johnhendron.net: hendron’s digest - a weblog

I sometimes get asked, usually at an off-site meeting or conference, about why it’s important to keep up with some of the latest technologies in schools. I often cite the need to be prepared, about starting small, and evolving into new trends that are likely to have a lasting impact in the lives of our students.

“Indeed, educators recognize the need to increase the in-school emphasis on media literacy as a way to help students think critically about traditional and new media, including on the Internet and in video production.”

A recent article talks about this, and ties it to maintaining twenty-first century skills. It’s an interesting, short read.

For a year, I’ve been using a third-party application to try and sync my calendars between a desktop computer at work, my laptop, and my desktop computer at home. On top of this, trying to keep phones in sync with events has been… a challenge.

This morning I set my work computer to sync with my Google calendar. This is a feature Google added this summer. I am going to detail how I got this to work with Mac OS X Leopard and iCal 3.0.5. Others migrating here to Leopard may want to take advantage of this functionality.

1. Set up a Google Calendar account. If you’re a Goochland teacher, you can do this through your Google Docs access. Click on “Calendar” in the top-left-hand side of the Google apps environment to access the calendar.
2. Fire up iCal version 3, that supports CalDAV.
3. Read over the instructions found at LifeHacker. I used this as a guide, but made changes to get it to work.
4. Grab the correct URL from Google. Under calendar settings, visit the Calendar Address section, and grab the URL for iCal.

5. In iCal, go to Preferences and visit the Accounts area. You’re going to add a new account for Google. Put in your Google account information (email and password) but under “Advanced”, for the URL, add the URL you copied from step 4. I changed the http:// header to https:// for encryption.

6. Close the iCal settings, and a new calendar should appear in your sidebar.
7. You can “Get Info” on this new calendar (right-click) and change settings, such as how often it syncs with Google.

What’s the point?

You’re now using Google to keep your calendar. You can enter appointments on either iCal or by going to Google’s online calendar. Either way, the two calendars will remain in sync.

Furthermore, I can repeat this process on more computers (even using desktop calendars other than iCal), and keep my calendar in sync on every computer I use. No matter where I add items, they’ll be sent to Google, and to all the other sync-ed calendars.

Lastly, if you sync your phone with your desktop calendar, it too will grab the items from there, and consequently, those that are on your Google calendar.

If you have success with these instructions, drop me a line in the comments.

Today in our TechTimes Live Podcast, I published a new 5.5 minute video designed for budding middle school researchers. It could also be used in grades 5 and likely in high school, too. I plan, however, on making variations of this video for both younger and older students.

I will be placing a copy of this video on our internal server for Promethean flipchart sharing so that GMS teachers can copy this video and use it in the classroom before assigning a  research project with students.

While GCPS owns the copyright of this work, we’re making it publicly available to other schools who may find it useful. If there is great demand, I will host it on Vimeo instead of our own server.

Cool Cat Teacher is linking to information from Tony Wagner on the importance of “rigor” in education. I know that’s an undercurrent this year for us at GHS. She also points to a good article entitled “Rigor Redefined” (link). This is great reading for our teachers.

Social Networking is becoming more mainstream each and every day. But my concern is: how many are too many?

Each day I get friend requests in Facebook. I have chosen right now not to participate in Facebook. But I do belong to several Ning groups. We even created our own Goochland Ning group. But again, have to ask: how many are too many?

I just joined a new group sponsored by ISTE. It looks like it is off to a good start. But they had a NECC Ning group, and I belong to my affiliate Ning (VSTE), and I also enjoy membership in more established groups like Classroom 2.0. 

It will be interesting to see how each of these develops. But something in the back of my head wishes that some of this stuff was more… centralized. I don’t want to have to visit 5 networks to check the pulse of what’s new and happening. I’d rather use one source.

Does that feeling seem natural to others too?

Some Saturday I’m going to have to tie up all the lose ends and provide some RSS magic to take each strand to create one big rope… maybe that’d be a good 1-hour session for others too some day.

In many discussions with teachers about G21 projects, we came up with ways for students to publish online. For others, it was a method for turning in documents as assignments.

Recently, I worked with a group at the specialty education center and they had to turn in podcast episodes to their teacher. We created a Moodle course for this purpose, and the 5th graders logged-on and uploaded their lyrics and math songs. But for other purposes, you may want a public space where students can communicate.

I’ve set up a public wiki area for use by Goochland educators and students. If you think you’d like to use it, contact me. It uses MediaWiki, the same framework used for the famous Wikipedia. 

If you don’t create an atmosphere in which risk can be easily taken, in which weird ideas can be floated, then it’s likely you’re going to be producing work that will look derivative in the marketplace.

– Pixar University Dean Randy Nelson.

Several years ago at a NECC conference (where, I’m guessing Atlanta), we heard a speaker tell us about giving risk opportunities to children in schools. One said she created a “garage like atmosphere,” a little factory of learning where kids could explore, create, and make mistakes.

She said it was wonderful.

The article linked above, about Pixar’s “University” that inspires its employees to maintain their creativity, sounds like what a good K-12 environment should be like.

As our “Annals of Corruption” series unfolds, readers will see that Feynman’s account is as timely now as it was when he wrote it. State adoption proceedings still are pervaded by sham, malfeasance and ludicrous incompetence, and they still reflect cozy connections between state agencies and schoolbook companies.

Judging Books by their Covers by Richard P. Feynman.

Someone’s at it again, another cool Flickr image search engine–this one built on colors.

Multicolr Search Lab

It searches Creative Commons, interesting photos. This really impresses me in some of the same ways Google Earth does: we can search for content in ways that language alone, or shall I say text, falls short.

I mean, why not a search engine based on color, rather than….titles, tags, or whatever other metadata we can tack-on with letters?

Have fun.

A teacher wrote me today with a question I’ve heard a lot–so I thought I’d put my definitive answer here on my blog! This question usually comes in the form of two questions, with the same answer.

Where can I find great pictures for kids to use online?

Can we use Flickr.com?

First, yes, Flickr is a wonderful website for photographers. It’s a leading “star” in the concept of Web 2.0, not only for its huge base of avid photographers, but for its use of folksonomized tags for organizing the photos (and now videos) folks are uploading to the Yahoo-owned site.

Second, it’s a good source because millions of photos have been tagged with Creative Commons licenses, meaning the photographers are willing to share their photos with others, including use in projects that our students may undertake in school.

There are two areas where you can do the search for Creative Commons-licensed photos. First, there’s a Attribution Only license. You can use the photos, but have to link back to the source page on Flickr. This is easy to do on the Web, and in print, you can simply list the URL on a slide or in a document like a book citation. 

Second, there’s the attribution, non-commercial license, which means you can use the photos, including the provision for attribution, as long as you don’t profit from the photo’s use. Both of these seem appropriate for use within a school setting.

One caveat: while the truly gross photos folks may post are policed by the “crowd,” it is possible to find explicit photography using Flickr (just the same, really, with any mainstream search tool). So–be forewarned. Setting kids loose on Flickr isn’t always a wise proposition. My advice is, at the elementary level, search for the photos yourself and share them via iPhoto off your laptop, or via a USB stick, or CD-ROM. At the high school level, I think the searching aspect is important. Preview what comes up before class starts, and at all times, keep your eyes out for what students are doing.

Under no circumstances should pictures be dragged from the browser window at Flickr, and out onto a project (in Word, Keynote, etc.). Photos should be collected and the attribution stage should come before the photos appear within a project.

If you have further questions, let me know.

Where was this when I was in school?

Several educators have sent me e-mail about this, and of course, it’s been “a buzz” in the edu-blogosphere.

With tight budgets, consider spending some time between now and the end of October at the K-12 Online Conference, focused on pedagogy with technology.

“Conference in a website?” Sure! You can listen, read, and watch, and from what I’ve seen, it’s all high quality.

eSchool news recently came out with an article about initial investigations on how folks “conduct research” online.

Although the study notes that horizontal searching and “power browsing” aren’t confined to young internet users, its findings–and general observations about students’ internet behavior–have led to some serious reflection on the part of educators.

They identify a number of different “ways” or “techniques” people use, but so many of them rely upon a “horizontal” look instead of a deeper, or “vertical” look. The report suggests too many students skim over the breadth of information. In thinking about myself, I probably do some of the same, because there’s so much content online!

I think it’s important to focus on both “directions,” and as educators, we probably need to spend some time in the vertical orientation of what we find… when we cover research online with our students.

Studying China?

Check out IBM’s (yes, that IBM) 3-D virtual world project: Forbidden City. Immerse you and your students into a 3-D world exploring what it might have been like to walk around in, and experience, the city forbidden to all but China’s emperors.

This is not a web-based game, it’s a downloadable simulation.

For folks out there who work in some type of code, or spend a lot of time in a “text” editor versus a word “processor,” you may enjoy this comparison of monospaced fonts.

What’s funny, I think, is how many times they describe so many of the fonts as “clean.”

Mrs. DiTerlizzi (GHS library media center) recently pointed out a new-found technique for subscribing to RSS feeds.

It’s possible now in several of our blogs to subscribe with your newsfeed to only one single category. Let’s say a teacher is putting blog posts into two categories: French 1 and French 2. You can limit your subscription to just the news from the one category that corresponds to one class.

Check out our “What is RSS?” page (bottom) to find out more on subscribing to just one category in a teacher’s blog.

Here are some great examples of elementary schools using video to highlight activities in their classrooms.

   • Class Projects (http://www.schooltube.com/video/5332/This-Land-Is-Your-Land)
   • Lesson Plans: (http://www.schooltube.com/video/11314/3rd-Grade-Me-Web-Tutorial)
   • Music: (http://www.schooltube.com/video/10820/Blackbeard-Bluebeard-and-Redbeard-by-Eric-Herman)

It appears SchoolTube would be a great place to share some projects your students in elementary and middle school produce that you want to share with the world. (Thanks go to Ellen Guidry!)
 

I recently came across this article, detailing mistakes with using blogs with students.

Ruth Reynard’s suggestions?

1. Blogs are mostly about the individual benefit to students.
2. Choosing the blog tool in a course would mean that the transferable skills of critical thinking, thought processing and knowledge construction would be well supported and recorded.
3. When using blogs to encourage students to articulate their thoughts students can become empowered and feel that they are developing their own voice in the learning process.
4. It is, therefore, important to keep students focused with regular reminders and to keep expectations clear and grading transparent. Timelines for completion should also be set so that students know how much time they have to use the blog tool.
5. Students should be fully aware of what the expectations are and how the tool is being used in their learning process.

I, for one, think the blog should act as a real tool of productivity. Looking at a blog used for learning should be like what we’d imagine cutting open a head, and looking inside the brain might be like. Student blogs should, for me, be windows into their thinking and knowledge acquisition.

My only concern in the 5 mistakes and suggestions would be the one (#4) on grading. I think the blog should benefit the student, but the grade, if any given, should not undermine the student’s personal connection to the medium. In fact, for some students, they might thrive with another type of tool to demonstrate learning. Thankfully, blogs today don’t just have to be text, but can be made up of any number of various media, whether it be video, sound, or pictures.