of my educational career, Educon 2.0 held at the Science Leadership Academy (SLA) in Philadelphia. This exciting event is again being hosted by SLA this weekend (January 23 - 25, 2009).

At Educon 2.1, you will find some of the most well-read, most challenging thinkers and doers in the world of education and technology gathering in Philadelphia for conversations around the following Axioms:

• Our schools must be inquiry-driven, thoughtful and empowering for all members.


• Our schools must be about co-creating -- together with our students -- the 21st Century Citizen.


• Technology must serve pedagogy, not the other way around.


• Technology must enable students to research, create, communicate and collaborate.


• Learning can -- and must -- be networked.

Unfortunately, this year I'm not in Philadelphia, but home with flu symptons, but thanks to today's technology I am joining many others by participating virtually. You can, too!

I've been watching a steady stream of snippets from the conference, ranging from links, quotable quotes, and Aha's from my Twitter network. You can, too!

I'm watching a live video stream from Clay Burrell's blog. You can, too!

I will surely, be watching more videos from the conference which will be archived on Educon's conference wiki. You can, too!

Would love to hear from both attendees and virtual participants of Educon about some of your experience with Educon, including reflections and aha's.

Inauguration 2009

There is certainly no lack of educational activities available for students to participate in celebrating this historic day. Both Lucy Gray and Lucie deLaBruere were unable to limit their weekly Friday Five list to only this week.

But even with this plethora of activities, I saw an opportunity to demonstrate the engagement potential of using a Smartboard and the variety of "game show" type templates that can be downloaded online to teachers in my school. So at the midnight hour, I added content to this PowerPoint Game from http://jc-schools.net/tutorials/PPT-games/ creating a Historical Inauguration Jeopardy Game that you can download to use in your school.

The questions are challenging for even those who've been around for a while. So you might want to modify the rules to engage your students by teaming them with adults who have seen a few Inaugurations. Here are some ideas for playing this Historic Jeopardy Game.

• Give students a chance to use the Internet to search for answers. Perhaps use the Jeopardy Music as a timer.
• Have two classes challenge each other with their ‘teacher’ where the students picks the question and has the choice to let the teacher answer it for “half the points”.

You might want to start the activity by watching this National Public Radio Slide Show of “First” for Inauguration Day.

This historic day also generated opportunity to show the power of Voice Thread in student learning. a VoiceThread is an online virtual space that has a unique commenting environment for shared media like images and videos. Students can comment by webcam, microphone, telephone, or text. The Inauguration Day Voices project has encouragd educators who have developed VoiceThread projects that capture the voices of individuals exploring and expressing their own perspectives on this historic event to tag them with "inauguration09". Help your students find their voice today by participating in one of several Inauguration Voice Threads or create your own. If your new to Voice Thread, take some time to explore Collette Cassenilli's Voicethread 4 Education wiki, which is filled with tips and tricks for teachers interested in using this powerful tool.

And if you have not stumbled upon the New York Times Interactive Inaugural Words, stop everything you're doing and go check out one of the best examples of how technology provides the tools to redesign learning activities. This site takes a look at the language of presidential inaugural addresses from 1789 to present. The most-used words in each address appear in an interactive chart, sized by number of uses. Words highlighted in yellow were used significantly more in this inaugural address than average. Just hover over each word to see how many times they were used and click on the word to see it used in context (through the years). I challenge readers to use the comment section to share the "questions" they used with their students that challenged their capacity as "Infinite Thinking Machines".

I leave you with a last gem I discovered during my exploration of Interactive Inauguration Activites - the blog of Larry Ferlazzo. Larry's talent for combing the Internet and discovering the best websites for teaching ELL, ESL, and EFl has earned him numerous awards, but more importantly it is filled with invaluable resources for teachers of ALL students on a variety of students, including the Inauguration.

I hope you enjoy this last minute goodies and share how you and your students celebrated this historic day in United States history.

.

Pondering New Years Resolutions (Digital Access)

My last post began a series of reflections on the New Year's Resolutions I made on Infinite Thinking Machine back in 2007. It focused on

#1 My resolve to update my collection of keyboarding resources and promote keyboarding skills in ALL students.

This time I'd like to look back at the second of five resolves I made that year.

#2 I resolved to know which students lack access to digital tools at
home.

A few years ago, I was encouraged by the data that we collected about the number of students who have computers and Internet access at home. I was encouraged that in a high poverty area such as ours, almost 90% of our students had access. Computers were becoming more affordable and multi-functional; even families that didn't always see the value in investing in educational tools at home, were purchasing computers as they took on entertainment value.

But this year I became discouraged by an increase in the response “we use to have Internet” or our computer doesn't work anymore. Discretionary items such as “internet access” are being cut from family budgets during increasingly challenging economic times. I also became discouraged when I learned that local public libraries do not have the resources to keep up with increased demands and use. I recently gave a student without home access a thumbdrive to save her work so she could continue it after school at the public library. She returned it the next day and shared that the only computer available to her didn't allow for thumb drives. (Photo Credit)

As we increase computer resources and Internet access in schools, teachers are integrating more technology tools in the classrooms. As a technology integration specialist I am excited about the increased use of tools like Google Earth, wikis, blogs, and social bookmarking in our school. But students with access at home are definitely at an advantage. Although I consider myself sensitive to the population of our students without digital access, I worked on the premise that these students at least had access to these resources in our public libraries. But I recently realized how challenging it is for libraries to keep up with increased demands.

Part of the challenge for libraries is that those who need computers for homework, filling out job applications, or accessing information only available online are competing with an increased use of library computers for accessing MySpace, playing video games, or accessing other entertainment websites. Libraries like those in Palm Beach, Florida are challenged by increased need for computers after the local food stamps office closed, forcing local residents to apply online. (Photo Credit)

The community library in Williston North Dakota reports increased use of its computers as the economy suffers. Upgrading or repairing home computers and keeping Internet access in their family budget has become increasingly difficult for many families.

For years libraries have been balancing the needs of their patrons to have access to essential nonfiction materials with increasing request for fiction; just because the circulation for fiction materials was higher, did not mean they stopped purchasing nonfiction resources. This dilemma continues in a world filled with digital information and entertainment. How do libraries make computers available for both those who seek to use them for entertainment and those who need them for homework or everyday living tasks?

Thus my evaluation of my 2007 resolve has just been expanded to not only inquire about student access at home, but to also find out about the access possible outside the home. Does it exist? To what extent? What are the parameters?

And finally, I resolve to start dialogues between community libraries and schools about how we can better support each other and collaborate towards the goal of greater digital equity in our community.

Pondering New Years Resolutions

New Years Day resolutions are all around us. One of my resolutions is spend more time writing about the educational issues I've been thinking so much about lately – starting with more regular post to Infinite Thinking Machines. But while I'm making my resolution, others are boasting that their resolution is “no resolution” --claiming most resolutions are lofty goals that are never met.

I sat back and asked myself, “what's my stand on resolutions as I enter 2009?”. Am I feeling hopeful or discouraged when I think about “resolutions”? In thinking about this I went back and read my first New Years post on Infinite Thinking Machine (January 2007) and reflected on the progress that came from my resolve. What progress have I made? Do I feel both hopeful and discouraged?

Perhaps the best place to start meeting my resolution to “write more” is with a series of posts that examines my 2007 resolution, why I feel hopeful about, and what I plan to do about the areas I'm discouraged about.

Photo Credit: Flickr Husin.Sani (Creative Commons)

My 2007 resolution focused on digital equity and included 5 areas where I planned to make a difference in making sure “no child was left behind in a digital age”. This week I'm going to reflect on the first of the 5 areas I pledged to focus on in my digital equity resolution, with thoughts on the other 5 areas in upcoming posts.

1. I resolved to update my collection of keyboarding resources and promote keyboarding skills in ALL students.

As I watch the fifth grade teachers bring their students into the computer lab this year, I noticed that many students are writing more freely and quickly filling screens full of text during their visits-- thinking less about finding the “z” and more about the story they're writing. A fifth grade girl called me over to her computer, during her first visit to the computer lab. I thought she needed help; she pointed to a paragraph on the screen and said proudly “I typed this all without looking”. It made me hopeful that my commitment to teaching the 3^rd and 4^th grade teachers HOW to teach keyboarding was making a difference.

But I also saw students still struggling to find the keys and barely finish a paragraph during that same visit. After a little research I found that many of these students had completed less than half of their “Type to Learn” lessons; I found that many of these students had been pulled out for math or literacy intervention during the keyboarding time. It made me discouraged that we had not provided these students with the same tools for success as their peers. Not only do they lack the skill to complete the “quantity” of work expected for their grade levels (a standard that increases as their peers continue to produce longer and longer writing pieces) but they are deprived the opportunity to focus on improving their writing process by having to focus on finding letters on a keyboard instead of the flow of the writing.


I heard an ed tech leader this year say that we should stop wasting time teaching kids and that this skill will come naturally as we give them increased access. I don't disagree that increased access will help; but Michael Phelps didn't win 8 gold medals by having access to a swimming pool. My old typing mentor use to say “Practice doesn't make perfect; perfect practice makes perfect”. I'm going to continue to mentor our new generation of elementary teachers in the technique of teaching keyboarding – so that no child gets left behind in an increasingly digital world because they can't keyboard (especially the kids who are being pulled out for different intervention – they need every advantage they can to close the gap).

Elementary teachers! -- One of the most powerful things you can do is to model and to attribute importance to hands on the keyboard and correct techniques as they use computers in your classroom. Find time for students to practice and build keyboarding skill. Reward proper technique with praise, certificates of completion or other incentives for knowing the alphabet without looking. I try to update this wiki on strategies that work for learning to type including links to free keyboarding software that you can send home with students or to this very effective KeyGuide for learning to type.

As I think of what else I can do to grow in this area in 2009, I resolve to add the ability to effectively use voice recognition technology in 2009 so as to better assist students with special needs.

In the next few post, I'll reflect on the progress and the work still to do in the remaining parts of my 2007 resolution -- “making sure “no child was left behind in a digital age”

#1. I resolved to update my collection of keyboarding resources and promote keyboarding skills in ALL students.

#2. I resolved to know which students lack access to digital tools at home.

#3. I resolve to promote sensitivivity to lack of or slow Internet Access.

#4. I resolve to revive the TechSavy Girls program and create new opportunities for girls to build skills and confidence in their use of technology.

#5. I resolve to make Web-based and Open Source Software available to students to increase home access to digital tool.

Brightstorm: Expanding the Reach of Great Teachers

Every wonder what happened to the eccentric star of the original Infinite Thinking Videos - Chris Walsh? Well he hasn't strayed too far from the world of "effective use of video" in education.


He's been busy recruiting rock star teachers that support his belief that video provides a powerful medium to help students learn and helping to build a new online learning network. The network, Brightstorm, has recently launched 19 video based courses lead by expert teachers helping high school students deepen their understanding of college prep content and skills such as Algebra II, Geometry, SAT Math, Writing and History.

Video based courses have been around for a long time, but this implementation aims to match the interest and learning styles of today's high school students with their digital consumptions habits. The countless hours that today's teenagers spend watching You Tube videos attest to their interest in online video as a medium. What Brightstorm had done is recruit stellar educators with a proven track record in instructional design and made their teaching style and expertise available to any student, teachers, and parents for $49 a year. Each 5-hour interactive video courses is broken down into 10-20 minute lessons, with interactive quizzes, challenges, study guides, and discussion groups.

Almost every topic includes courses offered by at least two different teachers. Watching free lessons allows the learner to find the teacher that best matches their learning style. The concept of student choice is key to the Brightstorm philosophy of learning. "Choice is the easiest thing you can do for personalization" states Chris as he describes how students can use the video medium to stop, start, zip through episodes, skip around, and chart their own learning path. "We give learners tools where they are in control and can get what they need when they want. They even have choice around who they get it from."

Helen Beethan and Rhon Sharpe's book "Rethinking Pedagogy for a Digital Age" supports the impact that tools like Brightstorm can have by reporting that "Simply being able to study at a time, place and pace to suit them can profoundly change learners relationsip with conceptual materials."

But within a design that gives learners choice, Brightstorm puts the teacher at the center. Believing that teachers are the most essential ingredient to great learning, Brightstorm has put their energy in finding real teachers that have a proven track record at connecting content to the relevant tasks that kids are doing.

The video courses are not ONLINE courses that replace the 'for credit' course offerings. They don't pretend to offer the full scope and sequence of traditional courses; they don't offer assessments on student performance. Instead, Brightstorm assesses student engagement by reporting on the amount of time students interact with the materials. Brightstorm delivers their video courses directly to learners who could benefit from additional materials to engage them in a way that matches their learning style.

Although Brightstorm markets directly to students and parents, as a teacher, I immediately saw a value added for teachers. A service like Brightstorm can support teachers who are looking for ways to encourage active, independent learning, but find themselves with limited tools wthin the physical environment in which they teach. I could see a teacher using a tool like Brightstorm to "engage disaffected pupils, to allow them to take control of their own learning by enabling interactive, individualised learning at the pace and level appropriate for them." as recommended by Terry Lamb in his keynote address at the Independent Learning Conference (2003).

Any teacher interested in emerging pedagogical models seeks "access to an enabling suite of tools to support greater learner choice and self-direction" as described by John Stephenson's "Learner Managed Learning". Stephenson comments that "new media open up opportunities for different pedagogical approaches to be used. Moreover, they argue, the technology itself is driving pedagogical change towards a more learner managed approach." This along with
lessons learned from pedagogy research support the development of tools like Brightstorm.

Lessons Learned:

• We need to provide multiple routes through the materials and allow students to make their own choices.
• We need to communicate proactively with the students and provide structured formative feedback on achievement.
• We need to allow the students to build on their existing skills and knowledge and to undertake learning activities that are relevant to their interests and learning needs.
• We need to provide plenty of opportunities to communicate for those who are most comfortable in a community of learners, whilst allowing those who wish to plough a lone furrow to do so.
  

I look forward to see how all of those in the learning equation (students, parents, teachers) will benefit from lessons learned in using Brightstorm and other emerging tools that give our students access to resources meeting increased demands of differentiated instruction.

An Electronic Voting Machine: Turning Data Into Information

With only a few more days until the U.S. Election, I'm sure many American classrooms have been buzzing with election theme activities. Some schools will be collaborating and comparing data using programs such as the National Parent/Student Mock Election Project., [check out your state's ballot] while some classrooms will be tallying paper ballots.

Vermont middle school students from St. Albans City School will be doing a little bit of both. Class lists will be used as a voter checklist during lunch periods where students in Grades 5 – 8 will receive a paper ballot to cast into a ballot box. Kinesthetic learners will benefit from the physical act of going through these motions and touching a real ballot and ballot box.

Next, students will get a chance to cast an electronic vote using Google Forms. The following form will be available on a Google Site loaded on one of several computers located next to the ballot box. These votes will be automatically tallied into a Google spreadsheet that updates blue and red graphs immediately available for teachers to use with their students in Election debriefing sessions.

• Some classes are deliberating the pros and cons of electronic voting.
• Other classes are comparing their grade's results to the voting results in their community.
• Junior high student using Google Apps for your Domain: Eduction Edition will be working with their teachers on the process of turning data into information.

They will examine the process by which each piece of data was collected, analyzed, organized, and presented into meaningful information.

• In math class they learn how to create graphs.
• In social studies class students are using data representation to discuss social issues. Google Forms allowed them to collect information from other students querying which issues were most important to teens. A core group of students analyzed this data and used Google Docs to organize research in preparation for a school wide assembly featuring their mock debate. The results from the actual mock election will be contrasted to the pre-debate poll data in analyzing the success of their debate.
• In science class, students are preparing for a scientific inquiry project that will require the collection, analysis, and presentation of data. Being actively involved in the process of turning data into information gives students real experience as background when designing their own science projects.

Feel free to download this Google spreadsheet template to edit and use in your own school as an electronic voting machine, or simply as an example of how Google Speadsheet can be turned into a voting machine on any topic or issue you're studying.

Insert "countif" into the search box of this link to learn more about working with the countif formulas used in this spreadsheet. The spreadsheet template also models the concept of linking data between sheets where the original data collection worksheet was linked to other sheets to help aggregate data and turn it into information and graphs.

I'm hoping readers will use the comment seaction to share their own spreadsheets templates. Check out this tip on how to add &newcopy when sharing your own spreadsheets links to allow teachers to download a clean copy of your spreadsheets as a tempate in their down Google Docs accounts.]

Amplifying the Possibilities with K12 Online Conference

Are you looking for ways to amplify possibilities in your classroom this year? How about connecting and learning with other educators from all over the world by participating in one or more of the 40 workshops offered this year in the K12 Online Conference.

The conference started last week, but no need to worry. You can join other educators on this learning journey anytime, anywhere, by pointing your browser to k12onlineconference.org. No travel cost! No leaving your family behind! No lessons plans for substitute teachers! You can participate in your pajamas, on your commute to school, or even during your daily jog.


The K-12 Online Conference is filled with audio, video, slides, handouts featuring innovative ways Web 2.0 tools and technologies can be used to improve learning. The 2008 conference theme is “Amplifying Possibilities”.

Check out the pre-conference keynote or workshops that were posted from October 13 - 24, or join one of the upcoming live events scheduled October 27-31. The easiest way to see the conference offerings at a glance is to check out the Conference Schedule

Start by clicking on workshop titles that catch your interest. Approach the workshop using the methods you learn best.

• Perhaps you'd like to scan the handouts?
• Perhaps you'd like to explore the presenter's background?
• Perhaps you'd like to watch the video or slides on your computers?
• Perhaps you'd like to listen to the workshop while you're folding laundry?
  
  You decide.

My preference is to download all the audio clips in a k12onlineconference folder on my computer as they become available. I rename them starting with the date and abbreviated title and make sure my I-Tunes syncs that folder to my IPod. With the latest k12onlineconference workshop audio on my Ipod, I can pick up nuggests of knowledge or inspiration anytime I have some listening time -- while standing in line, on my ride to school, or taking a walk!

I like the fact that I don't have to be sitting at my computer to learn. I take note of the workshops that I want to revisit because the audio left me wanting to know more and "see" the rest of the story. I bookmark the workshops with handy handouts and tag them using my del.icio.us account.

This two week online conference provides me with enough learning material to last all year if I let it. But usually it just whets my appetite for more and leads me to new contacts for my personal learning network and a wealth of networked resources to explore and share.

But best of all, the K12OnlineConference models connected learning. It engages us in opportunities to walk the walk, not just talk the talk of Learning 2.0. Hope you'll amplify the possibilities in your professional learning this year by participating in the 2008 K12OnlineConference. I invite readers to recommend some of their favorite discoveries from this year's conference.

Freedom to Read

The Book Fair Safari filled our school library all week as it was the host to The Scholastic Book Fair - one of the most popular events in our school. Kudos to our school librarians and community volunteers for encouraging our students to Read, Dream, and Grow (this year's book fair theme). Today was also the the last day of Banned Book Week (September 27 - October 5) which

"celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even
if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the
importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular
viewpoints to all who wish to read them. After all, intellectual freedom can
exist only where these two essential conditions are met "

And if Doug Johnson's suggestion was adopted we would also be displaying Blocked Bytes Week Posters and be promoting the Freedom to Read more than just books. A year ago, Wes Fryer posted a chart comparing Internet content filtering he experienced in China, and the Internet content filtering he was experiencing in a U.S. public school district. And earlier this spring, Bud The Teacher, posted a request for designs for a 21st Century version of the “I Read Banned Books” buttons which yielded some wonderful designs and a campaign for reducing filtering constraints in our schools at NECC 2008. All you have to do is read the 90+ comments responding to Will Richardson's recent post - Filtering Fun, to realize that the freedom to read continues to be challenged in our schools today.

But filters are not the only thing limiting our childrens access to 21st century reading. In my work with teachers, I often hear that there is not enough time for using computers in the school day because the school's researched based curriculums mandate large blocks of uninterrupted time working with prescriptive strategies to improve reading and math scores.

When I suggest strategies for integrating technology into classroom literacy time, some teachers question whether these strategies would be "approved" activities. Many of the research based materials were developed around teaching students to read using print media. We need literacy specialists offering professional development in schools to also include strategies that integrate reading digital media. This year the Vermont Reads Summer Institute for teachers included workshops by reading specialist, Julie Coiro, that gave our teachers 'permission' to integrate technology into their literacy time. Our teachers came back from this summer institute with their own print version of Reading the Web by Maya B. Eagleton & Elizabeth Dobler which added credibility to the tech integration strategies I've been promoting for years. Thank you, Julie, Maya, and Elizabeth!

There are many strategies you can learn from these and other reading specialists that can give students the skills and access they need to read in a digital age. Here's one small step you can start with. Try allowing the computer stations in your room to be a choice during sustained silent reading time. Here are a few sites to get you started.

1. http://storylineonline.net/
   The Screen Actors Guild Foundation reads stories aloud to children. This site includes videos,related activities and downloadable activities guide. What a great listening center activity.
   
2. http://www.starfall.com/n/level-c/fiction-nonfiction/play.htm?f
   Give students access to some online fiction and nonfiction books with pictures for younger readers to read online from Starfall- a site full of reading resources targeted for early readers.
   
3. http://www.roythezebra.com/
   Roy the Zebra.com includes guided reading stories, interactive whiteboard reading activities, literacy lessons, and resources that have been developed to help emerging readers learn to read.
   
4. http://www.biguniverse.com/
   Big Universe is a web community devoted to beautiful children's picture books. READ hundreds of offerings from today's best children's book publishers, CREATE e-books with the help of an easy-to-use Author Tool, and CONNECT with other Big Universe members to share your creations and to learn what books they have read, created, or recommend. Parents, teachers, kids, authors, and others can share and learn while they enjoy this educational and entertaining website.
   
5. http://www.gutenberg.org/
   Have you tried giving students print and audio access to books in the public domain?
   Project Gutenberg is the first and largest single collection of free electronic books, or eBooks. Look for Huckleberry Finn, Alice in Wonderland, Sherlock Holmes… and many many more. For sites that offer audio versions of some of these books check out: http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:The_Audio_Books_Project
   Or how about having your students record themselves reading aloud and contribute to the project itself.

And don't forget students for whom increased access means having the ability to see and hear what they read online. Try using one of these free websites that read text aloud to students, or install a free utility like Zoom It for students who need help seeing the screen.

Thank you to all of you who are promoting increased access to reading materials for our students and those of you teaching our students the skills they need to read more than books! I've mentioned only a few here, but would love to hear from readers about more resources and strategies to give our students the access and skill to be 21st century readers.

The Open Minds Momentum

Has Open Source in Education reached a Tipping Point-- “the levels at which the momentum for change becomes unstoppable?” Anyone attending the K12 Open Minds Conference would be hard pressed to argue otherwise. “Let’s Declare Victory!” and move on to the next steps was certainly the tone starting with the PreConference Summit (lead by Bryant Patten and Donna Benjamin) and Large Scale Deployment (lead by Steve Hargadon) in Indianapolis, Indiana.

In his book, “The Tipping Point”, Malcom Gladwell, outlines what it takes for an idea, movement, or product to achieve a moment of critical mass: The salesman; The maven; The connector. The K12 Open Minds Conference was an opportunity to witness the incredible energy and synergy when those 3 forces come together in one place. Having students, teachers, tech directors, school leaders, who use open source software for teaching and learning converse and collaborate with the developers of those tools truly created an Open Minds energy throughout the conference. If you missed it, perhaps you can still pick up a few tips, tools, or resources with my takeaways from this conference.

• I got a chance to meet teachers like Michelle Librach who lead sessions like Audacious Audacity targeted at teachers. While fellow teachers walked away with practical tips on how to use open source in their classrooms, open source developers got a chance to witness first hand the fruits of their labor.
  
• I overheard NCOSE award winner, Eric Harrison, humbly admit that he sometimes thinks it's surreal that hundreds of classrooms are benefiting from increased access to computers using K12LTSP -- a project he helped develop.
  
• I listened to open conversations about open standards between Walter Bender, developer of open source software, Sugar, and students from Illinois Math and Science Academy who started the first high school chapter for OLPC.
  
• I got a sneak preview of the G-Phone which reminded me of of the authentic opportunity that projects like Google’s Summer of Code provide students to contribute to an open community as they develop authentic 21st century skills. “Let’s not stop with getting kids to work WITH open source… let’s get them to work ON open source development.” advocated Bryant Patten’s (director of National Center for Open Source in Education). “Can you think of any better assessment of the new ISTE NETS for Students than having a student contribute to an Open Source Project? “
[Photo credit: ISTE NETS for Students]


• I applauded when keynote speakers reminded us of the the fact that we need to develop the spirit in inquiry in today's students.
  
  - Alex Inman, advised teachers to “Be quiet. Stop talking and give your students the opportunity to to experience the power of inquiry. Let them DO something. Let them create”.
  
  - Chris Lehman, also stressed the importance of inquiry at his school, The Science Leadership Academy – “a project-based environment where the core values of inquiry, research, collaboration, presentation and reflection are emphasized in all classes”.
  
- Dr. David Thornburg, encouraged the use of Open Source (and Duct Tape) to promote creativity in K12 schools and challenged us to prepare the type of student who could repair a moon buggy with duct tape while wearing oven mitts.


• I was inspired by those in the trenches like Randy Orwin (band teacher turned network administrator) who’s passion for student learning drives every decision he makes, whether it be “hardware purchases, open source adoption, or filtering”. While some open source evangelists get bogged down trying to decide whether to spend their energy on convincing commercial product developers (like Inspiration) to release a Linux version of their product or convincing educators to adopt a “pure” open source alternative like Free Mind, Randy asks “what’s the best decision I can make for 5th graders right now.” This approach gives Randy more time to develop truly pragmatic educational implementation of the open source products he believes are truly best for student learning. I can’t wait to try the “Nanogong” module that adds audio accessibility to Moodle or the other tips Randy shared such as how to turn a Moodle branded page into a bright, exciting, colorful, entry point for first and second grade students.
  
• I learned a myriad of tips and tricks for supporting Open Office and other Open Source tools in real classrooms.
  
  Thank you , Randy, for the Open Office tip about adding clipart libraries such as (WP Clipart) and (Open Clip Art) to Galleries by categories instead of using the Insert Picture method. The ability to see clipart thumbnails and drag them into Open Office documents will remove one of my biggest barrier to Open Office adoption by teachers! And a big thanks for sharing Solveig Haugland's open office blog -- what a teacher friendly resource for anyone using Open Office.
  
  Also, thank you to Andy Mann and Laura Taylor for being willing to expand your session to include both free and open source software, but to also include lots of invaluable experience about which tools make the most difference in Real Classrooms with ReaL teachers. The enthusiasm and experience you shared from Indiana's InAccess is invaluable to us.

I think the diversity of the audience was one of the strengths of this conference. Yes, it offered plenty of ‘genuine geek time for those genius brains” to network and collaborate. I can’t wait to see what emerges from conversations between folks like those between Robert Arkiletian (developer of a K12LTSP app called FL-Teacher Tool) and Benoit St. Andres (from Revolution Linux). Watching developers collaborate to improve the tools we're excited to use in education has me looking forward to new products and updates.

But mostly this conference brought students, teachers, school leaders, network admins, and developers together to promote open resources, technology and teaching practices in education. And when visionaries like Australia's Donna Benjamin bring the spirit of The Cape Town Open Education Declaration and her incredible facilitation skills to such a group, then the mavens, connectors, and salesmen of Open Source in Education are tipping the scales. And perhaps the next step in this collaboration efforts the TRUST as described by our last keynote speaker, Dr. Brad Wheeler, "build the trust to get the leverage we need to enable greater things to happen on the edge." I am leaving this conference revitalized and hopeful that that our school and industry leaders and network administrators will continue to build the infrastructure and systems we need to leverage the great things that open source developers and teachers are making happen to continue the Open Minds Momentum.

Social Digital Tools with an Election Theme

Although your students may be too young to vote, they are never too young to become engaged in local, regional, and national politics. Whatever your content area or grade level, adding an election theme to your lessons is an ideal way to create high interest, add fresh content, and increase the level of critical thinking skills in your classroom.


A great place to start exploring the possibilities of using social digital tools with an election theme is by exploring Googlitics (a site filled with links and lessons to help students participate and learn about American politics with online tools from Google for Educators). Not only have Cheryl Davis and Kathlen Ferenz compiled a wealth of resources that will help educators infuse 21st Century tools in their classroom, they've also modeled a real 21st century approach to organize these resources - sharing these resources via an I-Google Tabs.

If you don't already have an I-Google account - this would be a great oppotunity to experiment with the power this tool has for sharing resources amongst educators. Create and I-Google Account and log in. Then

• Click to add Googlitics' "Election Central" tab to your iGoogle homepage


• Click to add Googlitics' "Election Road Map" tab to your iGoogle homepage

This will automatically add two new tabs in your IGoogle page that Cheryl and Kathy have created and shared with you using I-Google's ability to share Tabs with others. You and your students are now equipped with a compilation of election data for some higher order thinking (such as a gadget from the interactive website from 270toWin which provides the history of the electoral vote of your state from 1782 - 2008 and much more).


Check out Googlitics Lesson ideas for instruction on how to add your own gadgets, or other check out Googles Election Tools for Your Classroom for more tools and ideas that will engage your students in exploring the candidates and issues.

Google's Elections '08 Map Gallery and Google's Elections 2008 Gadget can keep you up-to-date on the 2008 election. These maps and gadgets can even be embedded in your own wiki, blog, or school web page.

Chris Pirillo provides a great tutorial (both print and video) on how to use Google Doc's new Form Feature to create your own polls or mock election.

Perhaps this would be an ideal opportunity to experiment with cellphones in your classroom by using Poll Everywhere Voting and Polling Website. You can set up polls and allows students to use either texting on their cellphones or any Internet enabled computer to vote. The results can be displayed on a Website or using Powerpoint.

How about getting your students involved in Letters to the Next President -- a writing and publishing opportunity co-sponsored by Google and the National Writing Project? Perhaps you can help your students experience the process and power of the voting process by getting involved in the National Parent/Student Mock Election Project.

Check out the wealth of Interactive Games, Gadgets, and Tools at PBS Vote 2008 or use the full multmedia curriculum Election 2008: ACCESS, ANALYZE, ACT: A Blueprint for 21st Century Civic Engagement, developed in partnership with PBS Teachers and Temple University’s Media Education Lab to help educators develop middle school and high school students' understanding of the Presidential campaign process by harnessing the power of Web 2.0 for teaching media and information literacy, critical thinking, communication, collaboration and technology skills.

And there has never been such an abundance of primary source videos from the campagin trail on video sharing sites like You Tube and Google Videos. Adding Google's speech recognition technology makes for a powerful tool in differentiating instruction.

Even the well-respected Common Craft video series added its Simple and Plain English Style to help us understand the Election with this 3 minute video (Electing a US President in Plain English). You can even encourage your students to create similar videos on a wide variety of topics with these 'behind the scenes" instructions. And news programs like NBC have made their videos available with accompanying education materials through sites like Hot Chalk.

Whatever your content areas or grade level, the resources are as plentiful as the lesson ideas which you can find at sites like:

• Election 2008: Lesson Plans from Scholastic.com (includes a Special Report on Election 2008, with lesson plans designed to complement presidential election coverage for Scholastic News and Junior Scholastic magazines and Scholastic News Online.


• Elections Theme - Lesson Plans, Thematic Units, Printables, Worksheets, and More from A to Z Teacher Stuff which includes Units and Lesson Plans that integrate election themes across the curriculum for all types of grade levels and reading levels.


• Education World® : Special Theme: Primaries, Voting, and Elections. (Although this site is 4 years old, I found some great links here and there are updates for the 2008 elections)

Or for a real global perspectives lesson, check out the You Tube tutorial on using The US Election 2008 Web Monitor which provides weekly snapshots of global Web coverage with results that reflect attention and sentiment towards the US presidential candidates from several different countries.

But don't limit your use of digital social tools to helping your students understand the U.S. Election, continue to use these tools to help students gain an increased global awareness by following similar elections and political events from around the world.

And please, please, please share your favorite tools and ideas on how to use these tools with other readers by adding them in the comments section. I can't wait to read them.

Hopes and Dreams

It’s almost that time of year again for many teachers – the time when eager little smiles will walk into your classroom outfitted with clothes and supplies from their back to school shopping trip. For some teachers with a different school year than mine, your back to school experience might not be this month, but hopefully it is filled with the same feeling of rejuvenated hopes and dreams. Many teachers I know actually build in a Hopes and Dreams student activity as part of their beginning of the year routines. I hope you do! Perhaps this student's hopes for her new classroom can inspire you to integrate some 21st century tools in your classroom.




Perhaps you can learn a new tool to help your student express their hopes and dreams. Perhaps you can help them expand the scope to more global hopes and dreams. Perhaps you can provide the next stepping stone to dream that will only be realized long after they leave your classroom.

Recently, I overheard a teacher tell a colleague “This year, I’m going to make sure that the kids write hopes and dreams that we can actually accomplish in our classroom”. I wanted to say “Oh, please don’t!”. Today’s technology puts tools in your student’s hands that will allow them to express their dreams in ways that were not possible only a few years ago. What about using Animoto or Voicethread to create a classroom hopes and dreams project? Perhaps start a list on a project like 43 things.

Today’s technology can knock down the walls and open the possibilities for you to reach far across the globe. How about using Google Maps, Google Earth or Google Sky to take a field trip that your students’ could only dream of not so long ago. Video’s available through You Tube, Google Video, or other video-sharing websites, along with other video services such as Discovery Education Streaming, Annenberg Media, or National Geographic Video can also help your students’ dreams reach far beyond their classroom.


Today’s technology makes it possible for you to connect with someone who can help your students achieve one of their hopes and dreams. Astronauts, authors, video game producers, Olympic athletes, visiting your classroom are more possible than they ever were through tools like email or video chat. Consider having your students use a service like Skype or GabCast to turn a phone call interview into a podcast of someone who has achieved one of their hopes and dreams.

Today’s technology allow you to collaborate with others who have similar hopes and dreams. Consider joining one of the many collaborative projects made possible by collaborative tools such as those featured at Global School House’s Project Registry, Taking IT Global, or Epals. If you’ve never experienced the power of global collaborative projects in your classroom, check out Jim and Mali's Keynote Address from NECC 2008 (two outstanding teachers whose practice was transformed through their participation in global collaborative projects)

But most importantly, today’s technology is available to you as teachers to be a tool that helps your students reach their hopes and dreams.

As teachers, we are in the fortunate position to help our students get one step closer to realizing their hopes and dreams. If for any reason, you need a little convincing of this, I strongly suggest you put aside an hour to watch “The Last Lecture” by Randy Pausch. Randy, whose legacy includes ALICE, a program that helps kids learn the concepts of programming through storytelling and animation. In this inspirational video, Randy shares his childhood dreams with his audience during some of the last months of his fight with cancer. His lecture is filled with inspirational messages to today’s teachers, parents, mentors, and children about the people and events that helped him realize his childhood dreams.

May you be one of the forces in your students’ life that takes them one step closer to realizing their hopes and dreams. And please, please, share your Hopes and Dreams activities with other readers or simply add to the this Hopes and Dreams VoiceThread.

Shining Eyes of Passion

School’s out for summer - yet for many --more learning is happening in shorter periods of time than happened during the 180 day school year. Having just spent a week with 22 girls during TechSavvy Girls summer camp and another week with 32 middle school kids during TechSavvy Kids summer camp, I started to think about what makes summer camp so much more engaging than school. Surely it takes more than replacing the word “school” with the word “camp”… to transforms the experience. Why is it that we would rather spend time at “summer camp” than “summer school”.

• Is it because there are no bells that tell us it’s time to move to the next station and we have larger blocks of time to immerse ourselves into our learning?
• Is it because there are no mandates that create solid boundaries about what will and will not be learned and how we should learn it?
• Is it because there are no test and quizzes that try to quantify how much we remembered about what we learned?
  

No… I don’t think it’s the absence of something; but rather the ‘presence’ of an important element – PASSION!

A week long experience where talented passionate instructors focused on creating fun filled experiences that pass on that passion to others --– whether it be humanities camp, chess camp, outdoor camp—will yield lots of learning, lots of eager smiles, and lots of shining eyes.

And for those of you who think that this formula only works when learners themselves are passionate about the subject – think again as you watch the masterful Benjamin Zander create an understanding and appreciation for classical music amongst the unsuspecting audience of the T.E.D. 2008 conference.






Consider your role as a teacher as you listen to Zander describe his role as a conductor.

“The conductor of an orchestra doesn’t make a sound..
He depends for his power on his ability to make other people powerful.

My job was to awaken possibilities in other people..
How do you know if you are doing it
Look at their eyes.. if their eyes are shiny you know you're doing it

If not.. you should ask..
Who am I being that my players eyes are not shiny?”

What do you need to do this summer to come back to school in September ready to bring out the shine in your student's eyes?


Do you need to immerse yourself into a new experience that lights your fire? Do you need to do something new you’ve always wanted to try – and reflect on the parts of it that make your eyes smile as you do it ?

Do you need to immerse yourself into the powerful words of writer who allows you to escape into the passions of their experience? Perhaps escape to Italy, India, and Indonesia with Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat, Pray Love or to a village in Afghanistan’s with Greg Mortenson in Three Cups of Tea.

Do you need to immerse yourself into an experience that takes you out of your comfort zone? Every couple of years I try to learn something that I’m not naturally good at or perhaps even fear. In the past few years I’ve tried tennis lessons, swing dance lessons, and motorcycle riders classes. Each of these has helped make me a better teacher by helping me tune in on what it takes to bring a reluctant learner’s fear of failure to a state of confidence and success. Success doesn’t mean I’ll ever play in a tennis tournament, participate in a dance competition or drive a motorcycle in real traffic, but it means I gained an appreciation for those who have passion for each of these activities in real life.

Do you need to immerse yourself into a self study of some new technique or tool that might engage your students when they return to your classroom this Fall? Pay attention to the young people around you this summer and notice what they are passionate about.

• Take note of the little white buds in their ears and think about how you might be able to bring ipods or other mp3 players into their learning environment.
  
• Take note of their thumb typing skills and consider ways to use cell phones as a learning tool.
  
• Take note of how they interact with the web and look for websites that bring the same type of interactivity elements to their learning.
  
• Take note of the messages in Darren Draper’s Pay Attention Video and the related Transforming Teaching Through Technology tutorials and strategies and challenge yourself to select one new technology tool to play with this summer that could transform one of your lessons into an engaging experience that bring a shine into your students eyes.
  
  
  

Inspiration and Innovation at Googleplex

From the Google colored chairs to the gourmet chef, Googleplex provided the perfect environment for 50 creative educators at the June 25th Google Teacher Academy to be inspired by Googlers (staff at Google) and innovative educators using Google tools in their classroom.
The folks from CUE, West Ed, and Google designed a fast paced series of events that had us buzzing with ideas. I agreed with the educators from New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the U.S. that it was like drinking from a firehouse. There wasn't a session that didn't leave me blown away by the power of Google tools to transform teaching and learning. (Photo Credit. Molly Schroeder)

Award winning examples from Vicki Davis' keynote address and the inspiring example of Esther Wojcicki's journalism classes reminded me of the quality work today's students can produce when we set high standards and expect that they will succeed. During the fast-paced tech rotations, I learned about product features that I never knew existed; I saw classroom application of these features that I can't wait to use to help students think deeper as they collaborate, communicate, connect, and create.

• Chris Walsh, who many of you know as the host from ITM videos, gave us a tour of advanced search features, many of which can be found under the “more” tab or 'even more” tab. Check out this interactive demo to learn how to search Google from your mobile phone. http://sms.google.com/.


• Jerome Burg, introduced his project, Google Lit Trip, amongst other GEO applications of Google Maps and Google Earth in the classroom. Check out the gadgets (browse the directory of My Maps) that can turn your Google Maps into tools for measuring distance of a path or digging a hole through the earth.


• Mark Wagner demonstrated Google Doc's newest features including how to add data collecting forms that automatically add the data to your Google Spreadsheet along with the new “gadget” library (found under 'create a map, chart, or table link within a spreadsheet). I can't wait to visualize data using the gauges gadget or watching data change over time using the motion chart gadget.


• Cheryl Davis helped us discover how to use Blogger, iGoogle & Google Reader to collaborate with colleagues, students, and parents. Did you know that items shared through Google Reader can be annotated with notes?


• Kathleen Ferenz helped us discover the power behind Google Notebook and other Google tools to scaffold the research process for students. Did you know you can highlight important facts in a web page and right click to add it to your Google research notebook? Shared notebooks provides teachers with a digital formative assessment tool.


• Kyle Brumbaugh's inspiring message of how his district adopted Google Apps for your Domain to teach students how to become Global Citzens, including making sure that all students have both a computer and Internet access from home made him a hero in my book. Kyle updated us with ways to use Google Apps and Google Sites in the classroom.

These fabulous GTA alumni modeled the spirit of collaborating and sharing their experience and knowledge by organizing Google Almanac --a wealth of resources related to the tools they presented at the Google Teachers Academy 2008. Add these to the lessons and tips from Google Educators Page or sign up for the Google Teacher Newsletter and you'll find yourself with plenty of ways to try googlizing one of your own lessons, or better yet, add a a Google Certified Educator to your personal learning network.

P.S. You can also learn more about some of the Google Teacher Academy participants and view their videos in this unofficial pre-academy wiki or by reading some of their post-academy blog post.

Audience Matters

It’s that time of year again. The end of the year frenzy is in full swing -- - the field trips, the yearbook deadlines, the sports banquet, the concerts, the report cards! The computer lab is buzzing. The eight grade yearbook team is asking for help trying to convert Photoshop files to a PDF files so they can rush them over to the printers. Students and parents are learning how to convert their Photostory slideshow for the sport banquet tonight. A group of sixth graders are using Audacity to edit the recording of the end of the year concert. A classroom teacher calls to cancel her computer lab reservation because they have to finish another pencil and paper assessment. The spot is quickly filled when another teacher calls begging for any available computer time because they have two more writing portfolio pieces to squeeze in to meet the state requirement.

Some of the frenzy makes me smile; some makes me sad. I think about the stress our system puts on teachers and students this time of year. I wonder about the validity of test scores gained from students this time of year. I wonder what the teacher comments will look like on those last writing portfolio pieces? Will the students get to see them? Will they learn from them?

But then I smile again, thinking about the seventh grade student who eagerly shares with me the latest statistics from Google analytics of the viewers who have read his latest blog post. I think about how the ‘rap’ song '802' composed by two Vermont student about their state capitol caught the attention of thousands of You Tube viewers, The New York Times and other news sources. I think about the third graders who posted a description about their town on Wikipedia sparking a series of related articles. I think about the 4th graders exchanging their music scores electronically in the Vermont Midi Project’s online space getting feedback from real music composers. I think about the DVD of short movies produced by the fifth graders at Waitsfield Elementary School and the premiere held at their local movie theatre.

And suddenly I know exactly what my Google Teacher Academy video entry about Motivation and Learning will be about! Producing the video contributes to more ‘end of the year’ frenzy for me – the type that makes me smile. I start to brainstorm possible lyrics and images on a wiki. Throughout the day, my son in New York State, and I were collaborating on music and lyrics using the wiki, cell phones, and the ability to compose and share music electronically. Within the next day, his brother in Connecticut, was using different software in the production process, adding the voices of young children. Meanwhile, Mom was collaborating with hundreds of photographers she had never met from the Flickr community who post their images with Creative Commons licenses. By the end of the week, the words, images, music, and videos had been edited in 3 different states (hundreds if you include the Flickr community) and was ready to be published in a venue where the audience could be from many different countries.



This is the type of “transformative” application of technology 21st century classrooms are filled with and that Grappling’s spectrum speaks of. It makes me smile to think of all the teachers who have moved beyond focusing on a checklist of technology skills; it makes me smile to think of the teachers who have moved beyond the “do something; do anything” with technology model; it makes me smile to see examples of teachers who are redesigning learning in transformative ways that would not have been possible without today’s technology.

The fact that Google Teacher Academy designed an application process that goes beyond ‘written applications read by a panel’ and included a product with a real audience models using technology in transformative ways.

Thank you to Google for giving hundreds of educators an opportunity to step back from our end of the year routines and feel the excitement of reflecting, creating, producing for a real audience. Thank you to all the teachers whose experience, passion, insight and creativity matters to the audience that watch your one minute videos on motivation, learning, and innovation. I invite readers to share stories stories and links of examples where audience matters to you and your students.

Google Gears Up as a Digital Equity Strategy

Every once in a while the universe throws you into a situation that challenges you to take a closer look at how well you understand the reality of those you advocate for. As an advocate for digital equity, I pride myself in promoting strategies that help bridge the digital divide. So there was a certain degree of irony to the fact that I have found myself in a situation with no Internet access for the summer.

Living in rural Vermont, where many communities have no high speed Internet access or cell service, I've always been sensitive to the challenges of students and teachers whose only Internet access is dial-up and even more sensitive to those for whom a computer or the monthly fees of having Internet access are cost prohibitive. Yet I was still surprised at the adjustments I needed to make at my new summer place at a campground without Internet access. A friend from my Personal Learning Network recently gasp at the fact that my last Twitter update was 18 days ago, and suggest that I change my username from 'techsavvygirl” to “she formerly known as techsavvygirl”. I'm grateful that he agreed to make an exception to his personal Twitter rule -- “drop followers who fail to update after two days.”

Ah, but alas, the “Internet withdrawal” symptoms made me sit up and take notice of one of Google's newest additions – Google Docs Offline made possible by Google Gears. Google Gears is an open source browser extension that allows you you to view and edit your Google documents offline, without an Internet connection. Well, maybe not 'all' of them. It allows you to view and edit word processing documents and to view (not edit) spreadsheets and presentations offline using Google Docs. Google Gears is now part of my summer 'survival' kit and has earned a place in my list of digital equity strategies.

Since our school has adopted the use of Google documents as a digital equity strategy and implemented Google Apps for your Domain (Educational Projects), many students have been able to continue working on their assignments outside the school day. There is a big equity gap between students who type 80 wpm and those who type 15 wpm when giving kids computer lab time to complete an assignment. Unfortunately the latter, is also usually the student who does not have a computer and high speed access at home. Our students who needed more thinking time or typing time were now able to finish the assignment offsite. Even those without Internet access at home, claimed that Google docs helped them access their schoolwork at the library or a friend's house.

But suddenly some of our teachers were finding themselves in the midst of their own digital divide problem. Students started eagerly sharing their documents with teachers or submitting them electronically using the Share feature of Google Docs. This proved challenging for teachers with only dial-up access available. I wasn't sure I could do more than empathize, until I discovered Google Gears.

Now I show them how to access their Google Docs offline. Clicking on the “Offline” link on Google Docs toolbar will result in a prompt to install Google Gears and give it access to your computer. (Make sure you don't do this on a 'shared” computer.) Then the next time you log into your Google Docs account, check out the "work off line" tab. You will be prompted to allow Google Gears to work with Google Docs off line. The documents will be stored and made available to you on your computer, even when it cannot access the Internet by typing http://docs.google.com into your browser or by clicking on the desktop shortcut that is downloaded during the installation process.

I not only used Google Gears to work with my Google Docs, but also synced it to work with my Google Reader. Getting ready to spend the weekend without Internet, I did some preliminary research for a project I was working on by adding the sites to my Google Reader, then made sure to sync my computer with Google Gears before I left. For the rest of the weekend, I was able to access information that would not have been available to me otherwise! Even though Google Gears didn't provide me with “full text” or ability to follow hyperlinks, it certainly gave me access to more digital resources than I would have had otherwise.

Although the list of applications that work with Google Gears is fairly short, those of us with limited access now have a new strategy in our digital equity toolbox. And as much as we would like to believe PC World's prediction “that it won't be that long until we're always online.”, we are thankful to those Web 2.0 products that understand that ubiquitous online access is not everyone's reality.

Shopping for A Wiki Tool?

When educators ask me what tool I would recommend as an entry point to using Web 2.0 in education, I usually suggest “wikis” as a quick way to get started. WikiWiki is the Hawaiian term for “quick” and you can’t get much quicker than a wiki when trying to publish content to the world wide web.

For the web publishing consumer who desires “flexible design elements” with the ability to create a stunning and unique “look and feel” for their web content, a wiki is NOT the right tool. But if you are looking for easy and quick when publishing content to the web, you can’t get much more “wikiwiki” or “quick” than a wiki.
(Photo Credit)

In his book, Raw Materials for the Mind: A Teacher's Guide to Digital Literacy, David Warlick, suggest that we "Avoid training teachers to use sophisticated web editing software. Teachers are not web masters... they are communicators. Help them to communicate" (p. 280). Wikis not only help teachers and students to communicate, but to collaborate.

ITM blogger, Mark Wagner’s post about wikis and CUE article, "Why Wiki?" provide a great introduction to the world of wikis, as does his K-12 online conference session “Wiki While You Work”. Commoncraft’s reputation for short-easy to understand videos, offers another ‘quick’ introduction to help beginners understand wiki’s.

But even within the “quick and easy” world of wikis, more and more new features are being offered to cater to the needs of various type of consumers – including the educator. The features are so many that sites such as

http://www.wikimatrix.org/ have emerged to help you compare the features of over 100 wiki tools. Although such a matrix, can certainly help you understand the scope of features available with different tools, I believe that James Suroweiki and Malcolm Gladwell would agree that the best way to find out the ‘best wiki tool” for educators, is to ask other educators. I invite Infinite Thinking Readers to share their wiki experience in two areas. (1) What wiki features best meet the needs of educators and which wiki tools contain those features and (2) What are some examples of “wikis” used in exemplary ways in education.

I’ll start the conversation by highlighting two features that I feel are key to helping teachers get started with using wikis in their classrooms: 1) the cost of ‘free’ 2) simplicity.

If advertisements in exchange for “free” are keeping you away, check out sites like Wikispaces PBwiki, and WetPaint which offer educators “ad-free” wikis. Since 2006, the folks at wikispaces have been offering their Plus Plan (which usually sells for $50 a year) free to K-12 educators. This plan removes usage limits and advertisements for your educational wikis. It even allows you to set the wiki to private mode (where only “space members” can view and edit pages). To enroll in this program you must certify that your wiki space will be used for k12 education by signing up at http://www.wikispaces.com/site/for/teachers

I usually recommend Wikispaces for teachers just starting out using wiki’s because it is one of the simplest sites to manage. It may have less ‘features’ than other wiki tools, but sometimes LESS is MORE, when you are looking for a simple easy way to get started. Beginning teachers don’t miss “extra” seldom used features and welcome the simplicity. The one feature that I did miss is the ability to change font color – until last week. Thank you, to Adam Frey, and the folks at Wikispaces for adding this feature.
http://blog.wikispaces.com/2008/03/bringing-color-to-your-wiki.html.

Despite its simple, easy to use, interface, Wikispaces has included extra features that many educators will might find very useful as their use of wikis increases. Check out the “discussion” , “history”, and the “notify” me tab. The discussion tab allows users to communicate about a page without having to actually edit the page For example, a student can post new poetry on their page, and others can offer “comments” in the discussion area. The history tab allows you to ‘revert’ back to previous version of your wiki page, which is comforting in case of “accidentally” or “intentional” undesired changes. It also has a “compare” feature which makes for a great formative assessment tool for teachers looking to measure change over time in a student product. Finally the “notify me” tab is a great way for an educator to keep track of when someone makes changes to your wiki. This can be done with email notification or through an RSS feed. This will save an educator time, by giving him/her updates when their students or colleagues update their pages.

Even though the simplicity of wiki’s make them a very accessible tool to use in the classroom, the real key to using this collaboration tool lies in how these tools are used. Check out collections such as http://educationalwikis.wikispaces.com/ or educators.pbwiki.com/Best%20practices%20and%20examples to learn more ways to use wikis in education and to see hundreds of examples of education related wikis.

Other wiki tools I plan to cover in upcoming post because of their responsiveness to the needs of education are PBwiki, WetPaint and SeedWiki. Won't you help me, by sharing your favorite features of these wiki tools: What features you look for in a wiki tool and how has thus feature increases your effectiveness as a educator?

Promoting Digital Equity with Web 2.0 and Open Source

Open Source and Web 2.0 - a two prong approach to digital equity!

Last January, I made a resolution to continue my focus on digital equity. As a person who sees opportunity everywhere I turn, I also try to pay attention to those who don't have access to the the same opportunity.

Although providing access to cool digital tools “at school” is one step to bridging the digital divide; teaching students how to access digital tools when they are OUTSIDE of school is yet another digital equity strategy. One way to do this is to teach them to use Web 2.0 tools that they will be able to access on a public computers and let them know which libraries, community centers, or other organizations provide high speed Internet access to them outside of school. To learn more about using Web 2.0 tools, check out past Infinite Thinking post, or Web 2.0 directories. Consider joining Wendy Drexler and Anna Baralt's TechWeb2 project and contribute to Web 2.0 evaluations by teachers for classroom use.


Web 2.0 not only brings us access to a wealth of learning materials including audio, images, video and other interactive media (often for free) through services like I-Tunes, Flicker, YouTube, and Voice Thread, it also brings us access to tools for increasing productivity, encouraging collaboration, and expressing creativity by offering Software as Service over the Web. Instead of having to choose which piece of software they can afford to purchase with their limited financial resources--

• productivity software for word processing, spreadsheets, or presentations OR
  
• an image manipulation program OR
  
• visual organizer,
  
  students and teachers can now access a variety of tools over the Web (often for free) . Using Google Docs or Zoho as a productivity suite, Flauntr or Picnik as an image editor, Mindomo or Gliffy as a graphic organizer increases access to a rich variety of free digital tools. Using these tools in schools contributes to digital equity by introducing students to tools that they can also access from home or from a public computer. Photo Credit

But let's face it --some of our students live in areas where high speed Internet is not available; others live in households where it is cost prohibitive.

Another way to promote digital equity is to introduce students to free or open source software they can install on their home computer (even if they don't have high speed Internet). While it may be possible for a students to gain access to a donated or low cost computer for their home; the cost of commercial software or high speed Internet is often still out of reach. By including free and open source software in your school's digital toolbox, you promote digital equity in two ways. Not only can you burn a copy of the software on a CD for students to take home, but you also provide them with the skills to use that software when they get home. One day last year, I occurred to me that offering a student "free software" to take home, while we only used commercial products at school, sent a message that the software I gave them was substandard and might contribute to their own feeling of worth. When I started modeling use of opensource software by building assignments around it, I added value to the 'free disk" I sent home. The students felt it was worthy to be used and they KNEW how to use it.

Download the Free Software for Schools catalog at National Center for Open Source in Education or check out sites like http://www.opensourcewindows.org/ for Windows specific versions of open source software.

	Commercial Product	Web based	Open Source or Free
Benefits to Promoting Digital Equity	Lots of other folks have it, so more support is available from other users and company Compatible file types to more people.	Uually Free . Students can access the tool anywhere they can access a computer (libraries, teen centers, home) No software to install	Usually FREE You can download a free copy or someone can give you a free copy of the software if you don't have Internet
Challenges to Digital Equity	Might be cost prohibitive. File type might not be compatible and require others to purchase same software.	Might not have high speed Intenet Access Might require a logon or have age restrictions. Might be filtered in public spaces; Might have advertisements. Sometimes free version does not contain all features.	You have to “install it” on your computer and this might feel intimidating. Some files might not be compatible or might require advanced learning to understand file compatibility.

I'm not advocating that we stop using commercial products such as Microsoft Office, Inspiration, or Photoshop when they are the right tool for the job. But I'm advocating that we include a diverse set of tools in our student's digital toolbox (both the tools and the know how to use these tools). Not only does this approach expand their toolset and access to digital tools outside of school, but it also takes away the stigma of feeling that a free tool is less worthy (therefore they are less worthy). It also has the added benefit of providing the much needed 21st century skill of “transferring” the understanding of a concept from one medium to another! Knowing which icon to click to double space is not as valuable a skill as knowing how to use HELP to accomplish a tasks.

Lately, I have found myself noticing situations where we stand behind a word phrase like “equity and excellence for all” as long as we don't have to give up anything. I was guilty of it, too; even after I had installed Open Office on my compuer, I found myself using Microsoft Office because it's always been on my computer; I knew it better; and it came with clipart and templates. It wasn't until I made a vow to click on Open Office first that I discovered solutions like the 20,000 image “WPCLIPART Library available for Open Office or became proficient at changing my SAVE as Preference to always save in compatible file format.

How do we start an awareness of these tools or a commitment to promoting digital equity in our schools? St. Albans City School has given this job to its junior high students. “Student Ambassadors for Free Software” work towards promoting digital equity by coming up with strategies to promote free software solution to the community; to their peers; and to their teachers. Activities range from training sessions; demonstrations at community events, testing and reviewing free software, creating and distributing free software CD's, and even helping teachers modify their lessons to use free software. The student team has also turned donated computers from industry into learning stations by adding free software or changing the operating system to Edubuntu where appropriate. They have started to create a Digital ToolBox Charts that can promote digital equity. Perhaps you can add your own recommendations.

Application	Commercial Product	Web based	Open Source or Free
Productivity suite	Microsoft Office	Google Docs Zoho	Open Office plus free Clip Art
Learn to Keyboard	Type to Learn	Learn2type.com and more	Type Faster
Editing Digital Images	Photoshop Elements	Flauntr or Picnik	Gimp, Picassa, Paint.Net
Graphic Organizer	Inspiration	Mindomo or Gliffy	Free Mind CMAP

What would it take to create a culture that promotes digital equity at your school? Perhaps providing a diverse toolbox for learning with technology that includes commercial products, web based tools and open source software where everyone has access to digital tools (whether be at school, home or a public computer).

As we move forward in the digital age, let's not lose sight of those that might be getting left behind. The memory of what “lack of access” to a resource feels like fades quickly once you join the ranks of those with full access.

EduCon Conversations were NOT about Technology

Friday morning I found myself standing in a starkly naked room filled with empty desk and chairs that replicated those that the Founding Fathers of the United States Government sat in as they deliberated the future of their new nation. Two centuries ago, a brilliant group of passionate men came together to craft a document that would lay the foundation for a vision that would shape the future of their country. These men were so committed to crafting a document that reflected the best of their deep thinking and strong convictions that they gave up on the tasks of ‘tweaking’ the Articles of Confederations and created a brand new document – The U.S. Constitution .

As I listened to the Independence Hall guide, I thought back to the recent conversation responding to Will Richardson’s Some New Year's Dreaming post, debating whether whether a change in education could come about by evolution, or whether revolution was the only hope for transforming our schools.

These thoughts were the perfect launching point for what was to be 2 and ½ days of conversation amongst some of the most passionate, caring, and thoughtful educators I’ve had the privilege of meeting. Two days of conversations about the possibilities for education when the right combination of passion and pedagogy are supported by transformative tools left participants of EduCon 2.0 emotional and inspired as they returned home to continue the work of transforming our 21st century schools.

Emotions, reflection, call to action, manifesto’s, and yes… more conversation continue far beyond the weekend, and extend way beyond the walls of the Science Leadership Academy, where Chris Lehman (visionary Principal and leader extradonaire) and his learning network hosted this fabulous Un-Conference. If every participant finds themselves able to channel the emotion, energy, and inspiration from Educon 2.0 to "just win more than three" colleagues as Kevin Jarret's Educon reflection suggest … than the weekend was truly an agent of change.

But the change agents, were not just those who attended, it was also each of you who participated in the conversation remotely through U-Stream modeling the power of transformative tools in learning. As many of us stated over and over again this weekend – it was not about the technology. The transformative part was not that we were using U-Streams to record or wikis to post our notes. The transformative part was that the sessions were set up as CONVERSATIONS not presentations. And these conversations would not have been the same without the hundreds of remote participants contributing through the backchannel chat; nor would they have been the same without the collaborative features of wikis to dynamically share knowledge throughout the weekend and beyond; nor would they have been the same had they not been extension of many prior conversations happening throughout the edublogosphere.

For those of you who missed the event – it’s not too late to participate. The hundreds of pictures already on Flickr will provide visual cues to the energy level that was present. My favorite was the photos of the MAC Lab noticeably void of computers adjacent to the photos displaying the white Apple branded laptops visible throughout the school, in the hands the students whose job it was to care for and use the tools in the service of learning. But more symbolic to me than the laptops in those photos were the white lab coats worn by the students at SLA – the uniform of inquiry.

While some of these bright and inquiring minds brought the voices of students in the conversations, others offered a wonderful service to the community unable to attend by operating video cameras that made the conversations available through U-Stream. Each of the wiki pages that accompanied the 6 strands of “conversations”, not only contain notes, digital handouts, and links, but also contain an archived U-Stream video when possible. And for those who prefer their conversatoins in a 3-D space, check out the space Konrad Glogowski created for Virtual EduCon in Second Life. The richness doesn’t stop there; hundreds of blog posts tagged EduCon provide insights, reflections, and opportunities for the conversations to continue. So whether you were in Philadelphia this weekend, or elsewhere, transformative technologies coupled with thoughtful, pedagogically sound format for a “conference “ -- or “unconference” has provided you with an entry point into the conversation. May you join the conversation! Thank you to all who contributed to Educon and the learning that is extending from it.

Photo Credits: http://www.flickr.com/photos/teachandlearn/

Fostering the Spirit of Innovation

I’ve been “green” with envy as some of my colleagues who ordered an XO laptop unpack their little GREEN machines. Mine has not arrived yet. But as I listen to their first impression comments , I’m reminded of the VISION of the OLPC (one laptop per child) project and that the nature of children to explore, express, and learn were key in the design of this tool that would find itself in the hands of children all over the world. I hear questions like:

"Why doesn’t it come with a spreadsheet?”
“Where’s the productivity suite?”
“Would this be a tool I could use in my classroom with my students?”

Suddenly I realize that we are thinking like teachers. This tool was not designed for us. According to the OLPC website, the XO laptop was intended to give children

“…tools for writing, composing, simulating, expressing, constructing, designing, modeling, imagining, creating, critiquing, debugging, and collaborating."

“The laptop takes learners beyond instruction. They are actively engaged in a process of learning through doing. …. “

“The laptop helps children build upon their active interest in the world around them to engage with powerful ideas”

The XO laptop was even designed to be taken apart and repaired by kids. No, This Does No Void the Warranty! ;-)

I’m not going to predict the impact of the OLPC, nor argue its merit. But this event certainly has me revisiting thoughts about the impact on society of not providing children with enough opportunity to “explore, express, and learn” . A re we continuing towards the “perfect storm” that Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson warns of if we ignore the “quiet crisis” of not growing the next generation of scientist and engineers?

While educators have become tuned into the fact that more and more kids are coming to school without book sense and are developing researched based programs to address this, a kindergarten teacher in Tennessee worries “about the number of kids coming into my classroom who don’t know how scissors work.” Educational consultant, Jim Moulton, ponders the impact of this and asserts that

“the mastery of scissors is even one of the early steps on the road to Advanced Placement physics or chemistry. I believe that the kinesthetic experience they provide around equilibrium, experience gained in struggling to master this simple tool so as to be able to cut construction paper smoothly, lays a foundation for future complex conceptual understandings.”

It was exactly this type of need that lead Gever Tuller to create the Tinkering School. Despite the provocative title of his Ted Talk “Five Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do”, the message is really about allowing kids the freedom to explore to make them stronger, smarter, and safer.

Children receiving the XO laptops have not lacked the opportunity to explore the principles of physics in their natural environments, but now have access to a new tool equipped to support their desire to learn, express, and explore. But what about places, where children currently have access to such tools? Do they have access to the opportunity to use these tools the way the XO laptops will be able to be used? Or will the access to these tools continue to be stifled by “teacher think” and “school restrictions” or “lawsuit fears” ?

Having spent many of my teaching years reconciling the need to report on a ‘checklist’ of foundational skills that every student must know about a subject area with my project based learning approach, I understand the struggle. Accountability that is based on reporting what we can measure, doesn’t leave much time for the type exploring, expressing and learning that grows innovators and scientists.

But as I watch the excitement in my “grown up” friends as they explore their little green machines, I have a renewed interest in finding ways to bring back learning by exploration to today’s students. And I’m not talking about waiting for the availability of the XO laptops in your country; I’m talking about reaching for tools that are currently available that will promote this type of learning.

• Let’s dig out our old version of Incredible Machine or look for new games like Crayon Physics that stimulate innovative thinking in our students.
  



• Let’s get rid of the obstacles that prevent tools like the many WEB 2.0 applications from being fully deployed in schools. Ning, Wikispaces, and Voice Threads are leading the way by adding features that make it possible to safely deploy these excting tools thus supporting this type of learning in schools.
  



• Let’s share the resouces we find with our fellow educators and support a network of educators who are committed to give this generation of “incredible thinking machines” -- our students—the resources, the permission, the encouragement, the guidance they need to use technology in the spirit of innovation.

I invite readers to share some of the games, tools, web 2.0 apps, etc. that they feel have this type of potential. I’d love to do a followup post filled with these resources.

Inspired and Engaged by Authentic Learning in 2007

With the countdown towards the end of 2007, comes a time of reflection for many. Some include those reflections in their annual holiday greeting cards; others are more private. Time Magazine reflects on the year in many ways including announcing its Person of the Year. This announcement started me reflecting on the folks that have influenced my life (personal and professional). One remarkable educator came to mind as someone who inspired me and many young minds during 2007—Nilah Cote (a fifth grade teacher at Sheldon Elementary School).

Nilah Cote could easily be counting down the days ‘til retirement… but instead she is counting the days until a new projector comes into her classroom. “I don’t have much time you know”.. she reminds her Tech Director that she is retiring in a few months. Nilah is frantically trying to squeeze in all the teaching and learning she can in her last days as a public school educator. With 38 years in the classroom, Nilah has not grown tired of looking for opportunities to engage kids in authentic learning.

Early this spring, Nilah asked me for help picking out tools she would need to podcast with her students. She had never tried podcasting, but had a vision of students interviewing community members about the impact of the 88 acres of forest that surrounds their school and community and believed that her students could become stewards of their forest.

The unit (Stewards of the Sheldon Community Forest) started with 45 seconds of silence, when long-time journalist, Nat Worman, explained to a group of fifth graders that ‘listening’ was the key to a good interview. Prepared with the tools and skills needed to conduct a good interview, the students traveled to different parts of the forest to learn from their community. “This is like an adventure..” they noticed and dubbed themselves the Woodland Investigators. These fifth grade students are learning that editing an interview also requires lots of listening as they use the free program, Audacity, to prepare their interviews for publication. And when the first student to publish her interview using the free service PodcastPeople shared her first podcast, the quiet resumed. You could have heard a pin drop, when the sound of the interview echoed in the room and pride beamed across her face.

Authentic learning brings joy, excitement, successes, and sometimes frustrating setbacks – as when the shared folder containing all their interviews disappeared from the network. But knowing that a real audience awaits their product, students are busy remixing the audio files (which thankfully still existed on their voice recorders). Ms. Cote has never let mishaps discourage her from being a pioneering educator who desires to truly engage students in real learning. Even though my retirement is a long ways away, I so hope that I will be like Nilah Cote days before my retirement as an educator.

I can’t wait to hear more interviews from her students, and read the forest management plan her students are working on using a class wiki. To hear Nilah tell her story of the Stewards of the Sheldon Community Forest project, listen to this short interview conducted using Gabcast – another free tool that allows you to create podcast from phone interviews.

Why not use the comment section of this post to share (or tribute) someone in your educational network as a powerful influence to students or fellow educators during 2007. The editors of Time are quick to point out that their pick for Person of the Year is not a contest, it is not an endorsement; nor is it necessarily an award –it does, however, identify someone has had a strong influence on the world around them. Surely many educators come to mind. Why not tribute them here.. don’t forget to include links (if appropriate).

Google Apps for Your Domain in Education

“Google the Jelly Rolls;
Become a Jelly Rolls expert;
Connect to other Jelly Rolls fans;
Create your own content and contribute to the global knowledge base about the Jelly Rolls;
Plot the band's tour on Google Earth and create links on theKMZ file to your blog posts on the shows…”

instructs Google certified teacher, Kyle Brumbaugh, as he sets the scene for students to begin their own 21st century learning experience using powerful Web 2.0 tools. The Jelly Rolls are a fictional punk rock group, that Kyle uses to help students visualize the strategies and skills they will need to participate in Global Communication- a program aimed at making students better consumers of the content they have access to in an online world.

The interdisciplinary program includes Social Studies, Language Arts, and Health working on content standards using topics from Globalization to Digital Citizenship. The program provides an excellent model of integrating technology to produce a learning experience that would NOT have been possible without today’s technology. It also models a way to meet several of the new ISTE National Education Technology Standards for Students

Capuchino High School has adopted Google Apps for your Domain as one of several tools used to implement the Global Communications program. The program uses tools that expand the circle of influence these students have outside of their local community by helping them connect and collaborate. Google Apps for your Domain provides the school with several powerful Google tools, while allowing them to keep their own school domain name: http://www.capuchinohighschool.org/ and allowing them to keep control of the student accounts using a web based control panel.
According to Kyle,

“The kids have access to the Gmail function, with chat turned off, docs
and spreadsheets and their own homepage (iGoogle) that they can customize.
Wealso allow them to use the calendar function. The students also use this
e-mail account to create their 'blogger' accounts. Every kid in the Global
Communications classes has their own blog. The next step in the process
for some of them is to start to use reader to subscribe to feeds. “

On the opposite coast, a Vermont school district has taken a different approach to adopting Google Apps for your Domain. Rutland South Supervisory Union started with administration, then teachers, and are now piloting student accounts. Looking to move away from maintaining his own in house post office, network administrator, Jayson Casavant examined outsourcing. The Google Apps for Your Domain free education access resulted in a substantial savings per year for his district. He set up trial accounts for each of the admin team then sent several weekly "google tips" for them to experiment with. Prior to the roll out to staff, he built an extensive addition to our web site offering FAQ's, tips and instructions for the staff.
Jayson feels the change has been well received by his district...

“Having a web based solution has offered our staff more flexibility than our
previous client based solution. Docs and spreadsheets is widely used as are
email and calendaring. We have currently rolled out roughly 100 students as a
beta test and plan to offer email to more going forward. All in all we have
found Google apps to be user friendly and easily scalable to our needs.

Meanwhile, a group of students from Burr and Burr Academy's Research Lab are hoping their district will follow suit. Adam Provost's students have created a proposal for their school to adopt Google Apps for Your Domain. The solution is currently pending, but Adam and his students are hopeful that the school will consider their proposal. They feel that

“Google for Domains makes a wild amout of sense. Have a company offer a
school free email, a management console, collaboration tools, integrated web
2.0 services and spam filtering...for free ? Using your own domain name ?
This program saves schools money and also all configuration and maintenance
time. Reclaiming that money and personnel time alone... Good problems to
have in my book. Most schools are barely scratching the surface educating
kids for the present day. Embracing opportunities and technologies like this
in secondary education, discussing and modeling these technologies instead of
limiting their experiences will bring us closer to educating students for
the future - where they'll be working. “

Best of luck to these pioneering students and other schools as they venture into Google Apps for your Domain as vehicle to provide tools that transform the way we teach and learn.

More Tips for New Classroom 2.0 Teachers

My last post provided practical tips to help teachers manage the integration of Web 2.0 tools in the classroom. An invitation to pioneering educators to share their strategies generated a wealth of resources for teachers aspiring to use these tools. Thank you Ms. Mercer for referring us to Scott McCleod’s Moving Forward Blog. Greg’s 10 steps to help teachers to use these tools themselves before asking kids and Clay’s 10 must have Web 2.0 accounts are a great complement to Andrew’s Web 2.0 Tutorial for teachers and Barbara’s prolific perspective as a school administrator on her Dare to Dream Blog.

I’d like to offer a very special thanks to Candace for turning me on to Teachers First –which not only offers some very practical tips for first time teachers but also maintains an incredible database and review of web 2.0 tools specifically aimed towards teachers who “want to try tools but cannot envision the how and why.” This one goes right at the TOP of my recommendations for all teachers starting their journey towards School 2.0.

Photo Credit

As promised, here are just a couple more tips that I’ve found to help you proceed on this journey.

1. Read the terms of service of the tools you would like to use. These terms are often difficult to sift through, and I’ve been guilty of reading them too quickly. When in doubt contact the company and ask for clarification. (Example: In some cases, where it is not acceptable for a 12 year old to create their own account on a system, it might be acceptable for them to use a teacher’s account within a supervised classroom environment.)
   


2. Take some time to get familiar with the legal parameters that schools must comply with. Make sure someone in your school truly understands CIPA, COPPA, and FERPA and that the conversations that guide the development of policies, practices, and procedures in schools relating to Internet use is not based on fear and misconception. Much needed teacher voice is sometime lacking in this process. After reading this FAQ from SafeWiredSchools and similar information sources, I became more confident in my ability to make responsible professional decisions about classroom management strategies that used Web 2.0 tools.
   
   

   CIPA is the Children's Internet Protection Act, and was passed in late 2000. It requires schools and libraries receiving certain types of federal funding to filter or block Internet access to "visual depictions" of material that is obscene, child pornography, and when minors are using the computer, material that is harmful to minors.

   COPPA is the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, and was passed in 1998. It requires commercial Web sites oriented to minors to get parental permission to collect personally identifiable information from children under age 13.

   
   Your school’s legal advisor should be able to clarify ambiguity, and offer support and protection for educators seeking to use web 2.0 tools.
   
   


3. Create a classroom set of logins for your favorite Web 2.0 tool that you as a teacher keeps control of for your class. Google Certified Teacher, Kyle Brumbaugh, sent me this video tutorial he found in Google Certified Teacher Forums that allows teachers to easily create classrooms sets of logins without creating new emails for most Web 2.0 tools. However, I can't see a way to avoid creating a new gmail account to access Google docs for a each member of my class. Yet, this method did allow me to create those student accounts quickly using my teacher gmail account as the "required" alternate email account. As a teacher, I consider myself to be the one entering into a partnership with Google (not the students) and I would only do this with a group of students where I was willing to accept the responsibility for supervising my students' behavior. I would also take the additional precaution of setting up a forward rule on each student gmail account, so that all mail gets forwarded to my teacher account. You can then use the "filter" method suggested in the video tutorial to keep this mail organized.
   

A big thanks to readers who came forth with such wonderful resources to encourage our colleagues who are almost ready to take the plunge. Keep those ideas coming; readers like J. Allen are particularly looking for those strategies that work for younger children.

---

P.S. In an upcoming post, I’d like to feature educators who have found Google Apps for Your Domain, the key to classroom management in a Web 2.0 world. Drop me a comment if this tool has worked well for you.

Tips for New Classroom 2.0 Teachers

Every veteran teacher knows that the first 6 weeks of school are the key to success for the rest of the year. The tone you set in your classroom and the practice of routines you establish with your students are key to creating a successful learning environment. Yet, despite 6 weeks of ‘practice”, classroom activities don’t always go as planned and when unplanned chaos takes over, teachers regroup, come at it from another approach, and often seek the advice of their peers. Thank goodness for veteran teachers who are willing to share tips like those found at Middle Web’s First Days of Middle School.

These wonderful ideas have been built from years of “experience” in Classroom 1.0. The educational technology world is filled with advocates for Classroom 2.0 who share the opportunities of Web 2.0. But some are starting to ask questions like “Why are more teachers not flocking to use Web 2.0 tools?”

Maybe, what teachers need is some really concrete tips and strategies on ‘management’ in a Classroom 2.0 learning space. Pioneers of Classroom 2.0 are ‘experimenting’ themselves; not all these experiments work exactly as planned. We need to remember that not all teachers or administrators work in an environment where they feel safe or supported to be pioneers in such a public arena as Web 2.0. This is much different than trying something new inside your own building or classroom. Fears of legal repercussions fuel environments that are not supportive of implementing a Classroom 2.0 model.

Perhaps those of us who do work in supportive environments should not only share our stories in terms of the opportunities that Web 2.0 bring us as a learning community, but we should start to put together a page filled with tips and strategies that teachers interested in using Web 2.0 tools could use to get started. These tips would also benefit IT Staff and School Administrators who would be more supportive of Web 2.0 tools in education if they could see a collective inventory of concrete classroom management (or risk management) strategies.

So in that spirit I’m going to start with three Classroom 2.0 management tips and invite other pioneering educators to comment with their own advice. Remember that what might be obvious to a seasoned Web 2.0 teacher might not always be obvious to a “first year” newbie interested in creating a Classroom 2.0 learning environment.

• Create more than one email account using web based services like Gmail or Yahoo Mail that you can use to sign up for web 2.0 tools.
  


• Start by limiting your use of Web 2.0 tools to inside your classroom until you feel comfortable that your students understand the rules for using these tools. Just like students need “practice” to learn what it looks like and sounds like to take a trip to the library, they will need your guidance to visit a virtual location such as a class wiki. And don’t give up if one of your students steps out of line, anymore than you would give up going to the library.
  


• If your students are under 13, consider signing in using one of your alternate web based email to register for a “classroom” account to a Web 2.0. tool. You can then sign in “yourself” as the teacher to a tool (like a WIKI) that you want your students to contribute to OR you can give them the username and ‘password of the day’ to sign in and make it part of your daily routine to change the password at the end of the school day. Many Web 2.0 tools stay logged in once you have signed in, so you might only have to do this once a day.

I’ll post more ideas in my next post but for now let’s hear your tips

(Photo Credit)

Tech Savvy Learning Communities (a la Moodle)

"The daily working life of most teachers is one of unrelieved time pressure and isolation; they work, largely alone, in a classroom of 25-30 children or adolescents for hours every day." Prisoners of Time. National Education Commission on Time and Learning. April 1994

Since this publication was released over a decade ago, many technological tools have emerged that have potential to relieve the isolation and combat the lack of mutual time to plan, converse, and reflect that teachers so desperately need. In her article "Professional Development Through Learning Communities", Kathleen Fulton talks about how the same forces that drive us to use technology to create learning communities for students, "offer the opportunity for new models for the professional growth of teachers. Learning communities share a way of knowing, a set of practices, and shared value of the knowledge that comes from these procedures. These learning communities, with expanded human and technological resources, bring together students, teachers, and community members in directing the course of education in new ways."

Tools like Tapped In, Second Life, Google Groups, and Ning communities such as Classroom 2.0 provide innovative ways to create virtual places for professional development, collegiality, collaboration, and social interaction. But one tool, that may be overlooked to help teachers form learning communities is Moodle

Moodle is most known as an Open Source LMS (Learning Management System) (similar to Blackboard and WebCT). Many schools are using it to either offer online or hybrid courses or as a digital space for a face to face class where students can use Moodle to submit homework, view online resources, or have online conversations with their classmates. Moodle also has modules that allow students to take quizes, surveys, or participate in a classroom wiki.

My belief that the best technology professional development is embedded in the process of participation in authentic meaningful tasks for teachers and not as a separate activity lead me to create an opportunity for teachers to gain skills and confidence using a tool like Moodle by turning it into a technology tool that could be used to help our teachers save time, increase collaboration, and relieve isolation. If you have access to Moodle, try setting up a Moodle "course" in topic mode (instead of the weekly mode) and hiding the modules that say "grade" and "assignment". Give it a cool name that identifies it as a "teachers space" for your school, then:

1. Add a forum called "Teachers Room" for general dialogue between staff.


2. Create another forum called Staff Meetings. Post all agendas and minutes as a discussion topic to this Forum and encourage teachers to continue the staff meeting dialogues online.
   
3. Add all Staff Meetings, Inservice, Early Releases dates, or other important dates to the "course" calendar.


4. Add handy staff resources such as PDF copies of parent or staff handbooks and frequently used forms.


5. Create a quick poll to gather staff input about an important topic in your school.

These 5 simple ways to use Moodle with your staff will provide an authentic opportunity for learning to use a 21st century tool, generate ideas, build confience, and start dialogues that encourage teachers to start using a tool like Moodle to build learning communities with their students.

The fact that Moodle can be set up as an Intranet might make some teachers feel more comfortable participating. If you don't have the school resources to set it up on your school server (did I mention it was free?), there are many resonably priced hosting solutions for Moodle such as http://www.siteground.com/ that will do all the legwork for you. Teachers can also reserve free Moodle classroom through Global Classroom, which also includes a free skillbuilder course.

Peter Senge was asked (O'Neil, 1995) what he would do, if he were a principal of
a school, to transform the school into a learning organization. Senge
replied that initially he would find the teachers who were interested in doing
things differently, who have 'some real commitment and passion to do it,' and
get them to talking to each other. Pulling a core group together is a strategy
frequently used for mobilizing and moving people in an organization. ~Dr. Shirely M. Hord

One of the biggest obstacles to doing this in schools is the lack of common time. Why not try one of the many technology tools available to start collaborating online about practical issues, then move into the ongoing visioning process of a real learning community.

Professional Development To Go - A Summer Time Treat

Summertime, and the livin' is easy
Fish are jumpin' and the cotton is high ...Gershwin

For many teachers, summer time is also a time to renew, rejuvenate, and revitalize
But just because technology is on your list of areas where you want to refresh your skills does not mean you have to spend all your time inside on a computer. If you're the type of educator who feels torn between the need to upgrade your technology skills and the need to be enjoy the sunshine, paint the garage, or play in the dirt, then why not take your Professional Development to Go! Grab your IPod or other mp3 player, fill it with podcast that instruct, inform, or inspire you to become a 21st century teacher. (Photo credit)

Here's my recipe for filling your mp3 player with professional development that will have you returning to school invigorated with ideas for using technology to create a true 21st century learning environment in your classroom.

• Create PLAYLISTS
  Download many different type of podcast and organize them into playlists that will provide variety in your listening experience. I recommend starting with a playlist of 21st century thinkers which include Tom Friedman and Dan Pink, then transitioning over to Wes Fryer's Podcast featuring Kevin Honeycutt, whose humorous style puts Friedman and Pink's big ideas into perspective for a classroom teacher, or Steve Hargadon's interview with Tim O'Reilly on Web 2.0 in Education. Make sure to include a Playlist that features practical, concrete lesson ideas, such as those offered in the SmartBoard Lessons Podcast or the Infinite Thinking Video Podcast. How about a playlist that helps educators (and students) get up-to-speed on the latest content in their field such as Science Friday or National Geographic. Perhaps a playlist of podcasts that feature “tech tools” or pedagogical concepts. Summertime is also a good time to locate good audio materials to use as content with your students such as StoryNory or some good models of student produced content such as the video podcast from students at Mabry Middle School or the Room 208 student produced audio podcast.
  
  
• Add a SMALL notebook to your toolkit
  Tote along a small notebook to jot down a few reminders about which podcast might be worth another listen to. Or perhaps create a 'rating' system for each podcast you listen to based on criteria that are important to you. (i.e. humorous, inspiring, practical classroom ideas, big ideas) Use these ratings to create new playlist. (such as 'Top Ten” podcast for 'literacy strategies”). But DON'T get caught up writing notes. Most podcast have shownotes online which often contain key links, key ideas, and sometimes whole transcripts. Make listening fun. Listen for big ideas and inspiration. Use your notebook sparingly. Enjoy!
  
  
• SHARE your Playlist with colleagues
  If lending out your mp3 player is outside your comfort zone, perhaps your school librarian would consider adding an mp3 player filled playlist created by teachers to their collection of resources. If not, why not burn your playlist on CD to share with a friend. Or better yet, why not contribute your recommendations to a playlist wiki.
  
  
• TALK about it
  How about setting up a face to face dialogue night or an online space for you and your colleagues to discuss the inspiring ideas that came to you during your listening experience. Or perhaps you can recommend future listening. Add to the discussion tab of this playlist wiki or create your own. A more feature-ladened space such as Ning can help you connect with other colleagues using common language created during your individual listening experiences (all while doing what you enjoy the most from your 'summertime' to do list). One teacher shared with me that this made the “refinishing her wood floors” project, so much more enjoyable this summer.
  
  
• Expand your Listening Experience
  Don't limit your listening experience to educational podcasting. There's probably a podcast on every topic imaginable. Whether you're into Comedy Central or National Public Radio, try searching the web directly or the thousands of podcasts available through podcast services such as Itunes for a topic that interest you. A quick survey of the ITM bloggers revealed that TED TALKS was amongst our top pick for favorite podcast series.
  
  
  
  

Conference 2.0

I've been attending the National Education Computer Conference for over 10 years, and each year I walk away revitalized, my head swarming with ideas and luggage filled with resources ranging from business cards, handouts, literature, and other conference goodies. This year I noticed educators walking away with one more exciting 'benefit' -- an incredible sense of community that resulted by combining their face to face conference experience with read/write web's community building tools.

Conference 1.0 looked like this: You're sitting next to someone at a workshop. You spend several minutes chatting, learning about each other, and just as you start to engage in a meaty discussion sharing resources, the workshop presenter brings your focus to their exciting content. Trying to squeeze in as much as you can in this day packed with valuable, but limited, opportunity to network, you run off to your next session, remembering that you forgot to get a business card from the person sitting next to you, but thankful that your presenter had not run out of handouts.

At recent NECC's we have been introduced to the tools of the read/write web and have started to use them to build community online. While at this year's NECC, I saw a new level of passion being ignited as educators who have been using these tools met on escalators, in workshop sessions, at the blogger's cafe, or by an exhibitor booth.

Conference 2.0 looks like this: You're sitting next to someone at a workshop. You politely introduce yourself, and recognize the name on their conference badge. You've seen it online along with the works of her students. Within seconds you are in a meaty discussion receiving timely tips about how to replicate the strategies you've already picked up from this teacher's online showcase. Your workshop presenter starts and skips all the “background” information that would build credibility and authority (because it's online at his/her blog) and gets right into the meat of the presentation, touching on the important points, leaving you to explore the minute details on their wiki or blog. Instead of fervently taking notes and hoping they don't run out of handouts, you click on online conference handouts and focus and reflect throughout the whole workshop.

For others, the online communities that lead up to face to face meetings at the conference were more formal. Member of Classroom 2.0, the open source community, second lifers, edubloggers, and even we (ITM bloggers) met face to face for the first time. The sense of community reached a new level by these face to face meetings, and I know that our online experience in the year to come will be richer because of this opportunity. Feeling like I already knew someone because of their contribution to the read/write web; and knowing that I would be able to continue to have insight into the development of their work, ideas, class projects through their read/write web contributions, made my NECC 2007 connections some of the most powerful ones I've ever made at a conference. How did the read/write web impact your conference experience?

That's Mathematics

Part of any good teacher's strategy is motivating students by helping them understand the relevance of what they are learning. While legendary math professor and entertainer, Tom Lehrer could count on his musical talent to describe the value of mathematics, most of us have to come up with more varied engagement strategies. Part of the power of Web 2.0 applications is their ability to engage a participatory audience, thus why not capitalize on elements that make sites like YouTube popular amongst digital natives to increase participation in your classroom.

Creating a video podcast for math class can help your students correct misconceptions, learn the language of math, and clarify thinking about mathematical concepts. To see the refinement in thinking that occurred while these 6th grade students created a series of Math Strategies Podcast, their teacher examined the revision history of the scripts they edited on Google Docs. It was amazing how much ‘self learning’ occurred when students reviewed each newly produced version of their podcast episodes and self-corrected their scripts. The quality of the written process outlined in the final revisions of the scripts was many times higher than if the students had been asked to simply write out their math problem solving strategy. Although these students created each episodes using the “record” feature of a Smartboard, you can also use a variety of Screen Capture software such as the free version of Camstudio. A tablet PC or graphic tablet can also be used to capture inkstrokes making thinking visible. Some document cameras have video capture features, and there’s nothing wrong with using traditional video cameras, digital cameras, or even cell phones to create a video podcast of your mathematic strategies.

These video podcasts were created by St. Albans City School middle school teachers to help parents support their children's homework time by explaining the hows and whys of new math strategies. Uploading them to sites like YouTube, BlipTV, or Google Video allows you to hyperlink to your math podcast or even embed one directly into your own blog, wiki, or website. For those looking for a more controlled environment, consider TeacherTube or New Vista as an option for viewing and uploading video podcast. Even if you’re not ready to jump into producing your own math podcast a simple search for “math” on any of these sites will yield a wealth of videos ranging from academic tutorials to entertaining mathematics comedy to engage your students. (Warning: not all materials in these sites is suitable for educational use requiring some advanced planning on developing strategies that align with your school culture and acceptable use policies)

More data delight

The data delight continued for me this week as I explored more ITM readers’ suggestions for tools that can help students learn data-analysis, probability, and other important mathematics concepts.

Okay, the word ‘delight’ might not work if you’re not a ‘data enthusiast', but maybe you would be if more people followed the advice of Edward Tufte and mastered the skills to visually represent data. Watching Al Gore’s global warming presentation skills or Hans Rosling’s exciting Ted Talk makes it easy to understand why Visual Literacy has been identified as one of the key 21st century skills according to North Central Regional Educational Lab (NCREL) (Photo Credit)

"Visual literacy is the ability to interpret, use, appreciate, and create images and video using both conventional and 21st century media in ways that advance thinking, decision making, communication, and learning" ... NCREL

While I would never want to see the colorful crayons and markers that Ms. Patterson's students use to produce the graphs that line their classroom wall disappear, the next steps for preparing tomorrow’s leaders could be collaborating using online spreadsheets, publishing or embedding their graphs in a blog, wiki, or web page, and chatting from remote locations about their findings. The addition of graphing capabilities to Google spreadsheet provides an accessible tool for even our younger students to develop these 21st century skills.

Students can create an online graph in 3 simple steps.

(1) highlight data and click on the toolbar’s graph icon
(2) fill out a clean, user-friendly screen that even our younger students can understand (type of chart, labels, and whether you are charting columns or rows (both options --yeah!!)
(3) save and voila your graph appears on your spreadsheet.

Most teachers will easily see that the graph can be moved, edited, and saved as a separate image. If you want to share your charts with a global audience, click on PUBLISH tab, then scroll down to More Publishing Options. Selecting HTML as File Format will Generate a URL that you can paste as a hyperlink in emails or on a webpage. However, selecting the HTML to embed in a web page File Format and clicking Generate URL will actually give you some code that you can paste in a webpage, blog, or wiki. Don’t worry if you don't understand this code, just ask any student who has a MYSPACE account and they can show you exactly what to do with this code. Thank you JR for the tips on how to remove gridlines and the folks at Google for discovering that merged cells should be avoided on spreadsheets with published graphs (until this little 'bug' is fixed) as I added a Google chart to the jumping jacks data collected by by the students at St. Albans City School.

Go ahead, give it a try. Add a new twist to some of the classic Candy and Cereal graphing lessons using Web 2.0 tools to help today’s students meet important math standards. Imagine if the 2002 Skittles Project data had been collected and charted with Google Spreadsheet. (Photo Credit)

Thank you to all the ITM readers who shared their favorite tech tools for creating visual representation of data. Besides those I explored in my last post, readers have also suggested advanced tools (like www.data360.org and www.many-eyes.com) ; online productivity suites (like Zoho and ThinkFree); and online spreadsheets (like EditGrid and NumSum and more),

I can’t wait to hear how some of you are redesigning assignments with these tools.

Collaborative Charts and Graphs

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my wish for an easy Web 2.0 solution to collaboratively create and share charts and graphs online. Within the next few weeks, ITM readers were quick to offer their favorite tools and Google did indeed launch the much anticipated Chart Feature to Google Spreadsheet. I enjoyed exploring the solutions you offered in your comments and hope that sharing that process might provide educators time-saving insight and ideas for applying the unique features of each of these applications to different educational goals.

Mr. Freer suggested http://instacalc.com/. You can't get much simpler than Instacalc. It's very easy to embed the calculator or a link with some preliminary formulas and data as a part of a challenge problem posted to a web page, wiki, or blog in any subject area. Engage your students during a science or social studies class by providing a critical thinking prompt and InstaCalc containing data pertinent to your lesson. The natural and readable number and equation language makes this calculator tool very appropriate to use with younger students who might find cell references somewhat abstract. Since no login is necessary to use InstaCalc, elementary teachers can easily use it with students under 13. Unfortunately, there is no graphic interface for creating graphs and charts. And even though, the coding for adding a graph of your calculation data is not difficult to learn, it would not be my choice for teaching younger children how to create charts and graphs. InstaCalc is a good tech integration tool that preserves the focus on the lesson, because it has a simple learning curve and a short setup time. The Instacalc Blog offers many tips for using this powerful tech tool. Give this shared calculator a try and figure out What the radius of a circle should be for the volume and area of a sphere to be equal?

To include simple graphs and charts as part of your lessons , you might consider ChartAll.com which can also be used without setting up a login. Logging in allows you to save your graphs. Browsing the charts, I found several classrooms making use of this simple tool to analyze basic data such as Distribution of Blood Types Within a Classroom. In his comment, Dave from ChartAll.com suggest selecting the "Data from a Google spreadsheet" and then typing the key of a "published" spreadsheet. I loved this idea, but would suggest having plenty of time to learn the limitations and the strengths of this tool if you plan to use it with Google Spreadsheets. After several attempts to graph a 7^th grade class project comparing the number of jumping jacks students could perform over time for a Math unit on Variables and Patterns, I concluded that our Google Spreadsheet data would have to be changed from rows to columns to produce useful results with this tool. However, ChartAll's linking and embedding features were quite easy to use and provided a useful tool for creating and sharing basic graphs on line.

For more complex data analysis, try charting the data using Swivel.com which was suggested by ITM reader Kathleen. Our class Jumping Jack data collected using Google spreadsheet imported easily into Swivel, and the site provided us with many ways to look at our data, including disaggregations and summaries we had not considered. If you're a real data geek, Swivel will keep you busy for hours with its wealth of features. Again, we discovered that the graph we were looking for required graphing rows, and Swivel seems limited to charting columns, so our results weren't exactly what we were looking for. However, Swivel's many shared sets of data, graphs and tools are testimony to the value of Web 2.0 in education. The site is full of fascinating materials and prompts for classroom discussions to accompany lessons in a variety of curricular areas. How about this Swivel graph to accompany the blood type data these students graphed using ChartAll.

Finally, many of you wrote to me as soon as you spotted the announcement that Google Docs and Spreadsheets launched the anticipated CHARTS and GRAPHS feature. I can't wait to check out this new Google Spreadsheet feature, and promise to report in as soon as I put our Jumping Jack data to the test.

How do we teach kids to cross a busy street?

It seems that everywhere I turn lately, I find educators struggling over how to responsibly move forward with the use of Web 2.0 tools in an educational setting. Ed-tech leader, Ed Barry, recently asked Vermont colleagues to share what PROCESS they use in deciding which tools to allow in their schools? Most of the answers offered referred to the school’s Acceptable Use Policies, with many of us agreeing that our AUP’s need updating. I walked away from this meeting eager to research AUP’s that supported a School 2.0 environment and the process used to design them. The insightful post and comments I collected on the topic, left me with more questions than answers. So instead of a summary, I offer you a list of questions that these writers touch on, and invite you to peruse their insight and share your own thoughts.

• How do we teach kids to cross a busy street?


• How can we support an institution with desires to seek innovation in teaching, learning and research; willingness to innovate & a growing culture of sharing?


• How can schools ensure that they are fulfilling their duty of care to ensure safe environments for their students?


• How do we promote a culture of social responsibility?


• Must we reach beyond Acceptable Use Policies?
  


• How do schools make and enforce rules when students are not on school ground or acting as part of a school function?


• Should our AUP’s reflect understanding of changes in our culture?
  Should AUP support us to change our culture?


• How do your AUP's integrate IT policies with Institutional policies?


• What key principles are your AUP’s based on?


• What is the best approach to deploying risk assessment and risk management ? What legal risk do schools face?


• Is your AUP used as a control mechanism to prevent usage which IT staff may frown upon?


• Does your AUP work on behalf of your organization in helping to ensure the effective use of IT by its users?


• Why do we hide behind AUP’s?Where did our policy come from? Is it infallible?


• What mechanism do you have for changing your AUP and engaging your users in that change?


• How does it take into account the facts that technologies change, usage changes, and culture changes?


• Is your AUP simple or sophisticated enough to accommodate for technical and organizational complexities we face in the 21st century?


• Should we wait to evaluate and master immature technologies before permitting them?


• How can we provide safe environments, minimize risk, allow learning and encourage enthusiast?


• How can we develop policies around technologies that are a massive productivity enhancer and also a great time sink?


• How can schools fulfill their duty of care to ensure safe environments for their students?


• Can AUP’s guide us towards an agreed role and agreed manner of operation for that role?


• Can AUP’s keep up with the fast pace of emerging tools and uses of these technologies (i.e. recording capabilities of cell phones and other economically accessible tools)


• Should time tested principles such as ETHICS be at the center of our acceptable use policies?


• How do we involve students in the process of updating AUP’s?


• How do we promote a culture of social responsibility? Must we reach beyond Acceptable Use Policies? (repeated for emphasis)
  
  Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ereiam_j_h/354525742/

Rumor has it - My wish might come true!

I remember when I first discovered online spreadsheets. Within minutes I was creating charts or graphs in my browser in three easy clicks. First a bar graph; 3 more clicks; and a pie graph of the same data was floating around next to it. Introducing a tool that created visual representation of data so easily made me the tech integration hero in my school for the next few weeks. This tool, truly could be ubiquitously streamlined into any lesson where a visual representation of data lead to greater understanding of the content being taught. From history classrooms to math classrooms, the simplicity of creating graphs in a Web browser took away one of the biggest complaints of my most reticent teacher -- “its not efficient for me to use technology to teach this concept. The upfront’learning the technology’ or ‘setup’ time takes away from my precious classroom time and it does not add enough value to my teaching.” IROWS, a new online spreadsheet tool had teachers and students illustrating ideas without even having to stop to log-in. Logging in was useful for saving and more advanced features, but when you have a classroom of 3rd graders ready to illustrate their data, the three click chart increased usability and made CIPA compliance much easier. Then one sad day, during a professional development workshop, I noticed an announcement on the IROWS website. The site would soon be shutting down. The founders of IROWS had been hired by Google.

Turning my attention to Google Spreadsheets, I discovered new reasons for using online spreadsheets in the classroom. The collaborative features that allows multiple users to share a spreadsheet is great for group projects or engaging your whole class at once in an exercise. The chat feature can be used for reflection and makes a great assessment tool. We used both of these innovative features of Google Spreadsheets in designing the lesson plans and template that you see in the virtual field trip of the ITM 5 video. A few tricks (like using the same font color and cell color to hide the results of a row, and then writing an IF statement to compare a student input to the hidden cell, and providing a positive message when correct) can be used to create drill or practice sheets with immediate reinforcement. To login to online spreadsheets with students under age 13 in a district that does not allow student email, I used email aliases that all point back to my teacher account and created a classroom sets of logins.


But, I still desperately miss the charts and graphs feature I had so enjoyed when using IROWS. Taking the time to compare the features of other online spreadsheets (some of which include chart features) is on my TODO list. Meanwhile, it was my wish that the founders of IROWS are quickly coding their wonderful AJAX graphing capabilities into Google spreadsheet. Rumor has it that my wish might come true very soon. My fingers are crossed, but while I wait, I would love to hear your reviews of online spreadsheets and tricks and tips of features that make online spreadsheets work well as a classroom tools.

You, too -- girls!

For nearly 10 years, the computer programming class met in the lab next door. Only once during those ten years, did I see a girl walk into that classroom. A little bit of research revealed that young women were notably absent from computer programming classrooms across the country. According to the New York Times article “Where The Girls Aren’t” “more than 19,000 boys took the Advanced Placement computer science examination in 2001, compared with just over 2,400 girls”. Thirty years ago, it was not unusual to see 2 or 3 girls in a Calculus class; today nearly 50% of the students taking the AP Calculus are female. Reversing this trend took a sustained investment in strategies focused on increasing the success of women in mathematics.

With the increase use of computers in today’s classrooms, work places, and living rooms, it is easy to assume that we no longer have a gender gap in high-tech courses and careers.

But the reality is that the participation of women in these areas have actually decreased over the past two decades. Whenever I lead activities that raise awareness about male/female ratios in tech related careers and courses, participants are always surprised at the gender gap. As a teacher there are many ways you can implement gender equity strategies in your classroom. Tech Integration across the curriculum is one of the top strategies. If girls are not flocking to computer classes, let’s make sure the computers come to “them”. Along with making technology part of everyday learning, creating opportunities where girls can gain skills and confidence with technology can help address the “experience gap”. One of the biggest challenges young women face when considering a high-tech class or career is not “aptitude”, but experience.

Maya, the only girl in her Java programming class, quickly noticed that
most of the boys in the class seemed to already know a lot about programming
from their experience with robotic toys, or from having built pieces of their
own computers. They seemed to already have a rapport with the
programming teacher comparing notes about their favorite video games strategies during class. Her programming class quickly turned to a very frustrating and lonely experience. When asked by she enrolled in this class, she
answered, “one of my teachers noticed that I was smart with computers and
learned HTML code quickly and invited me to participate in a Tech Savvy Girls
summer camp.” There I spent a whole week learning cool new technologies
with all girls. I even took a mini-workshop in programming. It was
fun. I felt smart. I didn’t have “less experience”. My junior year I found I had an open timeslot in my schedule. I looked at the available classes that block. If it had not been for Tech Savvy Girls, I wouldn’t have noticed programming, but some of the women role models I met in Tech Savvy Girls activities often mentioned programming as a class they took when they were in school.

Year after year, I listen to girls tell their stories during our Tech Savvy Girls activities and over and over again, I hear tales of teachers who provided awareness, inspiration, and experience opportunities to young women. “ My teacher often gave me extra computer tasks to do; my teacher recommended me for a computer camp; my teacher asked for my help with the computer; my teacher believed in me; my teacher recommended this course for when I get older;”

Look for information and opportunities to create activities such as “The Creative Side of Engineering” that send a strong message to girls that the world needs more than girls who “use” technology, the world needs their input into design and innovation.

Resolution 2007 - Promoting Digital Equity

As you move forward in the digital age, take the time to notice who we might be leaving behind. How about adding digital equity to your 2007 resolution. Consider expanding the definition of No Child Left Behind to include “no child left behind in a digital age”. My 2007 resolution is to renew my commitment to digital equity and provide increased resources to teachers for bridging the digital divide in their schools.

1. I resolve to update my collection of keyboarding resources and promote keyboarding skills in ALL students.
   
   Ignore those who tell you that we don’t need to teach this skill anymore because of the voice recognition technology or because today’s kids are on the computers so much they pick it up naturally. Those who use effective keyboarding techniques will build skills and gain increased productivity, while those who don’t will get further and further behind in their schoolwork. Don’t forget to include assistive technology options for students with disabilities.
   



2. I resolve to know which students lack access to digital tools at home.
   
   Informally inquire about students access, so that you can provide solutions that help these students and their families. I make old keyboards available with keyboarding practice sheets AND teach students how to practice on a keyboard alone. I was surprised at the number of 3rd and 4th grade students who took me up on this offer (some of them have computers, but complain that other family members horde all the computer time). I know of at least one Vermont school that refurbishes old machines with Linux and open source software and makes them available to families in their district. Making parents aware of public library access to computers, or creating public hours for your own computer lab can increase access.
   
   
3. I resolve to promote sensitivivity to lack of or slow Internet Access.
   
   Many communities still have only DIAL UP access. If you post documents online for parents, make sure that the families without Internet are aware of how they can also access these documents. Break the documents down for quicker download for dial-up users. For example , if your school’s program of studies is online, consider posting it as separate “chapters” or text only format for dial-up users. Using a free PDF maker can ensure that your documents are posted in a format accessible to all users. Consider differentiated assignments and resources to accommodate students with limited or no access.
   



4. I resolve to revive the TechSavy Girls program and create new opportunities for girls to build skills and confidence in their use of technology.
   
   While it appears that most middle school girls have confidence and skills equal to their male counterparts when it comes to technology use, interest and participation levels decrease significantly during high school and college years. The ratio of girls to boys in high level computer classes has actually decreased during the past decade and hover around the 12% rate.
   



5. I resolve to make Web-based and Open Source Software available to students to increase home access to digital tool.
   
   Our regional technology users group is exploring the use of more Web-based and Open Source resouces in our schools. In a series of parent workshops, we distribute “FREE” open-source software for parents who attend. One of our teachers is adding OpenSource platform productivity tools to his lab to increase students familiarity with these tools. This is also a great way to promote greater understanding of tech “concepts” and skills transfer.

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

Tomorrow's Leaders

If you are reading the ITM, chances are you are looking for new ideas and strategies for integrating technology in your school. While ITM bloggers and readers are excited to share tools and strategies we've discovered, I'd like suggest that you not leave untapped an important resource that's already an intregal part of your school --TOMORROW'S LEADERS.

Are you tapping into the your students as valuable resources? The National Education Technology Plan was developed with input from Student Voices. Ideas from students in Student Views on Tranforming Education and Training Through Technologies provide insights that a generation of "digital Immigrants" could not have envisioned on their own.

Why not include student input as you update your local technology plans? In his article "Vision to Action: Adding Student Leadership to Your Technology Plan", Dennis Harpers makes note that

"Students make up about 92% of people in attendance in any school. Most technology plans focus on the role of the other 8% (teachers, administrators, adult technical support staff).

It is no wonder that

“Students report that there is a substantial disconnect between how they use the Internet for school and how they use the Internet during the school day and under teacher direction. For the most part, students’ educational use of the Internet occurs outside of the school day, outside of the school building, outside the direction of their teachers.”' Pew Internet & American Life Project (2002).

The investment we made in our Student Technology Leadership Teams ten years ago have produced a return many times its original cost. Not only has the school benefitted from the services, ideas, and energy students brought as we developed solutions for maintaining growing networks of computers, training staff, and designing innovative ways to integrate technology, but students gained invaluable opportunities to develop leadership skills. Dennis Harper's Gen Yes includes several models for integrating student leaders in your schools. States such as Kansas, Wisconsin, and Kentucky have developed state-wide student tech leadership initiatives. No need to wait until your state develops a program, programs such as TechSavvyKids and SWAT started as local initiatives. Examining these models can help you find strategies for including student voices in your school.

Today's students are "The Infinite Thinking Machine" - let's provide them with the skills and the opportunities to develop into tomorrow's leaders.

What Happens When We Share

In his recent post, The Internet as a World of Wonder, Wes Fryer steps back in awe at the "empowering nature of the Internet today" to "connect people and bring them closer together in virtual space." The Read/Write Web is transforming the world we live in, providing educators with a growing number of wonderful collaboration tools, such as those referenced by Lucy Gray. Along with new tools, The ITM bloggers are providing educators with examplar models, sound strategies, and best practices for using collaborative tools.

One model project, The Vermont Midi Project has been using the power of the Internet to connect musicians and music composers with K-12 students producing more than musical talent. Over the past ten years, this project has crafted the art of online collaboration and tested strategies for Reflection and Critique and Mentoring. The project website also shares authentic and concrete examples of the Online Mentoring Process in action, providing a glimpse into best practices for educators preparing to use online tools for sharing.

Along with examples of "What Sharing Looks Like," educators also could benefit from inspirational stories of "What Happens When We Share". Stories about the impact of online collaboration on students such as that of aspiring composer, Matt Podd, can provide tools to help address the "fear of using social software" which can sometimes be a barrier for innovative educators ready to use online collaboration tools. Sharing his music in the VT Midi Project's password protected site provided Matt with the skills and confidence he need to participate in the more global Sibelius Music Community. The power of the Internet to connect provided a student from a small rural town in Vermont the opportunity to have his music compositions played in four different countries and experience to compete with students from more urban cultural centers for limited slots in the college admission process for music composers. As your digital toolkit grows, don't forget to pack it with inspiration and best practices.

Why Do People Share?

Are you one of the many educators who have struggled with how to provide students with music and photos that students can ethically use in multimedia presentations? The increased access to photos and music available on the Internet increases our responsibility to model and teach computer ethics and help our students understand copyright. The Read/Write Web has created a wealth of opportunities for anyone to publish text, images, video, or music. With these increased opportunities for creative works to be shared, came the need to redefine the way we share.

Along came - Creative Commons with the mission of "Enabling the legal sharing and reuse of cultural, educational, and scientific works.” Creative Commons has changed the way I teach "intellectual property". While I still use valuable resources like Kathy Shrocks's Copyright and Citation Resources as a reference and the free NoodleBib MLA account by Noodletools , I no longer start by introducing students and teachers to "what they can't do" because of copyright and the restrictions of Fair Use Legislation. Instead I start by introducing them to what they CAN do because of new ways to share and grant permission for others to use your work. Creative Commons new comics and videos make it fun and easy to help students understand copyright and also spread the spirit of sharing.

I still stress the importance of proper documentation and respecting copyright. I show them my email correspondence with author Tom Friedman granting permission for me to use some of his materials in my presentations as testimony to how the Web has made it easier than ever to contact authors of copyrighted materials for permission. But now I start my lessons with a different 'essential question' --- "Why Do People Share?"

We explore Yvonnie Kim's insight that "Some might share because it is more fun, some might share because they believe it is for social goodness, and some might share because they want more people to see what they have done. No matter what motivation individuals might have for sharing, it seems obvious that ’sharing’ is related to the issue of how people are motivated and eventually how they are rewarded.”

I have discovered that the approach to teaching intellectual property combined with the spirit of independence and sharing that is an inherent part of adolescent development makes the students desire and seek out legal resources instead of grumbling that they can't use "Green Day" as the music to their presentation.

Redesigning the Research Assignment

On my way to parent's weekend at my son's college, I pulled into a cute little town around noontime, and discovered the best homestyle cooking. I used a proven research technique for quickly finding a good restaurant in a new town; I asked a couple experts at the gas station on the corner. Both times I got the same answer. When I drove in I noticed a long line and thought "hmm that's a good sign".

Social bookmarking tools such as del.icio.us and Furl allow students to use the same ‘proven’ techniques for their research assignments while also allowing teachers to redesign research assignments requiring higher levels of critical thinking (high on the list of 21st century skills) Instead of searching the “whole web” to find websites that contain “statistics about teens and alcohol”, searching FURL or del.ico.us brings you to a list of websites other users found worth bookmarking about the topic. Does that guarantee that a site that’s been bookmarked by 944 other users contains the information you’re looking for? Not anymore than the long line out the restaurant door guarantees a prime dining experience; but I’d be willing to bet that “people’s choice” provide me more useful results more often than “search engine optimization” results for many research projects.

I can almost hear the MOANS… “great, not only do my students have an easier time plagiarizing because of the WWW, but now someone else can do their research for them?” But wait, working smarter might be the “hook’ to engage your students into using these tools, but the REAL reason I’d advocate using social bookmarking tools is that they allow teachers to redesign assignments in ways that require higher critical thinking skills.

Following the advice of Alan November that teachers redesign the assignment, Vermont middle school teachers, Melissa Haberman and Deb McCarthy, have redesigned the research phase leading to their students creating of public service announcements on Teen Issues. By using “cut and paste” and the “notes” feature of del.icio.us along with the ability to TAG, these middle school students are totally engaged by the ability to work ‘smarter’ and skip some of the tedium associated with traditional research methods. Meanwhile, teachers are clicking on the ‘tags’ with the students name and reading the “notes” sections to assess their students’ critical thinking skills in being able to include relevant data from each bookmarked websites that answers the “guiding question”. One student came back to class the next day and said “I installed del.cio.us at home last night; is it okay if I use it for other things besides this project, like can I bookmark websites about “puppies”. Thumbs up to these teachers for engaging their students with technology tools that require higher critical thinking skills; thumbs up to the students for transferring the skills to life outside the classroom.

Athough ‘redesigning research” is one potential use of social bookmarking sites, the potential uses to these tool in education increases as each adds new features. (The Social Bookmarking FaceOff post on Read/Write/Web) Although I was surprised, that this review did not mention one of my favorite features of FURL as a research tool (the ability to export a selected list of sites in APA or MLA format). Do I hear another MOAN…”you mean my students don’t have to suffer through correctly punctuating their Works Cited page like I did ”… SIGH!

Authentic Audience

It was almost 10 years ago that a group of Vermont students discovered the power of the World Wide Web to provide an authentic audience for their student work. Our rural community had just joined the ranks of those with local access to the Internet. Prior to that, access was available only to those who could afford a long distance call to an AOL or CompuServe number. While exploring this new medium, we stumbled across forward-thinking educators from The Global Schoolhouse, who encouraged students from all over the world to harness the power of the web by publishing stories of their communities as part of an International Cyberfair.

Energized and excited by the power and potential of web publishing with students, I quickly organized my students to produce their first Cyberfair project. We had to work quickly; the project deadline was less than a month away. Within weeks, the students from North Country Union High School published their first web site about the beauty of their Vermont community affectionately known as the Northeast Kingdom. A few days later the following email from Seattle, Washington appeared in our inbox.

From: Claude Williams
Re: Treasure Found

Dear students of NCUHS
I think you might be able to help me take care of something that has been on
my To Do List for a very long time. About 15 years ago I was scuba diving in the
Philippines when I found a shiny object. It was a ring with a bird of prey on
it, the letters ‘NCUHS’ on one side, and Class of ’78 on the other side. The
letters “TKD” were engraved on the inside. Through the years I’ve searched
several directories trying to find its rightful owner. Yesterday I was learning
to use a search engine called Alta Vista and decided to type in the letters
NCUHS which lead me to your web project. Could this ring possibly belong to an
alumnus from your school?

The students quickly ran down to the school library and dusted off the 1978 Falcon yearbook. One student’s initials matched the letters TKD. After a brief inquiry, we were able to locate a Virginia phone number for Mr. Todd Durkee. He seemed a bit puzzled when we asked him if he had ever lost his class ring, but answered “yes… I lost it cliff diving in Hawaii”. We asked his permission to pass his phone number to a man who may have found his ring. Not only did Mr. Durkee get his class ring back, but the two men found several other connection, including having served on the same naval ship. Meanwhile, we started a small classroom geography activity exploring theories of how the ring might have traveled from Hawaii to the Philippines. But mostly, we were so thrilled that our student project was not only read outside our classroom, but had actually reunited a man from the Northeast Kingdom with a long lost treasure. We named our Cyberfair project that year "Kingdom Treasures."

For the past ten years, the Internet has provided an authentic audience for our student work. I look forward to exploring the infinite power of the web to expand thinking by connecting people, places, and ideas.