Engaging Learners

Winding Down?

After two days of cold,pouring rain, the skies are beginning to clear in Virginia. It's mid-May, and it should be hot and sunny. Normally, the warm weather signals a winding down of the school year for all of us.
This year, though, I feel like we are gearing up.
We are finally putting finishing touches on our involvement with the Powerful Learning Practice led by Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Will Richardson. I had hoped for more Virginia schools, however we have a strong contingent to join Elizabeth Helfant from St. Louis, several schools from New England, and 10 schools from New Zealand. The Virginia schools are Christchurch School, Randolph Macon Academy, St. Christopher's School, and Fredericksburg Academy. We are the host school, so all face-to-face events will be held here.
To say I'm excited is an understatement. This is a great opportunity to put into practice what we've been working toward all year--a chance to collaborate professionally with schools around the world and to create a professional network of teachers all working on the same goals.
This summer I hope to arrange several opportunities for teachers to get up to speed on using various tools to enhance their collaboration. My short list includes:

• Google Docs
• RSS
• SlideShare
• Wiki Spaces

Watching these teachers learn to blog and network with others online shows me how powerful this reflective practice can be. But even those not blogging yet have started using wikis and Google Docs for class collaboration and video creation for student-centered learning. I miss having a class of my own!
Richardson commented about two schools he visited in Australia recently, saying...

Both are ripe for the ways in which technology can supplement real learning in the classroom, not just information processing. Obviously, there is much more about the culture and the infrastructure and the climate that goes into all of this.

It is that connected culture and climate at FA that will allow us to continue this work with our students.
Image: 'The Brindabella Light Show'
www.flickr.com/photos/13237839@N00/392829645

Why I Love That I Love Change!

I've always loved change. I move my furniture around constantly. I've changed jobs many times over my lifetime. Heck, I moved constantly as a kid and attended 13 schools in 12 years.
So it's often difficult for me to understand why some people don't like change. And, frankly, I often feel like the odd one.
After reading pwoessner's blog post, though, I feel vindicated!
Seriously, he makes some excellent points about creativity, our children's future, and change.

Testing Apture Again

I love when companies respond to a request for help. Especially when the request wasn't obvious.
This morning I was playing around with Apture and had some difficulties getting the links to appear. I used the "automatic add" available for Typepad, so I assumed the issue wasn't with coding (since I hadn't coded anything).
But my day was busy, so I left the issue to resolve later. If ever. You know how when faced with difficulties, we often just move on?
Tonight, I arrived home to discover an email from the folks at Apture explaining that, in fact, the issue may have had something to do with the automatic add button--AND giving me a suggestion to make it work.
Wow. So here I am, testing again. I do want to make this work. We plan to start blogging in earnest soon, and I am excited for students to try using this tool as they gather resources for research like the recent student-created videos on Jefferson, The Depression, and World War I they did for the AP review.
Now, if you see links in this with small icons placed next to certain words, you'll know it's up and running!

There we go! Thanks, Apture.

Connections

I am trying my best not to jump on every new thing these days. It's time consuming. And most new tools are just that--new tools.
However, Will's post this morning caught my eye. And in two seconds, I had signed up for Apture and added a link to my post on John Medina.
The program allows you to add videos, text, and images to your posts with a simple click. I am envisioning all kinds of use for student research. I added the link for John Medina while I was installing Apture. I'll need to exit this post.
Ahhhh, I just discovered something. Only I can see the link and the video that goes along with John's name. I just asked my colleague, Susanne, to check to see if she could see it. No luck.
Hmmm, more figuring to do on this one.

Edited: Ahhhh, so when I published the post, the link I had added to the previous post appeared on John's name in this new post. Interesting!

Edited: And now the link in the previous post has disappeared, but all the links in the new post are working.

The Mysterious Brain

Starting Over.

That's what John Medina says we need to do with our schools and offices IF we want to live and learn in an environment most conducive to what we know about the brain.

I first read about Brain Rules, on Glen Weibe's site. But I wanted to know more.
Today, I spent some time reading John Medina's posts and watching his fascinating videos on his Brain Rules blog.

He says:

Though we know precious little about how the brain works, our evolutionary history tells us this: The brain appears to be designed to solve problems related to surviving in an unstable outdoor environment, and to do so in nearly constant motion. I call this the brain's performance envelope.

If you wanted to create an education environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing, you probably would design something like a classroom. If you wanted to create a business environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing, you probably would design something like a cubicle. And if you wanted to change things, you might have to tear down both and start over.

In many ways, starting over is what the book is all about.

He also says I can't multi-task effectively....

And I need a nap at 3 p.m. Plus, teachers only have 10 minutes to keep their students' attention.

I need to read this book!

Who says it's the truth?

"For the Google generation, what happens to the concepts of truth and knowledge in a user-generated world of information saturation?"
Monica Hesse, Washington Post reporter, takes a fascinating look at how we view the truth in an age when information is readily available and abundant.
The discussion of knowledge vs information is also interesting. "Information has replaced knowledge," says author Felipe Fernandez-Arnesto, quoted in the article. He says information is about crumbs of data, while knowledge is knowing what to do with accumulated information. What worries people (teachers, included) is that students are now information gatherers but not critical thinkers.
"That's the most profound change," said Corbin Lyday, professor at George Washington University about many of his students compared to 30 years ago. "The way they manage information. There's a growing impatience and a real passivity."
Also, people are too easily convinced that the information is correct and true and "use information to reinforce their own beliefs," Hesse says in the article, listing as an example the 9,000 hits in Google for "The moon landing was staged."
We at FA are also trying to navigate through these muddy waters as we work with our students. But it becomes even harder when we consider that research says, "we believe what we want to believe."

"People are very insensitive to where they hear things," says Norbert Schwarz, a University of Michigan psychologist who worked on the study. If one quack repeats the same piece of information to you five times, it's nearly as effective as hearing the sound bite from five different reputable sources.

Same goes for reading e-mails -- if you get three spam e-mails relating Abraham Lincoln's folksy wisdom about truth and dogs, you'll eventually believe it as strongly as if you heard it from the reference desk at the Lincoln Library.

"The basic psychological process is the same" as it's always been, Schwarz says. "But in the olden days you might have seen something once in your newspaper . . . now the likelihood that you'll see it again and again and again" -- on blogs, in your inbox, on YouTube -- has exploded."

All of this, of course, reinforces the need for our students to participate in the discussions of their learning. And is makes me realize how complicated teaching has become.

Beginning with Sheryl's 9 principles for implementation in this shift is an excellent start. As Sheryl says, "it's not business as usual."

Image: 'need to know basis'
www.flickr.com/photos/86176561@N00/124771501

According to Jane

One of the best ways to find new tools is Jane Knight's site, Jane's E-Learning Pick of the Day. Today she links to a PDF with the top 100 tools, compiled from readers. Included is a subset of 25 key free tools for learning. Check it out.
One that I hadn't seen yet is FreeMind, an open source product. Another product I haven't yet tried is Captivate, an Adobe tool for screen capturing, recording of podcasts, and making quizzes. Not free, of course, but seems robust. Has anyone else used this?

This Makes Me Smile

Thanks to Alec Couros for this link today.

Citing My Sources

As a middle-school English teacher, I always taught my students to cite their sources, give proper attribution, and never give the impression that someone else's idea is your own.
A new wrinkle in this is giving credit to someone in the blogsphere for a tweet on Twitter or a post or comment on a blog.
When I send out a tweet or write up a post, I try to link to the original source. But with the avalanche of information coming at me, I find it nearly impossible to track. Plus, current thinking is that with many people now using Creative Commons licensing, writing and photos will be used all over the web, mashed, stretched, re-worked, and re-vamped. I know I've found many photos with no attribution (and I've done it, too, when I forget to go back to copy and paste). If you take the photo from that post, do you give the secondary user credit?
Complicated.
Early this morning, I first saw the story about the student jailed in Egypt using Twitter to reach out for help on a post by Michael Arrington on Tech Crunch, or was it Chris Brogan's site? I'm not even sure anymore since it also popped up at least 10 times on different Twitter accounts as first-time tweets and many other blogs during the day. If I decided to write about it later, I would have had a difficult time trying to remember where I first saw the reference. (And I know and remember the old, "if it's mentioned in five or more sources, you don't need to cite it...but go with me here.)
Many times I see tweets and posts about reviews for videos or applications I've already tried. So if I choose to write about them later, whom do I credit? Or do I, if I've stumbled upon them myself but have also read someone else's review? What about referencing comments on a blog? What if the comments have moved to another blog? I'm not talking link love, here. I'm talking old-fashioned, getting the attribution right.
The conversations about how to sustain archives of digital information are also fascinating, given that information may not always be with us in the existing format.
"How do we archive information when the technology to read it, and indeed the information itself, changes so fast?" asks Josh Catone on The Read Write Web.
The past few days, I've read several posts about giving credit where credit is due. Some folks want to be recognized for breaking the story first, even though it's darn near impossible for anyone to know who said what first. And what about RSS feed sharing? Who owns the information? Does it matter anymore.
Frankly, the only reason I care is that we've been teaching our students the importance of proper attribution forever. When I work with students and teachers, I want to be thoughtful in supporting their research and citing of sources in however they decide to present, publish, write, or digitize. Shouldn't we all be saying the same thing?
Ah, life was easier when I could pick up a book, grab the information, and follow MLA style.
Even Robert Scoble weighed in on this, saying:
"The era when bloggers could control where the discussion of their stuff took place is totally over.This is a trend that the best bloggers should embrace. Me? I follow wherever the conversation takes me.
As someone else wrote: steal my content please."
If anyone is developing new guidelines for their students, I would love to know. How do you cite Twitter, for example? I couldn't find anything on MLA when I looked. Carolyn? Anyone? Do we even bother to cite it?
For all I know, someone has already written this post. I just can't find it.
Just thinking, here....

Image: 'At Odds - Day 27'
http://www.flickr.com/photos/33063906@N00/373863333

Searching the Boolean way

One of the challenges we face is how to teach students to search well.
Jane Knight posted this interesting new tool, Boolify, which seems ideal for children--and, well, some of us adults, too!
By moving icons, such as "and" "but" and "or" onto the screen, one is able to use search terms to limit those ever-expanding internet searches.
I am definitely going to explore this one.

A link to link moment

Early this morning, I opened my Google Reader and linked from this to this, a history teacher's blog I hadn't read before.

As I read through some of Glen Wiebe's posts (and many are posts to which I'll return), this one about a new book caught my eye. I had been to Borders earlier in the day and almost purchased it.
(I was after presentation ideas in this book instead, and it deserves a separate post later.)
The 12 rules in Brain Rules provide "nice research and examples to explain how we interact with our environment and each other, especially how we as teachers can impact student learning," Wiebe says.

They are all fascinating statements, but this one in particular jumped out at me:

EXPLORATION | Rule #12: We are powerful and natural explorers.

Next, I wanted to look something up in my Reader, and a link from Dana Huff took me to another great read, teacher Lisa Huff, who posted about a new tool, Moonfruit, which may be what I am looking for--a way to post student portfolios online.

When I finally decided to write a post about this serendipity, I went to grab a picture from Flickrcc and discovered you can now edit your pictures in Picnik from the front page!

All in all, it's been a productive morning. And it's only 7:30 am!

Image: 'Morning Mist on the Dumoine II'
www.flickr.com/photos/17875539@N00/542306837

Repetitio mater memoriae

We started spring break today
So with nothing to do, nowhere to go, and no one else home, I propped up my feet and started to clean up my laptop.
One of my old bookmarks, which I've transfered from machine to machine, was labeled "blogs."
Now, these days, I don't save blogs in my bookmarks. I use RSS like everyone else I know.
I chuckled to discover my first blog, and that back in June of 2004, I was sending a post to my teachers to "learn RSS."
Funny.
Four years ago.
And I'm still sending out the same messages.
Then, I was the lone user. Now, I am happy to report many teachers in my school use RSS. And they blog. And they twitter. And they teach me things.
This was a happy discovery.
My job is done.
I can relax.

Image: 'A Picture Share3'
www.flickr.com/photos/48600072071@N01/124936

Meeting the Rock Stars

Have you ever been to a concert--a big concert--and sat there staring at the performers, thinking: "Oh my gosh, I'm seeing [insert name]. I can't believe it!"
I felt some of that yesterday, when David Warlick came to town. I've been reading David's work for years, and to finally hear him in person was such a pleasure.
Talk about quiet confidence. Vision. Presentation skills.
I ustreamed the event, a first at a conference for me. Chatting with the 17 people in the chat, figuring out where to aim the camera, and listening and reflecting to David's thoughts were challenging at first, but soon I was multi-tasking like a .....beginner. Nothing pro about my work, but listen to David's keynote and you'll be inspired.
It was also fun to see the members of the VAIS tech committee on which I used to serve. And seeing Jamie Britto from Collegiate took me back. I attended a conference in, I think it was 1999 or 2000, where he led us in discussions about using tech in the classroom. So long ago. Funny how we are, in some ways, still saying the same things. And yet the world is different.
Today, my colleague Jennifer and I will present on using web 2.0 tools for ourselves and our students. After some difficult conversations at school this week about what our vision is for teaching and learning, I am struggling to get my head around what these tools truly mean for us. How do they fit into the big picture of how we learn, how we can help our students learn, and what they mean in this "flat world."
Of course, it's not the tools themselves but a philosophy of education--and I can't go there until I have more coffee.

What inspires you?

Thanks to Dennis Richards for links to Big Think and videos like this:

Timely

I read this blog fairly regularly, and this particular post (which I just re-read) hit me right over the head today.....hope he doesn't mind that I copied it here....(what's the protocol for this?)

• That being open to learning often means being challenged, being surprised, being overwhelmed, and being wrong. Sometimes all of these things at once. And it’s OK.
• That some of the best learning experiences come from being vulnerable– a key part of being open– and vulnerability’s OK.
• That vulnerability– even the good kind– often involves fear. And fear’s OK.
• That none of these things matter if you don’t care and the fact that you don’t care isn’t always– or even often– your fault. It’s not a permanent condition. It’s OK to care.
• That the upper register of caring is in harmony with passion and while we can’t all be passionate about the same things we can respect it when we see it, hold onto it when we discover it, and look for it everywhere. Go ahead: dig through the drawers, go for dessert first, wonder aloud, and ask big questions. It’s OK.
• That being passionate can make us strangers in our own skin– not to mention our world of friends, acquaintances, peers and family– and that’s OK.
• That wonder is just one down-stroke past wander, you can’t have the first if you don’t do the second, and wonder isn’t only wanting to know something you don’t, but a state of being, as in being awestruck or being in love.

Image: 'Dream'
www.flickr.com/photos/86708826@N00/149049741

Learning from the back of the room.....

I am sitting here watching our history teacher, Katie, teach her class via Skype. She is home with a new baby, but she wanted to help her kids with a particular unit, so we decided to try this.
All I can say is "amazing."
She sent a slide show ahead of time, so the students are taking notes as they listen to her. But it's a conversation. A real conversation. She stops, asks questions, jokes with them, and even corrects them--all from the screen in the front of the class. The class is small--12 students--so they are all sitting around the front tables, fairly close to the laptop with the mic, but she can hear and respond to all of them.
The students are engaged, they are thinking and discussing, and I love it.
"The loss of life is extreme," she says about a battle in WWII. "Yes, good answer," she says to one student, adding, "hey you did a great job in the play last weekend." Big smile.
When they all start talking at once, the substitute asks them to raise hands so she can pick one to answer (so they don't overwhelm the mic), but otherwise they simply talk.
"Yes, and Trent just brought up something I was leading up to," she says.
And off they go on another topic. She calls them by name, recognizing their voices. Makes them laugh. Grins when she hears them articulate a difficult answer.
She's a wonderful teacher anyway, which makes adding this technology component simple.
It works.

My head is spinning, thinking of all the people we could invite to our classes to talk with our students. I've read of others doing this, and now I understand why.

Powerful stuff.

Ahhhh. Not perfect. Just as I was about to end this, I looked up and noticed one student playing a game on her laptop. She's listening, sort of, but when Katie said, "do you see this map?" she just nodded her head and kept on playing, knowing Katie couldn't see her.

She forgot I can. Busted.

mage: 'What is Skype?'
www.flickr.com/photos/27481259@N00/125252891

A second look

I am sure Karl Fisch must feel the same way--if I never see Did You Know again, I won't mind.
Not that I have anything particular against the video. Initially, I was inspired and motivated by it; now, I'm simply tired of references to it. When I hear the music, I almost feel dread!
However, this teacher's post caught my attention. I've been enjoying Dina's blog. Powerful writing. Thoughtful. Engaging.
Today, she writes about her visit to a conference in New Orleans, her need to put it in writing, but her decision to do it visually instead:

However, I also cannot deny that for me, the experience of New Orleans, and the questions it raised about the responsibility our society has to answer the basic needs of its people before anything else, do stand in stark ironic contrast to the juggernaut spread of “Do You Know?”.

Go. Visit. Watch.

Following Conversations

Follow Twitter Conversations - Quotably

This seems to be a way to catch up with those random twitter conversations.

tags: quotably, twitter

Education 2.0

Chocolate Thoughts

I can always tell when I shift into my "need more time to read and figure out what to do with the information" mode.
The bag of dark chocolates in my desk starts emptying. It's not me, mind you. I have no conscious recollection of grabbing, unwrapping, and sticking in my mouth the hundreds of pieces of sweet, bitter chocolate squares that seem to disappear during the day.
After sharing, showing, and collaborating with teachers and students the past couple of months, this week has been quiet. Grades and comments are due, and teachers, understandably, don't have me on their minds.
So I am catching up on my reading, and when I do that, I eat chocolate.
This morning, for example, I skimmed DyDan's blog to discover Patrick had a new post I hadn't read yet. Good stuff about motivation and world domination.
But there was also a new read, and what a powerful voice she has: I am bound by law to have a sugar-bombed beignet and chicory coffee on Sunday morning at the Cafe Du Monde this weekend..." And that's her writing about food. Wait until you hear her voice on teaching and homework....and she mentions Tom whom I read and follow. Gotta go there now....
More chocolate.
That post sent me to the ASCD website, where various bloggers summarize the recent conference...and link to things like "what the best teachers know and do." Save to read later.
WHY didn't I think about going there? I wonder, as I take another piece of chocolate from the bag.
My Google Reader still open, I see Kim Cofino has shared a post--Arrgghhh, a new blogger, at least for me. Do I click and add yet another read? Skip it? No, Ok, ok, I say to myself, as I unwrap what I determine will be the last piece of chocolate this morning and read more on the McKinsey report and Finnish teachers.
My mind is also thinking back to the SOS podcast I listened to this morning, where I bumped into Sheryl....which reminds me, I gotta call Hiram to check on the PLP progress.....just one more piece of that blasted chocolate.

Something tells me I need to get back in the classroom or switch to apples.

Image: 'Fairtrade chocolate pieces'
www.flickr.com/photos/60364452@N00/903391978