Thinking Big as the World is Small

By Wesley Fryer On November 10, 2005 · · Add Comment

Technology and Learning TechForum: Breakthroughs and Best Practices for Technology Leaders

Welcome and Opening Keynote: “Thinking Big as the World is Small”
by Hall Davidson

The cameras in their cell phones make them citizen journalists. The web is their personal library and media center. They communicate in real time with the ends of the earth. But can they convince their teachrs t olet them learnat school with help from such powerful tools? Beyond the “wow,” technology provides nearly limitless potential for connectivity and education. See examples of how today’s technologies– from calculators to the web, from music files to video-on-demand– can (and should) engage and teach a new generation of students.

Will give a tip at the end guaranteed to improve student achievement in every classroom

This is my first keynote in PowerPoint! (no HyperStudio on Mac OS X)
– example of globe

video clip showing cave art coming to life

There were horses in North America before the Europeans, we ate most of them

Who tends to use this technology we have?
– advertisers
– they have figured out the images are powerful for education
– look at Marlboro ads

Cool Tools (important part is the tools, “cool” is so what)
– question is: can you bend it into something valuable for classroom teachers
– is it going to save me time, that is the question teachers have

Useful applications of terminals
– United airlines personalized checkin

Self-service fast food at Taco Bell in Orange County

What do we start with when it comes to kids
– start with things they have in their pockets (cell phones)
– now you want to make sure kids are using these things for

LA Times: on jut agmes, $72 million in 2004, ring tones are more like $300 million per year

London bombings: first image was rom a cell phone

Kids set up a website called we’renotafraid.com

www.werenotafraid.com

– students sent images from their phones, computers
– students become photo

Do you have a place in your school district where kids can send images?
– remember you will always know where it came from
– set up something like this at school

Took a pic with his cell phone, emailed it do himself
– then checked email, inserted pic into his PPT

Do we want students to have their eyes opened to
– video of Hall having breakfast with Mike Lawrence of CUER

Our kids in 5 years will be able to watch video on their cell phones

LA Times Nov 6th, for about $20 a month you can downlad Discovery Channel

– digital curriculum, united streaming – why not use student devices to delivery curriculum?

What else can you find: go to Google Mobile

Wiki
– in Hawaiian wiki means “right now”
– Wikis let anyhone edit, it is deliberately wide open

Are wikipedia entries for day of the London bombings
– quicktime movie with screenshots showing how the current event changed
– 7 July 2005 London Bombings
– were some explitives, but that was quickly corrected
– “you just have to trust it”

Homepage is halldavison.net

DiscoveryEducatorNetwork: where Hall works now
– just hired Steve Dembo
– how do you know what the rules are?
– they setup a Wiki for anyone who works in that division, this is not an open wiki
– their organization uses this all the time
– how many of you have hard: we didn’t know that
– if you have a wiki, and you have a question, you go and check the wiki

Could kids have a wiki?
– of course, they have info to share
– this is a useful piece of technology that is cheap and we are not using it much like we should
– this can work for kids

Brad Upshaw has won in every category of the California media contest
– best elementary teacher in the world

How do you use
– Carolyn McGuire setup “Rock Our World” project to connect kids to other kids all over the world
– were in 6 countries, 5 continents, 6 time zones, and 2 different days
– what did we see? Kids decided they were going to share things with kids all over the world
– Kids from Wellington New Zealand shared Maori Chant

My thought on this: challenge is connecting learning together rather than just having random interesting things that do not stitch together linearlly

So web cams have an application that means things and can be useful in the classroom
– so how does this tie into the curriculum?
– next thing we did was apply this to math (Eratosthenes calculated in 400 BC the circumference of the earth)
– we decided to use the same experimental method

Beat the Greeks
– 2 simultaneous webcams on same earth longitude line
– 30 brainy kids
– 30 minutes
– calculators
–

To get kids to understand this, kids used manipulatives
– question is can you compute the circumference of the earth like the Greeks did in 400 BC?

some kids used a level, some used a plumb bob
kids drew diagrams, real time, looking at different places in the earth

Needed to explain this, so did a google search and best site was in French
– right on Google homepage, used language tools

My thought: my translation

Do a Google advanced search for powerpoints on a particular topic
– this saves people time
– now Hall’s group is trying to limit search results

You want depth, complexity, trends and patterns esp when working with gifted kids
(my thought: you need this for all kids)

You can use excel and google to track political trends

Hall is really in awe of Madison, Franklin,

For Google searches, you have to play around with the words and make sure it is the data you want
– graphed people who agree and disagree that Ronald Reagan was the greatest President
– did search for English pages, French pages
– right after Google translation, you can do a search

how can I look at my search terms to see if results are good
– in gifted strand you have to study TRENDS and PATTERS
– this stuff is real, it is “out there”
– kids need to understand how this works

Also can use Altavista.com
– can do searches for video, mp3, etc on altavista

Where else are we going that is interesting?
– in old days we had broadcast TV
– invisible rays sent moving pictures and sound, as long as you had air you could get TV, with a piece of metal you put on your TV
– then people thought about putting it in a wire
– in some US cities, over 90% of homes have cable TV

Discovery channel is just 20 years old
– 20 years ago it was called the education channel
– when it was launched, the starter had 6 months of cash
– ran out of money
– Discovery now has 20 channels
– it costs about $200 million to launch a new channel
– eventually you get

Now cable is changing from coaxial to broadband internet cables
– the world is now changing

TiVo is prelude to changes in cable business
– if you are in TV business, you are watching your numbers erode because people are not caring what comes on at 7

Graph of primetime ratings with network TV and CAble TV

Live 8 concern in Muly 2005, graph of TV/Cable and Webcasts
– this is scary to broadcasters
– it means the entire universe is shifting

Halls’ preduction: By 2013, entire world of broadcasting is being changed
– districts should have their own media libraries
– now districts have media libraries they have shifted to the Internet
– are downloading media through the internet
– that is the future of media

So we should be doing this in our schools now
– at PBS we spent a long time teaching teachers to tie video clips into their curriculum
– use short clips: 1 min, 42 sec clip of “What is maps”

This is how kids are going to be watching media now
– kids can add their own narration of
– kids not just using the video, they are rewriting the

Don’t make kids into watchers of media, make them into MAKERS OF MEDIA

California Student Media and multimedia festival

www.mediafestival.org
– students that found 5 medal of honor winners of Japanese ancestry
5th graders with camcorders can get

Digital Story on how do you solve the problem of needing to learn to tell time

Start with clips you download, you add your own voice

Pretty soon kids are deep into

Video sources:
www.schoolhousevideo.org
www.kitzu.org
www.unitedstreaming.com
www.halldavidson.org

Study on wanting to improve reading skills in 1970s
– difference was kids that tested higher had a hearing impaired member of their immediate family
– turns out when you watch video with captions, you learn to read better
– so lesson here is: always turn the captions on (look at sports bars: if it works for drunk American males, it can work for you kids!)

If you are using video in schools, turn on your captions
– lots of research says, your kids will learn better
– since 1994 every TV
– this is data in the video image, you just have to unlock it

You will find this has an impact, it DOES work!!!
OPEN THE CAPTIONS IN SCHOOL
– kids will hate it, but that is too bad: they can watch TV without captions

www.discoveryeducatornetwork.com
Hall Davidson
Hall_Davidson@discovery.com

My question to Hall; accessibility for video
– there is a gee4 plugin for iMovie available on Apple’s site
– can also use Quicktime pro to add captions