Moving at the Speed of Creativity

Kristin Hokanson is live blogging Malcom Gladwell’s opening keynote tonight for NECC, and invites anyone to join in! This CoverItLive session is set to also grab/include Twitter posts with the #necc09 tag.

Technorati Tags:
#necc09, #necc, gladwell

We had a great day of conversations today at EduBloggerCon09!

Hat tip to Peggy George for sharing this original photo!

My posts for the day were:
- EduBloggerCon: Web 2.0 Smackdown
- Wish a particular tool existed? Learn how to get it made! We’ll design a tool together
- Leveraging social media tools for social change (includes Ustream video archive recordings)

Tomorrow I’m off to Gary Stager’s 3rd Annual Constructivist Celebration @ NECC !

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#ebc09, #necc09, blog, ebc09, education, iste, necc, necc09, school, technology, bloggercon

This is great– Tim Holt is spearheading a Podstock Southwest conference to be held August 6-7, 2009, in El Paso, Texas.

Visit Podstock Southwest

The “first PodStock” (yes, I’m proud to say ‘I was there!’) was held in Wichita, Kansas, on May 1-2, 2009. I’m not entirely sure if I’ll be able to attend PodstockSW or not, since our family has been planning to attend the XIT Rodeo and Reunion in Dalhart again during those dates in August. (I made a video “storychaser style” last year during the XIT, which I titled “72 Years of Free BBQ.” If I come to PodstockSW, can you promise equally amazing eats, Tim?!)

The call for proposals for PodStock Southwest is available as a PDF file, and is due June 17th. That’s a quick turnaround! I’m wondering if in addition or in lieu of all formally scheduled sessions, it would be good to turn this into a BarCamp event? Just a thought! BarCamp seems to epitomize the grass-roots nature and spirit of a Podstock conference. I think it still could be beneficial / a draw to have invited keynote speakers, but at least some of the sessions could be setup in a BarCamp model, or the entire conference sans keynotes could be.

Technorati Tags:
conference, education, learning, podcasting, podstock, school, texas, workshop, #podstocksw09, elpaso

We had a great turnout for the Oklahoma City Public School’s annual “Tech Day” conference, held at US Grant High School in southern OKC today. I had fun live-blogging Tammy Worcester’s keynote, “Beyond Copy and Paste: Building Integrated Technology Projects.” Tammy is a wonderful presenter and her message really resonated with the diverse group of K-12 teachers here in Oklahoma City. It’s always challenging to address a K-12 audience with widely varying technology skill levels, and Tammy did a great job. She is a learning consultant with ESSDACK in Hutchinson, Kansas.

Here are the wiki links from my three sessions today. My 8 year old daughter, Sarah, helped run our Ustream webcasting setup all day and recorded the first session. Sarah also helped me co-present our final session today about our family learning blog, “Learning Signs,” and did a super job presenting and teaching as well. My relatively new (and relatively inexpensive) Nady wireless mic worked GREAT, and Ryan Collins is my hero for his comment on Sunday solving the mystery of the timing out Sony Digital 8 camcorder: Removing the tape made the camera stay on all day long without interruption! Yeah!

Digital Storytelling on a Shoestring - UStream Archive - Wiki Links

Powerful Ingredients for Blended Learning (updated fairly extensively since my May 16th workshop at ESC16 in Amarillo)

We didn’t add links yet to our wiki page for our Family Learning Blog presentation, but we will before this session is repeated at NECC in Washington D.C. on June 30th. Many thanks to Dawn Danker for co-presenting today and sharing how she’s been using Ustream with her son for him to share video-based book reports with a global audience!

Technorati Tags:
digitalstorytelling, education, learning, oklahoma, technology, video, okcps, techday09, techday

I’m live blogging Tammy Worcester’s keynote at Oklahoma City Public School’s Tech Day today! The title of her keynote is, “Beyond Copy and Paste: Building Integrated Technology Projects.” We’re starting NOW!

Bandwidth permitting, I’ll try and share most of my full-day workshop tomorrow here in Amarillo over Ustream. The workshop is titled, “Powerful Ingredients for Digitally Interactive Learning.” Our workshop starts at 9 am CST and lasts till 4 pm CST.

I’ve brought another Mac laptop to use for the Ustream, so we’ll see how this goes. The quality should be better than what I’ve achieved recently using Ustream Mobile. If you attend (virtually or face-to-face) and are willing to serve as a moderator, make sure you’re logged in with a Ustream account and let me know in the chat, and I’ll “knight you” with moderation powers over the chat. I’ve only run into problems once or twice needing moderation in a live Ustream broadcast, but that was enough to encourage me to use this feature. See UStream FAQ #3 “How Do I Moderate My Chat” for more info on Ustream moderation options as well as commands.

Tomorrow’s workshop is BYOL (Bring Your Own Laptop) and we’re expecting around 90 participants. The workshop description is:

Good teaching is similar in many ways to good cooking. Recipes are helpful, but master cooks often modify those to meet different needs and situations. The same is true for teachers. If we extend this analogy of cooking to teaching and learning in a web 2.0 world, what are the best “ingredients” to use as we help both teachers and students learn to be more effective, safe, and powerful communicators in our flat world? In this working session we will focus on six key ingredients: del.icio.us, social bookmarks, Flickr photo sharing, VoiceThread digital storytelling, collaborative writing tools, websites for phone recording as well as SMS polling, and videoconferencing. Cooking can be intimidating for novices, but richly rewarding. Bring your own laptop and join Wesley Fryer as you learn how to cook up some gourmet learning with some powerful (and free) web 2.0 tools!

Technorati Tags:
learning, workshop, ustream, broadcast, powerful, ingredients

I’m presenting a full-day, hands-on BYOL (bring your own laptop) workshop in Amarillo, Texas, on Saturday, May 16, 2009, titled “Powerful Ingredients for Digitally Interactive Learning.” As of this morning, eight more spots are still available in the workshop, which will be held at the ESC16 Service Center. The workshop description is:

Good teaching is similar in many ways to good cooking. Recipes are helpful, but master cooks often modify those to meet different needs and situations. The same is true for teachers. If we extend this analogy of cooking to teaching and learning in a web 2.0 world, what are the best “ingredients” to use as we help both teachers and students learn to be more effective, safe, and powerful communicators in our flat world? In this working session we will focus on six key ingredients: del.icio.us, social bookmarks, Flickr photo sharing, VoiceThread digital storytelling, collaborative writing tools, websites for phone recording as well as SMS polling, and videoconferencing. Cooking can be intimidating for novices, but richly rewarding. Bring your own laptop and join Wesley Fryer as you learn how to cook up some gourmet learning with some powerful (and free) web 2.0 tools.

This is a topic I’m going to be writing, presenting, and speaking about QUITE a bit in the months ahead, as Karen Montgomery and I are continuing to work on a book focused on these topics.

If you live near Amarillo and aren’t registered for this event yet, please sign up and join us a week from Saturday!

Technorati Tags:
esc16, workshop, technology, learning, amarillo, texas, web2, school, training, integration

Here’s the Ustream archive from Kevin Honeycutt’s closing comments at the 2009 PodStock 2009 conference in Wichita, Kansas. Yes, he did play the iPhone guitar app!

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#podstock09, podstock, stories

These are my notes from “Getting a Global Perspective - The Power of Collaborative Projects” by Dyane Smokorowski at the PodStock09 conference in Wichita, Kansas. Her wiki with links for this session is on: http://podstock.wik.is MY THOUGHTS ARE IN ALL CAPS. THIS IS VERY SIMILAR STRUCTURE WISE TO DR JUDY HARRIS’ TELECOMPUTING PROJECTS FRAMEWORK WHICH I HEARD ABOUT IN THE LATE 1990S FOR THE FIRST TIME. IT’S AMAZING TO SEE HOW THESE PROJECTS ARE WORKING AND BEING IMPLEMENTED NOW WITH ALL THE WEB 2.0 TOOLS WE HAVE AVAILABLE!

Here are all Dyane’s links on telecollaboration projects: http://podstock.wik.is/Links_on_Telecollaboration

Dyane’s slideshare from today:

Most important thing: it needs to have a real world connection
- we use technology (should) because we can’t do it otherwise
- I believe if you want to make a connection

7 kinds of classrooms

intercultural exchange

data collection projects
- great place to start
- not as overwhelming
- the collection of data is not the higher level thinking part: it is what you DO with the data!
- the global grocery project is one that has been around a long time, now a web search can get that

Tooth Tally Project (meant for 1st grader)
- kids tally tooth lost during the year
- great because there is not too much for the classroom teachers to manage individually

herebirdy project
- kindergarden project, data collection
- kids are learning to read graphs, how things are changing over the seasons
- teachers moving data over to the wiki each day, so the data was live
- teamed up with the Great Plains Nature Center here in Wichita

CIESE.org (The Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education) has lots of data collection projects

Now: Intercultural exchange
- Cultural Exchange Box is one of the most popular
- started by a teacher in Israel
- Friends and Flags is similar but on a hiatus

Digital photography is the key for intercultural exchange projects
- audio projects and tools: Skype, VoiceThread

be careful with seeds: Australia doesn’t allow any seeds to be sent (including sunflower seeds)

Another example type: Travel Buddy Projects
- originated in Australia
- created to increase
- find travel buddies (stuffed animals)
- Community Helpers Around the World was our project, we got a grant to support this
– 4 different elementary schools involved
– had an elephant, tiger, others
– buddies were to travel, we had 32 classrooms around the world on 6 different continents

Lots of travel buddies on trampolines all over the world!

Only requirements we had were: take the buddies and do the journaling
- with these guidelines, the magic happened
- example of a travel buddy learning Maori dancing with students in New Zealand
- another met a movie star in the Czech Republic!

Also did “There’s No Place Like Home” projects with travel buddies
- took the Wizard of Oz theme
- what is great about YOUR state?
- we’ve all had death by PPT experiences with state projects
- this was a year long project involving all 4th grade students, with 32 other American classrooms, to discover what makes each American region unique
- same requirements: take photos, send some of this data
- most requested buddy was “wicked witch” - she went to see “Wicked” in New York on Broadway, went to a Hannah Montana concert, in Arizona was compared to the witch character they have in their Native American culture
- Toto went to Disneyland (I am a former Disney cast member)
- Tinman met the governor of Vermont

What do you do while the buddy is away?
- it is meant for discussion
- originally we just used email
- now we have skype, documents on wikis, animoto to make slideshows of the week
- now using Etherpad for synchronous projects

Now Interpersonal Project Examples
- you are an expert, I’m an expert, and we exchange info
- we did “Being Green” project with an Australian school, focus was “is our planet getting warmer,” can we get our communities thinking about living more green
- kids were struggling just like scientists on whether global warming is happening
- everyone agrees

Other interpersonal project examples
- Movie in the Making
- Prince Caspian Project
– become a collaborative project for teachers, sharing resource for teachers on lesson materials for those teaching about the novel

Next example type: Student Publishing Projects
- involve student creativity
- students publishing their own poetry, art, video, writing, etc
- Four Lines of Sight project for 2nd grade, 80 classrooms around the world joined us for this:

This global 2nd grade project had a simple question. If I gave each student the exact same 4 lines on a sheet of paper, what would they create? The students could rotate the lines in any direction and use any art medium to elaborate on the lines. Over 300 2nd grade students participated and added their work to our virtual art gallery.

You could see similarities between students in the same classroom, but many of the projects blew you away with their creativity
- our webserver was so full with images on the district but they made me take it down
- we chose images so language would not be a barrier for the students

Cyberdictionary has been around since 1997 (Fairy Tale / Folk Tale CyberDictionary)

Monster Exchange Project - it is:

Monster Exchange is designed to encourage the development of reading and writing skills while integrating Internet technology into the classroom curriculum. Classrooms from a variety of schools worldwide are paired together; the students in each classroom are split into groups, each of which designs an original picture of a monster. The students must then write a description of the monster. The partnered classes then exchange their descriptions via e-mail and the Internet. These students are then challenged to use reading comprehension skills to read the descriptions and translate them into a monster picture. The true challenge involves creating a redrawn picture as close to the original picture as possible without looking at the original and using only the written description of the monster.

SchoolTube has great opportunities for students to be collaborative, lots of GREAT content there now
- examples of projects by students who may not feel they are very strong in writing, in math, and other things, but they are able to use multimedia to teach concepts to other students
- SchoolTube contests!

Project I am planning to launch next year: The Adventures of Paperclip!

Are you ready to jump in and try one of these?
- if you are designing one of these, what do you need to think about?
- do your kids already study different cultures or geographic locations?
- would kids benefit from collecting data and sharing it with another class?
- are there any issues such as the environment or animal protection your students would be passionate about?
- do you have any museums, zoos, or other resources nearby that could partner with you?
- would they be interested in discussing a book or selecting the Caldecott winner with other classes?

Disney involved in helping kids learn about PSA writing (Public Service Annoucements)
- going on the Disney Radio Channel
- kids had to get excited about this!

you need to create a plan
- project milestone
- set up a project calendar: deadlines, beginnings and endings, etc
- more…

Step 3: find your partners
- places on Ning now have project collaboration
- Use Global SchoolNet listserv, generally has a good response
- use Twitter and Plurk
- reach out to your PLN!
- International Travel Buddy List Serve

Step 4: get resources

Step 5: Jump in and Watch the Magic Unfold
- remember chocolate always tastes good!
- had “Violet Crumble” from Australia, it is a Nestle product not sold in the US, amazing!
- kids become emotionally connected to what they are doing: they will research more, they will love it, and they will remember it

Dyane’s blog: http://mrssmoke.onsugar.com

Kids who go on trips with their families on a vacation: they have to take their travel buddy, take photos, and blog about it!
- see the guest blog post, “Travel Buddy Projects Part II” for more on this approach

My only barrier is my imagination getting out of hand!

only budget issues come in with travel buddy projects
- we do have some teachers in the world who are not tech saavy: we’ve had some who didn’t know how to do email attachments, others are really impressing us!
- give all the resources on your website, including the parent letters
- sometimes finding partners is a challenge

Getting started: Global Schoolnet registery of existing projects is great
- contacting local museums is good
- can also trade 1 elementary school to another within the district
- get a hold of tech nerdy people, may have an approved blog or wiki
- if you have all your ducks in a row, generally when you bring curriculum that is ready, tech people will work with you

Empowered Desktop this year is changing, will be adding wikis
- this is a Kansas-only web resources
- other teachers in other states can’t use that tho

During school Dyane worked at Toontown at Disneyworld as a 1 semester internship, it was a GREAT experience, very intercultural / international
- inspired a project “Is it a Small World After All?” project that Dyane started
- had students from Arab and Western countries in Ning, all dialoging

May the Force Be With You!

Technorati Tags:
education, project, telecomputing, learning, collaboration

This evening I learned about the YouTube video “Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn’t seen it)” by listening to Justin Karkow’s “Digital Storytelling Frame by Frame” presentation on the 2009 Nebraska Educational Technology Association Podcast channel.

As a big Star Wars fan, I found this remix quite amusing and fun. Nice use of Final Cut Pro.

The NETA 2009 conference was held April 23-24, 2009, in Omaha, Nebraska. The podcast channel from the conference is GREAT. I was not able to attend the conference, but thanks to this audio podcast channel I can attend virtually, after the fact, and you can as well! Way to go Nebraska educators! I think it’s definitely a best practice to, at a minimum, audio record key sessions at conferences as the leaders at NETA did and make them available afterwards as free downloads. This substantially amplifies and extends the voices of those presenting at the conference as well as the sponsoring conferencing organization itself.

Go NETA! A twitter account was created for the 2009 NETA conference, which can be a good way for face-to-face conference attendees to find each other on Twitter. I’d recommend, however, setting up a non-year specific Twitter account for conference events so the account can “live on in relevance” after the year of that particular conference is over.

Hat tip to Elizabeth Helfant of St Louis MICDS for letting me know about this NETA09 podcast channel. (Twitter: ehelfant) As a related aside, if you’re anywhere NEAR St Louis consider attending their “MICDS Summer Teacher Institute” in 2009. Their lineup of presenters and presentation topics is FANTASTIC. This is sure to be a fantastic series of learning opportunities for midwestern educators!

Technorati Tags:
starwars, finalcutpro, fcp, youtube

This podcast is a recording of my presentation at the Oklahoma Technology Association (OTA) conference on February 11, 2009, in Oklahoma City. Check the podcast shownotes for links to the session wiki, which includes referenced websites and tools as well as others we didn’t have time to address in this session. The official program description was: Often the most valuable learning outcome of a professional conference is a single website, collaboration idea, or software application which can transformatively help students and teachers more effectively demonstrate mastery of knowledge and skills included in the curriculum. This presentation focuses on a diverse array of web 2.0 tools teachers and librarians can use to enhance classroom websites, collaborative projects, and multimedia reports created by students individually or in distributed teams.

 

 Podcast311: Digital Magic Tricks - An ecclectic series of digital learning tools and techniques [63:10m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1005)

Show Notes:

1. Session resources and links
2. Celebrate Oklahoma Voices learning community
3. Oklahoma Technology Association

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I’ve created a new presentation and workshop I’m calling, “Geo-StoryChasing.” I’ve listed a variety of mobile audio, video, and photo sharing options (many supporting geolocation) on the wiki curriculum page I started. If you know of others I should include, please let me know by commenting here. This is the short description for this session:

Lots of stories are connected to places. Sometimes we can recount and share a story better when we are in a specific location, on-site. This session presents tools and projects focused on creating and sharing digital stories connected to specific places. Most of these can be used with cell phones and are ideal for student field trips or other travel opportunities.

I may rename my breakout session at PodStock in a few weeks and present this session.

While linking up tools for the workshop/presentation wiki, I learned GabCast has added two new features: Users can limit the maximum time for phone calls, and also remove the “feature” which tells callers to a channel how many minutes remain in the channel:

These are both good features to utilize for Gabcast channels set up to support student field trips, and are particularly important now that Gabcast is charging for all minutes used / not providing free usage options.

photo credit: Goa Observer ?

Technorati Tags:
geolocate, story, storytelling, digital, storychaser, storychase, storychasing, gabcast, loopt, flickr, qik, ustream, audioboo, geograffiti

I’d like to invite you to join Steve Hargadon and I tomorrow (Saturday, April 11, 2009) to discuss issues and ideas surrounding EduBloggerCon09 and the “BarCamp” model in the Classroom 2.0 LIVE Elluminate room, at 9am Pacific / 10am Mountain / 11am Central / 12pm Eastern / 5pm GMT. Visit Classroom 2.0 Live for more information.

How can we, as a community, make EduBloggerCon09 the best and most valuable learning experience it can be for all participants? Let’s put our heads together on this one. I’m sure we can create a great event at this year’s NECC!

For more background, please see my ISTEconnects post from earlier this evening, “EduBloggerCon09 and the BarCamp model,” as well as Steve’s post from today, “Blowing the Doors off NECC 2009.” Steve’s post is not only about EduBloggerCon but also NECC Live / NECC Unplugged, which will likely be combined this year. Also, I’d recommend reading up on the “BarCamp” participatory event model via WikiPedia. The proposal we’ll be discussing is embracing the BarCamp model for EduBloggerCon. It’s a successful “unconference” model that’s worked in numerous other venues. Check out the BarCamp wiki for more info about the model as well as upcoming BarCamps around the world which you can attend. If you have doubts about creative people’s willingness to share great ideas, the BarCamp global hCalendar (which is subscribable via iCal) may dispel those perceptions! (Help on hCalendar is also available.) Next weekend, for example (April 17-18) there are BarCamps in:

1. Ilmenau, Germany
2. Almaty, Kazakhstan
3. Madison, Wisconsin, USA
4. Orlando, Florida, USA
5. Rochester, New York, USA

Hope you can join our Elluminate conversation tomorrow and contribute to this important dialog!

Hat tip to James Deaton for first introducing me to the BarCamp model, and Joe Corbett for providing Steve and I with ideas and resources related to BarCamp implementation.

Technorati Tags:
#necc09, necc, necc09, necc2009, edubloggercon, edubloggercon09, #edubloggercon09, barcamp, collaboration, elluminate, classroom2

This podcast is a recording of a presentation shared by Beth Knittle titled, “All a Twitter about Twitter: Micro-Blogging as a Professional Networking Tool.” Beth shared this presentation on November 19, 2008, at the MASSCUE 2008 conference in Sturbridge, Massachusetts. I helped out a little bit sharing some ideas too during the session. The official program description was: Twitter is a free social messaging service for staying connected in real- time, using the web, your phone, or IM. It is a cross between chat and micro-blogging. Twitter can play a key role in developing a learning environment. Participating in the network can provide just-in-time support and continued learning, and it facilitates a better understanding of the people you collaborate with. Come discover some tips and tricks to make Twitter work for you. (We’ll also examine Plurk, another Twitter- like tool.) Wesley Fryer, a world-class Twitterer, will join the discussion.

 

 Podcast310: All a Twitter about Twitter: Micro-Blogging as a Professional Networking Tool by Beth Knittle (MASSCUE 2008) [01:03:05m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1540)

Show Notes:

1. Twitter
2. Beth’s handout for this session (PDF)
3. My text notes from this session
4. Ustream video archive of this session
5. Beth Knittle on Twitter: @bknittle
6. Wesley Fryer on Twitter: @wfryer
7. Beth Knittle’s Presentation Wiki (additional links from this session)
8. Beth Knittle’s homepage
9. Beth Knittle’s blog: Beth’s Thoughts on Technology in the Classroom
10. Twitter directories mentioned during the session: twitter4teachers.pbwiki.com and justtweetit.com
11. Edmodo: Free private microblogging for Education 2.0
12. Plurk

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This podcast is a recording of a session presented by Meghen Ehrich and Sharon Tompson, school technology support staff members from Prince George’s County Public Schools in Upper Marlboro, Maryland. This session was shared on March 10, 2009, at the CoSN 2009 conference in Austin, Texas. The official conference program description for this session was:  Prince George’s County Public Schools decided in March 2008 to implement the Google Apps Suite. The panel will share their experiences on how they migrated 28,000 users from Microsoft Exchange to Gmail. Google is integrated into the network and users are provided with single sign-on access. It’s also a ubiquitous tool for staff to access their work from anywhere. In addition, the panel will discuss how they are providing 1000+cell phone users with options, how they are securing the environment, providing tools for e-discovery, and will identify future plans for integrating Google Apps with a LMS to create a low cost anytime, anywhere learning environment for all staff and students.

 

 Podcast309: Google Apps - Implementation and Changing the Way We Do Business (from CoSN09) [51:50m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1230)

Show Notes:

1. PGCPS Has Been Googlized (Google Presentation links for this session)
2. Prince George’s County Public Schools in Upper Marboro, Maryland
3. Google Apps for Education
4. Google for Educators
5. The Infinite Thinking Machine
6. Google Teacher Academy
7. The Consortium for School Networking (CoSN)
8. The CoSN 2009 Conference

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