Podcasting for Educators

In Annette Lamb & Larry Johnson's articles about podcasting--"Podcasting in the School Library, Part 1 & 2" (Teacher Librarian 34:3 February and April 2007), the authors note that pocasting--(a combo of ipod and broadcasting) is a great way to offer multimedia learning for students. In Part 1, the they state, "Podcasts are a way to convey ideas and emotions that are difficult to express in a text format." What I liked most about this article was the incredible resources for educational podcasts which were listed included:
Education Podcast Network
http://epnweb.org
Podcast Directory for Educators
http://recap.ltd.uk/podcasting
Podzinger
www.podzinger.com
and more!

The authors ask interesting and relevant questions including:
"What is the vaue of the audio medium? How does the Podcast fit with other learning resources? My family and I often listen to podcasts from NPR www.npr.org/podcasts and Studio 360 (http://perec.studio360.org/podcast.html) while traveling in a car and not only is there some topic for everyone--but, it's a great way to get new information while multi-tasking with other things like driving, playing games, knitting, etc.

In Part 2, "Creating Powerful Podcasts with Your Students," the authors state, "...instead of spending time confiscating MP3 players from students, [teachers can] integrate learning by involving students in scripting, recording, editing and sharing Podcasts..." Some tips to consider while creating a podcast are to: work in teams, write a script, check for copyright issues, select a good location for your podcast, choose a microphone, add sound effects and most importantly, select the right software. You can use GarageBand or the opensource software Audacity which is free. Podcasts can aso include pictures, video and animations.

Race to Nowhere--education documentary

Race to Nowhere (www.racetonowhere.com) is a new educational documentary by parent Vicki Abeles focusing on the overly competitive educational system which has been created for high schoolers in the US. Many of today's students who are overworked by homework, extracurricular activities, rehearsals, varsity sports and more are suffering from depression, headaches, stomach aches, anorexia and anxiety. As the creator and director of the film states, "We want the best for our kids"--watching kids today and the stress they are under led this parent to document and then challenge current paradigms for education.

There were many distinguished educators and psychologists in the film emphasizing the point that in today's society we are asking students to perform at a much higher level than in the past. Sarah Bennett, author of Stop Homework noted that in her research--homework does not make kids smarter. Apparently, there is no correlation between academic achievement and homework. Dr. Deborah Stipek from the SOE at Stanford University noted that there is no equity in schools and kids in low-income schools do not get the resources that other kids in high-income schools get such as tutoring for ACT/SAT, computers, summer opportunities, etc. Dr Denise Pope, another Stanford education professor and author (Doing School: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed-Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students) noted that the implication of tutoring says to the student--you can't do it alone, we need to help you. This lends itself to the culture of "perform and then produce" and leaves out the all-important step of processing. Many of the educators noted that "smart" has many different meanings.

Due to the 2002 No Child Left Behind laws, we now have students drowning in content and tests. Unfortunately in the US, success is measured by how much money you make v how happy you are. What does it mean to be successful for kids?

How do we get kids to love learning? Learning is power. We need to raise critical thinkers and problem solvers. The point of education is to learn, not to memorize facts. The documentary asks: What type of individuals are we trying to create for our society? What does it take to produce a happy, motivated and creative human being?

Talking About Technology to Teacher-Candidates in the SOE at Pace

This week I did a 30 minutes presentation in one of my Professor's classes in the SOE at Pace University. Professor Kathryn De Lawter, an Assistant Professor in the SOE at Pace has been using Ipads in her educational pedagogy class via a Verizon grant and I came into her class, at her request, to talk to future teachers about learning and technology. I started with some anecdotal stories from my own family, kids and students I work with and talked about how I have watched technology push individuals to learn in new ways. I introduced some great sites like: comiclife, wordle, glogster, xtranormal, dipity and more to get them to see that students want to be engaged and want to create. I told them to join twitter---only one student out of 30 was on twitter because it is the best Personal Learning Network out there.

There was one student in particular who really despised the idea of using technology. She called me out when I used terms like--"this program is really easy--it's just drag and drop" and said--why is drag and drop important for students to learn? What does it teach them? I love a good challenge and what ensued was a heated discussion around her views as an anti-technology person and mine as a technology educator. In the end, I'm not sure I convinced her to even try using anything technology-related in the classroom. What made me ultimately sad was that she is an example of so many of the teachers out there who basically are not--going with the flow in contemporary society. Change is good--and for an educator to be completed closed off to change is quite unfortunate. How do we get teachers to try using technology in the classroom? I haven't figured this one out yet--but, I know that my own passion for technology will remain and grow.

Gaming & Education--Part 2

In James Paul Gee's article, "Good Video Games and Good Learning," (Phi Kappa Phi Forum 85, No. 2, Summer, 2005), he notes that games are "hard, long and complex." He asks, "How do you get someone to learn something long, hard and complex and yet, still enjoy it?" He raises a really good point and says--"Humans actually enjoy learning, though sometimes in school you would not know it." This leads me to a question that I think about a lot--How do you motivate kids to learn? Gee makes an interesting point by saying that the context of schoolwork is mostly made up of facts--biology, world history, even math--and that these facts are basically trivia. Games are also made up of tons of trivia--the better you do in the game, the more facts you know.

Gee then goes on to look at various learning principles around games. Interaction, Risk Taking, Customization ("real intersections between the curriculum and the learner's interests, desires and styles), Well-Ordered Problems, Pleasantly Frustrating and System Thinking ("encourage players to think about relationships, not isolated events, facts and skills) are just some of the fourteen principles Gee talks about in terms of what students can learn from games.

Gee raises significant and excellent points. I enjoy watching my own kids playing games because I know that they are learning as they challenge themselves and their friends to a game. Games can be educational and are a great way to learn 21st century skills such as critical thinking, collaboration, cultural awareness and technology.

Gaming & Education--Part 1

The implications for gaming in education are huge. There has been so much research around gaming and education in the last ten years noting how much children can learn through games, that it still baffles me that parents and some educators can't see the value in games. One of the most prominent proponents of games and education is the Arizona State Professor of Literacy studies, James Paul Gee, who wrote the influential book, What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Literacy and Learning back in 2003. In the 2009 article, "Welcome to Our Virtual World," (Educational Leadership 66, No. 6) written by Gee and Michael Levine, the Executive Director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, the authors note that students are bored at school and that we need to motivate them in new and different ways. They state that games involve complex thinking, problem solving and this is even tied to language and understanding vocabulary words and concepts. They note, "Many young people today also design and produce media, often collaboratively, in a popular culture that stresses production and participation, not just consumption and spectatorship." Everyone is an expert, a professional in this digital age on some aspect of content. Gee and Levine state, "Digital media holds out the potential to hone the skills necessary for success in our globalized world."

Gee and Levine encourage teachers to help their students gain the necessary skills needs for 21st century jobs. They suggest doing Webquests with kids as well as allowing students to do podcasts, play good video games and more. The authors state, "To leverage the potential of digital media to transform classrooms and motivate students, teachers must become tech savvy...They merely need to gain a basic level of comfort with technical learning and be open to opportunities to gain expertise in not just using--but also producing with--such technologies as YouTube, blogs, and social networking sites." Lastly, the authors list some excellent resources for teachers--a few of which are listed below:
*Classroom 2.0 Wiki (http//wiki.classroom20.com)
*Route 21 (www.21stcenturyskills.org/route21)
*Edutipia (www.edutopia.org)

More on SB--Designing Lesson Plans

There is an amazing SB podcast at www.pdtogo.com hosted by two amazing technology educators in Canada. You can listen to these pocasts on your smartphone or ipod and I've just recently downloaded a whole bunch of them. I recently listened to a SB lesson from December 9, 2007--yes, almost four years ago, but still relevant to creating SB lessons today. The lesson was called the "Compare & Contrast Episode No 103." Ben Hazzard, one of the hosts, looked at Dr. Robert Marzano's research into instructional strategies that work for children. Dr. Marzano has an interesting website here: http://www.marzanoresearch.com/about/about_dr_marzano.aspx. The SB lesson included types of comparison/contrast lessons that you can do with kids. I have used this strategy a lot when looking at art history with college-level students and I know that students really enjoy looking at a work and seeing what is the same and what is different--it really makes them think about small details that yield big differences in artworks and the historical, cultural and economic period of the time. In this way, you can discuss the visuals with students and spur them onto a deeper discussion about a particular topic. This is really good for differentiated instruction as well because it helps a child with learning differences look and then think about what is the same/what is different using a multi-modal approach. Another great site mentioned is:http://www.smartboards.typepad.com/ This one is great for ideas and suggestions around creating lesson plans on the SB. So much to learn with the SB!

Some thoughts on the SMARTboard

I've seen SMARTboards in action and I even fought for one at my son's school a few years ago. I've seen how young learners love the immediacy and connectedness of it. In my further studies related to SB, I went to Smart Exchange (http://exchange.smarttech.com/#tab=0) and reviewed the following lesson plan called: Pop Art: What Inspires an Artist? The lesson says that it can be used for elementary through high school age students. In this Smartboard lesson, the first slide gives you a magnifying glass and asks students to consider the question--What Inspires an Artist? By guiding the magnifying glass over empty frames, what is revealed are concepts like: love, money, fame, etc. The second slide which shows a Marc Chagall, asks the viewer to consider what inspired Chagall--and I couldn't get the slide to work to show me what inspired him! Kind of frustrating. The next slide on M.C. Escher also didn't work. The next slide on religious artworks had the answer cut off a bit on the bottom part of the screen. The next few slides were not game-like and just stated, in general, what are art movements and what inspires artists in various art periods. I like slide 12 which states on the bottom--"to understand art, it helps to know what is going on when the artwork was made." Art is ultimately about history. Slide 13 asks students to create an artwork about the present day and slide 14 contains a bit of a chart to help students organize various categories of history including--politics, technology, economics, lifestyle, etc. The next few slides gives an intro to various pop artists--there is a lot of text on the slide as well as various images of the artist's works. Slide 21 has an imported crossword puzzle about pop art for review. The students can write in the answers using a SB marker. The last 4-5 slides are slides for a teacher to look at which gives some essential questions as well as a rubric.

I have to confess, that one of the things I've been doing for many years is teaching art history to students. All in all, I found this SB lesson, quite rudimentary--almost trite in its definitions of what inspires artists. The SB lesson was very glossy with all the images and then the text on the top. Why not just show a student an image of an artwork? Why does there have to be a long definition of who the artist is and what he does on the top of the slide? Could there have been a better way to organize the material? I also felt that the SB slides were kind of trivial in a way--almost like silly games to get students to critically think. I briefly looked at another SB lesson about copyright and the example used was JK Rowling and the Harry Potter books. I found that lesson also kind of silly--skipping over major facts and issues about copyright--not even mentioning fair use. And, the whole thing was being "narrated" by a purple wizard.

Prior to looking at these two lessons, I was really into SBs. I know how important they are to multi-modal learners. I know my son couldn't learn half the things he knows without having one in his classroom. I have seen how smart teachers use the SB to review course material, to show videos or to play math or reading games during school breaks or at the end of the day. So, I'm a bit saddened to see two SB lessons which I consider to be just mediocre at best. Perhaps, these new opinions are being clouded by the brilliant podcast with technology educator, Alan November (http://novemberlearning.com/) that I listened to right before looking at the SB lessons. I really enjoyed this great resource: SMARTboard Lessons Podcast at http://pdtogo.com/smart/?p=93 even though this particular one with November was from July 2007. So much of what he said still rings true for today including stating his belief that "teaching children to add value to the world and teaching children to have self-respect and empathy" are some of the most important things we need to teach students. He also noted that corporations seem to value collaboration, risk--but schools don't and that school is like "the learning police--we block the cool things--podcasts, IM, blogs, etc." I so agree with this idea! Look at NYC public schools which don't even allow students to have cell phones (most put them on silent in their coats and backpacks!) November also stated that the job of a teacher is to understand how students can use lots of technological applications and how we, as educators can demand more rigorous assignments. He doesn't think teachers have to know every bit of technology out there--let the students guide the teacher--that's called collaboration. November noted that to him, "the white board is a $2k blackboard in many classes and that it takes a really gifted teacher to work it well." He stated that he prefers technology where students each have something on their desk--a computer, an ipod, etc. He also states that faculty should be engaged and transformed in SB technology and the principal should use a SB during faculty meetings. Further, he notes that "wikis, blogging, web portals, podcasting--everything should flow together--it should be a continuum of interconnectedness." Lastly he states--technology has to be about equity--that we have to enable access to all students and that the reality is that technology is not an equalizer--it is an enormous polarizer." November gives you a lot to think about--and I agree with his analogy of a SB as a giant expensive blackboard. I do think that a SB is very helpful for K-8, but I hope that by the time a student is in high school, that s/he has his own laptop and that they are using all sorts of educational technologies to learn.

Top 10 Tips for Students Thinking About Their Future Careers

I was recently asked to speak at Career Day at a high school in Brooklyn. There were many people speaking about their careers in journalism, art, business, science careers and more. Here's what I told the students (in no particular order) attending the section I talked at: Education.
1. Spend your twenties in school (especially if you don't yet have the responsibilities of marriage, children, etc.)
2. Like what you do--be passionate about it.
3. Be creative and flexible in your life. If you don't like your job, think about how you can find a new one.
4. Take a risk--especially if you are young and don't have lots of debt. That means--travel, start a business, try many different jobs.
5. You can do more than one thing with your life. You can be a teacher and an artist.
6. Think about what your skills are--can you write? Are you a great researcher? Are you great with technology? Are you a people person?
7. The jobs that will be available to you when you graduate are not even invented now. How can you stay current?
8. Obtain 21st century skills in whatever you do--creativity, collaboration, critical thinking.
9. Be a go-getter. This may include writing letters or tweeting people you admire or you may want to meet.
10. Intern and volunteer NOW.

Tux Typing for Kids

I'm spending the night exploring new open source programs and on SourceForge.net I typed in education and just found this amazing typing program for kids called Tux Typing. I downloaded it--as my computer warned me that this software could be harmful to my computer--but with tons of recommendations, I decided to go for it. I'm always looking for interesting typing programs, because my younger child is still learning to type and it has proven to be a difficult task. He hunts and pecks at the keys, even though he is on his computer at least 3 to 4 hours a day. He has a program he does everynight from his school called Typing Aces which--yes, is boring! I can hardly wait to show him Tux Typeing! It's a penguin named Linux who sits at the bottom of the screen and there are various games that you play using the penguin. For example, you can do finger exercises as fish come down from the top of the screen or you can laser away fish--again, using correct typing finger placement. Brilliant! After spending quite a few dollars over the past few years on fun typing programs, I'm so happy that, finally, some developers have created one for free. Thank you open source developers. I noticed it had over 2100 downloads this week with 54 recommendations and the last time it was updated was June 8, 2010. Linux the Penguin, you may just become my new BFF.

Yes, Open Source is Great for Educators

Open Source is free software that anyone can download for free. But, it's more--it involves giving away code and a community that works, edits, preserves and constantly improves on the project. Wikipedia notes that open source software has to have the following requirements:
the freedom to run the program, for any purpose; the freedom to study how the program works; and modify it (access to the source code is a precondition for this); the freedom to redistribute copies; the freedom to improve the program, and release the improvements to the public. One of my favorite sites to find open source software is:
http://opensourcemac.org which lists the best stuff for Mac. I've never used Juice before, but I'm eager to try it for podcasting. Of course, Firefox is amazing as is Cyberduck for FTPing files. I haven't looked at this site for about six months, but I can see that they've added a whole section on Education which features Moodle among others. If you don't want to purchase expensive software for a classroom or district, the best way to go is open source. I like the above site the best because it has simple downloadable instructions, clear graphics and easy-to-understand categories of what the software is and does. For students, I could see downloading any of the word processing programs as well as Audacity-a sound recording tool or Freemind which looks like Evernote for taking notes. There are also editing clients, wifi finders, protecting your laptop with an alarm and much more. While this page shows you open source projects that are stable, it is clear that the website is updated frequently by open source developers to showcase their wares. To quote the opensourcemac.org page, "Note to software creators: first of all, thanks so much for making free, open-source software-- we love you."

In an increasingly net enabled world...

Should our web tools be tightly connected or loosely aligned, and how do these decisions impact the classroom? This is an interesting question because I believe that web tools should be tightly aligned to state standards and content but, loosely aligned for students to explore. Take a look at this from Mohamed Amine Chatti's fascinating blog
http://mohamedaminiechatti.blogspot.com where he posted Michael Wesch's 2007 video Rethinking Education here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Xb5spS8pmE. Wesch talks about how the public is engaged in a level of writing, blogging and interactivity in unprecedented ways. Scanning, searching, editing, links, input, output are just some of the ideas that this video speaks about. Students want to be active, they want to create, categorize and not just consume. Yes, let's rethink the university! Let's rethink how kids learn and how they want to learn. How do we catch up with new processes? The public is living in a much larger sphere of information and knowledge. People want to make, create, share and explore collectively and together. Web tools like Tumblr, Google Sites, Blogger, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Delicious and more allow users to contribute to society with their opinions, ideas, pictures, thoughts, statements in an astounding way.
My question is--are teachers, administrators, principals really thinking about how to revise and redo course curriculum? It takes work and its totally different that teaching from the place where you are the giver of knowledge. Today, "we are harvesting collective intelligence" and we are on a new journey. People constructing knowledge--i.e. wikipedia--is good! Where are our students? What are our students doing? Let's Rethink Education!

Tech Kids Unlimited for Spec Needs Students --Animations Posted!

Here are the animations from Tech Kids Unlimited.
These were created with just seven hours of workshop time in Feb 2011.

http://vimeo.com/techcampunlimited

It's All About the Kids

On Webogg-ed, Will Richardson has excerpted out a part of his new book coming out in May 2011 called PERSONAL LEARNING NETWORKS: Using the Power of Connections to Transform Education at:
http://weblogg-ed.com/2011/personal-learning-networks-an-excerpt/. It looks like a great book!
In this excerpt he sites a teacher (Clarence Fisher) working in a very remote place who has connected himself and his students virtually via the internet and how it has significantly changed his classroom. He notes the power of a personal learning network to become "a connected learner." The students skype with other students around the world, watch Youtube and other videos and while doing so are involved in a virtual chat.

This teacher says his classroom is "thin-walled" to denote the ever-changing and shifting way that students gain knowledge. Fisher wrote on his own blog, the following:
"The connections have had very little to do with me. I’ve provided access, direction, and time, but little else. I have not had to make elaborate plans with teachers, nor have I had to coordinate efforts, parceling out contacts and juggling numbers. It is all about the kids. The kids have made contacts. They have begun to find voices that are meaningful to them, and voices they are interested in hearing more from. They are becoming connectors and mavens, drawing together strings of a community. They are beginning to expect to work in this way. They want to know what the people in their network are saying, to hear about their lives and their learning. They want feedback on their own learning, and they want to know they are surrounded by a community who hears them. They make no distinction about class, about race, about proficiency in English, or about geography. They are only interested in the conversation and what it means to them."

Richardson goes on to note the overwhelming amount of knowledge we have at our fingertips as compared to before the web. How, do we as educators, share the knowledge with our students? We can't spoonfeed them as was done in 19th and early 20th century paradigms of education. Instead, we must teach students to think about the journey of knowledge--where to find, access, define and use all of this accessible information. Richardson further notes that the old system of education--one size fits all, classrooms based on ages, traditional evaluations and assessments just don't work anymore. I agree. Richardson notes, "For each of us as learners in the world at large, the fundamental change is that we can be much more in control of the learning we do." The changing shift is that students and teachers can, should and need to be connected to one another in sharing knowledge. Personal Learning Networks like Delicious, Google Reader, Twitter and more make us one step closer to the knowledge each one of us has and each one of us is passionate about. So, as Facebook tells you: like it or share it. See you online!

Tech Kids Unlimited for Spec Needs Students

I recently just completed a 3-day tech workshop for kids with learning challenges called Tech Kids Unlimited.  I started this camp a year ago and this is the fifth time running it.  Kids who have various special needs sign-up via the JCC and spend three afternoons in the media lab creating their own animations using IStop Animation software.  Kids work in groups, collaborate, create and draw their own characters and sets and then animate.  One of the highlights of the workshop is seeing all the kids unique talents--some are interested in Blues Clues, others created their own characters which come to life on the screen.  Kids become producers rather than the usual consumers they are!  I have a wonderful artist-in-residence who leads the workshop and I always get high school and college volunteers who work with the students 1:1 for a really nurturing experience.  At the end of the workshop, we have a presentation of all the student's works for the parents, families and babysitters.  What fun.  Here are some pix from the latest workshop.  I will post the videos to my vimeo soon.  This parent feedback just in!:
HE BENEFIITED FROM SO MANY IMPORTANT DYNAMICS SIMLTANEOUSLY: WORKING IN A GROUP, COOPERATING, BEING CREATIVE, ASKING FOR HELP APPROPRIATELY, TAKING TURNS, SHARING, FEELING PROUD OF HIS WORK/EFFORTS!

No More Textbooks Or, A Digital Curriculum

This post:
http://21centuryedtech.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/part-1-going-digital-ten-points-to-consider-when-transforming-towards-digital-curriculum/
from Michael Gorman's 21st Century Educational Technology and Learning Blog (http://21centuryedtech.wordpress) should be a must-read for all teachers and administrators.

If you're attached to your Kindle or Ipad--and your kid uses it too in his spare time after school or on the weekends,  then you may very well know that books and yes, textbooks are from a by-gone era.  I recently went into a Borders where everything was 20 to 30% off.  I was excited to walk around the store and see what I could get for a discount.  As I looked at the shelves and aisles of books, I was struck with this thought--why do I want to buy these books when I could easily get them on my Ipad Kindle App and carry all of them around with me in a slim/sleek tablet?  I wandered over to the knick-knack area where there are bookmarks, pens, pencil cases and notebooks hoping to find something to purchase.  There wasn't anything of interest there--I have a Droid phone so all lists and To-Dos are easily stored on my phone.  So, while it's sad that Borders is going out of business and/or filed bankruptcy and is closing many stores, I honestly thought--are bookstores, things of the past?  Will we look at them in years to come like people wearing hats and gloves in the 1950s--where did all the milliners go?

Michael Gorman notes that curriculum for centuries in education has been driven via the textbook.  Whether you were lucky enough to get a new textbook in your school or a ten-year old one--that is what you got in your classroom.  I remember when my daughter entered elementary school ten years ago and the motto of her school was--"we don't use textbooks!"  That was new, different and quite revolutionary for teachers to structure learning around xeroxes, novels, science experiments and museums in the 90s.  In today's world where information is king, it is really unrealistic to use textbooks in the classroom.  How can a student of today study about the recent Egypt revolution?  Is their a textbook for kids about the meaning of people's changing relationships via technology--or, why the phone may not ring in your home anymore?--but, your cell phone is beeping and vibrating.

Gorman notes that it's not easy to "go digital." You need professional development for teachers, access for schools, time, familiarity with PBL, STEM and the ISTE standards, among other things.
I especially like Gorman's no. 10--"A digital curriculum must allow students to be at the center of their education with the teacher actively facilitating and orchestrating real student learning.  Such a curriculum allows students to contribute and design outcomes. It gives students the necessary ”Drive” (Daniel Pink) to become actively involved and take charge of their education."  What do you think?  Are textbooks dead?  Should all schools go digital?

Social Media Week in NYC & Higher Education

I went to the Higher Education panel of Social Media Week last week which was held at the McGraw Hill publishing offices in mid-town.  The McGraw Hill presenter talked about "the nexus between social media, data analysis and workflow tools" and so I was excited to see what the event would be about.  After this brief presentation about what McGraw Hill is doing in the world of technology, visitors were invited to a poster session featuring various tech companies.  McGraw Hill's own platform is called GradeGuru.com and it is basically a website where college students share their notes with other college students.  They are given incentives--prizes--for putting their notes up online.  Their literature says that GradeGuru is a "ready to use study network where students can: join their school and class communities, share study materials and collaborate with their peers, create and share class study materials, build their academic profile, set class goals, track progress and keep motivated."  Wow.  Sounds kind of impressive, but let's remember that most college students are already on Facebook or Twitter and are sharing ideas and materials through those platforms.  I asked a MH representative why students want to share their notes with other students (and probably only the smart students who are good writers would be even interested in this gameplan)....and he said that it relates to the era of sharing.  It seems, in some way, that MH is just really trying to gain access to the college population.  I know no one who has ever used GradeGuru.com and I teach and work at three universities in the metropolitan area.  Hmmm.  Next, I skipped over the guys from Google Apps for Education and the Skype table which was making a big sell about how professors are now using their software to skype with students.  I love skype and use it all the time, but I think Blackboard and other university software has chat/stream capabilities on most major campuses already.  I then went to Unigo.com which is another MH website where college students and experts tell you what the colleges won't about certain colleges.  Sounds like a guide to colleges by students, to me.  That has certainly been done before.  Next I talked to another bunch of guys about their website Jatched.com which apparently connects college students to certain brands.  I asked them--"shouldn't college students be studying and not going online to get things sold to them"--and the guy laughed and said--well, in between studying, they could go to the site.
All in all, I have to say, I was highly disappointed by the offerings at this Social Media Week event for higher education.  It seemed like companies just want to have the niche of the audience of college students to "sell" them something---becoming motivated to get good grades by posting their notes, branding consumer products to them, etc.  It was so frustrating to see that, ultimately, the interpretation of Social Media Week for Higher Education amounted to--what can we sell to college students because they are such a great niche market.  I found very little creativity in terms of what students really want or need in college.  I felt like every young entrepreneur there was trying desperately to have that million dollar idea that could be ultimately bought up by a bigger company so they could make tons of money.  I'm not sure what I expected--I guess I wanted some rich and original content around thinking about higher education and combining social media with it--but, that's not at all what was there.  I wish all of those companies a lot of luck.  It's clear the only one which is really doing meaningful work for students is Google Apps for Education.

The Best iPad Apps for Kids With Special Needs - Expertise - SavvyAuntie.com

The Best iPad Apps for Kids With Special Needs - Expertise - SavvyAuntie.com

Technology Vision Statement from a Private School in NYC

I was recently going through some emails and noticed that at one of my kid's schools, a private school in NYC, they have a Technology Vision Statement which was crafted in 2004-5.

Here's the statement:

The school's vision is to create a community where students can search, experiment, serve others and grow in an atmosphere of mutual respect, cooperation and trust.  We are committed to educating each student intellectually, aesthetically, spiritually and physically.  Each student is offered a challenging education that develops intellectual abilities, ethical and social values.

The use of technology at "the school" expands these educational aims and values.  Its goal is to help create a learning community in which students work with computers to develop a new ways of learning and thinking.  Technology thus serves as a medium of thought and expression and is broadly integrated into the curriculum to provide students with the ability to:

Explore

• Gain an awareness of the appropriate and ethical use of technology, with an emphasis on intellectual integrity
• Use their curiosity and perceptions to help develop the skills necessary to access, interpret, evaluate diverse educational reference materials and resources
• Internalize their learning by actively working to gather, interpret and process authentic information to solve actual problems
• Participate in many different learning situations in the same classroom: group projects, individual pacing and differentiated instruction

Express

• Become fluent in the use of software applications that encourage the development of their critical thinking skills and problem solving abilities
• Facilitate their development, organization and  presentation of ideas
• Communicate with teachers so that the instructor becomes a facilitator in open-ended learning activities, where students and instructors can learn from each other
• Creatively express themselves verbally, in writing and through the use of multimedia presentation tools

Exchange

• Use diverse modes of collaboration and communication in order to encourage and facilitate peer to peer cooperation rather than competition
• Access appropriate educational and research communities worldwide to sustain an expansion of inquiry beyond the classroom and the school itself, thereby making the world’s resources part of everyday educational activity
• Take advantage of global community resources, become exposed to diverse cultured and have the ability to publish their own accomplishments, projects and thoughts
• Make advance research a part of their daily school life

Technology empowers teacher to meet diverse learning need in a stimulating hand-on approach to learning.  When technology is efficiently integrated into the curriculum, it enables students to meet current learning goals while helping to prepare them for a life in the twenty-first century.

I really like this statement for a variety of reasons.  Even though it was written more than five years ago, it shows that the school was ready to take on the responsibility of incorporating technology into their school curriculum.  I notice that a lot of times my child has to do an assignment at school which consists of, for example, using PPT or using comiclife.com to create a report.  When I watch her work on these assignments, I can tell that there is an enormous amount of pride in her developing computer technology skills.  In fact, I think she tackles these assignments, possibly, with more rigor and creativity than just a regular word document paper.  If I was to add something to the statement for 2011, it would be to cover the use of social media--blogging, RSS, etc. and to write something about students learning to be producers of technology culture, not just consumers.

Overall, I think the committee did a really nice job, years ago! of having a tech vision for the school.  I'm excited to see what they come up with for 2011.

Can blogging change the traditional classroom?

Educators cannot teach one way, test another way, and expect positive outcomes.--Patricia Deubel

Blogs and testing are two controversial topics in educational learning for the 21st century.
What do blogs do for the student in the classroom?

1. They encourage students to write and reflect about a topic.
2. They break down barriers between student and teacher and home and school time.
3. They may be motivating in terms of their access to technology.
4. They engage readers in a conversation about the content/topic.
These are all good things.  These are all ways for students to explore content and new technological advances in learning technology.  Who wants to write in a black x white composition notebook anymore?  
Here's a good example of how a blog can be motivating to a student.  My own child, J, who has learning disabilities recently spent the past week at home due to cold and flu season.  After a few days, he was utterly bored consuming television and watching Youtube videos.  As I was putting together the template for this blog, I asked him if he would like to start a blog about his favorite things.  I had forgotten that back in 2008 his sister had actually set up a blog for him and lo and behold as soon as he signed onto blogger, his blog appeared!  He hadn't touched it for two years, but was eager to update it with three reviews of his favorite DVDs.  Wow!  He is not a writer.  But, he loves his computer and everything about it.  He spent about an hour writing his short reviews--three separate ones--and pushed the publish button.  An incredible sense of satisfaction came over him--not just in seeing his words in print online, but in updating his blog, making it even more fun with new design elements and automatically sending it to family and friends.  Hours later when he went on his email, he received numerous congratulatory notes from his fans letting them know that they had read and enjoyed his blog.
The anecdotal story above, I think, illustrates the power of technology for students and especially for students who DO NOT learn in traditional ways.  In "Educational Blogging" by Stephen Downes EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 39, no. 5 (September/October 2004: 14–26) the author notes that a blog, "in its purest form, the core of what has come to be called personal publishing."  The blog is the ultimate form of hypertext--"the capacity to link to new and useful resources."  Blogs can, according to Downes:
1. replace standard class web pages; 2. provide useful links and resources; 3. can organize in-class discussions; 4. can organize class lectures and summarize reading; and 5. act as vehicles for reflection. All of this is clearly a great way to engage students on a topic.  
However, this new form of software as used for educational purposes is not without its problems as Downes notes with these questions:  What happens when a free-flowing medium such as blogging interacts with the more restrictive domains of the educational system? What happens when the necessary rules and boundaries of the system are imposed on students who are writing blogs, when grades are assigned in order to get students to write at all, and when posts are monitored to ensure that they don’t say the wrong things?  By telling students they have to write on a blog for a grade--do we get unthoughtful blogs full of spelling and grammatical errors just to complete the assignment?  And, if students are "prompted" to write via specific assignments, does this really count for a blog?  I want to note that, if assigned properly, blogs can and should extend the learning and knowledge of a student by asking or maybe, forcing, them to dig further on the subject matter topic.  By writing about a specific topic about, for example, Rome, students can then attach pictures of what a gladiator looks like, link to a view of The Colosseum and more.  I think this is a much richer way of learning about a topic than by filling out a xeroxed sheet about Rome (which was a recent assignment for my child).  
If blogging is ultimately a way of the future--engaging, motivating, fun for the student and allows him/her to be in charge of accumulating and assessing knowledge on a topic--how do we now view testing a student with an online mechanism?  The answer is: vastly different.  In "Are we ready for testing under common core state standards?" by Patricia Deubel from The Journal on September 15, 2010, she notes that there are challenges with asking students to perform well via online testing methods.  Deubel states, "There are two major concerns in connection with the rise of CCSS online testing. First is the need to expand the technology infrastructure within schools. Second, learners need greater opportunities to engage with technologies they will encounter within the online testing environment. Given that teachers play a key role in learning and preparing learners to succeed on state standardized tests, regular technology use in classrooms will be essential for success of online testing."  So, we are faced with a double-edge sword--students can be using technology--at home and/or in school, but still, if the school is not updated with a well-equipped computer lab, network, and teachers who feel confident about using technology in the classroom, then, ultimately students will not be able to perform adequately on standardized tests using an online format. She notes, "If instruction does not involve all teachers integrating technology, then the playing field for learners to have had sufficient school-time experience with technology use is uneven, which might then impact learners' ability to successfully complete questions of an online test. There's nothing new in saying that teachers will need help with technology integration. We've been saying this since computers were first introduced in schools. However, new national assessments involving online tests that will be developed by SBAC and PARCC make this more imperative than ever."
In all, we can facilitate technological learning for our students by asking them to use it: practice makes perfect.  However, if the classroom learning environment is not adequately supported with teachers who feel confident in using new technologies and with classrooms that are well-equipped and supported with new computers and softwares, then we are ultimately failing our students.  Using technology for students and then testing students in an online format, must go hand-in-hand if it is to work properly.  Ultimately, the more students can use technology, the better off they will be in actually functioning in a digital world.  Daily life for everyone is being technologically changed--from banking, to libraries to checking out at the supermarket--all people must use technology and have a certain amount of comfort and ease using it.  If we don't expose our students to the latest in technology, they, ultimately, will not be able to function as independent adults in life.  And, that's even more important than performing well on a standardized test.