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?
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Thursday, January 24, 2008
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.
(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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Monday, January 21, 2008
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:
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.
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.
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.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
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.
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:
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.
- 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:
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.
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
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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Friday, January 18, 2008
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:
These subscriptions are helping me enhance my own professional development. I learn something every day from my email.
- 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.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
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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Saturday, January 12, 2008
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
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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Monday, January 07, 2008
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:
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
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".
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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