Moving at the Speed of Creativity

We’ve received some snow in St Louis, but the Midwest Educational Technology Conference (METC) goes on! Yesterday pre-conference workshops were held, and today and tomorrow are the “regular days” of the conference. Here are links to the resources I’ll be sharing in my sessions today.

Storychasing Literacy (a.k.a. “StoryChasing: Empowering Students as Digital Witnesses”)

Prior to the keynote this morning, I’m most likely going to share quotations from the Flickr group, “Great quotes about Learning and Change.” Both today and tomorrow, keynote and featured speaker sessions will be streamed live, via links available on the METC 2010 Moodle.

My afternoon session is “Geo-StoryChasing: Mobile Digital Storytelling!” If time permits during this morning’s keynote, I may demonstrate the Powerful Ingredients Administrative Walkthrough Rubric which is accessible as a Google Form on a smartphone like an iPhone or Blackberry.

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education, literacy, metc, storychase, storychasing, technology, workshop, mecd_csd

Great thoughts about why we should CHOOSE teaching from Gail Lovely:

To be a teacher — choose it as a calling, not a job.

Choose it to do something meaningful and powerful, with rewards only you might notice.

Choose it to be a role model.

Choose to be a teacher because you love learning.

Choose to be a teacher because you love learners.

Choose to be a teacher because you cannot imagine anything else so wonderful!

Catch up with Gail by following her on Twitter. I had a wonderful opportunity today to visit with Gail both during Darren Kuropatwa’s afternoon workshop session (quietly of course) and a bit this evening at our METC dinner. Her husband IS a real rocket scientist. Who knew? Her decision to share the quoted thoughts above on her homepage speaks volumes about her values as an educator and change agent for engaged learning.

H/T METC 2010 organizers for the opportunity to meet and visit with Gail today, and to Gail for being here and sharing! Gail has some great links on the “resources” section of her website.

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If you were watching the Super Bowl last night on U.S. television, you likely saw Google’s advertisement, “Parisian Love,” during the third quarter. What a clever way to tell a story, through a series of Google searches and some well-timed sound clips. If you missed it, here it is, on YouTube (of course.)

Is your school still blocking access to YouTube for everyone, including both teachers AND students? Time to unmask the digital truth.

It would be great to see students use this method of “storytelling via screencasted Google search queries” to tell other stories. What story would you tell? If your Google history could talk, what stories would IT tell?

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These are my notes from a part of Darren Kuropatwa’s METC 2010 workshop, “Extreme (web 2.0) Lesson Plan Makeover.” I was only able to attend a little of the afternoon session. WOW. If you ever have a chance to hear Darren present in person, do not miss it. I do not use the title, “Yoda,” lightly here. It’s a term Marco Torres uses to refer to those people in our lives who are our wise mentors. If we could choose our own Yodas (and virtually, of course, we can to an extent) I would definitely choose Darren.

MY THOUGHTS AND COMMENTS BELOW ARE IN ALL CAPS

All of Darren’s METC 2010 presentation resources are available on his wiki: dkuropatwapresentations.pbworks.com/METC-2010

#2 search engine today: YouTube

Example video: help with bowdrill set

Darren showed foldplay.com to show how to make personalized kaleidocycles

Stuff kids made for me 5 years ago on paper doesn’t exist anymore
- that’s not the case for a lot of digital content
- is it really ephemeral? Some digital artifacts are more permanent

4 people in a group is not a working group, it’s a social occasion (keep collaborative group sizes limited to 2 or 3)

create the problem, solve the problem
- publish it online using any way you like

DEV: Developing Expert Voices
- Developing Expert Voices (capstone projects)

Blog: Developing expert voices
- students linked to our housed all their digital work on this project
- usually started by 2nd or 3rd week of term, students worked on this all semester

If you can use a pattern you identify which underlies
- mathematics is all about patterns

Blog: Mathematics is the Science of Patterns
- project done in HALO

MITSOP Episode 1 video

Advice: Don’t do all of this NOW
- always ask: how can I get the students to do this work?
- I just started with my blog, which at the beginning I was just reading and writing
- it’s not like you will go back to school and do all this next week
- now you are ideally situated to be the model for others
- big danger of giving presentations: People say “you can do it” because of A, B, C and D
- five years ago I did not have these skills
- I evolved, I grew into using these skills
- there are certain underlying patterns in the way things

3 most revolutionary technologies of our time (IMHO – Darren)
1- The hyperlink (so now you and a person in Azerbaijan are neighbors!)
2- Tags: when you get your head around tags and how tagging works, combined with hyperlinks can be used together, it’s amazing what can be done
- knowledge is no longer organized hierarchically, it is organized organically via networks (folksonomies)
3- RSS: the glue that holds it all together (via RSS you can take my Flickr stream, and have it beamed over to you)

Great quotes about learning and change Flickr group

Reasons to publish student work:
- you need to create ways for students to look inside each other’s heads
- Good things happen when you publish
- you’ll know they know when they create content that educates

“A computer is an instrument whose music is composed of ideas”

Web 2.0 Cool tools for Schools wiki

Be careful not to post your email address online b/c of spambots

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I created a wiki page for the topic “use friendly images” as part of the 3 hour morning workshop I’m co-teaching tomorrow with Karen Montgomery here at the METC Conference in St Louis. The title of our hands-on workshop is, “Powerful Ingredients for Blended Learning.”

One of the most exciting finds I made for the topic of “copyright friendly media” tonight was the “Copyright-Friendly and Copyleft Images and Sound (Mostly!) for Use in Media Projects and Web Pages, Blogs, Wikis, etc.” wiki thanks to Joyce Valenza’s “Playing with Images” page of her New Tools Workshop wiki. What a wealth of resources! If you STILL have not yet checked out Joyce’s K12Online09 preso, “The Wizard of Apps,” I HIGHLY encourage you to do so and share it with other educators you know.

After you view it take a few minutes to provide Joyce and her students with some edifying feedback, either on the blog or the K12Online Ning. Talk about a treasure trove of great ideas and resources for student media projects!

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Yesterday at our Creative Oklahoma Education committee meeting, Pattie Maes and Pranav Mistry’s demo of “SixthSense technology” at the TED conference in February 2009 was mentioned. Speakers are being considered for the Creativity World Forum in Oklahoma City in November 2010, and the possibility of having Pattie Maes and Pranav Mistry come share SixthSense is being explored. This is pretty amazing.

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development, future, lab, media, medialab, mit, technology, TED, video, sixthsense, sixth, sense, 6th, wearable

I’ve set up three different websites with Wordpress in the past year for local nonprofits, and I need to help the leaders of each organization begin using their sites to post updated information. I’m utilizing screencast tutorials from Wordpress.tv in this post to create training materials for these individuals as they start using Wordpress. I’m sharing this information and these videos here since this also might be of interest if you’re getting started with Wordpress!

To use and apply these tutorials, you’ll need the login credentials to your Wordpress website. Generally that is the public address of your site, followed by the directory name “/wp-admin” (without quotation marks.) This should direct you to the login page for your site. Then use the username and password for your account. Depending on the “rights” assigned to your account, you’ll have different authoring and configuration abilities within the Wordpress administrative area. If you don’t have a Wordpress account but would like to try one out for free, setup an account on Wordpress.com. If you’re an educator, I recommend you setup a free Wordpress account with EduBlogs because of their great support and the very active educational bloggging community (with students as well as teachers) already there.

Let’s get started with a few basic Wordpress user tutorials. Click the direct link for each one if you’d like to view a larger version.

1. Start off with an overview / introduction to the Wordpress dashboard.

2. Second, learn how to write and publish a post on Wordpress.

3. You won’t always finish a post at one sitting, so next learn how to write draft posts which you can return to at a later date with Wordpress.

4. Organization of Wordpress sites is accomplished mainly through the use of different categories for posts as well as “tags.” Learn how to add categories and tags to your Wordpress posts.

5. Last of all, learn how to add photos, video, and other media to your Wordpress posts.

Many of the screencast tutorials on Wordpress.tv apply to Wordpress developers, rather than users, so don’t be overwhelmed by the options. As a new user, I recommend starting with the tutorials available in the Writing with Wordpress category after you view and practice with the five tutorials I’ve highlighted in this post.

In addition to these tutorials also utilize the free “how to” articles on the Wordpress Codex.

Good luck with your Wordpress writing and publishing! Blog on!

Cross-posted to the Powerful Ingredients Workshop Mini-Lessons wiki.

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blog, blogger, post, tutorial, wordpress, write, wordpress.tv, how, start, beginner

These are my notes from the February 4, 2010, informational meeting held by IMPACT Oklahoma at the Oklahoma City Community Foundation. I’m here on behalf of our Storychasers nonprofit and the Celebrate Oklahoma Voices oral history / digital storytelling project. MY COMMENTS AND REFLECTIONS DURING THIS WORKSHOP ARE IN ALL CAPS BELOW.

According to the organization’s website:

Impact Oklahoma focuses on five nonprofit disciplines: Family, Health and Wellness, Education, Environment and Culture. The fields of interest are those women care about … the ones that make our community stronger and better for everyone.

Impact Oklahoma was started in 2003 by a group of friends who wanted to contribute something significant to their community. These women, while on a “girls weekend,” discussed a magazine article Page Beatty had seen, about Impact 100 — the first Impact group, which was started in Cincinnati. They contacted another friend, a banker, to help them with the financial aspects. After a year of planning and organizing, and an inaugural year of membership recruiting, Impact Oklahoma gave its first grant in 2005.

The workshop started with a welcome from IMPACT Oklahoma President, Page Beatty

Now we’re hearing from Anne Holzberlein, Grant Chair for 2010

This grant workshop is required for any nonprofit applying for an IMPACT Oklahoma grant. Applying organizations are required to be a 501(c)(3). The 2010 Letter of Inquiry (LOI) is due by 5 pm, 19 Feb 2010. The goal is for 500 Oklahoma women to donate $1000 each, and IMPACT Oklahoma will award five $100,000 grants.

There are about 150 people in this meeting. The room is completely full.

Black and white rules:
- all applicants must attend this workshop
- deadlines for submissions are fixed
-

1 date on our website is incorrect:
- LOI must be received (not postmarked) by 5 pm Fri Feb 19. You must mail it, you cannot drop it off. Mail it

Deadline for submissions: Fri March 26th at 5 pm
- have 1 mailing location, at UCO in Edmond, THAT submission CAN be hand-delivered

There is NOT a downloadable LOI, there is a checklist of requirements

We are still working on the grant application, but you don’t have to worry about that for a couple of weeks
- we are going to limit number of words permitted

THEY SHOULD USE SURVEYMONKEY AND USE CHARACTER/WORD LIMITS!

Be sure to put the correct information in the correct spots on the grant application

LOI is submitted to see if you meet basic requirements
- examples: can’t apply for a project outside our service area, can’t pay salary for your Exec Director, can’t award less than $100,000

late submissions will be declined
- you can just submit 1 application per organization

If you have questions following this workshop, email them to aholzberlein [at] uco [dot] edu

This is a volunteer, grassroots organization, so be forgiving with our website errors and other issues which will be fixed soon!
- our webmaster is a volunteer
- we have no paid staff
- we are very excited about our new website

INTERESTING TO KNOW SOME BACKSTORY ABOUT THEIR NEW WEBSITE AND WEBMASTER, THANKS TO OUR 25 JAN 2010 OKC WORDPRESS USER’S GROUP MEETING!

Among other LOI requirements, you must include your organizational mission statement

501(c)(3) letter MUST be included – you cannot receive funds from us unless you have 501(c)(3) status

We reserve the right to change the grant category in which your application is considered. Generally we do that for your benefit, depending on the number of applications received in each category

Must include 2-3 sentence summary of your project

If you are a statewide organization, you grant project application must focus specifically on our target area: Canadian, Cleveland, Logan and Oklahoma County.
- you don’t have to cover all 4, but you can focus on/in just 1 or fewer.

Identify your target population and the demographics, your timeline
- you have 24 months to expend the money when you receive funding

What are your measurable goals? How are you going to measure success?
- we need to be able to identify the need and also the impact

You will have a full month to work on your application, if your LOI is accepted

Now hearing from Barbara Butner, grant co-chair to go over grant guidelines

(This is the actual grant application on the IMPACT Oklahoma website)

We changed the grant deadline because of Spring Break

In the past few years, we had people manipulate fonts and use font size 6, to fit more text in the provided space
- there will be guidelines about number of permitted words per question
- these will be blocks to fill in, 250 – 500 words per answer
- remember who is reading these applications, this is not a foundation that has 25 years of research experience (10 members of our committee are going to read this, they are not professional grant readers)
- tell us what you need, why you need it, and who you are going to serve

A few changes with grant application
- you have GOT to have 501(c)(3)
- that eliminates a lot of folks, maybe you are going to have it but in this case you HAVE to have it

Third page: description of proposed project
- provide evidence of your need which you propose to address
- describe the community you are going to target, be very specific
- address how the project fulfills your organization’s overall mission
- sometimes organizations become so involved serving very diverse interests, they lose focus on their actual mission statement
- focus tightly on your mission statement for this proposal

Big change this year: we are using the word “need” instead of “situation”

List specific activities for which you are seeking funding
- is this existing or new?

Staffing: will it require NEW people to come into your organization to fulfill this need?
- what are the credentials / degrees / certifications of your staff who will work on this project?

If you have a $20K budget, you are probably not a good candidate for this grant program
- a $100K grant would overwhelm your annual budget, and the requirement to expend those funds in 24 months would be unrealistic

Now telling the story of a past recipient which provides grief counseling services at a center, and wanted to move the provision of those services into schools

Sustainability is very important for every project

There are three key elements to consider when completing your grant:
- Need
- Impact
- Sustainability

IT IS INTERESTING TO NOTE NO AUDIO-VISUAL RESOURCES ARE BEING USED IN THIS PRESENTATION FOR 150 PEOPLE. WE ALL HAVE A STAPLED, PAPER HANDOUT.

Past beneficiaries are listed on the IMPACT Oklahoma website

Write as clearly as you can. Be concise, don’t ramble.

Question on “evidence” – do you want statistics?
- yes, statistics are great
- you can compare to other states, if you have proof something is working somewhere else, and it could work here, that is great
- remember these are volunteers reading these applications (some are professionals, some are homemakers, there is a real cross-section in terms of whether they are statistically oriented, or more emotionally

None of the volunteers will look up a website that you provide, so don’t plan on that when you write your grant application

Be sure to discuss your collaborators and partners for this initiative
- every organization here has some overlap with other groups
- those are good things, they show you are not trying to just keep your services within your walls
- collaboration is a great thing

Why is your organization uniquely qualified?
- have you done your homework?
- is that service not already here?
- is this a new thing?
- do you have the expertise?

How many of you are United Way agencies?
- really focusing on “outcome measurements” this year

How will evaluation be conducted?
- how will you know what you are doing will be successful?
- describe plans for sustainability
- have you sent a lot of other grants out to fund this?

How are YOU going to measure this?

Audience question: Is this a reimbursement grant?
Answer: No

You tell us what increments you need this money in, we are not going to dictate that
- we give 100% of our donor’s individual $1000 contributions in these grants

Are your boards supportive of your organization (page 5)
- how much do your board members give?
- how much do your board members give?
- 100% of your board should be GIVING to your organization
- We just want to know IF they gave, not how much they gave (Example: 80% of our board gives, 100% of our board gives, etc. You don’t have to break that down individually.)

Generally organizations have a minimum gift amount for board members, but in many cases board members far exceed those minimums

At our annual membership meeting on Sept 28th, one of your representatives has to deliver an 8 minute presentation before the member vote
- then the winners are announced! (that day)

200 people have attended our workshops this year

March 26th: Applications must be completed
- our goal was to have 3 finalists chosen, and Aug 23rd all site visits finished

We have (probably) 10 people on each committee, they will have guidance but we can’t tell you for sure what each committee will do / decide in terms of their preferences

Once committees have been formed, please do NOT ask committee members about what they read and review
- Each committee member has to sign a confidentiality agreement, maintaining the integrity of the organization and our members

Summary of expenses on page 6 is very standard

March 26th is the deadline, March 19th is NOT!!!! (But you can certainly get it in early!)

10 copies of everything – keep it simple.

THIS REALLY IS A GREAT FUNDING OPPORTUNITY FOR OKLAHOMA NON-PROFITS. IT ALSO REINFORCES FOR ME MY PERCEPTION THAT THERE ARE WONDERFUL SOURCES OF PRIVATE FUNDING HERE IN OKLAHOMA FOR WORTHWHILE PROJECTS. VERY EXCITING POSSIBILITIES FOR STORYCHASERS!

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grant, guidelines, nonprofit, oklahoma, workshop, impact, 2010, 501c3, budget

Yesterday in a full-day workshop I facilitated for CASTLE with Minnesota K-12 principals in Rochester, one of the participants told me about a very negative situation which took place in November 2009 involving a class blog in Owatonna, Minnesota.

According to Curt Brown’s November 20, 2009 article for the Minneapolis / St Paul Star Tribune, “Racial tension running high after fight at Owatonna High School:”

Principal Don Johnson said the problems began when two white students wrote papers in recent weeks that were “inflammatory and very disrespectful.” One student handed out copies of his paper to friends, while the other posted his on a class blog. Both were suspended from the school of 1,600 students — about 100 of whom are Somali.

Johnson said that before the second student returned to school Monday, the student sent text messages over the weekend to white and Somali students that were “unapologetic and in your face.” He then walked into a common area Monday where more than 20 Somali students were gathered and sat down. An altercation erupted that sent one of the white students to the hospital for observation.

There are currently over 100 comments on Melissa Kaelin’s November 19, 2009 article for the Owatonna People’s Press, “School works to quell tensions.” I am not intimately familiar with the details of this situation, but based on what I heard today from a workshop participant and have read online, it sounds like blogging and social media were NOT “the problem” in this situation. Several commenters state racial tensions have been a problem at Owatonna High School for years. In this case, it sounds like students utilized social media tools at their fingertips (not limited to a class blog, but also including SMS text messaging) to share messages of hate and disrespect. The actions students took based on their apparently racist attitudes were and are “the problem” in Owatonna. We must reject hate in all its forms. When hate manifests itself, we need to address it, as I’m hopeful the community leaders in Owatonna are doing right now. It’s important not to blame social media when an incident like this takes place. Guns don’t murder. People do, however, and when they do those actions must be addressed.

As I wrote in my January 28th post, “Latest Facebook Situation in Nashville Highlights Need for Social Media Guidelines in Schools,” we need to catalyze conversations in our communities about social media guidelines.

Students or anyone else can use any tool for good or evil. We can use a shovel to plant a garden or kill a snake.

Drunk driving is a problem, but we don’t ban driving as a result of these poor choices some people unfortunately make. We tried banning alcohol in the United States, and it didn’t work out too well. We cannot and should not ban social media use in our societies, or in our schools. This happens in quasi-closed societies like modern China, but should not and must not happen in the United States.

This situation in Owatonna, Minnesota, would make an appropriate case study on why team blog MODERATION is essential in schools. See my blog post, “Blog comment moderation: How and Why?” for more on this topic.

Do you know of other situations in schools, besides this one in Owatonna, which highlight the importance of teachers turning ON blog post moderation, as well as comment moderation, on “official” class blogs?

Issues like these are NOT going to get away, and will (I’ll assert) only grow more common in the months ahead as social media websites gain even more popularity and usage. See my June 2006 post, “Blocking social networking sites is an insufficient response,” for more thoughts along these lines.

H/T to Jamie Fath for sharing the “drunk driving analogy” I used in this post.

Technorati Tags:
blog, blogger, comment, moderation, post, owatonna, minnesota, somali, racial, racism, fight, controversy

I posted the following as an entry on my “Technology 4 Teachers” Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) blog for Spring 2010.

Question:
How can I turn on comment moderation on my Blogger blog? Why is this recommended?

Answer:
I recommend all educators turn on comment moderation for ALL blog posts and other social media websites they setup for use with K-12 students in the United States. There are several reasons for this:

1. Prevent cyberbullying: Sometimes people can be mean when they comment online. By turning on moderation, you (as the owner / administrator of your blog) must approve EVERY comment before it shows up “live” for others to see. This can prevent your students from being victims of cyberbullying, including vicious attacks from others. It also can prevent / stave off spam comments. We are using our “Constructive Commenting with Social Media” rubric in Technology 4 Teachers to intentionally encourage an ethic of responsible and respectful blog commenting. Unfortunately not all blog commenters will follow this ethic, but by turning on blog moderation you can PROTECT your students and learning community from those people and/or trolls.
2. Avoid a public relations nightmare: An unmoderated class blog can potentially cause problems. The situation at Owatonna High School (Minnesota) in November 2009 is a case in point. Given the litigious nature of our US society today, it makes sense to moderate posts before they “go live” on your class blog. The last thing you want in setting up and using a class blog is for a post on it to get parents, other students, or your entire community in an uproar. In cases like the one at Owatonna, the “problem” may not be “the blog,” but often people will blame technology in those situations. They also might blame the teacher who did NOT setup comment moderation. Some situations like this might be avoided by turning on comment moderation. If you are using the blog as a TEAM blog, where students also can post, you might want to consider using a blogging tool/platform which lets you MODERATE contributor posts. Wordpress does this (and is used by educational blog sites/services like EduBlogs) and so does Class Blogmeister. I’m not sure about Kidblog.
3. Monitor the conversation: If you setup and use a class blog, you have a responsibility and obligation (I would argue) as the teacher to monitor it and “keep the pulse” of the conversations taking place there. By monitoring the comments, you serve as the gatekeeper of conversations there and can more readily monitor what people are saying and WHO is saying them.

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blog, blogger, blogging, comment, education, moderation, school, teacher

Tomorrow on Thursday, February 4, 2010, the Oklahoma State Board of Education will hold it’s monthly meeting at Crescent Public Schools.

This is a BIG deal. Crescent Public Schools is one of only FIVE public school districts in Oklahoma (out of 530+) which is currently implementing a 1:1 learning initiative. That will change later this spring with the announcement of ARRA-funded grantees for 1:1 learning projects, but even when those projects begin 1:1 learning will still be the exception rather than the rule in our state. Oklahoma State Board of Education members have heard about Crescent’s 1:1 program and want to learn more about it, as they should. What better way to learn about the program than traveling there for a meeting, and getting opportunities to visit with both students, teachers, and administrators?

I am crushed that flight schedules would not permit me to fly from Rochester, Minnesota this afternoon and get back to Oklahoma City tonight, so there is no way I could attend and storychase this event tomorrow. If you’re going, please share a blog post about what you see and hear, and tweet me a link as an @ reply. It would be great if we could have a student Storychaser team there on site, webcasting like Van Meter students in Iowa did last week from their state legislature!

My thoughts and best wishes go out to all the teachers, students, and administrators at Crescent Public Schools tomorrow morning! The Eyes of Oklahoma Are Upon You!

To read more about Crescent Public Schools, in addition to checking out their website see my posts “Oklahoma Students: Modeling Digital Education and 1 to 1 Learning” (Feb 2008), “Crescent Public Schools: A Beacon for Oklahoma Education” (Nov 2008), and “Leadership, Vision, and Student Achievement (Panel)” (Nov 2009). Dawn Danker wrote a great guest blog post here in July 2009 which addressed Crescent Public Schools and their 1:1 leadership which is also worth revisiting: “1:1 Teaching & Learning Session, OK SDE Leadership Conference.”

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1to1, leadership, oklahoma, politics, school, crescent

I received the following via email today from Terri Silver, Director of Board Development for the Oklahoma State School Boards Association:

With the beginning of the New Year, the annual OSSBA/CCOSA Conference and Exposition will soon be here! This year’s conference will be August 27-29th at the Cox Convention Center in Oklahoma City.

Enclosed, please find the application for presentation for breakout sessions. Sessions can be 1 or 2 hours in length. New this year- we are also taking applications for pre-conference (3 hour) sessions on Friday morning. However, these sessions will be very limited in number.

We encourage anyone who has something valuable to share or showcase with school districts, board members or administrators to apply. A conference committee will review all applications and we will let you know if the application is accepted by May 1st.

We look forward to hearing your presentation proposal.

Thank you for your time.

Terri Silver
Director of Board Development
OSSBA
terris [at] ossba [dot] org

This information does not appear to be available yet on the OSSBA website. I’ve shared this as a read-only Google Doc, which you can (if desired) download locally to edit and submit via snail mail.

The deadline for proposal submissions is Monday, March 15, 2010. Note the following sentence at the end of the proposal form:

Each room will be set theater style with a head table and four chairs, screen, and podium microphone. OSSBA/CCOSA does NOT provide live Internet access in session rooms.

My work for CASTLE this week with K-12 principals in Minnesota has energized me to share more technology leadership workshops, presentations, and resources for our administrators in Oklahoma. I can think of multiple session possibilities for OSSBA, addressing things like our Storychasers Mobile Learning Collaborative, the Celebrate Oklahoma Voices digital storytelling project, the Unmasking the Digital Truth project to address misconceptions about content filtering in our schools, Social Media Guidelines for Educators, as well as other topics. (How about “Digital Magic Tricks for School Administrators?!”)

If you’re a member of our “Celebrate Oklahoma Voices” learning community, please consider sharing the digital stories you’ve created and your students have created with others at OSSBA. This is a great chance to open the eyes of school board members around our state to the constructive potentials of social media technologies.

Iowa K-12 students from Van Meter did a great job getting the attention of their legislators last week, and helping open their eyes to our need for legislative support of 1:1, project-based learning. We need to do the same thing in Oklahoma.

Cross-posted to the Storychasers blog and the COV Learning Community.

Technorati Tags:
conference, oklahoma, ossba, technology

Kevin Jarrett tweeted me the following question today:

If you happen to be reading this post at a school or in another location which currently blocks access to Flickr, here’s the text version:

Hey @wfryer looking for the 411 on eDiscovery: http://bit.ly/9hcxe9 (your wiki) Bottom line: do schools have to archive STUDENT email?

Before replying, I need to add a “standard disclaimer” statement which I always try to do regarding legal issues: I am not a lawyer, and the information below should not be construed as legal advice. If you need legal advice, consult a lawyer who is credentialed to practice law in your locality. The information presented here is my understanding and perception, based on my limited knowledge, understanding and experiences.

Disclaimer over.

My short answer is, “If the school district provides the email service for students in-house, then the same archival responsibility present for staff email is in effect for student email. If a third-party service / website provides student email (for instance, students are using Gmail, Yahoo mail or Hotmail accounts for their own email accounts that are not “official” school accounts) then the district is NOT required to archive those email messages.” The best open resource I’ve seen written to date on this topic is Scott Bauries‘ October 2008 post on the Edjurist blog, “The E-Discovery Amendments And Electronic Technologies In Schools (Email And Local Documents.)” In that post, Scott wrote:

These suggestions might cause some of you to ask what you should do if you customarily use Web 2.0 tools such as Twitter. As I pointed out in the other two posts in this series, only information within your custody or control (or the custody or control of the school district) is discoverable. It is my understanding that any actual archiving of Web 2.0 material typically occurs at a third-party vendor site, and it would be that third-party vendor’s responsibility to save it if it becomes relevant to litigation. If you do host your Web 2.0 content on your system, though, it is likely that you must save it if a litigation hold is issued. Also, if your Web 2.0 tools cause information to be placed into your Temporary Internet Files or some other temporary storage area on your hard drive, you should not actively delete the information because it is in your custody and control. Your school district’s attorneys may also want you to disable any automatic “clearing” of the temporary files until further notice.

It is that laws in the United States today may make it easy for school officials to take the following position: “We’re not going to provide any student email accounts, because we don’t want to deal with the archival responsibilities and other “general messiness” (as well as work for the IT staff) which that entails.”

There are many problems with this position, of course, and one of the most basic is how educators in the school district can help students master the ISTE NETS-S without email accounts?

My advice to schools on this topic is to adopt and implement Google Apps for Education (it’s free) and utilize one of several archiving solutions. There are lots of reasons why Google Apps for Education is a great idea. When it comes to email archival, the current Google Education Edition FAQ states on this topic:

Google Apps for Education gives schools the ability to filter, monitor or archive mail using our Google Message Security and Compliance Solutions.
You can learn more about these solutions here.

We offer a 66% discount for educational institutions and non-profit organizations.

Alternatively you could choose to implement your own filtering, monitoring or archiving solution using an email gateway. This gateway allows your school to route all mail into and out of our system through your network. This gives you the ability to filter, monitor, and archive in any way you see fit.

We have developed a guide on how to implement a Mail Gateway, for more details, see this page.

We have a number of partners who can offer this service if you do not want to implement it yourself. You can navigate here learn more about the partners.

That’s my 2¢ on eDiscovery requirements and archiving student email. Remember, however, I’m not a lawyer!

Edlaw folks, what say you to Kevin’s question?!

I’ll add the answers and links here to the list of resources on the e-Discovery page of the Unmasking the Digital Truth project wiki.

Remember the DURATION of time schools are required to archive email may vary by state, and archival requirements for specific emails can change when a “litigation hold notice” is received. See the previously reference post by Scott Bauries, as well as his December 2008 post, “Discovery Rules And State Education Laws,” for more details about these issues.

On this topic and other related legal issues in schools, you might also check out my post from METC 2007, “Technology in the Schools: Policy, Privacy and Practical Issues for Teachers, IT and Others.”

Full Disclosure: Per my blog disclosure policy, I’m a Google Certified Teacher, I’ve drank the Google kool-aid, and I think it tastes wonderful. I receive no financial rewards if your school district or you personally choose to use Google products. At this point, I don’t even own any Google stock! I certainly should, but don’t yet…

Technorati Tags:
education, email, gmail, law, legal, school, student, technology, ediscovery, archive, rules, googleapps, postini

On January 28, 2010, a group of students in grades 5-12 from Van Meter, Iowa, shared testimonies for the Iowa House/Senate Education Appropriations Committee about 21st Century Learning and the way learners can be empowered with digital tools. This podcast is an audio recording of a skype conversation with Deron Durflinger, secondary principal of Van Meter schools, and John C. Carver, superintendent of schools in Van Meter. Deron and John skyped in to a full day workshop just outside St Paul, Minnesota, which I was facilitating for CASTLE (The UCEA Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education.) These Van Meter students got the attention of Iowa legislators last Thursday, who need to understand the power and potential of 1:1, blended learning. In this podcast, Deron and John share part of the story of 1:1 learning in Van Meter and their administrative vision for transformed learning in the 21st century.

 

 Podcast337: Evangelizing Educational Transformation and 1:1 Learning in Iowa Schools [31:17m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (562)

Show Notes:

1. I Witnessed History Today – blog post of principal Deron Durflinger about the student presentation on 28 Jan 2010 for Iowa legislators
2. The Think, Lead, Serve Wiki – Van Meter website about the 28 Jan 2010 Iowa legislature event
3. Blog of Deron Durflinger (Principal of Van Meter Secondary Schools)
4. Blog of John C Carver (Superintendent of Van Meter Schools, Iowa)
5. Blog of the Van Meter Schools Elementary Library
6. 1:1 Schools Team Blog
7. Iowa 1:1 Schools Blog
8. 1:1 Iowa Schools Wiki
9. Van Meter Schools Central Wiki
10. John C Carver on Twitter: @johnccarver
11. Deron Durflinger on Twitter: @derondurflinger
12. Dillon’s Rule in Iowa (English WikiPedia)
13. Westside Community Schools (Omaha, Nebraska)
14. Skype (English WikiPedia)
15. Around the World with Skype by Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano (K12Online09)
16. Alrededor del Mundo con Skype by Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano (K12Online09)
17. Video-Conferencing It’s Easy, Free and Powerful by Brian Crosby (K12Online08)
18. UCEA Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE), Iowa State University
19. Our workshop curriculum links today

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I’m a big fan of digital witnesses to history.

If you have not already, be sure to read Iowa principal Deron Durflinger’s post from last Friday, “I Witnessed History Today.” How can we not only get the attention of our state legislators to recognize the power of 1:1 computing, but change their perceptions about our NEED for project-based 1:1 learning environments NOW in our schools? The Iowa students in grades 5-12 who testified for legislators last week answered this question powerfully. We need to let our students SHOW and DEMONSTRATE the power of connected, hyperlinked, media-rich learning for older, less digitally-saavy adults elected to lead our states and nation. Check out some of the social media conversations surrounding last Friday’s event by searching on Twitter with the hashtag, #vanmeter. Join the #vanmeter Twitter shout-out by adding your name and Twitter link to their ThinkLeadServe wiki.

Last Friday’s experience for Iowa learners in the statehouse demonstrates many things, but one which readily comes to mind after seeing some of their video is the public relations utility of equipping students to be capable webcasters and Storychasers!

Our group of principals in Minnesota I’m working with today for CASTLE is hoping to Skype with Deron later this afternoon to learn more.

Technorati Tags:
change, school, student, webcast, iowa