Thursday, December 06, 2007

Over the Top!

For you dog lovers out there, find Tillie on her social networking site, dogster.com and she'll be your friend!


Visit my family
Join the Dogster community

Killer Presentation

When one tries to describe the current state of technology and it's impact on education, it's difficult to help people understand the magnitude of the effect. I've done a few presentations for small groups about Web 2.0. Reading educational blogs and belonging to a couple of social networks really helps me learn about the Read/Write web. It's important to note however, that most of the people I know, my face-to-face friends don't have any idea. They don't use social bookmarking, the don't read, much less write blogs, and their feeling about wikis are really negative as a result of their limited understanding of wikipedia. My presentations are pretty lame compared to one that I ran across today on a blog that I read on a regular basis. Lucy Gray does an amazing job in her presentation The Winds of Change - Emergent Technologies in Education. I'm sure she had a few videos embedded in the PowerPoint so I wish I would have seen it live. The message is really thorough. Here are a few of my favorite elements of Lucy's presentation:
  • Today's teen - born in 1990 (same year as my middle son), and the technology that has become important throughout his life; there's something to think about.
  • Lots of statistics - not usually a big fan of numbers, but this message needs the numbers to back it up
  • The examples of blogs in chart form - really liked that all the blogs I read regularly are broken down in categories; teacher, student, professional development
  • Same with Wiki examples - (boy, someday I want to be a "heavy hitter" so my wiki would show up on a list somewhere)
  • List of cool web2.0 tools
Overall, I though Lucy's presentation was probably really compelling. It was thorough and provided a great deal of information. I'll bet her audience was really moved by her story. We all should be!



Powered by ScribeFire.

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

We Have to Know

In August 2006, Clarence Fischer of Arapahoe High School in Colorado made a presentation to his staff. His PowerPoint presentation was on his blog that week and I found it really compelling. His purpose was to get his teachers to really think about what students need in their learning environment to be prepared and successful in the 21st century. The message of the presentation is that we need to pay attention to factors such as the growing importance of India and China and globalization that has made our world "flat". This shift should not be looked at negatively, but instead we need to recognize that this shift provides tremendous opportunities for our children. We need to reflect on our own teaching practices and attitudes in response to this change.

During the next several months, the Shift Happens presentation was seen all over the edu-blogosphere. They call that "going viral". In the past year or so, estimates of over 10 million people viewed various versions of the presentation. What would that be like for Clarence, I wonder. How could a simple staff presentation become so powerful that millions of people have seen it, quoted it, wrote about it, and let the story move them? See the shifthappens wiki created by Clarence and Dr. Scott Mcleod for information about the presentation.

Although the presentation is essentially over a year old, it's been reworked a couple of times to keep in fresh and clarify its message. His recent keynote at the K 12 Online Conference is worth a look. Anne Davis does a good job of summarizing his address. Here is Anne's description of Clarence Fischer's keynote at the K12 Online Conference.

Here is the video of the most recent version:


Powered by ScribeFire.

Sunday, December 02, 2007

Learning Secrets: Teachers Can Do Hard Things

Although blogging has been around since around the year 2000, I've finally set a goal for myself to take the plunge and become a full-fledged blogger. I have set a goal write a blog article 5 times a week for the next 10 weeks. Doing the math, that means 50 blog posts.

I am motivated to start this phase of my blogging by mentioning an article I read in Teacher Magazine by Anthony Cody describing the strategies to get students to do "hard things" - tasks that they don't think they are capable of doing successfully.
Research shows that students who lack motivation are often not convinced that the effort they invest in themselves is going to be rewarded. They simply have not been academically successful in the past, so why bother? Furthermore, their parents may have been ineffectual in school, creating a template for failure easier to live up to than disprove.


Another look at that research can be found in an article by Pro Bronson; How Not to Talk to Your Kids describes research that supports the position that children who are constantly told how smart they are tend not to takes risks to try something new. They don't make the connection between hard work and success. Children who are constantly praised for "being smart" lack confidence in their ability to tackle tasks that would require effort. When children feel that all that is needed is intelligence, the task is out of the child's control, and the effort that is needed to complete the task is looked down upon as evidence that they aren't so smart after all. We all know teachers who do not try something new, because they are afraid of failure, or "looking dumb" in the eyes of their students. The message in the article is that the real reward is in the effort it takes to succeed, or at least try to succeed.

Anyway, back to the original point. Cody makes a few specific suggestions about teaching strategies that will support students as they "do hard things". I can translate them to my own endeavor as an about-to-be blogger.
  • Keep a portfolio - That is what a blog is, isn't it? A blog can simply be a portfolio of writing where by the writer can expect to see some progress and growth.
  • Provide valuable feedback - Well, that is possible in a blog. Readers are invited to comment and trackback. The comments a blogger receives could qualify as feedback.
  • Provide clear models of high quality work - There are lots of models of high quality work in the edu-blogging world. I've been reading reading high quality blogs for a couple of years. Shortly after I post this, I'm going to create a blog roll to link to all the high quality blogs I've been reading. I only hope that I can come close to their success.

I am sure going to try.

Powered by ScribeFire.