Dangerously Irrelevant

I’m excited to be in Norman, Oklahoma for the University of Oklahoma K20 Center’s annual Winter Institute. I really like the folks at the K20 Center and am looking forward to spending more time with them today and tomorrow. I’ll also get to see Wes Fryer and Jan Borelli, among others (I think Jan’s excited to see me too!). Everyone here is wonderfully welcoming. They even brought in the snow and ice from Iowa so that I’d feel more at home!

I wandered around the hotel last night, getting my bearings and snapping pictures. As you can see, I’ve got a large roomful of people to keep engaged so the pressure’s on!

I’ve posted the materials for my keynote. I think both Wes and the K20 Center are going to record me as well. If so, I’ll update this post with links to the recording(s).

Update: here's the audio podcast of my keynote.

A fairly disturbing chain e-mail (it mentions rape, murder, and skin flaying) is making the rounds among a group of elementary school girls here. [click here to read it]

A few things to note about this…

1. Most parents of these girls had no idea that this was occurring because they’ve never, ever supervised their elementary school daughters’ e-mail use. Once they found out about this message, many were horrified.
2. Many parents are unsure whether they should be notifying other parents that their daughters are receiving and reading this.
3. Some parents’ reactions have been to see this as confirmation that ‘the Internet’ is ‘evil’ and to consider prohibiting their daughters from using it.
4. At least one parent’s reaction allegedly has been to declare, despite knowing the content of this message, that she doesn’t want to invade her daughter’s privacy because e-mail is like a diary or journal, trusts her daughter to do the right thing, and is (at least publicly) unconcerned that her daughter is passing this along to others.

I tell the administrators with whom I work that schools MUST play a role in educating children about appropriate Internet use. If they don’t, kids and parents will be left to fend for themselves and, as this incident confirms, many parents have little to no clue about what they should be doing in this area.

Thoughts?

Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society just released a massive report, Enhancing Child Safety and Online Technologies. Here's a quote from the study:

Sexual solicitation and predation are serious concerns, but the image presented by the media of an older male deceiving and preying on a young child does not paint an accurate picture of the nature of the majority of sexual solicitations and Internet-initiated offline encounters; this inaccuracy leads to major risks in this area being ignored. Of particular concern are the sexual solicitations between minors and the frequency with which online-initiated sexual contact resembles statutory rape rather than other models of abuse. Finally, though some technologies can be more easily leveraged than others for solicitation, risk appears to be more correlated with a youth’s psychosocial profile and risky behaviors than any particular technological platform.

In case you didn’t notice, we inaugurated a President yesterday! Back in October, before we knew who he would be, I invited edubloggers to write a letter to the next President. Here are some excerpts from each participant’s response… [click on names for full posts]

Rich Haglund

If you want our country to be safe from terrorists or rogue nuclear states, focus on education.  As Geoffrey Canada, President and CEO of the Harlem Children’s Zone recently explained to Charlie Rose:  We need a group of people to stand up and say, “Education is a national security issue and we’re not gonna let it go down without a fight.”

Tom Hoffman

Please (continue to) listen to Linda Darling-Hammond and do what she says.

Miguel Guhlin

It will be easy to listen to the experts, to enact legislation like NCLB that calls for high standards and ruthless accountability, to forget that we must ask, not what technology can do with students, but rather, what they can do with technology. Remember one story, and ask, how will this child see America? A land of freedom that empowers, or that freedom belongs to those rich enough, powerful enough to control the technology?

Justin Bathon

For the past hundred years we have educated toward manufacturing and we built a manufacturing economy in the United States the likes of which the world has never seen. Our prosperity in the last century was built on the backs of factory workers and truck drivers and plant managers and all the people needed to service them. Both of my parents, for instance, continue to manufacture car bumpers and it allowed them to build a nice home and send their kids to college. In fact, we got so damn good at manufacturing that everyone else around the globe learned and imitated us. But, how do we assure America's prosperity in 2108? Can we expect the America we know today to be similarly prosperous then by tinkering with the status quo?

Tammy Gillmore

Just as you never take being an American for granted, nor do I ever want my students to ever forget the many hard-fought freedoms that we are privileged to every day, every day within our classrooms, within our homes, within our towns, within our states.  For without patriots such as yourself, we would not live in such a blessed nation as the great United States of America.

Kevin Riley [see also this post and this post]

Hope…
I am the preacher-prophet who foretold that we would reside one day
in a promised land.
He must be with us now.
Though the years have kept his visage young…
His eternal voice is crisp as fire
As he sings from the mountain top.
This morning I heard the sky rejoice-
like the deafening wail of 10,000 hurricanes.

Bill Ferriter [see also this post]

I think successfully educating all children in America requires something more than sounding warning bells and asking teachers to “pull up their boot straps” time and again.  For me, improving education means being willing to significantly rethink how “school” is done in our country.

Robert Pondiscio

We’re not going to get anywhere as long as teachers are expected to bear the load alone.

Scott Schwister [see also this post]

Education is not a factory, and children are not widgets. Rather, there’s art and unpredictability and instinct and intuition in this messy, mysterious process we call learning. There’s beauty and fear, frustration, loss, and wonder. Students are human, and humans are messy. In human learning, we find the familiar black and white, but also quirkier flavors: up and down, strange and charm. We have responsibility to leave no child behind, and an equal responsibility to define “behind” in a way that recognizes and honors each child’s uniqueness. If you’re not with us, you’re. . . behind? We need a more inclusive vision of education.

Evan Abbey

Just like Iowa's schools, you are a powerful symbol. An historic symbol. A symbol for our students everywhere, regardless of their humble beginnings or color of their skin, that they can achieve whatever they put their mind to. The votes cast for you were much more than votes cast for your ideology or votes cast against the previous president; they were votes cast for the very democratic principals that make this country truly strong.

Wesley Fryer

We have too many mandates from state and national governments, and many teachers do not feel empowered or even permitted to help students engage in the deep, project-based approaches to learning which lead to actual transfer and retention. We must have a secretary of education who rejects the vending-machine approach to learning which has become a policy mantra in past years. We need someone who understands the power of open content, collaboration, and hyperlinked writing. We need a secretary of education who champions the importance of teacher relationships with students: Teachers who KNOW their students and therefore understand how to best stretch and extend their skills, knowledge, and dispositions. We need a secretary of education who promotes not just Internet safety, but digital citizenship. We need a secretary of education who can not only form coalitions and partnerships, but can inspire our nation to transform our classrooms and schools into places where passionate learners gather to share, collaborate, create, and show what they know.

Scott McLeod

I voted for caring over self-interest. I voted for mastery of our digital world, not ignorance. I voted for hope rather than fear. Most of all, given the ambiguity and complexity in which we live, I voted for general promise rather than specific promises.

See also Renee Moore’s post at Education Week and Brian Crosby’s writing assignment for his students.

Many thanks to everyone who participated. Happy reading!

[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]

I love winter. But I'll admit it's been a bit nippy here lately. Here was the temp when I got out of my class in Mason City Wednesday night:

If you haven’t seen them yet, here are two ads currently being aired by Kaplan University. They come out pretty strongly against the traditional postsecondary paradigm. What do you think? 

It’s time to revive the crimson megaphone!

After a long hiatus, I really, really need to get my list of blogs that deserve a bigger audience (DABA) back up and running. I can think of no better blogger to kick this off than Ann Krembs, librarian at the American School of Bombay. Ann actually has two blogs, Dear Librarian and ASB Book of the Week, both of which are wonderful resources for her school community.

I encourage you to look over Ann’s blogs. I think she’s a wonderful model of what an engaged (and fun!) school librarian can look like in this digital age, particularly since she has students helping with the blogs and her other library work. You also may be interested in Ann’s conversation with David Warlick at the Learning 2.008 Conference in Shanghai.

I had the pleasure of meeting Ann in person when I was in Mumbai last February. She rocks. Happy reading!

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I just ran across this eSchoolNews video from my 2007 Leaders in Learning trip to Washington, DC. I had completely forgotten about it. For those of you who are interested, here’s 10 minutes of me (squinting because of the bright lights they had in my face!)…

I thought I'd share something that we're doing here in Iowa…

The School Administrators of Iowa (SAI), the state leadership association for principals and superintendents, and CASTLE, my center at Iowa State U., are working together to ramp up administrators' knowledge and ability to be effective technology leaders and supporters.

The flyer for the workshops and our wiki will give you an idea of what we're doing:

• http://uceacastle.wikispaces.com/saitraining

Session 1 focused on big picture issues: the world has changed, schools need to change too, how do schools keep up?, how to lead in an era of disruptive innovation, etc.

Session 2 (occurring right now) starts with a little more big picture stuff, then introduces participants to the Social Web (including concrete examples of usage by teachers and students). We conclude with 60-75 minutes of getting set up with Google Reader and loading it up with a few feeds so that they can start immersing themselves in the Social Web too.

Reactions to the first two sessions have been extremely positive. School administrators want to do what's right – they just don't know this stuff and so don't know how to proceed. Helping them wrap their heads around what's happening, showing them concrete examples that spark ideas that can be done back home, and giving them the ability to engage in the social aspects of the Web are all activities that help them move themselves and their school organizations further along…

Session 3 likely will focus on good classroom technology integration (what does it look like? how do you support it?) and fears / concerns (what happens when you open up your school organization to these tools and learning environments?). We'll also likely show them some other stuff that they can do with Google Reader.

Thoughts? Reactions? Suggestions?

This year I’m going to try and do a better job of letting folks know where I’m going to be. David Warlick’s excellent at this… (* = public events)

• Jan 5 – working with the leadership team for Newton (IA) CSD; also visiting Van Meter (IA) CSD
• Jan 6* – technology leadership workshops for SAI in Council Bluffs, IA
• Jan 7* – technology leadership workshops for SAI in Ames, IA
• Jan 8 – meeting with ISEA, Des Moines, IA
• Jan 9 – online mini keynote for Web 2.0 Learning Institute, Montclair, NJ; participant in meeting of Iowa Coalition for Innovation & Growth, Des Moines, IA
• Jan 12* – technology leadership workshops for SAI in Coralville, IA
• Jan 15* – technology leadership workshops for Metro ECSU, MN
• Jan 16* – technology leadership workshops for SAI in Des Moines, IA
• Jan 20 – visiting Carroll (IA) High School; meeting with Ankeny (IA) CSD
• Jan 21 – participant in meeting of Iowa’s Wallace Foundation Grant advisory group, SAI, Des Moines, IA
• Jan 22 – technology leadership workshops for AEA 267, Cedar Falls, IA
• Jan 26 – technology leadership meeting at Iowa Department of Education; participant in Superintendents Roundtable for Iowa Department of Economic Development; panel presenter at Iowa Business Council Annual Partnership Meeting (all in Des Moines, IA)
• Jan 27 – participant in Iowa Department of Economic Development Legislative Breakfast & Innovation and Education Day at the Capitol
• Jan 29* – endowed lecture for University of Oklahoma K20 Center Winter Institute

Plus the usual workload of teaching, advising, scholarly writing, trying to hire new faculty, committee meetings, conference calls, etc.!