Extending the Conversation

I have started a new round of blogging, this time with my English students. We are using ClassBlogmeister as a place to reflect on their readings as they do research on a variety of topics.

Today, we started talking about leaving comments. I began the class asking a few students to share what their topics are about. For each student, I made a generic, related but throw-away comment, like "I like black holes, too." Even as we were talking, the students would make faces at my comments, knowing that what I said really wasn't that important.

Then, we talked about why my comments weren't well received. Ultimately, students felt that I wasn't being very helpful. I agreed, and we discussed how bad comments can stop us but good comments help to develop a conversation, a give and take between the people and ideas.

During fifth period, once students had been working for awhile on their entries or leaving comments for classmates, one of my more reluctant bloggers turned to me and said, "Now I get it. I can see why this would be helpful." Then, while visiting with a student after school, I was asked, "How do I comment on a comment?"

They have been bloggers for about four days, now. Already, some of them are grasping what they can do with this tool.

Podslam.org

Podslam.org is an impressive new project highlighting slam poetry. The current theme is black history month.

Welcome to podslam.org's first feature, presented by Just Media and Cafe Nuba. We have 15 of Denver's best spoken word artists. They were asked to spit something relevant to black history month, but you can be the judge of that.

Each artist's poem can be accessed in a number of ways, including audio and video. The videos are nicely produced green screens, so for each performance the artist appears in front of a dynamic background, which changes to support what is being said.

Local schools have been getting more involved in holding poetry slams. There were three last year and one this year so far. Students from our school have participated in all of them, and we are considering ways to work even more slam poetry into the creative writing units. The podslam poets I have already watched can serve as great models of the performance aspects of slam poetry. Pacing and body language are difficult to teach, and seeing the high quality performances of these poets will go a long way toward helping students improve their own craft.

Shameless Plug

PBWiki is a free wiki space tool. I used it to set up a district tech committee space for subcommittee work. So far, the wiki has been useful for sharing documents (mostly revisions to tech standards), and I am trying to encourage its use for conversing and creating/revising documents.

I find the PBWiki very easy to use, and I think committee members who have explored have also found it easy to use. At least, I haven't had to answer many questions.

The shameless nature of this plug is that for writing about PBWiki they will up our storage space, which will help as more files get posted for review.

NCCE 2006 | What is your philosophy?

I started the conference with David "The Shirt" Moursund's session, "Developing a Philosophy of Computers in Education".

Moursund used the session to walk us through his thought process for using information and communication technologies (ICTs) in education. Questioning is a critical component to this process, and he put many questions on the table.

One of the questions that really struck me was "What is your 'authenticity' philosophy?" There was a time when not memorizing was a radical idea. The use of pencil and paper meant facts, ideas, and opinions no longer needed to be memorized. This, understandably, shook the memorization approach and changed the nature of education.

Now, the computer has changed the professional world to the point where it is difficult to work without open access to information. How does this change what "authentic" means when applied to work being done? to learning? to assessment?

So, Moursund asked, is letting the computer do something "cheating"? If part of our goal as educators is to prepare students for the world they will be trying to make a living in, are we doing a disservice whenever we limit their access to information?

This brings me back to an ongoing lunch table discussion of the importance of teaching facts. In a world where facts can be looked up in seconds and frequently don't require specialized texts to access, I see no reason to memorize facts, and I find making students memorize facts a waste of time. The facts we find interesting and/or use frequently, we internalize. If we don't use a piece of information frequently or see any value in knowing, there is no reason to memorize it.

What I am more interested in spending time on is the use of facts, ideas, and opinions to create something new. This is becoming an important facet of my philosophy--the use of ICT needs to fit into a process of accessing, understanding, and creating.

This idea of creating something new, of "adding value", of extending the conversation should be the beginning of my philosophy. How is the use of technology going to help my students bring something new to the conversation?

NCCE 2006

I just got back from two very good days in Portland, OR attending the Northwest Council for Computer Education conference.

Normally, this is a pretty wet time of year to visit Portland, so much so that NCCE gave away umbrellas as member gifts. However, the skies were clear and sunny with temps in the high 40s to low 50s. I took a beautiful walk along the river on Wednesday and really wish I had thought to take a camera.

Over the next few posts I will dig into my notes and start thinking about how to use the ideas I have taken from the conference.

Welcome to my first podcast

Okay, I decided to take the plunge and try out podcasting for myself. Honestly, I'm pretty impressed with how easy it is. And free, too, if you don't count the cost of the computer, thanks to garage band and audacity.

Give a listen here.


The graphic is from Podcasting Graphics.

Process:

1. Put together a few piano loops in GarageBand for intro music.
   
2. Record vocals in Audacity (I tried doing this in GarageBand but couldn't get stereo output. I will need to dig around in the settings some more.)
   
3. Bring intro music into Audacity, arrange, and add fade out effect for intro music.
   
4. Export as MP3 and upload to Internet Archive.
   
5. Blog away.

The missing step: Oh yeah, next time, maybe have some content in mind.

Silly iTunes Fun

Chris Lehmann got this ball rolling and I thought it would be fun to play along.

My iTunes, well iPod really, top 10.

1. The Handshake - Bad Religion
2. Sick of it All - The Distillers
3. Dancing Through Sunday - AFI
4. Man With a Mission - Bad Religion
5. Can't Spot It - Bad Religion
6. Fats Terminal - Bone Orchard
7. Dismantle Me - The Distillers
8. Die on a Rope - The Distillers
9. I am Revenant - The Distillers
10. The Gauntlet - Dropkick Murphys

Looks like punk is the flavor of the moment. Good high energy music to keep the heart pumping.

Echo Chamber No More

Lawrence Lessig is a constant source of powerful ideas, but his newest wiki, the Anti-Lessig Reader, is a rather impressive attempt at inviting, as he puts it, "the other side of the story". What better way to get away from the echo than opening the door yourself and inviting in new voices.

So, how can we take this example and use it with students? A wikified debate seems like a logical first step. Small groups of students could take various aspects of a complicated issue and, using the wiki, share the arguments and work toward understanding the depth of the issue.

Of course, given the ease of editing, I can already see students "helpfully" making changes to the opposition's information. What great opportunities for discussing ethics, integrity, and respect for multiple view points.

Web-based Resources: The Musical

Today, I presented a number of useful resources available out there on the web to the district's technology committee.

From a show of hands, many of them had heard of and read blogs, which is a great start. Unfortunately, only one other person had a blog, and she admitted that it was in need of an update. Still, this is a start. My hope is that the resources I showed them today help push them toward using these tools in their own lives and in their classrooms.

We started with blogs and, specifically, Class Blogmeister, which is an incredibly teacher friendly way to have students use blogs in a safe, managable way.

Then it was time for wikis. Most had heard of/used wikipedia and used the tech committee wiki I had set up for posting subcommittee work. This is encouraging. Those of us on the tech committee are seen as the ones out in front of the wave (rightly so or otherwise); we need to be using the tools.

We then spent a fair amount of time on bloglines and furl as tools to help control the flow of information. I also showed them how these tools are part of the social, information gathering network, which naturally led to how powerful the sharing of information can become in a classroom.

We wrapped up with SuprGlu. This tool has enormous potential for pulling together all the bits and pieces a class is creating on line. All the furled content, all the blog entries and flickr postings, across multiple classrooms (and even subject areas) gathered together in one place for the students to use.

I only had an hour, and I really feel like I ended up blasting through most of it. My hope is that a few bits sink in, here and there, and people start by playing around with these things on their own. I have already been asked to do a more in depth session when we can get together in a lab and really do some hands on work with each of the resources.

Overall, things went well. Anyone visiting from the committee, leave a comment, become part of the conversation, and have fun playing with these new tools.

Is it Time for Podcasting?

Over the last three or so months I have been really getting into listening to podcasts. I had sampled a few here and there but been turned off by the more aptly titled vanietycast nature of the programming, so I quit listening.

But then Tim Wilson started producing Ed Tech Coast to Coast. Being a fan of Savvy Technologist, I decided to take a listen. The light bulb went off immediately; here there be content.

I was hooked.

With some more digging, I uncovered more content-rich podcasts. Alt.npr's YouthCast is a regular listen. Anyone teaching Romeo and Juliet should listen to the story of NetNet and Rome.

But now, like blogging, I want a better understanding of the tool. How do podcasts work? What tools do I need (I'm not ready for this just yet)? And what do I want to say?

The answer to the opening question seems to be not quite yet, but soon.

Welcome to '06

Being a teacher, the start of the "new year" has always felt a bit off. Nothing really changes for me on January 1. Semester doesn't even switch until the 20th. My new year is the end of August when the students come back from summer vacation.

Still, this seems like the moment to take stock. This time last year, I was only two or three classes into my Master's Degree. Now I am three from the end.

I had just started learning about weblogs, had only written a few posts, and was reading just two or three weblogs regularly. While I still haven't become a consistent, even every other week, blogger; I certainly have become dependent upon my bloglines feeds.

(As an aside, I just ran blogger's spell check and discovered that it doesn't have "blogger" in its dictionary. Spell checkers amuse me; I wonder if other English teachers get the giggles watching how they behave?)

My goal, now, is to start putting all the theory I have been reading into some form of application. There is plenty of "what" and "why" spinning around; I need to develop the "how".

• How are these web-based resources going to work for me, my classroom, my students, my school, and my district?


• How am I going to be part of the solution, part of the answer to the problem of getting these tools used?


• How do I best use these tools and model their use to others?

Part of the answer is using this space more. I need to push myself more to blog the process. To wrestle with the hows in this public space.

My students in print!

Okay, I suppose this has happened to the more high profile blogs-in-education types before, but being quoted in a national article is new to me.

It's fun to see my name in print alongside Tim Wilson, Anne Davis, and Will Richardson. All three of these people have been wonderful guides down the tech integration path.

What is even more fun, though, is seeing my students get recognition for their hard work and willingness to try something new by using blogs in the classroom.

Enough giggling, now back to work.

Life 2.0

Doug Johnson was cleaning up odd-n-ends over at Blue Skunk Blog when he threw out this little bit:

Relationship advice for guys: If your wife accuses you of being uncommunicative, do NOT say "Just read my blog." Trust me on this.

Certainly sound advice. My wife wouldn't find such a comment helpful, either.

But I wonder how long this will be the case. MySpace, and similar social networks, are growing in popularity. Today's teens are tomorrow's married couples; how will web 2.0 shape life 2.0? A good marriage is all about communication, afterall. Will children check in via the family wiki, updating their after school plans so Dad knows when to pick them up after soccer practice?

Student Ownership

I was being interviewed today for an article on using blogs in the classroom (my first interview, very exciting) when the reporter asked whether or not I felt having students identified by only their initials hurt their sense of ownership or voice. I hadn't considered that aspect of the identification issue before.

Upon reflection, I don't think using initials instead of first names makes a difference for my students. At least, I see their personalities, their voices, in their blog enteries, but I do have the advantage of working with them every day. As for ownership, I'm still not sure. I need to ask them.

131 Gbps

SlashDot has a pointer to an article describing a bandwidth contest. The winners, a CalTech partnership, acheived an average transfer rate of 131 Gigabits per second.

Transferring this amount of data in 24 hours, is equivalent to a transfer rate of 3.8 (DVD) movies per second, assuming an average size of 3.5 GB per movie.

3.8 movies per second!

There are still a number of technical hurdles to be overcome, including hardware and software that can take advantage of such high data speeds, before this becomes commonplace. But even if it takes ten years, and it would surprise me if it took that long, schools need to start planning now.

What happens to education when the entire class can be present without everyone being in the same room? or even in the same country? Do teachers become private contractors, competing for students from around the world, in an education open market? Do schools and libraries fade away? or do they transform themselves into information hubs?

Web 2.0 is the crack in the dam, and whether we are plugging the hole or drinking freely from the leak, the dam is about to burst.

Rebranding

My original purpose for this blog was to reflect on the use of the tool in my classroom. But as I have explored and learned about the wealth of web-based resources and their potentials in the classroom, the nature of this blog has changed. The title is a small thing, but renaming this space is part of the reflection.

Collaborative word processing

Will Richardson brought my attention to a web-based resource today, writely.com. He just mentions it in passing, but there is something about this WBR that simply clicks for me.

Writely is a web-based word processing application that at first blush does the basics very well. I'm typing this entry on writely and it feels like I am working in Word. Once I finish, I will try out the blog tab at the top and see how well it works.

The real power of the tool, however, comes from the ability to collaborate on writing projects in real time. I can email an invitation to collaborate to one of my co-workers. She can then follow the link to see the document I have started. If we are both working on the document at the same time, writely will update the page in what seems to be near real time so we can see each others changes as they occur!

Distance educators take note. Imagine a student in an on line course completing a rough draft of a paper, emailing the teacher for collaboration, and then working with the teacher in real time on the revision of the paper. Pair this with chat or skype and instant writing conference.

Students in different classrooms, or different countries, could work together on a project.

On an amusing note, writely's spell checker doesn't think writely is spelled correctly.

New Tools Coming My Way

The administrative rep on the district tech committee has tapped me to try using a wireless, Tablet PC setup in my classroom.

I am rather excited to bring in this new, interactive tool. I have been weighing interactive white boards v. tablet pcs, and I think the tablet pc will better fit how I would use it. One of the presenters at T+L² discussed the "event" of a student going to the interactive white board. There are days when it is hard enough to get students talking, let alone going to the board. With a tablet, I can hand the technology (either the tablet or a wireless keyboard/mouse) to students and have them doing. This implementation feels much more organic.

I have already started hitting up my colleagues for ideas, getting them excited, too. Once the equipment comes in, I plan on taking a few days to learn and experiment with it before using it with my classes. But then I want to show the other teachers how it all works and hand it off to them, giving them each a few days to use it, too.

At the December tech committee meeting, I need to present my findings, and I want to bring in ideas from as many curricular areas as possible to demonstrate the power and flexibility of interactive tools like a tablet pc. My hope is that this will spur more innovative thinking about how to integrate even more technology into our school and the curriculum as a whole.

They're Listening

Last.fm is an interesting, social web-based resource that tracks what users listen to on their computers, connects them to other users who like the same kinds of music, and even provides for creating personalized web-radio stations.

Part of me gets a real kick out of this. I like other-than-mainstream music, and I'm always looking for new bands. Last.fm lets me see what other people who listen to what I like are listening to. Great idea. A quick peek at the site has already shown me a few new bands I need to check out. But I haven't created an account.

The idea of the site keeping an ear on my listening habits at my computer makes me uneasy. Call it Big Brother Lite, the masses slowly giving up their privacy, slowly revealing more and more of themselves online. With other web-based resources, I choose which pieces I keep public or private. From my admittedly quick look, last.fm takes it all and puts it out there for everyone to see.

Privacy aside, the homogenization of listening tastes is also bothersome. I worry about the flattening of experiences that may come from connections and recommendations based on my favorite music. Ideally, the social aspects will lead to tangental discoveries that help people stretch beyond their comfort zones, but the lure of the comfortable is strong. What is lost by not having a good DJ, either on the airwaves or streaming across the internet, mixing up the music and bringing strange new experiences to our ears.

Pulling the pieces back together

I just stumbled across SuprGlu, a web-based resource that pulls all the content a person creates into one spot. My blog, furled articles, flickr pics, and many other bits flung out onto the web come flying back, hence my SuprGlu space A Gathering of Boomerangs.

I have just scratched the surface of this site, but already the idea of a class creating content in a variety of ways and using SuprGlu to keep it all in one, easy to access space is very appealing.