Moving at the Speed of Creativity

These are my notes from our November meeting of the Oklahoma City Wordpress User’s Group. MY COMMENTS AND THOUGHTS ARE IN ALL CAPS

Several of the websites mentioned by attendees tonight:
- http://jcriley.com/
- http://jfsays.com/
- http://menonpurpose.com/
- http://becoming.followersof.com/

First preso tonight by Bert Boan
- my theme is a free one by ThemeShift

iPhone plugin first: WP Touch
- strips your theme out and makes a basic, text-page for mobile phones
- one of the best things about it: there is a toggle switch at the bottom of your browser so you can turn it off and see the regular site too
- for WP pages, has dropdown menu at the bottom to select
- doesn’t require a theme to be installed too (LIKE THE ONE I USE NOW, WORDPRESS MOBILE EDITION)

The website http://iphonetester.com/ will theoretically show you the iPhone/mobile version of a website dynamically…

Maintenance Mode adds a splash page to your blog when your blog is down for maintenance
- people with admin rights can see the actual site, others see the splash page
- simple settings to customize splash page
- very handy when you are developing a site but don’t want the world to see the “live” version

Bert also uses the Featured Content Gallery plugin for Wordpress

My question was if the iPhone plugin Bert uses conflicts with a cache

David North uses WP Super Cache and it doesn’t conflict with WP Touch

Now hearing from Tim Priebe

T&S Web Design’s Favorite WP Plugins

Contact Form 7
- this just wants to take data from a form and send an email

Pros
- free
- can handle uploads
- customizable error messages
- can use HTML elements
- emails are fairly customizable
- handles multiple forms
- highly rated
- regularly updated
- lots of downloads

If you want to “go ghetto” and make an online form to solicit emails, this works great

Cons
- have to know basic HTML
- maximum of two emails sent
- can’t load a different page after submitting, uses AJAX
- takes a bit of work to setup emails

don’t change the field name for email, leave it as “your-email”
- rest of the fields looked fine

can’t use PHP in code

Aside: Tim’s favorite Muppets YouTube video: Bohemian Rhapsody

Now discussing: AWS Easy Page Link
- purpose is to make it easier to insert links to your pages

TinyMCE editor is the one Wordpress uses
- has built-in feature that lets you include preset links (pre-populates links)

This pre-populates the editor with your page links
- does hard code the URL of the site
- this can be a problem for sites in demo locations

Now discussing: Shadowbox JS
- used with images, sound files
- is an AJAX popout for images
- automatically works for photos
- works iwth videos, music and YouTube Google Videos
- Works with individual pictures or galleries
- regularly updated
- highly rated
- plenty of downloads

Another aside, James Deaton (who attended this meeting virutally) shared this link comparing different VPS services

Other Wordpress Plugins we use
- Role Manager
- WP-Polls
- Search Excerpt
- MyCaptcha
- ShareThis?

Now David North showing pagemash plugin
- gives you an alternate view of how to see pages

If I was sharing plugins tonight I’d share as my top 5:
- Simple Trackback Validation
- Comment Timeout
- PageRank
- ReCaptcha
- Subscribe to Comments

I’M HAVING TO LEAVE EARLY AGAIN TO PICK UP BOY SCOUTS!

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These are my notes from Bruce Dixon’s session titled “21 Steps to 21st Century Learning” at the AALF / Oklahoma SDE 1:1 Learning Conference, November 30, 2009. This event is organized by the Anytime Anywhere Learning Foundation, and sponsored by the Oklahoma State Department of Education. MY THOUGHTS AND COMMENTS ARE IN ALL CAPS.

5 years ago we’d barely had YouTube

YouTube has taken over dominance in bandwidth

staged photograph by Apple: Journalism school a the University of Missouri

not having a conversation with your community about this, everyone’s expections, is hurting you

how many of your parents are expecting:
- laptops to be used all day?
- will be worried if the laptops are used at school more than 2 hours

What you think they think they may not know

KEY: Building communication strategies around your initiatives is #1
- if you don’t build a messaging strategy that insures every
- what, how and why are you going to do this

question: What should ubiquitous technology access make possible for schools, teachers and learners

Brainstorms
- individualized learning
- equity
- access
- creativity
- engaging
- exciting
- hard fun (that is what Papert calls it)

We have to stop thinking that people are reading minds
- we have to be able to understand it and articulate it
- this is not easy
- there are some imperatives that are driving this

When every child in your class have their own laptops, the first thing that will happen is that WHEN we teach much change

WHERE we teach must also change

WHAT we teach must change as well

Heart of it all: HOW we teach must change

It is all about these simple ideas: When, where, what and how
- this does NOT mean we are going to throw the baby out with the bathwater
- it does not mean we are going to stop learning from all our years of experience working with young people
- if we are going to transform learning experiences, then these things must happen

what is classroom transformation: reconceptualizing learning for students

If you get software like Fathom where you do hands-on concept development, and THEN go to formulas is SO strong to develop deep understandings of complex mathematical ideas

SOME OF THAT FATHOM FUNCTIONALITY IS AVAILABLE NOW AS WIDGETS IN GOOGLE SPREADSHEETS I THINK

When you start to talk with your faculty about how you can talk about more in-depth

in the past we used to send teachers off to “skills courses” hoping teachers would use the computer more in their classrooms
- many of the teachers didn’t have computers in their classrooms
- how can make it meaningful

so we’ve been focused on the wrong things, like “skilling”

kids are going to be historians, not just learn about the facts of history
- that is what we want the technology to do

21 Steps to 1 to 1 Success
- without this you come unstuck
- we are going to go through the major points
- we are in the 21st century
- some of these are common sense (distribute laptops)
- others require months and months of work

Imperatives driving New Visions for Education
- the economic imperative (increasing accountability, shifting economoic foundations)
- the paradox of universal education (unengaged and disenfranchised vs Rich, Relevant and Rigorous – the existing model is simply no longer adequate)
- the globalization of education (unlimited access to vast resources: connecting to experts and ideas – a shirt in the context of expertise and control)
- 21st century challenged (rethinking the essentials of what is 21st cneutry learning, collaboration with teams – global perspectives)
- Digital Lifestyle: multi-modal, multi-literate… multi-tasking – continually connected through new mediums for learning

We used to have viable excuses for NOT doing global collaborative projects
- money is no longer the issue
- time zones are still the main obstacle
- tools and access ARE there now: why aren’t we doing these kinds of projects more?

How the demand for skills has changed
- Levy and Murnane: Identified by the OECD “Learning and Technology, World Forum 2009″
- huge drop off on “routine cognitive” jobs
- the skills that are easiest to teach and test are also the ones that are easiest to digitize and outsource

Mckenzie report in the last 3 months
- The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in Schools
- if the US had in recent years closed its gap…

A world of change in baseline qualifications (also from OECD)
- year 12 completion
- 40 years ago US was #1, now we are #13
- we have a real problem with year 12 completion
- around the world we have economic imperatives that force us to think differently

Views of globalization
phase 1: 1492 to 1800:
phase 2: 18000 to 2000
phase 3: 2000 to now

What if anyone could access a course at MIT or Stanford or….

example: Prof Lewin swinging on a pendulum at MIT
- 3000 people per day download his videos, that is over 1 million per year

The Open University
iTunesU

Book “High Noon” by JF Rischard (20 global problems, 20 years to solve them)

What out the spaces

Bransford’s 2000 book “How People Learn”
- very small amount of time kids are actually engaged in learning in the formal learning environment

1 to 1 Mythbusters
- There IS a difference in how GenY are wired, they can grasp tech more equickly and are able to effectively multi-task
- we need to have these conversations
- parents are making their minds up about things like this

with multi-tasking, the key word is “effective”

Problem we have at the moment is most kids at school don’t connect to much
- quoting Clayton Christensen: Average child in school, 59% of students spend less than 55 minutes in front of a computer each week at school
- that is not worth doing anything
- that’s a waste of time, those dollars would have been better invested in swimming pools and football fields

Everyone here, including me, has gone down that road of “trying to do fishes and loaves” with computer labs and mobile carts
- it doesn’t work

the evolving learning environment
- we don’t have kids just expressing themselves through written work and through voice
- now we have visuals, animations, videos: new medias available

Now we have students who can have a global audience
- This has changed in the past 5 years, 7 at tops

Rischard says we won’t solve these by thinking the same way we did in the past
- his solution: global issues network
- his book is very optimistic, btw

Demand for business (web 2.0) solutions
- Gartner 2009 Corporate Web 2.0 Penetration

these blogs, wikis, etc are now mainstream
- but this is still just the tip of the iceberg

Quotation from George Siemens: “It’s not about tools. It’s about change”

It’s the change underlying these tools that I’m trying to emphasize. Forget blogs…think open dialogue. Forget wikis…think collaboration. Forget podcasts…think democracy of voice. Forget RSS/aggregation…think personal networks. Forget any of the tools…and think instead of the fundamental restructuring of how knowledge is created, disseminated, shared, and validated.

I like how Prensky talks about dabbling
- it’s about doing new things in new way

there has never been a more challenging and exciting time to be a teacher today

the web is now
- challenging traditional approaches to how we learn
- challenging our assumptions about classrooms and teaching
- challenging our assumptions about knowledge, ….

Henry Jenkins addressing “participatory culture” (quoting Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach)
- paper: “Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century”

See Alice Barr’s post “Using Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture for Staff Development”

It’s about pooled knowledge

Cheating
- we’ve got to rethink what we think about teaching and learning
- collaboration
- what about doing collaborative PhDs?

TIGed: TakingITGlobal – For Educators

Tread Lightly is a climate change education initiative offered by TakingITGlobal through the generous support of the Staples Foundation for Learning.

Amazing thing about work in Maine, with Angus King and others is their willingness to share openly their successes and mistakes
- Angus says his biggest mistake was when asked by a reporter on the spot after money was approved if laptops will go home, he said “No”
- what about sustainability: another $35 million coming in 4 years
- another $6.5 million coming in 2 years here in Oklahoma
- I hope all of you are thinking about sustainability now, because that is the key

Maine broke down huge barriers there
- Gov King’s vision was so important
- He realized your main employment options pre-MLTI in Maine were timber, tourism and shipbuilding
- you need to rebuild the economy for a knowledge economy

Now lets talk about Uruguay
- I haven’t met the President
- Miguel Brechner is the director of the project
- similar economic situation in Uruguay with OLPC initiative
- the President is an eye surgeon

NOTE: THE FOLLOWING SLIDESHARE WAS NOT PART OF BRUCE’S PRESO, BUT IT IS RELEVANT SO I’M EMBEDDING IT HERE

Next example: Kiva
- micro-philanthropy
- operationalizing idea of teaching people to fish, not giving them fish
- making micro-loans of $25 to $50
- girl involved in Kiva had never turned on a computer
- thought to connect banks for micro-loans to social networking
- Kiva is someone reconceptualizing what technology makes possible

So what does social networking and chat make possible in schools?
- I’ve seen extraordinary examples of kids using social networks so effectively to communicate
- and yet our main response in most schools is to ban it
- we have to re-conceptualize what these tools make possible

the world today is about being able to do what you were NOT taught to do

As Stephen Heppell says, our biggest challenge is not being audacious enough

Be bold and ambitious

the technology emperor has had no schools
- we had technology-driven ideals
- ill-defined expectations
- trivializing teacher competence
- access IS a major issue: 5:1, 4:1 are just slightly better versions of the same thing!
- 59% < 59 minutes

What is it that this makes possible?

evolution of use: Learning environment
- basic ICT
- PC labs
- classroom eLearning
- 1:1 learning

I WANT TO KNOW WHERE THIS GRAPHIC IS FROM

ratio of students to computers is basically meaningless
- 1:1 is not 4 times better than 4:1
- 1:1 is a whole order of magnitude better, it is not a straightline graph
- all of you don't share your computer
- it's not a straightline relationship
- when it is your thinking tool, what you plan with, it is a reconceptualization of what is possible

Todd Oppenheimer in 2003 agrees with Papert 1992, 1996
- agree that the full effects of technology cannot be realized while it is still a shared resource

talk about vision: Papert and Alan Kay
"more and more I was thinking of the computer not just as hardware and software but as a medium through which you could communicate important things..."
- Kay: an instrument whose music is ideas..."

The imagination machine

SHARING THESE IDEAS ARE THE REASON I AM SO THRILLED BRUCE AND AALF IS HERE SHARING THIS CONFERENCE AND THIS VISION. THIS IS SPOT ON.

Children, Laptops, and Powerful Ideas: An International Conference
- Portland, Maine 2002

Maine's initiative was the tipping point as the first statewide initiative

3.5 years ago OLPC was the paradigm shifting innovation which Clayton Christensen

I have never seen cost as a barrier to entry
- example of Australian school which has been implementing 1:1 since 1992

Now we really see the affordable computer as a reality
- what does this allow us to do?

Intel is supporting 43 initiatives worldwide
- best estimates say around 2 million young people around the world are in 1:1
- by end of 2010, we will have over 5 million worldwide

Australia has just taken a big step forward
- had been to sleep for 10 years
- then we had a change in government, and we are moving forward

Prime Minister Jose Socrates in Portugal leading the vision
- redefining the economic base in Portugal
- building an entire economy around the laptops

SO HERE IS A QUESTION: WHICH LAPTOP HARDWARE PURCHASE WOULD HAVE THE MOST DIRECTLY BENEFICIAL IMPACT ON THE OKLAHOMA ECONOMY? ANY?

Identifying the Key Drivers for 1 to 1
1- lays down an econmic foundation for future growth
2- equity: narros the digital divide
3- budget / stimulus imperative
4- improves academic benchmarks
5- improves assessment alternatives
6- provides opportunity for textbook replacement
7- marketing: competitive advantage
8- unlocks the possibility of personalized learning
9- expands pedagogical opportunities
10- offers 21st century learning opportunities
11- more...

My own teaching history: I was about personalizing learning for 35 10 to 16 year olds

I am disturbed by what California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is saying we should do with digital textbooks
- apparently someone forgot to tell him everyone will need their own computer/laptop

Join AALF
- free to join
- we give access to best research available on 1:1

key finding for 1:1
- allows us to write more often and better

other research findings....

What are emerging trends we are seeing
- constructive accountability (not a shallow, high-stakes testing approach - it is constructive, it goes both ways in terms of investment and sharing)
- personalizing learning to address learner diversity
- enabling an expanded view of learning environments
- increasing pedagogical capacity
- leveraging digital content in a re-imagined curriculum

In England their vision is:
- successful learners
- confident individuals
- responsible citizens

another one: (conceptualization of the 21st century literacy skills we want for our kids)
- numerate
- literate
- articulate
- curious
- and passionate

Vision articulated by Dr Ng Eng hen, Minister of Education in Singapore
- first, strengthen competencies for self-directed learning (that is about as radical an idea you can imagine)
- second, tailor learning experiences according to the way that each student learns best
- third, encourage students to go deeper and advance their learning
- fourth, learn anywhere

THESE DEFINITELY ARE GREAT GOALS. I WOULD ADD TO THIS,

Singapore is about to implement a 1:1 nationwide program

Papert in 1998: "My goal in life is to find ways in which children can use technology as a constructive medium to do things that they could not do before; to do things at a level of complexity that was not previously accessible to children."

We need to ask:
- fundamental change or incremental improvement?
- the question is not much which is right, but rather why has there been so little discussion about the question?

Where do you see your school, on this continuum from "incremental improvement" to "fundamental change"

Now referencing NYT headline from Liverpool, May 4, 2007: “Seeing No Progress, Some Schools Drop Laptops”
- lots of excerpts from this article reveals what was going on in that school
- they didn’t get 21 steps right, they got 22 steps wrong
- we had 30 or 40 people with AALF respond to this
- guess who leads the public debate in education today? It is journalists and politicians. It is about time we took the lead in setting the terms of that debate

AMEN TO THIS. BRUCE GOT SOME APPLAUSE TO THIS.

Ron mentioned Dr Thierry Karsenti at the University of Montreal, is helping them videotape student learning in classes to observe creativity, curiosity, etc.

Salesmen’s motto: under-promise and over-deliver
- supporting these things is not a problem, but it does take planning

consider:
- technical support
- connectivity
- wireless access
- network storage
- power supply
- security
- physical security
- learning environment
- staff readiness
- parental support
- community support
- leadership support

Lithium battery usually gets around 650 charges, so you need to buy new batteries in the 2nd year to cover you for years 3 and 4 (they do lose some with shelf life)

Implementation models
- a variety of paths to take:
– a class
– a grade level
– a school

pilot vs an expanded program

optional vs mandatory?

You can use checklists or you can use more formal project management tools
- deployment plan: checklists, milestones, timelines

think about prerequisite, preferred and optional

my priority is the things that go to kids

Adam Smith with comparatively weaker machines with less power
- their focus was doing amazing things
- doing robotics
- if you are going to make a decision, please make it in favor of the kids

set a high bar as you do this

you are going to have some issues with wireless
- wifi still catching up with itself
- so underpromise and overdeliver
- say to parents and students: say you still

1 to 1 Funding Equity (core principles we recommend at AALF)
1- funding should ensure all students can participate
2- funding should be structured to ensure it can be sustained indefinitely
3- laptop funding must be supported by a commitment to professional development
4- everyone who benefits should make some contribution

my bias: the notion of kids bringing any laptop they have at home to school doesn’t work now
- there are support limits to what schools can support
- that model also breeds inequity

Where can you get funds:
- govt
- P&F
- foundation
- school/district
- family

What you say to the parents is this: Your kids will be at school for 20% of their waking time, and at home 80% of the time
- so the school is going to provide a laptop… how about if we share this cost, for you to have 24/7 access
- that is the model
- when you explain it like that, no one puts their hand up and says “I don’t understand”
- this is not “parents paying for public schooling”

note I said everyone makes “some contribution” (didn’t say the SAME contribution)
- just like how we handle kids going to camps, field trips, etc.
- let’s say you’re asking for 50 cents per day
- some parents will say they just can’t afford that

Costs: start with assumptions
- student laptop: $1050
- more…

Another option: Expensive netbook for $600, shared cost model $24.61 per month

Italy asked for a capachino per day

In Victoria, Australia, this is the funding model they are following:

Service and support must be tri-level
- most of your breaks are warranty
- why will there be failure? Look at normal driver vehicle failure rate versus taxi driver vehicle failure rate

#1: you are going to have a 3 or 4 year warranty

Life of machines: now we are up to 4 years
- that is what Apples in Maine

Do not buy anything but Tier1 machines
- it is how they are manufactured

Once in 4 years you will get that funding
- for the next 4 years, if you haven’t thought about how you are going to service these things and keep them in kids’ hands, you are going to deal with that
- for $10 or $50, you get the best machine you possibly can
- what matters is you buy Tier 1, because you are looking at taxi failure rates

Conservative failure rates, as bad as you’ll get

Last thing you need to worry about are kids damaging these computers
- if that happens YOU have a problem, you must have them totally locked down, not letting students do anything engaging with them, etc

70% of problems are warranty covered

You need to calculate how many loaners you need
- 5% is the high end
- you need these because kids bring in machines because they need repairs

1 – Set up student teams

you might want to certify them with GenY

70% of the laptop problems presented do not require a soldiering iron and screwdriver
- that is why kids on teams working as you firstline response systems can work on

So you build a helpdesk software and a system in place, everything is reported, so you as the administrator

sometimes kids with the technical expertise are not the most emphathetic
- you want good listeners, problem solvers, empathetic

2- work with your dealer partner
- you are not going to best buy to buy 100 of these
- your dealer partner for service is probably going to lose money with your first agreement
- example: I expect 90% of these machines will be turned around in 48 hours
- rural schools may not be able to agree that
- “key performance indicators of my service level agreement”

rule of thumb: 5% for loaners, but that is high
- kids should never be without machines

What may the failures be and how many can we expect
- adapter failures: can make 30 to 40% of total
- hard dries: noisy / bad sectors / failure
- optical drives: read errors (don’t put an optical drive in there)
- LCD general falure: cracked /lines / pixel failure
- PCB: won’t boot
- keyboard: missing keys / failure

next year you’ll find all hard drives will go SSD

I love Toshiba’s but they have never been able to make good AC adapters

Why would you want kids repairing computers

So which device is best from a service perspective?
- Classmate / OLPC
- Netbook
- Notebook
- Tablet: tier 1 tablets are most reliable, failure rate of screens is 10% of others becuase of

if you can afford tablets, buy them
- applications are now there

Don’t need a tablet to use ONEnote, btw
- Tablet is at the high end

I think OLPCs are brilliant but they were really designed for developing countries

Intel has just released their tablet they call a “convertible,” I’m told that cuts the tablet cost in half

Netbooks generation 3 now is a pretty cool machine
- they ARE real machines
- in another 12 months
- 4th generation will have SSDs
- reason they don’t break is because they don’t have these big floppy screens which break easily
- 10 inch screen is robust size for kids
- yes you still have high end applications that won’t work on them
- ATOM processor was limited

Black Friday laptops are not made for schools
- those machines are made for a price like Best Buy

So “regular” notebook computer: $800 – $1000
- these are the machines to look for

Go for tier 1 only

Insurance
- get it, don’t self-insure
- don’t use your house cover for it
- existing insurance companies have real trouble with school laptop programs
- vendors have their own insurance policies, pretty detailed
- policies are usually (at high end) 5-7% of cost of machine
- deductible is usually in front, may change for damage versus entire loss
- important you think of that

with insurance, you want it 100% backed up with testimonals
- like cars, make sure relationship between your insurer and your repairer is watertight
- management of parts is critical for your success

PD and Change management…
- no time for this now

Innovation in a 21st Century Learning environment should…
- offer extensive opportunities to significantly address learner diversity
- promote pedagogical innovation
- improve teaching effectiveness and promote personalization
- help us challenge assessment models
- reimagine curriculum

2 things I want to convey in remaining minutes of this session
1- how do you get everyone on board
2- key attributes of a good technology coach

folks on front end / early adapters are “the adventurers”

at the right end we have the “unwise” (very small in number, but often loud in voice)
- focus in the middle: on the TRANSFORMERS
- those are the great teachers who simply need to have someone spend time with them showing them what is possible
- that comes from our technology integration coaches / facilitators

2- key attributes of a good technology coach
- being a good listener and empathetic is most imporant

Be sure to adopt good policy guidelines for your school
- we have 44 areas that you need to address
- you are going to setup a policy committee with parents, teachers, and students
- you might even develop a “1 to 1 handbook”

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These are my notes from our third session (Leadership, Vision, and Student Achievement) at the AALF / Oklahoma SDE 1:1 Learning Conference, November 30, 2009. This event is organized by the Anytime Anywhere Learning Foundation, and sponsored by the Oklahoma State Department of Education. MY THOUGHTS AND COMMENTS ARE IN ALL CAPS.

See Dawn Danker’s guest blog post here, “1:1 Teaching & Learning Session, OK SDE Leadership Conference,” from 17 July 2009 for more on these ideas and from members of today’s panel.

Brainstormed Challenges from the audience (sharing facilitated by Bruce Dixon)
- sustainability
- professional development
- bandwidth
- damage
- theft
- keeping laptops charged throughout the day
- filtering on the network
- locations without Internet access
- infrastructure
- students who move a lot (laptops checked in and out)
- curriculum: how to transform from textbooks to Internet-based digital sources
- teacher buy-in

Now comments from Steve Shiever with Crescent Public Schools
- it’s tough work doing 1:1 computing

bottom line: this is the best way to teach, the best way for students to learn

I started with 1:1 in 1998 in 1 district
- then went to Crescent in 2003 (they had no infrastructure and hardware)
- we built it from ground zero: we put in fiber, Cisco switches
- buy good equipment and build for the future, that is the key

We currently have a 1:1 deployment in our high school
- IWBs in every classroom
- laptops in hands of every teacher
- want to provide laptop for teachers to work whenever they are motivated to work

We designed for high school because we didn’t have funding for the entire district
- I wanted to give our HS students to have access before they entered a technology-focused college environment
- we host all our content on Moodle
- now doing podcasts: have a podcast server setup this summer, teachers capture their lectures in 10 minutes or less, teachers can post those with their materials online

Challenges
- if you are going to implement 1:1, make sure you have everybody on board so you can sustain the project
- it is really not a project, it is a process
- supt, bld principal, teachers: all on the same page with buy-in
- if you have a loophole there, you will lose staff members

Mentioned this morning: I like to hire new teachers who are technically driven, as well as seasoned teachers who are technically driven
- those older teachers have delayed retirement, because teaching with this technology is more fun (it is also more work)
- must have that technical person to answer your daily questions

If you want to sustain a program before you even begin, put in a professional development plan from the start
- we started in 2003 with 2 hours of PD per week for all teachers
- at that time it was focused on productivity applications
- today we don’t use textbooks at all
- all of curriculum is teacher-generated or open source
- staff development gives teachers assurance that they can get answers to their questions

Sustainability
- funding is the key issue
- this is not a one time venture, it is a continuous venture
- at Crescent we have treated the technology as a core class
- as I setup my budget and appropriate so much money for math, language arts, social studies,etc
- grants are wonderful, they can jump start, but they don’t sustain you
- that is why it is so important for the superintendent to be involved and on board

Staff development is of critical importance for staff to understand the process
Before we started implementation, we discussed that once the train leaves the station, it’s over
- 2nd year is easier, because teachers have their courses built on

Now hearing from Scott Parks, superintendent of Howe Public Schools (Oklahoma)
- we serve approx 500 students K-12
- we have been implementing a 1:1 program for the past 8 years, that has been a phased implementation
- this year focused on grades 9-12

Sustainability is so critical
- that is why we started with so few grades
- I wish we could say we spent many months planning, in our case we started with our team and implemented it with passion and focus
- encouraging staff to participate was how we began, with provision of special instructional tools and PD

Infrastructure is so critical as well
- no one here has purchased laptop hardware without focusing on the infrastructure
- we do a lot with videoconferencing as well in our district
- if we hadn’t addressed those issues first, it would have been a disaster
- can be as simple as your wireless infrastructure, you can have a tremendous backbone but if you put classrooms of 20-40 computers on a weak wifi link that becomes a disaster

I can remember old days when we started PD focusing on applications: PPT, Word, etc.
- at that time we did nothing to help teachers understand how these tools would be used within the curriculum
- idea of sustained, ongoing PD is critical
- we didn’t have that model that Steve discussed at Crescent
- we had few days up front, then at the end of the year: that really had no sustainable impact

laptops are just another tool in the toolbox

I AM REMINDED HERE, HOWEVER, OF THE IDEA THAT THE COMPUTER IS A PROTEAN DEVICE QUALITATIVELY DIFFERENT THAN OTHER CLASSROOM TOOLS LIKE AN OVERHEAD PROJECTOR, MICROSCOPE, PENCIL, CHALK BOARD, ETC.

The laptop in and of itself is a hands-on tool
- often we get “more of the same”

What we need to focus on as educators is how we can beyond what we do traditionally, focus on the new Bloom’s taxonomy
- too often we see teachers reverting back to the “same old ways” we were taught
- my question is: how is this different from the ditto sheet we used before we had laptops?
- what I want to see you do is be guarded against that mentality (digital ditto sheets)

HEAR, HEAR. SCOTT IS 100% ON TARGET HERE.

We need to change the learning process
- it is not just about facts and figures
- our everyday lives are not about facts and figures
- our lives are about real world events and problems
- more often we need to

we have tunnel vision when it comes to looking at the tests
- that often leads to absolutely zero creativity in our classrooms
- we become so focused on those outcomes that we kill creativity
- getting our kids creating, collaborating, telling their story: using tools like skype to communicate with others, to simulate
- they need to be simulating the world, what is the world of work like?

this moves teachers into “the active facilitator role”
- you have to do this to get out of the way, and let the kids show you what they know
- can let the kids take over, and help with the learning process
- getting out of that tradition / rut is the key
- the mode I am in now is the easy way to prepare and teach
- preparing for a truly interactive lesson is harder, but the outcomes are far greater
- dropouts, need for engagement

my passion is becoming: how can we get out of these ruts we are in day in and day out in the classroom

I have not been able to say, “textbooks are gone”
- we are going now with a blend
- both digital and paper-based textbooks

Buy in is critical, but as has been said today there will be naysayers in your district
- sometimes those may be the loudest voices too
- what is needed for our kids?
- economic times ARE tough
- sustainability can’t become a financial excuse for not doing it
- we must be focused on what is best for our schools

Now hearing from Scot Trower with Lowry Public Schools

when I started as a teacher 16 years ago, I was a technology nerd then and I am a technology nerd now

I look at it from the perspective of students and teachers: if they/we don’t want to come to school

As a teacher what I hated hearing most was, “no we can’t afford it”
- many of you are probably thinking most about sustainability

In 1995 I bought my own laptop and we used it in my classroom, we didn’t even have Internet
- I wanted to move up so I could make the decisions for our school district

Same board meeting when I was hired, the board riffed 5 employees

we got our infrastructure in place first
- bought some laptops my first year with federal program money

originally we were going to do 5-8th grades
- when you’re talking with your school board, it is a different audience
- it’s all about selling this, customizing your message to your specific audience
- I had a handful of teachers who were 25 year career teachers with their binders they opened at the start of every year and used without deviation, that opposed this

I was getting very frustrated
- listening to Steve Sheiver
- through an Apple rep, learned about a Kansas school doing 1:1 and took some of our teachers up there on a field trip
- when my teachers sat down with other students (not teachers) they were sold on this idea in an hour and a half

We did a lease purchase to do this, a bond issue in our district was not an option
- we got the laptops in February
- we rolled them out a week after they got there
- we had that “Euphoria phase” that has already been talked about

insurance coverage is about $70 per machine bumper to bumper, we make our students pay for that if they take the laptops home

2nd year
- biggest frustration was teachers who put the laptops on the shelf, didn’t want to deal with them anymore
- we had a forced regrouping with PD, worked on getting over fears again
- now in our 2nd full year, kids carry their laptops around like Trapper Keepers

We have gone over that hump of just making them an everyday part of their education
- no different than their textbook or Trapper Keeper
- we offer parent training, so parents

We are about to add 32 more computers to extend our laptop program down to 3rd grade

Bruce now asking question of vision: How do you build a shared vision among a wider community and your faculty specifically

Steve Shiever’s answer
- lots of sharing ideas
- discussing what do we want our students to know
- prep for the 21st century college environment
- talked about student collaboration
- most jobs in the workforce are collaborative jobs: that is what we need to encourage with our students, this was a big piece

curriculum design piece was very scary for many teachers at first

Ron Canuel’s answer:
- traditional responses generate traditional results / outcomes
- once people started to recognize that we needed to change behaviors for changed
- I was able to create a sense of urgency around this
- 2001 I had quadruple bypass, I was a junk food eater
- that gave me a very acute appreciation of time and what time means/meant
- I questioned this position that change has to be slow in education, because slow change is at the expense of children
- I appreciate deep PD and planning, but why should we agree it must take YEARS to do when the kids need it now?!
- so we did change our PD model from the “dog and pony show”
- for teachers it was far more effective to do “on hands” PD
- first year, we invested 225 days of PD

Question from small, rural K-12 educator
- In our CIPA agreement we discourage use of electronic equipment because we feel we have to so we can prevent lawsuits. How can we get by that and let students take laptops home, and use tools like Twitter in the classroom

Ron Canuel’s answer:
- who is going to teach them (the kids)
- filters don’t keep kids safe
- key is talking to kids and adults, focusing on using this properly
- because students are so adept with technology and open to it does not mean they know how to use it appropriately (we heard this from Karen)

I HOPE OUR OKLAHOMA SUPERINTENDENTS WILL FIELD THIS

Scot Trower
- we put the burden back on our parents
- successful school districts drew up paperwork with lawyers to put burden on the parents
- I obtained copies of other district policies and used those with our students and kids
- story of parent

Question for Ron: How did you offer so much PD without cutting into instructional time?
- his answer: We didn’t. We did cut into instructional time, but we recognized the PD was so important that we needed
- we reduced the teaching time of 1 teacher per school 10 – 15% and gave them responsibility for being pedagogical leader on their campus to help other teachers, we called them “enhanced learning strategy teacher”

Question for Steve: Can you use state technology textbook fund for technology
- answer: Yes you can, and this session the legislature is going to look at letting districts be more flexible with their use of textbook funds

Lisa Pryor’s answer: Textbook funds can be used for software currently, but not hardware
- that may change in the future, however

Question: Were any of your teachers paid stipends for PD?
- Steve Shiever: 1st summer before deployment, did 3-4 day workshop and did pay stipend, but since then we do Wed afternoon from 2-4 pm each week
– we also take the whole staff to OTA each year
- Scott Parks: as we started, no, we didn’t pay stipends
– we initially asked teachers to do 30 hour training block on their own time, but in exchange we would fully equip their classroom with multimedia tools
– we had neighboring schools send their teachers who WERE paying their teachers, that led to interesting dynamics
– as we shared after that training, we had used about $1500 to equip our teachers so they were DOING The things we had talked/trained on, while other district teachers weren’t and couldn’t because they didn’t have the equipment

Scot Trower and Ron also said they don’t pay and didn’t pay teacher stipends for PD

Questions: functions on RFP require ISTE NETS standards
- do you use those with assessments?
- do you hold teachers and administrators accountable with ISTE NETS?

answers:
- Scott Parks: No
- Scot Trower: Is a part of our curriculum, there are open source tools out there now for evaluation
- Ron: said “we don’t have ISTE standards in Canada”

I CHIMED IN FROM THE FRONT ROW: YES YOU DO!!! (ISTE STANDARDS ARE INTERNATIONAL)

Ron responded that those standards are really baseline standards for their teachers now

INTERESTING TO NOTE NONE OF THE SCHOOLS REPRESENTED ON THE PANEL ARE DOING ANY KIND OF ASSESSMENT TIED TO ISTE STANDARDS.

Bruce’s points:
- for this grant “technology integration specialists” are written into this grant and ARE essential in this process

Ron:
- quoting Seymour Papert, perhaps we talk too much about technology rather than “learning” and “literacy”
- we shifted our language, we used to have a “1 to 1 Technology Conference” and called it a “Share Fair” – eliminating the word technology brought many more in: focusing on literacy, numeracy, and transformational contexts

Steve Shiever: We hae “shining stars” in each building
- train those people with train-the-trainer model

Bruce’s comment:
- ongoing support for teachers

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These are my notes from Bruce Dixon’s comments between our first and second sessions at the AALF / Oklahoma SDE 1:1 Learning Conference, November 30, 2009, as well as Carolyn Thompson’s session, “Models of Contemporary Learning.” This event is organized by the Anytime Anywhere Learning Foundation, and sponsored by the Oklahoma State Department of Education. MY THOUGHTS AND COMMENTS ARE IN ALL CAPS.

Bruce Dixon’s comments after Ron Canuel’s presentation

today we’re seeing more schools MANDATING file navigation and management skills
- how to use folder management
- we need to take the time to help teachers as well as students learn how to do this

Now making a plug for ONEnote
- many people absolutely LOVE ONEnote
- some say this works the way I think

Keyboarding skills
- some people
- Australian champion of thumbing got 26 words per minute last month
- why handicap our young people?
- my girls can do about 80 wpm
- give kids time each week, esp over first month to six months
- show kids the way they can most effectively use that keyboard

I THINK THAT IS A GREAT WAY TO ADDRESS THE IMPORTANCE OF KEYBOARDING. WELL SAID, BRUCE!

None of your parents went to school where they had laptops
- many of your parents don’t even understand that a good keyboarder can generate information two to three times as fast as they can handwrite

Now hearing from Carolyn Thompson, her presentation “Models of Contemporary Learning”
- Carolyn is a secondary teacher at the Louise S. McGehee School in New Orleans, Louisiana

Carolyn’s links for today on Sharetabs

her first question: “How many of you are teachers?”
- I am coming to you from the trenches of the classroom

THIS REMINDS ME OF MARCO’S RESPONSE TO THIS QUESTION AT ACTEM. WHY SHOULD WE ONLY SAY WE ARE TEACHERS IF WE ARE CURRENTLY IN THE CLASSROOM? OF COURSE MANY OF US ARE STILL TEACHERS EVEN THOUGH WE ARE NOT IN A CLASSROOM WITH KIDS EVERY DAY.

Today I’m going to focus on issues of collaboration and relationships
- my relationship to my students, their relationships to me, to each other, and to others outside the classroom with others around the world which have really been transformed

I really view this as a journey
- my school’s mission statement focuses on individualized learning, and lifelong desire to learn

Let’s talk about conceptions of citizenship
- I teach honors US government
- I really want my students to be empowered to make change

I ask my kids to setup a blog at the start of the year about an issue they are passionate about, something they care about, something that will get them off their chair
- example from Grace: My big issue is
- example from Grace: My Bill Ideas

Having my kids setup blogs at the start of the year is critical, this gives me a vital window into their learning and their minds throughout the year
- our journey of learning together personifies the idea that I am not in control and in charge of all the information and the learning this year
- starting to change the dynamic between my students and I
- changing my kids perception from seeing me and their textbook as something they have to “conquer” during the year

The ability of these tools to help students connect with each other has been incredible
- number of web 2.0 tool is incredible
- I had to push a lot of those away
- I have to think as a teacher, what is it I want to do…

have to help students overcome their sense of isolation
- through use of wikis, through use of class weblog, changes the ways students see each other and the class
- students start to create a network of learners
- kids become contributors to class projects, which are things they look back on with pride
- students look to each other for information and inspiration
- in my comparative AP government class, kids have to learn several countries inside and out
- weekly current event assignments, assignments come in
- kids share their reports and findings on a common class weblog

Example of wiki being used by students
- becomes commonplace for students to publish
- becomes as simple as clicking a button
- what this means: rather than a poster that goes up on the wall, stays in the classroom, now they can be shared with the greater world

We have a partner classroom in Bangalore, India, for our global issues class
- this is brand new, we’re just launching this
- kids are contributing to this wiki resource
- integrating a food diaries here, talk about how we eat compared to how kids in India eat before we talk about the global food crisis
- photos on Flickr showing foods
- have been very successful using skype between our schools, are going to integrate that into our global food crisis study

What I have found using this ability
- it is so easy to use
- when I first started using Wikis, you had to know a lot of programming

these are incredibly easy tools to use
- as you start thinking about what you can do with them, the sky is the limit

OF COURSE THAT ASSUMES THAT THESE WEBSITES ARE ACCESSIBLE FROM YOUR SCHOOL, AND YOUR SCHOOL ADMINISTRATION IS SUPPORTIVE OF THE IDEA OF KIDS CREATING, COMMUNICATING, AND COLLABORATING…

Project example using wiki: The McG Model Congress
- used discussion tabs to mirror committee work
- did this over 3 sections that I teach, this brought the entire grade together
- ended with huge day of debate, students from all 3 sections came together (F2F) to debate and work on bills
- the wiki was the tool behind the scenes which allowed all of this to work

In order to do these things, our kids need to learn how to do these things
- we shouldn’t assume they already know how to do all of this
- they CAN do this, but they don’t come to us knowing these things

Examples of concepts they need:
- RSS feeds: how do I find out about the world I am living in? It takes too long to visit all these sites
- using iGoogle
- we talk about lots of different sources of information
- differences between mainstream media sources, blogs, identifying liberal vs conservative blogs and other news sources
- if kids are going to learn about their world, they have to know about different sources of information that are out there
- looking at iGoogle makes a great way to start the day, looking at what is making headlines today, news of the day
- have liberal and conservative sources/voices

social bookmarking has also been HUGE
- kids need help organizing their information they are finding

I build the use of these tools into students’ daily and nightly assignments
- often they have to find something relevant and related in the news which connects to the assignment
- students constantly are using web evaluations
- I teach them over and over how to organize information, we focus on tagging a lot

Many times I’m asked about if this takes away from students’ learning about government, my ability to cover content
- my answer is that this IS the way students are and will learn about their government, and about other issues

The past 10 years I’ve been doing this have been so dynamic
- I have learned so much from my students
- this is what I do all day, I have great relationships with my students, they are excited to go vote, to participate and be active in government
- in a day when we see so many bemoan apathy and a lack of civic engagement, my students’ excitement is inspiring to see and experience

Carolyn Thompson on Delicious (social bookmarking)

Bruce’s closing thoughts on Carolyn’s presentation:
- technology increases our pedagogical capacity
- I can’t think of a better example than what we’ve just seen from Carolyn

More from Carolyn:
- we are the only girl’s school in the city with a laptop program
- when Katrina hit, no cell phones worked
- all cell towers were down
- when I evacuated, I was pregnant, wasn’t thinking I would be gone for 6 weeks
- couldn’t communicate
- we are right in the garden district on the river, our school didn’t flood
- our classroom had websites setup outside our school, our school servers were down
- Aug 26th, I setup via our class weblog different sites on blogger for different grade levels
- students found there way there from Starbucks and other wifi sites
- makes me cry when I read them now– people so thankful now to be able to share, to find others, to get news
- because our students had been using this type of technology in the classroom to build community, it was so natural for them to come to the school websites to find each other
- we were the first school in the city to re-open
- Oct 24th we re-opened with 50% of our kids, which was amazing

This taught our administration that this laptop was not just about posting assignments or bragging about sports wins/test scores, it is about places to come together and build community together
- this was an unbelievable experience
- this is not just about teaching, it is about connecting with the people you love

Our students participated in a city-wide crime march
- kids put together this project, wanted to go to Washington
- the entire 11th grade pulled together, created lobby booklet using a wiki
- saw 7 or 8 Senators, met with House of Representatives too
- were the talk of the town in Washington
- not sure if did a lot in the end to put resources on the ground

Carolyn Thompson’s profile page on Independent School Educator’s Network

I view blogs as a place to work out ideas
- they need to recognize it is public as well
- so language cannot be too informal

I think this is Carolyn Thompson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/mcgijoes

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These are my notes from Ron Canuel’s presentation, “Leadership and Vision in a 1:1 Reality” at the AALF / Oklahoma SDE 1:1 Learning Conference, November 30, 2009. This event is organized by the Anytime Anywhere Learning Foundation, and sponsored by the Oklahoma State Department of Education. MY THOUGHTS AND COMMENTS ARE IN ALL CAPS.

I’m doing a 30 minute overview of our 8 year experience with 1:1 learning

I am the “director general” of our school district
- that is a Napoleonic term for “superintendent” in Quebec

Our experiences have been very humbling
- the soft underbelly of education is often revealed

impact on teachers and educators? simple
- it took our very good teachers and made them excellent
- it took our poorer teachers and made them weaker
- so this is very polarizing
- this is all about learning
- the challenges come forth

We’re in a society where technology is so prevalent, but as some have observed

Me: 34 years as an educator
- Reader’s Digest Canada 2008, “Hero” in Education

In our providence, our government to date won’t acknowledge us and our work with 1:1 learning, not-with-standing our partnerships with Uruguay and South Korea
- we teach kids in Circ-de-Solet online

Video: people take so much for granted today which SHOULD impress them! (Conan show clip)

If we are going to prepare students for THEIR future, we really need to be attuned to issues of relevancy and engagement

I have 28 schools across a territory the size of Maryland
- almost 7000 students in our district
- we planned for 18 months, met 1 day per week
- came up with 209 items to work on

how did we generate that list? I asked me people: come up with every question you think will come up
- that led to a “blueprint” that we developed to answer each of those

That indicated to all our constituents that we did our homework and knew what we were talking about
- 1 question I was not prepared for: mom who asked about her daughter being kidnapped because she had a laptop

Provincial curriculum ins inquiry-based learning
- constructivist in basis
- this has been a very difficult transition in our schools
- in terms of standardized testing: our providence has led the way
- kids have to pass tests their last 2 years to get their certificate

Our achievement results
- in 2003 when we started, 66 or 69
- in 2008: we are 23 of 69

Dropout rates: down 41% – 26%
- we are about to have a press conference and announce now we are below 20%

Our 3 goals:
- enhancing teaching
- engaging students in learning
- creating a culture of excellence

Research on dropouts is unequivocal: kids are leaving school because they don’t see the relevance, don’t “get it” from a connection standpoint

Outcomes
1- improved literacy / numeracy
2- reduced dropout rate
3- equalized learning “Field”

When we encounter people who say, “I don’t believe a laptop has any place in the classroom” respond by focusing just on pedagogy alone: “Why would you say the most powerful learning tool ever created in the history of the world doesn’t have a place in the 21st century classroom?”

This has equalized the playing field tremendously
- we have students with autism who communicate via email with their teachers and parents
- students with serious handwriting problems now typing proficiently

consistent complaints from teachers:
- the kids are writing too much (there is too much to grade / review)

Phases of Integration when you bring in technology as we havej
- four distinct phases over a 3 – 4 year period

If I had my druthers, I would start in Kindergarten, because that is where literacy and numeracy starts

If you ask math teachers why some of their kids are not doing well, the answer is the same: they can’t read the questions

Start at the elementary level and work your way up

4 phases
1- The “Euphoria” phase
2- The “Dip” phase
3- The “Re-focus” phase
4- The “Building capacity” phase

all our kids take the laptops home all the time, 95% of our kids are bussed

make sure the laptop is PERSONALIZED: kids will take much better care of it than they would a textbook
- we thought our laptops would last 3-4 years, they are still in operation 6 years later
- we re-image laptops each summer
- we just take 3 days to re-image teacher laptops

this must be driven by pedagogy not by technology
- your directors of curriculum must be in charge of this initiative

When we announced to our IT director and his team that we were going from a PC platform to an Apple platform, for 3 months they were on suicide watch
- now, our team members are experts on both platforms

Some of our teachers in 2002, going to the ATM machine was a big event
- handing teachers a laptop and saying you’ll teach with this was HUGE

When I visited Maine classrooms in 2002, I asked kids about the interactions between their Apple laptop and their PC computers at home
- kids gave blank stares
- kids go from one platform to another without a problem

that was a poke in the eye for me: kids want to be able to use the technology in a way to express themselves, to collaborate, to be collegial with each other

Leadership components of change
- beware of the philosophical vs pragmatic
- we were first district in Canada to go 1:1, admins were very enthusiastic
- after 6 months, there was a lot of philosophic buy-in but not practical buy-in
- loaded plates for administrators

We realized PD must include management

Michael Fullan from Canada says it best: pressure and support are two key elements for any educational reform effort

managing change is about managing people

We’ve developed integration of technology and education rubrics that are now on the US DOE website

April 2008 survey of parents:
- conducted in spring of 2008 involving all students, teachers, administrators and large representation of parents
- responses were all confidential and anonymous, most submitted online

We did this project with no additional money
- I have 21 elected trustees who voted anonymously for this
- we got bank loans, and we have a foundation
- with the promise of not 1 cut into a school program
- I can assure you I’ve heard the issue of money nonstop, I can help show you where you have some money you can redirect

In any change situation, you will always have 10-15% of people who are against change no matter what you present
- those are the types of people who get up in the morning and say, “Oh no, not another day…” (I was just getting used to yesterday)

Bruce’s answer to what you do with reluctant teachers: “Mate, you work with the living”

Harvard Business Review says: most successful organizations invest in those people who make it work
- those other teachers “are coming around”
- we have less and less of those against it, because there is an inevitability to this

Key finding #2: students most often use their laptops to look up information and write both at school and at home

finding 3: language arts, French, science ,social studies and math were subjects where laptops were most useful
- student research, making schoolwork more interesting and general improvement in school work are the most useful applications for the laptop

I AM VERY INTERESTED IN THIS CONCEPT OF LEARNING TRANSFORMATION. SO FAR WHAT WE’VE HEARD FROM RON MAINLY SOUNDS LIKE THE DIGITAL WAY TO DO TRADITIONAL SCHOOL….

Fun uses are less common than we thought

can be used for all subjects

this is about philosophy

for teachers we find: the more they use the laptop for their personal lives, the more likely they’ll use it professionally to integrate technology

We know you have to have Internet filters, we have none
- have met with lots of experts who say: they don’t work
- kids figure out how to get around them

I was in Washington DC now, and some teachers are telling kids to get

There is only 1 filter that really works: monitoring
- we expect our teachers to monitor kids, and parents to monitor as well

I have parents come say, “My child just spent 3 hours on that laptop YOU gave him! What are you going to do about that?”
- my response: Why don’t you tell them to turn it off! (that isn’t a problem with the technology)

Some basic “lessons about a successful 1:1 laptop deployment
1: education really doesn’t like change, whether it is top down or by local consensus. 10-15% of individuals won’t like anything to do with change, plain and simple
- focus on mid-adapters: your early adapters will NOT carry this initiative forward
- have to really support them and your late adapters

Lesson 2: If the technology (laptops, infrastructure) is not reliable (95%) regular, sustainable, and supported then teachers will simply put the machines to the side
- create a SENSE of openness to the Internet – too many filters also serve as a major deterrent
- we have to work around this

Lesson 3: curriculum must support integration of technology and be based on becoming transformational, in both learning and teaching contexts
- teacher PD must focus on the integration of new pedagogy, as well as in integrating technology into the classroom
- be careful of younger vs seasoned teachers
- teachers with strongest pedagogy will be your strongest leaders with 1:1

Lesson 4: departmental and school leadershipL pragmatic buy-in and not philosophical buy in
- don’t want people to just see this as “more work”

Lesson 5: evaluation drives instruction
- in establishing any new context for learning and expecting teachers to move to a transformational situation, the entire evaluative rubric for each subject must be completed, prior to the deployment
- otherwise the technology usage will simply mirror traditional, Socratic teaching methods

2003 response from many when we started: laughter
- now showing video of kids on laptops, set to Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down” song (NICE CHOICE FOR A SONG, BTW)
- I THINK IT WOULD BE EVEN MORE POWERFUL TO SEE A VIDEO OF KIDS AND TEACHERS ACTUALLY TALKING ABOUT WHAT THEY ARE DOING WITH THEIR LAPTOPS

Still more derivatives
- increased teachers / administrators involvement in the learning cycle
- we have an expectation of change and self-improvement
- being more evidence based, not just based on gut-feel
- improved student attitude / motivation / behavior
- created a permanent culture of ongoing professional development
- more..

2008 response by educators, ministry of education, politicians, and media: deafening silence

www.etsb.qc.ca

canuelr [at] etsb.qc.ca

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These are my notes from the opening remarks from AALF / Oklahoma SDE 1:1 Learning Conference, November 30, 2009. This event is organized by the Anytime Anywhere Learning Foundation, and sponsored by the Oklahoma State Department of Education.

Comments from Lisa Pryor:

Oklahoma has $6.5 million to invest in the next 18 months in educational technology

This opportunity is site-based

Federal government’s emphasis on 8th grade tech literacy is the reason we are focusing on innovations for the middle school years

Focus today is on LEARNING: This is not just about buying “stuff” (hardware)

This is a HIGHLY competitive application process
- will look at quality of applications
- will look at your commitment to transforming learning

Comments from Bruce Dixon:

This is my 56th time to the United States

this is a marathon, not a sprint
- this is about transformation of the learning experience for our young people

today we hope to share experiences with you
- we’ve worked in just under 30 states
- we’ve worked closely with those in Maine
- unfortunately Betty Manchester from Maine is afflicted with H1N1 and will not be able to join us

We’ll start today with Ron Canuel from Quebec, Canada: “Defining a Vision for Technology-Rich Learning”

Then we’ll hear from Carolyn Thompson from Louisiana: “Models of Contemporary Learning”

After our break, we’ll look at some of the challenges: “The Challenge of Leading Technology-Rich Learning Environments”

Panel discussion: Leadership, Vision, and Student Achievement
- Scott Parks, Scott Trower, Steve Shiever, Ron Canuel

Lunch will include vendor presentations

After lunch:
- Planning: 21 Steps to 21st Century Learning
- Implementation: 22 Steps to 21st Century Learning

End of day: OK SDE Information Session by Eric Hileman

AALF focuses on LEARNING more than LAPTOPS
- we started in 1996 up in Seattle
- have run workshops across the USA, got very popular
- decided to setup a nonprofit organization

This isn’t about the brand, the technology: this is about the experience for young people

Our mission has 3 parts:
1- evangelism: why we think this is important, what we believe in, and why we believe it
– we’ve done a lot of this over the past decade
2-

We developed program/framework “21 Steps to 21st Century Learning” with Queenstown, Australia schools and leaders
- this is normally a 2 day workshop
- we’ll cover the essential elements of this in 2 hours today
- first quarter is about vision and beliefs: what underpins the decision you’ll make
- next is about logistics: nuts and bolts
- then pedagogical implications
- then will finish off around important elements of policy development: this is a big key to success

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Thanks to the hard work of Patrick Woessner and others on the K12Online09 PR committee, a 2 page printable flyer is now available which you can use to share the 2009 K-12 Online Conference with other educators with whom you work! Please read the full post on the K-12 Online Conference blog – due to differences in dates/times converting from GMT, it is important to provide this flyer in LOCAL time zones if possible. Multiple versions are provided on the K-12 Online Conference blog post, as well as the GMT version embedded vis Scribd. Editable MS-Word versions are also available which you can customize for your local time zone. All events on the main conference schedule and the Ning Events page are in GMT, with date/time conversion links provided.

k12online09flyer-GMT

Also, remember the official hashtag of the conference is #k12online09!

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Thanks to a post from the ever-helpful and prolific Richard Byrne, I learned about the website WatchKnow. According to the website’s about page:

Imagine collecting all the best free educational videos made for children, and making them findable and watchable on one website. Then imagine creating many, many more such videos… WatchKnow—as in, “You watch, you know”—has started building this resource.

As Richard noted in his post yesterday, “Survey – How To Respond to YouTube Being Blocked” – the YouTube website must be unblocked for WatchKnow videos to play in your location. The site reminds me of Totlol, which recently became a members-only website and is designed for parents of toddlers. WatchKnow is free and designed for older learners. The idea of creating a filtered and vetted resource for high quality educational videos found on YouTube is an excellent one, and certainly needs more than one entrepreneur or group seeking to meet this need.

All of the “selected blog posts” on the WatchKnow “press” webpage are from October 2009, so I was apparently asleep at the keyboard when many others became aware of the site last month. As Kevin Jarrett noted, the site is “people powered,” so it relies on contributions from members. This short (almost 5 minute) video explains how it works.

Larry Sanger, the co-founder of WikiPedia, is the founder of WatchKnow and is the primary narrator of the above video.

In the project “Unmasking the Digital Truth,” school district leaders are encouraged to provide differentiated content filtering for teachers and students. This means teachers are given more trust in the form of “access rights” on the network than students. Those additional access rights should definitely include the website YouTube, which is required for access and use of WatchKnow.

On the subject of high quality educational videos, I also should put in a plug for Next Vista for Learning. It is setup in an entirely different way from WatchKnow, but is also a non-profit organization focused on providing access to high quality educational videos for students around the world.

Check out both these educational video resources and consider using them to find and share educational videos with your students. Whether or not these resources are blocked at your school, I encourage you to take Richard Byrne’s survey on educator responses to YouTube access censorship. If YouTube is blocked in your school district, consider contributing ideas to the “Unmasking the Digital Truth” project and acting on those ideas locally so more digital learning resources can become available for educators as well as students in your school. It’s exciting to see projects like WatchKnow and NextVista growing. It will be even more exciting when the day dawns when all these educational resources are accessible on the networks we fund for our schools as taxpayers.

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access, censorship, education, learning, school, technology, video, youtube, watchknow, nextvista

Cross-posted to the K-12 Online Conference blog.

Tomorrow on Classroom 2.0 Live, organizers of the 2009 K-12 Online Conference will discuss this year’s conference which begins on Monday, November 30th with a pre-conference keynote by Kim Cofino. Here are the details of this FREE online meetup!

Date: Saturday, November 28, 2009
Time: Saturday, November 28, 2009 (9:00am Pacific/ 10:00am Mountain/ 11:00am Central/ 12:00pm Eastern)
Location: Elluminate – http://tinyurl.com/cr20live

Tips for first-time users in Elluminate are available.

The official description of the session (according to the Classroom 2.0 Live calendar entry) is:

The topic this Sat. will be “2009 K12Online Conference Update” with the K12Online Conference Co-conveners. Please join us as we are updated by the conference co-conveners about the latest news of the K12Online Conference live events, keynote speakers and conference presenters. More information and session details are at http://live.classroom20.com. Classroom 2.0 LIVE is an opportunity to gather with other member of the community in regular “live” web meetings. Special thanks for this go to our sponsor, Elluminate, for providing the service that allows us to do this! Thanks so much for being a part of this community!

Hope you can join us for this discussion online, as well as for the K-12 Online Conference! Please remember (if you have not already) to join the K-12 Online Conference Ning, follow us on Twitter, friend us on Facebook, and subscribe to our blog!

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The 2009 K-12 Online Conference starts on Monday! Our presenters continue to share short “teaser” videos giving previews of their presentations. To view all the teasers, you can click the “2009 – Teasers” category on our blog, or view them in the “videos” section of our Ning.

Here’s the teaser video for Julie Lindsay’s upcoming K12Online09 presentation, “Learning Confluence: Where Philosophy Meets Practice in the 21st Century.”

Find more videos like this on K12 Online Conference

Here’s the teaser video for Richard Beach’s upcoming K12Online09 presentation, “Using VideoAnt Annotations to Provide “Audience-Based” Assessment to Students’ Video Productions.”

Find more videos like this on K12 Online Conference

Here’s the teaser video for Rachel Boyd’s upcoming keynote in the K12Online09 strand, A Week in the Classroom. Her presentation is titled, “A Peek for A Week.”

Find more videos like this on K12 Online Conference

Here’s the teaser video for Jackie Gerstein’s upcoming K12Online09 presentation, “Digital Writers’ Workshop.”

Find more videos like this on K12 Online Conference

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This podcast is a recording of a presentation by Shawn Massey and Wynn Draper-Bryant of Flint Community Schools, Michigan, at the One to One Institute’s annual conference in Chicago, Illinois, on November 10, 2009. The title of their session was Classroom Basics for 1:1 Computing. Shawn was the project director for the Flint Community Schools “Freedom to Learn Project,” and Wynn has been a classroom teacher for 36 years. If they take her laptops away from her students, Wynn says she’d have to retire! In Flint Community Schools, select campuses have been implementing one to one laptop learning projects for almost eight years. Shawn and Wynn shared a wide variety of perspectives and ideas in this presentation, including many practical tips for other educators currently implementing 1:1 or considering the implementation of 1:1 learning projects. I particularly enjoyed and appreciated the way Shawn and Wynn integrated student comments and quotations into their presentation. I will include a link to my own textual notes from this presentation in the podcast shownotes, along with additional resource links referenced by Shawn and Wynn. Shawn and Wynn’s messages about how important it is to keep moving forward, support the people who solve the problems, and celebrate the victories of everyone involved as you walk down this road of one to one computing together are 100% on target. We can learn a great deal from these passionate Michigan educators about ways to most effectively solicit community buy-in for one to one learning and support one to one projects for the long term. The PD model, the “dine and dialog” events, the constant dialog, showcasing, and celebrations which were a part of their Freedom to Learn Project implementation plan are exemplary and can be used as models for other 1:1 programs. As Shawn says, however, remember “one size does NOT fit all.” It’s critical to be flexible, adaptable, and LISTEN to all the stakeholders as you move forward with 1:1 project implementation.

 

 Podcast 335: Classroom Basics for 1:1 Computing by Shawn Massey and Wynn Draper-Bryant [49:55m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (457)

Show Notes:

1. My text notes from this workshop
2. Flint Community Schools, Flint, Michigan
3. One to One Institute
4. Contact Wesley
5. Follow Wesley on Twitter

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As we celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday today in the United States, Miguel Guhlin is encouraging others to share software applications for which they are thankful. Here are my picks, both for my Mac and iPhone.

7 Mac Applications for which I’m thankful:

1. Mars Edit: The offline blog post editor which I use every day.

2. Skitch: A free screensnap and annotation tool which can automatically post to Flickr, along with other photo sharing destinations. I use this almost every day.

3. TextWrangler: A free text editor supporting GREP search and replace functionality, and handy for use as an intermediate location to paste and re-copy web-based text when I don’t want to paste formatted text in a destination application or location which does not support a “paste text only” option.

4. Cyberduck: A free FTP appliation for Mac which I use to upload podcasts and other files to my web host account.

5. FireFox: A great, free web browser which I use extensively along with the default Safari web browser on my Mac.

6. Seashore: A free port of the open source image editing program The Gimp. This is my main photo and graphic editing program these days. I haven’t owned or used a copy of PhotoShop for several years now, thanks to The Gimp and Seashore.

7. Flickr Uploader: A great free application to label, arrange in sets, tag, and upload images to Flickr.

7 iPhone applications for which I’m thankful:

1. Pano: An amazing $3 app which permits users to create multi-image panoramic images of different scenes.

2. Loopt: A free mobile life blogging app which I connect to my Twitter account (which is connected to my Facebook) to share mobile updates as well as photos.

3. Ecofon: My favorite iPhone Twitter application, also free. I particularly use this to check and respond to Twitter direct messages (DMs) and @reply messages.

4. Facebook for iPhone: I hardly ever use Facebook on my laptop now, instead I use this mobile application to check and post updates, confirm friend requests, check and send Facebook email, etc.

5. Holy Bible (YouVersion): I love having 40 different translations of the Bible in my pocket and at my fingertips at all times. My favorite translation to use these days is “The Message,” and I also use the daily reading suggestions (based Robert Roberts’ daily reading plan developed over 100 years ago) fairly often.

6. Evernote: This is my digital archive for notes, my off-board brain. If someone give me a tip or suggestion, I try to note it quickly in Evernote. It’s searchable and not only accessible via my iPhone but also via the web-based interface and desktop application.

7. Google Reader for Mobiles (actually a web app): I read almost all my news these days from my RSS reader / aggregator, Google Reader. It’s free, allows for flexible sharing, and also has a “star” feature which I use to flag articles I want to blog about or share in another way later.

Fairly complete lists of my Macintosh applications as well as my iPhone applications are also available on wiki.wesfryer.com.

What software and mobile phone applications make your “thankful” list this year?

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Here’s a fun Facebook option my sister showed me today.

From your Facebook homepage, scroll all the way down and in the lower left corner click on your LANGUAGE. From the available choices, choose ENGLISH (Pirate) – beta.

Now you can enjoy using Facebook and reading updates from your friends using Pirate English!

Warning: Be careful when USING Pirate English with others, particularly in professional settings. Not everyone may share your enthusiasm for this language dialect, especially fans of political correctness.

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english, facebook, fun, pirate, language

Matthew Teague’s December 2009 National Geographic article, “The Other Tibet,” should be considered must-reading for anyone interested in understanding modern China. In my November 5, 2009 podcast, “Reflections on Social Media, School Change, 21st Century Learning Skills, and China” I addressed some of the recent challenges the Chinese government has faced in maintaining tight control over its citizens’ abilities to organize as well as protest in Xinjiang, known formally as the “Uyghur Autonomous Region.”

This is the western-most providence in China which has an area of over 600,000 square miles, and as of November 5th still had Internet access cut off to the ENTIRE providence as a result of the protests, riots, and violence in Urumqi in July. Read Cui Jia’s Nov 5th article “The missing link” from the English China Daily News for additional background. This December 2009 National Geographic article provides MUCH more background about these events, their precedents, and the ways in which the September 11th attacks on the United States prompted the Chinese government to begin a unified spin campaign portraying Uyghur groups (pronounced “WEE-gur” and sometimes spelled “Uygur”) as “international terrorists” in solidarity with those opposed by the United States in its “global [and apparently perpetual] war on terror.”

I hope my reference of these topics and issues in my blog will not result in my domain being blocked in China. According to the National Geographic article, publicly mentioning Rebiya Kadeer’s name in Xinjiang can invite governmental reprisals, including imprisonment. In this post, I am NOT explicitly advocating support for East Turkestan, the World Uyghur Congress, or other groups advocating for political change in Xinjiang. What I AM doing is highlighting this recent article in National Geographic, and asserting that the issues it raises are critical for those interested in understanding modern China.

The following 69 second YouTube video, “The Other Tibet: China’s Uygur People,” is available from the National Geographic Society’s official YouTube channel and is a “teaser trailer” for this article, “The Other Tibet.” All the photographs used in the print edition of the article are included in the video. I don’t know how long NG has been publishing article video trailers like this, but I think it’s innovative as well as effective. Take a look.

Of course, National Geographic author Matthew Teague’s use of maps in this article is exemplary. This one shows the relative locations of major cities in Xinjiang including Urumqi, Karamay, Dushanzi, Kashi (Kashgar,) Kuqa, and Shache. As a resource-rich region, Xinjiang reminds me of both Wyoming and Alaska in the United States. The strategic importance of those states to the United States is quite similar to they way the Chinese government perceives Xinjiang.

The 5000 year old silk road, the 2500 mile West-East gas pipeline (completed in 2004), railroads, and highways now connecting Xinjiang with the rest of China are reflected on this map. What is not shown, but is discussed in the article in detail, is the impact of the Chinese government’s incentive policies encouraging Han Chinese to move west to Xinjiang since 1949. The Uyghur People of Xinjiang are Turkic and predominantly Islamic. Consider the following graph I created and published this evening using data from this article and Google Spreadsheets.

You’ll recall the Chinese revolution (the final stage of military conflict in the 1946–1950 Chinese Civil War) ended in 1949.

Now consider the following paragraph from this National Geographic article:

The big business in Xinjiang is oil, but all that oil is controlled from Beijing by state-owned energy companies. Many of the good jobs in Xinjiang are government jobs, and employees can advance more readily if they join the Communist Party, which requires renouncing their religion. And most Uygurs won’t do that. The result is an ironic and combustible symmetry: As Han settlers pour in, Uygurs, unable to find work in their fantastically wealthy and spacious homeland, migrate east to work in privately owned factories in crowded coastal cities.

Does the above graph, paired with these sentences, begin to paint a picture of why there is widespread and deep-seated discontent in Xinjiang? Take some time and read the full article. It is very important that we, in the West, do not view Muslims as a monolithic group and naively regard the Uygur people as terrorist allies of Osama bin Laden, Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, etc. The history here is much more complicated than that.

There are big reasons why Internet access is still blocked in ALL of Xinjiang. Nine people were executed earlier this month in China because of their alleged involvement in the Urumqui riots. Adrienne Mong reported today from Beijing that international calls are still blocked to and from the province. Relatively speaking, I predict we have just begun to hear news from Xinjiang here in the West. The Chinese government appears to be making all efforts to prevent further news from the area from leaking out via mainstream media or citizen journalist channels. Given what happened a few months ago with the 2009 Iranian election protests and social media, it’s an open question whether or not the Chinese government can stop all news from leaking out of this area or prevent all individuals from organizing using digital technologies.

This 2 minute, 15 second interview with NG article author Matthew Teague gives more insight into how severe and complete the information restrictions in Xinjiang still are today. Unfortunately as a Bing Video you may have to install an updated version of Silverlight to view this, but even if you do it’s worth it to watch the accompanying B-roll footage and hear Matthew describe his recent experiences in Xinjiang writing this article.

Stay tuned, you can bet we’re going to hear more from “The Other Tibet” in the months to come.

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According to the English Wikipedia, a “Lip dub” is:

…a type of video that combines lip synching and audio dubbing to make a music video. It is made by filming individuals or a group of people lip synching while listening to a song or any recorded audio then dubbing over it in post editing with the original audio of the song. There is often some form of mobile audio device used such as an iPod. Often, they look like simple music videos, although many involve a lot of preparation and are well produced. The most popular lip dubs are done in a single unedited shot that often travels through different rooms and situations in, say, an office building. They have become popular with the advent of mass participatory video content sites like YouTube.

The following video is an example of a Lib Dub, created by students at the University of Quebec at Montreal. They used the Black Eyed Peas song, “I’ve Got a Feeling” to create this. It’s had over 2.7 million views on YouTube since publication a year ago in September.

The “Lip Dub” WikiPedia article cite’s a 2007 post by Tom Johnson in which he identified four characteristics for an outstanding Lib Dub. They are:

1. spontaneity
2. authenticity
3. participation
4. fun

Here is another Lib dub example, which Tom analyzed in his post. This is “Lip Dub – Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger.” It has also had over two million views on Vimeo since it was published 3 years ago.

Lip Dub – Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger from amandalynferri on Vimeo.

The University Lib Dub Project has lots of other example videos, and the project is open for new contributions.

Videos like this would certainly invite interesting discussions about copyright, intellectual property rights, remixing, and fair use among school librarians. I’m looking forward to hearing what Joyce Valenza, Mathew Needleman, and other presenters have to say about copyright issues in presentations for this year’s K-12 Online Conference.

The Washington Post’s article, “Office Drones, Lip-Sync Your Heart Out” shared information about Lib dub videos two years ago, but somehow I’ve never heard of this UGC video genre until today. Hat tip to Scott McLeod and the CASTLE link list from Nebraska TAG for sharing this.

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digitalstorytelling, fun, sharing, theater, video, youtube, lipdub, ugc