What Students Want

It was exciting to take advantage of an invitation on twitter from Ryan Bretag to look in on a discussion with a group of students on the impact of technology in education. It was a broadcast on Ustream TV. During the broadcast there many other educators in the chat room listening in and commenting on the conversation. As an educator who rarely gets the opportunity to have such rich conversations with students (other than my own three kids) I was really interested in what they had to say.

In the broadcast, Ryan introduced them to a few tools such as Twitter, social networking (specifically Ning), and google docs. I wasn't surprised that they hadn't heard of any of these tools. Although we give digital natives a lot of credit for knowing everything, in reality, they only know the tools they use in their personal or academic life. They don't have any more time than us grownup to go out there and seek out what's new and interesting. That's our job as ed-techs. The thing that really impressed me, to the point of smiling from ear-to-ear, was the thoughtful questions and comments in terms of how the tools are valuable. Twitter, for example wasn't met with much enthusiasm at first, as far as a tool that fits in to school. When examples such as being able to use twitter to communicate with others at different schools was offered, then the students were interested. The students really focused on the value for school. How would this be used in the context of the classroom? I was really impressed that the students focused on the value of the tools in their learning environment.

Ning made them nervous. Social networking is viewed as something they do in their free time. Networking with teachers? Not so much. When Ryan made it clear that Ning is a more professional tool, than the students could see the value in using it as a tool for communication and collaboration. They could wrap their heads around the value of the tool as they separated the concept from their own "facebooked world".

Google Docs was really met with a lot of enthusiasm. Many students brought up specific examples of how they would use this tool as they worked in groups. The described scenarios where emailing documents back and forth to team mates really failed, or kept them up until all hours if the message didn't arrive right away.

While I was listening in on this conversation, I was forming a plan to have a similar type round table discussion with the middle school students in my district. I run a risk because middle school students are not quite as focused and insightful as they will be in a few years. The I thought about having this kind of discussion with the teachers. With the teachers, I run the risk of getting a great deal of resistance. "Who has time?" is a question I get a lot. Also, unfamiliar tools tend to get a lot of resistance from non-digital native because we can always find fault with something that seems really new and different. In addition, in the case of elementary school, if only some teachers used the tools and most others didn't, would all of the students get an equitable chance for exposure or utilization?

Ryan blogged about these discussions this weekend. He really hit the nail on the head here:

Bottom line: Despite growing up in a digital world, they aren't as familiar with the tools or use the tools as much as we believe. However, the difference is that they are open-minded compared to some of an older generation.

A lot of time, we give these kids credit for knowing more than they really do, but we don't give them credit enough for having the same kind of sense of urgency and same recognition of value of their own educational experiences.

Personal Learning Networks II

In an earlier post, I indicated that one of my "big three" was to start using twitter. I've been using it regularly for a couple of weeks and through twitter I got a chance to see David Warlick speak at the North Carolina computing educators conference through ustream. Here is a link to his handouts. In the workshop he talked about using RSS to find tools and information that will help one as a professional. In describing how to use RSS to find images and other information that would help put together lessons and classroom activities, David said, "Train the information to find us." I thought that was a cool quote and I understand exactly what he is saying. So much time is spent looking for information, "just in time". If we prepare in advance by setting up feeds, wikis, and other web2.o tools to accept and organize the information, when we need it, it's there for us.

Once again, the impact of blogs as a professional development tool was brought up with his group. David asked his group if they read blogs and then offered a list of bloggers that are widely read by other educators as a way to learn about what is going on in the field. (His blog should be on the top of the list.) As I mentioned before, reading blogs of other educators who are interested and knowledgeable about technology is the single most important professional development activity that I engaged in.

Twitter is coming a close second. Because of Twitter, I was able to attend David's session today. Here's my Big Three for David's session:

1. Set up RSS feed pages on my pageflakes page for topics that I'm interested in including internet safety, blogging in the classrooms, PLN
2. Participate in twitter in a meaningful way, like posting links to good tools and interesting articles - not just posting goofy stuff
3. Participate in my ning networks because I know that the people in my ning group will be knowledgeable and supportive with the issues that I have in my job. I'll learn alot from them.

Lighten Up Francis

Thanks to Four Eyed Technologist, I finally found out where that phrase comes from. When I get all mad and start ranting about this, that, and the other, my husband says to me, "Lighten up, Francis." I knew that line was from a movie, but never knew it was Stripes.

The clip in his blog was fitting. He is really fired up! Ryan focused on his thought, "Learning spaces that live and die with the teacher aren’t Good Enough." The message of his post described course management systems and how teachers utilize various features of the CMS to one degree or another. Since the use of the tools is not consistent, the students' learning experience depend greatly on the teacher and how much effort they put into the course environment . (I hope I got it right.)

I'm going to focus on his other idea, the one he chose not to expand on. I found that it's more what I can talk about, "Pockets of Greatness aren’t Good Enough". Here's my thoughts about this statement:

I agree with Ryan. It's frustrating to see the educational experiences in some classrooms to be technology-rich and using transformative tools. Other classrooms could use their computers as boat anchors. "Pockets of greatness" can also characterize the educational experiences of students outside the use of technology. There are great teachers who demonstrate a real understanding of their students. Great teachers use best practices in differentiated instruction, focus on higher levels of Bloom's taxonomy, and allow his or her students to connect the classroom to the real world. In that "pocket", children experience the opportunity to think creatively and be self directed. Out of the "pocket", students are disengaged and undervalued as learners. With or without technology, there is greatness and not-so-greatness. Within a child's whole 8 years (I'm an elementary educator), he will not always be in the class of a great teacher. It's unfortunate, but let's face it...it's true. What keeps me from "going Francis" is to focus on the big picture. The students will be fine. The students that came out of the school where I taught were very well prepared, and their technology-related experiences were much richer that that students from other other schools. Technology is so much a part of the lives of children outside of school, that they are competent and confident. It would be great if they utilized real world tools in all aspects of school. I really believe that and I do absolutely everything I can to promote the use of technology in meaningful ways. I'd like to expect that every teacher is on the same page. Realistically, it 'aint gonna happen......yet. Reflecting on the analogy that Ian Jukes gives us, a passionate educator with vision keeps "swimming upstream" as a committed sardine. Eventually, the rest will follow.

Ryan's blog post reflected passion and high standards. An influential teacher/leader needs that kind of vision. To keep one's sanity however, sometimes it's necessary to step back and look at the big picture.

Thinkature - a very cool tool

One of my favorite ways to surf the net is to start with the del.icio.us and click on popular. I come across some of the coolest tools that way. I almost always save at least a few of the popular sites on my own list. I have over 1200 links that interest me. Once in a while, I come across something that I feel like I must use immediately. Today it was Thinkature. Thinkature is a really cool collaboration tool where you can create mind maps and brainstorming visual organizers. The other mind map tools that I've found include WiseMapping, Mind42, and MindMeister. Naturally, my favorite will always be the offline version Inspiration. (I wonder if they are developing an online version with all the cool features?) Thinkature's features are really powerful. They include chatting and the use of images, either from your hard drive or imported from the web. Wow! It's so cool! Here are a few ideas on how to use this in the classroom or as a professional tool for teachers.

• With an interactive whiteboard
• Recap a field trip
• Create a timeline
• Connecting ideas as a study guide
• Prepare to write an essay or report
• Prepare a presentation

I started a workspace, just to get a little practice. Feel free to add to edit it.

Pageflakes - the way to keep track of Intentional R&D

I came across a post from a blogger from the Teacher Leaders Network describing the educational use of Pageflakes. I used to have pageflakes set up as my home page, but it was really slow to load. My kids started to complain, and I just set it back to good 'ole Google. After reading Mr. Ferriter's post, I decided to work on my PageFlakes and even copied a few of his pages, like the educational bloggers page and the Accomplished Educational Leadership page.

Like Mr. Ferriter, the single most important form of professional development that I engage in on a daily basis is reading blogs. Creating a visual way to organize my favorites (who are also his) will make it easier to spend a few minutes here and there to read them and organize information that I get from them with flakes like notepad, and delicious.

I think when I show teachers how to read blogs, this form of feedreader will be easier to understand and perhaps I might be able to persuade more teachers to try this when I show them my pageflakes page.

Technology Driven Differentiated Instruction

I've been following Vicki Davis's blog and projects for quite a while. It was really cool to have her present at the Illinois technology conference. The presentation that I attended was Technology Driven Differentiated Instruction. I've done a great deal of research about differentiated instruction. My master's thesis was a study on effective professional development strategies in order to implement DI into teaching and learning. I've read research by Carol Ann Tomlinson, who is the foremost expert on the subject. This workshop presented the content with a new twist. DI is a very complex topic and generally pretty difficult to do well at first. Vicki's presentation provides some very specific recommendations for the use of web2.0 tools in the classroom and how the process, the product, or the content can be differentiated based on the teaching and learning experience. I need to take a look at her slideshow a few more times to get my head around the information. Pairing the implementation of web2.0 tools with DI is so overwhelming. I think that first teachers have to be comfortable with one concept or the other first before the two are paired. Clearly, Vicki has well developed technology integrated classroom, globally connecting her students using blogs, wikis, podcasting, and other tools. None of the teachers I currently work with are using web2.0 tools.

Here's the slide show, and my big three.

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• Find a way to use ClassTools.net - I saw this site at Beth's workshop too. It looks like a cool application for interactive white boards
• Blog regularly - even if I can't implement any of these "big three" lists, continue to write about what I've learned
• Write a Big Three for the workshops from IL-TCE
• Organize Intentional R&D - Use this name for the list of stuff I want to look at, learn, implement, inspire other with. This seems like a way to make the time I spend with new ideas and articles much more productive.

Building Personal Learning Networks - Engaging Adult Learners

This is a presentation by Vinnie Vrotny. Unlike other presentations, Vinnie tried to make it interactive by giving the group guiding questions to discuss for a few minutes to get us thinking and talking about personal learning networks. His goal was clearly to get us to network with others around us. The ICE conference is always a good way to network and I like to take advantage of the opportunity to meet other enthusiastic educators. The complete presentation can be found here.

My "Big Three":

• Set up a social networking or web2.0 application for parent workshops. Include videos, articles, prompt questions. Encourage engagement and for parents to be a guide and a mentor rather than a policeman.
• Use twitter and the Ning network to extend my personal learning network
• Facilitate personal learning networks with others in my district. I've discussed this possibility with a couple of staff members and was met with lukewarm response. I need to find a way to show them examples and demonstrate the value.
• Set up a tool to develop a learning network for our chapter of ICE (ICE-COLD)

Has anyone noticed that my big three is usually more than three?

Welcome to F.R.E.E. Fantastic Resource for the Enthusiastic Educator

From Beth Buke's presentation, which was hilarious. How fitting that it was held in Zanies. Her very energetic presentation had a smattering of technical issues, but she kept it moving. Beth worked very hard to put together an extremely informative presentation. Her presentation wiki can be found here. Her list of resources is very nicely organized and annotated.

Here's my "Big 3"

• Use googledocs. I already use google docs in a very limited way. My boss loves the idea of posting our curriculum maps to google docs and giving all the teachers access to make them living documents. I want to really develop the use with students and teachers.
• Animoto: take photos, upload them and animoto - 30 seconds is for free, would be a great alternative to those very hairy iMovie projects
• Jing: already use Jing regularly for screen shots, but to demonstrate how to do something in a movie, I should use this more often, turn off the mic, since I don't like my voice.
• prezentit.com - similar to powerpoint not quite as fancy very easy - maybe this would be a good tool to teach powerpoint challenged teachers
• Screencast-o-matic - you don't have to create an account, record what you want, and download it, check this out!
• Voice thread - example Mrs. Joe's class. Upload pictures and users make comments, Ridge has to use this!!! The power is the comments (different settings for privacy), public but keep it off of the browse - great idea, students create their identities within identities within her account to keep it safe and controlled, planning is extremely important - use a story board! Focus on the content.

I've heard of all of these resource and even signed up for every one. Beth has motivated me to get moving and use them.

IL-TCE - a great time!

The best advice from the Illinois Computing Educators Conference was from Vicki Davis. I attended her workshop on differentiated instruction using technology. She recommends that everyone "have a big three" from every workshop that was attended. Write down three things that will be done in the next seven days. That's great advice! After attending this conference for the past seven years, I always feel overwhelmed, excited, energized, and have my head stuffed with new information. It's really hard to process it all and make connections. This is particularly true when I am attending the conference as a professional development coordinator for the others in my district or my school. I not only have to fit pieces in for myself, but I have to have a handle on what the conference can mean to others that I work with - how I can disseminate information for others, how can I spread my enthusiasm for the new ideas, how can I inspire people. Start small. Write a big three for each workshop.

Why Web2.0 Is Critical to the Future of Education

The first session I attended at ICE was Steve Hargadon's spotlight session at IL-TCE (Illinois Computing Educators annual conference). Click here for more information about his session. The highlights of his information are the ten web 2.0 trends that will have an impact on education and the shifts based on those trends. I hope that Steve annotates this wiki with more information. He was extremely passionate in the delivery of his message, I couldn't take effective enough notes to really tell the story effectively. I'll start with my Big Three and my Intentional R&D List for this session.

For my "Big Three" for this session, I'd like to do the following:

• Check out diigo - Steve recommends this site as a way to keep bookmarks, annotate them, and collect information to use for collaboration
• Use twitter - already looked at this and belong - kinda don't get it, but I started using it a little during the two days of the conference.
• Get the rest of my family to use Flicker
• Start a Ning group for ICE - COLD (Steve is a consultant for NING. I belong to his Classroom2.0 NING.)
  
• Use chatzy - create a chat room during at least of my parent workshops.
  
• Look into using Skype in the classroom - can I find another class to collaborate with?
• MedlinePlus Videos of surgical procedures - This is really cool, but might be a little much for elementary school.

(That's more than 3...I'll have to prioritize these.)

That list seems kind of weak, based on the compelling information that Steve explained during his presentation. My notes had a few good quotes, one of which is, "The Internet is becoming a platform for unparalleled for creativity. We are creating the content for the web." The potential is there, but with few exceptions, we are not connecting content creating on the web to the educational experience of our students. Those teachers who provide those types of experiences are really the exception. One of the big reasons is because social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace were the first social networking sites. Educators didn't get the jump on the whole phenomenon before social networking got such a bad rap. People who are producing content on the web are doing so with no guidelines and no rules.

"Web 2.0 is the cause of this tidal wave. Web 2.0 is the solution." - another good quote from Steve. Examples of this are using social bookmarking sites to tag and share information with others. Another example is using a wiki to put together information about topics and collaborate with others to compile information and manage content.

Another example that works for me is tracking and reading bloggers. I follow about 25 bloggers and reading those blogs on a regular basis is the single most important professional development activity that I engage in. That's how web2.0 helps me with the tidal wave.

Here's something to look up....knowledge about career is obsolete in 3 years, meaning that the knowledge that one acquires for their profession is out of date in just a few years.

Read/Write Culture

I really learn a great deal from watching the presentations on TED. The speakers and the content of their presentations are really inspirational. Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach is one of my favorite educators. I frequently read her blog. One of her recent posts summarized this presentation by Larry Lessig. Watch the presentation not only for his message, but for his presentation style and use of PowerPoint (even though in this case he was using Keynote from Apple.)


What I found most compelling about his argument is this sense that the kids and the culture are progressing, but the laws are making it impossible for us (particularly the kids) to live within the law. The culture is progressing, but the lawmakers are not keeping up. Neither is education for that matter, but how much does really matter?

Virgin Mobile, Cheapskates?

This poor girl from Texas has her photo uploaded to Flickr, like millions of other teens and Virgin Mobile uses the image in their advertisements in Australia. You have to be kidding me! A billion dollar company can't hire a model, sign a release, and go through the proper channels to create an ad the ethical way? I would have loved to been in that marketing meeting -
(marketing executive one): We'll get a picture of a girl and under her picture we'll put the tag line "Dump your (pen pal) free text virgin to virgin"
(marketing executive two): Great idea! Which modeling agency should I call?
(marketing executive one): Don't bother...I've got some time on my hands. I'll search through the millions of pictures of teenagers on Flickr and find the perfect girl for our campaign.

Drats! There are dozens of cute images of my daughter on Flickr. Why couldn't those guys from Virgin found her? Then we could be embroiled in a nasty legal battle over privacy and copyright laws.



This brings a whole new dimension to educating our kids about privacy and the internet.

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How I Learn New Stuff

I try really hard to know as much as I can about current technology. Even if I'm not able to put every available tool or trend into practice in my personal or professional life, I pride myself on at least being aware of what's going on out there among the most tech-savvy. I've been asked dozens of times, "How do you know so much?" My answer is, "I read a lot!" I read blogs, del.ico.us links, articles, and occasionally, books. I also listen to podcasts and watch videos of presentations, or sometimes at least look at the presentation, even if it's without the presenter. I spend sometime everyday expanding my knowledge about what's going on in the world, especially when it applies to education.
Here are a couple of the coolest tools that I use on a daily basis:

• Del.icio.us - this is a public book marking site. I have collected over 1000 links. I always start by looking at "popular" and "recent". One can find great articles, new web2.0 websites, and other useful web resources. I also have a network of educational technology experts that I follow and I check to see what they've bookmarked to make sure I don't miss anything important.
• Google Reader - This is an aggregator that helps me keep track of all the blogs I read and news websites from this site as well. When I find a blog or new site I want to follow, I copy the link and "add the feed". Every time I return to my Google Reader page, the articles that have been posted since my last visit are available. I will eventually take advantage of the shared items feature so I can create a shared items page for my friends.
• Clipmarks - This site/tool is hard to describe. Basically when I read articles that I want to keep for future reference, I use a clipmark to highlight the important parts of the article and the site saves my articles in a collection and using tags, I can access them later. It's important to read what other people are clipping and "pop" the articles from others as a way to participate in the clipmark community sharing information.

When I find a resource, website, or article that I want to keep, I decide how to mark it for future use. I usually bookmark the site on Del.icio.us. If it's an article that I want to refer to in a future presentation or blog, I use Clipmarks. Google reader lets me "star" a blog entry or news article. If I find a resource that I know is useful for teachers, I'll add the site to my wiki.

I have a real problem with collecting all this stuff. I need time to sift through all the information and organize and annotate the best resources. I have a huge collection of interesting stuff. I just need to put it to good use.

Wikipedia is not the Enemy, and neither is Flickr

In November, there was a lot of buzz about a particular librarian in New Jersey and her anti-wikipedia campaign. I read about it in one my favorite blogs, Dangerously Irrelevant. Around the same time, I was up against a very small battle with teachers regarding wikipedia. The argument against wikipedia is valid. The articles can be modified by anyone, creating an opportunity for inaccuracies. Teachers who are against Wikipedia want to take the extreme position that the site should be completely avoided. I find that once we discuss the format of the site including the features of wikis in general, safeguards put in place to prevent all out vandalism of articles, and the Nature Magazine study comparing the results to Britannica the tone of the discussion usually changes. I can usually convince teachers that Wikipedia is a fine place to start gathering information, particularly if one needs some basic background information. After all, Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia never intended for the site to be used for "serious research".

When teachers complain that students should never check Wikipedia because the content is created by "anyone", they are missing the point. "Anyone" includes experts in the fields, graduate students, professionals (like teachers), and people who care a great deal about the content of the article because the subject matter is their passion. Just as we would never want students to use an encyclopedia article as the only source in an essay or research paper, we could recommend that if Wikipedia is used, the student must add a resource to their list of sources sited. In addition, high quality Wikipedia articles include a bibliography, from which further research can be done. I can make a really good case for using Wikipedia and I've even had a few workshop attendees sign up for an account and begin an article about their own school or parish.

Here's the weird thing - with lots of discussion about how "dangerous" it is to ask the community or the public to write articles for one of the most widely used online encyclopedias, why don't we hear an equal amount of caution about asking the community/public to tag and comment on the photos from Library of Congress' Flickr collection? I see no caution that the public will negatively impact the integrity of the project with inappropriate comments or irrelevant tags. By the way, Library of Congress sounds ecstatic over the results of their pilot so far.

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Library of Congress Goes Web 2.0

I've been a big fan of the Library of Congress for several years. We've used many of their collections for writing and social studies projects. With more than 10 million primary sources, the resources that can enhance a lesson can be very overwhelming. A good place to begin is The Learning Page which includes a database of lesson plans and activities using various collections. Examples of units and lesson plans that I've been involved in using the American Memory Collections include the following:

• Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project with 5th grade students. They were assigned to select a couple of the pieces and read the stories to familiarize themselves with the stories as told in first-person accounts from former slaves. They were then assigned to write their own narrative in the voice of a former slave. The writing was assessed based on the facts surrounding the character's life and the reflection of emotion in the story.
• The Industrialization Documentary Project, where the student researched the early part of the century, collected media, and used movie editing software to put together their own narrated video documentary. Several collections were used, depending on the sub-topic that the students selected; Alexander Graham Bell papers, Detroit Publishing Company, America at Work, America at Leisure Motion Pictures, Emergence of Advertising in America, Chicago Daily News - Chicago Historical Society, The Life of a City - New York City Films, Inventing America - Early Sound Recording and Motion Pictures of the Edison Companies, American Environmental Photographs, Inside an American Factory, The Nineteenth Centry in Print, Railroad Maps, Historic American Sheet Music, Around the World in the 1890's
• After studying inventors, 3rd graders collected images from these collections: Wilbur and Orville Wright Papers, Samuel F.B. Morse Papers, Alexander Graham Bell Papers to create a "scrapbook" page with a small sampling of the images and annotations or captions

The collections from the Library of Congress are vast. For anyone studying American History, they are essential resources. The challenge is to find the right resources to help in the study of a particular topic. There isn't an effective way to search through the millions of pictures to access the appropriate group that illustrate a period in our culture. It takes a great deal of time and familiarity with how the Library organizes the collections to select the images. Students, particularly those in elementary school, or even the general public would find navigation impossible. Perhaps recognizing this, the staff at the Library offices have posted thousands of images to Flickr, the world's most popular photo-sharing site. The plan is for the the Flickr community to tag, comment, and make notes on the images. Flickr users use 20 million unique tags to categorize the hundreds of millions of photographs on the site. That's the idea. The Library wants us to go th the collections on Flickr, called Commons, and add information to the photographs to make them easier to find. The whole concept is amazingly innovative and I for one am looking forward to years to come, when every one of the 10 million images are tagged, commented on, and easier to find and use because of the contributions of the Flickr community.

Read more about this project on the Library of Congress Blog.

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The Google Generation

I recently made a disturbing discovery in my school district. Students in the middle school have never actually been "taught" information literacy skills, particularly effective ways to find information. I helped a teacher check this history of a web browser and inadvertently noticed that the child was using complete questions in the search box of Ask and then presumably when he didn't get a good answer, wrote the question in the search box of Google. I surmised from his history that he never used search terms that would help him drill down to the correct information. It appeared that he didn't have any idea where to begin. He even tried the old "searchterm.com" technique. The history of his internet search disclosed a great deal, although I need to check with the classroom teacher to get the whole story. The student (along with the rest of the class, as verified by the tech-aide assigned to supervise the children) was assigned a task to research a broad topic. The goal was to prepare for a "geography bee". He was given very little guidelines and no specific websites whereby to start gathering some background information. Not knowing where to begin and with very little to go by, he starts "asking" the search engines questions. The results that were returned were of little help. I checked and discovered that his question was answered with results that are completely unrelated and irrelevant to the original question. Now here's the interesting part. Frustrated and clearly getting no where, he starts searching on google images of pop stars. He stumbles upon an interesting article on a web magazine which would qualify as completely inappropriate - and gets caught on this website. That's why I got called in; to show the tech aide how to search the history of the browser to see where else he had been during the class. He is in big trouble now for not only being off task, but clicking in to a site that should have been filtered.

This scenario brings me to a little research. I ask the following questions:

• What was the assignment or the task the students were required to complete during their time in the computer lab?
• What guidelines were given to them to support the task?
• How were the other students doing searches? Were they using key words, going to websites like wikipedia, asking for help?
• Who taugh

t these students how to use a search engine to find relevant and valid information?

It's no wonder the student was off task. The task was impossible. They were given a couple of example questions from the geography bee. No relevant websites were offered as a starting point. Most of the students were using the same ineffective search techniques. Basically, the kids were turned lose with about 6 billion websites to learn about a very broad topic.

This brought me to the librarian at one of the elementary schools. I asked her when or how are the children taught information literacy skills like searching and evaluating websites. Her response was, "They're not." Apparently the librarians in the district wrote an entire curriculum around these topics and somewhere down the line it was scrapped. Along with several other factors, there was some disagreement about who was in charge of teaching these topics, the computer teacher, the librarian, or the classroom teacher.

The experience of the middle school students demonstrate how imperative it is to implement some kind of instruction or at least support. I come to find out that the experiences of our students are pretty much right on target with the rest of this generation, coined the "Google Generation". A study in the United Kingdom found that children really lack the skills needed to effectively use the internet. The report can be downloaded here and you can read a very thorough review here. It turns out that young people, who are extremely competent with technology, do not read for information on the web. They prefer not to read a great deal of text. They like to get information from multimedia sources rather than from text. In addition, there is a great deal of plagiarism taking place and information is "cut-and-pasted". They know about intellectual property, but feel it is unfair and were unlikely to respect this issue of copyright.

It turns out that we're not unlike all the others in the world, trying to understand what training is needed to teach our students to become effective and efficient information seekers.

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Information is Power

I sign up for everything. Each day my email inbox is bombarded with email from my subscriptions. Here are a few of my favorites:

• Education Week (edweek.org) - for news, and special events such as live chats around relevant topics
• Teacher Magazine - good quality articles, research, and resources
• Pete MacKay's Teacher's List - I get an interesting website sent to me each day. This is one of my favorite subscriptions. Pete sends me some of the bests sites ever. I've never seen one I couldn't use with teachers or students.
• Education World - I like the administrators and the professional development newsletters
• Edutopia - from the George Lucas Educational Foundation, topics including professional development, technology integration, and comprehensive assessment
• NetFamilyNews - among all of the high quality resources that guide parents and educators, this is the BEST resource for current and relevant news, research, and tools to deal with how web-savvy young people are using the internet, particularly in the area of social networking.

These subscriptions are helping me enhance my own professional development. I learn something every day from my email.

Think Outside the Template

In an earlier post, I explored how PowerPoint is being used these days in the "real world". The way to produce high quality presentations is to avoid the templates, slide layouts, and Microsoft produced slide designs. I found a terrific blog by hosted by Tom Kuhlmann. He provides some fine examples of how the program is used as an "authoring environment". I particularly enjoyed his tutorials on how to create animations using PowerPoint.

How Walt Disney Would Use PowerPoint to Create E-Learning Courses - The Rapid eLearning Blog via kwout

I tried out these techniques and created some nifty animations. The motion path feature doesn't work on a Mac (phooey) but the other techniques are really fun and produce some cool techniques. Here are some possible edtech possibilities:

• Create an animation or set of animations and record narration of the story
• Use animation as a "special effect" to help illustrate a message, to really engage the viewer
• Save the animation as a .mov file (Mac only) and embed in another project (haven't tried this...wonder if it'll work?)

It wouldn't be enough to just teach students how to create the animation. They would have to be able to use it with some kind of story telling. It's something to think about.

I Want to Be this Guy!!

Matt Montagne is a Middle School technology integrator and computer teacher. Check out these amazing projects on his blog!

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We Have to Know

Clarence Fisher of Arapahoe High School in Colorado made a presentation to his staff in August 2006. 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 to be 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" provides tremendous opportunities for our children as our society shifts. 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. See the shifthappens wiki for information about the presentation.

Clarence Fisher
Anne's Description of Clarence Fisher's keynote on K12 Online Conference

The video

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A Whole New Set of Rules

PowerPoint has been around since 1987. That makes this technology application 20 years old. I was surprised to find out (from wikipedia) that it was originally a program that ran on the Apple Macintosh. Microsoft purchased the program from the original developers for $14 million. Since the 1990's, PowerPoint has been used as a presentation software by business people, teachers, and students. I don't have any real statistics, but I'm venturing a guess that it is used in every school. Even by non-techy people, it's easy to use due to the features that Microsoft has put into the program to meet the needs of presenters and audiences.

When I taught second graders how to create a slide, I told the students that this program is very easy to use, because it's "built for grownups". Kids of course, would be able to figure out what to do to create slides with images and text just by following the directions right on the screen. I worked with children in every grade level as they produced PowerPoint presentations for a variety of classes and for a variety of purposes. Along the way, students would learn the features of the program: animations, charts and graphs, sounds, embedding movies, and using the programs to create products other than presentations, such as picture books and scrapbooks.

If I were still a computer teacher, I would have to be aware of the fact that there is a great deal of criticism over the use of the program. I'm not sure where it started, perhaps with Yale's Edward Tufte and his book PowerPoint is Evil. Read the review from this link to get a sense of the major criticisms of PowerPoint. Basically, it's believed that most presentations created with PowerPoint are pretty awful. Even the creators, Rober Gaskins and Dennis Austin agree as told in an article in the Wall Street Journal.

The major complaints include:

• The slides are used as "cue cards" for the presenter, not to help the audience understand the message
• Poor layout and design due to the use of default templates make presentations hard to read or hideously boring
  
• Ideas are are simplified into bulleted lists and stories are sometimes turned into a set of disparate facts
• Every slideshow usually ends up looking like everyone elses
  

Don McMillan encapsulates every kind of mistake made by bad presenters. This movie is hilarious, but really gets the point across. I sent this to my husband last summer as he was struggling to complete a 60 slide presentation that was supposed to sum up his business to a set of investors. I'm sure his presentation didn't have any of these common mistakes.


One of the most compelling criticisms is that creating PowerPoint presentations do not develop writing skills. Particularly with students, assigning PowerPoint presentations instead of writing essays is most likely a disservice because students are not utilizing a more important literacy skill - that of writing. In the articles I mentioned above, the big complaint is that business people do not write, instead they formulate a presentation, with a bunch of bullet points and charts.

Even with the criticism, it is still one of the most widely used applications, so everyone has to know how to create a PowerPoint presentation. Teach children how to use the program in a whole different way. Teach them to use PowerPoint as truly a visual aid, not as the sole source of information. It is a medium for communication and can be used effectively and ineffectively. We need to learn more about it's effective use. We've all seen really bad presentations with really bad PowerPoint slide shows to go along with it. Think about how we teach our students. Always start with writing - students should write out their essay or speech and that piece of writing should be assessed using the same rubric and grading criteria as an essay not requiring a visual component. PowerPoint presentations should help tell the message of the essay (which presumably could be used as a script) and students should approach the presentation that way
Each slide can use the following

• Really big text in a headline format (Takahashi Method)
• Beautiful images, even if they seem unrelated, to fill the entire slide and use not text (Godin Method)
• Combination of both - some slides with images, some with really big important text
• Avoid the templates at all costs!
  

Check out this video done by an educational technology specialist:




By the way, if you following the links to the Presentation Zen, you'll find it is an extremely interesting blog if you want to learn more about presentations. In addition, check out SlideShare - "the world's largest community for sharing presentations on the web.". Look for presentations that are featured and popular. Most of them follow "the new rules".

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