CUE 2007: The Will Richardson Trilogy

From the time I saw the lineup for this years CUE conference, the sessions I have been looking forward to the most have been the Will Richardson presentations. I have been blogging for about the past 18 months and my 'EdTech Epiphany' happened when I went to an Alan November presentation and started reading blogs and began to explore the blogosphere. One of the first blogs I subscribed to was Will's 'Weblogg-ed Blog' and his RSS Guide is one of the first things I put into a teacher's hand when they want to start getting into 21st Century Literacy. As I applied to become a Google Certified Teacher, the video I made as part of the application process featured stills of Alan, Will, and David Warlick. I even bought several copies of Will's book for each of the teachers in our Global Communications Program. Since I have seen Alan and David on several occasions, Will was the last of the "Big Three" that I had not seen present in person.

Now, during Will's first presentation he went through many things things that I was familiar with having been a reader and commenter on his blog and it was validating in the fact that I had interpreted things the same way many of the people in the blogopshere have interpreted 21st Century literacy. OK... So, Will is about 40 minutes into his 60 minute talk and I have a few notes on my notepad and then it starts... There's something that catches my ear. I had heard the term 'Folksonomies,' but had never really thought about the process of what makes a folksonomy. The idea that there are connections to resources and ideas that are user created and defined was interesting to me. I am intrigued by the prospect that that individuals can take the same set of facts and come to different conclusions, not to say that one conclusion is better than the other, but the sharing of these ideas can create a third conclusion that make the 'conversation' we are having in Web 2.0 much richer. There have been several terms used to describe the conversation and mixing of ideas: remixing, mashup and sampling, etc. I think one of the bloggers that embodies these ideas is Danah Boyd at UC Berkeley. The tag line of her blog, 'apophenia,' is "making connections where none previously existed."

Will gave several references on how individuals can do this and share back out to others. One of these ideas was the use of specialized or personal tags within his 'del.icio.us' page. You could then use this specialized tag to collaborate with a group of people and create a common reading list of items. The other items that facilitate the process of sharing a common set of ideas with a group of collaborators are: Pageflakes.com and suprglu.com The one 'trick' thing Will threw out was the 'RSS to Java Script' Translation tool. I immediately went through about 15 different things I could use this for. The one thing that immediately came to mind was to create blogs for each teacher and then create subscriptions on the Department pages on our school web site to allow teachers to access the school web page without having to use an intermediary to upload the pages.

The second session Will gave was on Podcasting and Vodcasting, we have been on the cusp of doing some of this with the Global Communications course and with the courses connected to the Global Communications course. (Health, English and Contemporary World Studies) Will presented several free MP3 creation and publishing tools, including: Audacity, Podomatic, GCast, and Odeo. He also presented a few open source / share alike music sites that can be used for student projects. (Jamendo and CCMixter)

The third session did have some repeats from the first two sessions, but there were a few very valuable tools that came out during this session that will facilitate some of the tasks I have been trying to complete with teachers and students. The most important one was the idea of 'screencasting,' or the ability to create a video that is a capture of a computer screen. I have known about screen capture software for sometime, but the cost was just a little too high to justify the costs. Will mentioned that the SMART board software includes this function and it's free... I downloaded the software as soon as I got home and was impressed with how well it works.

If you want the compete rundown of the resources Will uses in his presentations, try his presentation wiki.

CUE 2007: Teacher Collaboration in the 21st Century

Dr. Joy Lopez: Bishop O’Dowd High School, Oakland, CA

Dr. Lopez did a good presentation on how teachers can use many different tools to facilitate collaboration between teachers within disciplines and schools. The steps she gave created a scaffold onto which teachers can build relationships with each other and create a richer and deeper sharing of resources.

The students we teach live in an ‘on-demand world.’

As we look at the teachers presently in schools, we find several types:

Veteran Teachers:

- Jurassic Teachers: These teachers are completely reluctant to using any technology that may be available to them.

- Tour Bus Teachers: Will try something, but will not stay with something unless they see an immediate value in what they are doing.

- Converted Teachers: These teachers have it. They see the value in the use of technology in education and have integrated its use into their teaching repertoire.

Newbie Teachers:

- Gap Teachers: These teachers have had professional experiences other than teaching. Most of these people have a working knowledge of technology and its use in business, but do not understand the process of using technology within education.

- Tweener Teachers: These are the recent college graduates, who may have used technology while they were in college, but are making the transition of using technology as a teacher.

The teachers that will be entering the profession over the next few years will be: Net Gen Teachers. The Net Gen Teachers are fully integrated in using technology in the professional and personal lives. These teachers have already created a positive transfer of personal technology skills into their professional lives.

As a technology leader, how can you be all things to all teachers? The short answer is that you can’t. Therefore, you create a ‘360 degree – reciprocal’ teaching/mentoring program for teachers to assist each other and begin the collaborative process. Collaboration takes on many forms in education and among teachers.

- Share Knowledge

- Capture Learning

- Build Community

- Track Growth

- Modeling the skills needed in 21^st Century learning.

As teachers, or others, begin the process of collaborating online, they take on one of a few different roles.

- Lurkers: Look, but don’t contribute due the fear of the unknown in cyberspace.

- Newbies: People, who have looked and watched for a certain length of time and now feel comfortable in contributing to the conversation. Students spend less time in this role than teachers or other ‘Digital Immigrants’ do.

- Experts: These people feel comfortable in contributing in many different online areas.

In order to get teachers to collaborate, you must provide an online area for the collaboration to take place. The three places Joy, identified were:

- Course Management Systems: Like Blackboard or Moodle.

- Blogs: Like Blogger or Word Press

- Wikis: Like PBWiki and Wetpaint.

All in all, I thought the session gave structure to a process that many people are already doing, but it allows those who are not yet doing it a path to follow in their own schools.

CUE 2007: Keynote - Fun, Games and a Message

Well, we just finished up the 2007 Computer Using Educators (CUE) Keynote. I have to be 100% honest, I really wasn't expecting much, since I didn't know the speaker and was going into the unknown. Boy, was I in for a surprize...

Deneen Frasier Bowen, was the Keynote speaker and she entertained us through her several alter egos and drilled down to some of the critical issues facing education today. The first of the psersonalities she introduced us to was the curmudgeonly school marm who was resistant to any introduction of technology into the educational process. "These kids are too wired.... we need to get rid of all of these wires," she stated as she showed a "Time Magazine" cover with a student covered in all of the technological periperals they have in their life. This reminded me of the presentation David Warlick gave in Monterey in November about "cutting the tentacles" off of the students as they walk in the classroom. Deneen did all of this with a huge brace on her knee, and hobbled around from place to place, but did her cruising though the crowd on a Segway scooter that the CUE organizers arranged for her to use.

The second character Deneen introduced us to was Edy, an 8th grader who has discovered blogging and her personal voice and power as a citizen journalist through blogging. Her pseudonym on her blog was 'Saran Rapper,' which I thought was prophetic in several ways, only one in which she explored through her presentation. She mentioned that she was 'transparent,' like Saran Wrap, as a student prior to blogging, but the experience gave her an outlet for the personal feelings she had inside. The transparency issue with the Administrator Edy has a difference of opinion with, is something as educators we need to be much more sensitive to as more students use the technology to publish their ideas and views. Students do not shed their First Amendment rights as they enter the school house gate. Edy's blog is eventually seen by a teacher in Chile, which validates her reach and personal voice.

Deneen transitioned to Edy's 5th grade mentee, Maria who became involved in the use of technology through 'Digital Storytelling.' Maria's first story was about her family's move to another town to get medical care for Maria's younger sister. Through this process, Maria become more and more engaged in the use of technology in education that she becomes a mentor to her peers and eventually to her teachers. Maria expands her circle of influence by bringing in other technologies, like podcasting and digital recorders to keep track of her expanding imagination.

The final charater is a video of a teacher and a dog.... the idea of reciprocal teaching and learning more from the process than the actual content was designed to teach.

All in all... I was WOWed by this session... If you missed it, find a place where Deneen is speaking and get into see her presentation! Deneen! Great Job and keep the message going!