Dangerously Irrelevant

NECC - Edubloggercon, Web 2.0 Smackdown, Chicks That Click

NECC ‘09 and Edubloggercon ‘09 are underway! We had a quick intro from Steve Hargadon, then broke into sessions. I stayed for Vicki Davis’ Web 2.0 Smackdown. Here are the tools and resources that people showed:

• Vicki Davis, demonstrated Diigo Lists.
• John Costilla, demonstrated QR Codes.
• Rushton Hurley, demonstrated FreshBrain.
• Lisa Thumann, demonstrated Google Labs Similar Images Search.
• Angela Maiers, demonstrated CompFight, FlickrStorm. and Wibe7.tv.
• Kristin Hokanson, demonstrated CoverItLive.
• Jane Krauss, demonstrated a “thinkspace” for those of us who help others with Web 2.0.
• Adam Frey, demonstrated Wikispaces tags.
• David Jakes, demonstrated Fur.ly and Issuu.
• Scott McLeod, demonstrated Twoogle, Twitalzyer, Retweetist, and David Pogue’s article on typing expansion software (EVERYONE should be using this kind of software!).
• Leigh Zeitz, demonstrated Woot!
• Wes Fryer, demonstrated the K12 Online Conference and EdTechTalk.
• Lee Kolbert, demonstrated Tag Galaxy.
• Maria Droujkova, demonstrated TinEye.
• Chris Chater, demonstrated Noteflight and JamStudio and the Opus09 Ning.
• Jim Gates, demonstrated the WolframAlpha Firefox extension.
• Chad Lehmann, demonstrated the iPhone app Bump.
• Craig Nansen, demonstrated Tinypaste and Today’sMeet.
• Kevin Honeycutt (via Skype from a train in Missouri), demonstrated his new Web 2.0 keychain and album.

I’m now in a small break-out discussion regarding the lack of female students’ interest in technology / computer science careers (and also science, math, etc.)!

Video - Clay Shirky: How mobile and social technologies can make history

 Yet another great TED presentation, this one by Clay Shirky:

Shirky notes that we are living through "the largest increase in expressive capability in human history." Wait, isn't it a function of K-12 schools to help students be effective communicators in the media of their time?

What if you could find every school, district, or university Twitter feed in one place?

Continuing the theme of my last post, how great would it be if every school, district, or university Twitter feed was in one place? The aggregated posts would give us a sense of what each level of schooling thought was worth publicizing. I’m guessing that we’d also discover lots of interesting information that is typicallly hidden from the view of most of us…

Schools Twibe:

Districts Twibe:

Universities Twibe:

What if every Iowa educator on Twitter could find each other?

After a recent presentation here in Iowa that included some discussion of Twitter, a superintendent came up to me and said, “Okay, I’m in. But how will I find people that I want to follow?” That fantastic question led me to create the Iowa Administrators group at Twibes:

While I was at it, I also created the Iowa Teachers group at Twibes:

Shari Barnhart, Technology Coordinator for the Oskaloosa Schools, then created the Iowa Technology Coordinators group at Twibes:

So what we have here is a burgeoning effort to create spaces where Iowa educators can find others in the state who are on Twitter, see what they’re saying, and sign up to follow them. Maybe there’s a better way to do this but for now I think this has some promise, particularly if folks are willing to sign up and pass this along to others. I believe there are some great conversation and resource-sharing possibilities if most of the Iowa educators on Twitter are following each other.

What do students want in an e-textbook?

Technology & Learning has a great graphic in the May issue of its magazine that highlights the features that secondary students would like to see in electronic textbooks [click on image below to see larger version]. Be sure to read the whole article. The data are taken from Project Tomorrow’s latest Speak Up survey.

If you’re not a regular reader of the free Tech&Learning magazine, you should be! Here are a few other articles from the latest issue that may be of interest:

• Nine reasons to Twitter in schools
• Profile of Max McGee, President of the Illinois Math and Science Academy (IMSA’s cool.hub project sounds really awesome!)
• The AV Club Next Generation

Videos - The future of the humanities in the Internet era

Here are two presentations by Dr. Richard Miller, Chair of the English Department at Rutgers University, that are well worth any university instructor's time to watch.

The Future Is Now: Presentation to the RU Board of Governors 

This Is How We Dream, Part 1 and Part 2

8 indispensable items for presenters

I’m getting more requests to come speak to groups. Here are 8 items that are indispensable to me as a presenter (click on each image for a larger version)…

1. Presentation remote

The Interlink RemotePoint Navigator is without a doubt the best presentation remote that I’ve ever seen. It has the usual functions: forward, backward, laser pointer, and “slide hide” (which turns the screen to black). But its aesthetic feel is what distinguishes it from its competitors. This device is designed perfectly for the human hand. I’ve had numerous people borrow this remote, either because they forgot theirs or because they don’t have one. I invariably get some kind of comment like, “Ooh, this is NICE. Where can I get one?” It comes with a USB dongle and a bag and, although a little pricy, is worth every penny. I have three – stashed in my home, office, and car – so that I always have one readily available.

2. Up-down timer

I strongly encourage anyone who presents, including classroom teachers and professors, to invest in an inexpensive timer, particularly one that counts both up and down. A timer keeps you on track, lets you know if you need to speed up or slow down a bit, and sends a message to participants that you consider their time to be important. My latest timer, the Component Design TM15, has extra-large digits for easy reading and a loud alarm, which is helpful to me because I like to roam around when I present and often am not near the podium. I also like the fact that mine has a fold-down stand rather than a clip that sticks out from the back. This gives it a smaller profile in my travel bag. One disadvantage of mine is that there’s no on-off switch, which means I have to take the battery out to prevent accidental operation.

3. Screen timer

I’m a pretty strong believer that, no matter how engaging you are as a presenter, listeners’ brains are mush after 45 minutes or so. That’s why for even short presentations I create opportunities for participants to take mini-breaks. Typically I’ll pause my presentation after 10 to 15 minutes, throw up a 60– or 120–second countdown slide, and ask them to share some thoughts with their neighbors. When I’m doing a presentation or workshop that’s longer than an hour, we take bigger breaks: 10 to 15 minutes, get up and stretch your legs and lips, hit the restroom, get a drink of water, check your cell phone voice mail, and so on. I have found this online screen timer to be absolutely wonderful for getting people back into the room on time (and use this downloadable one as an alternative when I don’t have Internet access). I start it up before I let them loose so they know to keep an eye on the time. This has worked much better than simply telling folks to check their watch.

4. Wireless broadband

I pay a monthly fee for wireless broadband from Verizon (and am grateful for the Iowa State University discount). I carry around this USB dongle and can plug it into any of my laptops or netbooks that have the Verizon software installed on them. Sometimes I need this when I require Internet access on the road but am not near an open wireless access point. Its primary use, however, occurs when I visit schools that either can’t give me Internet access, won’t give me Internet access, or give me Internet access but filter and block everything so tightly that I can’t show anything (you know who you are, people!). So, plain and simple, it’s my school district filter bypass and I’ve had to use it on numerous occasions.

5. USB memory stick

Nothing’s worse as a presenter than bringing your own laptop and then having some technology problem just a few minutes before your presentation starts. This is particularly true if you’re supposed to be some sort of ‘technology expert’ that others might even be paying to listen to. Almost nothing destroys that professional aura quicker than fumbling around with your very own computer! So I ALWAYS bring my presentation files on a USB stick: every slide, every video, every Internet URL. I have only had to fall back on this option a couple of times, but when I have I’ve been grateful that I was prescient enough to load it up and bring it along.

6. Audio and video cables

My move to Iowa has put me in more rural schools than ever before, many of which are quite old. One of the things I am finding i that older school auditoriums typically are not configured very well for laptop-driven presentations. Although, as noted above, I rarely pin myself to the podium, I at least like to be somewhat near my laptop. That’s difficult to do when I am up front and the laptop/projector is in the back right corner, in the projection booth at the rear of the auditorium, or smack dab in the middle of the auditorium rows (and, yes, I’ve had all three of these happen to me). I invested in some audio and VGA video cables - along with 12– to 15–foot extension cables for each. These have proved useful on numerous occasions.

7. Travel speakers

It’s rare when I fail to have some kind of multimedia content in my presentations. But it’s tough to show a video or play an audio file if the audience can’t hear it. I ask the folks who invite me to please have speakers available but time after time I show up and they don’t have any, or they had some but now can’t find them, or they have some but someone is using them, etc. So I started bringing my own. My Griffin Journi speakers are a little large and I know that there are smaller ones out there. They’re pretty loud, though, so I’m hanging on to them for now. One advantage of my speakers is that they have a rechargeable battery that allows usage without needing an electrical outlet. The wrap-around leather cover flips over and slides into a slot on the back and thus creates a self-contained stand to keep the speakers upright.

8. Contractor power strips

I usually encourage my workshop participants to bring their own laptops. I’m not threatened by their presence and understand that people can be both paying attention and also checking their e-mail on occasion. In fact, sometimes they pay better attention because they can keep one eye on things back home rather than being anxious about what’s occurring in their absence. However, rarely are we in a location that has sufficient access to electrical outlets. While this usually is not a problem for a 60–minute session, it’s a huge issue when we’re doing an all-day workshop. I carry four industrial-strength power strips in my car. I’ve used these so often that I’m considering investing in a few more. I like these because the cord is 15 feet long, which is incredibly helpful when existing outlets are far from participants’ tables.

All of this has evolved for me over time. As I run into presentation dilemmas, I try to invest in things that eliminate those problems for future events. What else have you found to be useful for your own presentations?

5 clever PowerPoint tips

Last night I ran across a series of PowerPoint tips from Wendy Russell that I thought were worth sharing…

1. Start creating your presentations in widescreen format

I hadn’t really thought about the fact that most laptops ARE now shipping with wide screens to accommodate widescreen video and movie formats. So why not start creating any new PowerPoint slide decks that you make in widescreen format? Makes sense to me! As Wendy notes:

If your presentations will be reused in the years to come, you are wise to start now in creating them in the widescreen format. Keep in mind that converting a presentation to widescreen at a later date, will cause the text and images to be stretched and distorted. You can avoid those pitfalls and have only minimal changes to make at a later date if you start at the beginning in a widescreen format.

2. Create a custom show for a particular audience from a larger slide deck

There are several ways to create a custom show from a larger set of slides. Option 1: rename the file and delete the slides you don’t want. Option 2: Create a new presentation and copy/paste slides from the old deck into the new one. Option 3: Follow Wendy’s handy tutorial on how to create a subset of slides within the larger slide deck. Very cool…

3. Hyperlink to a new presentation from another one

Wendy walks through the process of creating a blank, hyperlinked rectangle object that will take you right to the next presentation. I’ve done this before to pull up documents or videos from within a slide deck but hadn’t thought about daisy-chaining presentations together. I’ll have to consider how I might use this concept in my teaching and/or presenting.

4. Mix portrait and landscape slides in the same presentation

I don’t know how many folks need to switch between portrait and landscape slides during a presentation, but Wendy’s tutorial covers how in case you do!

Wait, there’s one more!

Finally, this is a great time to call attention to an old post by Doug Johnson…

5. Choose your own presentation

Doug wrote about his idea to create a ‘choose your own adventure’ type of presentation. Essentially, he set up a spiffy home slide and then created short slide sequences within the presentation. Each image on the home slide had an internal hyperlink to the beginning of one of the short sequences. At the end of each sequence was an internal hyperlink back to the home slide. The audience then could choose which path it wanted to wander down at which time. A very, very nifty idea.

What PowerPoint, Keynote, or other presentation software tips have you found to be particularly unique, interesting, or helpful?

Frerichs v. Mao: Showdown at the netbook corral

Chad Frerichs, Director of Technology for the Okoboji (IA) Community Schools, listened to Episode 4 of the 4 Guys Talking podcast and disagreed with Jeff Mao’s assertion that netbooks were not viable options for 1:1 laptop programs.

Here is Chad’s Tweet:

Here is Chad’s follow-up e-mail to me:

We've not been using them yet. I have been demoing varioius units for the last 2 months for consideration for purchase for next school year. I have been loving them. I have to admit I was skeptical and had the same reservations going in, but I have proven myself wrong. I have upgraded each demo unit to XP Pro (we have available licenses), and they have all ran smoothly. I await Win 7 which is supposed to have Atom specific things in it. I have been using Google Earth, Movie Maker, Gimp, OpenOffice.org, etc. without issue. Granted Google Earth is slow during the 3D stuff, and Movie Maker takes a little longer to do massive amounts of transitions/effects, but it is very workable. I have made a 'news cast' on each of the netbooks demoed with multiple transitions/effects with the built in camera and mic. A project I envision students doing. I have edited photos in Gimp and applied multiple filters without issues.
 
I have been proven wrong about these things. I think they are a viable solution for us, and possibly others. Are there drawbacks? Absolutely, but viable none-the-less. I think we will be ordering 72 or 96 of them for next year.

Your thoughts?

4 Guys Talking - Episode 4 (Jeff Mao)

Yesterday was Episode 4 of 4 Guys Talking, the new ‘talk radio’ podcast series from CASTLE. We spent the entire time talking about 1:1 laptop programs. Our first 50 minutes was spent with Jeff Mao, Learning Technology Policy Director for the State of Maine. Among other things, Jeff talked about funding models, professional development for teachers and administrators, pedagogical frameworks, challenges faced by the state over the past few years, and, perhaps surprisingly, the relative lack of emphasis on standardized test scores as measurable outcomes for the initiative. He also shared his strong feelings about laptops v. netbooks for 1:1 programs. After Jeff left us, we spent the last 10 minutes debriefing, sharing thoughts, and raising further questions.

You can download the podcast or listen to a Web-streamed version here:

• www.blogtalkradio.com/uceacastle

You also can subscribe to the 4 Guys Talking feed using iTunes or a RSS reader.

Thanks to those of you who joined us live yesterday, either by calling in or listening over the Web. Future dates/times are as follows (all times Central):

• May 11, 9am to 10am
• May 26, 1pm to 2pm

[Yes, I'm still reworking CASTLE Conversations, the old CASTLE podcast channel, which will include all previous and podcasts (including 4 Guys Talking). I'll post about it when it's ready (probably not until summer).]

Happy listening!

Photo credit: An Apple in the dark 2

The CIA discovers Web 2.0

TIME has a new article out on the use of Web 2.0 tools by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Apparently Intellipedia, a classified version of Wikipedia, has been “transforming the way U.S. spy agencies handle top-secret information by fostering collaboration across Washington and around the world.”

Here’s what I think is the money quote from the article:

The first time chlorine was used in an improvised explosive device in Iraq, someone created a wiki page asking what intelligence officers and others in the field should do to collect evidence of the usage. "Twenty-three people at 18 or 19 locations around the world chimed in on this thing, and we got a perfectly serviceable set of instructions in two days," says Tom Fingar, who headed the National Intelligence Council from 2005 to 2008. "Nobody called a meeting, there was no elaborate 'Gotta go back and check with Mom to see if this is the view of my organization.' "

Intellipedia now consists of 900,000 pages, has about 100,000 users, and receives around 5,000 page edits a day. Hey, if the deeply paranoid folks at the CIA can do this Web 2.0 stuff, can’t schools?

PostRank confuses me

Larry Ferlazzo blogged yesterday about PostRank’s list of the top education blogs as measured by “engagement.” I think PostRank has the potential to be a really useful tool but right now I have some serious questions about it. For example… [click on images for larger versions]

1. Why is edu.blogs.com on the list twice?

2. I don’t think www.ed.gov technically is a “blog.” And I don’t think its affiliated static web sites like Do[ing] What Works or African-American History [FREE] are either.

3. I confess that when I think of “education blogs,” neither EurekAlert! nor Common Craft nor OUPblog nor Clear Admit pop into my head. Ever.

4. Yesterday this blog was #78 – down from #30 the previous week – below Teacher Lingo. That was cool except my engagement numbers seemed significantly higher. So I figured maybe I didn’t understand the ranking system. But then this morning I find that this blog is #35 – down from #31 last week. Huh? What happened to me being #78 and #30? Now I don’t have any faith in its engagement numbers or its rankings.

PostRank clearly isn’t ready for prime time yet (but keep an eye on it!)…

Academics on Twitter

Recently I was interviewed for The Chronicle of Higher Education’s article on academics who Twitter. Here’s my portion of the story:

8. Scott McLeod, an associate professor at Iowa State University and director of the university's Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education. Tweet: "College students are online more AND reading more? http://snipurl.com/eko4k"

http://twitter.com/mcleod
Followers: 1,307. Posts: 1,190.

Mr. McLeod argues that professors have been too slow to adopt Twitter. Academic discussions online often take place on closed e-mail lists, he says, when they should be happening in public forums like Twitter, so that a diverse group of outsiders can join in. "I think academics are actually missing a lot by not being involved in more of these social tools," he told me. "There are a lot of academics who think, 'If it's not coming from some other academic it's not worth a damn,' and that's not right."

He admits that some of the messages on Twitter are banal, such as people describing what they had for lunch that day, but he said such notes are part of what makes Twitter such a powerful way to feel connected to far-flung colleagues. "It's like those daily interactions you have with your neighbor — sometimes they're highbrow and sometimes they're lowbrow, but after a while you really get to know the person."

I don’t know if academics have been too slow to adopt Twitter specifically, but I definitely believe that academics have been too slow to adopt social media generally.

Check out the article if you’re interested. What do you think are some good ways that professors could be using Twitter?

A tisket, a tasket, a netbook in my basket

I greatly enjoyed Clive Thompson’s recent Wired article on netbooks. For years laptop manufacturers have been giving us more and more powerful computers: bigger hard drives, more memory, faster processing chips, etc. What netbooks have shown, however, is that many laptop users actually need less, not more. When 95% of laptop use is for things like e-mail, instant messaging, basic office productivity software, Facebook, YouTube, and so on, people don’t need a super workhorse computer. Instead, a less-capable computer works just fine and other concerns such as portability (size and weight) and cost become more important.

I recently purchased my second netbook, a HP Mini, to go along with my Dell Mini 9. I have used these netbooks for a full day of presenting – which usually includes showing very large PowerPoint presentations with embedded videos, Web surfing, and using Microsoft Office – without a hiccup. I tote along in a small bag my 2.4 pound netbook, wireless broadband dongle, portable external hard drive, and presentation remote and I’m all set. Throw in my cell phone, iPod or iPod Touch and headphones, a paperback book, and a Moleskine pad and pen and my road warrior status is downright bearable (shhh - don’t tell my wife!).

For many schools, I think netbooks can make a lot of sense. At $300 to $450 per computer, the price is low enough for many districts to start thinking about a 1:1 deployment for students for the very first time, either for entire schools or for smaller grade- or class-level pilot projects. Scatter a few more-powerful machines around the school building for students who need to do heavier-duty work (e.g., photo or video editing) and this becomes a workable solution for a number of school organizations. Of course full-fledged laptops still have their place and many schools may find that the more-traditional approach works better for their 1:1 needs.

Schools that are considering purchasing netbooks should do a careful job of comparison shopping. For example, I wouldn’t recommend either of my netbooks for schools. The keyboard for the Dell Mini 9 is just too small for me and my right pinky finger is always looking for the dang apostrophe key (which Dell moved to the bottom row). In contrast, the keyboard for the HP Mini is wonderful (it’s 92% of the size of a full keyboard) but HP in its infinite wisdom decided to use a proprietary VGA port, necessitating the purchase of a separate converter cable to connect to a projector (which has resulted in a lot of angry customers). Schools may find that other models such as the Acer Inspire One, Lenovo Ideapad S10, or Asus Eee PC 1000HE are more workable solutions. Since the technical specifications of netbooks are all basically the same right now, design issues such as the keyboard layout often are the distinguishing factors. I strongly recommend a hands-on test drive of a particular netbook model before you make any kind of large-scale purchase.

I really like my HP netbook a lot. Like others, I have been quite surprised to find how useful this less-capable laptop has been to me. Because of its small size, I take it places I never would consider taking my Lenovo ThinkPad X61 Tablet and indeed am gravitating more and more to using it as my primary computer whenever I travel anywhere. What’s really exciting to me is to think about what these small laptops will look like just a year or two from now. I’m guessing that they will have much larger solid-state hard drives and include much of the capability that currently give larger laptops a performance advantage. A netbook that can do what today’s laptops do, in just a couple of years? That’s a winning combo!

Photo credit: HP Mini

Would you send your child to school with a laptop from home?

I found out recently that my local school district now allows students to bring their own laptops from home. I think that this is GREAT (even while simultaneously understanding the digital divide issues that accompany this policy).

Imagine that your local district allows the same. Would you send your children to school with a laptop/netbook? If so, would your children take one (or would they be too worried about standing out because other students weren’t also bringing computers to school)? This latter question’s of particular interest to me since my tech-savvy daughter starts middle school next year…

Thoughts?

Photo credit: Netbook Skin using Wordle.net (Lenovo S10) [cool use of adhesive photo paper!]

The Iowa series - Wrap-up

I've had a lot of fun guest blogging over at The Des Moines Register this week. For those of you who would like to have a single link that you can forward to others, you can use this web address:

http://snipurl.com/iowaseries

Here are links to each of the five posts here at Dangerously Irrelevant:

• Iowa - 21st century curricula
• Iowa - A robust system of online learning
• Iowa - A computer in every hand
• Iowa - Invest in leadership
• Iowa - Better information

Happy reading!

Read Kindle books without a Kindle

I was really excited to read David Pogue’s article today on Amazon’s new Kindle for iPhone application that allows you to download e-books from Amazon onto your iPhone or iPod Touch. That’s right – no need to buy a Kindle to access Amazon’s ever-increasing book selection. I was quoted today in the Des Moines Register as saying that in many ways the iPhone represents the future of mobile computing. Sure, there’s still a place for the larger screens and keyboards of laptops and netbooks, but it’s awfully handy to have a device in your pocket that does so much.

I’m off to the Apple app store! Wouldn’t it be really great if Amazon made its source code public so that others could improve upon its free app (and thus result in Amazon selling more books)?

At $10 a book (or maybe a little more for textbooks), I think this opens up a lot of possiblities for K-12 classrooms. What do you think?

Photo credit: And a good book

Iowa - A computer in every hand

[This is Post 3 for my guest blogging stint at The Des Moines Register.]

Archimedes said “Give me a lever long enough and I can move the world.” This week I am blogging about 5 key levers that I think are necessary to move Iowa schools forward and help our graduates survive and thrive in this new digital, global age in which we now live. Yesterday I discussed online learning opportunties for students. Today’s post concerns providing a computer for every student.

It is hard to believe that the personal computer is nearly three decades old. Our computing devices have come a long way in that time and they now permeate nearly every aspect of our personal and professional lives. At the individual level, this movement has been driven by mobile computers and phones, wireless access, and the rise of the Internet. Every generation of computers seems to be smaller, cheaper, faster, and more powerful than the one before. Every new device or online service allows us to do things more efficiently, more effectively, or that we never could do before. And of course the pace of change is quite brisk.

As a result, it’s extremely difficult to find a well-paying job in America these days that doesn’t involve significant use of digital technologies. Unlike other sectors of our society, however, our schools still view the use of computers as a marginal add-on, as something that’s optional rather than essential to the everyday core of teaching and learning. Our schools still pretend that it’s an analog paper world rather than a networked digital world.

This has got to stop. We have to stop believing that we can adequately prepare graduates for a technology-suffused world by immersing them in paper-suffused learning environments. We have to look critically at student-computer ratios in schools – which mask the reality that most computers belong to teachers or are in labs – and ask a different question instead: On average, how much time per week do students get to use digital technologies as part of their classroom learning? The answer to this question is dismally low in almost every Iowa classroom.

There are a number of reasons for the lack of technology-facilitated learning opportunities in our K-12 schools. One is funding, of course. I recently did some back-of-the-envelope calculations for Iowa’s Institute for Tomorrow’s Workforce. At $300/year, the costs each year to provide a laptop to the 480,000 students in Iowa would be:

213,000 K-5 students = $63.9 million
114,000 6–8 students = $34.2 million
153,000 9–12 students = $45.9 million

These numbers look daunting, particularly given difficult economic times. But it is possible to do this by sharing the cost between state monies and school districts’ general funds, levies, and referenda. Other potential ways to reduce costs include, but are not limited to:

• utilizing federal or grant monies,
• leasing instead of buying,
• purchasing netbooks instead of laptops,
• allowing students to bring in their own laptops,
• making use of the mobile computers that most students bring to school every day (i.e., their cell phones), and/or
• only purchasing laptops for economically-disadvantaged students.

In the end, we have to balance the costs of doing this versus the costs of NOT doing this.

In addition to funding, numerous other challenges exist as well. One of the biggest is the current predisposition of schools to invest in teacher-centric technologies like televisions, DVD/VCR players, projectors, electronic whiteboards, and document cameras. They’re important and useful but they’re also primarily used as yet another way for teachers to push out information to students. In contrast, laptops, netbooks, digital cameras, small high-definition camcorders, digital voice recorders, webcams, digital scientific probes or sensors, and other devices are primarily used by students to facilitate their own academic learning. If we want Iowa students to gain the technology skills they will need to be productive citizens and workers, schools should be making as many investments in these latter, student-centric devices as possible. There also are a number of free or low-cost online software and tools that students and teachers can use in creative and productive ways.

Another large barrier to students’ technology usage is teachers’ inability to effectively implement digital tools into their instruction. One of the dirty secrets of K-12 educational technology is that many of the computing devices that already have been purchased are rarely used. This may occur because of teachers’ lack of training; most educators need a lot more help in this area. Or it may occur because of a lack of adequate technology support, which results in teachers inability to rely on the technology actually working when they do decide to use it. Or it may occur because of teachers’ outright refusal to integrate technology because of lack of interest or comfort.

Other barriers include the often-draconian Internet filtering systems that are in place in most schools, the increased pressure on schools’ Internet bandwidth capacity from additional computing devices, and the lack of adequate wireless and/or electrical capacity in many of Iowa’s school buildings.

The state of Maine provides laptops to 36,000 students and 11,000 educators (at a cost of just under $300/head, which is the basis of my calculations above). The New South Wales province in Australia has announced that it will be purchasing 197,000 laptops for its secondary students. A number of schools and districts across the country (and a few in Iowa) are piloting or implementing 1:1 laptop programs for students. It is these graduates, who have had the opportunity to regularly utilize in productive ways the same technologies that the adult world uses, who will be best prepared for a digital society.

Chris Lehmann, Principal of the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, notes that technology in schools should be like oxygen: ubiquitous, necessary, and invisible. This is how technology is in adult workplaces. Can you imagine how unproductive you would be in your job if you had to schedule a time next Thursday for 45 minutes in order to use the computer (as teachers now have to do for students to use the lab(s) in their schools)?

There will be a day when we look back and realize how foolish it was that we waited so long to get a computing device into every student’s hands 24–7. Until that day, however - until we find the collective will to enable Iowa students to productively utilize in their schools the technologies that are transforming our society - they will continue to be disadvantaged compared to their more fortunate counterparts in other states or countries.

Recommended reading

• Rethinking Computers in the Classroom
• Everything Is Miscellaneous, David Weinberger
• Here Comes Everybody, Clay Shirky
• Wikinomics, Don Tapscott & Anthony Williams

Recommended viewing 

Using the iPod Touch in the classroom

I tweeted:

Here are the responses I got. Thanks, Twitter network!

Meet Minnie

This is Minnie, our Dell Inspiron 910 Mini “netbook” that’s the newest addition to our computer family. As the pictures show, she’s a lot smaller than my ThinkPad X61 Tablet. She shipped with 1 GB of RAM and a 16 GB Flash hard drive. She’s running Windows XP Home, Microsoft Office 2007, Skype, a number of media players, and a few other programs. She’s got a built-in webcam and a bunch of ports and jacks around the edges.

Like any family member, she’s not perfect. Her small keyboard’s not the greatest. The function keys are the same keys as ASDFGHJKL; and the apostrophe’s way down in the bottom row. Her speakers are a little anemic. Occasionally she’s a little pokey, which is to be expected with a netbook.

All in all, however, my kids and I like her a lot. She weighs just over 2 pounds, measures about 9 in (23 cm) by 6.75 in (17 cm), and has at least a 3–hour battery life. She’s light, extremely portable, and boots up very quickly. I’ve remapped the keyboard slightly and also did a BIOS upgrade that added F11 and F12 functionality. I upgraded her RAM to 2 GB, which was extremely easy to do and boosted her performance a bit. She’s a sleek little machine, particularly for Internet browsing and cloud computing.

Many people are touting netbooks as possibilities for 1:1 laptop initiatives in K-12 schools. Having now used Minnie for a few weeks, I think netbooks might work pretty well in that role, particularly as their functionality improves a bit over the next year or so.

Gloria, our GPS unit, is happy to have a friend in the house…

Can a computer lecture better than a human?

[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]

I’m going to prime the pump a little bit for my K12 Online presentation next week…

My fifth-grade daughter’s math homework this weekend required her to find out what a radian or a grad was (hint: both are ways besides degrees to measure angles). We hit ye olde Google and quickly found this helpful (and free) learning activity from Wisconsin Online:

Bam! Ten minutes later my daughter and I had learned what a radian was (the animation was much more helpful than the mere definitions that we found), answered correctly all of the self-assessment questions, and were ready to move forward.

Okay, we actually weren’t ready to move forward because we thought the animation was so cool that we set up a Wisconsin Online account and dug around for other interesting tutorials. In other words, we were passionate, self-directed, engaged learners, prompted by a single question from my daughter’s math book.

I’ve thought about that moment quite a bit the last couple of days. Of course my mind started wandering to the K12 Online Conference, the TED videos, various podcasts, the MIT Open Courseware project, and other similar online multimedia resources. As my mind meandered around, it dug up a question:

Can a computer lecture better than a human?

That question’s not quite accurate, because there’s still a human behind every online learning activity. What I mean is that there are quite a number of examples on the Web of ways that we can learn and assess ourselves on fairly complex material using video lectures, animations, simulations, video games, and the like. As these resources grow in number – fueled by easy-to-learn, increasingly-powerful software that allows average citizens to create learning objects – and are organized and collected by individual experts, organizations like Wisconsin Online, or group efforts, it’s going to become unbelievably easy to find a variety of ways other than text to learn about almost anything we want. This will be especially true if we are intentional about it and actively work to fill in needed gaps.

Would I rather learn about a radian from a book or the Wisconsin Online animation? The animation – hands-down – due to its better explanatory power. Would I rather learn about a radian from a person or the animation? Well, the animation is infinitely patient – it doesn’t get irritated with me if I don’t understand the first time around. I can replay the animation as often as I need to but probably can’t ‘replay’ the person. The animation is more accessible – it was available to me in my home, at a time when I wanted to access it. And if the animation still doesn’t do the trick, there are other ways to learn the concept just a mouse click away (but other people who can explain radians usually aren’t so easily found).

Don’t get me wrong. There’s still a lot of value in human teachers when it comes to explaining difficult concepts, working through students’ misconceptions, inspiring students to want to explore deeper, and so on. We’re not replaceable by robots and software just yet. But it’s easy to see that simulations, animations, and other online text and multimedia resources can carry a great deal of the initial instructional delivery load.

There is a wealth of research showing that around 80 to 85 percent of classroom work is low-level factual and procedural work, exactly the kind of work that can easily be facilitated by the kinds of technology-mediated learning activities that I’ve alluded to this post. So why waste an expensive human on those things? If there’s going to be that much lecturing (and similar low-level learning work) going on, why not let the computer ‘lecture’ and free up our valuable humans for the stuff that software can’t do yet?

ITEC 2008 - Alan November

Here are my notes from Alan November’s keynote today at ITEC 2008 in Des Moines. ITEC is Iowa’s statewide educational technology conference so it’s always a good time. I actually had never seen Alan present before so that was fun for me. He was extremely entertaining and I got to go up and meet him afterward. He said that I was younger than he would have guessed!

• There is a gap between what we teach children and what is needed in the global workplace, and the gap is growing.
• Students need to be able to do three key things
• Have the capacity to do good research on the Web
• Have good global communication skills
• We should evaluate teachers on their ability to directly engage children with people all around the world
• Be self-directed
• Our system is based on the concept that teachers own the learning
• Corporations need people who don’t need a boss to tell them what to do
• The top skill learned in school is to learn how to be taught
• West Point is requiring its instructors to teach Islam across the curriculum
• The Internet, rather than being a tool that will expose you to other beliefs and perspectives, is instead becoming a place to simply validate one’s own beliefs.
• We need to teach teachers good assignment design when teaching them technology.
• Why not teach students how to debate kids in Britain regarding their perspectives on the Revolutionary War?
• We vastly underestimate kids’ ability to create rich academic content that contributes to the learning of the rest of their class.
• We need to teach children to have a global voice that people all around the world can hear.
• Paper gives you a little voice – paper stays in the classroom.
• Bob Sprankle has 2nd graders asking for their own writing / math podcast shows. A sign of a good classroom is kids asking to do more.
• The Internet has made people realize that they are really, really poor and their work ethic is almost scary to watch because they think education is the ticket out of poverty.
• Showed part of the Digital Kids @ Analog Schools video.
• Check out Screencast.com: MarcosMath’s Library, Mathtrain Podcast, bob.primefactor?
• Have the kids help you build learning objects (using, e.g., Jing)! This is a “shift in control” problem, not a technology problem.
• Demonstrated how to set up a custom Google search engine. Can set one up so that students only search the sites that the teachers select (e.g., FunBrain, BrainPop, IKnowthat). High school students can help create the sites that go into the custom search engine.
• Have an official researcher every day at the one computer the teacher has in the classroom. That person is in charge of finding answers to questions that pop up and also in charge of adding relevant sites to the class search engine.
• You can create a search engine for just a particular topic (e.g., Revolutionary War). Have your class’ British ePals contribute to the search engine too!
• You can access other people’s custom search engines.
• Showed TinyURL.com
• Too many “technology-enabled” assignments involve using the computer as a $1,000 pencil.
• Collaborative class notes in Google Docs are even better than presentation notes because students can add on extra resources, etc.
• Google Docs gives you a running history of the flow of writers’ thinking through version control. About 4 people can write concurrently.
• Google Docs is ideal for collaborative writing. We should be teaching kids collaborative tools. The content should add up to something greater than the sum of the individual parts.
• Kiva – a great web site to teach children how to make a contribution to other parts of the world. A community of contributors invests in a person / project. If the Web needed a reason to be invented, this is it. Linking people around the world to help people.
• Three elements of video game design that are not present in schools
• Students go to the most challenging level – they don’t want to be bored
• Students get instant feedback (less than a second) – hard to reproduce in class
• Third? [never got to it; we went off in a different direction]
• If blocking is your only strategy for protecting children, you’re setting them up for failure in the real world. This is immoral. It’s a manipulative world out there. We have to teach kids how to navigate it.
• Kids think they can take down their MySpace / Facebook content when it’s time. Show them the Wayback Machine!
• We’re blocking them instead of teaching them. This is not the way to prepare kids for a web-based world.

I sat next to Angela Maiers. Vic Jaras, Evan Abbey, Carl Anderson, Leigh Zeitz, Rob and Magda Galloway, and bunch of other fun people also were there (including a good showing by Iowa State folks!). Iowa may not be where we’d like it to be but there are some fantastic educators here who are trying hard to make it happen!

Update: I added a picture of Alan to this post. It's not the greatest picture in the world but it's hard to get him to stand still!

Slide - Asking better questions

[Download this file: png ppt pptx]

[from David Warlick, Chris Quotes]

Not so irrelevant 014

My latest roundup of links and tools…

America is not competitive

A majority of Fortune 1000 executives surveyed give the American pre-college system a failing grade. As Andrew Trotter reports from Education Week’s new Digital Education blog (check it out!), 95% of the survey participants think that the U.S. is in danger of losing its global position because of students’ disinterest in STEM fields. Be sure to check out the other Bayer Facts of Science Education surveys.

Chris Lehmann rocks out

As others have noted, Chris’ presentation at IgnitePhilly is a must-see. Forward on to others using this URL:

• http://snipurl.com/ignitephilly

This is the kind of passion I strive for on a regular basis. I don’t always get there, but this is my desired goal. 

Hot for teacher

I wonder what the NEA thinks about this SinglesNet ad.

Teach students about dating violence

Rhode Island has made school training about dating violence mandatory. This is a fantastic idea. Did you know that 1 in 5 female high school students report being physically and/or sexually abused by a dating partner?

Americans who want Americans to be dumb at math

Jo Boaler has an interesting Education Week article on the ‘anti-knowledge movement.’

This just in: Teenagers like to text message

The New York Times reports that cell phone users send more text messages than make phone calls. Teenagers are the most prolific texters, which of course will impact their communication habits when they hit the workforce.

Wireless school buses

I love this creative thinking in Arkansas about using wireless Internet access to turn long school bus rides into learning opportunities.

WeDo joins MindStorms

Andrew Trotter reports on Lego’s upcoming WeDo kits for schools. Calling all junior robotics engineers!

Two great Campus Technology articles

Article 1: 5 common mistakes using blogs with students.
Article 2: Educators and the generative nature of the digital economy.

Hill Street Blues meets K-12

Did you know that over 12,000 K-12 employees in the U.S. had a nonfatal occupational injury in 2006? As Sergeant Esterhaus used to note, Hey, let’s be careful out there!

My netbook is on its way!

Netbooks are hot, hot, hot! (see, e.g., the articles in GigaOM, ZDNet, and PC Magazine). Between netbooks and smartphones, the mobile Web is well on its way to penetrating every nook and cranny of our lives. This has positive implications for getting a computing device into the hands of every student! I thought it was time to dive into this computing sector and will share pictures of my Dell Inspiron Mini 9 when it arrives later this month. Now all we need is ubiquitous wireless broadband…

Not so irrelevant 013

My latest roundup of links and tools…

When did the IT staff get promoted above the superintendent?

Will Richardson notes:

[A] school superintendent I spoke with … lamented the fact that his IT staff wouldn’t give him access to YouTube and even Wikipedia.

See also my older post: Principal blogging not allowed.

Math and motocross

Check out this sweet series of motocross math videos at HotChalk. The brains behind the math? Former guest blogger Jason Dyer!

“I didn’t know Sasquatch was real.”

Fun with the Pacific Tree Octopus!

Maybe we should do this for teachers and administrators too

"Seventy-one-year-old Peggy McIntyre needs to learn as much as she can about Windows before 8 a.m. Or else."

Post-Gutenberg economics

It’s now a publish-then-filter world. Clay Shirky notes that “we’re clocking a singularity a week at this point.”

We need to educate our educators

Seth Godin says:

It’s easy to be against something you’re afraid of. And it’s easy to be afraid of something that you don’t understand.

Open your brain, open your model of education

The Education Innovation blog has an interesting post on closed v. open models of education. [Note to self: this might be the world’s longest URL]

Some good thinking going on here

Thanks to Mike Sansone, I recently discovered the Union Square Ventures blog. In Power to the People, they state:

[W]e believe that we are only at the beginning of the web’s impact on the fundamental structure of education. We expect much of that change to be away from the existing educational institutions and towards empowering individuals and newly-formed groups.

In Why the Flow of Innovation Has Reversed, they note:

[T]he vector of innovation has changed. It used to be that innovation started with NASA, flowed to the military, then to the enterprise, and finally to the consumer. Today, it is the reverse. All of the most interesting stuff is being built first for consumers and is tricking back to the enterprise. . . . [O]ne reason this is happening is that the success of a web service is more often determined by its social engineering than its electrical engineering.

Students aren’t the only ones missing the big picture

The Florida Department of Education is concerned that students are missing the big picture when it comes to science. A task force stated that “teachers should provide a broader focus on scientific concepts and process in a 'big picture' sense.” Hmmm… I wonder if that means the Department is going to narrow down the list of required science standards and also pare down the size of approved textbooks. I’m guessing not. Download the full report if you dare.

Disempowered today = disempowered tomorrow

I left this comment at Jim Gates’ Tipline blog:

Students who aren't fluid technology users today will be the low-wage workers and disempowered citizens of tomorrow.

I want it right THERE

Finally, if you’re anal-retentive about your Windows taskbar like I am, check out Taskbar Shuffle.

Not so irrelevant 012

Three great questions

I especially like the last of these three questions from Rodney Trice. We should be asking teachers and principals that question more often (and just that directly).

• How do you intend to bring the global community into your classroom?
• How will you prepare students for a future that is relatively unknown?
• How you will eliminate the racial predictability of achievement outcomes in your classroom?

This just in: Teenagers play video games!

All kidding aside, the latest report from the amazing Pew Internet & American Life Project confirms that kids - even girls! – are up to their eyeballs in video games.

We’ll stick to the tried and (not) true

Nope, sorry. iPods are not allowed. Back to the old way. Too bad it doesn’t work as well. Gotta do it anyway. Oh, and I love how the music players are categorically, by definition, a ‘distraction’ (if not in actuality). Who needs reality when we have these little educational policy fantasy worlds that we can create for ourselves?

Throw da bums out!

After attempts to bring in turnaround experts didn’t work, the state of Maryland is increasingly leaning toward completely restructuring schools that are academically unsuccessful. State schools Superintendent Nancy Grasmick says:

We are very comfortable being more aggressive about this. We have seen much better results [when the staff is replaced].

Blog like a farmer

I ran across an old post by Mike Sansone, one of my Iowa blogging buddies. I really like his metaphor that blogging should be like farming.

Scorecards

I bet parents and community members would really like to see scorecards like this one (maybe with different data) for their local schools. I know some schools and districts already do this. Hopefully they use line graphs rather than tables of numbers. Could you tell the essential story of a school district with 10 key, well-done graphs? I bet you could!

No writing in journalism class?

Check out this excellent article about the NYU journalism student who got in trouble for blogging about her class. [hat tip to Tim Stahmer]

I got no money, honey

Did you catch Edutopia’s advice on how to innovate without extra money or support?

Spend hours on content you can find with Google in 3 seconds!

One of my favorite things about Wes Fryer is his ability to highlight the ridiculous. I also enjoy his irreverance (“Behold! I hold aloft the holy words!”), particularly when I have the same experience at my kids’ school.

Speaking of Google…

Finally, I’m digging Google Chrome. it’s now my default browser and I’m using Firefox less and less (and I love Firefox). Chrome is much faster. I also like that each tab is a separate process; I have yet to have a browser hang…

My computer setup

I don’t blog about technology tools too often, but I thought I’d share my computer setup at home (my setup at work is quite similar):

I have no data files on my tablet PC, just software. The key to my system is my portable hard drive, which contains all of my data files. It’s just 3.1 in (8 cm) x 5 in (12.6 cm) x 0.6 in (1.5 cm) and weighs 0.4 lbs (180 g). It comes with a USB 2.0 cable and a drawstring bag.

Every time I plug in my portable hard drive, it automatically backs itself up to a larger external hard drive. It also automatically backs up files on the fly as I edit them.

Basically, my computer-driven life fits in my pocket. I can carry around the portable hard drive, plug it into any other computer, and work with my files. It requires no power cord, instead drawing its power from the USB port. This is the same idea as a flash key, only the portable hard drive holds more files.

In addition to my tablet PC, I also have a second desktop computer (Dell Dimension 9200) that I use for digital audio and video.

What’s your setup?

[I use Launchy for everything. What are the four icons on my desktop? Well, one’s my curriculum vitae; it’s amazing to me how often I need it. The other three are my department’s electronic letterhead file, Computer, and the Recycle Bin.]

Not so irrelevant 011

My latest roundup of links and tools…

The critics need a reboot

David Wolman’s article in Wired Magazine is a quick and effective rebuttal of those who claim that technology is making us stupid.

Social networking for babies

Yep, that’s right. Social networking for babies: Made a mess in my pants today. Slept. Made a mess in my pants today. Slept…

The $70 PC

Using a thin client model for school computers seems like an idea that has promise. And of course a $70 price tag per computer sounds great. Does anyone know a school organization that’s working with NComputing?

Should kids learn about 9/11 via cartoons?

Gary Stager’s got a vein pop about BrainPop…

Handheld learning

Thanks to Dean Shareski, I now know about the Handheld Learning web site. Thanks, Dean!

Youth, porn, and violence

Want the latest facts on youth exposure to pornography and violent web sites? Head to Harvard’s Berkman Center!

Speaking of the Berkman Center…

There is a LOT going on at the Center. Check out its list of projects (the list is clickable thanks to Kwout) and sign up for its news feed!

Karl Fisch is big in Germany

If you didn’t catch it, Karl recently posted about a German magazine’s story about his school and the Did You Know? video. Anybody read German?

Snow in the bathroom

And, finally, here’s a good rule of thumb: don’t read Doug Johnson while you’re supposedly participating in a serious meeting. Thy guffaw mayest disrupt…

Not so irrelevant 009

My latest roundup of links and tools…

Do buildings matter?

• Jay Matthews wonders how much we should care about decrepit school buildings.

Math matters

• Daniel de Vise provides an even-handed overview of the math scene.

Moving forward in Manassas

• It’s always nice to read about a superintendent who gets it.

Extremely handy

• I use this online stopwatch a lot in my presentations.

Sylvia is skeptical

• A few weeks back, Sylvia Martinez had a great post about Curriki and the like. I wonder what she thinks about my letter last year to U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings (see also my follow-up post)?

Follow the numbers

• I am appreciating Jon Becker’s use of large-scale data to ferret out interesting questions and issues. Check out his posts on digital equity and math achievement to see what I mean.
• Eduwonkette - a.k.a. Jennifer Jennings - is the queen of using data in interesting and provocative ways in her posts. She and Jon are good models for the rest of us who have access to data.

Send this to your wife or neighbors and spark a good conversation about your kids

• If you somehow haven’t run across it yet at another blog, be sure to read Clive Thompson’s article in the New York Times about the brave new world of digital intimacy. Lots of conversation-provoking stuff in there…

Recommended reading - Effective presentations

I often get asked by administrators for some recommended reading. Here are some of my favorite books on delivering effective presentations. If the Amazon widget doesn't load in a few seconds, here's a static picture of the list.

[Transparency disclosure: If you buy a book using this list, CASTLE gets 4% of the proceeds. Your cost doesn’t go up any. Amazon just pays us a little for the referral through its Associates Program.]

Help wanted: Moving Forward classroom wiki and podcast projects

Although we need some more lists of subject-specific blogs (which I’ll work on in future posts), the blogs page of the Moving Forward wiki is basically a pretty solid resource right now. The wiki and podcast pages, however, could use some work…

If you know of an exemplary K-12 classroom wiki or podcast project, would you add the link to the appropriate wiki page?

• Classroom wiki projects
• Classroom podcast projects

Thanks!

[The Moving Forward wiki houses a collection of resources to help presenters and change agents as they help move schools and universities forward into the 21st century. If you have a resource to add, please do so!]

Productive and powerful

[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]

I’m in the midst of reading Clark Aldrich’s Simulations and the Future of Learning. As Aldrich walks me through the process of developing a leadership simulation, he has a number of interesting things to say about video game and simulation design. Thanks to Aldrich’s clear and engaging prose, I’m finding myself unexpectedly captivated by the nitty-gritty of the workflow of simulation production.

So far the statement that has resonated with me the most, however, pertains as much to education as it does to the gaming industry. Aldrich said:

The goal of learning in any organization (business, educational, governmental) should be to make its members more productive (p. 3).

I’ll agree with that. And I probably would add to the end of that statement “… and more powerful.” I think that additional phrase takes the edge off what might be construed as a focus solely on preparation for work and expands it to include personal empowerment.

Productive and powerful. Isn’t that what we want for the children in our schools? Isn’t that we want for the educators with whom we work? Productive and powerful. I like it.

We have 50 million public school students in the United States. Are the thousands of worksheets that they will complete in their lifetime making them more productive? Are their countless hours of individual seat work going to lead to greater personal empowerment? Are they getting opportunities to be both productive and powerful on a regular basis?

What about our subpopulations? Are socioeconomically-disadvantaged students often getting the chance to be powerful? Do our students with disabilities or our students whose primary language is not English have multiple, ongoing opportunities to feel like they are productive, contributing members of our communities?

What about our 3 million public school teachers? Are the tens of millions of hours that they spend in staff development and training each year actually making them more productive? Do you think the bulk of them feel empowered by their ‘learning opportunities?’

Do we regularly ask ourselves these kinds of questions in our school organizations? As educators, should we?

I have some hard thinking to do about my own graduate classes and degree programs here at Iowa State…

Blogging, tweeting, and the uncovering of personality

Will Richardson has yet another post that’s generated a great deal of discussion. This time it’s about the value of Twitter for conversation. Will ponders Twitter’s impact on conversations and suspects that maybe it’s making us lazy…

For me it’s about the conversation but, more importantly, it’s also about the uncovering of personality. The social web is about people and connectivity, right? So every blog, tweet, Skype chat, comment, Flickr photo, YouTube video, Facebook update, or Ning post - they’re each another gap-filler for me. Chink by chink, brick by brick, pixel by pixel - the picture becomes more clear and complete. Is this someone with whom I want to connect? Is this someone with whom I want to converse? Is this someone from whom I want to learn?

That’s the power of Twitter (and blogging and … ) for me. Is it maddeningly disjointed and unconnected? Absolutely. But that’s what happens when everyone has a voice and when there are numerous tools to express ourselves. Our aggregation and monitoring tools will get better in the years to come. In the meantime, I’m going to celebrate the power and potential of our new information landscape, despite all of its frustrating flaws and growing pains, because I know that it has greatly enriched my life and exponentially expanded my horizons (cue the violins)…

Photo credit: weblogg-ed.com

Ed tech quarantine?

[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]

This is a picture of the Mobile Quarantine Facility built by NASA for astronauts returning from the Moon. It’s basically a modified Airstream trailer. The idea was to isolate the astronauts until it was determined that they didn’t have ‘moon germs.’ Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins stayed in this quarantine trailer for 65 hours after their return to Earth (Welcome back, heroes. Get in this trailer!).

Of course my pathetic brain saw this and immediately started thinking about educational technology. How sad is that?!

This MQF (gotta love those government acronyms!) got me thinking about whether we technology early adopters need a self-imposed moratorium on talking about new technology tools, at least in certain settings. One of the most common refrains heard from teachers or administrators who listen to us talk or blog about all of these new cool tools is “Why do I care about this as an educator?” In our eagerness to share our nearly-palpable glee and excitement, we often struggle to adequately answer the “So what?” question in ways that are substantive and meaningful to the average teacher or administrator.

So when a new tool comes out – Twitter, Diigo, whatever – maybe we should hold off for a bit before we start blabbing to educators who don’t live as close to the ed tech edge as we do. Maybe we should voluntarily follow a process that looks something like this:

I believe that an emphasis on pilot testing, experimentation, and identification of both mainstream educator use(s) and optimal training mechanisms before introduction to other educators often would help us quite a bit. Instead of turning off the very educators that we want using many of these tools, some time spent in the ed tech quarantine might go a long way toward facilitating our overall goal of greater technology adoption in K-12 classrooms.

I don’t know if I’ve gotten the quarantine process exactly right. And of course many of you already do some version of this. But I think this is a concept that generally should be kept closer to the forefront of our brains. What do you think?

Social Media in Plain English and Mr. Winkle

I’m a big fan of the videos from Common Craft. I use them constantly in my classes and workshops. Their newest video is Social Media in Plain English:

I also ran across the Mr. Winkle Wakes video today (hat tip to Jon Becker):

Moving Forward - Blogs for special education teachers

Many of you know that I'm asking the edublogosphere to gradually help me flesh out the Moving Forward wiki so that it can be a valuable resource to presenters and others who are trying to facilitate change in schools. For example, in April we identified a number of high-quality elementary classroom blogs.

This week I'm asking for great blogs that are of interest to special education teachers (particularly special education teachers who are blogging themselves). By great blogs, I mean the kind that you might show in a presentation to persuade others of the power and potential of blogging for teachers of students with special needs. If you know of any such blogs, please add them to the wiki!

Don't read this article

I really wanted to like the Creating Valuable Class Web Sites article in the May 2008 issue of Learning and Leading With Technology. I really did. I believe strongly that teachers should be incorporating digital technologies into their instruction and communication with students and parents, and I know that teachers can use all of the good ideas, best practices, and resources that we can provide. But then I read the article (hat tip to Sylvia Martinez and Bud Hunt) and I was completely dismayed…

As Sylvia and Bud noted on Twitter, many of the web sites presented by the author are quite dated. Geocities and Tripod: weren’t those big in the 1990s? Netscape Composer: Seriously? FrontPage: didn’t Microsoft quit selling that a while ago? The inclusion of such tools calls into serious question the currency, and thus credibility, of the author’s expertise.

The Resources section at the end was similarly lacking. Take a look at Blog Connection. It was one of the two best blogging sites the author could recommend for K-12 educators? And EdBlogger Praxis? The site that hasn’t been updated since February 2007? At least the author linked to eMINTS when it came to wikis…

Instead of tables of outdated web resources and an irrelevant resources section, the author should have included current tools rather than those from 5–10 years ago. Some discussion of the desirability of using outside, non-district-sponsored tools also would have been nice. Instead, the article reads like it was cobbled together by someone who’s rooted in the technology of yesteryear rather than today. This was an opportunity squandered. Is this stuff what the author teaches her students? Doesn’t ISTE have a responsibility to do some checking of article content?

Learning and Leading With Technology is supposed to be helpful to educators in 2008, not 1998. And usually it fulfills that function extremely well. I hate to say this - because I’m rarely critical in public of others (unless they’re clueless leaders who should know better) – but the author and the ISTE editors didn’t do their job with this one.

Not so irrelevant 008

My latest roundup of links and tools…

I read blocked blogs

• I’m gettin’ me some of these super-cool buttons (made by Stephanie Sandifer; inspired by Bud Hunt). What a great thing to hand out to administrators!

Are you up to the challenge?

• The 2008 Comment Challenge is now on (and, hey, recognize a fantastic commenter!)

Why K-12 educators shake their heads at academia

• Rick Hess perfectly captures one of my primary complaints about academia, which is that much of what we do is completely inaccessible (and/or meaningless) to K-12 educators

No hand-held electronics in front of the kids!

I was incredulous to read ... the decision by the London Catholic School Board in Ontario banning hand held electronic devices in schools. . . . Even more bizarrely ... school board employees are only allowed to use these devices "in areas from which students are excluded." Taken to its logical extent then this includes staff also being unable to use digital cameras to record student work or projects, create and listen to podcasts and so on.
– Gareth Long

Like Alfie Kohn, Dan Meyer forces us to rethink / justify

• Who do we think we are?
• The difference between us and them
• Sobriety

New tools I’m finding quite useful

• Taboo Firefox extension
• FeedDemon RSS reader

The impetus is on us, not them

Help a teacher develop an integrated lesson [that] ... focuses on a local issue of real importance, in which they, their families, and/or others in their community have a genuine stake and interest. If their learning is situated in that type of context, I think you’ll find the impact of their learning experiences will be far greater, and many more of them will learn digital literacy skills alongside traditional literacy skills. Teaching in a problem-based learning environment is a lot more work than simply lecturing and delivering content to students, but it is the type of learning environment our students need to remain engaged in school work. Too many kids today are BORED by school. As the adults running our schools, it is our responsibility to remedy this situation.
– Wesley Fryer

A couple of gems from Clay Burell…

• Muhammad Ali: A D- student or an F- school?
• Education as pretense: Schooly “speeches” versus real “talks”

And a couple more from Gerald Bracey

• Proficient readers: Dear Strong American Schools (be wary of those NAEP proficiency levels!)
• A test everyone will fail

We are a little egocentric, aren’t we?

• Fujitsu’s world map (thanks, Brett!)

And, finally, a reminder from John Pederson

• Don’t count your Twitter followers

One year ago: Well, what's your answer? and Principal blogging not allowed

Moving Forward - Elementary classroom blogs

Thanks to @rickscheibner, @abubnic, @rrmurry, @kolson29, @plugusin, @glassbeed, @pmcanulty, @tracyweeks, @NancyW, @RickTanski, @juliafallon, @swvalley, and @rwentechaney, I now have a number of new elementary classroom blogs to show my children’s principal today. What's with the @ signs? Oh, those are Twitter IDs. What’s Twitter, you say? Well, among other things, it’s a great way to get questions answered. Fast.

I’ve added these blogs to the Blogs page of the Moving Forward wiki. If you know of any other great elementary classroom blogs – ones that have students blogging (as opposed to just teachers) – please add them to the wiki. What’s the Moving Forward wiki, you say? It’s a communal resource for people trying to facilitate change in schools. Check it out.

Thanks for the tweets, everyone!

Not so irrelevant 007

My latest roundup of links and tools…

Some really cool posts about Twitter

• Twitter set theory & the wisdom of the group (a must-read)
• 17 ways to visualize the Twitter universe

Reading blogs is like visiting a new city

• I need to think this way about all of the unread posts in my feed aggregator (thanks, Mike Maloy!)

Rethink trust

• An interesting video from an interesting organization (also downloadable)

Zamzar

• Like many others, I am enjoying using Zamzar, a video download / file conversion tool

Lame-o

As someone in a Ed leadership program right now, I couldn’t agree more that it is a waste of time and hoop-jumping to get an administrative license. My professor lectured for two hours to a class of adults on the importance of collaboration in adult education. Lame-o.
– Jethro

A great way to think about the social Web

• No one has ‘forgotten’ or ‘left out’ anything. You just haven’t added it yet. – Alan Levine, Wiki Way (thanks for the tip, Vicki Davis!)

The firestorm subsides

• In case you missed the latest edublogosphere hubbub, you can check it all out here (start at the beginning!). I thought that there were lots of thoughtful replies to Jon’s concerns, but Vicki Davis’ and Ric Murry’s and Tom Hemingway’s stand out for me. I also really liked Wesley Fryer’s reflective post today on his own history and the changes that he’s seen.
• One of my previous posts, Linked, may provide a useful way of thinking about blog ‘superhubs’ as connectors, not inner circles. As the conversation swirl about Jon’s post so aptly demonstrated, getting noticed by the superhubs can bring you into the conversation very quickly and get you a substantial increase in traffic. My experiences with the Did You Know? video and my post about classroom cell phone videos, both of which were picked up by bloggers with far larger audiences than me, bear witness to that truth.

Happy reading, everyone. Like Wesley, I am here for the learning revolution. Hope you are too.

Not so irrelevant 006

In the past, I’ve labeled my random thoughts and captures from the Web on this blog as Half-finished or half-baked?. As of today, I’m re-labeling those as Not so irrelevant and have made a new category on my blog for these…

YouTube Insight

YouTube has released YouTube Insight, an analytical tool that allows users to view detailed statistics about the videos they have uploaded. I pulled up my list of videos and clicked on the About this video button for my video on The Resilience of Teacher Culture (featuring Richard Elmore). Here’s what I got:

Nathan Lowell quote

Here’s my favorite quote (from Nathan Lowell) from all of the comments at Will Richardson’s post regarding 21st century skills for educators:

We've spent millions of dollars to equip and wire schools and now that we're discovering just how much we can learn with them, we're spending millions more to prevent the intellectual capitalization that our investment represents.

Classroom examples

Colette Cassinelli has set up a VoiceThread 4 Education wiki where educators can post examples of how they’re using VoiceThread in their classrooms. Very cool idea. Similarly, Liz Kolb is blogging about how to use cellphones as K-12 learning tools. I’ve added these to the Moving Forward wiki since I think they’ll be helpful examples for presenters. [Anyone know of similar sites – ‘how to use these tools in education and here are lots of examples’ – for online video, podcasting, Twitter, etc.? I particularly like the idea of the wiki where everyone can post their examples for all to see…]

Rightload

Courtesy of LifeHacker, I discovered a nifty little Windows tool called Rightload that allows me to right-click on a file and instantly upload it to my web site.

Music education bloggers

Joseph Pisano and Owen Bradley are trying to get 100 new music education bloggers by January 2009. So far they’re up to 36. If you know of any music educators who are blogging who aren’t on the list, encourage them to sign up! [It would be great if the massive list of teacher bloggers at Support Blogging was divided up by subject areas!]

Leaders in Learning 2008

Kudos to Dan Meyer, Vicki Davis, Jason Ohler, Liz Pape, and the other finalists for the 2008 Leaders in Learning Awards. As a General Excellence awardee last year, I can emphatically state that the winners will have a great experience!

Hanging change agents out to dry

At the request of her principal, Pam delivered a presentation to her staff on technology tools. At a follow-up meeting, she faced a lot of criticism from members of the Faculty Council who claimed that she ‘wasted their time.’ Rather than supporting Pam, her principal simply sat there and nodded her head as Pam absorbed the blows.

Here is the comment I left at her post:

Your administrator cut you off at the knees. She essentially set you up. NOT cool. Does she do this to others or is it just you? Either way, it should be a huge warning sign that you're not going to get the kind of support you need. I suggest you either call her on it (and judge her reply very critically) and/or start looking for another building. As an educational leadership professor, I say be very, very wary of a leader who breaks trust with you like this.

Do you think I was too harsh?

Some new videos

Here are some new videos I have recently run across:

• Blogs in Plain English
• Online Photo Sharing in Plain English
• Google Docs in Plain English
• Having Our Say: Middle Grade Student Perspectives on School, Technologies, and Academic Engagement
  
• The Essay

The last one is very funny and also illustrates yet again the power of Web 2.0. elkedas added the link to the video on the Moving Forward Videos and Handouts wiki page. If I hadn't made that page publicly editable by anyone, and if she hadn't voluntarily taken the time to add the link, I probably never would have seen the video. Now I have a new resource for when I present (thanks, elkedas!).

These are the kinds of examples we need to give educators in order to help them see the power and potential of some of this technology stuff. Also, please remember that the Moving Forward wiki is intended to be a free resource for all of us who are trying to facilitate technology-related change in schools. If you've run across a great education-related blog / wiki / podcast / video / etc., please add your resources to the wiki so that we all can benefit, just like elkedas did. Thanks!

Kwout

I don't often blog about specific technology tools, but I just ran across a service called Kwout (pronounced 'quote'). It lets you quickly take a screen shot and then post it to a web site, Flickr, or Tumblr.

The cool part of this is the image mapping. For example, in the screen shot below from this blog, you can see that what looks like an ordinary graphic actually contains hyperlinks. Very nifty!

XOs for my XO

I'm one of the lucky ones: my XO arrived in time for Christmas (thank you, Betsy!). I wish I knew to which country the other one went. For those of you who are so inclined, you still have time to give one and get one.

My kids and I have been playing with the XO a lot over the last couple of days. It definitely requires a mind shift for those of us who are used to computers with the Microsoft Windows interface. I've been reading up on the Sugar interface so that we can better understand how to think about this new computer. I've also started bookmarking some helpful XO resources in my del.icio.us account. As others have noted, the key is not to judge the XO by the standards of a more expensive, mainstream laptop but rather to recognize it for what it is (and then marvel at the form factor and functionality that you get for the price).

Now that it's in my physical presence, I already have LOTS of questions about my XO (e.g., how do I find files that I download? can I add some of you as friends in an XO group?). Doug Johnson, Tom Hoffman, Anne Davis: who else out there in the edublogosphere has/ordered an XO? Should we create an edublogger community around this thing, maybe as a group blog or as a social network in Ning?

Notes

1. I tried to wow my 89-year-old grandmother with the XO yesterday. She said, "Oh, I know all about that thing." My mom had heard about the OLPC project too. Awesome!
2. I'm the third person in Iowa to add myself to the XO Frappr map!

This stuff is too easy not to use

[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]

I talked my department chair into letting me do a 10–minute technology demonstration to my faculty colleagues at each of our monthly department meetings. My last one was titled ‘Fun With Audio.’ It went something like this…

Hi everyone. You know how you open up your word processor software, type some stuff, and then hit Save and your file’s somewhere on your hard drive? Let’s take that same thought and extend it to audio…

[open up Audacity with the LAME MP3 encoder already installed]

This is audio software. It’s like your word processor but for voice.

[hold up tabletop mic]

This is a microphone. $30 at Best Buy. I plug it in here and I’m ready to go. I click on this record button, start talking [blah blah blah], hit stop when I’m done. Voila! A sound file!

[play back file]

What can I do with this? Well, I don’t know about you but I can talk faster than I can type. So maybe I’d like to send a message to my class…

[demonstrate a quick voice memo to students - blah blah blah]

Click on Export as MP3, put the file where I want it, and send it as an e-mail attachment. Ta da! I’ve just freed up 20 minutes of my day. What else might we do with this?

[talk about voice instructions for online course management systems, sending voice e-mails instead of text e-mails, doing interviews for research studies, interviewing local experts for department web site, etc.]

[expand my faculty colleagues’ horizon by quickly mentioning Skype and the ability to record long-distance phone calls for free; offer to help anyone install Audacity and get up and running; drop a hint that I’m going to do a hands-on podcasting clinic in the spring]

Done! Thank you very much!

[next month: YouTube QuickCapture!]

This stuff is getting too easy not to use. Faculty members in colleges of education don’t tend to be very tech-savvy. With the right approach, however, we can get them using, and thus exposing future educators to, these tools. My audio demonstration took about eight minutes, I never mentioned the word ‘podcast,’ and I had a ton of questions and interest at the end.

We can do this. Share the love, share your knowledge: adopt a professor today.

Youth violence and electronic media

This arrived in my e-mail inbox yesterday:

CDC REVIEW OF ELECTRONIC MEDIA AND YOUTH VIOLENCE
Research Shows Increase in Electronic Aggression

In September 2006, experts from academic institutions, federal agencies, and nonprofit organizations gathered at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, to better understand the varied ways new media technology – blogs, instant messaging, chat rooms, email, text messaging and the Internet – influences youth aggression. The two-day meeting, "Electronic Media and Youth Violence," was held to review current research and to discuss the implications for youth, parents, school staff, and educational policymakers. Data from the review show although rates of electronic aggression are lower than rates of physical and verbal aggression, these rates seem to be increasing. In 2000, 6 percent of internet users ages 10 to 17 said they had been subjected to online harassment; by 2005, the percentage had risen to 9 percent – an increase of 50 percent. 

The complete review can found in the December 2007 supplement of the Journal of Adolescent Health. To access a complete copy of the Journal and the supporting issue briefs, which summarize the research and discuss the implications of these findings for youth, parents, school staff, and educational policy makers, please visit www.cdc.gov/injury.

A few thoughts…

1. Most parents probably don’t do near enough at home to teach and monitor children’s appropriate usage of electronic communication tools. We know that schools and religious institutions don’t when kids are with them. So why should we be surprised that some children and adolescents are using these tools for inappropriate purposes? It’s like Lord of the Flies out there when it comes to adult supervision!
2. The JAH research articles on this topic are impressive. It’s going to take me a while to read through them all. My first scan, however, is that while there seems to be a bevy of top notch, peer-review-quality research there, it’s all on the harmful effects of communication technologies and none on the empowering effects of the same. We need good, data-based information on this topic, but I’d like to see academia provide some counterpoint research on the positive aspects too, not just more fear-driven research. I want to also see a two-day meeting on Electronic Media and Youth Empowerment. We’re not going to back to a tech-less society. Why can’t we get info on both sides of the coin so that we can make intelligent decisions about this stuff?
3. ‘An increase of 50 percent’ sounds ominous. An actual rise from 6 percent to 9 percent doesn’t. Presentation makes all the difference.
4. The policy implications from the expert panel crack me up. Essentially the panel said ‘The federal government should do very little. The states should do more. School districts and schools should do the most.’ In other words, they could have just typed the word ‘federalism’ on a piece of paper, handed it in, and gone out for coffee. Nice job, folks!

Technology usage and overlap

[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]

We can imagine a continuum of frequency of technology usage that looks something like this (click on image for larger version):

People use digital technologies at various levels at both home and work. We can arbitrarily categorize the frequency of their technology usage as a range of very low to very high. Of course individuals may fall into one category at home and another at their workplace.

We can imagine a second continuum of technology usage overlap that looks something like this:

In other words, the digital technologies that people use at work will overlap to various degrees with those used at home. Some folks will have little to no overlap, using one set of tools at home and another at work, while others will utilize similar software and hardware in both locations.

[There’s at least a third possible continuum: type of technology usage. However, I’m not smart enough to figure out how to incorporate into this post how people use their digital technologies so I’ll leave that for someone else. There probably are other dimensions of this as well. Maybe we’ll hear from the tech integration folks!]

We can conceptualize different individuals or job classes by using these two continua. For example, we probably would be safe in guessing that someone working in the information technology industry is likely to use technology a lot both at work and at home. That IT professional also may have substantial crossover between home and work in terms of tool usage. In contrast, a secretary might have a technology-intensive work life, using a computer nearly every minute of every day, but have a less-intensive technology experience at home. Finally, a fast food worker may not use technology much at work or at home, the latter perhaps because of income challenges. Lest I offend anyone, let me note that these are just generalizations to illustrate the use of the two continua; we all can think of many exceptions to these examples.

If we use these continua to think about K-12 schools, then I believe the issue probably looks something like this:

Speaking generally, the people in charge of implementing technology initiatives likely are high users at both home and work, with a fair amount of overlap in terms of the tools that they use. Teachers and administrators, on the other hand, probably are not using technology near as often. Also, they likely have relatively little crossover between the specialized technology systems they use at work (e.g., student information systems, electronic gradebooks, PowerPoint, parent portal software, and “clickers” for formative assessment) and what they use at home (e.g., digital photo management, games). What overlap does exist is probably mostly in the arenas of e-mail, word processing, and browsing the Internet. Finally, as we know, students’ personal lives usually are much more technology-rich at home than at school. They use many more tools, most of which are not allowed during the school day.

It would be interesting to discuss these continua with a school staff, ask educators to draw their own diagrams, and then compile the results in some way. For example, if we assign the numbers 1 (very low) through 5 (very high) to the first continuum and 1 (no overlap) through 4 (high overlap) to the second, we can think of individuals as numeric triads (home-work-overlap). Using the examples above, an IT professional thus would be 5–5–4, a secretary 3–4–3, and a fast food worker 1–1–0. A media specialist might be 4–4–3, a principal 1–1–1, and a student 5–1–1. Once the triads were determined, they could be analyzed for purposes of sparking discussion.

I’m not strongly invested in these continua. There probably are better ways to think about these two dimensions and, if so, I’d love to hear them. But I do think it’s helpful to try and diagram issues in a way that makes sense to people. If we believe that moving schools forward on the technology front is desirable, we have to help educators create mental models that are easily understandable and useful.

Have a happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Creating digitally-interested administrators

[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]

Here is a suggested five-step conversation plan for creating greater interest in digital technologies by your school administrators…

Step 1. Acrobat

“Can I have 10 minutes of your time?”

“Sure. How about tomorrow at 3pm?”

The next day…

“I am guessing that you run across things on the Web that you’d like to save for future reference. I know I do. I often bookmark those in my Web browser but sometimes they disappear and aren’t there when I return later. I thought you might be interested in how to capture a web page in the full version of Adobe Acrobat so that you have it forever in a PDF format. I use this a lot myself.”

Demonstrate Acrobat…

“Thanks. Let me know if this is something you’d like me to install on your computer. Also, I know I went through this fast, so I’m more than happy to come back anytime and walk you through how to do this.”

Step 2. Podcasts

“Can I set up a one-hour meeting with you to go over some technology stuff?”

“Sure. How about next Thursday at 1pm?”

A week later…

“Hi I brought this CD with an interesting interview I heard with three data-savvy principals in Minnesota. I thought we could listen to it together and then talk about it.”

Listen to the CD. Have a conversation about the administrator’s reactions to the podcast and how you can help with some of the data-driven issues raised in the interview.

“Thanks. By the way, here are a few more CDs with some other podcasts related to data-driven decision-making. I thought if you liked this one you might want to have some others to listen to while you’re driving around, working out, or whatever. Oh, and there’s lots more good stuff like this on the Web. Let me know if you’re interested in seeing what else might be out there for you.”

Follow up a month later if you haven’t heard from the administrator.

Step 3. Online videos

“Can I set up a one-hour meeting with you to go over some technology stuff?”

“Sure. How about next Friday at 10am?”

A week later…

“Hi. I have a few online videos I wanted to show you. None of them are very long but they’re all really good. Some of these might be great discussion starters with our staff.”

Watch some or all of the following online videos together (make sure they’re not blocked!):

• Teacher movie
• Administrator movie
• Introducing the book
• Did you know? 2.0
• A vision of students today
• The machine is us/ing us
• Information revolution

Have a conversation about the issues raised in the videos, how they might be useful with school initiatives, etc.

“Thanks. By the way, here’s a link to some other videos that may be of interest. You might be particularly interested in the administrator’s guide to cyberbullying. Oh, and there’s lots more good stuff like this on the Web. Let me know if you’re interested in seeing what else might be out there for you.”

Follow up a month later if you haven’t heard from the administrator.

Step 4. Sheetfed scanner

“Can I have 30 minutes of your time?”

“Sure. How about next Wednesday at 2pm?”

A week later…

“Hi. I wanted to show you this thing. It’s a sheetfed scanner. What you do is you insert it between your keyboard and your monitor. Then, anytime someone hands you a document that you want to save, you stick it through the scanner, give it a title and some keywords, and click on save. This saves the file as a PDF document on your hard drive. Anytime you need it again, you can open up the software and pull up the document by doing a quick search on the title or keywords. Then, best of all, you can throw the paper away! This is a great way to stay organized and reduce all of the paper that’s laying around your office. I use this all the time in my own work. Would you like to see a quick demo of how it works?”

Demonstrate the scanner and software. Highlight how quick it is to scan and save, and how easy it is to retrieve scanned documents.

“Thanks. Let me know if this is something you’d like me to install on your computer. Also, I know I went through this fast, so I’m more than happy to come back anytime and walk you through how to do this.”

Step 5. RSS

“Can I have 30 minutes of your time?”

“Sure. How about next Tuesday at 9am?”

A week later…

“Hi. I know you’re interested in woodworking and hiking. Plus you’re always raving about those pugs of yours. I wanted to show you something.”

Show RSS in Plain English. Then show the administrator the RSS aggregator you’ve created for him, with feeds already set up for woodworking, hiking, and pugs (replace with whatever the administrator’s interests are!). Show that you’ve also seeded the aggregator with some administrator-oriented blogs too, so that the aggregator can be used for both professional and personal interests.

“Thanks. Here’s the URL for the aggregator. I showed you how to open up posts in both the aggregator and the original web site, but let me know if you have any difficulty. I’ll leave this for you to play around with for a few weeks. By the way, if there are other web sites that you visit regularly (e.g., CNN, USA Today, The New York Times, ESPN), they probably have RSS feeds too and we can add those into your aggregator. Let me know if you’d like to make any changes or additions to this.”

Follow up a month later if you haven’t heard from the administrator.

And so on…

Conversations like these can go a long way toward facilitating administrator buy-in and support for technology initiatives. Too often technology workshops and demonstrations focus on student or teacher needs and neglect the very real needs that administrators have for professional growth and increased efficiency or effectiveness. The key is NOT to show administrators what you think is cool but rather what will be USEFUL to their own learning needs and day-to-day work. Remember that the most important person in your administrator’s life is herself. Once she’s engaged personally, then you have a much better chance of getting her interested in what teachers and students might do with digital technologies. Until you’ve set the hook, much of this will be abstract to her. Create opportunities to make digital technologies concretely real for your administrators. Help them feel in their gut that this stuff is useful and powerful.

Hopefully this five-step conversation plan will spark some ideas regarding your own work with administrators. If so, please share with the rest of us!

Educational benefits of social networking

Check out the transcript of Will Richardson's live online chat about the educational benefits of social networking. Part of the fun at this year's T+L conference!

FYI, tomorrow is an online discussion with Thomas Hutton, senior staff attorney for the National School Boards Association, on navigating the legal landmines associated with new technologies. You know I'm looking forward to reading that!