Moving at the Speed of Creativity

This podcast is a recording of the keynote address I shared at the Massachusetts Computer Using Educators educational technology conference in Sturbridge, Massachusetts on November 19, 2008. The official conference program description of this session was: U.S. educators in the early twenty-first century face formidable challenges but are blessed with access to unprecedented tools and opportunities for shared professional learning. As teachers we must help our students master content area knowledge and skills, but also develop and refine a set of important 21st century literacy skills that are not measured on traditional, multiple- choice examinations. How can we effectively and realistically enable our students and teachers to meet the learning demands we have inherited from 20th century legislative mandates, and simultaneously embrace and encourage the development of 21st century skills? A focus on creating and collaborating within a context of project-based learning offers hope in the face of these challenges. Let’s explore together practical ways students and teachers are using digital tools to create and collaborate together, reaching new heights of student achievement and documentable learning.

 

 Podcast293: Creating and Collaborating: The Keys to 21st Century Literacy (MASSCUE 2008 Keynote) [01:02:45m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (70)

Show Notes:

1. Session wiki links
2. Presentation Slides (PDF - 2.4 MB)
3. MASSCUE 2008

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I posted the following memo to our Celebrate Oklahoma Voices learning community this afternoon, in response to questions raised by a school district official and a company providing content filtering services for some of our Oklahoma school districts. This is also available as a PDF file. See my November 11, 2008, post “Making the case for a safe, moderated learning community for Oklahoma schools” for part 1.

To: Celebrate Oklahoma Voices Project Participants
From: Wesley Fryer
Date: November 17, 2008
RE: Learning Community Website Issues – Part 2

Some members of our COV advisory committee have had additional discussions with Oklahoma school district personnel as well as commercial vendors who provide content filtering services for Oklahoma schools about whitelisting our COV learning community websites per the Nov 11th instructions and memo published last week. This memo is a response to those new questions which have been raised.

QUESTION ABOUT OPEN SOCIAL AUTHENTICATION

Our Celebrate Oklahoma Voices learning community currently uses (along with other websites created with Ning.com) the open social authentication protocol: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSocial

One of the commercial vendors serving Oklahoma school districts participating in the COV project has pointed out there is a “fairly obscure vulnerability” which permits users once the http://api.ning.com domain has been opened/whitelisted to access content from other social networking websites like Friendster, Myspace, Orkut, Ning, and other social networking websites using scripts/hacks for the open social authentication protocol. The following question came up: “Given this obscure vulnerability, should our school district keep all Ning.com websites blocked including Celebrate Oklahoma Voices?”

EXPLANATION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Use of this exploit is analogous to student use of a proxy service to obtain access to websites which are blocked via the school’s content filter. Here are several things to think about and keep in mind with regard to this question and situation.

1. Recognizing this exploit is analogous to student use of a proxy service and is (according to the commercial vendor who raised this issue) a “fairly obscure vulnerability,” COV project facilitators recommend that school district personnel weigh the tremendous benefits and value of providing teachers and students in their district with access to the moderated content and moderated learning community which is COV in contrast to the limited potential of this obscure vulnerability to be exploited by students to access inappropriate/officially filtered web content. We recommend school officials continue to monitor student Internet use and deal with students utilizing web scripts/hacks which exploit this vulnerability in the same way other students are disciplined who use web proxy services to bypass the school content filter. We recommend school officials continue to permit access and use of the moderated COV learning community by whitelisting http://celebrateoklahoma.us and http://api.ning.com.

2. If an Oklahoma school district’s administrators are adamant that the risks posed by this “fairly obscure vulnerability” is excessive and not tolerable, there is a content filtering work-around which can still provide teachers and students with access to the COV learning community. This access can be handled in two ways:

A. If the school district has implemented authentication for web access (also referred to as “differentiated content filtering”) where teachers are permitted different/more permissive access rights to Internet websites than students, then port 443 (ssl) access to the https://celebrateoklahoma.us and https://api.ning.com domains can be authorized/permitted on the content filter for teachers, but denied for students. Students, however, can STILL be permitted to have port 80 (standard http) access to these web domains. Unauthenticated port 80 access to these sites still permits students to view videos and other content on the COV learning community, but does not permit the posting of new content or commenting.

B. If the school has NOT implemented a scheme for differentiated content filtering, then read-only access to the COV learning community can still be provided by permitting the port80-only access to the above cited websites and prohibiting port 443 (ssl) access. This is NOT the preferred/recommended access COV project facilitators recommend for school districts, but compared to “completely blocking / banning” the COV website from all educator and student access, this limited read-only access IS preferable.

3. From the perspective of legal mandates (CIPA, COPPA, FRCP, etc) schools are NOT required to block student access to all social networking websites. While many Oklahoma schools do block access to social networking websites, this is not required by law. Schools CAN therefore (as also addressed in our memo from 11 Nov 2008) legally permit access to our COV moderated learning community.

4. It is important to remember there is no substitute for face-to-face relationships and conversations with students to address issues of digital ethics and citizenship. In virtually all our Oklahoma schools today, some students are utilizing proxy websites and services to circumvent district-imposed content filters. Schools are required by law to have a content filtering policy in place and enforce that policy. These good-faith efforts comply with the mandates of federal and state laws regarding Internet access on school networks. No technological policy or procedure for content filtering Internet websites is guaranteed to be 100 percent effective, however. When users are granted ANY access to the Internet, some risk is accepted for those users accessing content which may be inappropriate or undesirable.

As leaders and officials in our schools and organizations, it is important that we move forward in helping equip students with the skills they need to become responsible and ethical citizens in our community, state, nation and world. In many of our Oklahoma school districts today, the level of censorship enforced and authorized by school administrators is more severe than that imposed by the Communist, totalitarian government of China. School district officials must walk a line balancing the expectations of citizens in our free society on the one hand, and the need to protect students, teachers, and the organization itself from harm and liability risks on the other. This is a formidable challenge.

Our focus in our Oklahoma schools must be not only on protecting our people, resources and organizations, but also facilitating the processes of creating, collaborating, and communicating with digital tools. Our schools should be digitally relevant learning spaces for teachers as well as students. By providing access to the Celebrate Oklahoma Voices learning community as well as project, school officials can take important steps forward in meeting these challenges and priorities alongside other Oklahomans committed to the best interests of our students, their educational future, and our shared future as creative Oklahomans.

If you have questions regarding these issues or recommendations, please do not hesitate to contact me toll free at 888-501-2059, or by email at wes [at] oklahomaheritage [dot] com.

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ning, opensocial, vulnerability, oklahoma, school, technology, socialnetworking, friendster, myspace, leadership, ethics, citizenship

My three children were honored to participate in a ceremony today held at the Oklahoma Heritage Association and Gaylord-Pickens Museum in Oklahoma City, as members of the Oklahoma Centennial Commission and several of our state’s young citizens dedicated a time capsule scheduled to be opened in forty-five years, five years prior to the celebration of our state’s 150th birthday. Oklahoma celebrated its 100th birthday as a state in 2007, and this ceremony was the final act of our state’s Centennial Commission.

Each young student participating in the ceremony placed several items in the time capsule, and pledged to return to re-open the time capsule in 2052. Each one received a commendation from our Oklahoma governor, Brad Henry.

This was a historic and memorable occasion, and not only inspired thinking about the history of our great state but also expectations for the exciting future into which we are moving rapidly. My children took some time this evening to reflect on the experience as well as what they think they’ll be doing in almost fifty years in a VoiceThread digital story we created at home:

In addition to witnessing my children participate in this historic time capsule ceremony, I was also thrilled to meet Dr. David Boren, current present of the University of Oklahoma, following his book-signing time at the museum this afternoon. Dr. Boren served as governor of Oklahoma from 1975 to 1979 and in the United States Senate from 1979 to 1994.

Bob Burke and Von Russell Creel have recently published “Oklahoma Statesman: The Life of David Boren,” and all three were present today to sign copies of the book.

Of the photos I took today, the following is my favorite, where my five year old is showing members of the audience the items she is about to proudly place into the Oklahoma Centennial time capsule:

I love our Oklahoma Centennial slogan:

A unique history. An extraordinary Future.

The best is yet to come, for we write the future!

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oklahoma, centennial, timecapsule, time, capsule, history, heritage, david, boren, gaylord, pickens, museum

Thanks to Philadelphia educator H. Songhai I found this touching slideshow of President-elect Barack Obama and his family on election night last week, as they experienced together intense moments of waiting, hoping, and eventually celebrating together the culmination of so many years of hoping and dreaming.

I want to view this slideshow set to music, and I’m guessing it won’t be long before someone creates a remix that includes music. I was struck by several things watching these images flash by on my laptop screen.

First, isn’t it going to be WONDERFUL and amazing to, again, have a young President with young children in the White House?

Many of these photographs are intensely personal. Look at those hands held together. This image speaks volumes to me.

I adore this photo. The proud children, coming out to congratulate their father. Wow.

Hail to the Chief.

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barack, obama, election, family, photo, photos

I shared a presentation today at the 2008 Oklahoma Distance Learning Association’s annual conference in Oklahoma City titled “Webcasting on a Shoestring.” The program description for this session was:

Historically it has been quite expensive to produce and host a live radio program that is broadcasted for a global audience. Today, it is possible to share a live webcast over the Internet using a laptop computer, a high speed Internet connection, and a combination of free software programs as well as one $30 commercial software program. In this session I will explain and demonstrate how to use a Mac laptop, a USB cell phone data card, a web browser and the website Ustream.tv, Skype software, Audio Hijack Pro software (the $30 program) as well as Camtwist to webcast for a global audience on a shoestring budget.

A Ustream.tv recorded archive of this 50 minute presentation is available. Presentation slides are available as a PDF. (14.8 MB)

I am updating the list of referenced websites and links from this session on http://handouts.wesfryer.com/shoestring-webcasting.

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webcast, webcasting, ustream, video, videoconferencing

Tuesday was Veteran’s Day here in the United States, which is a time to remember, reflect, pay respects, and honor veterans. I was able to help facilitate a Veteran’s Day presentation (over a videconferencing and webstreaming connection made possible by Tandberg) by high school students and veterans in Asher, Oklahoma, Tuesday morning, and I’ll be posting links to an archived recording of that wonderful conference here soon.

Tuesday was also the day educators at Temple University announced The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education. (PDF) According to the guide’s opening section:

This document is a code of best practices that helps educators using media literacy concepts and techniques to interpret the copyright doctrine of fair use. Fair use is the right to use copyrighted material without permission or payment under some circumstances—especially when the cultural or social benefits of the use are predominant. It is a general right that applies even in situations where the law provides no specific authorization for the use in question—as it does for certain narrowly defined classroom activities.

This guide identifies five principles that represent the media literacy education community’s current consensus about acceptable practices for the fair use of copyrighted materials, wherever and however it occurs: in K–12 education, in higher education, in nonprofit organizations that offer programs for children and youth, and in adult education.

When Dr. Renee Hobbs presented her OTEP conference keynote in Oklahoma this past September, “Media Literacy as Literacy for the Information Age,” she briefly discussed this document and the importance it would have for ALL educators and students using media materials to support learning. Dr. Joyce Valenza mentioned this forthcoming report to me at NECC 2008 as well, so I have been anticipating its release and publication since July.

A Ustream archive of the announcement of this document in Philadelphia at the National Constitution Center is available, but unfortunately the audio is a bit distorted in the first 4 minutes and 30 seconds of the recording. Thankfully the distortion WAS corrected by the AV gurus sharing the preso over Ustream, so just bear with the first 5 minutes of the recording– it DOES get better / clear!

Lesson Plans for Teaching about Copyright and Fair Use for Media Literacy Education are available on the “Unlocking Copyright Confusion” wiki. These are divided into five main categories:

1. Section 1. Understanding Copyright
2. Section 2. The Cost of Copyright Confusion
3. Section 3. Defining and Applying Fair Use
4. Section 4. The Five Principles
5. Section 5. Advocacy

“Videos Illustrating Case Studies Showing Teachers Using Copyrighted Materials According To The Code Of Best Practices For Fair Use In Media Literacy Education” are available for elementary, high school, and college settings.

In addition to outlining principles for educators and students to utilize in making fair use determinations for media use, this Code of Best Practices also addresses multiple myths which are common in our schools when it comes to copyright and intellectual property issues. These include:

1. Fair Use Is Too Unclear And Complicated For Me; It’s Better Left To Lawyers And Administrators.
2. Educators Can Rely On “Rules Of Thumb” For Fair Use Guidance.
3. School System Rules Are The Last Word Of Fair Use By Educators.
4. Fair Use Is Just For Critiques, Commentaries, Or Parodies.
5. If I’m Not Making Any Money Off It, It’s Fair Use. (And If I Am Making Money Off It, It’s Not.)
6. Fair Use Is Only A Defense, Not A Right.
7. Employing Fair Use Is Too Much Trouble; I Don’t Want To Fill Out Any Forms.
8. Fair Use Could Get Me Sued.

This last “myth” may be the one which will get your attention first and that of your administrator, so I’ll quote the Code of Best Practice’s response in full:

Truth: That’s very, very unlikely. We don’t know of any lawsuit actually brought by an American media company against an educator over the use of media in the educational process. Before even considering a lawsuit, a copyright owner typically will take the cheap and easy step of sending a “cease and desist” letter, sometimes leading the recipient to think that she is being sued rather than just threatened. An aggressive tone does not necessarily mean that the claims are legitimate or that a lawsuit will be filed.

I’ve added links to this Code of Best Practices and these copyright curriculum materials to our Copyright and Fair Use resource collection (a Google Site) for the Celebrate Oklahoma Voices digital storytelling project. I’m VERY enthused to be able to integrate these resources and guidelines into the workshops we’re providing for teachers here in Oklahoma focused on digital storytelling and video publication!

Many thanks to all the educators, advocates, and organizations who collaborated to create this Code of Best Practices!!! This document is VERY important for learners everywhere seeking to legally advance the causes of media literacy and digital storytelling in our schools and communities.

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copyright, digital, school, education, learning, legal, fairuse, temple, media, literacy

In response to some questions we’ve had in the past couple of weeks regarding the Ning website we’re using for our “Celebrate Oklahoma Voices” statewide oral history and digital storytelling project, I posted the following in our forum (“Clarifications on our COV learning community (Ning) website”) and also on Classroom 2.0 (“Specific guidelines needed for Ning subdomain content filter unblocking.”) In addition to whitelisting our main project domain (http://celebrateoklahoma.us) Steve Hargadon stated our participating schools also need to unblock http://api.ning.com for the images. The following is available as a 4 page PDF file as well.

To: Celebrate Oklahoma Voices Project Participants
From: Wesley Fryer
Date: November 11, 2008
RE: Learning Community Website Issues

We have received several questions regarding our “Celebrate Oklahoma Voices” (COV) learning community website (http://lc.celebrateoklahoma.us) recently. The purpose of this memo is to address several of these questions, clarify some issues, and provide insight into the ongoing development and direction of our project. Celebrate Oklahoma Voices is presented by The Oklahoma Heritage Association. (www.oklahomaheritage.com) COV is a statewide digital storytelling project empowering learners to become digital witnesses, archiving local oral history and sharing that history safely on the global stage of the Internet.

HOW IS THE COV WEBSITE MODERATED?

COV workshops are led by teams of Oklahoma educators who serve as facilitators. Facilitators are set up on the COV learning community website as administrators with authority to moderate members and content on the site. New members who join the learning community must be approved by a facilitator/administrator, and new videos or photos added to the site must also be approved. To date, I have been handling the moderation of new members and newly added videos to the site, as well as following all activity on the site including comments which are posted by members to videos or to others in the community. Anonymous commenting is not permitted on the site. As we further develop our co- facilitator program for COV in 2009, we will offer guidelines and training for our facilitators in moderating website members and content. Past participants in COV are welcome to become project facilitators. More information about that process will be posted to our website in December 2008.

WHY IS THE WEBSITE SETUP THROUGH NING.COM?

Our website is accessible from the address http://lc.celebrateoklahoma.us. If your school district’s content filter is set to “whitelist” the domain “celebrateoklahoma.us” then you should be able to view content (including videos) on our learning community website. You should NOT have to unblock or whitelist the entire ning.com domain and subdomains. Please contact me directly if you need assistance working with your IT department or the company providing your content filtering service for your school.

One of the important purposes advanced by the COV project is providing a safe, moderated online community environment for both Oklahoma teachers and students to post, share, and discuss videos as well as other issues relating to our digital storytelling project. For students as well as educators to learn digital citizenship skills in the 21st century, it is vital that safe environments be provided where learners of different ages can practice safe and ethical online behavior. Our Ning.com website has allowed COV project facilitators to create a dynamic and safe web environment which serves primarily as a location to post, share, and respond to project videos. Our project grant pays to have advertising removed from our Ning website, the Ning promotional links removed, and to use a custom domain for our site. While our site is accessible from http://celebrateoklahoma.ning.com, it is also accessible from http://lc.celebrateoklahoma.us and we recommend schools whitelist “celebrateoklahoma.us” to provide access to the site for all students and teachers.

During late fall of 2008 and spring of 2009, we are spending approximately $20,000 of our COV grant from AT&T to purchase dedicated server hardware and pay for the development of a custom learning community website using the open-source content management system Drupal (drupal.org). Via an extensive RFP process our COV server advisory sub-committee selected the Oregon-based company Funnymonkey (www.funnymonkey.com) to develop this website which will have the functionality of our current Ning site with additional user and site controls for teacher participants as well as project administrators. OneNet (www.onenet.net) is providing unlimited bandwidth/hosting for the COV project server on its network, and we are very enthused about the potential for our project to grow in the months and years ahead.

Our Ning website has served us well, and we plan to continue using our current site through the Spring of 2009. Prior to the start of our summer 2009 workshop series, we plan to transition over to our new Drupal learning community. That website will not use Ning.com at all, so content filtering issues related to Ning should not be a factor at that point. The main project website will continue to be http://celebrateoklahoma.us. We will migrate videos and content from our Ning website into our new Drupal website.

DOES THE USE OF A SOCIAL NETWORKING WEBSITE LIKE THE COV NING SITE ENDANGER STUDENTS?

Absolutely not. Most teenage students today are already utilizing social networking websites on their own, but the vast majority of those sites are entirely unmoderated by caring adults in their community. The COV learning community site is moderated by Oklahoma educators, and provides a safe, accountable website for learners of all ages to engage in video sharing and discussions about project videos.

All of the schools in our state receiving E-Rate funding provide some level of content filtering for students and teachers on their computing networks as required by law. Unfortunately, some leaders are mistakenly operating under the assumption that blocking access to websites which permit users to engage in social networking is a complete strategy for helping students become responsible and ethical decisionmakers as 21st century digital citizens. Limited content filtering on school networks IS important, but students and teachers MUST be provided with opportunities to practice safe and ethical social networking AT SCHOOL if we are to fulfill our obligations to provide students with a relevant education which prepares them for today as well as the challenges of tomorrow.

No one can learn to swim by watching a teacher explain the process using a chalkboard. We have to get into the water and actually swim to learn how to do it, and overcome our fear of the water. Similarly, no one can learn safe and responsible social networking skills without actually practicing those skills in an online environment. Our moderated environment provides that opportunity for students in Oklahoma.

HOW DO COV PROJECT FACLITATORS AND SITE ADMINISTRATORS HANDLE THE POSTING OF INAPPROPRIATE COMMENTS OR MATERIAL TO THE WEBSITE?

I, along with other COV project facilitators and administrators, work directly with teachers in our Oklahoma schools to address any questions or concerns which come up regarding the propriety of online discussions and shared content on our COV learning community website.

To date, after having over 100 videos posted to our site and over 200 people join our learning community, we have had only two incidents of inappropriate content on our site. Both instances were resolved by working directly with local teachers in schools, who were former COV project participants. We have established a policy in which COV students are required to use an “avatar” rather than a photograph on their learning community profile page. By moderating new user accounts as well as submitted videos and photos, we have been able to facilitate safe dialog in our accountable digital learning environment.

In the Drupal version/revision of our learning community website being developed for Spring 2009, teachers will be afforded more direct control over the moderation of student comments as well as accounts for students from their school/classroom. This level of control will be in addition to the moderation abilities already afforded to project facilitators and site administrators. What will not change in the future revision of our site is the accountability which is present in our community TODAY. Individuals are not permitted to participate, comment, or contribute anonymously, and contributions by those approved to be included in our learning community are moderated by project facilitators / administrators.

CAN STUDENTS UNDER AGE 13 JOIN THE CURRENT COV WEBSITE?

No. Because of COPPA restrictions, students under the age of 13 are not permitted to join any Ning website (including ours) and establish a user account. We are working with Funnymonkey to ensure our revised website will also be COPPA compliant.

CONCLUSIONS

I hope these answers provide more background about our COV project and learning community website, as well as insights into where we are headed in 2009 together. As the director of technology and education outreach for the Oklahoma Heritage Association, I am pleased to continue partnering with a diverse group of Oklahoma educators and organizations to refine and develop the COV project. Our project started in the fall of 2006, and has been ongoing now for two years.

We are continuing to open up doors of opportunity for valuable digital learning on the part of teachers as well as students in our state through our collaborative work together. While many older adults less familiar with new digital technologies are fearful of the Internet and may perceive technology to be an isolating and alienating influence, the powerful stories and personal networking opportunities provided by our COV project offer critically needed contexts for cognitive dissonance on the part of those adults. Digital technologies can and are being used in many positive, powerful, and constructive ways, and the work of Oklahoma teachers and students in our COV project provides many cases in point.

We need your help in further amplifying and sharing these wonderful stories and constructive examples of digital video use and social networking in our Oklahoma schools and communities. If you have not already, I encourage you to share the web address for videos on our learning community site with others in your community. That address is:

http://lc.celebrateoklahoma.us/videos

Please also share the website of The Oklahoma Heritage Association and Gaylord-Pickens Museum, which is proud to present the COV project in collaboration with a growing number of organizations throughout our state. More information about our project partners as well as current COV initiatives is available on our website under the EDUCATION link for EDUCATOR WORKSHOPS:

www.oklahomaheritage.com

Please offer to share videos created by student and teacher COV participants at meetings of local service clubs, church groups, and other community organizations in your local area. Share the stories of “Celebrate Oklahoma Voices” with others, as we seek together to not only archive and share our own valuable histories, but also move our Oklahoma communities and schools forward in embracing the positive learning potentials latent in new digital technologies.

If you have questions about the COV project, please contact me directly at wes [at] oklahomaheritage [dot] com or by phone toll free at 888-501-2059. The COV Advisory Committee will be meeting in December to schedule workshop dates for 2009, and those will be announced on our learning community website.

Technorati Tags:
oklahoma, ning, cov, networking, social, school, technology

Back in August 2007 when Karen Montgomery suggested I share photos of my 3 year old daughter, Rachel, getting a new haircut on her Flickr group “Tell a Story in 5 Photos for Educators” as well as a VoiceThread digital story I never imagined it would be seen by so many people around the world. Another Missouri educator, Cindy Lane, brought to my attention this evening that this VoiceThread digital story has now been viewed over 15,000 times! Wow.

Although it doesn’t have the same “cute factor” and hasn’t had nearly as many views, my 10 year old son Alexander’s VoiceThread refection from our Washington DC trip last March for the COSN conference is the other VoiceThread digital story we’ve created on my account that continues to get regular comments from different people about every other week.

I end up deleting some of comments on both these VoiceThreads when commenters mainly doodle on the photos rather than provide meaningful feedback. I still have both of these open for unmoderated commenting. Of the hundreds of comments we’ve received on all our family-published VoiceThreads, we’ve only received a couple inappropriate or rude comments. On the few occasions I’ve contacted VoiceThread support staff about these issues, they have been VERY prompt to respond and exceptionally helpful.

It might go without saying (but I won’t let it in this post) that I fully support substantive conversations and discussions about issues in digital stories which students and our children create and share online. I am not just an advocate for “cute” uses of technology. I do perceive that modeling of potential and actual technology uses is very important, however, and I hope both of the above VoiceThread digital stories continue to further that goal in many classrooms and homes. The VoiceThread for Education wiki has an extensive collection of examples by students in different grade levels.

I dearly wish my own children were able to share the excitement and motivating power of online digital storytelling and educational networking with their classmates at the public school they attend here in Oklahoma. We’ve told their teachers about our family learning blog and forwarded one VoiceThread my eight year old made several weeks ago as part of her book study activities for Charlotte’s Web. These at-home digital publishing and sharing activities have been basically ignored by their teachers, not because they are unsupportive of their learning– quite the opposite– but rather because I think my children attend school in a learning culture which views digital publication, collaboration, and online sharing as irrelevant to the real focus of public education.

I could be wrong about this, of course, but that is my perception.

Technorati Tags:
voicethread, digitalstorytelling

Today was the final day of our November Celebrate Oklahoma Voices workshops on digital storytelling for 17 new participants in Tulsa and 19 new participants in Oklahoma City. While I was only able to see one-fourth of the newly published participant videos this morning during our “show and tell” time (I saw half of those shown in OKC) I took some time tonight to see several of the other videos online which are now part of our learning community website. We revised our agenda for this week’s 2.5 day workshops based on the success we had last week for a 1.5 day “partner’s workshop.” Day one was entirely an audio-focus, using Audacity and the Platronics headset included in participants’ “digital backpacks,” and Switch software along with the Olympus WS-110 digital recorder. Day two included a focus on images: Those which can be taken with the kit’s digital camera as well as images which can be located via Creative Commons image searches. In Day 2 we also introduced PhotoStory3 and iMovie, depending on the platform preference of participants.

I continue to be amazed at the frequency with which at least some workshop participants completely blow off / choose to ignore the guidance we provide on copyright-friendly media resources and Creative Commons. As we did this summer, we had a participant this week ignore all instructions and use a CD of copyrighted music for his digital story along with copyrighted images located via a Google image search. I think we need to come up with a memorable skit or ploy to help teachers recognize that they should NOT do this, or encourage/allow students to use media in this careless way which ignores copyright/fair use guidelines altogether. I’m thinking we should write a reader’s theater and take a gong show approach.

photo credit: suzanne carey

It would be rude and insensitive during the “show and tell” portion of the workshop on day 3 to simply “gong” a participant who has used all copyrighted images and music in their digital story, and flagrantly ignored all our guided practice and suggestions about intellectual property respect. I’m sure if we did that, however, we might actually make an impression on some of our educator participants who seem bound and determined to persist in their intellectual-property infringing ways despite our best efforts to show “there is a better way.”

I use a Safari bookmarks bar RSS feed link to keep close tabs on all the activity on our learning community website. Events include new members, newly added videos, (both of which must now be approved) new comments, and new friend notifications. 59 “activities” this afternoon on our site is quite a bit of activity!

Thanks to our participants as well as my twitter network this evening, we added several new websites to our “Music and Audio Resources” page on our Google site for the COV project. I anticipate we’ll be adding a lot more to our Image Resources page, especially as we continue collaborating with state library and state Department of Education - Library Division educators on a new Library of Congress workshop institute opportunity for Oklahoma educators. (Teaching Inquiry Through Primary Sources)

Here are four of the wonderful stories which Oklahoma educators created this week in our COV workshops.

Dora Fuqua created this amazing story of her great-grandmother’s journey as a blind child from Oklahoma to Colorado for a miracle surgery which gave her the gift of sight:

Find more videos like this on Celebrate Oklahoma Voices!

Debbie Evans tells the story of Elmer McCurdy, who was an Oklahoma outlaw/train robber made famous when his mummfied body become part of traveling shows and circuses in the early 20th century.

Find more videos like this on Celebrate Oklahoma Voices!

Andy Boatman related some stories from the incredible 1947 tornado which struck Woodward, Oklahoma:

Find more videos like this on Celebrate Oklahoma Voices!

Julie Cook worked with her daughter to record the narration for the story of John James Scannell, one of the orphaned Scannell children in her family who lived a tragic life:

Find more videos like this on Celebrate Oklahoma Voices!

It was a pleasure to again work with fantastic Oklahoma educators in these workshops. I am 100% sold on our model of using three facilitators for these workshops. There’s no way I’d EVER want to teach one of these 2.5 day workshops on digital storytelling alone!

Technorati Tags:
oklahoma, history, story, digitalstorytelling, cov

I snapped 25 photos this morning when I voted before I drove downtown into work, and recorded a few thoughts about our voting system in Oklahoma and my experiences voting in a VoiceThread with five of those photos tonight.

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election, vote, voting, oklahoma, edmond

Our education committee for the Oklahoma Creativity Project had an interesting discussion during our monthly meeting regarding today’s U.S. elections. Why is voting “cool” now, in the perception of many people in our country?

Certainly participatory technologies have played a role in these changing perceptions. The CNN-YouTube presidential debates were a big part of this. NPR reporters referred to this as “Digital Democracy.”

The challenge to “post your response” as well as post questions to the candidates which were used in the live Presidential debates was a fundamental change from debates of the past. I have no doubt that the use of participatory technologies like these increased interest in the election as well as eventual voter turnout.

While YouTube is an example of leading edge, web 2.0 technologies used to bolster interest and viewership in events like the Presidential debates, let’s not overlook the role of good ‘ole email. Just how many emails laden with unsubstantiated political assertions did you receive personally in the past few months? How many times did you take the time to actually verify the claims in political emails on Snopes? I wrote about these issues in my August post “Media literacy, US Presidential elections, and assertions of infanticide support” and January post “Political emails fly fast, but are readers validating content?” I was interested to see in several of the more recent political emails I actually read/scanned that the authors included references to Snopes (which were unsubstantiated) as a play to make their claims seem more legitimate. In all of these cases, email communications have arguably caused more people to think about and focus on electoral politics more often then ever before in their daily lives.

Saturday Night Live video spoofs of political candidates have certainly also been a major factor in focusing voter attention on the candidates and the election. I won’t argue these skits have necessarily been enlightening from an issue perspective, but they have successfully attracted and maintained the attention of large percentages of the electorate. In an attention economy, this is important.

In addition to YouTube video usage in the Presidential debates, emails, and SNL, the focus of individual candidates on widening voter participation in the election has also been an important factor. This was brought up by another member in our committee meeting today. Presidential Candidate Obama has captured the imaginations of many U.S. citizens, both young and old, with his focus on change and hope for the future.

What reasons have I missed or overlooked here? Why is voting cool now? Are there lessons for us to learn from changing perceptions about voting and civic participation which we should be (or could be) applying in the context of schools and our classrooms?

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We had a wonderful “partners” Celebrate Oklahoma Voices (COV) workshop this week on Thursday and Friday in MidDel Schools. These are just two of the amazing stories our participants created in a very short and concentrated time together.

Scott Charlson created “A Few Sketches of Minnie’s Cafe,” telling the story of his grandmother and her informal encounters with legendary Oklahoma musician Woody Guthrie:

Find more videos like this on Celebrate Oklahoma Voices!

Scott had told me about this story back in April when he first attended a COV workshop at Western Oklahoma State College in Altus, and his desire to share this story with others. At that time I interviewed Scott for a podcast about their use of Moodle at WOSC, and learned about his passion for family histories. This week Scott not only created another digital story as a COV project, he also helped co-facilitate our workshop and was formally “knighted” as a lead facilitator for our project! Since my Halloween costume for the day included a sword, we felt such a ceremony was appropriate to mark the auspicious moment! Thanks to Jean Hendrickson for taking and sharing this photo.

Rosalynn Wade also created a fantastic digital story in 1.5 days this week titled “Silver Spoon - A Legacy of Integrity and Compassion.” The planets must have been in the proper and requisite alignment for so many things to come together for her and her family last night. Her parents were supposed to have left for a vacation but were delayed in departing. Her father was eager to share this story as well as the photos which make it even more impactful. He even returned later in the evening to add the concluding lines, which he specifically requested be at the end of the story. This is an unforgettable Veteran story from World War II.

Find more videos like this on Celebrate Oklahoma Voices!

It was exciting again to see so many new people become engaged, inspired, and passionate about the power of digital storytelling to preserve family histories and develop the skills of rich-media communication using images, audio, and text.

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history, oklahoma, interview, cov, veteran, story

In this rather amusing advertisement for Hitachi, Mr. T claims “intelligence is never in the network.” Apparently Mr. T has not been introduced to the concepts of connectivism.

Even though this video script for the the actor formerly known as Laurence Tureaud may not reflect a basic understanding of connectivist learning theory, I do like the video since I know several school IT departments that could use a Mr. T - style shakeup! Rather than advocating for Hitachi hardware, I’d re-write Mr. T’s lines to include the following exhortation:

Wake up fools! Mr. T is in the house! Why are you blockin’ all these web 2.0 tools for these teachers and students? Don’t you know we’ve got to collaborate as a nation and a planet if we’re going to survive? Are you all a bunch of supporters or blockers? Let’s get on the same page with this education mission!

I think this video provides some great ideas for further creativity and remixing of ideas. Certainly it can provide an interesting opening for a discussion on the relative merits of dumb networks compared to smart network technologies.

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technology, school, web2, mrt, Hitachi, youtube, video, ad, advertisement

I had a big surprise today during our Celebrate Oklahoma Voices “partner’s workshop.” For fun and to make some serious points, to kick off our discussion of copyright and intellectual property issues as they relate to digital storytelling I started to show a YouTube version of the 1992 video “Don’t Copy That Floppy.” This was supposed to be just a fun, short introduction to copyright and a juxtaposition of a 16 year old video on copyright issues with the more current Creative Commons video “Get Creative.” It turned out to be more of a “teachable moment” than I’d anticipated.

At minute mark 1:15 of this 9:42 video, video annotation text started to appear on the full-screen video I was playing on a Smartboard, which included some words and phrases I certainly didn’t expect to show our audience of teachers and administrators.

According to the YouTube website:

Video Annotations are a new way for you to add interactive commentary to your videos! Use them to:

• Add background information about the video
• Create stories with multiple possibilities (viewers click to choose the next scene)
• Link to related YouTube videos, channels, or search results from within a video

Video annotations certainly can be a great way to have conversations in and around videos, but they also can (as this example demonstrates) be used disruptively and inappropriately. Perhaps the Google-employed authors of this YouTube “help page” could also add the following uses of video annotations to their posted list:

• Surprise and embarrass teachers who may be showing a YouTube video to students and others in schools.
• Further guarantee that school officials won’t let the YouTube website be unblocked for student use (and in many schools, for teacher use either) since the appearance of such video annotations is wholly unpredictable and likely disruptive for the educative potential of the video being shown.

My advice to educators when it comes to sharing YouTube videos with either students or peers (which I will certainly follow myself in the future) is the following:

• When possible, use one of multiple available methods to download the video “offline” to your hard drive or a flash drive, so you can play it reliably and WITHOUT video annotations.
• If time or other factors prevent you from being able to download the video offline, be sure to follow the YouTube tutorial instructions and turn off video annotations for the SPECIFIC video you are showing, BEFORE you play it for an audience.

According to the YouTube “about” page for video annotations:

Video annotations, once published, are shown by default. You can turn them off while watching a video through the “Menu” button on the bottom right of the video player.

Unfortunately it appears video annotations cannot be turned off globally for all YouTube videos you watch when you are logged in with a YouTube account. According to some users posting in the YouTube support forum, turning off annotations is even temporary for the video you’ve selected and for which you’ve turned off annotations. This IS irritating, problematic, and unnecessary.

My suggestion to the YouTube development team at Google (if you’re listening / reading) is to PLEASE provide an option (preferably as an account setting) to permanently turn off video annotations for ALL videos. I know surprises like the one I had today are an inherent part of accessing and using user-created content. Still, I think it would be sensible as well as beneficial (especially for educators striving to convince others of the potential value of video sharing sites like YouTube for students in schools) to provide a video annotation opt-out option.

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youtube, video, annotation, option, disruptive, technology

I have a personal challenge for you: Provide a small donation for a classroom teacher who has posted a purchasing wish on the Donor’s Choose website. I’ve created a custom giving page for “Moving at the Speed of Creativity,” and I’m considering what type of incentive to offer if readers and contributors reach a specified level of giving.

The September 28th post on the DonorsChoose blog suggests:

Offer to do something wacky if your readers reach a certain level of donations. Last year, the blogger behind TomatoNation.com offered to dance through Rockefeller Center dressed as a tomato if her readers funded all the projects on her challenge page. It worked.

I’m not sure I’m up for dancing through Penn Square mall dressed up in a funky costume, but who knows? Maybe such a ploy would bring in the bucks for a handful of Oklahoma teachers wanting to purchase digital cameras for use by their students in class?

Consider the following request offered up by a 1st grade Oklahoma teacher:

Pictures will help us remember our learning activities and projects, and help me reinforce learning objectives and procedures. Unfortunately our classroom camera was stolen last year and we are unable to record the events in our classroom. Our parents don’t have extra money in their budget to help buy a replacement camera.

A new camera, that would be locked up safely, would help us record our work. Once the pictures are downloaded, they can be printed on my photo printer/scanner, and added to scrapbooks that will go home at the end of the year. The pictures would also be saved to my SnapFish account so that we can create class books that demonstrate action words, classroom procedures, and community involvement.

Got any suggestions for a wacky offer I should make to promote DonorsChoose contributions? This sounds like it could work into a great opportunity for StoryChasing and having another member of my family document the event with my flash-based camcorder.

If you have your own blog or wiki, consider setting up your own giving page for others on DonorsChoose and posting a linked widget on your site.

Thanks to Scott McLeod for bringing the DonorsChoose blogger challenge to my attention.

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