This blog is to provide Educational Technology resources to teachers from around the country. The resources listed here allow teachers to quickly find resources to use with their classes and to improve their own technology integration skills.
So, call me crazy! One of the ideas that I have been rolling around in my head over the past few weeks is to hold a EdTech Conference at Woodside High School, where I became the Vice Principal this past July. Now, this conference wouldn't be massive like CUE, or intimate like a Monterey CLHS/CUE conference, but would be more like a collaborative experience for those people who are already innovators in the Educational Technology field. I understand that many of the headliners, make their living this way, but I wanted to have something that would bring all of the innovators together in one place for three days and allow the group have some synergistic energy to tackle some of the issues surrounding EdTech and its implementation, or lack thereof in the schools of this country and around the world.
If you want to visualize it, think of a TED like conference or a FOO camp for just for those people working as innovators in the Educational Technology field. The location is great as well, since Woodside High School is one mile from Sand Hill Road the cradle of Silicon ValleyVenture Capital Firms and the weather during the Summer months is great. San Jose and San Francisco are 25 miles away in opposite directions.
The idea came from a connection I had over the past year after having been a participant in the Google Teacher Academy (November '06) as an attendee and as a Lead Learner (June '08) and seeing the large whiteboard in the lobby at Google with all of the ideas on it and how employees were using their 20% time to create new and innovative projects that interest them, which have become new Google products. The image stuck with me again last summer when I saw the movie 'Accepted,' where two High School seniors create a ficticious college to accept them and then create the college to keep the charade going. What the students found out in the process was that they were more motivated to learn when the constraints placed on them by traditional educational institutions were removed. Although it doesn't exactly fit, one of Clay Shirky's quotes comes to mind. "Social Tools don't create collective action, they merely remove the obstacles to it."
Attendance would be limited to 600, with 500 receiving invites and the other 100 being selected through an application process. Participants would be responsible for their own travel and lodging. The cost for attendees is $0.
Call me crazy? Maybe crazy enough to make it work?
I have been mulling this post in my head over the past few months for a few reasons. First of all, as I speak at different educational technology conferences, I see teachers at many different places along the skill continuum with regards to tech skills and there wasn't consensus as to which skills were really the most valuable for teachers. Secondly, as a new administrator, I wanted to have a list of EdTech skills I could use during the interview process to be able to objectively evaluate potential candidates for teaching positions at my school.
So, I started the process of developing a list, I didn't initially start out to list 50, but to list the skills I felt were necessary for teachers to have, which would allow them and their students to take advantage of the tools and services available. I just started typing in a 'Word' document and quickly the list grew to over 40 skills, so I decided I would get to 50 and stop there. I put the skills into 6 different categories to make it easier for me to assess strengths and areas for improvement quickly.
So, here's my list, I am not saying that the list is definitive, but I do think it is solid. As you look at the list, which skills would you delete or add? I am interested to hear what others think, since I tend to have higher expectations for teachers.
- Google: (10)
- turn on ‘safe search’
- use Google as a dictionary
- use Google as a calculator or conversion tool.
- search web pages from a particular domain
- search web pages from a particular country
- search for particular file types.
- determine the sites linked to a particular site.
- search for non-copyrighted material.
- set up a Google Alert.
- translate text into another language
- Google Apps / Tools: (5)
- set up an RSS reader. (Google Reader, Bloglines)
- set up a Google Group
- create a Google Spreadsheets form.
- put a place marker in Google Earth.
- save a Google Earth file. (.kmz)
- Internet: (8)
- decode an Internet URL
- find the owner of an Internet domain.
- download a document or image from an Internet site.
- view a historical version of a web page.
- compare the traffic of two different web sites.
- create a blog.
- create a wiki.
- set up an online calendar.
- Image / Videos: (4)
- download/upload images to an photo sharing site. (Flickr / Picasa)
- download a ‘YouTube’ or other video service video
- embed media into a webpage, blog or wiki.
- create an online slide show.(VoiceThread, Photostory, Animoto, Picasa Web Album)
- Communication: (6)
- send, receive and respond to e-mail.
- attach a file to an e-mail
- send e-mail to multiple recipients and how to use copy and blind copy
- use an Instant Messaging Client. (AIM, Google Chat, Yahoo Messenger)
- set up a microblog (Twitter, etc.)
- set up an Internet ‘phone call.’ (Skype)
- set up a video chat.
- Cell Phone: (3)
- use your cell phone to send a text message.
- use your cell phone to search Google. (SMS)
- upload images from your cell phone to the Internet.
- Personal Computer Management: (13)
- cut and paste from/into any Office Productivity Application (Microsoft Office, Open Office) document.
- crop an image
- create charts and graphs in any spreadsheet application
- copy text data and paste it into a spreadsheet so it can be manipulated or sorted.
- convert any office productivity document into a file type usable by another application.
- create a .pdf file.
- create a mail merged document.
- add media to any presentation application. (PowerPoint)
- save any document to a flash drive.
- burn data onto a CD.
- convert audio files into MP3’s.
- do basic computer troubleshooting .(Physical, Hardware, Operating System)
- test an Internet connection. (ping)
I am interested to hear your responses... please leave a comment or e-mail me here.
“We are all faced with a series of great opportunities - brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.” - John Gardner, Founder - Common Cause and former Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare.
This is one of the quotes that Thomas Friedman uses to start the second half of his new book, "Hot, Flat and Crowded." Just as we face many issues in dealing with Global Warming and the depletion of fossil fuels on the planet, we also face many issues in education that necessitate the change from the standard 5 rows of desks inside a classroom, with students reading from a standardized text book, following along with a teacher who is probably following the same lesson plan they developed ten years ago.
As the most technologically savvy country on the planet (allowing us to have an ego!), we need to play to this strength to solve the problems of global warming and in education. Unlike the world of "Green" industries that are in their infancy, many of the technologies that can transform education are in their teens, metaphorically speaking. Which means, we have seen these devices develop and we have a good idea what they will look like when they have fully matured and reach adulthood, but there is still some opportunities for change.
The tools that will power the change in education are known to a certain extent, in the fact that we are quickly seeing a convergence of technology tools at a price point which will make them affordable and accessible for most teens to own. We have all seen the XO Laptop ($100 Laptop), ASUS Eee PC and the new Acer Aspire One, all of which have a price of less than $350.00 and have the full functionality of a standard laptop. There are also mobile devices like the iPhone, LG Dare, G1 and the BlackBerry Storm that have many of the functions of a laptop with access to the Internet via a 3G mobile network. Want proof of this convergence? Animoto, the music video slide show site, has recently launched a version for the iPhone.
We need to think of these mobile technologies as 'leap frog' technologies, just as most of the developed world 'leap frogged' the wired telephone in their homes and went directly to cell phones which don't need a cable. In the personal computing market, many teens may or may not have their own computers, but a vast majority of them will have cell phones (current data states 80% of all 13 to 18 year olds) and it is the primary mode of communication for most of them, if you look at voice and text services. (Video Here illustrating this point.) The current survey states that 15% of all teens already have 'smartphones' and with the current two year replacement cycle of cell phones in the US, the numbers of teens owing 'smartphones' will rise dramatically by 2010.
So, what does this mean for education? We have a good idea as to what kind of devices students in our classes will have and some of the basic functions they will have, which will continue to expand as each of the mobile carriers develop 'App Stores' for their phones, allowing third-parties to develop and market applications for their devices. Educators need to develop ways for students to use these devices in ways to authentically assess their proficiency. Liz Kolb's blog, "From Toy to Tool: Cellphones in Learning" is a great resource with many different ways to use cellphones in the educational process. Here are just a few...
Camera, video camera, voice recorder, search engine, polling responder, speech to text messaging, mobile blogging, to do lists, etc. The number of applications available will continue to expand, so for the tech savvy educator it is imperative that you learn how to best integrate these devices into your curriculum. You can even deliver or share content with your students via video or podcasts they can access from their phones. For the tech savvy administrator, you need to find those teachers who are moving in this direction and give them the encouragement and support to keep developing ways to integrate these devices into the curriculum. I know as we start looking forward, we will be looking for teachers who have the skill and desire to move in this direction.
Your comments and suggestions are welcome... If you have ideas of how to integrate cellphones or smartphones into the curriculum, please drop me a note!
It has been awhile since I have been able to post on this blog, and the ideas have been piling up. Being a high school adminsitrator just doesn't give me the time to blog like I have had in the past. I have been able to keep up on most of the blogs I have followed in the past and read some books, but I haven't been as active in the Google Certified Teacher's Group as I had been prevously and I haven't 'tweeted' on Twitter as much either. That was one of the interesting side notes of my visit to Monterey earlier in the month, when I presented at the CLHS/CUE conference there. I had several people come up to me specifically to mention that they had noticed my absence from the blogosphere and the 'tweetsphere.' I was also impressed with the turn out I had in my one 3 hour session in Monterey, I had a triple sized room and eventhough I was the first thing on the agenda and not many people had arrived at the conference yet, I had a nice group that stuck with me the whole way through. If you were one of those who was in my first session in Monterey, thank you!
One of the goals of the Winter Break from school is for me to get some things done for school, but also to get some of the ideas that have been running through my mind out and posted here. I have things like "Filtering is Fallacy," "The 50 Skills Tech Savvy Teachers Must Have" and "Using a Crane to Lift Teachers from the Stone Age" as potential blog post titles. I have written a little on the filtering issue in the past and hit it hard during my last two presentations at the Monterey conference and in a private session with teachers in Piedmont. The 50 list came to me one afternoon when I was sitting at home spacing and I was actually able to pull over 40 skills off the top of my head in about 10 minutes. Thinking about a film showing the 50 skills in small screen casts mashed up together.
It has been over a month since I have posted on this blog for a variety of reasons, but the biggest reason is that I have been climbing a sharp learning curve in my role as the Administrative Vice Principal at Woodside High School. I have likened the experience to running on a treadmill and having people throw me things to carry as I run and deciding what to catch and what to let fly by. In this vein, I am in a mode where I am working hard to become a good administrator, while at the same time remaining connected to my previous roles as an EdTech coordinator and teacher. One of my primary motivations to get into administration was to advance the idea that school and education is changing and technology will have a major role in that transition.
Will Richardson's blog, Weblogg-ed, has been one of my favorites since I have entered the blogosphere myself and he seems to have a finger on the pulse of the directions in the EdTech. His posts on some of the Lessig materials have been spot on and I have read several of the books he has recommended on his site, including Henry Jenkins, James Surowiecki, Daniel Pink, Don Tapscott and Clay Shirky. His latest post has a quote from Clay Shirky which rings true for me.
"Social tools don't create collective action - they merely remove the obstacles to do it." - Shirky
The tools are available to make education a truly interactive endeavor, yet we create artificial obstacles through legislation and school district policies and regulations to keep this from happening. The problem is that school districts can't stop it. The statistics from a variety of sources show that the proliferation of smart phones like the iPhone, the LG Dare and the new Blackberry Thunder which have the ability to present full web pages make any Internet content available to students on our campuses EVERY SCHOOL DAY! 92% of all 17 year-olds have cell phones and given the marketing nature of the nations cell phone companies, where you can up grade your phone every two years, by the time 2010 rolls around, a majority of the students on our high school campuses will have a smart phone where they can access any internet content.
To keep up... I am changing some of the blogs I subscribe to... First, I have added Liz Kolb's 'From Toy to Tool' blog where she consistently presents some of the best uses for cell phones in education. Secondly, I have added Dan Meyer's dy/dan blog. I have been a fan of Dan's starting this summer and some of his video relating the educational process back to inquiry and student engagement are truly powerful. I found out that he was a presenter at the ILC in San Jose, as I was last week, but I didn't get the chance to see his presentation, I am hoping we cross paths in Monterey at the CLHS/CUE conference in December, where we are both presenters.
It has been some time since I have posted on this blog for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, I have been trying to hit my stride at my new job as the Administrative Vice Principal at Woodside High School. It has been a long month, since school started on August 21, but I tell people I see around campus that, "I am still vertical." I am also teaching a few nights a week back in my old stomping ground at Capuchino High School in San Bruno for ROP(Regional Occupational Center) in the Cisco Networking Class. It has been helpful to keep my hand in the teaching arena, since I felt at different points in my career that some administrators didn't have enough of the classroom perspective to genuinely appreciate the art and craft of teaching. I do believe that teaching has an artistic / craft facet to it, not to say that non-artists can't be great teachers, but those who have the knack tend to hit their stride much more quickly than those who don't. This is something I need to remember as I begin the process of evaluating teachers over the next few months.
I am also starting to see part of my role as a bridge builder between my old role as a teacher and a technology coordinator to school site administration and district level administrators. We are currently at the crossroads in the role of technology in the educational process. We have many teachers who have done remarkable jobs in using technology to make the content and curriculum accessible to their students and allow them to exponentially increase their personal growth. There are others who have not moved in this direction, and while they are not bad teachers, they do limit the amount of growth their students could experience if they introduced some of the resources available today. The issue is that the door is already wide open, (see previous blog post) the longer we wait to bring all teachers into the conversation, the longer it will take to hit our collective stride as educators.
I have for years been a PC person. In my early years in dealing with technology, I was an Apple user. In fact one of the last things I did in High School in 1980, was to unpack the first Apple IIe's and set them up at Menlo-Atherton High School. In the mid-1990's as I began to become more involved in educational technology and tech integration, I found myself using the Windows platform more and more. By the time I started teaching a Computer Repair class in 1999, I was completely over on the Windows side of the continuum. My colleagues in the Google Certified Teacher's group referred to me at the 'Token Windows Guy." Over the past few years, I have found myself wanting to drift back more and more to the Apple platform for a variety of reasons, the biggest being the ability to create web content much easier and having a suite of integrated apps to do that was very valuable to me. Not that I couldn't do all of this on the Windows side of the house, but it was just pre-packaged on the Apple side. About 2 years ago, I was able to get a Intel iMac in my office at Capuchino. I was able to do things in iMovie and other things I really liked, but disliked shuffling media back and forth from a Windows machine.
So, in my new position at Woodside, I was able to make a clean start as far as technology goes, and what did I do? I planted myself firmly in the middle. This is my first blog post from my new MacBookPro running Parallels in Coherence Mode. So, what does that mean? I have both operating systems running at the same time sharing the same desktop. I have the Apple Dock on the left vertical edge and the Windows task bar on the right vertical edge of the screen. I have been able to have applications in both operating systems at the same time and switch between the two and share files between the two operating systems, as long as they have that same host application.
The goal today is to get the Google Reader account down to zero... It has been hovering around 1,000 the past two weeks, so let's see if I can get there. I bet there will be some cool stuff I will want to share along the way!
FYI: I am presenting at ILC2008, with two of my former Capuchino colleagues on October 15. Hope to see everyone there!
There has been some talk around the Internet about Web 3.0 and what does that exactly mean? There are several definitions of Web 3.0, but it is easier to see it as the next step along the computing continuum, instead of something new and different. And more importantly, what are the implications of Web 3.0 schools?
A more practical delineation of the differences between Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 are as follows:
Web 1.0 - When you can access and consume (read/watch/listen) the content available on the Internet.
Web 2.0 - When you can access and consume (read/watch/listen) the content and react to it by 'publishing' your own content in some way. (blog/video/podcast) This can also facilitate the conversation between other consumers of the media. We access, consume, respond and republish in this stage. One piece of media can spring forth hundreds, if not thousands of responses. The responses reuse older media and ideas and bring them together in new and different ways (mashup), creating a new work.
Web 3.0 - When you can access, consume and interact with the media and applications by employing it to meet your needs and the needs of others. Google Apps is a good example of a Web 3.0 tool. Software is no longer something that is loaded on a local computer, it resides on a server located on the Internet. Terms like Cloud Computing and "Software as a Service" (SaaS) will become commonplace as more and more computing occurs on a server someplace other than the users home computer.
What are the implications of all of this and the effect on the educational process? There are a few which are significant.
Buying software is so Web 1.0: The necessity to have all the applications to use, produce and publish content on the Internet do not need to be on the user's local machine. There have been blogging tools and podcasting tools for quite some time, but in the past few months we have started to see online video editing tools. This makes it possible for users to create rich, multimedia content any place at any time. (See previous blog post!) Students don't need to own the application, it is on the Internet for them to access for free or in the case of some of the heavy hitters like Microsoft, for a subscription fee. Personally, I don't think the subscription model is going to work after we have been given access to many very powerful applications for free.
- Imagine students going on a field trip, taking video clips from the trip with their mobile phone, editing those clips and adding other content from online sources while on the bus on the way back to school and posting the video content on YouTube or Vimeo and embedding the video on the class wiki. Students would be ready to present the learning to their peers when they get back to school.
The Filtering Fallacy: Filtering Internet traffic on High School campuses is a fallacy! Do we really think that we are going to keep students away from undesirable content at school? How many new 3G iPhones or LG Dare's do you think you are going to see in the hands of students when school starts again in a few weeks? Can we really think we can stop it? Lawrence Lessig's quote about students and the way they interact with technology really hits the point home.
"We have to recognize something about our kids – that they are different from us. We made mixed tapes they remix videos. We watched TV, they make TV. It is technology that has made them different. We can’t kill the instinct technology produces, we can only criminalize it. We can’t stop our kids from using it, we can only drive it underground. We can’t make our kids passive again, we can only make them ‘pirates’."
- To illustrate this point a little further just take a look at the biggest dance craze by US teens over the past year. The "Soulja Boy - Crank It" video has been viewed over 33 million times in the past year. It is in the Top 15 of all music videos and Top 20 of all videos all time on YouTube. The video has become so popular that you cannot embed the authorized version from YouTube any longer. I have embedded an alternate version of the video below, which has been viewed almost 10 million times. The video shows how this dance and music craze spread... It spread through computers and smartphones and teenagers posting embedded copies of the video on their MySpace sites.
Where is this going to go? I think we all have an idea and we need to get ready for it, because if we don't it just might trample us!
Google has purchased Omnisio, a site that allows you to take YouTube videos and edit the clips and create new videos to be posted on YouTube. You can also add PowerPoint slides from services like SlideShare, etc. to the videos. For those districts who have unblocked YouTube access this could be an awesome creative tool for teachers and students. I like the ability to create a video lecture with only the specific clips I want and adding slides to the mix where the teacher or student can do the voice over on those slides. You can then embed the video into a website or wiki. Awesome!
Now, I know some of you are saying.... I can't use this tool, my district blocks YouTube. Well, Here is what I would advise... Create the video you want using Omnisio, post to YouTube and then download to your hard drive and use at school or send out as an attachment or post to another video hosting service that is not blocked by your district. I have seen many of these services, but the one I like that allows embedding and has good picture quality is Vimeo.
Below is a video from Dan Meyer, a teacher in San Lorenzo Valley, CA, which is just down the road from me. I got connected to Dan from reading Will Richardson's blog last week and really liked the video below on classroom management and I am a HUGE fan of "The Wire." I also want to show you the quality from the Vimeo site.
This data is promising and troubling all at the same time. I was happy to see that Internet use among Asians and Blacks is on a par with White Americans.This means that Asians and Blacks are learning how to use the medium, even if it is only to e-mail or access social networks, and integrating it into their daily lives. Many of these skills are transferable to other applications and technology tools and will eventually enter students academic lives. The troubling statistic is that Latinos lag behind all other groups by 20 percentage points in Internet usage and Broadband access. One can only hypothesize for the reasons, personally I believe that culture, language and the lack of Internet access in Central and South American countries are all contributing factors. The article also mentioned that in households earning less than $40,000 annually the level of Computer and Internet access is less than 50%.
Programs, like Digital Bridge, at Capuchino High School and Computer Check Out at Woodside can help bring computers and Internet access to many families who currently do not have access. With more than half of all of the people on the planet owning cell phones, those running on 3G wireless networks will help bring many more Latinos into the digital age.
While most schools send most school-wide communication home in both English and Spanish, I also think teachers need to work with families who speak languages other than English, by using translation tools like BabelFish and Google Translate to bridge the communications gap.
Is the "Digital Divide" real? Yes... Is it permanent? No! Will it disappear tomorrow? No, but we can see it from here!
Today, on the TechCrunch blog, the editor, Michael Arrington, based on a blog post on the Macrumors blog, proposed the creation of the device like the one above. It would have a browser (Firefox) and Skype and a USB port. There would be no keyboard, but there were several suggestions in the comments section, like an on screen keyboard like the iPhone, a small USB keyboard or handwriting recognition with a stylus. The unit would also have speakers and a web camera built in. Arrington wants the retail price to be around $200 and the screen size would be approximately twice the size of the iPhone.
Something like this would be a educator's dream. You could reduce the cost of entry for all students and with the price of access to 3G networks dropping (future blog post) we could have ubuquitous for all students by 2010.
The unit would have access to all of the things the students want and all of the things teachers want them to have access to.
What do you think? Is it plausible? Is it desirable? Only time will tell.
There has been quite a bit of discussion about how computing and social networks will create a completely connected world. Just in the past few days there have been more than a few things that have crossed by me that tell me that we are right around the corner from having a completely connected world and as educators, we need to be at the forefront when it comes to using the connectivity our students will have.
Here are some statistics and other items that I have seen lately that make me believe that we will have completely connected students by 2010.
Because of the nature of the technology (the ease of being able to interconnect cell towers wirelessly, which decreases infrastructure costs), cell phone penetration has been able to 'leapfrog' other technologies. In the years between 1998 and 2003 growth rate of cell phones in Africa was over 5,000% mostly because it was cheaper to install cell service than it was to install actual copper or fiber optic cable. The growth rate of cell phones in the United States between 1995-2004 was over 300%, from 34 million to 159 subscribers. The rates for these services have also dropped considerably from approximately .25 a minute in 1995 to .06 a minute currently.
Most 3G networks offer Internet access with their service.
The newest cell phones run on 3G or 3rd Generation Wireless service, which allows the transfer not just calls, but other forms of data including broadband wireless data and multimedia Internet traffic. 3G networks are growing at a rapid rate, with 200 million subscribers in 2007, which is only 6.7% of the total number of wireless subscribers, but in countries where 3G networks were first introduced (Japan and South Korea), over 50% of the wireless subscribers are now connected to 3G networks. Most of the 'industrialized world' will have a majority of their subscribers connected to 3G networks by 2010.
The newest 3G iPhone has a full feature set, including Internet access by connecting to an available wi-fi hot spot or using the phone's own network from the cell phone provider. Apple is also offering a whole new set of applications to be used with the iPhone, all of which are available at the Apple Store.
Google has been busy in the cell phone market as well. First, offering over 10 million dollars to developers to build applications for the 'Open Handset Alliance' platform. Google may also come out with a GPhone as well, as revealed this week.
Yesterday, the editors of the 'TechCrunch Blog' held a round table discussion yesterday in Menlo Park, CA to hypothesize the future of the mobile phone computing platform. The discussion was streamed over UStream and once I can find it archived someplace, I will embed a copy of the discussion here.
Now, why am I writing all of this now? Because I got slapped in the face with it last week. During Summer School, I had a teacher bring me a confisgated cell phone and I called the student in to discuss the matter. The student quite calmly announced he was typing his paper on his cell phone, so he could access it later from home and perform edits. He did this instead of writing out the paper long hand and have to type it in later.
More to come soon in this rapidly changing computing landscape....
A new service, Sazell.com, has launched today that allows you to take a snap shot of any web page, highlight it and share it with others via RSS. Below is a sample snapshot I did of the Edupunk page on Wikipedia.
The service also has a 'Digg' function, where pages that are 'snapped' more frequently are posted on the main page for others to see as they access the service.
From an educational standpoint, this type of application could be invaluable as a way to collect resources and bookmarks prior to a research paper or project. Students could paste their 'snaps' on a single page and use that as the beginnings of their bibliography. The ability to add visual content to bookmarks that are shared is a big plus and also gives students an additional frame of reference for their information.
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit." -- Aristotle
How can we expect the students of the 21st Century to be information literate and become digital citizens if we do not provide the training for them to learn and model these skills in schools? This question has been posed to educators for the past decade with a variety of responses; some acknowledging the issue, some in denial that the issue exists and others finding a variety of reasons to keep from taking any positive action.
The new ISTE NETS*T standards for teachers was released this week at NECC in San Antonio. They reflect a change in the role of the teacher as someone who 'possesses' the knowledge that students need to learn to someone who teaches students how to interact with the media they come into contact with in an academic and ethical way.
1.Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity 2.Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments 3.Model Digital-Age Work and Learning 4.Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility 5.Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership
Over the past ten years, I have been working with teachers to integrate technology and media into their teaching repertoire. I have worked with a great number of teachers who are eager and wanting to move forward in their classrooms. For the most part, I have encountered these teachers at conferences or professional development sessions I have spoken at and found the energy and professionalism of these teachers truly remarkable. These teachers are the few, from among the many who could be doing more to bring 21st Century Skills to the students who are in our classes everyday.
When I was the Technology Coordinator of a school and a little later on of a School District, I would always be reminded by those who didn't want to join the party, "Why should I do this, I am not being evaluated on it?" My reply was always: "You do this because you are supposed to be a professional and work to improve your personal skill set and provide the best education for the students in your classroom." Well, I pushed some forward, not as many as I would have liked to, but some. Capuchino High School has the reputation and can state that they are the most technologically integrated school in the San Mateo Union High School District, but I still think Capuchino has a lot of room for growth.
I looked at the situation and realized that many of the teachers I had spoken with were right. The teachers were not being evaluated on the level of technology integration. Why? Because the administrators responsible had no idea what effective educational technology integration looked like. We haven't trained many of the adminstrators in tech integration, nor did we provide them with any models that they could use for comparison purposes. To some of the admininstrators I spoke with, posting a syllabus online and being able to create a PowerPoint would be considered high level technology integration.
"You must be the change you wish to see in the world." -- Mahatma Gandhi
Over the past three years, I have worked outside of my local school and district to build educational technology integration. The Google Teachers Academy, The Digital Bridge Project, and a variety of presentations (CUE / CLHS / CTAP) I have done over the past three years have been my efforts to increase the level of tech integration. I also have mentioned on this blog several times, this has been my motivation for moving into the administrative ranks.
So, I may not solve the issue all on my own, but I will definitely be part of the solution and move the agenda forward in my small way!
"Give me a place to stand and a lever long enough, and I will move the world." - Clay Shirky: Here Comes Everybody p. 6
How much leverage did this interaction have? Think about it... I was in Fremont, CA in my kitchen, Vicki and Kevin were in San Antonio, TX and they were broadcasting to the world and there were at least 30 people in the back channel. I had heard reports from some of the people at GTA that there were going to be upwards of 500 people involved at Edubloggercon.
The leverage that teachers now have to share best practices, learn from each other, and connect and collaborate is truly amazing. Getting these tools into the hands of more students and teachers and getting them to engage in this new and rapidly growing space is one of my goals as a professional educator. When I arrived at GTA on Wednesday, my name tag had under the role section, "CUE Lead Learner." I took a great deal of pride in this title, since I still see myself as a learner and fully expected to learn from the participants at GTA, which I did. (Pulling the locations of participants from a spreadsheet and then plotting them on a Google Map is VERY COOL!)
So, the question is.... where are you going to stand? Because the tools available to you today definitely give you a long enough lever to move the world!
I have been very fortunate in the fact that I have been able to work with some truly wonderful people in the area of Educational Technology. In November 2006, I was one of the first 50 Google Certified Teachers, and it has opened several doors to me over the past 20 months. First of all, I have had the opportunity to work with a great group of people in the area of Educational Technology. The ability to collaborate with many experts in the EdTech field has allowed me to grow and take new chances. Kathleen Ferenz, Cheryl Davis and Jerome Burg (The EdTech Rockstars!) have allowed me to hang around and present in many different venues with them. This has given me the opportunity to meet many new people and get feedback from the writing I have done on this blog from people who have attended presentations I have given.
In the past two days, I have had another one of those experiences that come once in a very long time! On Wednesday, June 25, I had the opportunity to be one of the presenters at the newest Google Teacher's Academy. I had the opportunity to meet another 50 truly gifted people and watch them go through the same experience that changed my life almost two years ago. When I was giving my presentations, the questions and the amount that the participants already knew about the products was very impressive. There were times I felt more like a cheerleader than a presenter. I have to admit, I got a little star struck when Vicki Davis was in my presentation on Google Apps - Education Edition and Google Sites after I had gushed all over her in the line waiting for and on the bus over to the main campus for lunch. Vicki had a great Keynote to start the afternoon session. One of the anaolgies she made about the British Fleet and the Spanish Armada in 1588 and schools today was spot on! Chris Walsh and Esther Wojcicki were as wonderful as they were when I went through the academy.
Then... if that weren't enough, I was able to attend the GTA - Reload for the GCT's in the group I went through the academy with in November 2006. There were about 25 of the original 50 who were able to make it back to the Mountain View campus to reconnect and work with some of the Google engineers on the products. The opportunity to provide feedback to the Google engineers in Google Apps - Education Edition, Google Groups, Google Apps, Google Book Search,Google Sites and Google Earth / Sky was very cool. It really made me feel like I was in on the ground floor on some of the Google development.
The connections I have made over the past 20 months within my Google Certified Teacher's group and the online connections I have made with the Santa Monica and New York City cohorts have made me step it up a few notches in my own professional development. I can only imagine how much more the bar is going to be raised with the newest Mountain View cohort! I guess I better get my high jumping shoes on!
A big thank you to everyone who I have had the opportunity to connect with over the past 20 months and to all of those newly minted GCT's who were so kind to me during my presentations on Wednesday!
Congratulations to Esther Wojcicki, a phenominal English and Journalism teacher from Palo Alto High School to being named to the Creative Commons Board. Esther's work with students at Palo Alto and the work the students have done in their online Journalism program is a model that I think will soon be replicated by schools all over the country. I know Capuchino High School is moving this way as I write! (One of my last acts as I moved to Woodside High School, was to get an online journalism class piloted.)
I first met Esther when I attended the Google Teacher's Academy in November 2006, when she presented Google Docs to our group, before it was really out to the public.
I am personally looking forward to Esther's contributions to the Creative Commons board and the direction I see coming in relation to Copyright, Share-Alike and other types of creative licensing of original works and the role they play in the educational process.
Again, congratulations to Esther! We are all looking forward to great things!
I have been away from this spot for way too long. With the end of the school year and a myriad of other duties, I have been unable to get back here to get this out. I actually started this post several times and then hit 'delete' thinking that it was a little 'out there.' But as I kept thinking about it, it made more and more sense. So, what is it?
Over the past three years, when my EdTech epiphany occurred, I have gone back and forth looking for the right paradigm to explain my vigilance in the EdTech arena. I started with evangelism, thinking that I needed to convert the masses and bring Educational Technology to them and convert others. Did I need a list of theses, like Martin Luther had in 1515 in Wittenberg? I know that Wesley Fryer contemplated his own list of theses in one of his blog posts. I saw the need to bring the information and the skills to the teachers I worked with on a daily basis, but if I went over board I would run the risk of alienating some and end up with the opposite effect. I also looked into some of the strategies of Guy Kawasaki, one of the original 'Apple Evangelists' to gain some insight into non-religious evangelism. What it really came down to was the dedication to an ideal or set of ideas that any individual wanted to garner more attention for. I was much more comfortable with that definition in theory and practice.
I have also used the idea of being an EdTech Guerrilla. I even have registered the domain, Guerrilla Learning, which sits fallow right now and my current professional development wiki is titled, "Guerrilla Learning." I took the wikipedia definition of Guerrilla Warfare and broke it down to illustrate how students (the guerrillas) and the teachers (the established government) interact with educational technology. The students, being more willing to take chances with the technology and media they had access to would begin to create rich content and use it to demonstrate their mastery of educational objectives, whereas the school, not being able to control the information and media would attempt to lock it out. I have rattled around the ideas of guerrillas, but the ideals of Che Guevara didn't exactly get me where I wanted to be. When I first thought of Guerrilla Warfare, I had images of the Movie, "Red Dawn" from the mid 80's with Patrick Swayze and teenagers from Colorado taking on the Soviet backed, Cuban paratroopers. Although, I dislike the overtly military references, I did tend to identify with the definition on many different levels. First, those taking part did so of their own choice. Secondly, they used what every was available to them to advance their cause or ideals. Third, there was an emphasis on being mobile, and attacking from ambush or other advantageous positions, which is a definite trend in EdTech. (mobility and quickness)
So, what is my goal? My goal is to equip teachers and students with the tools necessary to create rich media and use it to demonstrate their mastery of educational objectives. To teach teachers and students that they are the masters of their own knowledge and they do not need to rely on someone lecturing on it to obtain it, it is available on any Internet accessible computer. But to truly make teachers and students accountable for their own learning, we must teach them the skills to evaluate and make informed decisions about the content they are consuming.
The paradigm is important in the sense that it gives someone a point of reference or a way to scaffold the skills and information to make meaning of it for the teachers and students. What paradigms do you you use? How do you use paradigms personally? How do you teach students to use paradigms to take control of their own learning? Regardless of the specific paradigm that you or your students use, having a well thought out systematic process to teach one's self is well worth it and it is something that brings focus to the teaching and learning process.
Over the past few years, I haven't made it much of a secret that I was attempting to move into the Administrative ranks after spending over 20 years in the classroom. I looked and looked for models that I would like to teach in and couldn't find one that would suit my needs, so I decided I needed to move forward and work with a team towards creating it. I have always liked the Gandhi quote, "We must be the change we wish to see in the world." So this is what I am doing. In early May, I was offered and accepted the position of Administrative Vice Principal at Woodside High School in Woodside, CA. I will start at Woodside on July 1, 2008. This will be a homecoming of sorts, since I graduated from a school in the same district.
I will continue to be active in EdTech issues, being involved with the Google Educators Group and doing Professional Development sessions in Northern California. I am already scheduled to speak at the Innovative Learning Conference in San Jose in October and at the CLHS/CUE Technology Conference in December in Monterey. I will also continue to write on this blog, eventhough if you go to it now through Blogger, it has changed. First, the actual color scheme is now the Woodside orange, replacing the Capuchino green and the title has changed slightly from "EdTech from just a little north of the Valley" to "EdTech from the Valley" paying due respect that Woodside High School is about 2 miles from Sand Hill Road, the financial heart of Silicon Valley.
I wrote a response to a Will Richardson post in December, which I have quoted previously, where I outlined there were two ways to create change. Either work within the current system or outside of it. I have made a conscious decision that the only way to evoke long-lasting, institutional change is to work within the guidelines of the current model. The nature of education is going to change, it is inevitable and I want to be on the front lines leading the charge.
So, as my last day as a full time teacher comes to a close this Thursday, May 29, 2008, I am looking forward to the new challenges that will present themselves in the coming months!
Hey... maybe I can get some of the high-tech big shots to stop by? Doubtful... but you never know! (smile)
About a week ago, I lead a wiki professional development session for a few people involved in a grant our school and region is currently working with. The BRIDGE (Bay Region Initiative for Digital Gap Elimination) grant is a group of Northern California Community Colleges, High Schools and Regional Occupation Programs working together to develop career paths in the digital arts. Part of our mission is to build the capacity of the faculties of these institutions in the teaching of courses in the digital arts, the dissemination of best practices and facilitate articulation agreements between K-12, Community Colleges and ultimately to UC/CSU campuses.
Our wiki workshop was designed to use wiki's as a collaborative tool that can be used as a class website or as an individual student portfolio to house their work. I also wanted each participant to create a wiki that they could implement immediately. One of the participants was a Audries Blake, who is the new chair of the grant committee from Cabrillo College in Aptos. As I began to teach the section on embedding video into wiki pages, she called me over for assistance. She showed me her current work, which was a wiki dedicated to the work of her father, J. Herman Blake, an educator going back to the early 1960's. She had found a video on the University of California, Berkeley web site that was an interview from October of 1963 with a UC Berkeley Professor; her father, who was a graduate student at UC Berkeley at the time and Malcolm X. Yes! "THE" Malcolm X! We had a little difficulty embedding the video directly from the UC Berkeley site since the video was in Real Player, but a quick 'YouTube' search found the video in several 3 to 4 minute pieces.
In working on this with Audries, I found myself drawn to her father's story. After the workshop ended that day, I took some time to research her father's career. J. Herman Blake was a graduate student at UC Berkeley at the time of the video above. He eventually earned a doctorate in sociology from UC Berkeley. In 1966, he became the first African-American professor at UC Santa Cruz, Dr. Blake also served as the President at Tougaloo College and in leadership positions at Indiana University, Swarthmore College and Iowa State University.
So... what is the point? The teacher became the student, a Lead Learner! Through my own personal initiative, I learned about something I didn't know before. I enriched my life because I took the time to learn about someone else. I was able to do this quickly and easily because I knew how to learn. I had the skills to teach myself. If we stop and think, isn't what we should be doing with the students in our classrooms? Teaching students how to learn and teach themselves?
As most of you, who have read this blog in the past, I have made no secret about moving into the Administrative ranks. I always get a 'why?' from people I meet at workshops I present at and other teachers in my district. The biggest reason is the graphic above. I have worked over the past 15 years toward integrating more technology resources into the educational process, because it was apparent to me early on that information was the most important resource in our society. The difference becomes in the way "information" or presently "media" is seen as part of the process. The 20th Century Model says that students and teachers need to 'possess' or 'know' the information they are presenting or learning in class. All teachers in high school classrooms today are there because they have shown a level of competence or possess a 'body of knowledge' in a particular subject area. In the 21st Century Model, teachers and students do not need to possess the information available they need to be able to manipulate the information in ways useful to them in their academic and personal lives.
There are many in the 'Edublogosphere' who propose that the newest generation of teachers need to 'lifelong learners.' But these teachers need to fill a different need in today in their classrooms. Teachers need to frame the learning in their classrooms, but they also have to be flexible enough to allow students to find their own way to internalize the material that is essential to the course.
How do you think schools would change if we had Administrators who were tech savvy and had the skills to identify, evaluate and integrate technology into the educational process? How long would it take for this to happen?
Its been a few weeks since I posted here, for a variety of reasons, but I am in the throws of 'blogger's Guilt' and need to get this post out. I get in to these periods, where I want things to change immediately and get frustrated when they don't change at the rate I want them to. Over the last few weeks I have seen some really cool things happening in Educational Technology and say why can't we do this all... TODAY! Create, Evaluate, Analyze and Apply are the four upper levels of the Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) identified in Bloom's Taxonomy and I want to see it used more in the form of assessment but I find that in education we constantly get lost in the quagmire of easy to assess multiple choice tests.
We just finished our annual round of STAR tests at Capuchino and it is huge institutional stressor. First, we adapt the daily schedule to administer the test, while trying to maintain some modest level that some instruction is really going on. Second, we pull most of the instructional aides from their assignment to shuffle test documents and booklets from box to box in preparation for the next days test. Lastly, we maintain a J. Edgar Hoover like security with the tests, with a special room that no one is allowed to enter. Teachers walk in and they wait at a counter for one of two or three instructional aides to get them their testing material. We ask teachers to sign an affidavit swearing the utmost security for all of the testing material. (I would think this would be within someone's professional standards, but there are those who would do anything to make themselves look like better teachers than they are.)
I know the question has been asked and answered several times and in several ways in the past, but why can't we create a state wide form of assessing students that does not involve bubbling in a scannable answer document. We have done a lot with rubrics to allow for objective assessment of writing and projects, but I think one of the thrusts of teacher training in the future needs to be in assessment. One of the benefits I have seen in moving from teaching Social Science to teaching in the Technology Arts has been the authentic form of assessment that is available to me. I can assign a project for students to complete using a computer or building a network, my assessment of their efforts can be boiled down to three words... does it work? Some of the literature dealing with Professional Learning Communities advocates for students to receive grades of 'A', 'B', 'C' or 'Not Yet.' Students would work on mastery of a set objectives before moving onto a new set of objectives.
I am adding a video from Dean Shareski about assessment and goal setting, I think there are some great analogies and metaphors from the point of view of a Canadian Football player and his coach.
How should schools deal with assessment and mastery of objectives in an educational system that is rapidly changing to meet the needs of a student body that will need to have a skill set that is yet to be defined? How should we assess student learning in the future? Let me know!
This could be a huge benefit to school districts, lowering the 'technical point of entry' to have their own CMS. To do something like this in the past required a number of technical support staff to install and maintain the system for the school. One of the issues I see when I work with schools and technology is that the educators and the technical support staff don't interface well. I live in both worlds, having been a classroom teacher for many years and having some technical training, I often become the interpreter between the geeks and teachers. Time to get these guys on the same page... this might be it!
So, what is the cost of entry? One computer that can be used as a server. The rest of the material is free, unless you need to register a new domain name, which can be done for a few dollars a year. You will also need the support of your network administrator to get a static IP address so that people can find you!
I'm simplifying the process somewhat, but I think it is definitely something many schools could implement quickly and easily to create a dynamic web presence.
This is one of the quotes that Thomas Friedman uses to start the second half of his new book, "Hot, Flat and Crowded." Just as we face many issues in dealing with Global Warming and the depletion of fossil fuels on the planet, we also face many issues in education that necessitate the change from the standard 5 rows of desks inside a classroom, with students reading from a standardized text book, following along with a teacher who is probably following the same lesson plan they developed ten years ago.
