In the morning and for part of the afternoon, Rachel and I created an ePUB eBook with a fiction book she’s been writing all school year by hand with a classmate. (Literally since the first week of August!) She recorded each of the seven book parts with RecordPad, and I compiled the book with typed text, scanned pictures drawn by her classmate, mp3 files I converted with Switch, and Pages software. We’re getting the last illustration (hopefully) from her classmate to tomorrow to scan, and will most likely publish it on ePubBud, Amazon, B&N Nook Books, and a new website domain I registered for her and am configuring tonight. She created the main website graphic today using Brushes on an iPad. She’s going to give the book away as a free download, but offer it for purchase as a hardback! It’s precious!

This afternoon, my 11 year old daughter worked with two classmates on a science project about the Ejyafjallajokull volcano in Iceland.

Using two laptops, they continued research they had started earlier in the week and created a narrated slideshow video as their “final product,” following the instructions in their teacher provided rubric. They created a presentation using Keynote software, and wrote a project script using Pages. They found photos to use from multiple sources, including Flickr Creative Commons, and included attribution on each slide for the websites where they found the images. I encouraged them to use a minimum of text on each slide, and instead use large images to make their points. (Presentation Zen style.) They recorded their final video on an iPad using “Explain Everything.” To get the Keynote slides from the laptop to the iPad, they used PhotoSync software to transfer the images. The $3 “Explain Everything” app allowed them to create their narrated slideshow directly from the images transferred with PhotoSync. They used my iRig microphone for the recording, and they sound great!

They recorded their script twice, reading it from the screen of a laptop in Pages instead of printing it out. They did a super job, and are justifiably proud of their afternoon of work! I’ll feature this narrated slideshow soon on “Student Media Examples.”

Technorati Tags: ebook, ipad, playingwithmedia, book, volcano, Ejyafjallajokull, iceland, narrated, slideshow

A Saturday Filled with Media Creation and #playingwithmedia originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 28, 2012.

Last May, before I presented at TechForum Chicago, he had a chance to visit Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. On both visits, college staff have been a bit surprised that he isn’t in high school yet but wanted college tours. I’m convinced, however, we need to find ways to help our children, grandchildren, and students go on serious college visits LONG BEFORE they start high school. By the time students are juniors or seniors in college, if they haven’t taken the necessary coursework and earned good grades in challenging courses, it’s too late for them to do much if they have an epiphany as a result of college tour like, “Boy I need to really apply myself in school so I can go here and win a good scholarship.” One of the highlights of our visit to Northwestern’s College of Engineering was meeting Ben Slivka. Ben led the team which developed Internet Explorer at Microsoft for many years and really made an impression on Alexander concerning the value of engineering and problem solving skills.

One of the ideas I’ve been kicking around for about a year is developing a grant-funded program through Storychasers to enable students to both visit university STEM departments as well as participate in day-long, short “job-shadowing” experiences with actual engineers, scientists, and others involved in STEM-related work. If we’re really serious about increasing the number of qualified applicants in STEM fields, we need to get students interested, motivated, and EXCITED about the work available in these career fields when they are in elementary and middle school. High school is too late IMHO.

In this program I’ve been building in my mind, students would be required to create and share short, reflective videos following their college visits and job-shadowing experiences. This would not only provide them with opportunities to reflect more deeply on their experiences and what they learned, but also give others who could not join them for this firsthand experience the chance to vicariously hear a little about what they did, saw and lived. This weekend I had Alexander think about what he might share in a short, narrated slideshow about his tour of the KSU Engineering College. I brainstormed some open-ended questions for him to think about, and today he created (using the application SonicPics on my iPhone along with an iRig microphone) a five minute narrated slideshow. Here’s his video reflection:

This is the planning sheet of questions I wrote for Alexander, and we discussed together prior to his recording of this SonicPics video. He did all the “clicks” to make this video, I was his tech and content coach.

Our tour guide at KSU, Richard Reed, recently graduated from the college in Chemical Engineering and is currently in the Master’s program in Nuclear Engineering at K-State. One of the key statistics we heard from Richard involved attrition. Most students drop out of the engineering program in their freshman or sophomore years. Of about 130 students who initially declared chemical engineering in his class at KSU, only 30 graduated on time in four years. It’s a tough program and lots of people opt to change majors within the college of engineering or go a different direction with their academic studies. Richard was a FANTASTIC tour guide, and spent an amazing 2.5 hours with us in all. He’s a great ambassador for KSU and KSU Engineering, and I know gave Alexander lots to think about as he ponders his future options.

On a technical note regarding this video: For some reason the direct upload to YouTube from the Sonic Pics app didn’t encode properly on YouTube. While the entire video is 4:50, once uploaded to YouTube it just showed a time duration of 3:15 and didn’t have the images synced properly. I downloaded the video to my laptop and uploaded it to YouTube, but the result was the same. I think this is a problem with the video codec used by SonicPics. To resolve the problem and make the video display properly on YouTube, I wanted to use QuickTime Pro 7, but a Lion-compatible version is not available online. The .m4v video format from Sonic Pics is apparently not handled well by YouTube’s default conversion process. I opted to download, install and use MPEG Streamclip (free) and exported the video using a variety of different settings as a MPEG4 (.mp4) video file as well as a QuickTime (.mov) file. None of those conversions worked either: The first image of the SonicPics slideshow was skipped and the image sync on the rest was messed up.

After some Google searching, I discovered this Apple support article about installing QuickTime 7 on Mac OS 10.7 Lion. My $70 Lion USB installer was useless for this. I had to locate my old OS 10.6 Snow Leopard install DVD and found the “Optional Installs” package. I was able to use it to install QuickTime 7, and then enter my Pro code in the preference setting to activate the Pro conversion features.

Using the “Audio/Video issues with .MOV and .MP4″ YouTube support help article, I exported the .m4v SonicPics video as a QuickTime .mov movie and uploaded it successfully to YouTube. This was a ridiculously long process and took me over an hour to figure out. Hopefully this issue will be resolved in a future version of SonicPics and/or the encoding process utilized by YouTube.

Technorati Tags: sonicpics, student, video, ksu, engineering, interview, storychasers, reflection, kansas, state, university, northwestern, convert

Increasing STEM Interest via College Visits & Reflections originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on December 18, 2011.

Adam Neff is the coach of the undefeated, state football champion Raiders of Maryetta School in Stilwell, Oklahoma. (Their junior high school football team was undefeated with an 11-0 record this year and are the 2011 O.R.E.S. Division I State Champions.) Adam is not just a remarkable educator for his coaching skills, he’s also an outstanding science and technology teacher. In our five minute interview yesterday, Adam shared some amazing things he’s doing with 7th and 8th graders using the virtual world/simulation software Minecraft. Not only are they using Minecraft for science lessons, they are also in the process of creating a virtual world for an “Oklahoma Ag in the Classroom” video contest. What a great example of creativity, innovation, and student-centered learning! Stilwell families are lucky indeed to have Adam Neff as a local teacher, and the supportive administration which continues to make their 1:1 laptop initiative for middle schoolers a success! (I made a brief mic adjustment early in the interview which affected volume, my apologies… it’s just a brief change which was rapidly fixed.)

This story is just one recent example of the engaging, creative and outstanding learning opportunities provided by PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS in the great state of Oklahoma. Way to go, Adam Neff and Maryetta students!

Technorati Tags: creative, creativity, learning, oklahoma, science, technology, minecraft, stilwell, adam, neff

Using Minecraft for Virtual Simulations & Oklahoma Ag in the Classroom originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on November 11, 2011.

Kevin Helmer, who I met this past April during a Storychasers “Celebrate Texas Voices” workshop in Lubbock, Texas, tweeted me the following 3 photos tonight of the dust storm today (Monday, October 17, 2011) in Lubbock.

Posted via email from wesley fryer’s posterous

Dust Bowl Nightmare in Lubbock originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on October 17, 2011.

These links are also available on my handouts wiki. The videos “Mathboarding” and Rate of Work” are from Rushton Hurley‘s wonderful digital storytelling archive, “Next Vista for Learning.” An audio podcast of this presentation is also available on “Fuel for Educational Change Agents.”

Sponsors of Tomorrow-Rockstar (30 sec)

Engineering Process with Michael Solomon (3:37)

Find more videos like this on Celebrate Oklahoma Voices!

Mathboarding (1:54)

Rate of Work (1:07)

The Importance of Art Class at School and Creativity (1:15)

Technorati Tags: classroom, digital, edtech, education, maine, media, playing, playingwithmedia, storytelling, technology, video, yarmouth

Deepening our Learning Through Storytelling: creativity, STEM and stories originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on September 27, 2011.

The Google Earth YouTube channel is one of the suggested resources for the Google Geo Teachers Institute which I’ll be attending in Lewiston, Maine, September 26-27, 2011. It’s going to be a GREAT two days of geo-learning!

Technorati Tags:
earth, education, geo, google, inspiration, maine, video, workshop, institute, matters

Great Reasons Geography ROCKS! originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on August 23, 2011.

Yesterday morning we went north from St Mary (on the east side of the park) and entered through the third entrance by Many Glacier Hotel. Wow want a place and a view! The hotel was built by the Great Northern Railroad in 1915, along with others in a “Swiss chalet style,” to encourage tourism to Glacier National Park and other points west of St Louis. This is a photo from the parking lot above the hotel.

This is a panoramic photo from the same location, taken with the iPhone application Pano.

Here is another panorama, which I took from the porch of the hotel.

In addition to enjoying the mountain views and seeing a grizzly bear from the porch, my dad and I had lunch in the hotel restaurant. This reminded us both of Old Faithful Inn and Lake Hotel in Yellowstone.

This is one of my favorite photos from yesterday, it’s a “Prevent Resource Damage” sign at Logan’s Pass atop the “Going to the Sun Road.” The impressive backdrop makes this sign much more persuasive, IMHO!

Some people actually brought sleds and snow saucers and went sledding in the snow fields above Logan’s Pass. This is a photo of a deer grazing near the Visitor’s Center. Note the snowfields in the background.

These folks had finished sledding and were packing their snow saucers home.

Glacier NP is a perfect destination for HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography. HDR software takes a brightly exposed version of a scene and combines it with a darkly exposed version to render a digital image with greater color depth. One disadvantage of my favorite iPhone HDR app, Pro HDR, is it does not automatically include location EXIF (geo-location) data with photos. The HDR photo below looking up at Jackson Glacier, on the east side of the continental divide on “Going to the Sun Road,” shows one of the twenty-six rapidly disappearing glaciers in the park. (My favorite iPhoneography capture apps are included in this Appolicious list from July.)

Here’s another HDR image looking up toward Jackson glacier.

This screenshot of HDR processing shows the two original images which were combined to form the one above. (This was created with the built-in HDR feature of the iPhone4′s camera.)

Glacier National Park had 150 glaciers in 1850, now there are just 25 or 26 left. Climate models predict all the glaciers will be melted away by 2030. If you haven’t made a visit to Glacier NP yet, it’s time to go.

This is my favorite photograph from yesterday. It shows waterfalls flowing down from the snowfields above Logan’s Pass, just on the east side of the continental divide. I used this for my Photo 365 image yesterday and titled it, “An Eden of Waterfalls.”

I’ll close with a photo of a Glacier National Park animal icon. The fleet of red “jammer” buses in GNP have a mountain goat on the side of them.

These are refurbished buses from the early part of the 20th century.

We did see quite a few mountain goats in our two days in Glacier, but yesterday just below Logan’s Pass we saw a herd of big horn sheep! This was more big horn sheep in one place than my dad or I had ever seen. This was very exciting for us, as players of “the game game.”

If you have not already, make plans to visit Glacier National Park someday soon. It’s an incredible place that will take your breath away.

My hotel bandwidth isn’t fast enough to let me upload HD videos from the past two days, so I’ll save sharing those for another day.

Remember you can also explore my Glacier National Part photos from yesterday via this Flickr map of saved geo-locations. Not all the photos have locations saved, and some are guestimates, but most are there. I REALLY like this feature of digital photography! (More details on this post from last night)

Technorati Tags:
iphoneography, photo, photos, glacier, national, park, travel

More Highlights from Glacier National Park originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on August 7, 2011.

I’ve highlighted the pass we saw in this screenshot of the NASA Human Spaceflight Live Tracking site, taken about 30 minutes after the flyby.

Our dog coincidentally woke me up this morning just after 5 am. I used the Camera Genius iPhone app to snap this photo with the location / date / time included. I got up a little early to try and configure my iPhone to capture a light trail of the ISS flyby.

None of my iPhone camera apps had a “bulb” or slow shutter speed setting which I could use with my tripod. Thanks to this discussion post in the Flickr iPhoneography group, I learned about the iPhone camera app “Slow Shutter Cam.” (It’s on sale for 99¢ today.)

A few weeks ago I ordered a Glif tripod mount for my iPhone4, and figured this would be a good chance to give it a try. I got everything to work, but the 15 second exposure time I used proved too short to capture a satellite fly over.

My 7 year old daughter was the first to spot the ISS flying over, on the eastern horizon. It should have come into view at 5:26 am, but because of light pollution from the Oklahoma City metro area we didn’t see it till its last 30 seconds of visibility. Our Twisst post indicated it would be visible for just 2 minutes. Things go by pretty fast when you’re flying over the planet at 17,000 miles per hour! Despite the fact we did not capture this exciting, early-morning moment on camera, this was a VERY memorable and worthwhile experience I’m sure my girls won’t forget soon.

I asked Rachel to record a short audio summary of our ISS sighting this morning using AudioBoo. She recorded it later in the morning, after getting a bit more sleep after our early get-up!

To receive your own Twitter alerts when the International Space Station passes over YOUR location on our planet:

• Make sure your Twitter profile location is correct for the city / state / country where you want to view the ISS.
• Follow Twisst ISS alerts @twisst on Twitter

For additional space / astronaut / NASA related inspiration, follow my Astronaut list on Twitter. This photo of the Space Shuttle Atlantis streaking toward home and a safe landing was taken from the ISS (and posted to TwitPic) by astronaut Mike Fossum. Mike is a fellow Eagle Scout currently aboard ISS.

Mike also took this photo of Atlantis just before undocking and shared it on Twitpic.

He reported via Twitter the following is the most amazing photo he’s ever taken: It’s of the space shuttle Atlantis, the ISS, and an aurora over the earth all in the same frame. Amazing!

If you don’t think stuff like this is cool, we need to get you to a doctor FAST to check for a heartbeat. Technologies like digital cameras, Twitter and orbital trackers in the hands of astronauts and scientists empower some REALLY amazing experiences playing with media!

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fly, nasa, photo, twitter, ISS, flyby, sight, sighting, tracking, orbital, shuttle, twitpic, twisst

We SAW the International Space Station Fly Over Oklahoma City! originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on July 22, 2011.

At Newman Grove Public Schools, science teachers are using the great outdoors as their classroom, giving students the opportunity to experience the scientific process in its most natural form.

My favorite quotation in the video, at 4:54, is Newman Grove science teacher’s Mark Seier’s statement:

All science is learned in classrooms, and unfortunately most science is learned out of ‘cookbook labs’ where we already know what the answers are going to be before we even start the labs… we do need to be in the classroom to learn the concepts, but if you are ever going to get students excited about science they have to be out and DO it, and discover things that are not known yet.

Take six minutes and watch this short video, then share it with others in your digital as well as face-to-face network. Watching this video, it’s easy to understand why so many Nebraskans LOVE their public schools!

NElovesPS | Newman Grove from NElovesPS on Vimeo.

At Newman Grove Public Schools, science teachers are using the great outdoors as their classroom, giving students the opportunity to experience the scientific process in its most natural form.

I’m featuring Nebraska Loves Public Schools in my closing chapter on “Digital Show and Tell” in my forthcoming EPUB eBook, “Playing with Media: simple ideas for powerful sharing.” Videos like this one about Newman Grove, Nebraska, are not examples of “quick-edit” and “no-edit” videography: They are professional, educational documentaries at their best. These videos DO showcase the power of digital media to shape perceptions, however, and the ways learners in our schools need to be “storychasers” telling our stories on the global stage of the Internet.

Kudos to the NElovesPS videography team and the Sherwood Foundation in Omaha, which financially supports this phenomenal educational advocacy project. Follow the project @NElovesPS on Twitter and on Facebook to keep getting inspired about wonderful ways teachers and students in Nebraska are learning in PUBLIC SCHOOLS!

NElovesPS | Newman Grove from NElovesPS on Vimeo.

Hat tip to Nebraska educator Beth Still for letting me know about NElovesPS via a badge on her blog, “Nebraska Change Agent.”

Technorati Tags:
advocacy, learning, nebraska, school, science, teacher, video, loves

Nebraska Science Teachers Model “Go Outside” Best Practices with Students #stem originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on July 9, 2011.

Storychasing NASA History at Space Center Houston

Learning About NASA Mission Control in Houston

Technorati Tags:
history, houston, ipad, nasa, science, video, youtube, irig

Storychasing NASA History at Space Center Houston originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on July 6, 2011.

I used youtubetime.com for the direct link to this “delayed” video start time and these instructions with the older, deprecated YouTube embed code (not the default “iframe” code) to create the embedded version. The embed code requires you to convert the time delay into just seconds, so while the direct link time delay is 30 minutes and 20 seconds, the embed code delay time is 1820 seconds. This is a nice technique to use when sharing videos like this, containing great ideas which start several minutes into the actual video.

Hat tip to Ann Michaelsen for sharing the video link.

I noticed in preparing this post that ISTE has turned on Google ads for this specific video. As a result, some visitors (like me) are being shown the ad “Single and Over 40 – Try Mature Singles Only” alongside Dr. Medina’s keynote. Not the best example of co-branding for ISTE. It would be nice if YouTube permitted video owners to specify ad types or categories to allow. “Dating sites” are popular, but might not be a choice ISTE would choose intentionally for its conference videos. As far as I know, YouTube’s Promoted Videos program doesn’t offer this kind of selective advertising preference. Perhaps someday it will.

Dr. Media’s book “Brain Rules” is available as an eBook for Amazon Kindle for $2.99.

If you’re looking for “More Medina on YouTube,” check out his Authors@Google presentation from 2008. It’s 54 minutes long.

Technorati Tags:
iste, iste2011, research, medina, john, brain, rules, brainrules

John Medina’s #iste11 Keynote on YouTube: Brain Rules originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on July 5, 2011.

The theme for this year’s conference is “Teaching for Tomorrow,” with an emphasis on 21st century skills. When I told my 10 year old daughter Bill Nye was the keynote speaker for this conference she almost flipped out… Especially when I quietly told her we couldn’t go! If I wasn’t presenting and sharing a keynote and workshop on iPads in Education for the summer 2011 TEPSA (Texas Elementary Principals and Supervisors Association) conference that week, I’d be in Memphis learning from Bill with other institute attendees!

In addition to Bill Nye, Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam will also keynote the conference. Other featured speakers include Tom Barrett, an innovative primary school teacher from Nottingham, England; Carol Vukelich, an expert on early literacy; Viaja Wagle, a group leader at Harvard’s Project Zero Institute; and Tiffany Boyd, a consultant with Heinemann Publishing. Workshop presenters include Apple Distinguished and Google Certified teachers, university professors, district curriculum trainers, and administrators and teachers at high performing schools.

If you attend Martin Institute Summer Conference this year, be sure to share some links to your learning with the Twitter hash tag, #micon11!

Technorati Tags:
conference, education, learning, memphis, micon, science, technology, tennessee, micon11, fun

Learn with Bill Nye the Science Guy in Memphis June 15-16! #micon11 originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on June 8, 2011.

Interestingly, my search for “directional evolution” in Wikipedia this evening took me first to an article refuting this theory, rather than one presenting both sides of the debate. Stephen Jay Gould is quoted in the first paragraph of the article, and his theories are those I just heard Kevin Kelly refute in chapter eight of his book. It is vital that we as well as our students understand the dynamic nature of science and scientific theories, and this book certainly brings that reality into sharp relief. Too often we present science in our schools as “merely” a set of facts to memorize, much like we teach social studies. Both tendencies are regrettable and avoidable. I’m looking forward to sharing some excerpts from Kelly’s book with my own kids. Lots of the ideas he discusses are challenging to fully comprehend, and I’ve had to replay several sections multiple times to try and get a better understanding of his points. Some of this is definitely attributable to new vocabulary to which he is introducing me. Even though I’m pretty sure my kids won’t fully understand the book excerpts I’ll share with them, they will likely provide some lively topics for conversation. The paraphrased statement, “If you want to study E.T., study DNA” is an example. Lots of great ideas here for our imaginations and minds to ponder as well as play with!

If you have not yet listened to a full audio book, I highly commend this experience to you. I was a doubter for many years, but now wouldn’t want to take a long car trip without one!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Praise for Audible’s iOS App and Kevin Kelly originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on May 16, 2011.

This (working at a National Energy Laboratory) really is science as a contact sport… the reason you are here is you get to contact, you get to touch, you get to interact with the brightest minds in the world, work with the best, fastest, most unique, newest facilities in the world, and some of the most challenging scientific problems. It is like going to Disneyworld, only better.

The challenges at the end of this video are GREAT too! Are you ready to transform the nation’s transportation system? Are your students? If you don’t inspire them to rise up to these challenges as well as opportunities, who will? Bring on the challenges, and invite the smartest, most motivated people you know to join in the work. Don’t discriminate in this invitation, however: It’s videos like these which can help spark interest in STEM which can lead to motivation, hard work, and new inventions. It’s time to invent the future!

photo © 2007 Kelly Walker | more info (via: Wylio)

The idea of using video to help students understand how COOL as well as powerful science and engineering can be reminds me of Intel’s “Sponsors of Tomorrow – Rockstar” video. If your students haven’t seen this one, you should share it also!

Learn more about opportunities at Oak Ridge National Laboratory on their website www.orau.org/ornl, Facebook page, and by following @GovInternships on Twitter.

Hat tip to the Texas Tech University Graduate School listserv for grad students for sharing this video link.

Technorati Tags:
energy, engineering, lab, math, research, science, stem, student, technology, youtube, laboratory, oak, ridge, oakridge, ornl, motivate, inspire, postdoc

Science is a Contact Sport with the Brightest Minds in the World @GovInternships originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on April 17, 2011.

Check out Julie’s fantastic science curriculum wiki (yhs-raines.wikispaces.com) for additional links and resources. More videos from our tour of Yarmouth High School are available on wiki.wesfryer.com/videos.

Technorati Tags:
science, dna, virtual, fingerpint, fingerprinting, lab, biology

Virtual DNA Fingerprinting Lab (1 to 1 Learning in Yarmouth, Maine) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 9, 2011.

Check out the full set of archived images from astronaut Wheelock, archived in a Flickr set by Triggerpit.

Few things can inspire thinking about science, exploration and adventure like amazing images from space.

Colonel Wheelock is @Astro_Wheels on Twitter. If you’re interested in science and space, consider following and encouraging your own students to follow Wheelock and other astronauts. The official NASA twitter account @nasa_astronauts follows 26 astronauts currently. Clayton Anderson (@Astro_Clay), Mark Kelly (@ShuttleCDRKelly), Marcos Pontes (@Astro_Pontes), and many more are listed. After following an astronaut on Twitter, pay attention to the other folks Twitter recommends following as well. Ed Van Cise (@Carbon_Flight – Flight Director at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in the Mission Control Center,) Lori Garver (@Lori_Garver – Deputy Administrator, NASA,) Beth Beck (@bethbeck – NASA: Space Operations Outreach Manager) and NASA JPL (@NASAJPL – NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s News Office) are examples of other, related Twitter users I learned about this way.

I couldn’t readily find a Twitter list someone else had started for astronauts, so I went ahead and created one: twitter.com/wfryer/astronauts. I’m following 33 so far. I won’t promise to keep this updated regularly, but it certainly could help you get started following more astronauts! I’m going to subscribe to this list as a new section on Flipboard (free) on my iPad.

Consider the possibilities here. Paolo Nespoli, an astronaut currently aboard the International Space Station, just tweeted a link to the following image on Flickr of an undisclosed Asian capital at night.

His challenge to viewers?

An Asian Capital. Which one?

Una capitale asiatica. Quale?

Do you think your students would enjoy using the resources at their disposal to figure out the answer? I’m betting they would. Consider giving your students challenges like these in 2011, by bringing REAL scientists, engineers, and space adventurers like Paolo Nespoli and Douglas Wheelock into your classroom via Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Flipboard, and other blended learning tools.

Not able to access those websites from your school network? Perhaps the “Balanced Filtering in Schools” project will be able to help you with that advocacy and community education need… soon. Resources like these from astronauts are exactly the kind of relevant, real-time media we need to share with students in our classrooms.

As classroom teachers, we are in one of the most influential positions to help inspire the next generation of scientists, engineers, technology inventors, and mathematics gurus. As digitally connected learners, we are blessed to have access to not only Internet-based resources, but also REAL PEOPLE like these sharing their experiences with us as they happen.

Our access to plentiful quantities of information is going to continue increasing at a dizzying pace in our lifetimes. Awash in this sea of information, we will continue to find “priceless” those human beings who can inspire us to dream dreams bigger than ourselves. Never underestimate or undervalue your own potential to influence the minds of others to dream and to ask good questions.

For more inspirational photos from space, see this December 23rd post from astronaut Wheelock. Wow.

Technorati Tags:
education, learning, math, video, youtube, nasa, twitter, astronaut, astronauts, flickr, school, science, technology, engineering, stem

Tweets and Photos from Astronauts in Space: Consider the Possibilities! originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 1, 2011.

Read more about Sophie’s environmental advocacy in the February 2009 Seacoastonline.com article, “Student touts recycle mindset.” The April 2008 BioCycle magazine article, “Cafeteria Composting In Southern Maine,” unfortunately requires a subscription login to view.

I interviewed Sophie earlier this month when my daughter and I visited South Berwick to stay with friends. Sophie won the “MEGAT 2009 Distinguished Student Award” for her environmental advocacy work. Sophie and her mom have been local champions of the “Nike Reuse a Shoe Program” and were recognized for their work in August 2009.

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maine, milk, carton, recycle, recycling, south, berwick, sophie, towle, composting

Milk Carton Recycling and Composting in Maine originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on December 11, 2010.

Are you thinking Oklahoma is old school? Think again. This is as high tech as it gets! Are you and other teachers at your school preparing your students for their high tech future, today? What’s described by Dr. Anderson in this video isn’t theoretical about the future: It’s today’s technology. Are pencils still the predominant technology in your classroom? When is your school giving every student and teacher a laptop for learning? Is your school still banning all mobile devices for students? When is your school board going to adopt policies which hold students accountable for their behavior, and help them learn the vital skills of digital citizenship as well as self-discipline? When is your school board going to embrace balanced content filtering for Internet use? We live in transformationally dynamic times. We need to move forward with REGULAR collaboration and project-based work in our classrooms to prepare students for the high-tech PRESENT.

Learn more about the incredible work being done at PHF Research Park by reading their recently released PHF Research Park Action Report. (PDF)

Many thanks to Jim Mason, Executive Director of the Oklahoma Nanotechnology Initiative, for leading our fantastic tour today.

Technorati Tags:
creativity, cwf2010, engineering, science, tech, technology, medical, phf, bioscience, bionic, arm, bluetooth, high

International Collaboration and Bluetooth Prosthetics in Oklahoma #cwf2010 originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on November 18, 2010.

A digital fabricator (commonly shortened to fabber) is a small, self-contained factory that can make objects described by digital data. Fabbers make three-dimensional, solid objects that can be used as models, as prototypes, or as delivered products. They are widely used by manufacturers for these purposes. Fabbers use a wide range of techniques to make products from a wide range of materials. The quality of these materials and the precision of fabrication can be a major constraint on functional applications.

In September of 2009, when I was in Hong Kong for the 21st Century Learning @ Hong Kong Conference, I had an opportunity to learn about “rapid prototyping” and see some of the equipment used by students at Discovery College (a private K-12 school in Hong Kong) to actually “make stuff” using these processes. WikiPedia defines rapid prototyping as:

…the automatic construction of physical objects using additive manufacturing technology. The first techniques for rapid prototyping became available in the late 1980s and were used to produce models and prototype parts. Today, they are used for a much wider range of applications and are even used to manufacture production-quality parts in relatively small numbers. Some sculptors use the technology to produce complex shapes for fine arts exhibitions.

In my work at the University of North Texas this semester teaching “Computers in the Classroom,” I’ve learned a bit about the work underway involving NCTM, AMTE, SITE, ITEEA, and ISTE to author a NSF grant supporting digital fabrication in K-12 schools. The following two minute, forty second video by Daniel Tillman provides an overview of digital fabrication as well as excerpts from Karen Cator‘s recent comments in Washington DC at the National Technology Leadership Summit about our need for this technology in our schools today.

The website digitalfabrication.org has been created by educators at the University of Virginia to provide resources, tutorials, and assistance to others interested in digital fabrication. A Diigo group for digital fabrication has been created, as well as a Ning site “for those tinkering with Fab Labs.”

My own work with Scratch software together with preservice teachers this semester at UNT drives home the importance of computational thinking and REAL engineering activities for our students. I hope to learn more about digital fabrication this semester at UNT, and will be sure to pass along what I can.

Imagine classroom lessons with your own students, in which everyone is able to create and rapidly manufacture objects using (essentially) specialized computer software and fancy printers. That’s digital fabrication. I hope the NSF grant writing of the organizations depicted in Daniel’s video is successful!

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Rapid Prototyping, Digital Fabrication, STEM, NSF and Karen Cator originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on November 9, 2010.

This is a real eye opener. If we want to help more students enter STEM career fields (science, technology, engineering, and math) many things are needed. One important need is helping students understand why engineering matters. This video provides a vivid example and story about how engineers can make a HUGE difference in the lives of millions of people.

WARNING AND TIP: As is the case (unfortunately) with many YouTube videos, the comments on this video are not moderated and include profane as well as tasteless sentences. If you’re going to share this with students, consider one of the following options so no one is subjected to the comments:

1. Download the video to your local hard drive, instead of playing it directly from YouTube.
2. Play the video from the TEDTalks website, instead of YouTube.
3. Play the video on YouTube from within the TEDTalk channel, rather than on its separate YouTube page. (This view doesn’t show comments.)*

According to his TED bio page:

Inveterate tinkerer Peter Haas is the co-founder of AIDG, the Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group, which connect people to electricity, sanitation and clean water through a combination of business incubation, education, and outreach.

Peter’s work would be great to share with students who are talking about ways to make a big difference in the world. I’m thinking of work Paul Allison and others are doing with students in the National Writing Project, as well as discussions Bob Sprankle, Cheryl Oakes, and Alice Barr had with Adora Svitak recently. I’m also thinking of the amazing students at TEDxRedmond.

* Hat tip to Daniel Rezac for sharing this great “in channel YouTube video playing” tip in his recent post and screencast, “You-tilizing YouTube in the Classroom.”

Technorati Tags:
engineering, failure, haiti, earthquake, stem, construction, fail

Construction Engineers and Concrete Masons can save MILLIONS of lives (Haiti earthquake story) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on October 14, 2010.

Alec is one of the facilitators here who I’ve read and learned from for years, but have never met face to face until today. He is definitely one of my “yodas” in the educational technology arena, particularly in higher education. He is teaching his “EC&I 831: Social Media & Open Education” course this semester as an “open course.” This means anyone can take and participate in the course, and he’s also recruited “network mentors” to work with his pre-service education students. The forms of this mentorship are likely to be varied, but at a minimum individuals who’ve agreed to formally “mentor” will be reading the blogs and commenting on students’ writing during the semester. It’s a great idea and sure to provide great opportunities for learning, not only for Alec’s students but also for everyone else who joins in the learning. Alex was a few minutes late joining us this morning for our initial facilitator meeting because he was teaching his class “live,” synchronously, from here in China. For those with access, it’s a “flat world” indeed. (Alec lives and works in Regina, Saskatchewan.)

I learned a BUNCH of things from Carol Jordan today as we shared ideas for our Visual Literacy / Digital Storytelling conference cohorts, and will share a few of these links in no particular order. Carol’s Chemistry class blog is “Chemical Paradigms: IB Students Thinking Outside the Box.” Throughout the year Carol encourages her students to post publicly on this team blog, following an excellent set of guidelines and suggestions. She begins this page of chemistry blogging expectations by noting:

In Chemistry you know many things already: that 1 mole is equal to 6.023×1023 particles and that atoms are made up of protons, neutrons and electrons. However, we rarely stop to think about the process by which scientific knowledge is produced, obtained and achieved, nor under what circumstances, and in what ways scientific knowledge is renewed and reshaped by different people and from what perspectives and approaches. By pausing to reflect about the complexity of knowledge as you move though your study of chemistry (& science) you will deepen your understanding of how we know what we know about science and the scope and limits of this knowledge.

She goes on to share ideas for students on:

1. What can you blog about
2. Reflect on the nature of Science
3. Some expectations for posts and replies

This is a class chemistry blog which her students use from year to year, and is hosted by the Shanghai American School. Because the Chinese government is very unpredictable in the sites they choose to block, it’s beneficial for international schools in China to “host their own” sites for things like blogs and video sharing. I highly commend Carol’s page of blogging guidelines and expectations: Whether or not you teach chemistry or high school students, there are some great suggestions here you could probably use on your own class blog as you work to help students understand how they should utilize a shared publication platform as well as engage with their classmates in discussions which extend beyond the “traditional” class day.

Carol utilizes the “Habits of Mind” framework in her chemistry classes with students to help them not only learn content but also develop the skills and dispositions they will require to be successful after high school graduation. Her “Chemical Paradigms – Habits of Mind ePortfolio” is a great wiki demonstrating how high quality ePortfolios can be created and shared by students utilizing this framework. Be sure to click on the Student ePortfolio links at the bottom of the page. Lily’s ePortfolio is one which is exemplary. She created a separate page with text and embedded media for each of the “Habits of Mind,” explaining and demonstrating how she had learned about and shown that habit in her studies during the year.

The ways in which Carol is encouraging her students to publish their ideas openly for others to view, and even critique, is outstanding. Shanghai American School, where she teaches, provides a Moodle-based learning management system which Carol also utilizes extensively to provide as well as assess student work. She uses the “pages layout in Moodle, which provides nice “tabs” at the top of her site to organize her course content by topic. Not everything her students do is published on the “open web,” most student work is shared privately online in their Moodle courses. Carol feels, however, as I do that it’s very important for students to publish some of their work openly. We discussed these dynamics today: The quality of student work is often higher (the bar is raised) when their work is published openly, and students are often very motivated to see the wider audience (via their Clustermaps) which their work has attracted.

Another excellent resource Carol shared today, which was new to me, were the Protocols from National School Reform Faculty. These can be used, among other things, as reflective tools to examine and evaluate student work. The National School Reform Faculty: Harmony Education Center website offers a caution for those using these tools and resources without proper training and background preparation:

Welcome to the materials section of the National School Reform Faculty website. Here you will be able to find protocols and supporting materials for use in your Critical Friends Group (CFG) and for use as your practice grows as a facilitative leader… Protocols are less effective and can be counter-productive when used outside of established groups or are led by people who are unfamiliar with their facilitation. Please be aware that their use outside of an established context might not reflect the potential power of protocols, CFGs, and facilitative leadership.

I had not heard of the National School Reform Faculty, or these resources, so I was glad to hear Carol share about them today. I’m eager to learn more.

In her “Theory of Knowledge” class, Carol had her students participate in a “World Hunger Project” and create video documentaries. Here is an example of one of the student videos, which is hosted on her school’s own video/media server website. I’m not sure what video CMS they’re using for this site, but I’ll try to find out this week. (If you know, please share the name and link as a comment!)

Carol has used a short video assignment at the start of her “Environmental Science” course to find out why students are taking the course and what they want to learn. She uses this input to structure the content and activities of the course. Here’s one student example.

Carol also has her students create podcasts for chemistry, and has published her thorough rubric as well as student podcast examples on her classroom wiki. Her students used Garageband to make these podcasts, so if you’re familiar with Garageband “jingles” you’ll notice some familiar intros and outros here. The students show great creativity in these projects, however, as well as their knowledge of chemistry content!

It’s absolutely fantastic to be able to work with and learn from Carol during this conference, and I’m energized after just our first day of planning together. We’re going to have a GREAT conference experience together with the participants in our cohorts I’m sure!

A few other resources were shared by other cohort facilitators today as we discussed ideas and resources for the activities we are considering for our conference participants. These included:

The “Technology Integration Matrix” utilized by Florida schools:

The Technology Integration Matrix (TIM) illustrates how teachers can use technology to enhance learning for K-12 students. The TIM incorporates five interdependent characteristics of meaningful learning environments: active, constructive, goal directed (i.e., reflective), authentic, and collaborative (Jonassen, Howland, Moore, & Marra, 2003). The TIM associates five levels of technology integration (i.e., entry, adoption, adaptation, infusion, and transformation) with each of the five characteristics of meaningful learning environments. Together, the five levels of technology integration and the five characteristics of meaningful learning environments create a matrix of 25 cells as illustrated below.

The following articles which look excellent, but I have not read previously:

1. Top 5 tech tools chosen by teachers (from Read/Write Web, 16 August 2010)
2. Getting Attention on the Laptop Classroom (November 2008 article by Jamie McKenzie)
3. Crisis: Technology Implementation in the Classroom (by Leslie Wilson, President of the One to One Institute)
4. Ed Tech Experts Choose Top Tools: Which web 2.0 tools are best suited for enabling collaboration in teaching and learning? A trio of ed tech experts offer up their top three choices apiece. (August 2010)

The following videos are among several cohort leaders are planning to utilize with participants.

Dan Pink: The Surprising Research on Motivation (TED)

Sugata Mitra: The child-driven education (TED)

This final video was recommended to me by Carol, for our visual literacy cohort and strand:

Jonathan Klein: Photos that changed the world (TED)

I’m sure there were more tidbits shared today that are worth recording as well as passing on, but that’s about all I’ll share for now. I’ll close with a GREAT quotation Darren Kuropatwa shared as we discussed creativity and media / knowledge products today:

Creativity requires constraints.

That’s one of the ideas Carol and are are hoping to model as we invite our cohort participants to create collaborative Pecha Kutcha presentations this week.

Technorati Tags:
china, creativity, development, education, learning, literacy, media, professional, shanghai, technology, video, learning2cn, #learning2cn, ideas

Great student project examples, lesson ideas and links integrating media #learning2cn originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on September 15, 2010.

Podcast356: Discussing EV (Electric Vehicle) Technology and Plugin Hybrids with Nathan Parrow of Oklahoma Robotics LLC originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on August 29, 2010.

photo credit: Mixtribe

According to the English Wiktionary, one definition of “obsfucate” is:

To deliberately make more confusing in order to conceal the truth.

The etemology of “obsfucate” is from the Latin word obfuscare, from ob- + fuscare (“darken”). The “dark ages” was the era in European history following the fall of the Roman Empire, described in Wikipedia as the “period of intellectual darkness between the extinguishing of the light of Rome, and the Renaissance or rebirth from the 14th century onwards.” The Enlightenment should continue today as digital communication technologies fundamentally change the access we enjoy to information, and our abilities to share information ourselves. The advance of enlightened thinking relies principally on our abilities and willingness to think critically however, as well as the access we enjoy to varied sources of information and opinion.

Critical thinking and problem solving are not a new skills, even though they are often included in frameworks for “21st century skills” like those espoused by The Partnership for 21st Century Skills. Corporations as well as groups of individuals have intentionally shared falsehoods and obsfucating “research” findings for many years before Internet technologies arrived on the information scene. As an example, Richard Littlemore writes in his article “Manufacturing Doubt” in this NewScientist series:

You can’t beat doubt as a corporate strategy– especially if your product is life-threatening when used as directed. These days we don’t have to speculate as to whether industries have manufactured doubt. They have admitted it too many times. In 1972, Tobacco Institute vice-president Fred Panzer outlined his industry’s ‘brilliantly executed’ defence strategy. A key tactic was ‘creating doubt about the health charge [that tobacco use increased chances of getting cancer] without actually denying it’ while ‘encouraging objective scientific research.’… Where tobacco led the way, coal and chemicals followed. And, of course, the fossil fuel industry has been working overtime– and with shocking success– creating doubt about climate change.

While groups like “Big Tobacco” have conducted organized campaigns to obsfucate societal perceptions about medical risks for years preceding the Internet information revolution, digital communication technologies are now used to rapidly repeat and therefore disseminate false messages which can gain cultural currency through repetition. In many cases, thanks to the indexing schemes of search engines like Google, these messages can also gain acceptance in the digital info-sphere much sooner than they might have in earlier eras of history. In his NewScientist article “Giving Life to a Lie,” Jim Giles details the history of a falsely attributed quotation to John Houghton. Houghton was falsely quoted as saying, “Unless we announce disasters no one will listen,” and this quotation has been used repeatedly since its initial publication in November 2006 by those seeking to debunk climate change. Giles explains how an “informational cascade” online today can rapidly cause quotations or ideas to gain popular currency much faster than they could in the past. Giles writes:

The process [of informational cascade] is amplified by the ‘echo chamber’ of the internet, which has made it easier than ever to encounter and generate falsehoods. It also makes it easier to start them. Propagators are often aware of what they are doing, according to [Cass] Sustein. Some act out of self-interest, such as the desire for money or fame. Others are defending an ideology or faith. Some are simply malicious.

Giles explains how repetition of messages can lead to the “illusion of truth.”

‘Hearing something 10 times does not mean there there are 10 different pieces of information,’ says [David] Hirshleifer. ‘But the more you hear something the more likely you are to believe it is true.’ And so it is with denial: if everybody appears to be saying that climate science is corrupt, or that the MMR vaccine causes autism, it takes on the appears of fact.

Although it is not mentioned in this article series on “deniers,” I was reminded of the common perception today that all interactive chat environments on the Internet are evil and can only be used for nefarious purposes. I think dynamics similar to those identified by Littlemore and Giles are at play with these discussions of “Internet Safety.” After hearing multiple references to “predator danger” news specials, a common perception has been reinforced in many U.S. communities that the interactive Internet overall is a dangerous place which should be avoided by young people. While there are increasingly popular online destinations like Webkins, Club Penguin, etc. which might logically help to refute this perception, when it comes to many school-based discussions of Internet safety it’s clear the fear message and perception continues to predominate. Too often, even as adults, we FAIL to critically analyze and validate messages we hear in the media and within our environment. It’s not just students who need encouragement to be critical thinkers: We do as adults as well.

On the topic of safe chat environments for students at school, I recommend you check out the relatively new site Classchats.com. The Seedlings interviewed teacher Cherrie MacInnes about the website and its genesis in their June 3, 2010 webcast. Getting involved in an interactive class project using a site like Classchats may be one of the best ways we can individually help overcome overblown perceptions about the dangers of interactive digital technologies.

Few technology topics seem to bring the need for a focus on critical thinking to the forefront as much as WikiPedia. Like many other school districts in the United States, the public district where my two youngest children now attend elementary school simply bans WikiPedia use outright by students rather than talking about its value and the importance of validating information. When school leaders ban an important and relevant information resource like WikiPedia instead of helping learners of all ages understand how to use it effectively, they do an educational disservice to the entire community. We should not only be using WikiPedia regularly in our schools and homes, we should also be talking about the process through which we validate and trust information. Banning WikiPedia outright because it can (and often does) include erroneous information ducks vital conversations which we need to be having regularly as expert and novice learners. As teachers, we hopefully never tell our students to only use a single source for their research projects, and take everything that source says or has written at face value without any verification or corroboration. In practice, however, I find there is remarkably little QUESTIONING about sources, perspectives, and bias in many classrooms conducting research projects. This needs to change.

It’s certainly easier to teach in an environment where facts are not contested and conclusions are not disputed. The real world outside of classrooms, however, is filled with situations which have ill-defined outcomes. Decisions must be made based on limited and imperfect information, and critical thinking is essential.

photo credit: mia3mom

How can we encourage more critical thinking inside and outside our classrooms? Discussions of and practice with the scientific method, utilization of frameworks like The Big 6, and simply adopting an inquiry-based approach to learning are all ways to encourage more critical analysis. Conversations with students during and about their process of creating a knowledge product should include lots of open ended questions which challenge students’ thinking.

This mode of teaching is certainly “messier” than traditional, teacher-directed instruction, but this is exactly the sort of dialog we need to prepare students to be engaged and educated citizens in the 21st century. Our need for critical thinking is greater today than ever before. Are you living in an echo chamber? Are your students? We need to find ways to regularly step outside our bubbles of normalcy and question both our assumptions and our sources of information. This inquiry-based process should allow us to act as true “sceptics” guided by a scientific way of thinking rather than “deniers” driven primarily by ideologies or other biases. Our digitally connected learning landscape makes this need even more apparent than it was a decade ago, last year, or last week.

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Critical thinking is more important than ever amidst Internet-based denier propaganda originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on July 5, 2010.

MY ASIDE: THE STORYCHASERS MOBILE LEARNING TEAM BLOG IS A PLACE FOR EDUCATORS IN 1:1 SETTINGS TO SHARE IDEAS.

I JUST NOTICED AT THE TOP OF THE CRESCENT PS WEBSITE, IT SAYS “TIGER SEARCH DOES NOT INCLUDE WIKIPEDIA.”

Jim’s homepage on the Crescent Public Schools’ website. Jim has a phenomenal website about web-based instruction.

If you tell kids to type in a URL to start a lesson, it will take you 10 minutes to get them to a website
- those are the kind of problems you’ll run into

MY QUESTION FOR JIM: WHAT ARE YOU ABLE TO DO WITH THE ONLINE CURRICULUM THAT YOU COULDN’T DO BEFORE. JIM’S ANSWER: NOTHING. INTERESTING.

What I am going to share with you today is 15 years of online curriculum work. Your curriculum is not going to look like mine to start. Don’t let this discourage you.

The virtual learning environment is where you are able to do things DIFFERENTLY that you couldn’t do with just a textbook.

When I was hired my superintendent said, “I don’t care about your test scores. Find out a way to use the laptop in class with students every day.” The culmination of Jim’s learning and educational philosophy is available on his Web Based Instruction Internet Resources website.

Now let’s look at my online curriculum for chemistry. Remember this is the culmination of fifteen years of work.

WOW! THIS IS AMAZING!!!!

I retired from full-time teaching 3 years ago. Mr Sheiver stole me away from Mr Parks with an offer to help us with curriculum development and teach 1 chemistry class. The rest of the day I play with curriculum.

Anywhere in the curriculum where you see a tiger paw, it is a podcast
- those podcasts are on the web, NOT on our “podcast server”
- I have EVERYTHING on my box
- I am fanatical about redundancy
- 30 years of teaching is on my box (computer)
- I have converted/ (digitized) everything

My box / computer belongs to Crescent public schools, but all my curriculum fits on a flash drive that I can take with me if I need to.

MY THOUGHT: THIS IS WISDOM.

What do I do with podcasts?
- I teach using PowerPoint for class discussions
- I took those PowerPoints, sit down in my nice, quite office, and created these podcasts
- I had to shorten them, because I believe when it comes to curriculum students have a maximum of a 10 minute attention span
- kids MIGHT watch something for 10 minutes, but they are NOT going to watch it for 30 minutes

I kept all under 10 minutes
- if a student is absent or wants some review other than looking at print, they can use those
- I don’t teach with those, they are supplementary

The versions of the PowerPoints I’m using have been done in the last year
- I’ve had PPT since 1995
- Those PPT files are not on the website, but the podcasts are

There is a link that lets you also switch to an alphabetical list.

Now showing us his actual Moodle site (we’re logging in as guest)

Guests on Moodle can’t see student material: They can just see teacher-prepared materials

Moodle will let you do polling
- polling is really just a single multiple choice question
- that polling device is built right into Moodle

Moodle topic discussions are asynchronous
- this is the virtual learning environment
- this is what REALLY makes the 1:1 learning environment special

You can teach kids how to think and learn without laptops
- but this asynchronous environment is what makes 1:1 so special

When I came to Cresent, teachers had been instructed to build their online curriculum in Moodle
- I don’t have to know any HTML in Moodle, I can save as a text page or a webpage
- I am really a dinosaur when it comes to technology
- I want to build this on MY BOX
- I want it ALL on my box, THEN I want to upload it to the web
- I do not like the idea of going to Moodle and building my curriculum there
- If Moodle goes down, then I can’t get to my curriculum (I would have to connect to the Moodle server)

In this room if I was teaching and the network blew up, I don’t even know it if I’m working off my curriculum saved on my box
- I am constantly tweaking my curriculum at home in the evenings

I live less than 2 blocks away from the school, but if our Internet server is hit by lightning / we lose power, servers can go off and then I can’t get to my stuff
- I can tweak everything except Moodle

That is why I’m not a real big fan of building everything in Moodle
- we build in Moodle for security reasons, and for a confidence reason (if you know just you and your kids can see it – you don’t have to worry about what other teachers in the world think about what you are doing.)
- I am confident enough to put my own work out there, but most people when they start building their own curriculum aren’t that confident

MY THOUGHTS: WOW! THIS IS A HUGE ISSUE IN TERMS OF SHARING, TEACHER CONFIDENCE, ETC. I AM SO THRILLED THAT JIM HAS HIS CURRICULUM ON THE OPEN WEB AND IT’S NOT ALL LOCKED UP ON THE CLOSED WEB / THE DISTRICT’S MOODLE SERVER. I “GET” THAT MANY TEACHERS ARE NERVOUS ABOUT PUTTING THEIR WORK ONLINE, BUT I THINK IT’S INCUMBENT UPON US AS EDUCATORS TO OPENLY SHARE AS MUCH AS WE CAN. THESE ARE VERY IMPORTANT ISSUES TO REFLECT ON…

Technology can help you engage students who don’t want to be motivated
- some kids are very intrinsically motivated
- some kids are motivated by grades
- the laptop can help you reach those kids who don’t really want to be involved

If you are using the steps included on the blue card in your packet, “The Perfect Web-Based Lesson Plan,” it is guaranteed you will be able to enagage even those students who don’t want to be engaged.
- that came from the DBQ project (document based questioning – a commercial outfit that is paper-based)
- I stole it!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document-based_question

On Copyright law: If you are using things for instruction with your kids in your classroom, you are within fair use. You don’t have to worry as long as you are not selling it.

MY COMMENT: THAT IS NOT QUITE THE ENTIRE STORY ON FAIR USE…. I THINK THIS IS A COMMON MISCONCEPTION… THIS IS DIFFERENT ESPECIALLY WHEN WE REPUBLISH THINGS ONLINE. FAIR USE HAS 4 ELEMENTS, AND TRANSFORMATIVENESS IS KEY…

I am not paperless in my classroom, I still hand out lab handouts

Start your online curriculum development NOW!
http://crescentok.com/staff/jaskew/WebBased/converting.htm

Every one of my webpages has been created from scratch using TextEdit.

MY THOUGHT: WOO HOO! LET’S HEAR IT FOR OLD-SCHOOL HTML CODING! (THIS MAY MAKE SOME OF OUR PARTICIPANTS PASS OUT HERE, BUT I THINK IT’S GREAT… NOT BECAUSE I THINK ALL TEACHERS NEED TO LEARN HOW TO CODE HTML, BUT BECAUSE THIS BRINGS BACK A LOT OF MEMORIES AND SHOWS HOW POWERFUL BASIC WEBPAGE AUTHORING SKILLS CAN BE!)

Before I came to Crescent, I broke down my pages for 1 concept per page. You can do that now with a very small number of “tags.”

I started this iterative process, building my curriculum bit by bit
- when I started adding assignments, I had to start thinking about how long this would take

At some point I learned students do NOT like to scroll down through webpages
- this is the reason I broke everything down by concept

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

From Lesson Plans to Online Curriculum by Jim Askew #ok1to1 (Amazing open Chemistry curriculum) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on June 4, 2010.

Some of the classes which look GREAT to me (and I wish someone was offering in or around the Oklahoma City metro area) are:

1. Imaginary Worlds Computer Camp (Learning to create with Scratch!) – Do you have a favorite song for which you’d love to create your own music video, or an idea for a cool 2D computer game? Bring your songs and ideas to this year’s Imaginary Worlds Camp, where we’ll be creating music videos and games using the latest version of Scratch, a new software package from MIT. In the process, we’ll be learning logical thinking, problem-solving techniques, quantitative reasoning, and the basics of computer animation. You will take home a flash drive containing Scratch, and will publish your project on the Scratch website (scratch.mit.edu)
2. Lights, Camera, Action! Movie Making – Students will be taught basic movie making skills including screenplay writing, lighting, camera angles, maximizing the use of a setting to add to the film, and basic editing techniques. Bring your own video camera!
3. Intro to Lego Mindstorms NXT Robotics – Lego enthusiasts, get ready to Robo Lego style! In this course, you’ll use Legos, a laptop computer, and an NXT programmable brick to build a robot creations using sight, sound, ultrasonic and light sensors plus interactive servo motors and many more creations. The design possibilities are nearly limitless. Come have some fun and build a robot!
4. Worm Farming: Composting with Worms (Vermiculture) – Dig in to the basics of backyard composting, including bins, tools, and accessories; sift through the process of turning kitchen scraps into plant fertilizer and cultivate the production of compost tea. You will learn from experts, experience the process first hand and go home with hard working worms ready to produce for you.
5. Digital Photo Editing for Free – The Digital Photography course is designed to show you how to use your computer to capture, edit, manipulate and produce top quality digital images for both the Internet and printing. Digital photography is easier than you may think. This level 1 digital photography course assumes you know little or nothing about digital techniques. Just imagine being able to create stunning images on your PC. Jump into the magic of Picasa 3 and Paint.net today!
6. LEGO Films and Stop Action! – Make your toys come to life! Bring in your favorite action figures or LEGO’S and create a short film with your friends. Whether you want to recreate a scene from Star Wars or design a world of your own, this class brings your dreams to the screen. Students will need to bring in LEGOS or action figures from home and a digital camera, but all other equipment provided. Students will finish the class with a CD of their movie to show their family and friends.

Way to go faculty and staff at Western Oklahoma State College for offering this diverse array of hands on (as well as geeky) classes for kids in and around Altus! Woo hoo for creativity and learning fun in Oklahoma!

H/T to Kent Brooks for telling me about Kids College!

Technorati Tags:
creativity, film, lego, oklahoma, stopmotion, video, wosc, altus, youth

Scratch, Stopmotion, Lego Robotics, Worm Farming and more at Kids College in Altus originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on May 18, 2010.

Carol Engelmann is an Einstein Fellow for the National Science Foundation. Her criticism of the harmful “narrowing” of our K12 school curriculum to focus almost exclusively on math and reading (to the detriment of the sciences and other content areas) mirrors the REVISED opinions of Diane Ravitch shared in her new book, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.”

Fortunately for us in Oklahoma, all scientific, inquiry-based learning has not been sacrificed at the unholy altar of NCLB. Today was our 4th grade science fair.

Of course, statewide testing IS over now. Could our school leaders envision a day when science fairs happen BEFORE mandated testing days? Or a day when we have MULTIPLE science fairs during the course of a year?

As long as NCLB pressures teachers and administrators to “narrow” their curricular focus, that answer is probably NO.

It’s time to change our educational political course in the United States. It’s too bad our current administration seems bent on continuing to perpetuate the failed educational policies of the past.

Technorati Tags:
education, nclb, politics, ravitch, science, einstein, fellow, diane

NCLB has killed creative teaching and energetic learning about science (at least before state testing) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on May 12, 2010.

Background
- professor at OU
- aerospace and mechanical engineering
- research in Engineering Education
- structural analysis is “other” research
- electronic media is perfect for engeineering
– time-based simulations
– 3D animations and visualization
- Common problems: budgets and time
– political issues as an added constraint
– distance learning is a potential solution

I can’t do 3D animations and visualization without a computer
- Example: Salad Spinner (see how it operates)

I get around copyright issues by just building materials myself (because I don’t want to hassle with legal issues)
- Creative Commons was not around 8-10 years ago when I was starting with this

etextbooks can be cheaper for students

Learning Tools: Old and New
- tutor: great if you can afford it
- topic expert: traditional instructor
- book: long storage of knowledge
- CD: losing importance
- Laboratory: trial and error, time consuming
- Group Discussion: collaboration
- Internet: the new library

I have found if I don’t save the instructor TIME, the resources I create do NOT get used

Needed features for the learning system I wanted to design:
- eBook
- user tracking
- problems
- examples
- collaboration
- online lecture tool
- course management
- simulations
- animations
- no-downloads (web)
- 3D visualization
- grading
- discussion forum
- lecture creation

When students come in and ask me questions, I can go in with them and see if they’ve opened that section of the course eBook

Very few instructors will write their own questions and upload them to a learning management system
- classic way most instructors test: the 2 book method (teach out of 1 book, ask test questions out of another textbook – which students do NOT have)

I developed this because of problems with WebCT and Blackboard
- needed system with content, not just framework
- needed something to save me time: in 2004/2005 I have 100+ students per class
- wanted to reduce costs to students if possible
- publishers now offering systems:
- Wiley edugen.wiley.com
- Pearson – www.masteringengineering.com
- connect.mcgraw-hill.com

8 years ago, WebCT / Blackboard were not oriented toward engineering (MY COMMENT: THEY STILL ARE NOT SPECIFIC TO 1 DISCIPLINE AS FAR AS I KNOW)
- this system I’ll show today can be used exclusively at a distance, but it can also be used in a blended format (and that is how I use it most)

If other instructors (even at other institutions) wants to use my system they can, I host the courses for them
- I use an access key to prevent students from gaining access and setting up their own courses to get all the test questions!

Beams don’t crush, they buckle
- my students must understand this
- I’m trying to give my students interesting case studies which they may not have thought about previously, and then also share the theories which go with it

Looking at the user statistics is a nice tool for me, I can see if students are reading or not… This is something I can emphasize in class, it is a very useful tool for me.

How does cloud computing affect us in engineering?
- intensive calculations that can be done “in a cluster,” maybe 24 CPUs working on a problem for you
- processors in your laptops now are more powerful than the computers on the Space Shuttle

Example: let’s design our own airfoils

Students want instant results, so using computers in the cloud / clusters can provide much faster results for students

By using this online system, students can get their grades within an hour of it being posted
- once solutions are posted, students can’t get credit

Server keeps track of where and when students logged into the course
- that can help you figure out if it was a student problem or a server problem in a particular circumstance

My online quiz system lets instructors point and click to choose questions for their course EASILY
- that is the key: 90% of the instructors I’m familiar with won’t online systems like Desire2Learn to do anything except post their syllabus
- we have to make this easier

My perspective: There are 3-4 textbook writers in Engineering with this type of content now available
- publishers have stayed away from Desire2Learn, BlackBoard, etc so they have built their own portals
- ultimately I see this going to more of a WikiPedia model: community uses it, contributes to it

What about collaboration?
- I have added an electronic whiteboard function that I can use with a Tablet PC
- I can record an entire whiteboard session with the click of a mouse

(Photo captured with my iPhone GS, cropped with Crop for Free, and uploaded to Flickr with PixelPipe)

I hate bandwidth hogs: So I wrote this system to run nicely over a dial-up modem
- so we don’t have video in this system
- do videos really help students learn? In Engineering, no.
- Circus training: Yes. You need videos.

MY COMMENT: THAT IS A VERY INTERESTING OPINION. I WONDER IF THIS IS A COMMON PERCEPTION AMONG ENGINEERING FACULTY?

I was so excited about the iPad until I learned it didn’t support Flash!
- I use Turban7 to change those instructions into Flash action script
- I don’t have to license anything to anyone: It’s all free

3 years ago Prof from McNeese State in Lousiana asked about using it, that professor just obtained a NSF grant and they are going to institutionalize the use of this learning management system for students in all their community colleges (learning at a distance)

My learning management system could actually be used for non-Engineering courses, but at this point it’s just engineering

It can be a nightmare to design a “self-paced” course for students

Online Statics course delivery comparison
- Goals:
– deliver a high quality statics class to community college students over the Internet
– compare student performance and satisfaction
Method:
- same course delivered to 2 groups of community college students covering the same material but using different delivery methods
- no pre-selection of students in either class: students had the option of choosing either option
- both classes held meeting times 3 times a week
- on-campus students had office hours in person while others met virtually
- both had weekly assignments to turn in

overall test score average for online versus on-campus students was 77.0 vs 70.7
- my key message is that online: you are getting an equal or better learning opportunity

Engineering students think it’s a birthright to have partial credit
- many go through the roof at multiple choice
- I remind them that the bridge either stands up or it falls down: there is no partial credit for a bridge that collapses

I ask them if they remember that Mars mission 8 years ago, when it crashed into the planet?
- that was a $200 million spacecraft, the problem was conversion factors that were wrong (someone measuring in feet, someone in another unit)

WOW THAT IS A GREAT STORY TO SHARE. THAT WOULD MAKE A GREAT DIGITAL STORY!

I wanted to show you more demos and we are almost out of time!

University style: everything is open

We did a lot of online training for Tinker AFB: tinker.ou.edu
- This does save them a lot of time and money, don’t have to bring in people to lecture
- with this model, they can actually have people answer questions and prove if they have learned something or not as a result of their learning experience

CD example: Math 4 Teaching Textbook
- Oklahoma company called “Teaching Textbooks”
- all down with Flash and delivered via CD
- that company refuses to put their work on the web
- at least 20-30% of their homeschool market do not want to have ANY Internet access for their students on the computer which their students are using for learning

MY COMMENT: ISN’T THAT AN INTERESTING STATISTIC AND DYNAMIC. CASE STUDY ON DIGITAL DISCIPLINE. MAYBE THOSE FAMILIES NEED TO USE SLIFE.
- ALSO INTERESTING TO SEE GOOD ‘OLE CAI CHAMPIONED…

People learn different ways, we need to provide different ways for students to access content and learn

HEAR, HEAR – AMEN!

I think students are going to stop using laptops and going to higher resolution smartphones
- the resolution on many of these devices is phenomenal

Toughest thing I have in this job: something else comes along and keeps me up at night!

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Delivering Distance Engineering Courses Utilizing Web-based Electronic Media by Kurt Gramoll #odla2010 originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on April 23, 2010.

The conference keynote speaker will be Dr. Kurt Gramoll. The conference program includes the following bio for Dr. Gramoll:

Prof. Kurt Gramoll graduated from Virginia Tech in 1988 with a PhD in Engineering Mechanics. He also holds an undergraduate degree in Civil Engineering and masters degree in Mechanical Engineering, both from the University of Utah. He has taught at the Univ. of Memphis, Georgia Tech and at the University of Oklahoma. He currently holds the Hughes Centennial Professorship in the School of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at OU. He has also worked at the National Japanese Institute of Space and Astronautical Science for one year. Currently, he teaches classes in both mechanics and electronic media.

Research work in educational technologies include CD- and web-based courseware including Statics and Dynamics (published by Addison Wesley), Mars Navigator CD and Video Animation for NASA.

Training CDs and web sites for industry include the MSC/PATRAN analysis software training CD, Cisco routers CD, NASA space transpor- tation CD, and various industrial training systems. Current research involves server-based, large-scale learning and training systems. Projects include Tinker Air Force Base (Oklahoma City, OK) training modules for environmental management, Defense Ammunition Center (McAlester, OK) online demilitarization process maps tool, Professional Engineering Review website, undergraduate statics and dynamics courses, and K12 teacher education using electronic media. He has also consulted with various companies for online training and education.

Kurt Gramoll has written numerous conference and journal papers on eLearning, engineering education, and electronic media. He has also written 6 eBooks for engineering, including Dynamics, Statics, Solid Mechanics, Fluid Mechanics, Theromodynamics, and Math.

One of Dr. Gramoll’s online publications of possible interest to K-12 teachers is the OU Engineering Media Lab Ecourses Web Portal:

eCourses web portal is designed to assist both students and professors in basic engineering courses. The web site includes all instructional material to conduct a course and there is no cost to either the instructor or student. Features include eBook, database of homework/quiz/test problems, solution to all problems, lectures in both Quicktime and Flash format, computer grading, and utilities. To help facilitate communications between students, instructors, and TAs there is an integrate web board and collaborative drawing board. Each web-based course is controlled and administered by the instructor.

I’m thinking this should be a high-tech keynote, from a content perspective, and am looking forward to it. Please join us in Norman for ODLA 2010 on Friday!

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ODLA 2010 Spring Conference Program Available originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on April 20, 2010.

The keys to creating images like this are:

1. Make or buy a LCD light pen. (Since Oklahoma Robotics folks buy supplies in bulk, each of our light pens cost $3.15. This cost was included in our $10 registration for tonight’s workshop.)
2. Use a tripod with your digital camera.
3. Set your camera to manual, with an exposure time of 15 seconds.
4. Open the aperture to the largest / maximum F-stop stetting.
5. If you want to see your subject in the photo, turn on the flash.
6. Take your photos in a very DARK location. This can be inside or outside. Outside photos can be interesting with other ambient light, but we tried to find a location that was as dark as possible.

My light saber (which Alexander drew) was a bit wilted tonight.

This one of my favorite creations from the images we made this evening. You can see a “ghostly” version of my face in the photo.

For more ideas and resources on being a “maker,” check out MakeZine and Instructibles. We can all be “makers!” The maker’s philosophy is:

If you can’t change it, you don’t own it!

We can all use more opportunities to tinker with electronics and art.

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Painting with Light! LCD Pens, Circuits and Creativity originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on April 10, 2010.

My son, who is now 12, loves to watch NOVA specials on our home DVR. We particularly like watching episodes together about theoretical physics topics including dark matter, the origins of the universe, etc. It’s absolutely phenomenal that the explosion of television programming as well as our digital learning landscape online affords us so many chances to expand our knowledge on topics of interest like these. On past summer trips, we’ve enjoyed listening to “Science Friday” podcasts, NOVA ScienceNOW podcasts, and others. Who cares that his science curriculum at school has never touched these subjects with any notable depth?! That hasn’t stopped us from learning about these topics and discussing them together at length.

Now, I’m excited to learn we have even more high-quality, free resources on theoretical physics to enjoy together. This evening, thanks to a delicious share by Dennis O’Connor, I learned Stanford University has published a free course series to both YouTube and iTunes titled, “Modern Physics: The Theoretical Minimum,” taught by Leonard Susskind. One example of these available free courses by Dr. Susskind is “Quantum Mechanics (Winter 2008.”) All ten lectures from the course are available via this YouTube playlist. At the start of this lecture, Dr. Susskind explains what “continuing education” is at Stanford as the context for this lecture series.

The Open Culture blog’s list of free physics courses is superb, and includes courses from other universities in addition to Stanford. The eleven minute video, “Understanding String Theory” from Harvard is one I will share with my son this week. It is unbelievable that anyone with an Internet-capable computer, a high-speed Internet connection, and a local network policy which permits access to these video websites (certainly NOT the case in all our K-12 schools, I’m afraid) can enjoy access to these videos and more like them.

I’ll be sharing a session on April 7th at the Iowa 1:1 Institute titled, “OER: Open Educational Resources – Learn what the open content movement means for 1:1 schools (free digital curriculum.)” When I was in Hangzhou, China this past November, I was very interested to learn staff members at some of their largest universities are tasked to compile hotlists of videos like these which can be integrated into Chinese courses offered both online and face-to-face. I don’t think we’ve hardly begun to tap into the potential value of video content like this in our own colleges and universities, much less our K-12 schools.

Thankfully that shortcoming does not have to stop us from learning @ home. I think it is superb Stanford makes these videos available NOT ONLY via iTunesU, but also via YouTube. Access at any price to some of the best minds at a university like Stanford is a remarkable gift. Who wold think that price, or the cost of admission, would be digital connectivity? Add this to my previous list of reasons all our colleges and universities should have 1:1 programs TODAY.

Technorati Tags:
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Brush Up on Modern Physics – Free originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 27, 2010.

NASA eClips is NASA’s newest program, one we’ll discuss today but we’ll address others too

Mark is with the National Institute of Aerospace
- innovative real world learning for the 21st century
- we are a research institute for NASA
- our mission: develop aerospace engineers
- consortium of 7 universities

www.youtube.com/nasaeclips

Mark is going to publish is presentation to Slideshare

We have K-12 outreach
- developing resources for STEM specifically
- one of NASA’s missions by law is education

I am personally on loan from the Virginia Beach public schools to NASA

All of these links are available via my Filamentality hotlist:
tinyurl.com/yz24fmq

Traditional NASA education products
- have 30-60 minute video clips
- philosophy was: teachers should be able to make sense of these resources

eClips are short: 5-7 minutes (7 minutes is max time)
- these are content focused, and NASA focused
- we have taken NASA missions and technology, and found the things that really tie in well to a math/science classroom
- idea is you can use these videos to engage students, answer the question: “Why do I need to know this?”

There are three people on our NASA eClips team, I am the high school person (also have an elementary and middle school educators)

4 programs under NASA eClips:

1. NASA’s Our World (K-5: compare the natural world with the designed world, illustrating the unique contributions of scientists and engineers)
2. NASA’s REAL World Mathematics
3. NASA Launchpad
4. NASA 360 degrees

big push in STEM for engineering

MARK’S DELL WINDOWS XP LAPTOP LOCKED UP WHEN HE TRIED TO PLAY THE FIRST VIDEO CLIP, SO HE IS RESTARTING. TIME TO GET A MAC, MARK!

In Middle school, we often start to lose students in math
- so we have a real push to engage students there

launchpad is a focus on technology

we are trying to model how we can effectively use video clips in the classroom
- it is more than just

Example: Real World: Farewell to the Mars Phoenix Lander

K-5 example: Our World: The Sun, A Real Star

Learn about the important relationship between Earth and the sun. Find out about the layers of the sun and how Earth’s magnetosphere acts like a giant handkerchief to protect us from all kinds of space weather.

Middle school example: Real World: Monitoring Earth’s Energy Budget with CERES

In this NASA eClips video segment learn how NASA uses CERES, a satellite in our Earth observing system, to make accurate measurements of energy leaving the Earth. Discover how NASA studies the interactions of clouds with sunlight and heat to determine how much heat is emitted back into space. Demonstrations are used to help support the segment.

High school example: Launchpad: Transits

Discover how scientists used the last Venus transit and a geometric technique called parallax to verify the distance between sun and Earth. Find out what scientists hope to learn the next time Venus makes a shadow on the face of the sun.

2 ways to access these videos:
1 – go to NASA.gov website, click for educators and on sidebar click NASA eClips
- direct link: www.nasa.gov/education/nasaeclips
2- can also access via YouTube: www.youtube.com/nasaeclips

Icons are available for topics, these are changing from “aeronautics” and “earth” to things like “algebra” and “chemistry”
- videos can be downloaded and played from the NASA website, are player independent, are all closed captioned!

YouTube channel videos have higher quality than NASA website versions, they can also be embedded (AS I HAVE ABOVE)

MY COMMENT: KUDOS TO NASA FOR MODELING THE CONSTRUCTIVE USE OF YOUTUBE IN THE CLASSROOM!

Have also started building support for these videos: The Teacher Toolbox

NASA.gov has an internal bookmarking system called “MyNASA”
- good way to deal with the dynamic nature of the NASA website, where things are changing frequently
- NASA is very conscious about having the most current information available online
- lots of the older resources that referred to Pluto as “a planet” are not available now, because those resources have been taken down until they are updated

Also: Engineering Design Guides are available for K-5 and 6-12 to help teachers introduce students to the engineering design process

Keeping a logbook to document your process is a key element for scientists

also has a rubric to help you assess what students can build

Use Google for an advanced search to find relevant NASA resources: example search syntax: “NASA” and “social studies”

There are TONS of NASA missions in addition to space shuttle and Apollo program!

NASA eClips™ Educator Guides: We are in the process of getting 24 lesson plans approved for using videos effectively in a lesson plan, how to tie content directly to the video
- 8 per grade level (8 for elementary, 8 for middle school, 8 for high school)
- right now there are just 3 eClips Educator Guides available now, more are being drafted now

Last thing we are doing: the Teacher to Teacher Blog
- just got approval for this last month
- is highly moderated
- trying to get teachers in the classroom to share their experiences, ideas, etc.
- not a lot of activity there yet, we are trying to get people to go there and share their thoughts

MY QUESTION: HOW DO YOU MEASURE SUCCESS

Answer: lots of web statistics gathered on hits
- is getting more attention/hits than

MY QUESTION: ARE YOU PROVIDING WORKSHOPS FOR SCHOOLS
- answer: they can, and they do when those are requested

Nortel Learn It, now “Teach It Learn It” is a program for using digital images and video in the classroom
- sample rubrics are available for assessing student projects

Other NASA resources
- click on FOR EDUCATORS in top bar
- you can click FIND TEACHING MATERIALS and choose from a variety of checkboxes now

content on nasa.gov is not embeddable currently

March 2008 contract was issued for eClips, so NASA’s use of YouTube in this project preceeded the Obama Administration’s use of YouTube and other social media websites

Most content now seems to be geared toward elementary and middle school students

The NASA “Ask an Astrophysicist” program is the only interactive part of the NASA website currently
- he does SpaceMap at NASA (worksheet activities, warmups for teachers)

Projects to get kids involved
- Star Count: you as a citizen get information about how to collect data, and you report your data in
- satellite information is validated using that information

-S’COOL: ground truth verification
- you are told when a satellite is going to be overhead, and you are asked to take land-based photographs showing what the clouds look like from the ground
http://asd-www.larc.nasa.gov/SCOOL
- Dr Lynn Chambers runs this project and actually uses that data

NASA World Wind
- NASA’s answer to Google Earth
- get world maps, and can overlay NASA data
- if NASA collects the data, you can overlay it onto the earth
http://worldwide.arc.nasa.gov/java
- you can download the software development kit (SDK) and develop your own
- someone just told me about this a month ago, it’s been available a LONG time though!

DiscoveryNOW is a 90 second video blurb podcast on NPR telling about something going on at NASA now
- can use this along with “Do It Yourself Podcasting” which NASA offers
- NASA Podcasts
- NASA Podcasting Help page

Sun-Earth Viewer shows different live images of the sun with different filters
- visualizations of the data
- realtime data

Landsat is part of NASA’s mission
- can do overlays, lots of imagery
- you own all of this stuff, because NASA is public

Internet Archive
- www.nasaimages.org setup by the Internet Archive
- thousands of available images

NASA Goddard Space Center has the largest collection of earth scientists in the world!
- lots of earth science done by NASA

Global Climate Change is out of NASA Langley

NASA centers are setup autonomously, so coordination between different websites is challenging

Because of STEM, our program is a great example of how NASA is now really paying attention to teacher voices and ideas
- it is a HUGE step forward

Career Bytes is a “Teach It Learn It” resource focused on careers and helping students connect with others for job/career learning

Do you have an idea of a career path you would like to follow or would like to learn about? The Career Bytes online interviews are short (~5 minute) videos exploring technology or technology-related career paths. Find (below) interviews that showcase diverse backgrounds, talents, and interest areas — from game creators to test pilots to rock stars! Career Bytes profile professionals discussing how they became successful, their challenges and interests, and how technology impacts their daily work.

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NASA Resources for Millennial Learners by Mark Clemente originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on November 9, 2009.

Aaron’s faculty page at UM

We need to figure out what “transformation” looks like
- think, act, feel

What is technology transformation?

9.5 guidelines for technology transformation (joke)
- going to show three environments: Adventure Learning: GoNOrth!
- GeoThentic
- SecondLife

reaches about 4 million people worldwide

From the University of Minnesota website:

GoNorth! is a free adventure learning program for the K-12 classroom developed at the University of Minnesota. Our team of educators, scientists, and K-12 teacher explorers are dog sledding LIVE to 5 circumpolar Arctic locations (2006 – 2010) to educate our audience around the world.

The online education program is anchored in natural and social science curricula for K-12 classrooms. GoNorth! provides each participating classroom with a free 300+ page curriculum and activity guide, a different set for each trek. Activities on the trail are synched real-time to the curriculum.

Each spring, during the 14-16 week LIVE event, learners enter the online classroom for powerful collaborative opportunities. We present live field updates and field research findings in collaboration with NASA and the National Science Foundation.

The result is a community of motivated learners on the Internet acquiring knowledge from the expedition, the Arctic peoples, subject matter experts, and from each other.

Join the team and more than 3 million learners worldwide at PolarHusky.com.

GeoThenic supported by the National Geographic Society that helps students learn geography

We are designing experiences, not products
- designing for engagement, not completion

I want my students to have valuable experiences throughout the entire learning process
Now showing a 30 second video

University of Minnesota

As a former K-12 teacher, I always wondered why we didn’t use the affordances of technology and bring them into the classroom?
- so I created “aventure learning”
- a hybrid online education approach that provides learners with opportunities to explore real-world issues through eauthentic learning experiences within collaborative…

It is not a “Where’s Waldo” program because it is focused on a theoretical foundation

1- We first identify an issue and a place

2- We next think about the narrative, the story we want to share with studetns

3- we develop the curriculum

4- we develop as many collaborative possibilities as we can

it is delivered FREE to everyone on the Internet
there are many “synced” learning opportunities with students
- as we traverse the landscape, we are collecting a variety of data on an ongoing basis which enhances learning
- we are collecting a variety of media as well as we travel, anything that can enhance learning for the students

First trip we did we went across the Canadian arctic
http://www.polarhusky.com

We deliver educational assets “from the tent” to schools worldwide every week
- we also collect snowflake data for NASA and use that within our curriculum
- we also collect and share ecological knowledge, knowledge from the elders, and share that as well

When we arrive in the communities, hundreds of students come down because they have been using our curriculum and participating in our activities
- this photo is in the middle of the arctic, where there is little more than ice and snow everyehwere

Next project was GoNorth, each year had a different focus on a region and specific topic

Here is a 2008 video of Aaron

Now discussing Geothentic
- wanted to scaffold the use of geospacial technologies with learners

- focuses on students solving problems: what areas of the world are most impacted by climate change, where is the best place to build a hospital in a specific community, etc.

Now talking about using Second Life, to design experiences
- trust is so important in an environment
- traditionally trust comes from the instructor, than from content, then design
- in online learning environments, that is flipped: trust must come first from design, then from the content, then the instructor

Learner as designers
- we try to develop opportunities for students to be designers
- in the go north project, students share their own videos with each other, from Australia, to the United States, up to the Arctic

Example from Geothemtic: student providing a justification for where they would place their hospital in the bay area, based on their analysis of the data

I also try to tap into the expertise of the students in my classroom, and thereby model “learners as experts”
- example in students’ blog, life in Kaktovik, 5th and 6th grade experts from Arctic Alaska

working together without boundaries
- designing collaboration and discourse opportunities within our learning environments
- we have both synchronous and asynchronous opportunities in GoNorth!
- showing an example of a meteorologist from a local weather station was the expert for our live chat

Here is a video about Aaron from Vimeo (OF COURSE VIMEO AS A VIDEO SHARING SITE IS BLOCKED HERE IN CHINA)

I try to always keep an eye for aesthetics

I want students to develop a self-narrative, when they are so excited about a project and learning that they go and share it with others

As an example, in the GoNorth project we always tell a story from the perspective of one of our dogs, in this case “Timber”
- students begin to follow this on a daily basis, and for many this became part of their narrative
- students really connected with this aspect of the project (showing photo of kids holding signs at the airport when Aaron came back, about Timber)
- for this reason, I try to develop narratives within my online learning envrionments

eighth principle: I try to design for TPAK: Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge
- people like TPAK, but many are not sure how to design with it or how to assess with it

So in our project, there are three different ways teachers can assess with TPAK
- one based on reflection
- another based on where students have spent the most time in the learning environment
- another is based on an objective test

We now have developed User-Driving Adventure Learning (AL 2.0) so others can develop their own adventure learning projects
- we have had many different attempts to use technology to transform education

I always try to help my learners become designers
- the self-reflective process is very important
- it is now up to YOU!

Overview of the principles we have outlined together
1- designing experiences, not products
2- trust
3- learning as designers
4- learners as experts
5- aesthetics
6- self-narrative
7- TPAK
8- innovative pedagogy
- design as a learner!

Now Q&A:
- these iterations from these learning environments have gone through numerous changes over time
- we can’t stand still and be satisfied with doing things as we’ve done them in the past

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Designing for Learning: Engaging Students and Teachers from the Arctic to Australia by Aaron Doering originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on November 1, 2009.

Main wiki: Laptops in the Science Classroom

Honors Chemistry wiki
- used for threaded discussion

We recommend you be consistent using a wiki platform
- if you’re using WikiSpaces, stick with it: this lets the kids just keep 1 login
- if you’re using PBworks, go with it
- this streamlines the use of wikis across the curriculum, to have a common platform

Another wiki: The Independent Science Project
- the students ARE the scientists in these projects

I am very proud of the fact that I have kids every year that get scholarships because of their science projects
- one student going on an $80K scholarship to WPI because

All your science probes connect directly to your laptop
- Vernier Lab Probes

Teacher sharing Elevator motion graphs using Venier

We’ve heard a lot today about letting students be creative
- we have students for whom writing is not their forte or cup of tea
- we’ve used the digital cameras on the laptop, to capture building of atomic structures
- this year I’m going to ask them to take those photos into iMovie
- creative things we can do with the laptop

Many kids are not good writers, but they can explain things well verbally
- we should allow kids to verbalize what they know
- use the built-in audio recorders
- laptops can be used by kids to demonstrate that they got the concepts, they are not stupid

Another teacher in our session asks students to do demonstrations
- Kids took a video of a demo, and then used iMovie to slow down the reaction, then explained what was happening

Can use a strobe light with a digital camera, can set exposure long enough to get a series of exposures

Sue was at a Google Conference
- many, many kids said they were NEVER asked to be creative during their high school years

If we give kids choices and

another creativity example: connecting a camera to the top of a microscope
- designing their own experiment
- taking pictures over time through the microscope
- then students can actually make measurements, observe contrasts, which students can measure

another creativity door to open: ask “how would you solve this problem”
- potato chips: how does a change in pressure affect it?

by opening up the laptops to LET students be creative in a way that is comfortable for them
- some kids are musicians
- some can write a rap about covalent bonding
- if we instead say: write everything you know about covalent bonding, that may not be a comfortable modality for them

we as the educators need to be flexible and say there are more ways to test learning than just paper and pencil

Technorati Tags:
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1:1 in a High School Science Classroom originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on October 16, 2009.

Thanks to the hard work of many teachers and parents, 148 sixth graders from Classen School of Advanced Studies (a public magnet school) in Oklahoma City Public Schools spent a VERY memorable 4 days together in “outdoor school” this week learning about geology, meteorology, hydrology, fossil hunting, and much more in the best science classroom of all: The great outdoors! Here are a few highlights and reflections from our week of outdoor camp.

Water and rain played a big role in our week, but thankfully it did not impede any of our major activities. On our “three falls” hike, we had to ford or otherwise walk across streams (on rocks or logs) six different times. This was a novel experience for MANY of the students in our group, and probably some of the 28 adults who were sponsors and chaperones. It reminded me of backpacking on the west coast of New Zealand’s South Island, where (in the summer of 1987) I spent many hours hiking up river valleys and crossing streams. No, the topography of the Arbuckles does not equal New Zealand– but few things can beat the opportunity to experience the challenges and thrills of the great outdoors firsthand, wherever you may live! Many of Alexander’s classmates at Classen may never get a chance to hike in New Zealand, but now they can all proudly say they’ve been hiking– a LOT– in Oklahoma’s Arbuckle mountains!

Our activities were organized on a “matrix” schedule designed by Mr. Ed Holtzberger, who has been taking Oklahoma City Public School students to outdoor camps for several decades. I really can’t praise “Mr. H” enough, along with all the other teachers from Classen SAS who made this week possible. While my son has had a variety of previous outdoor experiences thanks to his involvement in Boy Scouting as well as our own family camping trips, it was phenomenal for him to be able to experience “outdoor school” with his new Classen classmates and be exposed to so much contextually-rich, experiential learning in one of the most beautiful parts of our wonderful state. I wish every student could be so fortunate to have a “Mr. H” working MANY, MANY extra hours to provide an outdoor school experience for so many students and parents. It was a week I’m sure we’ll never forget.

Our first scheduled activity was boating on the waterfront, in rowboats and canoes.

For the majority of boys in our cabin (14 in all) this was their first experience paddling or rowing on a lake. No one capsized, but we did have some high stress levels when a caterpillar dropped down onto the life preserver of one of our students! From his reaction, you’d have thought a crocodile had his leg in his jaws! Lots of memorable experiences were had by all, and many of the most memorable were not expected or predicted! When you get a group of students, teachers and parents together in an environment like this with a flexible schedule for learning, amazing things are bound to happen — and of course, they did!

The archery range was definitely a favorite of many of our students this week. Again, many had never had an opportunity to shoot a bow and arrow previously. The archery range was always open for use during free time, and just required a parent to supervise and manage the range when students used it. I think our cabin group shot at the archery range at least 4 – 5 times this week, to include a final trip this morning after they finished packing and cleaning up our cabin.

A big highlight was learning about fossils and actually finding them. Most of the fossils we found were crinoids, estimated at 400 million years of age. It’s pretty amazing to find something that old yourself in the dirt, hold it in your hand, and have permission to take it home (up to four per student) so you can show your family as well as examine them further.

Snakes and other creepy/crawly animals and insects are always a sure way to get the attention of young people, and Mr. Preston did a great job sharing his knowledge and collection of snakes with our kids. Some students were able to hold snakes. Usually each one would ask as they received the snake, “It won’t bite, will it?” to which Mr. Preston would truthfully respond, “Now I didn’t say that…” (No one got bit, however.)

Mr. Preston’s presentation on “skins and skulls” was one of my personal favorites. This next photo is Alexander with Mr Preston, with Alexander holding a black bear skull (which has molars as well as carnivore teeth, since it’s an omnivore) and Mr. Preston holding a wolf skull, which just has flesh-tearing and eating incisors since it’s 100% predator.

In this next image, Mr. Preston compares a wolf skull (on the left) with a much smaller coyote skull (on the right.) What a difference!

Here are two of my favorite images from the week: This is Mr. Holzberger teaching the kids on the fossil hike about the age of our earth. This is an image of an amazing science teacher, teaching in what must be one of best science classrooms in the world for geology: the Arbuckle mountains!

In this activity, students took 1 step for every 100 million years of earth history, and Mr. Holtzberger had different parents stop and remain at different key times in geologic history. This was a great method for trying to help others visualize just how HUGE geologic time is, especially compared to our short, human history.

I really enjoyed leading some optional geocaching activities for campers and parents on both Wednesday and Thursday. These were the GPS units we used: Five Garmin eTrex units and my Garmin eTrex Legend.

Our groups found four of the five geocaches hidden by Camp Classen staff around the camp. They used small Pelican cases for their geocaches, and each was secured to the ground with a metal wire and stake to prevent it from “walking off” with a camper or an unsuspecting muggle.

One of the caches had not been properly closed by the previous finders, and the effects of water as well as bugs made a clear visual aide for making the point to our students: Be sure to securely close the geocache after you sign the find log!

I could recount more experiences and memories, but I’ll close by again noting how VERY appreciative I am to Mr. H, Mrs. Carlton, and many, many others who made this week’s outdoor school experience possible. Alexander and I are quite proud to now call ourselves Classen Comets, and we’re likely to never forget this week’s experiences in the Arbuckles with his Classen classmates in the Class of 2016!

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In Praise of Outdoor School, Ed Holzberger, Classen SAS and Oklahoma City Public Schools originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on October 9, 2009.

Dennis Cheek is a Senior Fellow and former Vice President of Education at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. He is a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania and the Center for Contemporary History and Policy at the Chemical Heritage Foundation. Dennis is a member of the teaching faculty for the midcareer doctoral program in educational leadership at the University of Pennsylvania and the M.Th. program at Continental Theological Seminary in Belgium. He has been a Vice President at the John Templeton Foundation, an administrator for 13 years in the state education departments of NY and RI, a senior consultant to Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), an Auxiliary Protestant Chaplain for the U.S. Air Force, a middle school and high school teacher and district curriculum developer, and on various university faculties. He has authored, edited or contributed to over 770 publications and multimedia products and currently serves on the editorial or manuscript review boards of the International Journal of Technology and Design Education, Journal of Science Education and Technology, Odyssey, Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, The Science Teacher, and Philosophy of Science. He earned bachelor degrees in history, secondary education, and biology; a master’s in history, a Ph.D. in curriculum & instruction/science education from Pennsylvania State University and a Ph.D. in theology from the University of Durham.

Dennis Cheek is now discussing “schools” versus mentorships with Peter Donaldson, who is role playing Leonardo daVinci as our MC and facilitator in the conference today.

I am from Philadelphia
- discussing the life and achievements of Benjamin Franklin
- discovery of electricity and flying a kite to “catch the spark from the heavens”

Leonardo: this is foolish! not wise to do!
- What is the application of the trick?

Now prompting the audience to respond to the prompt: Type in two or three powerful words that perfectly describe what creativity means to you.

Human beings are always curious
- we’ve been studying how as humans we learn in school and outside of school
- sometimes in schools our learning there bears very little

Today we call people who apprentice others “mentors”
- thinking used to be that you have ONE mentor
- now the thinking is that you will have multiple mentors across your entire life

THIS REMINDS ME OF MARCO TORRES‘ QUESTION: WHO IS YOUR YODA?

someone can mentor you all the way around the world

In 1977 for the first time, we had a machine you could put a person into (it made a horribly loud noise, and worked with magnets)
- created the first picture inside a person’s living brain
- now we have thousands of machines that can do this (MRI)

We know some things, patterns
- human beings are programmed to look for patterns: before you are even born

Leonardo: There is a danger in patterns, if you repeat it and become comfortable so you do not break the pattern, you just repeat it

2 truths:
1- pattern seeking is fundamental in the brain
2- patterns can be habit forming, which can block imagination and creativity

Now discussing idea of cooperative learning / social learning
- you are learning from your peers and from your teacher

We also know now that learning takes place across your lifetime

Many of us will live to 100 years old
- many of us will change jobs
- interact with different people
- but we often don’t think about our life in the span of 100 years

I’M HAVING TO STEP OUT OF THIS SESSION SO WE CAN PREPARE FOR THE STUDENT PRESENTATION WHICH BEGINS AT 11 AM…

Technorati Tags:
creative, creativity, learning, oklahoma, neuroscience

Thinking About Learning & Learning About Thinking: Implications for Creative Human Activity by Dennis Cheek originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on September 30, 2009.

Earlier this week, John Donahoe (CEO of eBay) stated lawsuit issues are NOT going to “…derail the $1.9 billion deal with Netscape founder Marc Andreessen’s Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, Silver Lake and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.” Last week in Hong Kong, some participants at the 21st Century Learning Conference were discussing the uncertain future of Skype and wondering if it would continue to be a viable videoconferencing platform for education. These predications and news items make that future look hopeful, but we’ll have to stay tuned.

The march of disruptive technologies continues. Bring on the choices. As consumers when we have more choices, we benefit. When artificial barriers to competition are imposed by law and corporate pressures, generally consumers pay higher prices and have fewer choices.

As a related aside, Steve’s 3 minute TEDtalk from March 2007 on being a rocket hobbyist is amazing. Share this with your kids and inspire them to become rocket scientists. Literally.

If you want to see more hobby rocket launch images, check out this set from Steve’s Flickr site.

Hat tip to Alan Levine for the link to Steve Jurvetson’s ForaTV preso.

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Standalone WiFi Skype Phones and Rocket Scientists originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on September 24, 2009.

I LOVE the fact that thanks to Internet access and sites like TED, anyone can have access to incredible scientific minds as well as ideas like these.

The TED video “George Smoot on the design of the universe” has the following official description:

At Serious Play 2008, astrophysicist George Smoot shows stunning new images from deep-space surveys, and prods us to ponder how the cosmos — with its giant webs of dark matter and mysterious gaping voids — got built this way.

The TED video “Neil Turok makes his TED Prize wish” is not just about the amazing schools for math and science which Neil has helped build all over Africa, it also includes tantalizing information about his work as a theoretical physicist. The video’s official description is:

Accepting his 2008 TED Prize, physicist Neil Turok speaks out for talented young Africans starved of opportunity: by unlocking and nurturing the continent’s creative potential, we can create a change in Africa’s future.

If you’re a science teacher studying our solar system or physics, consider using one or both these videos as curricular supplements to catalyze conversations in and outside of your classes. Share these with a curious, inquisitive young student your know who likes to ask BIG questions about our universe. These videos are likely to expand their thinking as well as yours, and generate even more GREAT questions!

Technorati Tags:
education, school, science, TED, video, universe, galaxy, TEDtalk

Thinking about dark matter, the origins and size of the universe originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on September 15, 2009.

According to the May 2008 New York Times article, “Monkeys Think, Moving Artificial Arm as Own:”

Two monkeys with tiny sensors in their brains have learned to control a mechanical arm with just their thoughts, using it to reach for and grab food and even to adjust for the size and stickiness of morsels when necessary, scientists reported on Wednesday.

The report, released online by the journal Nature, is the most striking demonstration to date of brain-machine interface technology. Scientists expect that technology will eventually allow people with spinal cord injuries and other paralyzing conditions to gain more control over their lives.

The findings suggest that brain-controlled prosthetics, while not practical, are at least technically within reach.

Isn’t this AMAZING? Hearing about this work makes me wish we had opportunities to learn about lego robotics, pico crickets, Scratch, and other programming / robotics related technologies in our schools and communities. We do have three organizations focused on high school robotics competitions here in Oklahoma, but I’m not aware of robotics learning opportunities for elementary or middle school aged students. Even our local Oklahoma City lego store staff were not aware of any opportunities to learn about lego robotics here. What’s up with that?!

Our learning moments about neuroscience and robotics this morning in the car on the way to school underlines the benefit of subscribing to a diverse array of compelling podcasts, so interesting content is always just a click away on an iPhone or iPod Touch when you want it! It also demonstrates how valuable it can be to have a personal, mobile, media player! I still keep all my feeds cross-loaded in PodNova as well as my local iTunes client for backup purposes. If you’re interested, my podcast subscription OMPL file is available. It doesn’t appear that the feeds are updating within Podnova, however, so I’m not sure what’s going on with that. I wish iTunes made it easier to share podcasts to which a person is subscribed and likes, similar to the way NetFlix or GoodReads does.

Do you know of a website besides PodNova which is setup to easily facilitate the sharing of favorite podcast subscriptions? I’d want something which either has ZERO advertising or a minimal amount. There are plenty of podcasting directories out there, but I’m looking for something like the NetFlix Friends portal area.

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podcast, science, brain, wave, control, robot, robotics

Using brain waves to control robotic arms, value of diverse podcast subscriptions originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on August 24, 2009.

The Flickr images are coming in.

From Shenzhen, China:

From Hanoi, Vietnam (I think):

Some of my favorites are not embeddable from Flickr, like this one from Hong Kong, this one from Guam, and this one from Manila in The Philippines.

Hat tip to CNN.

Would your students enjoy doing a Google Earth project, embedding and geo-tagging these images and others? If you do a project like this or learn of someone else who has done/does one, please let me know!

Technorati Tags:
asia, china, flickr, vietnam, solar, eclipse, pictures, photo, photos, sun

Full Solar Eclipse Images originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on July 22, 2009.

Hold on to your hat, Buck Rogers. Our blue planet beckons.

Empower the dreamers. Our day to slip the surly bonds of earth is coming.

Technorati Tags:
space, tourism, flight, commercial, newmexico

Space tourism coming in 2010 originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on June 21, 2009.

I remember many years ago talking about tornados with my former Troop 74 Scoutmaster, Ray Hightower, and he told me about his theory that many destructive tornados actually have smaller vortexes inside them which do much of the damage we see from these storms. I’ve never forgotten him telling me about that, but until today I’d never seen video footage which supports that theory. Amazing.

It was a great blessing, as far as I’ve heard, that this tornado was out in the middle of no where and did not affect any populated areas.

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Incredible tornado footage originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on June 7, 2009.

There were LOTS of new vocabulary words and concepts we learned about for the first time as a result of this program. I had never heard of nano-diamonds or hexagonal diamonds, which the program authors explained must be “completely extra-terrestrial” because of their unique atomic, crystalline structures. See the Washington Post article, “Gems Point to Comet as Answer to Ancient Riddle,” from January 2, 2009, for more on this.

Scientists have been looking for Iridium traces in the “black mat” layer of geologic history, preserved well in parts of Arizona, which appears to be a smoking gun showing when a large number of enormous, North American mammals were suddenly killed off. “The Last Extinction” theory is that instead of “overkill theory” which holds that native people were the cause of these extinctions, a massive asteroid collision similar to the one theorized to have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs was responsible for the North American large mammal extinction that took place only about 12,900 years ago. This extinction involved around 35 different, large North American mammals.

One of the biggest questions posed by scientists who doubt this theory is, “Where is the impact crater?” The NOVA program explains that the crater could be missing because the impact could have been distributed over parts of the northern ice sheets, and therefore have not left visible, residual evidence behind.

It’s amazing to consider that the Greenland ice sheet includes over 450,000 years of geologic history. Wow.

Imagine a “storm of comets” hitting the earth. That’s been the subject of multiple books and films, including the 1998 movie “Armageddon.” Last week I saw the movie “Knowing,” which deals with an extinction event caused by massive coronal flares rather than an asteroid collision. These events have happened in the past, and could happen in the future. It’s amazing to consider what might have caused these massive extinctions in North America such a short time ago, geologically speaking, and consider how we can best theorize their cause today given the evidence as well as the tools at our fingertips.

NOVA rocks. It’s amazing we have access to such thought provoking and inspiring scientific programs like these as part of our monthly cable TV subscription, and that (thanks to our DVR as well as the NOVA website) we can watch them in their entirety, at our leisure.

I think many of the conversations we’ve had at home following these NOVA specials have likely surpassed the potential for engagement provided by my son’s 5th grade science textbook and district approved science curriculum. It’s so much fun to learn like this together at home!

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nova, science, iridium, overkill, extinction, asteroid, armageddon, learning

The Last Extinction and Science learning with NOVA originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on April 20, 2009.

Last night, Alexander asked me to review his paperwork for the week and sign his folder. He was particularly proud of a very challenging social studies test which he’d aced, as well as a writing assignment he completed: A time-capsule letter to a future student at his school in 10 years. After reviewing all his papers and grades, we spread them all out on the floor of our living room. Several of these documents were multi-page, stapled together. This is a week’s worth of worksheets from his school, sent home this week in the “Thursday folder.”

Alexander and his sister DO attend a wonderful school, but in many ways it defines “a worksheet school.” The students DO participate in wonderful musical programs, participate in memorable class-wide events like the re-enactment of the Oklahoma land run, and participate in living history museums. They also have time each day for recess, which is more than the Texas school we left three years ago provided for students in grades three and above. (That was due to high-stakes testing pressure – The school was “exemplary” but they still didn’t have time to let 9 year olds have recess during the day.)

At our current Oklahoma elementary school, “learning evidence” from the week is communicated to parents almost exclusively via the “Thursday folder” and the worksheets it contains. Our school is very common in following this procedure in Oklahoma. This is what kids do in most schools today in 2009: worksheets. This is how most schools communicate with parents about the “learning” their children are allegedly doing in class each day: by sending home worksheets.

My problem with this situation? It’s twofold. First, many of these worksheets are stupid, irrelevant, busy work. Second, worksheets tell me VERY LITTLE about the things my child understands, perceives, knows, and wonders about. Worksheets are almost useless to me as a parent interested in the learning activities and developmental progress of my child, compared to alternative forms of assessment. It’s good to see how Alexander’s writing skills are developing, including his handwriting. But it saddens me to see worksheets like this which he’s spent HOURS in some cases completing.

There are SO many more valuable ways to spend heartbeats than completing word search puzzles. This is busy work, and I think assignments like this contribute very little, if at all, to meaningful learning experiences for my children inside and outside of school.

Included in the assortment of worksheets sent home this week in the Thursday folder were several pages about science and the unit on light they’ve been studying. I asked Alexander if he’d done any experiences during the unit on light. He said yes initially, but further questioning revealed HE had not done the experiments, he had watched the teacher demonstrate some things in front of the class. He had not formulated ANY hypotheses and tested them with experimentation and observation. How is my son supposed to learn the scientific method and become the engineer he aspires to be, if his school does not provide him with REGULAR opportunities to learn the scientific method by PRACTICING the scientific method? (David Thornburg’s message from CoSN09 burns in my mind when I ask these questions.) The answer? Like many things (including writing with social media and learning about hyperlinked writing) it’s up to us as parents to teach these things at home. What about other kids whose parents are not focused on these issues? Who is going to “turn these elementary age kids on” to science? If we really care about STEM, why are we not insisting on a hands-on approach to science in our schools which involves regular experimentation instead of endless note taking and worksheets?

Alexander recorded this short, 90 second video explaining about his Thursday folder and demonstrating what happens at the end of Thursday night after we’ve looked at the pile of worksheets: They get thrown into the trash can. (We did save his social studies test he was so proud of, however, and put it on the fridge.)

I dearly wish our school district was willing to embrace the constructive potential of social media to help students “show what they know” and more meaningfully document their journeys of learning with images, audio, and video than anyone can ever do with mere worksheets. After Alexander shared his “time capsule” letter with me last night, I asked him to quickly record it onto a short, three image VoiceThread for which he selected the photos. This took five minutes for us to do together, and I posted it to our family learning blog. His grandparents in Kansas were able to listen to him and watch this today, and told us on the phone they loved it. They hadn’t realized he’s planning to major in robotics at Kansas State in college! I hadn’t either until I read his essay. Without this technological documentation of his learning, there is little chance his Kansas grandparents would have EVER seen, read, or heard this letter. Thanks to technology sharing tools like VoiceThread, however, they did and now you can too. This is extremely important and valuable stuff to Alexander and to our family. And, it’s free to do.

We need to get digital tools into the hands of ALL our students in grades three and up as soon as possible, as well as our teachers. This morning I had a chance to briefly examine a $200 Lenovo S10 Netbook owned by James Deaton, and I marveled at the size, capabilities, and price point of this device.

Hat tip to Dawn Danker for taking the first photo in this series of me with the netbook.

When are my own children going to be able to use technologies like these IN SCHOOL here in Oklahoma? The clock is ticking. They’re learning plenty about how to use technology tools here at home, but we have much more limited opportunities to digitally create, collaborate, and communicate compared to what could be accomplished during the school day.

I have my fingers crossed that our state’s educational technology stimulus money will be used in an innovative way to empower students in a few more Oklahoma school districts (in addition to Crescent, Howe, and Lowery) to learn in 1 to 1 environments.

Meanwhile, we’ll continue to watch the stream of worksheets come home each week in the Thursday folders.

Technorati Tags:
assessment, learning, edmond, oklahoma, school, science, stem, hypothesis, handson, thornburg, lenovo, s10, netbook, technology, voicethread, onetoone, 1to1, pbl, assess, measure, worksheet, folder, thursday

The Thursday Folder and Worksheet Measured Learning originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on March 27, 2009.

This podcast is a recording of Dr. David Thorburg’s presentation “Science Education from a Technology Leader’s Perspective” at the 2009 CoSN Conference on March 11, 2009. The official conference program description of this session was: K-12 education science, technology, engineering and mathematics is a hot topic today, with conversations spanning from the classroom to the Oval Office.  Technology can be used in ways that help address many of the challenges facing K-12 STEM programs.  This dynamic talk explores five challenges:  Shortage of qualified teachers; Learning that science is a vibrant human activity, cutting back on hand’s- on science instruction; Science as inquiry and projects; Connecting science to other subjects.  By moving toward a more constructionist approach to science instruction, taking advantage of various cutting-edge probe-ware tools and other computer based resources, many of these challenges can be addressed in ways that greatly increase student appreciation for more analytical subjects.  Our economic recovery requires a highly educated populace, and this presentation tackles some of those challenges head-on.

Show Notes:

1. Dr. Thornburg’s website: The Thornburg Center for Space Exploration
2. My text notes from this session
3. PhET: Free online physics, chemistry, biology, earth science and math simulations (University of Colorado at Boulder)
4. Explore Learning Gizmos
5. Instructables
6. PASCO’s Spark
7. Futurework 2020

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Podcast305: Science Education from a Technology Leader’s Perspective by Dr. David Thornburg originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on March 11, 2009.

Isn’t it amazing we’ve gone from looking for cool ballpoint pens at conferences from looking for 1 GB pen drives

Now 3M has a $300 projector using LEDs, 10 lumens, that is the size of your hand
- within 6 months I think we’ll see a 800 lumen LED projector, it will be more than $300 but not much more
- life of LEDs is said to be 10,000 hours, based on our tests it may be more like 20,000 to 30,000 hours

Let’s go back in our “wayback machine”
- my world changed on October 4, 1957 with the launch of Sputnik
- that event really enticed me to get excited about science, engineering, and all this stuff
- without having my excitement captured by Sputnik

Nov 13, 1957 President Eisenhower gave a speech encouraging US to change its schools in fundamental ways, and we DID it

Technology in the old days
- film strips, movies
- machine tools
- soldering irons
- wood lathes
- iron foundry
- printing presses
- real world tools of all kinds
- (personal computers were still many years away)

We need to broaden our minds beyond computers and the Internet when we think of technologies in schools
- many kids don’t have opportunities to go to schools with these rich tools

quotation from “Learning for the 21st Century, Partnership for 21st Century Skills”
- Participating effectively…

some challenges
- shortage of qualified teachers
- learning that science is a vibrant human activity
- cutting back on hands-on science instruction
- science as inquiry and projects
- connecting science to other subjects

need to break down the stove

Great quotation about Science by Joel Stein from Chicago Tribune

Stats on “students taught by teachers with no major or certification in the subject taught, 1999-2000″
- grades 9-12
- physical science: 63%
- chemistry: 61%
- physics 67%

Why is it OK to say you’re not good at math, when it is NOT ok culturally to say you’re not good at reading

Article from the Wichita Eagle: “Filipino teacher experiment a success”
- Feb 8, 2009

Learning that science is a vibrant activity
something to do:
- write down the name of a scientist
- in most cases, the name written down had the following 3 characteristics:
1- white
2- dead
3- male

Newton, Einstein (who was a mathematician primarily), Marie Curie, and…

Leaves out: Mayans and their calendar
- marvelous piece of scientific work done before

George Washington Carver
- eat peanut butter? Thank him!

we live in a world now where Google is a verb

[I LOVE THAT STATEMENT]

Our oldest daughter went to school in the US, and had never experienced the beauty of mathematics
- then saw a fractal model on my computer

We have been cutting back on hand’s-on science instruction
- we have got to do something about that

Look at San Francisco Bay Area Schools in 2000 (Lawrence Hall of Science study)
- schools in the heart of Silicon Valley
- minutes per week on science, K-5
20% spending 60-180 minutes
64% spending 60 minutes or less
16% no time

WOW

If this is the nexus of creativity and technology

Lots of people think 3rd grade is really the critical one for getting kids excited and interested in science
- we’ve got to do something here

When we DO get around to teaching science, we rely on printed books

Problem with science textbooks
- by the time they are published, they are out of date

How do science textbooks get adapted? By infuriating as few people as possible
- so you write the most bland stuff you can get away with

this strips out all the arguments

too often science textbooks presents science as fait accompli

As a child of the October Sky, I was Very, very fortunate
- there were MANY resources being made available in schools and to the public at large
- one was called “Things of Science” for a $5 subscription
- this was my Christmas gift in 1957 from my Dad

this was COOL stuff
- by the time I got to high school I was ready!

Today you can do many of these things are free online
- PhET
- these are downloadable gadgets or you can run them online
- either flash or java applets

you can start to make observations about the relationships between mass and springs

Other examples: Explore Learning’s Gizmos
- allows teachers to customize their practice for how they want to approach science
- very powerful tools
- these are the kinds of things that give me hope

http://www.instructables.com/
- example: Napier’s Bones: Quickly Multiply, Wooden Style

- you can download instructionables in PDF format
- kids can post their own diy instructions
- this is powerful stuff

Ohio State Univ study
- Learning Science Facts Doesnt Boost Science Reasoning

- gave science fact tests and science reasoning tests to both Chinese and US students

inquiry is a process by which students ask and answer questions which go so far beyond what our textbooks can do and support, it is phenomenal

example: why is it that the rotation of the moon is exactly synchonized with the earth? (so we just see the one side of the moon)

- photograph of the back side of the moon
- look at the differenes between the photos

in Brazil, projects where kids design and machine their own rocket engines
- these kids are not thinking about subjects in silos (content areas)

Have you ever been to the playground and heard a kid say, “I was reading my science textbook the other day, and read this fascinating thing on page 263….”

We do a staff development on inquiry-based project learning
- example: teachers built a functional wind tunnel to test different nose cone designs

The importance of connecting science to other subjects
- when things are being taught in a vacuum it doesn’t make sense
- science fiction is a lovely connecting point for many kids
- the original Star Trek

Kristina Johnson of John Hopkins Univ: “Today’s problems are more complex… require more cross-disciplinary approaches…”

lots of focus on STEM projects seem to try and strengthen existing stove pipes (content areas) rather than connecting the stove pipes

by the end of sophomore year, 50% of Purdue’s entering engineering students have changed their majors

audience discussion
- many engineering schools lose MATH students not engineering students (kids don’t have the chops for the math courses which are required)

THAT JIVES WITH MY OWN EXPERIENCES WITH CALCULUS II

Great slide David is sharing on connections of Math, Science, Technology, and Engineering

they involve creativity/design, world of the ‘made’, scientific method, world of the ‘found’

somewhere kids need to see all of this at once

schools: MSCE

challenge:
- must go beyond learning ABOUT science, we must DO Science
- we must learn to see the beauty in science, not just in places like literature

it is all about authenticity
- give kids real things to do
- we’ve got authenticity here and beyond

remember the Star Trek tricorder?

PASCO’s Spark

40,000 dead satellites

give kids to play with real tools to solve real problems

any K12 can have their experiment on the ISS, costs 10K per kg

have found more than 2 dozen volcanoes on Io (moon of Jupiter)
- photo of scientist researching this

Who is going to replace here?
- her replacement is in our schools today

Story of Rip Van Winkle
- we have them every night when we go

websites like device (?) and instructables, good to see creative things happening

David’s materials: http://www.tcse-k12.org/futurework/

Futurework 2020: Futurework 2020 is a contest for students in Middle and High-school to anticipate the new kinds of jobs that will be available in the year 2020 that are not available today. In addition to defining the jobs, students will identify the skills that people will need to get one of these new jobs.

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david, thornburg, stem, science, technology, engineering, math, education, school, creativity, design

Science Education from a Technology Leader’s Perspective by David Thornburg originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on March 11, 2009.

Today after Sunday school, however, rather than talking about Smartboard setups or podcasting, Landon visited with my 11 year old son and I about some exciting computer programming he’s been doing for fun. This photo shows an $8 Radio Shack breadboard with LED lights which Landon has recently learned to create and program:

According to WikiPedia:

A breadboard (solderless breadboard, protoboard, plugboard) is a reusable solderless device used to build a (generally temporary) prototype of an electronic circuit and for experimenting with circuit designs. This is in contrast to stripboard (veroboard) and similar prototyping printed circuit boards, which are used to build more permanent prototypes or one-offs, and cannot easily be reused. A variety of electronic systems may be prototyped by using breadboards, from small circuits to complete central processing units (CPUs).

My son has a small and large snap circuit board kit, which is very simple but has given him some introductory opportunities to learn about electricity, circuits, current, and some other foundational ideas of electrical engineering. Although I took (and did pass) an introductory course on electrical engineering in college, I will readily admit that my own functional knowledge in this area is VERY limited. I know that hands-on learning, play and exploration in this area (with some supervision, of course, to try and keep things safe) could be VERY important in helping my kids cultivate both their own interests as well as their perceptions of their own skills in and among different content areas. I want my kids to perceive themselves as extremely capable and literate individuals, both in language arts and the social sciences as well as in hard science. Since neither my wife or I are professional scientists, this is a challenge, but I think opportunities to act like and be real scientists, forming and testing hypotheses through experimentation, can go a long way toward advancing these goals with my own kids. With these ideas in mind, I was very interested and enthused to see and learn about what Landon shared today.

This image shows a different breadboard and processor Landon has purchased and programmed, which is outfitted with a small LCD screen which costs about $20. The chips Landon is using cost between $2 and $7 each. The smaller of the two is shown on the image below, and is a “AT MIL” chip from AT Mega Chips. Landon orders most of his equipment from Mauser.

This image is a close-up of the LCD screen. The screen itself is about $15, the backlight (which Landon chose as blue) costs $5:

This picture shows the soldering job Landon did to connect the LCD screen to a circuit board, following the wiring schematic which came with the screen:

Landon explained to Alexander and I that some of the small integrated chips like those he’s using for these mini-computers have built-in translators which can be used to display ASII text. The ones he is using, however, do not, so he wrote his own program to convert a particular font into binary code. This photo shows some of those code sequences on his laptop screen. This literally makes the letter “a” display correctly on the LCD screen:

Landon has not written all this binary code by hand, however. He has written a VisualBasic program which takes simple two-color graphics he creates in PhotoShop, and then writes the binary code required to display them on the LCD screen. He then copies that code into the C++ program, and uses the open source program WinAVR to compile the C++ code into binary code which can then be transferred from his computer into the ROM memory on the flash-based circuit processor.

The flash-based circuit processors Landon is using on these two breadboards have 64K of ROM, and 4K of RAM. It strikes me as amazing that the computers NASA was using for the Gemini and Apollo space programs in the late 1960s and early 1970s had 64K of RAM. ____ , a Gemini and Apollo program flight engineer for NASA, mentioned this when I interviewed him recently for a podcast. Just think of it: The computational power of NASA’s best computer when we landed on the moon, now available for anyone to order online for just $7 US. Amazing.

I encouraged Landon to create some YouTube videos documenting what he’s created and learned using these breadboards and electronic components, and he said he’s considering setting up a blog or other website. (I recommended using WordPress or Blogger.) Over the holidays, he may get together with another friend who is wanting to use homegrown electronics like this to create custom LED blinkers for his motorcycle. If possible, I told Landon I’d love to record a short video we could post to YouTube in which he explains the components, products, and processes he’s used to create both of these electronic circuits.

My professional career track has taken me away from work in programming, elementary circuit design, and robotics, but as I mentioned earlier I really want to learn more about these applications for the sake of my own kids. I’d also like to encourage others to pursue hands-on learning opportunities in these areas too, of course. That is one of the reasons I keep a link to the free Scratch programming environment at the top of my blog.

Thanks to Bob Sprankle initially sharing a podast recording of Dr. Mitch Resknik at BLC07, and hearing Dr. Resnick present at NECC 2008 this past summer, I’ve heard a little about his company PicoCricket. PicoCricket manufactures circuit boards which permit students to more easily do some of the things Landon has used inexpensive electronic components to do, like turn on lights and output data to a display, but with simpler user interfaces. The PicoCricket devices also include and interface with more advanced input devices, like sensors, so the output of those devices can be utilized by software programs. A PicoBoard costs $50, and actually permits learners of any age who create a program in Scatch to interface their program with Scratch programs.

Last summer at NECC, in addition to hearing Dr. Resnik discuss Scratch and PicoCricket, I also interviewed a representative from Lego about their new product “WeDo” scheduled for U.S. release in January 2009. “WeDo Robotics” include products designed for elementary students ages 7 – 11.

I’m not sure if Santa will be shopping at PicoCricket for our household this year or not, but if he does, I’m sure those gifts would “keep on giving” for a LONG time after the holidays are over!

Technorati Tags:
robotics, programming, radioshack, breadboard, lego, wedo, circuit, electronic

Breadboards, LED lights, small screens, and programming homegrown, inexpensive computers originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on December 7, 2008.

This podcast features an interview from November 2008 with Oklahoman Tom Weichel, who served as a flight engineer for the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) during the 1960s and in 1970 for the Gemini and Apollo space programs. Tom was at mission control in Houston for both Apollo 11, the first successful moon landing mission, as well as Apollo 13, which was nearly a tragedy. Many thanks to Daniel Moore, who introduced me to Tom and arranged for this interview. Tom has worked with Daniel at the Caddo Kiowa Technology Center in Fort Cobb, Oklahoma. To encourage and inspire a new generation of engineers, scientists, and mathematicians Tom believes educators must help students take a more HANDS ON approach to learning. He relates that growing up on a farm, fixing things, and learning figure things out was an important part of his childhood. It was inspiring to visit with Tom and hear about his experiences with NASA firsthand. The NASA programs leading up to and including the Apollo program are some amazing chapters in our global history books.

Show Notes:

1. NASA (WikiPedia)
2. NASA Official website
3. NASA Gemini Program (WikiPedia)
4. NASA Apollo Program (WikiPedia)
5. NASA Apollo 11 Mission (WikiPedia)
6. NASA Apollo 13 Mission (WikiPedia)
7. 1983 Movie “The Right Stuff” (WikiPedia)
8. 1995 Movie “Apollo 13″ (WikiPedia)
9. 2005 IMAX Movie “Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon 3D” (WikiPedia)
10. Caddo Kiowa Technology Center, Fort Cobb, Oklahoma
11. Project Lead the Way (STEM curriculum)
12. Mission Accomplished: India fifth in world to reach moon (15 Nov 2008)
13. Celebrate Oklahoma Voices (oral history and digital storytelling project)

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Podcast294: An Interview with NASA Flight Engineer Tom Weichel discussing Gemini, Apollo 11 and Apollo 13 originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on November 28, 2008.

I was impressed that about half the attendees brought laptops to the conference! There were some wireless network options in the hotel, but I wasn’t able to connect to any of them prior to my keynote, so I connected to the AT&T cellular network with my 3G data card and then shared that connection openly with participants. I’ve used this configuration previously with my family members on trips and in the car, but this was the first time to do this at a conference event. It worked well.

I’ve created a wiki link for the Gabcast voice reflections shared by participants, the VoiceThread I created at the end of the day in the closing session integrating many of those reflections, and links to my own presentation materials.

I posted about fifty photos from today as a new Flickr set. Here are a few of the highlights.

It was great to see, briefly visit, and hear presentations from both Charlene Chausis and David Jakes today.

I was also glad to meet Ben Grey, a former teacher and now technology director in Barrington, Illinois, who is the proud new owner (he actually got it yesterday) of a BRAND new MacBook Pro. It was/is very slick looking.

Here’s his computer with our conference Chatzy backchannel displayed:

Several folks were proudly using a few different mini-laptops as well. This one is from ACER:

This was a EeePC:

I didn’t see anyone running Linux today, however, and no one had an OLPC. I should have brought mine, but I didn’t think to before I left home.

This is one of my favorite photos of the day: Administrators in my session “Guidelines & Instructional Applications for Cell Phone Use @ School” using Gabcast to record some reflections about their learning points during the day:

All our Gabcast-recorded reflections (there are currently 14) are available on the free Gabcast channel I set up for the TechCon08 conference. At the start of my keynote I asked how many people had laptops, pencils or pens, and cell phones. I shared the toll free number for Gabcast, our channel number and password, and had participants write it down. Then during the day people recorded reflections. Many of these were recorded during my session on cell phones for learning, but others were recorded at different times. I suspect the experience of actually using GabCast firsthand was memorable for participants.

I was a little concerned that my keynote and presentations at the conference were a little too curriculum-focused for the audience, which included technology directors, principals and superintendents, but also included CTOs and business office administrators. The ideas seemed to be well received, and feedback was positive, but I still wonder.

I did learn some sad news about the fate of the technology immersion pilot initiative in Illinois. The project lost funding after two years, and evidently the evaluation phase which was to begin in year three never started. Politics, politics. Because the laptops purchased for the immersion pilot all have Absolute tracking and theft recovery software installed on them project administrators know exactly where all the laptops are (thanks to WiFi triangulation technologies) and the fact that over 1000 of them are not being used AT ALL currently. In some participating schools, lots of bureaucratic roadblocks stopped the laptops from being even rolled out to teachers and students until March of the first school year they were to be deployed, and the professional development plan teacher-leaders from the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy were prepared to share never was fully implemented.

On a positive note, I did learn about a great Ning social network for Illinois administrators created and managed by Rich Voltz, the IASA Associate Director:

As I shared in the opening keynote for the conference, for many topics our peers are our best assets when it comes to ongoing learning. It’s great to see so many Illinois educators are finding ways to bring the power and benefits of social networking technologies directly to administrators. Hopefully positive experiences with these social networking environments will eventually “trickle-down” as more open policies for moderated social networking environments being available for teachers and students in Illinois schools.

My other two blog recommendations for administrators which I didn’t mention in my sessions but should have are LeaderTalk and The EdJurist blog. Of course I did share and promote participation in the free K-12 Online Conference, which has already started with the pre-conference keynote and gets underway fully this coming Monday. I didn’t get to the slides for K12Online08 in my keynote but did talk it up in my closing session.

One of many highlights from today was meeting and visiting with James Gerry of the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, who was formerly the school’s chief technology officer but now is heading up a new group focused on creativity, innovation, entrepreneurship, and designing a new collaborative space at the school to foster creativity. I didn’t know previously the inventors of both PayPal and YouTube are IMSA graduates. Many IMSA grads work for Google. James recently visited Google to gather ideas about how to design the new collaboration and creativity spaces at IMSA. He worked at Bell Labs for ten years, so he certainly has a fantastic background to lead a team which is imagineering new learning spaces for schools. I’ll publish my interview with James here soon as a podcast.

To learn more about IMSA, besides visiting their website I’d recommend listening to my podcast interview at NECC 2008 with Scott Swanson and April Hope. IMSA’s website byline is:

Igniting and nurturing creative, ethical scientific minds that advance the human condition.

Does that sound like a GREAT place to teach and learn or what? I hope the next time I’m in the Chicago area I’ll be able to bring at least one of my kids to IMSA for a visit and tour. The idea of one of my kids not living at home for high school does NOT appeal to me at all, but who can say where creativity and innovation in a school like IMSA could lead? The sky’s the limit.

Many thanks to all the educators in Illinois at TechCon08 for a fantastic day of learning!

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techcon, techcon08, illinois, chicago, technology, school, education, conference, socialnetworking, 1to1, onetoone, laptop, pilot, project, imsa, science

Images and Experiences from TechCon 2008 near Chicago today originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on October 18, 2008.

I first heard about Clay Shirkey from Will Richardson, who led an unconference session at EdubloggerCon 2008 in San Antonio on his most recent book. (Unfortunately I couldn’t attend because of the scheduling of sessions there, I would have loved to listen and participate in a book discussion led by Will.) Clay Shirky: Institutions vs. collaboration is a thought provoking TedTalk focusing on the power and potential of social media tools and technologies like tagging to permit collaboration in transformative ways which would have either been impossible or cost-prohibitive for institutions in the past.

Among other ideas, I found Clay’s observations regarding citizen journalism versus traditional journalism to be most thought provoking. He points out that journalism was an answer to a need: How to disseminate and share information about events. It is very exciting to be living in such a time of transition when we see old paradigms of information dissemination giving way to new models. Clay points out that the printing press ushered in an era of chaos, for approximately 200 years, which broke the Catholic Church’s control over ideas, information and lives. He predicts about 50 years of chaos which is being introduced by what I call “publish at will” technologies. I certainly need to add Clay’s book to my future reading list. It is great to get a taste of his perspectives via this TedTalk.

Alan Kay is an amazing computer scientist and educator who I first heard speak in person at EduComm in June of 2007. His TedTalk, “A powerful idea about teaching ideas,” includes a similar demonstration to the one he shared at EduComm using the software environment Squeak to help students learn basic (but complex even for many adults) concepts about acceleration, physics and mathematics. I’m looking forward to sharing this with my kids, especially since the video of Alan’s demonstration on the screen is such high-quality. Oh how I yearn for experiences like those Alan shared “doing science” for my own children!

If you haven’t looked at the AMAZING selection of video presentations available on the TedTalk video podcast channel ever or recently, you definitely should. What a treasure trove! With videos like these on one’s iPod or iPhone, 20 minutes of learning about powerful ideas is always just a click away in my pocket! Subscribe to the TED blog to stay up-to-date on new additions!

Technorati Tags:
shirkey, kay, clay, alan, tedtalk, ted, science, organization, tagging, video

Lunch with Clay Shirkey and Alan Kay originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on October 14, 2008.

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.

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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[tags]lego,robot,robotics,creativity,design,math,science,program,programming,necc,necc08,necc2008[/tags]

Podcast267: A Discussion about Lego WeDo Robotics at NECC 2008 (Coming in January 2009 to North America) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on July 24, 2008.