User Generated Education by Jackie Gerstein

User Generated Education Jackie Gerstein

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Contents Hello world! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Overt and Covert Lessons from Avatar: Skills, Knowledge, and Attitudes Relevant for Todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Learners . . . . . . . . . . . . . Connection + Pedagogy + Technology + Content: #ISTE10 Reflections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Student Voices: School Failure, Reform, and Hope . . . . . . . Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) . . . . . . . . . . PBL is Passion-Based Learning: Show Me Your Passion . . . . Future of Online Education: Online Learning or Education of the Future? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Learning Spaces (School?) as Narrative Architecture . . . . . . The Scale of the Universe in the Classroom . . . . . . . . . . . 21st Century Enlightenment . . . in Education . . . . . . . . . . Integrating Technology: Technology Tools to Develop a Collaborative, Participatory School Community Learning Space Real Life Education ala William Kamkwamba . . . . . . . . . . Social Media Revolution Should Be (and is) Creating a New Type of School . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . And the Technology Integration Begins! . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Technology-Enhanced Celebration of Learning . . . . . . . . Technology Integration Begins with a Perceptive Principal . . . Comic and Animation Technologies in the Classroom . . . . . . Technology Integration for the Students: The First Month . . . . Integrating Technology This Week: Resources Discovered, Re-Discovered, or Created . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Criticizing, Pondering, and Actualizing: An Educatorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Guide . Junior High Technology Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5th-6th Grade Civil Rights Project: Technology-Based Activating Event . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Global Education 2010: ANSER Got rights! . . . . . . . . . . .

1 2 9 13 21 25 29 32 35 39 44 56 62 66 70 79 80 83 92 94 98 103 108

Sugata Mitra: A Model of User-Generated Education (Big Ideas Fest) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Flow – A Measure of Student Engagement . . . . . . . . . . . . The Writing is On the Wall. Why Isn’t Anyone Reading It? . . . Rethinking (College) Education – More Writing on the Wall . . Imagine That: A School of Possibilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mobile Learning: Learners As Informed Consumers, Creative Producers, and Active Participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . More Disruption of Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Narratives in the 21st Century: Narratives in Search of Contexts Kids Are Learning . . . Just Not in Ways We Want Them To. . . Celebration of Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Flipped Classroom Model: A Full Picture . . . . . . . . . . Nurturing a Learner’s Sense of Wonder . . . . . . . . . . . . . It really is about the technology and . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . An Educator’s Letter of Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Montessori Methods – Worth a (Re) Look . . . . . . . . . . . . Reading: A Natural Human Phenomenon Given the Right Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Where is reflection in the learning process? . . . . . . . . . . . Beginning the School Year: It’s About Connections Not Content Team and Community Building Using Mobile Devices . . . . . Learning Communities: The Future (the Now?) of Education . . Bringing Digital Propensities Into the Learning Environment . . Educator’s Guide – Am I Doing It “Right?” . . . . . . . . . . . A Declaration for an Education of Interdependence . . . . . . . Traditional Education is the Ultimate Filter Bubble . . . . . . . Understanding the Language of the Internet Age of Education . Facilitating Learner Voice and Presence in the Classroom Using Mobile Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Facilitating Learner Voice and Presence in the Classroom Using Experiential Activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . An Instructional Activity: Student-Produced Viral Videos . . . . Using Mobile Devices and Technology to Enhance Emotional Intelligence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . An Experiential, Mobile-Device Driven Communications Exercise Student Voice in Educational Reform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Texting Communications Exercise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

111 115 118 122 124 128 130 134 138 143 144 160 168 171 175 178 181 185 193 213 218 225 227 230 232 234 240 246 252 258 263 267

Studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Own Mobile Devices and Celly Provide Peer Feedback Flipped Classroom Full Picture: An Example Lesson . . . . . . Every Educator Has a Story . . . Just Tell It. . . . . . . . . . . . Win As Much As You Can Mobile Edition . . . . . . . . . . . . A Technology-Enhanced Lesson on Conflict . . . . . . . . . . . Tinkering and Technological Imagination in Educational Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Evaluating the Value of Apps for Educational Use . . . . . . . . A End-of-Course Student Survey: The Use of Mobile Devices for Class Activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Teach Every Class As If It Were the Last . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2011 in review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

271 275 285 287 293 299 305 308 312 314

iii

Hello world! Monday, December 21, 2009

Hi, All, I am using Wordpress as a new blogging platform. My goal for 2010 is to Blog more often. I named the Blog User-Generated Education because I believe all of the new technologies are making it ripe for a learner-centric, learner-driven, constructivist education. I am looking forward to exploring this via this Blog.

Overt and Covert Lessons from Avatar: Skills, Knowledge, and Attitudes Relevant for Today’s Learners Monday, January 4, 2010

I joined the masses this holiday season in viewing the movie, Avatar 3D, and I, as did so many others, loved this movie (although I could have done without the &frac12; hour end-of-movie clichéd good-prevails-over-evil battle scene). As I tend to view life through the lens of an educator, I gleamed messages and metaphors for today’s learners. What follows are the overt inyour-face and subtle not-in-your-face messages intended by director James Cameron as well as those I received through my own subjective lens. Everything is Connected Several years ago I became interested in brain science. What fascinated me most about this science was how learning, on a biological level, can be defined as the connections between neurons. These cellular connections matched my ideas that learning occurs through human interactions – through social connections. In essence, learning is all about the connections. In Avatar, Cameron takes this idea of neural connections to another level when describing the vast bio-botanical neural network that all Pandoran organisms are connected to. Obviously, Cameron’s plotline is that survival of each individual, each species, the world is dependent on each individual’s actions. Classroom Applications: Concern and stewardship of community – classroom, school, local, global – can and should be a prevalent and overt purpose of education. There are a lot of how-to’s I could include here . . . cooperative learning structures, green (teaching paperless) classrooms, networked learning . . . One effect of information technology is a stronger sense of the social aspects of learning and the ready connections now available to groups of people, groups in many cases that have formed because of their access to the Web and the

Internet. http://www.campustechnology.com/Articles ←/2009/10/21/But−I−Do−Not−Want−to−Teach−My− ←Students−How−to−Use−Technology.aspx . . . . but the bottom line is to infuse, model, and practice the values of initiative, responsibility, interdependence, and global stewardship within the learning environment. All Energy is Borrowed and Some Day You Have to Give It Back This was my favorite quote from the movie. How, in my mind, this relates to learning in our connected world is that we need to get away from ownership of knowledge and intellectual property, the prevalent paradigm of the 20th century. Scholarship, in its purest sense, means that once knowledge is developed and articulated, it is freely shared with others. Scholarship is creative intellectual work that is validated by peers and communicated broadly. http://www.adec.edu/ ←clemson/papers/weiser−2.html. Today’s youth have taken naturally to this idea – sharing and remixing ideas and media, basically ignoring the archaic laws associated with copyright (for more on this topic see Lessig’s “Against Perpetual Copyright” http ←://wiki.lessig.org/Against_perpetual_copyright). Classroom Applications: The culture of the educational system needs to be changed from competition to collaboration, from hoarding and owning knowledge to openly sharing it and inviting its use, reuse, revision, and re-mixing. Educators should establish and encourage learners to publish in public areas such as Media Hosting Sites, Wikis, Nings, and Google Apps. Good Science is Good Observation This is a direct quote from the movie. In terms of practice, the scientists in the film reflected about what they learned via video logs. Brain science has suggested the power of reflection to enhance and understand new learnings.

The optimal learning environment provides sufficient time for both action and reflection.http:// ←faculty.lagcc.cuny.edu/CTL/dfl/dfl0809/summer/pdf/ ←TAP_ReflectionArticle_pp1−4.pdf Classroom Applications: Reflection of learning is one of those instructional activities that many educators agree about its importance. But due to “not enough time” syndrome common in many educational settings, it is often overlooked. When it is done, it often occurs in a written format as a homework or end-of-day activity such as with journals or exit cards. Given emerging technologies and media, reflection of learning can be integrated within content-related activities through a video log similar to the one used in Avatar using Flipcams or Camcorders, through Blogging, or through a Flickr-type photo imagery project. The World is Understood Using All the Senses Although technology has infiltrated almost all areas of our lives – work, recreation, consumerism, telecommunications (and ironically with schools being the least technology-”enhanced”), understanding of the world often occurs through the whole-person using all of the senses. For the past few years, I taught gifted kids with opportunity to develop my own curriculum. I used a lot of hands-on and technology integration. I found that the kids almost always selected the hands-on experiences over the technology (even the technology games) when given a choice. They intuitively and instinctively understood the value of the use of all the senses. Classroom Applications: Technology-enhanced experiential learning addresses both human’s need to fully engage in the world using all the senses and use technology to further understand it. Examples of such learning include GPS/GIS games/learning, using digital media to make scientific explorations, and learning with Wii, Augmented or other haptic technologies. Learn Fast or Die Although this direct quote from the movie is a bit extreme for a discussion about educational applications, it’s relevancy comes in the need for rapid learning, flexibility, and learning in today’s climate.

To believe that somehow teaching and learning can occur now in a bubble as if the information technology revolution has not occurred is to live in a delusional world. It is not that we all have to be pioneers or early adopters, but we educators have to be at least curious and willing to better understand how the entire knowledge culture in our world has been altered and about how all assumptions about knowledge have been disrupted. Education in the connected world has experienced an analogy to punctuated equilibrium [ . . . ] which offered an alternative to the common assumption that evolution is a gradual and slow process. Instead, a chance mutation suddenly changes the balance and a new species explodes onto the landscape. http://www.campustechnology.com/ ←Articles/2009/10/21/But−I−Do−Not−Want−to−Teach ←−My−Students−How−to−Use−Technology.aspx? Page=2 Classroom Applications: First, foremost, and now more than ever, the teacher needs to be a learner. A hand on the pulse of emerging technologies, educational networking initiatives, and 21st century learning competencies is needed by every educator on a constant and continuous basis. To not do so is a disservice to the learners (and I personally believe it borders on educator misconduct but that is another Blog). It means that the teacher-as-alearner brings this attitude into his or her classroom environment modeling, ”Hey, the world is changing and evolving at a rapid pace. Let’s learn about it together.” Brain Science will Permit Greater Understanding of Human Learning The science-fiction of Avatar displayed an intimate look of the brain. Although this was science fiction imagery, these types of glimpses into the brain are rapidly developing. “New teaching techniques could be developed based upon what brain imaging research tells us about how the brain reacts to learning various types of things” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki ←/History_of_neuroimaging#Future_implications). Classroom Application: The brain-compatible classroom movement popular in the 1990s has seemed to lost momentum. I believe that this movement needs to be revitalized using what we are currently learning about the

brain. Brain Rules (http://brainrules.net/), for example, provides such a model. Students can also be taught about how their own brains work in order to develop the skills for self-directed learning, a theme of this Blog. In a recent issue of Educational Leadership, Judy Willis describes “How to Teach Students About the Brain” http://www. ←ascd.org/publications/educational_leadership/dec09/vol67/num04/ ←How_to_Teach_Students_About_the_Brain.aspx The World (eventually the universe?) is Flat: Global Connections Require Respect and Understanding of Other Cultures James Cameron, in discussing the themes of his movie, states that he had a desire to “make you think a little bit about the way you interact with nature and your fellow man” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_%282009 ←_film%29). Classroom Applications: Respect and sensitivity towards other cultures comes through an awareness and understanding of those cultures. The educational networking opportunities afforded by technology are far-reaching, easy, and affordable (free!). I believe that global-collaboration projects should be required by every student at every grade level. Digital Storytelling is the Storytelling Tradition of Our Times Storytelling is as old as human history and has an evolutionary progression that matches the medium and media available during that historical time period. This progression possibly started with drawings on cave walls. Then prior to a culture’s adoption of written language, oral storytelling was used to tell a story. Later, with the invention of photography and film, stories were told using this medium. Now, as Cameron has demonstrated with the huge financial success of Avatar, folks are now being drawn into 3D storytelling. Classroom Applications: The classroom application for this area is obvious. Learners can demonstrate what they know through the use of digital storytelling. The use of digital cameras, graphics software and online tools (see “How To Animation Series on ISTE Connects” http://www.isteconnects.org/2009/12/29/it%E2%80%99s− ←xtranormal−to−blabberize−goanimate−part−1/ for example), and 3D

virtual worlds for Machinima ( see http://adrianbruce.com/teacher− ←toolbox/machinima−in−the−classroom/) not only have learners using tools and media they enjoy but also provide them with some skills that they may, more than likely, be using in the workplace when they get older. The World Is Depicted in 3D In Avatar, not only was the film, itself in 3d, the maps used by the film’s characters were 3D renderings of the environment. The number and rate of 3d tool development during the past few years has been outstanding – more than even the best futurist or science fiction writer could have imagined a decade ago. Classroom Applications: 3D tools such as Google Earth, Virtual Worlds, and Augmented Reality technologies not only have the potential for strong education value but are teaching learners about the tools they are and will be using in their future work and recreational experiences. Vision and Perseverance is Often Necessary to Achieve Your Dreams Although this was not a theme in the movie, James Cameron’s vision for and development of Avatar occurred over a decade . Avatar had been in development since 1994 by Cameron, who wrote an 80-page scriptment for the film. Filming was supposed to take place after the completion of Titanic, and the film would have been released in 1999, but according to Cameron, ”technology needed to catch up” with his vision of the film http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_%282009_film%29. Classroom Uses: At a very young age, most people develop a strong specific interest or passion. A spark is something that gives your life meaning and purpose. It’s an interest, a passion, or a gift. What do you bring to the world that is good, beautiful, and useful?” (http://www ←.ignitesparks.org/) Savvy internet users are pursuing their own passions through user groups, Facebook, social media, and online social networks. Educators, in this era of learning, should provide the tools and means for learners to pursue their

passions. I believe the future of education lies in user-generated learning experiences where learners pursue their passions while demonstrating core competencies. Opportunities need to be provided for learners need to develop the skills for autonomous, independent, and self-initiated learning. The technologies are ripe to permit this type of genuine differentiation. Interestingly, what began as a simple reflection of the connections I made between Avatar 3D and 21st century teaching/learning developed into a deeper exploration of those themes or threads that I believe are integral in living, working, and playing in todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s world. Each one of these individual themes could be a major article in itself.

Connection + Pedagogy + Technology + Content: #ISTE10 Reflections Thursday, July 1, 2010

I tend not to go to the ”same” conferences each year as I find a lot of repetition from previous years. ISTE is the exception. ISTE 2010 was the fourth consecutive ISTE conference I attended. I love attending this conference to learn more about technology and technology integration. Many educators practice, preach, recommend the pedagogy prior the technology. I do not separate the pedagogy from the technology. I see them as fluid, interweaving, and interconnected leading to synergetic results. I ask, ”How can the technology enhance a solid pedagogy and the educational process? How does/can technology influence and drive learning?” As I stated, this was my fourth ISTE conference. The first two (Atlanta and San Antonio) were great in terms of learning but lonely in terms of human interaction. When told to network, the muscles in my body tighten in anxiety. If it occurs within a session, I get up and leave or dive head first into my computer. Even though I love 1:1 interactions, I am very uncomfortable initiating those interactions with folks I don’t know. But, interestingly, a shift occurred during the NECC09 in Washington, DC. I had been on Twitter and in Second Life for most of the year prior to this conference. Virtual connections were made and relationships were built during that year. I got to meet them in Real Life at this conference. It was like meeting old friends. We would recognize one another via our Twitter and Second Life names and give hugs like old friends who have not seen each other in a long time. I did not have a “lonely” conference in ‘09, but I still focused on gaining technology insights. So I went to ISTE10 with a planner overfilled with what I can learn more about how to “do” this cycle of technology to enhance learning, learning being driven with technology. I attended my selected sessions and started hearing about uses of tools that are commonplace to me now – VoiceThread, Glogster, Google Apps, and found myself online reading Twitter instead of listening to the sessions. Upon later reflection, I realized that with the advent and proliferation of social media – twitter, live webinars, startpages with RSS feeds of blogger sites – I learn about these technology and tools continually . . . not needing a conference to do so.

What I ended up really loving about #ISTE10 was meeting and reconnecting with so many of my social networked friends (including K9, Knowclue, Lucie deLaBruere, Erin Barrett, Andrea Hernandez, Maureen Tumanas, Paula Naugle, Kim Caise, Peggy George, Shannon Miller – to name a few) and created some indelible and deep memories with others: • I have been using Helen Barrett’s work on ePortfolios (http:// ←electronicportfolios.com/) for over a decade. She is a lifelong learner and a model of how instructional strategies (in this case ePortfolios) can continually be altered and adjusted to meet changing/emerging technologies. She also showed me some cool iPhone apps and how very fun she is. • Anne Collier’s work on internet safety (http://www. ←netfamilynews.org/bio.html) is among the best. I had some amazingly intelligent conversations with her about the internet. She reinforced for me that it is important to do your research. She uses intelligent, logical, research-supported arguments to demonstrate that the internet can be a safe place for our students. • I have been learning about Bernajean Porter’s work on digital storytelling via Second Life for some time (http://www.bjpconsulting ←.com/) . She always seems to plant a ”nugget of insight” into my thoughts that wasn’t there before. During some one on one time with her, I discovered her passion for Vision Stories (http://www ←.ustream.tv/recorded/7979510). This fits with my penchant for narrative therapy. Passion-to-passion connection is extremely powerful. I have no doubt we will make it grow into something new and exciting for the both of us as well as with those we teach. • The beginning of the conference for me was Edubloggercon (http ←://www.edubloggercon.com/EduBloggerCon+2010). I came late after a flight and was a bit disoriented. After a first session in this state, I settled into a session facilitated by Angela Maiers (http://www ←.angelamaiers.com/) and Jeff Utecht. My brain kicked into gear as the discussion turned to how to teach kids about digital citizenship. I went up to Angela after the session to introduce myself and thank her. She was one of those folks I got to know virtually during the past year. Upon introducing myself, she gave me one of those old

friend hugs . . . a genuine, strong, connected hug. For an introvert like me, it connected me to the social aspect of the conference. • One of my “deepest” discussions occurred during my last hour at the conference as I met Kevin Honeycutt (http://ktls.net/?q=kevinh ←). He articulates so passionately, beautifully a world that respects and honors the learning of all kids. It has almost perfect congruence with my beliefs and he says it so much more eloquently than me. One of my most interesting, thought-provoking experiences (on many levels), though, occurred on Tuesday afternoon. I volunteered to give a demo about how to use Twiiter in the Social Media playground at 3:30. As I was leaving my previous session, I noticed a long line waiting to get into the next session. I asked someone who was speaking and they said Ian Jukes. I had heard the name and visited his website – http://www. ←committedsardine.com/. (Personal biases – his website appeared to me to be a sales site so I didn’t explore further). No one showed up for the Twitter demo session, but I noticed a crowd gathering and was told that it was for a live session to #Edchat (http://edupln.ning.com/forum/topics/edchat ←−at−iste10) at 4:30. I decided to hang out and wait for the #Edchat. In the Playground, Ian Jukes’ talk was being streamed. Since, as I stated, networking is not within my DNA, I decided to watch the talk while more folks arrived for the #edchat and began talking to one another. The more I listened the more I became intrigued and excited about what he was saying. I wanted to state loudly to the gathering crowd, “You need to listen to what this guy has to say” . . . and at the end of the talk, I wanted to get up and clap . . . but did not do so knowing it would embarrass me. His talk was the highlight of ISTE10 for me in terms of “content”. Some of the “power nuggets” he talked about included: • No one wants or needs obsolete excellence in education. • We’re training kids for routine cognitive work which is increasingly disappearing. • 40% to 55% of students are dropping out of school. If 40%-55% of business widgets didn’t work, it would be out of business. • Increasingly the education system is trying to fit standardized tests into the non-standardized brains of students.

• Richard Florida’s The Creative Classhttp://www.creativeclass. ←com/ When I get excited about “things”, I want others to experience those “things”. I understand the need to social connection and interaction, but found myself disappointed that those waiting for the #edchat to start did not hear his message. BUT because of the magic of technology, his talk was recorded and can be watched here – http://www.istevision.org/ ←viewsession.php?id=120 I encourage all to do so. So what I learned/re-learned at ISTE 2010 . . . Pedagogy + Technology + Content + Connection (noting that these are integrated, synergetic . . . flowing in and around one another) = Rich, Engaging, Authentic Learning (for me, at least).

Student Voices: School Failure, Reform, and Hope Monday, July 26, 2010

I believe student voice is important. How can it not be? Students are the consumers, customers, participants, and targets of our educational system. Today, there was a buzz via twitter about Valedictorian Speaks Out Against Schooling in Graduation Speech. This sparked me to post a Blog of some of the student voices that have resonated deeply for me. I included those segments of their messages that I believe should be heard by educators. • Erica Goldson’s Valedictorian speech about how school failed her and her peers. • Tim Ludwig’s TedxEdOntario TED Talk about how schools could benefit from ”unmotivated” and underachieving students like him. • Dan Brown’s letter to teachers after he quit college. • Adora Svitak’s TED Talk: What Adults can learn from kids. Erica Goldson’s Valedictorian’s Speech I am graduating. I should look at this as a positive experience, especially being at the top of my class. However, in retrospect, I cannot say that I am any more intelligent than my peers. I can attest that I am only the best at doing what I am told and working the system. While others sat in class and doodled to later become great artists, I sat in class to take notes and become a great test-taker. While others would come to class without their homework done because they were reading about an interest of theirs, I never missed an assignment. While others were creating music and writing lyrics, I decided to do extra credit, even though I never needed. I have no clue about what I want to do with my life; I have no interests because I saw every subject of study as work, and I

excelled at every subject just for the purpose of excelling, not learning. And quite frankly, now Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m scared. We are not enlivened by an educational system that clandestinely sets us up for jobs that could be automated, for work that need not be done, for enslavement without fervency for meaningful achievement. We have no choices in life when money is our motivational force. Our motivational force ought to be passion, but this is lost from the moment we step into a system that trains us, rather than inspires us. For those of you out there that must continue to sit in desks and yield to the authoritarian ideologies of instructors, do not be disheartened. You still have the opportunity to stand up, ask questions, be critical, and create your own perspective. Demand a setting that will provide you with intellectual capabilities that allow you to expand your mind instead of directing it. Demand that you be interested in class. Demand that the excuse, â&#x20AC;?You have to learn this for the testâ&#x20AC;? is not good enough for you. Education is an excellent tool, if used properly, but focus more on learning rather than getting good grades. For those of you that work within the system that I am condemning, I do not mean to insult; I intend to motivate. You have the power to change the incompetencies of this system. I know that you did not become a teacher or administrator to see your students bored. You cannot accept the authority of the governing bodies that tell you what to teach, how to teach it, and that you will be punished if you do not comply. Our potential is at stake. For those of you that are now leaving this establishment, I say, do not forget what went on in these classrooms. Do not abandon those that come after you. We are the new future and we are not going to let tradition stand. We will break down the walls of corruption to let a garden of knowledge grow throughout America. Once educated properly, we will have the power to do anything, and best of all, we will only use that power for good, for we will be cultivated and wise. We will not accept

anything at face value. We will ask questions, and we will demand truth.

Tim Ludwig at TEDxOntarioEd The steps that teachers or administrators should take to help get more kids motivated to come to school for learning is to get more relevant learning. You canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be teaching students something that theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll never use. Please donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t forget students like me because we can do things that others might not be able to do. We are motivated just not in the way in the way school tries to teach us to be motivated. We can benefit the school system and make positive change because students like me are the ones that school is not working for. We know how to change it and know how to improve so we can have a good learning environment.

Dan Brown’s Open Letter to Teachers We are in the midst of a very real revolution and if institutional education refuses to adapt to the landscape of the informational age, it will die and it should die. With the advent of Internet, the monetary value of information is fast approaching zero. This is not a bad thing. It is a good thing. It is the best thing to have ever happened to human beings. Because of the Internet, information is now free. By free I don’t just mean doesn’t cost money, I also mean it has been liberated. I was a student at the University of Nebraska and most of my classes went something like this. On my first day I would show up and there would be a lecture hall of 40 to 200 kids and one professor. Professors rarely made an effort to learn anyone’s names and almost never encouraged any sort of interaction amongst the students. I would be required to spend anywhere in the neighborhood of a hundred dollars on textbooks per class that I would never open – not because I didn’t care – but because better, easy-to-find information was online. Classes would drag on for an hour and all they would consist of is the professor standing in the front with a powerpoint telling us facts. We’d frantically scribble down those

facts. Test time would come around and we would memorize our scribbling. We’d take the test and we would receive a grade based on how many facts we memorized. But society no longer cares how many facts we can memorize because in the information age facts are free. Any educational institution based solely on facts not preparing students for the real world. In the noble quest to provide education to the masses, we have lost site on what education really is. Education isn’t about teaching facts. It’s about stoking creativity and new ideas. It’s not about teaching students to conform to the world as it is. It’s about empowering students to change the world for the better. Two weeks ago I dropped out of school not because I am a deadbeat, not because I was failing, not because I am not just as motivated as anyone else to make a difference in this world. I dropped out of school because my schooling was interfering with my education. To the educators of the world, I am here to say, “You don’t need to change to change anything. You just simply need to understand that the world is changing and if you don’t change, the world will decide it does not need you anymore.”

Adora Svitak’s TED Talk: What Adults can learn from kids In order to make anything a reality, you have to dream about it first. In many ways our audacity to imagine helps push the boundaries of possibility. Now our wisdom doesn’t have to be insider’s knowledge. Kids already do a lot of learning from adults, and we have a lot to share. I think that adults should start learning from kids. It shouldn’t just be a teacher at the head of the classroom telling students “do this, do that.” The students should teach their teachers. Learning between grown ups and kids should be reciprocal. Now, adults seem to have a prevalently restrictive attitude towards kids from every “don’t do that, don’t do this” in the school handbook, to restrictions on school internet use.. And, although adults may not be quite at the level of totalitarian regimes, kids have no, or very little say in making the rules when really the attitude should be reciprocal, meaning that the adult population should learn and take into account the wishes of the younger population. Now, what’s even worse than restriction is that adults often underestimate kids’ abilities. We love challenges, but when expectations are low, trust me, we will sink to them. Kids grow up and become adults just like you. Or just like you, really? The goal is not to turn kids into your kind of adult, but rather better adults than you have been, which may be a little challenging considering your guys credentials, but the way progress happens is because new generations and new eras grow and develop and become better than the previous ones. It’s the reason we’re not in the Dark Ages anymore. No matter your position of place in life, it is imperative to create opportunities for children so that we can grow up to blow you away. Adults, you need to listen and learn from kids and trust us and expect more from us. You must lend and ear today, because we are the leaders of tomorrow. We are going to be the next generation, the ones who will bring this world forward. Now,

the world needs opportunities for new leaders and new ideas. Kids need opportunities to lead and succeed. Are you ready to make the match? The world’s problems shouldn’t be the human family’s heirloom.

Translation to Practice What these students (and others) reinforced for me is that if I am to be an effective and ethical (yes, I think the ethics on how we interact with others – especially our students – comes into play) educator, I need to practice the following: 1. Take the words ”teach” and ”teacher” out of the educational vernacular as it implies a power-over position. 2. Give students a voice and to listen, really listen, to what they have to say. 3. Encourage student voice in all its forms – speech, writing, drawings, and media creation. 4. View students as producers of learning in addition to being consumers of learning. 5. Give students the power, permission, and opportunity to create their own learning experiences.

6. Structure school more like camp and their natural play time. 7. Encourage experimentation and risk-taking. 8. Open up all forms of social and educational networking. 9. Become a co-learner with the students. 10. Practice, model, and love lifelong learning. 11. To be continued . . . . always.

Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Beginning during my Doctoral studies and continuing throughout my professional career as an educator, I discovered and keep re-discovering how congruent the concepts related to Progressive Education, Naturalistic Inquiry, Participatory Research, and Reflective Practiceare with my beliefs about good education, learning, assessment, and research. Conversely, the practices related to Quantitative Testing and Research and Essentialism never worked in my scheme of what good education entails. What I knew, intuitively, to be de-motivating and toxic for me as a high school and undergraduate student, I became able to articulate with words. I absolutely understand the need and desire for accountability and evidence of efficacy. Concrete evidence, scalablity, and the ability to duplicate best practices actually are the indicators for a profession being viewed as a profession. The problem lies in that the education system’s efforts in demonstrating efficacy occur through quantitative methodologies. There are several problems with this approach: • Human behavior and learning is complex – assigning numbers to learning is reductionist, implying that learning is a simplistic process that it can be measured in the same manner that blood pressure can be measured. • Quantifying learning does not provide the in-depth descriptions of best practices for other educators and students. Best practices – the success stories of education cannot be duplicated based on viewing test scores. • Students become commodities, where their value is measured by the numbers assigned based on test scores. At the Reform Symposium (an online conference), I had the privilege of listening to Monika Hardy and her students/cohorts (for the archive, seehttp://reformsymposium.com/blog/2010/07/12/monika−hardy/) . Of special interest to me was the part presented by James Folksmead on Youth

Participatory Action Research #YPAR. His Prezi can be viewed at http ←://prezi.com/kx2njm16ouqy/par/ It became an earth moving AHA for me – the missing piece of my perspective on “good education”. Students should be part of the research process. Note that the emphasis here is on part of the research process not the subjects of the research. I got motivated to do a search on YPAR. What follows are excerpts from a referred research conference paper, Students: From Informants to CoResearchers. It could be argued that the dominant discourses of schooling, in relation to curriculum, assessment and pedagogy are grounded in psychological, rather than sociological, perspectives. Power differentials between teachers and their students are less often discussed from such a perspective. Students are typically positioned as immature, not yet fully capable children This power differential between teachers and their students, as manifested in schools and classrooms, is reflected in the educational research processes themselves. Students are at worst the objects and at best the subjects of the research. They are not seen as participants in the processes of enquiry. Indeed, Morrow and Richards (1996) note that within existing ethical guidelines on human research in medicine, children are considered alongside adults with impairments. In other words, they are not seen to have status, but to be vulnerable. They are characterised as relatively incompetent and at risk of exploitation. Studies centered around the experiences of young people in schools typically position the students as the objects of the research. They are observed, surveyed, measured, interviewed and commented upon in order to inform a research agenda to which they have made little contribution. They are rarely recognized as active agents, who can not only be reliable informants, but also interpreters of their own lives. The positioning of young people in educational research is analogous to that of women within traditional patriarchal research paradigms. They are at worst, silenced; at best patronized.

The authors describe their ideas for Principles for Substantive Participative Engagement in Research by Students: 1. The purposes of the research should be in the best interests of the students; 2. The purposes of the research should be transparent and consented to by all key stakeholders, including students; 3. The research should be respectful of the students’ definitions of the phenomena being examined and incorporate methodologies which allow for varying levels of literacy and oracy; 4. Students should be active in providing input and advice regarding the initiation and design of the research; 5. Students either directly, or by representation, should be partners in the research’s enactment and interpretation; 6. Students should have a voice in determining the implications of the research for appropriate educational policies and practices; 7. Students should be enabled, by provision of appropriate resources (such as time, space, technologies and materials) to be fully participative in the research. The benefits as I see . . . • Students assess what they learned, how they learned it . . . and reflect on their learning as part of their participation. They learn the skills for reflective practice. They learn to be critical consumers and producers of their own learning. • The boundaries between assessment and research become blurred . . . as it should be. Assessment becomes naturalistic and descriptive rather than reductionistic and contrived. • Best practices are described, developed, and disseminated through the collaborative efforts of educators and students, the populations who have the vested interest in these practices. This increases the validity of these practices in the eyes of these stakeholders and the

chance/opportunity for implementing these best practices. The quality of education improves.

PBL is Passion-Based Learning: Show Me Your Passion Tuesday, August 10, 2010

During the weekend of July 30-August 1, I attended the Reform Symposium, an online conference for educators, administrators, parents and students.. One of the sessions was by Angela Maiers, What the Heck is a 21st Century Skill Anyway? in which she spoke of her Dream Team. My big ”aha” from her session was providing students with the opportunity to live like a scientist, an artist, a mathematician … Let them find their hero(s) – their choice, not yours. Once they pick their hero(s), have them dive into what made them tick – and what made them successful. Fast forward one week later. I watched a segment on 60 minutes about Jose Andres, a molecular gastronomy specialist. My interest in this man was instantaneous due to his extreme passion for culinary arts. When asked to describe him, a food critic stated, “Expect wonders.” The why’s and what’s of high school didn’t interest him so he dropped out to enroll in cooking school. I repeat, he quit high school to pursue his passion. What is the purpose of education especially in this century? Shouldn’t at least one major purpose be to nourish students’ passions? Passion-Based Learning appears in the Blog-o-sphere every so often, most notably through the words of John Seely Brown. During his New Media Consortium keynote this past summer, he stated: What’s the mindset? A passionate pursuit of extreme performance with a deep questing disposition and a commitment to indwelling. Perhaps we should teach not skills, but dispositions. Immersion in, not about; marinating in the phenomena. Without digital media, this quest and this indwelling and this immersion would not be possible.

As I see it, if the characteristics of Passion Based Learning could be identified, they would include: • Self and Intrinsically Motivated, Learner-Driven • Individualistic • Desire for Deep Understanding of the Content-Topic • Driven by Innovation and Creativity • Vision of What Can Be • Desire to Make the World Better Via the Passion If a student is passionate about a topic, doesn’t it make sense to have that student study, really study, professionals who who are also passionate? Mastering a field of knowledge involves not only “learning about” the subject matter but also “learning to be” a full participant in the field. This involves acquiring the practices and the norms of established practitioners in that field. It is passion-based learning, motivated by the student either wanting to become a member of a particular community of practice or just wanting to learn about, make, or perform something (John Seely Brown)

A student, who is passionate about culinary arts, has a possibility of learning about culinary arts through Jose Andres. Not only could this student learn about the craft of culinary arts, but also study and “practice” some of the dispositions. Andres owns several restaurants, teaches a course in culinary physics, works with Harvard scientists to understand the science of food, and works at a food kitchen. Some segments from an Interview with Jose Andres exemplify these dispositions: Don’t be afraid to fail. I came to New York to open a Catalan restaurant that later closed. Failure, right? But not really, because that brought me [to the United States] and out of that came everything else … A lot of young people are afraid to make mistakes, and I think that keeps them from succeeding. Churchill said success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. So screw up, but don’t lose heart. Learn from it and keep moving. Being on the board of directors of D. C. Central Kitchen, a nonprofit that feeds the hungry and offers culinary arts training to the unemployed. Meeting Robert Egger, founder of this amazing organization that fights hunger and creates opportunity and trying to help him achieve his dream … to make sure no one is hungry and that we give opportunities to those people who want to contribute. That has been my sidekick job for 14 or 15 years and is probably the one that has given me the most joy. As I watched the 60 Minutes segment and read through interviews I found online, I realized that it becomes much more than learning about the culinary arts. It becomes a way of being in the world, the dispositions that contributes to success as a culinary artist. Due to the Internet, the student can read and view media about Jose Andres, possibly connect directly with Jose Andres, and find similar minded students-professionals. Follow-up could include the study of molecular gastronomy, volunteering at a local soup kitchen, and writing/preparing his-her own recipes. This, in essence, would become a Personal or Individualized Learning Plan (PLP). The student would learn about – live the dispositions of the culinary artist.

Even though I think students should find their own passion mentors, I believe that in my role as a tour guide of learning possibilities (how I explain my role as an educator), I can help identify possibilities. I have begun a list . . . • Architecture – Cameron Sinclair • Animation - John Alan Lasseter • Online Gaming – Jane McGonigal • Creative Writing – JK Rowling • Data and Statistics – Hans Rowling This year, I have a half-time job as the technology instructor for a K-8 Charter school. I plan post a big sign in my classroom that says, “Show me your passion!”

Future of Online Education: Online Learning or Education of the Future? Wednesday, August 11, 2010

I read several posts this week about recommendations for the future of online learning. These are summarized below. First, though, I know we are currently differentiating between online-virtual and face-to-face, placebased education. We also have added blended education into this discussion about how and where education takes place. This is probably a moot point as the education of the future will be where, how, and when the learner chooses. Lines will be blurred with some education face-to-face, some virtual – depending on the learner’s interests, skills to be learned, and knowledge desired. These recommendations should be discussed as best practices for all types of education. Two articles, one from the Chronicle and one from Mashable, discussed the following: 1. Education needs to reflect the ability of the web to keep an ongoing and current pulse on global events and information. 2. Education needs to embrace the collaborative, social aspects that attracts users to social networking. Real Time, Current, and Authentic Knowledge What’s required are innovative approaches to course design that set aside old models of instruction where theory often trumps actuality. Online course providers must embrace the web’s potential to match students with the kinds of timely knowledge and skills that address current issues head-on, and enable them to thrive in the global marketplace. It’s not enough for a course to be accessible online, it must also be designed in a way that keys into the digital pulse of current events, trending topics and insider knowledge endemic to the web.. The web, as a real-time medium, is begging us to build innovative courses that can be used for the rapid delivery of education designed in a way that integrates current news,

information, insights and research about topics like the oil spill and thousands of other current issues. Networked Learning To attract and retain the typical college-age demographic, as well as the larger population of adult learners in search of relevant and engaging educational content, the next generation of online education must be characterized by courses that build in the social, real-time information capturing components that have made the web such a dynamic medium for sharing information and knowledge. We’ll see more collaborative endeavors in online-learning offerings. It will be more social than what it has been. New technologies are moving that way. The rise of social networking, Web 2.0, and the participatory web. At the center is the social interaction between individuals. Right now most courses that are based on content-management systems are not focused on interaction between participants. They’re focused on, let’s put together this weekly module, and then that’s where the experience happens. The student goes there to read about the weekly module. The future is where the center is the student, and the people comprising this online learning community. The student and the community are collaborating on the content. It’s no longer possible for universities to be offering distanceeducation courses that are isolationsist or individualistic when people’s experiences outside of the university are social and connected. Claims have been made that the MTV generation forced educators to have to be more like entertainers to keep students’ attention. I believe that such boredom existed throughout the institutionalization of education – that students of the MTV generation just realized the potential of media to engage, entertained AND educate them. An American lecturer believes he has found the secret of engaging the ”MTV generation” who have an attention span of ”minutes”. Stressing that his undergraduate experience was in

the United States, he said: ”The worst thing in the world for me was these one-way lectures. I sat through so many lectures that were just so boring.” But while he put up with it, he said today’s young students were less tolerant. ”The old guy who stands there and just lectures to the class – these days are gone. Their attention span is in the minutes now, ” he said. Mr Dever said that studies as far back as the 1970s had shown attention spans of only 15 to 20 minutes at a time. But today’s bricksand-mortar institutions now faced a threat from online courses that engaged students and avoided the problems of one-way lectures. The same is true, in my perspective, for the claims being made of online learning. Human beings have a natural propensity to stay informed, to work socially and collaboratively, and to help with global stewardship. The technologies are now providing the opportunity to do so. Users of the Internet are now the learners. These consumers of education will just insist, as did the MTV generation, that their educations of all kinds, face-to-face and online, contain the elements of real time and authentic information and connection.

Learning Spaces (School?) as Narrative Architecture Monday, August 16, 2010

As a former outdoor educator, I experienced how the physical leaning space contributes to the learning process in the best environment available – the natural one. See DesignShare, http://www.designshare.com/, for more information about importance of learning spaces. I also believe that a purpose of education and the educator is to provide learners with a framework and skills for directing their own learning (hence the name of this Blog – User-Generated Education). Part of the process becomes giving the opportunity for learners to develop and share their own unique voice – about how and what they want to learn and actually do learn. Narrative Architecture and the Learning Space Today, I heard the term Narrative Architecture for the first time. From Latin, narrativus means telling a story. In mid 16th century architecture from Latin, architectura means the art or practice of designing and constructing building. Started from both of definitions, narrative architecture means an art of designing and constructing building to tell a story. If novel, fiction, comic, and folktale tell the story by texts and picture. If painting and photograph tell the story by a great picture. If movie tells the story by moving picture and sounds. Architecture tells the stories without texts, but by geometrical form, space, and materials. Narrative could be translated into architectural form by envelope materials, route, event, rooms, and also smell, sound and light effects. The essential question becomes, How can the educator create the learning spaces – real life and/or virtual – to elicit the positive power of narrative architecture? This would be a space where learners feel as though they can tell their stories as the producers of their own learning. Narrative Architecture and Making Meaning

Meaning is not exclusively in the morphological properties of space themselves, nor in the cultural processes of its formation and interpretation, but in the dynamic network of spatial, social, intellectual and professional practices that embody and produce different kinds of social knowledge. Learners (real life or online) working in collaborative learning spaces will interpret and form the learning space to have personal, and ultimately collective, meaning. They do so in all learning spaces. Does the learning space create stories of boredom . . . fear . . . isolation? Or does it create stories of engaged and passionate learning experiences? Because I fully believe that since time spent in any learning space becomes a narrative architecture for the learners, educators should approach that space with intention, knowing that learners will draw from and create meaning in and about that space. Interestingly, Henry Jenkins used the concept of Narrative Architecture in his ideas regarding interactive gaming. The game space becomes a memory palace whose contents must be deciphered as the player tries to reconstruct the plot. Game spaces are designed to be rich with narrative potential, enabling the story-constructing activity of players. This statement can be translated to – have meaning for learning spaces: The learning space becomes a memory palace whose contents must be deciphered as the learner tries to reconstruct what he or she is attempting to learn. Learning spaces should be designed to be rich with narrative potential, enabling the storyconstructing and sense-making activity of learners. The how-to of creating this Narrative Architecture – whether in real life or online – becomes having the educators and learners co-create this space together – all being equal participants in the process. The space then becomes part of the learning process – increasing the opportunity and potential for deep and indelible understanding of the learning process and content.

Photo: My 5th -6th students (a few years ago) creating a blueprint of how the classroom should look. The classroom was NOT set up for them prior to the beginning of the school year.

The Scale of the Universe in the Classroom Saturday, August 21, 2010

Student-centric learning puts the educator in the role of an ethnographer. In the role of ethnographer, the educator studies the learners â&#x20AC;&#x201C; both individually and as a group. The educator can then offer a menu of learning activities based on what is discovered about the learners. Because of technology and the Internet, this menu can be composed some rich and exciting learning delicacies. The learning environment operates in a similar manner as a food cooperative (the ideals of a cooperative, http://en.wikipedia.org â&#x2020;?/wiki/Rochdale_Principles) The Size of the Universe A few years ago, I worked with gifted 3rd through 5th graders in a pull-out program. What I learned about them, as a group, was a general attraction to science and especially, space and space exploration. I also learned that as much as they loved technology (I had a small computer lab and integrated technology into the curriculum) that when given a choice they would choose hands-on activities over technology. So with that in mind, we began our second year together with an activity, The Thousand Yard Model or, The Earth as a Peppercorn. This is a classic exercise for visualizing just how BIG our Solar System really is. Both the relative size and spacing of the planets are demonstrated in this outdoor exercise, using a mere peppercorn to represent the size of the Earth.

The kids talked about this activity for the entire school year â&#x20AC;&#x201C; stating it was one of the best school activities in which they had ever participated. Now, with so many related activities online, I would have offered (and can offer future students with similar interests) the following activities as part of this learning menu: Online Interactive The Scale of the Universe

From the smallest possible unit of distance (known as the Planck Length) to the other reaches of space and the universe and everything in between, this amazing tool gives you a small idea of the incredible scale of the universe. Fascinating for any biologist, chemist, physicist, as tronomer, cosmologist, science student or simply anyone who marvels at our insignificance in the grand scale of things. Videos The Known Universe by AMNH

The Grand scale of the Universe Artistic Interpretations . . . and for the more artistic and mathematics oriented learners, here is a TED talk: part of the transcript: And here is a similar sculpture. That’s the Sun at that end. And then in a series of 55 balls, it reduces, proportionately, each ball and the spaces between them, reduce proportionately, until they get down to this little Earth. This one is about the Moon. And then the distance to the Earth, in proportion also. This is a little stone ball, floating. As you can see the little tether, that it’s also magnetically levitated. And then this is the first part of – this is 109 spheres, since the Sun is 109 times the diameter of the Earth. And so this is the size of the Sun. And then each of these little spheres is the size of the Earth in proportion to the Sun. It’s made up of 16 concentric shells.

21st Century Enlightenment . . . in Education Monday, August 23, 2010

Recently, I discovered RSA Animate series of videos. The importance of these types of resources is not only in their content but also in that the messages are conveyed in written, oral, and visual modalities. If I had only seen this type of content in written context or heard it in an oral presentation, I am certain I would have acknowledged it as interesting or possibly noteworthy, but missed the synergistic power of using the combined media. This brings me to the most recent RSA Animation, 21st Century Enlightenment, by Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA).

I became intrigued with this organization and when I looked them up via an Internet search, I found the following mission: For over 250 years the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) has been a cradle of enlightenment thinking and a force for social progress. Our approach is multi-disciplinary, politically independent and combines cutting edge research and policy development with practical action. We encourage public discourse and critical

debate by providing platforms for leading experts to share new ideas on contemporary issues. Our projects generate new models for tackling the social challenges of today. What a great mission . . . “to encourage public discourse and critical debate by providing platforms for leading experts to share new ideas on contemporary issues . . . to generate new models for tackling the social challenges of today.” I would love to see a similar mission for public education . . . “to encourage discourse and critical debate by a community of educators and learners to share ideas and generate solutions for social challenges of today.” Another significant point about RSA is that even though they are 250 years old, they recently made a proclamation, of sorts, that their organization should reflect 21st century enlightenment. Again, this could apply to public education systems – a need to re-conceptualize its mission to reflect this period of human growth, development, and evolution. Taylor believes we need to ask ourselves: ”What are these values (that shaped us and our systems)? Do they work for us? Do they meet the challenges we now face?” We need to live differently in the 21st century and to live differently involves thinking differently. To paraphrase Taylor, this form of questioning, of thinking often unsettles who we are in the world, and states that we need “to resist our tendencies to make right or true that which is familiar or make wrong or false that which is only strange.” 21st Century enlightenment, according to Taylor, encompasses the following: • The principle of autonomy holds that human beings should be free to use their reason to create self-authored, valuable lives. The 21stcentury enlightenment should involve a more self-aware, socially embedded model of autonomy. • Universalism is generally taken to mean that all human beings are born with inalienable rights and are equally deserving of dignity. The emotional foundation for universalism is empathy. • The basis for social arrangements should be what increases human happiness and welfare.

• Mature ethical discourse is the foundation for multiculturalism, mutual respect and conflict resolution. How does this translate into everyday practices in the education environment? 1. We are living in a world that easily, frequently shares information via the Internet through Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube. In order for our learners to be able to engage in mature ethical discourse, first and foremost, they must have access to this information. Blocking, or if we really want to label it truthfully – censorship, does not help learners become critical consumers of the information they have easy access to outside of the school environment. 2. As noted by Taylor, the real time global media has brought suffering of distant people into our living rooms. These are teachable moments in the educational setting – where learners can engage in discourse and intelligent debate, and develop and implement action plans for change, if so desired. 3. Educational systems do and should take responsibility for teaching skills – skills for and related to reading, writing, mathematics, science, humanities, and the arts. I think, though, we need to question the content that is taught. Schools are often driven by an Essentialist view – that there is specific content that students NEED to know. Why, for example, do New Mexico history textbooks only contain one chapter about Native Americans when there are centuries of historical events there? Why did I have to read Shakespeare (over and over) in high school when my preferences, at the time, were to read African American female writers? Why does a young person need to struggle learning geometry out of a textbook when s/he would prefer to be learning principles of 3D objects via drawing or building in a virtual world? Who and how chooses this content? Why do administrators and educators take at face value that this content is what young people are to know? 4. As the noted by Taylor in his RSA talk, this century has given us some tools for being different in the world than in the past centur. The systems that drive the education of youth need to both mirror and assist them for being in the world. What are these systems doing

to . . . prepare them to lead self-authored and valued lives? . . . to engage in mature ethical discourse? . . . to develop empathic capacity? 5. So, what I propose for education for 21st Century Enlightenment: • Assist learners in developing their own individual learning plans. • Open up the Internet and ask learners to engage in ongoing and critical analysis of its content. • Ask learners to produced content/projects based on their interests and share it in ways to get feedback – both positive and ways it could be improved. • Assist learners in developing survival skills – personal safety and protection (online and real life), interpersonal communications (real life and online), networking, and goal setting. • Provide venues for engaging in mature and intelligent discourse, e.g, Socratic seminars. • Help learners develop and engage in communities of practice. • Provide opportunities – both with time and suggestions – for learners to work in and for global collaborations and stewardship. • Rid the system of tests, data-driven decisions, assessments – assist students and educators in establishing feedback loops for improvement (peer, experts, educator-based) (see post – Youth Participatory Action Research). • Help learners develop their own unique voices in whatever medium and modalities they choose. Again, this means opening up the internet and giving them a tour of all the media creation opportunities and then . . . • Assist them in becoming the authors-producers of their media and in finding ways to publish these works for viewing, commentary, and feedback by an audience both within and outside of the immediate learning environment.

â&#x20AC;˘ Build in reflective practice for learners to self-evaluate, assess real-life relevancy, and articulate oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s desirable long-term, lifelong legacy.

Integrating Technology: Technology Tools to Develop a Collaborative, Participatory School Community Learning Space Tuesday, August 24, 2010

This year I have a new position as a part time technology instructor at a K-8 Charter School. The principal and a few of the teachers/staff, not realizing how advanced educational technology has become, got excited when I demonstrated how technology can be integrated throughout the entire school curriculum. The principal, being the change agent she is, understands that the integration needs to be a process . . . that the first year of my employment should be in assisting teachers to see the benefits of technology integration, and how it can enhance the lessons and projects that are already doing. As a learner-centric educator, I perceive my role as a tour guide of learning possibilities. As such, I offer a menu of options for learner engagement (in this case, the learners are the charter school professional staff). I provide instruction about how to use the tools and examples how they have been used in other educational settings. But then I get out of the way to see if and how the learner uses the technology. I may love a tool but learners may not – I then let it go. For this upcoming year, I set up the following FREE educational networking tools to offer the professional staff at the school: • Social Bookmarking: Diigo • Wiki: PBWorks • Social Sharing: Gro.ups • Blogging Platform: Kidblogs • Projects and Student Pages: Thinkquest • Classroom Projects and Communication: Edmodo • Online Book Shelf and Discussions: Shelfari

â&#x20AC;˘ Facebook (already established) â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Parent and Community Communication I will document if, how, and why these technologies are used throughout the year as a case study of technology integration in a school that has historically had a limited use of technology. A Rationale for Integrating Technology Into the Classroom

Social Bookmarking: Diigo Social bookmarking permits websites and online resources to be saved and compiled in a central location. By setting up a group for a school or an organization, users can save them so all members of that community group can view and access them.

Diigo in the Classroom tutorial: http://www.slideshare.net/granolagirls ←/diigo−in−the−classroom

ANSER Group Link: http://groups.diigo.com/group/anser−charter− ←school

Wiki: PBWorks A wiki allows a group of people to collaboratively develop a Web site. Anyone can add to or edit pages in a wiki – it is completely egalitarian. • ”A wiki invites all users to edit any page or to create new pages within the wiki Web site, using only a plain-vanilla Web browser without any extra add-ons.”

• ”Wiki promotes meaningful topic associations between different pages by making page link creation almost intuitively easy and by showing whether an intended target page exists or not.” • ”A wiki is not a carefully crafted site for casual visitors. Instead, it seeks to involve the visitor in an ongoing process of creation and collaboration that constantly changes the Web site landscape.” In the Classroom • Encourage student-centered learning. Even young students can build web pages, embed images & video, and post documents. What can you do with a Classroom Workspace? • Class Resources - Publish class notes, PowerPoint lectures, schedules and policies; show off examples of great student work. • Group Projects – Build collaborative pages, start discussions and encourage comments. • Parent Outreach – Keep parents involved. Post assignments, key dates and volunteer lists. All available at home, from work, or anywhere. • Student Portfolios – Give students their own page to post content, upload homework, and share their work. • Expand Horizons – Share and interact with other classrooms or groups, across town or around the world. Throughout the School • Host and share information between students, faculty and staff. Encourage staff development and shared resources across schools. (http://pbworks.com/content/edu−classroom−teachers) User Manual: http://usermanual.pbworks.com/Educational−Editions Resource: http://educators.pbworks.com/ Class Example: http://weewebwonders.pbworks.com/

ANSER link: http://ansercharter.pbworks.com/FrontPage Social Sharing: GRO. UPS GROU. PS is a do-it-yourself social networking platform that allows people to come together and form interactive communities around a shared interest or affiliation. The functionality of any online group is limited only by the members’ collective imagination and ambition. By giving any user the ability to create an easy-to-use, yet powerful, social network, GROU. PS is propelling online collaboration, communication and content sharing in a new socially-aware direction. For those familiar with NING, GRO. UPS is being used as the alternative as NING has become charging for its services. I foresee using the GRO. UPS as a central place to post the different classroom projects. It permits uploading of photos and videos, and the ability to make comments and discussions. Individual members can create a ”My Page” which has some similar properties as Facebook.

ANSER Gro.up Site: http://grou.ps/anser

Blogging Platform: KidBlogs Blogging is a means of self-expression that extends to nearly every social sphere — moms, entrepreneurs, soldiers, athletes – bloggers can be found in every walk of life, every niche, profession and people group. Everyone has something to learn or share in a blog community. It is that idea that makes blogging such an ideal method of learning for children. Surely Matt Hardy, an elementary school teacher, had this in mind when he created Kidblog.org, a blogging platform exclusively for elementary and middle school students and teachers. The platform creates a safe and simple environment for students to publish posts and participate in discussions within a secure classroom blogging community.

Since this is a K-8 school, Kidblogs was selected as the Blog Platform. This is a closed learning environment meaning only ANSER students who are registered by their teachers can use it. If the school was upper level, I would have recommended Edublogs. Kidblog Tutorial: blogtutorial

http://www.slideshare.net/cgmediaspecialist/ ←-

Special Note: I like Nicholas Provenzano’s idea of staring a Blogger’s Community-Café at his school – see http://www.thenerdyteacher.com ←-

/2010/08/creating−blogging−community.html and plan to offer this at my school.

ANSER Link: http://kidblog.org/ANSER/ Projects and Student Pages: Thinkquest ThinkQuest is a protected, online learning platform that enables teachers to integrate learning projects into their classroom curriculum and students to develop 21st century skills. It includes the following: a project environment where teachers and students engage in collaborative learning; a competition space where students participate in technology contests; the award-winning ThinkQuest Library. I think this is underutilized in education settings. It was a favorite technology tool of my gifted elementary student a few years ago. It permits students to set up their own “My Page”. It has many of the same attributes of Facebook – the ability to have a “My Page” where students can personalize their avatar, create polls, suggest links, upload pictures and create discussions. This site can only be accessed by registered schools, their teachers and students. I plan to create accounts for all of the 350 K-8 students as well as offer classroom teachers the opportunity to develop projects.

Example Student Page:

Example Project Page:

Classroom Projects and Communication: Edmodo Edmodo is a social learning network for teachers, students, schools and districts. Edmodo provides free classroom communication for teachers, students and administrators on a secure social network. Edmodo provides teachers and students with a secure and easy way to post classroom materials, share links and videos, and access homework, grades and school notices. Edmodo stores and shares all forms of digital content â&#x20AC;&#x201C; blogs, links, pictures, video, documents, presentations, and more.

This is a closed learning environment meaning only ANSER students who are registered by their teachers can use it. Edmodo Usersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Guide: http://www.edmodo.com/guide/

http://www.edmodo.com/home (Need Log-In Code to be go to ANSER Site). Online Book Shelves and Discussion: Shelfari Shelfari is a social cataloging website. Shelfari users build virtual bookshelves of the titles they own or have read, and can rate, review, tag, and discuss their books. You can also create groups that other members may join, create discussions, and talk about books.

I introduced this site last spring during my interview. One of the Junior High Language Arts teachers and a few of the students have been using this site throughout the past summer. General Website:http://www.shelfari.com/

Facebook A Facebook page is already an active part of the ANSER community. It is used a parent-family informational and PR tool.

http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Garden−City−ID/ ←ANSER−Public−Charter−School/190805753573?v= ←info&ref=ts&__a=24&ajaxpipe=1

Real Life Education ala William Kamkwamba Sunday, August 29, 2010

William Kamkwamba is becoming famous through his TED talk.

. . . and from his book The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

I had the opportunity to hear a live interview with William Kamkwamba. He conveyed many guidelines for obtaining a real life education. Interview â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Part 1

The Importance of Education

Education Provides More Choices William noted that in Malawi students have to pay for school. He was forced to drop out of school due to family financial problems. He went to the library so that he could continue his studies and in his words did so, so that ”I wouldn’t be behind the rest of the students.” This lead him to studying engineering books – realizing during his early teens that he had an interest in and a propensity for inventing . . . in this case, windmills. Now in his early twenties, he believes that education is not about getting a job but it does give one more choices. How this translates into the classroom is, first and foremost, by creating a culture of the specialness of education. Education in countries such as the US is taken for granted by most. Learning should be fun and engaging, and viewed as a special privilege. Hearing kids say that they hate school breaks my heart . . . and truthfully, I don’t blame them given how the system is structured today. One of my goals as an educator is to create a learning environment where kids shiver with excitement thinking about what they are going to learn that day, stay in the flow most of their learning time, whine when it is time to leave because they want to stay and learn more, and continue learning on their own time. In other words, the process of learning needs to be viewed as important as or more important than the product of learning. Second, William is living proof of Passion-Based Learning. See my post PBL is Passion-Based Learning: Show Me Your Passion for more about this. Interview – Part 2

Solving Our Own Problems When you are in trouble, you don’t wait for others to pull you out of trouble. You start things yourself, and then the other people come and help you. People who are facing the problems need to come up with ideas for solving the problems. Others don’t know exactly the way yourself know it. Waiting for government or some other organization won’t solve your problem. We need to be thinking of our own ways to solve our problems. In the learning environment, this translates into allowing and facilitating critical thinking and problem solving. Standards-based learning, backwards design, best practices lead to scripted programs and productbased learning not critical and heuristic problem solving. Tinkering (see Tinkering School comic) and learning from failure do not become an option in these learning environments. It also relates to our school systems in that problems should be addressed locally within those systems. Administrators and educators need to stop the blame game – waiting for the right curriculum, the right amount of money, the right superintendent to solve the problems within their schools. Educating Others About the Magic

When William’s neighbors in his village believed that the electricity that the windmill created was magic, he educated them in a way they could understand the science behind it. Due to social networking (e.g., blogs, Twitter, and Facebook), I know a lot of educators are doing it right – creating learning environments and projects that are the real magic for their learners. I wonder – almost daily – why aren’t the policy makers being educated about ”good” education? They believe, falsely, that the magic of learning can be structured with standards and measured by numbers. Learning Entails Flexibility I learned to be flexible in the things I wanted to do. I changed the design to fit in with materials I have. Learning and Innovation is often stated as a 21st century skill. Flexibility in learning means great learning is not dependent on big bucks initiatives – often used as an excuse for substandard education. William built a functional windmill out of materials from a junk yard. I built a full technology program from eight old computers and internet access (see Creative Web Tools For and By Kids, and Discovery Kids). I really am not comparing myself to William. I want to emphasize that when educators and their learners create a community driven by flexible innovation; rocket ships are built from the wood pile, books are written and illustrated in the sand, and global collaboration occurs on cell phones. Solving Problems in Our Own Communities William is beginning his college education at Dartmouth College this fall. He then plans on going back to Malawi when his studies are complete to help build his community. He also began a nonprofit to rebuild his primary school, Wimbe School. I find the walls and fences – literally and figuratively – between schools and their communities to be baffling. Collaborations between schools and their local nonprofits (e.g., shelters, food pantries, environmental centers) create amazing learning opportunities and set a climate, an expectation, an affiliation for local and global stewardship. Achieving Our Goals William ended his interview with the following:

In life we face so many challenges in order to achieve our goals. Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t let the challenges stop from you from doing what you want to be doing. Everything in life is possible. If you work hard and trust yourself, you will achieve so many things. Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t give up, no matter how tough it might look like. You will achieve something.

Social Media Revolution Should Be (and is) Creating a New Type of School Sunday, August 29, 2010

I love how the messages of our times are digital. Folks from the future who look back to study this time will view these digital messages as primary source documents that tell the stories of us. The following are some of my favorite videos of this past year. They tell the story of what needs to and should drive education â&#x20AC;&#x201C; in this era of social media and educational networking. These two videos tell the story of what is occurring in the real world businesses know this, journalists knows this, the kids on their own time know this . . .

New Brunswick Department of Education â&#x20AC;?gets itâ&#x20AC;?: This video was produced by the New Brunswick Department of Education to stimulate discussion among educators and other stakeholders in public education in the province of New Brunswick. The 21st Century presents unique challenges for education worldwide. In order to keep pace with global change we must focus on 21st Century Skills and public education must adapt to keep students engaged. Rigor and relevance are key,

This principal does not. But note thatInnovativeEduâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s editorial re-mix is part of this video:

Yet, it is being implemented within educational projects such as the Flat Classroom Projectand Rock Our World:

Hopefully, WHEN (yes â&#x20AC;&#x201C; I am hopeful) schools adopt social media as standard operating practice, the results will help lead to enlightenment in the 21st century.

And the Technology Integration Begins! Saturday, September 4, 2010

This was my first full week at the K-8 Charter School as the new technology instructor. Technology has been used minimally by the teachers at the school during the ten plus year history of the charter school. As stated in an earlier blog, Integrating Technology: Technology Tools to Develop a Collaborative, Participatory School Community Learning Space, the principal got excited about the potential of technology integration across the curriculum during and after my interview, wants it, but also knows it needs to be a process driven my the teachers. I explained to the teachers that I want to support classroom learning expeditionswhen the learners come to me for their computer class. I also told them that I am willing to show them technology-based tools they can use to enhance their classroom activities. I know many of the Web 2.0 tools and their potential for instructional applications (as a wear as a badge of honor for my addiction to social networking, online webinars and conferences, and hanging out in places like Second Life). Based on conversations with the school principal and my own experiences/intuition, I understand that that technology integration needs to made as an offering to the teachers. They need to decide if and how these tools can be incorporated and integrated into their own classrooms. So this first week was one of preparation as the students start after Labor Day (first weekend of September for the United States) . . . and to my pleasant surprise, several “incidents” of technology integration occurred. During this pre-school week, I assisted teachers with technology integration ... • The principal asked to me to use Wordle for a warm-up for a staff training session. The teachers were instructed to throw out terms that represent how they felt when learning something new. I created a Wordle from their responses. Several teachers told me later that they plan to use Wordle during the first week of school. • T., the Community-Based Curriculum Director, discussed with me the use of Movie Makerto showcase the students’ service projects. In

the past, the parents and kids took photos and then T. used Movie Maker to showcase them. I showed her Animoto. She practiced using photos from the pre-school family picnic that occurred this past week. The next day she excitedly approached me, stating that she now plans to offer students the choice of usingAnimoto as a means of reflecting on their service learning, that she can then mash-up the students’ Animoto videos for her end of semester service learning presentation.

• J., a Junior High teacher, worked with me to set up a PBWorkssite for the Junior High Africa Expedition. Students will work in small groups to study countries and post their findings on the their PBWorks page.

• I showedShelfari during my interview. J. and several of her junior high students set up shelves last spring and actively participated over the summer. I worked D., another Junior High teacher, to show her Shelfari as she and J. are planning to use it for their JH reading project.

â&#x20AC;˘ M, a middle childhood educator (3rd -4th ), and I set up a Weebly page for her classroom and created/inserted a PollDaddy survey to assess her studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; learning style preferences.

• I also showed M.VoiceThread as a Digital Portfolio. She is now considering using Voicethread for the student-lead parent conferences. • A., a Kindergarten teacher, asked me to help set up a classroom page for parent information.; and L., the special education coordinator, wants a parent site for homework so she could add IEP-based accommodations. I wanted to get other opinions about this so I went to my trusted network on Twitter. The recommendations for this included using Google Calendar for the homework with accommodations and Google Sites for the classroom pages. I asked via Twitter for some example classroom pages using Google Sites and here is a list of what I received: • https://sites.google.com/site/unquietlearning21/ • https://sites.google.com/a/lovettsch.org/ ←sterneenglish/ • http://sites.google.com/site/dandradeedusite/Home • https://sites.google.com/site/whworldhistory/ • https://sites.google.com/site/pdlincolnacademy/ ←google−tools/sites • https://sites.google.com/site/media21spring2010/ • https://sites.google.com/site/yhsdigitalcitizenship/ ←Home/core−values • http://sites.google.com/site/cyberscienceschool/ This was a good first week! Lesson learned: Technology integration needs to be approached as differentiated instruction for the teachers. They are the users in this case and need to generate their own education. They should be presented with a choice menu and then given the support to develop the tools and technologies that address their abilities, interests, and teaching styles.

A Technology-Enhanced Celebration of Learning Thursday, September 9, 2010

As part of my Pedagogy of Learning and Psychology of Learning courses for pre- and in-service educators, I included a final project for the course was a Celebration of Learning. They were asked to synthesize and reflect on their course learning using their own creativity, passions, and personal interests. The description of this project was: To demonstrate overall knowledge and integration of the material studied in class and from the texts, students are to do one of the following and demonstrate/report results to their classmates:

write a report do a photo essay compile a scrapbook build a model put on a live demonstration do a statistical chart keep a journal record interviews design a mural develop a simulation set up an experiment do a mind-map engage in a debate produce a videotape develop a musical

choreograph a dance create a rap or song one of your own own design You will present your project to the class on the last day. You have up to 15 minutes for your presentation. The grading criteria for this project includes:

Neatness and Professionalism- clean, professionally presented, easy to view, free of grammatical and spelling errors Integration of Course Theory and Content â&#x20AC;&#x201C; demonstrates an integration and understanding of class content and your research findings. Quality of Content â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the content demonstrates mastery and insights into the subject matter. Creativity and Insight â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Materials demonstrate creativity and insight about self and course material.

When students have multiple choices in ways to demonstrate their knowledge, the evidence of their learning is more accurate. We wanted the students to actually become the

experts through the learning process. This assessment isn’t just a fancy term for a presentation at the end of a unit. To actually engage in an authentic celebration is to witness a true display of student understanding. Learning Celebrations are Authentic Assessments of Student Understanding

Technology-Enhanced Celebration of Learning The concept of celebration of learning, honoring students’ learning preferences, and reinforcing the classroom learning can be enhanced in this age of technology. Technology provides additional ways and opportunities to differentiate instruction based on content, interest, and ability. Choice menus give learners the opportunity to self-select activities that are best suited to their interests and ability. The result is engaged and motivated learners with resultant products that when shared in the classroom have often made me cry due to the personalized and passionate characteristics of these products. Options that can be offered that have technology-options include: Create a Series of Word Clouds • Wordle – http://www.wordle.net • ABCya Word Cloud – http://www.abcya.com/word_clouds.htm • Imagechef – http://www.imagechef.com/ic/word_mosaic/ • Tagxedo – http://www.tagxedo.com/

Write and Illustrate an eBook • Storyjumper – http://www.storyjumper.com/ • ePubBud – http://www.epubbud.com/new.php • Titkatok – https://www.tikatok.com/ • PBS Mash Up Story – http://pbskids.org/writerscontest/make−a ←−mashup.php • Storybird – http://storybird.com/ • Kerpoof Storybook storybook

–

http://www.kerpoof.com/#/activity/ ←-

• Artsicam Picture Book Maker – http://www.artisancam.org. ←uk/flashapps/picturebookmaker/picturebookmaker.php? PHPSESSID=8214006849223e7a03dbb8b4a20c30a5 Draw or Paint a Picture • Kerpoof Draw – http://www.kerpoof.com/#/activity/draw • odosketch – http://sketch.odopod.com/ Make Comic Strip • Make Beliefs Comix – http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/ ←Comix/ • ToonDo – http://www.toondoo.com/ Do an Animation • GoAnimate – http://goanimate.com/ • Sketchfu – http://sketchfu.com/draw • Stage’d – http://stagedproject.com/comic • Scratch – http://scratch.mit.edu/ • Doink – http://www.doink.com/ (need to be 13 years old or older)

• Xtranormal – http://www.xtranormal.com/ (need to be 13 years old or older) Create a Data Visualization • Create a Graph default.aspx

– http://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/createagraph/ ←-

• Many Eyes – http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/ Create a “Media” Presentation (must include at two different types of media – photo, images, audio) • Prezi – http://prezi.com/ • Glogster – http://edu.glogster.com/ • Animoto – http://animoto.com/ Keep a Blog • Kidblog – http://kidblog.org/ • Edublog – http://edublogs.org/ Make a Game • Game Mechanic – http://gamestarmechanic.com/ • Sharendipity – http://www.sharendipity.com/ • Game Boards – http://jc−schools.net/tutorials/gameboard.htm Make a Timeline • Dipity – http://www.dipity.com/ • Timetoast – http://www.timetoast.com/ Make a Google Earth Trip • Download Google Earth – http://earth.google.com/ • Google Lit Trip – http://www.googlelittrips.com/GoogleLit/ ←Home.html

• Google Earth Education Community -http://edweb.tusd.k12.az. ←us/dherring/ge/googleearth.htm Make an Online Quiz • MyStudiyo – http://www.mystudiyo.com/ Compose a Musical Composition • Aviary Myna – http://aviary.com/tools/audio−editor ←?utm_source=aviaryeducation&utm_medium=link& ←utm_campaign=edu • Audacity – http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ Make an Audio-Media Message • VoiceThread – http://voicethread.com/ • Blabberize – http://blabberize.com/ • Woices – http://woices.com/ • Voki – http://www.voki.com/ Create an Infographic • Teaching With Infographics | Places to Start = http://learning. ←blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/teaching−with−infographics− ←places−to−start/?partner=rss&emc=rss • Seeing the Future! A Guide to Visual Communication http:// ←www.howtoons.com/?page_id=1455 • Infographics Scoop.it – http://www.scoop.it/t/infographics−in− ←educational−settings Make a Book Trailer • How to Make a Book Trailer – http://www.booktrailersforreaders ←.com/How+to+make+a+book+trailer • Book Trailers – Movies for Literacy Examples – http://www. ←homepages.dsu.edu/mgeary/booktrailers/default.htm

Create a Stop Motion Animation • Claymation and Stop Motion in the Classroomhttp://sites.google ←.com/site/movies2bmade/ • The ClayAnimator – http://clayanimator.com/english/menu.html Create a Technology Enhanced Scavenger Hunt • SCVNGR – http://www.scvngr.com/ • QR Code Scavenger Hunt Example – http://scls.typepad.com ←/techbits/2010/06/the−qr−code−scavenger−hunt.html; QR Code Generator from the ZXing Project – http://zxing.appspot.com/ ←generator/ Create an Mobile App • App Inventor for Android – http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/ ←about/ • iSites – http://isites.us. Organize and Film Flash Mob Performance • Examples videos/

http://mashable.com/2010/06/20/flash−mob− ←-

• Example – Gotta Keep Reading – Ocoee Middle School – http:// ←www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6D9jiEYxzs Build a Project in a 3D Virtual Environment • Greenbush Grid – http://grid.greenbush.us/portal/ • Reaction Grid – http://reactiongrid.com/ Student Examples This past term, two students in my undergraduate course on Interpersonal Relations selected technology-enhanced projects. TJ loves Minecraft, so his final project included a review of the course concepts using his Minecraft Skills.

Another student, Nicole, created a series of Wordles for each topic covered during the course.

In addition, one student loved the Wordles were created in class so much, she did her own handmade versions for her project.

Technology Integration Begins with a Perceptive Principal Thursday, September 30, 2010

The charter school where I started working this fall decided to move from parent volunteers teaching the technology classes to hiring a part time technology instructor. Technology classes in the past consisted mainly of typing and keyboarding skills. As such, the principal and the interview team were pretty much blown away and a bit overwhelmed during my interview last spring when I demonstrated all the the Web 2.0, social networking, and online educational tools that tech savvy schools and teachers are now using. The principal, in deciding to hire me and change the structure of the technology classes, explained to the teachers, ”We didn’t know what we didn’t know about technology.” In her wisdom of human nature and systemic change, she realizes that teachers will integrate technology at their own rate and in their own style. She wanted the staff to see the potential of technology integration at the start of the school year. So for one of the first professional development sessions, she asked me to provide an overview of the ”hows” and ”whys” of technology integration. Here is the slide deck that I used for the presentation. A few of the teachers have really grabbed onto using technology to enhance their and their students’ learning experiences – more than either the principal or me expected at this point. The technology classes I am teaching are supporting the classroom activities and I am assisting teachers in bringing technology into their classrooms. It is a wild ride . . . technology integration being more fun than I ever expected.

Comic and Animation Technologies in the Classroom Sunday, October 3, 2010

I have several lists of online project-product creators for my K-8 technology students. I cover a new tool every week or so. But being kids, they like to explore the other tools from these lists. The ones that overwhelmingly get noticed and the ones the students get most excited about are the comics and animation creators. There were several tweets over the weekend that inspired me add to my knowledge, tools, and personal excitement for using comics and animations in the classrooms. I have aggregated and compiled the following resources for my students. Here is what covered S. Hendy in her slideshow plus some additions of my own: Online Comic Creators • Toondoo – http://www.toondoo.com/ • Comic Creator – http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/ ←interactives/comic/ • Garfield’s Comic Creator – http://www.garfield.com/fungames/ ←comiccreator.html • Make Beliefs Comix Comix/

http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/ ←-

• Myths and Legends Story Creator – http://myths.e2bn.org/ ←story_creator/ • Kerpoof Story Maker – http://www.kerpoof.com/#/activity/ ←storybook • PiZap – http://www.pizap.com/ • Creaza – http://www.creaza.com/cartoonist • Chogger –http://www.chogger.com/create • Comiqs http://comiqs.com/editor/

• Comic Master –http://www.comicmaster.org.uk/ • Be Funky – http://www.befunky.com/create/text • Charlette’s Web http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/ ←flashlightreaders/charlottesweb/comic/maker.htm • Goosebumps – http://www.scholastic.com/goosebumpsgraphix/ ←makeyourown/index.htm Animations The following amazing animation, shared via Twitter, was completely made using the open source 3D software, Blender:

contains minor violence but the story is excellent (and sad) Animation Creation Tools • Aniboom – http://www.aniboom.com/ShapeshifterAnimachine. ←aspx • Scratch – http://scratch.mit.edu/ • Blender – http://www.blender.org/

Using Comics and Animation in the Classroom My ultimate goal for using technology in education is having students love learning and creating. The tools are the means to do so. As such, they can be connected to a number of content-based assignments: • Autobiographies – http://www.uic.edu/classes/ad/ad382/sites/ ←Projects/P009/P009_first.html Instructional Manual • To Demonstrate and Record Research • Mock Interview • Convert a Work of Fiction to a Comic http://www.eduref.org/ ←Virtual/Lessons/Language_Arts/Writing/WCP0013.html • Report on Current Affairs • Sequencing http://www.teachervision.fen.com/reading− ←comprehension/lesson−plan/346.html • Reflection • Story Boarding • Comprehension • Practicing New Vocabulary • Poem and Art Interpretations • Historical Interpretations

Technology Integration for the Students: The First Month Monday, October 4, 2010

Technology integration continues at the K-8 Charter School. To refresh your memory, I took a position as a part-time technology instructor at this school starting in September. The previous technology instructors were volunteer parents whose primary focus was on keyboarding skills and using the Microsoft suite. Part of my self-imposed role is assisting teachers in integrating technology into their learning activities and supporting classroom learning during the students’ technology time. A subgoal is to demonstrate how technology integration can be achieved with computers and internet connection and no other costs. Here is the summary, an overview of technology integration for the different age groups that occurred during September. Junior High – 7th and 8th Graders PBWorks for African Learning Expedition

The learning expedition for the Junior High this year is studying Africa, past to present. Students have been assigned a specific African country to research, to become an ”expert” about that country. APBWorks was set up

for students to post their research. At this point, the students are posting general facts they are finding about their countries. These facts will be used to create Glogs, Animoto videos, and Dipity Timelines. Glogs About Their Countries This past week during their technology class, the students were introduced to Glogster. They spent most of their time learning how it works. A few began creating their Glogs about their African countries.

Part of their instruction included how to use Google Image advanced search

to find images for their Glogs using strict filtering and usage rights â&#x20AC;?labeled as reuse with modificationâ&#x20AC;?.

Shelfari for Book Discussions The Junior High language arts teachers asked all of the students to set up Shelfari accounts. This was initiated by one of the teachers after she saw me demonstrate it during my interview last Spring. What follows is part of the permission letter she sent home to parents for permission or students to sign up for Shelfari: As students discover wonderful books, they will share their reviews and recommendations with each other. Over the summer a few Anser students piloted an online site for discussing books. Students found Shelfari.com to be a fun and interactive way to share their excitement about books. On Shelfari, students can create a virtual bookshelf, rate the books they have read, write and read book reviews, discuss books with readers from around the planet, create a reading wish list, and much, much more. Our class will also have a private group where we can safely discuss books we are reading together. Only group members can see our discussions and reply to our questions. Participating students will have a profile (bookshelf and friend list) on the Shelfari.com site. In order to create a Shelfari account, students need parental permission. Shelfari registration requires an email account; however, for the safety of the student, I recommend that you use a parent email to register. A Group Shelf of books was established for the class.

They are asked to participate in monthly discussions on Shelfari where they post their own questions and respond to questions posted by other students:

Middle and Upper Childhood – 3rd, 4th, 5th, & 6th Graders Where I’m From PicLits One of the beginning of the year projects for the 5th and 6th graders was composing lengthy poems. Where I’m From. The teachers asked how technology could assist with the expression of these poems in an artistic and visual format. PicLits was the tool I believed could best support this project.

The students’ PicLits were all posted on a single page: http:// ←anserupperchildhood.pbworks.com/Where−I−Am−From−PicLits Word Clouds for the River Expedition I showed the teachers Wordle at the beginning of the year and it immediately sparked the interest of the teachers for the students in these grades. They have requested the creation of word clouds during technology time to support classroom activities. I started with Wordle but wanted a tool that can easily saved as images to the desktop. Wordle does not have this characteristic. After exploring other options, I decided to useABCya Word Cloud. The Upper Childhood students practiced using it by inserting autobiographical words. The Middle Childhood students created word clouds based on their river expedition. They included words that they associate with rivers. They will create another similar one after they finish their river study. The two word clouds will serve as a pre-post assessment of terminology gained from their river learning expedition.

Thinkquest for Networking and Posting Work I learn about many of the technology tools I use through Twitter and blogs. Thinkquest was demonstrated to me a few years ago at ISTE’s National Education Computing Conference. I love this site and so do my students. I used it when I was a gifted teacher a few years ago. The students at my ”new” school are having the same excited reaction. I don’t understand why I never hear it mentioned in any of my social networks. It is a safe place where students can create an online identify, communicate with other students from their own school and from schools from around the world, post questions and polls, and participate in online projects (way too many benefits to describe in this blog entry).

Internet Safety with Professor Garfiled Along with the production tools the students are learning, they have been studying Internet Safety with Professor Garfield. We watch the video together and then the students work through the Try and Apply components at their own computers.

Kindergarten and Early Childhood â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 1st & 2nd Graders Given the variance in the literacy levels of this age group, especially the 1st and 2nd grade group, the challenge has become how to differentiate to meet the needs of all children in the class. I believe that technology provides a great venue for differentiation and it has proved to be the case for this age group. ABCya Educational Games ABCya provides educational games for grades Kindergarten through Fifth with an assortment of games for each grade. From their website: ABCya! is the leader in free educationalkids computer games and activities for elementary students to learn educational computer games and activities were created or approved by certified teachers. ABCya! educational games are free and are modeled from primary grade lessons and enhanced to provide an interactive way for children to learn. ABCya! games and activities incorporate content areas such as math and reading while introducing basic computer skills. Many of the kindergarten and first grade games are equipped with sound to enhance understanding. on the web. This site provides options for self-differentiation as students pick their games based on their grade level and interests. Literacy Development For the first half of the Early Childhood classes, I focus on literacy development. Kidblogswere established for those students who have basic writing skills. The kids, at first, werenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t that thrilled about writing the blogs. But once they realized they could comment on each otherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s blogs, their excitement rose dramatically. One student asked if it was like Facebook for kids. Even at age 7, they understand and are attracted to social networking.

While the students are writing their blogs, the other students, emerging readers and writers, listen to and interact with online books such as Pinky Dinky Do. Online Drawing Tools The kids love to draw and paint with online tools. Along with the ABCya games, students have been given the opportunity to draw during the second half of their technology classes. Tux Paintwas downloaded on all of the computers in the technology lab. (Note: even the Junior High students like it!). Up Next â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Technology Integration by the Teachers: The First Month

Integrating Technology This Week: Resources Discovered, Re-Discovered, or Created Sunday, October 10, 2010

One of my hobbies and frankly, passions, is finding free, exciting, and engaging resources to enhance the curriculum at my K-8 school. Here are my finds for this week: Language Arts Got Brainy – Got Brainy features user-generated visual-based vocabulary definitions. These include Brainypics (photo/image definitions) and Brainyflix (video definitions). Students can create and submit their own Brainpics/Brainflix for their own vocabulary words. If there is enough school-wide interest in this project, we can create our own site of student visual definitions. International Children’s Digital Libraryhas a digital library of outstanding children’s books from around the world. The search engine for these online books include categories based on age level, genre, types of characters (kids, imaginary, animals), length, and picture-chapter books. Tools for Educators offers free word search generators, word search makers, worksheets and programs for preschool, kindergarten teachers, elementary school teachers and language teachers to make word search puzzles to print, games for lessons, lesson plans and K-6 printable materials for classes. Zooburstis a digital storytelling tool that lets anyone easily create his or her own 3D pop-up books. I tried it and what I liked is that I can upload my own images into the 3D book. I think the students are going to love it. Science PBS Kids: Sid the Science Guy is a science web site appropriate for our K-2 students. It includes three discovery zones: the Super Fab Lab at Sid’s school, the playground and Sid’s family kitchen.

National Geographic Creature Featuresallows kids to search through photographs and videos of all kinds of animals. The photographs are stunning. This was used with 1st and 2nd graders this past week, all easily staying occupied for their 45 minute technology course. Golems is a 3D recreational physics simulator. Some of the older students, Junior High, have expressed an interest in 3D rendering. I plan to offer this as a choice project later in the year as the Junior High students will be asked to identify technology projects they would like to produce. Production Tools Google Apps in the Classroom is a Google site I created that contains an aggregate of Google Presentations on Google Docs, Calendars, Sites, and Maps/Earth. We have Google Apps for Education for our school. These resources will, hopefully, get more teachers to utilize these resources. Stupeflix Studio is a video creator similar to Animoto. Pictures, video, titles, and music are mixed together to create a video. They are planning a version for educators. Animoto has become a very popular tool for the teachers and students at our school. It will be nice to offer them another option for video mash-ups.

Criticizing, Pondering, and Actualizing: An Educator’s Guide Sunday, October 17, 2010

I posed the following philosophical question on Twitter yesterday: Why do folks spend time criticizing what is rather than pondering-actualizing what could be? Three themes emerged from the Twitter stream of responses: • Is Pondering Just for the Privileged? • Is it Critical vs. Criticism? • Is it action for change or pseudo-action to appease the masses? Is Pondering Just for the Privileged?

Bill, via his tweets, believes that pondering that (1) is for the privileged and (2) it does not lead to sustaining change. Pondering is defined as: to weigh in the mind; to think about, reflect on; to think or consider especially quietly, soberly, and deeply. I disagreed with Bill in that pondering is for the privileged. I believe that all change begins with pondering. A follow-up question, for me, then becomes, “Can we afford to not ponder what education should and can be?” Our Junior High students area reading-studying William Kamkwamba’s Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. He pondered how a windmill could change

his village in Malawi. More about him can be found at Real Life Education ala William Kamkwamba.” I also included in my original question a double proposition with the first part being pondering and the second one being actualizing (to realize in act and not merely potential). These two parts equal a more unified whole in terms of possible sustainable results. Pondering without actualizing leads to stagnation. Actualizing without pondering leads to shabby and nonsustainable results. Finally, Bill expressed his concern that his pondering does not lead to change outside of the classroom. Theresiliency research demonstrates that change can occur given a caring adult, often a teacher . . . but that the results may don’t show up for years. I experienced such a story with Mark http://jackiegerstein.weebly.com/peak−experiences.html Is it Critical vs. Criticism? The next theme that came up was the need for critical analysis or criticism for change to occur.

As you can see by Candace’s and Melanie’s tweet, there is a belief that change is driven by criticism. This prompted me to respond with a difference between viewing problems with a critical (involving skillful judgment

as to truth, merit) versus with criticism (the act of passing severe judgment; censure; faultfinding). Approaching problems without a critical and discerning eye often leads to haphazard and trial-error problem solving. Approaching problems with criticism often leads to tunnel vision in terms of possible solutions. Is it action for change or pseudo-action to appease the masses? The final theme to emerge was related efforts to change.

Candice believes that lots of efforts have been made for educational change. I agree that there have been efforts. When I look at them, I think they are more of the same – standards and test driven reform. I believe this to be pseudo-reform that is often politically driven. These are efforts to maintain the status quo with only cosmetic change. Historically, few efforts (e.g. John Dewey and Progressivism) have attempted reform from the ground up. Given the reform efforts of the past few decades, I tend to side with Alvin Toffler’s position that ”We don’t need to reform the system; we need to replace the system.”

It would be hypocritical of me if I just criticized the criticizers. It might be easier to say and do nothing – especially on my emotions and psyche as swimming up the metaphorical stream takes energy, but in the long run, I would suffer from the incongruence. between my core beliefs and my real world practices. I had a boss once who said that if we were to come to him with a problem, then we also need to bring along our solution. I attempt to live education reform in my own local settings –practicing think globally act locally. This I know to be the problem

• Human learning cannot be measured through metrics. • Competencies are one thing. Standards are another. Student should have some basic competencies related both to the process and content of learning. Specific age-grade level standards are counterproductive to learning. Standards assume that all students of a given age are developmentally the same . . . cognitively, emotionally, physically, socially. • Given the previsous, one size does not fit all. • Public schools are not preparing students to successfully maneuver in the real world – now and in the future. • Kids are bored in school and similar to Pavlov classical learning theory, they are associating learning with pain. What I Do “Locally” to promote educational reform • I am an educator in both teacher education and elementary settings. • I do not give any tests – none! • I have chosen positions (PE and gifted) and schools where I can develop the curriculum. • The students in my classes speak a lot more than me. • I voice my thoughts and ideas – in my work settings and now via Twitter, Facebook, and BLogs. Finally, these are these are the questions I believe educators, as change agents, “should” be asking themselves: • Am I complaining or risking making a change? • Am I contributing more to the problem or more to the solution? • Am I a criticizer or an actualizer? • Do I ponder what could be? Do I give my students and colleagues the time and venue to ponder what could be? • What did I do today to actualize educational reform?

Junior High Technology Project Sunday, October 24, 2010

Rationale The Junior High Technology project was developed using the following rationale: • Sometimes It is About the Technology: Many educators involved in educational technology believe ”pedagogy before the technology.” I agree, but sometimes it has to be about the technology. Learners may not discover the full potential of a technology without direct instruction. There is a false belief that students, being digital natives, will intuitively learn all how the technology tools operate. I have observed something quite different. If a student does not immediately understand the workings of a technology, he or she will quickly get frustrated and/or move to onto another. My role as a technology instructor is to know the tool and demonstrate to students how to use that tool . . . learning the tool separate from its connection to a curricular area. • Offering Choice of Technologies: I know that has been some questions about the existence of learning styles, but I also know, through years of working with and observing students of all ages, that they have different needs and desires for expressing their knowledge and understanding of content and concepts. In most classes I teacher, I offer a choice menu of projects – see A Technology-Enhanced Celebration of Learning. • Tinkering is Important: At first I expected students to jump into their content-based project. I realized that the students needed to play with the tools to learn how they function. Now when I introduce a tool, I tell the students they can experiment with the tool, create projects on one of their hobbies and interests. Their content-related school project will come after they get the opportunity to explore and tinker with the various technologies being offered.

• Supporting the Content Area: Educators embracing the potential of educational technology believe, as do I, that technology should be integrated into existing curriculum rather than being offered as a separate course. It is similar to teaching multicultural education and character development. These areas, like educational technology should be embedded into all curricular areas. But, since I am a technology instructor (and like being so), I want to use technology to support the content being covered in the students’ classrooms. • Technology as Project-Based Learning: Along with supporting the content area, the technology project is designed to be just that – a project, one that will take several weeks to complete. • Addressing National Education Technology Standards: Built into the structure of the Junior High project is learning and practicing technology skills: developing innovative products and processes using technology; applying digital tools to gather, evaluate, and use information; and practicing safe, legal, and responsible use of information and technology. Idaho Content Standards Addressed Technology Basic Operations and Concepts • Students demonstrate a sound understanding of the nature and operation of technology systems. • Students are proficient in the use of technology. Social, Ethical, and Human Issues • Students practice responsible use of technology systems, information, and software. • Students develop positive attitudes toward technology uses that support lifelong learning, collaboration, personal pursuits, and productivity. Technology Productivity Tools

• Students use technology tools to enhance learning, increase productivity, and promote creativity. Technology Communications Tools • Students use a variety of media and formats to communicate information and ideas effectively to multiple audiences. Technology Research Tools • Students use technology to locate, evaluate, and collect information from a variety of sources. • Students evaluate and select new information resources and technological innovations based on the appropriateness to specific tasks. Humanities: Visual Arts Goal 3.1: Demonstrate skills essential to the visual arts. Objective(s): By the end of Grade 8, the student will be able to: • 6-8. VA.3.1.4 Produce art that demonstrates refined observation skills from life. • 6-8. VA.3.1.7 Locate and use appropriate resources in order to work independently, monitoring one’s own understanding and learning needs. Goal 3.2: Communicate through the visual arts, applying artistic concepts, knowledge, and skills. Objective(s): By the end of Grade 8, the student will be able to: • 6-8. VA.3.2.2 Demonstrate the ability to utilize personal interest, current events, media or techniques as sources for expanding artwork. Goal 3.3: Communicate through the visual arts with creative expression. Objective(s): By the end of Grade 8, the student will be able to: • 6-8. VA.3.3.2 Create a work of art that expresses personal experience, opinions, and/or beliefs.

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• 6-8. VA.3.3.3 Use the creative process (brainstorm, research, rough sketch, final product) to create a work of art. The Junior High Technology Project General Goal: This is a semester long project. The goal of this project is for students to use a technology creation tool to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of one of the following content areas: • Digital Citizenship (Technology) • Universal Human Rights (2009-10 learning expedition) • Africa (2010-11 learning expedition) Progression of Learning Activities For five consecutive technology classes, students will be introduced to different Web 2.0 project creation tools – one per class: • Animoto • Glogster Edu • Dipity • Google Earth • Fifth Class – variety for extra credit: GoAnimate, MyStudiyo, Jaycut, StoryJumper Students will be provided with an overview, during these introductory classes, of the expectations of their assignment. • At least 10 facts with references about their topic. • At lease five live links to additional resources. • At least 10 copyright available images. • A video embedded into the presentation • An audio segment embedded into the presentation.

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Safe and responsible internet use will be demonstrated throughout these lessons: â&#x20AC;˘ Locating appropriate information sites. â&#x20AC;˘ Judging the validity and legitimacy of a website. â&#x20AC;˘ Conducting a Google Image search using strict filtering and user rights that permit use of the image. Beginning with the sixth technology class, students will work on their technology projects. They will provide the teacher with the topic and the technology tool they will use for their project. As part of this contract, students will also specify possible extra credit projects. The expectation is that students will work on their extra credit projects in the case that they finish their project by the end of the semester. At the time that the students select their project topic and technology tool, they will be provided with a rubric of the assignment criteria. At the end of each class, they will be asked to write a reflective statement at the bottom of the rubric specifying progress and challenges related to the project.

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5th-6th Grade Civil Rights Project: Technology-Based Activating Event Sunday, October 24, 2010

Thelearning expedition for the 5th and 6th grade this year is civil rights. The teachers in the three classes started this expedition by having the students study literature and view media (Little Rock Nine) related to civil rights. During these initial activating events, students identified vocabulary related to civil rights. The teachers requested that their students create covers for their binders during their technology class. They asked for Word Clouds of their vocabulary words and a related quote to be included within this cover. Content Standards Addressed (Idaho) Technology: • Demonstrate increasingly sophisticated operation of technology components. • Locate information from electronic resources. • Use formatting capabilities of technology for communicating and illustrating. • Publish and present information using technology tools. Language Arts: • Use words and concepts necessary for comprehending math, science, social studies, literature and other Grade 6 content area text. • Read grade-level-appropriate text. • Apply context to identify the meaning of unfamiliar words and identify the intended meaning of words with multiple meanings. Process A Google Presentation was set up with sharing permission set for anyone to edit (plans to change to view only once their pages are complete). This permitted all the students in the class to work within the document without the

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need of an email to log in. This would not only result in student binder covers, but also in an embeddable presentation of all student work for that class. A template was developed that included a block for the Word Cloud image and text box for the quote. The individual student names were included on the slides so the student could find and work on his or her individual slide.

Students came to their technology class with lists of their civil rights words. Two types of Word Clouds were introduced to the students: ABCya Word Cloud and Tagxedo. I introduced Tagxedo during the first group but didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t realize that Tagxedo needed Microsoft Silverlight to operate. Due to the block on the system, any additional software needs to be downloaded by the network administrator. ABCya Word Cloud became the back up tool. But the third group (another day), got the opportunity to test out Tagxedo. The students loved producing the word cloud into a shape of their choice.

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To find a relevant quote, the students were directed to go to Thinkexist: more than 300,000 quotations by over 20,000 Authors. When students located their quotes, these were copy and pasted into their slide.

So with this few hour exercise, the students learned how to

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• engage in language arts content standards through a technology interface • convey their vocabulary words in a visual format • creatively play with words • download an image • insert an image • search for and locate a relevant quote • copy and paste the quote from a website into a Google doc • work collaboratively on an online document

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Global Education 2010: ANSER Got rights! Wednesday, November 17, 2010

I was hired as the new technology teacher at ANSER K-8 Charter school beginning this past Fall. I got offered the position last Spring – almost concurrently with the culminating learning expedition for the Junior High on the Universal Human Rights. For this project, the students worked with their teachers and other interested community members to set up a celebration of human rights in a local park – named the Anne Frank memorial – which facilitated the theme of the celebration, Never Again. As I future employee, I obviously had an interest in and desire to see the operations of the school – to learn about ANSER’s culture. So with my Flipcam in hand, I went to the presentation. Students presented information about individual human rights via display boards, performed original poetry and songs for the crowd, and sold merchandise to support the Never Again cause. So when the call for presenters for the Global Education 2010 conference was made, my thoughts went immediately to a virtual presentation of their Human Rights Celebration. I put out a inquiry for interested student participants. Only about a dozen students responded as this would be strictly volunteer – no grades nor credit attached. They worked with me on the proposal title, ANSER Got Rights (thanks, Cara), and the description for the presentation. Being that they are teen-agers, frankly, I became little concerned if they could pull off the presentation. They did not have very much time to work on their virtual presentations – a half hour a week – Friday last period. Added to this barrier is that I am a student-centric educator – meaning that I would provide them with some technology tool ideas and support, but that all their presentation materials and talks would be strictly their own. It was established that this would be a 100% student project. A little over a week prior to the presentation, though, I saw the individual students step up.

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• Thomas arranged for all the students to come to the tech lab during a study period, and suggested that the group stay after school on Friday, come in Saturday morning prior to the conference • Grady and Melody steadily and methodically worked through creating their Glogs as visual displays of their human rights, and then worked with Lizzie and Emma in coordinating how they would present using their Glog. • Kiana came to me the week prior to the presentation and asked to join us, and in a few short hours she and Thomas learned how to use and create an amazing presentation with Prezi. • Jennie and Maddi, also late-comers to the presentation team, found slides to go with the poem Jennie wrote and presented at last year’s celebration. • Cara did the same. • All of them learned how to manage themselves in Elluminate – testing the tools, checking to see if viewers can hear them, see their presentations. Here is a preview of their preparations and coming attractions for their presentation.

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Because I have only been at the school a very short time, I am now only getting to really know them, to develop relationships. Participating with them in their preparations, watching their creativity in action, observing their desire for perfection made my heart swell with joy and pride for them. In their presentation materials and practice talks, I saw a group whose presentation was as good as or better than many adult ones I have witnessed. I left late last Saturday morning of their final preparations for another engagement. The majority of the students stayed at the school to practice some more. My parting words to them, â&#x20AC;&#x153;I adore you!â&#x20AC;?

So their presentation is Wednesday, November 17, at 5 PM Eastern Time, and 2 PM Mountain Time (our time). More information and the link to the session can be found at https://www.google.com/calendar/render?eid=NGxncW84aDQxMmljZnNsMnNwb2NrNT The rest of the Junior High will be watching, some of their parents will be watching, hopefully some other interested conference attendees will be watching. I know that technology is a risk. I understand that there may be glitches in the presentation. I want so badly for it to go perfectly, they get the recognition â&#x20AC;&#x201C; that they can feel the pride that comes with it. But, if all fails, if the internet does not cooperate, I hope what is left is an indelible mark created from their dedication, passion, hard-work, and magic that lasts their lifetimes. . . . and the web which has the longest memory in the history of humankind can help them remember. Their presentation materials can be found at http://anser.weebly.com

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Sugata Mitra: A Model of User-Generated Education (Big Ideas Fest) Monday, December 6, 2010

Education scientist Sugata Mitra tackles one of the greatest problems of education – the best teachers and schools don’t exist where they’re needed most. In a series of real-life experiments from New Delhi to South Africa to Italy, he gave kids self-supervised access to the web and saw results that could revolutionize how we think about teaching. ”If the world belongs to our children then why don’t we just give it to them” was the title of Sugata Mitra’s talk at the Big Ideas Fest during the opening of the conference. According to Dr. Mitra, Of the 1 billion children on Earth. • 50 million have ample resources • 200 million have adequate resources • 750 million have inadequate resources. To this Dr. Mitra added, ”There are places in every country where, good schools cannot be built and good teachers cannot or do not want to go.” His solution was to install computers with internet access to those places where schools cannot be built and/or teachers do not want to go. It started with a Hole in the Wall in New Dehli. ”Where in the slum do you put a computer? Make a DIY ATM! Computer in a wall.”

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What he discovered was that, ”Groups of children can learn to use computer and the internet irrespective of who or where they are.” Dr. Mitra noted that these kids had no teacher to provide the pedagogy. Can the learners-kids to invent their own pedagogy? Yes, they had done it. ”Groups of children can navigate the internet to achieve educational objectives on their own. The bars that children set for themselves can be higher than those we have set for them.” Dr. Mitra continued to explore what would happen to student learning given the following formula: 1. Computers 2. Internet Access 3. Information and Search Skills 4. Reading Comprehension 5. Children Working in Groups 6. The Right Question Along with this formula came his teaching style, ”I have no idea. And now I am going to go.” He stressed that,

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You can drive children with questions. You don’t have to give them the answers. They can find the answers. If the kids/students didn’t get the ”right” answer, then teacher didn’t ask the right question. The teacher needs to change question. The research questions he proposed in his next study, the Kalikuppam Experiment, included: 1. Could Tamil- speaking children in a remote Indian village learn basic molecular biology in English on their own? 2. Could a friendly mediator with no knowledge of the subject improve the performance of these village children? 3. How would the learning and test scores of these children in a remote village compare with those of children who were uent in English and taught by subject teachers in a local state government school and those attending an affluent, private urban school? The results to this rearch, Limits to self-organising systems of learning—the Kalikuppam experiment, were published by the British Journal of Educational Technology. What are the limits that children can learn in self-organizing systems? Dr. Mitra would like to find out . . .

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More about Sugata Mitra and his work can be found at http://sugatam. â&#x2020;?wikispaces.com/.

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Flow – A Measure of Student Engagement Wednesday, January 12, 2011

When I first heard about Czikszentmihalyi’s ”Flow” concept and research, I became quite intrigued with this research. Its face validity immediately resonated with me. I always cherished those times in my own life when I was so fully engaged that I had no other thoughts than the task at hand, with joy coming purely from the engagement. I never had a name for it but Czikszentmihalyi did and conducted research on it. The characteristics of ”Flow” according to Czikszentmihalyi are: 1. Completely involved, focused, concentrating – with this either due to innate curiosity or as the result of training 2. Sense of ecstasy – of being outside everyday reality 3. Great inner clarity – knowing what needs to be done and how well it is going 4. Knowing the activity is doable – that the skills are adequate, and neither anxious or bored 5. Sense of serenity 6. Timeliness – thoroughly focused on present, don’t notice time passing 7. Intrinsic motivation – whatever produces ”flow” becomes its own reward (http://austega.com/education/articles/flow.htm) Here is a TED talk from Czikszentmihalyi: Using Flow As a Measure of Student Engagement The Canadian Education Association’s (CEA) released a report What did you do in school today? –athree-year research and development initiative designed to assess, and mobilize new ideas for enhancing the learning experiences of students. Intellectual challenge was measured by Csikszentmilhalyi’s theory of flow. (Source for the following http://www.cea− ←ace.ca/education−canada/article/sorting−students−learning)

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A new measure – instructional challenge – developed from Csikszentmilhalyi’s theory of flow, offers insights into students’ experiences of learning. First year results revealed generally low levels of student engagement. While almost 70 percent of the 32,322 students reported positive experiences of social and institutional engagement, only 37 percent felt intellectually engaged in learning. Less than half (between 42 and 47 percent) of middle and secondary students experience flow in their math and language arts classes.

In the past it was often assumed that disengaged students were easy to identify: they were the young people at the back of the class, the ones making their way to shop or special classes, or those lingering down the street well after the bell had rung. Data from What did you do in school today? suggest that disengagement is not – and may never have been – limited to small groups of students or as visible as we once thought. Over half of the students in our sample (n=32,300) – many of whom go to class each day, complete their work on time, and can demonstrate that they are meeting expected learning outcomes – are experiencing low levels of intellectual engagement. According to the report, the implications for educating youth include:

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Students differ in their aspirations, interests, and aptitudes. But it is worth considering how distinct pathways, trajectories, or streams that too often limit opportunities for students could become permeable spaces for learning. What if the curriculum anchors their learning, but ceases to anchor the students themselves because its aim is the development of important competencies through diverse learning experiences that value and extend young peoples’ knowledge, interests, and capacities across all curriculum domains? In the context of the still emerging 21st century learning agenda, the concept of intellectual engagement provides a way into considering the kinds of learning experiences young people require to develop important competencies for learning and life. If we aspire to create learning environments where all students are engaged in using and developing 21st century competencies, however, a much deeper approach may be required; one that provides for inclusive and sustained work with ideas and practices that disrupt prevailing assumptions about teaching, learning, and educational outcomes. (emphasis added). Questions for Thought” • Is Flow a valid measure of students’ intellectual engagement? • Should educators focus on creating a flow state for the students in their classrooms? • If so, what are some general strategies for creating flow within an educational setting?

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The Writing is On the Wall. Why Isn’t Anyone Reading It? Sunday, January 23, 2011

Current Research College Learning. This past week, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, a book by University of Chicago Press, was released. Some of the findings included: • 45 percent of students ”did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning” during the first two years of college. • 36 percent of students ”did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning” over four years of college. • Those students who do show improvements tend to show only modest improvements. ”How much are students actually learning in contemporary higher education? The answer for many undergraduates, we have concluded, is not much, ” wrote the authors (http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/01/18/ ←study_finds_large_numbers_of_college_students_don_t_learn_much). High School Students’ Engagement. The Canadian Education Association’s (CEA) released a report What did you do in school today? -a threeyear research and development initiative designed to assess, and mobilize new ideas for enhancing the learning experiences of students. First

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year results revealed generally low levels of student engagement. While almost 70 percent of the 32,322 students reported positive experiences of social and institutional engagement, only 37 percent felt intellectually engaged in learning (http://www.cea−ace.ca/education−canada/article ←/sorting−students−learning). Charting the Path from Engagement to Achievement: A Report on the 2009 High School Survey of Student Engagement from the annual High School Survey of Student Engagement (HSSSE) reflected bored students who say they are not connected to their school. The survey asked more than 42,000 high school students about their thoughts, beliefs and perceptions. The 2009 survey covered 103 schools in 27 states. ‘Kids are bored, not connected to school, ’” said Ethan Yazzie-Mintz, HSSSE project director. ”About 49 percent of the kids are bored every day, 17 percent every class. That’s twothirds of the kids who are bored at least every day” (http://newsinfo.iu. ←edu/news/page/normal/14593.html). Other Statistics • Until the 1840s the education system was highly localized and available only to wealthy people. Free public education at the elementary level was available for all American children by the end of the 19th century (http://www.servintfree.net/~aidmn−ejournal ←/publications/2001−11/PublicEducationInTheUnitedStates.html). What this means is that institutionalized education for all is less than 150 years old, a very short time span given the length of humankind. • The high school drop out rates for 2008 for White was 4.8, Black – 9.9, Hispanic – 18.3 American Indian/Alaska Native 14.6. Not surprisingly, then, the percentage distribution of students enrolled in degree-granting college institutions, by race/ethnicity in 2007 was: White was 64.4, Black – 13.1, Hispanic – 11.4 American Indian/Alaska Native – 1 http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/ The Writing on the Wall The obvious conclusion from these studies and statistics (as well as others) is that institutionalized education served a purpose for its time, but this purpose is no longer meeting the needs of society nor the learners. Many

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students are not learning and are bored. The educational system it is one that has racial inequalities. Educational reformers offer suggestions for improvement, but they are often based on how to reform the current systems of education. I am now of the belief proposed by Alvin Toffler, of Future Shock fame, ”We don’t need to reform the system; we need to replace the system.” The writing is on the wall, but few seem to be reading it. The reform movement often includes more of the same – better textbooks, better tests, better teachers – the same ”betters” that have been proposed by reformers throughout the history of institutionalized education. To quote Albert Einstein, ”Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” I am passionate about this topic because I found most of my K-Doctorate education to be boring, irrelevant, and frankly painful. I consider myself a model learner – as opposed to a model student (with most teachers agreeing that I was a pain-in-the-butt student). Now, with the internet, I am connected to information 24/7 – any time I desire it – which is often. An example came as I write this. I am listening to a live feed from theDLD11 conference. Don Tapscott just stated via this live feed, ”Why should I go to class and listen to a grad student talk about Peter Drucker, when I can hear him speak live on the web?” I can directly learn from, ask questions of and receive answers from my own teachers, ones that I have identified for myself and connected with via social networks. I am learning more and more often now than any other time in my life due to the resources offered in this information age. I am the master of my own learning. Don’t we owe it to the ”next” generation to help them do the same? The writing is on the wall, most are not reading it, but some are. Some grassroots initiatives to re-form the educational system include: • Unschooling – http://www.unschooling.com/ • Edupunks – http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/138/who− ←needs−harvard.html • University of the People – http://www.uopeople.org/ • Open Education Resources – http://www.oercommons.org/

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. . . and my own proposal is a personalized education leveraging Communities of Practice Learning Centers, both online and in-person. One of my pastimes is ceramic pottery. I go to the local arts center that offers ceramic classes and a lab. The open lab is my favorite time. It is a time when anyone can come in to make pots. The folks that show up are both male and female, and of all ages from teens to senior citizens. One of my favorite sites is seeing a teen and senior citizen learning together â&#x20AC;&#x201C; sometimes the senior teaching the youth, and sometimes the other way around. Age and gender does not matter, mastering ones own interests and craft does. This is one of my Communities of Practice Learning Centers, others include my Zumba classes, my online Personal Learning Networks (e.g., Learn Central, Classroom 2.0), and my Twitter/Facebook networks. I took the responsibility to locate and contribute to these communities because these are my passions. At this time in history, the purpose of education should be to assist learners in identifying their passions and sparks, and then in locating/establishing their own Communities of Practice Learning Centers to master those passions.

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Rethinking (College) Education – More Writing on the Wall Tuesday, January 25, 2011

My previous blog post entitled, The Writing is on the Wall. Why Isn’t Anyone Reading It?, provided some research, statistics, and rationale on how institutionalized education is failing today’s students. Michael Wesch, of A Vision of Todays Students fame, produced the following video, Rethinking Education. It provides some additional thoughts about how institutionalized education – university in this case – is not serving today’s students

Here are some key points form the video: • People came onto Wikipedia to edit. What are these people getting out of it? Why would they do this? They are not getting any marks – no university credits. What would people construct knowledge on that basis? There are 80,000 new Blogs a day. The public is engaging in a level of writing and political thought and opinion-building like we’ve never seen before. Where are our students in this? They are filing out exam booklets. – John Wollinsky • We may need to seriously rethink the university and its future. Michael Wesch

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• University culture is focused on what we do in the classroom, how it ends up on the exam booklet and will I get published in a journal– in that way we are missing the boat. • The formal education system has not even begun to catch up with the new processes. • The public is living and breathing within a much large sphere of information and knowledge. That critical openness to knowledge is something our work had better address or we are ill serving our students.

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Imagine That: A School of Possibilities Saturday, February 5, 2011

One of my favorite Bloggers, Maria Popova aka Brainpickers, shared a project called Museum of Possibilities http://www.brainpickings.org ←/index.php/2011/02/03/the−museum−of−possibilities/ To prevent this disconnect when inaugurating its Quartier des Spectacles, the city of Montréal came up with an exceptionally inspired solution: The Museum of Possibilities — a wonderful daylong pop-up installation inviting visitors to share their dreams and visions for the future of the space by jotting down their ideas on pieces of paper and attaching them to colorful balloons.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kelseysnook/5049569491/sizes/z/in/set ←−72157624459314436/

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/kelseysnook/4777855005/sizes/z/in/set ←−72157624459314436/ Others could then vote on the ideas with stickers, collectively choosing the best visions for their shared space.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kelseysnook/4778484200/sizes/z/in/set ←−72157624459314436/ I immediately thought, “Wow, what a great idea for visioning the future of an individual school or school district.” Ever since I heard about how the Chucagh School District revamped their educational system, I have been intrigued by the idea of having the local communities develop their own

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educational systems and curriculum in a way that meets their community and student needs. Chugach School District in south central Alaska transformed their district from a failure to a success by engaging the community, asking fundamental questions, and using real data to understand where resources needed to go. In 1994, the district was failing by almost all measures: staff turnover exceeded 50%; students scored lowest in the state of Alaska on California Achievement Tests; business leaders complained that graduates lacked basic skills; and only one student in 26 years had gone on to college. Through a series of town hall meetings, the district determined that the traditional industrial model of education to prepare students for college was not relevant to their community. The school board and district leaders proposed radical changes to suit the remote community’s needs. In 2001, the district was the smallest organization ever to receive the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Awards for performance excellence in education. http://www.cosn.org/Initiatives/3 ←DDataDrivenDecisionMaking/3DCaseStudies/3 ←DCaseStudyChugachSchoolDistrict/tabid/5701/Default. ←aspx An event such as The Museum of Possibilities or in this case, The School of Possibilities, could kick off a visioning of a new school (newly formed or older one serious about school reform) – one driven by all stakeholders –> school personnel, students, parents, local business, and other interested community members. This event would work only if the school ”officials” were willing to seriously consider all ideas, to begin or re-organize the school basically from scratch driven by the ideas generated at this and follow-up events. Some of the key steps for this event would include: • An invitation or call out for anyone and everyone interested in developing the school environment, curriculum, and instructional practices is sent out via all types of social media outlets.

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• It is planned as a celebration of learning with the planners locating an outdoor venue to set up the balloons, and arrange for some live music, possibly dance, and some food. • During the event, everyone, all ages, are encouraged to jot down and post their ideas on the balloons, and vote for their favorites. Those who have difficulty reading and writing for any reason are be given assistance. • The results are published via paper and online sources, and widely disseminated with a further request for feedback. Guidelines would need to include: • Understand and embrace crowdsourcing as a viable or even required method for visioning the future of the school. • Enter with and accept the ideas of others with an open mind, attitude, and heart. • Let go of expectations what the outcomes might be. • Be willing to entertain and implement any popular ideas. What are the underlying messages that such an event would give? • Visioning the future of the school is a celebration – something that should be embraced and enjoyed. • The power for the school and its curriculum is under local control. • All stakeholders and interested people’ are important. • It really does take a community to educate a child and that the community is invited and encouraged to do so. This would only be a start – but what a great way to jump start authentic and engaging educational change for that school community.

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Mobile Learning: Learners As Informed Consumers, Creative Producers, and Active Participants Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Children and young people are using their own mobile devices – Pods, iPads, netbooks, laptops, and smart phones – to be consumers and producers of digital content, and to be active participants in online communities. They are doing so as part of their day-to-day lives outside of school as leisure time activities. They are familiar and comfortable with social networking and using a variety of apps via their devices. The 2010 Nielsen’s Teen Mobile Reportreported that “94% percent of teen subscribers self-identify as advanced data users, turning to their cellphones for messaging, Internet, multimedia, gaming, and other activities like downloads.” When educators leverage this informal learning by giving agency to the students to use their mobile technologies AND by providing the structure and skills for their use within more formal educational settings, motivation and learning is increased. (Learn more about Agency and Structure, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_and_agency .) By bringing these experiences into the classroom, consumption of content becomes more informed, production of online content more creative, and participation as global citizens more active and directed. Informed Consumers. Learners are consuming real time and constant news with Google, Twitter, Facebook, and other newsfeeds via their mobile devices. In more formal learning environments, learners can be given the

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agency to access this information and provided with the skills to make informed and critical decisions as to its relevance, efficacy, and credibility. Creative Producers. Young people are taking pictures and creating video using their mobile devices. Pulling out mobile devices during real world photo-ops is commonplace. Although many young people have the desire to produce media that is creative, attention-grabbing, and has high production value, many lack the knowledge and where-with-all to do so. When this desire to produce media enters into a mobile learning environment, the education setting can provide a combination the right instruction; and apps for planning, filming and editing. Learners-as-producers not only increases the potential for creative and higher quality media, but also additional avenues for them to develop and showcase their content-related learnings. Active Participants. Mobile technologies have provided digital access to many who do not have access via computers and in-home Internet. This includes lower SES individuals from developed countries as well as those in third world countries. This anytime, anywhere, and with almost anyone capability makes mobile learning ripe for collaborating globally and developing global stewardship. It levels the educational landscape permitting communication and collaboration between diverse groups of learners.

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More Disruption of Education Monday, March 14, 2011

http://www.flickr.com/photos/whgrad/2980023432/ Several posts this month added to the discussion of . . . . and hopefully movement towards – the disruption of institutionalized K-12 and Higher Education. Disrupting K-12 Education Standards-Based Accountability’s High Stakes by Ronald A. Wolk was posted in Education Week on 3/7/11. The first part of the article provides some evidence of the failure of the goal of the late 20th century to actualize, ”All children can learn” (in school). Wolk goes on to ask ”How do we explain that nearly 30 years of unprecedented effort and enormous expenditures has not improved student performance, reduced the dropout rate, or closed the achievement gap?” More standardization is not what our schools need. As the Harvard business professor Clayton Christensen puts it in his book Disrupting Class, applying his ideas about “disruptive innovation” to education: “If the nation is serious about leaving no child behind, it cannot be done by standardized methods.

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Today’s system was designed at a time when standardization was seen as a virtue. It is an intricately interdependent system. Only an administrator suffering from virulent masochism would attempt to teach each student in the way his or her brain is wired to learn within this monolithic batch system. Schools need a new system.” Wolk proposes that disruption of K-12 education can occur through personalized education. Some of his recommendations include: • Schools should be designed around the human scale because students and teachers need to know each other • Preschool education would be universal. • Beginning in middle school, multiple educational pathways would lead to college and other postsecondary programs to prepare young people for work in a complex and changing world. A student could choose a pathway reflecting his or her interests and aspirations. Each student would play a significant role in designing the curriculum, which would be anchored in the real world, not in the abstractions of most classrooms. • There would be no “traditional” core curriculum with typical academic courses and rigid schedules in middle and high school. • Teachers would become advisers who guide students in educating themselves. They would tutor students and help them manage their time and energy. • Technology would largely replace textbooks and worksheets. • Student learning would be assessed on the basis of portfolios, exhibitions, special projects and experiments, and recitals and performances—real accomplishments, not abstract test scores. Disrupting College A report was published entitled, Disrupting College: How Disruptive Innovation Can Deliver Quality and Affordability to Postsecondary Education (February, 2011) by Clayton M. Christensen, Michael B. Horn, Louis Caldera, and Louis Soares.

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The propositions of this report revolve around the use of online learning to be the disruptive force in higher education. This emerging disruptive innovation presents an opportunity to rethink many of the age-old assumptions about higher education—its processes, where it happens, and what its goals are. But the major recommendations they make for policy makers (and to that I add administrators, board members, faculty, and yes, students as the consumers of higher education) are application to both online and face-to-face institutions of higher education: • Eliminate barriers that block disruptive innovations and partner with the innovators to provide better educational opportunities. • Remove barriers that judge institutions based on their inputs such as seat time, credit hours, and student-faculty ratios. • Do not focus on degree attainment as the sole measure of success. • Fund higher education with the aim of increasing quality and decreasing cost. An Example Grassroots Effort -An Alternative for Getting a Higher Education Peer 2 Peer University The Peer 2 Peer University is a grassroots open education project that organizes learning outside of institutional walls and gives learners recognition for their achievements. P2PU creates a model for lifelong learning alongside traditional formal higher education. Leveraging the internet and educational materials openly available online, P2PU enables high-quality lowcost education opportunities. P2PU – learning for everyone, by everyone about almost anything.

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Narratives in the 21st Century: Narratives in Search of Contexts Sunday, May 1, 2011

As someone trained in counseling, the therapeutic modality that resonated most deeply with me was Narrative Therapy. Simple stated, narrative therapy is about telling oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s story and having witnesses that story. (For more about Narrative Therapy, see http://www.narrativetherapycentre.com/ â&#x2020;?index_files/Page378.htm.) People want to tell their stories AND want witnesses to theses stories. Evidence of this is seen in todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s world through the amazing popularity and growth of status posts via Twitter and Facebook, and through all of those personal movies being uploaded to Youtube at an unbelievable pace. So when I saw the recent posts of by John Nagel and Walter McKenzie about narratives, I began thinking about what they mean in this postmodern/21st century and its implications within education.

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John Hagel, inThe Pull of Narrative – In Search of Persistent Context, discusses narratives and their place in this post-modern era. Key points he mentions are: In our digital world, content providers progressively chunk up their offerings to provide more choice and easier access. . . . As this occurs, value moves from content to context. In the old days, context came in various forms. It came in the package that delivered the content (you often could judge a book by its cover) or, even more broadly, it came from the stable surroundings that produced the content. . . . As our world fragments and changes ever more rapidly, we find that context cannot be taken for granted – it must be defined. We have already seen a growing emphasis on experience as an important element of context. Stories have become increasingly important to provide even broader context. We are now on the cusp of a revival of narrative as an even more valuable context The role that narratives play: • Narratives provide stability and continuity in our lives. Narratives help to orient us. • Narratives have the potential to profoundly shape the future. • Narratives also help participants construct meaning, purpose and identity for themselves. • Narratives help to ignite and nurture passion within us. We desperately need new narratives that will provide alternatives to the older, more confining narratives. These new narratives must embrace the fragmentation and change that give us more choice and options while helping to orient us and calling us to more fully realize the potential that we all have. What we need are narratives of explorers, rather than narratives of true believers. The narratives of explorers emphasize the opportunity to learn and grow by constantly framing new

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questions and embarking on quests to gain new insight through action. They focus on the possibilities to be discovered rather than the certainties to be recovered. The tools required to take on this task are becoming more and more powerful and ubiquitous. Digital technology provides all of us the ability to define and communicate narratives in rich and textured ways. McKenzie also discusses the need for contexts for information (like narratives) and how they can lead to insight and innovation. Referred to as the Information Age, the first ten years of this new century are characterized first and foremost by an information explosion. At the outset, the challenge seemed to be to simply be able to manage the data with which we are inundated. But as the tools to manage data have become more and more user friendly, the next challenge is to find contexts for the pertinent information we encounter…context provided by the experience and expertise we bring to understanding information. When we have meaningful understanding of information, insight is created…the kind of insight that identifies opportunities for innovation. http://edge.ascd.org/_Beyond− ←the−21st−Century/blog/3732794/127586.html Not only do people want to tell their story – they want their stories embedded into a place and time. Thus, this time in history can be subtitled as, Narratives in Search of Contexts. As such, technologies are being developed to provide context to stories. • Tags and Hashtags (e.ghttp://www.cybraryman.com/edhashtags. ←html) • Location Based Services like Foursquare (e.ghttp://www. ←accreditedonlinecolleges.com/blog/2010/30−ways−to−use− ←foursquare−in−education/) • Social Gaming (e.g. http://livebinders.com/play/play/5696) • Virtual Environments like Second Life and Opensim ( see http:// ←thejournal.com/articles/2011/01/11/next−stop−open−sim.aspx)

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• Even GMAIL is introducing a People Widget “Next to every email message you can now see contextual information about the people in that conversation including recent emails you received from them, relevant Buzz posts, shared documents and calendar events” (http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/introducing ←−people−widget.html) . As this is an education blog, the implications and support for constructivist and personalized education become even more evident within this discussion of narratives. Educators and parents should gain an understanding of the need for personal narratives as a source of personal understanding of self, environment and community, and the world-at-large. They need to provide the guidance for young people to create their own narratives safely and respectfully within post-modern contexts. It is also important to take this opportunity, as Hagel states, to assist the new generation in becoming explorers, in developing their narratives (and related contexts) for framing new questions and embarking on quests to gain new insight through action.

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Kids Are Learning . . . Just Not in Ways We Want Them To. Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Kids are learning . . . just not in the ways expected of them through formal education. Young people have always engaged in informal learning based on their interests and passions. Kids have found and initiated these opportunities in the past through school clubs, reading, local community centers, and neighborhood kidsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; ballgames and performances. These informal learning opportunities have taken an astronomical metaphorical leap due to social networking and ease of access of interest-based information via online means. I am that not sure if those involved in the institutionalized education of young people are unaware or choose to ignore that young people are often learning more outside of the school than within that learning environment. Major researchers such as Mimi Ito, Constance Steinkuehler, Danah Boyd, and Henry Jenkins have been documenting these trends. Here is what theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve discovered: Mimi Ito on Interest-Based Learning

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Networked media offers an unprecedented opportunity to support learning that is highly personalized and learner-centered, driven by passionate interest and social engagement. But very few learners and educators are taking advantage of this opportunity. And the reason for this is that too often we separate the worlds of young people and adults, play and education. We hold onto the old boundaries between schooling, peer-culture, and home life, between what looks and feels like learning and education that we grew up with, and what looks and feels like socializing, hanging out, and playing. Even if those boundaries were never that real to begin with, in today’s networked world, they are even more untenable. My argument is that we need to engage with kids’ peer cultures and recreational lives outside of school if we want to tap into the power that today’s networked media offers for learners (http://www.itofisher. ←com/mito/publications/peerbased_learn_2.html) Full Reference: Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project http://digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley ←.edu/report Constance Steinkuehler on Creating Powerful Learning Environments Through Games

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Collective information literacy emerges in which the communal rather than individual participation is the defining feature of online play spaces such asmassively multiplayer online games. In In online social contexts such as World of Warcraft, information literacy is contingent on the presence and availability of other people. Peers are often the first line of inquiry because, simply put, storing information across one’s social network and then querying that network when a need arises is far more efficient and adaptive than storing copious amounts of information in one’s own head. In such spaces, the fact that the Internet is a communication device and not merely a collection of semistatic information resources becomes difficult to ignore. Martin, C. & Steinkuehler, C. (2010). Collective information literacy in massively multiplayer online games. To appear in eLearning and Digital Media, 7(4), 355-365. Constance Steinkuehler’s Publication Page: http://website.education. ←wisc.edu/steinkuehler/blog/?page_id=222 danah boyd on Teenagers who are Living and Learning with Social Media

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We all know that youth are searching for information in totally new ways so I’m going to skip over that. But they are also sharing differently. Sharing of information is very different in a world of bits where it’s easy to make a duplicate and still retain what you originally had. Pointers have value and sharing information can create memes. Needless to say, youth are leveraging social media to share with their friends and peers. Now, most of what they share might be pure gossip, but teens also share links, references, ideas, and original content. Written Transcript:http://www.danah.org/papers/talks/PennState2009. ←html

Henry Jenkins on Learning in a Participatory Culture Henry Jenkins on Learning in a Participatory Culture

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Outside their classrooms, today’s children learn by searching and gathering clusters of information as they move seamlessly between their physical and virtual spaces. Knowledge is acquired through multiple new tools and processes as kids accrue information that is visual, aural, musical, interactive, abstract, and concrete and then remix it into their own storehouse of knowledge. (http://www.henryjenkins.org ←/2009/05/what_is_learning_in_a_particip_1.html) Henry Jenkins’ Blog: http://henryjenkins.org/index.html Progressive educators have always asked, ”How can we provide students with the opportunities and skills to learn how to learn?” Now, given the tools and access, the role of educators should be primarily to assist students is leveraging the numerous online resources so that they become their own self-motivated, passionate, and self-directed learners.

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Celebration of Learning Wednesday, June 8, 2011

I prepared this slideshow to show current students examples of end-ofsemester Celebration of Learning. Love studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; creativity and passion. It is always such a pleasure to witness these presentations.

[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.997614&w=425&h=350&fv=offsite%3Dtrue%26offsite%3Dtrue% us%26page_show_url%3D%252Fphotos%252F57763362%2540N05%252Fsets%252F72157 Celebration of Learning, posted with vodpod

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The Flipped Classroom Model: A Full Picture Monday, June 13, 2011

Due to Khan Academy’s popularity, the idea of the flipped classroom has gained press and credibility within education circles. Briefly, the Flipped Classroom as described by Jonathan Martin is: Flip your instruction so that students watch and listen to your lectures… for homework, and then use your precious classtime for what previously, often, was done in homework: tackling difficult problems, working in groups, researching, collaborating, crafting and creating. Classrooms become laboratories or studios, and yet content delivery is preserved. Flip your instruction so that students watch and listen to your lectures… for homework, and then use your precious class-time for what previously, often, was done in homework: tackling difficult problems, working in groups, researching, collaborating, crafting and creating. Classrooms become laboratories or studios, and yet content delivery is preserved (http://www ←.connectedprincipals.com/archives/3367). A compiled resource page of the Flipped Classroom (with videos and links) can be found at http://teachingwithted.pbworks.com/w/page/37315118/ ←Flipping−the−Classroom The advantage of the flipped classroom is that the content, often the theoretical/lecture-based component of the lesson, becomes more easily accessed and controlled by the learner. Cisco in a recent white paper, Video: How Interactivity and Rich Media Change Teaching and Learning, presents the benefits of video in the classroom: • Establishes dialogue and idea exchange between students, educators, and subject matter experts regardless of locations. • Lectures become homework and class time is used for collaborative student work, experiential exercises, debate, and lab work.

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• Extends access to scarce resources, such as specialized teachers and courses, to more students, allowing them to learn from the best sources and maintain access to challenging curriculum. • Enables students to access courses at higher-level institutions, allowing them to progress at their own pace. • Prepares students for a future as global citizens. Allows them to meet students and teachers from around the world to experience their culture, language, ideas, and shared experiences. • Allows students with multiple learning styles and abilities to learn at their own pace and through traditional models. One of the major, evidenced-based advantages of the use of video is that learners have control over the media with the ability to review parts that are misunderstood, which need further reinforcement, and/or those parts that are of particular interest. (Using technology to give students ”control of their interactions” has a positive effect on student learning, ) It is important, though, not to be seduced by the messenger. Sal Khan is very charismatic and has produced good videos to explain some complex mathematical concepts. With the growth of open education resources via Youtube and Creative Commons, it is important to note that excellent video lectures have been and are freely/easily available. The Flipped Classroom concept, though, was not developed and articulated by Khan but by teachers such as Karl Fisch and Jon Bergman/Aaron Sams. The problem is that educators, as a group, know how to do and use the lecture. When educators are asked to replace their in-class lectures with videotaped ones (either their own or others) that learners watch at home, educators may not know what to do with this now void in-class time. Those who advocate for the flipped classroom state that class time can then be used for discourse and for providing hands-on, authentic learning experiences. In a recent interview Khan stated. “If I was a teacher, this is exactly the type of class I’d want to teach, I don’t have to prepare in a traditional sense. But I do have to prepare for projects and all that, so I have to prepare for creative things” (Meet Sal Khan). As Frank Noschese notes:

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Sal Khan is not showing any examples about what students and teachers are doing beyond Khan Academy. The news stories are not showing the open-ended problems the kids should be engaging with after mastering the basics — instead they show kids sitting in front of laptops working drills and watching videos. The focus is on the wrong things. Khan Academy is just one tool in a teacher’s arsenal. (If it’s the only tool, that is a HUGE problem.) http://fnoschese.wordpress.com ←/2011/05/10/khan−academy−my−final−remarks/ In other words, the message being given is that teachers can do what they want to during class time. Now educators have time for engagement and interaction with the learners (#EdCampChicago presentation). A major roadblock or barrier to the implementation of this model is that many educators do not know what to do within the classroom, what to do with that ”whatever they want to do” time. For educators, who are used to and use the didactic model, a framework is needed to assist them with the implementation of the Flipped Classroom. In other words, the message to teachers to do what they want during classroom is not enough to make this transition. In order to minimize the flavor of the month syndrome (recall character education, phonics movements, multicultural education, Reading First, powerpoints in the classroom), the use of video lectures needs to fall within a larger framework of learning activities – within more establish models of learning, providing a larger context for educator implementation. What follows is an explanation of the Flipped Classroom Model, a model where the video lectures and vodcasts fall within a larger framework of learning activities. (Note: I am titling it the Flipped Classroom Model to get folks’ attention given the Flipped Classroom popularity right now. It really is a cycle of learning model.) It provides a sequence of learning activities based on the learning theories and instructional models of Experiential Learning Cycles – http://reviewing.co.uk/research/learning.cycles. ←htmand Bernice McCarthy’s 4MAT Cycle of Instruction- http://www. ←aboutlearning.com/what−is−4mat/what−is−4mat. The Flipped Classroom Model

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Experiential Engagement: The Activity

The cycle often begins with an experiential exercise. This is an authentic, often hands-on learning activity that fully engages the student. It is a concrete experience that calls for attention by most, if not all, the senses. According to McCarthy, learning activities are designed that are immersive. Learners â&#x20AC;?experience the now.â&#x20AC;? They become hooked through personal connection to the experience and desire to create meaning for and about that experience (ala constructivist learning).

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Students become interested in the topic because of the experience. They have a desire to learn more. This is in line with John Dewey’s thinking regarding experience and education. The nature of experiences is of fundamental importance and concern in education and training. People learn experientially. It is the teacher’s responsibility to structure and organize a series of experiences which positively influence each individual’s potential future experiences (http://wilderdom.com/experiential/ ←elc/ExperientialLearningCycle.htm). Examples of Experiential Engagement include Experiential Learning Activities, Science Experiments, Simulations, Games and use of the Arts. Setting: These activities are designed for in-class time and often occur in a group setting. In a blended course, these are synchronous activities conducted during face-to-face instructional time. In online course, students could be asked to go to a community event, museum, . . or the creative educator could provide some type of hands-on activity or simulation for students to complete during a real-time synchronous webinar session via Adobe Connect, Elluminate or through a 3D Learning experience such as Quest Atlantis. Conceptual Connections: The What Learners are exposed to and learn concepts touched upon during Experiential Engagement. They explore what the experts have to say about the topic. Information is presented via video lecture, content-rich websites and simulations like PHET and/or online text/readings. In the case of the flipped classroom as it is being currently discussed, this is the time in the learning cycle when the learners view content-rich videos. This is where and when videos such as those archived by Khan Academy,Neo K12, Teacher Tube, or other video services are used to help students learn the abstract concepts related to the topic being covered.

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McCarthy reinforces that concepts should be presented in accessible form. By providing learners with online resources and downloadable media, learners can control when and how the media is used. This is the major value of flipping the classroom . . . content-based presentations are controlled by the learner as opposed to the lecturer as would be the case in a live, synchronous, didactic-driven environment. In a user-generated learning environment, students could be asked to locate the videos, podcasts, and websites that support the content-focus of the lesson. These media can then be shared with other students. Part of this phase includes an online chat for asking and addressing questions about the content presented via the videos, podcasts, websites. Through a â&#x20AC;?chatâ&#x20AC;? area such asEtherpador Google Docs, learners can ask questions with responses provided by co-learners and educators. Videos could even be embedded into a Voicethread so students can post comments/reactions to the content. Obviously, in a face-to-face setting, students can bring their questions into the real time environment. Setting: These materials are used by the learners in their own setting on their own time. In other words, students have the opportunity to access and interact with these materials in a personalized manner. They can view them in a learning setting that works for them (music, lighting, furniture, time of day) and can view/review information that they find particularly interesting

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or do not understand. It is asynchronous learning and as such permits the learner to differentiate learning for him/herself. Meaning Making: The So What

Learners reflect on their understanding of what was discovered during the previous phases. It is a phase of deep reflection on what was experienced during the first phase and what was learned via the experts during the second phase. Learners can articulate and construct their understanding of the content or topic being covered through written blogs or verbal-based audio or video recordings. Within the standard school system, this would be the phase when students are tested about their understanding of the content. If this is the case, it is recommended that the tests target higher levels of Bloomâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Taxonomy â&#x20AC;&#x201C; evaluation, applying, synthesizing. Setting: If possible, learners should be given the opportunity to reflect upon and make meaning of the content-related concepts within their own time schedule . . . both at a time when they feel ready to do so and taking the time they personally need for producing self-satisfactory work. Demonstration and Application: The Now What

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During this phase, learners get to demonstrate what they learned and apply the material in a way that makes sense to them. This goes beyond reflection and personal understanding in that learners have to create something that is individualized and extends beyond the lesson with applicability to the learners’ everyday lives. This is in line with the highest level of learning within Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy of Learning – Creating- whereby the learner creates a new product or point of view. In essence, they become the storytellers of their learning (See Narratives in the 21st Century: Narratives in Search of Contexts). A list of technology-enhanced ideas/options for the celebration of learning can be found at: http://usergeneratededucation.wordpress.com/2010/09/09/ ←a−technology−enhanced−celebration−of−learning/ Setting: This phase of the cycle is best when it occurs in a a face-to-face, group setting within the classroom. The reasons for recommending this type of synchronous learning are (1) the educator can guide the learner to the types of projects and tools best suited for him/her, and (2) an audience of peers and mentors increases motivation and provides opportunities for feedback. Obviously, in an online course, students can work on their projects and present them to peers/educators during a synchronous, interactive online forum. Here is a slideshow of former students’ Demonstration and Application Projects and Presentations.

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[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.997614&w=425&h=350&fv=offsite%3Dtrue%26offsite%3Dtrue%26lan us%26page_show_url%3D%252Fphotos%252F57763362%2540N05%252Fsets%252F721 Summary The Flipped Classroom offers a great use of technology â&#x20AC;&#x201C; especially if it gets lecture out of the classrooms and into the hands and control of the learners. As it is being discussed, it is part of a larger picture of teaching and learning. The Flipped Classroom videos have a place in the models and cycles of learning proposed by educational psychologists and instructional designers. Providing educators with a full framework of how the Flipped Classroom can be used in their educational settings will increase its validity for educators and their administrators. Flipped Classroom: The Full Picture View more presentations from Jackie Gerstein A Simple Example: Undergraduate Communications Course Goal of Unit: Identify and analyze strategies for using language more effectively. Experiential Engagement Students participated in the Mine Field and Bridge-It experiential exercises.

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Mine Field

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Bridge-It Concept Exploration At home students reviewed related media and had associated text readings. Here is an example of one of the videos students reviewed at home:

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Personalization and Meaning Making Students blogged about what they learned comparing the in-class experiential activity with their text readings and video viewings. We broke into groups of three and were asked to create one side of a bridge within our group to connect to the others groups bridge. We were in two separate rooms, with the same supplies and could only communicate with one member of the other group at a time, every five or so minutes. I was the communicator for my group. This was extremely hard trying to build the same thing as someone else in a totally different room. As the project moved further along, people began to get frustrated and irritated for different reasons. Even though it was successful as far as the construction, many of us left class upset and frustrated. In the readings I read â&#x20AC;?the process of constructing meaning is itself symbolic because we rely on words to think about what words and other things meanâ&#x20AC;? (Wood, 2010, p. 100). I think this is so true and it was evident in our project. Each team was relying on the words of the other team to determine the explanations of the bridge construction. . . . and from another student:

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To clarify, without our ability to SEE the other group’s project, we had to solely depend on words. Words are discussed as never being self-evident or absolute (Woods, p. 100). With each person’s individual perspectives, we assign individual and unique meanings to words. In that process, we unintentionally open the doors to misinterpretation. As Woods describes, language defines, evaluates, organizes, allows hypothetical thought, and also allows self-reflection (Woods, p. 103-107). The key roles witnessed during this activity were the organization of perception, hypothetical thought, and evaluation. Mainly these were present between each group’s communicator to the other group, but they also trickled down to the communication within the groups as information was passed along; much like a chain of events. The power of verbal language is almost jarring. Demonstration and Application This phase had several components: 1) Students demonstrated what they learned through in-class listening exercises.

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2) Then learners selected listening skills they decided to practice in real life. They reported on their results through blog entries. When it comes to pseudo listening, it seems like for the most part there were just too many distractions or barriers going on. I found myself wanting to listen to people around me, but I couldn’t turn the internal dialog off. So throughout the week I tried to catch myself, and found that it wasn’t too hard. Most of this type of non-listening occurs when I’m on the phone (particularly with my parents) for a long period of time. I’m not very good at talking on the phone anyways because of the lack of eye-contact and my distractions caused by trying to multitask. The best results in correction my pseudo listening were to go and sit in a quiet area (have a smoke) and literally sit on my free hand. If my mind still wandered, I fought to catch myself and redirect my attention to who I was speaking with on the phone. 3) Finally students integrated their course learning through a celebration of learning. They created metaphors for the course content, and explained

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personal learning and future applications via these metaphors. A Board Game

A Face Metaphor

. . . and Celebrating

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Postscript: Learner-Educator roles change. At the conclusion of this course (June, 2011) a student stated, “You were so much more than a teacher to us.” Final Note: The title of my blog is User-Generated Education. I have a goal of assisting with educational reform in that a learner-centric system of education evolves. I believe that this cycle of learning is a natural way of learning and that educators can assist students in understanding this cycle so they can use it for their own personalized learning experiences. Photo Image for Phase 3 Blog Picture: Blog Photo Image: http://www ←.flickr.com/photos/mcteach/5066409388/in/set−72157625004568191

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Nurturing a Learner’s Sense of Wonder Tuesday, July 5, 2011

I started my work in education as an outdoor educator. I took elementaryaged kids on environmental education adventures and at-risk youth on extended wilderness trips. When taking the at-risk students on backpacking trips in Maine, some of my favorite moments came when we came over a knoll to an outlook that appeared to have a view of the whole state of Maine. Due to numerous trips to this location, I knew what was coming after our long day hiking through the dense woods. The kids did not. I would rush ahead so I could see their faces as they approached this magnificent view. It never failed. I watched their faces turn from the look related to the strenuous climb to that of pure joy and amazement at the view. These “too-cool” teens’ lit-up faces and cries of ”wow’ reminded me of the same reactions I saw in the younger kids as they explored the nature world during our hikes. A sense of wonder is characterized by full engagement, flow, being present in the moment, and a high “wow” factor. Rachel Carson stated in A Sense of Wonder: A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood. If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength. I am proposing, then, that a primary role of the educator – of all ages – is to tap into, nurture, nourish, and celebrate each learner’s sense of wonder.

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Our job as educators is to create space in our classrooms and our day for this wonder. We need to let them know that their questions are not only valued an important but have a place in our classrooms and school (Building a Culture of Wonder: Inquiry in Primary Education). Specific Examples of Bringing a Sense of Wonder Into the Classroom What follows are a few activities to learn about students’ areas of wonder. Included are both hands-on and technology-enhanced learning activities. Four Quad Poster Learners are asked to paint a piece of plywood, cut about 12” x 12”, that addresses the following.

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This activity has been used with Kindergarten through Masterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s degree students. Painting was chosen as the medium to activate a different frame of mind (part of the brain) for answering these questions â&#x20AC;&#x201C; possibly tapping into thoughts, areas, creative parts of themselves that they may not with more common medium. After completion, their quad plaques were hug in the classroom. Each student explained his/her creation and fielded questions by other students. 1st Grader, Jeff, Wonders About Sunsets

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5th Grader, Marc, Wonders About Girls (of course)

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A huge benefit of this activity is that it provided me, the educator, with a huge amount of assessment information. I got to learn about the passions of my students and very quickly got to know each one as a unique individual. Five Word Memoirs: What Do You Wonder About The 3rd through 5th grade students were given the following directions:

First, they created artistic versions of what they wondered about:

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Then, they converted these into technology-based expressions: With PicLits

. . . and with Imagechef

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WonderPoints: Using Mobile Devices to Activate a Sense of Wonder Bernie Dodge, of Webquest fame, is exploring ways to incorporate mobile learning into the classroom. He is developing WonderPoints as a way to use mobile devices to explore personal points of wonder. WonderPoints, involves studying a small area outside the classroom from multiple points of view. As they note things they wonder about, they take pictures, record sounds and capture the beginnings of a question that is then geotagged. The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. Albert Einstein Additional Readings I did an extensive search of the internet to find additional references and resources for creating a sense of wonder and a culture of curiosity in the classroom. Sadly, I found only a few: â&#x20AC;˘ Edutopiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s A Sense of Wonder: Creating and Maintaining Interest in Education

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• @Saskateach’s Building a Culture of Wonder: Inquiry in Primary Education • Related: Tinkering School

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It really is about the technology and . . . Friday, July 15, 2011

It is not about the technology. I have developed a sour taste for this common and almost automatic “battle cry” from the educational technology community. If we view learning as a process that is integrated, holistic, and systemic, then of course it is about the technology . . . and the pedagogy . . . and the learners . . . and the available resources . . . and the community. It is not about one thing before the other, one thing over another. It is about the whole picture. It goes from being a reductionist view of technology integration to one that holistic, taking into account all the elements, and how they influence and are influenced by one another.

I am teaching an online Integrating Technology Into the Curriculum course for a Masters of Education fully online program. This is the only technology course they have during their Masters work (and it is an elective). It is an eight week course and one that has been designed by the university’s course designers. Most of the students come into the course with knowledge of Microsoft products – Word, Powerpoint, Spreadsheets and hardware such as overhead projectors (yes, they still reference this), DVDs, and Elmos.

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Most of the students’ suggestions for integrating technology into their curriculum include examples using these tools they know. Here are example recommendations from one of the “better” students from his technology improvement plan: Computers would make a nice addition to each classroom for use by students. Software such as Microsoft should be installed on each computer so students can explore with Spreadsheets, word, and database. In addition, with computers the school should install the internet on them so students may use it to search for topics of interests and study as well as thousands of other things. They know their learners, their schools, their content areas, and only the technologies I described. But most of their technology integration ideas pretty much contain these old school technologies. I make suggestions about how to enhance their curriculum using more current technologies – Google docs and apps, social networking, Blogs, wikis, Prezi, TeacherTube – but few “take me up” on these offerings. An emphasis here – these are masters of education students in an Educational Leadership program. This fits with the cliché of ”If all one knows is a hammer, then everything is viewed as a nail.” The same tenet applies to educational technology integration, ”If all the educator knows is Word and PPT, then all technologyintegrated learning experiences will be viewed through the lens of a Powerpoint.” The benefits of educators knowing a full range of emerging, educationalrelevant technologies include: • Content and process can be presented to the learners using a variety of modalities – visual, auditory, interactive. Use of multiple modalities has the potential to make the content more interesting and more relevant to a broad range of learners. • Instructional could be differentiated to meet each student’s needs. The more tools an educator knows, the more likely s/he can offer the right technology to address that student’s learning style and interest areas.

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• Teachable Moments are enhanced. When learners bring up ideas or questions, the educator has a larger back pocket of options, knowledge of internet resources upon which to draw to address that teachable moment. It then becomes the responsibility for educators to understand the current technologies being used by society-at-large. What that means in actual practice is: • Keeping informed of how emerging technologies are being integrated into the educational landscape by other educators, librarians, instructional technology specialists, and administrators. This is where social networks such of Twitter come in handy. • Getting to know and understand the tools through webinars often offered by the tool administrators/developers and online tutorials. • Understanding the user agreements and privacy issues associated with the tools being used by society-at-large. If education is serious about preparing learners for their real lives – current and future, then they it becomes an ethical imperative to bring relevant, current, and emerging technologies into the learning environment.

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An Educatorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Letter of Introduction Thursday, July 21, 2011

I recently got hired by American InterContinental University to teach a new digital citizenship course for their Masters of Education program. As is the norm for online universities, I am required to take an online training prior to teaching. This training started this week and one of the first tasks is to create a letter of introduction, a letter to provide students at the beginning of the course. I ended up really enjoying the process and was impressed with the guiding questions provided. I think this is great exercise and artifact for educators to give to learners. What follows are the directions and questions provided by AIU along with the letter I developed. http://www.flickr.com/photos/taytayforealz/3272590793/ The Welcome Letter is one of the first things a student will see so it is important that a great Welcome Letter sets a positive tone for the class. The Welcome Letter provides personalization, relays enthusiasm for the program and the class, and gives advice to the student for how to be successful. Here are some guiding questions: â&#x20AC;˘ What makes you passionate about the work you do? â&#x20AC;˘ How long have you been teaching?

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• How long have you been in the work field in which you are credentialed to teach? • What are your proudest moments or inspirational accomplishments? • Who is the teacher behind the computer? • What helped you to be successful? • What is your advice for success for students in your class? • What do you hope for your students to accomplish by the end of the course, and/or for their futures based upon what they learned from the course? • How will you express your “open door” philosophy within the Welcome Letter? • What are some anecdotes or quotes you might include? Here is the letter I composed for my learners: Hello, I am excited to be spending this term with you! This letter will provide you with some information about me, my background, my passion for education, my general philosophy for approaching my role as an educator, and recommendations for being successful in this learning environment.

My official name is Dr. Jaclyn Gerstein, but I invite you to call me Jackie. My byline is, “I don’t do teaching for a living, I live teaching as my doing, and technology has AMPLIFIED the passion.” I have been an educator for several decades. I began in more informal learning environments through outdoor and environmental education. Then I moved into more formal settings such as psychiatric hospitals and schools. I have a broad range of teaching experiences from Kindergarten

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through Graduate school within face-to-face, blended, and online teaching environments in public, private and charter schools. Since I began my career in the area of outdoor education for at-risk youth, I obtained a doctorate in counseling focusing on group and experiential therapy for that population. I have maintained my counseling credential (Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor in New Mexico), but went on to get my K-8 teaching certification and gifted education endorsement. I moved from counseling to teaching children and pre-service/inservice teachers. My motivation for this move came from my discovery that educators do a lot of counseling in their classrooms – often more than counselors. It also fits with my belief that all good education begins with a positive relationship between the educator and the learner. I feel extremely grateful to be in a profession where I get the opportunity to view human growth and learning. There is no gift greater than to literally view light bulbs going off in learners’ eyes/brains and self-esteem grow. I wrote about some of these key moments, which I call peak experiences, in my ePortfolio at http://jackiegerstein.weebly.com/peak−experiences ←.html. I take pride in my work as an educator due to my guiding values and principles: • I work towards creating learning environments that are engaging, authentic, and student-centered. • I approach education as a process of co-creation whereby the educator and learners work together to create the learning experiences. • I have a theory into practice model. I assist learners in developing strategies, skills, and activities they can use in their own home and work situations. • I have a dream of helping develop an education system where all students can flourish, where their own passions are at the core of their own individualized and personalized education. My expectations for students as they engage in class activities are based on my guiding principles and include: academic rigor; clear, well-composed and appropriate communication; personal connections to course content,

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and community involvement. Even though the expectations revolve around these high standards, a lot of support is provided through the readings, additional resources, detailed rubrics, and our community of learners. • Read over all of the course materials and resources. • Ask questions of and for assistance from both your co-learners and me. • Seek answers and resources using the Internet search engines and social networks like Twitter. • Share resources that you find with the rest of us. • Bring your own passions and interests into the course. • Use the rubric criteria to guide your assignments. • Use available resources to assist you. For example, AIU has a great writing center. I have a mastery of learning philosophy. How this translates into you being a student in this course is that you have the option to revise and resubmit work that did not meet all of the assignment criteria. The feedback you receive is based on the grading rubric and feedback you may receive from your classmates and me. You may submit your work several times until it meets a level to which you are satisfied. In closing, I am looking forward to our journey together as I believe we are all educators and learners in this adventure. To quote the famous educational philosopher, John Dewey, “Education is a process of living and not a preparation for future living.” See you online, Jackie Gerstein, Ed. D.

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Montessori Methods â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Worth a (Re) Look Monday, July 25, 2011

The techniques developed by Maria Montessori are getting some press recently. What is interesting is that Montessori methods cannot be more diametrically opposed to the current teacher-driven, standards-based, testinfused system that is common in many school environments throughout the globe.

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The Harvard Business Review featured an article today, July 25, 2011, entitled Montessori Builds Innovators. Shouldn’t we be paying a great deal of attention to the educational method that produced, among others, Larry Page, Sergei Brin, Jeff Bezos, Jimmy Wales, Peter Drucker, Julia Child, David Blaine, and Sean ”P. Diddy” Combs? They were all students in Montessori schools. According to a Wall Street Journal article by Peter Sims, there’s a ”Montessori Mafia” among the creative elite. So maybe there’s something to the method Italian physician Maria Montessori came up with around the turn of the 20th century. . . . and from the Wall Street Journal article, Montessori Mafia. The Montessori Mafia showed up in an extensive, six-year study about the way creative business executives think. Professors Jeffrey Dyer of Brigham Young University and Hal Gregersen of globe-spanning business school INSEAD surveyed over 3,000 executives and interviewed 500 people who had either started innovative companies or invented new products. “A number of the innovative entrepreneurs also went to Montessori schools, where they learned to follow their curiosity,” Mr. Gregersen said. “To paraphrase the famous Apple ad campaign, innovators not only learned early on to think different, they act different (and even talk different).” Will Wright, inventor of bestselling “The Sims” videogame series, heaps similar praise. “Montessori taught me the joy of discovery,” Mr. Wright said, “It’s all about learning on your terms, rather than a teacher explaining stuff to you. SimCity comes right out of Montessori…” . . . and yet for more evidence of the efficacy of Montessori Methods, Google Founders, Page and Brin, credit Montessori School for their success:

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If education is always to be conceived along the same antiquated lines of a mere transmission of knowledge, there is little to be hoped from it in the bettering of manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s future. For what is the use of transmitting knowledge if the individualâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s total development lags behind? Maria Montessori

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Reading: A Natural Human Phenomenon Given the Right Conditions Sunday, August 14, 2011

The written word is a fairly new development in human evolution given the history of humankind. Even so, it has become a common and natural way of communication for a lot of people in our current times. School curriculum often presents reading and writing as a forced, unnatural skill to be acquired through hard work. As an elementary student, I was required to do the requisite book reports. I wasn’t interested in the books I was told to read. I learned how to creatively tweak the book cover summaries to write these reports – receiving A’s and B’s for books never read. Fast forward to 9th grade. I don’t know how but somehow I picked up Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle and was hooked into reading. Reading became my survival to my painful and boring high school experiences. I would bring books of my choosing into class, would hide them in the class textbooks and joyful escape into the worlds of these books. Without any prompting or direction, I located and read many of the books by the following authors during high school (note the following are direct links to websites dedicated to that author): • Kurt Vonnegut • John Steinbeck • Alice Walker • Ayn Rand • Richard Bautigan • Margaret Atwood Fast forward – today. We have seen this natural drive to read by this current generation of youth through the Harry Potter and Twilight series. I recently asked a group of about 25 sixth graders if they liked to read and received a resounding, ”No!” I then asked if they had read Harry Potter and most had.

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So I get frustrated when I read about all these formalized and structured ways to teach reading (and have a gut-level, nauseous reaction to discussions around Success For All and Reading First). I understand that many kids do not have the skills and motivation to independently locate books of personal interest, but I do believe that one of the responsibilities of educators (of all content areas) is to provide learners with reading recommendations. This past year, I started reading YA novels, finding them intelligent, engaging, and thought provoking. I believe if kids are introduced to the choice menu of these and similar books, then kids will become naturally interested in reading. Some recommendations I would offer (if I was teaching middle or high school) include: • The Hunger Games Series • Uglies Series • Maze Runner Series • Ship Breaker • Life as We Knew It Series • Delirium • Matched • Flip • House of Scorpion • Looking for Alaska • The Adoration of Jenna Fox This is just my own list. Imagine if educators and young adults shared all of their favorite books and discussions about these books became the norm in English classes. Technology and social networking have the potential to increase interest and engagement in learning. A few years ago I taught gifted education for elementary students. Philip, a charismatic and sports-driven young man,

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said he was not interested in reading because he did not like the books the teachers gave him to read. I introduced the class to Shelfari. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know what it was about this Web 2.0 tool but Philip totally took off, becoming motivated to read and add books of his choosing to his Shelfari. These can be viewed at http://www.shelfari.com/phillip12/shelf.

I am waiting for the day that the guiders and managers of education realize that forced education does not become lifelong learning.

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Where is reflection in the learning process? Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Today, we finished the second week of an interpersonal communications course. The students in the course are first term college students, a few fresh out of high school. As is my common practice, I end my week of instruction with reflective questions for the students: • What was your significant learning this past week? • What principles for everyday life can you extract from our class activities? (Note: The activities are experiential). • What did you learn or what was reinforced about yourself? • What can you take from the class activities to use in your life outside of class? I asked the students to get in small groups to discuss these questions. They got in their groups and just looked at one another with baffled looks on their

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faces while remaining silent. I tried rewording the questions and providing examples and still got blank looks when they returned to their group discussions. Products of a Standardized System I began to get frustrated by their lack of response until a major AHA struck me . . . They are products of a standardized system where they were asked to memorize standardized information and spit that information out on standardized tests. When finished with one unit of information, they were asked to quickly move onto the next unit. They were not given the time, skills, and opportunities to extract personalized meanings from their studies. Reflection was not part of their curriculum as it cannot be measured nor tested. Educators as Reflective Practitioners When I entered my doctoral program, I was quickly introduced to David Schonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Reflective Practitioner (in an adult learning course), and was immediately drawn to to importance of reflective practice. Later, as a counselor and teacher educator, I have held tightly onto the belief that good counselors and educators need to be engaged in ongoing reflective practice. The critically reflective habit confers a deeper benefit than that of procedural utility. It grounds not only our actions, but also our sense of who we are as teachers in an examined reality. We know why we believe what we believe. A critically reflective teacher is much better placed to communicate to colleagues and students (as well as to herself) the rationale behind her practice. She works from a position of informed commitment. She knows why she does and thinks, what she does and thinks. Stephen Brookfield The only way that educators can teach and promote reflective practice by their students (of all ages) in their own classrooms is to engage in, embrace, and fully understand this process themselves. It is important to realize the implications for our students of our own critical reflection. Students put great store by our actions and they learn a great deal from observing how we model intellectual inquiry and democratic process. Given that this is so,

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a critically reflective teacher activates her classroom by providing a model of passionate skepticism. As Osterman (1990) comments, ”critically reflective teachers – teachers who make their own thinking public, and therefore subject to discussion – are more likely to have classes that are challenging, interesting, and stimulating for students” (p. 139). Stephen Brookfield I fear that many educators and educators-in-training are not reflective practitioners. There are several resources to assist educators in gaining knowledge and skills for reflective practice: • Stephen Bloomfield Becoming a Critically Reflective Practitioner • Reflective teaching: Exploring our own classroom practice • Reflective Practice Online Resource • Educational Leadership: Getting into the Habit of Reflection If reflective practice is not encouraged within one’s teacher education program or school work environment, then it becomes that educator’s responsibility (verging on an ethical responsibility) to do so on his or her own. Reflection in the Classroom Learners do not just receive information only at the time it is given; they absorb information in many different ways, often after the fact, through reflection. The most powerful learning often happens when students self-monitor, or reflect. Students may not always be aware of what they are learning and experiencing. Teachers must raise students’ consciousness about underlying concepts and about their own reactions to these concepts. ETE Team Reflection in the classroom can begin at a young age. Reflection during instructional time can be facilitated through: • Structuring lesson plans to support reflective thinking. • Providing lesson components that prompt inquiry and curiosity.

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• Providing resources and hand-on activities to prompt exploration. • Providing reflective thinking activities that prompt students to think about what they have done, what they learned, and what they still need to do. • Providing reflection activity worksheets for each lesson plan to prompt students to think about what they know, what they learned, and what they need to know as they progress through their exploration. ETE Team There are specific classroom activities that can assist students in engaging in reflective practice. • Think-Pair-Share • Think Books – Reflective Journals • Exit Tickets • Blogging –Application of Blogs to Support Reflective Learning Journals • Podcasts or Vodcasts I further discuss reflection as part of the learning process in The Flipped Classroom: The Full Picture. By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest. Confucius Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/petesimon/5197395116/

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Beginning the School Year: It’s About Connections Not Content Sunday, August 21, 2011

Most classes, starting with about middle school, begin the school year with reviewing the content to be covered, expectations regarding grades, and other academic information provided by the teacher or instructor. The human or social element is often disregarded. What is interesting is that most learners enter the classroom wondering who is in the course. They want to know about the teacher and the people in the class not what material is to be covered. What this says to me as an educator is that it all begins with a social connection – between the educator and the learners, and between the learners themselves. Because of this belief, I begin all classes focusing on having the students make connections between themselves and me. I want students to learn about one another in a personal way. I want to learn about my students so my instructional strategies can be more personalized and tailored to their needs and interests. Beginning class with a focus on connections rather than content gives learners the following messages: • You are the focus of the class not me. • You are important as a learner in this class. • You will be expected to engage in the learning activities during class time. You will be an active learner.

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• You will be expected to do collaborative learning during the class time. • I, as the class facilitator, will be just that – a facilitator. I will introduce the learning activities, but you will be responsible for the actual learning. • I will get to know you as a learner and try to help you find learning activities that are of interest to you. Based on age/grade level, I have begun my classes in a variety of ways. What follows is a sample of activities I have used to begin the school year or college course. Team Contract Class members meet in small groups to develop guidelines for making the classroom a safe place to learn and to take risks. The groups then create a visual project that represents their guidelines.

Team Building Games There are tons of team building games that can be used in the classroom. Some of my favorite sources of these include:

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â&#x20AC;˘ Wilderdom â&#x20AC;˘ Teampedia The activity in the pictures is called Puzzling Moves Tangrams- a favorite of students of all age students.

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All About Me Activities Some example activities I have done: About Me Posters These arestore bought posters. They provide a great way to get to know students. After they are completed, I ask students to share them with the rest of the class and allow time for questions of each presentation.

For the older students, I had them randomly select another class member and they used the Biography posters to create a biography for the selected student. These were posted on one of the classroom walls drawing immediate attention of classroom visitors.

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I Am Poems Students createdI AM Poems using magnetic poetry.

Personalized Wallet Students began by creating an origami wallet. They then drew self portraits and included identifying information.

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Roomination When I taught 6th grade, I did not spend the week prior to the school year decorating the classroom for the students. I just piled the furniture and wall decorations in the middle of the room. In small groups, students developed blueprints for the classroom. Teams presented their designs to the rest of the class and their favorite design was voted upon. Students arranged the room according to the winning design.

Building Cubbies After the Roomination exercise, students built and painted their own cubbies. I provided the wood pieces and specifications, but the students built them needing to assist one another to do so. They individualized their cubbies through painting them as they desired.

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Team and Community Building Using Mobile Devices Monday, August 22, 2011

Cell phones today allow users to do so much more than just a few years ago. Students can use their cell phones to write and send text messages, take and send digital photos, and even take and send short digital video clips, in addition to making phone calls. http://teachingtoday.glencoe.com/ ←howtoarticles/cell−phones−in−the−classroom\\ As such, mobile devices provide great opportunities for learning. One such use is for team and community building. What follows is a list of smartphone-based, community-building activities. About Me

Ask participants to locate a photo, song, or video from their mobile device that best represents them. Each person then shares his or her media and the reason it was selected. Bringing portable speakers can assist with the sharing of songs so others can hear them. Source: Jackie Gerstein

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Playlists • Prior to the activity, create a list of at least 10 categories of playlists. Possible categories include pop music, boy band music, country music, holiday music, bits of TV or movie dialogue, classical music, college fight songs, love songs, TV or movie theme music, and cartoon character voices. • For the activity itself, have participants form teams of about 10 members each, then ask all participants to make sure that their cell phones are turned on. Next, tell them that you are going to call out a playlist category. If they have this style of ringtone in their phone, they have to find it, hold up their phone, and play the appropriate ringtone (or music) for everyone. • Points awarded to groups based on how many in group can ”play” the sound. • Example List – Boy band – Girl band

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– Love song – TV or Movie tune – Cartoon or movie Voice – Voice of significant other – A phone ring – Your own voice • Source:http://www.humankinetics.com/products/all−products/ ←Team−Building−Activities−for−the−Digital−Age−eBook Categories – Do you have? • Form students in small groups. • Ask them to find a picture on their mobiles that contains (just one per group to get a point) – Pet – Grandparents – Something in Nature – Person doing a sport’s activity – A group of friends • Source: http://www.humankinetics.com/products/all−products/ ←Team−Building−Activities−for−the−Digital−Age−eBook • Alternative – ask each small group to assign one person to take digital photos during some of the small group activities (e.g., team-building activities). This person should be told nothing but to get a visual record of the group during the activities. After the a number of group activities, this activity can be conducted. • Call out the following. If the the photographer for that small group has that image, then they get a point. – Picture of someone with the GPS – A Group Shot

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– A close up of someone concentrating – A close up of someone smiling – Someone helping another person – A picture with hands • Source – Jackie Gerstein

Spot the Eyes • In small groups, ask group members to take close ups of one another’s eyes. • Show the entire group the pics using the LCD – other group members guess whose eyes they are. This is a good name game. • Alternative – group members can send the facilitator full face shots and eyes-only shots of themselves. The facilitator can post these randomly on Flickr, a Wiki, 0r Facebook. Group members then attempt to match the faces with the eyes. • Safety – only first names should be used. Pictures should only be head and eye shots.

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• Source: http://www.humankinetics.com/products/all−products/ ←Team−Building−Activities−for−the−Digital−Age−eBook • Alternative: Jackie Gerstein

Community Puzzle • Separate group into smaller groups. • Explain – Your group is to use images from you cell phones to create a group story. The story can be sequential where one cell phone picture leads logically to the next. Cell phones and the pictures can only be used once to tell the story. The logic and connection to be obvious to the viewer with little or no need for verbal explanation. • Source: Jackie Gerstein

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Values Photos • Ask participants to choose their three top values. They can be given a list of values. • Give participants the task to locate objects in their environment that symbolize these values and take a photo using their mobile devices. • Photos with directions are directly emailed to a Flickr page set up for this purpose. Lisa Nielson describes this process in her blog entry, Using Flickr to Collect Images Captured on Cell Phones.

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Texting Gossip – Telephone • Prior to the activity, choose a phrase (with fewer than 300 characters) that has meaning to your group and translate it for text messaging (for help, visit http://transl8it.com/cgi−win/index.pl). Make sure that all participants have one another’s cell phone numbers stored in their own phone’s memory. • After arranging the group in a circle, text your message to the first person (it helps to have the message already loaded into your phone). The person who receives the text then whispers the message to the next person in the circle. That person must then text the message to the next person. Continue in this fashion (i.e., alternating texts and whispers) until the last person receives the message via either text or whisper. The last person then verbally shares the message with the entire group. • Example: – Fear stops you in your tracks. Self confidence propels you forward. to Fear stops U n yor tracks. Self confidNc propels U 4ward. • Discuss problems with texted gossip

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• Source: http://www.humankinetics.com/products/all−products/ ←Team−Building−Activities−for−the−Digital−Age−eBook Human Machine • Separate group into smaller groups – 4 to 8 per group. • The group’s task is the create a human machine that has the following attributes – Two cell phones that are to be ”synchronized” in some manner to make a sound – One or two cell phones that create some type of visual effect for the machine – All group members need to be connected in some way. – At least half the arms and half the legs of the group need to be moving in some way. – A group spokesperson needs to be able to explain the purpose and function of the machine. • Source: Jackie Gerstein Two Truths and a Lie • Each group members takes or locates (copyright free or creative commons) three images – two that represent ”facts” about them; one that is plausible but really a ”lie”. These should be symbols rather than portrait type shots . . . a favorite dog, a flower if likes gardening, a country’s flag is from or visited that country. • These are uploaded on a ”public” site such as Facebook, a Wiki, or Flickr only with a brief caption. Remember that the goal is to fool others so the third picture, the lie, needs to seem like a truth. • Other members guess which one is the lie by leaving their guess in the comment section. • Safety: Only first names are used. No pictures of self, family member, or friends

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• Source: Jackie Gerstein Building Communications • The facilitator builds a prototype model using Legos or another building kit. • Two or three volunteers act as the communicators. They have the prototype in their location. The rest of the group is in a remote location. They have all the parts of the prototype but it needs to be built as an exact replication of the prototype. The communicators either text or voice chats with the group who must build the prototype based on these directions. • Two or three times during the building process – a ”runner” from the building time can run over and view the original prototype. • If the group struggles with the task, they can send an image to the receiver. • Pictures of ”results” can uploaded onto Facebook or a Website – and placed side-by-side for comparison. • Source: Jackie Gerstein

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Text a Group Story â&#x20AC;˘ One person starts a story â&#x20AC;&#x201C; either a word, phrase, or sentence (can be negotiated with the group or predetermined by the leader), and texts this to the next group member who adds a word, phrase, or sentence. When it gets to the last person, s/he reads the story aloud.

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• If done virtually, the last person can post the story onto a wiki, website, or Facebook. • Source: Jackie Gerstein Memory • Form smaller groups – 6 to 8 people per group. • Group members choose an image or single word to display on each of their cell phones. • The phones are laid out on a table. • The other groups are give a minute to memorize the images-words. • The group that collectively remembers the most cell phone displays wins. • Each group is given a chance to display their cell phones. • Source: Jackie Gerstein

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Pass the Task • Smaller groups of 6 to 8 members are formed with equal number of members per group. • Give members some time to get the phone number of the person who is ”next in line”. • Group members are given slips of paper with tasks. Each smaller group gets the same slips. • The first person looks at his/her slip and texts the task to the next person. The next person does the task, then looks at his/her slip, and finally, texts this task to the next person. • The first group to complete • Tasks: – Hop 10 times on one foot

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– Hum or whistle your favorite song. – Shake hands or high five the next person in line. – Do Head, Shoulder, Knees, Toes three times. – Pat your head and rub your tummy – Say Sally Sells Seashells at the Seashore three times • Clarity in communication?? • Source: http://www.humankinetics.com/products/all−products/ ←Team−Building−Activities−for−the−Digital−Age−eBook Spot the Difference • This activity is like the Find the Eight (or so) Differences between the two pictures. • Group members take an original-first group picture. They then make subtle changes – eight to ten of them – to the group. It could be change of clothing, hair, background, etc. • Each set of pictures is displayed via some sort of LCD. The other groups are to identify the differences. • Virtual – individuals can do this using their home setting – making the eight alterations in the scene. The two images could then be uploaded to Facebook or a wiki. • Source: Jackie Gerstein Reflections • As a debrief for the day’s team building activities, ask participants to go a take picture of something that represents that day’s events. • Ask participants to use a song or ringtone to go with that image. • Source: Jackie Gerstein Texting or Facebook Feedback Students send their classmates via textbook or Facebook three adjectives that describe their classmates’ performance during the class activities.

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Using Mobile Devices to Create a Personalized Feeling Chart Students are introduced to the feelings cards by selecting the cards that matched their feelings at that moment . . .

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In small groups, students select 10-15 feelings cards and set up scenarios that represented each of feelings selected. They used their own mobile device to take photos of these images . . .

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The photos are directly uploaded to Flickr via an email. The full process is described by Lisa Nielson in Using Flickr to Collect Images Captured on Cell Phones.

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The uploaded images create a personalizedfeelings poster. Students are provided with scenarios and asked to locate on the Interactive White Board which of these displayed images that they created best represented how they would feel in that situation.

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Texting Communications Activity This activity is an adaptation of theBack-to-Back Communications Exercise. Students pair up. One volunteered to give the directions, the other to be the drawer. They exchange phone numbers and the drawers go to another room. The direction givers are provided with the following drawing and told to text in words (one student asked if he could send a picture) the description of the drawing. The goal was for the drawer to reproduce the drawing to scale.

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Learning Communities: The Future (the Now?) of Education Monday, August 29, 2011

I am lucky to have found a great passion in my life (in addition to being an educator) and that is pottery making. Due to local opportunities, I have mostly worked on my pots in community pottery studios. The key word is community. We are more than a group of potters working in the same space or room. We ask and share information about techniques used to create the pots. We are a learning community. What strikes me most about this pottery learning community is its diversity in terms of gender and age range â&#x20AC;&#x201C; from mid-teens to late 70â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s. The experts are not necessarily the elders of our group. The expert is the person who understands and could explain a technique about which another member wants to know. It is situational expertise. A useful and descriptive definition of learning communities comes from Etienne Wenger in his discussion of communities of practice: Communities of practice are formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavor: a tribe learning to survive, a band of artists seeking new forms of expression, a group of engineers working on similar problems, a clique of pupils defining their identity in the school, a network of surgeons exploring novel techniques, a gathering of first-time managers helping each other cope. In

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a nutshell, communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. Some of the characteristics of learning communities include: • Self-organizing • Not limited by age barriers • High levels of interaction, sharing of resources, and collaboration • Driven by intrinsic motivation Self-organizing What happens when groups of people gather together to provide mutual support for learning and performance? How would that work? Rather than being controlled by a teacher, learners might ”self-organize” into functioning communities with a general goal of supporting each other in their learning. That is to say, the function of guidance and control becomes distributed among group participants. Specific roles of group members are not assigned but rather emerge from the interaction of the whole. http://carbon.ucdenver.edu/~mryder/dlc ←.html Not Bounded By Age Level Grouping students by age and advancing them in lock step is an artifact of the agrarian calendar and factory model of schooling that emerged in the late 19th century. That it is still with us is a commentary on just how conservative schooling is. As every parent and teacher knows, children’s developmental trajectories vary widely, and the notion of grouping children by age is a convention without meaning. http://articles.latimes.com ←/2004/apr/26/opinion/oe−doyle26 Currently, our society is mostly marked by age segregation - both imposed (in school) and self-selected (through leisure time pursuits). A major advantage of learning communities driven-by-interest is that members of all

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ages choose to join. Young people learn from the life experiences of elders, Elders learn to view things from the fresh eyes and often idealist thinking of young people. Online learning communities organized through Facebook, forums, and massively multiplayer online game have dramatically increased these mixed age groupings. High Levels of Interaction, Sharing of Resources, and Collaboration The ultimate payoff for involvement in a learning community is developing more expertise in one’s area of interest. As such, there tends to be an ease of sharing knowledge, information, and resources. A simple example is when a request for information is broadcasted on Twitter or Facebook with the result often being a poring in of information to address this request. This is why I believe concepts-areas such as crowdsourcingand theopen education movement have become so popular. Intrinsic Motivation As stated, the payoff for being involved in a learning community is increased expertise and skills – and the possibility of leveling up. Intrinsic motivation as discussed in the context of learning communities can be viewed as the following: • Anticipated reciprocity. – A member is motivated to contribute to the community in the expectation that he or she will receive useful help and information in return. • Increased recognition - The desire for prestige is one of the key motivations for individuals’ contributions in a learning community. • Sense of efficacy – Individuals may contribute because the act results in a sense that they have had some effect on the community. (Adapted from http://socialmediatoday.com/index.php?q=SMC/190499) Learning networks have always existed with groups of people organizing around their interests and passions within community centers and clubs focusing on books, games, sports, etc. How the Internet and Web 2.0 have changed learning communities is through the ability to announce face-toface meetings and through online forums-networks. As such, one of the greatest gifts we could offer to our learners is how to find, join, and interact with their own personal learning communities – online and face-to-face.

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As kids have more connectivity and access to resources than ever, one challenge is to develop new practices and tools to support them in how they choose to manage learning opportunities. The challenge presented to us (as educators) is to empower them to consistently share those interests and activities that happen elsewhere and that paint a fuller portrait of who they are as learners. http://dmlcentral.net/blog/akili−lee/check ←−learning−and−social−learning−networks

Some resources for assisting students in learning about and developing their own learning communities: • Personal Learning Networks Are Virtual Lockers for Schoolkids by Vicki Davis – http://www.edutopia.org/pln−web−pages • Personal Learning Networks by Will Richardson – http://weblogg ←−ed.com/2011/personal−learning−networks−an−excerpt/

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http://www.phoenix.edu/uopx−knowledge−network/articles/current ←−conversations/connection−collaboration−creation.html

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Bringing Digital Propensities Into the Learning Environment Monday, September 5, 2011

Over the past decade there has been a lot of press given to the idea of the digital native. Regardless of one’s belief in this phenomenon, the under 21 age group is growing up with technology, always has had technology in their lives, and typically uses it on a daily basis. A new research project by the Open University explores the much-debated concept of “the digital native”. It concludes that while there are clear differences between older people and younger in their use of technology, there’s no evidence of a clear break between two separate populations. Younger students are more likely to have worked on a wide range of computing tasks, and to have used technology over longer periods. Younger ones more frequently have laptops and handheld devices – phones, music and games players. More of the younger users than the older ones, though, are likely to have access beyond the home computer – at work, at a public facility, or anytime, anywhere with a mobile device. When it comes to mobile phones, the differences are again in line with common perception – older users are just as likely as younger ones to make calls, but are less likely to use all the other features – text, camera, music, internet, wi-fi. (http://www.agent4change. ←net/resources/research/1088) Even with the evidence provided by research studies, I subscribe to the notion of educators as ethnographers (the science of contextualization). I observe and study how my learners interact with the objects in their world both in formal educational settings and in informal settings when it is their personal choice. I have been integrating technology into my classrooms (3rd grade to graduate school, online and face-to-facet) for over a decade. The big difference I noticed over the years is the ease that learners now have in using the technology. Years ago I needed to spend a lot of time explaining simple

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things like how to open applications, load pictures, navigate through a website. Now the learners easily complete these tasks. The similarity I find between now and then is that many learners are still not using technology in their educational-related tasks. What the researchers do find interesting – which is independent of age – is the attitudes to technology and approaches to studying. In short, students who more readily use technology for their studies are more likely than others to be deeply engaged with their work. (http://www.agent4change.net/ ←resources/research/1088) In an effort to blur the lines between school and ”outside” life, and to assist learners in using their everyday technologies to become 24/7, on-demand learners, I recommend that educators use and promote the following in their classrooms: • Let Them Tinker • Let Them Text • Let Them Google, Use Wikipedia and YouTube • Let Them Use Technology to Develop Their Skills and Passions • Let Them Showcase Their Skills and Passions Using Online Tools and Social Networks • Let Them Game Let Them Tinker I am absolutely amazed how easily young kids pick up and understand how to use the apps on iPads, iPhones, and other mobile devices. If you load these devices with a lot of educational apps, the kids will explore, play, and tinker with them, finding those they like. This serves several purposes, First, the kids are learning with excitement and self-motivation. Second, the educator, again as an ethnographer, can see which ones the kids are attracted to. This becomes a type of learning interest survey, whereby the educator can introduce the learner to similar education-based apps.

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For example, the young man in the picture, 8 years old, had never used an iPad nor iPod. I introduced him to mine. He navigated through the apps like a pro teaching me some things while he was at it. He found an app, Game Dev Story, and spent over an hour playing this game, which interestingly was not designed for his age group. So in line with letting learners tinker is not letting our own notions about what students can or cannot learn get in the way of their own learning (quite the sentence, I know). Let Them Text As Pew Research noted, teens (and pre-teens) text. Cell-phone texting has become the preferred channel of basic communication between teens and their friends. Some 75% of 12-17 year-olds now own cell phones. Those phones have become indispensable tools in teen communication patterns. Fully 72% of all teens or 88% of teen cell phone users are textmessagers. (http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1572/teens−cell ←−phones−text−messages)

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This provides a rationale for bringing texting and social networking into the classroom. Learners can be encouraged to text to one another about what they are learning; Tools likeEtherpad, Edmodo, or Wikispaces can be set up for this purpose., and for those more daring educators, Twitter and Facebook provide some other options.

Sending text messages – from the slang ”wot” and ”wanna”, to the short cut ”CU L8R”- may actually be improving, not damaging, young children’s spelling skills, new research shows. Contrary to popular belief, the use of text message abbreviations is linked positively with literacy achievements. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2006/sep ←/11/schools.uk1) Let them Google, Use Wikipedia and YouTube

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Young people search for information, content and entertainment through YouTube, Wikipedia, and Google. Peter Drucker, author of Managing the Future observed: ”We live in a very turbulent time, not because there is so much change, but because it moves in so many different directions.” (Drucker, 1993) Effective instructors have to be able to recognize and run with opportunity to learn, and to constantly refresh the knowledge base.” The complexity of rapidly changing teaching technology makes it a critical objectives for practitioners to learn about the latest tools to enhance presentations in the classroom. YouTube has proven in the last two years to be an emerging technology with strong potential for enhancing classroom discussions, lectures and presentations.http ←://EzineArticles.com/1652151 Yes, this may mean working to unblock these sites (57% of schools block YouTube, 14% of schools block Wikipedia) to open up these channels of student learning. Let Them Use Technology to Develop Their Skills and Passions; Let Them Showcase Their Skills and Passions Using Online Tools and Social Networks

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For example: • Andrea, who likes to write, was encouraged to start a blog. • Max, who likes to draw, was introduced and loved Odosketch. • Chris, who is an accomplished potter and just graduated high school, was assisted in developing an online portfolio using Weebly. • Eric, who loves online gaming, was given a link to GameMaker so he could make his own online games. Let Them Game Approximately 90% of teens have played video games at least once, with a majority of teens playing regularly. 83 percent of young people aged 8 to 18 have access to a game player in their own home. (http://mpoweredparent.com/get−the ←−facts/video−games−use−statistics/)

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What if teacher gave up the vestiges of their educational past, threw away the worksheets, burned the canon and reconfigured the foundation upon which a century of learning has been built? What if we blurred the lines between academic subjects and reimagined the typical American classroom so that, at least in theory, it came to resemble a typical American living room or a child’s bedroom or even a child’s pocket, – if, in other words, the slipstream of broadband and always-on technology that fuels our world became the source and organizing principle of our children’s learning? What if, instead of seeing school the way we’ve known it, we saw it for what our children dreamed it might be: a big, delicious video game? (http:// ←www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/magazine/19video−t.html) The benefits of using games for learning are too numerous to discuss in this post. I have a Teaching with Ted page on Gaming for Education and Social Good, and I am curating a Scoop. It on Game-Based Learning- an aggregate of articles and resources related to this topic. These are the strategies I am currently using with my learners. As can be seen in the photos of my classroom, student engagement is a common factor. My pledge to them is to continue to observe them in informal learning environments and adapt my instructional strategies around their interests.

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Educator’s Guide – Am I Doing It “Right?” Wednesday, September 7, 2011

What follows is an informal questionnaire I use to evaluate if an educator is doing it right: • Do the learners’ eyes light up when they see your? • Do your eyes light up when you see your learners? • Do the learners excitedly enter the classroom? • Do the learners hesitantly leave the classroom at the end of the day/lesson – often saying, ”Is it time to go already?” • Do learners feel comfortable asking you questions about what, how, and why they are learning in your class? • Do you see learners’ eyes flicker with new understandings? • Because of what they are learning in your class, do learners want to tell you about what they have read, created, seen, and/or thought about? • Do the learners ask if they can get on the computer to learn more about a topic being covered in class? • Do learners critically examine and question topics being covered? • Do you see your learners’ sense of wonder – the sense found in young children as they discover the world around them? • Do learners get to tap into, explore, and use their personal passions during your class? • Do learners propose learning projects to you – things they’d like to do in your class? • Do learners spend extra, not-required time outside of class studying and/or working on topics covered in class? • Does your heart break at the end of the school year when you say goodbye to your learners?

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â&#x20AC;˘ Do learners contact you after your class has ended to share difficulties and successes? â&#x20AC;˘ Do the learners contact later in life to say you have made a difference? (Note: This is more realistic given social media. I have had several students do so and it is an amazing gift.) Doing it right is never about the worksheets, tests, textbooks, or scripted curriculum. Others? Please suggest them!

Students Make Hats Depicting Favorite Literary Characters

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A Declaration for an Education of Interdependence Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Interdependence is a dynamic of being mutually and physically responsible to, and sharing a common set of principles with many others. This concept differs distinctly from ”dependence, ” which implies that each member of a relationship cannot function or survive apart from one another. In an interdependent relationship, all participants are emotionally, economically, ecologically and/or morally self-reliant while at the same time responsible to each other. http://en.wikipedia. ←org/wiki/Interdependence I love the interdependent-synergistic relationship I have with Twitter and the people I follow-who follow me. This group, who is known as my personal and professional learning network, has a collective goal of reforming/revolutionizing education so that students are at its center as opposed to content (and its related standards, tests, politics, etc.). Today I was exposed to two seemingly disconnected pieces of media via Twitter. In an effort to demonstrate interdependence and the role of social networks in facilitating interdependence, I am bringing them together in a synergistic way to make yet another case for a 21st century education – one based on interdependence. The Declaration of Interdependence

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The Transcipt: When In the course of human events, it becomes increasingly necessary to recognize the fundamental qualities that connect us, then we must reevaluate the truths we hold to be selfevident: That all humans are created equal and all are connected. That we share the pursuits of life, liberty, happiness, food, water, shelter, safety, education, justice, and hopes for a better future. That our collective knowledge, economy, technology, and environment are fundamentally interdependent. That what will propel us forward as a species is our curiosity, our ability to forgive, our ability to appreciate, our courage, and our desire to connect… That these things we share will ultimately help us evolve to our fullest common potential. And whereas we should take our problems seriously, we should never take ourselves too seriously. Because another thing that connects us…is our ability to laugh… and our attempt to learn from our mistakes… So that we can learn from the past, understand our place in the world, and use our collective knowledge to create a better future. So perhaps it’s time that we, as a species, who love to laugh, ask questions, and connect….do something radical and true. For centuries, we have declared independence. Perhaps it’s

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now time that we, as humans, declare our interdependence! If School Isn’t For Collaborating, Why Does Anyone Come? Ira David Socol posted a new blog entitled, If school isn’t for collaborating, why does anyone come? He notes: If students want to learn in isolation; if they want to sit at a desk and work on their own stuff, occasionally checking in with an ”expert, ” they have no reason to come to school. They can do a lot better at home, or at their local coffee shop or even the public library, where both the coffee and the WiFi connection will be better. A legitimate case has been made for blended education as opposed to one offered strictly online. The face-to-face component is not about the content to be learned. This can easily be done via online videos, textbooks, webinars, and forums. The reason, then, for face-to-face learning becomes about the people . . . . making connections, working together, and creating new/more productive ways of being in the world. An education for and of interdependence is being developed and disseminated by individuals and small groups. These pieces add up to a greater and fuller picture – one that is much greater than its individual parts, one that shows the potential of having the means, strategies, and tools to connect, share, and create globally. This may be the Interdependence Age of Education.

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Traditional Education is the Ultimate Filter Bubble Sunday, September 18, 2011

The Filter Bubble warns that a potential downside to filtered searching [learning] is that it ”closes us off to new ideas, subjects, and important information”[7] and ”creates the impression that our narrow self-interest is all that exists.”[1] It is potentially harmful to both individuals and society. http://en ←.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble

Criticism towards the traditional education model typically revolves around its focus on maintaining an industrial model of education. I believe that related to this, and possibly even more damaging, is that the traditional model also creates a filter bubble of learning. Although the filter bubble is used to describe how the Internet algorithms are limiting searches to personal and confined interests, these ideas can also be used to describe traditional education. Some of the characteristics of traditional education as a filter bubble include: • Students are grouped by age and typically similar cultural demographics as they are from the same neighborhoods. • Students are told what to learn, when to learn it, and how to learn it.

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• The topics to be covered, standards to be achieved, and curriculum to learn are mostly determined by the government. • Textbooks and testing instruments are written by a few individuals who decide what is important to learn and know. • Corporations decide which textbooks and testing instruments to highlight and disseminate. • Conformity is rewarded, diversity of thoughts and opinions is not. • Students who do not fit into the filter bubble are failed, asked to leave the system, or quit. Illustration by Susan Sanford – see http://www.sanfordillo.com/

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Understanding the Language of the Internet Age of Education Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Language provides meaning to complex concepts, influences our thinking, and even affects how we behave. Linguistic processes are pervasive in most fundamental domains of thought, unconsciously shaping us from the nuts and bolts of cognition and perception to our loftiest abstract notions and major life decisions. Language is central to our experience of being human, and the languages we speak profoundly shape the way we think, the way we see the world, the way we live our lives (Lera Boroditsky). Based on evidence that language influences our thoughts, perceptions, and behaviors. it follows that understanding the language related to technology use in our society influences if and how educators and learners use these technologies for their own learning. The importance of this premise has been noted by the National Council for English Teachers, who proposed what it means to be literate in the 21st Century. Literacy has always been a collection of cultural and communicative practices shared among members of particular groups. As society and technology change, so does literacy. Because technology has increased the intensity and complexity of literate environments, the twenty-first century demands that a literate person possess a wide range of abilities and competencies, many literacies. These literaciesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;from reading online newspapers to participating in virtual classroomsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;are multiple, dynamic, and malleable. As in the past, they are inextricably linked with particular histories, life possibilities, and social trajectories of individuals and groups (http://www.ncte.org â&#x2020;?/governance/literacies).

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We tend to shy away from those things we do not understand, do not have a language for. The following is my version of a multi-modal, multimedia dictionary of those terms that are being developed and used by educators and learners in this age of learning. The proposition is that with greater understanding and knowledge about how technology is influencing informal learning, workplace training and development, and society-at-large, the more likely educators would be more to explore the integration of these ideas and instructional strategies into their classroom environments. The ultimate goal is stated eloquently by Cathy Davidson: Given the ever-increasing rapidity and magnitude of change on a global scale, we all need to master the precious and formidable skill of being able to stop in our tracks, discard the roadmap that has failed us, and try out a different route on the unpredictable journey ahead. (Davidson, 2009). To do so requires that educators know and understand the trends that affect the world-at-large. Please feel free to tell me of any additional trends that should be included! Boroditsky, L. (2010). Lost in Translation. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from http://online.wsj.com/article/ ←SB10001424052748703467304575383131592767868.html Davidson, C. (2009). Learning Radical Transformation. HASTAC. Retrieved from http://hastac.org/blogs/cathy−davidson/learning−radical ←−transformation. National Council for English Teachers. (2009). The Definition of 21st Century Literacies. Retrieved from http://www.ncte.org/governance ←/literacies.

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Facilitating Learner Voice and Presence in the Classroom Using Mobile Devices Saturday, October 15, 2011

I recently started another face-to-face class with undergraduates – about 3/4 of them in the 18-20 age group. I work towards a learner-centric classroom based on the following principles: 1. Give learners multiple opportunities to be heard and seen through multiple modalities – verbal, written, visual. 2. Get to know each learner as an individual – this is in line with my belief of the educator as an ethnographer. Really see every learner in the room. 3. Insure that the learners see one another as much as (or better yet more than) the content and the teacher. 4. Provide ongoing opportunities to connect with the learners and for them to connect with each other. 5. Use strategies, tools, and materials that the learners use outside of the school 6. Make sure learners know that they are significant, important, that they matter- see Angela Maiers You Matter. 7. Use learning activities that are engaging and authentic with the knowledge that the learners are giving their time (and sometimes money) to be in the learning environment. (I feel an obligation not to ”steal” my learners time with activities that are boring, useless – painful for them.) As such, my first classes are always focused on having the students get to know one another and building a sense of community. The only contentrelated activity during the first class is going over the syllabus which occurs during hour 3 or 4 of the class – not the first activity. Another one of my driving principles is continual improvement. I have been an educator for a few decades but I am always looking for ways to improve my courses. Mobile technologies have evolved to a point where

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they can be leveraged in the class. What follows are the mobile activities I used in this course to get to know the learners, have them get to know one another, and build a sense of community. About Me Students located a photo, song, or video from their mobile devices that best represented them. Learners then shared their media and the reasons for their selections.

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Every student had a mobile device with personal content on it. Even though the majority of students were under 21, a few were in their 20s and two were over 40 years old. Most students selected a photo to share, two selected videos, and two shared a favorite song. Values Photos Students asked to choose their most important 10 values from a list of values. They were then asked to narrow their list to three values, their core values. This was followed up with giving them the task of finding objects around the school that symbolized these values. Once found, they took pictures of the objects using their mobile devices and emailed the photos directly to a Flickr page set up for this purpose. Lisa Nielson describes this process in her blog entry, Using Flickr to Collect Images Captured on Cell Phones.

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I can unequivocally say that there was close to 100% engagement by 100% of the 16 students the entire 3 hours of this first class. Guess Whose Eyes My goal is to continue this engagement and connection outside of the classroom. A Facebook page has been established to have them post their class reflections and for addition community building activities. For example, I took photos of each studentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s eyes during the first class. These were

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posted on Facebook as Guess Whose Eyes â&#x20AC;&#x201C; students are already making their guesses.

Facebook for Class Reflection . . . and the reviews have begun to come in via their class reflections on the course Facebook page.

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. . . a response.

This significance of this post cannot be understated. The young woman who posted this is extremely shy and reserved (possibly has Aspergerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s syndrome). She told me at a break that she is not a people person. Watching the magic occur during these learner-centric activities cannot be understated. Seeing the engagement, smiles, connections happen during class is why I am an educator.

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Facilitating Learner Voice and Presence in the Classroom Using Experiential Activities Monday, October 17, 2011

This is the companion piece to Facilitating Learner Voice and Presence in the Classroom Using Mobile Devices. The first post described how mobile devices were used during the initial classes of this undergraduate course (mostly 18-20 year old students). This post focuses on the hands-on, experiential activities I used. The introduction is the same, but the activities, obviously, are different. I work towards a learner-centric classroom based on the following principles: 1. Give learners multiple opportunities to be heard and seen through multiple modalities – verbal, written, visual. 2. Get to know each learner as an individual – this is in line with my belief of the educator as an ethnographer. Really see every learner in the room. 3. Insure that the learners see one another as much as (or better yet more than) the content and the teacher. 4. Provide ongoing opportunities to connect with the learners and for them to connect with each other. 5. Use strategies, tools, and materials that the learners use outside of the school 6. Make sure learners know that they are significant, important, that they matter- see Angela Maiers You Matter. 7. Use learning activities that are engaging and authentic with the knowledge that the learners are giving their time (and sometimes money) to be in the learning environment. (I feel an obligation not to “steal” my learners time with activities that are boring, useless – painful for them.)

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As such, my first classes are always focused on having the students get to know one another and building a sense of community. The only contentrelated activity during the first class is going over the syllabus which occurs during hour 3 or 4 of the class â&#x20AC;&#x201C; not the first activity. Group Norm Development â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Class Contracts Students were given the following task . . .

. . . and then asked to create a metaphor or symbol for their group norms.

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I Am Poems Students created poems using the following template:

http://score.rims.k12.ca.us/score_lessons/symbols_freedom/pages/ 竊進_am_poem.html I gave students the option of using magnetic poetry (collected with several eBay purchases) to complete the assignment.

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(This is a Spanish Version of Magnetic Poetry) . . . and here are some studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; poems.

Self-Collages

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Students created collages of images that represented their physical, intellectual, emotional, and social selves.

Student Reflections About the Class Activities Students are posting their class reflections via Facebook. Here are some of their comments about the class activities: In class this week we got into groups to work on class values and what we want to expect from this class. The groups we

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were put into we were with people we barely knew, it was very exciting. I enjoyed getting to know the 3 girls I was grouped with and I believe I got to know the talents the girls have. I was unaware of how much we use communication. The way we think about things make all the difference in the world, reminds me of â&#x20AC;?The glass is half full or half emptyâ&#x20AC;?. I loved the fact that we spent most of the class time learning about the others in the class. Learning about others helps us communicate better as well as making the class more comfortable! Jackie had us create a collage that showed our physical, social, emotional, and intellectual selves, I was unable to finish the collage however because of a health problem I had during class. I learned that the people I attend class with have had hard lives, and are giving their all to change them into better ones. The hands on learning experience that the class offers helped me understand how things from my mind go onto paper. I was very happy that my group was able to just be open and I was able to see the personalities of people come out. I love making new friends so I was very excited about this.

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An Instructional Activity: Student-Produced Viral Videos Wednesday, October 26, 2011

I implemented my plan to have my undergraduates (mostly 18 to 20 year old students) create ”viral” videos for one of our in-class activities. The first part of this post is geared towards educators and administrators. It provides a rationale for this type of learning activity. The second part describes the characteristics that help define a viral video so that these attributes can be presented to the students. Young People’s Use of YouTube The rationale for this activity is based on How Teens Use YouTube & Social Media: The Online Generation Gap: 1. Teenagers today see online video as a normal every-day type of activity. During middle school and high school years, YouTube is always a hugely popular platform. Most teens consider it to be the “normal” way of watching video (as opposed to television). Certain YouTube videos would take the younger generation by storm; they’d be talked about in the hallways of schools to even the dining table at home. It’s just about impossible for teens to remember the days before YouTube and other online video websites. 2. Teens Share More Videos Than The Older Generation. Teenagers consume these videos as they would gossip and TV shows and magazines – whatever video makes an impression on them, they share. 3. Creating videos for this generation comes as naturally as creating an essay in school. Teenagers are not only creative; they are very impressionable. They express their findings in life both verbally and visually, through all means of technology. Encouraging Communication, Collaboration, Critical Thinking, and Creativity Given these ”knowns”, asking teen and young adult students to produce their own videos related on the content begin covered in class should facilitate an engaging and authentic learning activity. This learning activity also

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addresses some of the 21st Century Learning Skills: the 4 Cs – communication, collaboration, critical thinking and creativity – as proposed by Ken Kay (via Edutopia) and the Partnership for 21st Century Learning. P21 & FableVision collaborated to release an animated film about the 4 Cs:

Assignment – Producing a Viral Video My young adult students will not be interested in any of the above information. This is provided for educators and administrators to gain an understanding regarding how and why integrating the production of videos can enhance learning. They will be interest in the characteristics of what makes a viral video. • Make them laugh.. or cry. The best way to compel someone to send a video to friends and family is to stir up emotion, whether it’s laughing or crying. There are some common traits among the most viral videos – ”music, dancing, attractive women, Candid Camerastyle pranks, children and topical and political references’ (Lauren Dell). • Keep it short and snappy. A video needs to be easily ”consumed by a multitasking generation” – viewers shouldn’t have to watch a longform video to get the joke. ”Keep your clip or video short, interesting, edgy and give us a surprise that makes us want to forward it to our friends” (Lauren Dell).

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• Surprising Contrast. When we see two things that don’t normally belong together, and someone finds a way to make them belong, the reaction it creates is one of surprise. For example, Big guy with a little voice; small girl with big voice - Do you remember the little girl who sang opera on YouTube and how quickly her videos spread? (Jim Chao) • Three things every video should have: – Authenticity – Connection—humorous (The Annoying Orange), touching (Transcending), or surprising (Susan Boyle). – Visceral—We’re all really, REALLY busy. Unless we’re moved on a gut level, we won’t forward anything (L. Drew Gerber). • Include one or more of the following as viral videos tend to include these types of content: – Pranks – Dancing – Music – Children – Political humor – Song parodies – Video blogs – How to (Eric Olson) In-Action These suggestions were presented to my interpersonal communications students (18 to 20 years old) along with the desirable content – to demonstrate via different types of nonverbal behavior as presented at Nonverbal Modes. They worked on these in small groups during class time. Here is one example:

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The results are not that great as you can see but the students were engaged (quite difficult with this particular class of young college students) and they learned about nonverbal behaviors. . . . and this parting shot of a short clip written and produced by my gifted students from a few years back.

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Using Mobile Devices and Technology to Enhance Emotional Intelligence Saturday, October 29, 2011

I often start my blogs with a rationale for how and why I teach the way I do. Here are a few related to the activity I describe in this post. 1. Classroom activities should be authentic, engaging, and studentcentric. Students can learn the theory on their own time using the textbook and media (PPTs, Slidehares, Videos). Face-to-face class time should be spent on having students experience the concepts. 2. Classroom activities can and should be continually tweaked to reflect the current out-of-class environments, culture, and society-atlarge. Currently, I am asking myself, â&#x20AC;?How can I integrate the mobile devices that my young college students are using in their own lives into our learning activities?â&#x20AC;? 3. Along with my goal of continuous improvement of learning activities comes the desire and need for continuous reflection. I view it as an informal type of action-research which includes my observations and student written reactions to and reflections about the class activities. The Activity: Using Mobile Devices to Create a Personalized Feeling Chart Students were introduced to the feelings cards by selecting the cards that matched their feelings at that moment . . .

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In small groups, students selected 10-15 feelings cards and set up scenarios that represented each of feelings selected. They used their own mobile device to take photos of these images . . .

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The photos were directly upload to Flickr via an email. The full process is described by Lisa Nielson in Using Flickr to Collect Images Captured on Cell Phones.

As you can see the uploaded images created a personalizedfeelings poster. Students were provided with scenarios and asked to locate on the Interactive White Board which of these displayed images that they created best represented how they would feel in that situation.

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Reflections â&#x20AC;˘ This class meets once a week from 6 to 9:40 PM. Most of the students are within the 18-20 age group. Because it is an evening course and many of the students work, they are tired when they come to class. As I stated above, I do not use our time together to lecture. The first half of this nightâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s class was used doing some self-assessments

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and large group discussion. Student interest faded in and out with some students being more actively involved in the discussions. The activity described above was introduced about midway through the class. The energy level of the students rose dramatically, all students engaged, all laughing, smiling and enjoying themselves and what they were doing. Was it the small groups? The fun activity? The use of their mobile devices to take photos? Seeing themselves projected on the big screen? • The second major observation – more of an ”aha” was related to the devices the students were using. Most had cells phones, a few had laptops. These students, as a group, are classified as lower income students. None of their devices had the capability to download apps. What this says to me as the educator is that when I am designing activities that use the students own devices in my BYOD classroom, that they cannot include the use of apps. They have camera, email, texting, internet capabilities, but no way to use apps. Interestingly, as I was thinking about this today, a related article was posted on Edutopia Should We Be Concerned About an ”App Gap”? by Audrey Watters. • Students will be posting their reactions to this activity viaour class Facebook Page this week. These will be added to this post,

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An Experiential, Mobile-Device Driven Communications Exercise Saturday, November 5, 2011

This past week in my undergraduate interpersonal communications course, I adapted the Bridge-Itcommunications exercise to incorporate my students’ (most ages 17-20) mobile devices. It combined some of my favorite instructional strategies: • Experiential and Hands-On Learning • Team Building and Problem-Solving Group Initiatives • Using Mobile Devices in Educational Settings Procedures First. students were asked to line up in the classroom on a continuum from those who believed they had the best, most effective communication (verbal and listening) skills to those who thought they lacked those skills. They counted off by three’s to form three groups. The top three self-reported communicators were asked to be the communicators, the others were the builders. Next, groups were moved to separate rooms, given the same set of building blocks and their task . . . Build a three-dimensional structure using all the pieces provided. All three structures need to be exact in dimension and in color patterns. The communicators can use their cell phones via text and/or voice to communicate with the other groups.

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No time limits were set. When the teams believed they successfully completed the task, they could send pictures of their structures to one another.

Reflections After the completion of the activity, reactions and reflections were posted on a Voicethread slide using an image taken during the activity and quickly uploaded to Voicethread.

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Comments included: I loved doing this project! It was fun to get to know the class and it was interesting to figure all of this out without being in the same room with one another. We all worked very well together after we figured out what we were doing. The activity showed we all communicated very well. The best way we were going to build our structure was to communicate by one and to make sure we had everything in place. i learned that communicating with good instructions will make it successful. This activity showed how well we can communicate with each other. I learned that we can communicate well if given proper instructions that are detailed and precise. Follow-Up Next class students will be shown video clips of their participation in the activity. Since the topic is on nonverbal communication, they will be asked to text to Wifittiwhat the nonverbal behaviors they witnessed during each of the clips.

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Student Voice in Educational Reform Sunday, November 6, 2011

This past week, major news publications featured the voices of two young people who clearly articulate the need of the educational systems to change to better meet their needs - educationally, personally, and professionally (yes, young people have professional needs). Nikhil Goyal, a 16-year-old junior at Syosset High School in New York, in the Huffington Post article, It’s Time for a Learning Revolution, states: Students are left out of the debate, even thought we have the most important opinions. Instead of schools cherishing students’ passions and interests, they destroy them. Let’s raise kids to dream big and think different. America will need to rekindle the innovative spirit that has propelled in the past. It’s a do or die moment. Bring on the learning revolution! I propose that we institute a 21st century model of education, rooted in 21st century learning skills and creativity, imagination, discovery, and project-based learning. We need to stop telling kids to shut up, sit down, and listen to the teacher passively. Dale J. Evans, 19 years old, in the New York Times Learning Network discussedHacking Education: Going along with the program seems pretty sweet. I could have written papers, skipped class and partied until dawn. After four years as a college student, I would have had many friends, a good job and letters after my name. But I left college because

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I realized I couldn’t rely on a university to give me an education. To get a real education, I took matters into my own hands. Students who hack our educations will change the world. You can tell these students apart because they have spark in their eyes, and if you ask them about their passion they won’t stop talking. To these two, I am reposting the voices of two other insightful young people - Erica Goldson’s Valedictorian speech and Adora TED talk originally discussed in Student Voices: School Failure, Reform, and Hope. Erica Goldson’s Valedictorian’s Speech I have no clue about what I want to do with my life; I have no interests because I saw every subject of study as work, and I excelled at every subject just for the purpose of excelling, not learning. And quite frankly, now I’m scared. For those of you out there that must continue to sit in desks and yield to the authoritarian ideologies of instructors, do not be disheartened. You still have the opportunity to stand up, ask questions, be critical, and create your own perspective. Demand a setting that will provide you with intellectual capabilities that allow you to expand your mind instead of directing it. Demand that you be interested in class. Demand that the excuse, ”You have to learn this for the test” is not good enough for you. Education is an excellent tool, if used properly, but focus more on learning rather than getting good grades.

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Adora Svitak’s TED Talk: What Adults can learn from kids Adults, you need to listen and learn from kids and trust us and expect more from us. You must lend and ear today, because we are the leaders of tomorrow. We are going to be the next generation, the ones who will bring this world forward. Now, the world needs opportunities for new leaders and new ideas. Kids need opportunities to lead and succeed. Are you ready to make the match? The world’s problems shouldn’t be the human family’s heirloom.

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As a teacher, I believe in listening deeply and seriously to what learners have to say about the ways they want to be educated. Photo Image /4637981216/

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Credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wwworks â&#x2020;?-

A Texting Communications Exercise Friday, November 11, 2011

This is part of a continued series of blogs in which I reporting about and describing how I am adapting more tradition team building, communications, and problem-solving to include learnersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; own mobile devices. Part 1 This activity is an adaptation of theBack-to-Back Communications Exercise. Students found a partner. One volunteered to give the directions, the other to be the drawer. They exchanged phone numbers and the drawers went to another room. The direction givers were provided with the following drawing and told to text in words (one student asked if he could send a picture) the description of the drawing. The goal was for the drawer to reproduce the drawing to scale.

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Part 2 Students then met face-to-face to complete the exercise again using a second picture.

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Reflection After the two exercises, a discussion was facilitated that centered around two questions: 1. Which of the two exercises produced the best results â&#x20AC;&#x201C; where the original and reproduced images best replicated each other? 2. Which of the two exercises did you prefer? For the first question, the results were split with about half saying the texting produced the best results and the other half stating it was the face-to-face directions. Those who selected texting described the ability to read through the directions several times to insure correctness. Those who believed faceto-face produced better results described the use of body gestures to assist with the results. For the second question, all but one student preferred the face-to-face . . . and all but one student is of the texting generation (18-20 years old).

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Studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Own Mobile Devices and Celly Provide Peer Feedback Friday, November 18, 2011

This is part of my continuing series of blogs where I am reporting how I am integrating studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; own mobile devices into the classroom activities. Using Celly Celly was used for the learning activity that is described later in this blog. Celly creates mini social networks called cells that connect you with people and topics. A cell can contain anybody with a cellphone. We let you define filters based on hashtags, location, time, and user identity. Celly lets you instantly group people and topics into cells. Cells function as chatrooms where people communicate instantly via text-based messaging. Cells can also include messages from the web or other social networks to capture your interests. Learn It in 5provides the following tutorial about how to set up and use Celly. Ways to use Celly at school can be found here. Peer Feedback in an Interview Activity Students in my undergraduate course on Interpersonal Relationships were asked to practice their active listening skills. They conducted interviews with each pair of interviewers-interviewees being observed by their classmates. Feedback to the interviewer was provided via Celly. First they were provided with the following information to join the class cell.

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The format for texting in their feedback was @interpersonal (cell) ”The Feedback” #(person’s first name).

During the interviews, students texted their observations of the interviewer behaviors to Celly.

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After each interview, the feedback was projected on the whiteboard. This way students could view personal feedback, get ideas of appropriate interview behaviors, and analyze the quality of effective feedback.

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Flipped Classroom Full Picture: An Example Lesson Sunday, November 20, 2011

The flipped classroom, as it is currently being described and publicized, is simply recording the didactic content information via videos, having students view these as homework, and then using class time to further discuss these ideas. Harvard Professor Chris Dede stated in his Global Education 2011 keynote in response to a question directed about the flipped classroom . . . I think that the flipped classroom is an interesting idea if you want to do learning that is largely based on presentation. You use presentation outside of the classroom. Then you do your understanding of the presentation and further steps from the presentation inside the classroom. I think it is a step forward. It is still, in my mind, the old person. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s still starting with presentational learning and then trying to sprinkle some learningby-doing on top of it. I am interested more in moving beyond the flipped classroom to learning by doing at the center than a kind of the intermediate step that still centers on largely on tacit assimilation. As I describe in The Flipped Classroom: The Full Picture, I believe, as Chris Dede does, that the problem with the flipped classroom is that the major focus is on the didactic presentation of information, that it is still at the center of the learning experience. The flipped classroom, given that is currently getting so much press, provides an opportunity to change the paradigm of learning, whereby learningâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;by-doing, the experiences along with the understanding and application of those experiences become core to the learning process. The following lesson describes a type of flipped classroom. This lesson did not center around the content media, in this case the Slideshare, but on the studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; personal experiences, interactions with other students, and acquisition of tangible life skills.

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Interpersonal Communications: Listening Skills Experiential Engagement: The Activity The cycle often begins with an experiential exercise. This is an authentic, often hands-on learning activity that fully engages the student. It is a concrete experience that calls for attention by most, if not all, the senses. They become hooked through personal connection to the experience and desire to create meaning for and about that experience (ala constructivist learning).

For this lesson, the learners started off with the Lighthouse activity, where in partner teams, the sited person led his or her blindfolded partner through a series of obstacles. The goal of this part of the lesson was to provide an experience that overtly demonstrated the importance of listening â&#x20AC;&#x201C; especially when the sense of sight is taken away.

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Conceptual Connections: The What Learners are exposed to and learn concepts touched upon during Experiential Engagement. They explore what the experts have to say about the topic. Information is presented via video lecture, content-rich websites and simulations like PHET and/or online text/readings. In the case of the flipped classroom as it is being currently discussed, this is the time in the learning cycle when the learners view content-rich videos. The videos support the experiential learning rather than being at the center of the learning experience.

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In this lesson, the learners were asked to view and review the following slideshare via their own computer terminals. The benefit of this form of personalized viewing is that the learners have control of the media so they can view it at their own pace â&#x20AC;&#x201C; spending more time on the concepts they need to further review or of which have special, personal interest. Use of their own computers also permit them to search for more information about a given topic. Meaning Making: The So What Learners reflect on their understanding of what was discovered during the previous phases. It is a phase of deep reflection on what was experienced during the first phase and what was learned via the experts during the second phase. Learners can articulate and construct their understanding of the content or topic being covered through written blogs or verbal-based audio or video recordings.

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For this lesson, the learners made a personal connection with the content as they were asked to identify the 10 listening skills they believed they needed to further develop. This also became a technology-enhanced lesson. Learners made a mind map of their identified 10 skills that included: (1) the skill, (2) normal and current behaviors associated with the skill, and (3) goals and steps for improvement.

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Demonstration and Application: The Now What During this phase, learners get to demonstrate what they learned and apply the material in a way that makes sense to them. This goes beyond reflection and personal understanding in that learners have to create something that is individualized and extends beyond the lesson with applicability to the learners’ everyday lives. This is in line with the highest level of learning within Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy of Learning – Creating- whereby the learner creates a new product or point of view. In essence, they become the storytellers of their learning (See Narratives in the 21st Century: Narratives in Search of Contexts). A list of technology-enhanced ideas/options for the celebration of learning can be found at: http://usergeneratededucation.wordpress.com/2010/09/09/ ←a−technology−enhanced−celebration−of−learning/

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Part One The learners practiced their active listening skills during class time. Feedback was provided to the listener via their mobile devices using Celly. See the full description at Studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Own Mobile Devices and Celly Provide Peer Feedback.

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Part Two The learners located a professional in their area of study to interview. Their interview questions focused on the communication skills expected of those in that profession. Their homework was driven by real-life experiences going out to speak with a professionals in their communities. Homework was designed to further promote the applicability, transferability, and relevancy of this lesson.

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Every Educator Has a Story . . . Just Tell It. Wednesday, November 23, 2011

This is one of my favorite cartoons ever.

The ”punch” line is that every person on the planet has a story to tell. I also know that every teacher story to tell.

Educators are doing amazing things with their learners in spite (i.e., to show spite toward) of the standards-based and accountability-driven movements. I’ve learned about so many exciting learning activities from educators who are publicizing their great projects via Twitter, Facebook, and Blogs. I’ve read about global collaborations, interesting ways technology is being integrated into the classroom, kids making a difference in their communities, and great project-based learning. This is my own call to action for educators to tell their stories of those rich and amazing things they are doing in their classrooms. • Write a blog. • Tweet about it.

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• Make photo essays and upload to a photo sharing site like Flickr. • Take some video footage and share it on YouTube, TeacherTube, or Vimeo. • Ask learner to blog about it. • Share on Facebook. • Give virtual presentations at conferences such as Global Education and K12 Online. • Ask local reporters to come to your classroom • Others? (Please add to list.) For example, I am incorporating students’ mobile devices into an undergraduate course on Interpersonal Relationships. I take photos during each class and that day write a blog entry about mobile learning. These entries take about an hour. • Facilitating Learner Voice and Presence in the Classroom Using Mobile Devices • An Instructional Activity: Student-Produced Viral Videos • Using Mobile Devices and Technology to Enhance Emotional Intelligence • An Experiential, Mobile-Device Driven Communications Exercise • A Texting Communications Exercise • Students’ Own Mobile Devices and Celly Provide Peer Feedback I now have a record/reflection about the class. I get to share it with others via Facebook and Twitter. If all educators publicized the accomplishments they had in their classrooms using technology, hands-on activities, global collaborations, project-based learning; then an informal qualitative research project would result. When educators are asked to provide evidence of efficacy to administrators, parents, other educators, funding sources, they could share these success stories. This aggregate would become the collective narrative – story of education of our times in the beginnings of the 21st century.

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Win As Much As You Can Mobile Edition Friday, December 2, 2011

Win As Much As You Can is a popular negotiation game based on the Prisoner’s Dilemma problem (Axelrod 2006). In one version players are grouped into four teams and asked to play an X or Y over a series of rounds. The object is to score as many points as possible. If everyone in the group chooses X, then everyone loses points. If all choose Y, everyone scores points. If there is a mixture of X’s and Y’s, those that played X get more points and those that played Y get fewer points. Discussion is not allowed except during three bonus rounds, when players may discuss how they will play the next round.

Many assumptions are embedded in this deceptively simple and powerful game, developed to illustrate economic principles from game theory. The most obvious is the use of a “game” to introduce many of the fundamental themes and concepts of negotiation theory. These include the tension between creating and claiming value, individual versus joint gain, trust, concessions, attributions, ethics, and multi-round negotiations.

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The sports or game metaphor and the “game,” with its title commanding the player to “win as much as you can” reflect the values of self-interest and personal aggrandizement. The title, score-sheet and rules of the game also suggest a “fixed pie,” leading to the assumption that there is no room for integrative bargaining. The game, however, is more complex than that, as players discover that single-minded pursuit of self-interest can backfire, and that a relationship between personal gain and joint welfare exists, particularly when there will be a continuing relationship. The title and rules suggest that conflict may lie ahead [and almost always does result]. Cultural Baggage When You “Win As Much As You Can” Julia Ann Gold Mobile Edition The mobile edition is appropriate for upper level High School students and college students. In the mobile edition, students form in four subgroups as in the original game. One member from each group becomes the designated voter using his or her mobile device to post his or her team’s response. Votes are made through texting into Celly (a free group texting service) their X or Y vote along with the round number using a hashtag to denote the round. The results of each round are projected to the entire group so they can view all teams’ votes.

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The individual groups make their selections and votes with no communications with the other groups except in three of the rounds. Three different forms of inter-group communications are permitted during rounds 3, 5, and 6 with payoff results increased during those rounds.

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â&#x20AC;˘ Round 3: Groups are invited to text to any other group any message of their choice. As such groups are asked to exchange phones numbers prior to the game.

â&#x20AC;˘ Round 5: During this round, the teams can text message any communications they want to make to the other groups through Celly which

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are projected to the entire group.

â&#x20AC;˘ Round 6: Groups can communicate directly with one another.

. Reflection of Win As Much As You Can occurs through a VoiceThread set up for that purpose, and through group discussion.

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A Technology-Enhanced Lesson on Conflict Saturday, December 3, 2011

This lesson was done with undergraduates, ages 18-20. As you can see by the lesson, the driving pedagogical tenets are: • Experiential and authentic learning. • The use of technology to increase student engagement and motivation. • A focus on student-centric learning with the teacher only providing directions as to how to complete the experiential activities. • Students interacting with each other and the content much more than the teacher. The Goals: • Define conflict. • Describe differences between destructive and constructive approaches to managing conflict. • Identify and describe win-lose and win-win negotiation strategies. • Identify and use conflict management skills to help manage emotions, information, goals, and problems when attempting to resolve interpersonal differences. Define Conflict Students are given the following directions: Write the word conflict in the center of a blank piece of paper and draw a circle around it. Quickly jot down all the words and phrases you associate with the word conflict by arranging them around your circle. Review your list of associations and categorize them as positive, negative, or neutral. Count the total number of positive,

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negative, and neutral associations, and calculate the percentages that are positive, negative, and neutral. Did you have more than 90% positive? Did you have more than 90% negative? What do your associations with the word conflict indicate about your views about conflict and your approach to conflict? Following a discussion of the positive and negative aspects, students are asked to complete the following tasks: • Reduce your list to four words. • Find a partner, reduce that list to four words. • Join another partner team – reduce the list to four words. • Go to Visual Thesaurus – http://www.visualthesaurus.com/ get definitions for each of the four words • Create a web on the white board that includes your group’s four words and key words associated with those main words.

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Escalating and Deescalating Conflict Situations Students are presented with the following scenarios and compose two responses for each, one that would escalate the conflict, and two, another that would deescalate the conflict.

They are invited to use their own laptops to compose their responses. They find partners, who reads and finds the comments composed by their partner to share with the rest of the class.

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Conflict Resolution Techniques Through a brief Powerpoint presentation, students are introduced to the following conflict resolution techniques: • Abandoning • Getting Help • Humor • Postponing • Compromise • Integrating • Collaborate/Problem-Solve To practice using these strategies, students write a Dear Abby letter that describes a conflict they are currently or have experienced in their lives. These are composed on Primary Pad. Their individual links are emailed to the teacher. These links are shared with the entire class one at a time so the other students can make recommendations for resolving the conflict based on the strategies above.

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Win As Much As You Can Negotiation Strategies A separate blog post describes this activity â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Win As Much As You Can Mobile Edition

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Personal Goal Development – Motivational Posters Finally, students make goals for improving their conflict resolution skills by creating a motivational poster using the Big Hub Motivational Posters. These are uploaded to a Google Presentation to create a class aggregate of motivation posters.’ [googleapps domain=”docs” dir=”present/embed” query=”id=ddcqbr4n_22gpcf2bht&size=m” width=”555” height=”451” /]

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Tinkering and Technological Imagination in Educational Technology Sunday, December 11, 2011

Given the infusion of technology in almost every aspect of our lives, the education sector is struggling on how to integrate it into the classroom. We have seen current trends and attempts for the use of educational technology with the Flipped Classroom ala Khan Academy, Interactive Whiteboards in every classroom, and lots of discussion about what are 21st century skills and literacies. Most educators would agree that a major purpose of education is to assist learners in gaining the skills, attitudes, and knowledge for having a better quality of life now and in their futures. So any discussion about technology integration should include this purpose. Qualitative evidence points to the ease by which kids pick up their computer devices and use them as if they were brain-wired to do so. But even as some parents and educators express unease about students’ digital diets, they are intensifying efforts to use technology in the classroom, seeing it as a way to connect with students and give them essential skills. Across the country, schools are equipping themselves with computers, Internet access and mobile devices so they can teach on the students’ technological territory. ”If it weren’t for the Internet, I’d focus more on school and be doing better academically,” says one youth. But thanks to the Internet, he says, he has discovered and pursued his passion: filmmaking. Without the Internet, “I also wouldn’t know what I want to do with my life.” Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction Hmm. So in the big picture, do we want students to do better academically or find and pursue their passions? I do understand that many educators would argue for both. The current educational climate is so centered on academic achievement and standards-based curriculum, I believe we need to make proactive, concentrated attempts to get the pendulum to

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swing towards semi-structured, open-ended, process-oriented and studentdriven learning environments. Two recent and interconnected discussions have implications about how technology can be used in the classroom to ignite passion, innovation, and creativity . . . technological imagination and tinkering.

Technological Imagination A course being offered at the University of Washington during Winter, 2011 provides this description of technological imagination. Humans have always been technical beings. We live in and through our technology: from stone tools and woven baskets to combustion engines and computers, our society is continually altered by the existence of these technical objects. Living in a highly industrialized, networked society such as ours, one need only try to imagine life (let alone college life) without computer or Internet technologies, or any number of everyday information technologies which seamlessly mediate our daily routines; yet this is precisely what it is so difficult to do: to â&#x20AC;&#x153;thinkâ&#x20AC;? technology, and to see its peculiar agency in our individual experiences and in our social world. For us, this situation seems magnified by globalization and the intricate layer-

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ing and interconnectedness of technical systems, complex industrial machines, and vast networks. Our needs go beyond an immediate understanding of a given technology to the development of a more reflective technological imagination in which we consider the ways technologies enable us, and shape and reshape our experience and social realities. â&#x20AC;?Developing the Technological Imaginationâ&#x20AC;? (Winter 2011) Tinkering In order for technological imagination to develop, tinkering needs to be encouraged within educational settings. In his discussion about Learning for the Digital Age, John Seely Brown presented the following slides about tinkering.

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If we want more young people to choose a profession in one of the group of crucial fields known as STEM â&#x20AC;&#x201D; science, technology, engineering and math â&#x20AC;&#x201D; we ought to start cultivating these interests and skills early. But the way to do so may not be the kind of highly structured and directed instruction that we usually associate with these subjects. Time: In Praise of Tinkering

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In a discussion with Howard Rheinhold, Mitch Resnick stated the following about tinkering. One thing we’ve seen is that the best learning experiences come when people are actively engaged in designing things, creating things, and inventing things – expressing themselves. It’s not just a matter of giving people opportunities to interact with technologies or using technologies, but if we want people to really be fluent with new technologies and learn through their activities, it requires people to get involved as makers – to create things. A lot of the best experiences come when you are making use of the materials in the world around you, tinkering with the things around you, and coming up with a prototype, getting feedback, and iteratively changing it, and making new ideas, over and over, and adapting to the current situation and the new situations that arise. I think there are lessons for schools from the ways that kids learn outside of schools, and we want to be able to support that type of learning both inside and outside of schools. Over time, I do think we need to rethink educational institutions as a place that embraces playful experimentation. Mitch Resnick: The Role of Making, Tinkering, Remixing in Next-Generation Learning The full interview can be viewed . . .

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More about tinkering in schools in general can be found with the Tinkering School page of Teaching with TED. As I’ve stated before, I believe that the educator is now ”the tour guide of learning possibilities”. Educators should expose learners to the potential types and uses of technologies and then get out of the way so that the learners can tinker and develop their own technological imaginations . . . ones not driven by state standards, competencies, outcomes, nor products. Each educator needs to decide how to implement tinkering into his or her educational setting. When I taught gifted elementary students, the last 45 minutes at the end of the school day was dedicated to tinkering. I’d introduce the learners to Web 2.0 tools and hands-on technology kits like WeDo and PicoCricket. I’d then get out of the way so they could play, tinker, experiment while sharing their findings with me and their peers.

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Evaluating the Value of Apps for Educational Use Monday, December 19, 2011

As of the writing of this post, there are approximately a million apps available. On my daily Twitter feeds, I see list after list of apps for educational use. • Monster List of Apps for People with Autism • 22 Best Apps for Education • 250 best iPad apps: education Yesterday, I saw a post from TechCrunch The Top 20 iPhone and iPad Games Of 2011. I downloaded and have been playing Cut the Rope for two days now. It has been giving me hours of joy. See Cut the Rope: Experiments Review. If I was still teaching my 3rd through 5th grade gifted students, I would definitely introduce them to this game.

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I have been critical of the use of educational apps and games in the classroom in that many of them have been developed by adults in business ventures. They are more like worksheets on steroids rather than games and apps for higher-order thinking. I also wonder as I read through the lists of recommended apps if the kids, themselves, would find them educational and interesting . . . worth their personal time in using and playing with them. As such, I test out technology tools and games from the standpoint of a user rather than an educator . . . asking if I’d like to use it if I were one of today’s young students. Based on my own experiences as a gamer, educator and kid at heart (one of my 4th grade students gave me the compliment, ”You haven’t forgotten what it is like to be a kid.”), I developed my own criteria for evaluating the potential of apps for educational use and engagement: • Does it have cool graphics and an interesting interface? • Is there a game-like and/or creative intent to the app? • Is it fun and entertaining? • Does it make the user laugh with joy? • Does it require creativity, ingenuity, imagination, and problemsolving in its use? • Do the tasks get more complicated, requiring more skills as the user works through the game-app? • Does the user have the opportunity to gain points and level-up? • Does it have an addictive quality (yes, I believe in this) in that it calls for continuous play? • Does using the app create a state of flow? • Are there opportunities to connect with other users for socializing? problem-solving? strategizing? As I said, I am currently spending my time playing Cut the Rope (physics and geometry). Past personal addictions have included Scrabble (language arts) and building in Second Life (geometry and spatial reasoning). Friends’ and colleagues’ game and app passions have included World

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of Warcraft (economics, social bargaining/cooperation) and Angry Birds (physics). Excluded from the list is a question about educational value. A good educator can extract learnings from any app that meets most of the criteria discussed above. If educational value can be extracted from Angry Birds, then it is possible with almost any app It is important to note that one person’s app and game joys may not be another person’s, but most offer educational opportunities. An educator can leverage what students are using and playing in their own lives and explore ways they can be integrated into the curriculum to learn different content area concepts. The role of the educator is this era of learning of that of facilitator. What a great way to facilitate learning – to leverage what the learners are using in their own lives to teach broader content-related concepts. The bottom line becomes focusing on quality rather than quantity – to find those apps and games that have potential for long term use and engagement. Following a constructivist model of education, an effective educator can assist students to extract their own meanings from an app of personal interest, helping them make larger world connections (which includes addressing those ever present content-related standards).

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A End-of-Course Student Survey: The Use of Mobile Devices for Class Activities Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Preface As is true for many of us using educational technology in the classroom, we are experimenting with how technology can enhance the learning experiences of our students. Sometimes we have failures, often times we have successes. Yet, in this age of evidenced-based education, educators, administrators, and other decision-makers are depending on and using the data gleamed from large studies often completed by companies with vested interests, e.g. Gates Foundation, book publishers, and testing companies. Educators can easily conductaction research about the practices they are using in their own classrooms especially given the ease of creating online surveys and data collection methods. Yet, it seems that it is rarely done. For example, I introduced Quest Atlantis into my gifted classes a few years ago and asked these 3rd through 5th graders to complete a survey to assess its efficacy from the student perspective. The results I received were rich and informative. The kids offered great feedback, ideas, and suggestions. See Beyond the Game: Quest Atlantis as an Online Learning Experience for Gifted Elementary Students. So if educators want to influence what occurs in not only their own classrooms, but in the classrooms of their co-teachers, then they need to invest the time and energy to demonstrate best practices. In a related blog, I discuss Every Educator Has a Story . . . Just Tell It. End-of-Course Survey The Interpersonal Relations course was offered during Fall, 2011. There were 12 students in the course â&#x20AC;&#x201C; five were male, 7 were female; ten of the students were 18 to 20 years old, one was 25 years old, and the oldest student was a female in her 50s. The first section of the survey listed all of the class activities that used the studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; cell phones. I blogged about the individual activities. The

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archive of these blog posts can be found at User-Generated Education tagged with mobile learning.

Obviously the sample size is small, but I was excited to find that most of the students found most of the activities of some value and that only one student found one of the activities a waste of time. I also asked a series of open ended questions . . . Favorite and Least Favorite Activities? These were all over the map with no general consensus. What was the greatest advantage of using studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; mobile phones to get to know one another and build a sense of community in the class? The responses centered around being able to use the devices they used outside of the class, It was something that we use everyday so it related back to us. It was something they were familar with.

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The students use their phones on a regular basis. . . . and that their devices helped to create an environment of sharing, friendliness It provided us with a common ground on which to get to know each other. We got to talk to each other outside of class, not just when we were in class. We were able to communicate outside of class and create friendships. You got to know the people better though them. To get a better experience from the class and enjoy coming to class. What was the biggest problems in using students’ mobile devices during class time? As was expected, most of the student responses centered around them being a distraction. People would abuse it and text friends and do other things that the activity wasn’t for. The students were tempted to use the phones for personal use. Sometimes people weren’t always doing what they were supposed to be doing. Students had more of a chance to get distracted. Some people texted when they should have been participating. (Note: I had to implement a device away strategy, when I had to ask students, often several times, to put their devices away when we weren’t using them for class activities.) A few mentioned service problems.

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Some didn’t work. The service was bad because i would send a text and it would show up ten minuets later. What recommendations would you make to improve the use of students’ mobile devices for class activities and community-building? Most of the students stated, ”None.” There are none everything is A Okay. Interestingly, two mentioned having laptops available for all students. Change the moblie devices into personal laptops provided by the school. Have computers for each student. Next week, I begin this course again with a new group of students. I will continue to test out the mobile learning activities and get student feedback about them. Thanks Fall, 2011, students!

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Teach Every Class As If It Were the Last Saturday, December 31, 2011

The best advice I was ever given in my counselor education was to approach each counseling session with every client as if it were the last one. The rationale is that you never know if the client might decide not to show up again. I have taken this advice into my teaching. I have taught elementary gifted and PE, and teacher education courses. Some classes last an hour, some a full day (gifted kids and weekend intensives for pre- and in-service teachers). I bring this philosophy into the classroom in all my teaching. The learners are giving me their time, literally pieces of their lives. It becomes my responsibility to provide them with experiences worthy of their time. In most of my teaching situations, I would see them again for the next class – but one never knows. I have had a handful of students who suddenly went missing-in-action due to family conflicts, emergencies, etc. In terms of what this means to my teaching practices, I want to bring magic and joy into my classroom. I work towards having my students experience one or more of the following: • An ”Aha” – a new insight about the content, self, or the world-atlarge. • A feeling of being an important part of and connected to the world. • A rise in self-esteem (Note: Seeing a student’s eyes light up/body posture change – observing the growth in self-worth is the most amazing thing I have ever witnessed.) • A new question to explore. • A new topic of personal interest. • A new friend to learn more about. • A flow experience.

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I work towards and have a desire for every student to leave each class qualitatively different than when he or she came to class that day. This is a lofty goal but really adds to the excitement with which I approach each class.

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2011 in review Sunday, January 1, 2012

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog. Hereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s an excerpt: The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 37,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 14 sold-out performances for that many people to see it. Click here to see the complete report.

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Index globaled10, 108 A action research, 308 animations in the classroom, 80 astronomy, 35 B blended learing, 227 bloomâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s taxonomy, 144 BYOD, 246, 252, 267, 275, 287, 293, 308 C celebration of learning, 70 choice menus, 35, 98, 178 classroom design, 32, 185 collaboration, 29, 246 comics in the classroom, 80 community-building, 234 conferences, 9, 25 culture of curiosity, 160 D differentiated instruction, 70 disrupting education, 130, 227, 246, 285, 299 E Education, 2, 9, 13, 25, 39, 44, 56, 62, 66, 79, 80, 83,

92, 94, 108, 111, 115, 118, 122, 124, 128, 160, 171, 185, 218, 225, 232, 285 education. youth, 21, 25, 225 educational reform, 13, 25, 39, 79, 94, 111, 118, 124, 130, 134, 138, 144, 160, 175, 178, 181, 185, 193, 218, 225, 227, 230, 232, 234, 246, 252, 263, 285, 305, 312 emerging technologies, 2, 98, 103, 128, 134, 138, 144, 218, 232, 305 experiential learning, 240, 252, 258, 267, 271, 275, 287, 293, 299 F filter bubble, 230 flipped classroom, 144, 275 flow, 115 future visioning, 232 G game-based learning, 138, 193, 218, 234, 258, 287, 305

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global, 2, 29, 62, 111 global education 2010, 108 group initiatives, 258 I ideas fest 2010, 111 interdependence, 227 iste10, 9 K Khan Academy, 144 L language arts, 92, 103 learning, 2, 35, 103, 115, 124, 138, 160, 185 learning communities, 213 learning space, 32 literature, 178 M mobile learning, 128, 193, 234, 246, 252, 258, 267, 271, 285, 287, 308 montessori, 175 N narrative architecture, 32 narratives, 134 networked learning, 2, 9, 44, 56, 138, 185, 193, 213, 218, 227, 293 O online education, 29 P passion, 225

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professional development, 66, 171, 181, 275 R reflection, 181 reflective practice, 181 research, 115 S school reform, 21, 39, 56, 62, 66, 79, 83, 94, 111, 118, 122, 124, 130, 138, 144, 160, 175, 178, 193, 213, 218, 225, 275, 285, 308 science, 92 sense of wonder, 160 social learning, 9, 25, 62, 111, 118, 138, 218, 234, 246 social networking, 29, 44, 62, 108, 134, 185, 213, 218, 234, 271 social studies, 103, 108 student voice, 13, 108, 115, 124, 134, 160, 181, 234, 240, 246, 263, 267, 271, 312 student-centric education, 312 student-centric learrning, 240 T team building, 258 technolgy, 9, 44, 83 technological imagination, 299 technology integration, 66, 70, 79, 83, 92, 98, 128, 218, 246, 252, 258,

267, 271, 293, 299, 305 TED talks, 13, 111, 144 tinkering, 299 trends, 232 U university, 122, 171 unschooling, 130, 178, 213, 230 V video production, 246 W web 2.0, 35, 44, 66, 70, 79, 80, 83, 92, 103 Y youth action research, 21 youtube, 218, 246

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