Connected Educator Month

This past week, my online course looked at a few ways of engaging in online professional development networks and conferences.  Through my membership in Classroom 2.0, I received an email from Steve Hargadon describing some exciting opportunities awaiting us in the month of August. 

August is the Connected Educator Month.  It is a U.S. Department of Education Office of Educational Technology's Connective Educators initiative.  Read more about it on the Dept of Ed site here.  Explore the Connected Educator's Initiative and check out the Calendar of Events, Activities!    It's an incredible line up of speakers, forums, webinars, etc. on a wide range of topics related to online educational technology topics. Alan November, Karen Levine, Howard Gardner, Kathy Schrock, etc, etc, etc. are a few of the speakers. Watch this video to see how to navigate the calendar.  August 1, looks like a packed day, but it doesn't stop there.  Follow the #ce12 hashtag on Twitter.

Steve Hargadon describes the 2012 Learning 2.0 Virtual Conference, August 20-24, 2012 and the role it will play in the Connected Educator month. His post also provides links to opportunities to submit proposals to the Library 2.012 conference, October 3 - 5 and the 2012 Global Education Conference, November 12 - 16.  August and beyond hold many opportunities to participate in some free, online learning opportunities. 

Thanks to Steve Hargadon for his work and dedication to spreading the news.  Happy learning!

Connected? Pairing Two TED Talks

As I prep for a class, I am leaving open a choose your own topic of interest week based on ed tech.  This made me think about what topic I would choose if I were given this assignment.  Online gaming, the future of books, online and hybrid courses, social media: there are many topics I love.  I’ve enjoyed following Jane McGonigal’s work on gaming in education (See my past posts as I explored this topic last summer.), and Sherry Turkle’s TED Talk is one of my favorites.  So, in challenging myself to begin my own assignment, I would choose to pair these two talks and explore common and conflicting concepts.

Watch both of these talks and form your own conclusions.  Some interesting lesson plan or discussion, yes discussion, is waiting to be developed by pairing these two talks together.  Hmmm... a Vialogue  or TED Ed would be a fun way to have conversations develop here.

Jane McGonigal: The Game that Can Give You Ten Extra Years of Life

Sherry Turkle: Connected, but Alone?

I’ve gotta go.  I’m off to play a game of Words with Friends with my kiddo and grandpa.

Happy conversing!

ISTE 2012 Highlights

To blog about ISTE or not to blog about ISTE?  That was the question.  It’s fun to share, so here are some of my highlights.  I selected sessions that can be watched or further explored via the links.

The two keynotes I attended were great.  What’s not to love about Sir Ken Robinson, his ideas and sense of humor?  I’ve watched so many of his talks over the past few years that it was nice to be there with him at ISTE.  Dr. Yong Zhao gave an impressive speech as well.  (See below and forward to minute 25 to get to his presentation.)  Here’s a link to these and other ISTE videos.

Google Slam was fun to attend.  I walked away with a few new ideas, particularly with the use of Google Docs and gadgets.  The vocabulary flash card gadget has potential.  Here’s a direct link to explore more.

Kathy Schrock is an engaging presenter who packed her session full of practical ideas.  Here is her presentation on Literacy in the Digital Age.  I particularly liked her section about global literacy.  Concepts such as how people from different countries react differently to the same text, the topic of news bias, and ways to promote global literacy supported by the use of technology was reiterated in other sessions as well.   If you are not familiar with Kathy’s work, take a look.  It’s near impossible to explore her site and not glean a new idea or inspiration.

Annette Lamb also delivered a session, Graphic Inquiry: Dynamic Differentiationand Digital Age Learning, filled to the brim with practical tips. I recommend watching the session here.  Here’s a direct link to her presentation handout and  Get Graphic site, two valuable resources with many applications for ESOL, differentiation best practices, etc.!  Some of her ideas for the use of infographics as a means of critical analysis and inquiry are interesting.  Since I use online comic strips, timelines, etc. in my own teaching, I liked her discussion of students generating both the physical and the online versions.

I could easily write a whole post on the larger ideas from the presentations of Alan November’s session, Empathy: The 21st Century Skill,  David Warlick’s session, Cracking the ‘Native’ Information Experience, Chris Lehmann’s session Beyond Googling: Using Technology To Build A Culture of Inquiry,  and Will Richardson’s session, The Steep Unlearning Curve: Rethinking Schools, Classrooms, and Learning.  Check out their work if you are not familiar with them.   

Renee Hobbs has some useful information on the topic of copyright and fair use laws that I have been exploring lately.  Judith Harris delivered an interesting session called TPACK: Will You Know It When You See It? I was a bit disappointed I didn’t see more, but caught the tail end of the presentation, Educational Blogging: Flattening the Classroom Walls!, by Linda Yollis and Kathleen Morris.  I’ve followed Kathleen’s tweets and work for quite some time.  Their site is  well worth exploring for elementary teachers interested in blogging and global collaboration.

As a fun side note, like many of the attendees, I used my iPad to record notes, capture pictures, etc.  Evernote was my go to app and I enjoyed participating in Today’s Meet backchannel.

There is a lot of useful information out there to explore on the ISTE 2012 conference site.  As I was writing this post, I ran across a few I took the time to watch, such as Cool Collaborative Activities with GoogleTools with TammyWorcester geared toward grades K-5 and The Wonderful World of Wikis with Viki Davis.  Watch recorded sessions and explore more presentation notes here.

Happy learning!

ISTE History: Through the Changing Eyes of a Third Grader Turned Let’s Say Thirty Something

“First” ISTE Conference: I enjoyed my “first” ISTE conference this week in San Diego, CA!  It was exciting for me on a few levels.  I have followed the works of many of the presenters that I attended for several years now, so hearing them present in person was fun, but I’ll leave that for part II.  As I reflect, it is decidedly at a much more personal level that ISTE was unexpectedly important to me.  Perhaps the story of my “first” ISTE conference in 2012 began back in the 1980’s as a third grade girl eagerly anticipating a trip over the mountain passes from Idaho to Oregon to visit her dad who dedicated summers to earning a Masters in Computer Science in Eugene, OR.  Yes, this was back before online learning was an option. 

I have been exposed to Ed Tech my whole life and probably interested in it roughly since birth, but for whatever reasons only in more recent years discovered how much myself.  It was an honor to attend with my dad, an excellent computer science/math teacher at the high school level.  The founder of ISTE, Dave Moursund, was his advisor and instructor in Eugene, OR when I was a just a kid back in the 80’s.   I recall hearing about a man who expected excellence of his students and received respect from my father.  As we sat together during some of the keynotes, the history of ISTE and its leaders unexpectedly became of interest to me.  A new human dimension was added to the organization as we discussed the changes of the organization and educational technology in general.

I should take a step back and clarify.  This is not the only time I have been to an ISTE conference with my dad; it’s the only time I have attended.  My dad presented a couple times, once on Skype in Washington DC in 2009 and a presentation entitled,Think Wireless, in 2001 in Chicago, IL.  The 2001 date is memorable because it was the year I met him in Chicago embracing my 4 month old daughter.  I was honestly more interested in showing him his first granddaughter than in hearing about his presentation.  There also may have been years in my youth in which I tagged along, but if I did shopping and the big city filled my thoughts more than what my geeky father was doing at this crazy convention.  I also recall hearing many enthusiastic stories from both of my parents of where Ed Tech was headed in more recent years after their attendance.  Somehow I just didn’t get it until this year.  And now it has connected in several ways for me: from the speakers I’ve heard my father “introduce” me to over the years— Annette Lamb and Kathy Schrock for example, to the history of the organization, to the concept that technology is NOT the emphasis of Ed Tech; it is fundamentally about education and people (or at least that is how I will choose to see it).

ISTE/NECC History: I’m not generally a history buff, but when connections are made, it comes alive.  My dad said he felt like ISTE has exponentially grown over the years. This year’s ISTE history page shows his perceptions are right on.  In 2011, there were 355 concurrent sessions while in 1979 (then called NECC) 32 sessions ran.  Comparing conference themes as they have changed and remained the same also brings up lively conversations. Add a comparison of the exhibitors and this info. would make an interesting infographic!  This history triggers my interest to know what changes the speakers, such as Lamb, November, Richardson,  Schrock, and Warlick, whom I particularly liked and listened to during the conference have experienced. What advice would they give to a “newcomer” such as myself?

And my story doesn’t end quite yet:  My daughter and mother also attended the exhibits.  If you were there, you may have seen them walking around in yellow Turning Technologies capes.  It’s hard to say if my kiddo was more interested in Ed Tech or shopping as I was at her age, but she did give up a day at Sea World for browsing the exhibit hall.

Seemingly random but connected ending thought of a let’s say thirty something year old:  This is not verbatim, but I overheard two ladies presumably walking to a conference session on augmented reality.  One lady animatedly expressed, “I AM augmented reality.  I augment my student’s reality everyday with who I AM as an educator.”  Yes, it’s about the people.  More specifically, it’s about the educators and learners, and the definitions hopefully blur as we move forward.  Moving forward with the technology is exciting, but the history and being grounded in the people—students/educators, keeps it real and in my case in the family.   

The Learning Network: Teaching and Learning with The New York Times Teacher Resource

The Learning Network: Teaching and Learning with The New York Times has tons of valuable resources and activities for 7^th-12^th grade teachers. It contains a blog that invites students 13 and older to contribute comments about the news.  (Here’s their commenting FAQ page.) There are lessons based on content from The New York Times that can be adapted and are geared toward many content areas.  Students can take news quizzes and more.  Here’s a taste from my brief exploration today.

I explored the technology section and enjoyed the first post entitled, ‘The Secrets It Holds’: Discovering the Lively Morgue and Other Archives.  It contains an interesting short video about the The Lively Morgue which left me wanting to explore this link to the The Lively Morgue Times Tumbler.  I was not disappointed, and you will not be either if you enjoy captivating pictures that captured moments of everyday life from the past. Today’s highlighted picture of a bucking bronco in Montana in 1929 brought a smile to my face as I imagined one of my Montana relatives taking a ride.  Grandma, is that you?  Click on the picture and you’re in for another treat.  Don’t take my word for it, browse other wonderful pictures such as this one, read, and learn.  

This same post from The Learning Network, ‘The Secrets It Holds’: Discovering the Lively Morgue and Other Archives, has some excellent questions and could be used as a springboard for an assignment or discussion.  Here are a few of the questions from this post: “Why do you think some people feel a stronger connection to a physical object like a book or photograph than the same data presented on a screen? As the photo editor Darcy Eveleigh says, ‘You can’t touch digital. It’s easier to look at, faster to look at, but it feels in a weird way like this [the morgue] is a little more permanent than digital.’ Would you agree? “

The post also contains suggested activities and links to additional worthwhile readings!  These could easily be embedded in an engaging unit that probes students to consider issues of our times revolving around research, libraries, books, and the past and future.  These concepts are things I’ve been thinking about over the past few years, and they relate to several articles written on this blog, including my post What’s a Book?  Is This a Book?  (Rereading this post written about a year ago made me think how much our conversations on this topic have changed since then, yet how the essence is the same.)  It also relates to a podcast interview I listened to today with Mark Bauerlein and Steve Hargadon on Ed Tech Live. 

What is described here is only ONE post on a rich site. It is worth checking out and RSS feeding like I did. Check out other educational sites here.  Happy exploring!

Digital Citizenship, Information Literacy, and Digital Literacies Conversations Begin Today

With the explosion of information available to us at our fingertips and even by voice command, it is paramount that we as educators begin to understand information literacy, media literacies and related concepts of digital citizenship.  These three terms can lead down many paths of conversation.  For a beginning focus in this post, I'll ask can we assign a topic to our elementary-high school students and expect that they can find credible, reliable sources and know how to cite them? Will students be safe as they explore sites at school and home?  When do these skills get taught, and when do conversations about digital citizenship begin?  Is around junior high too late?  Whose responsibility is it to teach these skills and to instigate these conversations?  Perhaps all educators (including administrators and parents in this definition) need to learn and be involved in helping our children navigate informational literacy, media literacies, and concepts of digital citizenship.

Begin Exploring Digital Citizenship at Digital ID
I'm still in the beginning stages of pulling together some sources to help my own kid understand these topics and to continue educating myself.  Digital ID is a great place to go to begin understanding digital citizenship (a part of which relates to information literacy).  It is a wiki created by Gail Desler and Natalie Bernasconi.  Take your time, explore it and use it with your students!  Watch this Ed Tech Talk where Gail and Natalie discuss the wiki site and more.

This interactive graphic by Online PhD spurred on this post and offers some tips for using Google search.  But don't forget to go beyond Google.  Some of the links in the Information Literacy Tools section on our web 2.0 tools page offer some ways of doing so for various age groups.  Don't miss our young guest blogger's post, The Teachers Should See This: Research and Expensive Food.  These are a few ways to begin to understand informational literacy.

How do these concepts of information literacy, media literacies, and digital citizenship connect?  Perhaps in large ways as our students remix and become producers of knowledge, not only consumers of it. As educators, we can help them do this in responsible ways.  We can encourage connections to the everyday pop culture, but focus on extensions beyond into academic learning.  Doug Belshaw gave an interesting TEDxTalk entitled, The Essential Elements of Digital Literacies, that offers another view of this changing landscape as well as more food for thought.

Join us in developing these skills and having these important conversations at all levels in education. 

SLA Theories Come to Everyday Life in Prezi, Online Comic Strips, and Fakebooks

It’s an exciting time to be in education!  Teaching in the online and hybrid environment is fun on so many levels.  One of my favorite aspects is taking a good assignment and seeing how the available technology can push us to the next level.   It’s an ongoing progress that involves some play.

Here’s one assignment for my TCE 572 online and hybrid courses that I’m in the process of playing with.  In short, students work with Second Language Acquisition theories that many of them are encountering for the first time.  It’s a lot to take in at once, so in looking for alternative methods for them to work with the theories and express themselves, they choose from a variety of levels of technologies: Prezi (challenging), online comic strips, or Fakebook. Since technology is also an objective of the course, they get exposure to it and discuss how they may be able to use it with their language learners in the K-12 environment.  Putting this into perspective, it’s a small assignment, so I encourage them not to spend more than an hour, but I know many of them spent more than that.  (Note to students: Thanks for your dedication to your learning:-)

This was my second time of giving this assignment a whirl.  There were a few glitches, but they worked through them.  The Fakebook site seemed to work about 85% of the time and seemed to load best on Internet Explorer for me.  Although I imagine it caused some frustration, many of those who had trouble with the site did problem solving and took screenshots.  In future courses, I will suggest they screencast them.

A big thanks to all the students who may have stepped out of their comfort zones to work with this technology and content!   Here are the debuts of those who chose the option to post them here!

Prezis on SLA: (For information on Prezi Educator’s account, look here.)

Chomsky   a. http://bit.ly/K6S7yO  b. http://bit.ly/J1Mmr9  

Krashen  a. http://bit.ly/JE4yEZ, b. http://bit.ly/IMYEh3 , c. http://bit.ly/KP6cjT

Schumann   http://bit.ly/JE4QM2

Vygotsky   http://bit.ly/J4f2ci  

Derewianka http://bit.ly/JFWdhJ

COMICS on SLA:  Humor is displayed in several of these comic strips made with Make Beliefs Comix. 

Approaches to Grammar Instruction  http://bit.ly/KdYOTD

Krashen  a. http://bit.ly/KUhMtF, b. http://bit.ly/KK2ldw  c. http://bit.ly/JtShBB

Schumann  a. http://bit.ly/J1NoTR, b. http://bit.ly/JndIV0 and c.  http://bit.ly/IGFwT7

FAKEBOOKS on SLA THEORIES:  This is a spin-off of the Facebook/social media idea in popular culture.  ClassTools.Net is the site used.   Several debates between theorists play out in some of these.  Some are in a question/answer format.   One student has a conversation with one of the theorists.        

Chomsky http://bit.ly/KP94xe

Krashen  a. http://bit.ly/JjCjd6,    b. http://bit.ly/LuoEjY,  c. http://bit.ly/J4h8sO

Vygotsky a.  http://bit.ly/KP9t2I   b. http://bit.ly/JAhEjA

Assignment Reflections:  We had an interesting discussion in my hybrid course about how this type of technology allows students to bring in their everyday language. They talked about how they could use it to compare/contrast academic language.  These assignments could be done in different languages as well. We also discussed following through with oral presentations to give language learners an opportunity to speak, explain, and ask questions.

It also made me reflect on the assignment when one student first made her own Prezi for her kindergarten class using content that she was familiar with in order to become comfortable with Prezi.  She did this prior to moving onto working with the new theory content.  Her Prezi with bright pictures shows how this could be a useful tool for teaching at this level. http://bit.ly/KrlE8w 

Extension for my students to consider:

• Fakebook was working about 85 % of the time.  If this happened with any technology in your class, but you really liked the assignment, what would you do?
• How would you grade this type of assignment in your own class?  
• Here is a related site: ifaketext (See Tammy Worcester's suggested ways of using it.)

Thanks again to my students for their creations and interesting discussions.  Here’s a link to the first time I attempted this assignment.  Happy creating!

Connect Using Screencasting and Web 2.0 Tools Presentation

Here's my Ecampus Spring 2012 Faculty Forum presentation. It highlights a few ways I try to engage and connect with students in my online courses. These can be used in online or hybrid settings.  Click on the arrow to get started or watch a recorded presentation of it here. 

Ecampus Spring 2012 Faculty Forum on Prezi

Links to screencasts and web 2.0 tools can be found on the web 2.0 tools page.  Scroll down.  Main web 2.0 tools discussed in the presentation are listed under screensharing tools, timelines, online collaboration, and visual words.

Happy learning!

The Teachers Should See This: Research and Expensive Food

I am eleven years old and a guest blogger here.  I often find interesting sites and sometimes want to share them.  I will occasionally post things I think teachers should see. I hope you like my post.

 Sometimes it’s hard to believe all the weird stuff people will buy. Like buying a cornflake for $1,350.00 or a Pizza for $4,200. I am going to tell you about the most expensive M&M. It was a brown M&M sold for $1,500! The reason it was expensive is because it was on the Paul Allen’s SpaceShipOne on June 21^st 2004. If you ask me, it still seems like a lot. Here is a math problem you can ask your students. How many regular M&M’s can you buy with $1,500? I know it isn’t one! If you want more details about the M&M, click here. 

I have been learning to cross-reference. It’s called triangulation and it helps make sure your findings are valid.  Here are some other sites that back these prices up: Most expensive cornflake 1, most expensive cornflake 2, most expensive pizza 1, most expensive pizza 2, most expensive M&M 1, and most expensive M&M 2. If you want to know why I picked The Most Expensive Journal to represent the most expensive M&M, pizza, and cornflake, it is because it has been posted by the New York Times, etc. You can read about it on its about page.

I am still learning how to trust a site and stay safe online. Here are some sites that can help: Using the Web, How to Do Research, Credible Sources Count! , Research It Right!, and Ivy’s Search Engine Resources for Kids.  This site by Mrs. Train has some good information I used.  At the bottom is a template that can be used to ask yourself if your sites are reliable.

Happy researching!  Don’t eat too many expensive M&M’s.

Change Begins with Questions and Discussions, Doesn't It?

Why are kids in school? How do kids learn? Why do kids learn?  What model(s) of education best fit the needs of our children?  Where is the future of education headed?  These are some of the questions that this stop-motion, claymation video called Technology and Education addresses.  It brings in ideas from Sir Ken Robinson and others.  

This video resonated with me due to discussions I watched unfold in my online course this past week.  This term, my class is composed of a great mix of preservice and practicing teachers ranging from those doing student teaching to those who have been in the field for many years.  I only bring this in because it is exciting to see this range of experience asking the same questions and supporting each other in their quest to make personal meaning. One of the topics of the week is what it means to be a “principled teacher” (Freeman and Freeman, 2011).  Part of the discussion took an interesting turn and surrounded the topic of teacher autonomy.  How much power does the teacher have in the class? How can we support and empower each other?  Where does the teacher fit into the mix of answering the questions posed in the video?  (Note another correlation of the week: scaffolding in lieu of direct instruction in this post ;-)

I really love my job thanks to the discussions of my students!