This is Hendron’s Digest, a weblog devoted to the intersection of education & technology.
When I recently read that an Ohio high school recently passed-out diplomas with mistakes printed on them, something told me to “click.”
Sure enough, I knew the school. Westlake High School is where I did my student teaching. I am not sure they had a webpage when I was there, but they do now.
Today was an interesting one.
So, let me report on a few things…
Kindle. Karen Richardson wrote so passionately about her Kindle. So, I thought it would be worth trying out. I figured… always available Internet… basic web… books… maybe there could be a place for this in education. What I found, first off, is that Amazon is having web problems. I noticed it today through Safari, then later on the Kindle. Eh, interesting. Second, you’ve likely read this criticism before: what’s with the buttons on the side of the thing?? For as thoughtful as the design of this thing was, putting buttons on both sides of it wasn’t smart.
Oh, and the little case it comes with is a laugh. I’ll be affixing velcro soon.
Conversations. I’ve been hearing for some time about the blogosphere being a conversation. You’ll read about countless edtech bloggers and experts telling us that learning is also about conversations. So let’s all blog, right? Yeah, I buy into some of that.
But conversations require some activity on your part. The writings and subjects and people involved don’t yet all… mesh so well. But they could.
A new service called CoComment links the comments up with your “community.” Disqus does something similar, connecting the commenters between the blogs.
But for as much power as these Web 2.0 tools provide your read/write experience, they require work on your part. Establish accounts, install plugins, etc. Take MyBlogLog from Yahoo! It allows you to be tracked on various blogs via sidebar “widgets.” Show up someplace (even a place you don’t normally visit), and there you are, in the sidebar, counted and noted. Like a security camera at the entrance. Some people love this stuff.
I recently installed a plugin for this blog that allows you to get an e-mail when someone posts after you, to “follow up.” I like that solution. I can’t track it, and I don’t care. But sometimes, you forget to go back and participate. Read on, comment on. It’s tough. Yeah, the blog engines make RSS feeds for comments and posts, but… that’s a lot of feeding going on there.
At some point, someone will design the next big web app, which will connect all of this together in a hopefully “Apple-esque” wrapper, meaning, it will be just so easy and intuitive to use. And this trend, really, is something I’ve been telling teachers about for about 4 years now.
At once, the Web is getting far more complex and powerful, yet at the same time, easier to use.
While all these competing tools (add-ons or not) are competing for our loyalty, we seem to be in a “development phase.” What features do folks want? Who will be the winners?
I’ll tell you, following a blog, a Twitter page, a Tumblr blog, a work-community blog, and posts in a social network is even a little too far distributed for me. I’m old school, I’ll have a blog (or two). But just as blogging today is a facile way of getting your ideas published on the Web, I think staying connected can be just as easy, around the corner.
(My back’s calling for a nice flat surface. Peace!)
I realized this weekend something that I think many of us know, but it deserves to be re-articulated now, in a time when education in this country is being debated and questioned.
Many times, we only have this one chance to change a life.
What am I talking about?
I received an e-mail from my dad; in the past couple of years, it is the first written-out messages my father has ever written to me. We either exclusively communicated face-to-face, or phone receiver to phone receiver. And in the last message he sent me, he spared no decorum, having used far too many apostrophes than the U.S. educational system would allow. In short, when a word ended in “s,” he upgraded that to an “apostrophe-s.”
And as I began to think about that, and how/when/where my dad would have learned that, I realized (once again) he only had but a small window of opportunity to get that right. Who knows, perhaps we could say the educational system failed him; others might point out he wasn’t always the angel in school, and he failed himself. At this point, it doesn’t matter, his message was fine. It was understood. But sometimes we know people who wear just a little bit too much “bling” for an occasion (too much flashy jewelry). It doesn’t kill anyone, for sure, but that feeling of just a little “too much going on” is the reaction we get. That’s how I felt with all of those apostrophes.
Dressing appropriately in society is one of those skills we learn growing up, along with underwear first, pants second. It’s a finer skill, but nevertheless, it’s easy enough to remind a friend when their shoes are just too flashy for a PTA luncheon.
I am not sure telling dad about the apostrophes is the right thing to do (although I felt the same itch that’d I’d have in wanting to mention someone’s shoes). No, if he wants to sprinkle-on more apostrophes at this stage of the game, I consider them like smiles or kisses, a little gold dust “bling” to decorate an otherwise bland e-mail (it was set in Helvetica, which over time, grows a tad bland).
My point? Don’t forget that with a 15 or 17 year old student in your class/school, you’re not just teaching them for a state standard. You’re also teaching my 65 year old father, someone’s 70 year old uncle, or someone like… the president. It may be the only time in their life to learn what you have to teach. Like apostrophe usage in the English language.
Now, I need to figure out where I got my overuse of hyphens from. Perhaps these grammatical outpourings run in the family.
David Warlick recently posted about his new presentation style, which I’ve seen in action. He even talked about it at the presentation.
“Instead of presenting today with a PowerPoint, I will be following this trail of folders and show you actual artifacts and files…” — more or less a paraphrase of what he said, anyhow. What we saw was not unlike what he shows us at his website, a snake-like trail of files and folders.
Here’s what I do and don’t like about this approach.
I like that people are breaking the mold and trying different ways to present information using their laptops. This is good. But I think this approach ultimately pales in comparison to a well-crafted set of slides. Simplicity on the screen, dynamism on the stage (you). That’s an equation that gets a good message across well and looks classy, to boot.
I am simply amazed (in a negative way) sometimes when I see presenters at conferences and workshops use their browsers.
This happens more on the PC, but sometimes there is so much chrome and cruft that the usable space for the web browser (when used) is so restrictive. Multiple toolbars, big chunky buttons, and who knows what else crowds one’s screen.
Escape to Plainview for Macintosh, a Webkit-based browser that spans your entire screen. It’s especially made for presentations.
You can set up all your bookmarks ahead of time, and use the entire real estate of your screen to show off the wonders of the Web.
I look forward to trying this one out later this year at my own presentations!
I plan on getting the book referenced in this presentation, Brain Rules.
Thanks to Cool Cat Teacher (via Twitter).
If you take an old bottle of Italian dressing and throw in 3 oz. of end-user creativity, 2 oz. oil, and some ajax, RSS, and clean yet shiny wet graphics, you’re sure to come up with a killer Web 2.0 recipe every time.
Penzu is a new Read/Write, Web 2.0 tool (we’ve discussed the differences, before) that presents to you a lined piece of white notebook paper (sans holes) to… write on.
My colleauge Bea Cantor introduced me to this tool, telling me: “It’s about your own personal journal, instead of a blog…”
To me, Penzu seems both ahead, and behind the times, if that’s possible. Sure, it’s still in Beta, and they’ll likely still be adding features. But as it stands now, this is what you can do:
So, it’s like Writely/Google Docs, except you get lined paper, no spell check, and no real editing tools (copy, paste, highlight, underline, etc.). Oh, and they left-out the RSS.
It’s ahead of its time because to me it feels like a great mini-application if we all lived in a world that celebrated a Web-only operating system. Behind, because, it provides limited functionality when compared to other, more mature tools.
And the reason I’m writing this is because it advertises itself as a tool where you can pour-in your deepest thoughts, emotional state of mind, your inner secrets and personal reflections.
I wouldn’t recommend that anyone pour-in their deepest (wholesome or not) thoughts into a website owned and controlled by someone else. Instead, I’d recommend a password-protected personal organizer (a Yojimbo style application), or get yourself a Molkesine notebook.
I mean, I returned to their website, with my open Penzu entry, and in the sidebar, it says: If you are not John, please click here.. Yeah… Whoops, someone forgot to hit “log out.”
We’ll see how this one develops, but I’d caution any students out there who might feel this is a real safe environment for conducting mind-dumps.
One of my favorite services for my own personal organization, or you could say, “a tool in my personal GTD kit” is Jott. Today, Jott announced a new feature called Jott feeds.
Jott works with your cell phone to record (and transcribe) reminders, messages, and deliveries to other online services (like Google calendar). Now, you can subscribe to RSS feeds and get the updates read back to you over the phone!
A recent article in Edutopia magazine featured a discussion on plagiarism, from a teacher who insists on giving “zeros” on projects that include plagiarized content.
Beat the Cheat told us that fighting plagiarism is tough, and I’d agree from the experiences I’ve had at the high school level. Most interesting were the excuses author Kim Bochicchio cited students provided her for the cheating.
When I read many blogs today (and maybe, I admit, it’s the type of blogs I read), there is a definite and blatant attempt to link-back to original sources, and to cite the authors of quoted material. If you were to ask me, based on the blogs I read, if we’re in good shape, I might say yes.
As I became a blogger, and learned the lingo (trackbacks, permalinks, post comments) I soon put into practice that black magic of linking to other blogs, back to the very entry. Then, soon after, bloggers had re-invented the whole system again, putting pound signs by each line, so we could link back to the very line from where we’d found a nugget to reflect upon. That’s why, today, the purple pound signs have dwindled, but the pound sign itself is often used to denote a permalink within a blog.
My point here is… perhaps encouraging students to blog can also encourage them to link back to where they got ideas, facts, and information. The good news is, when properly done, teachers can be successful in stomping-out plagiarism, as author Kim Bochicchio reports.
This is a draft and will be updated with presentation slides later in July, 2008
I was asked by Daniel Arkin some months ago to present at the 2008 Virginia Society for Technology in Education Instructional Technology Resource Teacher conference held on July 25 ,2008. My topic was chosen for me: places to share content online. I felt the topic was lackluster, and instead, changed the focus just a bit. Instead of showing Pageflakes, iGoogle, and PortaPortal (how these collectively allow you to share your own content is a bit beyond me), I felt I wanted to present on the importance of sharing content.
For the record, I see the ITRT position as one whereby the individual works in the trenches, alongside teachers, marrying technology to instructional strategies both individuals deem best. Yes, this resource teacher is there to make sure the technology gets used, seemingly no matter if it’s the right thing or not (that’s the fear of some, I am sure). But by in large, ITRTs find methods of communication, evaluation, and problem-solving that use an array of available technologies, including handheld devices, computers, interactive white boards, and of course, computers and Websites.
Part of that job of the resource teacher is:
It’s not as simple, let’s say, as having a canister of pencils and helping students use those pencils through sharpening lessons, seminars on the correct grip, or penmanship drills. Not at all so simple. It instead might involve the adaptation of a collaborative, online writing tool (say, Google Docs) and how that can be used to improve the quality of writing of 10th and 11th grade English students. This new tool wasn’t designed for English teachers and high school classrooms. Nor was it designed to strategically improve the skill of writing. But the ITRT must examine what it can do, assess the concerns with obtaining student accounts, and and work with a subject matter expert on how best to use the functions of this tool to improve writing. So, the ITRT will discover, if she doesn’t already know, what the instructional problem is. There are certainly a number of things Google Docs offers that might be palatable: group collaboration, group review, facilitation of providing teacher feedback, etc. Ultimately, the ITRT, in partnership with the English teacher (or even alone) has to assess whether or not this new tool and the associated hardware is beneficial for improving writing. Inevitably, some find it does; others it does not. Some, they’ll encounter problems along the way, preventing a true assessment to be exercised.
In an ideal environment, we’d like to see ITRTs as:
Of course, you may have other ideas, too.
Many of the ITRTs in Virginia are former teachers, so they have experience with technology, but many possess an expertise in pedagogy first. Others have found themselves more technically minded, and are weaker at the pedagogical aspect. The so-called TPACK model (formerly TCPK, see http://punya.educ.msu.edu/research/tpck/) definitely takes as its focus the intersection of content, pedagogical, and technology knowledge at the center. Since few individual possess all areas of knowledge equally well, the ITRT and teacher partnership essentially attempts to provide the “sweet spot” in the TPACK model in the teaching environment.
With this in mind, I find that sharing resources online serves a two-pronged purpose:
We today participate in an online environment that presents the educator with a double-edge sword, to make an analogy. On the one hand, a seemingly limitless number of resources, experiences, and tools are available at our fingertips. On the other, our access may be limited, resources can be blocked by filters, and the sheer amount of new information being created on a regular basis is staggering, leading to confusion. In short, the downside includes the perception that simply evaluating new online resources could take up the full-time job of a team of educators.
This is why sharing resources must be done with caution: sloppily presenting pieces of what you do, what you create, or what you evaluate adds to the quantity of information. But the quantity alone is not enough. Because ITRTs do not devote the full time of their occupation to the evaluation of new resources, the quality of information encountered saves the resource of time. ITRTs should only share content when it ensures a quality presentation, that’s easily found, organized, and made freely available.
In short, when presenting information about the tools and resources you use, the ITRT ought to:
Sharing quality instances of the resources you use as an ITRT is both a professional courtesy and benefit to others in your field.
While ITRTs already are sharing some of their expertise on the tools and resources they are using, the tools alone are many times unhelpful to teachers who lack the experience or technical knowledge to implement the digital resource. Not knowing how to use a computer program, or not having access to a new Read/Write style tool on the Web, can easily thwart a teacher’s best intentions. By sharing information online in an easily accessible, open format, the ITRT can better the relationship with classroom teachers and further extend the effectiveness of what’s being shared when observed by other parties.
During the collaborative teaching process, the teacher and ITRT must share some understanding:
Many well-done lessons that implement digital tools are also lessons that follow a constructivist, project-based approach. If this style of teaching is less familiar to the classroom teacher, it is vital that all the instructional objectives and expectations are voiced before the instructional process begins with students. Documenting details of the experience before, during, and after the instructional experience by both parties can provide for valuable professional development for pedagogical skills.
So, to conclude: sharing the resources ITRTs are creating, finding, and using with others in the field–both classroom teachers and other ITRT colleagues–is a good idea. A variety of online tools exist to make sharing easy and inexpensive. This presentation will detail some of my favorite collaborative tools.
In thinking about an idealized tool for sharing, here are some criteria:
Thinking about your needs, in your school, in your school division will be paramount. Wikis blogs, and online collaborative networks all accommodate at least a majority of the criteria listed, above.
When evaluating online resources, consider the ease of use and access. Choose a tool that is blessed on your network, or one so compelling it should be blessed. Here are a few of my favorites:
Thanks for taking the time to read this, and I hope I’ve convinced you of some of the importance in sharing your craft as an ITRT with others online. I feel RSS technologies support these principles. Keeping your pulse on what others are producing is as important as sharing your own content. Consider purchasing RSS for Educators from Amazon.
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