Moving at the Speed of Creativity

Last year in our statewide Celebrate Oklahoma Voices digital storytelling project, we had a “teachable moment” arise concerning student profile pictures and avatars. According to Wiktionary, an avatar in a computing context is:

A digital representation of a person or being.

The situation in our COV project last spring involved a high school student who joined our learning community at the invitation of her librarian as well as our project coordinators, and chose to use a photo of herself on her Ning personal profile page which was not appropriate for the context of our project. I contacted her librarian about this, she had a conversation with the student, and the student changed her photo to an uncontroversial avatar image. This situation was not a bad one– I think it was good, in fact, because it provided an opportunity for an important discussion relating to digital citizenship to take place. It also pointed to the fact that we needed social networking guidelines for our project. The student in question along a friend of hers were apparently viewing our COV learning community as they would a MySpace or Facebook personal page. That was not the right “frame” to use in this situation. As a result of these conversations, our project coordinators decided that students needed to use an avatar rather than a photograph on their personal profile pages. Adult educators could use either one. At the time project coordinators posted the following clarification in our learning community forum as “Guidelines for using this social networking site:”

Student Members:
All members under the age of 18 will be categorized as students and should use a computer generated avatar as their member image. We strongly encourage students to remove their date of birth and location from their profile. This can be accomplished by going to the My Settings link on the site. Please make sure you have parental permission to join this social networking site.

All Members:
Blog postings, submitted videos and all content should be related to digital storytelling. Please keep your dialog and discussion appropriate for all audience members. We encourage everyone to join ALL appropriate learning communities realted to your profile. This can be accomplished using the icons on the right hand side of the site.
Thank you for participating.

This situation highlights the importance of discussing what constitutes an appropriate avatar or other profile image, both in a collaborative project space as well as on personal social networking websites. When visiting the Wordpress.org support forums recently, I found the website Gravatar. It explains:

A gravatar, or globally recognized avatar, is quite simply an avatar image that follows you from weblog to weblog appearing beside your name when you comment on gravatar enabled sites. Avatars help identify your posts on web forums, so why not on weblogs?

After I setup my own free account on gravatar, I was asked to “rate” my avatar on the following scale, similar to the Motion Picture rating system for commercially published movies.

“Hard drug use?” Are the gravatar creators talking about “illegal drug use” with that phrase? I would argue that all student avatars should be “G” rated, particularly if the student is participating in an online learning community or collaborative project for school.

This is an important discussion to have with students of all ages who are participating in social networking activities at school and away from school. Because students already have background knowledge / schema for motion picture ratings, it could be good to use the ratings framework to discuss appropriate profile pictures and avatars. It might be good to explore the question:

Would it EVER be appropriate to use an avatar or profile picture which is not rated “G?” What are some possible consequences of using a “non-G-rated” avatar on a website which is tied / affiliated / linked to you and your online identity?

The PBS special from January 2008, “Growing Up Online” (individual chapters of the show are viewable online) is a good resource to utilize in a discussion like this with students. I have additional links and resources related to social networking available, as well as Internet Safety resources for parents. The Digital Dialog Ning is a learning community for educators, parents, and others interested in exploring and discussing issues like these.

Technorati Tags:
avatar, profile, picture, internet, safety, technology, parenting

Thanks to James Lewin for his post “Plug-In Fixes PodPress Problem With WordPress 2.6″ which alerted me to “The No Revisions WordPress Plugin.” I can personally confirm that this plug-in DOES fix PodPress functionality in Wordpress 2.6.

Technorati Tags:
wordpress, podpress, blog, podcast, podcasting, plugin, bug, fix

What a relief! For the past few months I’ve been running Wordpress 2.5 on three of the four Wordpress blogs my family and I currently use (Learning Signs, Eyes Right and Talking Science) but I’ve held off upgrading my main Speed of Creativity blog because I’ve been burned before with Wordpress upgrades. They SHOULD go off without a hitch, but there CAN be problems. As I reported back in April, I’ve been fairly happy with the new interface which was introduced with Wordpress 2.5 overall, but have been hesitant to make the switch on my main blog because I thought I preferred the “old” dashboard, and because I haven’t wanted to risk the upgrade YET if it wasn’t absolutely necessary. Familiarity breeds loyalty, I suppose, and upgrades CAN be stressful. Yet for security reasons, upgrading a blog installation is as important as installing new operating system patches when they come out. The release of the iPhone Wordpress application this last week is what finally pushed me over the edge, I think, along with the release of Wordpress 2.6. The iPhone Wordpress application requires that you run at least version 2.5, so to have any chance of following in the footsteps of others like Bob Sprankle experimenting this summer with mobile blogging, I certainly needed to install this Wordpress update.

Upgrading my first three Wordpress blogs was VERY quick and easy: Plug-ins deactivated, new WP files uploaded quickly, updated the database with the upgrade URL, and re-activated the plug-ins. Quick, fast, easy. The way a Wordpress upgrade should be.

With this blog, however, things were not quite so smooth and fast.

I started by downloading a full backup of my mySQL database for my blog using pHpMyAdmin. I always feel better right after downloading a full backup of my blog. How many hours of work does this single file represent? I have no idea, but it would be a serious blow to lose all this data. My Wordpress mySQL database is currently 37.2 MB in size. Not overly huge by current video file standards, but still pretty large for a text file.

After making the local backup of my database, I downloaded and uploaded/installed three plug-ins for which new versions are available. No problems there.

I next deactivated all my Wordpress plug-ins. When I started to upload the new Wordpress 2.6 files to my server, however, I ran into some trouble. For some reason, the upload was VERY slow, and then it timed out! Ouch! It took three attempts before FINALLY I saw this screen… What a relief!

I’m not sure if the slow upload was due to hits on my site or local access issues. Whatever the case, I am relieved the update was successful. I did have to run the database upgrade URL command several times before it “took,” and I freely admit I was holding my breath when it appeared there might be a glitch. Now, however, it appears all is well:

I’m amazed that Akismet has “protected my site from 71,557 spam comments” to date. Good grief. That statistic is the reason I included the suggestion in my last post that educators select a blogging tool with EXCELLENT anti-blog spam comment functionality. I am delighted that the anti-spam commenting functionality in Wordpress is good enough at this point that I do NOT have to moderate all comments to my blog. This certainly permits the conversations here to be more free flowing and dynamic.

I am also relieved that the PodPress plugin seems to be working fine without problems under the new installation. This was also one of the reasons I delayed my Wordpress blog upgrade– I’ve been using the Podpress-generated podcast URL’s in my podcast feed (which I create and publish with FeedForAll Mac) since podcast 176, I think, and if that plug-in failed I’d end up spending hours re-creating that podcast feed with corrected URLs. I am soooooo glad I won’t have to do that!

My last upgrade step this evening was copying my full mySQL Wordpress database up to my Mobile Me “iDisk” site for backup purposes. As a zipped file, it was just 7 MB. I will be able to sleep well tonight!

Have you had good or bad experiences with Wordpress upgrades, or specifically Wordpress 2.6 and plug-in incompatabilities? My main “bad experience” with a Wordpress upgrade happened when I forgot to first deactivate my plug-ins before upgrading one time. That is certainly a no-no to avoid at all costs. Migrating my Wordpres blogs to a new webhost was also a bit of a nightmare. Hopefully I won’t have to ever do that again.

Technorati Tags:
wordpress, blog, upgrade, ftp

I received a question via email from Tammy Parks in Howe, Oklahoma, recently, who just returned from BLC08 eager to setup a team blog for teachers at her school. Her question is:

Our district would like to set-up a teacher blog site for each teacher to post a daily classroom summary. Initially, we would like for the blogs to be accessed by the admin and teachers only - not available to the public. What is the best way to approach this?

Here are several options I’d recommend, in prioritized order. Any of these can work, but they each have different drawbacks and benefits. This is a great question and could easily be a full-day workshop in its own right! I’ll try to summarize here but also point out some of the important considerations to keep in mind with each option.

OPTION 1: SELF-HOSTED WORDPRESS BLOG
Setup a Wordpress blog with an ISP like Siteground. You will be able to register a custom domain (like myschool.org) and the yearly cost will vary by how many months or years you pay for in advance. You shouldn’t pay more than $100 per year, Siteground is $84 for 1 year currently. Shop around carefully if you go with another ISP, check not only how much storage space you get but also your monthly bandwidth allocation and the supported applications. Bob Sprankle uses and recommends Bluehost as an alternative. Make sure your ISP supports Fantastico, which is a browser-based installer that you can use to setup Wordpress with just a few clicks. Set up your Wordpress blog as a team blog and grant access rights as desired. To make the blog a closed community, under settings for MEMBERSHIP make sure “Anyone can register” is unchecked and DO check “Users must be registered and logged in to comment.” With these settings, your blog can be publicly viewable but no one else (except those you invite and add yourself as the blog administrator) will be able to register, post, and comment / participate in the discussion. That is how I’d recommend you setup the blog initially if you want to limit participation. It will be VIEW ONLY to the public, but that is good in my view… You can make posts private at the time you write them, but that defeats many of the purposes of blogging IMHO. If you really want to keep things private and never make them public, consider setting up a private portal using a tool like Drupal. Content on blogs should be intended for a public audience in my view. If you to limit those who can post and comment you certainly can do this, but I think it’s best to not make all posts “private” within Wordpress.

At some point if desired, you can open the blog up for others to be able to comment, and even add students as “contributors” who can write posts but their posts have to be approved by an editor. In our litigious U.S. society I encourage all school personnel setting up a blog to be careful and maintain some level of moderation control over content that is posted. It is very interesting to compare differences between blogging environments in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and other countries compared to the United States. My observation is that the environment can be more open in other countries, due largely to differences in how litigious the society is. I’m not condoning this aspect of U.S. society at this point, but just pointing out it is real and no one wants to have a blogging project “blow up” with a bad incident. Wordpress under the “Users” tab lets you assign different access rights. You’d want to set up teachers as “authors, and students (at some point) as “contributors.” Alternatively you might consider making all teachers “editors” on the blog, but granting those more expansive access rights to teachers unfamiliar with Wordpress and blogging (which is probably 99% of the teacher population) may not be a great idea. It’s safer to setup all teachers as authors (who can directly publish to the site without moderation) and then have a more limited group setup as editors and administrators. Only administrators are able to moderate comments.

One thing to note is that Wordpress is setup for each user to have a unique email address. If students in your district don’t already have free and teacher-moderated email accounts, I’d recommend setting them up (for free) through ePals. Sue Waters has written a nice post on how to use a single GMail account to setup student blog emails, but be aware of the COPPA age restrictions in the U.S.

Be sure to configure your commenting settings in Wordpress as desired. Again for U.S. schools particularly, I recommend having comments moderated to ensure you don’t have objectionable content and links posted to the blog by registered users. It is very straightforward to do this, and Wordpress does provide a variety of options in terms of comment moderation. With a team blog, I highly recommend you have multiple teachers setup as administrators so comments can be regularly moderated.

I recommend Wordpress because as a fantastic open source blogging platform I think it offers the greatest degree of flexibility, customizability, and scalability for school blogging projects. Your district can self-host a Wordpress blog on your existing servers, of course, but you’ll need to have IT support staff with at last basic comfort levels with mySQL and PHP. I would recommend going with an ISP like those I’ve linked above, if your district policy permits content to be hosted off your official servers, because you can get great commercial support service for your site at a very reasonable cost. By hosting your blog on your own unique domain, you should be able to get the entire domain “whitelisted” on your school’s content filter to permit access. If your school blog is on a subdomain of your main school site, of course it should be accessible in your school/district. With the other options I’ll address below, you may run into more issues/problems with content filtering. Having your own registered domain for your school blogs is the way to go, in my view, but again you need to make sure you check with your local board policies to ensure this is permitted. (If a group of teachers in my students’ home school district in Oklahoma were to attempt a setup like this, I think officially they would either be shot at dawn or burned at the stake by the flagpole after the 3 pm bell. Make sure your formal school blogging activities have the blessing and approval of your campus administration as well as your district’s IT department to avoid consequences like these.)

OPTION 2: MANAGED WORDPRESS BLOG
I am a big fan of Wordpress, so my second recommendation (if you don’t want to self-host as described above) is to go with Wordpress but get more assistance in the hosting and configuration of your blog. Edublogs provides free blogs for teachers and students, but I don’t think they have a domain for teacher team blogs. Perhaps you could set up a team blog as a single teacher blog on EduBlogs. I bet you can. Support blogging has lots of links for teacher blogs as well as other education blogs, but I don’t think it currently has a category for teacher-team blogs. Instead of Edublogs, you could setup a teacher team blog with Wordpress.com. With Wordpress.com, however, you are going to run into the issue that in some cases to unblock your Wordpress blog sub-domain your IT administrator or district content filter manager may say they have to open ALL of wordpress.com on the content filter and that would open up children in the district to objectionable / offensive content.

If you get this answer, it is time to get a new content filtering solution for your school, after investigating further to see if that is REALLY the case. I know of cases where teachers have been told (in the context of our Celebrate Oklahoma Voices learning community on Ning) that it was NOT possible to simply whitelist that subdomain, when it fact it WAS possible but the IT person in the district didn’t want to admit they didn’t know how to do that. Again, this is why option #1 above is the best choice if you can do it. (You just whitelist the entire domain.)

Wordpress.com sites ARE Wordpress sites, but they have some limits that may frustrate you at some point. You don’t have direct FTP upload access to the site (as far as I know) so that limits what you can do with themes and plug-ins. You also may run into trouble entering some embed codes and javascripts for sidebar elements and badges. Still, it IS “Wordpress” and it will support the multi-user functionality I described above.

OPTION 3: BLOGGER
Darren Kuropatwa has used Blogger sites with his math classes in Winnipeg for several years with great success. Blogger CAN work very well for team blogs, and has the benefit of Google handling your user account management for you. COPPA applies here, however, and legally your students under age 13 will not be able to get their own Google Accounts in the United States (as far as I know) and therefore this isn’t a good option if you’re going to want elementary students at some point to have an account on your blog.

For all blogging options, I recommend NOT having “anonymous” commenting enabled. Accountability is important, people often act differently when they perceive they are accountable for their actions.

Miguel Guhlin is a great resource on this question of how to setup teacher and student blogs, and I commend his wiki site “Creating the Walled Garden: Setting Up Web 2.0 Apps on School District Servers” to you in this context. (I’m not just recommending that site because Miguel quoted me at the top, either!)

ADDITION: Miguel corrected in his post “Edublogging Solutions” the links above with his newer resources “Walled Garden Apps that use PHP/MySQL backend” and “Walled Garden Apps that DO NOT use MySQL backend but do use PHP.”

Overall, I am a big fan of server-based blogging tools which provide contributors as well as consumers with web-based access to the blog on any Internet-connected computer. I do love iLife on the Mac, but as a client-side application iWeb is much more limited and less powerful than blogs which use platforms like Wordpress or Blogger. I know Miguel is a huge client-side blog application fan (using Thingamablog) as is Kevin Honeycutt who uses iWeb. Both these educators create and produce wonderful educational content with their respective tools, but I stand by my recommendation for a server-based blogging platform for the reasons I’ve outlined here. For a teacher team blog, really you don’t have a choice, because it would be ridiculous for all your teachers to use the same computer to do all their blogging.

You also want a blogging platform that has VERY effective and robust anti-spam commenting functionality. Just like email spam, blog comment spam is prolific and can be nasty. Besides a cyberbullying incident happening on your school blog, the second worst-cast scenario is probably having offensive comment spam posted there. We’ve had lots of trouble in the past year on both the Google ITM blog (which is unfortunately still down as a domain, for some reason) as well as the TechLearning blog with blog spam. I use the free plugin Akismet on my own Wordpress blog, which handles most blog spam and comes pre-loaded in default Wordpress installations, as well as the free plug-ins Comment Timeout and Simple Trackback Validation. An updated list of the Wordpress plug-ins I use is on my blog “about” page.

Hopefully that is helpful. I haven’t updated these resources in many months, but I do have additional links and resources related to educational blogging on my wiki page “Safe Classroom Blogging to Improve Student Writing.”

Technorati Tags:
teacher, school, blog, blogging, wordpress, blogger, thingamablog, ilife, iweb

I was delighted to learn about Fish4Info this evening:

a next generation library portal that seeks to make the library catalog a socially engaging destination by integrating web 2.0 technology with the catalog. From book reviews, to forums, comments and tags; fish4info makes the library website an interactive social community.

Created in Drupal and available free as an open source project, Fish4Info looks to have some of the features I wrote about in the ITM post “A Quest for NetFlix Plus Functionality for Books - for Young Readers!” recently and we discussed on Teaching Teaching Teachers last week. (I’m guessing that since we had so much trouble with the connection that night, the archived conversation may not be posted and published.) Fish4Info permits users to rate books and write reviews, but it is not clear if it includes the “artificial intellience-like” alogrithm (similar to NetFlix) which I contend we need for young readers inside and outside our schools. As an open-source project, of course, it will likely be greeted with suspicion and doubt by many school IT departments. Perhaps companies like Remote Learner will offer commercial support for Fish4Info at some point, like they do for Moodle, and thereby reduce the implementation risks for school district leaders wanting to embrace open source learning and content management systems like these?

I learned about Fish4Info thanks to Evelyn Freeman’s post “Notes from ALA: The ‘Amazonization’ of the Library Catalog” on the Educational Technology and Library Media Services blog of Oakland Schools in Waterford, Michigan. I found this post via mksouden’s tweet from two weeks ago. I wanted to leave a comment on this post, but unfortunately the Oakland schools’ Wordpress MU installation is configured to NOT allow outsiders to comment and register for an account. How irritating! Although it is annoying to NOT be able to leave a comment on a blog, it is GREAT to see the Oakland, Michigan, school system embracing blogging. I wish we’d see more school leaders here in Oklahoma do the same.

In the somewhat random and often fortuitous way hyperlinked learning leads in new beneficial and unexpected directions, after visiting the Oakland Schools’ website I linked to their ten minute video of Dr. Mike Schmoker discussing the implications of Dr. Robert Marzano’s research for school administrators in a session titled “Getting Results: The Essential Elements of Improvement.” Mike emphasizes (as does Marzano) that emphasizing “what gets taught and how it gets taught” is one of the most important things school administrators can do on a regular basis to constructively transform and influence learning experiences and outcomes for both teachers and students. He exhorts principals to walk around in classrooms, take notes on what is taught and how it’s taught, and gather this data for subsequent reflection, analysis, and action. I had not heard of Schmoker previously or his book “RESULTS NOW: How We Can Achieve Unprecedented Improvements in Teaching and Learning.” I’m glad this video was shared on the Oakland PS website. I commend the district for utilizing web-video, but it would be much more effective as well as potentially impactful (from a viral standpoint) if this video was posted to TeacherTube or YouTube and then embedded on the district’s website. At least the video WAS shared online…..

Researchers and professional development gurus like Marzano and Schmoker are very successful in getting the ears and attention of school administrators, but I chafe under the impression that for the most part they advocate methods to simply more effectively deliver the same traditional curriculum to students in only slightly modified ways and formats. I heard Marzno last summer at our state leadership conference share a keynote entitled “The New Era of Comprehensive School Reform: Three Critical Interventions for Effective District/School Reform” but I was under-whelmed. Marzo does point out the ridiculousness of trying to teach and deliver a curriculum that is a mile wide and an inch deep, remarking how research indicates we’d have to have a K-22 school system instead of a K-12 system to address all the mandated content area standards with the depth and breadth they require for mastery. Neither Marzano or Schmoker appear to be true “educational revolutionaries,” based on my current understanding of their ideas, however. They do advocate a reduction in the number of mandated standards for teachers and students, but they do not go far enough. We DO need comprehensive school reform, but rather than simply reducing the number of standards I think we need a much more simplified but focused approach along the lines of Ted Sizer’s “Habits of Mind.” I agree with Marzo’s emphasis on formative assessments, and much of what he advocates for in “Classroom Instruction That Works” — including wider use of non-linguistic representation, as explained by Judy Beaver of the Punahou School in Honolulu, Hawaii. I still see both these educational administration thought-leaders as essentially advocates for an uninspiring and merely “tweaked’ educational status quo, however, rather than the reinvented learning landscape which we desperately need.

Am I off-base with this perception?

Technorati Tags:
fish4info, drupal, library, libraries, software, learning, education, school, leadership, schmoker, marzano, reform, change

At EduBloggerCon 2008 in San Antonio, Texas, on June 28th, some controversy arose regarding the presence of videographers hired by Pearson Education. Steve Hargadon, who was the primary organizer of EduBloggerCon, gave permission to Pearson to attend and videotape many of the sessions pending permission from the presenters and speakers themselves. Today I had an opportunity to interview Dr. Elaine Roberts, the Director of Product Development and Professional Growth for Pearson, about the video recording which took place at EduBloggerCon this year and Pearson’s plan for utilizing this video content. In my view, it is a real compliment that a respected and large educational publishing company like Pearson views the conversations and ideas discussed by educators at EduBloggerCon to be important enough to document and share. If we, as change agents in our schools and communities, want our voices and ideas to gain a broader and more mainstream audience, I think we should embrace opportunities like this to both share our perspectives as well as further educate educational publishing companies themselves. Respecting intellectual property rights is VERY important, and the conversations which took place before, during, and after EduBloggerCon regarding the recording and sharing of ideas are needed. How do we change? Through conversations. Hopefully the opportunity to have Pearson record and share participant perspectives at EduBloggerCon on Friday will lead to more constructive conversations about learning and educational change in the 21st century in the classrooms and educational board rooms around our nation and world. We’ve still had LOTS of great opportunities for “unconference” conversations at NECC 2008, and things are just getting underway here in San Antonio!

 

 Podcast 260: EduBloggerCon 2008, Recording, Intellectual Property and Recording: A Conversation with Elaine Roberts of Pearson [13:20m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (803)

Show Notes:

1. Ewan McIntosh: Edubloggercon’s not an unconference: here’s why
2. Stephanie Sandifer: EduBloggercon 2008 Reflections
3. Vinnie Vrotny: Growing Pains at NECC’s EduBloggerCon 08
4. Tim Stahmer: EduBloggerCon Reflections
5. Will Richardson: I’ll Be in the Hallway 
6. Dean Sharesk: EdubloggerCon 2008
7. Scott McLeod: NECC 2008 - Edubloggercon
8. All posts indexed by Technorati for EBC08
9. EduBloggerCon 2008 wiki
10. NECC 2008 Conference Ning
11. Pearson Education

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Technorati Tags: ebc08, necc08, necc2008, necc, intellectualproperty, pearson, record, recording, technology, school, change, controversy

I know it’s a bit late in the game (just 4 days off) but I added the following proposal to the session wiki for EduBloggerCon San Antonio this evening:

Wordpress as a Blogging Platform: Plug-Ins, Options, Pitfalls and Benefits
Wordpress is an outstanding open source blogging engine. Let’s visit about our favorite plug-ins for Wordpress, discuss what makes Wordpress great, what pitfalls / challenges it presents, discuss templates, sidebar add-ons, upgrade procedures / best practices, and anything else you can think of related to Wordpress. Whether you have been using Wordpress for years or are interested in learning more about its benefits and how to get started, let’s have some conversations that can help us all move forward in our use of Wordpress!

There are several reasons I added this session:

• I’d love to learn more about Wordpress from other educators who have and continue to use Wordpress regularly! A keyword search for “Wordpress” in the NECC 2008 program search turns up zero results, so I’m thinking this isn’t a topic we’ll see addressed formally at the main conference. I’m particularly interested in learning what plug-ins other Wordpress users consider essential which I’m not using and/or don’t know about yet. (I have my current list of plug-ins listed on my blog about page.)
• We need to evangelize and advocate for great open source software solutions like Wordpress both formally and informally. Since it’s open source, I’m guessing we’re not going to see or hear a lot of hoopla on the vendor floor for Wordpress. Yet it is a fantastic blogging platform for both individual and team blogs, and I think everyone in education should have some familiarity with it!
• I’ve got some specific questions about PodPress and Wordpress 2.5 that I’m hoping some other folks can help answer for me. I have updated four of the five Wordpress blogs I maintain to version 2.5+, but not all of them, and podcasting/podpress is the main reason I’ve held off on one. I can’t find the PodPress stats on my Wordpress 2.5+ blogs! I’m not entirely sure Podpress is fully supported on Wordpress 2.5.

Voting polls for each proposed session at EduBloggerCon are available on the wiki. In addition to EduBloggerCon I’m looking forward to the NECC “Unplugged” conversations at the blogger’s cafe.

Incidentally, I’ve proposed that Karen Montgomery, Vicki Allen and I share a live “Technology Shopping Cart Podcast” on Tuesday, July 1st fro 3:30 to 4:30 pm in the Emerging Technologies Lounge at NECC. I was inspired by the WOW2 live webcast last year at NECC in Atlanta… This would provide us with a great chance to discuss iPhones in the classroom and webapps for learning!

Technorati Tags:
wordpress, necc, necc08, necc2008, ebc08, iphone

In her June 21, 2007, article “Education: Connecting the Lonely Profession” for WorldChanging, Suzie Boss discussed how many teachers seem to be stuck in professional learning and interaction behaviors which resemble “parallel play” for young children. She wrote:

Roland Barth, founding director of the Principals’ Center at Harvard University suggested in Educational Leadership last year (March 2006) that too many teachers are still stuck in a grown-up version of “parallel play.” It’s that stage of early childhood marked by little peer interaction. He explains: “The abiding signature of parallel play in education is the self-contained classroom, with the door shut and a piece of artwork covering that little pane of glass. The cost of concealing what we do is isolation from colleagues who might cause us to examine and improve our practices.” Yet, he adds, “If one day we educators could only disclose our rich craft knowledge to one another, we could transform our schools overnight.”

With three young children of our own, my wife and I have definitely seen this process in which kids eventually move beyond playing in the same room BY each other but not WITH each other, to a point where they are really playing TOGETHER. This is a developmental process, but also one in which the encouragement of a peer can be critical. I’m positive our third child is much more advanced in her imaginative play because of the modeling and influence of her older siblings. Peers influence peers in powerful ways, at young but also at older ages.

I connect this with teacher professional development and ongoing growth in the following way: Please do NOT underestimate the VERY powerful and influential role which you have and will have on the other teachers in your own context. If there was a single message I learned in the three years I worked with the Texas Technology Leadership Academy for Superintendents and Principals (producing a series of 11 video interviews with past participants) it was that perceptual change most often happens when PEERS INFLUENCE PEERS. In the context of educator professional development and growth, we don’t want parallel play. “Play” is in fact desirable in many contexts (including uses of new technology tools) but these activities need to be interactive and collaborative, rather than isolated and “in parallel.”

I am convinced it is vital that we find ways to continue connecting as professional educators with each other in face-to-face meetups as well as online, virtual venues. Growing professional learning networks like the K-12 Online Conference, Classroom 2.0, Women of Web 2.0, The NECC 2008 Ning, and our own Celebrate Oklahoma Voices digital storytelling project learning community are perfect places for educators to connect with each other on an ongoing basis. These virtual communities gain strength and synergy when face-to-face meetups are possible, and allow for plenty of interaction and fun. That’s the reason I’m looking forward to EduBloggerCon San Antonio in a few short weeks!

The following Creative Commons licensed image is one of my favorites to use in presentations about school change:

I use this image as a backdrop for the statement, “Conversations change us.” When we think about school change, at both small and large levels, I think we need to be thinking about conversations. How are we serving as local catalysts for conversations about blended learning, authentic assessment, project-based learning, and 21st century literacy skills in our own local contexts? These conversations need to take place with parents, with fellow teachers, with librarians, with administrators, with community members, with board members, and with students. We need to find ways to DISCOURAGE “parallel play” when it comes to teaching and learning, and instead foster conversations with our peers and educational constituents about COLLABORATION on an ongoing basis.

In a comment to Suzie’s article, mrc notes that the organizational structure of our schools keeps teachers isolated in many cases, and that we should not look to blogging as “a panacea.” While I certainly agree there are no panaceas when it comes to the challenges we face in education and as educators, I also believe there has never been a better day to CHOOSE to be a connected educator than TODAY. Web 2.0 technologies mean many things to many people, but as Suzie notes in her article, one of the most important things they mean to a growing number of educators (including you and me, I’m sure) is that we are not alone in our profession and in our professional learning journeys. Whatever your context, whatever your geographic location, whatever your age, whatever your content area, whenever you are in time– We now have the opportunity thanks to these digital information networks which connect us to NEVER BE ALONE.

Isolation is a bad thing. That is why some adults make kids go sit in the corner by themselves, and criminals are sometimes punished with solitary confinement. As human beings, we are wired to be social and be connected. Certainly there are important times and places for DISCONNECTING, but in general most people are happier and more productive when they are safely CONNECTED with each other.

I think I’ll try and close this post with a trite but appropriate clincher. Friends don’t let friends teach alone. Or, how about: Just say no to parallel play in professional development. Are these attempts at humor silly? I’m sure they are. But you get the idea. We need to take ACTION based on what we know about the POWER and INFLUENCE we have on our peers and others in our own educational contexts. Let us remember and heed the prophetic words of Margaret Meade:

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

When you hear the pessimists, the naysayers, the doomsday prophets, and the “yeah-buts” tell you it is all hopeless, schools will never change, remember this: John Dewey didn’t have the opportunity to write and read blogs. Neither did Paulo Freire or John Holt. But we do. Our connected conversations and communications already ARE changing the world, because they are changing our practices. We are the learning revolution.

Thanks to the ever thoughtful and innovative Clay Burell for bringing Suzie’s article to my attention.

Technorati Tags:
learning, professionaldevelopment, teachers, isolation, reform, change, leadership

This afternoon and evening was quite momentous in terms of co-learning with my 10 year old son, Alexander. For many months, we have discussed together the possibility of him starting his own video podcast about creating different types of string figures. For the past two years, since we moved to Oklahoma, he has learned LOTS of different string figures from friends at school and from other places. His teachers have had books about string figures, and he’s been given books about string figures for birthdays by our relatives. He loves making string figures and teaching others how to make them. Given the visual nature of learning about string figure creation, I have thought for a long time this would make an ideal video podcast channel. I remain convinced that if we encourage young learners to further develop their hobbies and interests, and find ways to support them sharing and communicating about those activities with others, we can potentially help them cultivate their own literacy skills and abilities at many levels.

I also remain convinced that learning to write and alter simple programming code (like CSS and PHP in Wordpress templates) is a great activity for several reasons. As John Jones stated in his TTT presentation about Drupal last week, kids may not have many opportunities to learn and practice “attention to detail” in the ways they do when coding and tweaking code. The direct feedback which a person receives when attempting to use computer code to achieve a specific result is very powerful. It can be frustrating when things don’t work, but very gratifying when they do. This process of tangible feedback in the course of CREATING something is a big part of what constructionist educational pedagogy is all about, in my understanding.

It is also wonderful to learn how to author documents on the web and engage in hyperlinked writing. As I wrote in my December 2006 post “Shining lights, finding nuggets, adding tools”:

… hyperlinked writing is the most powerful form of writing that has ever existed…..

How wonderful to help one of my own children unlock the door to powerful, hyperlinked writing!

As a result of these conversations and thought processes, I helped Alexander create his own website “String and Me” this evening. We just activated the site late this afternoon (for $45 total: $15 for a 1 year domain registration and $30 for the “add-on domain” fee with Siteground) and the speed with which our new registration become “resolvable” via DNS surprised me. There is not a lot there yet, but we did spend several hours tonight configuring things. Alexander checked out multiple Wordpress themes but ended up settling on Blue Wonder. (Look familiar?) He learned to use a ftp client and was able to delete unwanted themes from his site (via ftp) as well as upload new themes and activate them. With this being his first day to work with Wordpress, PHP, and some basic scripting, I asked him how long it would be before he knows more about “this stuff” than I do. I bet it won’t be long.

Alexander spent almost all day with David Titus at the Survive and Thrive Single Mom’s conference. David came in to work with many of the older kids whose moms were attending the conference, and Alexander (as an experienced and knowledgeable string figure creator himself) served as David’s assistant. David uses string figures to tell stories as well as do Christian ministry. Alexander remembered LOTS of string figures he had forgotten, and learned a bunch of new ones as well. We both realized NOW is the perfect time to record (with video) the procedures for creating many of these string figures, both so he can remember how to make them in the future and so he can share his expertise with others.

It was an exciting evening– It’s not often you have an opportunity to introduce your own child to something as powerful and potentially life-changing as hyperlinked writing and blogging! Alexander as written previously on Learning Signs, of course, but I sense there is a BIG difference between a website he shares and has relatively less ownership and “stake in” and one (in this case, “String and Me”) in which he has a 100% stake and 100% control. He is fired up! It’s great to experience and share in his enthusiasm for learning, writing, creating, and sharing. I’m a proud dad! And we’re just getting started. Father’s Day tomorrow will be marked (I predict) by multiple video podcasts being recorded by the ten year old male in our house and posted to the web!

SiteGround is my web host

Technorati Tags:
blog, string, figure, stringfigure, learning, hyperlink, domain, dns, register, siteground

Remember the ENIAC computer? (Well, I guess I’m not actually asking if you REMEMBER it– as in you SAW it in person– more if you read and learned about it in the past.)

According to the current WikiPedia entry, it was unveiled in 1946 and cost approximately $500,000.

ENIAC was designed and built to calculate artillery firing tables for the U.S. Army’s Ballistic Research Laboratory… ENIAC contained 17,468 vacuum tubes, 7,200 crystal diodes, 1,500 relays, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors and around 5 million hand-soldered joints. It weighed 30 short tons (27 t), was roughly 8.5 feet by 3 feet by 80 feet (2.6 m by 0.9 m by 26 m), took up 680 square feet (63 m²), and consumed 150 kW of power… The ENIAC used four of the accumulators controlled by a special Multiplier unit and could perform 385 multiplication operations per second…..

I remember the ENIAC mainly for its size and relatively paltry computing capabilities compared to personal computers and supercomputers today. It was in “continuous operation” until 1955. When I think of the early days of computing, I immediately think of the ENIAC.

I mentioned in my post “The benefits of unplugging” that our family visited Los Alamos, New Mexico, last week. Los Alamos is home to the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Each time we’ve driven through Los Alamos, I’ve wondered what millions of our tax dollars are up to there– paying scientists and engineers to continue developing new technologies for the US military and our weapons systems. This evening, reading the news on our Wii as I waited for my son to teach me how to play “Rayman Raving Rabbids,” I read today’s AP article “Scientists develop fastest computer.” For a total cost of $100 million, scientists and engineers worked six years to create a supercomputer reminiscent of the ENIAC but vastly greater in its physical size as well as computing capabilities. For the first time the computer has:

…performed 1,000 trillion calculations per second in a sustained exercise… To put the computer’s speed in perspective, it has roughly the computing power of 100,000 of today’s most powerful laptops stacked 1.5 miles high, according to IBM. Or, if each of the world’s 6 billion people worked on hand-held computers for 24 hours a day, it would take them 46 years to do what the Roadrunner computer can do in a single day.

So if everyone on the planet was using an iPhone 24/7, how many years would it take us to replicate a day’s work of “the Roadrunner?”

The size specifications of the Roadrunner dwarf the ENIAC as well. According to the same article:

The interconnecting system occupies 6,000 square feet with 57 miles of fiber optics and weighs 500,000 pounds. Although made from commercial parts, the computer consists of 6,948 dual-core computer chips and 12,960 cell engines, and it has 80 terabytes of memory housed in 288 connected refrigerator-sized racks.

80 terabytes of memory… Is that all? Will my kids have that much storage capacity in their handheld computers when they start attending college in about a decade? Quite possibly.

I don’t intend to trivialize this computing achievement with attempted levity. On a more serious note, I recognize the pivotal role funding by the US government for military computing applications continues to play in the development of computing and supercomputing capabilities. The ENIAC was originally designed to make more accurate and thorough calculations for the US Army’s artillery units. The Roadrunner is ostensibly being used “to assure the safety and security of our (weapons) stockpile.” Do we really need a supercomputer with petaflop performance capabilities to do that? I thought the nuclear football, developed during the administration of Eisenhower, did that for us? I think it’s fair to hypothesize the actual military uses of the Roadrunner are barely touched on in today’s AP article.

A petaflop is 10 to the 15th power “flops: FLoating point Operations Per Second.” Can I begin to comprehend a number that large? That challenge is similar to trying to understand the distance the Andromeda Galaxy (our closest neighbor galaxy) is away from our own Milky Way galaxy: Approximately 2.5 million light-years away. I can say that number, but I can I really comprehend it? I don’t think so.

The speed of change we are witnessing today, in our lifetimes, when it comes to information technologies and telecommunications truly IS staggering. An SR-71 was fast (when it was operational) but blog-powered communication is faster. At the speed of light, packets of data traverse our planet and magically permit our ideas and thoughts to interact and influence each other. Who could have dreamed of such a day?

$100 million for a petaflop of performance. Wow. What does that mean? Are we approaching the moment of technological singularity? We’re certainly moving in that direction.

Amidst such change, it is ludicrous and sad to see our political leaders in the United States continuing to emphasize a 19th century approach to education via standardized assessments which place zero value on digital literacy or 21st century skills. We can be frustrated with NCLB, we can be mad about high stakes testing, but more than anything else, I think we can justifiably be sad at the glaring lack of vision and understanding for the dynamic communications landscape of the 21st century which it reflects.

In a few months, citizens of the United States will have an opportunity to cast votes for a new chief executive. When the reins of power are transferred, I hope we’ll be pleased with new educational vision in the White House which supports the development of both traditional as well as digital literacies in the classrooms and homes of our nation. If we’re paying $100 million for a petaflop of performance today, we’ll probably be paying $1000 for that same performance capacity in a decade. Are we equipping our current generations of learners to thrive in an environment replete with such computational capacity? No. Sadly, we’re still arguing about whether or not cell phones should be permitted in schools at all. Are people of all ages going to continue making poor choices with the tools at their fingertips, including cell phones? Of course. The solution is not banning them and condemning students and teachers to a 19th century learning environment devoid of opportunities for digital interaction.

Is this “glass” half empty or half full? I prefer to see it as half full. We live in a day ripe with opportunity for visionary and inspired leadership. Let’s hope our next chief executive signs landmark educational legislation framed by an electronic whiteboard or at least a laptop computer, rather than a chalkboard.

Perhaps such an image will inspire educators around the world to stand up and cheer, rather than fall to their knees and weep.

Technorati Tags:
eniac, petaflop, computer, supercomputer, losalamos, election, obama, mccain, politics, school, education, reform

Recently, on two separate occasions, my colleague and friend, Wesley Fryer asked if I would be willing to guest blog on Moving at the Speed of Creativity for the weekend. On both occasions I was planning to be at my cabin at Table Rock Lake. By design I do not have broadband Internet access and use as little technology as possible when I am there. Therefore, I declined, but third time a charm. This time Wes asked if I could take over his blog while he vacationed with his family. I agreed to do this and have agonized since Monday that not one new word has been posted. If you are reading this, it is probably because you are a regular and your RSS reader let you know that the content had been updated. By the way, Wes text messaged me earlier today and he and his family came down to Los Alamos to see a movie because it had snowed where they have been camping at altitude. I was a little envious since at the time he texted it was in the 90’s and very humid in St. Louis.

On Monday when Wes welcomed me as a guest blogger, I knew it before I checked Google Reader because I was getting e-mails alerting me to new twitter followers and requests for membership for Web 2.0 4 Teachers Ning Network. Oh, the pressure. The last time my twitter followers spiked and Web 2.0 4 Teachers had a higher than usual number of membership requests was the weekend after Wes posted his RSS: Ready for Some Stories on April 25 and linked to Ning. That’s the power of a well-read blog. Guess I better contribute to the Ning network and add something worthy of following to twitter tonight, tooJ

And now for the Adventures of Google Earth Girl…

Yesterday, I met with Cindy Lane, a.k.a. Google Earth Girl (GEG), to plan our presentation proposal for the K12 Online Conference. Over coffee at Starbuck’s, we worked out the details of our presentation entitled “Who Needs S.L.E.E.P.?” Assuming our proposal is accepted, and you attend (watch) the conference, you will learn what the acronym means. Otherwise, it will remain the secret of Google Earth Girl and her sidekick (me). We are planning to submit S.L.E.E.P. to the FETC and the METC, too. It does have something to do with a lack of…And now, the adventure begins…GEG found out today that she has been selected to attend the GOOGLE TEACHER ACADEMY on June 25th in Mountain View, California. Cindy will become the first Missouri Google Certified Teacher and will join the elite ranks of only 150 certified teachers in the world. Congratulations to Cindy! You Go, Google Earth Girl!

In my recent presentations and workshops for teachers and librarians titled, “A Summer Of Professional Learning Choices for Educators! Where Should I Start?” I have enjoyed introducing teachers to the Classroom 2.0 learning network.

Visit Classroom 2.0

With over 8000 current members as of this writing, Classroom 2.0 is a fantastic place for teachers to make connections with other educators across their state or providence, or across the globe! Joining and utilizing an online learning community like Classroom 2.0 is one of the best ways to help teachers personally experience and therefore understand the learning and collaboration potentials latent within the web 2.0 tools now at our fingertips.

Today when I checked my Diigo account, I saw I had four new friend requests. This is not an unusual ocurrance, since more and more educators are discovering and using Diigo, but it did seem remarkable that these four requests were from educators in four different countries in different parts of our world: from China, the United States, Israel, and Honduras.

This simple event is absolutely amazing, when I stop to think about it. The fact that free tools now exist which permit me, as an educator, to connect with the thoughts, ideas, and work of others located in different parts of the planet is both exciting and extremely difficult to comprehend. This type of capacity to directly connect and communicate (essentially for free, because it can be done at zero cost beyond what I have already spent to be connected online) has not existed in any previous era of human history. As our digital information landscape continues to morph and dynamically change before our eyes, I marvel that events like this can take place at all.

I continue to struggle with a strategy to help educational leaders in my own community experience and understand these powerful, constructive potentials of read/write web technologies. This evening driving to dinner, I had what may be an epiphany. Rather than ask to meet with administrative staff leaders, write letters, or organize a campaign of advocacy on a broad scale, I think it might be more effective to directly help members of our local school board to setup their own personal blogs and then utilize them to communicate regularly with constituents. I’ve previously read about Larry Lessig’s advocacy for blogging in higher education and government law circles, which he has done by helping others setup and use a personal blog. I think his example in this context is an excellent one to follow.

I am going to try this tactic. Personally experiencing the connective power and potential of web 2.0 is the key to understanding, or at least glimpsing, the reasons why we need to empower our students and teachers to utilize these tools regularly as part of their regular learning activities of the day. Will such a path result in changed hearts and minds about blogs, wikis, and other social networking tools in my own school community? I don’t know. Besides continuing to work on our statewide “Celebrate Oklahoma Voices” project (because “it matters” at so many different levels) this idea of helping board members setup and use personal blogs seems like the most practical course of advocacy moving forward in my own school community.

I’ll be sure to “report in” on my progress as I embark on this new pathway of local advocacy for “the learning revolution.”

Technorati Tags:
collaboration, education, teacher, leadership, advocacy, change, tactic, strategy, schoolreform, web2, readwriteweb, readwrite

The headline of today’s AP article, “Violence no worse than usual in Ciudad Juarez” trivializes a ridiculous and unacceptably violent situation in the border town across from El Paso, Texas. The second paragraph in the article reads:

But violence did not appear to be worse than usual in Ciudad Juarez, home base of the powerful Juarez drug cartel and one of the hardest-hit cities in a surge of homicides across Mexico.

“Worse than usual?” Are readers of the AP and MSNBC expected to accept the following “as usual” for the citizens and residents of Juarez?

Security officials reported at least six homicides since Saturday, including two municipal police officers who were riddled with machine-gun fire as they were getting into a car. Several businesses were set on fire, but nobody was hurt. The weekend homicide figures were not especially alarming in a city where more than 200 people have been killed thus far this year. Eight people were killed on Friday alone, including five men whose bodies were dumped on a street corner wrapped in blankets. Two of the men had been decapitated.

“The weekend homicide figures were not especially alarming.” Who is this AP writer kidding?! Eight people were killed on Friday and two had their heads cut off… and that is not “alarming?” Goodness gracious.

Following my post and reflections on Friday (“Drug violence in Mexico is bad: VERY bad”) I wanted to check in today and see how the weekend went in Juarez. Despite this misleading AP headline, I would conclude the situation continues to be HORRIBLE in terms of out-of-control drug cartel related violence.

Today’s El Paso Times article, “25 slain during weekend in Juárez,” reports:

More than 33 people were killed this past week compared with 25 slayings the previous week.

If this is not a case of drug-related violence spinning out of control on the Mexico - U.S. border, what is?

According to the May 18, 2008 AP article, “Police chief resigns in Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez amid wave of killings,” of twenty-two public officials threatened by the drug cartels this month, only ONE remains in office today. The rest are dead, injured, or (like the police chief of Juarez) have resigned:

As police chief of Ciudad Juarez, Prieto served during a period in which drug cartels grew increasingly bold, advertising for drug couriers, shooting it out with rivals in the streets and issuing a hit list threatening 22 top city police officials. Of those 22, seven have been killed, three more have been wounded in assassination attempts and the remainder, save one, have left their posts.

From an educational standpoint, I realize many (if not most) students and teachers in midwest U.S. schools are either out for the semester or will be soon. This current event would be a good one to track in the remaining days of the school year, however, both on Google News (a simple keyword search for “Juarez” turns up plenty of articles) as well as Technorati. Surprisingly, there have not been any recent articles on Global Voices Online about drug cartel violence in Mexico. The latest article I find there is from Eduardo Avila in January 2008: “Mexico: Drug-Related Violence in Tijuana.” Are Mexican bloggers reticent to speak up about this wave of crime and drug-cartel related killings? They may be wise to take such a position. Apparently all the authorities are bowing to the violence and threats of violence.

Do we, in the United States, living as many of us do in protected pockets of relative peace and tranquility, realize the violent and harsh reality lived daily by many of our fellow North Americans living just south of our border? Drug-related violence is certainly a reality in the United States as well, but similar situations to that in Juarez where city and police officials are silenced and forced from office by the drug-cartels are not happening in the U.S. as far as I know. But what do I know? Relatively little, but at least Internet websites and new media publication sources permit access to a much greater set of voices than would have been possible even a few years ago. Today’s Ciudad Juarez news article, “Bad Moon Rising: The Crisis in Ciudad Juarez” reports:

“Juarez has been lost to us,” shrugged Arturo Dominguez, president of the city public safety commission. “The crime rate comes from not paying attention. All of us, citizens, functionaries and businessmen, lost control of the city watching was happening on the corner but saying nothing. It is regrettable there is no order, but if we’ve lost control, we shouldn’t at least lose hope.”

From a documentation standpoint, I’ll point out that I was unable to find this article on what I think is the original source’s website. Tracking news events like this with search tools like Technorati is MESSY and can lead to many important discussions about information, credibility, validity, and sources. Certainly it is much easier to simply teach out of the textbook and from previously utilized blackline masters, but in our digital information age it is ESSENTIAL for students and teachers alike to grow adept at filtering and verifying information sources about different topics. Who is the source? How can we verify what they said? Do they have an obvious agenda or bias? If others disagree with their point, what reasons can we provide for those disparities? These are all good questions, and the issues at stake in this case are NOT trivial.

New media information fluency skills are needed by ALL learners, not simply those enrolled in technology applications courses. How will our students formally learn and practice these skills in school, if our teachers are not provided with sustained professional development opportunities to learn and practice them? As David Warlick exhorts us, literacy is EVERYONE’S business. We should strive to make the most of every learning opportunity each day, and this horrific situation in Juarez certainly provides many options for exploring and learning about new literacies.

Larry Lessig, The Sunlight Foundation, and others are fighting to curb corruption in U.S. politics via the Change Congress campaign. Who is fighting to end not only drug-cartel sponsored violence in northern Mexico, but the endemic and institutionalized corruption which permits it to flower? I don’t know. That would be a great question for your students to tackle in the weeks ahead.

Technorati Tags:
juarez, violence, border, killing, death, drug, cartel, assassinate, threat, corruption, police, resign, education, learning, technorati, globalvoicesonline

I spent a year living in Mexico City during 1992-1993 studying and writing about a variety of security issues including the U.S. led “war on drugs.” My longest paper from that research era, “US Drug Control in the Americas: Time for a Change,” reviewed historical and contemporary efforts (as of 1993) to combat the scourge of illegal drugs “at the source” in Latin America. Of course Latin American countries are certainly not the only sources of illegal drugs and never have been. The opportunity to make meth in labs has made many communities in the United States sources as well as distribution points for illegal drugs. The summative, negative impact of the drug trade on our society is HUGE. While living in Mexico and traveling not only in Mexico but also in parts of Central America (Panama, Guatemala and El Salvador) I became aware of the VERY strong role of Mexican drug cartels in the politics, economics, and overall social scene of Mexico.

I remember hearing about the potential “Colombianization” of Mexico and the US Mexican border back in 1992-93. My perception at that time was that IF the Mexican and US governments conducted strong police and military efforts to try and break the power of the drug cartels in Mexico, particularly in the northern states, the result would be an untenable war zone and political instability like that of Colombia. The 1985 assassination of US DEA agent Kiki Camarena was a dramatic example of the potential power of Mexican drug cartels in the 1980s. Friday’s Associated Press article, “E-mail warns of bloody weekend in Mexican border city,” confirms my perception of 15 years ago that the lawless state of some areas in Mexico make the regions ripe for Colombianization. The AP authors wrote:

The streets of Ciudad Juarez are empty after police became aware of an e-mail warning that this weekend will be “the bloodiest” in the Mexican border city. Ciudad Juarez police have been given assault rifles and instructed not to patrol the streets alone. The e-mail says that gunmen will open fire at malls, restaurants, nightclubs and other public places and that there will be “killings all over the city.” Ciudad Juarez Police Chief Roberto Orduna says the threats must be taken seriously and sought to reassure residents in a news release Thursday, saying police will be more vigilant. Officials say that more than 200 people have been killed in Ciudad Juarez, a city of 1.3 million people across from El Paso, Texas, as drug cartels fight for territory.

When many U.S. citizens think of lawlessness and war today, we likely think of our ongoing, bloody and costly war in Iraq– in both human lives of US combatants, Iraqi combatants, Iraqi non-combatants, and U.S. taxpayer dollars. We also SHOULD think of our (U.S.) ongoing war effort in Afghanistan. We should not lose sight, however, of the violence taking place just south of our border.

Growing up as I did in the United States, I took it for granted that if our family had a problem with criminals, we could call the police for help and they WOULD help. When I lived in Mexico, if you had a problem the LAST thing you wanted to do was call the police. Fortunately I was connected to the US Embassy at that time, and if needed I could call the Marine guard station at the embassy. I never had to do that, but I certainly remembered that option. People who ran into trouble in Mexico more often (if they didn’t have embassy connections) called friends for assistance rather than the police. Private bodyguards were VERY common among the wealthy and elite. The overall civil climate with respect to law and order was much different than what I was used to in the United States. Even with these realities, I LOVED living in Mexico City (except for the horrible pollution, of course) and wouldn’t trade my year there for anything. The relationships I built and cultivated in Mexico were life-changing and ones I still treasure. That said, however, I am certainly glad I do not live with the uncertainly and fear which can come from living in an environment where law enforcement officials have relatively little power over strong criminal elements and very little respect and confidence from the general public. This article about expected violence this weekend in Ciudad Juarez brings all these ideas to mind.

I hope this prediction of violence in Ciudad Juarez does not come to pass. I have not been to El Paso for a couple of years. The last time I was there, my breath was literally taken away at night by the expanse of lights at night which WAS Ciudad Juarez. If you haven’t spent time on the U.S. - Mexico border, I think your ability to form insightful and accurate perceptions about it is extremely limited. I’ve spent very little time on the border myself, but my time there has influenced my thinking in important ways. See my May 2007 post, “Humanizing discussions about immigration and borders” for more of my thoughts along these lines.

We need to help our students develop and cultivate more personal perceptions and understandings of our global society. The challenges faced by people just like us in other places and contexts would likely surprise and even shock many U.S. students. We are barely beginning to scratch the surface of opportunities we have for international education and collaboration via digital learning tools. I am dismayed by articles like this one from the AP about violence in Mexico and on the US/Mexican border, but I am motivated by it to further equip learners of all ages with the knowledge and skills to be constructive change agents in their local communities for important values like human rights and self determination. The WITNESS website is an example of a technology-powered initiative focused on political activism and change-making. Their steps are: