Moving at the Speed of Creativity

This evening when I was browsing through the iTunes podcast directory listings, I discovered Luis Perez’s amazing collection of screencasts titled “Tech-Ease: Classroom Tech Help.”

The Tech-Ease website and resources are part of the the Educational Technology Clearinghouse by the Florida Center for Instructional Technology. I heard Luis present at NECC 2008 with Shannon White in their session, “Where in the World is… GeoRSS for the Classroom,” but had not seen all these resources they have published to the web and via iTunes. WOW.

The website links here are deep and wide in terms of rich content. Their website “No Strings Attached: Wireless Laptops in Education” includes:

Over 100 videos taped in Florida schools… This website features exemplary models of technology integration across Florida, including lessons from the school districts of Bradford, Broward, Collier, Hardee, Hernando, Hillsborough, Leon, Manatee, Pasco, Pinellas, Polk, Seminole, St. Johns and Walton counties. Please see the credits page for further information.

I love the way many of the videos on the site utilize B-roll video footage of the teacher discussing the lesson, and A-roll footage of students working together collaboratively on their projects. This lesson example on The Roman Empire uses this video format:

Did I mention all these screencasts, PDF files, videos and other resources are available completely FREE to anyone, whether or not you live and teach in Florida?!

Great job Luis and the Florida Center for Instructional Technology!

Technorati Tags:
technology, integration, howto, tutorial, video, florida, videos

Welcome to episode 9 of the Technology Shopping Cart Podcast, a podcast (and now live webcast) where educational innovation thrives on the food of creative ideas. This episode features a conversation with Heather Chirtea of ToolFactory, Vicki Allen, Karen Montgomery, and Wesley Fryer about podcasting, digital storytelling, mobile podcasting labs, mobile flip video labs, “ushering” technologies which encourage teachers to extend their journeys of learning with educational technologies further, and “manifest destiny” for educational technology use in our 21st century classrooms. Of course we also include a variety of “geek of the week” websites, resources and tips, which includes a discussion of the superb “Global Nomads” organization which facilitates engaging videoconferences for students on a diverse array of subjects. Check out our podcast shownotes for links. We are tentatively scheduling our next live webcast for Friday, September 26th, 2008 at 10 am US central time to discuss challenges and pitfalls of integrating web 2.0 technologies in school districts. We’re asking some special guests from Missouri to join us who are in the trenches of IT and have some interesting perspectives to share. Whether you joined us live or catch the recorded version, we welcome your feedback, comments and suggestions as always!

 

 Podcast278: TechShoppingCart Podcast09: Digital Wishes, Flip Video Labs, and Manifest Destiny for EdTech [73:10m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1226)

Show Notes:

1. Tech Shopping Cart Wiki resources for this show
2. Digital Wish
3. Mobile Podcasting Lab (Digital Wish / Toolfactory)
4. Flip Video Mobile Lab (Digital Wish / Toolfactory)
5. Podcasting Grant Program from Olympus and Toolfactory
6. Toolfactory
7. Global Nomads
8. Loopt
9. drop.io - share files to the web by phone, email, web, widget or fax
10. Jog The Web
11. Phonevite
12. Textmarks
13. Amazon Buys Shelfari - 26 August 2008
14. CaseLogic SLR Camera Backpack (Heather’s favorite)
15. Our Ustream text chat for this episode is available, which includes referenced links.
16. Using a Mac, how to webconference using Ustream and skype (thanks Ryan Gordon)
17. VickiWiki: Presentation and Workshop Curriculum of Vicki Mongomery
18. Gomeric Hill: Blog of Karen Montgomery
19. Thinking Machine: Presentation and Workshop Curriculum of Karen Montgomery
20. Vicki Allen on Twitter
21. Karen Montgomery on Twitter
22. Wesley Fryer on Twitter

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In this podcast I share 45 minutes worth of brainstorming on the subject, “Given all the resources, administrative and parental support needed, how would you imagineer the ideal K-6 classroom learning environment?” Imagineering is a term I associate with Walt Disney and Disneyland, where creative and capable individuals come together to both imagine and engineer new worlds together. Carol Anne McGuire asked me last week to share some ideas with her along these lines, and prior to our conversation later this week I did some brainstorming and created this podcast tonight to clarify some of my thoughts. In the podcast shownotes you’ll find a link to the eighteen different ideas or suggestions I offer in this recording, as well as Stephanie Sandifer’s excellent  wiki for “Designing the 21st Century Global Learning Environment.” As always I welcome your comments and feedback on the ideas of this podcast.

 

 Podcast276: Imagineering the Ideal K-6 Classroom Learning Environment (Part 1) [46:40m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (802)

Show Notes:

1. The 18 bullet points I used as an outline for this podcast
2. Creating, Collaborating, Communicating: These “3 C’s” are the key and can be a basic focus of learning tasks, included in project rubrics
3. Walt Disney Imagineering (from WikiPedia)
4. Ed.VoiceThread (accountable environment for students and teachers to create VoiceThreads for school with individual accounts)
5. Consider setting up a “Team Curiosity Blog” to which both students and teachers can post using a locally-hosted copy of Wordpress. What are you curious about today? What are you wondering based on things you’ve read, seen, or heard?
6. Create school-wide wiki as a free gold wiki for education using PBwiki (Back to School Challenge)
7. Register your school and students for a free Think.com social networking account(s) - Now part of ThinkQuest
8. Stephanie Sandifer’s excellent  wiki for “Designing the 21st Century Global Learning Environment”
9. My notes from Stephanie’s facilitated session at EduBloggerCon2008 in July 2008 in San Antonio
10. Ideal 21st century learning is not…
11. Phil Schlechty’s excellent book “Working on the Work: An Action Plan for Teachers, Principals, and Superintendents”
12. Habits of Mind (EssentialSchools.org)
13. Camera recommendations from the StoryChasers Wiki
14. Alfie Kohn’s book “The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing”
15. Revisiting VoiceThread - TTT112 - 07.09.08 (Teachers Teaching Teachers podcast with VoiceThread co-founder Steve Muth discussing best practices with VoiceThread)
16. Kevin HoneyCutt
17. StoryChasers (main learning community website)
18. Powerful Ingredients for Digitally Interactive Learning
19. XTimeLine
20. Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow Research (ACOT)

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John Peters, Vicki Allen, and Rob Jacklin joined me this evening for a sixty minute online meetup via Ustream.tv and Skype (thanks again Ryan Gordon for the instructions) to discuss the StoryChasers project. I recorded our conversation on Ustream and also archived the text chat, which includes a few links as well as ideas for things we’ll be adding to the project wiki in upcoming weeks.

We discussed different flash-based video cameras, the pages and resources which have been added to the project wiki since our last meeting, more ideas for finding classroom partners for StoryChasers, and additional items that need to be added to the Project wiki. These include a page about curriculum alignments, some screencasts providing tutorials about the project, and a short and sweet project introduction page for interested educators. We’ll be working on adding these elements in the next couple of weeks, to include narrative text that can be used as a “template” for teachers writing local mini-grants for “digital backpack” equipment for their classroom. Check the “recent changes” page of the StoryChasers wiki to view the latest updates.

We will NOT have another StoryChasers meetup next week or for a couple of weeks, but will likely touch base near the end of September. If you have not already, please join the StoryChasers learning community and stay tuned for more updates! My goal is to have the wiki and site ready to announce on various listservs and project registries in the next two weeks. (Early September.)

Technorati Tags:
storytelling, video, school, education, project, collaboration, storychaser, storychasers

This podcast is a recording from our third online brainstorming session for the StoryChasers project on August 21, 2008. I was joined by Cheryl Lykowski, a 5th grade teacher from Michigan as well as James Sigler, a 3rd grade teacher from Missouri. We will convene a fourth brainstorming session (and hopefully our last one before formally announcing the project and sending our invitations to others to participate via the CILC and ePals) next week on Wednesday, August 27, 2008 at 9 pm Eastern / 8 pm Central time. Please join us if you can! Also please contribute to our project wiki, and join our learning community on our main website if you have not already. Refer to our podcast shownotes for these links as well as a link to the text chat transcript. The website description of StoryChasers currently reads: Storychasers is a multi-state (and potentially multi-national) educational collaborative empowering students and teachers to responsibly record and share stories of local, regional and global interest as citizen journalists. Where STN (Student Television Network) participants may focus more narrowly on student broadcast news productions, Storychasers has a broader focus on not only student-created news broadcasts, but also student-created documentary films and live event coverage (webcasting). Storychaser media productions can be shared as live broadcast events or recorded, asynchronously shared audio and video files.

 

 Podcast274: StoryChasers Brainstorm #3 from 21 August 2008 [77:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (558)

Show Notes:

1. StoryChasers (main learning community website)
2. StoryChasers Project Wiki
3. StoryChasers Project Entry Points
4. Text transcript for this online meetup (includes referenced links)
5. Ustream Video and Audio from August 6 brainstorm
6. Audio recording of July 30th skypecast brainstorm
7. Johnny Kaw (WikiPedia)
8. Cheryl Lykowski’s Classroom 2.0 page
9. James Sigler’s discussion of videoconferencing the classroom on “It’s Elementary” from May 2008

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One of our StoryChaser educators (jpatten) posted a great question in the forum on the StoryChasers learning community, and because I want to share a rather long answer I am posting it here. The question was:

I will be implementing a Federal EETT grant this year with some of my 5th grade teachers (science). Part of that grant communication component is going to be the development of a online learning network. Originally, I had planned on using Ning. Now I hear Wesley mention that he feels Drupal has some advantages over Ning. I’m curious as to what people feel some of the advatages are of using Drupal over Ning?

This is a GREAT question, and relates closely to some questions Miguel Guhlin asked in response to a post I shared titled “How can our school set up a team blog for teachers?” In that post I was outlining options for using either Wordpress or Blogger as a platform for a teacher team blog, which at some point might also include students. This question of “Drupal versus Ning” focuses on the type of learning community is similar to the “Wordpress or Ning” question, because Ning is included in both questions and it is important to differentiate not only platform functionality, but also the goals and purposes which are served (or can be served) through each environment.

Before I answer Miguel’s question, I want to point out several things. First, my own experiences creating and managing learning communities up to this point have been limited to using Ning, Blogger, Joomla, Drupal, Wordpress. The last three I mentioned are all open source projects, Ning and Blogger are not.

Blogger and Wordpress are designed to have more narrow functionality: Blogging. Both Ning and Drupal have been designed for different purposes, but both are well-suited for people who want to create and facilitate online learning communities. Joomla is a great tool, but from what I’ve read, heard and experienced it is less oriented toward learning community building than Ning or Drupal.

In a comment to my post about platforms for teacher team blogs, Miguel asked:

1) How easy is it to backup a Ning you’ve created if you decide to walk away from Ning?
2) How easy is it for you to setup a Ning on your own server if you do decide to walk away?
3) Does Ning have an education only location that at least has the obligatory “.org” label so that it won’t be blocked, unlike the “ning.com” that is in some districts?
4) How many administrators can you setup on a Ning?

These questions get to the heart of some differences not only between Ning and Wordpress, but also Ning and Drupal. As an open source project, the content within a Drupal site is much more portable and flexible. You can’t work with data in Ning directly on the backend site, like directly in mySQL, as you can with Drupal. Drupal is more complex to setup and configure, but is MUCH more flexible. Particularly because you have open access to your data, Drupal is the more flexible platform if at some point (as Miguel says) you want to pick up your and move it elsewhere.

I don’t think you can “set up a Ning on your own server,” to answer Miguel’s second question. You can register a custom domain and have your Ning site resolve to that domain, but the Ning itself and its data will reside on the Ning servers from what I understand.

Ning does NOT have an “education only” location that is treated more generously by school content filters. Many schools I work with here in the midwestern US block all Ning sites, and we’ve had difficulty getting school IT folks in some cases to just unblock our Ning subdomain (http://celebrateoklahoma.ning.com) for our statewide oral history project. In some cases content filtering systems apparently won’t let a subdomain be unblocked, in other cases IT people don’t know how to do this, and in others they simply don’t want to. In terms of the administrator question, I think you can setup as many administrators as you want on a Ning, but there are some features which are ONLY accessible by the person who created it initially.

I think the biggest differentiator, in addition to needing your own server or commercial host to run Drupal, is that you need to be willing to do some tweaking and configuring if you opt for Drupal that involves using ftp to upload modules, configuring them, and doing more technical back-end stuff than you need with Ning. Ning is setup so just about anyone can create and manage a website. Drupal requires developers to be directly involved. That developer can be YOU, but the question is whether or not you want to be or get that “geeky” to tweak configurations, modules, etc.

The Drupal Education Group is a good resource to consult when looking at Drupal for specific education settings. If you are wanting more of a learning management system to be used in student courses, you certainly want to consider Moodle instead of Drupal. My post from June “Moodle as ‘the killer app’” has a great conversation thread discussing Drupal versus Moodle, and John Jones’ presentation on Drupal from mid-June in Wichita (available as a podcast) is also a good resource on this discussion I can point you to.

Technorati Tags:
drupal, ning, opensource, moodle, education, contentmanagement

I received a question from Amy Hopkins in northeast Texas today that may be on the minds of more educators: “How can I join tonight’s skypecast?” (Last night’s published podcast and my July 25th post “Let’s brainstorm ideas for Storychasers” provide more background about this.) Before I answer that question, I want to point out it’s been awhile since I hosted a Skypecast, and I’ve been surprised as well as disappointed to see that some of the “live skypecasts” which are ongoing this afternoon / evening are quite inappropriate / offensive judging by the custom images the “hosts” have uploaded. The Skypecast website lets other users flag Skypecasts as “inappropriate,” but apparently that system is not working very well. I flagged several I saw tonight as inappropriate based on the uploaded images, hopefully the Skypecast admins will take those offline.

I also have run into trouble joining a Skypecast from my Macintosh computer, which is running the latest version of the OS X operating system (10.5.4) as well as the latest version of Skype for Mac: 2.7. When I try to join a Skypecast on my Mac using either the Safari or FireFox web browser, I see the following message designed for Windows users:

At this point, it appears that Mac users cannot join Skypecasts. MAJOR PROBLEM. Fortunately, I have access to a WindowsXP computer that I can use for this evening’s skypecast, but I’m guessing there may be some educators out there on Macs that may not be able to join. If that is the case for you, I offer my sincere apologies. I would NOT have scheduled this event as a Skypecast if I knew it wouldn’t be accessible to both Mac and Windows computer users. Instead I would have probably tried to arrange to use an Elluminate room, have tried Flashmeeting, or have reached out to the great folks at EdTechTalk to find an open day and time on their calendar. This also may throw a crimp in my plans to record the call– I am setup to record skype calls on my Mac but not on a Windows machine… Time to do some scrambling. Hopefully I’ll be able to record the call, and if I do I will post the recording here later.

It’s been awhile since I’ve hosted a formal “skypecast” (as opposed to just a multi-person audio conference in Skype) but as far as I know these are the steps you’ll need. Remember the skypecast will begin this evening, Wednesday July 20th, at 7 pm US Central time.

1. Set up Skype: If you have not already, download and install Skype. Be sure you have a RECENT version. Currently version 3.2 is required for Windows users to join Skypecasts, as far as I know version 2.7 for Mac users. (It is free but you’ll need administrative rights to install new software on the computer you are using.) Log in with your userid and password to
   Skype. Make sure your microphone is plugged in and working.
2. Website log in: Log in to the main Skype website. You’ll need to be logged in to join the Skypecast when it begins.
3. At the start of the Skypecast (7 pm US Central time tonight) click on this link to visit the Skypecast page. Click the link “Join this Skypecast” which will appear once the Skypecast start time has passed. On a Windows computer you should be presented with a dialog window which asks for your permission to launch an external application (Skype) and you’ll need to click yes to authorize that. Then you should be in the Skypecast. We’ll do introductions for at least the first ten minutes, so if you join late that is fine.
4. Be ready to participate! Depending on the number of participants we have, we may have everyone’s mic on or mics may be muted to minimize background noise. If mics are muted, you’ll want to click the button in the skypecast window which shows the names of all the people online to virtually “raise your hand” and ask to speak. In Skype 3.2 for Windows, this is a button in the Skype window which says “Ask for the mic.” As the skypecast moderator, I’ll unmute participant mics individually so you can speak and have the floor! We should also have a skype chat window available which can be used as a backchannel to ask questions, share ideas, and further challenge everyone’s multi-tasking abilities! I’ll do my best to keep up with the backchannel, but it certainly can be challenging to both read text chat and talk about an idea at the same time.

Again, here’s the link to join the Skypecast in an hour. Hope you can make it!

I’ve posted a basic agenda / outline for tonight’s skypecast to the Storychasers website. This is just a suggested guideline, we can deviate from this if needed.

Technorati Tags:
skype, skypecast, storychaser, storychasers

Technorati Tags:
skype, skypecast, story, storychasers, storychaser

This podcast includes interviews with Scott Swanson, the Strategic Technology Coordinator at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy in Aurora, Illinois, recorded in March and July of 2008, as well as April Hope, a 2008 graduate of IMSA and Scott’s current intern. They discuss the activities of IMSA students in forming the first OLPC (XO Laptop) High School Student Chapter, their experiences working in and supporting a one to one laptop learning initiative with tablet PCs, and their responses to conversations at EduBloggerCon 2008 prior to the NECC conference in San Antonio in July. The first conversation with Scott in this podcast was recorded at the COSN conference in Washington D.C. in March 2008. Many thanks to both Scott and April for sharing their thoughts, experiences, and perspectives!

 

 Podcast268: Conversations with Scott Swanson and April Hope about the first OLPC High School Student Chapter, 1 to 1 Laptop Immersion with Tablet PCs, and EduBloggerCon 2008 Student Reflections [50:20m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (745)

Show Notes:

1. Illinois Math and Science Academy Chapter of OLPC
2. Website of Scott Swanson
3. Photo of Jim Gerry and Scott Swanson at COSN 2008
4. The Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy in Aurora, IL
5. One Laptop Per Child

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Technorati Tags: necc, necc08, necc2008, math, science, imsa, illinois, olpc, xolaptop, tablet, tabletpc, edubloggercon2008, ebc08

NECC 2008 was a fantastic experience in San Antonio this year, but the road trip down to San Antonio and back to Oklahoma (for me) with Kansans Kevin Honeycutt, Michelle Honeycutt, Ginger Lumen, Charlie Mahoney, and Dean Mantz was one of the top highlights of the week. On the way down we engaged in some seriously geeky intra-car bonjour networking and video iChatting as well as live webcasting, which was certainly great fun. On the way back, however, our discussions (or at least much of the discussion in my car) turned serious: How are we going to use the tools at our fingertips to help more educators and students “plug in” to the growing digital learning network we’ve discovered, and do so in safe ways that cultivate digital citizenships skills along with media literacy, 21st century skills, and traditional content area knowledge and skills? For me, finding ways to support educators and schools engaged in 1:1 learning projects in Oklahoma and elsewhere is also of particular concern. One specific idea Kevin and I brainstormed was a new educational collaborative we could start: “Story Chasers.”

Think of storm chasers.

Equipped with the latest in high-tech gadgetry and communications technology, storm chasers travel the countryside following storms. Just like we can (potentially) as story chasers. Not stopping and ending our journey just because we have encountered a state line. Going after the story. Working together, using our technology tools, and bringing the story to the world. Developing and supporting local teams of “story chasers” including students, teachers, and community members. Providing holiday opportunities for participants to travel to a location to learn about digital storytelling, new media broadcasting, digital ethics, webcasting, and other topics. To create and publish compelling digital content together, and then return home further equipped and ready to be local story chasers. What a wonderful initiative for which we can seek grant and foundation funding.

Two weeks ago I registered the domain storychasers.org and tweeted about it. I had just installed Drupal on the site and put up an initial post there, but several people immediately registered on the site. Yikes! We weren’t necessarily ready to “go live,” but this is a work in progress, and no one (yet) is getting paid full time to develop this initiative. The adventure begins.

Today I received a tweet from Cheryl Lykowski, who had visited with Scott Meech as well as Kevin Honeycutt at a recent Discovery Education event about possible ways to network their students who are creating regular school news broadcast programs. Cheryl had been thinking of SNN as an acronym: “Student News Network.”

The story chasers project embodies many of the ideas and goals which Cheryl and Scott were discussing. Currently the “about page” for the project reads:

Storychasers is a multi-state (and potentially multi-national) educational collaborative empowering students and teachers to responsibly record and share stories of local, regional and global interest as citizen journalists. Instead of CNN (Cable News Network) think SNN (Student News Network.) Storychaser media productions can be shared as live broadcast events or recorded, asynchronously shared audio and video files.

It has been proposed that one specific focus of our collaborative be on supporting educators and learners involved in one-to-one laptop initiatives, where every student and every teacher is equipped with a laptop computer. It has also been suggested that we focus on primarily supporting learners in Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, and north Texas, but we are not an exclusively regional group and welcome involvement and participation from educators, students, parents, and other community members around the world. It remains unresolved whether we will have a regional focus at all. It may be that Storychaser groups will sponsor local events and meet-ups, and be open for membership and participation from learners around the globe. (We are currently an open community where any one can register.)

We encourage teachers currently involved in or wanting to be involved in the production of “school news” broadcast programs to register as a “Storychasers Affiliate Station.” This designation can be done after you register by clicking “My Account” in the left sidebar and clicking the tab for “Affiliate Info” at the top.

In addition to facilitating collaborative projects and partnerships among members, we aspire to offer holiday institutes focusing on digital storytelling, citizen journalism, remote webcasting and videoconferencing, and other constructive uses of new media technologies for communication, collaboration, and content creation.

Cheryl and I had a conversation today over Skype which resulted in a 20 minute recorded podcast (which I’ll publish soon) as well as a publicly shared Google document including more background on our ideas and thinking for this project. I created a project logo and spent some time adding some features and content to our storychasers.org website.

On behalf of the Storychaser project, I’d like to invite you to join us next week on Wednesday, July 30, 2008 for a skypecast discussion about this proposed initiative. We will start at 8 pm Eastern / 7 pm Central / 6 pm Mountain / 5 pm Pacific. To participate you’ll need to download and install Skype (free), be on a high speed Internet connection in a location that permits Skype to be used, have a working microphone, and visit this link to join the Skypecast. If you are located outside the United States and interested in attending, I apologize in advance that this is U.S.-centric time for the skypecast. If we have interest from international teachers, we certainly can schedule conversations at more convenient times. In any event we will record our conversation and I’ll share it here later as a podcast. Please register on the site if you’re interested in this project.

The storychasers are off! I think it is going to be an exciting ride.

Technorati Tags:
storychasers, journalism, storytelling, skype, skypecast

This podcast is an interview with Lars of Lego Education on the vendor floor at NECC 2008 in San Antonio, Texas, discussing the recently announced “WeDo Robotics” product designed for elementary students ages 7-11. According to the official Lego Education press release, WeDo Robotics “redefines classroom robotics, making it possible for primary school students 7-11 years of age to build and program their own solutions. Bridging the physical world, represented by LEGO models, and the virtual world, represented by computers and programming software, LEGO Education WeDo Robotics provides a hands-on, minds-on learning experience that actively involves young students in their own learning process and promotes children’s creative thinking, teamwork, and problem-solving skills – skills that are essential in the workplace of the 21st century.” Unlike the Lego NXT robotics kits, WeDo robot models remain tethered to the laptop computer running the iconic software program which controls the robot. WeDo is being released in North America in January 2009, and its software program runs on Macintosh OS X, Windows, and the XO Laptop’s “skinny Linux” operating system.

 

 Podcast267: A Discussion about Lego WeDo Robotics at NECC 2008 (Coming in January 2009 to North America) [20:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (929)

Show Notes:

1. Official WeDo Robotics press release from Lego Education (30 June 2008)
2. Additional videos and informational publications from Lego about WeDo Robotics
3. Lego Education
4. Lego Club (one of my 10 year old son’s favorite websites)
5. Lego NXT Robotics (Mindstorms)
6. Photo taken during Mitch Resnik’s NECC 2008 Preso: Movie of kids in Brazil using new Lego “WeDo” product on XO laptops
7. Paul Schwan’s 5th Grade Classroom website (Fort Myers, Florida)

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Technorati Tags: lego, robot, robotics, creativity, design, math, science, program, programming, necc, necc08, necc2008

I’m in the process of clearing out old files, and ran across the following quotation I heard from Luke Fox of Spring Branch ISD (Texas) awhile back. I can relate to this, as I am sure many educators can - particularly those in educational technology support roles, but other roles as well:

You’ve done so much for so long with so little, people expect you to do everything forever with nothing.

One thing I have consistently found challenging over the years is estimating how long a given technology project will take to complete. When asked by my boss, “Can you do this?” my answer has almost always been “Yes,” and often my answer to “Can I have this tomorrow?” has also been affirmative. It can be difficult to explain to supervisors (whether that is a principal, an IT director, a dean or a superintendent) that a project will take longer than they want it to take, and require more resources (human and financial) than they want to allocate to the initiative.

Estimating the time and resources required to complete a given project is a VERY important skill, and certainly one I’ve found doesn’t “come naturally.” As students engage in project-based learning, estimating the time required for different phases of a given project should be a process in which students are involved. Often deadlines are externally imposed, but to meet final deadlines intermediate deadlines should also be set. The entire process of project management is complex, and the skills involved are very important. I wrote about (and received some good feedback on) different project management software tools back in April in the post “Tools for facilitating PBL?” I think online software programs which facilitate PBL and its assessment (Project Foundry is an example) are VERY important and should receive more attention and utilization by students and teachers in our digitally infused years ahead. XTimeline is a free, web-based timeline tool which I think is ideal for project management as well as use in students’ personal digital portfolios.

It’s ridiculous to work forever with nothing, and everyone needs to cultivate the professional social skills to effectively and reasonably navigate these dynamics where minimal resources are allocated by management with an expectation for maximum work output.

Technorati Tags:
time, expectations, resources, project, management, education, technology

Because of problems on the TechLearning blog with commenting, I am cross-posting this over here so you may comment on my blog if you are not able to comment there. (I wasn’t able to directly comment this morning on Dave Jakes’ post from yesterday, so I’m following his lead.)

I’m a staunch advocate for project-based learning. As teachers, we need to be regularly facilitating student work on projects using real-world tools, as they collaborate with others in face-to-face as well as distributed work environments. Students need access to a diverse array of resources to accomplish their defined tasks, and need to work under deadlines. The real world is full of groups working on project teams, and part of the solution to fixing the disconnect between 21st century skills which employers say they want, and the skills emphasized in our schools, is operationalizing a learning culture in our classrooms which regularly involves project-based learning.

One of the biggest challenges to embracing project-based learning as a teacher, however, is the formidable task of structuring, monitoring, managing and evaluating student work. It is MUCH easier to simply lecture to students and deliver content, rather than manage a project-based learning environment. Often (as Darren Draper reminded me at NECC07) educators are focused on “doing what is convenient, not what is best for students.” As Dr. Tim Tyson exhorts us, however, we should be focused on maximizing student achievement, but that focus has virtually nothing to do with the emphasis of NCLB and high-stakes accountability. My understanding of maximizing student achievement includes inviting students to engage in potentially relevant, meaningful work in project-based learning contexts. Certainly our students need to take tests and score well on them, but there is SO much more we must do and on which we must focus in our schools than simply minimum standards for student performance established by the state.

My question, given this context, regards the most effective (and cost-effective) tools for helping teachers facilitate project-based learning. What are they? What is on the PBL software facilitation menu today? I learned about Project Foundry (commercial software) last summer, but I have more recently discovered a series of open-source project management tools that could be potentially used in school contexts for teachers facilitating PBL activities. The ones I have found to date include:

• Taskjuggler
• dotproject
• Open Workbench

I’ve started a social bookmark list for “project management” via Diigo, which also cross-posts to my del.icio.us social bookmarks. I’m looking for more tools like these which are web-based, and include Gantt chart functionality similar to Microsoft Project. A couple of questions for you:

1. Are you aware of other software options which should be included on this list?

2. Are you personally using or aware of other teachers using project management software currently to facilitate student PBL activities?

Dean Groom has created a PBL group over on Diigo which I’ve joined, which looks like a great place to continue this conversation as well and share resources.

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