Storychasing Literacy (a.k.a. “StoryChasing: Empowering Students as Digital Witnesses”)

Prior to the keynote this morning, I’m most likely going to share quotations from the Flickr group, “Great quotes about Learning and Change.” Both today and tomorrow, keynote and featured speaker sessions will be streamed live, via links available on the METC 2010 Moodle.

My afternoon session is “Geo-StoryChasing: Mobile Digital Storytelling!” If time permits during this morning’s keynote, I may demonstrate the Powerful Ingredients Administrative Walkthrough Rubric which is accessible as a Google Form on a smartphone like an iPhone or Blackberry.

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education, literacy, metc, storychase, storychasing, technology, workshop, mecd_csd

To be a teacher — choose it as a calling, not a job.

Choose it to do something meaningful and powerful, with rewards only you might notice.

Choose it to be a role model.

Choose to be a teacher because you love learning.

Choose to be a teacher because you love learners.

Choose to be a teacher because you cannot imagine anything else so wonderful!

Catch up with Gail by following her on Twitter. I had a wonderful opportunity today to visit with Gail both during Darren Kuropatwa’s afternoon workshop session (quietly of course) and a bit this evening at our METC dinner. Her husband IS a real rocket scientist. Who knew? Her decision to share the quoted thoughts above on her homepage speaks volumes about her values as an educator and change agent for engaged learning.

H/T METC 2010 organizers for the opportunity to meet and visit with Gail today, and to Gail for being here and sharing! Gail has some great links on the “resources” section of her website.

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quotation, quote, teach, teaching, metc_csd, metc, metc2010, gail, lovely, choose

Is your school still blocking access to YouTube for everyone, including both teachers AND students? Time to unmask the digital truth.

It would be great to see students use this method of “storytelling via screencasted Google search queries” to tell other stories. What story would you tell? If your Google history could talk, what stories would IT tell?

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ad, advertisement, google, love, story, parisian, paris, france, clever

MY THOUGHTS AND COMMENTS BELOW ARE IN ALL CAPS

All of Darren’s METC 2010 presentation resources are available on his wiki: dkuropatwapresentations.pbworks.com/METC-2010

#2 search engine today: YouTube

Example video: help with bowdrill set

Darren showed foldplay.com to show how to make personalized kaleidocycles

Stuff kids made for me 5 years ago on paper doesn’t exist anymore
- that’s not the case for a lot of digital content
- is it really ephemeral? Some digital artifacts are more permanent

4 people in a group is not a working group, it’s a social occasion (keep collaborative group sizes limited to 2 or 3)

create the problem, solve the problem
- publish it online using any way you like

DEV: Developing Expert Voices
- Developing Expert Voices (capstone projects)

Blog: Developing expert voices
- students linked to our housed all their digital work on this project
- usually started by 2nd or 3rd week of term, students worked on this all semester

If you can use a pattern you identify which underlies
- mathematics is all about patterns

Blog: Mathematics is the Science of Patterns
- project done in HALO

MITSOP Episode 1 video

Advice: Don’t do all of this NOW
- always ask: how can I get the students to do this work?
- I just started with my blog, which at the beginning I was just reading and writing
- it’s not like you will go back to school and do all this next week
- now you are ideally situated to be the model for others
- big danger of giving presentations: People say “you can do it” because of A, B, C and D
- five years ago I did not have these skills
- I evolved, I grew into using these skills
- there are certain underlying patterns in the way things

3 most revolutionary technologies of our time (IMHO – Darren)
1- The hyperlink (so now you and a person in Azerbaijan are neighbors!)
2- Tags: when you get your head around tags and how tagging works, combined with hyperlinks can be used together, it’s amazing what can be done
- knowledge is no longer organized hierarchically, it is organized organically via networks (folksonomies)
3- RSS: the glue that holds it all together (via RSS you can take my Flickr stream, and have it beamed over to you)

Great quotes about learning and change Flickr group

Reasons to publish student work:
- you need to create ways for students to look inside each other’s heads
- Good things happen when you publish
- you’ll know they know when they create content that educates

“A computer is an instrument whose music is composed of ideas”

Web 2.0 Cool tools for Schools wiki

Be careful not to post your email address online b/c of spambots

Technorati Tags:
learning, technology, remix, google, maps, googlemaps, collaboration, math, lesson, school, darren, kuropatwa

One of the most exciting finds I made for the topic of “copyright friendly media” tonight was the “Copyright-Friendly and Copyleft Images and Sound (Mostly!) for Use in Media Projects and Web Pages, Blogs, Wikis, etc.” wiki thanks to Joyce Valenza’s “Playing with Images” page of her New Tools Workshop wiki. What a wealth of resources! If you STILL have not yet checked out Joyce’s K12Online09 preso, “The Wizard of Apps,” I HIGHLY encourage you to do so and share it with other educators you know.

After you view it take a few minutes to provide Joyce and her students with some edifying feedback, either on the blog or the K12Online Ning. Talk about a treasure trove of great ideas and resources for student media projects!

Technorati Tags:
copyright, friendly, intellectual, media, property

Technorati Tags:
development, future, lab, media, medialab, mit, technology, TED, video, sixthsense, sixth, sense, 6th, wearable

To use and apply these tutorials, you’ll need the login credentials to your Wordpress website. Generally that is the public address of your site, followed by the directory name “/wp-admin” (without quotation marks.) This should direct you to the login page for your site. Then use the username and password for your account. Depending on the “rights” assigned to your account, you’ll have different authoring and configuration abilities within the Wordpress administrative area. If you don’t have a Wordpress account but would like to try one out for free, setup an account on Wordpress.com. If you’re an educator, I recommend you setup a free Wordpress account with EduBlogs because of their great support and the very active educational bloggging community (with students as well as teachers) already there.

Let’s get started with a few basic Wordpress user tutorials. Click the direct link for each one if you’d like to view a larger version.

1. Start off with an overview / introduction to the Wordpress dashboard.

2. Second, learn how to write and publish a post on Wordpress.

3. You won’t always finish a post at one sitting, so next learn how to write draft posts which you can return to at a later date with Wordpress.

4. Organization of Wordpress sites is accomplished mainly through the use of different categories for posts as well as “tags.” Learn how to add categories and tags to your Wordpress posts.

5. Last of all, learn how to add photos, video, and other media to your Wordpress posts.

Many of the screencast tutorials on Wordpress.tv apply to Wordpress developers, rather than users, so don’t be overwhelmed by the options. As a new user, I recommend starting with the tutorials available in the Writing with Wordpress category after you view and practice with the five tutorials I’ve highlighted in this post.

In addition to these tutorials also utilize the free “how to” articles on the Wordpress Codex.

Good luck with your Wordpress writing and publishing! Blog on!

Cross-posted to the Powerful Ingredients Workshop Mini-Lessons wiki.

Technorati Tags:
blog, blogger, post, tutorial, wordpress, write, wordpress.tv, how, start, beginner

According to the organization’s website:

Impact Oklahoma focuses on five nonprofit disciplines: Family, Health and Wellness, Education, Environment and Culture. The fields of interest are those women care about … the ones that make our community stronger and better for everyone.

Impact Oklahoma was started in 2003 by a group of friends who wanted to contribute something significant to their community. These women, while on a “girls weekend,” discussed a magazine article Page Beatty had seen, about Impact 100 — the first Impact group, which was started in Cincinnati. They contacted another friend, a banker, to help them with the financial aspects. After a year of planning and organizing, and an inaugural year of membership recruiting, Impact Oklahoma gave its first grant in 2005.

The workshop started with a welcome from IMPACT Oklahoma President, Page Beatty

Now we’re hearing from Anne Holzberlein, Grant Chair for 2010

This grant workshop is required for any nonprofit applying for an IMPACT Oklahoma grant. Applying organizations are required to be a 501(c)(3). The 2010 Letter of Inquiry (LOI) is due by 5 pm, 19 Feb 2010. The goal is for 500 Oklahoma women to donate $1000 each, and IMPACT Oklahoma will award five $100,000 grants.

There are about 150 people in this meeting. The room is completely full.

Black and white rules:
- all applicants must attend this workshop
- deadlines for submissions are fixed
-

1 date on our website is incorrect:
- LOI must be received (not postmarked) by 5 pm Fri Feb 19. You must mail it, you cannot drop it off. Mail it

Deadline for submissions: Fri March 26th at 5 pm
- have 1 mailing location, at UCO in Edmond, THAT submission CAN be hand-delivered

There is NOT a downloadable LOI, there is a checklist of requirements

We are still working on the grant application, but you don’t have to worry about that for a couple of weeks
- we are going to limit number of words permitted

THEY SHOULD USE SURVEYMONKEY AND USE CHARACTER/WORD LIMITS!

Be sure to put the correct information in the correct spots on the grant application

LOI is submitted to see if you meet basic requirements
- examples: can’t apply for a project outside our service area, can’t pay salary for your Exec Director, can’t award less than $100,000

late submissions will be declined
- you can just submit 1 application per organization

If you have questions following this workshop, email them to aholzberlein [at] uco [dot] edu

This is a volunteer, grassroots organization, so be forgiving with our website errors and other issues which will be fixed soon!
- our webmaster is a volunteer
- we have no paid staff
- we are very excited about our new website

INTERESTING TO KNOW SOME BACKSTORY ABOUT THEIR NEW WEBSITE AND WEBMASTER, THANKS TO OUR 25 JAN 2010 OKC WORDPRESS USER’S GROUP MEETING!

Among other LOI requirements, you must include your organizational mission statement

501(c)(3) letter MUST be included – you cannot receive funds from us unless you have 501(c)(3) status

We reserve the right to change the grant category in which your application is considered. Generally we do that for your benefit, depending on the number of applications received in each category

Must include 2-3 sentence summary of your project

If you are a statewide organization, you grant project application must focus specifically on our target area: Canadian, Cleveland, Logan and Oklahoma County.
- you don’t have to cover all 4, but you can focus on/in just 1 or fewer.

Identify your target population and the demographics, your timeline
- you have 24 months to expend the money when you receive funding

What are your measurable goals? How are you going to measure success?
- we need to be able to identify the need and also the impact

You will have a full month to work on your application, if your LOI is accepted

Now hearing from Barbara Butner, grant co-chair to go over grant guidelines

(This is the actual grant application on the IMPACT Oklahoma website)

We changed the grant deadline because of Spring Break

In the past few years, we had people manipulate fonts and use font size 6, to fit more text in the provided space
- there will be guidelines about number of permitted words per question
- these will be blocks to fill in, 250 – 500 words per answer
- remember who is reading these applications, this is not a foundation that has 25 years of research experience (10 members of our committee are going to read this, they are not professional grant readers)
- tell us what you need, why you need it, and who you are going to serve

A few changes with grant application
- you have GOT to have 501(c)(3)
- that eliminates a lot of folks, maybe you are going to have it but in this case you HAVE to have it

Third page: description of proposed project
- provide evidence of your need which you propose to address
- describe the community you are going to target, be very specific
- address how the project fulfills your organization’s overall mission
- sometimes organizations become so involved serving very diverse interests, they lose focus on their actual mission statement
- focus tightly on your mission statement for this proposal

Big change this year: we are using the word “need” instead of “situation”

List specific activities for which you are seeking funding
- is this existing or new?

Staffing: will it require NEW people to come into your organization to fulfill this need?
- what are the credentials / degrees / certifications of your staff who will work on this project?

If you have a $20K budget, you are probably not a good candidate for this grant program
- a $100K grant would overwhelm your annual budget, and the requirement to expend those funds in 24 months would be unrealistic

Now telling the story of a past recipient which provides grief counseling services at a center, and wanted to move the provision of those services into schools

Sustainability is very important for every project

There are three key elements to consider when completing your grant:
- Need
- Impact
- Sustainability

IT IS INTERESTING TO NOTE NO AUDIO-VISUAL RESOURCES ARE BEING USED IN THIS PRESENTATION FOR 150 PEOPLE. WE ALL HAVE A STAPLED, PAPER HANDOUT.

Past beneficiaries are listed on the IMPACT Oklahoma website

Write as clearly as you can. Be concise, don’t ramble.

Question on “evidence” – do you want statistics?
- yes, statistics are great
- you can compare to other states, if you have proof something is working somewhere else, and it could work here, that is great
- remember these are volunteers reading these applications (some are professionals, some are homemakers, there is a real cross-section in terms of whether they are statistically oriented, or more emotionally

None of the volunteers will look up a website that you provide, so don’t plan on that when you write your grant application

Be sure to discuss your collaborators and partners for this initiative
- every organization here has some overlap with other groups
- those are good things, they show you are not trying to just keep your services within your walls
- collaboration is a great thing

Why is your organization uniquely qualified?
- have you done your homework?
- is that service not already here?
- is this a new thing?
- do you have the expertise?

How many of you are United Way agencies?
- really focusing on “outcome measurements” this year

How will evaluation be conducted?
- how will you know what you are doing will be successful?
- describe plans for sustainability
- have you sent a lot of other grants out to fund this?

How are YOU going to measure this?

Audience question: Is this a reimbursement grant?
Answer: No

You tell us what increments you need this money in, we are not going to dictate that
- we give 100% of our donor’s individual $1000 contributions in these grants

Are your boards supportive of your organization (page 5)
- how much do your board members give?
- how much do your board members give?
- 100% of your board should be GIVING to your organization
- We just want to know IF they gave, not how much they gave (Example: 80% of our board gives, 100% of our board gives, etc. You don’t have to break that down individually.)

Generally organizations have a minimum gift amount for board members, but in many cases board members far exceed those minimums

At our annual membership meeting on Sept 28th, one of your representatives has to deliver an 8 minute presentation before the member vote
- then the winners are announced! (that day)

200 people have attended our workshops this year

March 26th: Applications must be completed
- our goal was to have 3 finalists chosen, and Aug 23rd all site visits finished

We have (probably) 10 people on each committee, they will have guidance but we can’t tell you for sure what each committee will do / decide in terms of their preferences

Once committees have been formed, please do NOT ask committee members about what they read and review
- Each committee member has to sign a confidentiality agreement, maintaining the integrity of the organization and our members

Summary of expenses on page 6 is very standard

March 26th is the deadline, March 19th is NOT!!!! (But you can certainly get it in early!)

10 copies of everything – keep it simple.

THIS REALLY IS A GREAT FUNDING OPPORTUNITY FOR OKLAHOMA NON-PROFITS. IT ALSO REINFORCES FOR ME MY PERCEPTION THAT THERE ARE WONDERFUL SOURCES OF PRIVATE FUNDING HERE IN OKLAHOMA FOR WORTHWHILE PROJECTS. VERY EXCITING POSSIBILITIES FOR STORYCHASERS!

Technorati Tags:
grant, guidelines, nonprofit, oklahoma, workshop, impact, 2010, 501c3, budget

According to Curt Brown’s November 20, 2009 article for the Minneapolis / St Paul Star Tribune, “Racial tension running high after fight at Owatonna High School:”

Principal Don Johnson said the problems began when two white students wrote papers in recent weeks that were “inflammatory and very disrespectful.” One student handed out copies of his paper to friends, while the other posted his on a class blog. Both were suspended from the school of 1,600 students — about 100 of whom are Somali.

Johnson said that before the second student returned to school Monday, the student sent text messages over the weekend to white and Somali students that were “unapologetic and in your face.” He then walked into a common area Monday where more than 20 Somali students were gathered and sat down. An altercation erupted that sent one of the white students to the hospital for observation.

There are currently over 100 comments on Melissa Kaelin’s November 19, 2009 article for the Owatonna People’s Press, “School works to quell tensions.” I am not intimately familiar with the details of this situation, but based on what I heard today from a workshop participant and have read online, it sounds like blogging and social media were NOT “the problem” in this situation. Several commenters state racial tensions have been a problem at Owatonna High School for years. In this case, it sounds like students utilized social media tools at their fingertips (not limited to a class blog, but also including SMS text messaging) to share messages of hate and disrespect. The actions students took based on their apparently racist attitudes were and are “the problem” in Owatonna. We must reject hate in all its forms. When hate manifests itself, we need to address it, as I’m hopeful the community leaders in Owatonna are doing right now. It’s important not to blame social media when an incident like this takes place. Guns don’t murder. People do, however, and when they do those actions must be addressed.

As I wrote in my January 28th post, “Latest Facebook Situation in Nashville Highlights Need for Social Media Guidelines in Schools,” we need to catalyze conversations in our communities about social media guidelines.

Students or anyone else can use any tool for good or evil. We can use a shovel to plant a garden or kill a snake.

Drunk driving is a problem, but we don’t ban driving as a result of these poor choices some people unfortunately make. We tried banning alcohol in the United States, and it didn’t work out too well. We cannot and should not ban social media use in our societies, or in our schools. This happens in quasi-closed societies like modern China, but should not and must not happen in the United States.

This situation in Owatonna, Minnesota, would make an appropriate case study on why team blog MODERATION is essential in schools. See my blog post, “Blog comment moderation: How and Why?” for more on this topic.

Do you know of other situations in schools, besides this one in Owatonna, which highlight the importance of teachers turning ON blog post moderation, as well as comment moderation, on “official” class blogs?

Issues like these are NOT going to get away, and will (I’ll assert) only grow more common in the months ahead as social media websites gain even more popularity and usage. See my June 2006 post, “Blocking social networking sites is an insufficient response,” for more thoughts along these lines.

H/T to Jamie Fath for sharing the “drunk driving analogy” I used in this post.

Technorati Tags:
blog, blogger, comment, moderation, post, owatonna, minnesota, somali, racial, racism, fight, controversy

Question:
How can I turn on comment moderation on my Blogger blog? Why is this recommended?

Answer:
I recommend all educators turn on comment moderation for ALL blog posts and other social media websites they setup for use with K-12 students in the United States. There are several reasons for this:

1. Prevent cyberbullying: Sometimes people can be mean when they comment online. By turning on moderation, you (as the owner / administrator of your blog) must approve EVERY comment before it shows up “live” for others to see. This can prevent your students from being victims of cyberbullying, including vicious attacks from others. It also can prevent / stave off spam comments. We are using our “Constructive Commenting with Social Media” rubric in Technology 4 Teachers to intentionally encourage an ethic of responsible and respectful blog commenting. Unfortunately not all blog commenters will follow this ethic, but by turning on blog moderation you can PROTECT your students and learning community from those people and/or trolls.
2. Avoid a public relations nightmare: An unmoderated class blog can potentially cause problems. The situation at Owatonna High School (Minnesota) in November 2009 is a case in point. Given the litigious nature of our US society today, it makes sense to moderate posts before they “go live” on your class blog. The last thing you want in setting up and using a class blog is for a post on it to get parents, other students, or your entire community in an uproar. In cases like the one at Owatonna, the “problem” may not be “the blog,” but often people will blame technology in those situations. They also might blame the teacher who did NOT setup comment moderation. Some situations like this might be avoided by turning on comment moderation. If you are using the blog as a TEAM blog, where students also can post, you might want to consider using a blogging tool/platform which lets you MODERATE contributor posts. Wordpress does this (and is used by educational blog sites/services like EduBlogs) and so does Class Blogmeister. I’m not sure about Kidblog.
3. Monitor the conversation: If you setup and use a class blog, you have a responsibility and obligation (I would argue) as the teacher to monitor it and “keep the pulse” of the conversations taking place there. By monitoring the comments, you serve as the gatekeeper of conversations there and can more readily monitor what people are saying and WHO is saying them.

Technorati Tags:
blog, blogger, blogging, comment, education, moderation, school, teacher

This is a BIG deal. Crescent Public Schools is one of only FIVE public school districts in Oklahoma (out of 530+) which is currently implementing a 1:1 learning initiative. That will change later this spring with the announcement of ARRA-funded grantees for 1:1 learning projects, but even when those projects begin 1:1 learning will still be the exception rather than the rule in our state. Oklahoma State Board of Education members have heard about Crescent’s 1:1 program and want to learn more about it, as they should. What better way to learn about the program than traveling there for a meeting, and getting opportunities to visit with both students, teachers, and administrators?

I am crushed that flight schedules would not permit me to fly from Rochester, Minnesota this afternoon and get back to Oklahoma City tonight, so there is no way I could attend and storychase this event tomorrow. If you’re going, please share a blog post about what you see and hear, and tweet me a link as an @ reply. It would be great if we could have a student Storychaser team there on site, webcasting like Van Meter students in Iowa did last week from their state legislature!

My thoughts and best wishes go out to all the teachers, students, and administrators at Crescent Public Schools tomorrow morning! The Eyes of Oklahoma Are Upon You!

To read more about Crescent Public Schools, in addition to checking out their website see my posts “Oklahoma Students: Modeling Digital Education and 1 to 1 Learning” (Feb 2008), “Crescent Public Schools: A Beacon for Oklahoma Education” (Nov 2008), and “Leadership, Vision, and Student Achievement (Panel)” (Nov 2009). Dawn Danker wrote a great guest blog post here in July 2009 which addressed Crescent Public Schools and their 1:1 leadership which is also worth revisiting: “1:1 Teaching & Learning Session, OK SDE Leadership Conference.”

Technorati Tags:
1to1, leadership, oklahoma, politics, school, crescent

With the beginning of the New Year, the annual OSSBA/CCOSA Conference and Exposition will soon be here! This year’s conference will be August 27-29th at the Cox Convention Center in Oklahoma City.

Enclosed, please find the application for presentation for breakout sessions. Sessions can be 1 or 2 hours in length. New this year- we are also taking applications for pre-conference (3 hour) sessions on Friday morning. However, these sessions will be very limited in number.

We encourage anyone who has something valuable to share or showcase with school districts, board members or administrators to apply. A conference committee will review all applications and we will let you know if the application is accepted by May 1st.

We look forward to hearing your presentation proposal.

Thank you for your time.

Terri Silver
Director of Board Development
OSSBA
terris [at] ossba [dot] org

This information does not appear to be available yet on the OSSBA website. I’ve shared this as a read-only Google Doc, which you can (if desired) download locally to edit and submit via snail mail.

The deadline for proposal submissions is Monday, March 15, 2010. Note the following sentence at the end of the proposal form:

Each room will be set theater style with a head table and four chairs, screen, and podium microphone. OSSBA/CCOSA does NOT provide live Internet access in session rooms.

My work for CASTLE this week with K-12 principals in Minnesota has energized me to share more technology leadership workshops, presentations, and resources for our administrators in Oklahoma. I can think of multiple session possibilities for OSSBA, addressing things like our Storychasers Mobile Learning Collaborative, the Celebrate Oklahoma Voices digital storytelling project, the Unmasking the Digital Truth project to address misconceptions about content filtering in our schools, Social Media Guidelines for Educators, as well as other topics. (How about “Digital Magic Tricks for School Administrators?!”)

If you’re a member of our “Celebrate Oklahoma Voices” learning community, please consider sharing the digital stories you’ve created and your students have created with others at OSSBA. This is a great chance to open the eyes of school board members around our state to the constructive potentials of social media technologies.

Iowa K-12 students from Van Meter did a great job getting the attention of their legislators last week, and helping open their eyes to our need for legislative support of 1:1, project-based learning. We need to do the same thing in Oklahoma.

Cross-posted to the Storychasers blog and the COV Learning Community.

Technorati Tags:
conference, oklahoma, ossba, technology

If you happen to be reading this post at a school or in another location which currently blocks access to Flickr, here’s the text version:

Hey @wfryer looking for the 411 on eDiscovery: http://bit.ly/9hcxe9 (your wiki) Bottom line: do schools have to archive STUDENT email?

Before replying, I need to add a “standard disclaimer” statement which I always try to do regarding legal issues: I am not a lawyer, and the information below should not be construed as legal advice. If you need legal advice, consult a lawyer who is credentialed to practice law in your locality. The information presented here is my understanding and perception, based on my limited knowledge, understanding and experiences.

Disclaimer over.

My short answer is, “If the school district provides the email service for students in-house, then the same archival responsibility present for staff email is in effect for student email. If a third-party service / website provides student email (for instance, students are using Gmail, Yahoo mail or Hotmail accounts for their own email accounts that are not “official” school accounts) then the district is NOT required to archive those email messages.” The best open resource I’ve seen written to date on this topic is Scott Bauries‘ October 2008 post on the Edjurist blog, “The E-Discovery Amendments And Electronic Technologies In Schools (Email And Local Documents.)” In that post, Scott wrote:

These suggestions might cause some of you to ask what you should do if you customarily use Web 2.0 tools such as Twitter. As I pointed out in the other two posts in this series, only information within your custody or control (or the custody or control of the school district) is discoverable. It is my understanding that any actual archiving of Web 2.0 material typically occurs at a third-party vendor site, and it would be that third-party vendor’s responsibility to save it if it becomes relevant to litigation. If you do host your Web 2.0 content on your system, though, it is likely that you must save it if a litigation hold is issued. Also, if your Web 2.0 tools cause information to be placed into your Temporary Internet Files or some other temporary storage area on your hard drive, you should not actively delete the information because it is in your custody and control. Your school district’s attorneys may also want you to disable any automatic “clearing” of the temporary files until further notice.

It is that laws in the United States today may make it easy for school officials to take the following position: “We’re not going to provide any student email accounts, because we don’t want to deal with the archival responsibilities and other “general messiness” (as well as work for the IT staff) which that entails.”

There are many problems with this position, of course, and one of the most basic is how educators in the school district can help students master the ISTE NETS-S without email accounts?

My advice to schools on this topic is to adopt and implement Google Apps for Education (it’s free) and utilize one of several archiving solutions. There are lots of reasons why Google Apps for Education is a great idea. When it comes to email archival, the current Google Education Edition FAQ states on this topic:

Google Apps for Education gives schools the ability to filter, monitor or archive mail using our Google Message Security and Compliance Solutions.
You can learn more about these solutions here.

We offer a 66% discount for educational institutions and non-profit organizations.

Alternatively you could choose to implement your own filtering, monitoring or archiving solution using an email gateway. This gateway allows your school to route all mail into and out of our system through your network. This gives you the ability to filter, monitor, and archive in any way you see fit.

We have developed a guide on how to implement a Mail Gateway, for more details, see this page.

We have a number of partners who can offer this service if you do not want to implement it yourself. You can navigate here learn more about the partners.

That’s my 2¢ on eDiscovery requirements and archiving student email. Remember, however, I’m not a lawyer!

Edlaw folks, what say you to Kevin’s question?!

I’ll add the answers and links here to the list of resources on the e-Discovery page of the Unmasking the Digital Truth project wiki.

Remember the DURATION of time schools are required to archive email may vary by state, and archival requirements for specific emails can change when a “litigation hold notice” is received. See the previously reference post by Scott Bauries, as well as his December 2008 post, “Discovery Rules And State Education Laws,” for more details about these issues.

On this topic and other related legal issues in schools, you might also check out my post from METC 2007, “Technology in the Schools: Policy, Privacy and Practical Issues for Teachers, IT and Others.”

Full Disclosure: Per my blog disclosure policy, I’m a Google Certified Teacher, I’ve drank the Google kool-aid, and I think it tastes wonderful. I receive no financial rewards if your school district or you personally choose to use Google products. At this point, I don’t even own any Google stock! I certainly should, but don’t yet…

Technorati Tags:
education, email, gmail, law, legal, school, student, technology, ediscovery, archive, rules, googleapps, postini

Show Notes:

1. I Witnessed History Today – blog post of principal Deron Durflinger about the student presentation on 28 Jan 2010 for Iowa legislators
2. The Think, Lead, Serve Wiki – Van Meter website about the 28 Jan 2010 Iowa legislature event
3. Blog of Deron Durflinger (Principal of Van Meter Secondary Schools)
4. Blog of John C Carver (Superintendent of Van Meter Schools, Iowa)
5. Blog of the Van Meter Schools Elementary Library
6. 1:1 Schools Team Blog
7. Iowa 1:1 Schools Blog
8. 1:1 Iowa Schools Wiki
9. Van Meter Schools Central Wiki
10. John C Carver on Twitter: @johnccarver
11. Deron Durflinger on Twitter: @derondurflinger
12. Dillon’s Rule in Iowa (English WikiPedia)
13. Westside Community Schools (Omaha, Nebraska)
14. Skype (English WikiPedia)
15. Around the World with Skype by Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano (K12Online09)
16. Alrededor del Mundo con Skype by Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano (K12Online09)
17. Video-Conferencing It’s Easy, Free and Powerful by Brian Crosby (K12Online08)
18. UCEA Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE), Iowa State University
19. Our workshop curriculum links today

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If you have not already, be sure to read Iowa principal Deron Durflinger’s post from last Friday, “I Witnessed History Today.” How can we not only get the attention of our state legislators to recognize the power of 1:1 computing, but change their perceptions about our NEED for project-based 1:1 learning environments NOW in our schools? The Iowa students in grades 5-12 who testified for legislators last week answered this question powerfully. We need to let our students SHOW and DEMONSTRATE the power of connected, hyperlinked, media-rich learning for older, less digitally-saavy adults elected to lead our states and nation. Check out some of the social media conversations surrounding last Friday’s event by searching on Twitter with the hashtag, #vanmeter. Join the #vanmeter Twitter shout-out by adding your name and Twitter link to their ThinkLeadServe wiki.

Last Friday’s experience for Iowa learners in the statehouse demonstrates many things, but one which readily comes to mind after seeing some of their video is the public relations utility of equipping students to be capable webcasters and Storychasers!

Our group of principals in Minnesota I’m working with today for CASTLE is hoping to Skype with Deron later this afternoon to learn more.

Technorati Tags:
change, school, student, webcast, iowa

Given my keen interest in OER and high quality digital curriculum sources generally, I was enthused to learn this evening (thanks to a tweet by Bud Hunt) the outstanding Core Knowledge Curriculum is being released / published free to the world:

Over at Education Week, Catherine Gewertz has advance word on a big piece of upcoming news: After more than two decades of publishing and distributing its K-8 Core Knowledge Sequence exclusively to Core Knowledge schools, the Foundation is planning to make its proprietary curriculum available for free online… The move to common standards “could be bigger than any other reform I can think of,” Core Knowledge founder E.D. Hirsch, Jr. tells Gewertz. “We’ve had a hell of an incoherent system. It’s been based on a how-to theory, and not enough attention has been paid to the build-up of knowledge. This is a moment when we really could change the direction.”

The learning revolution marches on.

For more background and resources related to OER, check out the podcast “Free Content + Open Tools + Massive Collaboration = Learning for All by Karen Fasimpaur” from NCCE 2008.

Technorati Tags:
curriculum, oer, open, core, knowledge, hirsch, mit, courseware

Clicking on a different part of the interactive body map displays related statistics, like these about the brain:

Searching online activates more brain regions than reading printed words.
On average, multitaskers spend 11 minutes on a project before switching to another, typically changing tasks within a project every three minutes.
It takes about 15 minutes to return with full attention to a serious mental task after you responded to an e-mail or instant message.
Video gaming in moderation can help develop improved pattern recognition, more systematic thinking and better executive skills.

Website articles are filled with links to references and additional materials. Browsing through the available videos, I found the following two particularly compelling.

Todd Oppenheimer, author of “The Flickering Mind,” argues that computer classes should be treated like “shop class” in our schools. Work habits are KEY, and schools MUST help students acquire these skills. (1:06)

In Marc Prensky’s interview montage titled “Education 2.0” by the digital_nation producers, he asserts students want to engage in interactive, hands-on collaborative projects which have a focus on changing their communities and changing our world. While I’m not a big fan of Prensky’s digital native / immigrant dichotomy I do agree with his endorsement of project-based, engaged learning in this video. (4:31)

Thanks to a Facebook post this weekend by Marco Torres, I learned about “What’s Your Issue:”

A Global Initiative and Competition for the next generation of leaders and social entrepreneurs – Seeking global thinkers 14 to 24… For 2010, we are looking for 3-minute videos with Issue & Solution format. Express your issue and propose an innovative solution-project. Winners presented to Obama administration, on Best Buy screens across the planet, and at VIP reception and Awards Ceremony hosted by Sony Pictures in Los Angeles

This sixty second YouTube spot summarizes the project and contest. If you have any of the “digital natives” Prensky is talking about in the previous video clip in your classroom or household, you might give them a heads-up on this contest.

Technorati Tags:
digital, education, interactive, learning, map, nation, oppenheimer, pbs, students, technology, native, natives, frontline, digital_nation, prensky

These are the specs on the first version of this movie I recorded directly with QuickTime Player 7 and my USB webcam:

These are the specs of the second version, which I converted before uploading using MPEG Streamclip:

I see differences in the data rates and sizes for these videos, but everything else looks very similar. Looking at YouTube’s video codec guidelines, nothing is jumping out at me that would explain the differences in YouTube’s transcoding of these video versions this evening.

I need to get my built-in iSight camera fixed on my Macbook, because I’m sure the initial audio sync problem was caused by the slower USB webcam I used. I’m mystified why the first uploaded video had a MORE pronounced audio sync problem on YouTube, however. Have you seen these types of audio sync problems with videos you’ve recorded and uploaded to YouTube? Any suggestions or theories as to why I had these problems tonight?

Technorati Tags:
apple, audio, record, transcode, video, youtube, sync, problem

After you’ve grouped some polls and renamed the group as desired, click on the vertical arrows to the left of each poll and move it (if desired) into a group or different group.

Joyce Valenza has a wealth of polling tools and options listed in her “New Tools” workshop wiki. See my January 21, 2010, post, “Taking class attendance with cell phone SMS messages and PollEverywhere,” for more background on this topic.

Full disclosure: I’m not affiliated with PollEverywhere. As described in my blog disclosure policy, I have been given a free “Presenter” level account by PollEverywhere which I use frequently here on my blog and in conference keynotes/presentations.

Technorati Tags:
poll, survey, polling, polleverywhere

Last February in the opening keynote for the eTechOhio conference, I shared a similar video which I took with my son as part of my presentation introduction. Taking and sharing “on the sled videos” has become a winter tradition for us! (If you just have to do something twice to call it “a tradition!”)

I continue to be amazed by the “publish at will” environment in which those who are digitally connected today can live. It is both sad and instructive that so many of our schools continue to operate as if this environment of video and media sharing does not exist and will simply go away if it is ignored long enough.

Technorati Tags:
oklahoma, publish, sled, snow, storm, video, youtube, sledding, ice

Before Apple’s big announcement today, I made a prediction that Apple’s device would disrupt the textbook industry and consequently education, particularly language education, as we know it. Apple has built its iPad on the same popular platform that runs both the iPod Touch and the iPhone and has added a bookstore to its iTunes application called iBooks. Perhaps the next edition of our textbooks, however, won’t necessarily be found in the iBooks section , but rather in the Apps section. The advent of the iPad could quite possibly cause us to re-envision our educational materials as ecosystems that seamlessly direct text, audio, video, social networking and gaming toward a singular set of learning outcomes rather than just an e-book. Remember that when the iPhone was first launched, it did not include an Apps store, so the amazing functionality of the device was not entirely realized until developers rethought previous assumptions about the phone. So, too, I predict, will we see new kinds of learning affordances over time via the iPad.

I responded by writing:

I hope you’re right about the iPad and Apple’s emerging role as disruptors of the textbook industry, and I’ve shared similar hopes/predictions on my blog too. I think Apple’s view of DRM is key to this question, however. Timothy Lee’s post yesterday, “The case against the iPad,” is a good read on this topic since he takes issue with Apple’s vision of sharing in our web 2.0 world. At this point, I don’t think we see Apple truly embracing the disruptive power of Open Educational Resources. I do acknowledge that Apple is a corporation naturally focused on quarterly profits, just like every other corporation, but as a company it has historically stood for values far bigger than “just” profits. I’d love to see Apple officially embrace technologies which support OER. I’m concerned that most the Apple advocacy I’ve seen in the past year for iTunesU is done because as a company Apple wants everyone to get an iTunes account with a credit card. That was something Steve Jobs mentioned in his presentation this week. That comment was significant, as well as the opening comments about how many billions a year Apple makes. I think Apple stands at an important crossroads when the textbook industry COULD be constructively disrupted, and OER could play a HUGE role in that process. Hopefully this will happen, but I think Apple will need to place emphasis on OER formally and not just promote the iBooks store.

I love your concept of instructional materials not “just” as an eBook but as an interactive app. I’ve been utilizing different tools this semester in my own course to create “learning portals,” and I would love it if every one of my students had a mobile device which could access our “course app.” It’s safe to say many of my students are overwhelmed with all the new tools and “places” to find content that we’re using this semester. I think an app could really focus and simplify this for them. This fall I learned about mobilAP, and would be intrigued to use it or something else like it to build an interactive mobile web app I could use with my classes. I particularly would like/need functionality where RSS feeds could be added to the app. Are you aware of other free tools/platforms like mobilAP, or other reasonably priced software tools which would support his kind of “classroom app building?”

Technorati Tags:
apple, itunes, textbook, oer, disrupt, disruption, industry

From time to time I need to use a webcam, however, so I’ve been using the High Definition USB 2.0 Hue Webcam at these times. Barbara Lindsey asked me today during my live Q & A session for my T4T class about the webcam I am using, so I thought I’d post about it here.

Do you have a favorite webcam you like? I wish I could take advantage of the Hue Webcam’s HD capabilities in webcasts, but Ustream to date has just supported Windows computers for HiDef webcasting. I just learned Ustream now offers a free and commercial “Ustream Producer” application, for both Windows and Mac, which supports HiDef webcasts if you pay $200 for the Pro version. Livestream has a beta version of Procaster for Mac but I haven’t tried it yet. I think I’d have to pay for a monthly commercial account on Livestream to webcast in High Def. I don’t think that is the case with Ustream.

Technorati Tags:
apple, webcam, isight

One of the project options I’ve given my students for this VoiceThread assignment is contributing to the Great Book Stories project. You’re welcome to not only view and use the 60+ stories already in “Great Book Stories,” but also contribute your own! In addition to embedding these screencasts here, I also shared these on our T4T FAQ blog. I also cross-posted these to my YouTube channel, which is something the free screencasting website Screenr automates with just a few mouse clicks. (If Screenr goes away, it’s good to know these screencasts are still available somewhere else too!)

1 – Create a free Educator Account on VoiceThread (cross-posted to YouTube)

2 – Locate copyright friendly images with Compfight.com for an educational media project (link to Compfight – cross-posted to YouTube)

3 – Locate copyright friendly images with Flickrstorm for an educational media project (link to Flickrstorm – cross-posted to YouTube)

4 – Part 1 of 3: Creating a VoiceThread (images) – (cross-posted to YouTube)

5 – Part 2 of 3: Creating a VoiceThread (comments) – (cross-posted to YouTube)

6 – Part 3 of 3: Creating a VoiceThread (sharing) – (cross-posted to YouTube)

7 – Embedding a VoiceThread on Blogger – (cross-posted to YouTube)

Technorati Tags:
class, howto, instructions, screencast, storytelling, t4t, teachers, technology, tutorial, voicethread

Taylor Cummings was a popular basketball star on the verge of graduating from one of Nashville’s most prestigious high schools until a post on Facebook got him expelled. After weeks of butting heads with his coaches, Taylor, 17, logged on to the popular social networking site from home Jan. 3. He typed his frustrations for the online world to see: “I’ma kill em all. I’ma bust this (expletive) up from the inside like nobody’s ever done before.”

Taylor said the threat wasn’t real. School officials said they can’t take any chances.

But the case highlights the boundaries between socializing in person at school and online at home. It also calls into question the latitude school officials have in disciplining students for their conduct online.

I think Jaime Sarrio’s choice of words in this introductory sentence is misleading. A “post on Facebook” isn’t what “got Taylor Cummings expelled from school.” Taylor’s decision to threaten the life of a school coach was the action which led to expulsion. The word choice of reporter Sarrio suggests the social media technology is to blame in this situation. Like many other scenarios, however, a social media platform provides documented evidence of inappropriate communication. The genesis of this problem does not lie with Facebook or social media more generally. As I stated in Wednesday’s post about the Pope encouraging priests to blog, in many cases “transparency is instructive and helpful, rather than undesirable.” That is the same point I made in my August 2008 post, “Josh Jarboe YouTube video controversy shows the value of transparent, publish-at-will technologies.”

There certainly ARE and should continue to be limits on the punishments school officials mete out in response to students’ off campus behavior with social media technologies. This case involving Taylor Cummings, who reportedly had a public Facebook page and was threatening school employees with physical violence, is very different from a case like that of Churubusco High School (Indiana) student athletes who were punished for slumber party photos they posted to a private Facebook profile over the summer. I wrote about this in November 2009 in the post, “Photographic privacy is over.”

What is your school doing NOW to proactively address these kinds of issues? Do you have a set of social media guidelines yet? Each of our schools do NOT simply need new “policies” to address social media issues, we need guidelines which can catalyze ongoing conversations about these issues and the themes of digital citizenship, digital reputation, and online ethics among all our school constituents. I have several good links to videos and other posts related to these issues on my T4T class overview under the heading, “Digital Footprints, Privacy and Information Disclosure.”

Karen Montgomery and I started a group on Facebook in the summer of 2009 called, “Social Media Guidelines for Educators” following our presentation at the National Educational Computing Conference in Washington D.C. about this topic. The group description is:

The focus of this group is to discuss and collaboratively contribute to the conversation surrounding social media guidelines for schools and school districts. The goal of the group is for educators to frame discussions not about which “cool” Web 2.0 tools should be used in schools, but to suggest and help craft guidelines for administrators, educators, parents and students which support the use of social media within and outside of the school day.

The wiki “Social Media Guidelines for Schools” includes examples of guidelines schools are using to proactively educate students, parents, educators, and other community constituents about the issues which WILL INEVITABLY ARISE in our communities as more people utilize social media platforms for communication. My presentation with Karen at NECC 2009, “R U In My Space? Y Have A Social Media Policy Guideline?” is available as a free audio-only podcast.

Karen and I are planning to include a chapter on “Social Media Guidelines for Schools” in our forthcoming book, “Powerful Ingredients for Blended Learning.” Drafts of several of our chapters are available on our Powerful Ingredients wiki.

Hat tip to Derek Baird for sharing the link to this article via his social bookmarks. On the topic of Facebook and youth, be sure to see Derek’s post from yesterday, “Study: Facebook and MySpace Enhance the Positive Relationships Kids Already Have.”

Technorati Tags:
facebook, policy, school, student, expel, guideline

At 6:43 of his presentation, Steve said:

All of us use laptops and smartphones now. Everybody uses a laptop and/or a smartphone.

That may be true in Cupertino, but it’s certainly not true here in Oklahoma. I use an iPhone and a MacBook Pro, and we’ve got LOTS of iPhone users around, but smartphones are FAR from ubiquitous. In our schools, we only have five public schools in our state (I think) currently implementing 1:1 laptop programs. That’s going to change with the award of new ARRA funds in February, but it will still be a FRACTION of the students in our state. Many people may WANT to use laptops and smartphones, but we’re a long way from being able to say everyone does.

The second statements with which I take issue were Steve’s comments about netbooks. From 8:15 – 8:45 of his presentation, he said the following:

Now some people have thought that [new device in between a laptop and a smartphone] was a netbook. The problem is, netbooks aren’t better at anything. [applause] They are slow, they have low-quality displays, and they run clunky old PC software. So they are not better than a laptop at anything, they are just cheaper. They are just cheap laptops. And we don’t think they are a third category device.

My netbook is GREAT at doing a lot of things. First of all, it’s very light and easy to carry. That’s a BIG deal. Second, it’s great on the web. Google Chrome runs slick as a whistle on it– VERY fast. And as I “work the web,” using tools like Google Docs, Google Reader, Diigo, etc, it performs just as fast as our family’s Macbooks and my MacBook Pro. I definitely love having a larger screen to work on when I’m home, and I don’t see my netbook as replacement for my own MacBook Pro laptop, but they definitely ARE a “third category device” between a smartphone and a laptop. For many people (particularly K-12 students) netbooks can be their “only” computing device. Students can do creative, collaborative, compelling things on netbooks — not “just” surf the web. Has Steve used Google Docs himself much? It’s a far, far cry from “clunky old PC software.”

If you read my January 25th post, “Predictions for the iSlate on Wednesday: Apple Gambling Big to Redefine Digital Literacy,” you probably know the reasons I was “under-whelmed” by today’s iPad announcements. No forward facing camera for videoconferencing and no multi-tasking functionality. Perhaps most significantly, no vision for the iPad as an entirely untethered device that can make it a laptop replacement. It’s a jumbo iPhone which looks great for surfing the web, but not for revolutionizing 1:1 learning in schools. That isn’t the target market with the device. Apple has built a very sexy eBook reader and web appliance, but it’s very expensive. That price point is a VERY big deal.

The netbook, on the other hand, IS a revolutionary device that, in Steve’s words, is “a cheap laptop.” Today’s cheap laptop was, however, yesterday’s dream computer. Every student in our schools doesn’t need an iPad, even though they might love using one. Students DO, however, need a netbook, and their teachers need full-size laptops along with a LOT of professional development support. (Our Storychasers Mobile Collaborative recommends Macbooks for teachers, btw.)

Commoditization of digital classroom learning devices is essential. OLPC knows and embodies this. Apple does not, or chooses not to target that goal.

As I wrote on Monday, I continue to love Apple and their products. I love Apple’s passion and historic vision for empowering people to change the world. I’m on that proverbial Mardi Gras float. I’m as enthusiastic a Mac user as you’re likely to find anywhere, who is not actually employed by the company.

When it comes to 1:1 computing, however, I believe digital learning devices need to replace pencils. Netbooks can (and with visionary leadership) will do that very soon. The iPad won’t.

Technorati Tags:
apple, computer, ebook, education, ipad, iphone, ipod, jobs, learning, steve, tablet, technology, touch

I really liked how Etherpad provides a shared document space, with everyone having their own text color automatically, as well as the chat area. The design and functionality reminds me of the Mac-only software SubEthaEdit, which I used a few times with collaborative teams in 2003-2005. The chat window on the right side is ok, but it’s great the focus of the collaborative space is a shared document. I used this to better effect in my second class than in the first today.

The most amazing thing about Etherpad, however, is the “time slider” view which allows anyone to re-create the document collaboration as it happened. You can move a slider at the top of the Etherpad and dynamically show the change over time in the document as edits were made. This is AMAZING!

I am glad Google opted to release Etherpad as an open source project, but I certainly don’t have the geek-quotient to take that code and put it on my own hosted server. I’d love to have my own installation of Etherpad to use with students in my classes as well as in presentations / workshops. I’m wondering if this is something I could affordably outsource using a site like RentACoder?

Has anyone setup Etherpad for educational use on your own server, or do you know of someone who has? What’s the best way to go about getting Etherpad setup privately on a hosted server account? (Like Siteground or Bluehost)

Learn more about backchannels in Scott H. Snyder’s 2008 K-12 Online Conference presentation, “Back-channels in the Classroom.”

Have you had experiences, good or bad, using backchannels with students in 1:1 settings? Do you have other backchannel recommendations in addition to Chatzy and Etherpad? Scott referenced Backnoise, Chatterous, and TodaysMeet in his presentation, but I haven’t used any of those or seen them in action yet to form opinions.

Technorati Tags:
chat, collaborate, collaboration, etherpad

“If people live in cyberspace then the Church ought to be in cyberspace” says Father Brian Paulson S.J. a Jesuit priest in Chicago. Paulson will soon head up a community of about 80 priests and seminarians, some of whom blog, and one of his concerns with the Pope’s mandate is quality. He worries that blogs that don’t pay close enough attention to the Church’s teachings or are written poorly will turn people away rather than attract them.

If priests are blogging heresy they are almost certainly preaching it too. I’d offer that sort of transparency is instructive and helpful, rather than undesirable.

Open the windows. Bring forth thy blogs.

Randy’s presentation tonight was interspersed with interactive lessons he facilitated in the “shared space” which was the back of the school auditorium. It was a very experiential, kinesthetic learning time! Randy’s work this week is part of the Kennedy Center’s “Changing Education Through the Arts” (CETA) program. Randy explained the differences tonight between Arts curriculum, Arts enhancement, and Arts integration. Arts curriculum involves formal classes in the visual arts, learning dance, vocal music, instrumental music, etc. Randy said only 7% of all schools nationally (in the U.S.) have a dedicated drama teacher, and the vast majority of those are secondary schools. Very rarely do you find an elementary school with a full time drama teacher. Wilson Elementary has one, and we met him tonight after the program! Wilson is the only elementary school in all of Oklahoma City Public Schools with a full time drama teacher.

Arts enhancement is using something from the arts to help enhance learning, but largely in a superficial way. Randy said learning to sing “The Fifty Nifty United States” might be an example of arts enhancement in social studies.

Arts integration is different, and that is the focus of the program at Wilson Elementary. The Kennedy Center Teaching Artists define arts integration as:

an APPROACH to TEACHING in which students construct and demonstrate UNDERSTANDING through an ART FORM. Students engage in a CREATIVE PROCESS which CONNECTS an art form and another subject area and meets EVOLVING OBJECTIVES in both.

Randy pointed out the connection between the arts and a content area is always NATURAL as well as SIGNIFICANT in arts integration. Not so for “arts enhancement,” as I’ve seen and experienced previously many times.

This evening was a wonderful experience for all the members of our family. How often do we have chances like this to actively learn together, and especially to dance together?! Not nearly often enough! The last time I remember dancing in public with my kids was at my cousin’s wedding in September 2008. We had a blast, and my six year old even showed everyone some breakdancing moves we didn’t know she’d picked up somewhere! Clearly we need to find ways to get out and dance together more often! Thankfully this family program at Wilson Elementary tonight provided a great opportunity for this, along with a lot of additional learning about the school’s unique approach to learning.

I think the coaching / integration model of the Kennedy Center PD program is really valuable to consider, not only in the context of arts integration but also thinking about technology integration. Rather than have presenters come share workshops and then teach model lessons in classrooms for teachers, Randy comes for three days and works intensively with SIX teachers. Together, they plan and lead integrated arts lessons together with students which focus heavily on interpretive dance.

What a fantastic learning model, and what an amazing school!

Read more about Randy’s work for the Kennedy Center in the October 2009 article, “Kingsley students use dance to learn about plant cycles,” sharing about his work in Iowa. The 1.5 minute video “Moved to Learn” is not embeddable but is still available on the same website. It includes interviews with Randy and Iowa students with whom he worked. Randy’s current biography (PDF) is linked from the Kennedy Center’s Professional Development homepage.

One other noteable resource Randy referenced this evening is Anne Green Gilbert’s website, Creativedance.org. The articles page under resources includes PDF versions of articles including, “Movement is the Key” and “Boys Need Dance.” In the first article Anne writes:

During the 1977 school year, 250 students from four elementary schools studied language arts concepts through movement and dance activities for twenty weeks. The third grade students involved in the study increased their MAT scores by 13% from fall to spring, while the district-wide average showed a decrease of 2%! The primary grade project students also showed a great improvement in test scores. Most significant was that the research showed a direct relationship between the amount of movement used by the classroom teacher and the percentage increase of students’ test scores. The classroom showing the least increase in test scores used movement fifteen minutes per week for learning language arts concepts. In the classroom that showed the greatest increase, the teacher integrated movement and language arts concepts fifteen minutes per day.

Certainly we shouldn’t (and likely aren’t) motivated to change teaching practices solely by stories of increasing test scores. In the day in which we live, however, citations like this can get the attention of some people who might otherwise pass off arts integration as “districting fluff.”

My closing thought is:

As for me and my family, we will take the creative path, for it is the path less traveled and the one far more likely to produce long term learning as well as lifelong skills, with large doses of fun and joy thrown in as well.

Wilson Elementary rocks.

As Gandalf The White said in “The Return of the King:”

The board is set. The pieces are moving.

Technorati Tags:
arts, city, elementary, integration, okcps, oklahoma, oklahomacity, wilson

I have no inside information. All of the predictions below are purely speculative. If you don’t want to read yet another blog post about what someone thinks the Apple tablet will be like based on nothing more than intuition and guesswork, click away now. No purchase required. Void where prohibited.

That post by John as well as Philip Elmer-DeWitt’s New Year’s post, “Tablet: Big iPhone or thin MacBook?” are two of the best I’ve read to date attempting to stare into the crystal ball of Apple’s computing future. I shared some of my ideas last fall in my Oct 1 post, “Apple iPad rumors, Netbooks, and Commodifcation,” my Christmas day post, “Get ready for an exciting year to read (and share) media,” and my Jan 5th post, “Access your notes even after your textbook subscription expires.” To those ideas, I’ll add the following conjectures.

1. iSlate Videoconferencing

Ever since I saw Steve Jobs demo the iPhone at MacWorld in January 2007, I’ve been dreaming of ubiquitous videoconferencing with a portable device MUCH smaller and lighter than a laptop. The iPhone has the camera on the wrong side for videoconferencing. I don’t think that will be the case with the iSlate. I predict we’ll see a built-in webcam, just like we do on Mac portables today, and it will have full support for videoconferencing with both iChat and Skype. I think the device will be sold with optional cellular service, but it won’t be a lock-in for AT&T only. More providers will be able to sell service on the device. Either way, with 3G or 4G cellular data connectivity or with Wifi, I predict the iSlate will revolutionize how we think about videoconferencing. This is a BIG deal, and I think it will be a revolution.

2. Redefining Textbooks with Interactive Multimedia

As I guessed in my Christmas day post, “Get ready for an exciting year to read (and share) media,” I think iTunes U is going to play a pivotal role in the new iSlate’s success. The tea leaves are pretty clear to see, if you have watched the rise of iTunes U functionality in the latest versions of iTunes. Every Apple rep I’ve heard at conferences has been touting iTunes U. This isn’t an accident, in my view, it’s part of Apple’s strategy to focus market attention on what WILL hopefully be a revolution in the textbook industry. I hopefully predict Apple will succeed in disintermediating the textbook publishing industry the way it has opened the door to digital music publishing and purchasing. I predict we’ll see multiple textbook publishers share the stage with Steve on Wednesday, announcing not JUST the availability of digitized eBooks on the iSlate (like the Kindle and Sony eReader offer, essentially) but truly MULTIMEDIA eTexts and INTERACTIVE books. I’m betting the iSlate will be an ideal publishing platform for the Technology 4 Teachers curriculum I’m continuing to write/develop this semester, based on the Powerful Ingredients for Blended Learning framework I’m co-developing with Karen Montgomery. Lecturecasting portals like the one I’ve created this term for T4T are going to be ideal for the iTablet.

3. No iTunes Sync Required

Philip Elmer-DeWitt asked on New Year’s day, “Tablet: Big iPhone or thin MacBook?” My prediction is: Definitely a thin MacBook. One of the biggest limitations of the iPhone and iPod Touch currently is they have to be tethered to a desktop or laptop computer at some point. Although Apple has made great strides to permit media to be downloaded on mobile devices, and MANY more functionalities of both the iPhone and iPod Touch no longer require a desktop sync, that is still required for those devices. They are designed as additions-to an existing computer, not replacements for it. I predict the forthcoming iSlate will be a computer replacement. You won’t need to sync it. Of course it will be beautiful and fast. Sadly, it will also be pretty expensive. No commoditized netbook here. But it will be fundamentally differentiated from the iPod Touch and the iPhone in that it won’t require a sync. I predict it will backup to a desktop or laptop computer, but it will alternatively backup to an online service like Mozy or a Time Capsule WiFi base station.

So those are my predictions. Why have I titled this post, “Apple Gambling Big to Redefine Digital Literacy?” Because with the iSlate, Apple is poised to redefine how we think about computers. The iPhone IS a computer, but it is fundamentally still a tethered device. Computers are untethered. They don’t require docking or syncing. They are autonomous. After Wednesday’s presentation, I think we’re going to be looking at tablet devices in new ways, not as “mere” eBook readers, but rather as fully-functional computers. Why are you and I going to want an iTablet, even if we already have one or more laptop computers and portable devices? Because the iSlate will be a device with which we’ll interact in fundamentally different ways that we do now with either a smartphone or a laptop. We’ll pull it out to read the news, communicate with the world, and watch video, but we’ll also CREATE video and edit it just like we would on a desktop computer. The iSlate will replace our current computers, and that is why it will help redefine digital literacy.

Bottom line, of course: Everyone who sees us use an iSlate will think we are REALLY cool. Apple makes being a geek amazingly chic.

Time will tell, we just have 2 days to wait!

One more note. I love Apple, and I love the core values it has stood for historically. Want to know what those are in sixty seconds? This ten year old video of Steve Jobs talking about core values gives you the answer. Passionate, dedicated people CAN and DO change the world. That’s me, and that’s you. It’s us. Viva la revolucion!

H/T to Fake Steve Jobs.

P.S. By Chris Foresman agrees with my prediction on the multiple cellular players prediction, in his post yesterday for Ars Technica, “Days before iTablet-palooza, the rumor hits keep comin’.” I actually read it after penning this post.

Technorati Tags:
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Larry Stone hosted our meeting tonight.

Tim’s company now builds 95% of client websites with Wordpress as a full-blown CMS

There’s a plug-in to integrate a Ning Network into your Wordpress blog
- ANYONE KNOW THIS LINK? ALL I COULD FIND WAS THIS 2007 POST FROM THE NING BLOG, and that plugin just lets your WP commenters use Ning authentication

First presentation: Tim Priebe – timjpriebe.com

Wanting to use plug-ins that let people simply and easily modify their own site code, but maintain pleasing graphical look

WP sIFR (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement)

With Google Chrome, you can right click / control click a page element and choose INSPECT ELEMENT

We don’t have the right to upload TrueType fonts directly to the web, so we had to look for other options

Use website sIFR Generator (www.sifrgenerator.com)
- install the plug-in
- create your fonts
- you have options to generate subsets of a font, rather than the entire font set

Javascript replaces text headings with Flash text
- for non-flash devices like iPhones, normal font texts are displayed

WP sIFR creates separate instances of SWF files for each time it’s used
- this slows things down and is a problem with this WP plug-in, the native version of sIFR creates 1 version per application

Now hearing from Bruce Jackson: Pitfalls to avoid in a custom Wordpress site

- I work on the backend of our websites mostly
- we were sent a Wordpress file to install on our servers at one point
- this was a case of the technical guys looking at a Wordpress site from the user perspective

creative.mbopartners.com

Don’t hide dynamic code
- we couldn’t use “Contact Form” plug-in, but they were using a custom code method
- those developers had hidden the code in the page template page.php
- this was very problematic because we spent half a day just looking for this code

Don’t reuse obviously
- example of someone using refer-a-friend.php plugin that left code from the Hello Dolly plugin

Don’t leave test data intact
- pages
- posts
- contact forms
- Lorem ipsum

Because this group left lots of test pages on the site, it was sometimes hard to discern what content to keep and delete (the stuff that had been created just for testing)

This was further complicated when we received new versions of the site AGAIN that needed clean-up

We ran the site through websiteoptimization.com to check the page
- several of the pages were 500K total to load, took 13 sec on a T1 line
- we ran the images through PhotoShop for optimization and that reduced total page size to about 35K

Needed to turn Apache Compression on, because larger javascripts were loading
- that is not on the Wordpress side of things, but can result in HUGE savings for time

Don’t Hard-code page numbers
- use page descriptors instead
- using hard-code page numbers can make it very difficult for others to change the site

Don’t avoid sidebar widgets
- in the case of our site, a webform was hard-coded in
- we wanted that to be a widget, but it wasn’t created that way!

Don’t customize public plug-ins and leave them as the original plug-ins
- otherwise your users will get the “upgrade automatically” and when they do, they will break your site (or at least the functionality of that custom plugin)

Check out “Contact Form 7″ plug-in

THIS MAKES ME THINK IT WOULD BE GOOD TO SEE A LIST OF REQUIREMENTS FOR A WORDPRESS DEVELOPER, THINGS WHICH ARE BEST-PRACTICES THAT YOU’D LIKE A DEVELOPER TO FOLLOW

Google has a new SEO service as a beta
- I COULDN’T FIND THIS WITH GOOGLE – DID FIND THIS PAGE OF GREAT SEO TIPS FROM GOOGLE, HOWEVER.

I NEED TO INSTALL GOOGLE ANALYTICS

only one person here tonight has managed to get online – Ugh!

Now hearing from Larry Stone

impactok.org – Impact Oklahoma
- 500 women, all donate $1000, donate massive grants to groups
- Larry Stone did a rudimentary website for them 5 years ago

I am so proud of this site now, it does not look like Wordpress
- Wordpress is beginning to be so prevalent, many sites look very “templatey”

New York Times, Daily Oklahoman, Time Magazine, all are using Wordpress now
- many of us are looking for sites that don’t look like others, are unique

I worked with “S Design” from here in Oklahoma City
- Jack Buley was who I worked with

Site has irregularly sized photos
- layout looks very feminine, I am very proud of this

Larry is willing to put together a list of plugins to use on the site
- site is built with a tweaked template

THIS BRINGS UP A GREAT POINT: WE NEED TO APPLY FOR AN IMPACT OKLAHOMA GRANT FOR STORYCHASERS AND CELEBRATE OKLAHOMA VOICES!

Larry’s wife is now on the Board of Impact Oklahoma
- he’s handed off several Wordpress websites to users, he shows them how to login and

Larry worked with the group that created the first CD-ROMs, and his group made the first hyperlink

iThemes has good Wordpress 101 tutorial
- other tutorials on Wordpress too

Lynda.com tutorials on Wordpress are really good too

The magic eBook for Wordpress is called the Codex: it tells you everything you need to know about Wordpress

Good rule of thumb: If you can’t find a plug-in that does want you want, then go to the Codex

WP MU Integration is now available with the WP standard release

BuddyPress is like Wordpress but for social networking

Next Meeting will be Monday, Feb 22nd
- if you have anything you want to share, let David know!
- Larry is interested in some rudimentary tutorials

FileZilla is a free ftp client for Windows, Mac, and Linux
- might change theme folder permissions to 777 instead of 755 to fix problem reported by one participant tonight, where theme downloader would not work / said not authorized. Permissions on themes folder may be not set to allow write changes.

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