Instructional Media @ Wilkes

December countdown -- "ideas to inspire" + "A+ Click Math"

2011-12-08T09:01:00.008-05:00

If you're at the point in the Wilkes course where you have to figure out something interesting to do with Google Earth, there's a slide show of activities in this impressive collection of presentations to help you. If you have a cool idea, pick the presentation it fit, email Anthony Evans (skinnyboyevans@gmail.com) for the link to the Google Doc presentation, and create your slide.

This is such a great tool for individual math problem solving review. The problems are mixed with multiple choice images and the program sends the student to the next level when 5 have been solved correctly. Set a timer on the whiteboard and see how many questions the kids can solve as a group in 3 minutes. OR let them play on their iPads when they're squirmy. When the page size is smaller, the display switches to fewer columns so there will be no scrolling on smaller screens.

Enjoy!

Potpourri or Potluck: collected ideas and tips from Digital Inspiration

2011-11-15T13:44:00.016-05:00

I'm cleaning out my in-box and today's target is Digital Inspiration. (My goal is to clear out 50 each day.) Amit Agarwal was one of the first tech bloggers I ever read, and he remains one of my favs. Hpwever, when I get behind in daily processing, his blog is one I skip because it's often so pithy, I know it will take me a lot of time to process and post the information.

Here then is a list of great ideas and tips from the past several months:

1) Using a QR code to give conference attendee access to your presentation slides and other handouts -- could also work in a class where the kids are allowed to use smart phones or have iPads to update them on homework assignments or where class presentations have been posted

2) How to check multiple Gmail accounts without signing out -- one bit of advice I use in my workshops is for teachers to create class gmail accounts, to register with online websites for classes using the gmail address, and then to have students work online using these accounts. This negates the need for them to register and gives you complete control of each all websites used. Keep the names and passwords easy to remember and meaningful.

For example: ourschoolgr5[at]gmail[dot]com could be the gmail address and the user name and password might be something like Oursch1Oursch2. That password is tricky enough to be accepted by 95% of websites but easy enough for the students and you to remember. [Note sub in your school's name or initials and your grade or class or block to make it fit your needs.] Be systematic and develop a naming convention, but keep the names generic enough that you can roll the accounts over from year to year or semester to semester.

3) The Google Earth Clock displays the current local time in your browser using satellite imagery from Google Earth / Google Maps.

4) Faking screenshots could be an interesting way to start a lesson on authenticating sources. Have students start with an original image and then alter it. Post a collection of 'reals' and 'fakes' and ask students in the school to vote. Here's another article that may stimulate some discussion and a link to an early post of mine about Authenticating Sources.

5) For librarians -- how to track new books with Google Alerts

6) See how far you can travel in a given time -- this could be an interesting one for math classes. Have students work out a radius the traditional way and then compare it to the map on this website. They can discuss the factors what might affect the outcome.

7) Create your own Google Maps -- if you like the idea of Google Lit Trips but don't want to take the time to have students work with Google Earth, try this simpler way to map historical events, literary works, scientific discoveries, etc.

8) Create a flippable e-zine that will work on iDevices as well as traditional computers using Themeefy -- this could be a great way for a student to compile an eportfolio of work created and posted elsewhere on the internet.

9) Another way to curate-- using Bo.lt which replicates webpages so that even if they cease existing on the internet, your reference will not disappear. "You may also use Bo.lt to save and archive web pages that require login" -- instead of using screenshots which is what I do at present to preserve all login information.

10) Sometimes PC desktops just do it better -- one keyboard, one mouse, multiple computers, multiple screens -- create your own command central for multitasking. See also Synergy if you mix platforms.

11) Learning about colour editing if you don't know much about it

12) Tip for repositioning a window on your PC when sreen recording

Happy Thanksgiving to all my American readers!

Wise words

2011-11-15T13:38:00.004-05:00

Don't Blame PowerPoint! It's just a vehicle

View more presentations from Clear Presentation Design

========

I love the message in this presentation. There's plenty here for students to consider when creating multimedia presentations of any sort.

Source: Digital Inspiration (one of my favourite tech blogs)

An interesting tools mashup for EDIM students

2011-11-13T18:49:00.002-05:00

When annotating and social bookmarking are too cumbersome, and you want to

keep track of a specific passages (or image?) in several articles
keep a list of those references for your bibliography

try using

CITEBITE which creates a unique URL for a highlighted portion of a website, AND
WEBLIST to compile those URLs into a personal list

Tundra Connections update

2011-11-02T22:02:00.003-04:00

1) Class registration page at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/TundraConnectionsPoweredByEdmodo

2) Education tools and materials

3) Events list (click to enlarge)

Tundra connections Nov. 14-16

2011-10-31T14:27:00.004-04:00

[Live cam]

Join a live, free webcast from the tundra during the peak of the polar bear migration near Churchill, Manitoba, Canada through Edmodo. Here's the information link -- http://blog.edmodo.com/2011/10/28/save-the-date/

News from Churchill http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/events-and-news-from-churchill-manitoba

Link to Facebook http://www.facebook.com/PolarBearsInternational

Link to PolarBear Cam above http://www.polarbearcam.com/#Page1

Embedding when there is no embed code

2011-10-04T10:02:00.013-04:00

Today I'm updating my Web2.0 and math Wikispaces to prepare for an upcoming workshop. I want to have 2 projects to display on the wiki page, so readers don't have to use link away from the page in order to see them. The problem is that the sharing options o n these pages give only the URL links -- no embed code.

Embed code is a snippet of HTML software writing language. O.M.gosh! I hear you moan. Now I have to learn another language in addition to figuring out how the tools work. Well, this is kind of like learning enough French to ask how to get to the nearest cafe in Paris. Once you understand some of the basic 'catch phrases' and what they do, you can adjust heights and widths so the display works in your own wiki, blog, or class website. I found the information at WebSource.

In Wikispaces once you're in edit mode, select Widget from the menu bar and then Other HTML which is at the bottom of the list of options.

Next you need to copy and paste into the box the embed code provided by WebSource. You'll find it about half way down their page shaded in grey.

Two steps left:

(1) The given code will display a page form the WebSource website. You want your choice to show up, so you have to change the URL in 2 places. Copy it from the address bar and paste it into the code.

(2) You may have to adjust the width and height. Again, make the changes in 2 places. This may take a few tries to get them just right for your website and for the devices your students are use most often.

This worked on my wiki page, but it's created a small glitch when I want to edit the page. I now get a message that says I'm missing a plugin (which cannot be found/I'm using XP). Also when I saved, I got an error message when I'm saving.

I click 'OK' and it all seems to be working fine except for that plugin message. Ignoring it seems to be the best plan. If I solve the problem. I'll let you know. I suspect this has something to do with the pages I've embedded being interactive.

The resulting web page is too big for this blog, so I'll have to link out to it. (Sigh!)
Feedback would be appreciated.

Badges -- reward or recognition

2011-10-01T11:23:00.004-04:00

Badges seem to be the new hot ticket in many classrooms today, but I have to say I'm not really comfortable with implementing what is essentially a points-based reward system. I'm not convinced that these kinds of extrinsic rewards pay-off with long term behaviour change, and I think the novelty wears off for children at a certain point.

I have been reading about a different use of badges that is more like the old Scout & Guides system. In this case students pick areas of special interest or talents or outside activities or things they want to learn or skills to remediate and work on them because they want to (intrinsic). The recognition of work done or learning accomplished or contribution made is a badge. The teacher and class can decide on what kinds of badges they'd like to work on, what the criteria for achievement will be, how it will be judged and by whom. The kids can be judges or you can get peer tutors involved in this. Students who feel their special talents aren't represented can ask that a new badge be created.

If one criterion of badge-earning is having to relate the work to curriculum in some way, then students can be set the problem of figuring out how to meet that expectation and this can become a platform for independent project-based learning with a real world dimension.

I'm creating a one-week Moodle learning event on SmartBoards that's due to run in the spring, and I want to introduce to it the concept of working on a badge over the week. I've figured out how to make the Moodle less linear and more website like so people can make their own connections and have even found a Moodle module that will allow the awarding of what they call 'stamps' and I'll use for badges. So far I envision an 'Explorer badge' for people who go on safari and bring back interesting files, links, and resources to the group. If I'm a bit cagey in the way I put this together they should have to cross topics to complete their badge. I hope this will accommodate those who want to create a new file, experiment with different features of their boards, become more expert at something, explore other resources and add to our collection, and so forth.

There's a movement afoot to introduce lifelong learning badges into the world, and perhaps this idea for a self-study course -- with badges that can be displayed on a blog or website somewhere else -- might have some appeal.

For more information there's a new Scoop on the topic at http://www.scoop.it/t/badges-for-lifelong-learning.

Where is the leading edge in education?

2011-09-26T16:42:00.003-04:00

Video source: The Extended Mind Thesis

I came across a post from a Change11 blogger who has just graduated with a degree in cyber anthropology. Before today I'm not sure I'd have thought that cyberspace has been around long enough to warrant an anthropological approach, but I suppose given the rate of change in the technology world, that you have to count time like we do dog years. One year in cyberspace equivalent to __?__ in real world years. Is 7 enough? Is 100 too many?

Anyway in my search for a definition, I came across what was a cutting edge article in 1994 by Michael Strangelove: The Geography of Consciousness. It appeared in WAVE, "the first European newsstand magazine about digital convergence, internetworking, and the emergence of cyberspace."

Here is a quote from the final paragraph:

"If you want to see the future, ... look into cyberspace. When you have arrived there, listen to the multiplicity of voices. Watch for the appearance of those who become empowered through bypassing the gatekeepers of mass communication. ... The new technology of communication, the new geography of consciousness, the new technique of existence combine to form a linchpin on which the whole world is about to turn."

Is there such a thing as educational anthropology? Is there any urgency to look back less than 20 years because so much that is important to understanding the roots of current practice, growth, and change may be lost if we don't?

Image source: Vicki Woodward 03-14-11 blog.xplana.com/2011/03/disruptive-technologies-cartoon/

Making peace with constructivism: towards a landscape of coherence

2011-09-19T11:22:00.003-04:00

Readings:
~Narratives of coherence by George Siemens (http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/connectivism/?p=61)
~Teaching in Social and Technological Networks (http://www.connectivism.ca/?p=220)
~Constructivist Learning Theory (http://www.exploratorium.edu/IFI/resources/constructivistlearning.html)

For some time I've struggled with constructivism. Surely, I've wondered, there's a lot of knowledge that's just better passed on in the old way -- taught directly by a person who understands it well. Would I want to entrust my body to a surgeon who'd completely constructed his/her own learning? Would I want to buy a house wired by a completely self-taught electrician?

Unfortunately, for some students, when their teaches implement a constructivist model, they abandon the role of instructional leader in the name of giving students responsibility for their own learning. Such teachers laud the value of peer-to-peer sharing and helping, but what they fail to see is that often the stronger students just take over the instructional role they (the teachers) have abdicated -- that of providing direct teaching to those who need it. (I suspect that in some constructivist classes, there's plenty of direct instruction going on. It just isn't emanating from the teacher.)

A few days ago, I came across the term "narrative of coherence". Aha, I thought, here's the secret that will save me| I thought it would fill in the middle ground between traditional delivery and extreme constructivism with some vision of how to infuse learning experiences with an underlying narrative that would give students' explorations coherence. But when I read the articles (top 2 above) more thoroughly, I realised the phrase was used as a sort of educational pejorative.

'Narrative of coherence', it seems, is a way to describe what traditional teachers do. They work out the setting, plot, characters, and theme and tell the whole story to their students who learn it by listening and studying it over and over until they know it by heart. Reaching the end of a lesson is like coming to the end of a chapter when a bedtime story is being read. Learners learn to wait until the next lesson to find out what happens next. The problem isn't so much that students don't learn the story (for many do and have), but that they hear only one story with an ending that always comes out the same way.

I firmly believe that well-crafted learning experiences must offer COHERENCE. I grew up as a teacher when 'discovery learning' and 'concept formation' were the progressive ways to teach. We believed back in 1974 that this was the way to put an end to the 'learn & forget' cycle (sound familiar???) because learning would become a sequence of 'aha' moments. I remember one day trying to lead a young fellow through the process of discovering how to do long division. I patiently laid out the bread crumbs that should have resulted in the magic moment of concept formation, but it just bewildered him. Finally he pleaded: "Please, miss, would you just teach me how to 'dibide'? I just want to know how to dibide!!!" So I did it the old way and after a few practice examples, he went away relieved and happy. For me it was a lesson learned.

But perhaps it was one I learned too well. Over the years I became a great educational story-teller, and my kids learned my narratives well, but for many that's where their understanding and questioning began and ended. Job well done, I thought -- but in retrospect it seems like a job only partially done.

So this morning I've been working on a new metaphor -- 'landscape of coherence'. I once read that mathematicians see a landscape of math. Like a virtual world, for them math has geography that is navigable and can be learned, enjoyed, used, enhanced, changed, and perhaps even destroyed. I think perhaps this metaphor has some power for educators as well. Perhaps the middle ground I've been seeking between narratives of coherence and radical constructivism is 'landscape of coherence'.

This landscape has important landmarks with some pathways connecting them, but the way you move around in it your way is determined sometimes by need, sometimes by signposts, and sometimes by interest. Instead of leading students down one garden path or telling them one story, teachers have to make informed decisions about what the critical landmarks are and then ensure the students understand & master those. As a complement to more traditional learning, we make the students responsible for working out their own meaningful connections, and we make time for sharing, comparing, crowd sourcing, and reflection (when we contribute our own perspectives as one of many).

When you revisit a learned landscape after a while, it's still familiar because it was extensively and intensively explored. You can revisit old landmarks and retrace old paths, but you'll also appreciate how the big picture has changed with time.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

(Video Link: Rotating Earth Animation)

The key then is for the teacher not to refrain from making any decisions, but to give up on trying to teach everything to everybody in case they might needed it sometime -- because it never takes anyway. Our job is to do the much harder work of being selective -- of making better decisions about what the important landmarks are-- and to then ensure our students know how to fulfill their role in this new paradigm.

And so I think I've finally made peace with constructivism. I guess you can teach an old dog new tricks.

A super multimedia project & one cool tool

2011-09-14T13:35:00.004-04:00

I just came across this video today. What a superb project that blends math, science, geography, and language learning with interesting videography as well !!!!!

If you do/did the Portable Video course with Frank Guttler, you'll be familiar with Photostory. it's the free Microsoft program that adds Ken Burns effects to simple slide shows.

Wow Slider enables kids to create stunning visual Java slide presentations for their blogs, wikis, or websites. The download is free for personal and educational (non-commercial use). They've added interesting transitions and the Ken Burns pan and scan effect as well.

I was able to follow the how-t0 explanation down to the part where it says how to post, but I think that after I try it a couple of times, I should be able to figure that out.

Howard Gardner interview today

2011-09-13T13:47:00.004-04:00

This quickie post will be of special interest if you're taking or have yet to take EDIM 508. You'll be reading and blogging about Howard Gardner's Five Minds for the Future, and Gardner is being interviewed online by Steve Hargadon at 5PM Pacific time today (Sept. 13). You can find the link to the Blackboard Collaborate room in Steve's blog at http://www.stevehargadon.com/2011/09/live-tuesday-sept-13-with-howard.html. Perhaps I'll see you there.

Link to video http://bcove.me/o82j7nsl

change.mooc.ca begins next week

2011-09-10T18:34:00.006-04:00

MOOC stands for 'massive open online courses' and this one promises to be a doozy. At present the schedule lasts 36 weeks each of which is being 'minded' by a different speaker. There will likely be over 1500 participants (and you thought your classes were big!!).

My main concern is that trying to keep up with so much incoming information may push me out of interested learner mode into being an overloaded procrastinator and finally into just dropping out. How do you scan RSS feeds from over a thousand co-participants' blogs? and stay current with the backchannel? and process the weekly discussions? and make meaningful contributions? and find people with whom you want to develop more personal and lasting relationships? and archive interesting links, comments, resources? and not end up swamped by the sheer volume of inputs?

I have an idea that it may make sense to follow a suggestion from Steven Bell who did a session last week in the TLT Friday Live free webinar series -- that is to create a small team, divide up the task of filtering, and create a way to update and share with each other the most promising/interesting/provocative inputs, and perhaps meet on a bi-weekly basis to share new insights.

If anyone's interested in trying change.mooc.ca and forming a team to try this, please let me know either in the comments below or through the Facebook page.

Link to 'What is a MOOC?' video http://youtu.be/eW3gMGqcZQc

Link to 'What is a MOOC?' video http://http://youtu.be/mqnyhLfNH3I

Link to 'Success in a Mooc' video http://youtu.be/r8avYQ5ZqM0

'm' apparently no longer stands for 'mother'

2011-09-04T10:51:00.003-04:00

I'm helping to put together a one week, Moodle, pro-d event about mLearning -- with the 'm' now signifying 'mobile' and am in the 'search for ideas' stage. Today I came across this wonderful video I thought I'd share.

I'd love it if you'd be willing to share ideas, resources, websites, blogs, wikis, and especially student projects that I could incorporate into this project. To help me out, please leave your links below or respond on the Facebook page. THANKS!!!!!

[BTW, the event will be open to anyone who wants to join in the fun, and certificates will be available to participants who want them. It will be late in October, and I'll post the registration information here when we get a little closer.]

-------------------------
Late breaking FYI --

Wikispaces has added a new feature called Projects to all educational wikis. This gives you a way to coordinate small group work inside one wiki by creating teams and assigning permissions.

P.S. I'll have to explore whether this can work for Canadian students as the kids apparently must join the wiki in order to be assigned to teams. If they can do this without having to register their personal information anywhere then this is a tool we Canucks can definitely make use of as well.

Big Ideas

2011-08-15T10:04:00.015-04:00

One of the things I struggled with when I was in the EDIM program was writing 'big ideas'. This might have been because I tried to use many assignments to grapple with how to apply a lot of what I was learning to the teaching of high school math. Math people haven't given much attention to the need for big ideas that could draw people into their content.

In math, big ideas are defined this way (R. Charles, Journal of Mathematics Education Leadership, Vol. 7 No.3) :

" a statement of an idea that is central to the learning
of mathematics, one that links numerous mathematical
understandings into a coherent whole."

and here's an example:

"Any number, measure, numerical expression, algebraic
expression, or equation can be represented in an infinite
number of ways that have the same value."

Now that idea can be a beautiful thing to a mathematician and it's clearly an underlying understanding or concept that we aim for students to develop over time, but having that knowledge hasn't helped me see it's value or importance or usefulness outside the walled garden of math.

[Image Credit: CC Attribution. Kent Barret, 1 Apr. 2005.]

One of the higher ed bloggers I follow is working on how to make the big ideas of physics and computational computing more accessible to his students.

vpython cvpm explanation from occam98 on Vimeo.

Now I have only a rudimentary understanding of physics and first heard about computational computing a couple of weeks ago when I watched Stephen Wolfram demonstrate Wolfram Alpha, but John Burk has made me wish I could take his class. He's managed to connect the dots from common ground topics of space and weather (who hasn't gazed at the moon or complained about bad weather!) to his content by showing his students some 'why's.

Lately I've been doing quite a bit of reading about how the folk in higher ed are struggling with the why's, how's, and what's of improving their teaching skills. Similar to the way that many K-12 educators have been reluctant to adopt new technologies, some higher ed folk are finding it challenging to change their way of thinking about learning and teaching. I think perhaps in both cases the reluctance may stem from not seeing the why's -- or perhaps it's because that for many educators, figuring out our why's is something that takes place in the formative years of our careers. Maybe it's like developing a personal fashion sense or a look when you're young and after that you always dress the same way unless/until something forces you to see yourself in others' eyes and you don't like what looks back at you.

[Image Credit: It Can't All be Dior blog, 20 Apr. 2011]

I think 'getting to why' is perhaps one of the biggest big ideas of our profession. Perhaps under all the reasons people give for not wanting to engage in this kind of educational overhaul (too much work for too little return, just a fad, no time, too much important content to cover, won't help on the test, doesn't work in my subject) lies these two simple facts:

those of us who have made the paradigm shift have not done the work of making the why's explicit in as enticing and elegant a way as John Burke has done with his one simple idea and his one big idea.
my why's (I'm an adult; I liked math; I didn't struggle in school) are not everyone else's (especially my students').

So ... we haven't revealed the connections in a compelling way to those who find them the most difficult to see, and we have become frustrated and tended to blame them for not 'getting it'.

Hmmmm ........ sound familiar?

Debriefing EdmodoCon11

2011-08-11T12:08:00.009-04:00

There's a little folder that sits on my desktop called 'Webinars'. In it I stash the notes I take as I watch & listen. Between the speakers and the chat there's so much to absorb that I try to get down as much as I can -- screen shots of great slides, links, copies of pithy comments, and ideas I want to be able to review later.

Most of my webinar files are between 10 and 125kb in size. 300kb was large until yesterday, but, thanks to an early morning tweet from Jennifer Brinson (Jen is a Wilkes EDIM alum), I spent from 10:30am until 6:30pm at EdmodoCon. This was an online conference put together to showcase innovative mashups of high quality teaching/learning, ed tech, and Edmodo. 18 speakers from the US, Canada, Brazil, and Australia talked to nearly 500 attendees sitting at their computers all over the world. EdmodoCon's file in my webinar folder is 21,457kb. That's over 100x bigger for only 8x longer (by time) than ever before. No wonder I was so exhausted by the end of the day!

The sessions were archived. To access them together with all associated materials and links, either register with Edmodo (or reactivate an old account) and use the group code (1bbsgy) to join the EdmodoCon 2011 group or keep checking back to their blog.

I really want to use this post to award Betsey Whalen a huge badge and a billion points (and hope she gets a huge promotion -- sorry -- inside joke for those who saw the Gamification session) for keeping her energy so strong and infectious all day.

[Image credit: CC Share/Attribution, 11 July 2007, ann-dabney/355168866]
She set the upbeat tone, kept everything pretty close to on schedule, and pushed through the few moments of tech glitches without letting the momentum of the event dissipate. For me the most important take-away from the entire Edmodo marathon came from Betsy after Carol Anne McGuire's session about her world-rocking projects. Carol Anne started her presentation by talking about how she became inspired to transform her own teaching. Here's an example of the most recent result:

When Betsy reflected after Carol Anne was done about how this wonderful explosion of remarkable work had come out of an inspirational moment at a pro-d session, she summed up in one moment for me the value of being in contact with interesting people who are passionate about what they do and act on their passion. How many educators see the potential of their work as giving our students moments like that?

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Final note: I've also bee thinking today, not about any single conference session, but about how Edmodo has evolved over the years from the the educational microblogging tool it first was into a resplendent content delivery, communication, and learning platform.

[Image Credit: CC Attribution, 14 Dec. 2009, jesusbranch/4184450383/]

By incorporating the features the users have requested, its developers have grown this tool from the grass roots up. One speaker who just started using Edmodo last year mentioned that he'd sent in about 12 suggestions and that most (if not all) have appeared in the newest version. Edmodo was designed not based on someone else's idea of what teachers, students, and admins need and want but by listening and responding to real needs and real wants voiced by real users in the real world, and its users wax rhapsodic about how it's literally changed their educational lives.

There was one EdmodoCon presenter who said his 'aha' moment about thinking about what teaching and learning could become came when he saw the parallels between gaming and schooling. Hmmmm ..... I'm seeing similar parallels -- but between Edmodo's responsive growth model and learner-centered education. Could this be a metaphor or a template for creating learning experiences that leave people wanting more?

Inspiring words for all teachers

2011-08-11T09:23:00.006-04:00

[CC Attribution: JohnONolan, 17 July 2010, from johnonolan/4816798476]

Print this. Tape it somewhere in your class where it won't get buried. Make it your computer's wallpaper. Add it to the notices on the photocopy machine wall (if your school hasn't gone paperless). Put a copy in your car and reread it in the morning before you step out in the school parking lot. Pass it on to a colleague who's getting a little lost.

An Open Letter to Teachers

Educational mindshifts & a new tool: Highlighter

2011-08-05T09:49:00.023-04:00

I'm reading a blog called Mindshift these days. It's about grasping the opportunity to shape how learning will occur in the 21st century. After all, we're already over 1/10th of the way in. It's time to accept that technology + tough economic times + pressures on educators at all levels to better meet students' needs have combined to make a 'perfect storm' in our field.

Having survived breast cancer, it's always on my mind that I might have a recurrence. Should that ever happen, there's one thing I know for sure: my very survival will depend on doctors who make the best uses of the newest technology and techniques available to them. Yet somehow when it comes to ensuring that this generation of children receives the best quality education, a vision of orderly rows of obedient learners absorbing all the information they can like sponges and giving it back skillfully on tests is what springs to many minds. Surely educating minds is as important as curing people when they become ill!!!

Educators now have crucial choices to make for the kids in their care -- do we continue to sit like big rocks rooted to the bottom of a river resisting the flow of the water until a flood finally pushes us along ...

(image credit: Glenn Scofield Williams, May2008, from Flickr CC)

or do we learn now how to read the current the best we can and take advantage of the flow to create a truly exciting ride?

(Image credit: Steve Collis, Oct 2009, in Flickr CC)

We can take a 'wait and see attitude' or become active participants in determining what education looks like 10, 20, or even 50 years from now.

Today's issue of Mindshift-- Turning Static Text into Interactive Discussions -- provides links to two interesting online learning courses: BioFundamentals by University of Colorado biology professor Michael Klymkowsky and Chemistry, Life, the Universe, and Everything by Melanie Cooper at Clemson University. They are using a new free tool called Highlighter to provide students with a way to interact on the course site and also collect feedback to guide further teaching/learning.

(I've installed Highlighter on this blog. Try it, and send me some feedback. If you see a toolbar at the top, clicking the arrows at the right will make it recede.)

Highlighter from Highlighter on Vimeo.

There is lots that could be done to make these examples even more student-friendly, but these educators are clearly trying to come up with workable solutions to the problem of how to improve the teaching/learning of science at the post-secondary level while at the same time coping with severe constraints such as funding cutbacks, huge classes (200-1500 in some places!!!), and the durability of old paradigms:

The recent emphasis on the science education system is based in large part on the perceived need to broaden the appeal of science and deepen appreciation for the scientific approach’s value when thinking about a wide range of phenomena. While the current system is demonstrably adequate for those who succeed in it, it actively discourages the majority of students. All too often, the function of a science or math course is perceived by students (and, sadly, by some faculty) as a sorting mechanism rather than an opportunity to learn (and teach). This is a perception that can lead to the loss of important contributions and talent as well as misunderstanding of and hostility toward science within the broader community.

(Mike Klymkowsky, Feb 2011)

While higher ed teachers have lots of technology and content expertise, they're in the process of learning how to be better teachers.

This way of thinking about the teaching/learning interaction may seem pretty fundamental to us K-12 folk, but the solutions the higher ed folk are coming up with: 'demand' lectures; collecting data on the fly so you start a class knowing what needs to be reviewed/retaught; just-in-time-teaching; paying more attention to the flow-through from pre-class, to in-class, and then post-class learning so it all contributes to student's shouldering more of the responsibility for creating the quality of their learning -- these are processes we need to look at more closely.

Blended learning is new at the K-12 level, but it's going to put a lot of pressure on how we do our work. In my former district, the e-learning division is growing at an unprecedented rate, and you can be sure that if the educational decision makers see it saving money and working reasonably well in the largest school district in my province, they will be pushing other regions to make more use of remote learning. More and more classroom teachers will soon feel the competion from this cheaper delivery model, and we'd better have something very special going on in our learning environments to set our work apart and keep our services essential.

At its heart, science works as a highly interactive community. At the same time, it is possible for a single person to challenge and change accepted scientific understanding. That is not to say that it is easy to change the way scientists think; after all, most challenges to well established theories are wrong, and it is generally a waste of time to think about them seriously. That means that a new way of looking at a phenomena must be clearly superior, both in terms of accuracy and explanatory power, to the ideas that it wishes to displace. It must explain more than the old ideas, and it must resolve problems that an old idea was unable to adequately explain. It is this tension between consensus, conflict and resolution that drives scientific understanding forward, so that, in the end, more and more phenomena become explicable. Through its fundamental ability to accept change, science has come to provide the practical knowledge needed to manipulate and understand the material world.

(Mike Klymkowsky, Science & its Methods)

If you replace the words 'science' and 'scientist' with 'education' and 'educators', this statement could become an interesting template for educational change.

Popplet Mind Maps

2011-08-03T08:42:00.007-04:00

I was getting to ready to work on another post about a great presentation on blended learning that I watched yesterday. I want to compare what was 'old school' (for us K-12ers -- this was for "higher" ed.) to what is really different, but that's a story for another day. Anyway, as usual, I started looking through Google and stopped at Go2Web20 (tag:mindmap).

(click any pic)

I love this search engine. The tagging system is superb, and the blog makes for an interesting reading. The general categories are quite broad to help you see how companies are thinking outside traditional uses of familiar processes. But it's so easy to get sucked into wonderful distractions, that you might not get your work done in a timely fashion. I spent quite a lot of time with Creaza and Trail Me.)

The tool I want to write about today is Popplet which is a collaborative online tool with an iPad app ('lite' vs is free, full-featured is kind of pricey at $4.99).

Other bloggers describe this as a pumped up version of Wallwisher (see Larry Felazzo's blog) because it's a kid-friendly way to collect, bookmark, and organise information, ideas, websites, and media. You can connect Popplets, embed them, and export or print them. Users have to register, but if you have a class gmail account, you can give the students access without their having to put their own information online. I keep the email account name and password the same to make it easy to remember. This is also a great way to control their content.) It will look great on a SmartBoard and there's a little bookmarklet tool for your toolbar so as you come across content that will work with a presentation, you can update the appropriate popplet.

This tool is one I'll be adding to the list people can play with at my workshops.

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BTW -- I also came across Mark Warner's collaborative presentation for uses of WallWisher. I'm sure the ideas can be used with Popplet as well. Enjoy!

https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=dhn2vcv5_436f8kscmdc

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Hey! I just figured out how to reduce this presentation to fit in the small display space provided in this blog. Simply cutting the width (to 400 for this blog) and height (proportionally either by estimate or using a ratio -- great math lesson!!!!) in the HTML code, cut off a big chunk of the Google Doc, but reducing with the 'amp' (whatever that is) to .75 as well did the trick. Hmmmm ... there's a lot to be said for trial and error learning when you have the time to play and an environment where there's immediate feeback!

EDIM Alum -- Cary Harrod

2011-07-31T11:41:00.004-04:00

[I want to figure out how to add pages to this blog without losing access to all the posts that are already there!!! If anyone can help, please let me know.]

I think it might be cool to feature some of the EDIM alums and let others know what they're up to now. For example, Cary Harrod is one of the people I used to meet in my courses. Her discussion threads were always insightful and I looked forward to trading ideas and perspectives whenever we landed in the same course. This morning I came across a webinar that she's hosting in Learn Central on Aug. 9.

"What happens to learning when 353 seventh graders walk into class with their own laptop, netbook or tablet? After five months of intensive planning, we launched our BYOL in January 2011, forever changing the story of what it means to teach and learn in our district. Join us for this informative session where administrators, teachers and students from our district will share their personal journey through a BYOL. We'll save some time to hear the stories of other districts who have taken or are thinking of taking the BYOL path and of course we'll leave time for questions from the community. Together, we can re-imagine learning."

Unfortunately, I may be in a math and technology bootcamp for higher ed educators talking to them about using SmartBoards, but if I decide to save the $$ and stay home, I'll be tuning in.

And ... hey Cary, if you see this post, your project sounds crazy wonderful!!!

Fast entry today: Inpaint (24 hour free download)

2011-07-19T10:11:00.009-04:00

[I'm off to take images and make videos that stimulate math questioning in about an hour, but this post is time sensitive because it's from Giveaway of the Day.]Inpaint is a small utility that will replace undesirable objects in an image with an approximation of what might have actually been there. You use the eraser to delete the unwanted object and it infills the selected area for you by gathering information from the existing background. This is one of the few tools I've seen on GOTD that has received such rave reviews.

Remember:

1) find this link on the Giveaway of the Day web page to download the program file.

2) download and install before the offer expires in your time zone. If you wait, you'll get a trial or lesser free version only.
3) open the 'readme' file and follow the installation instructions to register.
4) this is supposed to be portable, but I'm not sure how ... ???

Links:

read the reviews
overview from the website
online version (free for now, but it's in 'beta' which means this will not likely last forever)

Learnable Moment
(questions you can work through with your students)

Why is it not ethical to erase watermarks or publishing information from other people's online images? If the only 'perfect' image for a project said "All Rights Reserved" or "NOT for reuse without permission", how might you proceed? Where can you find images that do not have copyright restrictions? How can you give credit to the owner of the image? Why would you want to take the time to do this?

Thinkable Moment

What's in your project rubrics that addresses the issue of 'theft' of online resources such as images? If a student had used using copyright protected images in a project, would you:

ignore it because they're kids, who will know, or everything goes if it's for education?
accept that project under the fair use provisions (do these apply in your country)?
make them cite the source (what if they didn't bookmark and can't find it)?
accept but deduct marks?
make him/her replace the images?

Discovery Education's new Science TECHBOOK

2011-07-15T08:23:00.007-04:00

(Linked image)

Those of you in the EDIM program at Wilkes are so fortunate to be given free subscriptions to DE Streaming, Science and Health so you can use Discovery's assets to enhance the learning experiences you're creating for your students. Canadian students also have access to the DE's Canadian collection. (It's a separate subscription, so if you haven't been given this information, email your advisor and ask her for the details.)

But you may not be aware of DE's newest product -- their Science TECHBOOK.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

(Scott Kinney introduces the product)

(Patti Duncan's 60 minute webinar demonstration)

Ask yourself what's missing in a traditional textbook:

does it keep pace with scientific discoveries and current events?
is it designed around big ideas and essential questions?
does it facilitate connections across standards?
does it help students connect their learning to their own experiences?
does it stimulate their curiosity and make it easy for them to pursue their interests?
does it bring science alive for your kids?

I know that when I taught Earth Science 11, the book I used said Jupiter had 16 moons, Pluto was a planet, and there were no other Earth-like planets in the universe. Every year new discoveries made those facts obsolete (is that an oxymoron?), but there wasn't always time for me to research all the topics I wanted to cover to ensure my kids would have accurate information.

That's one of the big problems that DE's new Science Techbook solves. They've taken on the job of making it easy for you to deliver up-to-date content to your kids. They've also made it easy for teachers to be sure they're covering all the standards without having to carve up and dole out science content into isolated, decontextualised portions. The DE Science Techbook is all about the connections, the relevance, and the fascination of science that makes learning about science a way to learn more about ourselves, our world, and our universe and what can be more exciting than that!

So -- sign up for one of the Science Techook webinars and get a sense of what science teaching can be. Better yet, see if one of your instructors can arrange for a Wilkes webinar and request that Patti Duncan lead it. When I did my training with Discovery last year, Patti led the day on science making what could have been a stuffy training-for-trainers session fun and memorable. She teaches by example and models what she believes is possible in every science classroom.

The DE webinar schedule can be found near the bottom right of web page linked from the image at the top of this post. Enjoy!

Another webinar series: Mini-Geek Fest monthly online conversation

2011-07-11T13:43:00.004-04:00

(Image linked.)

If you like webinars or if you haven't ever attended one and would like to try out the technology, this could be an option. This is a series is a 'show and tell' for educators who enjoy talking to others with similar interests in technology. It's a time to listen, share, and discuss. LiveBinders is being used to store/share the links from each session. Professional development credits are available (1 per hour/session), and you can either attend live or listen to the archived event to qualify.

If you haven't used Elluminate (now Blackboard) before, it works best with a USB headset -- especially if you like to talk. Your desktop or laptop mike will cause a lot of feedback. Got to the session about 15 minutes ahead and go through the audio wizard set-up.

Chris Smith, aka Samblesguru, has done an introductory 'how to' video for the Saturday Classroom 2.0 web event series. Clicking on the image above will take you to the LearnCentral page where you'll find the URL to join the meeting.

SMART technologies app to access SmartBoard remotely

2011-07-07T09:32:00.006-04:00

Smart Technologies has the solution to the "how to access a SMART Board from an iPad" question. They offer an iPad app called SMART Bridgit Conferencing which solves the problem and makes your Board remotely accessible. Multiple users can write on the same display. Features include: wifi connection, intuitive toolbar to access tools, seamless integration with Notebook software, all the benefits of online meeting software so it works in an e-learning environment. I'm wondering if it's time to but a used iPad to test this.

Good news: the app is free so any of your students can download it.
The catch: " Access to a SMART Bridgit Server version 4.2 or later is required to use this app. For more information on SMART Bridgit conferencing software, or to learn more about SMART Bridgit server software," so you'll have to contact your reseller for a price.

Access SMART Notebook files from your ipad/iphone?

2011-07-02T12:31:00.004-04:00

A while ago I was showing 2 Notebook files that I'd created to accompany JUMP math lessons to a group of educators out at UBC. The question came up of whether the SMART people were working on an app version of Notebook software. The flash files wouldn't work, but it's possible to create lessons without using those kinds of gallery items.

Today I came across this response from a guy who calls himself Rabsmo in the MacRumors forum:

"I think that I have discovered the best solution based on the software available so far. I use an iPad app called LogMeIn which allows me to log in to the classroom computer and control it using my iPad. This allows me to walk around the classroom and do everything I would normally do with the smartboard using a copy of the computer screen on my Ipad. You do need a wireless connection (WIFI) between your IPad and the classroom computer to do this but it allows all of the functionality of the smartboard from your Ipad. With regard to using the VGA dongle there are Ipad apps available that allow you to display PDF files and web sites but you will have to be physically wired in to the Smartboard which I think limits the mobility that the Ipad was made for. If you are interested in these apps go to the app store and type in VGA as a search keyword."

Feedback on the website indicates that this might be an expensive solution $30 fee for the app gives you only a month's trial. But it might be possible to use the app version of Join.Me which is a free screen sharing program which I think allows you to pass off the control from one participant to another. You might be able to share with yourself and with other students and all access the same screen (i.e. the Notebook file hooked directly from the school computer to the SMARTBoard) from individual tablets and phones.

I haven't tried either solution yet because I don't have a SMARTBoard at home to practice with, but if you get it working, please send some feedback via the blog response or Facebook.

Marilyn Weston's Technology Tips for Classroom Teachers

2011-07-01T10:23:00.006-04:00

(click the pic)

I'm working on a PowerPoint version of Maria Anderson's Trinomial Traverse game. She and a partner have created this to get students to both practice multiplication of simple trinomials and also do some higher order game strategy thinking. It's a nice combination that can easily be adapted to other math skills when you want to avoid 'drill and kill'. I'm also working on a Notebook version for the SMARTBoard which uses spinners instead of dice because it's easy to change the information in the slices of the spinner.

While searching for interactive powerpoint dice, I came across Marilyn Weston's "Technology Tips for Classroom Teachers." She's been building it since at least 2003 (when the visitor counter was installed) and seems to be keeping it up to date. Although the website has a decidedly homespun look, this is a highly professional effort. On the "Stuff Ya Gotta Try" page alone there are hundreds of entries in a variety of content areas -- Language Arts, Math, Science and so forth -- and she's added material on topics such as Internet Safety, Keyboarding, and even "Anti-Frustration with Technology."

No tools compendium can ever be complete, and it's likely that when you scan her lists, one or two of your favourites may be missing, but this is a great place to look when you want to come up with a new tool for the Differentiation course or even to use with your kids.

My favourites:

PicassoHead --if you have a few minutes to waste in creative fun. The gallery is fabulous.
TerraClues for Schools -- "the ultimate Google Maps scavenger hunt game" -- you can use the hunts on the website or create your own or have the kids do their own for review
Mailinator -- create an alternate email address to avoid using your own when you register at websites. This may be a workaround for younger students. You could create a class set and then let the students use them to login.

Enjoy!
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P.S. -- if you have a link to a PPT with dice or spinners that I can adapt for this math game, please post the link as a response here on in Facebook. THX!!!!!!!!!!

Gapminder: world statistics made visual

2011-06-24T10:29:00.009-04:00

Gathering and interpreting statistical information is one way to make sense (on nonsense?!!?) of the world. Hans Rosling (see March 23 post) has developed a program that animates statistics -- which enables students to see changing trends over time and to compare trends in different countries. The goal of Rosling's organisation is to "replace devastating myths with a fact-based world view." Their method is to make data easy to access by compiling data sets from such organisations as the World Bank, Lancet, the WHO, and the UN and easy to understand by making it visual and manipulable. Gapminder comes in 2 versions: Gapminder World which is online or if your internet access is limited you can download the desktop software (must have Adobe Air installed).

(click above image for full size; link to static poster)

Students select the information they want to view by assigning the vertical and horizontal axes on the graph. The colours of the data bubbles correspond to countries on the map (upper left). Mousing over a bubble highlights the country on the map and its x and y coordinates. There is a slider beneath the graph one can use to choose the year (1800 - 2000+) to be illustrated. Clicking on 'Play' reveals the changes in the graph over time.

Using this kind of software to relieve the students of the time/labour intensive work of data mining and graphing will give them more time to speculate about underlying causes and possible future outcomes of making (or neglecting) changes. If you're looking for ideas about how to exploit this great resource, there is a teachers' page to explore.

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Final note: the Teq people are offering a free webinar on June 30 (4pm ET) on using Google Earth, Skype, Gapminder Desktop, and other free resources on you SMART Board. Perhaps I'll see you there.

More Visuals: Intel's Museum of Me

2011-06-17T11:07:00.007-04:00

A while ago I bought a GPS in hopes that I might find myself traveling to some strange city in the not too distant future. I practice with it when I drive around here at home so that I'll be more adept at integrating the visual and auditory cues when I really need them. My preferred mode is 3D which turns a traditional flat map into a 'drive through' experience. Watching the progress of the little car on the screen reminds me of my brothers playing with their dinky toys out in the back yard when they were young -- pushing them up sand piles, careening them around corners, crashing them into obstacles -- all with accompanying sound effects.

This morning I discovered another virtual tool that turns flat viewing into immersive 3D. Intel's Museum of Me morphs your Facebook page into a virtual building with rooms for your profile information, images of your friends, and your videos. It turns your text into a piece of dynamic art and at the end integrates the mosaic bits of the 'you' captured in your Facebook into a final defining image.

(Link to video)
I have to admit that visiting my personal museum is kind of a minimalist experience which reflects the fact that I don't reveal much of myself in that forum. The richer your Facebook, the more interesting Intel's virtual rendition of 'you' will be.

It would be very cool to use this kind of tool as a way to turn static classroom research about a historical figure or a character in a novel into a Museum of 'X'. If there's a way to make up actual Facebook pages for non-living characters, please let me know. Until then have fun walking through this tribute to your own life.

Thanks to CyberJohn from CEET for this one.

Worlde lovers -- meet Tagxedo

2011-06-16T11:33:00.010-04:00

(Link to interactive version)

OK -- so many of you who read this know that I live in Vancouver, that our team lost, and that many of those who live here behaved deplorably last night. I'm not sure if the sore losers in other cities wreak this kind of havoc when a team loses, but there has to be a better way to express disappointment than by trashing your own nest and doing it in front of an international audience!

But this post is about the image above and how to make one (not about the incident it portrays). This was made with a Web 2.0 tool called Tagxedo which blends visual with verbal by turning word clouds into images. It's in free beta now so you can play to your heart's content; however, soon some of the fancy features will move to a subscription basis. If enough people use it and write in, perhaps Hardy (the creator of this tool) will consider a special deal for educators (as have Glogster, Animoto, and GoAnimate to name a few).

(From the website) "With Tagxedo, you can:

make word clouds in real-time, and re-spin, and re-spin to your liking
save the word cloud as images for printing and sharing
look at all variants of the clouds in a gallery (see screenshot above), and pick the one you want for further tweaking or saving
choose from many different fonts
use local fonts (e.g. downloaded from Font Squirrel, DaFont, FontSpace, or your own hand-drawn fonts)
quickly switch between different colors and themes
constrain the cloud to selected shapes (heart, star, cloud, oval, etc)
use images as custom shapes (e.g. Reddit Alien) [premium feature]
use words as custom shapes (e.g. "USA", "Love", "Joy", "I LOVE YOU") [premium feature]"

For more samples and ideas, you can link to 101 Ways to Use Tagxedo. A helpful FAQ page provides information about how to use the more advanced features.

[One caveat: apparently there is no way to search for a gallery item once it has been created. I'd recommend doing your word composing in a document that can be saved so if you have to rework the original, you have the text on your own computer. I'd also add the URL of your gallery image to that page so you can get back to it at a later date. This might save some tears later on.]

Enjoy!

Climate Science Resources from England

2011-06-04T10:32:00.005-04:00

(click image to see full size)

Th Climate Science Info Zone offers information on climate and climate change in video (animations with subtitles if you wish) and print form. This is a website students can explore in a non-linear way -- following their interests and making their own connections. In the image above, you see the main topics and subtopics, but there's an additional layer of more specific key ideas linked to each of the subtopics so the students can drill down and find quite specific information in one to two minute chunks.

This first video I checked out (Exploring Earths' Climate >> How are climate and weather different?) is meant as an introductory piece, but it's all about the British Isles. You could turn this around and ask the students to create equivalent presentations for their own locations by making their own cartoon flip books using something like ToonDoo or their own video animations (try Xtranormal) or even PowerPoints with their own narrations (which could be uploaded and shared in Slideboom or AuthorStream).

But wait -- there's more! On the same website, the Online Stuff tab take you or your students to games, science news, and several themed exhibits. I love the one on the brain. In addition, if you click the Educators tab and then select Classroom resources from the menu at the left, you'll find a collection of great how to's for teachers that will help you organise hands-on activities and for your students in a variety of science topics (ages 3 - 16). There are videos, pdf's and templates -- everything you need for a successful science exploration with minimal prep and maximum activity. There's even a page on how to plan and run a CTD (collapsed timetable day -- aka 'dropdown' or theme day) on climate science. This could be a nice way to dovetail a whole day of activities with one of the great Discovery scientist webinars that are offered several times a year.

Thanks to Shana Opdenberg (Technology Integration Integration in Education Ning) for the heads up on this website. The British Science Museum, which makes this material available completely free, has done a wonderful job of connecting with the community. I wish we had something like it here in Canada!

Time travel, motivation, creative problem solving, and testing

2011-06-02T09:25:00.010-04:00

It's amazing what cleaning up one's email does. But let me back up a minute …..

Two weeks ago my tough Toshiba -- faithful companion through all Wilkes courses -- wouldn't boot up. I took it to my tech guys who were able to back up all the data and get it running again, but only sort of. There just wasn't any sound. Try as we might with fixes we found on the internet, the problem could not be fixed. The computer had been beeping strangely when booting up for some time, and I was on the last week of my 3 year, on site warrantee with Toshiba, so I contacted them thinking a nice miracle worker would come to my door to set everything right. Instead, they insisted on a compete reset back to factory settings in order to diagnose what was software and what was hardware related.

Now, I use my email as a sort of diary of daily connections, so there are over 10,000 sitting there -- some categorised nicely in folders, others just relegated to the junk file or left in the in-box. And all of this dates back to when I abandoned my desktop machine in 2009. I decided that before wiping out the heart of my machine, at the very least I ought to sort the individual folders and the junk file to preserve relevant content and purge the rest.

I started at the top, quickly got tired, and moved to the bottom of the list. There was more to delete from there, so it gave me the illusion of going faster. To my surprise, the process turned out to be quite interesting. I had set up the system so that most subscriptions would go to 'junk' simply so they wouldn't clutter up my in-box every day. Scanning these turned into a compressed journey through technological time. For example, I watched Google Wave go from inception to demise. I revisited the early smartphone and pre-tablet eras when making technology easily accessible in classrooms seemed an insurmountable hurdle. It made me very aware of the problems that 'technological disparity' is going to create in North American classrooms where a public school education is supposed to be one of society's great equalizers.

It also made me resolve to delete 200 old emails per day as well as read or properly classify all new ones rigorously which leads me to today's mashup. I offer you two items this week's emails : an article entitled "Panel Finds Few Learning Gains from Testing Movement" and a video (below) called "Gamifying Education."

What occurs to me is that perhaps U.S. educational policy makers should be looking at how to get from where they are (tests don't boost learning) to where they want to be (ensuring greater learning success for more children) as a game of connections (as in the last segment of the video). My worry is that they won't use this as a reason to apply creative problem solving and critical thinking skills to the problem but will just respond by adding another level of tests or by rejigging the existing tests to make it harder to 'game the system'.

I'd be interested in reading your thoughts on one, either, or both. What do you find are life and school's greatest motivators?

Free one year trial of 'Imagine Mars'

2011-06-01T08:51:00.008-04:00

(click for full-sized image)

Learning.com is a subscription-based company which will deliver online lessons -- selected from their collection or developed by you -- to your students. Their materials, for the K-8 market, are designed to help teachers meet the STEM standards as well as give students instruction in 21st century technology skills. Their game-based packages create a multi-sensory environment where students can "model … new skills and create stronger connections to their learning." They take advantage of kids' natural desire to master internet applications and at the same time support their learning efforts. Learning.com is partnering with a number of other educational service providers, including Discovery, so teachers can create and distribute online learning experiences which integrate materials from these sources through the SKY digital learning environment.

With Imagine Mars, Learning.com has created a project-based learning package for grades 3-8. It's a little reminiscent of the old survival on the moon group survival simulation activity we used to have students do in the old days. Learning.com has worked with Nasa to replicate virtually the kind of face-to-face experience illustrated in the video below.

CK2 NASA Imagine Mars youth program from danboarder on Vimeo.

The one year, free trial is good for one teacher and a class of 30 kids. All you have to do is answer 2 questions to start the process of signing up. Once you have your trial, you'll be prompted to create an account and set up your licences. Enjoy.

Mac Alert

2011-05-26T14:57:00.004-04:00

Update from May 31: Apple has released a security update to tackle this problem. See this article -- http://www.pcworld.com/article/229100/apple_releases_mac_defender_security_updateeverybody_relax.html#tk.nl_dnx_h_crawl)

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OK -- I'm struggling to learn how to use my new MacBook Pro effectively, so today I paid attention to an article on a Mac Virus and am wondering if I should be purchasing anti-virus software for my new machine. I thought these machines had immunity!!!!

In the meantime, I'm sure many of you are using Mac's so these links are worth a read: Mac Malware is Back (in PCWorld) and How to avoid or remove Mac Defender malware (from Apple Support).

Also be sure, you go into the preference and UNCHECK the "Open 'safe' files after downloading" option.

Right click on Safari.
Select Preferences >> General (light switch icon).
Uncheck the box at the very bottom of the page. This may help prevent the process from starting automatically.

Also, if a normal attempt to close Safari doesn't work, use 'Force Quit' (on the Apple menu, far left.)

What looks like a super writing tool -- Scrivener

2011-05-23T18:44:00.009-04:00

This is a big hello to all you new Wilkes students. I've found a tool I think would have made my life a lot easier when I was churning out papers, responses, and blog entries for my courses. Keeping track of ideas and sources was a complicated affair especially when writing a long paper or doing one of those courses that required multiple written pieces. Scrivener (in Mac and Windows versions) is designed to "help you get to the end of that awkward first draft. … Outline and structure your ideas, take notes, view research alongside your writing and compose the constituent pieces of your text in isolation or in context" -- it all seems to be there.

[Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DthBJhBrYs]

What I love about this tool is that the 30 day free trial means 30 days of actual usage. If you only use it once a month, you get 30 months free. After that the price is very reasonable. There is a good collection of tutorials, a wiki with the FAQ's, a support form, and you can register copies of the software on more than one machine. You can also publish your work so that it can be read on an iPad or other e-book readers and sync it with apps such as Simple Note that use DropBox. I'm wondering what it will look like on an IWB.

I'll be writing next week to see if you can move files back and forth between Mac to Windows as sometimes I work on one, and sometimes on the other. I've just bought a fancy new Mac, but have found that with the high-res screen, I can' change the sizes of the fonts in the toolbars unless I sacrifice resolution and I'm struggling to see the tiny print. Fortunately I have a second monitor (the best hardware investment I ever made) which works best at a different resolution which is better for my aging eyes. I've also installed something called DejaMenu which allows me to open a menu that pertains to the second screen on the second screen. This is a natural act on a PC -- Mac doesn't seem to lead the way in everything.

Onwards towards the end of the school year ...

Software finds: fill out PDF forms and make a screen recording

2011-05-10T10:15:00.006-04:00

You have a pdf form that needs to be filled out, but you've been keyboarding so long that you're handwriting skills have all but vanished. You don't want to fork out for the full Adobe package. Where do you turn? To PFDescape!!!

This is a little clunky (e.g. can't cut and paste to rearrange ideas in a paragraph or copy from a word document into the online file & I couldn't figure out how to do a circle or rectangle that wasn't filled in red), but compared to the alternative (my handscratch), it's a great way to fill in one of those read-only pdf's that can be such a pain. Just open an account (so you can save and get back to the document), upload, enter your information, then download and save as a pdf again. I tried it this morning and it worked perfectly.

I can see using this with students when they have job application forms to do. They can scan their forms, save them as pdf's (instead of jpegs), add their information in beautiful typed format and download to add their signatures and return them to the employers. They could also do fill in the blanks kinds of quizes or tests or annotate images like maps or mindmaps that have been saved in pdf format.

For those of you who can't easily get online, there's a very inexpensive ($20) downloadable alternative called PDFill. They also offer some free tools that are worth looking at if you're using an old version of Word and can't save to a PDF or want to merge/split files, reorder pages and so forth.

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For those of you who don't have a good screen recording tool, today's Giveaway of the Day -- Bandicam -- seems to be receiving good reviews from the gamers. I'm going to try making machinima with it in Second Life. Remember, when you download from GOTD, you must open the ReadMe file right away and follow the registration instructions exactly. If you don't do that inside their 24 hour period, you'll lose the lifetime registration and the program will revert to a trial version.

5 addtional ways to view Blogger content

2011-04-02T10:41:00.006-04:00

If you're tired of the standard view of the wonderful Wilkes blog and want to enjoy a more dynamic viewing experience, use this URL (http://wilkesinstructionalmedia.blogspot.com/view/sidebar#!/) and then use the drop down menu in the upper right corner to try all 5 options. Those posts which had no images show up as titles or summaries.

I think this could be a cool way to display class blogger content to to parents. If you were doing Scribeposts for math, one of the tasks could be to ensure there was a visual which represented the main idea uploaded directly to Blogger to help users recall the main idea behind. Younger students could scan artwork and use that to identify their posts. Before I stop, I'd better add an image to this post.

It's interesting to see the trend in use of visuals over the time that I've been writing this blog. I think I depend a lot more on videos now than I did when I first began.

Here are the links to the instructions to be sure your classes can access these 'dynamic views': All About and how-to.

BTW: I know that as EDIM students you're all writing and responding like mad. I'd love this to morph into a space to share ideas across class sections and across courses! If you or someone in one of your courses has written a blog post you'd be willing to share here, please let me know how to access the content, and I'll put it up. Just post a response here or in the Facebook feed. Thanks for the help.

Gmail Motion & Google docs Motion

2011-04-02T10:13:00.011-04:00

Those people at Google have done it again --

Link to video: Introducing Gmail Motion

AND

(to add action to real time collaboration and excitement to your presentations)

Globalization, Advocacy, and Washing Machines

2011-03-23T11:27:00.004-04:00

I think that some EDIM students may feel that the Globalization & Advocacy course is the least "practical" in terms of creating products that can be used immediately in class. This video may give you another perspective:

For me G&A course was about giving us a new perspective on our own place in the world and how to create learning spaces which at the same time both welcome people and ideas from all over the world and also prepare local children for lives that will be controlled to some extent by global forces. It's about seeing that every issue has at least two sides and that what we may see as good practices in the short run may turn out to be just plain short-sited.

Technology is often considered 'the great leveler'. We think it has launched the world into a post-industrial era. Rosling's point is that the great majority of Earth's population is still living in PRE-industrial times. As that divide widens and deepens, there will be more and more people who want 'what we have' and who we'll see as threatening as a result. Perhaps instead of investing in expanded national security and other 'defensive' measures, we should be put washing machines where more women can get their hands on them.

Connecting children to the internet can help them learn and build their dreams, but computers don't replace the labour intensive tasks of day to day life. Dreams denied can be a powerful force for the kind of change which may not be friendly to our way of life.

[This is just one Canadian's point of view.]

Incredibox -- online or screensaver

2011-03-23T10:19:00.005-04:00

Incredibox is the online incarnation of an artist who goes by the name of "The Incredible Polo."

Chris Pirillo's screen recording

Play online or download the screensaver. Slide icons from beneath the grey box onto the characters' shirts to add sounds to the performance. Click on a character to get rid of the sound and try another combination. After you have a few 'voices' going, clicking 'Shuffle Mode" will fill in the group automatically. When you insert "an instrument," a yellow bonus icon appears. Clicking that brings up an 'angelic' chorus. I found that opening the Incredibox in several windows at the same time allows you to have more than one version of the same voice going. If you screen-recorded different combinations, you could experiment with bringing various voices or groups in at selected intervals as a way of composing music.

This seems to offer some creative educational opportunities for collaborative team building, but it may just be (to paraphrase the guys on CarTalk) a great way to waste a few perfectly good minutes.

4th Annual Getting a 2nd life: Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference

2011-03-15T12:44:00.002-04:00

I'm heading back inworld this weekend to the 4th Annual Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference. Nunarya Fairlady/I'll haven't spent much time in SL lately so we/she/I?'m going to explore some of the venues today and tomorrow. I need to practise getting around without bumping into people again. Here are some links that will help you find your way in: conference gateway and schedule, main website, Tree TV portal to live media coverage. There are a number of tours to other virtual venues, but you'll need to have the software installed ahead of time and avatar chosen if you want to participate.

Salaman Khan and the Student : VHT ratio

2011-03-15T09:28:00.018-04:00

[Drat -- my keyboard has gone glitchy and I inadvertently deleted the first part of this. I hope I can reconstruct it.]

I've been watching the Salaman Khan (of the Khan Academy) TED talk about better math learning through technology. Khan is a hedge fund manager turned math educator who has observed over his 5 years in the field that too many good students with good math teachers reach a point when for them prior achievement is no longer a predictor of future success. To a kid it can can feel like their quota of math success has been used up. From the outside it may seem that once their fund of math knowledge is longer a dependable platform for new learning, they turn into 'overnight unsuccesses'.

Khan has a great metaphor for what he (and I concur) believes is the underlying cause of this for most kids. He blames it on the holes in "the Swiss cheese" of kids' math learning that keep building throughout their foundation. Most of the kids I asked over the years said that this started happening for them in grade 5. I suspect that by then that the survival tactics (eg. finger counting) many kids develop to do arithmetic can't hold up under the demands of complex arithmetical questions. Over the next few years, a pattern of giving up on learning first one skill and then another evolves until a critical mass of failure is reached and they have a math melt down. From then on unless they get some effective intervention, they come to accept failure as the norm in math and begin to plan their lives around this deficit.

Khan wants to change math classes from being an environment characterised by an acceptable level of failure to one where the expectation is mastery. I think taken to it's logical conclusion this would mean the end of 'Remedial' or 'Essentials' or "A&W" (Apprenticeship and Workplace) courses which have, in a way, become a systematized acceptance of failure. We dress these courses up with nice names and convince ourselves and the public that they are in the best interests of the child, but they're still the system's way of saying: "You've now not learned enough math to prove that our past expectations of you were too high. Here's your ticket to the easier course. Just struggle for a couple more years and you can get out of math forever!!"

Khan's solution is to arm teachers with the data they need to know immediately when a student has become stuck and to increase what he calls the "student to valuable human time with the teacher" ratio so little sticking points don't turn into big holes in the cheese. I'm not sure if I buy his entire vision, but the fundamental shift to continuously collecting feedback to guide instructional decisions is critical. If I were the queen of teaching, I'd put an end to teachers demonstrating correct solutions on the board after quizzes and tests. Unless the students actively find out where their mis-learning has occurred and fix it, what carries forward is recall of the error or of an incompletely learned skill. I'd forgo 'scatter gun' homework assignments in favour of assigning fewer questions and looking at them more deeply to assure myself and the child that the work of learning a particular skill was done.

I think Khan's technological solutions can help, but first we need to make the fundamental shift (as he has) to believing that we are seriously underestimating people's ability to learn math. Then the work of preventive math dentistry -- of detecting and filling little learning cavities to be sure all kids leave school with a full set of math teeth -- can begin.

Video link.

The best session at Educon 2.3

2011-03-08T10:34:00.000-05:00

Attending a conference virtually can be disappointing to say the least. If the presenters cannot see their own session through the eyes of the virtual audience, at home participants can be left unable to see the media on the screen or watching endless footage of groups working together in a room. I had as many as 3 different Educon 2.3 sessions up at a time, and the best one -- What's Wrong with this Picture -- I saw was by Dean Shareski and Darren Kuropatwa.

Participants were invited to "create video and/or images that concretely demonstrate how understanding the content is informed and molded by how we consume that content and communicate visually". We were asked to tell a lie.

From Dean's blog: "Darren and I wanted to see if we could get our participants to play and explore with ideas around imagery. We were a little concerned it may not work due to time constraints, equipment and simply because it's not normally the format at the conference. We were both blown away with the quality, imagination and thinking that went into their work. ... Upon return the conversation about critical thinking, media literacy, quantity vs quality emerged. The strong takeaway for me was that a little play can lead to important conversations. " Participants were asked to create 'forced perspective' images.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

View more presentations from Darren Kuropatwa.

These are some of the images from the workshop: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dkuropatwa/archives/date-posted/2011/01/30/ including my own which was actually taken by my workshop partner, Debra, when we were playing hookie from a conference in San Jose a few years ago.

Here's a collection with a similar premise from the Life Magazine Archives: Real or Fake ?

It's set up like a game where the audience can vote, see how they measure up to other viewers, and find out the right answer. I guess this one gives new meaning to the phrase: 'elephant in the room'.

As I prepare for my own next conference, I find myself thinking back to this session and asking myself what made their mix 'just right'. They set the scene for learning from their own experiences, drew participants into a dialogue so the learning would be more personal, gave us enough time to create something new and interesting, kept the technology simple enough that it promoted learning rather than becoming a barrier to participation, and summarised the experience. I almost expected to be sent away with a homework assignment at the end (LOL). This session was proof of the fact that -- technology notwithstanding -- there are old school teaching skills that endure.

Saving just a few pages from a pdf file

2011-02-19T09:48:00.019-05:00

Have you ever wondered how to break up a long pdf file and save just a few pages? Today I"m beginning work on a project for the JUMP Math people.This video is long, but until someone edits a new one from several of John's training sessions, it will have to do. His main point is that the bell curve is a social construct that we have come to believe and rely on to justify failure of huge numbers of students to fulfill their potential to be good at math (video link). The information on JUMP Math starts about 15 minutes into the video.

I want to put some of the JUMP demonstrations into a format that will work on a SMART Board and attach the pertinent pages from the Teacher's Guide to the Notebook file. Some of their guides are over 100 pages. They are treasure troves, but because they're so long, a lot of teachers using JUMP without any training plunge in without reading the guides. The problem with that is the heart and soul of about how to follow the JUMP model is in those guides. Without that information, JUMP Math can come across as just another set of workbooks. Armed with the information in the guides you can transform math teaching and learning into an art that captures the imaginations of the kids and meets the goals of teachers.

JUMP is a charity dedicated to helping teachers and students bust down the barriers to math learning. The materials are free to download and share. It's possible to apply for funds to set up math camps for kids during the holidays and for action based research that will provide them with more data to help them understand what it is about JUMP that works.

Here's how I made a new pdf file with just 4 pages from the original (video link). [Please note: the last frame on the video just shows that I did my screen recording with an old version of Snagit.]

To highlight multiple pages, click and hold down your control key.

You'll need something like the free version of Cute PDF Writer or Printer installed on you computer so that when you save the selected pages in the document, the computer can create a new pdf file for them. There are a number of pdf programs out there but Cute is reliable and the price is right.

DO NOT DOWNLOAD OR USE 'pdf 995'. It just about killed my computer and was almost impossible to uninstall.

I give Natalie Monroe her 15 minutes of fame

2011-02-17T14:39:00.009-05:00

Recently a Pennsylvania teacher was suspended when remarks she had made about students in her blog became public.

(Links to video and article)

Modeling ethical behaviour and attitudes to our students is one of a teacher's greatest responsibilities. Teachers who aren't sure where the boundary between acceptable and unacceptable public comment lies without having it written up as a school board guideline ought to do some serious soul-searching. On a personal level, all we need to do is ask ourselves who could be hurt if the information in our blogs became widely public. Professionally, we have a duty of confidentiality to the young people in our care -- no matter how challenging their behaviour or less-than-respectful their attirutes are. Any communication which breaches either of those trusts is unacceptable whether teachers feel their comments are justified or not.

Ms. Monroe still insists that she did nothing wrong. As my students often did when I caught them saying something hurtful, in her most recent blog post of Feb. 12 she tries to pass her comments off as a 'joke." She also paints herself as mystified by the tempest her "casual blog" has caused and as misunderstood because "the crazies" (students and parents probably aided by the press) who "tracked her down" tried to make her look bad by focusing public attention on the negative stuff she posted. She implies that if we knew the whole story and read all her posts, we'd see her as the proud and dedicated teacher she really is -- one who soldiers on in her teaching work like a salmon swimming upstream against the flow of "more and more, students [who are] are coming in less willing to work, to think, to cooperate." But if Ms. Monroe stands by her words, why has she deleted her blog's archives?

Despite her assertions to the contrary, she seems now to be in damage control mode. In her ABC interview (scroll to bottom), she said she started the blog at a friend's suggestion as a way for them to keep up better.

Good one, Ms. Monroe. When in trouble, blame a friend for getting you into it!!! Have you never heard of email? She is now claiming that the students alluded to in her blog were "caricatures of students she'd had over the years" (from the ABC interview) and that she "kept things as anonymous as possible" (from Feb. 12 blog). Read this blog passage from Jan. 29, 2010 (with bold/red emphasis added by me), and judge for yourself.

"After showing them how to set up their answer sheets, I said to the class, "And I would remind you of our honor day activities and the honor pledge. We didn't just do that for fun. Remember what we talked about. And if you were planning on doing anything untoward--[and I looked RIGHT at the girl in the pink and the kids around her]-- DON'T. [She averted her eyes immediately!] Because I WILL give you a zero, and I WILL call your parents, and I WILL talk to your other teachers about you. And I won't trust you anymore. And it's awfully early in the semester to lose my trust. So, even if you may have been tempted because you perhaps didn't prepare enough or are worried because it's the first quiz, DON'T cheat." While quizzing, I stood behind the pink-shirted gal and her area for a good 4 minutes ...".

Ms. Monroe is not the 'Julian Assange' (Wikileaks founder) of the educational blogging community. She is simply a jaded teacher who felt was pushed too far and blurted out a lot of stuff that she should have kept to herself or dealt with on a one-to-one basis with parents and administrators. I think her frustration turned into a sort of arrogance. In the blog posts I read, she seems to be looking down on her students and even her colleagues from her own little acre of moral high ground.

Although I'm guessing that her lawyer would have her deny this, I suspect Ms. Monroe hoped her writing would resonate with some readers somewhere. She said in the ABC interview that she was just blogging "for fun, anonymously, for her [7] friends," but it would only have taken a few clicks of the mouse for her to change the settings and permissions and ensure that her blog, which she claims was "not [meant] for mass consumption," remained truly private and restricted to only readers she chose. Whether Ms. Monroe wanted to reach other like-minded educators (which has now happened because she's up to over 400 followers from 7) or touch the heart of an uncaring public, clearly she needed something to change.

However, as the old adage goes, you have to be careful about what you wish for. Unfortunately this teacher's stinging words have not softened the attitudes of the people she most wanted to reach. Those students and parents will be very unlikely to show more respect to their teachers in future. The cause of hard-pressed educators has not been well served. Ms. Monroe herself may find it impossible to connect positively with any students (if she keeps her job at all or can get another after the furor and court cases have gone away). As tough as kids today seem, they still value trust relationships with their teachers and betrayal of this trust creates a wound which is almost impossible to heal.

When it comes right down to it, Ms.Monroe was supposed to be the adult, but she acted out -- just like the worst of her students -- and got caught. Her blogging was not honorable. Let me quote from her Jan. 29, 2010 , blog again -- here she's writing about taking the school's honor pledge seriously:

"So I designed an entire block's worth of activities .... I figured that if I spent 90 minutes on this topic up front on the second day of class, that they'd realize how important it is. We talk about honor and what it means. We talk about why we sign our names to documents and how on a contract, the signature is legally binding. We discuss reputations, how easy it is to go from a good to bad reputation (and how difficult to go from bad to good), and how much nobody wants a bad reputation. We talk about trust and the value of a good name. ... Honor isn't stuff to me. Honor is a driving force. Honesty, integrity, and one's good name aren't things that happen to you, but things that one earns and should value and aspire to and wish to keep."

Ms. Monroe -- I'm with your kids on this one. If you can "give myself a free pass of conscience" (Feb. 12) when you feel justified, how can you blame your kids when they do the same? After all, they learned it from their teacher. Before you set foot in a classroom again, I suggest you let your defenses down and reread some of those deleted blog entries and the students' comments. Use your English teacher skills to delve beneath the cuss words and ask yourself what they might have been feeling that would have caused them to lash back so harshly. As you wrote on Feb. 12:

"The truth hurts sometimes. Maybe instead of getting pissed off at the person pointing out the behavior, people need to examine their behavior and make a change. Better to know now before the Ghost of Christmas Future shows up."

2 Tools for history teachers today

2011-02-14T09:49:00.003-05:00

I'm paging through the OZ/NZ educators' Diigo group today and they share some interesting links, but there are two I passed on to a Social Studies teaching friend of mine

The first is a link to a Google Template created by Derrick Wadell.

It's so students can create a faux Facebook page for a famous person. This template is not connected to any actual Facebook account so is safe and user friendly. It works inside a Google Doc, so offers students an interesting way to collaborate to develop the profile of a historical figure. They can insert an image (try a Wikimedia Commons search first), but will have to add text boxes of their own to add their research to the right slots. (See "Facebook for Dead People" post in Richard Byrne's blog.)

The other is a new service from Life Magazine. Students can now view or create pictorial timelines using Life's photos or their own.

"With LIFE.com’s Timelines, you can unlock LIFE’s legendary archive of more than 10 million images — or choose pictures from your own collection — and put together photo essays to share with family and friends."

There's even a way to do a futuristic timeline of events that haven't yet occurred. I like the idea of them doing their own artwork and creating an interesting storyline or starting with historical photos, going through the present with Life and then projecting into the future with artwork.

History never seemed to be about real people or events when I was in school in the -- just lists of characters I was supposed to care about but didn't. I think using these kinds of tools would have breathed some life into history for me.

Join.Me -- free desktop sharing

2011-02-07T17:27:00.007-05:00

Posting twice in one day has to be some sort of a record, but today I found the coolest free tool for sharing your desktop and holding a video conference and couldn't resist. I have two screens and tried sharing with myself. It seems to work reasonably fast and smoothly.

There is no registration and it can handle up to 250 people together in one meeting. You can also have a Join.Me icon on your desktop if you like to set up meetings on the fly. The person who calls the meeting uses the Share Button to get the meeting code. One the others in the group receive the code, they can join the meeting. Control can be passed around. If you're showing a video, the sound is not broadcast from your computer, so you'll have to hold the phone up to the computer speaker.

Participants can communicate via phone or chat box. Join.me provides a free conference line, but it's not toll free so you may be charged for a call, but you can use your own conference number by changing the audio setting.

Finally there's a mobile viewer for iPhone and iPad now available and there'll soon be one for the android phones. From Digital Inspiration: "the apps are free, incredibly easy to use and also supports text chat so you may not just watch the presenter's screen while on the go but also interact with the meeting participants."

Free text-to-speech program -- Balabolka

2011-02-07T11:56:00.003-05:00

""Balabolka is a Text-To-Speech (TTS) program. All computer voices installed on your system are available to Balabolka. ... The program uses various versions of Microsoft Speech API (SAPI); it allows to alter a voice's parameters, including rate and pitch. The user can apply a special substitution list to improve the quality of the voice's articulation. This feature is useful when you want to change the spelling of words. The rules for the pronunciation correction use the syntax of regular expressions.

Balabolka can save the synchronized text in external LRC files or in MP3 tags inside the audio files. When an audio file is played with players on a computer or on modern digital audio players, the text is displayed synchronously (at the same way, as lyrics for songs)."

There is also a portable version so Balabolka does not have to be installed on your computer. For second language teachers, it will also read in a number of other languages including French and Spanish so your students can listen along as they read text passages.

Maria Andersen -- Prezi master

2011-02-06T20:20:00.001-05:00

Maria makes wonderful use of Prezi as an engaging presentation tool. (Note to self -- she doesn't do her own artwork. Don't be so hard on yourself!) I found this one here in her blog, Teaching College Math. That blog name is something of a misnomer because there are wonderful ideas there for all levels of math teaching and this one abpout future-proofing your education speaks to all educators.

Future-Proof Your Education on Prezi

I have two observations. The first is about Prezi. It seems at first to be a tool that affords people the opportunity to explore non-sequentially, but the more I look at it, the less I think this is the case. Yes, if you have a great illustration to work within, you can get a visual big picture that complements the thoughts, but the viewing pathway is really established by the creator. The viewer goes along for the ride.

The second is about Maria's ontent. I think a great way to begin any class would be to set up something like this as a way to measure progress and keep teacher and students together constantly assessing how well they are doing. The more deliberately we measure ourselves and our work against a series of sign posts, the more we'll internalise the message, appreciate the value of our education, and take on the responsibility for ensuring our education has no 'best by' date.

It's also interesting to note that none of her suggestions require radical changes to what we've been doing for a long time in most classes -- with the possible exception of math especially at the secondary level. Here's a summary of the Prezi list quoted from her blog post with the same title:

ANALYZE … think critically, interpret data, predict, solve problems, make decisions, scrutinize information sources

EXPLAIN … convey ideas in writing, depict data visually, speak so that others understand, present ideas digitally

FOCUS … observe critically, read with understanding, be self-directed, listen carefully, set and meet goals

EXPLAIN … convey ideas in writing, depict data visually, speak so that others understand, present ideas digitally

LEARN…find information quickly, reflect and evaluate learning, manage information, leverage tech to learn, metacognitive

INTERACT … guide others, lead, collaborate, advocate and influence, resolve conflict and negotiate, share

FLEX … be able to adapt, be creative, innovate, think across disciplines and cultures, design/usability

Google Art Project -- Stunning

2011-02-04T09:36:00.003-05:00

"Explore museums from around the world, discover and view hundreds of artworks at incredible zoom levels, and even create and share your own collection of masterpieces. ... Simply select a museum from the homepage and then either chose ‘Explore the museum’ or ‘View Artwork’. Once you are in the main site use the drop-down menus or the side info bar to navigate between artworks and museums. Finally create and share your own collections online." (quoted from their website)

The images used to introduce galleries participating Google Art Project are stunning.

Links for Facebook viewers: my art collage in Vuvox; video about the project)

P.S. I'd forgotten how quick it is to build a collage in Vuvox if you don't get fancy -- but the creative possibilities are a lot of fun.

Great Tool offered free for the next 24 hours on GIveaway of the Day -- iSpring Presenter

2011-02-01T08:36:00.003-05:00

Giveaway of the Day is a website that offers one free tool each 24 hour period. If you choose to download, you must install and activate the Giveaway license inside that 24 hour period before the deal expires. Usually this means you'll have a forever license for the product. Scrolling down the page takes you to the comments of those who've tried the product that day. They're a good guide about whether the program does what it says, if there are other free alternatives, and if there are any downloading issues. When you unzip the downloaded file, open the "Read Me" instructions first and follow them exactly. That will ensure you don't end up with a trial version, but get all the information needed to register your copy correctly.

Today's Giveaway is iSpring Presenter which is a great tool if you use PowerPoint. From the website: " iSpring Presenter works as a PowerPoint AddIn. It transforms your PowerPoint into a high end tool for creating engaging and interactive Flash based e-learning courses that can be viewed on virtually any computer or platform." It comes bundled with iSpring quizmaker. [Note: it does not work with the Open Office alternative to PowerPoint.] Here are links to a sample video and their tutorials.

Turning PPT into flash with all the animations preserved is a great way to display student's work without going to something like Animoto. You can publish it to Slideboom (keeping the account private if you wish) and pull in the embed code from there needed for students to display their work in their blogs or on a class website or wiki. The Slideboom Shop which has PPT templates is offering an 80% discount until Feb.3. They're still on the pricey side, but the graphs and charts might be good if students are integrating math or statistics into projects. There's also a free set and a weekly sample you can download free.

Finally, if you're into travel, KLM has a contest called "Pack Up Your Pals" where you can win a free trip by getting friends to validate your invitation. If you have long lists of Facebook or other friends, you can get multiple contest entries.

A Cool Tool -- Cohere

2011-01-17T22:38:00.013-05:00

This one comes under the heading of 'sensemaking'. (Image link for Facebook view.)

Cohere is a visual idea mapping for "trying to construct coherent patterns from the ocean of information" available online. It goes way beyond familiar social bookmarking tools and tag clouds and makes possible the development of idea clouds which can have one or more websites associated with each individual idea.You can also install a Firefox plugin so you can add to your web of ideas as you browse.

Cohere allows you to weave relationships among the tags and phrases. As you build the connections a large web grows that can be viewed as dynamic a big picture. As the web grows, you can focus in on just one 'corner' or hub and filter the kinds of related ideas you want to see. The ideas can be viewed as a list, a timeline, or by geographic location on a Google map. Click the 'Connections' view to see the dynamic web.

This seems to be a sister project of the downloadable dialogue mapping tool -- Compendium.

I haven't tried it yet, but I've been thinking about how this could surpass Twitter as a conference backchannel tool because the ideas are archived and connected. I'm going to work on my own math wiki page and see if I can create a new web of ideas and websites for my next presentation. I'll post it here when I've finished. In the meantime, here's the link to the video introduction (link for Facebook view).

Here's a sample about what climate sceptics believe based on this BBC article by Richard Black (2007). It may load a little slowly, but it's worth a look.

Life after EDIM

2011-01-12T11:03:00.009-05:00

On the weekend I received an email from Karena asking me to reach out to a prospective student who wanted some information about the EDIM program. I fired off an email asking what he'd like to know and he sent back some questions -- how I'd rate my experience and the rigor of the program and whether I found my learning useful. The most interesting one for me, however, was: "Is there life after the program?" This is a double whammy because I've also taken early retirement, so I didn't just go back to my old school life after I finished the EDIM program. I'm really trying to catapult myself into a life that still involves teaching but not the day-to-day responsibility of secondary classroom work. I thought my shiny new M.Sc. would give me access to lots of university level jobs, but alas, you now need a Ph.D or Ed.D to do a lot of that work and I'm not sure at 59 whether I'm up for 3-5 years more training and research before those doors open. So for now I peruse the online data bases of post secondary jobs weekly looking for interesting opportunities that don't have as a minimum requirement the completion of a doctorate.

Part of this process has required the polishing of my CV -- and I've had to ask myself repeatedly what I really have to offer and how can I wrap up a career of over 35 years into a few pages that will convince the screening committee that I can do the job. It's an interesting process -- rather like backwards building (yes -- Wiggins and McTigue are my new heroes!) a unit or a lesson. I have to start with the end in mind and try to sandwich the direct explanation of my skills and experience between layers of material that will connect to the recruiters in an interesting way.

Another thing I've discovered on this journey is that while many K-12 schools are bogged down by the effort to standardize learning so that all students exit with the same skills and knowledge sets, at the university level institutions and departments are coming together to map out the real learning outcomes for students and then to find the intersection between teaching content and reaching learners. I wonder how students who are now growing up in schools where the emphasis is on ticking off the standards as they progress through the grade levels will manage when they get to post-secondary training where they are expected to become partners in the management of their learning and must shoulder a large part of the responsibility of ensuring that they meet the outcomes.

The video that follows is from Royal Roads University in Victoria, BC. It's long but if you listen behind the details of the discussion to the intention of why this new work of curriculum mapping is being done, it makes for an interesting listen. Perhaps the most interesting questions are: "What questions you will ask to determine whether the program outcomes were met?" and "How can we know that the actions we're taking are making a difference?" But in the 21st century, these questions I think should be asked not only by us educators, but also the students. Wolf puts forward idea that we need to make space in the curriculum for the students to reflect on all they've learned -- to look back in order to move forward. If the students of today become the education critics of tomorrow, it may behoove us to grow learners who take away from their years in K-12 not only skills and knowledge but also an overarching appreciation for how much they have learned and how earlier learning was always the platform for new learning.

Watch live streaming video from royalroads at livestream.com

The nature of insightful moments in learning

2011-01-05T11:57:00.010-05:00

A study published in the May 13, 2010, issue of the online journal, Neuron, indicates that new learning does not always occur incrementally in the brain. When it comes to abandoning a previously learned behaviour pattern in order to master a new one, those 'aha! moments' we experience when we finally 'get it' are associated with new neuronal firing patterns that occur suddenly and often after several fully successful trials.

Researchers Daniel Durstewitz, Nicole M. Vittoz, Stan B. Floresco, Jeremy K. Seamans (the latter from my old alma mater, the University of British Columbia) discovered that

"when rats were required to deduce a new rule through trial and error, the entire prefrontal cortex neural network [emphasis mine] would abruptly shift to a new pattern of activity, rather than gradually as one might expect. Further, they found the shift in neural activity occurred one or two trials after the rats exhibited the correct behaviour for the task." (Ashman)

It turns out that when we have to abandon old, less advanageous, rules and develop new strategies to cope with changing situations, the change in neural activity is not gradual and incremental and does not occur in isolated regions of the brain. Collecting new evidence through trial and error and formulating a better procedure requires that "virtually all the cells in the prefrontal cortex contribute to encoding all the elements in each task." The entire network then puts "together arbitrary types of information in novel ways" (Floresco quoted in Ashman).

"The rats tried different things, then hit on the correct strategy, realized it was correct, and then encoded the new rule all at once within the prefrontal cortex" (Seamans quoted in Ashman).

Interestingly, the prefrontal cortex not only governs problem-solving and complex thought, but it's also in charge of emotion. It plays an important role in executive functions such as mediating conflicting thoughts, making choices between right and wrong or good and bad, predicting future events, and governing social control through the suppression of emotions. To my way of thinking this may explain why unlearning an old ineffective process and adopting a new one -- even with the promise that it will be more successful -- can be such a difficult process. It requires a huge amount of brain power plus a willingness to suspend disbelief in one's ability to conquer learning monsters and old beahviours long enough to change not only one's procedural understanding but all the emotional baggage that goes along with previous failure or ways of handling problems.

I think back to many of my former 'remedial' math students who still had not mastered such skills as fractions by the age 15 or more. In adolescents and adult learners the neural networks which encode the unsuccessful procedure have been strengthened during many hours of incorrect rehearsal over several years. These students also have to deal with a high level of emotional distress which we know blocks learning. In addition, " the same ensemble of prefrontal cortex neurons encodes two different rules through unique activity states or patterns" (Ashaman) which means the old learning and the new use the same neural real estate.

Unlearning and relearning requires that students be willing to attempt enough trials to 'get' the new process without even really registering any discernable brain activity which could reinforce their willingness to proceed. The light of the new learning doesn't turn up gradually like a rheostat. The switch is just off until it's flipped on. The realization that they've finally 'got it' and the encoding in the brain occur at the same time. They aren't going to feel like they are learning until they've let go of the old procedure and wholly accepted the new one.

What then can teachers do to help such students replace ineffective math learning with reliable methods? I think helping them understand just why they are finding the task so difficult can help. We should also clue in their parents and enlist their support when the going gets tough. We have to refrain from making promises we can't keep because they will be depending on their trust relationship with us to get them through moments of great self-doubt. If we say they are going to master an old skill, we have to to ensure that actually occurs. Finally we have to understand that presenting new information in an old way is not going to make the learning process or emotional self-governance easier. Giving students a new vivid learning experience to compete with the old pathway will mean they'll have distinct alternatives in their minds when confronted with new problems. I think as well, periodic review accompanied with a verbal rehearsal of the new process and discussion of how it differs from the old one can strengthen the new pattern and reinforce just how far the students have come from 'the old days'.

It's a big job to light up someone's entire prefrontal cerebral cortex in a new way. Success for the learner means making a global change in knowledge, emotional response, and self-image as a learner of math. The students and their teacher must share the belief that past failure need not predict future success, and the math classroom has to become a possibility space for all learners.

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References:

Ashman, Melissa (May, 2010). Brains Research Centre: Uncovering the science behind the "a-ha" moment. In Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute News & Information.

Ehrenberg, Rachel (June, 2010). Eureka, brain makes real mental leaps. In Science News.

(May, 2010) Eureka! Natural Evidence for Sudden Insight. In Science Daily.

Ways to use Twitter in class

2010-11-07T11:57:00.002-05:00

Here's a repost from an Ontario teacher using Twitter in class. I'd probably try Twiducate instead. Students don't need to register, and you won't be shut out when Twitter is shut off because of overuse. His ideas are aimed for a grade 8 class. (Click the image.)

Containers or connections

2010-11-02T17:32:00.007-04:00

This comes under the category of wow!!!!

Click the image to see the full sized version. It has been reprinted from Judy Breck's Golden Swamp blog.

"On the left above is a screen shot of Science Standards from the Illinois State Board of Education (you can download the pdf from this page). On the right above is a drawing of a Synapse phosphoproteome network from the Genes to Cognition team at the Sanger Institute. The full size version of the image above is here.

I put the Illinois Learning Standards and the Synapse side-by-side to suggest that we require students to learn subjects inside of little boxes, while students think about them in highly connected networks. The boxes in the Standards are separated from each other in all sorts of ways: living things are in different boxes than processes of the Earth. Different things about the same subject are spread out over five different grade levels. There seems little chance of having a thought that relates an early box in “A” to a late box in “E.”

Yet the news for the future is very, very good! The beautiful Sanger Institute drawing of the synapse network looks an awfully lot like what subject knowledge does when we put in on to the open Internet. Students’ synapses would seem naturally to mesh with online learning because both are networks. Learners can – as the drawing suggests – start at most any point or level in a subject and follow what they are thinking and learning to connect it to any and all other points."

She has another blog called Learning Nodes which is dedicated to open learning. Her stuff is worth a look if you're in favour of connecting students to the global knowledge commons. She sees sees the way the brain is structured and functions as a metaphor for the interconnectedness (what she calls "intertwingularity") of the internet and the people who use it.

Meanwhile you can take this brain age calculation test. I didn't come off too badly, but then I wonder if there are actually different scores or if they give the same final result to everyone to give oldies like me a little boost.

And then give this test a try to see if you are more left or right brain dominant.

This final addition to today's meanderings may be of interest to people in the digital story telling couse. It seems we no longer need to interview and question to connect with family history. This company claims it can turn brain waves directly into videos.

Philippe Cousteau webinar, Thursday Oct.28

2010-10-27T15:25:00.013-04:00

In case you haven't been reading the News section of your course moodle, Karena has arranged a Wilkes webinar with Philppe Cousteau for tomorrow at 4:00 p.m. EDT. EDIM alum & friends are also welcome to attend. The session will be archived and all those who register will receive the link.

Topic: Spotlight on the Gulf Spill, How it Affects Us Now and in the Future. Questions, Answers and More Uncertainty

Date: Thursday, October 28
Time: 4:00 p.m. (EDT)

Registration: http://community.wilkes.edu/gradwebinar

*Pennsylvania educators will receive one hour of Act 48 credit if they provide their PPID at the time of registration

About this webinar: Join Philippe Cousteau, grandson of the legendary Jacques Cousteau and Discovery Education Chief Spokesperson for Environmental Education, as he takes you to the Gulf through pictures and stories from his recent trip to evaluate the effects of the Gulf Oil Spill. He will discuss the effects on regional wildlife and ecosystems as well as focus on how the oil spill will affect us now and into the future.

If you have any questions about this event, you can contact me at karena.zdeb@wilkes.edu or 800-945-5378 x7841

Hope you will join us!

For those who no longer can access the EDIM moodle, try this link and login with your name and a current email address: https://discoveryedevents.webex.com/discoveryedevents/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=666687010.

Take-away for today:

Here's a lesson plan I did for the Globalization and Advocacy course which you are welcome to download. I used the Inquiry-Based Learning 5E's template furnished by Matt Cwalina and built a math lesson around the theme "Oil and Water Don't Mix" --

http://www.scribd.com/full/39526856?access_key=key-1ecvemo21p3cxopf37u1

Enjoy!

Attention Glogster Lovers ...

2010-10-21T10:43:00.012-04:00

This notice recently landed in my inbox ---

The student accounts are great because they don't require any personal information from the kids. You activate them from your dashboard. If you have not done this On the right side across from the messages, there will be a notice that says you have no student accounts. When prompted about how many you want, choose the maximum (100 until Nov. 7). I have no idea whether the new 50 rule will apply to old accounts that have not taken advantage of this feature or just the new ones, so I did mine today just in case. Now I just have to edit them to have individual icons and user names that make sense!

I shake therefore I am: The Mathematics of Metaphor

2010-10-17T11:08:00.008-04:00

Prezi is a tool many try but few master. You need lots of patience and a strong visual sense of movement. If done well the story is told as much by the trail of connections as by the words and the images.

Here's a great one on metaphor! Explore it before you watch the video that inspired it which follows.

Mixing Mind and Metaphor on Prezi

James Geary's TED talk ...

I connect therefore I am?

2010-10-01T11:05:00.006-04:00

I came across this TED video of Sebastian Seung today. Seung thinks that our memories, our personality, our intellect --the 'stuff' that makes us who we are -- may be encoded in the connections between our neurons. He calls that our "connectome." As we grow and mature our personality changes slowly because our experiences change our connectome -- with new neurons and synapses growing and others dwindling and being lost. "The mere act of thinking can change our connectome."

It occurred to me as I watched Seung describe his "Quixotic" quest to map the human neural connectome, that personal learning networks and social networks could be an external manifestation of what he thinks is going on inside our brains. If "I am more than my genes," then humans are more than the individual subunits (i.e. people) that make up the world's population. (If you haven't guessed, I'm taking the Globalization and Advocacy course!)

If my metaphor works and the stuff of our humanity encoded in the relationships -- the connections -- that thread us all together into a collective, then every action -- however casual or seemingly isolated -- changes the connectome of the whole. This in turn reaffirms the power of the individual to change the pattern of relationships in the world, and then there is no individual action without a consequence for the network of relationships that make up the whole. ('Heady' stuff!!)

Seung aspires to map the connectome of the human brain with it's 100 billion neurons. It ought to be comparatively easy to map the connections between the mere 6.8+ billion individuals on our planet. I wonder what a connectome of the human race would look like.

It could be an interesting task to do one for family or a classroom first and then use the same kind of imagery as Seung did in his presentation (7:35-8:24) to show the scale of those interactions compared to the size of the macrocosm of the human family. The only thing I didn't like about Seung's images was that as he scaled up from the single neuron to the mouse brain and then the human brain, the original slice appeared to dwindle into insignificance and then disappear altogether. How could kids change the image to both preserve the sense of scale and at the same time represent the importance of one synapse or one person to the connectome of the whole?

CRSTE 2010 Cyberconference

2010-09-13T14:33:00.003-04:00

There's a very cool online professional development event coming up in October from the 16th to the 24th.

"Featured presenters include: Dr. Karen Cator, Alan November, Mark Weston, CRSTE's Kathy Schrock Digital Pioneer and Leadership & Vision Award winners, and education leaders and ed tech leaders from across six continents! Each weeknight and weekend days and evenings, the Global Symposium will offer sessions that allow you to connect and collaborate with like-minded educators from around the world, seeking to work together to transform education for the Information Age."

From their wiki (which is open 24/7) you can register, take a look at some of the online tools people are using, test drive a tool and leave a comment or find someone to work with if the tool you're interested in is collaborative.

From the CRSTE website you can access the Elluminate archives of the Feb. 2010 event. Some of the more notable speakers were Ian Jukes, Kath Schrock, Sylvia Martinez, and Kim Caise, but there are over 100 sessions on topics ranging from " Laptops and 4th Grade Literacy" and "Animation and Digital Storytelling Across the Curriculum" to "Web-based Simulations that Build Math and Science Content Understanding" and "Putting the Horse Back Before the Cart: Technology Competencies All Educational Administrators Need".

If you're looking for a great way to spend some time with other educators from around the world, this looks like it will be a super event. See ya there, I hope!

Time to congratulate this term's' grads

2010-08-13T21:39:00.007-04:00

I am struggling with a laptop keyboard that isn't cooperating entirely. For some reason the key strokes hold back and the space bar isn't reliable. Did I say "For some reason?" Actually, the sound system of my laptop had stopped working perfectly and rather than settle for 80% function, I decided to invoke my extended warranty and get if fixed. Two mother boards later and I'm not quite back to the 80% I originally felt cheated by because in the process of opening and closing and fiddling and fitting, the space bar has begun to stick unless I hit it dead center with my thumb and sometimes there's a time lag between hitting the keys and seeing the letters on the screen. Do I dare call the serviceman again and this time ask for a new keyboard? I guess I'll give it a couple of weeks to see if it settles down a bit, but this is driving me nuts!!!!!!

~~~~~~~~~~

The real purpose of this post is to say congratulations to all of the people who are finishing EDIM everything tonight. I know about Rod Murray (Canadian!!!) and Emma Haygood, but I suspect there are others of you our there, and I'm issuing an invitation to all EDIM alums to create a slide for our new Google Doc.

What should you put there? Something about your best take-away from the program, a link to your best project, a note about how doing this program has transformed you or the way you think or feel about your work, or your best advice to other students to come, grad photos (at home or in Philly) or ??????

Here's the link: https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AXF4LtTfsKD4ZGdkNmZrNjVfNjNocmh2NHBncg&hl=en. I still have one course to go, so I'll start with a title page and some guidelines.

I hope this document will grow and inspire other teachers to try the program and stick with it when the dark moments hit and you feel all alone on your side of the computer. Meanwhile -- congratulations on your return to a life without "Post by Tuesday and respond by Friday" deadlines.

(Image source: http://www.things4myspace.com/myspace/graduation-graphics/)

~~~~~~~~~~

And finally to Karena our advisor -- congratulations to you too. If I'm not mistaken, you've finished your own degree this week as well!!!!

Writer's Drought Begone

2010-08-10T09:46:00.009-04:00

As the title suggests, the past few weeks have been low ones for me when it comes to thinking of ideas to for this blog. I've been working my way through Digital Storytelling (DST) -- but even that was in a singularly uninspired way. I've had to dredge up ideas from the depths to complete the assignments, and I have no one but myself to blame. The course is a good one and Joe Brennan is a great instructor, but I just haven't felt that my story ideas have been particularly inspired.

In retrospect I think I let the good ship DST sail without me. I could have used the course as a arena for exploring how to breathe more life into math teaching (my current crusade and passion) by giving students alternatives to the endless piles of questions we think will ensure they learn and that their learning lasts, but I didn't. As a result, I've gained a lot of knowledge about storytelling techniques, but I let the struggles I have with cameras and picture-taking bog me down and stayed with safe topics. I made several nice pieces, but I didn't really push myself to test how DST could have helped me be a better math teacher.

Last night in the final discussion forum I found an interesting problem posed by Dianne Clowes, one of the women in the course:

"Next year, due to budget constraints, I will have to teach some math classes. I have already considered ways to incorporate DS in my math classes but maybe someone can give me some suggestions as to how I can do it with this objective: Solve multi-step linear equations with one variable with the variable on one and two sides of the equation. I have an idea of what I could do but would enjoy hearing some ideas."

Here is my response:

I think that part of the problem with trying to use digital resources in math is that we have such 'crappy' big ideas to work with and that is a perfect example. To help students develop more personal connections to this kind of learning I think it's important to step back from the math and see if there is a larger understanding that overarches the particular objective or standard. I wonder if in this case the bigger learning is that an equals sign in an equation is like the balance point of a teeter totter and that whatever you do on one side, you must do the same way to the other side to maintain the balance. Perhaps it's that when you know all the elements of a problem except one, you can rearrange the elements you know to find the one you don't know. Can you think of a related science concept [she normally teaches science] you might use to illustrate this bigger idea? If so you could make the digital story for them as a sort of mystery to be solved. (Please share if one comes to mind. I'd love an example to use when I work with math teachers this fall.)

I went on with an explanation of what Dan Meyer (my math teaching hero) might say:

I think Dan might advise us to pose the students a real problem and let them struggle with how how to solve it before we even give them the math terms and tools. (Sample problems: How can you figure out what mark you need on the next test to maintain your average? How can you figure out how much money you need to earn from your after school job next month to have enough to buy an iPhone?) He'd have them use stories (digital or otherwise) to explain and illustrate how they came up with their solutions and why their method works. He might talk about what the students' solutions had in common and which offered methods that could be applied in other situations. Only after would he explain that math substitutes a letter for the unknown (to make it easier to talk about) and then offers a reliable process people can use to take a lot of the guesswork out of these kinds of tasks. Once the students have a deeper appreciation of what equation solving is used for, it will seem less disconnected from their lives and the learning of the process (which is what your standard is expressing) will be embedded in an experience they have shared and that is based in a real life situation.

And then of course this morning I came across what Dan actually wrote a couple of months ago about Storytelling and what he calls WCYDWT (What Can You Do With This). Dan's point is that the best stories don't give all the answers but lead us to them and let us drink ourselves. They entice, allude to, and reveal just enough to enable the viewer to make the connections. They aren't 'tell-all' exposés. He asks teachers to use stories to "perplex" and then to help the students create stories which will recreate the experience of their own exhilaration about learning inside the viewer. [Note: this assumes that students in math classes experience that kind of excitement in the first place.]

There's the challenge then -- to teach in such a way that more learnable moments become exciting -- not just to us and to the math-loving students in our classes -- but to all the kids and then to give our students opportunities to capture their learning and all the feelings that went with it in stories of their own. If we can get students to package their math learning inside meaningful stories their recall of the story-creating event will open the door to the content we wanted them to learn. They will not be storing their math learning in some impenetrable vault deep in their longterm memory. Instead, every time the visions of their stories sparkle and dance in they will be rehearsing the embedded math. What a way to engage their subconscious in keeping their math learning fresh!

Here's the Math Promo I did as an assignment for the 504 course. It needs work, but perhaps I'm on the right track.

Learning from the Greats

2010-07-23T14:09:00.011-04:00

I had several glorious days with the likes of Patricia Kuhl, Bruce McCandliss, John Mighton, Patricia Bauer, Jon Kabat-Zinn, and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Talk about learning from the best. This was a conference about the brain and learning and I'll warn you now, cognitive neuroscience is liable to infuse everything I write about for the next while.

At first listen, it can sometimes feel that the work of these people is very isolated and pointed at solving particular problems or answering particular questions and there is little overlap in their insights into learning and memory. However, now that there is so much more work of this kind being done, common threads or findings do seem to be emerging which we educators would do well to consider when designing learning activities for our students.

The work of combing through my notes for those key ideas and themes still awaits. Next week I'm off to Chicago to train with the Discovery Professional Development group. In preparation for that and for my next two assignments in DST (504), I've used the pre-learning assignment sent out by the DE team as a way to begin tying to fit together the research with best practices. Here's the preliminary result. If you have feedback to offer, please leave a comment.

For those of you who read this blog in Facebook, here's the link -- http://www.wix.com/wrlcfamily/DE .

Free website - By Wix.com

504 (DST) -- the power of story mapping

2010-07-13T23:06:00.023-04:00

We're well into the digital storytelling course and I'm already turning in videos late. I've found with Wilkes courses that there are no simple assignments. Last week's challenge was to figure out how to blend unit's lesson about how to create stories with emotional impact for an audience with the assignment requirements to introduce myself and where and what I teach to the others in the class. (This was doubly difficult because I no longer have a class or students or even access to a school now that I've retired.)

I found some great online resources by Jason Ohler to help me understand the purpose of story mapping using a process he calls VPS (creating a visual portrait of a story). Although at first glance, VPS seems to be about the plot line, it's really intended to add a sort of emotional tension to a story by ensuring that 3 key elements are present: a problem, a solution, and a transformation.

At the end of a presentation to a group of teachers in Alaska, Ohler was asked by someone in the audience how to guide her students to turn photos taken of a school trip into effective stories and her replied that they should be asked: "What did you learn? How are you different?" and to think: " I was one person who did not know something, but now I'm a different person because I learned this thing" and then tell the story of that change.

Ohler says that this VPS mapping-- the building of the emotional flow of the piece -- must come between the idea and the story boards: "Transformation keeps us watching. ... The story fails without our being able to witness that change. ... The new you has to win and the only way for the new you to win is if you change."

Twenty Revelations about Digital Storytelling in Education- Jason Ohler

View more presentations from jasonohler.

My first idea for the Introductions assignment did not meet Ohler's criteria at all. It was a cute take on how to present my story, but did not contain that essential transformation, and I was completely stuck. Finally, my husband persuaded me to take a night off and we headed to the Harrison Festival of the Arts to hear Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks amongst an audience of mostly over 50 counter-culture folk. The next morning the new idea seemed to be waiting for me in the shots I'd already taken and the images I'd been experimenting with in my video editing program.

Here is the final cut and I'm pleased to say that this one has received Bob's seal of approval. It means a lot to me that he likes it because week after week during the Portable Video course he patiently sat and walked and posed and acted as I fumbled with my camcorder and tried to get shots that would show some originality and a minimal attempt to follow lighting guidelines and the rule of thirds. Tomorrow and Thursday he'll be out with me again so I can take pictures for this week's door scene. I could not do these courses without his constant unselfish support, and having finally created a video that speaks to him touches me deeply.

Final reflections:

(1) I've been thinking back to my math presentation at ISTE and now understand that part of the reason it succeeded so well is that it incorporated Ohler's 3 elements: problem, solution, and transformation.

(2) Lesson planning is all about going directly from an idea (content, skills, standards, learning outcomes) to the 'storyboard' (plot line/instructional sequence). But what if teacher training institutions took Ohler's ideas to heart and added his 3 key story elements to that conventional process? What if we all had to think deeply and incorporate into each lesson and each unit the ways it would transform the students we teach? What if before we were allowed to plot out the what and how of any lesson we were required to let go of tired generalizations and pat answers and dig for personally meaningful changes that should emerge from we're doing in the classroom every day? I think that would truly revolutionize formal schooling. Instead of "No Child Left Behind" -- we'd be in the vanguard of a new movement called: " No Child Left Wondering Why."

'Discovering' Canadians at ISTE & upcoming DE webinars for all

2010-07-07T09:27:00.033-04:00

The folks at Discovery really know how to throw a great party and I want to thank you all for showing us Canadians a great time while we were at ISTE. The food was great, the speeches were short, and we had a chance to meet up with other Canadian teachers interested in educational technology and instructional media which hardly ever happens.

The event was also a celebration of Discovery's first year in Canada. They now offer over 3 million Canadian titles to us. If you're in the IM program and missed the memo from Karena about how to get an account with DE Streaming Canada, Karen Goldman and Austin Dolan are the people to contact. You'll need to a different user name and email for your Canadian account.

~~ DISCOVERY'S AUGUST WEBINAR SERIES LOOKS FANTASTIC ~~

There's a wonderful webinar series coming up in August (FREE!!!!!) and you don't even need to have Discovery in your school to participate.

(Click the image below and select Adobe reader to see the full-sized pdf version of the brochure. My blog columns are too narrow for the full-sized image.)

If you haven't been to a webinar before, Discovery makes this easy. In addition to your computer, you'll need either a phone (no charge) or a headset to participate.

YOU start by registering. Using the DEN Blog link above or this sign up page, click each title that interests you. Each webinar has its own online form like the one below. (If you aren't seeing all of the next image, please click it.) I like to change the time zone to Pacific so I don't have to remember whether to add or subtract the 3 hours on webinar day.

When you register for your first session, it's also a good idea to check to be sure you have all the necessary media players. Use the "click here" link at the bottom of the registration form and check each all 3. If any need updating, Discovery has provided all the links you'll need.

Once you've registered, you'll be sent an email with the code for the session and information about how to log in. The email will also give you the toll free number for dialing into the session. The phone/headset option is needed so you can hear the speaker. My old phone is very tinny so I us my headset -- a wireless USB type that I wear on one ear. If you want to use your phone instead, when the webinar begins set it to speaker and prop it up so you can concentrate on your screen.

On the day of the session, use the link and the information provided in the email to join the session. If you don't want to use your phone, now's the time to choose 'headset' instead. Mine sometimes doesn't work unless I go to the control panel on my machine test the audio device settings before I log into the webinar. If there's a problem, you can always quit the session, readjust, and then rejoin it if you need to.

During these webinars the speakers share slides and their desktops with you as they talk. You can ask questions or participate in the conversation using the chat box on the bottom right of your screen, or you can speak directly with the presenter when the moderator is taking questions. He'll enable your phone/mike at that point so you can talk. Don't hesitate to ask your question or add your comment. Perhaps you have an idea or past practice of your own that worked really well and you'd like to share it. Perhaps you want some clarification. In my experience the more that listeners participate, the more interesting the session becomes -- but it's also OK to watch and type. That's the cool thing about these Discovery webinars -- whatever your comfort level, you'll come away with interesting information and cool ideas to use in class.

Generally the sessions are archived and if you ask either at the beginning (before everything gets rolling) or at the end, the moderator will tell you how and when you can access the links to the archives. These are often posted in the DEN blog, but ask anyway -- just to be sure.

I know that August seems like a long way off right now -- but I thought I'd let you know about this series now so that if you're heading off to the cottage or out on the road, you can find your wifi hotspots and join these webinars from wherever you may be.

Responding to that first discussion in a new IM course

2010-06-28T07:27:00.006-04:00

I have just started the Digital Story-telling course -- which means that all that stands between me and my degree after this one is over is Globalisation. I went back and looked at the first post of the first course I took here. What did I think I was getting into when I started? A program that would pack a lot of new tools into my teacher's tool chest. What has happened is way more than that. I have decided to include the text of this course's first discussion to show you what I mean.

It seems like teaching and school have always been a part of my life. I started in what was called 'nursery school' when I was 4 or 5 and, even though I retired from classroom teaching in March, I'm still in school here at Wilkes. Instead of giving you all the details of what I used to teach, I'm going to talk about a time in my life when I could not.

The year I had breast cancer (I am a 10 year survivor) was one of the most difficult of my life, but that wasn't just because of the treatments and the way I felt physically. What was most unsettling for me was being away from school. I don't have children of my own, and what I did that gave my life value and shape was teach. Who was I if I wasn't the tough-minded, but caring teacher in Room C014?

I really withdrew from the world during my illness, but when I needed a break from being a cancer patient, I'd stop in at my old school on the way home from a chemo treatment. I knew I had about 4 hours before the 'tsunami' of after effects would hit, so I'd find a spot in the library and wait for the news that I was there to go around. Students and colleagues would stop by to chat and look at my head which was not completely bald but closely resembled a thinly bristled hedgehog. In about 90 minutes I could soak up all the reassurance from them that I needed. I knew that the cancer was just an unexpected blip on the timeline of my life because my my real world -- my school and the people in it -- was waiting to welcome me back whenever I was ready.

About a year later I left that school and went to work in a small alternative program that operated 4 days a week. That place was not a happy one. The kids were an interesting and challenging lot, and when the old magic worked I knew I'd had a hand in helping people whose lives were in danger of completely unraveling find their way back from whatever dark place they'd gone. So the work with the kids was rewarding. Unfortunately the staff was completely dysfunctional, and I always felt like I had to prove myself to them. Still I have to thank them for making the decision to leave school easier. If it had been a better place to work, I probably wouldn't have finished this degree or retired early. I certainly would have found it much more difficult to let go.

And now here I am -- no longer at the head of my own class and very close completing this program as well. I still have some things I want to do and say in the profession, but to do that I'm having to become shamelessly self promoting -- which is totally foreign to me after so long in the formal school system. I've spent the past 7 weeks doing a course about Second Life. Had anyone predicted 30 months ago when I first discovered PowerPoint and began this journey into the field of ed tech that I'd be looking for ways to use web 2.0 tools to teach in a virtual environment, I'd have just walked away shaking my head, but there I was learning to teleport and deciding whether it was worth it to go to an in-world red light district to buy a Canadian flag for my display. Crazy!!!.

Being in this program has done more than added more tools to my repertoire and upgraded my professional knowledge about things like learning targets and rubrics. It has given me an opportunity to reinvent myself as an educator. How I'm going to use this knowledge, I'm not sure. My dream is to be teaching at the university level, and I'm trying to use my blogging and course assignments to figure out what I'll say there if and when I have that chance.

I hope this will give you a glimpse of who I am rather than what I do - or rather used to do.

The IM program came into my life at a time of professional turmoil, and it seems to have been one element in the perfect storm that has pushed me out of the teaching life I knew and did so well towards something very new and completely unexpected.

Off topic but interesting if you're traveling this summer

2010-06-24T10:52:00.007-04:00

This little find comes under the heading: "Why don't more people know about this?" I am booked to present at ISTE in Denver next week, but I've been holding off on making the arrangements to go until I was sure I really had time to be ready. Seems silly, I know, given the amount of lead time you get between acceptance and event, but my thinking about tools use and education changes so much over 6 or 8 months because of all the research, reflection, and writing. The initial ideas can almost seem like someone else's thoughts in retrospect. So last night in typical last minute fashion I was looking for a place to stay in a town where every hotel room is booked.

Not wanting to settle for a 'no-tell motel' or a place far from the downtown center, I decided to change tactics and look for a B&B. After about 15 Google pages I found Airbnb.

There are loads of people all over Denver willing to rent me anything from space on their floor to an entire condo with hot top for prices ranging from $30 per night to $500. You enter the dates when you need accommodation and you get back all the listing of people who have space available for that time. They can post pictures so you're able to see what the space is like. I registered through my Facebook account. I has its own messaging system and maintains confidentiality until payment has been accepted at which time the 2 parties involved in the transaction get to see each others' email addresses and phone numbers. I used the PayPal option rather than give out my credit card information. The fee taken by Airbnb is a little high, but I was happy to pay it and still saved because I was ready to pay $100 or $200 a night for a hotel.

I will be staying with a teacher who has just gotten her SMART board certification. She lives 8 minutes from the convention centre (15 in bad traffic) and will give me a room with it's own door out to the back yard and internet service for $50 per night Canadian.

This is wonderful! It's been around since 2007. Loads of these people accept pets. How come I've never heard of this before? If you're traveling this summer and want to find interesting places to stay, this looks like a great place to start.

The end of 513 -- Inquiry Based Learning

2010-06-23T10:59:00.008-04:00

I hate to be evaluated and I struggle with rubric writing. You might wonder why I decided to go back to school to upgrade my qualifications at this late stage in my life. Sometimes I wonder myself, but the learning I've gained as I've moved from 'doing courses' to using this as an opportunity to reinvent myself as an educator has been worth all the anxious hours. After 513 is done, I'll have only 2 courses left, and I'm even entertaining dreams of attempting a doctorate. I'd love to be called Dr. Sue -- not to be confused with Dr. Seuss!

In the IBL course, Matt Cwalina points out that "the use of rubrics in the classroom began gaining popularity towards the late 1990’s". Now, I trained to be a teacher in the early 1970's. What feels natural and normal to younger teachers who grew up in a rubric-driven education system has been a challenge for me all through the Instructional Medial program.

Andrade (n.d.) defines a rubric as "a scoring tool that lists the criteria for a piece of work, or [says] 'what counts' " and "also articulates gradations of quality for each criterion, from excellent to poor." She goes on to explain that a rubric should "as concisely as possible ... explain what makes a good piece of work good and a bad one bad." What has become evident to me after reading many assignments and discussions in my courses over the past year is that the way rubrics are written (yes -- even our Wilkes rubrics as explicit as they try to be) can make the difference between students and instructors guessing and knowing what constitutes excellence.

Terms such as: well/sufficiently developed, clear, adequate/inadequate, limited, superficial, subtle, voice, minimal, and evident awareness leave a lot of room for individual interpretation. It seems that even in courses at the Master's level, except when it comes to counting bibliography errors or discussion responses, personal interpretation of general descriptive words still sometimes guides both students' work and instructors' evaluations. Unlike students in a classroom, we online learners don't often have the benefit of being able to compare work, grades, and comments.

So how, then, does one approach the problem of writing a rubric that will give students clarity? When I used to mark assignments and tests (yes -- even math tests), I had to go page by page so that I'd do all examples of longer questions consistently. I was definitely a teacher who knew excellence when I saw it but I also would have been hard pressed to put that into words. Rereading the Bresciani presentation assigned in the last unit of this course gave me a clue. She says (slide 5) that rubrics are a way of 'norming' teacher expectations and of "informing students what you are looking for." These are easy words to write, but they can be very difficult objectives to meet. Some hard mental slogging may be required to work out what those general terms really do mean rather than just come up with other synonyms.

Slide 15 was the most helpful.

When I read those questions, I realized that I could apply my learning in the IBL course directly to the problem how to write a good rubric. In Week 5 we learned about writing writing 'reasoned explanations' . In an explanation, you make a claim and substantiate it with evidence. This is my project from Week 5.

Free website - Wix.com

In a rubric, you set the set the target and then put into words what it will look like if a student is meeting this target. That's what makes this kind of writing so difficult. You can't just say what want; you have to say how you know it when you see it. Without the evidence, the explanation/rubric is just not complete. You have to reach deep inside and put feelings into words.

You have to make internal standards which are usually a complex blend and delicate balance of many factors explicit. You have to balance brevity with explication. You have to box yourself in by 'setting it in stone'. You have to put yourself in the shoes of struggling students -- those for whom general descriptors hold little meaning or perhaps a meaning which is different from your understanding -- and ask yourself what evidence they must produce to show you they 'get it'. If a student, parent, or colleague could still ask "How will I know?" (which echoes the "how do you know" question that underlies inquiry-based learning), your rubric may have all the boxes filled in, but it won't reveal to your students what it really takes to make you happy.

BTW -- Matt Cwalina who wrote the IBL course has been hired by Discovery and if you have an opportunity as a teacher who uses Discovery resources to get involved with any of his pro-d work, do so. This has been a great course and he's certainly an instructor who models what he believes in his teaching. Good luck at DE, Matt!

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References

Andrade, H. (n.d.). Understanding rubrics. Retrieved June 23, 2010 from http://learnweb.harvard.edu/ALPS/thinking/docs/rubricar.htm

Brecaiani, M. (n.d.). Creating, implementing, and using rubrics. Retrieved June 23, 2010 from http://www.ncsu.edu/assessment/presentations/assess_process/creating_implementing.pdf

All E's

2010-06-17T09:13:00.010-04:00

I'm getting ready for ISTE this week and next and am also wrapping up two courses that have complemented each other in interesting ways: Inquiry Based Learning and the one on virtual worlds I've written about before. As has often happened while I've been in this program, because of the time between sending the conference proposal and doing the presentation has been filled with new learning experiences for me, my sense of what I'd like to do with the session has changed. Now I'm full of angst about how to turn a fundamentally show and tell presentation into an inquiry based activity -- one that will take the audience through the 5E's without their having to actually open a laptop or do any independent exploration.

What are the 5E's you ask? Entertain? Elucidate? Expound? Extol? Exhibit? No -- I always have to look them up: Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate. And I have to be sure as well that all my claims are backed up with the 6th E - evidence.

If I guage the audience correctly, with as little as an hour they should be able to embrace the concept of changing the delivery of math instruction with Web 2.0 tools and evolve set of beliefs which they can articulate clearly and with passion. What follows are some quotes I recorded and thoughts I had a few days ago while viewing the video below in "Sail Wozniak's" blog of May, 2010. Although at the time I was thinking about the teacher/student bond, I also feel this applies to teacher/teacher relationships as well.

~~~~~

"People don't buy what you do, but why you do it."

"The goal is not just to sell to people who need what you have.
The goal is to sell to people who believe what you believe."

Do you know what you believe as a teacher?
Do you communicate your dream to others around you?
Do you tell your kids what you "have for them" or what you believe?

Simon Sinek in TED Talks: How great leaders inspire action
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html

"The early majority will not try something until someone else has tried it first." We can be the early adopters in kids' lives by telling them what we believe so they can take our vision and make it their own. Then they won't be showing up for us or their parents or because society says they must, but for themselves!

"Martin Luther King gave the 'I have a dream speech', not the I have a plan speech."

So ... set aside 15 minutes of planning time every day to work out what you believe.Transform yourself from being "the leader" in your class into being a someone others want to follow.

~~~~~

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Resources

BoyertownScienceInquiry. (2010). [Wiki]. Retrieved May 20, 2010, from http://boyertownscienceinquiry.wikispaces.com/Day+1

Sinek, Simon: How great leaders inspire action. (May, 2010) [Video]. Retrieved May 20, 2010, from Sails' Pedagogy at http://lindaleea.wordpress.com/2010/05/

Imagination Unleashed: immersive inquiry based learning

2010-05-24T12:20:00.014-04:00

[Note to Facebook readers: I've added linked captions beneath the videos for you.]

To write this week's reflection, I've stepped a way outside normal boundaries of a Wilkes assignment to imagine what it would be like to blend the power of inquiry based learning with the networking capability of a virtual environment and apply it to the most authentic problem-solving situation of all -- real life. These thoughts were prompted by the conjunction of the ideas of two educators: Sahsa Barab who is convinced of the potential of immersive learning to give meaning back to education and Tony O'Driscoll who used his blog, Learning Matters, to issue a challenge "to get the world involved" in finding a remedy for the daunting problem portrayed in this video.

[Oil spill video]

I suspect from his title that this was the seed of O'Driscoll's vision.

[Scene from Apollo 13]

Here's what Sasha Barab has to say.

[About the benefits of immersive learning]

For Barab, to play a game is to be "positioned with a purpose .... to help transform some situation that's in a problematic state. ... [and to ask] what are the rules of this world? What are the laws that affect it? When I do this, what happens?" He adds: "In a game I'm considered someone who has a really powerful role to do something significant with my time ... and that requires that I learn a bunch of things [so I can ] do that thing even better. ... Failure is motivating. It's not something to be avoided. ... [This kind of learning] allows me to be something I couldn't normally be."

As many of us (even educators) do, O'Driscoll underestimated young people and left them out of his call to become part of his solution. Barab's ideas hold promise, but he may not have been thinking 'big enough' either. I'm wondering if there's a way to involve educators all over the world in mobilizing the untapped resources of today's youth to solve not only an authentic but an actual problem such as the oil spill in the Gulf?

We try to raise children's level of concern when we show video clips of disasters unfolding and talk about how terrible they are in class, but perhaps what we're really doing is role modeling passive response. Without also engaging kids in working towards a solution, we may be adding to their sense of helplessness. They may come away thinking that if such problems are too big for corporations and governments to solve, they as individuals are powerless to do anything that will count.

Here's my question.

Is it possible to use evolving global networking capabilities to involve the world's youth in a collaborative effort of inquiry learning and problem-solving and thereby give them the chance to 'play' what might be the largest and potentially the most impactful 'game' of their lives?

If, as O'Driscoll wrote in his blog, what's going on in the Gulf "is not a technology problem," then we truly need people to "think differently ... to help frame the problem differently to see if there are transferable concepts that can help stop this leak." Imagine if every student we could connect globally in Second Life dedicated seventy-two hours to generating solutions? What if Linden Labs and all residents of Second Life pledged to make it a youth-safe zone for those three days? What if we then mashed the kids up in that virtual environment with adult scientists, designers, architects, educators, and engineers -- harnessing both the energy and unbounded enthusiasm of youth who believe in their ability to change the world now and also the experience and learning of trained thinkers and problem-solvers -- and infused the forum with the urgency of the Apollo 13 mission team?

Could they solve this problem?

Is it at least worth a try?

Can they do any worse than BP?

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Resources

Edutopia. (4 November, 2009). Big thinkers: Sasha Barab. [Video]. Retrieved May 24, 2010, from YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GBDAaXEvDo

EnergyBoom. (12 May, 2010). New underwater footage of BP oil leak at the sources. Retrieved May 24, 2010, from YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJ91G3e0OBQ.

"hychum". (4 June, 2007). Decision Making [Video excerpt from Apollo 13]. Retrieved May 24, 2010, from YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbBS8sHrDgA

O'Driscoll, T. (15 May, 2010). 2 Hour “Moon Shot” like Stop the Spill Challenge. [Web log post]. Retrieved May 24, 2010, from Learning Matters at http://wadatripp.wordpress.com/2010/05/15/72-hour-moon-shot-like-stop-the-spill-challenge/

Recipe for success: communicating from the inside out

2010-05-20T09:32:00.013-04:00

"People don't buy what you do, but why you do it."

"The goal is not just to sell to people who need what you have.
The goal is to sell to people who believe what you believe."

Do you know what you believe as a teacher?
Do you communicate your dream to your students, parents and the others around you?
Do you tell your kids what you "have for them" or what you believe?

Simon Sinek in TED Talks: How great leaders inspire action
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html first seen in Sail's Pedagagy.

"The early majority will not try something until someone else has tried it first." We can be the early adopters in kids' lives by telling them what we believe so they can take our vision and make it their own. Then they won't be showing up for us or their parents or because society says they must, but for themselves!

"Martin Luther King gave the 'I have a dream speech', not the I have a plan speech. "

So ... set aside taking 15 minutes of planning time every day to work out what you believe. Transform yourself from being "the leader" in your class by becoming someone others want to follow.

Meet Nunyara Fairlady -- a work in progress

2010-05-13T13:33:00.004-04:00

I'm taking an extra course this term in the Online Education program. It's about virtual worlds and using Second Life as an educational venu. My experiences there this week were 'extreme' so I thought I'd share them in this blog, even though this course isn't part of the Instructional Media program and I decided to try it because I have time to double up. I’ll begin by saying that when I signed up for the course, my expectations about ever feeling at home in Second Life were pretty low. I enrolled to prove to myself that I could do it, but my first days in SL left me feeling like I was an outsider who would always remains so and that no learning experience was worth the frustration I was experiencing, especially when it was self-imposed.

Although the text promised me god-like status and the unfettered fun of getting drunk, having sex, fighting, casting spells, flying, and changing my appearance at will (Rymaszewski et al, p.5), it also made clear that on this 21st century version of ‘Fantasy Island’ (but without Mr. Rourke and Tattoo), “your presence … is defined by your appearance” (p. 82). It implied that in order to avoid hostility I ought to construct an external appearance which would reassure the ‘in-world’ residents that I was like them (p.88). An appealing avatar would go a long way towards satisfying my need to be loved and admired (p. 87). My expectations sank even lower.

Other sources warned that:

“looking like a newbie” could draw “mean comments or wrong information” …. because “some of the old residents are really mean with new players” (Kiara Vaughn).

I shouldn’t “accept friendship cards from strangers" whose intentions may not be the best (Vaughn).

SL is a dangerous place if your are weak and an easy catch for “the griefers, spammers,” and others out to do harm (Lizzie Arriaga).

if I didn’t adapt fast to this environment and try to “fit the story,” I risked boring everyone because being unimaginative “spoil[s] the fantasy.” If I "barged in and stuck out like a sore thumb,” I would not be respecting “the rules of the sim” (Shauna Skye).

carrying The Newbie Woman’s Second Life Survival Kit (Darn! I wish I hadn’t detached the oversized bag with which my initial ‘av’ was equipped!) and learning some safety tips would probably be a very good idea (Women’s Resource Hub).

SL is bound to disappoint some who try it. Despite fans' claims that you can "do all the things people do in RL, but better, ... being there "can't make ... [us] great at what ... [we're] no good at in real life (Jenny Diski).

Those of you who follow this blog know that I'm passionate about the exciting educational possibilities offered by Web 2.0 technologies. I’m also relatively good at figuring out how to make these tools work and at helping others find resources that will fit their needs and comfort levels, but trying to do even simple tasks in Second Life put my anxiety level through the roof. I struggled with technical issues and could find no answers to my questions. I expected to be engaged with talking instructional modules, simulated demonstrations I could try to mimic, and virtual helpers I could activate at the press of a button. However, what I encountered were several 2-D read-only posters and a largely trial-and-error process of learning. Without some way to get a mental picture of what was possible, I felt lost.

Eventually, with the help of a YouTube video I figured out sitting, standing, making fish jump and chimes play, and flying without bumping my head on the ceiling, but I’m left wondering why I had to come back to RL (real world) for help. I expected an immersive experience and masterful tutorials. Did I miss them? I looked for the sign to Help Island. Where was it? I teletransported instead to the public clone of what was supposed to be my next stop and found myself in the midst of a crowd of 'avs' wandering zombie-like back and forth muttering near-obscenities to anyone within earshot. Finally, anxious about being targeted as a ‘noob’ (Vaugn), rather than keep my beginner’s duds until I got the feel of the place, I decided to find a secluded spot to change. From there things went from bad to worse. After a few hours, all I wanted to do was get out!!

This morning I’ve had a chance to compare descriptions of the old and new Orientation Island tutorials. I wish Linden Labs had preserved the old one to provide newcomers with a choice of whether they want to take the time to do the full 'walkthrough' or whiz through the shortcut. As an educator, I’d say the developers have made two versions of the same mistake: they’ve assumed that everyone learns the same way. Initially they made even those to whom these things come easily do every step of every tutorial before they could move on. Now they’ve gone way too far the other way and don’t provide enough guidance to those of us who clearly need more support and guidance to feel completely comfortable with the newness of things. Good educators try to anticipate the needs of their students and craft activities that will allow them to fly past the stuff they know or can learn easily, provide direct instruction and guided practice to scaffold new learning, and give choices that empower learners rather than overwhelm them. The SL Orientation Island learning activities (they really are not tutorials) made too many assumptions about my attitude and prior skills and fell way short of preparing me for the world inside.

Jean Brouchard writes that there are “two kinds of newbies in Second Life: the Eager ones ... and the Paranoid Ones." His point is that if you hang back -- “afraid that … [if you] do something wrong … the computer will self-destruct,” you’ll also miss out on the virtual adventure. I prefer to think of myself as cautious rather than paranoid, but I think there’s a lesson for educators in his piece. There are lots of children in our classes who are frozen by their fears, and yes, we need to encourage them to venture boldly into the unknown. After all what are a few bumps on the virtual head but reminders of where the ceiling is? What are mistakes but messages that you have to try a different way? Still there is clearly a critical mass of frustration and anxiety. Once that has been surpassed, many learners can end up feeling out of their depth and like they just want to escape. Finding the tipping point for each learner is the art of what good teachers do.

I solved my tech dilemmas yesterday by giving myself a fresh start. I decided that doing more of the same was getting me nowhere, so I created a new account using the name I'd originally wanted, selected a different avatar, and quickly made enough changes to her to create a skin in which I feel comfortable. I used the Map feature to locate SciLands (after a false start that landed me in with the Naked Scientists). Nunyara (“made well again”) Fairlady (a person I’d like to become) fell into the ocean only once, figured out how to use the virtual telescope, collected some notecards, and made it back to a quiet place of contemplation overlooking the sea near the free store on Help Island (public). She’s going to spend a few real dollars this weekend rather than head off to dubious locations in search of money trees because shewants new hair and a different scarf and really needs her glasses. Then she’ll be ready to take on new challenges even if that means colliding with a few people or objects along the way.

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Resources

Arriaga, Lizzie. (23 January, 2009). Newbie in Second Life. Retrieved on May 13, 2010, from People at http://secondlife-newspaper.blogspot.com/2009/01/newbie-in-second-life.html.

Brouchard, Joe. (1 May, 2007). The fear of being a newbie. Retrieved on May 11, 2010, from Clear Night Sky at http://clearnightsky.com/node/302.

Diski, Jenny. (8 February, 2007). Jowls are available. Retrieved on May 5, 2010, from London review of books archive at http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n03/jenny-diski/jowls-are-available.

Extreme rock balancing. (21 May, 2009). Image retrieved from Pichaus on May 13, 2010, at http://pichaus.com/extreme-rock-balancing-articles-@97f6f1183786f749ebcc8fbcfa7d25f4/

Fantasy Island.(nd). Retrieved on May 13, 2010, from IMDb at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077008/.

Newbie woman's SL survival kit. (25 March, 2009). Retrieved on May 13, 2010, from Women's Resource Hub in Second Life at http://womensresourcehub.wetpaint.com/page/Newbie+Woman%27s+SL+Survival+Kit.

Orientation Island (out of date). (13 March, 2010). Retrieved on May 13, 2010, from Second Life wiki at http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Orientation_Island_Walk_Through.

Rymaszewski, Michael et al. (2008). Second Life: The official guide. Linden Research Inc., Indianapolis.

Skye, Shauna. (28 December, 2009). Five ways to be boring in Second Life. Retrieved on May 13, 2010, from Moonletters at http://slfix.com/?p=6151.

Vaughn, Kiara. (nd). A quick guide for newbies in Second Life. Retrieved on May 10, 2010, from Hub Pages at http://hubpages.com/hub/A-quick-guide-for-newbies-in-second-life.

Welcome Island. (7 April, 2010) Retrieved on May 13, 2010, from Second Life wiki at http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Welcome_Island.

Australian Dreams & Mother's Day

2010-05-09T11:20:00.024-04:00

I'm recently home from 7 weeks in Australia with my family. I presented at the ACEC2010 conference there and towards the end of the trip had the great fortune to share a some time with a new teacher friend, Yvonne, who kindly arranged a tour of 3 Australian schools for me. We ended our wonderful day together with my doing a workshop for about 8 of her colleagues at Taylors Lakes Primary School (their primary is our elementary).

I have to say that workshop was the highlight of all the sessions I did while in Melbourne. I was chatting over lunch yesterday with my usual workshop partner, Debra, about whether either of us would have turned up Friday after school for a workshop on Web 2.0 tools, and we agreed that we would have NNNOOOTTTTT! So I have to both congratulate and thank the educators who came to play with my suite of tools that day. When everyone else was on the road home to families and weekend freedom, they showed up and gave me the hands-down professional highlight of my trip.

What was most exciting for me was that as the session progressed, the energy in the room lifted. The more they had the chance to play, they more they become absorbed in the fun and intrigued by the creative possibilities of using these in their own classes. We all left so positively charged by our time together that I couldn't stop talking about it when I got back to Mum's place. That session has given me the confidence to plan my way back to Australia. My goal is to return in a little less than a year to do lots more workshops and collaborations with any school that will have me.

Because my time in Australia was mostly split between family, getting ready for the conference, and doing homework for Wilkes courses, this time round I didn't get in much sightseeing. However, we did manage 3 trips to the seaside, and if you've read any of what I wrote last summer, you'll know that as long as I'm near the water, I'm a happy girl. Australian beaches are white or reddish sand backed by huge dunes or towering cliffs, and (where we were) cobalt blue water with curling surf that rolls up from Antarctica -- soul-fillingly beautiful. It's a good thing I didn't grow up there, because my parents would have had a terrible time trying to keep me in school. The call of the sea would have been too strong.

On my last evening there we watched the video of a trek you can do on the part of the coast we'd toured by car. The Great Ocean Walk runs from Apollo Bay to the Twelve Apostles (actually now 7 sea stacks that form when a portion of a cliff erodes and leaves a pillar behind). From the car on the Great Ocean Road, we looked down to the beach below from several fantastic lookouts along the way, but to walk it would be a peak experience -- and that will be part of my tour when I get back.

If my mum is up to it, I hope she'll be able to walk at least part of it with me. We did 5km together along the beach from Urquart's Bluff to Point Roadknight in Anglesea where my Aussie family has a summer house. To share that with her was the absolute highlight of my personal trip and I'd love to several more days of that with her before she's totally past it. That's my incentive to get shake loose from my computer chair and get back into shape -- so we can do some of that walk together. Several years of inactivity and eating have put on the pounds and robbed me of stamina, but now that I've retired and have this wonderful goal, I plan to embrace the opportunity to set that part of my life right and celebrate my new self with that trek next (Aussie) fall.

I've embedded the video we watched below. It's the tale of 3 walkers and their 6 days on this spectacular piece of Australian coast. I'm off for a local beach real-life walk with Thelma, the wonder dog, while the tide is out, and later today I'll be perusing a virtual island as we're into the first summer session at Wilkes and one of the courses (yes -- I'm doubling up to fit this one in) is about Second Life. Perhaps I'll get up my nerve and purchase a little waterfront real estate 'inworld' so I can have a virtual retreat by the water where I can go to write and study. How going to Second Life fits with my Third Chapter I'm not sure.

Happy Mother's Day to my Mum and all the other mums reading this. Most of us daughters do eventually figure out what's important in life and relationships. Although I now feel a long way away from my mum, I know it's because our time together in Australia brought us closer than we've been in a long time. Missing her is bitter sweet.

Enjoy the video!

Teacher -- heal thyself

2010-05-03T10:25:00.010-04:00

I've been watching this video and thinking about how I measure up as a teacher and as a learner. How many of us can truly say we value all of these skills for ourselves as teacher/learners? For how many of us have these habits of mind become a matter of do as I say, not as I do?

Arthur Costa Interview from 21Foundation on Vimeo.

Web Link: http://www.21foundation.com/

And how many of us believe that our students will remember us as pivotal people in their lives -- guides who had helped them find their own voices?

Found in this blog post which is worth reading to the very last line -- http://www.debaird.net/blendededunet/2010/05/youth-culture-project-gaga-2010-.html

Click image for expanded view.

From the Caine Learning Center -- http://www.cainelearning.com/files/Learning.html

508 -- last day

2010-05-01T18:05:00.007-04:00

Well I survived another one and am now 3 courses from the end of my program -- well 4 actually because I've decided to take a course in the Online Learning program on 3D/virtual worlds and Second Life. Since I'm in what Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot calls my 'third chapter' having recently retired from classroom teaching (yes -- I actually did it), it only seems fitting to launch a second life as well.

All that aside -- what is the most remarkable thing that happened to me in 508? Aside from doing my first Google Earth tour (definitely a lot easier if you have a bit of a handle on HTML code) , it has to be coming across the remarkable video of Sugata Mitra that I used as the centerpiece for the 508 Glogster project.

[For the full sized version, you can click on this link -- http://unfossil.edu.glogster.com/no-looking-back/. you may have to login to your Discovery account to view the assessment tools built with DEN's Assignment Builder.]

I realized about the 5th time I watched Mitra's video that, although I seldom turned the control of learning over to students that way in my classes, I have been moving that very direction in my pro-d work with other teachers. I am convinced that if you put teachers into a social setting and give them intriguing tools to play with and explore, they will reconnect with their passion to learn, and they’ll experience the delight that students feel when their “creating minds” (Gardner, p. 81) are engaged. Anyway as the workshop progress, the energy grew. As happened with the children in the video, the participants began to cluster in groups around those who emerged as the leaders. These ‘leaders’ did not take over but had simply figured out certain tools first and shared with others what they had done. Again as happened in the video, the people behind them made suggestions and even though they may have watched more than they played, they left feeling the tools they’d made lots of progress.

It can be so easy for us teachers to remain frozen by our own fears about not being able to make technology tools work. I am “device-phobic”. I don’t carry a cell phone; I’ve never used an i-Pod. I’m the last in a workshop to put my finger on a SmartBoard. Others, on the other hand, are perfectly at home with hardware, but find it equally challenging to try the tools that I demonstrate. They have what they feel are good reasons for holding back, but the more we let these fears put limits on our “creating minds,” the more we put truth to students’ doubts that formal education can deliver on it’s promise to develop life-long learners.

I once had a student who told me that she was terrified of going on the roller coaster at the PNE (Pacific National Exhibition) but that she feared even more being left out of all the fun and being thought a ‘wimp’ by her friends. One morning she decided she had to get over this, so she took the long bus ride from Surrey to Hastings Street and bought herself a ticket to ride.

After the 6th time around the circuit, she finally began to enjoy the excitement and the feeling of living life on the edge. It’s not always that kids are fearless in the face of new experiences. I think it’s they bring to learning that they feel is important a sense of determination which carries them through even the most difficult and frustrating moments. A student who will skip school rather than face a math test he thinks he’s going to fail will take the test for his driver’s license 3 times so he can get behind the wheel. Another who lives in terror of being asked a question in front of the class will spend countless hours in the skateboard park trying and failing at tricks and moves in the company of other boarders. When curiosity and perceived value outweigh fear and hesitation, even the least talented among us will try and keep on trying until we gain gain some mastery. From that point we can move into creativity and passionate involvement. That’s where the greatest rewards are waiting.

508: Digital Media final project

2010-04-24T07:00:00.008-04:00

This is a very quick post for Wilkes IM students in taking 508 -- for which the final project is to do Google Earth tour. I have posted some resources in the Q&A Discussion of my section, but I realized that not everyone can access these.

Here is my list:

as well as another one from Tom McGee the instructor for my section --

plus some new ones I found in Thomas Cooper's wikis (see an earlier post about his excellent work)

If you're looking for some basic ideas about how to handle HTML code inside GE, Thomas will have instructions embedded in the GE tutorial information in his wikispaces links.

And mashing up Google Earth with HTML code we get:

http://earth.google.com/outreach/tutorial_youtube.html

I hope these give you some help and some ideas. Cheers!

Getting creative with ToonDoo

2010-04-20T04:30:00.006-04:00

I am getting ready to do several presentations on using internet tools and resources at ACEC 2010 this week, and one of the tools I’ll be inviting the audience to take a look is my creativity tool pick for the week: TooDoo. My workshop partner, who could not come to Melbourne, is the ToonDoo expert in our duo, so I figured that I'd better become learn more about how to use this cartoon-making online software. Let's take a look at how the basic ToonMaker works.

ToonDoo is really 5 different tools in one:

the ToonMaker which allows students to create from 1 to 3 panel cartoons using the collection of backgrounds, characters, objects, and features provided. It's also possible to import images created in Paint or regular photos into your cartoons.

the BookMaker which turns a collection of previously made ToonDoos into an online book with pages that flip. This is a great way to compile students' work into a collection that can be posted online for parents or other classes to see. (Earth Day projects anyone?!!?)

Traitr allows you to personalize characters that can can be saved and used in other cartoons.

Imaginer is the tool for distorting the features of a photo. These can also be saved and used in other cartoons.

Doodler is the draw tool. (I assume it works with a tablet, but I haven't tried mine yet.)

There is a new educator version of ToonDoo called ToonSpaces ($), but the main functions of the program are still free. At the Learning Centre we signed up with a gmail account and create one user name. All the students make their cartoons using our account and that name so no Canadian laws regarding the storage of student information on servers outside the country are violated. Creations can be public or private -- whichever you prefer.

For people used to using other tools, ToonDoo features may seem a little constraining. However, this tool's simplicity makes it accessible to youngsters (I found one how-to video by a grade 2 student) and also means that older students have to concentrate on the product rather than becoming overly enchanted with options and effects.

ToonDOo Maker Tools § Tips by MrB | Make your own at www.toondoo.com

Animation Webinar

2010-04-13T17:18:00.002-04:00

Hey everyone --these tools look like loads of fun! Last fall I attended a attend a webinar about using free online software (Go!Animate, Blabberize, and Xtranormal) that was offered by ISTE/SIGMS. These are free, and as you know most everything ISTE offers has a big $$$ sign attached to it, so these are a great deal.

The presenter is Gwyneth Anne Bronwynne Jones, a teacher librarian, but lest you get the impression from her name that she's a prim and proper wallflower type --

-- her Animation Studios wiki looks crazy-dynamic!

The link for this event can be found in Classroom 2.0 at http://www.classroom20.com/forum/topics/animation-in-the-classroom.

If you're not a CR 2.0 member yet and can't bring up the webpage, here are the instructions:

heck that your computer is set up for Adobe Connect by visiting Adobe Connect Pro Connection Test (link -- http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/351/d83c3511.html)
Use this URL to enter the webinar room 10 - 15 minutes before starting time: http://Montgomery.na4.acrobat.com/SIGMS
Enter as a guest and type your first and last name.

If it's too cold or too hot for your kids to play outside and they're keen on animation, here's a free downloadable program called SqirlzMorph.

This is a little like the high tech version of what I used to see when my dad riffled through the pages of a "Big Little" book really fast and made the individual drawings on the corners of the pages dance for my little girl's eyes.

Here are two very different video examples of work done with this free program.

[Exo-Perfection] Reznic
Uploaded by Reznic.

There are loads of tutorial videos in YouTube, and I'm going to have to take this one into school on my laptop (we're not allowed to install at school) to let my students test drive it. I'm doing some experimenting with giving them visual ways to remember times tables. These a older kids who need to pass trade tests and we're working on creating dynamic visuals that will help them stop counting because they can see the images in their minds.

Squirlz also has tools you can use to animate water reflections, a Lite version.

Here's a page that can give you all sorts of interesting visual programs to play with: http://www.freebyte.com/graphicprograms/

Invitation to an hour with Ian Jukes

2010-04-10T01:43:00.010-04:00

Link to this week's Elluminate room: http://tinyurl.com/yhffesd
Password (for speaker series only): credenda-wilkes
Time: 5:30 p.m. PacificDaylight time

It's with great pleasure that I invite you to a conversation with Ian Jukes -- one of Canada's most passionate 21st century educators and self-professed education evangelist.

I first heard Ian speak about integrating computers into classroom work back in the late 80's or early 90's when he was a principal in a school in Whitehorse, Yukon,who had traveled south to tell a group of Surrey teachers how to use data bases creatively to enhance critical thinking skills in our students. Now he's away from home many weeks of the year helping educators all over the world understand why it's so vital for us to provide instruction to students in a way that will better promote their learning.

This is the second in the Tuesday group's speaker series. We haven't yet come up with a catchy name, but we meet online in Elluminate on Tuesdays to discuss our work in the Instructional media program -- to lend each other support with technical issues, to compare courses, and to challenge each other to put our learning to practical uses. If you'd like to join in and haven't yet been in a course where the link was provided, just let me know and I'll send it to you.

The time and link for the speaker series, however, are different. We'll be starting at 30 minutes early to give people in the east a chance to get to bed at a reasonable hour or to get in some last minute lesson prep (or catch the last half hour of The Biggest Loser).

This promises to be a challenging discussion. I hope you'll join us.

Ideas

2010-04-04T16:43:00.029-04:00

The next speaker coming to the Wilkes Tuesday group on April 13th (5:30 Pacific time) is Canada' own Ian Jukes, so I started this morning looking at his Committed Sardine blog. One of the contributors had posted something about Infographics which are charts, graphs, and visuals that can communicate data by turning it into information. If you like astoundingly big numbers these will grab you:

(Image and other infographics found at Gizmodo: http://www.gizmodo.com.au/tags/infographics/)

JESS3 / The State of The Internet from JESS3 on Vimeo.

(For more infographics see: Cool Infographics , Noupe, and just google 'infographics'.)

This week in 508, we've been looking at Howard Gardner's Chapter about developing the what he calls the "creating mind." Gardner has quite a narrow notion of what constitutes creativity. He writes that creativity is not a spirit or a feeling, but often grows out of synthesis and “breaks new ground” (p. 82). It is not the act of one person alone. The creating mind exerts an influence through innovations that become recognized in a particular domain (pp. 80-1). He seems to think of creativity not as a quality but as an action -- not something you are or have, but something you do that has a lasting impact on others.

I find myself often looking back at sections of the Cognition and Technology course (501) as I've been adding my replies to others' discussions. Recent neuroscience (catapulted forward by observers ability to use fMRI's to watch electrical impulses fire along people's brain's neurons) is telling us a lot about what happens in the brain when we are learning and even when we're making decisions. But what is known about how ideas develop? where they come from? what chemical and electrical signals in the brain we experience as the germination of an idea?

That took me to this piece below in an article in ISO50 about overcoming creative block by Alex Cornell. I think he's on the right track. Feeding the brain with as much thought-provoking stuff as you can must create the electro-chemical soup from which the big bangs we experience as ideas and inspiration explode.

I wonder though whether the development of the Newton Virus (or any virus for that matter) meets Gardner's criteria for creativity.

All of which take me back to Ian and one of the videos that presents some of his ideas about 21st century learners. One of his astounding statistics is that elementary teachers and parents and grandparents of the young children among us is are raising the first generation to grow up with a mouse in its hand.

Dan Pink -- thank you

2010-03-16T15:38:00.037-04:00

Dan Pink Thanks

View more presentations or Upload your own.

This is a very belated thanks to Dan Pink who sat in on Wilkes Tuesday group a few weeks ago. I started this post by transcribing a lot of what he had to say, but have decided instead to post the link to the recording and follow it with verbal snapshots of some of his ideas. Dan believes that anything enduring or great in life (eg. a love affair!) began with a conversation and he's hoping, that conversation by conversation, we can build a world that is 'just plain better'. I know Dan's ideas found fertile ground in our audience and I suspect there will be
"Fed Ex days" devoted undiluted autonomy popping up in more than a few classrooms. Thanks Dan for allowing us to pick your brains..

To listen to the archived recording of our conversation with Dan Pink
(session password = credenda-wilkes):
http://elm.elluminate.com/HOSTEDELLUMINATE/play_recording.html?recordingId=1249712753409_1266366421597

For a great summary of the book: see The Blue Skunk.

For some comments to tantalize and delight::

Too often business and education start from the wrong assumption: i.e. that were it not for carrots and sticks, people would just sit there -- inert. Interestingly, we do not feel that way about ourselves.

With even a 'rudimentary cognitive skill'. a higher reward leads to poorer performance.

On Autonomy:

'Management' is a very good way to get compliance, but a very poor way to get, engagement which can only be reached through self-direction.
Teachers have less autonomy than workers in any other white collar profession.

On Mastery:

People are engagement-seeking missiles and will find it in other realms of their lives when they can't get it in a traditional job (or classroom?).
The biggest motivator by far is making progress.

On Purpose:

Humans want to be part of something larger than ourselves.
If we really want people to do great work and prepare students for their future we need to move away from the outdated motivational technology and capitalize on people's drive to do things because they're interesting and contribute to the world. The more we do that, the more we will do right by our kids and make schools a congenial, challenging place to learn.
Purpose doesn't have to be big or transcendent. If kids can see the context for what they're studying and how it all fits in, there will be less need for coercive tactics or bribery to get them to perform.

On Extrinsic Motivation (carrots & sticks):

The best use of money as a motivator is to pay people enough to unleash their third drive (instrinic/its own reward).

On Education:

One of Dan's favourite writers is Carol Dweck (Mindset ; Self-Theories -1999 ): She puts foward 2 theories of intelligence: entity (fixed supply; can be measured by tests) vs growth (each encounter you have is a chance to increase your supply; people take more risks and engage in greater challenges). If you believe talent, capability, and intelligence can be grown, that takes you towards mastery. The entity theory precludes mastery for all but a very few.

The disengaged, aimless, purposeless kid is probably not that way in every realm of his/her life (music, sports, after school job, church group, volunteer activities). Often outside of class, kids are profoundly and passionately engaged. It's important to look at those kinds of things for hints about how to engage them: sense of collaboration, more freedom, can more clearly see progress, animated by a sense of purpose.

Standardized tests are impoverished measures of what it takes to be an educated person. A different kind of motivation can pay off on standardised tests. They're trying this in 'Big Picture schools' where individual curricula start from and are built around kids' interests.

What skills do kids need to be successful? Industry and business are looking for "multis" (-cultural, - disciplinary, -lingual) -- people who are "T's" with both depth and breadth. So let's equip students with great left brain abilities and right brain abilities so they're creative/conceptual thinkers. Let's be sure they have amazing work habits, that they care about others, are great collaborators, can span boundaries, can learn how to learn, and that they're persistent and persevering. That's a tall order ....

Any time there's a problem in North America we ask schools to solve it, then don't give them enough money and blame them when it's not solved.

Education seems to be making a concerted push right now on the second drive (reward/punishment) -- our schools are 'fighting the last war'.

Self assessment is an important habit of the heart. Grades have become a goal in themselves when they should be feedback on the road to mastery. Our (wrong) notion of kids as endlessly manipulable and fundamentally passive has led us to the (wrong) carrot/stick form of motivation. More promising will be to see them as little human beings who respond better to the third drive.

Image Source: Marty Bucella (http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/c/carrot_on_stick.asp)

A second career

2010-03-02T08:38:00.004-05:00

I have reached the 'arghhh' week in the 511 Video Production course. I have decided that although I love the editing part of the work, I am not a camera person at heart. I struggle to assess what's in the viewfinder of the camcorder with an educated eye, but I haven't figured out what the various light presets do which makes that difficult.

How is 'beach' different from 'snow'? or 'waterfall' different from 'profile'? (How often do you shoot a waterfall after all?) I have a colleague who says to look these things up in the manual, but there isn't much there to help me distinguish between them well enough to know what setting is best for say -- inside a white-walled living room on a sunny afternoon? That is where I did the shooting for the final project for this course. This week we have to look at all the footage and create a story board that goes shot by shot through the entire final video.

I did start with a shot list and a list of questions, but I've been reluctant to actually look at the footage because there isn't time to reshoot if I didn't light it correctly (there never was -- that would have tried my subject's patience too much) and I don't have the time to comb through it all this week before I get on the plane for Australia.

The conversation that I recorded was with my teaching partner and friend, Debra. We talk a lot about how we want to spend our last years in teaching and our early years out of it. She said she wanted to work at a local plant nursery because it isn't a people job. I used to say I wanted to tune pianos whenever the job got to be too much for me, but now I think I'd like to edit videos. The power that rests in your hands to pull the threads of a story together is amazing. You can literally put words in people's mouths by deftly rearranging what they've actually said to suit your own theme or purpose.

This week's slide show assignment has been fun from that point of view and I didn't have to take any of the pictures -- just find them and thread them together to create a story. Here is is for your comments and suggestions. I hope you enjoy it.

Invitation to a conversation with Dan Pink

2010-02-13T09:28:00.010-05:00

Back in November, when I was taking the Cognition course, one of the assigned texts was Daniel Pink's book: A Whole New Mind. As I wrote back then, this is a popular text in Wilkes courses. It's an interesting read. Even if you don't agree with everything Pink says, it will get you thinking about the importance of creating activities and strategies that will engage both sides of your students' brains to enhance learning, remembering, and responding. On Tuesday, Feb. 16 at 6 pm Pacific time (9 pm Eastern), Dan will be joining the Tuesday EDIM student group online to talk about his new book, Drive.

The Tuesday group (as I've come to think of us) was started by an EDIM student who is in his last course -- Vince Hill of Credenda Virtual School in Saskatchewan, Canada. He wanted to provide a way for EDIM students to meet and talk in real time once a week. For me the conversations have been a highlight of the program. As an "old school" person, I find I sometimes miss the interchange between students that takes place face to face in a local coffee shop after class. The discussion threads in the course Moodles are a great way to share ideas about a specific topic or question, and you do meet some of the same people in different courses, but the informal online meet-ups using Vince's Elluminate room give us a chance to share our successes, air our frustrations, ask questions about assignments to clarify expectations, and catch up with how everyone is doing. As was made so clear in the Cognition course (and in Dan's book), the social dimension of learning is an important one.

I know Vince is totally sold on the message in Dan's newest book. Vince is a thinking educator who generally doesn't use a lot of words to frame his ideas, but his latest blog post (Can we motivate students?Or do they have to be self-motivated?), an exploration of how Pink's ideas play out in education, is a long one. (When Vince writes upwards of 10 long paragraphs, you know he's excited about his topic. LOL!)

The issue of motivation has been troubling Vince for some time especially in his work with those of his students who don't attach much value to formal education. The underlying premise in Drive -- i.e. that extrinsic motivators don't work, have never worked and will never work -- makes huge sense to him. Vince sees extrinsic rewards (promising a screaming child an ice cream for good behaviour; paying students for perfect attendance; dangling a corporate carrot in front of a worker) as a form of negative reinforcement. In its true sense, "negative reinforcement" means increasing "the future probability of behavour" with a reward rather than diminishing it. The child comes to know that if he's bad, he'll get a treat; the student learns to comply when there's money on the line; the worker becomes dependent on bonuses as the reason to strive for superior performance. Vince's own experiences as an educator have been confirmed by the research and conclusions in Drive.

For Pink the true motive underlying the corporate world's use of extrinsic rewards is not to increase performance but to exert a form of control over the workforce. (Otherwise why would they persist in a practice that has such poor results?) He believes that the 21st century will be the era when finally companies' need for a passionate, creative, and dedicated employees will outweigh their desire to control. It will be economic suicide to continue to ignore the importance of self- (or intrinsic) motivation.

Extrinsic and intrinsic motivation cannot co-exist. Jobs that make filling one's pocket the highest priority seldom also fill our souls. After all -- do we teach because it pays us top dollar for our skills and time or because we love our work? On the other hand, when we know our livelihood is on the line, do we comply with policies we feel are not in the best interests of our students and bury our passions so we can meet external expectations?

I hope you'll join us on Tuesday for what promises to be an engaging conversation with Dan Pink. Vince and Karena (our Wilkes academic advisor) will be hosting the event. I (SueH) will be monitoring the chat panel, so if you type in your questions I'll do my best to feed them to Dan. The session will be recorded and archived and I'll post that link here.

Please note: in the event that many more people come than we had originally expected, there may be a redirect from the first Elluminate room (when you arrive) to a second one on a larger server. Please bear with us as we iron out any wrinkles in the technology.

You'll need the latest version of Java installed on your computer. Vince has recommended that we all clear our Java caches (especially important if you attend a lot of Elluminate meetings), and have a USB mike if you think you may want to ask questions directly. Your normal computer mike will cause echoing and may be disabled by the tech crew. If you haven't used Elluminate before, you may want to login (any user name will do) a little early and be sure your mike and headset are configured to work correctly. The room will be open 30 minutes early.

See you on Tuesday:
~ 6:00 pm Pacific (link to conversion clock)
~ meeting link: http://tinyurl.com/ycm8dj6