Moving at the Speed of Creativity

I have (at last) taken some time to read the entire text of the proposed DOPA legislation, as passed by the US House of Reps yesterday. I am going to encourage all the teachers / parents / adults at my session tomorrow at MTI 2006 on “Safe Digital Social Networking” (DSN) to use sites like Think.com, Imbee, and Moodle to help students learn safe DSN (digital social networking).

I notice in the language of the bill the world “commercial” is prominent. The first sentence of the act reads:

To amend the Communications Act of 1934 to require recipients of universal service support for schools and libraries to protect minors from commercial social networking websites and chat rooms.

Note the language, “commercial social networking websites.” Now what exactly does that mean? The bill will require the FCC to define the term. The proposed legislation also says:

20 “(J) COMMERCIAL SOCIAL NETWORKING
21 WEBSITES; CHAT ROOMS.–Within 120 days
22 after the date of enactment of the Deleting On-
23 line Predators Act of 2006, the Commission
24 shall by rule define the terms `social networking
25 website’ and `chat room’ for purposes of this

HR 5319 EH 5
1 subsection. In determining the definition of a
2 social networking website, the Commission shall
3 take into consideration the extent to which a
4 website–
5 “(i) is offered by a commercial entity;
6 “(ii) permits registered users to create
7 an on-line profile that includes detailed
8 personal information;
9 “(iii) permits registered users to cre-
10 ate an on-line journal and share such a
11 journal with other users;
12 “(iv) elicits highly-personalized infor-
13 mation from users; and
14 “(v) enables communication among
15 users.”.

Under this definition, it sounds like Think.com (a free resource sponsored by the Oracle foundation to schools) would not fall under this definition of “commercial social networking site.” Neither would Moodle sites that are being run by schools, not for commercial purposes.

Imbee, on the other hand, is a commercial site and although it offers parent moderation options and is a GREAT tool, it might fall under a FCC definition of “commercial social networking sites.” Parents and students could use this from home, but perhaps not from school if DOPA passes.

It is also not clear to me if DOPA would force US school districts receiving eRate funds (which is pretty much everyone in public schools) to block access to Wikipedia from school networks. Is WikiPedia a “for profit” social networking site? Students aren’t blogging there, although they create profiles. This seems to be less clear and up for grabs perhaps.

I am thinking if this legislation passes, schools and educators will still be able to use non-commercial websites to help students learn about read/write web technologies and safe DSN. Think.com, Moodle sites, and blog sites RUN BY THE SCHOOL (actually a very good idea for US schools according to educational law expert Dr. Scott McLeod) would still be fine.

I have added a new category to my blog for DSN. This is something I have written a lot about, and will likely be writing about more in the future… so this seems appropriate.

I know it’s arduous, but this is important legislation and important issues– so go ahead and read the fulltext of the bill yourself, linked from the GovTrack.us site for DOPA. (direct link)

What do you think?

Technorati Tags: dopa, mti2006

Preso by Tori Bihannon and Shirley Farmer at MTI 2006 sponsored by MACE Kansas

have headphones in the computer lab if you are doing virtual field trips!

Questions
- do you think field trips are too expensive, time consuming, a lot of trouble
- do you feel travel time for a field trip is time away from your focus on state standards and necessary curriculum
- then virtual field trips are for you!

Altho you might love to take your class to space or travel back in time, it’s not realistic
- instead do a virtual field trip (VFT)
- VFTs are playing an increasing role in public, private, and home-schooled curriculum
- for 55 million students who will start school this year, field trips can be a mouse click away

Linda Hiller, edtech specialists: “A textbook is 2D. When you are following somebody on the Internet, you can go where they go and discover with them. It makes a powerful impact on them.”

Kids can:
- learn about remote places
- communicate with explorers
- researchers
- scientists during online chats
- qualifications these experts can bring into your classroom are exciting!

Integrate into your classroom in4 distinct ways:

1- instructional tool when site visit is not practical (NASA virtual field trips, WWII museums, Hawaii volcanoes)
2- focus activity prior to taking a real trip (building prior schema) - studying animals in the zoo, smithsonian
3- reporting and reflecting follow-up activity for students after they have taken a field trip
4- presentation tool to show your own travels

Subjects it can cover: just about anything, can do lots of cross-curriculum

Sites: (I have included all these in my virtual field trips social bookmarks: http://del.icio.us/wfryer/virtualfieldtrips)

www.efieldtrips.org (need a free login) - Devil’s tower, fire’s role in the ecosystem, sea turtles, manatees, etc.
www.mbayaq.org - Monterey Bay Aquarium: great live webcams, podcasts, teacher and kid sites and resources
www.windowsintowonderland.org (about Yellowstone National Park, by the US National Park Service)
www.internet4classrooms.com/vft.htm
eduscapes.com/tap/topic35.htm - Good article on using virtual field trips
www.theteachersguide.com/virtualtours.html#Museums - online museums
http://www.theteachersguide.com/virtualtours.html#Museums - lots of online museums
www.uen.org/utahlink/tours - Utah state dept of education site on VFTs
www.tramline.com/tours/sci/tornado/playtour.htm (uses the software program tour maker that helps you create virtual field trips - this is an example of one about tornados, great for safety lessons in Kansas!)

Great education world article on VFTs: Get Outta Class With Virtual Field Trips

Google for Cybertours, virtual field trips, etc

Some things to consider
- select a trip with clear association to your curriculum
- collect signed parental permission slips to take your class online (I AM THINKING YOUR EXISTING DISTRICT AUP SHOULD HANDLE THIS)
- don’t allow students to wander online on their own
- be sure your VFT is in your lesson plans
- state a measurable goal for your culminating activity
- don’t present the site without knowing it in detail

Plan ahead
- teach intro lesson first
- preview the site, check links
- provide step by step tasks for students to complete as they are online
- have students collect text and graphics to make a scrapbook

Place a time limit on your trip
- be the tour guide: help students pace themselves

There is a setting you sometimes need to setup first on a windows computer to display a video on both your laptop and the LCD projector you’re connected to (I DON’T THINK THIS IS EVER AN ISSUE ON MACS)

Lots of advantages to VFT’s compared to traditional ones: costs esp

Technorati Tags: mti2006

Preso by Brian Retzlaff at MTI 2006 sponsored by MACE Kansas

Session will draw on another presentation: “The Art of the Digital Lesson: Technology Tools Removing the Tether”
- Brian got permission from his new employer (Cytek) to take any technology back into his classroom before he started working for them

smartboard, interwrite, promethean whiteboard are main competitors in this electronic whiteboard space

Interwrite school Pad, Mimeo, CPS, there are lots of products like this: at least a dozen that you can have

The key to making them interactive is to do something like this: pick it up and hand it to the student
- get it out of your hands, and give it to your kids!

Roles for an electronic whiteboard:
- mouse
- annotate
- interact

Use the software
- use filled boxes to hide the answers
- there are many features hidden in the software
- learn to use the software in your favor

Use a pen and hide answers on slides

As you pass the tablet around, tell the student to pass the tablet to

The interwrite tablet Brian is demoing today is about $500
- then you just need a computer and a projector
- and a fairly new computer, at least one that has USB and supports USB (Mac needs OS X, Windows NT is not supported)
- most hardware issues have been eliminated

Kids pick up using this really quickly! (digital immigrants have more problems

Big difference logistically-speaking if the whiteboard is mounted at the front
- there are issues about managing that
- plan ahead, think ahead (prep kids to be ready so you don’t waste teaching time)

You have to make a conscious effort to get to all your students!

Every step along the way, click the DUPLICATE PAGE so you can show all the steps
- there are buttons on the right side of the screen to step forward and backward on pages
- or use the popup menu at the bottom to change page being viewed

Differences between using a tablet PC and a smartboard
- interwrite is about $500
- smartboard is about $1600

MY THOUGHT: I NEED TO GET ONE OF THESE TO USE IN PRESENTATIONS!!!!

Make this interactive by wandering around the classroom and putting this in the hands of the kids!

Get this interactive by giving this to kids

Software let’s you built a plant cell part by part
- put the whiteboard in their hands

The specific interwrite pad we are using today will support up to 7 smartboards at a time
- you should also have a TEACHER smartboard

- smart airliner does something similar, but doesn’t have a software program to help you manage the bluetooth connections like interwrite does (that is a major disadvantage)

If you are going to have multiple ones, put colored tape on top and bottom, color is a lot easier to see across the room
- and definitely have a teacher unit (by default if the teacher unit is in use, no other units are working)
- for other student units, the first one to start working gets control

One of the competitors, when you draw the outline of an object, will let you cut out that part (trace it)
- the interwrite can just get rectangles and ovals
- this feature is probably going to be added to the software by the other 2 manufacturers

Another good place to get stuff is the manufacturer of the interactive whiteboard! (this is the Educator resource center for Interwrite)

Wichita Public Schools has a site where they share resources for electro

Lee Summit in KC also has a great support site for whiteboards

I STARTED A NEW SOCIAL BOOKMARKS TAG FOR INTERACTIVE WHITEBOARDS: http://del.icio.us/wfryer/interactivewhiteboard

All interactive / electronic whiteboards have a core set of features, so use them!!!

Benefit of an electronic whiteboard instead of a document camera
- you are stuck at the front of the room, instead of having wireless mobility
- biggest difference: there are a handful of additional tools that aren’t on a document camera
- save a little money on your whiteboard: instead of spending $1600 on an electronic whiteboard, buy one for $500 and use the other $1100 for an electronic document camera

most of the time a TV screen is not nearly as effective as a projector in the classroom

Waves of technology pushes
- computer on every teacher’s desk
- LCD projector in each room

Wichita Public Schools have spent over $1 million in the last year on wireless electronic whiteboards

Electronic whiteboards have changed dramatically in the last 6 months, the new ones connect to the computer, which makes it a real educational tool
- I predict this will become pervasive in schools in the coming years

Technorati Tags: mti2006

Mark Ahlness referenced me to Andy Carvin’s website, where he reported today that DOPA has passed the US House of Representatives overwhelmingly.

Perhaps not a surprise, but certainly a disappointment.

To see the vote breakdown, check out GovTrack.us’s page on DOPA. You can also read the full-text of the bill on their website.

Do we need and want to protect our kids? Of course. But should we prohibit all technologies in schools in which students create a “profile?” Definitely not.

I asked Will Richardson last night at dinner (we’re here at MTI 2006 in Winfield, Kansas) what he thought DOPA would mean for schools if it passes. He said, since the language of the bill would prohibit use of any website at a US school by students or teachers where the kids have a “profile”: this would stop use of all blogs and social networking software. I am thinking this means students would not even be able to access, much less post, to WikiPedia.

Give me a break. This is the biggest example of digital immigrants being disconnected to the REAL world that I have ever heard of. And I agree with Will, who is addressing this right now in his preso at MTI, that it is an example of election year / election time stupidity.

Should we throw up our hands and resign our teaching positions, or whatever educationally-related positions we hold currently in protest? Certainly not.

This is an opportunity: an opportunity to have conversations with lots of people who have heard very little about things like blogs, podcasts, RSS, digital social networking, etc. that goes beyond the media fear/death hoopla over MySpace. This is a clarion call to conversations. And an opportunity to help educate digital immigrants about the needs of digital natives in the 21st century.

This timing is pretty interesting… tomorrow here at MTI I’ll be presenting on “Safe Digital Social Networking,” and posting the preso as enhanced and audio-only podcasts.

I am reminded of Obi Wan, speaking to the leader of in Star Wars Episode III. He something to the effect (I’m paraphrasing from memory):

If you have warriors, tell them to prepare and be ready. Now is the time.

It is the time, and we all need to contact our Senators and the White House on this immediately. But will our voices be heard? They won’t if we are silent. Can we succeed in changing the Senate’s vote and the President’s decision on this? I don’t know, I doubt it given the current spirit on DSN issues in Washington, but that expectation should not stop us from taking action or silence our voices.

For more on this, check out current blog posts indexed by Technorati for “DOPA.” David Warlick and Brian Crosby, Will Richardson, and many others are writing about this– we need to extend this conversation outside the edublogosphere. If you know of a good political action site related to this and speaking out on DOPA, please comment and link it here.

Technorati Tags: dopa

Preso by Will Richardson at MTI 2006 sponsored by MACE Kansas

blog: weblogged-ed.com
email: weblogged at gmail dot com
presentation resources: webloggedlinks.pbwiki.com

This is all about kids teaching
- we should help kids create stuff so that when it is disseminated widely, it helps other people learn

30,000 uploads to Youtube.com per day

We have to get in the mindset of kids teaching

podcasting is syndicated, homegrown audio
- this is not just the creation of audio content
- idea is a regular show

This is not just for iPods, hundreds of student podcasts are out there

iTunes seems to be the best index of podcasts that are out there now

Radio Willowweb is a good example

David Warlick’s EPN is Education Podcast Network

Ourmedia.org is place you can post your podcast for free

Odeo.com supports direct audio recording through the web

Demo of skype with Dave of Worldbridges, then using Audacity to do basic editing of the podcast

Example: Advanced Video Podcasts

I am not a big fan of podcasts because it is linear and not interactive
- I am more of a visual learner and want to scan content

heavy metal umlaut screencast

Screencasting toolbox
- computer, camtasia (about $200 educational) or windows media encoder (free from MS) or SnapZ Pro

Book: “The Wealth of Networks”
- author was in the middle of a preso at Harvard and interrupted by his mom via skype during his preso

Key is putting these tools in the hands of kids so they can TEACH

we can learn a lot from our kids!

Preso by Will Richardson at MTI 2006 sponsored by MACE Kansas

blog: weblogged-ed.com
email: weblogged at gmail dot com
presentation resources: webloggedlinks.pbwiki.com

His free RSS guide (PDF)
Using his tablet and MS Office OneNote 2003 to teach this preso

Basic idea: is a technology that let’s you consume more content, instead of having to have you

2 pieces to RSS
- the feed (channel through which the info comes to you)
- the aggregator (news reader)

Graphic: thinking about lots of boxes coming into a larger box

A feed is an address, that is what you are looking for
- RSS
- reason it says “XML” is because that is the programming language RSS is built on / written in

Every blog has a built-in RSS feed, many mainstream media outlets are now putting out RSS feeds (Smithsonian and NASA are examples)
- example you can google for: NYT RSS

you can subscribe to any file with RSS, depending on what someone is publishing

So that is what a feed is, now let’s explore what an aggregator is
- Example: Bloglines.com
- this is all free, even though you have to “subscribe” to it

Book “Naked Conversations” is really good, author claimed he could track 1200 feeds

I now use the “flock” browser which has a built in aggregator, all kinds of cool stuff built into the browser instead of IE (free)

the “keep new” feature in bloglines is really cool, the clip/blog feature is not as great
- “keep new” allows it to stay in the displayed bloglines

Course Will teaches at Seaton Hall in NJ
- has all the students

My classes went paperless when all my kids had a blog

Weblogs in Education: are all the teachers, edublogers, about 70+ folks there

Even tho I’m a blogger, I’m a reader first
- this is a distintion that is important
- I am a blog snob: blogging really starts with reading
- blogging really starts with what you read, and how you synthesize it
- people writing about what they ate for lunch are journaling, really not blogging

MY THOUGHT: I THINK THIS IS A GOOD DISTINCTION: MANY PEOPLE IN MAINLINE MEDIA MISTAKE JOURNALING FOR BLOGGING

Will doesn’t have all his feeds public on his bloglines account (students are not, “good reads” are not, etc.)

news.google.com is itself an aggregator, b/c it is tracking around 4500 news sources

DOPA is being considered in Congress, I want to follow this, so I do Google News search for DOPA, search by date– now can get customized RSS feed
- do a country search like Somalia, then limit to specific sources

Also mentioned del.icio.us in the keynote
- allows me to add annotated information to each saved link
- we’ve used taxonomies for a long time like the Dewey Decimal system, but those were used in a world where there were not too many content creators
– now we are in an environment where people self-organize (this is the shift from a taxonomy to a folksonomy: using tags)
- Will’s del.icio.us quotable link list: http://del.icio.us/willrich/quoteable
- and you can subscribe to that del.icio.us

THIS IS A GREAT IDEA!

This is like “web goodness” now, we all share
- we are working for the betterment of each other

Go back to del.icio.us and look at the current cloud tag

Now on to flickr

Example: Alan Levine’s superglu page: example of all his content together online

Pageflakes is an interesting website and service
- can use this as a portal for yourself
- sort of like Netvibes
- if you want to create your own newspaper, this is sort of like how the Flock browser aggregates RSS content

Technorati.com

Wikipedia now supports RSS feeds, you can subscribe to the history as an RSS feed (new in the last few weeks!)

Technorati Tags: mti2006

Keynote by Will Richardson at MTI 2006 sponsored by MACE
Winfield, KS 27 July 2006

blog: weblogged-ed.com
email: weblogged at gmail dot com
presentation resources: webloggedlinks.pbwiki.com

(Will has granted permission for me to post an audio recording of his keynote this morning, which I’ll be posting later tonight as a podcast.)

Preliminary announcements by MTI folks:
- Winfield is community of about 12,000 people
- The Challenger Learning Center is here in Kansas (in Wellington not far from Winfield - MACE participants can do their program tomorrow, limit of 30) - They offer school missions, day camps, classroom programs, scouting programs, programs for corporate groups, and public missions. This looks great! (too bad my presentations are tomorrow and I can’t do this now!)
- MTI will be in Bonner Springs next year (right by Cabella’s and near the Nebraska Furniture Mart!)
- MACE in March07 will be at the

Will was last here 25 years ago as best man in a summer wedding in Topeka in the summer!

I don’t think technology is the main thing happening today
- the imagination that we have when we are using technology is the key

July 12: 2006 “The Red PaperClip” and Kyle MacDonald
- trading a paperclip till he gets a house
- this could not have been done even 2 or 3 years ago
- amazing audience and transparency for ideas

Anime Music Video website, kids doing mashups
- ability to create stuff like this and share it

imagination defined: the ability to…

Everything is more and more moving to the web, away from desktops
- 1 billion people are the web right now
- there will be another billion by 2015
- 10 billion webpages
- 1 trillion links (somewhere you can click, how amazing)

Emerging reality is not just this one way web, it is the read/write web
- you don’t need to know code, ftp, etc
- “web 2.0″
- easier to create, easier to publish
- Tim O’Reilly on 14 May 2006: “We are at a turning point in the technology industry, and perhaps even in the history of the world.”

I INCIDENTALLY AGREE WITH TIM ON THIS!

50 million blogs out there now, 70,000 new blogs per day, 7 million new web pages each day
- feeling overwhelmed?
- yes
- 2.7 billion links
- use technorati.com

Now we are really linking ideas, what people are talking about
- and people
- connecting to each other
- not just linking to content, it is much more intersting

- society of authorship
- age of participation
- era of collaboration
- age of engagement

Tom Friedmen calls this global society the “uploaders”

an active, participatory web, this is NOT just receiving!

Larry Lessig, author of “free culture”
- “We do not realize how significant the Read-Write internet could be.”

Personally this is EXTREMELY significant
- I have been blogging now for 5 years
- I have learned more from blogging on my site than any other collective experiences
- taught me about myself, technology, the world, other people

When I have the time, it is a place where I spend a lot of intellectual capital and get multitudes in return
- there are now 69,000 education related blogs (Joanne Jacobs)
- there were about 7 when I started

25+ million kids creating web content

It is about imagination

Now listen to Matt Bischoff, one of the first podcasters in 2004
- you hear excitement in his voice
- this is not for grandma and grandpa, this is for an audience
- podcasting from his bedroom

Will’s daughter Tess
- top weather recipies
- posted these pictures to Flickr
- over 1000 people have come to see Tess’s book

Sandaig Otters school in Glasgow, everything on the school homepage is created by kids

THIS IS A GREAT IDEA NOW, I NEED TO DO THIS WITH ALEXANDER AND SARAH’S BOOKS

Kids have audience and purpose that goes far beyond the traditional classroom
- collaboration example of Will’s class in New Jersey and kids in Georgia
- kids had a real audience and purpose, and they were TEACHING
- best way to learn is to teach
- I connected my kids with others, engaged

they are learning, building networks, going far beyond the classrooms

this is a different place, this is a different world, we need to start thinking different about what we are doing

quote from student in Clarence Fisher’s class “now that we have podcasting and blogging anyone can do it….”

leveraging the read/write web is not about the technology, it is about the imagination
- how can we integrate these into our practice to change the equation

We can’t think about our classrooms as 4 walls anymore

Big changes for Schools:

1- the web changes learning
- primarily: now we have access to a lot of knowledge and content
- in the past we thought the school was where we needed to get together and share knowledge
- when knowledge is scarce, learning looks like kids in rows
- story of teacher unfreezing from glacial

When knowledge is abundant

MITOpenCourseware site
- MIT has 600 classes online now
- you get all the video/audio lectures for some of the courses too, along with all the content
- so now you can get an MIT education, basically for free
- you can learn anything, anywhere, anytime, almost

MY THOUGHT: I NEED TO TAKE ONE OF THESE CLASSES, ESP ONE IN ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING (A BASIC COURSE) TO HELP ALEXANDER WITH DESIGN OF HIS SOLAR CAR

Mark Federman: “ubiquitously connected and pervasively proximate.”

Philadelphia is putting a wireless cloud over the entire city

In Newton Mass last week, using Google text messaging to get links

Oragami project from Microsoft: pocket tablet pc

learner decides what, when, where and how she learns
- how is this different from our classrooms
- we try to timestamp when and how our students learn

From just in case learning to just in time learning
- “I am a nomadic learner and I graze for information” (nomatic learning)

When we connect around affinity and not geography, learning looks like this (wikipedia)
- wikipedia is a post

Wikipedia is becoming very popular, look at trend lines compared to NYT
- over a million articles

From do your own work, to work with others
- the environment is now very expectant for working with others

John Dewey has risen in this world

George Siemens: learning is a network process, building networks, figuring out

Graphic of network connectivity
- example: 43 things

#1 think people want to learn in this environment is how to now procrastinate

Social networks
- listing of all social networks on wikipedia now
- lists how many people are on these networks, including

Digg.com
- very important now
- del.icio.us too
- these sites connect with tags

NECC example of photos

Question: how do we best support students in this environment, and re-envision our classrooms to leverage the abundance of info

The web changes text
- it is starting to look like wikis (example: South African curriculum)

Organically built physics text
- wikibooks is putting this together, they are writing 1000 books this way
- are textbook companies wondering about this?

lots of content sources
- we are in a “rip, mix and learn” society
- site: harvard H20, you can accomulate/aggregate content from a list and pick them out when you need them
- epitomizes idea of teacher as DJ

web changes teaching
- teacher as connector
- don’t have to be an arbiter of info
- example was Will’s “secret life of bees” project, the author directly teaches and mentored
- I just connected my student to a Washington Post, Pulitzer prize winning

Skype
- call all over the world for free
- you just need an internet connection

Question: when we have access to all this content and billions of people, how do we change school?

Instead of “hand in your homework,” what if we said “publish your homework”
- so it is not about me as the teacher and judge of the work, but the value of the ideas and content the kids create

Example of Darren Kurpatwa’s blog
- Pre-Cal 20S blog
- scribe post hall of fame
- way to check stats from all over the world

Checked the iTunes K-12 podcast list lately
- Room208, Radio WillowWeb
- lots of content designed to teach

Digital Storytelling
- Marco Torres video
- amazing things with kids and video
- having film festivals, creating music videos
- this is another literacy for the kids, for them to get engaged

Question: what needs to change when kids can publish to audiences far beyond our classrooms– when they are teaching

- think of assignments as things to be shared rather than assessed

literacy is changing
- how many are teaching kids how to read wikipedia?
- favorite story: kid that wrote a poor paper, posted it on WikiPedia, and watched it improve, and then when it was good enough, copied it and turned it in

are we teaching kids how to read in hypertext environments?

this changes how kids write: how many of you have assigned a hypertext assignment to kids
- the power of links in a digital environment

Great book by David Weinberger: documents are not containers of info anymore, they get value from what they point to

Example of MLK.org site (stormfront)

“What happens when everyone gets a printing press”
- this is a huge literacy issue
- we as adults probably aren’t

use easywhois.com and put in the url to get all the info about who owns something, to try and get behind info

The literacy of networks
- kids more and more are working in distributed, collaborative environments (Jill Walker)

Web as platform
- thinkfree.com
- javascript environment, 1 Gig of free space
- jumpcut.com to post videos

I NEED TO LOOK FOR THE WIKIPEDIA PAGE SHOWING SITES LIKE JUMPCUT WHERE PEOPLE ARE POSTING

- we’re not going to be loading much software on our computers much longer, it is going to be running over the network

Question: how can we use open source and open content to engage kids more fully

MySpace would be the 12th most populous country in the world if it was a physical place
- add 200 new accounts each minute, 280,000 new accounts today

I am really happy MySpace has blown up, because at least now we are talking about it
- there are
- only a third of myspace are kids, lots of adults are behaving poorly now
- 99% of myspace content is innoculous
- there are a million bands on myspace now
- it is a social site

Dana Boyd and Henry Jenkins from MIT’s essay, looking at why kids are gravitating to social sites

Kid’s don’t email anymore, they do myspace, IM, etc

This is a changing culture, it is much different from what we know and do

I don’t think

Coors Light commercial about twins
- when you compare that to a myspace site, it is really not that different
- this is a society that objectifies women, is constantly sending false messages to girls about what they should look like
- very difficult to help kids have some semblance of self-esteem in this media environment

Heather Candella quotation in NYT: “When you meet someone, the question is not “what’s your number?” it’s “what’s your myspace.” by checking out a guy’s profile, she said, “you can actually get a feeling for who they are.”
- this girl should not have graduated high school!
- who

Cover of Wired last month
- Rupert Murdock owns Myspace: says it is the best marketing opportunity ever
- who is talking to our kids about what this means, about the manpulation that is involved

I don’t think we get it yet, we understand it yet
- their perception of this is skewed

We really need to teach myspace
- it should be in every curriculum, in every school
- we need to teach them about safety
- have them learn they are creating their permanent record with every piece of content
- for kids they don’t have anything else to mitigate what is on their myspace account, problems with later job interviews, etc.

No one is teaching this stuff now
- we need more media literacy!
- this is a huge opportunity to teach

You don’t want your kid being taught to swim by someone who does not know how to swim themselves
- we need to “know” myspace
- we should all get accounts
- we should all

We can’t be afraid of it
- how many of you block/filter myspace

Why don’t we ask better questions?
- why are my kids learning the 50 capitals now?

we take the tools the kids use out of their hands when they come to school
- the result is our schools are looking less and less like the real world
- this is a problem, are schools are on the verge of becoming irrelevant

Al Gore: “Change is inconvenient.”

DOE results on student perceptions of whether schoolwork is meaningful, courses are interesting, school will be important in later life
- we are losing kids to a large extent because we are not using the tools that kids use in real life

30% of 9th graders don’t graduate nationwide, 27% of adults over age 25 have a college degree
- we are not doing good enough

US Dept of Ed have school 2.0 model
- we have to be ok with kids IMing, blogging, using social networks

Your goal

Are our kids continuous learners when they leave our schools? Are they nomadic learners?

George Siemans: we fire our kids every 18 weeks in schools!

WE need to embrace these changes, we really don’t have a choice.

Chris Lemann is doing this now.
- quoted Chris’s comments to Will’s question on what he should tell superintendents in New York

MY COMMENT: THIS IS A GREAT SERIES OF IDEAS FROM CHRIS!

This is VERY different

your goal or task leaving this conference is: how can I be more imaginative, and what is my red paperclip?

this is a difficult task, and it starts with one step!

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