School 1.0

• Rituals, rules, and routines
• Focus on the right answers
• This is okay.

School 2.0

• Engaged
• Self-directed
• Project-driven
•  Independent problem solvers
• Teachers and students are empowered
• Learning community

Meaningfulness + Significance + Connectedness =  Contribution

EXAMPLE:

Conrad calls the school during summer vacation, wants to come to school to work on his video project.  He won’t take no for an answer.  The school secretary forwards the call to Principal Tim Tyson.  The principal explains that it is too late to make your class grade better, the report cards have already been printed.  “But Dr. Tyson, I got an A”, Conrad explained.   “You said if the project was perfect, you would put it on the school website and into the iTunes Store for the whole world to see”, he continued.  The next day, Conrad showed up at 9am with two of his partners to get back to work on his project.

For the first time, schools can have access to true global distribution.

MabryOnline & iTunes

• School website serves up 1.5 million files per month on average.
• In June 2007, it served up 4 million files.
• People can subscribe to school content via iTunes.

The deal that Dr. Tyson put forth to his students:

• Your work has to be the best of the best
• Ask yourself: “What is it about your work that is so great that it needs to be out there for the entire world to see?”
• Students from New Dehli, Tasmania, Beijing, Shanghai, Peru, Georgia, Australia, UK are viewing their work.
• Students feel a great deal of satisfaction when their work is globally relevant.
• This is authentic assessment: when an A is not good enough for a student.

When does meaningfulness start?

• First job?
• Graduate college?
• Right now!
• We need to have a meaningful activities for students right now.

Project on Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research

• The students approached Dr. Tyson with their topic.
• Two weeks later, the students (on their own) had already scheduled a field trip to Emory University to spend two hours with Dr. Chetta in her research lab.  She presented one of the same intro presentations that she does for her doctoral students and physicians.
• Produced a movie that Patrice Weaver said was the best thing she’d ever seen.  Won the film festival.

Students wanted to make a difference, not just report:

• Commercialization of Drinking Water
• Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research
  • Shot everything but the video of the sonogram.
• Child Slave Labor on the Ivory Coast
  • “Social studies, but more grown up.”
• Saving African lives from Malaria
• Captivity of Elephants
• Poverty in China
• Organ Donation
  • Done like the series 24.
  • Students created every scene except for two that were recorded in the operating room by Emory University.
• Immigration in United States
• Genetically Modified Food
  • Students changed the way their principal buys his food.

Not all about technology and connectivity

• “I wish we could get away from this argument in our profession.”
• The effective educator is the one who bridges the gap between technology and meaningfulness.
• Students want to go beyond preparing for the next year, they want to make a contribution today.
• School 1.0 = Taking it in
• School 2.0 = Giving it out
• We need to stop simplifying our students’ education into tiny little segments.

Dr. Tyson’s closing keynote video/slides can be found here.

Link to session information page here.

Tuesday 3:30-4:30

Some resources:

• thefischbowl.blogspot.com
• learningandlaptops.blogspot.com
• www.lps.k12.co.us/schools/arapahoe/21c/necc2007.html

Staff Development is critical!

• Teachers meet once every three weeks for three hours - talk about:
  • educational theory, latest research, etc
  • pedagogy, how it looks in the classroom, collaborating & coming up with ideas (would try things out and then come back in person & blogs to report)
  • technology piece, show tool (blogger, del.icio.us, wikis, etc) and talk about how they can be used in the classroom.
• Key point that helped them: teachers teaching teachers, not from administration or coming from above.

How did they want to change the way they taught? They realized they wanted to teach via Constructivism - humans construct knowledge. Learning is an active process.

Created professional learning environment. Treated students as professionals.

• Tables, rolling chairs, so they can change the dynamic of the classroom all the time
  • allows for increased collaboration
• changed posters in the room to things students were interested in, and added some motivational type posters
• posted expectations the students created (what do you expect of your teachers, of the class, of each other?) Had students sign it, laminated it, and posted

Successes

• engagement. Engagement with teachers (lunchtime isn’t teachers complaining, they talk about how they’re teaching & share ideas). Engagement with students (they’re blogging! Voluntarily!)
• Students blogging around the perimeter live while others discuss in a fishbowl
• Skype is better than blogger

Collaboration

• within and without the classroom
• what’s important for our students to have to be successful in the 21st century? Teamwork! Know when to be a leader and when to be a follower
• Collaboration on wiki with another class from another country
• Collaboration != cooperative learning
  • collaboration: students together are teaching each other and learning. Helping each other understand. Goes beyond walls
  • cooperative learning: same idea, but not as engaged. Restricted to classroom.

Get students connected

• Be a reflective thinker - ask the students to be reflective on their learning. They can tie it together to things they did before in the course, in other courses, etc. Promoting the reflection promotes connections.
• Take an active role in their learning. Want to learn want to make connections.
• Blogging gives voice of their own
• whose standards are you using? Yours or your students’?
• Podcasting! You’d be surprised who is interested in what students have to say. Anything students write can be podcasting. Grandparents can listen!
• Wrote their own textbooks. Student editor worked with instructor. Teams of students got photos, format, text, etc. Used wikis to help collaboration.
• Googledocs, review toolbar in Word
• Digital Storytelling. Ask one big question, talk about it all semester (What does it take to challenge the system? What matters? etc). Everything relates to question, at the end they build a digital story relating everything to that question.

Higher education institutions are putting their research videos on ResearchChannel.com. Also check out TeacherTube for video.

Recommend the use of SurveyMonkey, ZOHO Polls, SurveyScholar, Zoomerang, and Response-o-Matic for original research.

We need to make sure that were teaching ethical usage of the polling services when we let students administer their own research.

Allow students to choose RSS feeds that they will be responsible for reporting back to the class. This could be used in tandem with writing this news to a blog.

Wikibooks

Respect of intellectual material. Emphasis needs to be placed on attributing ownership to original authors.

We want students to share, but once content is uploaded to the web, they have to ask permission from all of the content owners. Focus on using Creative Commons material.

Advice for professional social networks: use professional user names.

We need to speak up for issues that prevent students accessing the information and tools to which they need access.

Students need access to good (free if possible) to get their work done.

The presenters plugged all sorts of wikis for various levels (class wiki, class/play wiki, team wiki, etc.)

PrimaryAccess.org to put audio and still images together (similar to Snapkast?)

Train thyself: Hitchhkr.com, edtechtalk.com.

Link to session page here.

Tuesday 2:00 - 3:00
Dr Sue Stoddart

Key Words: Effective and Lively!

• instructor presence - must be more present than normally would be in a face-to-face class
• lively - engage students
• know all the tools available to online discussions (see discussions not read, etc)

How do we really get to know students in online learning? - Through online discussions!

Great discussions do not “just happen”. You need to put work in before, during, and after.

Before - prepare in advance

• clarify goals & objectives - use to evaluate student participation, revisit and reevaluate
• plan guiding questions for discussion
• design activities that will prepare students to discuss - research material/interview for discussion topics
• clarify goals for each discussion
• talk about discussion (what is a discussion? How do you participate effectively in a discussion?)
• set ground rules - provide a rubric! (no “im speak”, etc)
  • Quality of Information
  • Resources
  • Interaction
  • Participation
  • Delivery

During - great discussions are purposefully led

• ask questions that establish what students understand before asking them to do more complex or original thinking - don’t want students to get to the end too quickly. Let students ask each other questions, and evolve discussions. Students not participating this way? Step in, ask questions, and promote students asking questions as well
• ask follow-up questions that allow students to develop or clarify a response. Model this so your students will start doing this as well
• give feedback as they go, tell them how many points they are getting, where they are lacking, what they can do to improve

After - great discussions are assessed

• debriefing or journals - provide record or summary of key points as they emerge. Key things they learned from each discussion, and from course in general. Add entries every week.
• draw connections between day’s discussion and other topics - even a final project. All discussions build on each other up to the final project. Each is relevant to the greater course and can be connected to earlier and later discussions
• evaluate student responses based on ground rules. Not just quantity but quality of responses
• Use your rubric! Follow what it says, don’t grade on things not on the rubric.

Building to more discussions

• how will next discussion build on learning created in the current discussion?
• Always go in with discussions already set up. But allow the flexibility to change if the discussions shift, or if there are problems with a key topic, or if students understand something earlier than expected
• use students’ comments or written responses to address new discussions
• emphasize connections between new topic and earlier discussions

Extend the Traditional Classroom - benefits and uses of online discussions

• student interaction outside of class
• seek clarification for issue encountered in coursework - students can come more prepared if they have questions in between classes
• build on one another’s perspectives and gain deeper understanding - don’t be afraid to learn from students, don’t be afraid if they “know more about technology” than you do
• class preparation - use to discuss ideas to use later in class
• monitor discussions to identify where students are struggling
• frequently asked & straightforward questions
• shy students, students lacking confidence - they can flourish in online discussion! They find that they do have things to contribute, and gain confidence as they go
• chat rooms - one-on-one conversations with students, group work, special topics. (Sue doesn’t use chat rooms frequently, but when she does she doesn’t require them for the grade.) Fastest typers tend to contribute the most. Good for interviews with authors or other people of interest.

Failing Online Discussions

• no community - usually because the instructor isn’t present enough
• no motivation - no requirements, not clear goals and rubrics, don’t know if anyone is actually reading what they’re doing
• unfamiliarity - don’t know how to use the discussions. Use Snapkast, Camtasia, etc to help students learn
• no credit - doesn’t motivate students
• unrealistic goals

Benefits of Online Discussions

• students can think through responses thoroughly and take time to compose and edit before submitting
• can respond, save, and “sleep on it”
• can hear from each individual student as opposed to only the more outgoing people who are more apt to respond traditionally
• interactive learning and accountability - putting your thoughts in text. It’s there, and will be there in the future

Online Discussions are what make online courses courses and not just shoveling a face-to-face course online and expecting students to interact with it.

Free cartoons for instructors from Randy Glasbergen!

Link to session page here.

Monday 12:30 - 1:30
Paul Sparks

prsparks@pepperdine.edu

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it yourself.” - Alan Kay

Create a new identity - Avatar

• fully customizable
• hair/clothes/gestures/etc
• reflection of yourself OR new identity
• can have more than one avatar (”alts”)
• creating identities helps learn!

Participate in Community

• spaces built for interaction
• bars, dances, etc
• people share experiences through their avatars
• real sense of presence

Over 1 million active users in the last year, up to 8,000 private islands. But! Only 60 schools involved in Second Life

McLuhan Problem - create a virtual classroom in Second Life. Get this wonderful new technology….and make avatars sit in desks in rows???

Some ideas:

• create environment based on conceptual ideas of a book
  SLiki (collaborating to create virtual spaces)
• go to an island speaking a foreign language

Collaboration in Second Life

(student thoughts)

• collaborate in ways unique to SL
• think about learning in a different way
• take a concept, build something to represent it
• requires constant communication

Learning in Second Life

(student thoughts)

• take a concept, build something to represent it
• learning curve
• come to deeper understanding of topic and learning

Link to session page here.

Monday 11:00-12:00
Thomas McNeal

Students can take photos and video clips from anywhere. They can interview professionals in the field, and take video of locations of interest. Video taken can then be transferred to iTunes, etc. Using mobile phones for capturing video gets around high costs and maintenance of high quality equipment. Phones are also devices students always have on them, so they can take impromptu videos whenever they stumble upon something which could be used for a class.

Problem! The clips can only be 15 seconds each in length.

Solution: PocketCaster from ComVu
This product is in beta testing - so it’s free! (for now). Students can stream and save video clips without the time limit and do a live broadcast from the phone to a website. You can also record video without the live stream, and the site will archive the video so you can later view them and choose which you wish to use. Students only need a phone that can record video and a data account with a mobile carrier. (Tom has all of this for free from Verizon: they gave him some phones and free service. Other carriers will have varying costs for sending video.)

Journal of the Research Center for Educational Technology

Kent State Research Center for Educational Technology

Contacts:

Thomas McNeal
tmcneal@kent.edu

ComVu Media Inc.
Tony Randall
tr@comvu.com

Verizon
Laura Merritt
Laura.Merritt@VerizonWireless.com

Link to session page here.

Monday 8:30-9:30
Cristian Rizzi

What kinds of skills will our children need in 20 years?

• problem solving
• metacognitive skills
• able to use technology
• teamwork
• empathy & passion
• ability to find & filter information

21st Century Learning Skills Initiative

Students are being well-prepared academically, but not prepared for the work force. Group of corporations & educators got together to figure out what we need to teach our students to make them employable.

What they came up with:

3R’s

• Reading
• Writing
• Arithmetic

Also 7 C’s

• Critical Thinking & Problem Solving
• Collaboration, Teamwork & Leadership
• Cross-cultural understanding
• Communication & Media Literacy
• Computing & ICT Literacy
• Career & Learning Self-Reliance
• Creativity & Innovation

There is a difference between learning something and understanding something. If you understand it, you can use it. Collaboration and project-based learning helps students understand.

Think Quest - Project-based learning competition. Website building competition, challenging students to create innovative and educational websites to share with the world.

eDivide - gap between people with access to technology and those without increasing.

• Physical Barriers
• Digital Barriers
• Human Barriers
• Socioeconomic Barriers

Website was created by students working together in a project-based environment, one of the group winners of the Think Quest competition.

What is 21st Century Project Learning?

Students working in teams to experience and explore relevant, real-world problems. The teacher’s role is to be a coach, facilitator, guide, adviser, mentor, or conductor. They should not be directing and managing all the student work.

Key Features of Project-Learning:

• project-centered
• learner-centered
• question/problem
• real-world
• relevant
• open-ended
• focused on Higher Order Thinking Skills
• Collaborative
• Creative
• Multiple Perspectives
• Communication-driven

Oracle Education Foundation (behind Think Quest and Think.com) will be at the vendor fair booth 2232. A team of students involved in the Think Quest competition will be there at 1:15.

Link to session page here.

Sunday 8:30-3:30
Greg Jones, Scott Warren

What is a 3D Online Learning Environment?

• 3D multi-user environment
• collabortive groupware tools (some form of presentation communication)
• unified communication tools (chat, audio, etc)

These are common for all forms of MMO’s. The difference between any MMO and one used for educational purposes? Learning! (informal or formal)

Other properties of a 3D Online Learning Environment:

• Instant engagement - space, relationships, presence
• Interaction, immediacy
• multi-modal & -media
• distributed learning (as opposed to distance - all at own console)
• 3D environment as efficient as video conferencing (because it’s distributed)

History of Online Environments

Text-Based

• MUD
• MOO
  • (Note: Rutgers has a MOO! Check it out!)

Graphical MMORPG

• EverQuest
• World of Warcraft

Digital Worlds

• MMO Social World
  • Habitat
  • Vzones
  • There.com
  • Second Life
  • Activeworlds
  • QWAK
  • Multiverse
• Educational / 3D Online Learning Environments
  • River City (Harvard)
  • Quest Atlantis (University of Indiana)

Driving forces in 3D Online Learning Environment development - use of better computers, wanting to take it farther, solving problems

Affordances of Digital Worlds

Uses

• simulate real-world problems
  • science labs in 3D space
  • acquire language if given enough exposure and reason to know it
• blend face-to-face & online experience
  • communication purposes
  • hybrid courses
• situate activity within narrative
  • use 3D space for students to explore and talk to pedagogical agents - in-world characters that give students information (can simply be the teacher’s avatar, or a non-playable-character)
  • learn story through exploration
  • translate what they learn to real-world
  • not just about one variable, have to experience the whole world
• scaffold through pedagogical agents
  • students can go to pedagogical agents as many times as they need to. Over time they become independent learners seeking answers on their own.
• communication
• learning task gate keeping
  • students cannot move onto next thing until finish last

Media Affordances

“Perceptual properties of the environment that become apparent when perception is approached from an ecological perspective” (Gibson, 1978).

• don’t have to actively cognitively process each sense
• get lots of info from just an image, animation, or video
• be wary of cognitive overload!

Interactivity

• tools (keyboard, mouse, etc)

Simulations

• environment changed as directed and experienced by user
• causes & consequences in a safe environment (promote experimentation and exploration)

Communicative

• permits users to communicate with peers and/or system
  • synchronous & asynchronous chat
  • audio, video
• Habermas’ (2001) Theory of Communicative Action
  • efficiency of communication makes us most effective learners (most bang for your buck)
• collaboration, competition, coordination, cooperation

Visual/Spatial

• want to get own understanding of world, not give a scripted understanding
  • consider images (2D or 3D) as opposed to text - allows students to come up with their own interpretation, rather than you telling them what they are experiencing
• movement within structure
  • San Jose State created a 3D cell in Second Life — users can walk around and explore
  • can remember better if you experience it
• stimulus & response
• efficient organization of information in 2D & 3D spaces
• Paivio (1986) - dual coding theory
  • audio + video = more effective
  • But! Depends on what kind of learner it is - some learn better from exposure to just one
  • learners focus more on which has more information (a video where most of the important information is in the audio will result in learners only listening, not watching)
  • two most be balanced & learner must rely on both

Interaction with Learning Objects

• objects within space for immediate feedback
  • interact with objects, NPC’s
• pedagogical agents
• environment - dynamic changes to environment based on player interactions
• peer & instructor interactions in environment
  • but must have other in-system interactions, otherwise learners will use face-to-face communication instead of in-world communication

Motivational

A pure simulation not as effective as an environment with a game-like structure. Learners are most engaged with:

• video games
• play
• accomplishment (economy, items)
• grade-scale of leveling and improving
• narrative (mystery, ghost story, etc)
• feedback from characters (also it is less intimidating to get feedback from an avatar rather than an in-person instructor. Because of this the learner is more likely to try again and go back for approval)
• Gagné’s 9 Steps of Instruction
• Hawthorne Effect - “coolness” factor diminishes over time. So, you want to always be adding new stuff and pushing the bar forward to keep students interested and motivated.

Identity

• role play (Murphy, 1997; Steinkuehler, 2005)
• self cloak/anonymity

Challenges at the University Level

• short time to create learning community (a few weeks!)
• limited contiguity of communicators (how often/frequently can they really be in the system?)
• limited available participation (midterms, finals, work, family)

Improving Learning

What are you really measuring? Civilization did not necessarily teach history, but rather motivated students to want to learn more about history

Products that “improve learning” - is it the product itself or is it the modifications of the instruction in conjunction with the product that improves the learning?

Science/Inquiry-based Learning

• Quest Atlantis (Barab et al, 2006, 2007)
• River City (Dede, 2006)

ADDIE Model for Instructional Design

Analysis

• appropriate instructional methods for learning goals (do we really want a 3D learning environment?)
• identifying virtual worlds for learning (not all virtual worlds are created equal)
• commensurability of learning goals and digital affordances

Design

• technology professionals versus educational professionals
• proprietary system intentions and limits (whole system…both tool and school)
• contributions of the system
• on and off-task behaviors

Development

• system intention (does the system really work how you want it to work, or are modifications needed?)
• technology skill (what are your tech resources for programs and scripting)
• cost
• time
• product testing (test on users)

Implementation

• student subversion of the system (how you intend students to use the system and how they actually use it are different)
• teacher subversion of the system (usually due to lack of training)
• system learning curve
• multiple learning styles
• it is not as cool as you think it is
• school policy and equipment

Evaluation

• impact of complex worlds (difficult to study individual variables)
• standardized assessments
• qualitative assessments

Some Concerns

• commercial products (hard to motivate companies to help with your needs)
• user violations and system values
• kids and virtual worlds
• harassment impacting identity negatively
• too much time in virtual world

Saturday 8:30-11:30
Helen C. Barrett, Ph.D.

Helen has been working with ePortfolios since 1991. She has recreated her ePortfolio many times with some 28 or so different tools. One of the main points Helen wanted to drive home — students get so much more out of ePortfolios if they are given some freedom to express themselves and take ownership of their work!
Authentic Assessment with Electronic Portfolios using Common Software and Web 2.0 Tools - a paper Helen wrote on ePortfolio tools

Creating ePortfolios with Web 2.0 Tools - some different tools Helen has used to create her ePortfolio with samples for each

One tool Helen has used and liked is Protopage.
Helen’s Protopage ePortfolio.

Another tool Helen likes is Task Stream. Some of its features:

• secure
• student ePortfolios
• rubric/lesson plan builders
• assessment

But! Task Stream is a commercial project. It is also not Helen’s favorite tool, it is the one she recommends among commercial systems. (Full disclosure: Helen has been working for Task Stream…)

Web 2.0 Tools for creating ePortfolios:

• blogs
• wikis
• GoogleDocs
• Etc!

ePortfolio Components:

ePortfolios are made of two parts

Working Portfolio - accumulation of student’s work
This is the digital archive of student work. It is a repository of meta-tagged artifacts with personal information and a reflective journal (blog). This is all of the student’s work collected.

Presentation Portfolio - collection for specific purpose/audience
This is a subset of the Working Portfolio. It is pulled from materials in the Working Portfolio for the goal of the specific Presentation Portfolio. There can be many Presentation Portfolios, depending on the purpose and audience. There can be multiple views and permissions (public, private, etc) to give audiences correct permissions for each Presentation Portfolio.

Portfolio Process

1. PURPOSE - need to have specific purpose (Most important, and often overlooked!)
2. Collect - archive the materials
3. Select - Link the specific pieces to use for a portfolio (Note: hyper-linking helps students think metacognitively)
4. Reflecting - Storytelling (why did I choose, etc)

What is the best tool? — It depends!

The software capabilities you require allow interaction between teachers & students

If you have good Internet access -

• Task Stream (or any commercial fee-based system)
• Open Source Systems
• Web 2.0 Tools (blogs, wikis, etc)
  requires only a browser & Internet access to create an ePortfolio with Web 2.0 Tools. The software is on the company server

Web 1.0 vs Web 2.0 (O’Reilly, T (2005))

Using Web 2.0 Technologies

Advantages:

• free
• often open-source tools on web
• “Me Publishing”
• Shared Resources
• Shared Writing
• Media Creation Online

Disadvantages:

• requires higher technology competency
• mostly not secure websites

MySpace

According to the students: ePortfolio is like an academic MySpace - they use MySpace for friends, Task Stream for work. Many schools ban MySpace, but what is it really? It has all the elements of an ePortfolio for personal use. In fact, Helen suggests that MySpace is like the training wheels for ePortfolios.

Wikis

• wikispaces (hosted site with free subscriptions for teachers)
• mediawiki (open source - used by wikipedia)

Online Collaborative Writing Tools

• GoogleDoc
• Zoho Notebook (by Zoho)

What is an ePortfolio?

• Digital scrapbook
• reflection of self & growth
• lifetime repository
  • we focus on student work

An ePortfolio is a purposeful collection of work that demonstrates efforts, progress, and achievement in one or more areas over time.

The Challenge - multiple purposes!

The Learning Portfolio - “Know Thyself”

• lifetime of investigation
• self-knowledge as outcome of learning
• John Zubizaretta - The Learning Portfolio, 2004

The Assessment Portfolio

There are two kinds of assessment: Assessment OF Learning and Assessment FOR Learning

Assessment Of Learning:

• Sumative
• past to present
• purpose prescribed
• artifacts mandated (scoring for external use)

Assessment For Learning:

• formative
• present to future
• purpose negotiated
• artifacts selected by learner

The best way to improve student achievement - Assessment For Learning, because you give feedback on learning so that students can improve.

The Portfolio as a Story

ePortfolios should not all look the same. This should be a student’s tool to use as a laboratory where students construct meaning from own experience by looking at and reflecting on their work. Individualized and personalized, not template-driven. ePortfolios are a personal learning environment.

(Note: one great way to engage students is to add other media created by students, i.e.: a narrated slide show of student artwork.)

We are moving from filling in blanks on a web form to blogs & wikis, collaborative and constructive: learner focused, not accountability-driven. Students utilize this as lifetime personal web space.

Students need a sense of ownership!

So, how do we make ePortfolio development a natural process integrated into everyday life - instead of just something done at the end of the semester? How do we make it a Lifelong and Life Wide Learning process constructed throughout time?

How can we integrate ePortfolios with what we know about social learning & interactivity?

The Architecture of Interaction (Web 2.0) allows us a Pedagogy of Interaction (”ePortfolio 2.0″). We need to use these tools to create a process of self reflection, peer collaboration, and construction over time.
The overall goal is the development of lifelong independent learners (paraphrased, Ian Fox).

How-to: ePortfolios

Different tools for making ePortfolios.

Each page represents one learning goal. Items on each page include:

• What (Artifact)
• So What (Reflection — why, how, etc)
• Now What (My Future Learning Goals — what do I still need to learn in relation to this goal)

My trial WikiSpace ePortfolio

With Portfolio in Hand - Nona Lyons

Caution! Portfolio perversion - portfolios becoming the new test. This inhibits student creativity and individualism. But, it can’t be completely individual, or there is no practical way to evaluate. We get a continuum…

Where is the balance?

This is the challenge!

Session Wiki

The introduction included a quick demo of skrbl.

Introduction continued with a demonstration of clicker technologies. They used the eInstruction system; it seemed pretty decent. They mentioned last year’s keynote where a group of about 1,000 listened to the speaker and participated with clickers. The speaker was able to alter his speech based no responses from the crowd.

One of the questions was related to the generation that you represent. I was the only Millennial in the group.

Participated in a scavenger hunt. The final product is here.

Facts about Millenials.

Compared to Gen X, Millenials outnumber 2:1. Millenials comprise 30% of the population.

Millenials who were pre-teens during 9/11 are more connected to theirselves, more likely to question parents’ morals and values. “Our generation isn’t all about sex, drugs, and violence. It’s about technology, discovery, and coming together as a nation.” “They have values reminiscent of past generations. They appreciate country, family, and the planet.”

We need to be able to tap into the MySpacers mind while focusing on a standards-based curriculum AND using the tools with which this generation was born. How do we do this?

Link to the first part of the presentation regarding the Millennials can be found here.

Web 2.0

Traffic is soaring to sites that involve communities of participation. The problem with this is that Millennials do not have a great sense of information literacy. Most educators are not doing a great job helping students find a good foundation in information literacy. ICT Study results here.

Blogs are being created at the rate of 1.4 every second (120,000 a day).

Examples:

• Math class teacher creates a blog for each class he teaches, makes students contributors.
• Middle school teacher assesses student’s understanding of a book by allowing them to blog their assignments/comment on others’ posts.
• Using flickr under Creative Commons licenses for instructional purposes.
• Creating a YouTube channel for a class, Chinese father posting “History of…” videos that he helps his children make.
• TeacherTube
• Odeo, Pod-o-matic as solutions for recording your own podcasts…really simple.
• Vox is mySpace for grown ups. Not cool for kids
• TakingItGlobal - kids taking service projects to the web.
• Gliffy, bubbl.us - Collaborative mind mapping
• Skrbl - Collaborative white boards
• MyNoteIt - Collaborative online note taking.

The Web Tools for Educators wiki can be found here. There are links to all of the above technologies plus many more. Treasure trove for new instructional technologies to analyze.

Highlighted the Intel Educational tools, specifically, the ranking engine.

The example ranking involved values for a K-12 district. We were supposed to arrange them based on the values that we found most important for developing 21st century. Here is a comparison between my choices (left) and the class average.

Here is a scary example, comparison between me and one member in the class…

Yikes!

Long, hands-on use of wiki software.

Examples of teachers using Web 2.0 applications.