This session explores the uses of social media by schools and school employees. The session will address the need for digital citizenship as well as the professional uses of social media and the unintended consequences for its use.

this and filtering are two of the most discussed topics in our schools today
- how many of you have a district that have Facebook open for staff? for students?

the purpose of this isn’t to make pronouncements about everyone and every school
- it’s to share what I found as I researched what was best for my district
- what you’ll see today may make you uncomfortable

Social media: a means of communication/social interaction featuring user-generated content (Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Webshots, LinkedIn, etc)

Facts and stats:
- MySpace 19.7 M per day
- Twitter – 200 M users, 110 M tweets per day
- Flickr 5 billion images
- LinkedIn: 50 M users

MY COMMENT: NO CITATION FOR THESE STATS

Social Media facts and stats on Facebook:
- 350 M users in 2010, 640 M in 2011
- half login daily
- 65 M people login on mobile devices
- 700 M business accounts
- Users 55-64 increase 88% in 2010
- most users are 18-35
- 30 Billion pieces of content uploaded monthly
- Average person spent 20 min per day on Facebook in 2010, 1.5 M posts, 2.7 M pics uploaded
- 1 in 5 couples met online, 1 in 5 divorces are blamed at least in part on Facebook
- more than 70% of Internet users today are on Facebook
- would be the 3rd largest country in the world

Constructive Uses of social media
- communication
- friendship
- relationship building
- pictures, grandkids

Destructive Uses
- identity theft (friend in Edmond shared too much)
- invasion of privacy
- bullying
- professional liability
- professional consequence

I want to share info for you to consider and prepare

We tend to oversimplify that of which we don’t understand
- we want and need teachers, parents, kids and others to be protected

Social Media in the News
- article from Cohasset, Massachusetts, April 2010: “Teacher Loses Job After Commenting About Students, Parents on Facebook”
- I’m not saying the district was right to fire this teacher for this FB wall post, but it IS reality

“Jerry Buell, Florida High School Teacher, Suspended For Anti-Gay Facebook Posts” (Aug 2011)
- teacher was reinstated

“Court rules against Ashley Payne in Facebook case. But more to come.”
- this case still in court: teacher posted picture of herself of vacation in Europe at the Guiness Brewery, and district officials fired her

There can be unintended consequences to sharing Facebook images as a teacher…

Fox News Oct 2010: “Teachers Fired For Flirting on Facebook With Students”

Missouri passed law that teachers couldn’t friend students (“Missouri Law: Teachers and Students Can’t Be Facebook Friends“)
- this law was overturned on appeal

Case law is all over the place on these issues

if you are a friend with a student on Facebook and they post things about problems, you can be held liable for that
- if victim can prove “school environment had been altered for them, staff should have been aware, more…)

MY THOUGHT: THE MAIN THING THAT HAS BEEN COMMUNICATED SO FAR IS THAT LOTS OF PEOPLE AS WELL AS SCHOOLS HAVE ACTED CAPRICIOUSLY WHEN IT COMES TO SOCIAL MEDIA

Cyberbullying Research Center: www.cyberbullying.us
- Sameer Hunduja and Justin Patchin (2010)
- over 50% of kids are using Facebook

Cyberbullying Victimization statistics, cyberbullying by gender (girls are more likely to be victims than boys)

“Another ingredient in the stew we are cooking”
- depression and sexual activity: sexual active boys are much more likely to be depressed than girls
- stats for attempted suicide

What does this mean: Take sexually active, depressed kids….

Cyberbullying victims are twice as likely to attempt suicide compared to youth who had not experienced cyberbullying
- there is a lot of hurting going on out there that many adults are naive about

The cost
- Phoebe Prince, killed herself
- Jessica Logan forwarded a nude photo of herself to her boyfriend, she went on a crusade to try and stop others from repeating (hung herself at school)
- Ryan Halligan story (2003) become friends with a bully and spread photos around school that he was gay, he committed suicide

Of almost all the research I did on these issues, almost every case had a sexual aspect to it

Phoebe Prince’s lawsuite was settled for $225,000
- in Cincinnati the board and many others were

These parents and grandparents have holes in their heart which won’t heal
- lives changed forever
- photo of six kids charged with felonies from the yearbook, and then in court

“One wonders if these kids were taught anything about digital citizenship and how to be good people”

I want to play some video clips to lighten the mood now
- example of car fire video and story

Now story of “Social Media and Forever Consequences”
- showing photos of inappropriate photos posted on Facebook

MY COMMENT: I REALLY DON’T THINK IT IS APPROPRIATE OR NECESSARY TO SHOW THESE KINDS OF PHOTOS AT A PUBLIC CONFERENCE.

You want to see why I don’t release YouTube in my district, this is why:
- I searched on YouTube for “girlfriend dancing” and it’s the 2nd clip
- this is why I don’t let anyone (teachers or students) access YouTube in my school district

[Colin showed strip tease video from YouTube]

I know where you live and now I know if you’re home…. (geo-tagged photos)
- people can go rob your house when they see you’re not there

Now showing examples of business liability
- if you see people write “Ford lied” you could make a name for yourself suing that person for Ford

Digital citizenship is a must’
- we need to teach it and practice it ourselves
- this is the tip of the iceberg, I’ve looked at thousands of Facebook pages, I’m so tired of looking at Facebook pages

We need to teach this in such a way that we don’t give kids access to Facebook at school
- it’s not about where to point and click, it’s about decorum and teaching kids about right and wrong

poor decision making and naiveté are the biggest problems we have with kids when it comes to social media
- don’t take or let others take embarrassing photos
- don’t argue online

I didn’t coin “Social media access at school is like sponsoring a dance but not chaperoning”
- if you say it’s about supervising: try supervising kids who have access to labs everywhere… I don’t have the staff for that
- I can’t afford to pay someone to watch where kids go online and what they do all day long

We need to teach kids about images
(showed disrespectful photo about the U.S. President)

We need to teach kids to be careful about what they put online
- this is your digital footprint

1:1 and BYOD advice:
- control Internet access (we already have enough problems with kids being on Facebook on lab computers, in my wife’s school the superintendent had to issue an edict to tell teachers not to post to Facebook during school hours, because patrons)
- violations of acceptable use policy (district can be held liable, if you have Facebook open for kids you have huge liability)
- social media is not designed for instruction

We have a digital locker system at our school, our kids can get to their work from any computer on or off campus

Policy is what drives the bus
- do not ‘friend’ current students until they have graduated except family and church members
- consider unfriending students you’ve friended
- don’t establish academic Facebook pages
- established academic Facebook pages: set all security settings at maximum, provide login credentials to building administration

Some issues parents are upset about could be addressed when administrators can login and see what is happening
- if a parent chooses to come against you for an alleged offense

Do not associate your Academic Pages with the district
- don’t use your work email account to setup a Facebook page

Don’t lure the lines between teacher and student
Be cautious
Don’t post during work hours
Develop digital citizenship initiatives for students

“The intent of this is not to put the thumb on anyone”
- my superintendent asked me to do this, since sharing this presentation all teachers have stopped asking for access to Facebook

I told my staff I’m doing this to protect you, and encourage you to separate personal and professional pursuits

Be careful and watch out for the kids
- we want to protect you

Make decisions based on information from multiple perspectives

“I cannot have something on my network which I cannot control, because I have responsibility for this network”
- be careful using these free things in the cloud, don’t rely upon them as you main conduit for information and communication

Story about a nearby district: Parent called about their child who has created an adult personna online and must have done it at school… tech director produced a report of that child’s Internet activity for the past month and could prove she hadn’t created those pages at school
- “if that district had Facebook open, they wouldn’t be able to control that”

Email: cwebb [at] nobleps [dot] com

Comment from Jeff Herbel, Enid Public Schools
- Enid encourages teachers to use academic Facebook pages and set them up with their district email
- Enid uses a lot of curriculum materials from Common Sense Media for digital citizenship lessons

Technorati Tags: encyclomedia, otaem12, schools, facebook, safety, colin, webb, noble

Face the Facebook: Implications and Consequences for Educators Using Social Media by Colin Webb originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 8, 2012.

(I cooked brunch and ate with my family during Joe Brennan‘s session, “Digital Storytelling: Get it Write!” so I don’t have notes for it yet. I’m going to watch the webinar recording of that later and post notes. The little I saw/heard during Joe’s session was GREAT. Joe’s resources are on web.me.com/jbtv. Webinar recordings will be posted on blog.discoveryeducation.com.)

These are my notes from the keynote presentation by Dr. Astro Teller. His partial bio is:

Dr. Astro Teller is currently Director of New Projects for Google, working to help the company explore new potential business areas. Astro is also co-founder and a current Director of Cerebellum Capital, Inc, a hedge fund management firm whose investments are continuously designed, executed, and improved by a software system based on techniques from statistical machine learning. Astro is also co-founder and a current Director of BodyMedia, Inc, a leading wearable body monitoring company… As a respected scientist and seasoned entrepreneur, Teller has successfully created and grown five companies and holds numerous U.S. patents related to his work in hardware and software technology. Dr. Teller’s work in science, literature, art, and business has appeared in international media from the New York Times to CNN to NPR’s “All Things Considered.” Teller regularly gives invited talks for national and international technology, government, and business forums on the subject of the future of intelligent technology.

As a student in school, I fell into the habit of doing things more than once, like doing math problems 3 times
- this was because of my dyslexia
- it ended up being a great habit, however, because there is often more than 1 way to solve a math problem

in BC Calculus as a junior in high school
- sometimes my teacher (Mr. Benson) fumbled to remember things
- he responded: “I don’t need to remember almost anything, because I can figure it out from 1st principles”
- this was a huge “a ha” moment for me and transformational
- this moved me from seeing education as the accumulation of facts from picking up and enjoying learning the mechanics of doing different things
- with crucial thinking, you can re-derive all kinds of answers with available information
- that has really perspective-shifted me and shaped how I think students learn best

2nd story and confession: most of my experiences in schools come from teaching college age kids and talking to gifted high school students
- I acknowledge this is a unique group of kids, top half of achievers (maybe different than kids in poverty who don’t have basic needs met for safety, etc.)

My belief: Kids learn shocking amounts when they are motivated, and amazingly little when they are not
- I am talking about ‘what they get’ when they do or learn something
- simple example: Kahn Academy, it’s hugely absorbing to children (my son is ‘playing’ on Kahn Academy now downstairs at my house, the badges on the site are motivating for him)
- I know some parents who are paying their kids $1 per badge they earn on Kahn Academy (some of these parents have their kids finish high school math by 6th or 7th grade)
- it doesn’t sound like it’s possible, but it is

Motivation is the thing that separates all of us from the things we want to get done

1st Robotics organization
- is the Olympiad for building robots that compete with each other for accomplishing different tasks
- it’s phenomenal to watch these kids: who have never programmed, cut things out of metal, figure out how to solve things
- kids learn several grade levels of math, science and engineering in the 6 month period of time they are doing the activity
- motivation is the reason/key to this

At some level, kids intuit the ways they are often taught don’t often line up well with the ways they are going to spend their time later in life
- passion, persistence, integrity, critical thinking, creative thinking, adaptability, communication clarity, the ability to solve problems, etc are all keys
- the content areas of our schools are the MEANS not the ENDs (those are vertical slides… being good at the ‘horizontal slices’ (passion, persistence, etc are the horizontal slices)

Those skills are going to help people enjoy their jobs more (whatever those jobs are) as well as make more money
- the way information and skills are often presented to students is “under motivating” for kids (this is a real problem)

On the subject of inspiration: Teachers need to be inspired too!
- I’m out of touch with the prevailing winds in the teacher community
- in every other field I’m familiar with: paying for performance is the “de jure” focus
- I understand paying for test scores can lead to a test prep focus
- in the business world, we assess people’s performance in multi-faceted ways, there are LOTS of ‘soft measures” like how creative someone is, how hard they work, the qualities and not just the quantities they produce
- people in the business world are rewarded with titles, recognition, money, opportunities to learn more thing
- I would love to see teachers receive the same sort of thing
- I believe we need teaching to be seen as the most desirable and respected profession in the country
- we need to dramatically change how we interact with teachers and reward them in our nation, to focus on inspiration

Story of a teacher from the Bronx
- class expected to pass the end of course biology exam, she told all her kids they would pass
- 70% of her kids passed
- what bothers me about that story is the complaint people have: “If you have insanely motivated teachers, then the kids will succeed” – that bothers me because it’s a true solution
- all teachers DO need to be insanely motivated
- lots of the problems we see in schools today are motivation oriented

I’ve noticed we don’t teach kids to play soccer on a chalkboard (at least not for very long)
- it’s not just in grade school we make this mistake
- we do this into higher education as well, law school is a great example
- it makes no sense the things you do in law school are very disconnected from the things you actually do as a lawyer
- doctor prep can be much more apprentice-oriented, there is less of this in most law schools

We need kids at young ages to DO things they will do later in life
- I predict this will motivate them in huge ways

Aside about a NPR piece on the “Occupy Wall Street” protests
- upset student who had a history degree
- I think availability of liberal arts education is good but a luxury at the university level
- she seemed to think “our country owed her a job”
- she hadn’t seemed to think about how getting a liberal arts degree would connect with a job

BTW I have four children, two are 10 and two are 8, I worry about this a lot

There are 7 billion people in the world today, there will be 9 billion in 20 years
- resources for affluence are limited
- our children are going to have to compete at 10 times the level we did when we left college
- I’m not saying we should scare our children, but…
- people in India and China don’t mind working 12 to 14 hours to get what they want
- they understand they have to work hard, they don’t believe the world owes them a job or anything
- we need our kids to understand this so they will be motivated to work hard

Question from the audience: How do we get our school administrators to understand this perspective when they are so focused on testing scores?

Answer from Astro Teller: As a young entrepreneur I’d often sit down with my mentors and they would matter-of-factly tell me what to do
- “if you need to run your company with 50 people with no money, you just do it”
- problem with that is, I’d seen some of them do this but I didn’t know how to do it
- some of their ideas sounded as impossible as sprouting wings

Story of Ron Huberman who ran Chicago police force and succeeded, then ran Chicago transit authority and succeeded, and then ran Chicago public schools
- he said: I’m going to try and do so many good things while I’m alive, that some of the things will ‘stick’ by the time I die

my advice: Do what you think is right, and if they fire you then go and do something else
- in the end, however, surprising things may happen

If you were to ignore the standardized test and teach kids to be motivated (get them jazzed like a preacher gets you jazzed on a Sunday morning, heart-thumping excited) you’ll get all the learning and test scores you want for FREE

The “preacher issue” is a big one
- reaching inside people and grabbing them emotionally is of key importance
- there are people with that key skill, some teachers happen to have it
- teachers tend to practice that through kindness rather than trying to create a conflagration in your heart
- teaching is a marathon, it’s not a sprint
- I happen to not be religious, but we can try to create this kind of explosion in people’s hearts

Reason TED Talks are so addicting is because it leaves you with the feeling that ANYTHING is possible
- it sets your heart on fire, and we all crave that feeling (even children)
- this is more the job of educators
- more than teaching math and science, teachers need to help set the hearts of children on fire

My question for Astro: What things do you think are more cognitive/intellectual that kids need to learn in school which do NOT have a clear hands-on context?

his answer: there are some things that are hard to learn on your own
- math you can learn on your own
- but critical thinking you can’t
- you need to watch someone else do that, when you undergo a Socratic process
- to dig out what is interesting in a problem, why someone’s solution isn’t a solution
- public speaking is another example
- I believe we should teach “communication clarity” much more
- can you take your idea and install them in someone else’s mind
- that sounds much more fun than a 5 paragraph essay
- learning to become an orator is NOT something that people can typically do by themselves
- most of the things we think of as ‘most chalkboard-ish’ are the least well suited for the chalkboard
- are lots of examples of this: if a student desperately wants to win (RE First Robotics) they will work hard to learn and emerged as transformed people on the other end of that experience

When you become an adult, you learn that you can’t motivate all people the same way
- some want sense of achievement, some want recognition, some want more freedom to be left alone, some want money
- kids are the same, they fall into different categories
- kids fall into different categories
- when kids fixate on a long term aspiration, they realize you need to learn a lot (that motivation can transform kids, probably about 25% of the kids I meet have these kinds of long term aspirations)

other kids respond really well to environments of friendly competition like First Robotics

Question from the webinar chat: Do you want to start a movement?

Dr Teller’s answer: YES!
- Intro to AI class at Stanford that now has thousands of students

The slides and resources referenced in my spotlight session, “Playing with Media” are available on my handouts wiki. (See slide #11 for the eBook discount code, valid until midnight Eastern time on Sunday, Oct 23, 2011)

These are a few notes and resources from Dean Mantz‘ closing presentation, “Treat Yourself to A Story.”

Dean’s outstanding Livebinders collection of Digital Storytelling resources

www.partnersinrhyme.com is a source for legal/royalty free music/audio loops (more are linked on info.storychasers.org/home/resources/audio – also thousands of audio loops are available on Discovery Education Streaming if your school subscribes)

Dean shared two video examples from the “Celebrate Kansas Voices” oral history and digital storytelling project

A Woman Serves (student project shared by Vicki Constable

Find more videos like this on Celebrate Kansas Voices

Girl Fiddler by Jesse West

Find more videos like this on Celebrate Kansas Voices

Technorati Tags: denvirtcon, discovery, education, history, kansas, webinar, den, techtreat

Great Ideas from the Fall 2011 DEN Virtual Conference (part 2) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on October 22, 2011.

The [House version of the] bill allows taxpayer-funded charter schools to open full-time K-12 “virtual” charter schools in which classes can be taught on a computer by an instructor located elsewhere. It also requires students to take an online class before graduating from high school, beginning as soon as 2011. School districts would also have to offer full-time and part-time virtual instruction to students, through their own programs or by contracting with a third-party provider approved by the Department of Education.

That bill must eventually be reconciled with a Florida Senate version which would go even further, potentially providing public funding for K-12 students enrolled in private schools as well as home school settings. In addition, contracted virtual school companies would not have to operate within the state of Florida. Whether or not contracted teachers would have to be licensed by the state of Florida as professional educators is not addressed in the article:

A similar Senate bill (SB 1620) allows for a much bigger expansion of state-funded virtual schools, permitting a virtual school company from outside of Florida to offer K-12 instruction to any student in the state, even private school and home-schooled students, with the state picking up the tab.

Florida is considered a model for virtual education by many, including some of our leaders in Oklahoma. The Florida Virtual School paradigm is quite different from an open ended, almost free-for-all menu of virtual school choices which some of these PROPOSED bills in the Florida legislature would usher in. It is not entirely clear to me what the endgame agenda for public education is for leaders like former Florida Governor Jeb Bush. His Foundation for Excellence in Education touts an official reform agenda filled with buzz words like “rigorous academic standards,” “standardized measurement” “outcome based funding” and “data driven accountability” which continue to become mainstream vocabulary words for leaders around the nation discussing education reform. While I am an ardent supporter of blended learning and certainly agree we need to embrace opportunities to leverage virtual as well as blended learning, I am not entirely comfortable embracing the agenda of reformers like Jeb Bush because I don’t understand what the full vision of his proposals would look like for public education. I’m not sure anyone does, and that is a problem.

The “accountability movement” and “the standards movement” is now mixed with the “K12 virtual schools movement” in ways which serve to obfuscate the agendas of prime movers behind proposed legislation. I fear many of those agendas are those highlighted by Dr. David Berliner back in April of 2006. Many vendors and investors are keen to open the coffers of public education to private companies who can receive substantial portions of state public education dollars under proposed “education reform” legislation. While it’s clear these changes would be great for private investors, entrepreneurs and corporations, it’s far from clear these changes will benefit our highest performing students or our lowest performers. There is very little talk about addressing the challenges of poverty in our schools amidst this talk of virtual schools, accountability and standards, and the operating assumption seems to be that more threats as well as punishments will somehow coerce teachers as well as students in all schools to magically realize educational excellence.

A critical focus we do NOT have today in many educational reform discussions is school leadership. More than ever, we need school leaders who understand the issues and provide strong leadership for our communities (including those without a seat at the ‘reform agenda table’) in these times of change. The legislation linked in this post has not become the law yet in Florida, but I strongly suspect it’s a sign of things to come in many parts of the nation.

photo © 2010 Ingo Bernhardt | more info (via: Wylio)

Hat tip to Will Richardson for sharing this article link.

Technorati Tags:
change, law, leadership, learning, legislation, online, politics, reform, school, florida, k12, proposed

Proposed K12 virtual school legislation in Florida a sign of things to come originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on April 18, 2011.

AT&T provides a helpful analytic tool on its US wireless customer website (requires login) to view current as well as historical cellular data usage. This graph of my iPhone’s data consumption history shows since December 2010 I’ve averaged about 2.5 GB of usage per month.

My wife, on the other hand, is a light iPhone data user and averages less than 200 MB (approximately 0.2 GB) per month.

My son, who inherited my old iPhone for Christmas last year, appears to be averaging about 100 MB per month.

AT&T’s purchase of T-Mobile USA this week means the carrier will be (pending FCC approval) the largest US cellular provider by a long shot. It’s likely we’ll see AT&T continue to put limits on cellular data usage plans for all its new customers, as well as current ones.

One of the most interesting comments in the Engadget article referencing MyWi I linked to first in this post was the following, from Disqus user TwinSpin. I’ve pasted the comment in this post without edits, except for profanity which I’ve changed to asterisks. Although there is no way of knowing for sure if this person is an AT&T employee, their opinions on this topic are interesting and worth considering:

I feel obligated to jump in here and state a few opinions of MY OWN. First off, i work for AT&T as a sales rep in a corporate store. It sucks to see my company take this approach, but I can see why they are doing it. Ive heard facts that the top 2% of users account for 50% of the traffic. Thats a gross amount of data, that is obviously abusing the TOS. At this point, I wish to jump in and state that I use and Iphone 4 on an old grandfathered unlimited data plan. and YES i did jailbreak and have MiWI installed. When I first read this article (didnt come across it on internal channels) I was like “oh ****” but why? After a minute reflecting about it, well I came to the conclusion..”it was nice while it lasted.” People ARE cheating the system, including myself. Im guilty, but the difference is that I will man up about it and not complain about a company changing its approach to enforce fair usage, and stop abusers. People have managed to cheat the system and use tethering without paying for the capability…what do we call that, of yes stealing. If i got caught speeding and was pulled over, I would admit it and take the consequences. Bottom line, not everyone will get affected by this. I agree its probably triggered from usage per month, or by servers beings accessed. By the way, AT&T is NOT in a financial burden, so the theory this has anything to relate to network upgrades and costs involved is ridiculous. The question of whether AT&T can do this automatically if you continue to violate your ToS, its valid. You are breaking the rules by doing so. Heres an example. If you pop your sim card into an Iphone, it will automatically add the data plan to your account, even if you did not have one previously. The fact that you started using the iphone as your new phone accepts the terms and conditions, thats the way I understand it. Therefore if you tether without paying for it, and get caught, expect to face the consequences. But what do i know, I just work for a Corporate Giant that is inherently evil….To be honest, to many people are self entitled these days and are always looking for more for free. Always has the hand out, but doesn’t like getting told no. Flame on

Personally, I don’t think anyone is “cheating AT&T” if they are using cellular bandwidth they’ve paid for on another device via a tethering scheme like MyWi. Skeptickl’s comment and analogy to water is on target. Customers pay for water usage, they aren’t charged by the local water company for installing a new sink in their house. In response to the above comment, Skeptickl wrote:

Twin, I think you’re feeling guilty for using your unlimited grandfathered plan. But AT&T is wrong here. Like a water company saying hey, you gotta pay extra if you put in another kitchen sink. You pay for what you use. Period.

“Ive heard facts that the top 2% of users account for 50% of the traffic. Thats a gross amount of data, that is obviously abusing the TOS. ”

We pay city state and federal taxes to maintain roads. If a salesman drives those roads day and night, using a disproportionate amount of travel he still doesn’t pay higher taxes (except for fuel.) Individual usage only matters to providers if it affects performance. Providers readily acknowledge their networks capable of handling present and future loads.

Eric Swinson’s comment to this thread is also interesting.

The number one flaw in the whole 2% argument is that for the most part everyone is on a data cap. So what your are really saying is that 2% of the people are actually using close to the bandwidth they are paying for and if everyone used to the limits of what they actually paid for then the system could not support it. So basically your oversubscription rate on your bandwidth to customers is out of whack.

AT&T needs to decide if they want to charge for the water in the well or the size of the bucket you use to fetch it but not both.

Has AT&T oversubscribed iPhone users? Another way of asking this is, could AT&T’s cellular data network sustain maximum utilization (2 GB or 5 GB per iPhone user) if all current customers consumed data at the “maximum allowable quota?” I’m not sure but I’m inclined to think they couldn’t.

This is very interesting, because the number one criticism AT&T sales reps liked to levy against OneNet (during 2006-2008 when I worked for AT&T as a “state education advocate”) was that OneNet was/is “over-subscribed.” OneNet is our state network and ISP / Internet provider for many K-12 schools in Oklahoma. OneNet leases lines from AT&T at a mandated discount and then resells that service to schools and other organizations. I don’t have the conclusive evidence at my fingertips, but my sense is that just like OneNet has historically (in some situations) over-subscribed its K-12 educational network when it comes to bandwidth, AT&T has done the same thing today with its iPhone consumers. This isn’t precisely “the pot calling the kettle black,” since the folks I worked with in AT&T weren’t consumer cellular folks, but it is the same company. Very interesting dynamics.

I’m going to continue monitoring our family’s monthly cellular data / bandwidth consumption. Judging by these recent graphs, while I’m certainly using a lot of data each month it doesn’t look like I’m among the alleged “2% of users consuming 50% of the traffic.” It’s almost unbelievable that when the iPhone was announced in 2007, AT&T actually provided unlimited data contracts for customers. I’m still “grandfathered” on that contract, but I’ve heard enough stories from people I trust to believe “unlimited” today really means “don’t exceed 5 GB of monthly traffic, or we’re gonna come calling for more money– or kick you off our network forever.” The Engadget article I referenced first in this post doesn’t indicate WHICH AT&T MyWi-tethering customers are getting a “friendly SMS” asking them to pay up for tethering, but I’d bet it’s users who are exceeding 5 GB per month. It’s hard to tell if you don’t know someone who has actually received one of those messages, and can’t look directly at their monthly cellular data usage reports.

As a final bandwidth-related aside, I’ll comment that I’m amazed to learn Cox Communications is now offering an “ultimate” tier to its high speed, home Internet options in the Oklahoma City area. Our family is currently on the 3rd (or “Premier”) tier which provides maximum downstream bandwidth of 25 Mbps and 2 Mbps upstream. That should be plenty for our usage needs, including H.323 videoconferencing, but in reality I’ve found “normal” speeds I can get are much less. This depends on a lot of factors, of course. That “tier” of service costs about $65 per month. The new, 4th tier of high speed access (“Ultimate”) provides top downstream bandwidth of 50 Mbps and 5 Mbps upstream for $100 per month. It’s very illuminating to see the HUGE disconnect between these connectivity options for consumers in HOMES and the prices paid by our SCHOOLS for dedicated Internet connections. Bandwidth I enjoy at my house can (and does) easily outstrip available bandwidth in many (if not most) of our Oklahoma K-12 schools today. I wonder when this “digital divide” will be remedied? I wonder how many students in the months and years ahead, if this digital divide isn’t fixed and schools don’t embrace BYOD (“bring your own device”) initiatives for student mobile learning, will grow to prefer their own commercial/consumer cellular data service over that provided by the school? (Of course school-provided and monitored content filtering isn’t available for student-owned and provided devices in most cases.)

We live in interesting times.

Hat tip to Eric Hileman for sharing the initially referenced Engadget article via Twitter.

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att, bandwidth, at&t, mywi, tether, tethering, engadget, consume, tier, cox, onenet

iPhone Tethering, Cellular Bandwidth Consumption, & the Home / School Internet Access Divide originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on March 22, 2011.

Republicans now enjoy a super-majority in the Alabama legislature
- 105 incumbents, 33 new members in House

Now have a new Visitor’s Policy in the state house
- no obstructions are permitted in the hall of the 5th floor house
- procedures make it more difficult to communicate with legislators

MY COMMENT: THIS IS WHY FOR THE AETA MEETING TODAY, LEGISLATORS WERE INVITED TO COME FOR BREAKFAST AND TO NETWORK WITH ASSOCIATION MEMBERS. THIS WAS BEFORE THEIR 9 AM COMMITTEE MEETINGS. SOME CAME, SO THAT IS GREAT!

Everything happening in the statehouse now in Alabama is guided by the GOP “Handshake with Alabama”
- creating jobs and economic opportunities
- control wasteful spending
- ending corruption in Montgomery
- combat illegal immigration
- block the Washington DC Power Grab

We are seeing more bills that give tax breaks to business than we have in a long time

ETF FY12 Budget
- OCE is $89 million less this year and it will not covered the salaries and benefits of support workers currently employed
- this is what keeps the doors open for our state superintendents / district leaders
- Transportation is $23 million short funding salaries and benefits, includes nothing for fuel (estimates are we will need $40 million for fuel)
- 50% cut for High Hopes Program (Exit Exam Remediation)
- 1% salary adjustment (required by ACT 97-238) is not included
- textbooks funded at $15.88 per unit, same as FY11, and that IS “flex money”

There is no support currently for ANY new taxes, there will be no new revenue this session
- looking at Fractual Units (SB52)
- this means school districts can combine partial teacher credits and then allocate those teachers as needed

After the break we’ll probably see Tenure and Fair Dismissal” revisted
- we are not out to destroy tenure, but if teachers need to be transferred from 3rd grade to 2nd grade we shouldn’t have to go to an arbitration hearing, and that is what we currently have to do in some cases

This is the cliff we’ve been talking about… and it is here.

The more you can get local legislators IN your schools.
- try to get your legislators to look at the videos of students this morning
- this legislature: grassroots is VERY important, particularly the new legislators really want to hear from their constituents
- let legislators see what some schools have and what others don’t
- Coming to Montgomery is more difficult this year than ever, but you can be just as effective in your district

Ethics: After March 15th you can’t accept anything of value from anyone as a public employee
- you can still get door prizes or eat food at conferences
- beware of golf or deep sea fishing trips offered at conferences by vendors who are trying to sell you a service
- If Apple wants to take you out of state, a trip may include more than 12 people, you may want to run that by the ethics commission

The “solutions” being offered right now (budget cuts) seem to only affect classroom teachers (the state department of education, for example, isn’t facing any cuts)

Is everyone getting my “Friday Update” that goes to superintendents?
- this includes “action items”

MY COMMENT: I’M THINKING IT WOULD BE GREAT FOR LISA TO SHARE THESE OUT ON A FACEBOOK PAGE TOO

If you are struggling to meet your technology budgets, contact your legislators and talk to them about projects
- iPad initiatives for example: Many legislators want to fund projects, it can help them too with PR
- there is always money in these contingency funds, and Republican legislators control it now

Technorati Tags:
school, schools, update, alabama, politics, legislation, politicians

2011 Alabama Legislative Session Update (10 March) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on March 10, 2011.

Book recommendation: Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses by Richard Arum

Critical moment for me in my own teaching
- 7 years ago I was interviewing for a job at K-State
- as part of interview process, had to address a large classroom of students
- question was: can this person handle teaching a class of students this large?

I’ve been wrestling with this question for 7 years
- students passive and quiet in a lecturehall
- students at an American Idol concert

It’s not just about this generation
- the key thing students are involved in: meaning-seeking
- that is true for all of us
- we live in a society in which meaning and identity are not givens
- our society is filled with almost limitless choice
- this means we have to find out own identities

If you pay attention to the questions students ask, you can really get a window into what they are learning

References to video: “A Vision of Students Today”

There is literally something in the air
- digital artifacts of about 2 billion people are literally floating all around the room

We know we are headed to this world of ubiquitous connections and communication, but our educational systems are not built for this
- most elearning courses have been built on old models

I suggest we move from getting our students to be knowledgeable to being knowledge-ABLE
- find, sort, analyze, criticize, and ultimately CREATE new knowledge
- that is the only solution for our students to thrive in this new environment

Knowledge-ability is stepping beyond 2 buzz words
- steps beyond “critical thinking” (it’s important, but we must go beyond it)
- beyond “information literacy” (again, we must take a step beyond both)

Knowledge-ability

A lot is at stake, and I want to paint a picture of this by showing you the disruption that a new medium can have in the society of Papua New Guinea
- by metaphor, we’ll consider what changes are behind the curtain now in our society

Culture shock is a total loss of self
- we think of identity as an internal thing, but it is actually reflected back from others
- when you are around people who have no reference point for who you are, it’s like you become a baby again… you have to recreate yourself
- it struck me how different it is to grow up in a world which is unmediated
- I started focusing on what it is to grow up and create an identity in their world and ours

New media came to them in the form of books from the state government
- census, law books, maps
- a lot of the people in the village didn’t have names, they knew everyone they saw (mother, sister, friend, etc.) and they were more focused on relationships than names
- they started mapping out their villages on paper, and tried to create them in the real world

the book in a way rewrote the culture

The people who become empowered are the people who controlled the new medium
- the elders were powerful with oral history, but that becomes dis-empowered next to the power of writing and the power of the book
- people would look back at the changes which happened and say they didn’t like what happened
- they got trapped in the beauty of the writing, the goal of making their villages fit into these neat and clean rows
- the

Medi are not just tools or means of communication, they mediate realtionshipos: who can say things, how it’s said, how it’s stored, who can access it, etc.
- every medium has its own biases
- they mediate the relationships in our societies
- media changes, which changes relationships, which changs our society

look at televisions: suddenly we’re all facing the the television
- the remapping of the American dining room

Neil Postman’s analysis: a culture is made up of conversations between people
- in the past they were designed for the few for the consumption of the many, made entertaining, 30 seconds of interruptions

Think of the MTV moment:
- I was very much a part of the MTV generation
- interesting to see what pepe were saying about my generation: short attention spans, materialistic, want to be entertained…

“in the midst of a fabulous array of historically unprecedented and utterly mind-boggling stimuli..whatever.” (Thomas de Zengotita)

A brief history of “Whatever”
- pre-1960s: had about six meanings “Whatever. That’s what I meant.”
- late 60s: “I don’t care. Whatever” (could use the world as a standalone statement, you could use it for your identity to say you can stand apart from the system/society)
- this version has stayed with us to the present day
- 1990s: MTV Generation: the indifferent “Meh”
– Simpsons picked up on this
- Late 90s to present: “Whatever. I’ll do what I want.” (first version: Valley Girl wave)

Idea in the past: you have to be on TV to have a voice, to be significant

American Idol: It’s easy to understand why so many people want to be on the show
- there are so many people who think they ARE the next American Idol
- cultural movement of boomers moving into 70s, onslaught of self-help books and self-esteem movement
- benefactors of the self-esteem movement

We’ve never had higher self esteem than we do now in our country
- 1960s 10-12% of people would say they are a significant person
- now that statistic is around 90%
- that is a big sign of cultural shifts

Book: “Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled–and More Miserable Than Ever Before” by Jean M. Twenge

new books now on quarter life crisis”
- people feel like they should be really important by the time they are 25

this is the search for identity and recognition, in a society where those things are not givens
- our environment today whey we can search for and find our identity, it is so different

Video from Dove commercial: Onslaught – “Talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does”

TV is still the dominant media today
- critical thinking is a real life skill we need to develop

Amidst new social media environment, people want to focus on information literacy

My video I tried to create about this a few years ago: A quick history of text – The Machine is Us/ing Us (Final Version)

Think how eBay has transformed
- eBay
- Zilok for renting, not selling
- Swaptree (now Swap) – can register everything in your house you might want to swap with people, and you pay shipping

The Internet is the long, slow death of the middle-man
- 10% of loans in the next decate will be person to person, with sites like Prosper

Devices like Square to let you accept credit cards

New media shaping governance
- governance now is almost entirely based in paper
- Do Tank: Democracy Design Workshop (use new technologies

Summary of today: “a ubiquitous, context-aware, semantic, social network, of things, people and information”

processor in an umbrella that costs 51¢ today, did cost $4000

real-world objects becoming hyperlinked
- QR codes, RFID

Compare:

weforum.org

we-forum.org

Traditional media literacy: watch your sources, be aware people can be tricking you

example of faked video from Queen of England
- you’re seeing a really interesting harnessing of new media to make a strong statement
- our students should be able to do this to be actively media literate in today’s society
- created by the “Yes Men” – they try to hijack identities of large corporations and then correct them

They got on the BBC and took over the Dow Ethics website, BBC announced “Dow accepts full responsibility:
- Dow stock dropped $2 billion on that news
- this demonstrates the power of working the media

Maxine Greene: the social imagination
- moving from information literacy to media fluency
- navigating and moving to Digital Citizenship (Gardner Campell)

Examples: a hero from our mediated culture
- Free Hugs Campaign
- it’s ridiculously easy to start a global social movement
- then you get spoofs ($2 for Deluxe Hugs)
- a lot of spoofs, commentary and talking back gets very serious

Interesting remix of Dove Commercial: Dove Onslaught(er)

This is a critical moment in our history: these tools can be used for more freedom, or they CAN be used for more control

MY THOUGHT: JUST LOOK AT CONTENT FILTERING IN SCHOOLS

can lead to participation and engagement
- also can be tools for rampant distraction

I think Neil Postman would write a book called, “Still Amusing ourselves to death”

We can no longer blame big media for our problems
- this new media environment is what WE MAKE of it

Now showing “What These Walls Say…” (A Vision of Students Today)

Ultimately these walls (of our educational institutions) say: Obey the authority
- see post: Sending The Wrong Message

Story of Jeffery Ahmed (?)
- inspired by Greg Mortenson
- quits Notre Dame and moves to Bangladesh
- starts nonprofit, tons of YouTube videos, engages for global donations

Videos remixed via OpSound- global collaboration
- this music is an example of the best scenario of what we can do with our new media environment

Eric Whitaker: composer

Tufts university role in Ushahidi
- rescues in Haiti
- OpenStreetMaps created by thousands of volunteers
- quotation from Clark Craig, US Marine Corps about people being saved every day

3 part solution
1- engage real problems with our students (ones we don’t know the solution to – so we have to learn with our students
3- Harnessing and leveraging these tools not because our students think they are cool

our students are not as literate as you think they are, esp when it comes to educating themselves and changing the world with these things
- they are good at entertaining themselves

I hope a new definition of “Whatever” will emerge: I care and let’s do whatever it takes to effect change.

Technorati Tags:
change, conference, edmond, media, michael, mwesch, oklahoma, social, uco, wesch, youtube, heartlandconf11, heartland

Michael Wesch Keynote at 2011 Heartland eLearning Conference #heartlandconf11 originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on March 8, 2011.

First of all, you need to immediately follow Jason Neiffer and Mike Agostinelli, who tweet @techsavvyteach and write the blog, Tech-Savvy Teacher. Jason presented the K12Online09 session, “Probing the Prospects of Paperless Pedagogy.” His personal Twitter account is @neiffer. This was his response to the “Vision for Educational Leadership in 30 Seconds (2011)” challenge today. According to Jason, Digital school leadership is two parts: Expectations and Modeling.

Mr. Kenelty, the 8/9 Principal of Poplar Schools in Montana, shared this 28 second video about educational vision in the 21st century. According to him, vision should drive EVERYTHING at your school.

Today’s workshop was the most positive professional development experience in which I’ve been involved utilizing videoconferencing technologies – Ever. Hats off to all our organizations and tech support folks for pulling everything together. Leaders of Western Montana – Comprehensive System for Professional Development (WMCSPD) did a great job getting our time together planned and coordinated. VisionNet is the Montana-based company which has handled our videoconference bridging, web-streaming, and conference recording – it’s been GREAT. We had a participant today with a sick child at home who actually was able to interactively attend from her house! It was interactive for her thanks to our Twitter backchannel. This was our classroom today at the University of Montana, which utilized four LCD projectors and screens. One was for presenter laptop video, another was for our Twitterfall backchannel (using the hashtag #mtvision) and the other two were for remote video.

I love the way VisionNet set this up for side-by-side presenter computer content and video. This is a photo of Karen Montgomery telling the story of her 77 year old aunt and her eBook reader over the holidays.

Rob Reynolds‘ presentation after lunch, “Using Google Forms for Dynamic Data,” was the most impressive description of utilizing Google Forms with custom javascripts in schools I’ve ever heard. He gave me permission to share the audio recording as an upcoming podcast. What he’s helping his team do at Eureka Public Schools with Google Forms for walkthrough assessments and MANY other needs is fantastic!

If you have a lot of USB devices you need to charge at the same time, like a tub of Flip cameras, you really should check out the MonoPrice 24 port hub. The University of Montana College of Education has one, and it’s a slick way to keep these devices ready for action!

I could share more, but I’ll close with a few photos of the beautiful University of Montana campus. I took this photo with the iOS Pro HDR app, just outside our building today following our workshop.

Any questions about why this state is called “Big Sky Country?!” It’s magnificent. I can’t wait to return here again with my family when we’ll find time to get into the backcountry!

Access all our videos, links, and resources from our workshop this week on wiki.powerfulingredients.com/Home/workshops/techleadership.

Technorati Tags:
education, leadership, montana, mtvision, technology

Highlights from Today’s Technology Leadership Workshop in Missoula, MT #mtvision originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 27, 2011.

In response to the question, “What would your top two priorities be if you are elected to the State Senate?” Goza stated at 2:34 of the podcast:

I’ve got two lists out there right now, one is a published list that shows the top 250 highest paid state employees which cost the state taxpayers $96 million dollars. That’s one priority. I want to wean that list out, I want to get rid of some of these top-heavy state employees, drawing a paycheck, getting all the leave, working their 40 hours, not like the rest of us in the private sector working 60, 70, or 80 hours per week to run our small businesses. The second list I just created because I heard a lot of flak about the state superintendents and what they make. I went back three days ago and put the list together, it turns out of the 527 (I believe there is 527, give or take a few if you include the charter schools) costs us $50 million dollars. 199 of those school districts, the superintendent makes $100,000 plus a year. Within that, 194 of those districts have less than 350 students. It’s not fair to pay those kind of wages to a state employee with those little responsibilities. We need to consolidate those schools, we need to eliminate some of the chiefs, and make those schools more efficient. Those are my two priorities. I want to cut government. Wherever I can cut it, if I can find it, I’ll do the research, and we’re going to get rid of it.

Next, at 4:05 of the podcast, Kenny Goza went on to elaborate further on the specifics of what his school consolidation plan in Oklahoma would look like:

Well, I just presented the list to the H&H Gun Club downtown, and the average citizens that go there were infuriated that we have so many schools, 194 of them, that have less than 350 kids. We don’t have to necessarily consolidate the schools themselves, but the responsibility. Just like we have DAs that cover two or three counties, just like we have judges that cover five to seven counties, why can’t we have a superintendent who makes sometimes more than these judges and these district attorneys, cover the same geographic region? They don’t have to have their own office with their own staff and be insulated. They need to have more responsibility. That is my plan. Create these smaller rural [school] districts, put them all under one superintendent, maybe it’s five school districts, maybe it’s six, I don’t know where the cutoff point is going to be. But that will eliminate right there a $100,000 job if we start doing that.

If he had won the primary and gone on to be elected to our state Senate, Goza not only wanted to eliminate positions of rural Oklahoma school superintendents, he also wanted to eliminate costly positions held by physicians in the OU Health Science Center. At 5:53 of the podcast he stated:

Well the list [of the highest paid Oklahoma state employees] actually contains a lot of physicians at the OU Health Science Center. There are also a bunch of higher ed jobs, some of them are politicians who have gone out of the public realm in the state senate or state house of representatives, and have gone into paid positions in higher ed. I’d like to identify what their actual job description is, and see about eliminating them. I don’t think, when we start crying for new dollars for higher ed, and there has already been a proposal that they want more money, that it needs to go to the admin side of it. It needs to go to the classrooms, both in higher ed and into primary education. So I’m going to identify those areas, and it’s going to be tough. It’s a tough battle. I’m not saying it’s easy. But we gotta make $460 million dollars, [that] is what our shortfall is right now, we’ve gotta make these tough choices.

In response to the question, “Who specifically is on this list of state employees you want to cut?” Goza replied the list is on his website. (That site, kennygoza.us, is listed on BallotPedia but is currently offline.) He stated at 7:03 of the podcast:

Some are doctors that are fairly new, make about $250,000 to $300,000. Some make upwards of the neighborhood of $700,000 a year. Having two doctors that live in my neighborhood, one is in private practice and works 70 to 80 hours a week like I do. The other one actually lives across the street from me, and I hope he doesn’t hear this podcast. He’s a heart surgeon out at the OU Health Science Center and unfortunately he’s always home. And so that makes me wonder why we pay we pay this kind of money to state employees who are not actually on the job doing the work they are paid to do.

Wow. Where do I begin to respond to this? My first thought is of torches and pitchforks, except the evil ogre being pursued by the angry townspeople isn’t Shrek, it’s rural school superintendents and heart surgeons working at the university health science center. What a strange puzzle this is.

Here’s my attempt at some cogent responses.

GOZA LOST THIS ELECTION, BUT HIS IDEAS WILL LIKELY PERSIST
As previously mentioned, unofficial election results indicate Goza garnered just 320 votes in the district 47 election, or 6.34% of the total. He didn’t win. His ideas, however, are likely to persist on the Oklahoma political landscape. I definitely agree there are situations in our schools where too much money is being spent on administrative costs. The best way to address this is NOT to demonize small, rural school superintendents, however. The way to address this is to look at administrative costs in schools the same way we do in the world of other nonprofit organizations. As a percentage of total costs, how much is being spent on administration? Some rural schools should consolidate and a number of schools HAVE consolidated voluntarily in the past five years. This pattern is going to continue. The strategy of demonizing small school superintendents may have great appeal at the H&H Gun Club in Oklahoma City, but it’s a poorly reasoned argument which also flies in the face of local school control. If a local school district, which is funded primarily by local property taxes, wants to pay and can afford to pay their school superintendent more than $100,000 per year, they should. We need to remember: We live in the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, not in the Soviet Union or in China. Having local control over our schools has been a cornerstone of our nation for decades, and it should remain. The state legislature certainly has a strong influence on school budgets, but the focus of state education policy should not be “cutting government wherever we can.” There are very good reasons for having government, government jobs, public schools, and taxes. Our democracy depends on an educated electorate, and government can and should do things which private businesses won’t and can’t. Those ideas were completely missing from the campaign priorities Goza articulated in this January 7th podcast, and I’m willing to bet his voice will not be the last we’ll hear in 2011 Oklahoma politics attempting to win public support for the demonization of rural school leaders.

HEART SURGEONS ACTUALLY DESERVE TO GET PAID A LOT OF MONEY
It is really weird to hear a politician like Goza present himself as an ultra-conservative Republican, favoring individual rights and family values, and then hear him declare (in a fashion sure to make Karl Marx fans grin broadly) that heart surgeons who spend too much time at home should be fired from their jobs for not working. Goza’s Edmond Chamber of Commerce website includes the following quotation from him:

I believe we must stand strong against illegal immigration. I support gun rights, lower taxes, strengthening families, strong work ethic, smaller government, and more money in the classroom so our children can get the education they deserve.

Where does “Take down physicians and former politicians now in higher education who make hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, because they don’t work 70 hours a week to make ends meet like I do?” fit into the above quotation? It doesn’t. I have some sincere cognitive dissonance listening to this contradictory rhetoric, and I wonder if I’m the only one? Brian Bush didn’t question Goza about this in their January 7th interview.

OKLAHOMA EDUCATIONAL POLICY NEEDS A NEW VISION AND DIRECTION
From an educational standpoint, perhaps my biggest takeaway from this podcast segment is that we need a new vision and direction for educational policy in our state. Oklahoma voters just elected a new state superintendent, Janet Barresi, who incidentally is on Twitter. (@janetbarresi) After twenty years of leadership by Sandy Garrett, the Oklahoma State Department of Education is certain to see some change under Barresi. She linked to four recent news articles from outlets around the state highlighting her planned reforms. Some of what I’ve read and heard about Janet’s reforms sounds great, but I’m very concerned we have not broken step with the destructive NCLB / RTTT agenda which has (among many other bad things) perpetuated the lie that everything which matters in education can be measured on a bubblesheet. We need a vision for digital literacy and blended learning in Oklahoma education, and a focus on the vital importance of strong instructional leaders both in the classroom and in our districts’ central offices. Like Angus King in Maine, we need to advocate for a non-partisan agenda of 1 to 1 digital learning in Oklahoma, focusing on higher order thinking skills and project based learning. The Arne Duncan and Bill Gates school refom agenda does not support this, but our Oklahoma education leaders should. The educational policies of most Oklahoma politicians today are bereft of vision for learning in the twenty-first century. That needs to change, and I sense the need for that change even more strongly after listening to Kenny Goza’s campaign priorities in this recent Studio 46 podcast.

Kudos to Brian Bush of OC and The Edmond Sun for publishing this podcast and providing Edmond voters (like me) with an opportunity to get a much more in-depth look into the ideas of our local candidates. It’s a sobering look, but a welcome look none-the-less because it is NOT something we can get on the television or in a print newspaper. If you’re interested in subscribing to the Studio 46 weekly podcast, the RSS / web feed is available on their Podbean website.

The newly updated website of the Oklahoma State Department of Education includes links to “Follow the State Superintendent” on Facebook and Twitter. A new day has dawned. Hopefully it will become the bright sunrise we need in our Oklahoma schools and communities.

A Final Note: The H&H Gun Range has an iOS app for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. I wonder if they will publish a podcast of Kenny Goza’s full remarks at their recent club meeting which he referenced in the January 7th Studio 46 podcast? I’m sure it would be interesting to analyze a transcription of those remarks as well.

Technorati Tags:
education, educationreform, oklahoma, politics, goza, edmondsun, barresi

Oklahoma Political Themes: Fire Rural School Superintendents and Overpaid State Physicians originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 13, 2011.

On the panel: David Lopez, Amena Brown, Itamar Kubovy, Bart Conner, Andrew Essex, Randy Atkins, Ken Fergeson

Randy:
What are the grand challenges and how do they inspire innovation?
- one of our slogans: Because dreams need doing
- the national academies at the turn of the century looked at the past century and asked what the great achievements in engineering was
- list included auto, airplane, electrification, computers, the Internet
- our world was completely transformed in the last century
- we tried to look at the next 100 years not to predict, but it’s not unreasonable to expect similarly transformative innovations and changes
- Bill Parry, former SecDef chaired committee
- had 18 people, Ray Kurtzweil was included

- committee came up with 14 grand challenges
- check these out! www.engineeringchallenges.org

We write reports that are probably only read by about a dozen people, but they are important people
- some universities have held summits on our grand challenges, and two national summits

MY THOUGHT: WHAT A GREAT LIST OF CHALLENGES! THESE WOULD BE GREAT TO USE FOR STUDENT PROJECTS!

Bart:
- creativity is a mind-set and not a skill set
- at the core of everything has to be your passion
- if your heart and passion is there, everything else will work out
- fulfillment is a broad term: can be making a living, contributing back to the community, inspiring the next generation

if the mindset is right, and if you have connected your passion and your aptitude, you will figure out a way to translate that into something magical, and possibly profitable

Randy:
Can we teach children to be creative? YES
- talent is a gift, it comes from another place
- we too often conflate talent and creativity
- we have to have sandboxes where people can fail
- creativity isn’t just painting: anything can be creative: engineering

every human being is creative
- slogan “let your freak flag fly”

2 examples of creativity today
1- The Million Project
- we know there is an academic achievement project
- we need to make a connection between work and reward
- we are giving kids mobile devices for academic achievement
- if kids read books they get more time on their phone
- I am working on JayZ on his project, with Microsoft and Random House
– we have hidden each page of the book in the area where it’s written about

Tomorrow as an example of the antithesis of creativity
- someone

Itamar’s comments:
- now teaching CEOs and others via dance
- started at Dartmouth College, group of athletes created Pilobolus Dance Theater
- I joined that company in 2004 and realized there so many basic approaches there which could be translated to other disciplines
- lessons learned from 35 years of making dances in studios
- the key is ignorance: we are great believers in ignorance
- the more you know, the worse off you are
- if you can tackle a problem from a position of ignorance, the better you can analyze something
- so we help people do that

other key concept: when groups work together
- it’s very important not only for people to know how to lead, but also how to follow
- that is an incredibly ignored skill
- we should focus more time on this
- no great idea can ever gain purchase unless there is someone who recognizes it is a great idea
- the recognizing of great ideas is as important as having a great idea

See July 2004 NYT article: DANCE; Keeping Pilobolus Safe for Democracy

Now hearing from Randy (?)
- we have started to change the stereotypes of creativity in the marketplace: you can perform better if you behave creatively
- sometimes we don’t celebrate what is already out there: examples and models are important, they can (at times) be transformational

Example of the great things Apple has done
- great design, intuitive way they bring about engineering so people my age and 4 year olds can use it
- very creative approach to empower developers to create apps, and
- that’s another example of creativity

leadership does matter in business
- small teams can do things that are different
- nurturing starts at the top
- nurturing by Ed Whittiker of cellular company connected to SWBell really led to big innovations

We need Jean Hendrickson’s for business, A+ Schools approach for business

Ken Fergesen question: School CIOs say problem identification is way to show creativity, School supts say problem solving – How as business people can we get BACK with our common schools and bring those together

From a variety of panelists:

Steve Jobs is the Jimi Hendrix of today
- Apple used to have 5% marketshare
- we need new metrics which show how creativity increases business results
- people who use creativity need to convince their CEOs that

Lockheed Martin has assigned 1 person to each of our grand challenges
- they are doing some problem solving with those topics

In business we are trained to look for an opportunity, not to put out a fire
- business ends up with the products created by the schools
- the need for alignment is pretty clear
- conversation in this country today is ripe

Creativity? It is going to take some change
- what we are doing now doesn’t seem to meet individual students’ needs or our country’s needs

MY THOUGHT: THIS IS A CRITICAL ISSUE. WE HAVE TO ADDRESS THE ASSESSMENT AND HIGH STAKES MYTHS IN OUR SCHOOLS. WE ALSO NEED TO REMEMBER THAT BY TRADITIONAL MEASURES (WHICH DON’T TAKE CREATIVITY INTO ACCOUNT) OUR SCHOOLS DO SERVE AFFLUENT CHILDREN VERY WELL. IT IS CHILDREN OF POVERTY WHO HAVE THE LOWEST TEST SCORES. NO ONE HERE IS STAYING THIS. I THINK THE LAST PANELIST MAY HAVE BOUGHT THIS “STORY” (I.E. THE ONE IN “WAITING FOR SUPERMAN”) THAT ALL OUR SCHOOLS ARE FAILURES. THIS IS ABSOLUTELY NOT TRUE. WE NEED TO CHANGE SCHOOLS, BUT EVERY TEACHER IS NOT A FAILURE AND EVERY SCHOOL IS NOT EITHER. WE HAVE A MIXED BAG. THAT IS TRUE FOR CHARTER SCHOOLS TOOL. THEY ARE NOT A PANACEA.

Bart:
- American Fidelity, Devon Energy and Chesapeake Energy are among 100 most admired companies in America
- one setup a corporate health clinic for employees

How to engineers work within constraints?
- engineering is all about thinking inside the box
- difference between science and engineering: science discovers new things / laws of nature, while engineers create things that never were within the constraints of science

OETA special recently told the story of how elevators could only go so high because of the weight of the cables, until an engineer came up with the idea of using magnets instead of the elevators

many students are motivated by the prospect of working to save the world
- a combination of the arts can help engineers to do that
- also is important to help the public understand this

We need more engineers in this country
- young people in our country do not see engineering as a creative pursuit
- we could use the arts community to paint a better picture of engineering

artists actually spend 90% of their time figuring out how to make something work: that is like laying bricks

people often give short shrift how important it is to execute, and make an idea REAL
- an idea never realized might as well have never happened
- the doing of a great idea is REALLY important
- turning dreams into reality

Amena: Really you are talking here about left and right brain thinking, and bringing those together. Question for Itamar about using dance to do this…

Itamar: We’ve done a bunch of work with the Warden School of Business in their leadership training
- they have discovered as people serve as a pit team for race cars, climb a mountain
- very intense, requires synchronized performance
- we are very interested in how groups function
- we have taken a group who have never made a dance before, and give them a lot of constrains, and then in a very short time (5 min) come up with 1 minute of organized movement
- if we come up with enough constraints, you can get people relate and appear to each other differently than they did previously
- if you do that for several hours, and go back to their questions about their main issues, people almost miraculously go about that discussion in a different way

Being comfortable not knowing, but rolling up your sleeves and just figuring it out may be a quintessential “American” characteristic
- this can lead to some really good entrepreneurs

Bart: having a child is such a powerful experience
- your child is surrounded by a “soup of encouragement”

encouragement is the “soup I grew up in”
- in Oklahoma we are celebrating the magic that can happen when creativity is enabled to flourish

Bart’s question: When do we stop encouraging our children to be creative

We seem to get into “sorting” and then tell others / and ourselves what we are going to specialize in
- maybe that is part of our industrialized heritage
- we start to think that people are just one thing

Example: Dr Jordan Tang is as close as anyone to figuring out a cure for Alzheimer’s
- yet he painted a bison in an art event we had
- turns out he painted FIRST, and was a concert pianist

It’s a real problem in our society that we don’t make engineers cool
- story of an engineer comparing an iPad to an orange, from a design standpoint (the UI of an orange: perfectly designed)

Ken Fergeson: Our bank asks on our application about past art experiences

MY CLOSING THOUGHTS: I WONDER WHY A K-12 EDUCATOR WAS NOT INCLUDED IN THIS PANEL? BOY I WOULD HAVE LOVED TO BE IN THERE. LOTS OF GREAT IDEAS SHARED. I WOULD HAVE LOVED FOR THEM TO TALK ABOUT WAYS WE CAN ENCOURAGE KIDS IN K-12 SCHOOLS TO ACTUALLY CREATE. CREATE IS THE ROOT WORD OF CREATIVITY. IF WE’RE NOT CREATING STUFF AND ASKING OUR STUDENTS TO CREATE THINGS, WE’RE NOT BEING CREATIVE. IF ALL STUDENT WORK LOOKS THE SAME, IT’S NOT CREATIVE. NO ONE TALKED ABOUT THIS.

Technorati Tags:
creativity, cwf2010, engineering, innovation, okc

Are We Ready to Innovate? Closing Creativity World Forum Session #cwf2010 originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on November 17, 2010.

We are living in times of revolution
- our children are facing challenges which they are not prepared for and neither are we

if we are to meet these challenges, we have to think very differently about ourselves and our organizations

It amazes me so many adults don’t think they are creative, don’t have many talents
- a lot of people don’t enjoy what they do, they just do their work and wait for the weekend

Story of talking with a musical performer and saying, I wish I could play like that
- He said: I’ve been playing since I was five, I practice five hours per day, I play six evenings a week, I do it because I love it
- I do it because I love it
- “I think what you mean is, you like the idea of it”

I don’t mind talking on an airplane when we are landing
- I would much rather regret the five hour conversation we didn’t have, than the one we did
- On a flight to Hong Kong (18 hours) I talked with a professional pool player, as a kid she discovered pool (Abel Lawrence)
- she said, “If you are doing something that you love, your energy changes and you go into a different place.”

I think this is a spiritual thing, it is about connecting with your soul and true north
- you can tell because time changes

Terrence Tao now teaches at UCLA
- when he was 3 he taught himself to read watching “Sesame Street”
- 20 got PhD in pure mathematics
- Terrence gets math in a way I never did

Story of my daughter bringing home a worksheet of quadratic equations
Cartoon of a daughter bringing home a work

Human talent is tremendously diverse
Creative agenda in education
- our system is obsessed with a particular TYPE of ability
- this leads to alienation for many in the educational process

Education system has misconceptions about creativity and narrow conceptions of intelligence
- technology is changing the world in revolutionary ways
- changes are STILL coming down the pike which will

We have 7 billion people on the earth, that’s more people than have EVER lived her before
- we have to make the equation balance
- complex, uncertain, and highly challenging situation

Creativity: one of 3 terms
1- imagination: the power to bring to mind things that are not present
- the 1 capacity that distinguishes us from all other live on earth (our dependency on each, our organic natures, many things make us similar to other organisms, but not creativity)
- it is putting your creativity to work, applying your creativity to some task or enterprise
- creativity is not evident in other creatures like it is in humans
- dogs may get depressed but they don’t play the blues,

creativity is practical
- you can teach it
- it relies on certain conditions to help it blossom

We are missing Bart Connor today
- Bart was born in Illinois
- found at the age of 6 he could walk on his hands as easily as on his feet, including walking on stairs
- at that point it wasn’t much use, but he was in demand at parties of all sorts

when Bart was 8, his mom took him to the gym
- he says that was intoxicating: ropes, balance
- like disneyland and Santa’s house all in once place

is that how you feel when you walk into a gymnasium?
- he went every day
- 10 years later he represented the US in the Olympics

Bart and his wife Nadia

His mom could have said at 8, “Get over the hands thing. We’re done with it.”
- instead she chose to encourage and support his aptitude

To be good at something is not enough
- to be in your element you have to love it

it is a combination of aptitude and passion

Bart’s mom could not have foreseen the journey he was going to on

Life is not linear
- the problem is our education system is, but our lives are not
- to be alive is a creative process

to be a human being is to be creative, to be alive is to be on a crative journey
- we live the composition we write if we have the tools

many people are detached from their natural capacities and their sense of purpose
- this happens in companies and in schools

what drives people is often not apparent to them, their organizations, and others around them

This is fundamentally about ourselves as individuals and collectively

karl Young line: “Whatever you’ve done in your life doesn’t matter, it’s what choose to do

I am not what has happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”

We have a lot of choices, and we need to consider them carefully.

(NOW TRANSITIONING TO A PANEL DISCUSSION WITH DAN, DAVID, AND KEN)

Ken telling about the factory model of education
- educating people
- objects have no interest in how they are made, but people made
- education has to be personal, everyone here knows this
- the people who inspired you as a teacher were the best
- education is radically personal

Dan Pink:
- The economy is no longer about standardization and right answers, yet that is still the focus of our schools
- a lot of the policies we have in schools are designed for the convenience of adults, rather than what is best for kids
- standardized tests are an example

If you want to really assess people at a level that is truly helpful, it might cost more money. It might be messy.
We’re putting teens on buses in my school district in the DC area because that’s convenient for the bus system and athletic coaches

David Pogue
- story about Palm company, once you hire one idiot they hire more….

David challenges Dan on the “carrot and stick” message, and challenging these counter-intuitive ideas
- do they have a chance of succeeding

Sir Ken: Anyone who knows kids, has kids or has been a kid
- we are driven by feelings and ideas
- ideas can change our lives
- everyone can point to a teacher who encouraged or discouraged them at the right time
- there is no contradiction here
- I am not against standardized testing
- If I have a medical condition, I want some standardized information (not the cholester

standardized testing has become the purpose of the entire enterprise, not an instrument to serve us
- we don’t raise performance in education by reducing morale

Sir Ken: Talking about Oklahoma A+ Schools
- you shouldn’t get beyond the fact that any great school is never better than its teachers and principal
- there are wonderful schools in many countries
- there are real examples, not just theoretical ideas

Dan Pink
- if you look from a 30K level it’s easy to get depressed
- look at specific examples of people who are doing heroic things, we have reasons to be optimistic
- we have lots of ingenuity as human beings
- we make progress 1 conversation at a time, 1 person at a time

Ken: there IS a movement here, a shift in the Zeitgeist
- we need to be a part of this movement

Technorati Tags:
#cwf2010, city, creativity, cwf2010, education, okc, oklahoma

Sir Ken Robinson, Daniel Pink and David Pogue the Creativity World Forum #cwf2010 originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on November 16, 2010.

“There are very few things that are on the banned list in our household,” said Melinda Gates, who has three children, Jennifer, 13, Rory, 10, and Phoebe, seven, with husband Bill.

“But iPods and iPhones are two things we don’t get for our kids,” she said.

Gates, 44, admitted that she would love to own Apple’s addictive, application-loaded iPhone, despite her obvious loyalty to the Microsoft brand.

“Every now and then I look at my friends and say, ‘Ooh, I wouldn’t mind having that iPhone,’” she told Vogue.

In last week’s interview, Melinda was less positive about Apple and emphatic about their family loyalty to the Zune. Her responses to the interviewer are in bold below:

Do you own an iPod, which is made by Apple?
No, I have a Zune.

What if one of your children says, “Mom, I have to have an iPod?”
I have gotten that argument — “You may have a Zune.”

Do you have an iPad?
Of course not.

Is it true that Bill works on an Apple laptop?
False. Nothing [made by Apple] crosses the threshold of our doorstep.

Isn’t there room in this world for both Apple and Microsoft?
Microsoft certainly makes products for the Macintosh. Go talk to Bill.

photo credit: mateoutah

If my kids wanted a Microsoft product, like a Zune or a Windows laptop, I’d certainly try and buy one for them. That hasn’t happened to date, however. We do own a Dell Mini10 laptop in our home which can boot into three operating systems, including Windows 7, but none of my kids like running it with Windows. Of course, they haven’t had nearly as many experiences with Windows operating systems… in general I think it’s a good thing to avoid environments where malware is rampant. I understand (I think) why it would be a PR-gaffe for the Gates children to use and love iOS devices. I feel a little sad for them, however. Apple products are so much more fun, cool, and SAFE to use.

Hat tip to my Mom for mentioning this article last week.

Technorati Tags:
apple, ban, family, gates, ipad, iphone, ipod, melinda, bill, prohibit, home, microsoft, zune

Melinda Gates: No iPads or iPhones for Kids – Stick with your Zune originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on October 30, 2010.

According to the current English WikiPedia entry for 2010 Oklahoma State Elections:

State Question 744 would amend the Oklahoma Constitution by adding a new article: Article 13-C – Amount of money the State provides to support common schools.
The proposed Constitutional amendment would mandate that the Oklahoma Legislature spend no less than the average amount spent by neighboring states on common education on an annual, per-student basis. Common education refers to pre-kindergarten through high school; the surrounding states are Missouri, Texas, Kansas, Arkansas, Colorado and New Mexico. If the surrounding-state average ever declines, the legislature would be required to spend the same amount as it did the year before. The measure requires that increased spending begin in the first fiscal year after its passage. It requires that the surrounding state average be met in the third fiscal year after passage.
The measure does not raise taxes or provide a funding source for the new spending requirements.

I would like to know more about the “backstory” of state question 744. In this post, I’m going to share what I know at this point, some relevant links, and a little analysis. As always, I invite you to comment and share links on this post related to this question and these issues.

The gist of what I’ve heard from others in our church and community is that big dollars from outside the state, principally from the National Education Association, have poured into Oklahoma and continue to pour in to support passage of 744. According to BallotPedia:

SQ 744 was initiated by the Oklahoma Education Association (OEA) after the union lost a lawsuit seeking to increase education funding.

The website for the Oklahoma Education Association prominently features images and links asking for support of SQ 744. The website YesOn744.com is the primary advocacy site which as been created for the ballot initiative.

The OEA website includes a Facebook-posted video of OEA President Becky Felts, explaining in sixty seconds why Oklahoma voters should approve SQ 744. The bottom line is that Oklahoma students, because our schools and public education system are comparatively underfunded relative to our neighboring states, do NOT receive the same educational opportunities as students in our neighboring states. I agree with her. I would not have said “vote for 744 so our students can have the right books in class,” however. I’d instead talk about our need for a 21st century education which prepares students for success in our globalized workforce as well as society. Like Dr. Tim Tyson in his outstanding presentation last week in the K-12 Online Conference, I’d reference the educational success story of Finland and talk about the vital importance of recruiting our top students to serve as professional teachers. If we want a world class educational system, and we want to improve what we’ve got, we have to CHANGE some things. Here in Oklahoma, that starts with PAYING teachers more and funding our schools better. My son attends Oklahoma City Public Schools, and we’re thrilled MAPS is funding some improvements. We’ve got a long way to go, however, and mandating increased educational funding is an important part of “the way forward” for improving education in Oklahoma.

Opponents of SQ 744 have formed the “The One Oklahoma Coalition” and created the website, www.nosq744.com. Oklahomans for Responsible Government sponsor the website www.stop744.com. That website lists the following on its fact sheet:

The OEA’s FAQ on SQ 744 says it will cost $850-million dollars.

There is no funding mechanism for SQ 744. That means money will either have to be shifted out of other agencies or funded through tax increases.

House Fiscal staff says paying for SQ 744 (which it estimates will be $850-million) only through spending cuts will require a 20% cut from each agency.

House Fiscal staff says paying for SQ 744 through a tax increase would raise income taxes by 34% or sales taxes by 38%.

There is nothing in SQ 744 that mandates the money be spent in the classroom. In fact, the OEA says it will be local administrators that decide what to do with the windfall.

According to the report, “Blueprint for Transparency A Review of Oklahoma School District Websites” by Oklahomans for Responsible Government:

Oklahoma spends over $4-billion on K-12 education when federal, state and local dollars are factored in.

An $850 million increase in education, if that was a PER YEAR increase, would certainly be substantial. Interestingly, the OEA FAQ webpage for 744 referenced on the Stop744 “factsheet” does NOT include the statistic “$850 million.” In reference to the question, “How quickly will schools see funding if SQ 744 becomes law?” it states:

SQ 744 provides for a three-year phase-in period, which means that it will not be fully implemented until the 2014-2015 school year. This will allow us to properly plan and prioritize our schools. We can begin now to reinvest in our schools and focus on the future, leaving behind a positive legacy all Oklahomans can be proud of.

In response to the more challenging question, “How do we pay for SQ744?” the YesOn744.com site authors offer a variety of important points.

We could cut special interest tax breaks. They write:

We can afford SQ 744 if we end billions in special interest tax breaks. Last year, the legislature gave away over $2 billion dollars in special interest tax breaks for pork projects that had no effect on our economy and that created virtually no jobs for our citizens. Not surprisingly, career politicians and special interests haven’t offered to cut waste, fraud, abuse and risky projects. We can start by eliminating millions in wasteful spending, like giving $18 million to a rocket ship company that went bankrupt or giving away $32 million to a gimmick airline that never flew a single plane.

In September 2010, Oklahoma State Sen. Tom Adelson wrote in his article for NewsOK, “SQ 744 affordable if we change special interest treatment:”

Every year, every session your Oklahoma Legislature ignores hundreds of millions of dollars of potential revenue — money that should be invested in health, education, transportation and public safety — for favored businesses and “clients.” For example, investor and corporate tax breaks exploded from $50 million in 2006 to over $210 million in 2008. In addition to that staggering amount, the oil and gas industry has received another $350 million-plus in tax giveaways since 2004. That’s over a half-billion dollars that could be invested in our schools.

This is something I’ve been wondering about for a long time, ever since our family moved to Oklahoma four years ago from Texas. My dad grew up in Wyoming, and his best friend from school growing up in Powell now serves in the Wyoming legislature. He should know the answer to this question. Why has Wyoming, a natural resource-rich state, been able to so ably-fund its educational system as well as other elements of state government– and Oklahoma seems to be gasping for breadth not only in education funding but in every state agency? Oklahoma is natural resource rich too. I don’t have the evidence, but I have a strong suspicion I know the answers: Corruption, special interest tax breaks, and a failure of Oklahoma elected officials to act in the public interest.

On our state license plates we have the slogan, “Oklahoma is OK.” I’ve had a BIG problem with that, and I still do. There are lots of WONDERFUL things about Oklahoma, but in generally I’m not satisfied with “OK.” I want excellent, for my children and my grandchildren. I’m a part of the Oklahoma Creativity Project‘s education committee in part because I want to advocate for positive change in our Oklahoma schools. Their website says nothing about SQ 744, and I know they are consumed with preparations for next month’s World Creativity Forum here in Oklahoma City. I think this is a missed opportunity, however. I’m betting SQ 744 is very divisive among Creative Oklahoma member organizations, which include some heavily invested in our oil and gas industry. The politics of nonprofits and coalitions are frequently interesting.

The backstory of how SQ 744 came to be on the ballot, and what organizations are funding its advocacy (like YesOn744.com) are not a mystery. What DOES remain a mystery to me are the individual big funders behind The One Oklahoma Coalition (@oneokcoalition on Twitter) and www.nosq744.com. As of today, the coalition member page lists 110 organizations. These include groups like the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce, The State Chamber of Oklahoma, and the Tulsa Metro Chamber of Commerce. This is the banner image currently running first on the homepage of the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce today:

The first three claims on this negative advertisement are blatantly false. No oversight or accountability? What do the authors of this campaign think the Oklahoma State Department of Education is? Or our current elected officials, as well as the offices they hold? Our republican form of government, in which we elect officials to make decisions, pass laws, and run our government is the “check and balance” on all state spending. It is ridiculous to portray this measure as one which “no one” will be able to control, oversee, and regulate. That’s simply false. Overseeing and regulating state spending is what state officials, both elected and appointed, do now and will continue to do after the election.

Incidents of obfuscation when it comes to SQ 744 are not limited to organizations, however. “Oklahoma Chief of Education Strategy and Innovation,” Kathy Taylor, is telling the public passage of SQ 744 “…could force a reduction in funding of other services kids must have to succeed in life and help our economy grow.” What our legislature chooses to do, and HOW our elected officials choose to pay for SQ 744, is an entirely open question. Would the citizens of Oklahoma stand for a huge increase in personal income taxes, as many fear-mongering opponents of 744 claim? I doubt it. Yet that’s the “fear card” being played by many in the anti-744 gang. Consider the words of Roy Williams, President and CEO of the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber, in the right sidebar of the NoTo744.com coalition members page:

The Greater Oklahoma City Chamber has been active in supporting education, including more funding for years, but to tie funding to an arbitrary average, and either force funding education at the expense of other vital programs or by enacting huge tax increases is not the way forward.

“An arbitrary average?” Roy, exactly what would you consider to be a “non-arbitrary average?” The issue is whether we want to spend the money we need to educate our children well for the 21st century. To date, Oklahoma has been doing a poor job of that relative to our surrounding states. It is NOT required in this proposed state Constitutional amendment that programs be cut or taxes raised. There is another way to balance the budget, and it’s called: Finding other sources of revenue! I’m sure the corporations and individuals benefiting now from huge tax breaks don’t want those to end, and don’t want to pay more taxes any more than individuals in our society do. It’s critical that we subject those tax breaks to public scrutiny, however, and avoid the kind of waste YesOn744 documents. Consider the way Oklahoma legislators stack up in pay for their part time elected jobs for the state:

Oklahoma $38,400 per year
Missouri $35,915 per year
Colorado $30,000 per year
Arkansas $15,362 per year
Kansas $88.66 per day ($7,316 on 88 day session)
Texas $7,200 per year
New Mexico $0 per year

Those numbers alone won’t add up to the dollars needed to fund 744, but combined with other tax changes the money CAN be found.

As a state, Oklahoma is NOT poor relative to many other places. The majority of anti-744 press coverage and advertising I’ve heard to date follows (unfortunately) what Senator Adelson described in September:

The One Oklahoma Coalition tells us we can’t afford State Question 744. The coalition resorts to scare tactics such as prison closure and road collapse while ignoring hundreds of millions of savings that could be secured by simply ending special interest treatment through the tax code and redirecting that money to education. Passage of State Question 744 will require the Legislature to do just that. And it is high time we did.

I’d like to know more about the backstory of the anti-SQ 744 lobby, because I don’t think those folks should hide in the shadows. We need MORE democracy in this nation, not less– and it should start locally. Work by groups like the Sunlight Foundation to promote governmental transparency and better civic awareness are desperately needed not only at the federal level, but at the state level as well.

Do we need to pay our teachers and fund our educational system in Oklahoma much better than we do today? Yes, absolutely. Would passage of SQ 744 challenge our elected officials to more carefully scrutinize the tax breaks given to special interest groups, and reclaim much of that money for the public good? I hope so.

Things are heating up in Oklahoma in advance of November 2nd. This tweet today from @YESon744 provides a example:

One of the most important questions which IS being raised by the anti-744 cadre involves EDUCATION REFORM. Do we need it in Oklahoma? Yes, absolutely! It would be inappropriate for the authors of SQ 744 to have put provisions for educational reform into that proposal, however. We’re electing a new state superintendent for education this year, who will replace our current superintendent who has served for the past 21 years, since 1988. It’s going to be a GREAT time to not only discuss educational reform in Oklahoma in 2011, but also implement it. That will be particularly true if our educational system receives increased funding comparable to that of our surrounding states.

Don’t buy into the fear mongering and misleading statements of the anti-744 coalition. If you’re an Oklahoma voter, vote YES for state question 744 on November 2nd. Our children will thank us, and so will their teachers… as well as their future employers, who need a world-class educated workforce ready for the challenges of the 21st century.

Technorati Tags:
education, oklahoma, policy, politics, question, reform, state, 744, sq, sq744, nea, oea

The backstory of Oklahoma State Question 744 originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on October 28, 2010.

This past May, a devastating hailstorm in Oklahoma City totaled my less than 1 year old (for me) 2006 Honda Hybrid car.

I loved this car. It regularly got over 40 miles to the gallon, and sometimes (depending on driving conditions) could get close to 50 MPG. It had a range about twice that of my old Toyota 4Runner, and was fun to drive as well. If our family circumstances were different, I would have loved to replace that car with a used Toyota Prius or a fully electric car. Miles Electric, the company whose car I test drove in the first video above (in April 2009) has a Tulsa, Oklahoma, office. At the time I made this video with my kids, they had plans to bring a highway speed vehicle to market. Currently their website shows they are only selling low speed cars and trucks. I would love to find out more about their plans for higher speed vehicles. I don’t foresee income for our family in the near term which would let me buy a Tesla car, so options like those of Miles Electric seemed to be my best bet.

Thanks to this documentary, however, I’m now aware of a few more options. First, there is the option of getting an “Electric vehicle conversion” or EV kit. The film said the cost of these can be about $8000, to take a “regular” gas-powered car and convert it to a fully electric vehicle. Although certainly expensive, an EV conversion looks to be far cheaper than a new $33K Chevy Volt.

Before watching this documentary, I (like most people in the world, I’d guess) had never heard of the General Motors EV1 car. What a beautiful car!

photo credit: TimothyJ

It is a tragedy that GM destroyed these vehicles following the end of their consumer leases in 1999, ostensibly so more consumer demand would NOT grow for zero emission EV cars. That story is, of course, the major theme of “Who Killed the Electric Car?” The photos and video of the crushed EV1s are frustrating to watch, particularly as you contemplate the reasons why powerful, wealthy corporate and national interests in our world opposed the development of EV technologies like this.

For more on that story specifically, in addition to this documentary, check out the article, “Why did GM crush the EV1??”

In addition to EV Conversion kits, before watching this documentary I also didn’t know about plug-in hybrids. Hymotion is one type of commercially offered conversion kit for the Toyota Prius, which can offer the benefits of an all-electric driving experience for commutes close to home but the longer range of a gas-powered hybrid car for longer trips. The English WikiPedia article for “Plug-in hybrid” gives more background:

A plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV), also known as a plug-in hybrid, is a hybrid vehicle with rechargeable batteries that can be restored to full charge by connecting a plug to an external electric power source. A PHEV shares the characteristics of both a conventional hybrid electric vehicle, having an electric motor and an internal combustion engine; and of an all-electric vehicle, also having a plug to connect to the electrical grid. Most PHEVs on the road today are passenger cars, but there are also PHEV versions of commercial vehicles and vans, utility trucks, buses, trains, motorcycles, scooters, and military vehicles.

The cost for electricity to power plug-in hybrids for all-electric operation has been estimated at less than one quarter of the cost of gasoline. Compared to conventional vehicles, PHEVs can reduce air pollution, dependence on petroleum and fossil fuels, and greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming unless the PHEV is charged by plugging into an electric utility where coal is the predominant fuel used to generate electricity. PHEVs also eliminate the problem of “range anxiety” associated to all-electric vehicles, because the combustion engine works as a backup when the batteries are depleted. Plug-in hybrids use no fossil fuel during their all-electric range and produce lower greenhouse gas emissions if their batteries are charged from renewable electricity. Other benefits include improved national energy security, fewer fill-ups at the filling station, the convenience of home recharging, opportunities to provide emergency backup power in the home, and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) applications.

That sounds GREAT to me. You’re not going to see one of these in my driveway in the next few months, but maybe someday.

Before watching this documentary, I’d never heard of Stanford Ovshinsky. He is a brilliant inventor, and his battery technologies are in virtually all the hybrid electric vehicles on the road today. I was amazed as well as saddened to learn after General Motors purchased his battery technology to use (eventually) in the EV1, they sold a controlling interest in that technology to Texaco. Think Texaco raced to monetize the disruptive potential of Ovshinsky’s genius? Of course not.

I’m also VERY moved by the confluence of interests represented by groups like Plug In America, which is referenced towards the end of “Who Killed the Electric Car?” Former US CIA director James Woolsey explains how our continued dependence on foreign oil in the United States presents a continuing national security threat which a shift to electric vehicles could constructively address – for the LONG term. Woolsey is a founder of the “Set America Free Coalition,” and wrote the April 15, 2010 article in the Wall Street Journal, “How To End America’s Addiction To Oil.” An archived PDF version of this article is also available from the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, in case this article is later taken offline or locked to non-subscribers of the WSJ. Consider a few of the alarming statements from his article:

1. If it [oil] reaches $125 a barrel again, as it did in 2008, then approximately half the wealth in the world—above and below ground—will be controlled by OPEC nations.
2. Oil profits enhance the ability of dictators and autocrats to dominate their people. This is one reason that eight of the top nine oil exporters (Norway is the exception) are dictatorships or autocratic kingdoms, as are virtually all of the 22 states that depend on oil and gas for at least two-thirds of their exports.
3. Saudi Arabia’s oil wealth enables it to control around 90% of the world’s Islamic institutions even though it has less than 2% of the world’s Muslims. (For more on the impact of the Saudis on global Islam, see Yaroslav Trofimov’s 2005 book, “Faith At War: A Journey On The Frontlines Of Islam, From Baghdad To Timbuktu.” I reviewed this excellent book here on July 3rd this year.)

Bumper stickers like this are not uncommon where we live in central Oklahoma, in the heart of oil country.

Woolsey explains in his article why this advocacy campaign is inherently limited in its potential impact:

Drill, baby, drill? Some suggest that if we replace foreign with domestic oil our problems will be solved. Domestic drilling does help reduce oil’s share—a billion dollars a day—of our huge balance of payments deficit, and it adds some domestic employment.

But that’s it. OPEC has very large reserves and cheap extraction costs, while domestic drilling costs for new oil will be many times that of the Saudis. We can’t drill our way out of the cartel’s control of the global oil market.

In his article, Woolsey makes the case for four different ways we can reduce our dependence on foreign oil in the United States in the short AND the long term. In addition to supporting “The Pickens Plan” (as I do) he advocates for new legislation which would force car manufacturers to produce flex-fuel vehicles. “Set America Free” views FFVs (flexible fuel vehicles) as well as plug-in hybrids as the SOLUTION to our current oil addiction.

The national security implications here should be glaringly obvious to every voting U.S. citizen, as well as those too young to vote yet.

While the documentary “Who Killed the Electric Car?” is depressing to watch at times, it’s also inspirational to see the advocacy work of so many groups who are taking ACTION to address many of the issues this film raises. Change is difficult for everyone, and certainly our wealthiest petroleum companies as well as oil-rich nations are not interested in a shift to a greener future. I am, however, and so are lots of other people around our country.

Bring on the EVs.

Technorati Tags:
car, documentary, electric, film, politics, saudi, security, unitedstates, video, ev, electriccar, pickens, plan, energy, oil

Bring on the EVs (electric vehicles,) EV Conversion Kits, ZERO Emissions Cars and Plug-In Hybrids originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on August 22, 2010.

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

I’ve been blessed to work for 2 of the most progressive administrators in the state of Oklahoma: Steve Shiever and Scott Parks.

Why do you teach the way you do?
- it’s the way we were taught
- it’s what I believe

If you truly believe in the way you teach, don’t let me or anyone else tell you you’re wrong
- if you teach because that’s the way you’ve always done it, you might be in for a rude awakening in about 70 days

Your teaching philosophy ought to “fit” the way you teach

anyone been asked for a written version of your teaching philosophy
- I am a Socratic, constructivist facilitator
- these are the three key words I boiled down my teaching philosophy to

I teach with questions
- I use questions to make critical thinking a reality
- I truly believe we build our own knowledge by taking what we already know, getting info from the environment, and then putting them together to create new knowledge
- I believe facilitators make things easier for people. I make learning easier for my students

That is why I teach the way I teach

What are your 3 major teaching goals? (these were ideas from the audience)
- teaching kids to learn
- helping kids be successful outside the classroom
- teach them how to think
- inspire students
- make them into productive citizens

If you can’t list off your top 3 goals for teaching, you might have a tough time in 70 days

What will the 1:1 laptop program allow you to do better?
- engage students
- encourage creativity
- empower students
- work on critical thinking

You CAN engage students
- there are all kinds of other things students can be involved with

With 1:1 laptops, teachers are MORE important than ever!

Today’s students are EXPERTS with technology

I DISAGREE WITH THIS. I THINK KIDS ARE MORE FEARLESS NAVIGATORS WITH TECHNOLOGY, BUT THIS DOES NOT MAKE SOMEONE AN EXPERT… THEY CAN BE GOOD SELF-DIRECTED LEARNERS, BUT THAT IS NOT UNIVERSAL.

Kids will find their OWN interesting things to do if you don’t provide them
- Mike tells us often, “It’s a classroom management issue”
- Internet filtering isn’t the solution to off-task behavior

What is the product of education?
- a well developed mind?
- learning

In the 1 room school house, the “3 R’s” were the product
- public ed was a success
- kids didn’t HAVE to go, they only got to go when dad let them leave the farm

The high school movement
- for the first half of the 20th century, everyone agreed
- public ed was a success
- you should read about this if you haven’t
- more subjects, specialization, memorize facts so you can use them

Today:
- teachers aren’t doing their job
- public education is failing
- we need to fire teachers

What changed?
- lots of societal changes
- society, parents, technology etc

How did parents change from the first half of the twentieth century to the last half?

most of these things that changed we have NO control over
- we need to focus on things that HAVE changed

WWW
- December 25, 1990
- blame TBL: Tim Berners Lee
- before 12-25-1990 computer screens were all text
- after: HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol)
- we got links

The Internet is composed of an estimated 1.8 billion connected computers
- it is computers connected

WELL, IT IS ALSO PEOPLE BEING CONNECTED!

The WWW is composed over over 1 TRILLION pages of INFORMATION
- you need to know the difference between the Internet and the WWW
- many people use those terms interchangeably
- technically: the WWW is where the information is in webpages

The WWW changed the learning environment forever
- no one yet knows what this learning environment will look like in 5, 10, or 50 years

I AGREE WITH THIS!

Now showing 2 photos 98 years apart: 1909 and 2007
- what is different
- people are moving in both pictures

When the environment changes, Skill Sets change!

Computers and the Internet are NOT learning tools
- this will be blasphemous for some of you
- remember what Mr Shiever said, our way is not necessarily your way
- this is MY philosophy
- they are part of the ENVIRONMENT in which today’s learning takes place!

THIS IS A USEFUL CONSTRUCT. ANOTHER WAY OF SAYING THIS: THE ONLINE DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT IS LIKE WATER. IT IS WHERE WE LIVE. IT DEFINES OUR ENVIRONMENT.

If we focus on the tools, we lose sight of the environment
- the laptop environment changes EVERYTHING
- for you as a teacher, a parent
- for the mechanic down the street

I WOULD ADD: FOR US AS LEARNERS!

You know what a paradigm is, right? (This isn’t a joke.) It’s a proven way of doing things successfully.
- 1:1 laptops change the paradigm: not only for students but also for teachers

“Just Google It”
- 2 billion google searches every day
- that doesn’t even include the other search engines

You got to be careful: Just cause it’s on the web doesn’t mean it’s true!
- computers remember things VERY well

Now showing the new Bloom’s taxonomy
- for today’s HS and MS students, memorizing facts is… pretty much POINTLESS

math facts: Math teachers I don’t want to get into a major discussion with math teachers about math facts
- there are 2 points of view on this: both have good positions
- when I say something against memorization, I don’t want to step on toes about math facts

ASIDE: PROGRAM “MASTERING MATH FACTS” IS THE BEST PROGRAM

We don’t have to memorize facts before we use them

Anyone know this guy? (showing a photo of Rand Paul, R Senate candidate, KY)
- strongly supported by the Tea Party
- he has 2 primary agenda items for education:
1- Dump the US Department of Education
2- Wants to get rid of NCLB

What would that change if NCLB went away?
- MY COMMENT OUT LOUD: LESS FEAR OF BAD THINGS
- teacher fear of failure might go away
- test pressure would go away

Since NCLB was enacted in 2001, it has accomplished nothing

If NCLB would go away, teachers woulda gain

MOST of today’s standardized test questions DO NOT measure RECALL

I AM WONDERING WHAT TEST HE’S TALKING ABOUT. OF COURSE AS A PARENT I CAN’T TAKE OR EVEN SEE PEARSON’S TESTS THEY CREATE – IN THEIR ENTIRITY. THEY RELEASE SOME QUESTIONS, BUT NOT THE ENTIRE THING. NO ONE IN OKLAHOMA HAS GONE TO COURT, AS I THINK THEY DID IN TEXAS, TO FORCE RELEASE OF TEKS/TAKS TESTS.

Now showing Biology EOI (end of instruction) question from Oklahoma (a released item), and a US History EOI question
- both involve higher order thinking
- this released test question appears to have a misprint, say “effort” instead of “effect”

now PISA Question (Program for International Student Assessment)
- this is the assessment that says US schools are 24th in the world and our teachers are horrible
- those statements are not based on Oklahoma EOI results

Reading question about a paragraph and charges/tables on Lake Cad, last question, “Why do you think the author chose to start the graph in that year?”
- that is all about higher order thinking

If you are teaching to the test, that is not a bad word, but you need to recognize the test is NOT a recall test
- too many teachers “teaching to the test” don’t really grasp that today
- it is NOT a “Remembering test”
- they don’t have to remember everything from your class

If mulitiple choice tests are used in a 1:1 environment, they should look EXACTLY like the standardized tests

In 1:1 environment tests must challenge students to FIND and/or USE information
- MC tests that measure recall WORTHLESS
- remember this is MY opinion (this isn’t necessarily the opinions of my current and former superintendent)

Teaching today is NOT about content standards
- you don’t have to do away with NCLB to not be so concerned about standards

MY ASIDE COMMENT: INTERSTING NO ONE HAS SHARED OR SHOWED ANY VIDEOS TODAY YET

The common core standards which have just been adopted are probably NOT going to change anything at the high school level
- grade schools, however, might have a heart attack if Oklahoma adopts these
- Oklahoma governor HAS said Oklahoma will adopt common core

However, it’s not about content standards today
- it’s about cognitive science
- look in your packet for the card about cognitive science

[insert image here]

humans have always learned the same way: We learn WHAT we want, WHEN we want (or NEED) it
- if we had held this conference on June 4th last year, how many of you would have come?
- the MORE we NEED it, the more EFFORT we put into it

If we don’t WANT it or NEED it, we DON’T CARE ABOUT IT!
- now you care about this 1:1 discussion

recognize your students are JUT like this, just like you
- you have to make your classes relevant for students
- you have to help your students WANT It, move from the “I don’t care” mentality

MY THOUGHT: CLEARLY JIM ASKEW IS A GREAT EDUCATOR TO WORK WITH, HAVE ON YOUR STAFF, BE IN CLASS WITH. THIS IS GREAT TO HEAR FROM HIM!!!

Students actually LIKE to solve problems (under the right conditions)

Teachers must get it RIGHT for every student
- not too hard, not too easy

The 3 Proofs of Education
1- What do you KNOW?
2- What can you DO with what you know?
3- What are you WILLING to unlearn, then relearn?

The Texas textbook wars: why such a big deal?
- If you could write your own textbook, what would you put in it?

You can’t just tell kids when they come into your class, “We’re going to learn about Pluto today. Go out on the web and see what you can find.”
- we can’t just throw away the textbook
- you have to make decisions about what goes in the textbook

Your online curriculum IS the textbook

My online curriculum is 15 years worth of work, and I tweak it all the time

Digital textbooks are STILL textbooks
- if you just wanted to put a textbook on a laptop, you should have bought new textbooks or a Kindle

Someone else’s website is built for THEM
- imagine how empowered your students would feel empowered if you told your teachers you can build your own relevant curriculum / write your own textbook

THIS IS RIGHT!!!! PREACH ON, JIM!

Pick your 10 most important concepts
- if you are an EOI class, go through objectives and released items and pick 10 concepts
- say “If my kids had fully learned these 10 concepts, they would have passed this test”
- if you are an English teacher with 107 PASS objectives, this can work for you

Build your curriculum around these concepts

OF THE OVER 3000 PASS OBJECTIVES IN OKLAHOMA, OVER HALF OF THEM ARE IN LANGUAGE ARTS.

Involve your students in ACTIVE learning.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Jim Askew on Individualized Online Curriculum and Transforming Learning #ok1to1 originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on June 4, 2010.

Find more videos like this on Celebrate Oklahoma Voices!

This is the fifth video Oklahoma teachers and students have shared on our learning community website about some aspect of the Murrah building tragedy in the past three years, as part of Celebrate Oklahoma Voices. If you are addressing terrorism or the history of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing specifically in your curriculum, consider using one or more of these videos to discuss the history and issues surrounding these events with your students.

1. Sister’s Story by Brad Logan (5:28)
2. Innocence Lost by Andrea (2:39)
3. Unsung Heroes: Oklahoma Responds by Geraldine Southern (3:06)
4. A Day in the History of Oklahoma by Catherine Elizabeth Walling (3:20)
5. Oklahoma City Bombing by Mallory-Randa-Jessica (2:09) – This was a student project

On April 5, 2010, Oklahoma governor Brad Henry signed House Bill 2750 into law which makes the study of the Murrah building bombing a mandatory part of the curriculum for Oklahoma students starting in 2010-2011. according to the bill’s original language:

A study of the bombing and its aftermath can help students learn the impact of violence, the senselessness of using violence to solve problems or effect government change, and the importance of personal responsibility.

HB 2750 Denney

The COV learning community group “OKC Bombing” has been created to share videos, links, and other curriculum ideas/resources related to this event. The five videos above are all embedded on the group’s forum post, “COV Videos on the Oklahoma City Bombing (May 2010.)”

Anyone age 13 and above (in any location worldwide) is welcome to join the Celebrate Oklahoma Voices learning community website. Only registered members can comment on videos and participate in forum discussions. Membership is moderated by project facilitators, and submitted videos are moderated as well. Learn more about Celebrate Oklahoma Voices on our project wiki, and learn more about Storychasers by visiting storychasers.org

Remembering the Oklahoma City Bombing (supplementary curriculum videos) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on May 21, 2010.

photo credit: OctopusHat

FREE / OPEN SOURCE OPTIONS (not expiring demos)

WikiPedia has a helpful comparative matrix of project management solution options, and includes 7 open source choices which appear to meet our requirements:

1. dotProject
2. TaskJuggler
3. Collabtive
4. Endeavour
5. KForge
6. project-Open
7. Redmine

Some of the options currently listed on the WikiPedia matrix (like Project.net) are being run by companies and given away free, but commercial support plans for enterprise users. I left those off my shortlist above. I also did not include options like OpenProj, GanttProject and Open Workbench, because they are strictly desktop-client programs and not server/web based. Some of the options listed on WikiPedia, like eGroupWare, falsely indicate they are open source when they are NOT and are strictly commercial.

This demonstrates how WikiPedia IS and CAN BE an extremely valuable tool for research, but as with any information source it needs to be corroborated with additional research and investigation. As an aside, we NEED to help classroom teachers, librarians, and administrators understand this. Too many educators today completely dismiss WikiPedia as a research tool, when it CAN and SHOULD be utilized appropriately to meet academic as well as professional research needs.

dotProject and TaskJuggler are both open source, server-based project management solutions I’ve encountered previously and saved to my Project Management social bookmarks. It looks like dotProject has a shallower learning curve, but I’m not positive. If you have experiences, positive or negative, with either solution I’d love to hear about them. Of the other options I included in the list above, Collabtive and Endeavour are the ones which look most promising in addition to dotProject at this point.

TRIAL / COMMERCIAL OPTIONS

ZoHo Projects doesn’t offer any project template features in its free version, and currently starts at $12 per month US. It can integrate with Google Docs, but we’re really looking for something free to use. In the past I’ve used Basecamp with several projects, and had pretty good experiences with it, but its free plan only permits 1 project and commercial pricing starts at $24 US per month. We need a solution which supports unlimited projects and ideally an unlimited number of project templates.

Manymoon looks like a great commercial collaboration / project management option with its Google App integration, and their free solution is pretty robust with unlimited projects permitted. The Manymoon pricing comparison shows the breakdown of features. “Time tracking” and “Email to Task” are features you have to pay for to use. Their “team” solution offers a lot of reporting options that would be handy. I’m NOT sure how Manymoon’s project templates compare to those by commercial project management solutions like Basecamp, Deskaway, Wrike or Comindwork. On April 28, 2010, Manymoon announced their support of templates and custom task status functionality, so these are pretty new features for them. Of course MS Project is available and may offer some web-based functionality, but I’ve generally found enterprise solutions like this from Microsoft aren’t very Mac/Apple friendly and generally offer more features for Windows clients than others. That’s something we can’t accept.

Based on my cursory research, Manymoon looks very promising, especially with its Google Docs/Apps integration. It would be simpler to use their hosted solution rather than installing, configuring and maintaining our own open source solution. At most, we’d pay $180 per year to use their full version.

I’d like to go with an open source/free solution for this Storychaser need because my own learning about it would be more applicable for schools/educators which/who don’t have extra money to pay for project management solutions. I continue to believe our students and educators need to use web-based tools (like project management solutions) to effectively implement PBL. I wrote about this in my April 2008 post, “Tools for facilitating PBL?” Telecommmunting and working from home is an option for more and more people, and we HAVE to help students in our schools learn to work more independently with collaborative groups, meet project deadlines, and provide “deliverables” according to announced specifications. Even if federal employees still are constrained in their abilities to work from home (see the 7 May 2010 Washington Post article, “Bill to expand federal workers’ telecommuting options falls short in House“) that is not true in the private sector for many organizations and companies. Whether Storychasers opts to try Manymoon or a another project management solution, I’m sure the knowledge gained will be instructive, and I’ll definitely continue to share my learning journey on this here.

What do you think of available options for “true” free / open source project management solutions? (Please don’t comment here if you’re a vendor, or to tout a “free trial” version of something that goes commercial after a certain time.)

Technorati Tags:
app, docs, google, management, open, opensource, project, software, manymoon, googledocs, googleapps, gantt, basecamp, deskaway, wrike, comindwork, endeavor

Web-based, Open Source Project Management Software Options originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on May 17, 2010.

The advent of digital encoding technologies has brought a revolution to the entertainment and media industries, and afforded a wealth of new media consumptive options for consumers. In his song and music video, “Welcome to the Future,” country singer Brad Paisley reflects on how, in his childhood, he dreamed of watching TV in the car on an eight hour road trip. This dream is a reality today thanks to the proliferation of iPods and other portable media players, as well as the availability of commercial audio and video titles in electronic formats.

The landscape of consumer media options continues to be fraught with legal battles, however, in large part because of media conglomerates’ desires to maintain control over the “intellectual property” they produce, license, and sell. Entertainment artists and industry workers also share a stake in maintaining control and therefore profitability for media file licensing.

When it comes to the legality of making copies of DVD movies a consumer in the United States has legally purchased, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) as well as the DVD Copy Control Association (DVD CCA) are two fronts from which companies and organizations have challenged the legality of copying, archiving, and compressing DVDs. In her October 2008 article, “DVD Ripping: The Latest on the Legal Front,” Julie Jacobson opens with the following statement:

Here’s where we stand today on the legality of DVD ripping: We’re not quite sure if it’s legal.

The English WikiPedia defines “ripping” as:

…the process of copying audio or video content to a hard disk, typically from removable media. The word is used to refer to all forms of media. Despite the name, neither the media nor the data in it is damaged after extraction.

The article further explains in the “legality” section:

On the whole, it is legal for an individual in the United States to make a copy of media he/she owns for his/her own personal use. For instance, making a copy of a personally-owned audio CD for transfer to an MP3 player for that person’s personal use would be legal.
In the case where media contents are protected using some effective copy protection scheme, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act makes it illegal to circumvent that copy protection scheme. This law makes it illegal to rip most commercial DVDs as they are typically protected by CSS encryption.

The legality of DVD ripping depends on your location, however. Again according to the WikiPedia article:

In countries such as Spain, anyone is allowed to make a private copy of a copyrighted material for oneself, and the source copy does not even have to be legal. Making copies for other people, however, is forbidden if done for profit. This is also true for Sweden. In Australia, copies of any legally purchased music may be made by its owner, as long as it is not distributed to others and its use remains personal. In the United Kingdom, making a private copy of copyrighted media without the copyright owner’s consent is illegal: this includes ripping music from a CD to a computer or digital music player. The UK government has made proposals to allow people to make copies of music for personal use.

This is a confusing state of affairs.

The English WikiPedia article for “DVD Ripper” offers the following definition:

A DVD ripper is a software program that facilitates copying the content of a DVD to a hard disk drive. They are mainly used to transfer video on DVDs to different formats, to edit or back up DVD content, and for converting DVD video for playback on media players and mobile devices. Some DVD rippers include additional features, such as the ability to decrypt DVDs, remove copy preventions and make disks unrestricted and region-free.

The article also includes a detailed table listing and comparing different versions of DVD ripping software.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) provides a concise overview of the legal and technical issues at stake in DVD ripping on its page, “Hollywood v. DVD.” The page (as of 14 March 2010) states:

With billions sold, the DVD remains the principle way that millions of consumers experience digital video. Yet Hollywood has, from the birth of this format, imposed unprecedented restrictions on what customers can do with the DVDs they own.

Hollywood has argued in lawsuits and before policy-makers around the world that it is always illegal to make a digital copy (“rip”) of a DVD. Even if you own it, even if you’re trying to make a personal copy so that your children don’t scratch the original, even if you want to make a copy to watch on your iPod, even if you want to skip those annoying “unskippable” commercials at the beginning.

Hollywood has also sued companies that try to provide DVD owners with the same kinds of innovations that we take for granted with CDs—such as a “DVD jukebox” that lets you watch your own DVDs around your own house from a central home media server.

The difference between DVDs and previous media formats—like the CD—is the CSS encryption system used to “scramble” the digital bits on the DVD. Thanks to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a federal law passed a the behest of Hollywood, consumers enjoy fewer rights with respect to copyrighted works that are protected by “technical protection measures” (aka DRM) than they did with prior formats. Congress was told that the DMCA was necessary to prevent “digital piracy” online, but the use of anti-consumer DRM has been a total failure at preventing “piracy.” Instead, the legacy of the DMCA has been to penalize legitimate consumers and impair competition and innovation. So Hollywood today clings to DRM not because it has any impact on “piracy,” but because it allows the movie studios to dictate the features and innovations that legitimate companies can deliver to legitimate consumers.

The bottom line for consumers today in the United States is that intellectual property / copyright law forces the legal REPURCHASE of media which was originally bought in CD and/or DVD formats, and the consumer wants in a computer / mobile media player format. This was affirmed by Greg Sandoval’s March 3, 2010, article for CNET, “RealNetworks surrenders in RealDVD case.” Greg wrote:

The MPAA filed suit to stop the sale of RealDVD, a software that hands users the ability to copy and store films to a hard drive.
From the outset of Real’s struggle, the company appeared to be on shaky ground. Real argued that consumers possessed the right to backup their DVDs, just as they have a right to make a copy of their songs for personal use. Real told the court the company was just trying to offer consumers the means to do that and that they had a fair use right to do that.
But after hearing initial arguments from Real and the studios, Patel [the judge in the case] quickly slapped a preliminary injunction that prevented sales of RealDVD. Things went down hill from there.
Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group that advocates for tech companies and Internet users, defended Real’s pursuit of the case. He said Real could have provided real benefit to consumers, if not with RealDVD, then eventually with a DVD player that would have incorporated some of the software’s copying abilities. Real was working on a player, codenamed Facet, which would have created copies of DVDs and stored more than 70 films on its hard drive.

“(Real’s testimony) made it clear that Real was out to deliver to consumers a product that people wanted to see,” von Lohmann said. “I think the message this sends is if you get into the business of enabling consumers to do with DVDs what they’ve long done with CDs, you’ll get sued out of the business. I think that’s bad news for consumers. What that means is that if you want to create a digital back-up of your movies, you have to pay for that a second time on iTunes.”

The EFF quoted part of this article in their March 3rd “In The News” post, “RealNetworks surrenders in RealDVD case.”

Now that we’ve explored some of the legal perspectives on DVD ripping, I’d like to highlight two functional solutions for DVD ripping. Bear in mind, as explained above, that the legality of using these software programs depends on your geography.

Handbrake is:

…an open source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded vio trancoder, available for Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows.

Somewhat ironically, I first learned about Handbrake when visiting an Apple Store and asking about software options for encoding DVDs. Of course the Apple Store wasn’t and isn’t selling Handbrake: as a GPL-licensed program, it is free and legally must remain free: No one can sell it. I’ve used Handbrake software on my Mac to rip and compress numerous DVD movies. The program allows users to select the target platform for the encoded / compressed MP4 video version. Most of my Handbrake-encoded movies are around 600 MB in size, but some (like the two part disc series in the 2+ hour movie LOTR – ROTK) are over 1 GB.

Handbrake is great, but some DVD movie creators have become more sophisticated in their use of “Content Scramble System” methods in encoding DVDs so Handbrake cannot (at present) properly rip them. One example is the DVD of WALL-E. My initial attempt to rip WAL-E with Handbrake appeared to succeed, but the order of the encoded scenes was mixed up. To remedy this, I used the commercially available RipIt application (sold by the little app factory) to create a full-resolution backup of my purchased DVD. Then, I used Handbrake to create a compressed MP4 version playable on iPhones and iPods.

Hopefully copyright laws in the United States, the UK, and other countries will change to legally permit DVD and CD purchasers to make THEIR OWN archive copies of media files. Until then (and even afterwards) we’ll likely see continued legal fights by organizations and media conglomerates to prevent commercial, copy-protected DVD and CD ripping by consumers wanting to avoid the re-purchase of their movies and songs to realize Brad Paisley’s vision in, “Welcome to the Future.”

For more about these issues, check out The Digital Freedom Campaign’s website on www.digitalfreedom.org.

Technorati Tags:
copy, dvd, rip, ripping, ripit, handbrake, eff, dmca, intellectual, property

Ripping Personally Owned DVDs for iPhone or iPod Viewing: Legal and Technical Perspectives originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on March 14, 2010.

But this is an anachronistic view of the world. Modern authoritarian states have eagerly (but selectively) embraced globalisation to provide their citizens with at least a modicum of self-actualisation without ever abandoning their authoritarianism. Their young people travel the world, learn English, use Skype and poke each other on Facebook – all while competing for comfortable jobs with state-owned companies. We are entering the age of “accommodating authoritarianism” – and the internet has played a crucial (though hardly the only) role in providing many of the accommodations.

I agree with Morozov’s point that current leaders of countries like China want to “selectively” embrace globalization. See my post from last month, “Learning about Xinjiang, Urumqui, and China’s Uygur People” for more on these ideas as they relate specifically to China, as well as my podcast returning from China at the start of November 2009, “Reflections on Social Media, School Change, 21st Century Learning Skills, and China.” It is certainly naive to think the mere availability of social media tools to dissidents in relatively closed societies will lead to immediate and facile democratic change. It would be a mistake, however, to dismiss social media entirely as a powerful force for communication and change in these contexts. We also should not underestimate the importance of leaders in countries like China and Middle Eastern nations being EDUCATED in the West. While CURRENT leaders may favor selectively embracing globalization, future leaders may not.

This article from Evgeny Morozov reminds me of Steven Levy’s July 2009 article for Wired Magazine, “Booting Up Baghdad: Tech Execs Take a Tour in Iraq.” The article tells the story of a group of Silicon Valley CEOs and US tech company representatives traveling to Iraq with the U.S. State Department to meet with Iraqi leaders. Their discussions were to focus on the potential for social media technologies to promote economic development within Iraq, as well as the development of an engaged and participatory electorate. The article is an eye-opener, as was the trip for the traveling Silicon Valley CEOs, about the horrible status of Iraq’s infrastructure and the other challenges faced by its leaders in seeking to rebuild as well as build anew a country caught between worlds and worldviews. Echoing Morozov’s point about young people in many countries aspiring to hold “comfortable jobs with state-owned companies,” Levy describes how the entire concept of entrepreneurism is literally foreign to most of the Iraqis the U.S. delegation met on their trip. Iraq does not simply face challenges of infrastructure and security, it also faces huge obstacles in education and the vocational worldviews of many of its citizens.

One of the most thought provoking points made by Morozov in his article regards the political, economic, and lifestyle “choices” which are open to citizens of planet earth today. Morozov contends the dominant choices are fundamentally hedonistic. He writes:

In one respect, then, authoritarian states and modern democracies are very much alike: both have embraced hedonism as their main and only political ideology. The recent outburst of techno-utopianism in the West may thus be just another futile attempt to imagine a world where the purest ideal of Athenian democracy, uncorrupted by special interests and popular culture, is not only possible but could actually be facilitated by its more corrupt, frivolous, and somewhat culpable western sibling. This, of course, is an illusion. Citizens of modern authoritarian states face a choice between hedonism with stable prosperity (their status quo) and hedonism with unstable prosperity – the hedonism that may follow a tumultuous transition to democracy. Stability wins, with or without Twitter.

The central identification of “The West” and our values with hedonism and the unbridled pursuit of self-interests at the expense of all other values is a big problem. Frank Viviano’s October 2003 article for National Geographic Magazine, “Kingdom on Edge: Saudi Arabia” (which unfortunately is not available in its entirety online) provides some worthwhile insights into this clash of cultures and worldviews as they apply specifically in the Arab world. Viviano writes:

Jeddah, in the middle of the night, is the paradox of contemporary Saudi Arabia writ large. “We are being carried in two directions at once, backward and forward,” says Suad al-Yamani, a Saudi neurologist who sees, in her patients, the disorienting effects of changes that have rocketed a deeply conservative society from the 7th to the 21st century in the span of a few decades. The stakes are beyond exaggeration, for Saudi Arabia is not simply another traditional country coping with change. As keeper of the Muslim holy cities, Mecca and Medina, it serves as the chief custodian of Islam and the spiritual home of 1.3 billion Muslims worldwide.

Unlike Morozov, I do not view the options available to us as citizens of the United States or to citizens of China, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, or other nations as simply “hedonism with stable prosperity” and “hedonism with unstable prosperity.” While the marketing focus of our corporate-dominated economy today is clearly the consumption of ever-greater quantities of goods and services, this is not the highest value to which we as human beings should orient our lives and our nations. Living as I do in central Oklahoma, I can only begin to imagine what incredible stresses and challenges are faced by the citizens and residents of other nations by globalization. I reject Madonna, Britney Spears, and other celebrities as the cultural icons of our broader society. Many of us in the West stand for and support far more than mere “hedonism” in our culture and economy. While many voices in mainstream media continue to broadcast this ultimately destructive swan song of hedonism through various channels, social media tools offer “the rest of us” tools to share, cooperate, and organize for collective action around a different set of values.

One of the most important, tangible things we can and MUST do in “the West” is continue to reform our political systems to reduce and eliminate corruption. Mainstream media as well as social media communications platforms offer desperately needed windows into the corrupt backroom dealmaking which take place in ALL governments, but are not brought forth into the LIGHT of public scrutiny in far too many cases. We need look no further afield for dramatic examples of this than the deals cut to pass health care reform in Washington DC this month. Corrupt politics like that revealed by this latest round of “political dealmaking” should not only anger us as voters and taxpayers, it should also galvanize us to support the work of groups like The Sunlight Foundation to systemically reform our political system in support of values like openness, transparency, and true accountability.

No, social media is not going to single-handedly bring about a transition to peaceful and prosperous climates of self-determination in nations like China, Iran and Iraq. Social media is and will continue to be leveraged to powerful effect by those seeking political and cultural changes, however. What form SHOULD those changes take? I contend they should be far more than moves to embrace “the hedonism of the West.” Instead of focusing the bulk of our attention, efforts, and money on “fixing” the problems faced by other nations, I believe leaders of the United States should be forced by populist demands to clean up “our own house” and thereby demonstrate by example the political and moral benefits available within an open, participatory political culture which values open expression as well as debate. We must eliminate earmarks by giving the line-item veto to our President and making other systemic political changes. It should not and must not take a ridiculously long 2000 page bill to do this. We must reform campaign finance with systemic changes which limit the opportunities of corporate interests to buy votes and legislators at the federal and state levels. We must stop our insane race to run up even more deficits, spending our children’s inheritance, and adopt responsible fiscal policies which serve the long term interests of our electorate and not merely the short-term interests of our corporations.

There is a LOT of work which we must do as voters, constituents, and leaders in the United States. Will Twitter and social media be important and powerful tools for this needed populist, political movement? In my view, YES: sin una duda. Can social media be a powerful platform for communication and change in other nations around the globe? The answer is the same: Of course. One does not have to be a “techno-utopian” to understand as well as embrace the powerful, constructive potentials of social media to help determined groups of individuals change our world.

Technorati Tags:
change, identity, iran, iraq, politics, twitter, unitedstates, hedonism, authoritarianism, saudiarabia, saudi, arabia, arab, west, light, sunlight

Hedonism, Politics, Authoritarianism, Twitter and Political Change originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on December 31, 2009.

Bruce Dixon’s comments after Ron Canuel’s presentation

today we’re seeing more schools MANDATING file navigation and management skills
- how to use folder management
- we need to take the time to help teachers as well as students learn how to do this

Now making a plug for ONEnote
- many people absolutely LOVE ONEnote
- some say this works the way I think

Keyboarding skills
- some people
- Australian champion of thumbing got 26 words per minute last month
- why handicap our young people?
- my girls can do about 80 wpm
- give kids time each week, esp over first month to six months
- show kids the way they can most effectively use that keyboard

I THINK THAT IS A GREAT WAY TO ADDRESS THE IMPORTANCE OF KEYBOARDING. WELL SAID, BRUCE!

None of your parents went to school where they had laptops
- many of your parents don’t even understand that a good keyboarder can generate information two to three times as fast as they can handwrite

Now hearing from Carolyn Thompson, her presentation “Models of Contemporary Learning”
- Carolyn is a secondary teacher at the Louise S. McGehee School in New Orleans, Louisiana

Carolyn’s links for today on Sharetabs

her first question: “How many of you are teachers?”
- I am coming to you from the trenches of the classroom

THIS REMINDS ME OF MARCO’S RESPONSE TO THIS QUESTION AT ACTEM. WHY SHOULD WE ONLY SAY WE ARE TEACHERS IF WE ARE CURRENTLY IN THE CLASSROOM? OF COURSE MANY OF US ARE STILL TEACHERS EVEN THOUGH WE ARE NOT IN A CLASSROOM WITH KIDS EVERY DAY.

Today I’m going to focus on issues of collaboration and relationships
- my relationship to my students, their relationships to me, to each other, and to others outside the classroom with others around the world which have really been transformed

I really view this as a journey
- my school’s mission statement focuses on individualized learning, and lifelong desire to learn

Let’s talk about conceptions of citizenship
- I teach honors US government
- I really want my students to be empowered to make change

I ask my kids to setup a blog at the start of the year about an issue they are passionate about, something they care about, something that will get them off their chair
- example from Grace: My big issue is
- example from Grace: My Bill Ideas

Having my kids setup blogs at the start of the year is critical, this gives me a vital window into their learning and their minds throughout the year
- our journey of learning together personifies the idea that I am not in control and in charge of all the information and the learning this year
- starting to change the dynamic between my students and I
- changing my kids perception from seeing me and their textbook as something they have to “conquer” during the year

The ability of these tools to help students connect with each other has been incredible
- number of web 2.0 tool is incredible
- I had to push a lot of those away
- I have to think as a teacher, what is it I want to do…

have to help students overcome their sense of isolation
- through use of wikis, through use of class weblog, changes the ways students see each other and the class
- students start to create a network of learners
- kids become contributors to class projects, which are things they look back on with pride
- students look to each other for information and inspiration
- in my comparative AP government class, kids have to learn several countries inside and out
- weekly current event assignments, assignments come in
- kids share their reports and findings on a common class weblog

Example of wiki being used by students
- becomes commonplace for students to publish
- becomes as simple as clicking a button
- what this means: rather than a poster that goes up on the wall, stays in the classroom, now they can be shared with the greater world

We have a partner classroom in Bangalore, India, for our global issues class
- this is brand new, we’re just launching this
- kids are contributing to this wiki resource
- integrating a food diaries here, talk about how we eat compared to how kids in India eat before we talk about the global food crisis
- photos on Flickr showing foods
- have been very successful using skype between our schools, are going to integrate that into our global food crisis study

What I have found using this ability
- it is so easy to use
- when I first started using Wikis, you had to know a lot of programming

these are incredibly easy tools to use
- as you start thinking about what you can do with them, the sky is the limit

OF COURSE THAT ASSUMES THAT THESE WEBSITES ARE ACCESSIBLE FROM YOUR SCHOOL, AND YOUR SCHOOL ADMINISTRATION IS SUPPORTIVE OF THE IDEA OF KIDS CREATING, COMMUNICATING, AND COLLABORATING…

Project example using wiki: The McG Model Congress
- used discussion tabs to mirror committee work
- did this over 3 sections that I teach, this brought the entire grade together
- ended with huge day of debate, students from all 3 sections came together (F2F) to debate and work on bills
- the wiki was the tool behind the scenes which allowed all of this to work

In order to do these things, our kids need to learn how to do these things
- we shouldn’t assume they already know how to do all of this
- they CAN do this, but they don’t come to us knowing these things

Examples of concepts they need:
- RSS feeds: how do I find out about the world I am living in? It takes too long to visit all these sites
- using iGoogle
- we talk about lots of different sources of information
- differences between mainstream media sources, blogs, identifying liberal vs conservative blogs and other news sources
- if kids are going to learn about their world, they have to know about different sources of information that are out there
- looking at iGoogle makes a great way to start the day, looking at what is making headlines today, news of the day
- have liberal and conservative sources/voices

social bookmarking has also been HUGE
- kids need help organizing their information they are finding

I build the use of these tools into students’ daily and nightly assignments
- often they have to find something relevant and related in the news which connects to the assignment
- students constantly are using web evaluations
- I teach them over and over how to organize information, we focus on tagging a lot

Many times I’m asked about if this takes away from students’ learning about government, my ability to cover content
- my answer is that this IS the way students are and will learn about their government, and about other issues

The past 10 years I’ve been doing this have been so dynamic
- I have learned so much from my students
- this is what I do all day, I have great relationships with my students, they are excited to go vote, to participate and be active in government
- in a day when we see so many bemoan apathy and a lack of civic engagement, my students’ excitement is inspiring to see and experience

Carolyn Thompson on Delicious (social bookmarking)

Bruce’s closing thoughts on Carolyn’s presentation:
- technology increases our pedagogical capacity
- I can’t think of a better example than what we’ve just seen from Carolyn

More from Carolyn:
- we are the only girl’s school in the city with a laptop program
- when Katrina hit, no cell phones worked
- all cell towers were down
- when I evacuated, I was pregnant, wasn’t thinking I would be gone for 6 weeks
- couldn’t communicate
- we are right in the garden district on the river, our school didn’t flood
- our classroom had websites setup outside our school, our school servers were down
- Aug 26th, I setup via our class weblog different sites on blogger for different grade levels
- students found there way there from Starbucks and other wifi sites
- makes me cry when I read them now– people so thankful now to be able to share, to find others, to get news
- because our students had been using this type of technology in the classroom to build community, it was so natural for them to come to the school websites to find each other
- we were the first school in the city to re-open
- Oct 24th we re-opened with 50% of our kids, which was amazing

This taught our administration that this laptop was not just about posting assignments or bragging about sports wins/test scores, it is about places to come together and build community together
- this was an unbelievable experience
- this is not just about teaching, it is about connecting with the people you love

Our students participated in a city-wide crime march
- kids put together this project, wanted to go to Washington
- the entire 11th grade pulled together, created lobby booklet using a wiki
- saw 7 or 8 Senators, met with House of Representatives too
- were the talk of the town in Washington
- not sure if did a lot in the end to put resources on the ground

Carolyn Thompson’s profile page on Independent School Educator’s Network

I view blogs as a place to work out ideas
- they need to recognize it is public as well
- so language cannot be too informal

I think this is Carolyn Thompson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/mcgijoes

Technorati Tags:
1to1, aalf, education, laptop, learning, oklahoma, onetoone, school, ok1to1

Models of Contemporary Learning by Carolyn Thompson #ok1to1 originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on November 30, 2009.

…more than 25 percent of the available eRate funding that was committed to applicants during the program’s first nine years has not been disbursed.

Article commenter “dan597″ observed accurately that this headline and statement may be misleading, writing:

The headline on this article makes it sound as if 25% of E-Rate funding is just sitting around unused. That is not the case. Unused funding is carried over to future years. Those carryover funds have provided increased funding in recent years, allowing the funding of applicants who would otherwise have been precluded.

The final sentence of the article, however, addresses this concern, with Dennis noting and quoting the original GAO report:

Though unused funds are reallocated for use in future years, they are “still problematic,” notes the GAO’s report, “because they preclude other applicants from being funded” during the program year in question.

This GAO report was actually published in March 2009 under the title, “Long-Term Strategic Vision Would Help Ensure Targeting of E-rate Funds to Highest-Priority Uses.” There were two key recommendations made by GAO researchers in this report, which were not included in Dennis Pierce’s article:

To ensure targeted and efficient use of program funds, FCC should (1) report to Congress on its strategic vision for the E-rate program, including long-term goals, and (2) report annually in its performance plan on undisbursed funding associated with expired funding commitments. FCC took no position on GAO’s recommendations, and USAC noted it stood ready to work with FCC to develop and report performance goals and measures.

I heartily agree that the eRate program needs a revised “strategic vision.” Working as I did for AT&T from 2006 through 2008 as the Director of Education Advocacy for the state of Oklahoma, I gained a lot of insights into the eRate program from both the perspective of service providers as well as the schools and school constituents eRate was designed to serve. Since it started in 1996, eRate has been focused on providing Internet connectivity for United States schools and libraries. If you’re not familiar with eRate, check out both the English WikiPedia article for eRate as well as the FCC’s Schools and Libraries Division (SLD) website maintained by USAC. USAC administers eRate for the SLD, which in turn reports to the FCC.

Just as the United States needed governmental regulations and subsidies to complete electrification of our nation, particularly in rural areas in the 1940s and 1950s, we need governmental intervention to provide robust Internet connectivity for ALL the students, teachers, and citizens in our communities today. It is a ridiculous idea to propose we should simply “leave it up to the market” for high speed connectivity to be provided for all the citizens of our nation. Do you live in a rural community now? If not, have you been in a rural community lately and tried to get online with a cell phone? How about trying to get high speed Internet service at a residence or place of business in a rural location? In many communities, you’re lucky if you can get DSL. Satellite Internet options are available in many areas, but are VERY expensive and comparably much slower to cable modem speeds and newer VDCL options like AT&T U-Verse. Why have our rural communities not been served with a rich array of high speed Internet connectivity options by corporations providing Internet service? One reason: ROI. If you live in a sparsely populated area, the return on investment / rate of return calculations for corporations and even small businesses are stark when it comes to high speed Internet connectivity. Businesses can’t make money serving sparsely populated areas the same way they can when population concentrations are higher. The result is our digital connectivity divide, which is VERY real and should be of BIG concern to all of us, wherever we live.

The E-Rate program is many things to many people. From one perspective, it is essentially a wealth redistribution program which guarantees Internet Service Providers (ISPs like AT&T) will have a guaranteed revenue stream of millions of dollars to provide Internet connectivity to schools and libraries. All telecommunications customers in the United States pay a “universal service” tax on every bill which goes into a big pot of money. That money is disbursed through several programs, one of which is E-Rate. If you’re an ISP, E-Rate is a great program even though it has lots of bureaucratic hurdles to navigate. Checks and balances are essential for any governmental program: Without them, and even WITH them, unfortunately some commercial providers as well as recipient school districts abuse government programs and their funds. Just look to the health care industry and the shenanigans which continue to be performed by various actors if you need more evidence to support this contention.

While some bureaucratic checks and balances are definitely needed for E-Rate and other governmental programs, it is critical to evaluate HOW MANY checks and balances are needed, and whether those “safeguards” result in the tail wagging the dog when it comes to a funding program. E-Rate legislation was passed, from my understanding, largely through the lobbying efforts of our U.S. telecommunications companies. Certainly we have educational technology advocacy groups like the EdTech Action Network which lobby for more educational technology funding for schools not only from the vantage point of vendors but also from that of teachers, administrators, students and parents. I think, however, the funds of ETAN and other grassroots organizations are paltry compared to those of our telecommunications giants. The very limited goal and purpose of E-Rate, therefore, can be understood better when viewed with this lens. E-Rate has NEVER funded “end user equipment” for schools and libraries, “digital content,” or professional development. This means E-Rate funds provide discounted connectivity services for schools and libraries (think T-1 lines, T-3 lines, DS3 lines, etc) and infrastructure hardware “in the closet” required for wired and wireless connectivity, but funds cannot be used to purchase student computers, phones for teachers, etc. A percentage of videoconferencing equipment is generally available for an E-Rate discount, but not ALL the cost of that equipment since it equates to “end user equipment.” ISPs are not the only beneficiaries here, networking giants like Cisco Systems (who interestingly purchased the videoconferencing company Tandberg at the start of this month for $3 billion) have earned millions of dollars from the E-Rate program, and continue to do so.

I believe we need to view high speed Internet connectivity as a “basic service” provided within ALL our communities just as clean water, reliable electricity, and sewer/trash service is provided. Our community, state and national leaders need to take up this torch, because you can bet corporate leaders are not going to do it when their focus remains quarterly profits as well as long term ROI. We need to engage in conversations about these issues with the leaders of our existing rural utility cooperatives, which in many cases have huge “war chests” of dollars that could support the infrastructure build-out required to bring needed high speed connectivity to our rural communities.

It is my contention the strategic vision of the E-Rate program, as recommended by the GAO March 2009 report referenced above, is in dire need of revision. E-Rate funds should not simply provide connectivity for our schools, they also should be available to provide end user computer hardware for schools (like laptop computers,) digital curriculum content, AND professional development training for educators. We do not simply need our schools to be “connected” to the information superhighway. A robust, high-speed Internet connection IS a prerequisite for many of the blended learning activities in which our students and teachers should be engaging each week, but it is not a sufficient ingredient. We MUST make it an educational priority in ALL our states (not just in Maine) to put portable, wireless computing devices in the hands of every learner in grades 4 through 12 in the next five years. How can we fund this educational imperative? TitleIID ARRA funds and other stimulus funds are insufficient. We can’t look at this as a one-time, stimulus-fund supported initiative. It MUST be sustainable. One of the funding mechanisms for state-led 1:1 learning initiatives should be E-Rate.

Is the E-Rate Program in the United States broken? In some ways, yes. Broadband USA is a portal for ARRA funding related to connectivity and bandwidth, but again, we don’t need just “one-time, shot in the arm” funding programs. We need sustainable revenue streams to support robust and equitable blended learning opportunities for students, teachers, and community members around our nation. Can ARRA meet this need? No, it cannot. Invested strategically, ARRA funds can certainly help states and localities build capacity and infrastructure for more robust bandwidth and digital learning opportunities, but that connectivity is just part of the recipe we need to follow. End-user digital equipment (read: affordable and powerful student and teacher laptops) as well as sustained professional development for teachers are equally important pieces of this puzzle. That PD must also address other key educational stakeholders: School administrators and library media specialists.

E-Rate needs a new strategic vision. Will President Obama, those in his administration, and other elected leaders in our nation rise to this challenge and opportunity? I hope so. The future of our students and our nation is at stake.

Technorati Tags:
education, fcc, funding, leadership, learning, politics, school, technology, unitedstates, erate, E-Rate, sld, gao, bandwidth, rural, cooperatives, utility

Is the E-Rate Program in the United States broken? originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on October 20, 2009.

The responses of schools and school leaders to next Tuesday’s Presidential address to U.S. students is a case in point. It is instructive to listen carefully to the reasons school leaders are providing to either leverage the learning opportunities presented by this nationwide address or squander them. I think the address provides a great opportunity for teachers, librarians, school administrators, and parents to experience together the power and value of live, synchronous interaction and dialog surrounding an event. Next Tuesday during and after the speech, since my 4th grade daughter’s teacher has decided NOT to let students watch the address together, I’m going to pull her out of class so we can both watch and participate in a synchronous live discussion (via CoverItLive) with 5th grade students at East Elementary School in Littleton, Colorado. (H/T to Karl Fisch.) Interestingly, our local school board announcement about President Obama’s Tuesday speech provides guidance for parents who do NOT want their children to listen, but it does not provide any guidance for parents who DO want their children to listen live and interact with others about this address when their classroom teacher has decided to OPT OUT.

Irrespective of the decisions made by your local school leaders regarding the speech, I challenge each of us with this question: How will we personally leverage the synchronous and asynchronous learning opportunities which our President’s speech provides for our students and our communities? In addition to talking and writing about the issues this situation raises, we also should ACT in ways that can potentially have a constructive impact on the perceptions of others who may not be well informed about the potential value of live, synchronous events today when blended learning methodologies are employed.

Following the example of the successful Film on the Fly cell phone digital storytelling contests, I encourage students around the world to post short, thoughtful responses to President Obama’s speech to YouTube, EduBlogs.tv, TeacherTube, and other video sharing sites using a common hashtag. I’m not sure if a common hashtag has been suggested, so please share via a comment if you know of one– but I’ll suggest the hashtag #studentresponse09. The White House has provided a linked list of suggested classroom activities and media resources to use with students prior to and following the address, and a video contest should be announced soon on the U.S. Department of Education’s website. Whatever the focus of the forthcoming video contest may be, it’s a great idea to solicit direct student feedback and responses to the video address as well as the discussions which ensue online and face-to-face in the weeks that follow. (Of course, parent permission to post student videos online remains as important as ever.)

School leaders’ responses to President Obama’s upcoming speech tell us several things, some which we probably know already and others about which we may not have thought previously.

1 – FEW SCHOOL LEADERS UNDERSTAND HOW TO LEVERAGE THE POWER OF LIVE, SYNCHRONOUS EVENTS

In our schools and communities, when most people think of “school learning” they frequently conjure an image of passive, disengaged students. We all know (or should know) that active, engaged learning is much better than a passive alternative for many reasons, including student learning and achievement. We are living in an amazing day for information sharing and blended learning, and need to help others in our communities understand that increasing access to asynchronously shared video content (like YouTube) as well as interactive web services (like CoverItLive) create NEW opportunities for learning which involve NEW pedagogies.

All U.S. families do not currently have a DVR, or a home computer with high-speed Internet access. The fact that the White House will be posting this video address to YouTube following the speech, however, means that LARGE numbers of people who cannot watch the speech “live” WILL be able to do so after-the-fact. Since the text of President Obama’s speech will be posted to the White House website tomorrow (Monday, Sept 7th) it appears he will NOT be responding to any student-submitted questions or comments during the presentation. I hope that is not the case, since it would be great for the President to respond to student questions, but even if he does the realities of viewer numbers and time constraints are such that he wouldn’t have time to respond to many individuals even if Q&A is part of the schedule/agenda. Since the speech will be available for easy, asynchronous access via YouTube after the “live” speech time and the speech’s content will apparently not contain any “surprises,” a logical question to ask is: What is the value of having students watch the President’s address “live” and together?

The potential for and value of “live” interactions between students, teachers, and others is THE primary reason to watch the address live rather than watching it later. Every teacher in the classroom today, and administrator in our schools today, grew up in a time when this type of asynchronous, nearly-ubiquitous access to recorded video was impossible. From the fireside chats of FDR to the weekly radio addresses of U.S. Presidents leading up to the Obama Administration, if you couldn’t catch / consume the message “live,” it was hard or impossible to hear it in its entirety at a different time. (Please correct me if I’m wrong: It’s entirely possible the weekly radio addresses of George W. Bush were archived and made available online– I never heard about that being the case, however, and guess it would have been something we’d have heard about if his administration was leveraging digital media in that way.)

My point is this: WE need to question the value of synchronous, non-interactive face-to-face learning contexts. When we ARE live and synchronous with other learners, we need to LEVERAGE the potential of that context to dialog, discuss, and interact. Tuesday’s Presidential address provides an ideal opportunity for students, teachers, administrators and others to experience an educational backchannel.

For more on educational backchannel options, see Scott Snyder’s 2008 presentation for K12Online08, “Back-channels in the Classroom.” Remember we’re all invited to join 5th graders in Littleton, Colorado, in their CoverItLive session for the President’s address on Tuesday. It’s free to join and participate there.

2 – WE NEED TO EXPOSE SCHOOL LEADERS TO MORE EXAMPLES OF CONSTRUCTIVE SOCIAL MEDIA USE

Whatever your opinion of President Obama, our current debate over health care, or other issues– I hope you can agree that his constructive modeling of the uses of social media platforms to communicate with constituents (both young and old) is very important and needed by many of our school leaders.

In Oklahoma where I live, a LARGE number of public school districts block ALL video sharing websites as well as interactive/user-generated content websites including blogs and wikis. Many of our school districts, incredibly, continue to block access to our Celebrate Oklahoma Voices learning community and the 430+ educator/student created videos it now contains. The fact that this Presidential address is receiving so much attention and generating so much discussion is a GOOD thing, since adults as well as young people are going to likely grapple with the question, “Why don’t we just watch this later on YouTube?” That is a great question to ask at all levels of education, because it can expose the power of asynchronously accessible video as well as the priority we should place upon ENGAGED, INTERACTIVE learning environments devoid of passive learners. We’ve become far too accustomed to “passive learning” as the norm in classrooms, and this must change.

3 – WE HAVE FEW BRAVE LEADERS IN EDUCATION, AND MANY WHO PREFER TO BE DEFINED BY RISK AVERSION

This past week, in the Education Week article “Filtering Fixes,” I addressed the common tendency of many U.S. schools to overfilter Internet websites by noting:

Some of that [overfiltering the web] is understandable because of the risk-averse, conservative nature of schools,” he [Wesley Fryer] said. “My position is not ‘don’t block,’ but let’s filter reasonably and let’s also talk with students about choices and digital literacy and ethics, and let’s prepare kids for the unfiltered Web.

In the past several days, I’ve read a number of excellent posts by educators articulating the reasons students and teachers in our schools SHOULD watch the Presidential address and seize the moment to discuss a host of important ideas and issues together. Three (among many) I’d highly commend are Stephanie Sandifer’s post, “Fear, Censorship, and Agendas…”, Buffy Hamilton’s post, “It IS About Intellectual Freedom, Not Politics,” and Will Richardson’s post, “The Obama Speech.” To these thoughts and the comments shared in response, I’d add the following two observations.

A – We have too much HATE in politics today.

If President Obama had intended this message to be heard primarily by students and parents at home, he would have chosen to share this address in the evening rather than during the school day. The “official” reason my daughter’s teacher gave for NOT permitting her students to watch the address “live” in class next week was that the video would be more appropriately viewed at home with parents. Understand: This was the version of “why” which Sarah brought home on Friday. That reason could have been obscured in 9 year old translation, and I’ll confirm that next week.

I think the root issue with many schools choosing to give teachers the choice to “opt out” of watching the address with students, and parents the choice to “opt out” of permitting their students to watch the address at school, is HATE and dislike among many constituents for President Obama and his politics. I am NOT saying that teachers or school officials hate our President. I AM observing that it is far easier for school leaders to provide these “opt out” guidelines and policies for schools and teachers rather than face the predictable (but of course, highly unfortunate) wrath of parents who don’t like President Obama and don’t like the idea of him speaking directly to their children at school.

This situation of parents worrying over our President speaking directly to students is not only “silly,” as Arne Duncan has observed, it’s also RIDICULOUS. As I noted at the start of this post, however, this response is also highly instructive about our state of affairs not only within schools but within our communities more generally. We need MORE democracy and civic participation in our nation, not less. We need MORE opportunities for civic discourse and dialog among constituents today, not less. We need our schools to provide opportunities for students to question, to debate, to listen, and to learn. Announcing “opt out” school policies for the President’s speech reflects a broader tendency in many of our schools to kowtow to almost any type of parent demand, and seek the path of minimal risk / least resistance in most situations.

Our schools need to address HATE and become venues for civil discourse about these issues and others that matter. Schools should not be viewed primarily as institutions of social control where the thoughts, opinions and beliefs of students are shaped in a top-down model: rather they should be places where students learn how to THINK and practice THINKING every day. I’m not opposed at all to local control of schools, I’m actually an ardent supporter of it. It’s sad to see many of the choices which local control leads to, however, not just in the context of this Presidential address but in many other arenas: sports, technology, etc. The good news is, not all schools are making the same choices, and we can amplify those who are making more constructive choices which support student civic engagement rather than focusing only on those who give teachers and families the “opt out” choice.

B – Many adults overestimate the power and importance of the formal school curriculum.

I am going to write a separate post in upcoming weeks about this topic, but I’ve been amazed by the “permission forms” which our girls’ school district has sent home asking for parent permission to let students view specific video titles during the school year. Personally, I’d think we’d just leave it to the professional judgement of professional educators to determine the instructional materials appropriate for our students to view, read, and consume both at school and elsewhere as homework during the academic year. While educational officials have varying levels of control over the content of “the formal curriculum,” I think this situation with the Presidential school address may highlight an overestimation on the part of many adults of the power and importance of the formal curriculum. Don’t get me wrong, I am all “for” students watching the Presidential address “live” and engaging in discussions before, during and following the speech. A question that comes to mind in this regard, however, is this: What effect will “opting out” of viewing the Presidential address truly have on students and families, in terms of their knowledge about the ideas and themes of the speech? My guess is, in most cases: very little. The fact that there is so much buzz about this upcoming speech will insure that the vast majority of students as well as parents are going to be wondering, “What is the President going to say? What did he say?” There are going to be CONVERSATIONS around the ideas and themes of his message. Adult attempts to silence or prevent these conversations are going to backfire and achieve the opposite result: Those ideas are going to be even more likely to be amplifed and discussed because of these suppression attempts.

My guess and prediction is: President Obama’s message will be strong and shared in a compelling way. I predict he’ll tell stories, and work hard to connect with students’ hopes and dreams for themselves and for their own families. We should never underestimate the POWER OF WORDS. It IS a big deal that our President wants to directly speak to the students of our nation. I think it is great he wants to do this, and is going to do it. Even if my children or yours do not view President Obama’s speech “live” when it happens, there will be power and influence to his words as they are shared with the world. He is, after all, our chief executive and the leader of the most powerful nation in the world. His words SHOULD have power. They will have power, whether or not teachers in my school or yours choose to let students hear them “live.” Those who think they will diminish the power and influence of those words by keeping their children out of school on Tuesday if their class is going to watch the address are probably mistaken. Just like a teenager whose curiosity is piqued when told, “You can’t do/watch this,” student interest is going to be higher about the speech because of the absurd ways many adults have responded to it: With fear, trepidation, and disrespect in some cases. The power of the formal curriculum in schools today may be weaker than ever, in large part due to the tremendous power of mainstream media coupled with social media.

I’ve been trying to finish writing this post all day amidst our family Labor Day activities, and I’ve probably written too much. Remember that whatever your local school, classroom, teacher, or fellow teachers may choose to do with respect to the Presidential address on Tuesday next week, it will be an instructive moment. Ask yourself, what is motivating this decision? Are leaders trying to do what is best for children, for learning, for thinking and for our democracy, or are they simply doing what seems reasonable when “risk aversion” is the top value driving decisionmaking? Remember to ask what YOU can do to highlight the power and value of blended conversations during and following the address, and highlight the importance of an informed as well as active citizenry in discussing the affairs and priorities of our nation.

Behold, the value of social media is before us. We’ve only just begun to realize its potential to revolutionize learning.

Technorati Tags:
education, obama, school, video, youtube, speech

President Obama’s Speech to Students: A Great Opportunity for Synchronous, Live Discussions originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on September 6, 2009.

Survey prior to the session using Google Forms

I am a former 5th grade teacher, last year as an independent consultant I visited 28 states and the US Virgin Islands

In 2001 I started using Palm Handhelds with my 5th graders
- we developed our own applications, and had applications for us
- a PBS affiliate came in and did a documentary about our class
- had lots of fun using handhelds for learning

2 years ago I spent 18 weeks working in the US Virgin Islands working with schools using iPod Touches
- palms had worked really well
- smaller devices were needed, great for smaller spaces

showing name of App from website
- http://mkaz.com/nametag/ lets you create a nametag on your iTouch!

URL shorteners are great, esp when using handheld devices

tr.im is an example

I enjoy using the Google Form Summary feature (FORM – SHOW SUMMARY)

My website: Learning in Hand, click iPods

Use the twitter tag #LIH

Handhelds
- Palm technology with stylus looks so ancient!
- portable, dependable, easy to troubleshoot, ulta-cool, battery life, multipmedia
- #1 reason iPod Touch is great is ALL those apps that are available
- easy to install from the App Store application
- you can also get to apps via the iTunes Store

In the Palm days it was harder, you had to HotSync
- didn’t always work
- example of contraction timer for pregnancy
- teacher who was pregnant had a funny

iTunes Store has a ‘as seen on TV’ section

There are LOTS more apps now
- it took Palm 10 years to get 30,000 apps
- today there are over 50,000 apps for the iTouch in less than 3 years
- this is AMAZING application

148apps.biz keeps track of app activity each day on the store
- perday 238 apps are added to the app store!
- 3,514 education apps today in the iTunes Store with that education category

18% of all aps are games/education entertainment

Way to NOT have a credit card in iTunes
- log out of your account
- go find a free App in the store
- click GET APP
- you will be prompted to create a new account
- THEN and ONLY then (when you are signing up to get a free app) you can get an account without putting in a credit card

THAT IS A HUGE TIP!
- you can also just use iTunes gift cards in the future to buy paid apps without a credit card

Another bugaboo: trying to understand syncing
- iTunes account syncs to 1 computer and iPod, that makes sense
- what about the classroom: multiple iPods?
- you can sync as many iPods as you want to 1 computer
- then you can sign in on up to 5 computers with 1 iTunes account
- Apple has this setup so if you buy the software once, you can sync it as many times as you want
- the system is not setup to take multiple payments for multiple devices

Web directories for apps:
- mobxlix
- AppShopper
- iEducation Apps Review

On my site I’ve setup Google Moderator site, now have 38 ideas from 31 people

tr.im/appvote

right now gFlash and Stanza are top

iPod Touch graphic

Google Application: you can use your voice if you have an attachable mic

Let’s see these Apps in action

For Language Arts
- Whiteboard
- 2 devices can share 1 whiteboard
- similar to an app we used to have on the Palm

For language arts I like to do a game called crosstalk
- write a word on the whiteboard
- another student thinks up a different word that is a synonym, perhaps better for elaboration

If you want a stylus, you have to get a special stylus for the iTouch

YouTube has tutorials about how to make your own styluses on the cheap

Next demo: Quickword
- good Word processor, still not fantastic on the mobile devices but this one is pretty good
- peer review together
- have students trade handhelds
- this apps lets you highlight words, make some bold (highlight HOT words red, highlight words that could be revised blue)
- then when we trade handhelds I can see what my peer reviewer thought was awesome, and what I need to improve
- in this case my peer reviewer hasn’t changed anything

Dictionary.com is a huge dictionary, several megabytes in size
- all downloaded, doesn’t require active Internet connection
- Thesaurus too!
- More than 275,000 definitions
- WARNING: they have those words that you know students will look up first!

Social Studies apps

great videos online that you want to put online, YouTube may be blocked
- you can install and sync videos
- if YouTube is accessible there is a YouTube app right on the iTouch

To get it off of YouTube and convert to MP4 so iPod touch will use
- example: Schoolhouse Rock video
- Trick: just add the world “kick” in front of “youtube” in the URL
- on that website (KickYouTube.com) I can directly download the site
- be aware this could be against Google’s terms of service
- then go into the Videos app to watch it

Another way to get videos, get them from iTunes

Let’s talk about Safari
- you’ve seen the ads: this is the FULL web
- this is probably the application students will use most

Teachers may want to create their own homepage
- mobile homepage: my favorite is a web editor too: wirenode.com (kind of like a wiki, but ideal for iPod Touch, accounts are free, you can pick out your URL)
- my site: http://lih.wirenode.mobi/
- fonts are big
- I can link to different things
- can put direct links to podcasts (audio and video) to download

Social studies app: Inflation
- 99 cents
- I was wondering about Presidential Pay
- inflation tables just go back to 1913, President’s salary was $75,000
- today he makes $400K plus expense account of $50K

Google Maps
- let’s find the President’s house
- I am using the iPhone 3.0 software, I paid $9.99 for the update
- it allows Google Maps streetview in Googe Maps
- can add a drop pin to the map, and go right to Google Street View right on the iPod Touch

WOW THIS IS GREAT

Can take a screenshot of ANYTHING on my iPod Touch by holding down both buttons on the device
- it took the picture, now it is in my photos
- great geography links here!

I like to

LifeStrips ($5)
- vocabulary is great
- can be used to create comics
- some people will decry the lack of a camera
- two fingers to twist and stretch images where you want them to go
- double tap to add text
- screenshots from Google Maps, combined in LifeStrips

Comic touch also lets you make

Ali’s Jigsaw Puzzle
- save comics back as photos
- turn any photo into a jigsaw puzzle

Tip:
- extra power
- can use an iPod Touch connected to computer or power (Apple chooses
- battery back can give you about 3/4 of a new
- Get one that takes the same dock connector, so no cable is required

You want a powered USB hub to make your own inexpensive charging station

Hilarious photo on EdTechBytes with chargers

You can sync on a Mac more than 1 mac at a time
- for some reason on Windows, you can just sync 1 at a time

THAT IS HUGE! NOT AN ACCIDENTAL “FEATURE OMISSION” FOR WINDOWS I’D BET

Earbuds: Walmart has them for 99¢ each
- get earbuds for everyone
- they get tangled constantly: get adhesive hooks and put numbered tags on the wall

Another management tip: email
- Apple would really like you to get info with email
- so you can issue each iPod Touch its own email
- start a free GMail account for each iPod Touch

ACTUALLY I THINK YOU CAN CREATE AS MANY SUBACCOUNTS AS YOU WANT WITH 1 GMAIL ACCOUNT, THO IF YOU CHECK THE ACCOUNT I DON’T THINK THEY ARE DIFFERENT

My podcast “Learning in Hand iPods”
- don’t leave an iPod in your hot car! That diminishes the battery big time.

Have an App called “Beard Me”
- now using app “Talking Heads”
- commercial example Billy Mays style!

Power down your iPod by holding down the top power button for 6 sec

Math Applications
- lots of drill and skill
- research shows students who are using a handheld will remember their math facts better than if they are using paper
- it is more engaging

Math Drills
- they also give you visuals
- has a light version

Make Num Lite
- also called “Sum It Up”

Lemonade Stand (99¢)
- practice supply and demand, make the posters
- same algorithms from the Apple II days, but updated graphics
- you can actually go back to the Apple II graphics if you want to

Science Apps
- there are cheap thumbtack microphones
- I have a Belkin one
- for science, do a “sound seeing tour” when you are on a field trip
- come back and research it, add more sounds with an audio editor on a “grown up computer”

Flipbook
- Sketchy was my favorite palm app
- full version is $10
- old style Palm
- draw directly on the screen
- make it animation
- anything my kids made an animation about they remembered it forever
- they would watch it over and over, show it to their friends
- they turn out with a great product
- Flipbook

At flipbook.tv you can see lots of examples

Now ready for an unbelievable example: made by an amazing artist using Flipbook (Foodchain)
- you can pinch in and zoom in to make changes

You can make your own database with HandDBase
- can use for observations
- checkboxes
- any types of notes
- once I save it, it joins my database, can be synced back to the desktop computer
- doesn’t have to be bahvior, it can be what did you observe

Something I miss from the Palm days: the fold-out keyboard
- currently there are not any attachable keyboards for the iPod Touch, but I hope we might see those

Now for each student: iPod Touch for $229 or Netbook for $289
- tradeoffs: battery life, portability, all the apps, cool factor

http://handheldlearning2009.com/
- Oct 7-9 2009 in London, everyone gets an iPod Touch!

Technorati Tags:
#necc09, 1to1, apple, education, ipod, itouch, necc, necc09, onetoone, school, technology, touch, tutorial, tonyvincent, app, apps, itunes

Do So Much with an iPod Touch originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on July 1, 2009.

Tulsa World writer Barbara Hoberock titled her article about the veto today “Henry vetoes schools bill: He says the measure would have turned back the clock on decades of education reforms.” This is the lead, front page article on the printed/analog version Tulsa World today. Michael McNutt, writing for The Oklahoman / NewsOK, gave his article the headline, “School Deregulation Flunks With Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry: With Veto, Henry Says Sb 834 Would ‘Turn Back The Clock.’” This is a VERY big deal for our Oklahoma schools, so it’s interesting the headline seems buried in the online local news items on NewsOK.

I will not pretend to be an expert on this legislation or all the politics involved here, but I will share what I know. Joshua Williams has been keeping me up to date on some of the developments via his tweets on SB 834. A couple of weeks ago when I presented “Leveraging the Potential of Social Media for School Public Relations” at the 2009 Oklahoma School Public Relations Association conference, I visited with a representative of the Oklahoma Education Association (OEA.) She explained that some business groups in Oklahoma as well as school administrator associations (including the Oklahoma State School Boards Association) have supported this bill because it would free school boards, superintendents, and principals to fire educators at will without having to follow existing contract limitations and protections on educator contracts. The justification most are giving for this is the economy and our tough economic times for schools: It will make it much easier to make school budget cuts if administrators don’t have to mess with / respect these “pesky teacher contracts.” (That’s my paraphrase, not a quote from anyone directly.) While I certainly understand that administrators would like to make their lives easier by being able to hire and fire teachers at will, I also recognize that such a situation would open up teachers all over Oklahoma to arbitrary and capricious decisions by administrators to fire people they don’t like or want to work with for some reason. I’ve been in education long enough to know those sentiments DO exist on many campuses, and it’s VERY important that employment safeguards are in place to protect educators from such arbitrary treatment. We call this “due process” in the United States. I’m glad Governor Brad Henry vetoed SB834, not because our Oklahoma school system is perfect and isn’t in need of substantive reforms, but because this legislative effort was ill-conceived and potentially very harmful for the educators, students, and the educational system in our state.

There are several BIG issues here that do need to be addressed, but unfortunately this legislation would not have done so constructively.

The first issue is something I’ve referred to as “the dead wood” issue for teachers. We all have known and may still know teachers that simply should not be in the classroom. In some cases they hate kids, in others they refuse to do what’s best for kids if it causes them an inconvenience, in others they refuse to learn new techniques and ideas for better reaching kids and helping them learn. I’m reminded of a workshop I shared in a rural Oklahoma school back in 2007 about Google Earth. One of the teachers in the session played solitaire during the entire 45 minute presentation, refusing to look up from her screen at me or anyone else in the workshop or interact in any way with others in the room. Her unspoken but loud message was, “You can make me attend this professional development session, but you can’t make me listen or learn anything new.” It was sad. This anecdote actually highlights a rather minor instance of the “dead wood” problem, I know there are MANY cases which are much more egregious and harmful to kids. The bottom line is this: We need an educational system led by caring and strong administrators who ARE empowered to make the sometimes tough decisions which are in the best interests of students and the community. Teacher tenure has and continues, in many cases, to be an obstacle to the realization of this goal. Poor administrators who care more about coaching their sports team rather than providing instructional leadership within the school culture is an even bigger issue in many contexts, however.

The OEA representative with whom I spoke several weeks ago indicated that OEA had expressed a willingness to sit down with OSSBA and other groups to look at the current processes for teacher evaluation, probation and firing. Apparently this opportunity was not embraced by OSSBA and other administrator groups. Now that HB834 has been vetoed, perhaps these groups can sit down and work together on this issue. It IS real, and does need to be addressed more effectively.

The other big issue which the HB834 discussion highlights is MONEY. I could write at length about this, but I’ll attempt to summarize my thoughts in two main points:

1. We have to pay our teachers more in Oklahoma. We are rated 48th in the nation in teacher salaries. It is impossible for us to meaningfully improve our schools and school system if we continue to offer such paltry salaries to educators, as well as ridiculously meager (and expensive) health benefits. We must pay our educators more to both attract and retain great teachers who are passionate about kids and learning.
2. We must restructure the way education dollars are allocated in our state. Public education is a common good, not a private privilege. Visit some of our poorest urban and rural schools, and then visit some of our wealthiest schools in Deer Creek and Edmond. This phenomenon is not new, and it’s well known. Oprah focused on these types of school inequalities in her episode last year, “Failing Grade.” These inequitable facilities and opportunities for student education are UNACCEPTABLE, here in Oklahoma and elsewhere in the nation. We have got to get serious about addressing poverty on multiple levels in our nation, and the foundation of any strategy to reduce poverty is a high quality education. I am not entirely sure what form this school finance restructure needs to take, but I think “Tough Choices, Tough Times” is on the right track. We have to stop funding schools locally through property taxes, which are inherently inequitable, and instead pool education dollars so they can be dispersed in a truly equitable manner. This is not popular idea with real estate developers or racist / ethnocentric individuals. The common attitude in many wealthy areas seems to be, “We’ll just build more gated communities and take care of our own. Good luck to the poor, they’re on their own. We don’t care enough about them to give them the money their children need and deserve for a world class education.”

This YouTube video, “Trading Schools,” is from the Oprah segment I referenced above.

One of mechanisms I believe holds promise for improving educational quality and REAL accountability for teachers are online rating systems for educators. Pick-A-Prof is one of the best known systems used by college students nationwide, but other platforms inclusive of K-12 teachers also exist like RateMyTeachers.com. This isn’t a panacea, but I think overall MORE transparency leads to MORE information and BETTER decisions. The solution in cases of POOR democracy is MORE democracy. This is one reason I support the Change Congress movement. Upset because only the only ratings for educators at your school on sites like those above come from discontented / negative voices? Consider actually inviting students to post their ratings and thoughts. Look at what is happening in this regard in higher education, and ask if a similar dynamic could be positive for primary and secondary education. I’ve had this belief for many years: If schools permitted both parents and students to rate and evaluate teachers in schools, and those results were published online for all the world to see, that project could have more positive accountability effects for improving teaching and resolving real problems in classrooms than all the scantrons we pay Pearson to sell us as a state. When people are doing things that are wrong, generally they prefer the darkness to the light. Social media tools can be used in powerful, constructive ways to shine the light on people, actions, and topics which have been previously shrouded in a protective darkness. This dynamic is critical for a responsive democracy / republican government. We’ve got a long way to go, but I’m optimistic since so many powerful tools are now “at the fingertips of the people.”

The last issue I want to briefly address in this post relating to HB834 is the thick rhetoric which we hear from politicians and in the news articles covering education issues. In the two newspaper articles I referenced first in this post, why did we not hear the REAL reason business and school administrator groups want this legislation? If my sources are correct, the reason is those leaders want to be able to make budget cuts more easily in 2009-2010 by making fast personnel cuts. Instead of communicating in plain language we all can understand, we’ve heard politicians repeatedly talk about things like “quality standards.” My, is it not amazing how frequently politicians love to repeat the phrases “rigorous state standards” and “strict accountability?” This rhetoric almost makes me physically ill. Continuing to witness the failure of our elected leaders (at national as well as state levels) to articulate a constructive vision of substantive education reform builds my personal resolve to enter the political process at some point as an elected official myself.

We NEED to transform our schools to better meet the needs of our students, families, and communities in the 21st century. We did NOT need HB 834, however, and I’m personally glad to see the measure was vetoed. Thanks Governor Henry.

If you’re wanting to read more of my thoughts on education reform, and specifically how they relate to NCLB, see my February 2008 post, “A contrary view of education and NCLB.” The bottom line to a high quality education for students is high quality teachers. Thanks to all of you “in the trenches” of our classrooms, reading this post, who continue to serve the children and families of your community, our nation and world. You deserve our full support as citizens and taxpayers, and you deserve school administrators with the courage and gumption to do what is right even in difficult circumstances.

Technorati Tags:
education, school, oklahoma, politics, sb834, 834, teacher, union, association

Fire teachers at will legislation in Oklahoma vetoed by Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on May 9, 2009.

Antonia Juhasz has a website, www.tyrannyofoil.org, for her book which has the same title as the UChicago lecture I listened to this week. She is actively getting out her message on a variety of social media websites, and I’ll link to a few of the videos I found online by her on YouTube and Google Video below at the end of this post. The NPR report from October 2008, “Antonia Juhasz: ‘Tyranny of Oil’ Is A Grave Threat” provides a shorter (30 minute) summary of her key contentions:

Author and activist Antonia Juhasz argues that the oil industry’s grip on policy and government has never been stronger.

What’s more, Juhasz says, the business and politics of oil’s production pose such grave implications on so many fronts — the environment, human rights, the economy, worker safety, public health — that the current state of petroleum-industry affairs is fundamentally antithetical to democracy.

There are numerous events and issues which Juhasz highlights in this UChicago lecture which were new to me. I did not know about the change in U.S. law which was snuck into a 1000+ page omnibus funding bill that allowed Enron along with major banks to establish private, unregulated energy exchanges in the United States. I have had a growing idea about the role which oil futures trading has played in the current economic recession, but didn’t realize that oil futures started to be traded so recently, and that the oil corporations are generally opposed to this openness of trading because of the transparency it provides to many of these transactions. I didn’t realize that Cushing, Oklahoma, which is about 30 minutes from our house, is the main place in the world where “spot trades” for oil actually take place. I knew oil futures and other commodity futures traders don’t typically buy “actual” goods and products, but I didn’t know about Cushing’s leading role in oil exchanges. I have a podcast I need to publish with the owner of the community Internet cafe in Cushing, which I recorded on February 1, 2009. That isn’t directly related to these issues of oil economics, but it is a connection I have and I found interesting.

I have sensed for some time that the general tendency we’ve seen in U.S. politics for years, dating back to the Reagan era, to paint government and government regulators as “the bad guys” is an overly simplistic and harmful trend. We need some government regulation to protect ourselves from individuals and groups in society, including corporations. I found Juhasz’ references to the history of Standard Oil and the populist movement which resulted from its corrupt excesses intriguing. I’ve studied that history a bit in the past, but it is clearly relevant to our current political environment today when mass-mergers and mega-corporations are more common than ever. I’ve reflected previously on our need to place limits on the power of corporations. See my post from February 2008, “The Corporation documentary: A big eye opener,” for more on this.

I’m saddened to hear Juhasz relate how U.S. policy in Iraq seems bent on handing over all control over oil reserves and revenues to our oil corporations. The amount of excess cash the oil corporations have today, which Juhasz discusses in her lecture, is positively staggering. I don’t think I have even a small appreciation for the power and clout which multinational oil corporations have and wield today. Juhasz’s lecture sheds some new light on these topics for me, and I’m very interested in reading her book.

I agree with Juhasz’s point that a focus on “peak oil” can be more distracting rather than constructive. Peak oil will happen at some point, but we have no real idea when that will be. We likely have VASTLY greater reserves around the world than oil companies and countries currently count, but that is really not the most important point. The most important point is that we need to support political and economic changes which will move our country (and therefore other parts of the world as well, who can benefit from and utilize the technologies we develop and make available) to transition away from an oil-based economy, and replace that economy with one which is sustainable and environmentally/ecologically friendly. This is a HUGE undertaking, but one which I think we must take seriously and become involved in advancing.

One other historical issue Juhasz raised in her lecture was how the oil price spike in the early 1980s led not only to the international recession at that time, but also the IMF/World Bank debt cycle for many developing nations which are also “hard wired” for oil and had to increase their borrowing to continue purchasing needed oil supplies. The new military infrastructure which was created and deployed during the Bush administration will to primarily support and protect U.S. oil interests not only in Iraq but also in Africa and other nations will, as Juhasz be difficult to dismantle. We must, in my view, pursue will all available speed alternative energy sources which will replace in the short term our dependency not only on foreign oil, but on oil itself. This is a big reason I’m an advocate for the Pickens Plan. The Plan is not a total vision for where we need to go as a nation with energy policy, but it would move us in the right direction and we need independent actors like Boone Pickens who are willing (and have the financial wherewithal) to take on the oil industry in this fight.

Another author on global oil geopolitics who I’d commend to you is Steve LeVine, who wrote the book “The Oil and the Glory” and maintains an active blog about these issues. Steve’s focus is the transcaucus region and particularly Baku, but many of these players, names, histories, and current activities are the same as those Juhasz highlights in her book.

Here are some of the videos I found online from Juhasz which can provide greater insight into her thesis and contentions in her book, “The Tyranny of Oil.” These are critical issues for all of us to study and understand not only in school, but also in our daily lives as we attempt to fulfill our obligations and duties as informed citizens of a responsive, democratic republic.

The tyranny of Oil- 1/2 (YouTube – 5 min, 40 sec)

The tyranny of Oil- 2/2 (YouTube, 7 min)

Antonia Juhasz – The Tyranny of Oil (Google Video – 1 hour)

(Side technical note: I embedded the mp3 of the podcast lecture I heard using these instructions for Google flash video embeds of mp3s.)

Technorati Tags:
oil, politics, corporation, juhasz, levine, corruption, iraq, war, economics, tyranny, danger, recession, futures, trading, populism

The Tyranny of Oil, The Danger of Unregulated Markets, Power, and Populism originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on April 4, 2009.

HERE IS THE WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE LINK FOR A. PHILIP RANDOLPH:

Asa Philip Randolph (April 15, 1889 – May 16, 1979) was a prominent twentieth century African-American civil rights leader and founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, which was a huge achievement for labor and especially for African-American labor organizing.

Greg is passionate about sharing presentations like this about people who may not be included now in “the canon” of history personalities but SHOULD be included
- A. Philip Randolph is one of the people who Greg puts in this category

Movie “10,000 Black Men Named George” (NetFlix link)

Unions were segregated in the Gilded Age
- Randolph

Many of these resources are from the museum for Randolph in his museum in Chicago

When I use PowerPoint, it means I am using a lot of images, maps, and working to engage my students with historical documents

Porters become like the house servants in the age of slavery
- Pullman Porters were the luxury cars on trains
- interiors of these cars were very fancy
- in this time period, trains were the primary mode of transportation
- there is a Pullman car at our Oklahoma Science Museum now, check it out

Other train cars were not enclosed, so riders got filthy dirty riding them

“Third Class Carriage” book addresses this (author?)

Students today
- restaurant Jamils has professionally trained waiters

The motto of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters was “Fight or Be Slaves”

Founding of the Union
- Pullman Porters organized and founded the Brotherhood in 1925
- BSCP was the very first African-American labor union to sign a collective bargaining agreement with a major U.S. corporation
- A. Philip Randolph was the determined, dedicated and articulate president of this union who fought to improve the working conditions and pay for the Pullman Porters

Other slogans: “On the job every second” and “Railroad work is vital to victory!”
- reference to World War II?

Cartoon referencing “The Modern Gulliver”
- “Uncle Toms and Stool Pidgeons”
- Randolph is in the upper left corner holding a sword, labeled “Union”

“If we must die let us die as free men not Jim Crow slaves”

Were doing document analysis of photos like this: (shows Randolph carrying a protest sign

The idea that there are classes and differences of opinions between classes is something that is foreign to many of our students

Question from the audience, to what degree can our students today relate to this history?
- discussion about black/African-American students resenting a white teacher talking about black figures from history, Bill Cosby and his dialog with the black community over the past five years

Audience member: You can compare Randolph to Cesar Chavez, and also tie in Indian issues

Randolph was brought in to advise the U.S. government as a labor leader

Labor March on Washington from 1941
- preceded famous 1963 march on Washington, which Randolph helped organize

Blacks couldn’t get FHA loans after WWII
- in some cases here in OKC, white people bought the land because blacks couldn’t

Photo of Randolph testifying before Congress in 1948 against segregation in the U.S. Army

Opening remarks for 1963 civil right’s march on Washington were by Randolph

Technorati Tags:
philip, randolph, history, civilrights, labor, unitedstates

A. Philip Randolph: Service Not Servitude originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on December 6, 2008.

Dr Z’s blog: www.leighzeitz.com
Twitter: @zeitz

Dr. Z kicked off the webinar by sharing a PollEverywhere quiz about who has a Facebook account and uses it regularly.

Tim Berners Lee’s graphical representation of the web’s connections
- comparing 1993 to 1996
- 250,000 sties to 45 million global users

Web 2.0
- 80 million sites
- 1 billion global users
- web 2.0 is about building interaction

August of 2008
- now we have 1.5 billion users online using web 2.0 (6.5 billion on the planet)

I DON’T THINK IT’S TRUE YOU CAN SAY 1.5 BILLION PEOPLE ARE USING WEB 2.0 TECHNOLOGIES. THAT MANY PEOPLE MAY BE ONLINE, BUT LOTS OF FOLKS ARE STILL LIVING IN A WEB 1.0 WORLD AS FAR AS THEIR OWN USE, WHICH IS (IN MANY CASES) LARGELY LIMITED TO WEB SURFING TO CONSUME INFORMATION AND EMAIL.

Dr. Z’s Creative Cookbook for Collaborative Communication wiki page

HE JUST DONNED A CHEF’S HAT

Differences between cooperation and collaboration
- cooperation is when everyone is doing the same thing, we are using everyone’s work
- example: everyone is working on the same task together

collaborating is using our own strengths and gifts, like when people build a house together and are doing different things while working toward the same, larger goal

Collaborative tools?
- multiple user access
- same/different time editing
- revision tracking
- collaborative communication
- update notification

Collaborative web tools
- wikispaces
- blogger
- wikipedia
- skype
- twitter
- ning
- jing
- poll everywhere

Dr Z’s wiki: http://activeweb20.wikispaces.com/DrZ_Cookbook
- he used a tinyurl address to get people here

This is basically a website with an edit button

DR. Z IS NOW PLAYING THE VIDEO “GOOGLE DOCS IN PLAIN ENGLISH.” THIS LOOKS GREAT OVER ADOBE ACROBAT CONNECT!

Now he is demoing Google Docs

Now showing Jing

Now showing Twitter

Now showing Classroom 2.0

THIS IS A VERY “TOOLY” PRESENTATION: AWARENESS LEVEL SESSIONS ABOUT WEB 2.0 TOOLS. THIS IS OK, BUT PERSONALLY I THINK PRESENTATIONS WHICH ACTUALLY SHOW EXAMPLES OF STUDENT PROJECTS USING WEB 2.0 TOOLS ARE MUCH MORE POTENTIALLY INSPIRING AND HELPFUL. THIS SORT OF PRESENTATION ALWAYS REMINDS ME OF JAMIE MCKENZIE’S SEPTEMBER 2001 FNO ARTICLE, “TOOLISHNESS IS FOOLISHNESS.”

Remember:
- Live with courage
- Teach with Vision

“The most important thing is having fun.”

2 COMMENTS / QUESTIONS I POSTED IN THE ADBOBE CONNECT SESSION: (WE POSTED AS @ittosde)
- WHAT WE NEED YOU TO DO IS LEAD AN OPENLY LICENSED (CC) PROJECT WHERE LEARNERS UPLOAD AND SHARE THEIR TUTORIAL SCREENCASTS, SORT OF LIKE AN OPEN SOURCE ATOMIC LEARNING
- WHAT DIRECTORY DO YOU RECOMMEND TEACHERS USE TO FIND SKYPE-USING EXPERTS TO BRING INTO THEIR CLASSROOMS?

DR. Z DID NOT ANSWER/RESPOND TO THE FIRST COMMENT/SUGGESTION, AND SAID HE DIDN’T HAVE AN ANSWER FOR QUESTION #2. I WAS DISAPPOINTED HE DIDN’T HAVE A PRACTICAL ANSWER FOR THIS QUESTION BESIDES “IF YOU HAVE AN ANSWER, PUT IT ON MY WIKI.” THIS IS SOMETHING RODD LUCIER BLOGGED ABOUT MONDAY AND AGAIN TODAY.

FOLLOWING THE PRESENTATION, I HAD A POST WEBINAR DISCUSSION WITH JOHN COSTILLA AND ERIC HILEMAN. WE USED A PROMETHEAN ELECTRONIC WHITEBOARD TO CATEGORIZE THE WEB 2.0 TOOLS DR. Z ADDRESSED, USING A 2 X 2 MATRIX WHICH I CAME UP WITH IN FEBRUARY 2007 PRIOR TO MY WORKSHOP “POWERFUL BLENDING: USING WEB 2.0 TO INTERACT, CREATE, AND ASSESS” FOR THE SITE CONFERENCE.

THIS WAS THE ORIGINAL 2 X 2 MATRIX FROM FEB 2007:

BASICALLY, THIS ACTIVITY INVOLVES ANSWERING THE FOLLOWING TWO QUESTIONS ABOUT A WEB 2.0 TOOL OR TECHNOLOGY:
1- DOES THE TOOL OR ENVIRONMENT PRIMARILY SUPPORT INTERACTIVE OR NON-INTERACTIVE LEARNING?
2- DOES THE TOOL OR ENVIRONMENT PRIMARILY SUPPORT SYNCHRONOUS OR ASYNCHRONOUS LEARNING?

[THE REST OF THIS POST INCLUDES MY OWN REFLECTIONS, BUT I AM GOING TO STOP TYPING IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE IT FEELS LIKE I AM YELLING. ]

I defined these terms in my 11 January 2006 post, “Synchronous non-interactive?”

Synchronous: It’s “live.” The teacher and students are online together at the same time.
Asynchronous: It’s NOT “live.” The teacher and students are generally online at different times.
Interactive: Students ask questions and INTERACT with the teacher and often each other.
Non-interactive: The teacher is just lecturing / presenting content, students don’t have a chance to interact or ask questions

I also addressed this in my 18 January 2006 post, “The Synchronous Non-interactive Fallacy.” One of the key points from those posts is this: When an instructor is sharing lecture content and not permitting students to ask questions of any kind, that format of lesson delivery (synchronous, non-interactive) should be replaced by at worst an “asynchronous, non-interactive” format or even better, an “asynchronous, interactive” format. The following news report video, “Educational Podcasting in Woodland Park, Colorado,” is essentially an example of television reporters starting to experience this pedagogical epiphany:

Nod to Eric Hileman and his delicious social bookmarks for this link!

This situation brings to the forefront a VERY important question: How are students going to be able to access these videos of teacher lectures? How will the digital divide be bridged? What type of device will and should the school provide for students to access and watch asynchronous videos at home? Evidently in Woodland Park they are burning DVDs for many of the students to watch videos at home who don’t have a computer to access web-based versions. Long term and on a broad scale, that is not a great solution.

The correct answer, in my view, is providing EVERY student with a laptop computer which permits them to not only passively CONSUME content, but also take an active role in their learning as prosumers: creating, communicating, and collaborating. This is the case for 1:1 computing.

In Oklahoma, we need to follow the lead of school leaders like those Birmingham, Alabama. Bring on the laptops — But don’t stop there. We do NOT simply need to drop laptops on top of a 19th century model of education. Authentic learning is far more than filling a pail. Constructivist educators know and understand the vital role of active learning and knowledge reconstruction, as students connect new knowledge and ideas to their past experiences and schema.

Overall, this ISTE webinar from Dr Z. was OK, but I found its utility limited since it was essentially an “awareness” level presentation about a variety of web 2.0 tools. In a way, it’s easy to share presentations like this. Dr. Curtis Bonk’s keynote at SITE 2007 was similar in that he mainly seemed to draw attention to a variety of tools, but didn’t show in-depth examples of how these tools ARE being used in instructional lessons. Similar to Dr. Bonk, today Dr. Z made some oblique references to how these tools could be used instructionally (like enthusiastically suggesting, “Use skype to bring a guest speaker into your classroom” but when asked a specific, practical question like “What website or online database do you suggest K-12 teachers use to find guest speakers” he didn’t have an answer. (Some of mine are listed on “Videoconferencing Collaborations and Virtual Field Trips.” Brian Crosby’s K12Online08 presentation “Video-Conferencing It’s Easy, Free and Powerful” also has good suggestions. Best idea: Use a learning community like Classroom 2.0 to make connections with other teachers.)

Personally, I think it is very important to consider the wide range of teacher attitudes and dispositions when it comes to technology integration in the classroom, which tend to reflect Everett Roger‘s diffusion of innovations curve shared on the Technology adoption lifecycle WikiPedia article.

Most classroom teachers, in my view, are NOT going to get excited about Twitter. Social bookmarking with a tool like delicious, however, is a website resource and tool which EVERYONE actually needs and can use on a regular basis. I think if you are going to share an awareness / introductory session about web 2.0 tools with educators, it can be more helpful to focus on tools which can be considered “basic ingredients” for blended learning. (That’s the approach I’ve tried to take with presentations like “Powerful Ingredients for Digitally Interactive Learning.”) I think it’s also helpful to share and discuss categories of tools and a framework for understanding their appropriate contexts for use, as we did today at the Oklahoma State Department of Education following this webinar. I would have been interested to see the results of a poll Dr. Z could have done at the start of his webinar: How many of the people in the virtual audience already had an awareness-level understanding of the web 2.0 tools he discussed? I’m not sure of course, and that’s why a survey like that might have been helpful. I’d guess that many people were familiar with the tools– and did NOT need, for instance, an introductory tour of Google Docs.

There were a few tools on Dr. Z’s wiki which I had not encountered previously, however, and I’m looking forward to exploring them soon in greater depth. These included MyWebspiration, a web-based version of Inspiration concept mapping software (currently in free beta,) and CiteLine, “a service to facilitate the web publishing of bibliographies and citation collections as interactive exhibits and facilitate the sharing of this type of data.” CiteLine was linked from the MIT “Semantic Interoperability of Metadata and Information in unLike Environments” site, which Dr. Z has listed on his wiki as “Exhibit With Timeline.” This is the example Dr. Z has linked, and it is AMAZING. XTimeLine is the only other web 2.0 timelining tool I’ve seen to date, and I think these sorts of tools have LOTS of applications. The MIT Timeline application website is still available, but it has now become part of the Google Code MIT Smile Widgets project as “Timeline.” VERY COOL. I’m glad to have found these resource links from Dr. Z’s wiki!

I’m looking forward to more learning this year in the 2008-2009 ISTE Webinar series. I’m sorry I missed Bernajean Porter‘s presentation on digital storytelling from Oct 1st. It is for sale for $50 for ISTE members or $125 for ISTE non-members online. I don’t think I’ll be buying that on my own, however, for my personal PD menu. Instead I will soon be watching Mathew Needleman’s FREE K12Online08 presentation “Film School For Video Podcasters.”

The availability of free, high-quality professional development materials and curriculum (including video presentations) presents unique challenges for content providers who want to monetize their programming. That said, there certainly is value and amplification power (to use the metaphor of “technology as amplifier” I learned from Jeff Allen a few years ago) in a webinar series like this from ISTE. Liz Kolb’s presentation is coming up December 16th! If you want a FREE preview, check out her K12Online07 presentation, “Cell Phones as Classroom Learning Tools.” I’m hoping we’ll hear about new tools for cell phones from Liz in a couple of weeks!

Technorati Tags:
iste, webinar, web2, education, technology

Notes and Reflections on Dr. Z’s ISTE Webinar today, blended learning, and web 2.0 originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on December 3, 2008.

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There are three basic routes we take when we drive up to Manhattan, which all involve Interstate 35. Yesterday, since we had plenty of time, we opted for the prettiest route which takes us up K-177.

K-177 has officially been designated the “Flint Hills National Scenic Byway,” and has an area just north of the I-35 turnpike and south of Matfield Green which I maintain is the prettiest stretch of highway in the entire Sunflower State. According to WikiPedia, incidentally Matfield Green:

…has a total area of 0.2 square miles (0.5 km²)… As of the census of 2000, there were 60 people, 31 households, and 18 families residing in the city.

The smallest western town I’ve ever visited, I think, is Tie Siding, Wyoming. Matfield Green is comparatively a bustling metropolis!

Thanks to the radio broadcast system (1680 AM) on the byway, we started learning about Cottonwood Falls before we actually arrived in town. Cottonwood Falls has the distinction of not only being the county seat of Chase County, Kansas, but also having the oldest operating courthouse in the state of Kansas.

The courthouse has been in continuous operation since 1872, but just underwent 18 months of interior renovation. The county employees moved back in about a month and a half ago. Photos from the Chase County Courthouse “Restoration Celebration & Open House” on Saturday, October 25, 2008, are available on the official Chase County website. We just happened to have a chance to stop in and tour the courthouse yesterday, and learned a great deal thanks to the exceptionally helpful county appraiser.

The interior of this striking limestone edifice is accented most dramatically by a self-supporting staircase made of local Kansas walnut.

We were most impressed, however, by the historical Chase County jail located on the 2nd floor in the back of the courthouse.

This large handle was used (and still works) to lock all the cells inside the jail structure:

According to the metal label on the outside of the jail, this lever-based locking mechanism was patented in 1874 by P.J. Pauly and Bro. in Saint Louis, Missouri.

This jail replaced the first jail in Cottonwood Falls, which was in operation from 1870 to 1873:

I snapped the following photo from the original jail’s window. There is a drawing of Billy the Kid on the bars, so apparently there was a historical connection to him. I don’t know more details about that, however. (If you do, please comment and provide any links you can.)

One of the more interesting aspects of the historical jail in the courthouse was the graffiti inside and around it.

Amazingly, this jail was used from 1874 until the early 1970s, around 1974. I wonder how many other Kansas counties used the same jail for 100 years? Apparently one of the former jail residents was named Wes!

It was SO COOL to be able to explore and examine this jail which is over 100 years old!

My family can vouch that the 1874-patented jail locking lever system still works!

In addition to the jail, I found the set of law books in the back of the Chase County courthouse to be fascinating.

This photo shows the oldest volumes of Kansas statutes in the collection. The oldest one is from 1870:

Consider the size of that thin volume, compared to the “General Statutes of Kansas” from 1949:

This is a very visual way to see how our legal code / law system has grown in the past 100+ years.

The 1870 legal statutes book includes the following page for salaries at the “state university,” which was/is Kansas State University:

“For salaries of six regular instructors” the statute provided “$9,933.33.” If equally divided, that amounted to $1655 per year each. University salaries have changed quite a bit in the past century!

I will conclude this post of historical storychasing with some images and reflections on railroads.

The history of Cottonwood Falls was altered forever in the 1871 when the Santa Fe railroad bypassed the town and instead established a depot in nearby Strong City, just two miles to the north.

According to the historical sign in front of the Chase County courthouse in Cottonwood Falls, this decision to put the railroad stop in Strong City led to a “twin-city” relationship between the two towns and the establishment of one of Kansas’s first “interurban” railcar systems for public transportation.

I reflected on the similarities of importance between rail line infrastructure in the United States and high-speed Internet connections in my fourth podcast recorded on August 18, 2005, “Netflix – Google RSS Research – Trails, Trains, and T-1s.” The importance and implications of U.S. towns and cities being connected or bypassed by rail lines, Interstate highways, and now high-speed fiber optic connections to the information superhighway is reflected in a fun way in Pixar’s 2006 film “Cars.” The commercial viability of the film’s fictional town of “Radiator Springs” was decimated when it was bypassed by Interstate 40, almost eliminating the town’s geographic visibility thanks in the past to the historic “mother road” Route 66.

In the same way that the decision for the Santa Fe railroad to bypass Cottonwood Falls had profound economic implications for the community, the failure of many state and local governments (to date) to bring high speed, fiber optic connectivity to the Internet to rural communities has important economic and cultural implications as well. This is a photo I snapped yesterday in Cottonwood Falls of their local AT&T central office / telephone exchange. Seeing this central office and thinking about both historical as well as contemporary infrastructure connections in the midwest made me think more about these issues.

In April 2008, our family rode the Heartland Flyer train from Oklahoma City to Fort Worth. In reading the current WikiPedia article for Strong City, I was delighted to learn a proposal has been submitted to possibly connect the town (and eventually Kansas City) to Oklahoma City via the Heartland Flyer:

The small Kansas town surprised many communities when it announced its intensions to apply for an Amtrak station on Amtrak’s proposed extension of the Heartland Flyer from Oklahoma City to Kansas City, Missouri. If the town should receive a station it would be one of the smallest towns in the Amtrak system to have a station.

What fun it would be to be able to ride a train almost all the way to grandmother’s house in Kansas!

This past summer, we visited Dalhart, Texas (where we have historical family connections) for the XIT Rodeo and Reunion, and that trip also provided time to think about railroad and Internet infrastructure comparisons.

I wrote the post “Railroads and virtual connections” on August 20th addressing these issues. Whenever I see rail lines and small communities, whether they are in rural Kansas, Oklahoma, or Texas, my mind naturally turns to the implications of historical as well as contemporary infrastructure connections. This is the now abandoned, train depot in Tonkawa, Oklahoma:

This is the now abandoned rail line in Crescent, Oklahama:

When leaders of the United States recognized our need to provide electricity to EVERY citizen of our nation, they did not sit back to wait till companies made ROI calculations which justified the expensive infrastructure build-out which was required. Groups like the TVA were formed precisely because commercial corporations would NOT, left to themselves and “market incentives,” choose to provide commercial electricity services to many rural areas EVER. The same dynamics are present today with respect to fiber-based, high-speed Internet connectivity. While the E-Rate program has certainly provided greater levels of connectivity for U.S. schools and libraries, it HAS not and is not designed to provide the sort of high speed connectivity which our rural communities require today in 2008. E-Rate was established as a result of lobbying efforts by many groups. Its principal financial beneficiaries are, however, large telecommunications companies. These companies do NOT encourage schools to build-out or utilize “dark fiber” networks which can be OWNED by local schools or governments. Rather, schools are often encouraged to sign multi-year contracts for LEASED telecommunications services which guarantee high revenue streams for the corporations providing these services, but may not best serve the long term interests of schools and the constituents they serve.

In the months and years ahead, I am hopeful that leaders of regional utility cooperatives in the midwest (and elsewhere) will come to recognize the pivotal role which high speed, fiber-based Internet connections are playing and will play in the future. Our local municipalities should provide fiber-based Internet connectivity for EVERY resident at a low cost, in the same way electricity, natural gas, water and sewer utilities are provided. High speed Internet connectivity should be a residential utility expectation in the 21st century. Unfortunately, in most midwestern communities today, this is NOT the case. That perception can change, however, and I contend as educational leaders we should find ways to help these perceptions of our community leaders change positively and constructively.

For more historical information about Chase County, read William G. Cutler’s 1883 “History of the State of Kansas.” This book is one of many published in “The Kansas Collection, “an entirely volunteer effort:”

Letting the voices of the past be heard . . . The voices of the past are heard again in KanColl, through nearly-lost books, letters, diaries, photographs, and other materials.

What fun yesterday’s afternoon of storychasing in Chase County, Kansas, was! I’m hopeful the Storychasers Project will develop in the years ahead to afford many others similar opportunities to document and share their learning “on the road.”

Technorati Tags:
kansas, chase, county, cottonwood, falls, strong, city, cottonwoodfalls, strongcity, railroad, pixar, cars, history, internet, connectivity, oklahoma, texas, santafe, tonkawa, crescent, courthouse

Reflections about old jails, land appraisal, and high speed infrastructure in Cottonwood Falls, Kansas originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on November 27, 2008.

Here are a few photo highlights from our day!

The Columbian Theater after the performance tonight:

Dorothy and the Wicked Witch of the West posed with Sarah after the musical was over:

Perhaps most remarkable in tonight’s performance was the work of the “flight crew” who managed to empower witches as well as monkeys to fly!

While the “Wizard of Oz” musical performance was likely the highlight of my daughter’s day today, attending a KSU football game with my dad was certainly mine:

During the game, fans were asked to take photos with their cell phones and then email them to wildcatfans@ksu.edu. I snapped and emailed in the following photo with my iPhone, but it was NOT shown in the 2nd half along with other submitted fan photos. I wonder if the reason it was excluded was the guy sitting behind us, who looks like he was TOTALLY ASLEEP! The game wasn’t a nail-biter for most of the afternoon, but it certainly wasn’t as boring as this fellow apparently found it! (We should probably give him the benefit of the doubt, I bet his eyes just happened to be closed when I snapped the shutter for this picture.)

My only complaint from the day was that outside bottles of water are NOT allowed in Bill Snyder family stadium, and the stadium-wide fixed price for bottled water is $3.50 each for 20 ounces. Good grief! I think that is ridiculous.

Perhaps the message of this t-shirt is not true. It certainly was in our house today, however!

Technorati Tags:
kansas, manhattan, ksu, wamego, football, theater, columbian, kansasstate

Theater magic in Wamego, Kansas and KSU football originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on September 28, 2008.

Mike Cook’s advance comments:

Goal is to leave the conference with at least 1 thing that is going to improve learning for your kids
- if you can also leave with ideas to lighten the load on your teachers, that is great too
- focus on improving learning is our key focus

THEY ARE USING A VERY CLEVER IDEA FOR PRIZES, EACH PARTICIPANT HAS A BAGGIE OF BASEBALL PLAYING CARDS (BASEBALL IS THE CONFERENCE THEME: “THE FUTURE AIN’T WHAT IT USED TO BE” – YOGI BERRA) AND EACH ONE HAS AN ESSDACK STAFF MEMBER ON IT. AFTER EACH PRESENTATION SESSION YOU GET 2 NEW CARDS. THE GOAL IS TO HAVE THE COMPLETE “TEAM” FROM ESSDACK BY THE END OF THE CONFERENCE. GOOD IDEA, AND GREAT TO HAVE THE VISUAL “PLAYING CARDS” TO GET TO KNOW ESSDCACK STAFF MEMBERS AND THEIR ROLES.

Kevin’s keynote address:

I collect antiques and love old stuff, but I also like new stuff
- I love my iPhone, it challenged my marriage
- the book is an information conveyance like the iPhone, they do the same thing but differently
- picture of a book with an iPhone

Theme by Yogi Berra: “The Future Ain’t What It Used To Be”
- the brain learns in stories

How do you want to spend your heart beats? – Wesley Fryer (ACTUALLY CREDIT FOR THIS GOES TO WILLIAM (BILL) CASEBEER AND WILLIAM H. RHODES)

We learn through stories

We don’t choose our family, it chooses us
- looking for goodwill, school clothes shopping
- story of going into the Goodwill box through the slot
- people judge you on what you look like, and that is not fair
- story

This whole business of school is about relationships: connecting with kids and making them superstars

I grew up in a mobile home
- mobile homes are finger food for tornadoes

our dreams are based on our experiences
- trailer with skirting
-

HOw are you going to win me?
- the relationship is key

Want to find the best teacher in a building?
- often the one who is in trouble
- the one who is not afraid to get snot on them

when the human brain is on survival mode, it has a hard time learning
- the only way to help a child like that learn is to build a relationship and create a safe space

Intelligence is relative
- in Tennessee they said “That Yankee is sma-hert”
- then we moved to Pennsylvania where I was NOT smart (math teacher

in math if you miss 1 key concept which other things build on, you can have a defining moment

When we moved back to Kansas I was average again

I want to thank the Angels who were the teachers
- the ones who made the connections with us
- examples: recess aide, teacher

you never know when you are making a difference

first Honeycutt to graduate from college
- I was a teacher always helping other kids, and my own kids were always waiting
- story of the Honeycutt treehouse
- made one fast, son said “Dad that’s a deer stand”
- men need structure and limits
- went to Inman lumber and wrote a check for $1000

kids we teach today are living in a different world
- they are playing on digital playgrounds we didn’t play on
- we’ve got to get there so they are not alone
- Pomona High school we got computers first in 1984, we got two

the twitch generation
- kids can do more with two thumbs than many of us can do
- cell phone in hand, can take a picture and put it on myspace in 30 seconds
- what are the rules?

we have to talk to kids about these issues when they are very young

story of Atari vs. XBox
- old school
-

what are we willing to learn to connect with these kids?
- with all the digital things going on, how are we going to capture their attention
- video: Team Hoyt: Dick and Rick Hoyt

THIS IS SUCH A POWERFUL VIDEO, PARTICULARLY SET TO THE MUSIC… WOW. I LOVE HOW KEVIN HAS SITUATED THIS IN THE CONTEXT OF TEACHERS NEEDING TO FORGE MEANINGFUL RELATIONSHIPS WITH STUDENTS.

take you to the finish line
- the son graduates
- people believed in him

research now in Second Life, quadriplegics can manipulate an avatar in SL
- can they work in that environment?

We want to grow good brains
-freedom and context
- allow kids’ brains the luxury of free-association and help foster, promote and grow richer neural networks

do many of our students know things but not know how to do things with the things they know
- we need to go for messy learning
- it can’t always be predictable
- we DON’T want forests without branches

Michael Gelb “Discover Your Own Genius”

Another video… student diagnosed with autism who is team manager for his high school basketball team

I collect “conversational lubricants”
- inspire teachers

How can we create chances to shine?
- Google Sketchup
- is the project kids are creating helping prepare them for their future?
- story of students figuring it out

you ever seen a kid “launch?”
- kids can grab this and go with it
- don’t try to learn it

Ginger will not “helicopter” for students (do the assignment for students)

change the world moment
- learning is free
- I work with schools who have nothing
- can you still do something
- UC Berkeley just put a lot of their curriculum on YouTube free
- learning is free, but you have to pay for the diploma

YouTube viral video of Charlie biting
- taking your teachers on a YouTube treasure hunt
- let them giggle and have fun

1- go find something funny

2- go find something personally rewarding that you can learn from

3- go find something that would be beneficial for your teaching

story of learning the guitar
- a yard sale guitar with no strings attached
- I taught myself to play the guitar
- kicked out of a music store for “thoughtlifting” guitar

student creates a video for “Long train running by The Doobie Brothers”

Guitar lessons for my kid?
- my role came when my son got a guitar
- playing stairway to heaven learning from a guy on YouTube
- who is this kid? Eddie Van Halen’s son?

son said: Dad it’s not personal. I can rewind this as many times as I want and he doe

we can help our kids become rock stars
- go to these sessions and learn the what, we can hook you up with

you work on the “why?”

Technorati Tags:
ttt08, ttt2008, essdack, learning, conference, technology, kansas, students, relationships, honeycutt, kevinhoneycutt

Trends, Tools and Tactics for 21st Century Learning (keynote by Kevin Honeycutt) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on June 12, 2008.

According to the current WikiPedia entry, it was unveiled in 1946 and cost approximately $500,000.

ENIAC was designed and built to calculate artillery firing tables for the U.S. Army’s Ballistic Research Laboratory… ENIAC contained 17,468 vacuum tubes, 7,200 crystal diodes, 1,500 relays, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors and around 5 million hand-soldered joints. It weighed 30 short tons (27 t), was roughly 8.5 feet by 3 feet by 80 feet (2.6 m by 0.9 m by 26 m), took up 680 square feet (63 m²), and consumed 150 kW of power… The ENIAC used four of the accumulators controlled by a special Multiplier unit and could perform 385 multiplication operations per second…..

I remember the ENIAC mainly for its size and relatively paltry computing capabilities compared to personal computers and supercomputers today. It was in “continuous operation” until 1955. When I think of the early days of computing, I immediately think of the ENIAC.

I mentioned in my post “The benefits of unplugging” that our family visited Los Alamos, New Mexico, last week. Los Alamos is home to the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Each time we’ve driven through Los Alamos, I’ve wondered what millions of our tax dollars are up to there– paying scientists and engineers to continue developing new technologies for the US military and our weapons systems. This evening, reading the news on our Wii as I waited for my son to teach me how to play “Rayman Raving Rabbids,” I read today’s AP article “Scientists develop fastest computer.” For a total cost of $100 million, scientists and engineers worked six years to create a supercomputer reminiscent of the ENIAC but vastly greater in its physical size as well as computing capabilities. For the first time the computer has:

…performed 1,000 trillion calculations per second in a sustained exercise… To put the computer’s speed in perspective, it has roughly the computing power of 100,000 of today’s most powerful laptops stacked 1.5 miles high, according to IBM. Or, if each of the world’s 6 billion people worked on hand-held computers for 24 hours a day, it would take them 46 years to do what the Roadrunner computer can do in a single day.

So if everyone on the planet was using an iPhone 24/7, how many years would it take us to replicate a day’s work of “the Roadrunner?”

The size specifications of the Roadrunner dwarf the ENIAC as well. According to the same article:

The interconnecting system occupies 6,000 square feet with 57 miles of fiber optics and weighs 500,000 pounds. Although made from commercial parts, the computer consists of 6,948 dual-core computer chips and 12,960 cell engines, and it has 80 terabytes of memory housed in 288 connected refrigerator-sized racks.

80 terabytes of memory… Is that all? Will my kids have that much storage capacity in their handheld computers when they start attending college in about a decade? Quite possibly.

I don’t intend to trivialize this computing achievement with attempted levity. On a more serious note, I recognize the pivotal role funding by the US government for military computing applications continues to play in the development of computing and supercomputing capabilities. The ENIAC was originally designed to make more accurate and thorough calculations for the US Army’s artillery units. The Roadrunner is ostensibly being used “to assure the safety and security of our (weapons) stockpile.” Do we really need a supercomputer with petaflop performance capabilities to do that? I thought the nuclear football, developed during the administration of Eisenhower, did that for us? I think it’s fair to hypothesize the actual military uses of the Roadrunner are barely touched on in today’s AP article.

A petaflop is 10 to the 15th power “flops: FLoating point Operations Per Second.” Can I begin to comprehend a number that large? That challenge is similar to trying to understand the distance the Andromeda Galaxy (our closest neighbor galaxy) is away from our own Milky Way galaxy: Approximately 2.5 million light-years away. I can say that number, but I can I really comprehend it? I don’t think so.

The speed of change we are witnessing today, in our lifetimes, when it comes to information technologies and telecommunications truly IS staggering. An SR-71 was fast (when it was operational) but blog-powered communication is faster. At the speed of light, packets of data traverse our planet and magically permit our ideas and thoughts to interact and influence each other. Who could have dreamed of such a day?

$100 million for a petaflop of performance. Wow. What does that mean? Are we approaching the moment of technological singularity? We’re certainly moving in that direction.

Amidst such change, it is ludicrous and sad to see our political leaders in the United States continuing to emphasize a 19th century approach to education via standardized assessments which place zero value on digital literacy or 21st century skills. We can be frustrated with NCLB, we can be mad about high stakes testing, but more than anything else, I think we can justifiably be sad at the glaring lack of vision and understanding for the dynamic communications landscape of the 21st century which it reflects.

In a few months, citizens of the United States will have an opportunity to cast votes for a new chief executive. When the reins of power are transferred, I hope we’ll be pleased with new educational vision in the White House which supports the development of both traditional as well as digital literacies in the classrooms and homes of our nation. If we’re paying $100 million for a petaflop of performance today, we’ll probably be paying $1000 for that same performance capacity in a decade. Are we equipping our current generations of learners to thrive in an environment replete with such computational capacity? No. Sadly, we’re still arguing about whether or not cell phones should be permitted in schools at all. Are people of all ages going to continue making poor choices with the tools at their fingertips, including cell phones? Of course. The solution is not banning them and condemning students and teachers to a 19th century learning environment devoid of opportunities for digital interaction.

Is this “glass” half empty or half full? I prefer to see it as half full. We live in a day ripe with opportunity for visionary and inspired leadership. Let’s hope our next chief executive signs landmark educational legislation framed by an electronic whiteboard or at least a laptop computer, rather than a chalkboard.

Perhaps such an image will inspire educators around the world to stand up and cheer, rather than fall to their knees and weep.

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$100 million for a petaflop of performance originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on June 10, 2008.

Christy: Thank you for your willingness to extend these conversations beyond the blogosphere and directly advocate for constructive, sensible change in our educational institutions with our political candidates running for President in the United States. Clearly there is a great deal which can and needs to be said. I’ll try to be succinct.

1) We must cut down and reduce our curricular standards and instead focus on cultivating habits of mind in our schools. TIME is the number one obstacle we face for any type of proposed educational change. The elephant in the room, as Dr. Robert Marzano pointed out in his keynote at the Oklahoma state leadership conference in July 2007, is that we don’t have enough time TODAY to teach all the content standards and curriculum we are required to as teachers. In response to the demands of these mandates, high stakes testing, and mania continuing from “Nation at Risk” (2 Million Minutes is the latest example) we have people calling for simply more time in school. We don’t simply need a new wrapper on the same old “sandwich” of school learning. We don’t need food coloring, And we don’t need new flavoring added. We need a new sandwich. This begins with addressing the primary drivers of learning tasks in our schools today: Curriculum standards and high stakes testing.

2) Educational technology must play a fundamental role in this learning revolution. Every teacher and student in every school, from grade three on, needs to be equipped with a laptop computer capable of not only accessing content in various media formats (permitting media consumption) but also permitting media PRODUCTION and PUBLISHING. Creating and collaborating must become hallmarks of learning in the 21st century classroom. These tasks can be performed safety, respecting the privacy and rights of both students and parents. There are many choices and paths forward to advance these goals. Our vision of digitally infused learning in the 21st century must go beyond CAI (computer aided instruction) and using Microsoft Office. The 21st Century Skills our students require include media literacy, multimedia publication and communication, and collaboration with diverse team members separated by space and time. The OLPC costs $180 per unit today, but was developed for the developing world. The EEEPC costs $500 per unit today. Amortize those costs over three years. One to one learning IS financially reasonable for our students TODAY. This is a path we need to follow today, not tomorrow. The textbook industry is NOT going to lead this change, in fact they will continue to oppose it as they did in Texas with House Bill 4. The textbook industry should not dictate our educational policy in the United States, just as the oil and gas industry should not dictate our foreign policy. Without our vocal advocacy, the lobbyists for educational corporations will continue to try and call the shots. This must end. The open content movement will continue to grow and offer higher quality, comparatively better alternatives to paper-based printed textbooks as time goes on. The time to embrace 1:1 learning is now. We do not simply need more desktop computers in labs and in classrooms. We need one laptop computer for EVERY teacher and EVERY student in our schools (grades 3 and up) NOW, not tomorrow. And we need a vision for the constructive uses of these tools for learning, which involves regular CREATION and COLLABORATION as well as consumption.

3) As Phil Schlechty argues in his books and publications related to school reform, we must fundamentally redefine the role of the teacher in our 21st century classroom. Rather than defining the teacher as a fount of knowledge, we must define teachers as DESIGNERS and INVENTORS of engaging work for students. Often, the work students do will have a digital face, but that should not be universal. This is one of the most important elements in the learning revolution we need: Teachers must change their own view of themselves and their role in the classroom (in many cases, for those who remain the “sage on the stage”) and parents need to understand the reasons for this change. There are my reasons accounting for high rates of dropouts in our schools, but one of the primary ones we must address directly is BOREDOM. Many kids are bored in school. As teachers redefine their roles as DESIGNERS and INVENTORS of engaging work, this situation can be remedied.

4) Everyone wants a high quality education for students rhetorically, but the fact is in many states our legislators refuse to pay for it. This strikes home for me here in Oklahoma, where we rank 48th in the nation in teacher pay. We are living in an era of all-time high profits for oil and gas companies in the world, and Oklahoma is a major producer of oil and gas. Yet this year, in 2007-2008, our schools in Oklahoma are facing a $40 million shortfall. This is not just ridiculous, it is a crime. We must exhort our leaders at both state and national levels to pay our teachers higher wages. The economics of our educational situation do not require the analysis of a Rhodes scholar. To address the achievement gaps, we have to pay our teachers in more challenging / lower SES schools more money. We absolutely must not pay teachers based on the test scores of their students. ALL K-12 teachers, regardless of the socio-economic level of the students they teach, deserve and NEED to be paid more. As taxpayers we need to put our money where our mouths are (or should be) and pay teachers high wages so we can keep them in the profession.

There are more things that I could write, but those are some of the main points that come to mind. Thanks for your advocacy and being willing to speak out.

Technorati Tags:
accountability, activism, education, politics, nclb, testing, sizer, habitsofmind, schlechty

Speak out and share your vision for education reform originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on April 30, 2008.

My 7 year old daughter and I had an interesting disagreement a few weeks ago which was finally resolved on Monday. We had been discussing navigation and compasses, and she informed me that compasses have magnets in them. I asked her why she thought this, and she told me:

My science textbook says compasses have magnets in them.

I felt relatively certain she was mistaken, not only on a factual basis (because a compass is a freely spinning metal object on a pinhead or pivot, which is magnetized but does NOT have a magnet “in” it) as well as with regard to the facts included in her science textbook. SURELY her new, beautiful science textbook wouldn’t have a basic error in it like this? Surely she just “misunderstood” what was written in her textbook, and needs to re-read the information again to understand what makes up a compass?

To resolve this situation and clarify things, we worked together on Monday for about 10 minutes after school to build a basic compass in our kitchen. To do this, we used a needle, a small piece of foam which could float, and a clear bowl of water. We also used a magnet to magnetize one end of the needle. This was our simple, kitchen compass:

Sure enough it worked: The magnetized end pointed to the north, the same direction our house faces. Sarah experimented moving the floating pin around and watched as the free-floating needle spun around and always oriented itself to point north. Satisfied that, although we had magnetized the end of the needle with a magnet, the compass itself did NOT “contain a magnet,” we opened her 2nd grade science textbook to see “what the textbook says.”

As a second grader, Sarah has a beautiful, new science textbook from Houghton Mifflin:

As you can see in the following image, this textbook is copyrighted in the year 2007, so it was literally BRAND NEW last year in her school:

You will also likely note the copyright notice which is printed underneath the copyright year, and may wonder how I am legally able to share a few, limited photographs of this textbook here on my blog and still remain in legal compliance with U.S. copyright law. The answer is that I am complying with the fair use provisions of U.S. copyright law, which DO permit limited uses of excerpts of copyrighted works under certain conditions, including critiques and analyses of another’s work. This is a topic I discuss in my educational presentations on copyright, and addressed in more detail in the winter 2003 TechEdge article “Copyright 101 for Educators.” For more information about U.S. copyright and intellectual property law as it applies to bloggers and blogs, refer to the EFF’s Legal Guide for Bloggers.

Before I detail the erroneous information presented as “facts” regarding compasses in this 2nd grade science textbook, I want to show you the pages of the textbook (remember, printed in 2007) which focus on the planets of our solar system:

The first thing I notice, as a former elementary teacher as well as a lifelong learner interested in science, is that this picture provides an extremely misleading perspective on the relative distances separating our planets. No attempt has been made to make this “drawing” to scale, and no indication or disclaimer is included on the pages to bring this fact to the attention of 7 and 8 year old readers. The solar system overview of the wonderful “Nine Planets” website communicates these relative distances between the planets of our solar system quite well. Unfortunately, this critical “fact” is entirely omitted from my daughters’ science textbook.

Even more glaring, of course, is the fact that Pluto is presented as a planet on these pages, despite the fact that:

Pluto is now considered the largest member of a distinct region called the Kuiper belt. Like other members of the belt, it is composed primarily of rock and ice and is relatively small: approximately a fifth the mass of the Earth’s moon and a third its volume.

It is remarkable that although astronomers officially changed the status of Pluto from planet to “dwarf planet” in August of 2006, this science textbook copyrighted in 2007 completely ignores this controversial change. This omission can sadly lead to controversy in some classrooms. As a “big brother” in the Kansas Big Brothers, Big Sisters program, a year ago my cousin had to meet after school with his little brother’s fifth grade teacher, who had graded down his homework project on the solar system because he had not included Pluto as a planet. Instead, he had noted it was a dwarf planet and cited his online source, but the teacher had replied “The textbook says that Pluto is a planet, and we have to go with what the textbook says is right.”

Good grief. Give me a break. Thankfully, after meeting with my cousin the teacher agreed to give his little brother full credit for his solar system project EVEN though it contradicted the written gospel included in the classroom’s science textbook. So much for encouraging critical thinking and media literacy in that teacher’s classroom…..

Given this background, I was not entirely shocked to find another mistake in my daughter’s second grade science textbook, but I was still surprised. This is the page which describes and provides “facts” about a compass:

In case Flickr is blocked in the location where you are reading this post, I will transcribe the sentences from this image of the textbook:

People often use a compass when they are hiking in the woods. Ships at sea use a compass. A magnet in a compass helps you find direction. The needle always points north.

The third sentence in this paragraph is patently FALSE. Compasses do NOT have magnets in them. Yet my daughter’s 2007 second grade science textbook says that they do.

What are our learning points and “takeaways” from this situation? In the conversation with my daughter, we discussed how we CANNOT BELIEVE EVERYTHING WE READ, EVEN WHEN IT IS IN THE SCHOOL TEXTBOOK. This is a very important media literacy concept and conversation, and one which I am delighted to be able to have with her now. I don’t want her to believe everything she reads at face value, whether she is reading something on the Internet or a note written by one of her friends. She needs to consider the source as well as what other/competing sources tell her, and make up her mind for herself.

Hopefully, as a result of this conversation and our short, hands-on activity together building a simple compass in our kitchen, Sarah will have a much better idea of what a compass is and what it is not. Of course there are much more complex topics that we can and hopefully will dig into at some point that relate to compasses and magnetism. These include our current theories of how the earth’s molten core creates a dynamo and our planetary magnetic field, which in addition to making compasses “point north” also transforms the solar wind into the northern lights– also called the aurora borealis or polar aurorae. These are GREAT topics to discuss, investigate and explore in further depth, not only because they are so practical and engaging (using a compass is an important skill, and the aurora are beautiful) but also because they relate to scientific THEORIES which are continuing to evolve and develop through the work of diligent scientists around the world.

This conversation and controversy over “details” included in Sarah’s second grade science textbook also raises a critical curriculum and fiscal issue for our own school district and other school districts around our nation. WE ARE WASTING MILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN OUR COUNTRY PURCHASING PAPER-BASED, ANALOG TEXTBOOKS WHICH ARE OUT OF DATE AND OBSOLETE, IN MANY CASES, THE MOMENT THEY ARE PRINTED. We do NOT need to purchase ANY more paper-based textbooks in our schools. Instead, our school districts should be purchasing laptop computers for EVERY student which permit them to access up to date, multimedia and multi-sensory information online:

Unfortunately, the textbook lobby and textbook industry continues to maintain a virtual stranglehold on VAST quantities of public funding for education in the United States. For more on this, refer to my previous posts:

• House Bill 4 Could Dramatically Shape the Face of Public Education (2 March 2005)
• Sad to see the textbook lobby resort to personal attacks in the HB4 discussion (8 April 2005)
• HB2 / HB4 Advances in the Texas Legislature (6 July 2005)

We need to support 1:1 computing initiatives in our schools, and reject the pleas of textbook company owners, employees, and investors to “keep buying textbooks.” Please don’t misunderstand my position of advocacy here: I LOVE printed books, and libraries full printed books– especially children’s literature trade books. We still need books in our schools! We need to stop wasting money on PRINTED TEXTBOOKS, however, and instead embrace digital curriculum in various forms.

On a related topic, the WikiPedia article for compass contains a fascinating list of events and artifacts which relate to the question, “Who invented the compass?” The depth of inquiry and explorations to which we can stretch when we have access to online, digital resources is truly amazing.

When will this basic error regarding a compass and what it is “made of” be fixed in my daughter’s second grade textbook? Will Houghton-Mifflin issue an errata page in full color, and provide a copy free-of-charge to every student in the United States currently using this textbook which contains this basic, factual error? That doesn’t seem likely. If my daughter had access at school to DIGITAL curriculum sources, inaccurate information provided there could be fixed IMMEDIATELY. In her case, however, it seems likely this textbook error won’t be fixed for at least five years, when a new science textbook is adopted in the state of Oklahoma and purchased by our local school district. I hope by then, our state leaders in Oklahoma will have taken the enlightened step of providing a wireless, portable computing device for every student in the state, and freed up local districts to purchase varying types of digital and analog curriculum resources to meet the needs of learners. I’d much rather see our school district purchasing FOSS kits and student licenses to Explore Learning Gizmos than wasting money on another paper-based science textbook that can’t be updated once it has been printed.

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Sorry honey, you can’t believe everything you read in your printed science textbook originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on March 27, 2008.

2. I Love Learning. I Hate Schooliness.
3. So what is “schooliness”?
4. The Birth of Schooliness
5. Schooly Student Leadership
6. Schooly Ethics
7. Schooly Imagination and Curiosity
8. Schooly Critical Thinking: An Oxymoron
9. Schooly (Anti-)Science
10. Schooly Writing Lessons
11. Open Thread Invitation to Play: Your Definitions of Schooliness?

I Love Learning. I Hate Schooliness.

–this is my motto. It’s one of the reasons I wrote (in a post, “On Leaving Teaching to Become a Teacher,” with about 70 comments now),

I’m not sure how much longer I want to work for schools. I’d so much rather teach.

So what is “schooliness”?

I have no idea. But that’s not a problem:  I’m a teacher.  I’m quite comfortable speaking with confidence on subjects I know next to nothing about.

Fans of Stephen Colbert will note that “schooliness” riffs on Colbert’s “truthiness,” which won the Word of the Year awards from the American Dialect Society in 2005, and from Merriam-Webster in 2006.

Colbert, in a serious interview as himself, instead of as his Bill O’Reilly satire persona, had this to say about “truthiness”:

Truthiness is tearing apart our country, and I don’t mean the argument over who came up with the word…

It used to be, everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. But that’s not the case anymore. Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything. It’s certainty. People love the President because he’s certain of his choices as a leader, even if the facts that back him up don’t seem to exist. It’s the fact that he’s certain that is very appealing to a certain section of the country. I really feel a dichotomy in the American populace. What is important? What you want to be true, or what is true?…

Truthiness is ‘What I say is right, and [nothing] anyone else says could possibly be true.’ It’s not only that I feel it to be true, but that I feel it to be true. There’s not only an emotional quality, but there’s a selfish quality.

I’ve never tried to define “schooliness,” but so many people are quoting it as “Clay’s idea,” I feel it’s time to try – and to ask for your help in the Open Thread invitation at the end of this post.

The Birth of Schooliness

I first used the word “schooliness” in March 2007 – my third month of blogging – in one of a series of posts on “how to save blogging from teachers.” (I still worry about that danger, and still think-aloud about that challenge a year later.) I was envisioning a future in which all the edtech evangelists got what they wanted: schools full of teachers in every classroom using blogging with their students. But rather than seeing a utopia to celebrate, I saw a bleak dystopia: Blogging as “just another way to turn in homework.” Blogging, like thinking, creativity, and other joys, turned into an aversive horror by the forces of schooliness:

. . . . what reader will ever return to a blog that’s full of homework posts? If Stephen Colbert were here, he’d say such a blog smelled of this: “Schooliness.”

Like Colbert’s “truthiness,” “schooliness” stuck with me. It was a word without a dictionary definition that still seemed to identify something we all know, all too well.

Schooly Student Leadership

The next time I used the term was this past September. With a few other teachers around the world, I’ve started a Green Schools movement called Project Global Cooling. The project’s purpose is for student members to research waste-reduction measures, and their cost benefits for the school, and then present them for adoption in a formal proposal to the school administration – and to have, ideally, an Earth Day concert in cities around the world, student-promoted, on the same day, which will be filmed and uploaded to the Project Global Cooling website (it’s ugly right now, but it’s starting, finally, to grow legs – see my blog for future focus on this as it nears its April 19 climax).

One of the PGC students, a student council member, was ordered by the student council teacher-leaders to drop our club. It conflicted with the student council meeting times. That sent me into my second rage against the schooly in my post, “Student Council: Creating Tomorrow’s Followers (or, “Smells Like School Spirit”)“:

Me: “So what are you guys going to be planning in the Student Council that’s so important she’s forcing you to drop all other activities?”

Student: “The Haunted House for Halloween. And the next Student Assembly.”

Me: “The Haunted House….so, like, getting the pumpkins and doing some Halloween thing in the gym?”

Student: “Yeah.”

Me: “And the Student Assembly: what are you planning for that?”

Student: “Introducing the Sports teams. And raising school spirit.”

Me: “And how many people do you have meeting twice a week to plan a Haunted House and a 40-minute assembly to introduce the basketball players and give a few speeches and such?”

Student: “Seventeen.”

Me: “Seventeen?”

Student: “Yeah.”

Me: “Seventeen people meeting twice a week for the next 20 weeks to plan a haunted house in the gym, and an assembly to introduce sports teams? How long can it take to come up with a plan to introduce sports teams?”

Student: “I know.”

Me: “I hate school. Look at how trivial it makes you, even when you want to make a difference in the real world.”

Student: “I don’t have any choice. The Student Council teachers won’t let me out.”

Me: “And look how powerless you suddenly are. You’re 17. You’re a young adult. You know physics, calculus, and history far more than most of your teachers, but have zero power in school despite that. ‘They won’t let me.’ I hate school.”

* * *

So, your advice: I want to suggest he quit Student Council, since it’s clearly one very school-blindered, trivial waste of time for all these poor students seeking election in order to show they can handle power effectively – like adults do.

Another idea is to instead advise him to wage a bit of a rebellion inside the Student Council, by asking the very sensible question – “Is this the best we can do? Jack-o-lanterns and basketballs? Can we give the StuCo some teeth? Extend it into the real world? Isn’t it pathetically fay right now? Trivial? Irrelevant? Infantile?”

The sad thing is, it’s institutionalized. The Rat-Race for college admissions puts a high premium on silly bullets like holding a class office. College counselors, administrators, parents, students, teachers – the whole school culture – treat the Student Council like it’s an honorable thing. In reality, it limits the horizons of the 17 most motivated leaders from each grade level to the paltry world of the schoolhouse. It’s outrageously trivial and infantile.

I don’t know if it’s “consensus trance,” blind traditionalism, or winking condescension (”Let the kids play like they have power”), but it smells really bad to me.

Schooly Ethics

Schooliness raised its ugly head again when I considered the moral “offenses” schools choose to punish at school. Drive a gas-guzzler? Promote the bloody diamond trade with your flashy jewelry? Enjoy murder in video games or on your favorite movies? No worries. No punishment.

But use certain taboo vowel-consonant combinations, or look at the human form with certain taboo portions visible? We’ll throw the book at you, in our duty to teach you the difference between right and wrong. Schooly morality seems to have been held back since the mid-Victorian era. That was a fun post: “To Curse or Not to Curse: On Teaching the F-Bomb and Other Colorful Words.” Read it before you judge it. It’s about Shakespeare’s mastery of cursing, as an art form. Here’s a snippet:

Lear curses with style and grace, as befits a king. But Kent, his chief knight – Lear’s “Army Chief of Staff,” as it were – curses, as befits a career soldier, with much more salt and directness. Check out his classic “cussing out” of the slimy Oswald, servant of Goneril –

OSWALD:
What dost thou know me for?

KENT:
A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a
base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited,
hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a
lily-livered, action-taking knave, a whoreson,
glass-gazing, super-serviceable finical rogue;
one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a
bawd, in way of good service, and art nothing but
the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pander,
and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch: one whom I
will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deniest
the least syllable of they addition. (Act II, Sc. 2, ll. 14-24)

If your Elizabethan English is rusty, and you don’t hear the vulgarity and sexual insult sloshing in practically every line, download the free “Answers” Firefox addon, and click the unknown words while holding down “alt” on your Mac for an instant popup definition and more (PC users, you’re on your own – maybe “ctrl”?). Kent calls Oswald a pimp, son of a bitch, bastard, son of a whore, “wussy,” a suck-up, and more, and then says, in today’s language, “Deny one word, and I’ll kick your disgusting little donkey” (substitute the King James Bible word for donkey here).

It’s depressing, isn’t it, how the art of cursing has degenerated in our own modern age? Our four-letter words are so unimaginative and artless by comparison.

So if you were me, how would you guide students to translate these curses? Having Kent abuse Oswald by hissing,

You bad person, I’m going to kick your bottom.
You son of a bad woman, you sissy, you person born out of wedlock,
You big meanie, etc

just doesn’t strike me as a faithful literary adaptation. (It does strike me as schooliness, though. Some teachers, like Wilde’s classic Miss Prism in The Importance of Being Earnest, would give such a bowdlerizing an “A,” I’ve no doubt.)

Schooly Imagination and Curiosity

I’m battling with schooliness now, most distressingly, in the very people I thought would battle it with me: my high school seniors. It seems they are so unfamiliar with having their own ideas, and writing about them, that they simply cannot do it with any engagement. Their free-choice blogs are, overall, schooly imitations of authenticity. Pretending to have ideas they pretend to care about. Thank Goodness, there are exceptions. But the rule is so distressing, it’s led me to believe that, by high school, it’s too late to unlock the creativity and engagement Wes so often champions. Twelve years of schooliness seems to have beaten the desire to learn – the pleasure of learning – completely out of most seniors. It seems to me now that, if we’re going to feed fires for learning, we have to do it before they’re snuffed out. And that means, to be clear, focus on school reform in primary and middle years. (How to reform secondary school, so in the grips of the SAT and AP and College Admissions – not to mention high school teachers living out college professor fantasies – is beyond me.)

Here’s a snippet from, “From the Classroom Blogging Doldrums: What Would Teacher 2.0 Do?“:

The problem? Little vision, little connective writing.

It’s partly senioritis, I think. College applications, SAT’s, too many commitments to too many extra-curricular activities (got to have those bullets for the college application, even if they come at the cost of destroying both my learning and my GPA), too many week-long sports trips, too many AP classes that were chosen not for interest but again for careerist reasons.

It’s partly Korean culture: parents sending students to night and weekend schools for SAT prep, AP prep, tutors. Students confusing memorization skills with academic excellence, trained to “be instructed” rather than to “construct” meaning themselves. Having no time to be, reflect, explore, wonder (or having no energy, rather).

And it’s partly my own fault: all the macho posturing of Advanced Placement courses as “college-level, rigorous,” etc – and Wes Fryer’s etymolological connection, in Shanghai back in September, of “rigor” with “rigid” and “rigor mortis” echoes here – led me to buy in to what now seems a sadistic and pedagogically pathetic imperative to overload AP students with A Mountain Of Homework.

Schooly Critical Thinking: An Oxymoron

This is from, “Teaching Grammar on the Titanic: On Fear and Irrelevance in Education“:

So: the problem with me, as a teacher, is that I design units that don’t address anything important. I’ve been trained to think that my job is to stuff the headpieces of the next generation with such irrelevant things as the definition of litotes and onomatopoeia, to write cute little stories about nothing, to know Stratford-upon-Avon. To be able, paradoxically, to think critically about safe subjects. And above all, not to think about anything that might, god forbid, rankle the status quo. And let’s not even start to think about taking any sort of action.

Again, so: As soon as I stop thinking like a teacher, designing units derived from an institutional culture that defines me as a teacher, and subconsciously makes me far more traditional in my teaching than my progressively-posing ego likes to acknowledge….as soon as I re-define myself as a community leader – as that once-upon-a-time American thing called a citizen – instead, maybe the young adults of my community might have an opportunity to learn how to function in the world they’ll inherit from and manage for us all-too-soon.

Schooly (Anti-)Science

When Bulgaria is, per capita, more scientifically literate than America about biology, geology, and genetics – and when even science teachers are afraid of the “e-word” – little more needs to be said. I say it anyway, in this post that got 1,000 hits in 8 hours (a record for me): Truly Critical: On Science, Religion, and Goodness.

Schooly Writing Lessons

Under the influence of Oscar Wilde’s aphorisms and Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary, and in order to battle evil with wit and thus smile a bit more in hell, I’ve decided to slowly compile twitter-like definitions of all things schooly. Here’s my first effort, from a post last week:

Schooly writing (noun): Assignments by teachers who don’t want to read them, to students who don’t want to write them; a perpetual and unnecessary misery upon which hinges the student’s future, and the teacher’s present, livelihood; an oxymoron.

Open Thread Invitation to Play: Your Definitions of Schooliness?

Readers of my blog will know about the Open Thread idea. It’s simple: A topic or question is proposed in an Open Thread post, and all readers are encouraged to write comments as long as they would like, to copy them to their own blogs if desired, and to converse with each other in the thread. It’s fun.

I’d like to do an Open Thread here: Questions:

1. List the topics that come to your mind when you think of “Schooliness.”

2. Write your own “Devil’s Definition” and give us all a wicked laugh. I’ll carry them over to Beyond School and add them to a page there.

We know what schooliness is. We teachers live it daily. Let’s have some fun with it.

(Other comments are fine too, of course.)

–

Photo Credits:

• Colbert Motivational Poster by Louisville Joe
• Oscar Wilde Action Figure by -sel

“What is Schooliness?” – Discursus and Open Thread (Clay Burell guest-post 2) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on March 1, 2008.

Marc was a concert musician earlier in life!

response to NCCE 2008 program that had recipient’s first name spelled out with coffee beans

slide of Marc’s educational credentials
- the best thing I get to do now is interview kids all over the world now

what I do, is think about education from the point of view of the student
- I make R&D projects
- my latest book: “Don’t Bother Me Mom, I’m Learning”
- no one wanted to publish that book originally
- now it has been translated into 7 foreign languages

I was in Rome recently for the launch of the Italian version of my book

this morning I want to talk about “engage me or enrage me”
- how do we deal with today’s learners differently than we might have in the past

My biggest concern as an educator is:
- answer this question on a piece of paper NOW, and I will collect them
- write down 1 or 2 words

MY RESPONSE: THE LACK OF APPROPRIATE EDUCATIONAL VISION

I think it should be: “keeping up with change”
- kids have passion about the future
- 30 years from now, not that far
- our kids will either cry or laugh at the education we gave them in 2008

how many of you have sent an email in the past 24 hours
- “email is for old people” – a student
- that was a headline in The Chronicle of Higher Education
- elaborate email infrastructure put in by colleges

Did you have a good vacation
- image of parent dragging kid into the car, clutching his desktop computer

we need to understand the speed and magnitude of change that is here and the change that is coming, which is much greater

in 30 yars if technology ocntinues to double in power every year, our technology will be 1 billion times more powerful than todya

SO THIS IS THE SOURCE FOR THAT STATEMENT IN THE RECENT EDUTOPIA ARTICLE WHICH MARC WROTE!

what does that mean

1960s mainframe x 1B = today’s cell phone x 1 B = ???

we can do on today’s cell phone what people did with room-sized computers in the 1960s
- these are 1 billion time increases

today we are already working at the ATOMIC level
- every movie ever made, book ever written, will be placeable on a pinhead

my favorite quote in the world: “charles handy: walking backward into the future helps us keep looking at familiar things…”
- this leads to us getting creamed by the truck

2 things going on simultaneously
- most of us have not experienced much rapid change in the bulk of our lives
- we went to the moon, but we drive the same cars to go to the same jobs, etc…

the discontinuity is digital technology
- from now on, things are changing exponentially
- that is not just SO FAR OFF in the future
- our lives get different every day now
- you have probably changed the way you do banking, phoning, traveling, reading, buying and selling, obtaining info

THIS IS A GREAT POINT, THESE ARE CURRENT CHANGES, NOT JUST FUTURE CHANGES

for young people, ramp up these changes 10 fold

kids are approaching their lives differently

Net Day “Speak-Up Day” summary
- tomorrow.org
- they interview kids every year about technology preferences
- the emerging online life of the digital native

young people are figuring out new ways to do these things: communicating, sharing, buying and selling, exchanging, learning, meeting, gaming, coordinating, evaluating, collecting, creating, evolving, searching, analyzing, reporting, programming, socializing, growing up

5 to 10 years we are not going to have cash or credit cars: we will wave our cell phones in front of devices

the single largest differentiator is the social network
- Jack Mckenzie

Equity?

we can be a big part of the solution to the digital divide

within the next 5 years, the WiMax people of the year have a new thing that educators will be able to build their own towers, manage their own

inkwell program building their own computers for education
- ruggedized computers for education

software coming out now that will be really good, and adapt to each student
- when these things appear, the changeover is instantaneous almost

remember when we used to not use keyword searching for the web
- speed of change is happening in our lives

Kids were born to the idea of rapid change
- the change that empowers the students is often threatening to educators and adults in general (those who came before these changes)

are you threatened by unfiltered student access to the internet?
- unfiltered access to test answers?
- to grade books? (that is hackable!)
- to your personal records (personnel records)

secrecy is one of the things that is going away with this new technology
- the very nature of education is changing

the font of knowledge is the internet, not the teacher (quotation from a principal in Australia)

now the future is really uncertain
- now we are going to have to invent new tools

remember when we couldn’t collect political contributions on the Internet?
- when we couldn’t auction things on the Internet? (now that is one of the biggest businesses in the world)

how many of you see your role in eduation helping students with skills for an unknown future

our kids are not “little us’s” anymore
- video of lots of small kids in a house talking on the cell phone

almost every student already has a powerful computer
- we are far along with 1:1, because a great percentage of your students has a powerful computer in their pocket: a cell phone

cell phones are
- powerful computers
- inexpensive
- more….

what is missing here is often our imagination

question for you: (ethical)
- suppose in the middle of the day, you got a call from your own son or daughter asking you a strange question: what is the capital of Sri Lanka?
- you know the answer, but suspect that your son or daughter is in the middle of a test

that is an interesting question because we are right in the middle
- we should want to help our kids to use their tools

we need to evaluate these rules and change them appropriately

i believe in open phone tests
- and we laugh….
- but we are going to take an open phone test NOW

1. Who is Craig Venter and why is he important?
2. What has he been collecting from around the world and why?
3. If you know the answers to 1 and 2, find out something about him that you didn’t know

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Venter

the teachers who give open phone tests can ask harder questions
- high school senior said after a presentation: most of our tests are already open phone tests, you guys just don’t know it….

let’s get with the program folks!
- we don’t have to ban this stuff
- we can use it appropriately
- you are going to see all sorts of tools

think about how you can integrate cell phones into your teaching

kids ask: how can we adapt?

What do kids like?

I keynoted a conference recently titled “Educating Global Citizens”
- you can take this 2 ways, either we need to MAKE our kids global citizens or our kids are ALREADY global citizens

community?
- used to be those sitting at your table
- now your community is the world

how many of you see your job as connecting kids to the world?

some people are asking: When will this change END?
- it won’t

“You look at technology as a tool. We look at technology as a foundation – it’s totally integrated into what we do.” – a student

digital technology is considered a BIRTHRIGHT by kids at the start of the 21st century

- here’s a photo of my own kid, Sky, taken in 2005
- he’s surrounded by robots, books that read to him, his own music synthesizer
- everything he picks up is a digital device, and he tries to make phone calls with it

why are so many kids tuning out of today’s school
- simple answer: we are boring them to death
- kids say they have to POWER DOWN

we have to turn around and face this future
- let kids use their tools to learn

metaphor for today’s education
- kids used to grow up in the dark intellectually, until they went to school
- at school we started opening up the door, showing them the light, helping them learn about the world
- so in the past we were the people who showed kids the light

what happens today?
- kids grow up in the light:they are connected with their cell phones, computers, etc
- when they come to school, we make kids turn off all their connections to the LIGHT and essentially make them work again in the darkness

this is disturbing
- can we turn on the lights, please, for these kids?

“I’m bored all day because the teachers
“it’s not attention deficient, I’m just not listening”

road signs to prescription drugs

the idea that we can give kids a set of meaningful information that will last IS OVER
- the info changes too quickly
- so we need to teach skills that will be useful throughout life

my ideas
1- knowing the right thing to do: (behaving ethically, critial thinking, decision making, problem solving, etc…)
2- getting it done: goal setting, planning, etc.
3- doing it with others: communicating and collaborating, with individuals and groups, with machines (programming), and with a world audience

I AGREE WITH ALL THESE POINTS. CREATING AND COLLABORATING ARE THE KEYS

4. doing it creatively
5. doing it better and better

Who has read “the 7 habits of highly effective people” by Stephen Covey
- your homework assignment: READ THIS!
- this has been on the best seller list for 10 years
- so we KNOW these habits
- for us to know these and NOT be teaching

“our kids should sue us for the education we give them” -Angus King

how do we do this in the era of “no child left alive”
- we have to find a way
- we have to just things out of the curriculum
- my approach: “curriculum deletion”

hopefully we can get up in arms with the next set of leaders in Washington
- lets make every politician take the SATs with no prep, and then reveal their scores
- it is mostly stuff we will forget and won’t need

Why else are our schools so bored in school?
- were not teaching them in the right way
- there is a new paradigm for learning

We’re in California, right
- no, we are in Washington
- I always fear I will be in Kansas
- we’re not in Kansas anymore

HEY I TAKE OFFENSE TO THIS! (IN A GOOD HEARTED BUT YET SERIOUS WAY.) THERE ARE GREAT THINGS HAPPENING IN KANSAS AND KANSAS SCHOOLS! CLEARLY MARC NEEDS TO GET OUT MORE AND VISIT SOME OF THE INNOVATIVE SCHOOLS WE HAVE IN KANSAS NOW!!!!! KANSAS HAS AROUND 30 DISTRICTS DOING 1:1 LEARNING PROJECTS NOW.

the new paradigm is kids teaching themselves, not all on their own but with the teacher’s guidance
- you don’t even need technology for that, but technology helps

for the first time, our schools have serious competition

many are bypassing the schools, and going to after school projects
- MacArthur Program looking at after school programs

question is: can we compete, can we turn on the lights?
- or is it only the DARK SIDE of schools keeping us alive?
- kids go to school to be safe while parents can work
- we don’t talk about that, but this is true

consider this: will a teacher REALLY be fired if student test scores don’t go up?
- probably not
- but if a teacher tells kids they can do whatever they want and roam

otherwise, school is PRISON

what if we don’t work on this…
- funny graphics of misspelled words, an algebra problem saying “find x”

want to see what school is really about? go to YouTube

what is the role of technology?
- some think technology is the answer to getting engagement

technology isn’t the answer
- we are going to have to change how we are teaching before we introduce the technology

lots of digital immigrants teach by
- delivering content

[insert photo}

the new paradigm demands technology
- until the teachers move to a new paradigm, the technology can get in the way

May 8, 2008 article: Seeing no progress for laptops, NYT article

1st: change how teachers teach

2nd: let the kids use the technology
- then let the student do what they do well: use technology, find content, create
- let teachers assess

it is important that teachers don’t waste their time learning to use these new tools
- they don’t need to create with technology, because the kids can do it

I TOTALLY DISAGREE WITH THIS. I AGREE THAT TEACHERS DON’T HAVE TO KNOW ALL THE POINT AND CLICK PROCEDURES FOR EVERY PROGRAM, BUT IT IS ABSOLUTELY PIVOTAL THAT TEACHERS LEARN TO CREATE AND USE TECHNOLOGY TOOLS, FIRST FOR PERSONAL REASONS. WHY? BECAUSE WITHOUT THIS PERSONAL LEVEL OF EXPERIENCE, TEACHER WON’T BE ABLE TO GET THEIR HEADS AROUND THE POTENTIAL USES OF THESE TECHNOLOGIES AND BE ABLE TO FACILITATE LEARNING IN THE WAYS THEY NEED TO.

teachers need to know what the tools are about

how teachers should use new tools: assign, evaluate, teach

wikipedia:
- design a wikipedia article for

why does digital tech change so much from the past?
- because it is programmable

THE WORD HERE IS PROTEAN, IT IS VERSATILE IN TERMS OF FUNCTION

picture of a flashing alarm clock, “i can program that”

HE IS MISTAKENLY SAYING PROGRAMMING IS SETTING AN ALARM CLOCK. THAT IS WORKING WITH TECHNOLOGY, BUT NOT PROGRAMMING. I THINK THE DEFINITION MARC IS USING HERE FOR PROGRAMMING IS OVERLY BROAD.

when it comes to digital technology, we are hugely underestimate what our students can do
- who has seen Mabry Online’s videos?

Showing “Nothing But Nets” movie from Mabry Online
- help us change the world. help us save a life

SEEING THIS AGAIN MAKES ME RETHINK MY CURRENT PROFESSIONAL CAREER TRACK. I SEE MOVIES LIKE THIS, AND I WANT TO GO BACK INTO THE CLASSROOM AND FOCUS ON HELPING STUDENTS DO THIS. NOT TALKING ABOUT IT. DOING IT. NOT ENCOURAGING OTHERS TO DO IT. DOING IT. NOT SAYING “WOULDN’T IT BE GREAT IF WE….” DOING IT.

I THINK DR. TIM TYSON SHOULD BE OUR NEXT SECRETARY OF EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES. (REMEMBER EVERYTHING IN ALL CAPS HERE ARE MY – WES FRYER’S – IDEAS, NOT THINGS MARC IS SHARING DURING THIS PRESO.)

MARK REFERENCES WHAT TIM TYSON HAS SAID ABOUT THESE MOVIES, BUT NEVER SAID TIM’S NAME. HE NEEDS TO ATTRIBUTE HIS SOURCE AND TELL PEOPLE TIM’S NAME!!!!!

We need to do it WITH students, not TO them
- we need class meetings, talk about the technologies the students think are useful, as opposed to what we think is useful

why don’t we do better?
- because we don’t ask
- are we afraid of our own kids? to ask them what is good for them? to ask for their opinions?
- not to let them run the whole ship, but to ask them: “Am I boring you?”
- if they say yes, that could be a great answer, if our next question is, “What could I do that wouldn’t bore you.”

The only way we will get to where we need to go is to listen to the kids, and let them help us change what we are doing

2 things kids around the world

- ‘we’re bored”
- “we’re not stupid. don’t treat us like we are.”

5 stages of teachers and the new paradigm (photos behind)
1- Hiding (picture of alligator at the door)
2- Panic (keyboard button: “oh sh**”)
3- Acceptance (laying beside some sort of dead sea animal)
4- Comfort (kid washing a python)
5- Power (zebra driving a motorcycle being chased by a lion)

remember this: your job and the role of technology in my view has 1 single purpose: to empower kids to learn
- so please, if you do one thing, always be teh ADVOCATE for the students (not for the grades, the parents, the tests)
- kids don’t have a good advocate, they need one

Technorati Tags:
ncce08, ncce2008, prensky, marcprensky, education, school, learning, reform, educationreform, schoolreform, teacher, teaching

Engage Me or Enrage Me: Educating Today’s Digital Native Learners originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 28, 2008.

I added this video to our family NetFlix queue a couple of weeks ago after reading Dr. Larry Lessig’s wiki page for “Corruption RequiredViewing.” This film is a major extension, with great depth, of the ideas shared in the short film “The Story of Stuff,” which I saw this past December and shared with my family after reading Dean Shareski’s post “Give the gift of a goat” over on Eyes Right.

It’s going to take some time to process all of this. I’m sure some people might see this film and become overwhelmed by a sense of disillusionment and despair. I won’t count myself in that group. I also won’t count myself among those who are convinced that the legal idea which has relatively recently given birth to the modern corporation is clearly in need of being dismantled. I’ve been thinking a lot more lately about our “consumer society” from multiple vantage points, however, and there is no doubt that this documentary raises multiple points worth considering. As my wife continues to read “The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl,” I’ve been reflecting on how AMAZING it is that we didn’t have the consumer society we have today prior to World War II, and prior to FDR’s New Deal. People may assume that our current economic climate and system is not only the “way it is,” but also “the way it should be,” but that is not a justified assumption in my own view and clearly in the view of this documentary film’s directors.

There are many historical incidents and people discussed in the film with which I had not been previously aquatinted. As a past student of Latin American politics and history, I’m amazed I’d never heard of the Cochabamba protests of 2000 in Bolivia over the privatization of water. I knew companies were now patenting genomes, but hadn’t heard of the origins of this “commercial patent race” with Ananda Mohan Chakrabarty and the case “Diamond v. Chakrabarty.” I knew about Monsanto and its development of hybrid seeds (like “Roundup Ready Cotton”) thanks to a friend back in the Lubbock area who used to work for Monsanto. I was amazed to learn that the company prohibits farmers from “catching” and keeping seed from their harvest, and actually employs people to identify and “snitch” on those who do– who are then subject to large fines. I didn’t know about Monsanto’s development of Bovine somatotropin or BST, however, and that segment alone makes me much more concerned about the milk my kids drink. Yikes.

From a media literacy standpoint, the segment about how marketing agencies overtly attempt to get kids to nag their parents to force buying decisions was very eye opening. I know this takes place, however, but I’d never seen a documentary situating the marketing proponents themselves against those questioning the ethics of this behavior.

I’ll stop with my post-video observations now and just share my notes. This is a very thought provoking film, and well worth watching, whether you consider yourself to a a political conservative or liberal. We all should be concerned about these issues as human beings, irrespective of our current political affiliations or alignments.

I’m interested to know if anyone has posted a wiki project highlighting any mistakes or inaccuracies brought up in this film. The directors, writers, and participants certainly make a lot claims that I’m sure others would and do dispute, so it would be interesting to see what those points are and the counter-claims.

Studying controversial topics. This is one of the best ways to authentically develop media literacy and critical thinking skills. This documentary got me thinking, and if you watch it I’m sure it will get you thinking too. The question is, will our THINKING lead to ACTION?

— my notes follow, my own comments are in all CAPS —

“The corporation is today’s dominant institution.”

So begins the documentary…

the corporation began with the dawn of the industrial age

In 1712 Thomas Newcomen: steam driven pump to pump water out of a coal mine
- all about productivity
- more coal per man-hour

The Civil War and the industrial revolution caused an explosion of growth
- corporate lawyers realized they needed more power
- 14th amendment was passed to protect blacks and their life, liberty and property rights
- corporation lawyers came into court and declared that a corporation is a “person” in terms of the law (14th amendment)
- US Supreme Court upheld that view / position

The Center for Public Integrity

Corporations are designed by law to be only concerned about their stockholders, not their “stakeholders”
- they have no soul to save, and no body to incarcerate

key for every corporation: making as much money as possible every quarter

for a corporation, there is no such thing as “enough” money or profits

corporations are bound, legally, to put their own interests above ALL others

externalities: the effect of a transaction of two individuals on a third party who has not played a role in the carrying out of that transaction

a corporation is an externalizing machine in the the same way a shark is a killing machine
- isn’t a question of will or malevolence, characteristics are inherent which

Discussion of sweatshops worldwide by Charles Kernaghan, Director of the National Labor Committee
- example of a Liz Claybourne jacket made in El Salvador: Retail cost $178 each, workers were paid 74 cents for each jacket they made

“this is the reality, it is the science of exploitation” (referring to Nike documents on microseconds to produce a garment)

Commentary by Naomi Klein, author of “No Logo”
- workers rarely make enough to pay for 3 meal per day, let alone feed their local economy

discussion of pollution and synthetic chemicals
- starting in 1940, dawn of the age of synthetic chemicals
- the petro-chemical era
- industry is largely responsible for the current epidemic of cancer that we are seeing worldwide

stories of artificial hormone problems due to injections from Monsanto
- people are ingesting anti-biotics through their foods because of this
- Agent Orange lawsuits brought by US servicemen resulted in $80 million in settlements, but the company never admitted guilt
- Vietnamese also injured by Agent Orange never were able to bring suit against Monsanto

Multinational Monitor: top corporate criminals

Whether you obey the law or not is a question of whether it is cost effective
- this comes down to business decisions

“every living system is in decline”

intergenerational tyranny: a form of taxation without representation, by us upon generations yet to be born
- it is wrong to do

Characteristics of an individual meeting the requirements of a “psychopath,” applied to the “person” of a corporation:
- callous unconcern for the feelings of others
- incapacity to maintain enduring relationships
- reckless disregard for the safety of others
- deceitfulness: repeated lying and conning others for profit
- incapacity to experience guilt
- failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviours

“If the dominant social institution of our time has been created in the image of a psychopath, who bears the moral responsibility for its actions?”

Milton Friedman: Can a building have social responsibility?
- so why could a corporation?
- those people involved in a corporation all have moral responsibility

all flesh and blood human beings have moral responsibilities

former CEO of Goodyear: you do not have much freedom in reality
- layoffs are never a decision that any CEO makes lightly, but those decisions are the consequence of modern capitalism

comparison of slavery and other forms of tyranny are inherently monstrous, but the individuals involved in them may be wonderful
- in the institutional role, they are monsters because the institutions are monsters

Dr. Vanda Shiva
- Physicist, ecologist, seed activist
- it is legitimate for a corporation to create terminator technologies
- a war against evolution: seeds with self-destruction genes

“it’s about competition, market share, being aggressive, shareholder value – what is your stock at today?”
- people want money, that is the bottom line

excerpt from the movie “The Big One”

a CEO from “Interface” corporation who didn’t have an environmental vision
- read Paul Hawken’s book “The Ecology of Commerce”
- EO Wilson: “the death of birth”
- you can’t make all products sustainably (land mines – some products shouldn’t be made at all)
- if we can’t make carpets sustainably, then we shouldn’t make them
- I realized I had been running my corporation in the way of the plunderer
- there must come a day when running a business like this is illegal

9-11 was a blessing in disguise from a financial standpoint for clients that were invested in gold, because they doubled their money

Price of oil went from $13 to $42 a barrel when the US started bombing Iraq in 1991
- every broker was excited about Saddam doing more terrible things that would drive the price of oil even higher
- in devastation there is opportunity

There was a collective responsibility in the medieval world
- people farmed the land in a collective way because it didn’t belong to them
- beginning with Tudor England, we started to see the enclosures of the commons, focusing on private property, even in the ocean

GATT
WTO
IMF

More enclosures and private takings of the commons, Harvard Trade Union Program
- how is wealth created?
- isn’t clean air wealth?
- why does wealth have to be associated with private property

Mark Kingwell, Philosopher
- firefighters started as private companies
- you had to have the medallion of that firefighter company on your house for them to put out a fire at your location
- we moved beyond that to a public trust

Noam Chomsky: privatization does not mean you take a public institution and give it to a nice person
- it means you give it to an unaccountable tyranny
- public institutions have many side benefits
- may intentionally run at a loss

Maude Barlow, Chairperson, Council of Canadians
- there are some people who aspire that someday, everything will be owned by someone or something
- we are talking about essential services for life too: education, housing, etc
- the survival of the planet: water, air, we believe these things should be held in common

Michael Walker, Exec Director, Fraser Institute
- we should find ways to attach prices to polluting
- the interests involved in that stream should be OWNED by those who have an interest
- this is the solution to a lot of these problems
[THAT IS A CONTRARY VIEW TO THE FOCUS OF THIS

A Time Warner subsidiary holds the rights to the song "Happy Birthday"
- it has charged up to 10K to allow the singing of the song in a film

comparing marketing of the 1950s to the marketing of today is like comparing a BB gun to a smart bomb
- today it is much more sophisticated and pervasive
- products are not bad or good: it is the notion of manipulating children into buying products
- Initiative Media "The Nag Factor" - Initiative Media North America
- study to show how kids nag
- Parents, nagging kids and purchase decisions
- study in 1998: Western International Media and others conducted this study

study was not to help parents cope with nagging, it was to help corporations encourage kids to nag more effectively for their products
- a quarter of all visits to theme parks would not have occurred without kids nagging them
- if the kid nags enough, you are going to go

[MY GOODNESS THIS IS HORRIBLE]

marketers are playing to developmental vulnerabilities of children
- the more insights you have about the consumer, the more creative businesses will be/are

let’s distinguish between psychologists helping to create toys appropriate for children, and those focused on helping corporations market to children to manipulate them

1 family cannot combat an industry that spends $12 billion per year

corporate goal: build a relationship when they are young, they will stay with your company

any institution which has power over individuals confers social roles
- institutions that are vibrant will specify those roles as virtues: the church, the school, corporations, etc.
- corporations provide these as “the ideal consumer”

Chompsky: corporations have to create wants
- encourage people to focus on inconsequential wants (things that don’t matter)
[I THINK THE HOOPLA OVER COACH PURSES IS A PERFECT EXAMPLE]
- the ideal is to have individuals whose conception of themselves, their sense of value, is how many created wants can I satisfy
- public relations and marketing industries are designed to try and mold people into this desired pattern

story of ChrisandLuke.com
- corporate sponsor story
- “I have lots of faith in the corporate world, because it is always going to be there.”

corporations are manufacturing consent?

corporations don’t advertise products
- they advertise a story
- decades of propaganda teaching us to think in a certain way
- now propaganda perpetuating that the corporation is responsible for prosperity and “the good life”

perception management is a methodology helping corporations working with clients, going thru a thoughtful process to identify resources, barriers, and how they can accomplish their objectives
- clients: Philip Morris, combatting environmental campaigns in Canada
- creating an image for themselves

example of Pfizer-subsidized housing development

branding is not advertising, it is production
- corporations of the future produce BRANDING
- the dissemination of the idea of themselves is their product
- example with Disney is “Celebration, Florida” – making a physical representation of themselves
- creating a physical representation of ‘the all American town’

brand driver for Disney is “family magic”
- a branded environment like Disneyworld or Disneyland is a logical extension of that

Disney brands adult films “Touchstone”

imperialist aspirations of “branding”

what happens if we wake up one day and find out that virtually all our relationships that are mediated with other human beings are controlled by commercially arbitrated relationship

undercover marketing

by the time you go to bed, you have probably received at least 8 or 9 product placements (not just in films)

Chakrabarty case
- GE and Prof Chakrabarty, microbe modified in lab to clean up oil spills
- appealed US Patent Office decision that patents don’t cover living things
- US Customs Court of Appeals, by 3-2 decision, overruled Patent Office and ruled that this looked like a detergent
- Patent Office appeal was very clear that you can’t patent life
- this means that without any public discussion or decisions, corporations will own the building blocks of life
- years later the US Patent Office issued a decision that companies or individuals could patent anything they want, except a fully alive human being

[THE FIRST TIME I HEARD ABOUT COMPANIES PATENTING GENES I IMMEDIATELY THOUGHT THIS WAS RIDICULOUS. IT IS AMAZING THIS IS REALITY TODAY.]

there is now a great race by companies to find the great “treasures” in the human genome
- companies are claiming these genes as intellectual property
- within less than 10 years, a handful of companies will own the actual genomes that make up human beings as well as animals

dichotomy of the future: those who believe life has intrinsic value, and those who believe everything is and should be commercialized

Story of Monsanto legal threats to Fox News over investigative report about growth hormone
- Rupert Murdoch owned 22 TV stations at that time

The reporters were told “just write it the way the lawyers say to write it”
- then they were told: “we just paid $3 billion for these television stations. We’ll tell you what the news is. The news is what we say it is.”

[GOOD GRIEF. IF THIS ISN'T A MEDIA NIGHTMARE I DON'T KNOW WHAT IS. NEIL POSTMAN VALIDATED AGAIN.]

the reporters were offered a money bribe to NEVER speak of this report again, EVER
- eventually led to a re-write of the news story with corporate lawyers, all references that would be critical of Monsanto were removed
- was rewritten 83 times

the Fox News corporate lawyer put in writing that they were being fired because they stood up against them (Fox News)
- this made it retaliation, and invoked whistleblower status
- found falsifying the news isn’t actually against the law

RBGH remains hidden in much of the milk supply in the US

rainwater has been privatized in Bolivia
- the World Bank required privatization
- law prohibited people from collecting rainwater
- led to protests in the street, proclaiming that “water is life” and making the point that water should not be privatized
- World Bank loans were paid for in Bolivia by the privatization of state oil industry, airline, railroad, electric, and phone companies
- Bolivians failed to convince the people that water is a commodity able to be commercialized

[THIS IS A CHAPTER OF HISTORY I'VE NEVER READ OR HEARD ABOUT BEFORE]

The Bolivian government was firm in their belief that they should be able to charge a family making just $2 per day, a quarter of their daily income just for water
- standoff become very violent

Connections between the rise of facism in Europe and corporations
- Howard Zinn
- fascism arose in Europe with the help of huge corporations

Coca-Cola invited Fanta Orange to keep their profits going in Germany during WWII
- when you drink Fanta Orange, that was the Nazi drink that was created to keep Coke making millions of dollars while the Jews were exterminated

IBM systems were required in every railroad station and every concentration camp in Nazi Germany

IBM VP: discussing that computers can be used in all kinds of ways, “you always hope they are going to be used in positive ways”

[REMINDS ME OF EARLIER DISCUSSIONS ABOUT DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP TODAY]

Peter Drucker discussion IBM CEO Watson’s knowledge of IBM computer’s usage by Hitler

US Marine Corps General Smedly Darlington Butler admitted he helped pacify Cuba, Mexico, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, and China for US commercial interests

In 1934 large parts of US corporate America were against FDR’s new deal, and attempted to pull off a treasonous plan
- Butler was tired of being “a gangster for capitalism”
- includes video testimony of Butler, discussing the attempt to setup a fascist dictatorship in the United States, in a plot to overthrow FDR
- included JP Morgan, Dupont, and Goodyear Tire

Now, for corporations to dominate governments, coups are no longer necessary

capitalism has displaced politicians as the reigning powers
- “CEOs are the new high priests”

The Critical Thinking Consortium

Sign at a protest march: “Bow your heads, the corporations will now lead us in prayer”

“Everything in the store is for sale”

“I am a trade barrier”

“What corporation are you from?”

juxtaposition of images of governmental and corporate leaders meeting over champagne and wine, while protesters are violently put down outside

CEO arguing “accountability is in the marketplace, in front of their shareholders”

Ira Jackson, author of “Profits with Principles”

discussion of corporations subscribing to principles of “Corporate Responsibility”
- a voluntary tactic, a reaction, to a certain market
- corporation doesn’t have expertise in determining what “social responsibility” is

injustice, when a bluff is called, the tables turn
- ultimately wherever capital puts its foot down, it can be held accountable

Kathie Lee Gifford handbag WalMart incident

“Several years after the Walmart controversy, Kathy Lee handbags were still being made in China by workers paid three cents per hour.”

We need to look at the very roots of the legal system that created this “beast” (corporations)
- many states have laws which requires that corporations be dismantled

Fight to dissolve Union Oil Company in California (Unocal)

Michael Moore discussing the impact of his documentaries
- ultimately as individuals we have to accept responsibility for our larger, collective actions and the impact those have

corporations are not accountable to the democratic process

Reference to Ghandi’s simple act of rebellion against British authorities, taking sand from the beach to make salt in violation of the law
- India has held historically that any law which prohibits the keeping of seeds is a law not worth following
- saving seed is a duty to the earth and future generations
- it is more than symbolic, it is becoming a survival option
- farmers in India not using hybrid seeds from Monsanto have incomes three times as large as those farmers now locked in to using Monsanto’s seed hybrids

“there are many tools for bringing back community”
- what is REALLY important is VISION

captain of industry or plunderer of the earth
- we must move on to another industrial revolution and get it better
- group of people committed to the goal of doing no harm

our plan: “Climbing Mount Sustainability”
- zero footprint

Richard Grossman, co-founder, Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy

one should never underestimate the power of the people

Cochabamba, Boliva – resistance to water privatization

corporations still put Michael Moore videos “out there” because they don’t believe in anything
- corporations are convinced people won’t leave their couch and DO SOMETHING…..

Technorati Tags:
corporation, corporationfilm, corruption, politics, movie, film, economics, sustainability, environment, media, marketing, whistleblower, industry, law, democracy

The Corporation documentary: A big eye opener originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 16, 2008.

One of the many reasons I am enthused to help facilitate and lead our statewide digital storytelling project, Celebrate Oklahoma voices, is that historically the “voices” included in school history textbooks have been sharply limited and tightly controlled. Oklahoma has a very colorful history, and while all the voices of our state need to be remembered, I personally think not all of the opinions expressed by those “voices” need to be celebrated. One example of opinions which do not deserve to be celebrated are the racist views of Oklahoma’s ninth governor, William H. Murray. Interestingly, the only reference to Murray’s racist views and political proposals in the December 20, 2007 version of the English WikiPedia article about him is the following sentence under the heading “Oklahoma Politics:”

On November 16, 1907, President Roosevelt accepted the Oklahoma Constitution and Oklahoma was admitted to the Union as the 46th state. On the same day, Murray was inaugurated as the Speaker of the Oklahoma House, a position in which he often opposed the progressive work of Commissioner of Charities and Corrections Kate Barnard and where he pushed for Jim Crow laws.

Jim Crow laws, as students of US history can hopefully recall, enforced the ethic of “separate but equal,” and were formally dismantled in the 1950s and 1960s in an epic struggle known now as the African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968). Unfortunately, although racist laws have officially passed into the annals of U.S. history, racism and discriminatory views persist in many homes and communities. Our nation HAS come a long way in a short period of time with respect to race relations and equal treatment of human beings, but we still have a long way to go. It is interesting as well as historically instructive to learn that the WikiPedia version of the political life and views of Oklahoman William H. Murray is (at least as of December 20th last year) far from complete.

My wife has been reading Timothy Egan’s book “The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl,” and shared the following passage with me yesterday that she read on pages 108-109:

The new governor of Oklahoma gave people hope, but he also tried to get them to hate. William Henry David Murray had been elected in 1930 after scandal drove the last two governors from office, both of them impeached. With a campaign slogan that railed against what he called “The Three C’s — Corporations, Carpetbaggers, and Coons,” Murray won by a huge margin, 301,921 votes to 208,575. He was known as “Alfalfa Bill” for his ceaseless advocacy of agriculture as the cornerstone of society, Alfalfa Bill said anything could grow in Oklahoma. His daddy, David, had made wine not long after grabbing a piece of dirt in the 1889 Sooner land rush; his Murray Model was so well-known President Teddy Roosevelt had declared it “the bulliest wine of the land.” Alfalfa Bill was himself a bully, but these times needed such a man, he said. Born in Toadsuck, Texas, in 1869, Murray ran away from home at the age of twelve, worked on a series of farms, and then got involved in populist politics. He bought a newspaper, educated himself so well he passed the bar, and made a name as president of the Oklahoma statehood convention in 1906. Oklahoma, he said at the time, could be a great state only if blacks were separated from whites and kept in the proper jobs– in the fields or factories. Next door, in Texas, lawmakers had institutionalized that sentiment forty years earlier with Reconstruction laws that said blacks could work only as field hands. Blacks were inferior to whites in all ways, Murray said, and must be fenced from society like quarantined hogs. At the start of the twentieth century, many people felt otherwise, but Alfalfa Bill tried to set his view into the proposed constitution. At the same time, he welcomed even black support, if done properly.

“I appreciate the old darkie who comes to me talking softly in that humble spirit which should characterize their actions and dealings with the white man,” he said to wide applause at the constitutional convention. Murray hated Jews as well. Blacks had some virtues, but Jews had none, in his view. Nor did he like the handful of Italians who had come to the High Plains. The “low grade races” of southern Europe, he said, were a threat to civilization. Oklahoma become the forty-sixth state only after President Theodore Roosevelt forced Murray to remove the segregationist planks of the constitution. Murray was furious; he never let go of his grudge against the Roosevelt family.

The fact that William Murray’s ardent struggle to include segregationist planks in the Oklahoma state constitution is not included in the December 20, 2007, English WikiPedia article version for him is noteworthy for several reasons. To my knowledge, this fact was not included in any of the discussions my son had last year in third grade about the Oklahoma centennial. While no one in our public schools is likely to suggest Murray’s racist views should be celebrated, we certainly could celebrate the fact that we have come a long way in 100 years from the “wide applause” his discriminatory views invited at the 1907 Oklahoma constitutional convention. It would be interesting to learn how many students of Oklahoma history are aware of the racist views of our 9th governor. Thank goodness President Theodore Roosevelt insisted on removing “those planks” from the Oklahoma constitution.

The history included in our school textbooks is often incomplete. A resource like WikiPedia, as well as web 2.0 authored content on the “open web” more generally, provides learners around the globe with unprecedented opportunities to access, share, and further develop diverse perspectives on a limitless array of topics.

I shared this situation with a former educator today. His response was, “That’s an example of why school librarians don’t want students using and citing WikiPedia.”

My response to that opinion was and is, “Quite the contrary. This example is a vivid demonstration of why school librarians SHOULD permit students to use and cite WikiPedia.”

Some librarians have strong, negative opinions about WikiPedia, in my view, because they do not understand WikiPedia. Like so many other topics and issues relating to digital technologies, they may have heard “bad headlines” about WikiPedia and not yet explored in depth (as all advocates for media literacy and information fluency should, of course) the veracity of those claims. To address possible misconceptions about WikiPedia, I often recommend that people watch Jimmy Wales’ presentations “How a ragtag band created Wikipedia” on TEDTalks as well as his longer (and more in-depth) discussion about WikiPedia on Fora.TV from April 2006 titled, “Vision: Wikipedia and the Future of Free Culture.”

All nations, states, and peoples have “skeletons in their closet” of which many in current society are likely not proud. Rather than keep those skeletons in the closet, however, I think it can be worthwhile to appropriately take them out and intellectually examine as well as critique them. In the great hourglass of history, the U.S. Civil War itself was but a few moments ago. It’s an eye opener to read how rabidly racist and openly fascist one of our former state governors was. The 20 Dec 2007 English WikiPedia article version for William Murray does acknowledge his fascist patterns of action by noting:

By the end of his administration in 1935, Murray had called out the National Guard forty-seven times and had declared martial law over thirty times.

It fails to note, however, as Timothy Egan does in “The Worst Hard Time,” that one of these uses of the Oklahoma National Guard to impose martial law was to prevent blacks from celebrating Emancipation Day. Egan wrote on page 110:

…when blacks tried to hold an Emancipation Day parade in a park in Oklahoma City, the governor imposed martial law on the city and ordered his guard troops to shut them down.

Some people fear democracy in the United States has been and continues to be aggressively subverted. Oklahoma in the 1930s certainly must have seemed like a world removed from ours today in many ways.

Let us dedicate ourselves to the continual study of history, so that we may avoid its mistakes as we move rapidly forward into the future.

Incidentally, if you were wondering about the current location of Murray’s birthplace in Texas, the 20 Dec 2007 English WikiPedia article for William H. Murray reveals that “Toadsuck, Texas” was renamed Collinsville in the 1880′s. If the town had not been renamed, the high school mascot certainly might have looked interesting.

I have revised the first sentence of the second paragraph under “Oklahoma Politics” of Murray’s WikiPedia article to include a reference to his pro-segregation stance in the Oklahoma Constitutional Convention. Previously that sentence read:

On November 16, 1907, President Roosevelt accepted the Oklahoma Constitution and Oklahoma was admitted to the Union as the 46th state.

It now reads:

On November 16, 1907, President Roosevelt accepted the Oklahoma Constitution after segregationist planks were removed which Murray had staunchly supported and defended at the Constitutional Convention. Oklahoma was admitted to the Union as the 46th state.

Should students be utilizing and citing WikiPedia in their research projects? ABSOLUTELY. Of course they should NEVER use a single source, and they should ALWAYS question and verify the veracity of information they find both online and in printed texts.

My son’s copy of his district’s elementary school social studies textbook will NEVER be updated with additional information about Oklahoma’s ninth governor. In contrast, the WikiPedia article about him was JUST UPDATED. I’m sure more updates will follow. To see updates that are made next, check out the article’s history page. I need to learn more about citing sources in WikiPedia, and will do so before some summer workshops I’m hoping to share about using wikis in the classroom and WikiPedia specifically.

Long live web 2.0, and WikiPedia’s ethic of providing universal access to the sum of human knowledge.

Technorati Tags:
oklahoma, wikipedia, williammurray, racism, discrimination, history, jimcrow, timothyegan, timothy, egan, theworsthardtime, hatred, governor, textbook, school, research, education, library, librarian

Hatred, Racism, the 9th Governor of Oklahoma, WikiPedia, and “approved textbook history” originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 10, 2008.

- you had to construct your own learning
- you thought you knew how to do something, but via a form of authentic assessment you learned that was not the case

If we capture the qualities of these experiences you can:

1- construct your own learning
2- authentic assessment
3- immediate feedback (read Flow on that, for realtime feedback), it is so critical yet teachers take work home to give feedback later…
4- social interaction: engagement with at least 1 other person
5- goal is clear in your head, and you had a chance to
6- had a need to learn it

Borrow a term from Chris Dede: you are problably dealing with OVERHWELMING quantities of information, “ill conceived information,” not organized properly
- most of the information we provide to students is “well conceived”
- life, however, is NOT like that
- we need to give students more problems with ill-conceived information (that is counter-intuitive for most teachers, most work hard to develop lessons

i am a big fan of “less is more”

definition of learning is “you have to make mistakes”

It is very hard to transfer success to another problem
- the research in school is incredible, transferrance from 1 subject to another is VERY difficult to do
- in math: never give students equations in mathematics,
- math ought to be the most exciting course in schools, but it is usually deadly, being based on memorizing things that other people have already figured out

let me give you a problem
- I teach a doctoral class with Will Richardson
- 1 student is an instructor at WestPoint
- btw, I apologize for everything George Bush has done and ever will do
- all instructors at WestPoint are now required to introduce Islam into the curriculum

Example: Pope’s visit to Turkey last year, shared some comments
- so now: find the impact of the Pope’s visit to Turkey last year

how would you construct that search

there are 3 skills we don’t teach in school, that if we don’t decide that is important…

1- teach students to deal with MASSIVE quantities of information
- you can
- students need to understand patterns
- different organizational patterns for information

2- global communication skills / global communicators
- every classroom a global communications center
- checking sources with people on the ground

3- you must be self-directed
- you must be a lifelong learner
- unfortunately most people think that means I can sign up for another course that someone teaches me
- no: it means you do NOT have to rely on someone to spoonfeed you for your learning

Those are 3 essential skills for your graduates

to test you as a teacher, we actually ask you to leave the room and give your students a problem they’ve never had before
- have you developed capacity in your students to self-organize and solve problems

Ideas for the challenge from workshop participants:

- us Al Jazeerah website
- use del.icio.us search for pope Turkey islam

the WestPoint instructor did a simple keyword search in Google for Pope and politics islam visit
- got a lot
- what’s wrong with the pattern you get: it is all Western sources
- so those sources would actually reinforce a Western bias about this topic and these information

so instead we can limit sources to just websites in Turkey:

host:tr Islam response Pope
- search in Altavisa
- now we just get 207 results from Turkey

no one at WestPoint seemed to understand the grammar of the Internet

not up for debate: WE MUST teach children critical thinking on the Internet
- the grammar, syntax and punctuation of the Internet
- if you don’t understand the structure of information, you can’t have an interesting conversation

I have some tricks that WORK:
- when you can upset people, you have “got them”
- when you can shake people to their roots of what they believe, then they become much more interested in engaging and learning than if you just reinforce what they already perceive or believe

so when I teach history, I am going to get the British perspective

Altavista search example:

host:ac.uk “American Revolution” “General Gage”

I can usually find an email of an author
- these are only academic sources

example of “shots heard round the world”
- why did the American colonists “miss” hitting the British when they shot at them?
- they were drunk!

measure the experience of students creating a recorded debate about the American Revolution and posting that to iTunes – compared to having a written examination at the end of the week

“host” is in altavista and “site” is in Google
- Altavista can give you 10x the results of Google for searches like this

Rules for design
- you need an authentic audience
- there should be a global voice involved so the work lives on, it adds value to the school’s directory of learning objects
- this gives the assignment “wings” [I THINK ALAN IS QUOTING MARCO TORRES WITH THAT TERM, I LOVE THAT TERM TOO]
- creating a legacy (learning object) that lives beyond the “grade” given to the assignment
- (Alan did give credit for the term “wings” to Marco)

[AS AN ASIDE, MARCO'S WEBSITE IS BLOCKED HERE IN CHINA, I HAVE TO USE PROXIFY.COM TO ACCESS IT. ]

What is an organized database of learning objects

Story of a librarian saying only “published authors” belong in the card catalog
- my goal would be that every student should be recognized and published in the school library’s card catalog

All students should be given an assignment to contribute to WikiPedia

simple keyword search for “november”
- there are 3/4 of a billion hits
- wikipedia is number 1 and 2
- the website I often cannot beat in Google is WikiPedia

I have news: the Internet is elegant in its structure and architecture
- it is precise
- if you don’t know the rules and know why information is placed in front of you, “you don’t know” then you are being manipulated every time you use Google and you don’t even know you’re being manipulated

research shows in Google, if you are not in the top screen it really doesn’t matter
- I have to be in the top screen

Alan is using the website nofiltr.com as a proxy to access WikiPedia from here in China

in WikiPedia, quality of the knowledge is controlled by the many

[I DON'T THINK THAT IS TRUE OF WIKIPEDIA, WATCHING VIDEOS OF JIMMY WALES DISCUSS THE TIGHT GROUPS OF PEOPLE WHO MONITOR QUALITY OF WIKIPEDIA]

Alan’s example on WikiPedia was Pitot House

We can design VERY inspiring and rigorous assigments that blow away traditional assignments
- compare “traditional” research assignments to teachers who empower their students to be global authors

WikiPedia articles students have helped author is a LEGACY
- every 3rd grader ought to know the rigor and discipline of writing an encyclopedia article written for the world to review
- I think that is a good assignment

I think children should have a global voice
- younger kids don’t worry as much about being judged
- teens get more concerned about this
- so we need to do this when they are young, they will already know the social citizenship responsiblities of publishing for worldwide
- social justice issues fall in here
- schools need to

You can’t edit via a proxy site
- get your own wiki site then

[MY THOUGHT: THERE ARE DEFINITELY LOTS OF CHINA-BASED WIKIPEDIANS WHO ARE BYPASSING THIS, THE ANSWER TO THIS IS "OUT THERE" - IT MAY BE TOR]

Harvard business school case study model / methodology
- it is a process you go through to solve any problem

first problem we solved: no yellow pages for disabled in Boston
- in 1984: by kids organized all 97 agencies

Have your schools identified various processes for solving any problem, and embedding those across content area disciplines?
- teach children across different disciplines similar processes for solving problems, so kids REALLY are learning PROCESSES for solving problems so students learn that process more than they learn CONTENT
- it needs to be organized and across the school

Has the school recognized that transferring from one content area to another is almost impossible
- real test is cross-applicablitiy of ideas and skills in a different

International Bacclaureate group has looked at this

research shows that learning something in computer science doesn’t transfer to history

in the world of the Internet, memorization is your worst enemy

Now Alan is showing an excerpt from “Digital Students, Analog Schools” by Marco Torres’ students
- these kids are not asking for more technology
- they are asking for a change in their role
- students are staying I want to step up there with the teacher

Each year each teacher should give a standing assignment to kids, that they should locate web resources which contribute to the curriculum

I think the role of the teacher is to create the structure of the learning environment, not to handle all the details

unlearning is more difficult than bolting something on to something you already do
- stopping a behavior is much more difficult than just giving a teacher a smartboard so s/he
- we have technologies that is reinforcing some REALLY bad behavior in classrooms
- the last thing you want to do is buy technologies which reinforce historically bad learning behaviors

so, in summary:
- we need to teach students the grammar of the Internet

Example:

www.csi.ad.jp/ABOMB – A Bomb museum in Hiroshima
- students should be bringing resources like these to the teacher
- 1 job for students is the academic research team: bring rigorous and highly motivating content to the classroom
- podcasting team (don’t send teachers to learn how to podcast, just send a group of kids)
- teachers don’t need to know HOW to podcast, they need to know WHEN to podcast and WHAT to podcast
- we waste too much time teaching teachers technology

[I REALLY LIKE THOSE STATEMENTS ABOUT KNOWING WHEN AND WHAT TO PODCAST MORE THAN HOW]

this is my fulltime job, and I am woefully behind

Teachers don’t need to know how to screencast, they need to know how to EDIT the screencasts their students create

Now Alan is showing Room208′s VodCast about how they podcast

Google works on links to websites

You DO need to empower kids to have a global voice

Example of CamTasia studio screencast by student, teaching how to crop a photograph
- the voice of the child explaining this is DIFFERENT than the voice of the teacher
- this girl has created a legacy
- plus her example has shown it is OK to stop, pause, think, take some time (often teachers never slow down or make a mistake)

Today it is so fun, the tools are mostly free, the current boundary is the limits of our imagination for what we want students to do and learn

Technorati Tags:
learn2cn, learning, november, criticalthinking

Creating globally connected, rigorous and highly motivated assignments by Alan November originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on September 14, 2007.

Dr. Sandra Fryhofer of Atlanta is worried that millions of American youngsters may be as psychologically hooked on video games as some people are to gambling, hard drugs and alcohol. She’ll be among 550 members of the American Medical Association’s House of Delegates expected to vote today to urge the American Psychiatric Association to consider labeling video gaming as an addiction. The AMA is expected to recommend that the psychiatrists study the issue to decide whether video-game addiction should be included in the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the bible of mental illnesses. Inclusion in the manual would mean that more insurance plans would have to cover people treated for addictions to video games.

Video game playing is certainly on the rise, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise these activities are attracting more attention. The size of the video game industry in gross revenues, for example, dwarfs the Hollywood film industry and has for some time. Is watching movies on DVD, VHS and at the theater an addiction for some people that should be should be formally “labeled” an addicts in a upcoming issue of the DSM? Personally I do not think so, and this article appears to focus more on hyperbole rather than facts and reasoned conclusions. (Sadly normal for the mainstream media when it comes to articles about kids and digital resources.)

The article does quote one research project on youth and gaming:

Dr. Douglas Gentile, director of the Media Research Lab at Iowa State University, said one of every 10 youth gamers “shows enough symptoms of damage to their school, family and psychological functioning to merit serious concern.” Young people classified as addicted were making lower grades than their peers, were more likely to have video game systems in their bedrooms, were spending much more time playing games each week —- an average of 24.5 hours —- and were also more likely to have been diagnosed with an attention deficit problem. Dr. Suzanne Martin, youth and education researcher at Harris Interactive, said the prevalence of video gaming among youths “is great cause for concern and highlights the need for further research in this arena.”

The problems this trend seem to highlight may have more to do with PARENTING rather than a psychological addiction. The main medical doctor quoted in the article seems to suggest this, although the article author does not make this connection or point this out:

Fryhofer, an internist, said most parents “have no idea their children are spending so much time playing video games, and there’s reason to think it’s addictive.”

If some or “most” parents don’t have any idea what activities are consuming large amounts of their children’s time (online or offline) that’s a parenting issue. One of the key assumptions of “Digital Dialog,” a parenting workshop series my wife and I started this past spring and are going to teach again in July for a local Oklahoma City Church, is that adults and kids need to be in more regular communication about multiple issues, including gaming and online social networking. Declaring gaming to be “an addiction” sounds alarmist and unjustified by evidence to me at this point. The suggestion might make for a good attention-grabbing headline in Atlanta and elsewhere, but I don’t think that makes it good medical science.

Certainly we have a need for continuing research in the area of gaming, learning, behavior and human psychology. What is suggested by the “symptoms” highlighted by Dr. Douglas Gentile, however, needs more scrutiny. What does “damage to their school” mean? Is this a misquote, and was he saying that kids who report high frequencies of home game playing show poorer performance in school? He states subsequently that frequent gamers seem to have “lower grades than their peers.” So do video games CAUSE kids to have lower grades, or are kids who are generally more bored with School and the lack of intellectual challenges they find there more likely to find meaningful, engaging activities in electronic games? As is typical in many media articles, authors seem to misunderstand (or at best, not fully explicate) the terms and differences between correlation and causation.

At least there is a slight glimmer of reasoned advice included in this article. Of everything written by author Bill Hendrick, I find the following two sentences the most reasonable:

William Vestal said he allows his two children to play video games and worries more about the television they watch. He said he keeps track of how much time children Codie, 8, and Kelly, 6, spend behind the screen. “I don’t look at it as a bad thing,” said Vestal, 37, of Avondale Estates. He said Codie plays racing games and Kelly games with themes. “There’s no violence in them,” he said. “I consider it somewhat healthy.”

William doesn’t seem to be a medical doctor, as no medical credentials are mentioned in the article for him, but I think he may have the most balanced view on the issue of gaming and kids of those quoted by Hendrick.

As human beings, we generally need to seek “balance” in everything we do. Most things, taken to an extreme, can take on a negative and harmful influence. Watching too much television? Eating too much fast food? Spending a huge number of hours on the golf course away from your kids and family? All of these activities can take away from other potentially more important and beneficial ways to spend limited heartbeats in life. Time is zero sum. We need to all monitor the ways we’re spending our time and make sure we’re following the priorities we have for our lives, based on our own values and the values of our families.

Video games certainly CAN be highly engaging. Perhaps this tendency toward high-level engagement is at the root of this article and what alarms many adults about video games, because many adults may not be used to seeing kids spending large amounts of time on console games or behind the computer screen. Why do video games, as well as many other computer-based activities like social networking, have such a high potential for brain engagement of youth and others? I think Seymour Papert, in the beginning of his chapter on “Yearners and Schoolers” in “The Children’s Machine: Rethinking School in the Age of the Computer” offers some excellent insights. On page 4 he writes:

Video games are toys– electronic toys, no doubt, but toys– and of course children like toys better than homework. By definition, play is entertaining, homework is not. What some parents may not realize, however, is that video games, being the first example of computer technology applied to toy making, have nonetheless been the entryway for children into the world of computers. These toys, be empowering children to test out ideas about working within prefixed rules and structures in a way few other toys are capable of doing, have proved capable of teaching students about the possibilities and drawbacks of a newly presented system in ways that many adults should envy.

Papert goes on to write more (page 36) about the “mediating role” which computers play between children and ideas. This reminds me (and is likely closely related to) a quotation from Nicholas Negroponte, shared by Alan Kay two weeks ago in Anaheim at EduComm, that:

Computers are instruments whose music is ideas.

I’m not issuing a blanket endorsement of all video games here (including first person shooters) and suggesting kids of any age should be allowed to play video games all day and night long. To the contrary, I think a healthy balance in time devoted to video game playing is very important just as balance in other activities is.

I do want to highlight, however, the qualitatively different experience which video games offer to people young and old which is powerful and fundamentally different than many of the experiences we’ve been able to have as human beings up to this point in our history. The complex worlds into which many computer games, as well as increasing numbers of online social networking environments invite people, are attractive not because they offer an addicting chemical like nicotine or crack cocaine, but rather because they offer opportunities to ENGAGE THE BRAIN in powerful ways.

Some of the lessons we should draw from the passion (which approaches the level of “addiction” in the views of some) kids young and old demonstrate playing video games and interacting with others online include:

1. As human beings, our brains want to be engaged in meaningful activities involving complex activities, challenging environments, immediate feedback, and interaction with other sentient beings (real and/or virtual.)

2. When we see people (young or old) highly engaged in sustained activities over a long period of time, it is appropriate to ask, “What is going on?” Rather than assume the dynamic in question is evil, bad, and worthy of a negative label like “addiction,” we should take a more scientifically objective view. Just because kids are not doing their homework, let’s not assume they are engaged in sinister and malicious work detrimental to their own health and the greater good of our society. Let’s face it, what adults do you know who would actually choose to do the mind-numbing worksheets some teachers continue to send home as homework instead of playing a video game or interacting with other interesting human beings?

3. Let’s remember the value of balance in our lives. We need balance in almost all aspects of our lives, and video-game playing is no exception.

4. Let’s remember the importance of good parenting. Open and regular communication has always been important for parents (and other care-givers) and children, and that has not changed in the 21st century.

5. Let’s not underestimate the powerful potential of creative, digital technologies to both engage human beings and also help them LEARN. Many adults seem to be “running scared” from all video games, Internet-based social networking websites, and other digital technologies. I wrote several months ago about how this group might be described more accurately not as “digital immigrants,” but rather as “digital refugees.” (Amazingly, as a related aside, if you do a simple Google keyword search for “digital refugees” you get the above blog post link as the first result of almost 2 million. Wow.)

Whether you are a digital refugee, are suspected by others of being one, or know some, I think we’d all benefit from sitting down with “these game-addicted kids” and have some thoughtful conversations together. Have the kids show you want they are doing in their video games and/or online, and talk about it. If the kids are spending all their time in graphically violent environments where they are killing others, that should be a point of concern. Talk about how much time they are spending playing said-activity (whether that is a video game or a website like Webkinz or Club Penguin) and how many hours per day seems healthy and fair to dedicate to face-time with that screen. This goes for TV watching too.

We need to be more intentional in the ways we all choose to consume, create, and interact with digital content. That is a key message of “digital dialog,” and is a key element of a concept (and possible future book) I’ve thought about for many months: Digital Discipline. Most people don’t like to think about or practice “discipline,” but it just as important to success in life as ever.

Digital discipline in the context of gaming should not equate to adults making blanket generalizations of all young people spending time in front of screens playing games as “addicts” on equal footing with addicts of illegal drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, or even gambling. That view makes headlines, but it offers a poor template for parenting, teaching, or living life more generally in our digital 21st century information landscape.

Technorati Tags: digitaldialog, digitaldiscipline, digitalnatives, engagement, games

Lessons to draw from video game passion? originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on July 1, 2007.

Aerospace engineering jobs are very important in Oklahoma. According to the article:

The aerospace industry accounts for about one in 10 jobs, employing about 150,000 Oklahomans, according to the Oklahoma Aeronautics Commission, a state agency. [Victor] Bird [director of the Oklahoma Aeronautics Commission] said the average salary in the industry is about $55,000, which is almost twice the average salary in the state.

The article relates the importance of attracting more engineering graduates to the state of Oklahoma, since engineering graduates from the state’s major universities are in short supply relative to the available jobs. The article points out the American Airlines aircraft maintenance facility in Tulsa employs about 8000 workers, and some companies (like Boeing’s facility in Oklahoma City) are heavily focused on “the engineering side of the aviation business.”

Oklahoma state legislator Mike Jackson from Enid has proposed legislation (House Bill 2085) which would “provide an income teax credit for incoming aerospace engineers in the state.”

My thought and response to this is, more than legislation for tax credits, we need to be working hard TODAY to motivate the next generation of engineers, scientists, and inventors who will carry our economy into the 21st century but are sitting behind school desks today around our state. The NASA Digital Learning Network is focused on helping motivate the next generation of engineers and scientists to study mathematics and science, and pursue their passions to learn, explore and innovate as professionals later in life. I’m looking forward to facilitating the first videoconferences with NASA I’ve personally helped set up in two weeks in Edmond. I see a direct connection between the workforce needs (and opportunities) highlighted in this article and what we are doing (or not doing, as the case may be) with NASA and science in our schools.

Next year I’m hoping in one way or anther to get involved helping start a robotics club at my kids’ school, or at least helping my own children and others learn more about Lego robotics, learning how to design, build, and use their own robots.

We need to focus as much energy and attention on helping get our school-age children interested, motivated, engaged and active (with hands-on activities) in the real work of scientists and engineers, as we are expending today on test scores.

Time to motivate tomorrow’s aerospace engineers is today originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on May 16, 2007.

Dr. Resta received the SITE Lifetime Achievement award prior to this ke

This landscape is changing rapidly, it is important for us in teacher education to understand where it is and perhaps where it is going

Rather than thinking about a “digital divide,” we can think about ways we can move towards “digital inclusion”
- what are our responsibilities as well as challenges/opportunities in teacher ed to move forward?

“Digital Divide” has been around awhile
- generally means access to hardware and the Internet
- “digital exclusion” is part of a broader divide contributing to social and economic exclusion of people
- multiple aspects: economic, geographic (north/south), languages, gender, etc.

More critical divide: the KNOWLEDGE divide
- even if you provide access to computers and the Internet, that is not sufficient to bridge the knowledge divide
- teacher ed should (and can) play a leadership role locally, nationally and globally in moving toward digital inclusion
- this is so important, because sometimes (perhaps often) teachers don’t feel empowered that they CAN make a difference

Global landscape of the digital divide
- critical issue is adult literacy
- global chart of adult illiteracy rates by region and gender

[RATES ARE ABOUT 50% FOR FEMALES IN ARAB STATES, SOUTH AND WEST ASIA (GREATER THAN 50%) AND IN SUB-SAHARA AFRICA]

Are huge gaps in gender literacy in several areas
- these are critical problems
- for people to develop digital literacy, it is critical they have basic literacy

The challenge of global teacher shortages is also related to the goal of digital inclusion
- a huge shortage of teachers worldwide
- 15 to 35 million teachers needed by 2015
- two-thirds of the world’s 60 million teachers in developing countries
- teaching is becoming a less attractive profession: low status, poor working conditions and salaries

[I THINK THE UNITED STATES SHOULD REALLY MODEL "BEST PRACTICE" WHEN IT COMES TO THIS, VALUING OUR TEACHERS MUCH MORE HIGHLY

This shortage has often been thought of as a recruitment problem, but that is not it: it is a retention problem
- study by National Commission on America's Future (Tom Carroll) found "working conditions" rather than MONEY was the main factor influencing retention

Digital divide in a tech context
- percent of households with a radio
- colors that are darkest have 50% or less of households have a radio
- from UIS from ITU World Telecommunication Indicators Database (2005)

Access to computers: Number of personal computers per 100 inhabitants in 2002

broadband penetration in top 20 economies in Dec 2005
- we've often thought the US is a leader in broadband access
- look at this chart: US is #16 among these countries

Internet penetration: Internet Users by World Region
- are more internet users in Japan, Korea
- in China alone: are 30 million people with broadband access to the Internet
- Europe next
- US and Canada next
- then Latin America
- then Africa

Percent of Internet World Users
- Internet users per 100 inhabitants
- Iam MOST excited about "telephone subscribers and internet users 1994-2004" - radical upward shift in mobile phone users
- this curve is continuing to accelerate, particularly in developing countries

[THIS REMINDS ME OF A NPR STORY OF THE DAY ABOUT PHONE ACCESS IN AFGHANISTAN I HEARD RECENTLY]

Telephone subscribers per 100 inhabitants, Africa 1995-2004
- exponential growth line for Africa
- as we look at the impact and reach of technology, we need to increasingly look at wireless phones and wireless phone devices

Context of the digital divide
- need to frame this against the knowledge divide
- knowledge, both basic and applied, is growing exponentially
- world knowledge base doubles every 2-3 years
- resources available on the Internet are growing at about this same rate

Lyman at UC Berkeley in 2003′s study: Size of the Internet in Terabytes
- this data was about 4 years ago (from 2002)
- total size in 2002 was estimated as 532,897 terabytes

Surface web: 167 terabytes
deep web: 91,850 terabytes
email (originals): 440,696 terabytes
IM: 274 terabytes

US Library of Congress: Entire collection is around 20 terabytes
- when you consider that context, this REALLY is amazing

Contrast that with the “deep web” – non-public web, pay for or proprietary resources

I’m at UT, we have a digital library
- I”m able to access vast resources that I wouldn’t be able to access in most public school settings

Another aspect of the web: what is the language of the content available there?
- over 68% of all web content is in English (2004 study by VilaWeb.com)
- Japanese next, German next, Chinese, then French, Spanish, Russian, Italian, Portuguese…

So “English is required” to access most of the content on the web today

Essential conditions for digital inclusion: Access to-
- basic literacy skills
- computer hardware, software and connectivity to the Internet
- meaningful, high quality, culturally relevant content in local languages
- creating, sharing, and exchanging digital content
- educators who know how to use digital tools and resources in pedagogically sound, culturally responsive ways

What can we do to enable communities, schools, and students to create and share digital content?
- this is an essential question

What is our roles in providing learning opportunities to educators?

We have this opportunity toaddress the digital divide and foster digital inclusion in new ways we might not have played a key role in before
- 1 way: foster public/private partnerships
- hardware access in schools

Teacher ed is strategically situated to play a key role as an advocate and initiator of activities focused on DIGITAL INCLUSION
- connectivity: rapid growth of wireless technologies, WiMax: increasing range of wireless, Explore mobile learning opportunities

I think we are going to see a new generation of mobile devices (Apple iPhone: converging telephony, Internet access, mp3 player, etc.)

My work setting up a wifi network on a Navajo reservation, was able to demonstrate value of the network and then go to US gov’t and get support for funding access for Native American schools
- led to a huge national initiative, infrastructure installed, that started out with a pilot project
- teacher ed can help develop those kinds of projects: build the base and understanding
- the advocacy for expanding access, showing benefits

Advocate for new regulatory framework in developing countries
- in many countries: schools are charged the same for Internet access as businesses (this shoots themselves in the foot)
- today’s broadband challenge requires new thinking and an end to business as usual
- Build on mobile success where 1 billion mobile customers (or 58% of today’s 1.8 billion mobile users) are in developing countries
- Regulators have an unprecedented opportunity to speed the uptake….

Provide Leadership in Open Educational Resources
- rapid growth of digital libraries, open educational resources (Merlot, Google, Yahoo)
- Open Courseware Initiative (MIT, UNESCO)
- Rapid growth of free/open source software (Open Office, GIM, Tux Paint, Nvu)
- Creative Commons (some rights reserved)

Provide learners with access to teachers to know how to use 21st century tools for learning

New book coming from UNESCO: “eLearning for Teacher Development: A Policy and Planning Guide”
- will be in print and online
- as we were developing this, we used a 2D framework: y axis communication, x axis content (information repository, online-distance courses, blended-extended courses, communities of practice)
- so one of the ultimate goals for eLearning for teacher development is a community of practice

[THAT WOULD BE A GREAT SLIDE TO SHARE IN THE CONTEXT OF THE K-12 ONLINE CONFERENCE, BECAUSE DEVELOPING A PROFESSIONAL COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE IS ESSENTIAL]

Working locally for high quality, relevant

Four Directions Project as an example
- with 19 Native American schools around the country
- purpose was based on piloting: bringing teachers as pedagogical leaders, elders as cultural experts, and students as technology experts
- working together to develop culturally responsive curriculum
- VERY POWERFUL model, an amazing experience for everyone involved

We were using tech
- to incorporate traditional cultural knowledge into the curriculum
- also preserving and revitalizing native languages

Worldwide we are losing native languages faster than we’re losing the rain forest
- when you lose your language as a Native community, in many ways you have lost your identity
- in some of these communities, there were only a few elders who were fluent speakers of the language
- they developed textbooks, could hear them both in English and in their native language

[WHAT A GREAT PROJECT TO BRING TO OKLAHOMA! I DON'T THINK THEY HAD ANY OKLAHOMA TRIBES PARTICIPATING IN 4 DIRECTIONS]

Also looked at partnering with museums
- many cultural and historical artifacts of indigenous people are no longer located in that community
- called this digital repatriation” – bringing these artifacts back into the community
- examples created by 4th and 5th grade students
- I wish you could have seen the faces of the Smithsonian staff

Virtual museum partnerships have wonderful potential
- providing leadership in enabling communities, schools, teachers, students to crate, share and exchange digital content

[WHAT A GREAT MODEL FOR OUR OKLAHOMA DIGITAL CENTENNIAL PROJECT]

To see the respect the museum staff had for the tribal elders had a very powerful effect on the students that were participating
- made a change in the students’ own respect for their elders and their culture

Cultural Appropriation of ICT to Empower Indigenous Communities
- when you do this, you are enabling/empowering that community to have a voice on the Internet
- in many cases, voices outside the community (outsiders) are the only one present
- working respectfully with people in indigenous communities has great potential, allowing them to appropriate technologies as appropriate for their contexts

Research on the impact of this work helps us all too

Need to work to form trans-national partnerships

resta [at] mail [dot] utexas [dot] edu

Technorati Tags: digitaldivide, digitalinclusion, education, inclusion, indigenous, nativeamericans, site2007

The Changing Landscape of the Global Digital Divide by Paul Resta originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on March 29, 2007.

It is delightful to hear Christopher talk about his writing process, especially how he plans and invents the characters, languages, and events of his novels. This reminds me of some podcasts my wife and I listened to by Diana Gabaldon on a recent car trip, who is one of her favorite authors. (“Outlander” is the first in her Outlander series.) How wonderful it is to live in a day when we can have access to interviews like this, to hear authors talk about their writing process and ideas. This also reminds me of the Guerrilla Season Book Blog project led by Missouri teacher Eric Langhorst. Listening to an author talk about their writing, their perspectives, and their life is really a great opportunity that deepens understanding and appreciation for authors’ work and literary contributions.

Bill Thompson’s interview with Christopher was interesting and worthwhile, but I was disappointed and rather shocked to hear him admit that he had just read the first 30 pages of Eragon before the interview. Some of his questions (the dwarf language doesn’t sound like the Disney “Snow White” dwarves’ language, and the elves of Alagaesia don’t sound like the Keebler cookie elf) were ridiculously shallow and reflected little understanding of the genre in which Christopher is working as well as his actual writings. The background knowledge of the interviewer is always important to insure the questions they ask are relevant and in-depth. Despite Bill’s lack of knowledge and poor questions in this interview with Christopher, I still really enjoyed listening to the discussion and appreciate the fact that this is freely shared online.

Another series of recorded interviews with Christopher is also linked from the same WikiPedia article, from Homeschool.com. This was recorded several years ago, when he was still writing the book “Eldest.” The most interesting comment Christopher made in part 1 of the interview was his refusal to answer the question of a listener, “Are you a Christian?” Christopher told the questioner his mom told him never to talk about politics or religion, and he always does what his mom tells him to do.

I think the beliefs and undergirding life philosophy of authors are important to consider, not because I discount those who have different views than mine– but rather because those ideas inform my understanding of their books and themes. We have great insight into the beliefs of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, less insight into those of J.K. Rowling and Christopher Paolini. In the case of Christoper, as I wrote in my post “Gifts from Christopher Paolini” back in January after I finished reading “Eldest,” I suspect his ontological perspective is largely empirical. In that blog post, I attempted to summarize the view of Oromis (Eragon’s mentor or “Yoda” figure) which I hypothesize is the same as Christopher’s personal view of truth and reality:

Objective science, which only regards that as real which can be directly experienced and replicated, reveals truth. There is no authority outside of objective science.

I think the complexity and depth of Christopher’s writing is enjoyable and particularly remarkable given his young age. As in the case with J.K. Rowling’s novels, however, I find myself wishing there was more theological depth there.

As a final reflection on a different topic raised in this last interview with Christopher, it was enlightening to hear him describe how his entire family put their support (financial, emotional, time, etc.) behind his Eragon book project. His story is an exciting one, and I think it is great for us to have access to his ideas in his own voice via posted audio files like these, as well as access to his outstanding books!

I really enjoyed reading both “Eragon” and “Eldest,” and enjoyed most seeing the book series become the first “home run books” for my 9 year old son. I think in our schools today, we need to be more focused on helping students discover and HAVE TIME to read their own “home run books” than getting completely overwhelmed and focused on high-stakes testing. In order to do that more broadly, we’re going to need legislative changes which end the requirement to stop all learning for several weeks in the spring and focus on testing. How much better it would be (and will it be) to spend those precious hours in the classroom reading, learning, and sharing rather than fearfully and stressfully taking a battery of multiple-choice examinations.

Technorati Tags: eldest, eragon, paolini, wikipedia

Interviews with Christopher Paolini originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on March 10, 2007.

The Digital Entertainment Group, a nonprofit trade consortium, reported for the first time in 2006 that overall DVD shipments were stuck at about 1.65 billion units, roughly the same as 2005, after years of rapid growth. According to the weekly DVD Release Report, combined DVD releases dropped to 12,887 in 2006 from 13,712 in 2005.

In effect the video market is glutted. For big studios that means more jousting over future formats that may restart sales. But for specialty companies that have traded otherwise unavailable horror, action, art-house and exploitation titles, the glut has meant a struggle to survive.

Multimedia content, including videos, is increasingly being distributed via digital means. In his article, Bryan makes no mention of Netflix, iTunes, or other online video distribution channels. Netflix announced in January 2007 its new initiative to offer movies from its 70,000+ archive of titles as instant downloadable videos. The prospects for obscure movie titles living on in the era of the Internet-powered long tail is better than ever. According to the Netflix press release:

“We named our company Netflix in 1998 because we believed Internet-based movie rental represented the future, first as a means of improving service and selection, and then as a means of movie delivery,” said Reed Hastings, the company’s chief executive officer. “While mainstream consumer adoption of online movie watching will take a number of years due to content and technology hurdles, the time is right for Netflix to take the first step.

It likely is, however, a bad time invest in a bricks and mortar video store. This process of entertainment digitization will take time, and won’t reach everyone right away (the digital divide is real) but the future prospects seem fairly clear. According to Reihan Salam:

For Netflix, the heat is on, and it has responded with something called Watch Now. Like a magical movie faucet, the service streams video straight to your Web browser. Right now, about 1,000 of Netflix’s 70,000 titles are available for instant watching.

Though Netflix doesn’t offer unlimited streaming, you still get a hefty amount of watching time—roughly one hour for every dollar you pay in monthly subscription fees, at no additional cost. Three-disc subscribers who pay $17.95 a month, for example, can supplement their regular DVD watching with 18 hours of online time. If you need to watch more than 18 hours of streaming video per month, I can assure you that this problem will solve itself when you go blind.

It’s a great day to be a movie fan and digital consumer, especially if you want to be discriminating and intentional about the video content you consume along with your family at home or on the road. More than ever, there is little need (except with sports games and other live events) to “tune in” on a specific date and time to watch a favorite show when it airs. Disruptive technologies march on, and the ripple effects grow more pronounced.

Via Cynthia Brumfield in IP Democracy.

Technorati Tags: longtail, netflix

Obscure movies face a great future originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on March 4, 2007.

Things are really getting smaller
Shrinking between:
- geographic places
- people
- parents and schools
- students and students

We hope the distance between STUDENTS and TEACHERS is not shrinking

[MY THOUGHT: THE DISTANCE BETWEEN STUDENTS AND TEACHERS IS SHRINKING OUTSIDE THE BOUNDS OF THE TRADITIONAL SCHOOL DAY, AS BLENDED LEARNING OPTIONS ARE USED WHICH INCREASE ACCESS VIA ONLINE TOOLS]

Temporal shrinking in time?
- started teaching in 1971 in Middle School, there was 1 phone for all the teachers in the lounge
- adoption time seems to be about 3 years between the business world and education world

We are in a world when you can think of a world and in 5 years it is worth several billion dollars (YouTube)

website: Airtradoctions “there’s something in the air”
- this was my idea, but I’m not getting any credit!

Remember the days when you were searching google for data?
- is podcasting a worldwide phenomenon or just in the United States?
- do search for “student podcasts” with Google language tools in English, then in Spanish, then in Chinese
- then check hits
- plotting the data: Chinese, French, Spanish and English: lots of data for English speakers
- Spanish is dominant if you graph without English
- so look at data just from the Google hits

Remember Katie Couric?
- when she went to nightly news
- compare discussion on Technorati about Katie Couric against people like Kathy Lee Gifford, Paris Hilton, Quasimoto…

Google Trends
- search for trends

Demo of Google language tools
- translate webpages into other languages on the fly, links are also translated!
- translating phrases as well

[IF TEACHERS ARE GOING TO USE THIS FOR NOTES HOME, I'D RECOMMEND THEY RUN THE NOTE BY A NATIVE SPEAKER FIRST!

Other Google tools: Google Mobile

Hall wants to invite Google Gaggle to meet people in close proximity to use

[MY THOUGHT: A SERVICE LIKE THIS ALREADY EXISTS! MEETRO: THE SOCIAL MESSENGER. THIS MAY BE OK FOR ADULTS BUT CAN RAISE REAL PROBLEMS FOR KIDS.]

We now have the kind of world where when you think of something, it can happen
- you can envision something, it can become a reality
- imagination is so close to reality
- where to you start to teach kids with it?

Start with the things in their pockets
- picture of Google in braille
- kids expect things now to come with pictures, sound, multimedia

Cell phone pictures of the London bombings
- inspired werenotafraid.com

Example: take a cell phone image
- first choice is to SEND it somewhere
- Hall is sending it to his own email address
- image going through invisible rays in the air to a cell tower, the Internet, and to my email account

[HALL COULD ALSO HAVE POSTED THIS DIRECTLY TO THE WEB VIA FLICKER MAIL!]

So the teacher can actually give kids an assignment to use their cell phone and take pictures
- we can build a website with these things
- interviews, pictures

Example of cell phone shot video from Student from Ithaca, NY
- from student media festival in CA
- new category: video shot with cell phones

[CELL FLIX CONTEST FROM ITHACA, NY]

[AND YOU CAN EDIT IT ON THE WEB WITH VIDDLER, JUMPCUT, OR EYESPOT]

Pennsylvania teacher David’s video
- who do you send it to? The parent

Can use cell phones to teach poetry
- ancient Japanese poetry forms fits into cell phone text messaging box
- Tanka: 31 syllables in 5 lines, Japanese NPR “Saturday is Cellphone Tanka Night” and they get 3000 emails from cell phones

So we could teach Limericks
- example of epitaph from student in Louisiana

Kids can and will want to remix something like a challenge for creative Limericks

Why are community spaces online so important?
- the people

traffic x 2.5 than Google?
- MySpace
- so why is that? it is the nature of who we are, we want to be social

We have homosapiens in our classrooms all the time, and we have to find ways to tap into this

Us versus them
- the people on TV and in magazine aisle are NOT the most important ones in the world
- myspace demonstrates this

Example of DENblog
- examples of St Louis blogs

More videos are shared via MySpace than YouTube by a factor of about 5

How many people have been sent a video?

Why not create a community space to share things for school?
- share information, project based learning
- we can set those spaces up for free

Google for Educators

I work with the American College of Cardiology
- they used to charge for the information, no one came
- made it free, no one came
- made it a community of sharing information that users cared about, now people come

Story of Centrual Bucks School District
- principal did a search in Xanga for the name of the school and “bomb”
- the kid had posted a picture of his explosives at his home
- that kid was identified because a kid was

Steve Dembo does an entire session on this, being careful about what you put on your “permanent record”
- many of these kids posting stuff to the web are going to interview for teaching jobs sometime!

Fullerton School District
- did a google notifier for their school address, learned all these ways parents were circumventing the rules to get their kids in the school

Kids can use moodle, create blog sites

Where is a good place to learn about that? Here! Today!

DEN story of Keynote Coffeehouse, Feb 19, 2007
- Hall went to Coffeehouse (Panera) and did the keynote with 2 laptops
- 1 did webinar on a PC and used iSight on a Mac

How many kids have mp3 players
- talked to a kindergarten teacher, all her kids have iPods
- what can you put into an iPod? Self study, powerpoints

Copyright video of Hall
- Copyright and Fair Use: A Guide for Administrators
- renamed it “Hillary Duff” for his daughter’s iPod!

Doctor at Temple in the Medical school, recorded
- Dr. Michael Barrett
- turned out after 3 hours of listening on an iPod, ability to diagnose rose from 39% to 89%

Can do phonics, multiplication tables, lots of things with an iPod that we are not doing
- it is a reason to get an iPod, it is a reason to write off an iPod

www.audiosteps.com
www.podguides.net

Can make these adventures using those devices that students have in their hands

People podcasting in college
- students can stop coming to class (only 10%)

Choices: stop podcasting or energizing the lecture
- many times in college, there is NOT an advantage to coming to the lecture
- study of freshmen LA TIMES 1/26/2006 found 58% of 142 freshmen fell asleep in class

K-12 Schools
- grandparents can hear what the kids are doing
- picture of grandma holding a pie and wearing an iPod

We can become more interesting using media

President Bush’s State of the Union address on iTunes, and the other state of the union addresses
- and the responses
- if you do, use Google Language tools and translate “Politician to English”

Want to see how a cell phone can go immediately on the web

Dial 888-654-2278 (original 301-785-0719) and enter 8534
- then you can comment directly onto this keynote presentation
- can leave an audio comment
- using gcast.com

Kids are getting smarter, IQs are going up
- our kids made my globe spin the right direction by reversing the image!

Technorati Tags: metc, metc07

Thinking big as the world grows smaller by Hall Davidson originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 28, 2007.

There is a big difference between the way fishermen and surfers think
- fishermen always talk about the fish they CAUGHT
- surfers are only thinking and caring about the NEXT WAVE
- people thinking forward must think about motion and movement
- Energy is tangible and measurable, in the way a focused individual or group is energized and it becomes contagious

My role is analogous to the cartographer, but we are going to chart new ways of thinking
- we are not talking about traditional mapping, GIS applications, North/South distinctions, or circumnavigating the globe
- my role is to be a mapmaker of the way you think

You can’t change how you behave unless you change how you think
- changing our thinking is so hard because in many ways it is hard wired into our chemistry, and reinforced by our learned routines (patterns of behavior)

There are no “motivational speakers”
- Hans Sellhe (?) points out that motivation is self-driven
- no one can instill motivation in you
- what you are looking for should be inspiration: those who can inspire others
- turning inspiration into action is up to you

[MY THOUGHT: THIS STRIKES ME AS VERY SIGNIFICANT IN AN EDUCATIONAL CONTEXT, BECAUSE WE HEAR SO MUCH ABOUT ECONOMIC COMPETITIVENESS, THE WORKFORCE, OUR NEED FOR SCIENTISTS AND ENGINEERS, ETC. WHAT WE NEED TO BE TALKING ABOUT IS NOT JUST PUTTING PEOPLE INTO EDUCATIONAL PIPELINES, BUT ALSO HELPING INSPIRE THE SELF-DIRECTED MOTIVATION OF PEOPLE, ESPECIALLY YOUNG PEOPLE. THIS IS WHAT NASA'S EDUCATIONAL MISSION IS ALL ABOUT, AND WHY I THINK DOING VIDEOCONFERENCES AND OTHER EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES WITH NASA ARE GREAT WAYS TO SPEND INSTRUCTIONAL TIME IN SCHOOLS.]

Future thinking and higher performance always starts with SETTING THE BAR (picture of a high jumper clearing the bar)
- most organizations start at the wrong place
- when you start at the wrong place, when you ask the wrong questions from the start, you don’t end up going to the right place
- what is the first thing a travel website asks you? Where you ARE. You have to know where you are to effectively start any process of work or improvement.

Leaders set and create reality. Leaders define reality.
- Good to Great, whatever program of improvement you want to talk about, all planning for transformational thinking starts with where you are starting from
- Cartographers of thinking: We need to have 1000 reasons to cheer

[MY THOUGHT: THIS IS WHAT THE CELEBRATEOKLAHOMA.US PROJECT IS AND SHOULD BE ALL ABOUT.]

Lots of buzzwords have been used and are still used in the context of change:
- think out of the box
- paradigm shift
- change management
- synergy
- million versus billion

Here’s a concrete way to conceptualize the difference between a million and a billion
- all of the people on the current Forbes 400 this year are BILLIONAIRES
- you can’t get on the list just by being a millionaire
- the difference between a million and a billion:
– Tell a millionaire they have to spend $10K per day, and the will be about of money in about 90 days
– Give the same requirement to a billionaire but start them spending on July 4, 1776, and today they are still spending money ($10K per day) [I DID THE MATH AND THEY WILL BE SPENDING $10K PER DAY FOR OVER 270 YEARS!]

You need to be engaged in your work at a passionate level

How to think forward?

1- Simple thinking
- simple thinking is not conjugating a verb or using the pythagorean theorem
- simple thinking involves thoughtfully reducing ideas, information and content
- your brain is like a gigantic microprocessor
- the big picture can appear confusing, but your brain doesn’t just focus on the 90,000′ altitude level, it sees details
- it’s not about more, it’s about better
- the simple way is often the preferred way
- you have been confused by the words “easy” and “simple” most of your life
– easy = lack of effort
– simple = lack of complexity

How many devices have you seen that come with the statement: “Easy to assemble. No tools required.”
- is that ever true?

Stating what you want to do or you want others to do in THREE STEPS is key
- if you go to a fourth step, you reduce your chances of success by 37%
- that is the tipping point
- only 15-20% of casual jugglers can juggle four balls at once
- I have never had a group where no one could juggle

2- Overcome the FEAR of challenge
- everything that is worth doing is worth doing big
- Herb Brooks coaching the ’81 U.S. Olympic hockey team confirmed this, he wanted to beat the Soviets because they HAD one the Olympic gold in five of the past six contests
- the story of the 999 Failures (of Thomas Edison and the incandescent light bulb)
– Edison was amazing with building teams
– he just slept in 15 to 20 minute bursts, that made him pretty grumpy and unpleasant to be around most of the time
– imagine you were on the lightbulb team for Edison
– all was failure until trial 798, which held a charge but blew up
– it was around trial 1000 that things started working
– Edison’s famous statement about how long it took the team to discover the right technique and method, and asked how he felt about all those consecutive failures: “You must be mistaken, we created it in 999 steps.”

Bold steps have setbacks
- ROI = return on investment
- we also need to talk about ROF = return on failure

Image of Georgia O’Keefe
- grew up in New Jersey
- was missing inspiration
- all her artist friends tried to stop her from moving out to the American southwest

The language of an organization never changes when they say “we can’t do it”

Story of President Kennedy calling Stillson and Courtney (?) into his office after Sputnik and asking why the Soviets were beating the Americans, and if the problems were solvable.
- 2 days later JFK gave his challenge to put a man on the moon by the close of the decade speech
- this is the story of our ONE GIANT LEAP
- NASA had to move beyond thinking about blowing up rockets on the launchpad to sending rockets into orbit and to the moon
- they had to change the way they think

Movies and film clips are great, but the most motivational stories are not the ones that are fiction but the ones that were REAL
- not the fights you dream, but the ones you fought and lived
- that is the case with the US space program and moon project
- showed the image of the human footprint on the moon

(showed film clip of Grumman engineers in Jan 1963, not sure what the movie was)

[THIS REMINDS ME OF THE CLIP FROM "APOLLO 13" WHEN THE ENGINEERS HAD TO FIT THE SQUARE PEG INTO THE ROUND HOLE FOR THE CARBON DIOXIDE FILTER]

Reason NASA engineers succeeded was they had clarity of vision
- the #1 problem they had to overcome was weight
- there was never a LEM before, they couldn’t go look at the models in Home Depot
- they started with nothing

[MY THOUGHT: WE NEED TANGIBLE METRICS IN EDUCATION, BUT MULTIPLE AND DIFFERENTIATED METRICS THAT MORE ACCURATELY REFLECT THE COMPLEXITY OF THE EDUCATIVE PROCESS THAN MULTIPLE-CHOICE TESTS]

The Mustang was the first dominant model of cars after models become differentiated
- then the Taurus dominated
- then Toyota came along with the Camry
- Song by Jacob Dillion: Put up your arms, lift up your head and watch what is about to happen…

Organizations that are pushing the envelope of performance and possiblity are LISTENING
- In some ways there are ONLY new things coming out
- focus on brain research and what we know now about cognition and learning
– persuasion is chemically driven
– 87% of everything you’ve ever stored in your brain is VISUAL
– only 7.5% of what you have stored in your brain is audio-based

To a large extent human biology determines what gives reality
- the last recall by Ford was caused by concern that your back axel might fall off….

You have to listen and pay attention
everything is new
everything is disruptive in technology
AT&T normally drives that
The iPhone is the next big disruptive technology
- people have no idea what that is going to do
- the iPhone will change the way people look at communicating
- it is new

Newness affects direction
- most corporations your size are like a scarecrow that point differnet directions
- clarity of vision is the only thing that helps organizations move forward
- the ability to see the target

most companies are trying to move up instead of forward
- they are confused because they don’t understand the energy of the situation

Example: Hoberman sphere
- model lacks anything without energy
- added gravity, gravity drives it
- take the energy out of the system
- add kinetic energy
- all systems behave on energy

Newton’s 2nd law of thermodynmaics
- you are looking at energy as a metaphor for what you do
- you better, because energy is everything

When little kids build a fort
- they work all day long
- kids don’t care about lunch, they are building that fort
- they are focused, they have clarity of vision
- clarity of vision is measured by what is accomplished at the end

Engagement is SO important
- we are here to engage you in being part of this
- you can choose not to be engaged
- it is only about the OPPORUTNITY to be engaged
- buying is the lowest level of engagement
- you are participating
- difference in buyin and enrollment
- in enrollment you get to paint the picture, outline the frame
- buy-in is something you can engage in, it can also create a “vicious obedient”

[DON'T WE HAVE THOSE FOLKS IN SCHOOLS?]

When you can participate and be engaged, you have a chance to be a part of it
- that is a big piece of a successful puzzle
- we are 3 steps of most organizations because most have an inability to sustain performance

There is:
- bad
- good
- great
- freakin fantastic
- unbelievable WOW

The differences are TIMING
- take any organizations and they have problems sustaining, peaks of performance
- hard for food and beverage people to sustain

Great organizations sustain performance, because it is in the DNA of DOING
- it is about doing

IF you can’t do this, people will HANG UP

Your history is important
- how were the pyramids built
- it is still a mystery
- they are pretty sure a bunch of people hauled a bunch of rocks around (and those hauling rocks were most likely slaves)

There are more collapsted pyramids available for study than the ones who are standing
- first wrong thing was telling people how to do it
- then they got the whip out
- the problem was languages: the slaves were from 15 different cultures speaking 15 different languages
- that is how archetectural drawings started to transcend the communication and language challenges

American revolution was a guerrulla war
- the French and British were fighting in tradional ways, fighting in lines

81& of all digital music players are on iPods
87% of all digital music purchased is from iTunes
- the iPod shifted and changes the way music is done
- leads to the iPhone
- leads to sustained thinking about design is important
- Apple has a staggering level of clarity, that crosses all their business lines
- walk into Pixar, they have clarity and focus and do not vary from it

Even when they are wrong, they figure out
- there are no more loyal users than Mac users

Clarity is everything

Elite thinking creats elite behavior
- elite status is something your organization look for
- Tiger Woods does take more lessons than anyone
- lifts more weights, has a nutrition program, gets the right amount of rest
- there are big differences between I CAN and I WILL

Elite thinking creates elite behavior
- difference in the way you speak and think
- Marina ___ (tennis player) focuses on practice, 90 minutes of clarity and focus
- Jessica Berry preparing for 2008 Olympic games preparing
- Clint Eastwood is same: on the set he has never said ACTION
– he says: when you are ready
– that transferrs responsiblity to the actor
– that puts personal accountability in play
– Clint never says “cut” he says “that’s good”
– he rarely ever takes more than one take

Story from Iowa Jima movie
- Eastwood asked for 2nd and 3rd take
- in “inside the actors” studio interview, the actor said he was outside himself when he did it the 3rd time
- when Eastwood sayd, “that’s good” the actor cried
- that is peak performance

Yoda’s key line: there is no try, there is only DO or NOT DO
- you need that mentality to go to the next level
- stationary thinkers never get there

Roger Staubach quotation: “It takes a lot of unspectacular preparation to get a spectacular performance.”

ideas are always in motion
- whenever it is presented, it is alive, it never dies, or moves
- never fall on a sword when you’ve presented an idea, because it is out, it has been launched, it is going somewhere
- the value of the idea is that it is out

Characteristics of a forward thinker
- vision: example of an image that was created with similicty, elegance and power
- focus: the clarity issue, you need to know where the target is (no one on the Olympic team is aiming away from the target, that is what planng and clarity do)
– you have to know where your compass is pointing
- the need for feedback
– Tiger is always asking his coach how he is doing
- Be Bold: it is jumping out a perfectly good airplane, bold thinking driving everything

4 primary kinds of thinking
1- Thin slicing: Gladwell’s “Blink” book is all about that
– your brain goes through a rollodex of things, your gut feeling is almost always right
– example is lifeguard at Huntington Beach, looking at the water, 3 transition areas for 300 years: ankle deep water, knee deep to waist deep which is right where the waves break, and then watching swimmers
– then out of the blue they are out and sprinting, what did they see that told them someone is in trouble
– a mass surgeon does this on the battlefield too, called triage
– they both thin slice this based on their life experiences
– Teenagers abilities to thin slices very: experiences are key

2- critical thinkers solve problems

3- Strategic thinkers apply

4- Creative thinking
– like Einstein’s saying about imagination and knowledge
– don’t appear to follow the rules, can appear crazy,can also be visionary

You will generally only be good at ONE TYPE of these thinking types

In the show “House MD,” they put all these thinking types in one person
- peak performers are CONNECTED
- they for

slinky is another energy toy
- is one of the 7 original inductees in the toy hall of fame (with hula hoop, lincoln logs, etc)
- peak performers are never looking for balance

a balanced life has never existed (a slinky in a position of equilibrium, headed toward entropy)
- of perfectly balanced system always lacks energy

Look at Lance Armstrong’s training schedule
Maya Angelou
YoYou Ma
Dr Margaret Allen, famous as first person in history to find another planet
- we know all about stars
- you are actually looking into the distant past
- we could never find another planet outside our little solar system
- we got so frustrated

She found a wobble in a space image, turned out to be

Peak performers are out of whack, looking for out of balance
- newton’s 3rd law: en

They think differently, they behave differently, they speak differently

The key element
- the driver of performance: deliberate practice, goal setting, immediate feedback
- Roger Feder’s record was 93-3 last year
- big on technique

Pavorati is a great example as he approaches his singing
Wayne Gretsky
- every record he set in the NHL may never be broken, famous line about going to where the puck is going to be

Disney
- Walt was really different
- he was a very driven person, one of the ultimate visionaries
- practiced Bumblebee management (wandering around to teams, offering suggestions and ideas)
- got to be the first person on every ride
- partnering
- Google is a great one to keep your eyes on, they don’t even make anything
– I wrote an article for SW magazine last year about how staggering
– Google makes RELEVANCE
– when you search on google, their goal is to provide you with RELEVANCE

how does Google get better
- they add small things
- they hire 200 people per week
- they buy YouTube for 1.35 billion, and YouTube had no business plan and no value
- Why? 1 million hits per day, of that million that ma, 750,000 are unique viewers every single day

#1 call center in America: LL Bean
- go to that call center and study their best practices
- they spend a lot of time on who are we, what do we represent, what is the interaction like
- they get improvement through focus and clarity

Who is Nike losing marketshare to?
- Adidas
- count how many golf players are with Adidas and Nike

Ad for Nike with chip in the shoe that goes to the iPod

Apple is another great company doing that
GE is another one “imagination is in their tagline”

At&T will be in this group
- do you think you get the cover of Forbes if you’re not thought of like that

22,000 requests for the iPhone 4 hours after Jobs’ keynote

Rebel Thinking
- Ghandi: everyone wants a revolution to be violent
- had a meeting with people who were ready to fight those with guns with sticks, and convinced them to not do anything as a NATION
- it is about scaleability
- it is about ideas that tranfer into a revolutionary level

Audry Hepburn
- one of the revolutionary people on the UN UNICEF fund
- thought about taking food to places they had never taken it before
- revolutionary thinking

Galelieo
- knew was real
- LEADERS DEFINE CURRENT REALITY
- the Aritstotilian model had been around for 1500 years
- he was arrested for the rest of his life for how he thought

Amelia Earhart had to learn to fly as a male because women weren’t allowed
- she changed the way instruments are laid out in the cockpit
- the best get better by thinking

Read “Children’s Letters to Albert” from Albert Einstein
- in 8th grade Einstein was considered a mathematical midget

Steve Jobs

Martin Luther King Jr.

Dream metaphor, 7 minutes long on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial
- here is what it is, and what I think it can be

Orville and Wilbur Wright
- fixed wing flight
- Davinci had fixed wing flight, CONTROLLED was the difference
- do you think the Wright brothers ever thought of the shuttle lanuching?

Orville was a bicyle maker, Wilbur was a printer
- they put skids on it instead of wheels

When you only have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail
- one of the most powerful things you will ever hear

[APPLY THIS NOW TO 1:1 LEARNING]

Your thinking today cannot be your thinking tomorrow
- you have to change the best thinking to better thinking
- change that thinking

Great organizational law: Organizations don’t DO, they BEHAVE. People DO.
- organizations don’t learn. People learn.

If you want to be on the list when people rattle off TOP COMPANIES
- don’t think you’ll have an easy journey
- you can do it
- here are 50 different examples of how those things can be done

Now let’s talk about Leonardi Da Vinci
- if you list the great minds, name for me the great minds in history
- you will have some that will
- Socrates, Plato, Aristotle
– just know of Socrates through the writings of his students (Plato was his star student)
– Aristotle was Plato’s star model

Aristotle’s model of the universe hung around for 1500 years
- Newton, Einstein

There are minds out there right now that you don’t know of whose thinking is so radically different, that in 10 years you’ll say their names
- Da Vinci’s ideas were so revolutionary they

Not a global neighborhood, it is a global village

Last thought: if you believe in what you are doing, things can happen
- if you don’t believe organiations can accomplish great things, change the ways they think and behave, accomplish miraculous things

Then go talk to Neil Armstrong

Technorati Tags: leadership, learning

Forward Thinking originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 16, 2007.

Wed Mar 7 1:30 – Brand new “healthy Oklahoma manual”
speaker from Oklahoma Poison Control Center

FBI Parent guide to Internet Safety – www.fbi.gov/kids/parents/parents.htm

No-cost school program to address Internet Safety:
- www.webwisekids.org
- www.isafe.org

Bullying is intentional harm of others, it is NOT teasing

405-521-2107 is the phone number here for Gayle Jones, Oklahoma state dept of education Health director

Additional internet safety sites
- www.getnetwise.org
- www.wiredkids.org
- www.netsmartz.org
- www.media-awareness.ca
- www.safewiredschools.org

also on cyberbullying:
www.cyberbully.org

Presentation on Cyberbullying by Eric Hileman
- define cyberbullying
- profile of the cyberbully
- provide examples
- offer solutions

Bully stereotypes: on Nick Jr, lots of television programs
- only boys bully
- once a bully, always a bully
- low self-esteem
- low income families
- low academic students
- takes place away from school

Traditional bullying
- during recess and after school
- name calling
- cornering
- leaving someone out
- starting mean rumors
- shoving, hitting, pinching
- picking on people

Elements of cyberbullying
- not confined to school grounds or daytime hours
- tools include email, blogs, IM messages
- technology seems to incite a deeper level of meanness (it allows users to inflect pain without directly seeing its effects)

There are no bully police online

Tricks of the trade
- sending cruel, vicious and sometimes threatening messages
- creating websites that have stories, cartoons, pictures, and jokes ridiculing others
- breaking into email accounts and seeing vicious or embarrassing material to others as someone else
- engaging in IM and tricking someone to reveal personal information
- taking pictures in locker room and sending the image to hundreds of people in a cell phone address book

Saving evidence of the cyberbullying is often VERY important (saving documentation)

Why do people cyberbully?
- illusion of anonymity: many kids do and say things on a computer they wouldn’t have nerve to do in person
- # of kids using the internet makes it the preferred way to communicate: PEW reports 17 million kids age 12-17 use the Internet now
- easy to pose as someone else

Tidbits:
- iSafe survey: 42% of students in a survey of 1500 4th – 8th grade reported being cyberbullied, 53% admitted saying something mean or harmful to someone else
- Oak View Elementary in Virgina, student did a “top 5 most hated” kids survey online
- new weapons in teenage arsenal: stealing each other’s screen names, derogatory comments on blogs, forward private material

A blog is an online journal or online diary [THIS IS ERIC'S DEFINITION]

LaFlor county they have shut down all social networking sites
- had a kidnapping due to social networking (Lance Ford knows about this case)

In cyberbullying you have to protect kids from kids

Theory: traditional bullying is about power imbalances
- cyberbullying provides increased opportunities for bullying
- many victims of cyberbullying never know the identity of their bully
- outcomes of cyberbullying have potential to be worse
- goes into the home: both schools and home are supposed to be places where kids can feel safe and happy

Research shows that online bullying has particular appeal to girls, because of emotional rather than physical harassment to avoid direct confrontation
- proper term is relational aggression
- boys are not immune from this however
- cross-gender harrassment is more common with cyberbullying

livejournal.com is another blogging location besides myspace, xanga, facebook

Eric has a protected blog for his family, members love to gossip and comment (Whiner’s Circle)

is a push in the language arts community to allow free expression in schools

Good scenarios are available from the website “bullying.org”
- very sad

House Bill 1804 sponsored by Cargill focused on harassing digital messaging/communication passed in May 2005
- 1st offense is misdemeanor
- 2nd offense is a felony
- schools may need to modify their acceptable use policies to reference this House Bill in Oklahoma and the consequences which exist now in law

Possible solutions
- identify correlates and predictors of cyberbullying
- teaching Internet safety as part of traditional anti-bullying curriculum
- take Internet harassment seriously. If Internet bullying includes physical threats (including death threats) notify plice immediately
- guard you contact information, don’t give people your cell number, email address, etc.
- you wouldn’t send your children into the playground without supervision, don’t send your kids into the virtual world without supervision

Action steps for schools
- let kids know what behavior you find unacceptable, ask how they would feel if they were called x, y or z
- ask for students’ help in becoming cyber-saavy
- establish relationship with “cyber cops” on your local police force
- include cyber-ethics in the school curriculum

Solutions
- being harassed online: kids should log out and tell an adult
- don’t reply to harassing messages
- save harassing messages as documentation

[MY THOUGHT: HOW ABOUT CONFIGURING YOUR ONLINE WEBSITES FOR COMMENT MODERATION?]

- AOL Guardian” is available for AOL users, “snooper-vision”
- Yahoo’s “parental controls”, have weekly report card, four different levels available
- Microsoft’s “content advisor” is built into the IE browser
- 1-877-SAFE-CALL extension 651 (OK1) is toll-free hotline for students, parents, teachers and neighbors concerned about the safety of their local school

Comments by Fred Poteete, with Tahlequah Public Schools
- former teacher / coach / assistant principal / parent liason

I deal with bullying all the time
- I wish there was a formula for bullying, but there isn’t
- there are some guidelines, but not formulas

One guideline is to intervene immediately, but at times if you do you can embarrass the victim even more
- in one case like that, Fred invited the student in and asked her to brainstorm

I went to iSafe academy, taught classes on this back at Tahlequah JHS
- 1 in 3 young people have been solicited online, I had not really believed that at the academy in Carlsbad
- the very first class I taught, I encountered a girl who was being “groomed” online by a child predator (eventually leads to direct contact with the young person)

You’d never think that could happen in Howe, Oklahoma

Internet safety training is key
- education is a KEY

Problem with bullying on the Internet is kids think this is the wild west
- we have to teach kids that there is a community online just like in the F2F world

Had a situation where kids were creating a hate site about other classmates
In another case, had an “education session” with kids who were posting messages

every school needs to have an off-campus misconduct policy
- we do have one in Tahlequah, says if there is conduct off-campus that affects the learning environment you can do something about it as an administrator
- you have to, if you don’t stop it when it is small it is going to get worse
- like your bullying policy, you can have step 1, step 2, etc and/or have it open ended
- ours is open ended, gives a list but says consequences not limited to this
- you need administrators who will ACT if you have an open ended policy, if you have less action-oriented admins you may need a policy with specific step 1, step 2, etc.

Having evidence and witnesses are key
- had a situation after school on the weekend where someone was beat up
- you need to put some teeth into things like that
- your school attorney plays a key role in all of this

iSafe curriculum

Bullying: “Bullying happens whenever someone uses his or her power unfairly and repeatedly to hurt someone”
Violence: “any word, look, sign, or act that hurts a person’s body, feelings, or things”

The Bullied Person’s RIGHTS
- to tell about being bullied without being punished
- to be listened to sympathetically
- to have a person in authority investigate incidents and act on what is discovered
- to get feedback as soon as possible
- to have the bully made aware of what their behavior has done to them

Bullies may not remember bullying, but victims almost always remember being bullied

I always went over these RIGHTS with kids the first time

I think bullying comes down to 3 things: contempt, hurt or power
- recommended site “Kids are Worth It” and author’s book “The Bully, The Bullied and The Bystander”

Have a no-bullying pledge, encourage kids in school to develop thse
- for community members, faculty, parents, students

Have a bus driver survey relating to bullying
- bus rider survey
- has been helpful for Fred as a bus driver (that comes from “Bully-proofing your school” curriculum, they have lots of surveys like that)

Hot spot surveys also very helpful: have students mark a map of the school
- B = Bullying
- T = Tobacco
- D = drugs (including alcohol)
- X = place where kid feels unsafe
- a star or asterisk shows where kids feel SAFE

Make EVERY kid write on the back of the hotspot survey, otherwise the only kids who are writing on the back are reporting

Hot spot surveys also helped administrators
- helped kids have voice and power

Main goal of having drop box is to identify patterns of behavior, for students who are “displaying bullying behavior”
- it is a learned behavior, it can be unlearned
- better to not label someone a “bully” – instead use the words “displaying bullying behavior”

In one case we immediately suspended a student for choking another child until he passed out
- we had to prove there was repetition since that was in our definition
- you can have violence without bullying, but not bullying without violence in our case because the word “repeated” is in the definition

What do I say when confronting a bully?
- it can be different in every context
- don’t need to use an accusatory tone of voice, can use an inquiring tone of voice
Ideas
- hey, what’s going on here?
- should I be concerned about what I see here?
- do you people need some help?
- more

it is very important HOW YOU SAY IT (body language, tone of voice)
- if kids know you are aware of it, a lot of time behavior will change and even stop
- don’t embarrass the person being victimized

www.advantagepress.com has resources dealing with Bullying: DVDs volume 1 and 2

This is more about restitution: what am I going to do or not going to do next time, the focus is on behavior change
- we don’t always see the results of that

Go to www.k12coordinator.org has good training on cyberbullying, on day 3 Tahlequah is featured
- lots of links and resources
- have video clips, action steps, lots of great resources

Book: ““Bullies: From The Playground to the Boardroom” (Jane Middelton-Moz, Mary Lee Zawadski)”

Technorati Tags: bullying, cyberbullying, safety

Oklahoma Title I Videoconference on Cyberbullying originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 14, 2007.

Lynell’s website: www.educatebetter.org

All of us know that just because you fail one test you are not a failure, right?!
Hopefully we’ll have some laughs and some serious moments today
- also we will talk about some tools we can use to deal with stress

Book “Enlighten Up! An Educator’s Guide to Stress-Free Living”
- there may be a few of you who don’t need to be here, so if you need to give me a walking ovation that is no problem

Cartoon: teacher at the front: No talking, smiling, wearing weird clothes, more….

One rule: “If you’re having fun, you’re not learning”
- motto from the Disney movie, “Mathilda”

Surveys have showed that when we are stressed, 9 out of 10 times stress complaints have to do with TIME
- putting your schedule on a palm won’t solve your problems
- picture of someone’s hand with appointments written all over it!

To Do: Can Do. Will Do. Must Do and Deep Do list

Cartoon: “Due to airline cost-cutting, this is your dinner, pillow and air sickness bag”

Advertisements have us convinced “we are entitled” to everything money can buy
- images of diamonds, real estate, Porsche cars, etc.
- and entitlement of a place to keep it
- conflict between these messages and our paychecks

I used to work at at California’s service center
- image of huge house
- now: picture of a house on the back of a truck
- computers and phones situated in the bathroom, with a padded toilet seat

Testing, testing
- another area of great stress for
- reducing our kids to #2 pencils

Gary Stager had a movement at one point called “Pencils Down”

When you are stressed, the cortisol shrinks the
- their brains are 14% smaller (literally) and physiologically
- so we are literally making kids more stupid with all this stress

Techno Trauma: sometimes it can drive you nuts

Image of a computer monitor thrown out of a high rise building

Cartoon asking expecting parents if they want to email their zygote!

Technology is there at all the major events of your life
- groom leaving the church, saying to another woman dressed in a wedding gown: “Didn’t you get my email?”

Cartoon of console with login and username at the gates of heaven!

This technology was supposed to save us time
- how many of us spend 8 hours a day at a computer
- my record was 22 hours one day

Dogs on the computer: “Let’s see if we can’t scatter the trash all over his desktop”
- image of a desktop filled with files

Kids have no stress with technology or angst
- using the Pearson knowledge box in Southern California: kids lining up to use the computer during their recess time

You can use technology to make things more visual, that can be much less stressful for many learners
- for me math didn’t make as much sense when it was just numbers, but when you can

the “figure this” math site does things visually
- company “mind institute” in the exhibit hall is focused on visual math

Activity you can replicate: Progressive Story
- make a PPT slideshow with fullscreen images, and pass the kush ball and have people tell a story light you would tell a flashlight story
- example
- this can be used to test prior knowledge, to review, can even be used as the test
- I love this creative idea!!!
- this progresive story idea and

those who put the toilet paper over rather than under make an average of $32,000 more per year

Serious definition of stress: “stress is not the presence of something, it is the ABSENCE of something”

[THIS IS AN INTERESTING DEFINITION. ACCORDING TO THE FLOW AUTHOR STRESS IS A PERCEPTION.]

Stress is the absence of resourcefulness
- continuums of dark — light, stress — resourcefulness
- stress is a guage of PERCEIVED personal resources

[GOOD, I'M GLAD THIS INCLUDES THE IDEA OF PERCEPTION]

In WWII orgpanages, they would give kids a piece of bread at dinner and the kids would squirrel it away
- the psychologists learned if they gave them 2 pieces, they would eat one and save one
- they were perceiving that there wouldn’t be bread in the morning

The Dell Booth yesterday had bubbles
- a bubble bath is good for stress relief
- there are times when medication is called for, certain situations (I don’t want to make light of that, but if that becomes a lifestyle that can be a problem)

Cartoon: “The St. John’s Wort seems to be working, but be carful on the dosage”
Cartoon of dog with his feet in a jacuzzi tub
Snickers bars: there are as many fat calories are there are in 100 apples, so that’s a no brainer: Who has time to eat 100 apples?

Will Smith: “Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people the don’t like.”

Closet organizing ads
- you just have 4 or 5 choices tops
- somewhere between that level of organization and where we are now would be good

I have a new rule: if I buy one new thing, I have to donate five things I have now

Image of a backpacker with a loaded pack, and a TV on top

“What you aren’t willing to give away OWNS you”

Chronic overcrowding in the standards
- Even Robert Marzano who has made a fortune talking and writing about the standards admits we would need a K-22 system to teach them all
- Power Standards” book: says let’s get them down to the ones we really need

“Ask 3 before you ask me” is a good motto in the computer lab
- this empowered the kids, and freed him up
- the kids who are “the three” end up being teachers, we prepare the next generation

Image of Michael Jordan and the passion of making the shot
- he said: “Once the ball leaves my hands, it’s out of my hands” (he didn’t have to watch the basket)
- the ultimate “let it go”

Goeth: “Nothing shows a man’s character than what he laughs at”

humore: the juxtaposition of the unexpected (John Cleese)

Cartoon of a parent mouse in a robe talking to kids: “You were turned into white horses and forced to drive a pumpkin? out after midnight, and that’s the best story you could come up with?!”

Laughter is the shortest distance between two people: Victor Borge
- if you have an enemy or you want someone to help you, get them laughing

Kids laugh an average of 400 times per day
- by the time we are adults, we laugh around 15 times per day on average

Hopefully you’ll leave here and work on boosting your average

Tip: if you stick a number 2 pencil… in your mouth, it forces the corners of your mouth up a little so whatever you say will likely make you smile or laugh because your mouth is prepped
- you can also find a pencil when you need it
- this can also address disruption issues

Cartoon: farmer who made a scarecrow of his wife in the field

When you do cruel humor, you get an energy spike but then you dive
- you get briefly juiced but a bad aftertaste
- so use humor that isn’t cruel

The birthday card that says: On they day you were born the angels got together and said:
- Who messed up on quality control?

Between the lion’s series: a BB King series on the letter Y
- great show

Chateau MeddyBemps great website, whimsical humor
- great website esp for younger kids, up to 4th or 5th grade, esp good for

www.amazing-kids.org

Kid cartoon: “I’m never having kids. I hear they take nine months to download.”

I’ve given up on good internet joke sites, because most are ta

ahajokes.com

Clips from TV shows
- the old Cosby shows, the humor was always so sweet
- Bill and his wife on the show discussing if he remembers what he said when he proposed, and what was on the car radio

Shows the power of music
- what you remember, esp in highly emotional moments
- music can be used as a carrier of information to learners

The music of the spheres defined by Pythagoras: the music of the sun and the wind through the trees

Video clip of dramatizing “entrianment” – “toe tapping,” what happens when music plays and rhythm takes over our bodies

having a pet can lower your blood pressure
- a teacher’s smiling face can change the whole day for a child
- having friends you teach with can make such a difference

First connection in life: mother-child
- chemical oxy-tocin (the love hormone)
- that is the last to go in human life

“The heart of the matter”
- physiologically we have a brain in the heart, that sends messages to the brain
- stress or panic, and love / caring / compassion / appreciation
- when you are feeling those positive emotions
- you can only feel 1 kind of emotion at the same time

the fastest way of stress is to think of something you are deeply thankful for, because you can’t think about that and maintain your stressful thought
- think of something that brings tears to your eyes, something really deep
- that will flood your heart and move to your brain, and then you’ll realize you do have a couple resources
- shift your focus really fast from that stressful thing to something you’re thankful for

solution to the whole problem is to shift emphasis

Verse: in all things be thankful
- not “for” all things, that is saying no matter what happens, find the thankfulness in your heart and you’ll be able to rise above the circumstances

Have your kids write a thank you note if they are stressed out

THANK YOU is the big key
- this shows up scientifically, their are salivia tests and PET scans

If you have love, compassion in your heart, it can be felt within a 15 foot radius
- your students can feel what you are feeling
- do you want your students to

Your attitude is always key: you can always choose that
- you can choose who you want to be

cartoon: Moses as a kid, parting the milk

Steve CAse, founder of AOL had multiple paper routes because he knew there were many

Helping kids figure out what they want to be is very exciting

book “what color is your parachute” author says when you are in your highest calling, that is where your greatest passion and the world’s greatest need come together

Lifting kids with humor is hopefull

www.drewtretick.com music
- watch his face as he performs in this video
- playing with passion

My prayer for all of you, that you find this sense of mission and purpose

Technorati Tags: burmark, stress, tcea, tcea07, tcea2007

They laughed when I told them how I beat stress! originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 9, 2007.

I’ve created a short survey on KillerSurvey.com, asking what actions people think are most appropriate and realistic. There is also a space to submit other ideas. Give it a spin, you have to register, but everyone can see results. This is a free survey tool, similar to others I’ve tried before.

One good resource I learned about in the text chat was this three page PDF document from YALSA (the Young Adult Library Services Association) titled “Teens & Social Networking in the School & Public Library.” The first two paragraphs will give you a flavor for its message:

Social networking technologies have many positive uses in schools and libraries. They are an ideal environment for teens to share what they are learning or to build something together online. The nature of the medium allows students to receive feedback from teachers, peers, parents, and others. Social networking technologies create a sense of community (as do the physical library and school) and in this way are already aligned with the services and programs at the library/school

Schools and libraries are working to integrate positive uses of social networking into their classrooms, programs, and services. By integrating social networking technologies into educational environments, teens have the opportunity to learn from adults how to be safe and smart when participating in online social networks.

We need to promote safe digital social networking! Now we need to brainstorm together what to do, in addition to contacting our Senators, before they vote on DOPA. Hopefully we can encourage them to be more constructive rather than reactionary. For a decently reasoned perspective on this in the mainstream press, check out “House Misfires On Internet Safety” from CBS News. In the article Larry Magid writes:

While nearly everyone agrees that Internet predators should be “deleted,” this bill doesn’t address that issue. Unlike the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006, which the President signed into law on July 21, DOPA does nothing to strengthen penalties or increase prosecution of criminals who prey on children. Instead, it punishes the potential victims and educational institutions chartered to serve them, by denying access to interactive sites at school and libraries.

It would be like trying to protect children from being injured or killed by drunk drivers by ruling that kids can no longer walk, ride a bike or even ride in a car or bus to school.

Via Will Richardson and Doug Noon and Susan’s comment on Doug’s post!

DOPA actions? originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on August 3, 2006.

I notice in the language of the bill the world “commercial” is prominent. The first sentence of the act reads:

To amend the Communications Act of 1934 to require recipients of universal service support for schools and libraries to protect minors from commercial social networking websites and chat rooms.

Note the language, “commercial social networking websites.” Now what exactly does that mean? The bill will require the FCC to define the term. The proposed legislation also says:

20 “(J) COMMERCIAL SOCIAL NETWORKING
21 WEBSITES; CHAT ROOMS.–Within 120 days
22 after the date of enactment of the Deleting On-
23 line Predators Act of 2006, the Commission
24 shall by rule define the terms `social networking
25 website’ and `chat room’ for purposes of this

HR 5319 EH 5
1 subsection. In determining the definition of a
2 social networking website, the Commission shall
3 take into consideration the extent to which a
4 website–
5 “(i) is offered by a commercial entity;
6 “(ii) permits registered users to create
7 an on-line profile that includes detailed
8 personal information;
9 “(iii) permits registered users to cre-
10 ate an on-line journal and share such a
11 journal with other users;
12 “(iv) elicits highly-personalized infor-
13 mation from users; and
14 “(v) enables communication among
15 users.”.

Under this definition, it sounds like Think.com (a free resource sponsored by the Oracle foundation to schools) would not fall under this definition of “commercial social networking site.” Neither would Moodle sites that are being run by schools, not for commercial purposes.

Imbee, on the other hand, is a commercial site and although it offers parent moderation options and is a GREAT tool, it might fall under a FCC definition of “commercial social networking sites.” Parents and students could use this from home, but perhaps not from school if DOPA passes.

It is also not clear to me if DOPA would force US school districts receiving eRate funds (which is pretty much everyone in public schools) to block access to Wikipedia from school networks. Is WikiPedia a “for profit” social networking site? Students aren’t blogging there, although they create profiles. This seems to be less clear and up for grabs perhaps.

I am thinking if this legislation passes, schools and educators will still be able to use non-commercial websites to help students learn about read/write web technologies and safe DSN. Think.com, Moodle sites, and blog sites RUN BY THE SCHOOL (actually a very good idea for US schools according to educational law expert Dr. Scott McLeod) would still be fine.

I have added a new category to my blog for DSN. This is something I have written a lot about, and will likely be writing about more in the future… so this seems appropriate.

I know it’s arduous, but this is important legislation and important issues– so go ahead and read the fulltext of the bill yourself, linked from the GovTrack.us site for DOPA. (direct link)

What do you think?

Technorati Tags: dopa, mti2006

DOPA might not kill all DSN education in schools originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on July 27, 2006.

Perhaps not a surprise, but certainly a disappointment.

To see the vote breakdown, check out GovTrack.us’s page on DOPA. You can also read the full-text of the bill on their website.

Do we need and want to protect our kids? Of course. But should we prohibit all technologies in schools in which students create a “profile?” Definitely not.

I asked Will Richardson last night at dinner (we’re here at MTI 2006 in Winfield, Kansas) what he thought DOPA would mean for schools if it passes. He said, since the language of the bill would prohibit use of any website at a US school by students or teachers where the kids have a “profile”: this would stop use of all blogs and social networking software. I am thinking this means students would not even be able to access, much less post, to WikiPedia.

Give me a break. This is the biggest example of digital immigrants being disconnected to the REAL world that I have ever heard of. And I agree with Will, who is addressing this right now in his preso at MTI, that it is an example of election year / election time stupidity.

Should we throw up our hands and resign our teaching positions, or whatever educationally-related positions we hold currently in protest? Certainly not.

This is an opportunity: an opportunity to have conversations with lots of people who have heard very little about things like blogs, podcasts, RSS, digital social networking, etc. that goes beyond the media fear/death hoopla over MySpace. This is a clarion call to conversations. And an opportunity to help educate digital immigrants about the needs of digital natives in the 21st century.

This timing is pretty interesting… tomorrow here at MTI I’ll be presenting on “Safe Digital Social Networking,” and posting the preso as enhanced and audio-only podcasts.

I am reminded of Obi Wan, speaking to the leader of in Star Wars Episode III. He something to the effect (I’m paraphrasing from memory):

If you have warriors, tell them to prepare and be ready. Now is the time.

It is the time, and we all need to contact our Senators and the White House on this immediately. But will our voices be heard? They won’t if we are silent. Can we succeed in changing the Senate’s vote and the President’s decision on this? I don’t know, I doubt it given the current spirit on DSN issues in Washington, but that expectation should not stop us from taking action or silence our voices.

For more on this, check out current blog posts indexed by Technorati for “DOPA.” David Warlick and Brian Crosby, Will Richardson, and many others are writing about this– we need to extend this conversation outside the edublogosphere. If you know of a good political action site related to this and speaking out on DOPA, please comment and link it here.

Technorati Tags: dopa

DOPA passes US House of Reps originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on July 27, 2006.

blog: weblogged-ed.com
email: weblogged at gmail dot com
presentation resources: webloggedlinks.pbwiki.com

(Will has granted permission for me to post an audio recording of his keynote this morning, which I’ll be posting later tonight as a podcast.)

Preliminary announcements by MTI folks:
- Winfield is community of about 12,000 people
- The Challenger Learning Center is here in Kansas (in Wellington not far from Winfield – MACE participants can do their program tomorrow, limit of 30) – They offer school missions, day camps, classroom programs, scouting programs, programs for corporate groups, and public missions. This looks great! (too bad my presentations are tomorrow and I can’t do this now!)
- MTI will be in Bonner Springs next year (right by Cabella’s and near the Nebraska Furniture Mart!)
- MACE in March07 will be at the

Will was last here 25 years ago as best man in a summer wedding in Topeka in the summer!

I don’t think technology is the main thing happening today
- the imagination that we have when we are using technology is the key

July 12: 2006 “The Red PaperClip” and Kyle MacDonald
- trading a paperclip till he gets a house
- this could not have been done even 2 or 3 years ago
- amazing audience and transparency for ideas

Anime Music Video website, kids doing mashups
- ability to create stuff like this and share it

imagination defined: the ability to…

Everything is more and more moving to the web, away from desktops
- 1 billion people are the web right now
- there will be another billion by 2015
- 10 billion webpages
- 1 trillion links (somewhere you can click, how amazing)

Emerging reality is not just this one way web, it is the read/write web
- you don’t need to know code, ftp, etc
- “web 2.0″
- easier to create, easier to publish
- Tim O’Reilly on 14 May 2006: “We are at a turning point in the technology industry, and perhaps even in the history of the world.”

I INCIDENTALLY AGREE WITH TIM ON THIS!

50 million blogs out there now, 70,000 new blogs per day, 7 million new web pages each day
- feeling overwhelmed?
- yes
- 2.7 billion links
- use technorati.com

Now we are really linking ideas, what people are talking about
- and people
- connecting to each other
- not just linking to content, it is much more intersting

- society of authorship
- age of participation
- era of collaboration
- age of engagement

Tom Friedmen calls this global society the “uploaders”

an active, participatory web, this is NOT just receiving!

Larry Lessig, author of “free culture”
- “We do not realize how significant the Read-Write internet could be.”

Personally this is EXTREMELY significant
- I have been blogging now for 5 years
- I have learned more from blogging on my site than any other collective experiences
- taught me about myself, technology, the world, other people

When I have the time, it is a place where I spend a lot of intellectual capital and get multitudes in return
- there are now 69,000 education related blogs (Joanne Jacobs)
- there were about 7 when I started

25+ million kids creating web content

It is about imagination

Now listen to Matt Bischoff, one of the first podcasters in 2004
- you hear excitement in his voice
- this is not for grandma and grandpa, this is for an audience
- podcasting from his bedroom

Will’s daughter Tess
- top weather recipies
- posted these pictures to Flickr
- over 1000 people have come to see Tess’s book

Sandaig Otters school in Glasgow, everything on the school homepage is created by kids

THIS IS A GREAT IDEA NOW, I NEED TO DO THIS WITH ALEXANDER AND SARAH’S BOOKS

Kids have audience and purpose that goes far beyond the traditional classroom
- collaboration example of Will’s class in New Jersey and kids in Georgia
- kids had a real audience and purpose, and they were TEACHING
- best way to learn is to teach
- I connected my kids with others, engaged

they are learning, building networks, going far beyond the classrooms

this is a different place, this is a different world, we need to start thinking different about what we are doing

quote from student in Clarence Fisher’s class “now that we have podcasting and blogging anyone can do it….”

leveraging the read/write web is not about the technology, it is about the imagination
- how can we integrate these into our practice to change the equation

We can’t think about our classrooms as 4 walls anymore

Big changes for Schools:

1- the web changes learning
- primarily: now we have access to a lot of knowledge and content
- in the past we thought the school was where we needed to get together and share knowledge
- when knowledge is scarce, learning looks like kids in rows
- story of teacher unfreezing from glacial

When knowledge is abundant

MITOpenCourseware site
- MIT has 600 classes online now
- you get all the video/audio lectures for some of the courses too, along with all the content
- so now you can get an MIT education, basically for free
- you can learn anything, anywhere, anytime, almost

MY THOUGHT: I NEED TO TAKE ONE OF THESE CLASSES, ESP ONE IN ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING (A BASIC COURSE) TO HELP ALEXANDER WITH DESIGN OF HIS SOLAR CAR

Mark Federman: “ubiquitously connected and pervasively proximate.”

Philadelphia is putting a wireless cloud over the entire city

In Newton Mass last week, using Google text messaging to get links

Oragami project from Microsoft: pocket tablet pc

learner decides what, when, where and how she learns
- how is this different from our classrooms
- we try to timestamp when and how our students learn

From just in case learning to just in time learning
- “I am a nomadic learner and I graze for information” (nomatic learning)

When we connect around affinity and not geography, learning looks like this (wikipedia)
- wikipedia is a post

Wikipedia is becoming very popular, look at trend lines compared to NYT
- over a million articles

From do your own work, to work with others
- the environment is now very expectant for working with others

John Dewey has risen in this world

George Siemens: learning is a network process, building networks, figuring out

Graphic of network connectivity
- example: 43 things

#1 think people want to learn in this environment is how to now procrastinate

Social networks
- listing of all social networks on wikipedia now
- lists how many people are on these networks, including

Digg.com
- very important now
- del.icio.us too
- these sites connect with tags

NECC example of photos

Question: how do we best support students in this environment, and re-envision our classrooms to leverage the abundance of info

The web changes text
- it is starting to look like wikis (example: South African curriculum)

Organically built physics text
- wikibooks is putting this together, they are writing 1000 books this way
- are textbook companies wondering about this?

lots of content sources
- we are in a “rip, mix and learn” society
- site: harvard H20, you can accomulate/aggregate content from a list and pick them out when you need them
- epitomizes idea of teacher as DJ

web changes teaching
- teacher as connector
- don’t have to be an arbiter of info
- example was Will’s “secret life of bees” project, the author directly teaches and mentored
- I just connected my student to a Washington Post, Pulitzer prize winning

Skype
- call all over the world for free
- you just need an internet connection

Question: when we have access to all this content and billions of people, how do we change school?

Instead of “hand in your homework,” what if we said “publish your homework”
- so it is not about me as the teacher and judge of the work, but the value of the ideas and content the kids create

Example of Darren Kurpatwa’s blog
- Pre-Cal 20S blog
- scribe post hall of fame
- way to check stats from all over the world

Checked the iTunes K-12 podcast list lately
- Room208, Radio WillowWeb
- lots of content designed to teach

Digital Storytelling
- Marco Torres video
- amazing things with kids and video
- having film festivals, creating music videos
- this is another literacy for the kids, for them to get engaged

Question: what needs to change when kids can publish to audiences far beyond our classrooms– when they are teaching

- think of assignments as things to be shared rather than assessed

literacy is changing
- how many are teaching kids how to read wikipedia?
- favorite story: kid that wrote a poor paper, posted it on WikiPedia, and watched it improve, and then when it was good enough, copied it and turned it in

are we teaching kids how to read in hypertext environments?

this changes how kids write: how many of you have assigned a hypertext assignment to kids
- the power of links in a digital environment

Great book by David Weinberger: documents are not containers of info anymore, they get value from what they point to

Example of MLK.org site (stormfront)

“What happens when everyone gets a printing press”
- this is a huge literacy issue
- we as adults probably aren’t

use easywhois.com and put in the url to get all the info about who owns something, to try and get behind info

The literacy of networks
- kids more and more are working in distributed, collaborative environments (Jill Walker)

Web as platform
- thinkfree.com
- javascript environment, 1 Gig of free space
- jumpcut.com to post videos

I NEED TO LOOK FOR THE WIKIPEDIA PAGE SHOWING SITES LIKE JUMPCUT WHERE PEOPLE ARE POSTING

- we’re not going to be loading much software on our computers much longer, it is going to be running over the network

Question: how can we use open source and open content to engage kids more fully

MySpace would be the 12th most populous country in the world if it was a physical place
- add 200 new accounts each minute, 280,000 new accounts today

I am really happy MySpace has blown up, because at least now we are talking about it
- there are
- only a third of myspace are kids, lots of adults are behaving poorly now
- 99% of myspace content is innoculous
- there are a million bands on myspace now
- it is a social site

Dana Boyd and Henry Jenkins from MIT’s essay, looking at why kids are gravitating to social sites

Kid’s don’t email anymore, they do myspace, IM, etc

This is a changing culture, it is much different from what we know and do

I don’t think

Coors Light commercial about twins
- when you compare that to a myspace site, it is really not that different
- this is a society that objectifies women, is constantly sending false messages to girls about what they should look like
- very difficult to help kids have some semblance of self-esteem in this media environment

Heather Candella quotation in NYT: “When you meet someone, the question is not “what’s your number?” it’s “what’s your myspace.” by checking out a guy’s profile, she said, “you can actually get a feeling for who they are.”
- this girl should not have graduated high school!
- who

Cover of Wired last month
- Rupert Murdock owns Myspace: says it is the best marketing opportunity ever
- who is talking to our kids about what this means, about the manpulation that is involved

I don’t think we get it yet, we understand it yet
- their perception of this is skewed

We really need to teach myspace
- it should be in every curriculum, in every school
- we need to teach them about safety
- have them learn they are creating their permanent record with every piece of content
- for kids they don’t have anything else to mitigate what is on their myspace account, problems with later job interviews, etc.

No one is teaching this stuff now
- we need more media literacy!
- this is a huge opportunity to teach

You don’t want your kid being taught to swim by someone who does not know how to swim themselves
- we need to “know” myspace
- we should all get accounts
- we should all

We can’t be afraid of it
- how many of you block/filter myspace

Why don’t we ask better questions?
- why are my kids learning the 50 capitals now?

we take the tools the kids use out of their hands when they come to school
- the result is our schools are looking less and less like the real world
- this is a problem, are schools are on the verge of becoming irrelevant

Al Gore: “Change is inconvenient.”

DOE results on student perceptions of whether schoolwork is meaningful, courses are interesting, school will be important in later life
- we are losing kids to a large extent because we are not using the tools that kids use in real life

30% of 9th graders don’t graduate nationwide, 27% of adults over age 25 have a college degree
- we are not doing good enough

US Dept of Ed have school 2.0 model
- we have to be ok with kids IMing, blogging, using social networks

Your goal

Are our kids continuous learners when they leave our schools? Are they nomadic learners?

George Siemans: we fire our kids every 18 weeks in schools!

WE need to embrace these changes, we really don’t have a choice.

Chris Lemann is doing this now.
- quoted Chris’s comments to Will’s question on what he should tell superintendents in New York

MY COMMENT: THIS IS A GREAT SERIES OF IDEAS FROM CHRIS!

This is VERY different

your goal or task leaving this conference is: how can I be more imaginative, and what is my red paperclip?

this is a difficult task, and it starts with one step!

Technorati Tags: mti2006

A Web of Connections: Why the Read/Write Web Changes Everything originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on July 27, 2006.