johnhendron.net: hendron’s digest - a weblog

Tim recently posted about being Googley, and as much as I admire Google and all, I decided to read into the list for profound underpinnings.

As it turns out, these are good traits, no matter if you work for Google, want to be a good citizen, or simply want to change the lives of young people.

To paraphrase,

1. Focus on people,
2. KISS,
3. Engage,
4. Innovate,
5. Design for those outside your reach*,
6. Plan for today and the future,
7. Be worthy of our trust,
8. Human touch.

I think #10 is most important. It’s that #6 I want to spend just a couple sentences on, however.

Their #6 is design for the world, but I changed it slightly. When I design things in my job (a screencast, an after-school class, or a writing I do) I look beyond its immediate use. I don’t intend it just for my immediate, intended audience, but instead, a far-wider, far-reaching net.

After all, what I publish invariably ends up online. But shouldn’t we all aim higher, and take the extra effort, to make world-class things? If you speak of it another way, “Well for us here, I only would have to…”, you dumb it down.

I think one of the more important things I can do is share the fruits of my labor with more than just the 220 employees who are in instructional positions. Someone once said of me, “You’re always willing to share, you put so much of what you do out, online, for others to use.”

That’s right. I’m aiming for those outside my typical reach. And shouldn’t this be something we all go for? How are we to compete for the recognition of our ideas in an Internet-accesible age when our ideas aren’t good enough for a wider audience?

Be Googley. It can’t hurt.

Kevin recently posted about a new book that looks good, entitled Digital Ego.

We have talked a lot to teachers for the past two years on Internet safety, cyber-based copyright, etc., and there is a genuine concern for student safety. Are we careful to warn against using too-revealing information about ourselves?

This topic interests me because you do gain a reputation through search. I chose some time ago to use my real name for this website. I wanted to build a reputation, a type of “digital identity.” I figured if someone knew my name, they ought to find me in my own place online.

In college, we never used our real names, we used handles. And I use handles too, for non-professional activity online.

There’s some saying I seem to recall… “You’re only as good as your reputation” or something like that. It’s a reminder that in this emerging stage of electronic culture, our identities are very vulnerable.

I liked Gen Yes’s quote from Papert:

The role of the teacher is to create the conditions for invention rather than provide ready-made knowledge.

What was even more interesting was a comment from Lisa-Gaye that she gets tired of teaching with colleagues who are “sages on the stage.”

Having just went through something with many of our teachers along this vein, there was some resistance. Some simply will tell you “I don’t have the time or patience” to change my teaching, use technology, or… learn something new.

Becoming an agent of change is tough work, no doubt about it.

I’ve been thinking about fluency of late; having just presented to our K-12 staff a presentation (a half-day) looking at this concept alongside 21st century skills.

Following my earlier post on the advantages of digital reading tools (i.e, the Web, ebooks, PDF, etc.) today I was writing in a Moleskine notebook. There’s something about it (likely similar some reserve for the romanticism for books) that I like. But, this article on fluency reminded me how more fluent a writer I am when I use a computer.

A teacher recently wrote that she didn’t think technology should replace books. Don’t get rid of the books! she silently cried aloud in her head.

I’ve run across many luddites and technophiles who, despite their comfort with technology, decry replacing paper books.

I had a long discussion at lunch today over this topic with a colleague. He collects books; he’s got an impressive library on many different topics.

“I have a connection with a book; it alone can tell a story…”

I cut him off. “My CDs I buy can tell a story too, they have little books, and sometimes, I leave the price stickers on–for used ones–and I could tell you where I bought each one…”

We both started at each other like old women recounting the achievements of their grandchildren.

I read books, and I like marking in them. But the futurists I read seem to be telling us a few things. My own thoughts:

• Kids in schools today will read the majority of text in their lives off screens via electricity.
• We have yet to replace books. But the benefits of non-books may soon outweigh book benefits.
• Electronic books (Kindle, computer, cell phone) offer us potential that books cannot, and that’s why I think their days are numbered.

Specifically, with electronic text, you can:

• Save it;
• Carry it (and a lot of it);
• Search it;
• Tag it;
• Hightlight it;
• Have it read to you;
• Have portions sent to others;
• Quote it, and
• Summarize it.

We say teens are saving time and all with abbreviations, l33tspeak, and “chat lingo.” Why write-out a word when the abbreviation is so much quicker?

Why read a whole book when the chips and software can help you digest it more quickly?

Readibility needs work; formats need attention, but I already see huge benefits with breaking-news type content: i.e., NY Times online, Google News, Digg, blogs, RSS, etc., etc.

My 2¢ before dreaming…

The so-called “Four Eyed Technologist” recently posted on educators as learners, and his call was for the professionalism of educators to include self-learning and exploration.

In short, he suggested several action items:

1. Spend a portion of your day honing professional practice.
2. Establish a professional learning network.
3. Establish a virtual learning space.
4. Make professional reflection and scholarly work a public priority.
5. Model professional learning.

These sound wonderful, and they remind me of myself, I have to confess… I read, I create, I participate in online discussions, and I try to model these behaviors for our teachers.

But I feel the flaw in his call is that the public education system does not foster an environment for these learning opportunities or action items.

We try hard where I work, but let’s take a more typical place:

• Can’t get online to social networks because they’re blocked.
• Paid for contract time that begins with a duty, and ends once the kids walk out.
• May or may not have a school-issued computer.
• Self-guided time learning doesn’t count towards professional development requirements of the system.
• Scholarly work? Now, where’s the time for this?

I think these action items might be identifiers for very motivated and top-shelf educators (by saying I do some of this, I’m not trying to express any vanity), but you’d expect the better educators among us to be doing some of these things… right?

I use technology to stay focused, aware, and on top of trends, tools, and techniques. But I spent the majority of my days in front of a screen; I have no kids, and I frankly have more leisure time than your average teacher. Add an active family life, a 1 hour commute each day, time for vacation, and time for coping with a typical day: I’m supposed to drag my colleagues kicking and screaming to read my blog? At this point, I send out a weekly newsletter. I give away prizes if you read it. If they don’t care by this point, then… it’s not worth my time.

I simply don’t think our education system supports an environment for these action items to be carried-out. And I wish it were different.

Many in the education community have expressed opinions that earlier in our history, technology (i.e., computers) were introduced into our schools for the sake of introducing… technology.

I grew up during this generation. In the second-half of the first grade, we received one Apple //e computer in each classroom. When we got to use it, it was for things like Logo (making the turtle move) and educational games.

The games, like The Oregon Trail were far more popular and more widely used. I mean, how can a turtle compete with music, flashing graphics, and a persona who was talking to me?

I never felt that the computers were there “just because”. In hindsight, I could rationalize their existence because

• they were developing logical thinking skills more efficiently (Logo), and
• the games were motivational in ways other types of learning experiences were not.

But other folks felt the computers were there because the computers were the future. “Kids are going to have these in their offices and their workspaces and they need the experience of using this ‘future’ machines.”

No, that’s no real quote, but it’s the sentiment teachers today told me was floated about in the late 1980s and early 1990s where they began work.

And so today, we certainly do not use technology for “technology’s sake.” Right?

I think today we should have technology for technology’s sake more than ever before. But let me explain before you dismiss me.

Think about how school has changed from 1980 to 2005: that’s 25 years of innovation, folks. Except for the hair styles, or the markers replacing chalk, the only thing I could think of that’s changed in many schools is the technology. Yet, everything ought to have been evolving the whole time: room setups, collaborative spaces, and more flexibility for the school day.

Schools (and politics and human nature) being what each are, about the only thing maybe we could change was the technology. Broken computer? Sure, we’ll get you a new one… but it likely has new features.

Frustration set in when teachers discovered that this new computer ran a new system (What’s Windows?) and totally new software (Oregon Trail is in color now? Oh, we just now have a color screen… cool.).

Do we need technology because we have a leg-up on the skills kids will need 10 years from now? Well, I think being able to type on a computer, spell-check, perform a Google search are worthwhile, basic machine literacies that will likely be required in the majority of work, sure.

But by in large, they also do not take a long time to learn. So many technologies (cell phones, for instance) have adopted the same basic literacies that any child who is awake and is spoiled in this country is going to gain these literacies (to whatever degree) if they want to or not. So no, not technology for just developing basic literacies such as typing, spell-checking, or performing a Google search).

So why did I say what I did? Because technology in school enables us as educators to develop a diverse set of skills many are calling “21st century skills.” While these are not technology skills for the most part, many require technology beyond books, paper, and pencils to master.

We’re finally at that tipping point, to borrow a loaded phrase, where technology is no longer a luxury, it’s something society has donned necessary going forward. This isn’t new, it’s just the technology is new, this trend is historical. But it’s time schools caught up… because with the speed at which technology is changing, evolving, and emerging, we have little time to sit back and take our time.

We use technology to cope with the future.

These were just some thoughts in my head this morning as I was taking a shower and getting dressed, and I didn’t want to lose them… consider it a draft.

David Warlick recently posed some questions to a group he was speaking to out of state. I changed his questions, somewhat, as I might address educators, not policy leaders:

• What does the future hold for education?
• What aren’t schools and districts doing to prepare for the future?
• What change in society might help improve the impact of our jobs?

I think asking thought-provoking questions is an excellent way to begin professional development sessions; meetings, or discussions in the coffee house. I thought I’d proffer a few of my own ideas.

Future for Education. More challenges. We’ll continue to see society look at schools to solve the problems schools identify, but may not ultimately be responsible for. The future also holds promise. If we aren’t optimistic, we might as well accept defeat.

What aren’t we doing… In some cases we’re not preparing students with authentic experiences. I made the analogy today with a colleague about driving cars and the full, un-restricted Web in schools: “It’s like the bumper cars at the amusement park… I’d want my elementary son or daughter to have a bumper car experience with the Web in elementary school. In high school, it’s time for the bumpers to be removed, and scars inflicted; it’s only fair to prepare them with the real deal. We do as much teaching them to drive cars, right?”

In other cases, we aren’t keeping kids accountable to our own rules because the homes they come from value our rules or the idea of rules so little.

What changes could impact us… I for one would support more innovative practices to attract high-quality teachers. Tuition waivers for college, for one. More innovative use of planning and personnel (more personnel, to support more professional development, planning time, etc.). These are societal changes, in effect, because our at-large society needs to come together to support the wholesale improvement of our educational system. A country less obsessed with capitalism (i.e., fewer work hours, more vacation, etc.) would likely change the dynamics of homelife for students.

It’s late; I do require sleep.

Today many ITRTs in Virginia received a letter from the Virginia Department of Education on a training session for resource teachers on using so-called “Web 2.0″ tools. I call them read/write tools, but nitpicking aside, here’s the description of the course.

I wrote the DOE back, and this is what I said:

Thanks for the invitation to attend this session. I wanted to write you in concern for how the DOE can support school divisions for implementing Web 2.0 tools; namely, read/write tools such as blogs and wikis, but also other social tools including photo and video sharing services.

What I hear from so many folks within Virginia (and abroad) both through my own personal contacts and through read/write/social avenues is a refusal of school divisions to allow teachers (or in this case ITRTs) to use Read/Write and social web tools within their walls.

I could provide a number of examples, but the issue I feel is this:

This service is too open compared to what we’ve done in the past. There may be harmful material or opportunities there. Instead of raising the risk these dangerous tools could bring, let’s simply ban them.

Some hope that someday a cleansed version might exist for analogues to these tools. Others take risks and try them anyhow. And others ban and decry anything that has any association with read/write/social in the name.

It seems to me there are quite a few folks in VSTE interested in social, read/write tools, and now the DOE is promoting training in read/write tools. What might we do to calm the waters around Web 2.0 alarm for educators who want to use these tools within their walls, their classrooms, and their communities? If the DOE isn’t addressing this, I think they could certainly play a key role.

So, what do people do when they attend this training, only to find when they come back to work, that wikis (PBWiki, Wikispaces), blogs (edublogs, blogger, wordpress.com) and other sites (Flickr, YouTube) are banned via their Web filters?

Today’s day at work had some stress and strife associated with it; I don’t necessarily understand all the reasoning for me getting uptight, but it gave me an experience of working as some others do.

Today our ISP at work added their own filter which blocked some of our websites folks were trying to get to. Our ISP, is the county. We went into an agreement with them last year to share an Internet connection and save money.

Today they were testing out their own filter, and instead of just affecting the county offices, it affected everyone. Suddenly, folks started freaking out, e-mailing and calling me, wondering what was going on.

Then it hit me: this is what it must feel like at some other schools! No YouTube! No blogs! No wikis! No Google Docs & Spreadsheets! Phew. Welcome back to Web 1.0.

All the sites I needed were quickly unblocked, and the county was very accommodating by letting us “whitelist” sites we needed to use. But that hour or so when we didn’t know what was going on and panic set in, was very educational.

So what does that do for a school or district where… they go to a conference, or read a blog at home, or get a book on using Read/Write tools in the classroom, and they can’t do it at work? Does that encourage innovation in teaching?

I wrote to a colleague today in another district about their laptops being “locked down.” I asked the same question… if the tools you use can’t be innovative, then what’s the impetus for innovating (i.e., improving, changing, differentiating) your instructional habits?

We have our debates too, like other places, I’m sure, about what’s “instructional” and what’s not. Oh well, it’s after hours, time to relax, and to learn from what caused us stress.

While perusing Lifehacker before going to bed, I ran across this article with hundreds of comments.

In case you don’t want to read:

• person uses BitTorrent to download movies
• her ISP sends her a letter stating that what she did was illegal and for now she wouldn’t be sued.
• she asks for advice about downloading movies via BitTorrent…

I found the comments hilarious, but ultimately sad. A wide range of advice was proffered to the original poster. But what was funny/sad were the justifications folks had for being allowed or having rights to download movies or music for free.

I mean, you were sent a letter saying “We know you did this. It’s wrong. Don’t repeat!” –and then you’re going to do it again? Litigation, etc., is expensive. Yeah, maybe it was a “scare tactic,” but copyright/DMCA is the law. You might not like it, but that’s what it is.

You’ll run into advice like this:

A friend of mine ran into this kind of trouble. Try buying a copy of the DVD in question (PAY CASH!!!) and then if you need to you can claim you already owned the DVD and you were acquiring a digital backup.

Ha! Why not just buy what you want in the first place? Or rent it?

One guy claims he does his downloading at work:

consider that the reason why I now do 90%+ of my downloading through my job’s T1 line behind several secure firewalls…

And finally, yes, there are some wiser folks too that understand:

if you choose to break the law, be prepared to pay the price

I mean, isn’t this pretty clear?

The customer service representative stated that if my account was found to be transmitting and receiving copyright-infringing material in the future, then my connection would be terminated.

I am not sure why folks have such a hard time dealing with copyright. Yes, making digital copies of things at no cost then charging full price for each copy does feel like a scam. But that’s the reality of applying an old-world business model on the face of modern technology.

Tonight I bought three albums online. It took seconds to grab all three; I payed between $.89-.99 per track (average) between two online stores (namely Amazon and Apple). I payed for the privilege of hearing the music, and at any time I want, on any device I want. Do I wish the tracks were cheaper? Yes.

That’s me. I think I get it. But there are teachers and students I have interactions with that do not get it. Some of it might be economic differences between us. Some of it might be blantant disregard for the economic model that allows the music/movie business to work.

Or is it just me who wouldn’t risk their job by downloading this content from work? Where I work, it’s pretty clear. We make you sign paper work that says we reserve the right to fire you if you do x, y, or z, yet it’s happening elsewhere. Where people do get fired.

Amazing. That’s what it’s come to, the inabiity to resist getting something for free.

After writing my book, I was so focused because of ISTE’s suggestion, to aim the book at a particular reader/market, that I never once again thought about the super-advanced user/educator.

Even with RSS, was it possible to suffer from too much information coming out you, full, head on, in an aggregator?

I suspect if it’s student work, no. But if it’s news and blogs and podcasts and more of the above, then… maybe so. This blog post gives some sage advice.

• Make two “buckets” (i.e., what I call groups in the book)
• One bucket is for “must read,” the other is for “interesting fluff.”

Casually read the fluff like your significant other’s magazines when left in the bathroom; focus more attention on the first group. Not bad advice, at all.

When I’ve talked to audiences about the so-called remix culture of students, the so-called “digital natives,” it’s also worthwhile to share examples. It’s a culture that is labeled “prosumer” by some, and it shows the potential of creativity that connected folks have.

I am not sure the age of the creator of this video (it says he is 37), but it’s best described as the epitome of creative, prosumer culture. It uses the LineRider Flash-game to create quite a show. Enjoy!

Tonight in lieu of going to bed, I decided to draw in SketchUp. I’ve been meaning for weeks to design a restaurant.

Since I was looking at homes via realtor websites today, a “dream home” seemed easier.

I am ready for bed. I’m not really sure the best way to go about designing a home in Google’s drawing app, but practicing, I am sure, will only make me a better SketchUp artist.

For those interested, this is just the first floor. The large tower on the left is the multi-story fireplace. That back room will be multistory, too. Fun.

I’ve seen Scott McLeod online rallying support for CASTLE, an organization dedicated to technology leadership for school administrators.

There’s not terribly much there right now, but it appears to be a great gateway for an emerging tech-savvy administrator. Follow a few blog links, a few more, and you will have built yourself a nice collection of RSS feeds to stay on track with what others across the country (and world) are up to.

The other day, I was trying to explain to someone what a microblog was.

This example via Tumblr is a great example. A blog about puddles!

This week I’ve had some good interaction with two of our directors at work for planning a staff development session for the entire county.

It’s focus will be on 21st century literacies, and be a continuation of my presentation to the school division this past August on “Digital Kids.”

Not only will we be talking about some of the issues, we will also be doing some of the things that will help our students attain literacy and fluency with digital technologies.

The first part of this endeavor will be to ask each teacher to read an article and reflect upon it in their blogs; they will later have a discussion about it in an online space.

If you’d like, you can subscribe to my list of potential articles via RSS.

Reader Todd Neumann writes:

Can you explain to me the big deal about push vs pull email. I have read about the differences. But I really don’t see what the big deal about having your computer or phone “pull” or check your account every 5 minutes.

Todd - on my iPhone, I have three accounts setup. I have my work account, should I want to check on my work email on the go, my Gmail, personal account, and my Yahoo! account. The first two are IMAP-based, and I manually check them each time I launch the Mail application on iPhone.

The third account from Yahoo! is “push” enabled, meaning, the phone will buzz or vibrate the instant the message is sent. This way, even if I’m not in an e-mail checking mood, someone can still get a message to me, just the same as if they had sent a text message.

Some prefer the push method because they will be notified as soon as things arrive. I honestly don’t use the Yahoo! account much, so I can’t speak for its necessity. I prefer to get messages on my own schedule, so the IMAP-based account is preferable for my needs. I think the push-model is preferred for folks who don’t use, or don’t pay for SMS-based messaging services.

You mention just having the phone check, via the pull method, often. I’ve found this is not very good when your coverage is poor: you’ll get errors, etc., that it can’t reach the server. It also taxes the server, just the same aggressively-set RSS newsreaders do.

Today I once again got to see Mr. David Warlick at the Maggie Walker Governor’s School in Richmond as part of their staff development day.

Some notes for the presentation can be found on his wiki.

Most valuable for me were some new books that I had yet to read; I think they will be on my short list once I finish my current Prensky book.

Among the author(s) new to me was Richard Florida. I’m currently working on The Long Tail by Anderson, and I seemed to have found Wikinomics before anyone else (I liked the cover when it first came out). I have read some Daniel Pink, but his “Whole new mind” is a new one to me, I shall like to try that one too.

The most valuable thing about his presentation, I thought, was some of the dialog from Maggie Walker teachers. They challenged him on some points, and I would have liked to (at that point) diverted from the plan, and engaged them further (if I were Warlick).

My thanks go out to Patti Chappell for inviting us out two years now to share and hear Warlick during his visits.

Technorati Tags: warlick, classroom, flat

Today was day 1 of the Randolph-Macon EdTech conference in Ashland. Tomorrow I have the opportunity to present on Moodle and digital learners. I’m looking forward to it.

Today, I had more of an opportunity to visit sessions as an “attendee,” and enjoyed a lot of what I heard and saw.

The keynote speaker Dr. Sara Armstong, VITAL guru Karen Richardson, and Dr. Larry Anderson all mentioned the George Lucas Foundation and their theme, basically, was project-based learning. That if you want to reach kids in the 21st century will skills that will be important, a project-based approach is the way to go.

I also was able to step-out and see some of our own Goochland folks present. Ms. Kuhns got up, and in her loud voice, professed to the attendees in the day’s last session that in her 19 years of teaching, she’d never had all the kids turn in a book report and finish their books on time. But with this lesson inspired by Mrs. Cantor, they had. The kids made mock MySpace pages for book characters. She was excited about it.

That passion folks have is really what’s important about experiencing at a conference. Sometimes we lose our passion. Sometimes we find it in unbeknownst places. In the session with Larry Anderson, he asked if I knew what Twitter was in front of everyone. Maybe I sounded too passionate.

I’ve had an odd relationship with Twitter. It was not that long ago that I actually began to use it. I even have written about it and how it could be used. Yes, this week, the blogging meme was “Twitter is unreliable and lets me down a lot.” And while I have never used it (or Pownce) enough to notice, there’s something I don’t like about it, too. I like the concept, but am not an active cheerleader. Ultimately, I find tweeting very distracting from other work I’m engaged in on the computer.

Sure, educators need to hear about tools like Twitter. I even think that using these tools isn’t a shabby idea. (Link lost, but I read a blog post by a college professor just recently that praised the use of Twitter in his classes to continue and promote discussion after the official class left). And so here is the rub:

• Do we want to use tools that are wrapped in an education(al) wrapper, i.e., Moodle, Blackboard, Angel?
• Or do we want to use tools that are open, free, and ever-growing in number and capability?

To borrow Richardson’s term “pragmatist,” I think using a pre-rolled educational tool like Moodle is easier in today’s school climate. But I love the free, Web 2.0 stuff, too. The perfect medium might be a compromise, where plugins for learning management systems were of equal or similar quality/capability as the onslaught of Web 2.0 tools.

The one message that was clear today was that when you take some risks as an educator, you have the opportunity to really address the 21st century skill set, and that includes making things real, open, and available: student voices through blogs, etc.

I’m hoping other attendees got as much as I did from the experience. When I leave a conference, deeply set in philosophical thought, I know a worthy time was had.