Managing Online Resources with del.icio.us

When I think back to my beginnings with the web over ten years ago, I remember my growing list of bookmarks that inhabited my browsers. Eventually I created web pages to keep track of links and tried to keep things organized the best I could.  As a classroom teacher I eventually developed subject area web sites that contained links within the content I shared with my students, and my students became the hunters and gatherers of interesting and informative web sites that helped us learn and grow.

Wikis became a good place for me to quickly add developing lists of links over time, but it always seemed that my bookmarks and favorites became scattered on various computers that I used on a regular basis. Exporting these links helped, but it always seemed I had a mess on my hands!  Often, as every teacher knows, time was the issue, and I would find that as time passed when I finally got back to sorting my links, over the summer, many were 404 and no longer found!

As a new educational technology specialist I now had the time to search for and organize web resources as part of my service for teachers; however, the key to valuable resources is working with teachers to find things that they need to embed into their curriculum.  This process has to be streamlined, simple, and manageable, and I have focused my attention on del.icio.us as a possible answer to our challenge.

Now, what is del.icio.us:  ”del.icio.us is a collection of favorites - yours and everyone else’s. You can use del.icio.us to:

• Keep links to your favorite articles, blogs, music, reviews, recipes, and more, and access them from any computer on the web.
• Share favorites with friends, family, coworkers, and the del.icio.us community.
• Discover new things. Everything on del.icio.us is someone’s favorite — they’ve already done the work of finding it. So del.icio.us is full of bookmarks about technology, entertainment, useful information, and more. Explore and enjoy.

del.icio.us is a social bookmarking website — the primary use of del.icio.us is to store your bookmarks online, which allows you to access the same bookmarks from any computer and add bookmarks from anywhere, too. On del.icio.us, you can use tags to organize and remember your bookmarks, which is a much more flexible system than folders.

You can also use del.icio.us to see the interesting links that your friends and other people bookmark, and share links with them in return. You can even browse and search del.icio.us to discover the cool and useful bookmarks that everyone else has saved — which is made easy with tags.”

I have used del.icio.us personally for awhile now, but as with any list of links, they must be managed, sorted, and updated to be usable.  Over the summer I decided to share del.icio.us as a resource in my “Utilizing the Internet” workshop and it is proving to be a valuable resource.  The teachers I worked with, so far, helped to brainstorm an idea of creating a central repository of online resources based on their del.icio.us lists.  The process has begun.

A big plus with del.icio.us is that you can access your links anywhere you have an internet connection.  If you are on the road and find a great site it can be added via your smart phone, laptop, or any internet device!  A great feature of del.icio.us is tagging and the ability to search for other links based on the tags you create. This enables the social networking part of del.icio.us and makes for effective gathering of related links.  The tags also foster organization of content and help to easily put together a repository of information related to grade levels and subject areas.  You can also subscribe via RSS to various del.icio.us pages to keep up on added resources over time.  As one adds users to their network, a collaborative effort is facilitated as teachers easily can help build a repository of resources shared across the del.icio.us site while simply creating and sharing their personal list of sites.

To get things started I have begun gathering resources I have collected over time and have focused on the elementary grades at this point.  I put together some web pages to serve as the gateways to grade level and subject area information, but the key will be inviting teachers on board to share their personal resources. Teachers are the experts in their fields, and my goal is to facilitate the organization of the resources they find valuable for their students.  With ten elementary schools in our district, I know as teachers share their information it will be beneficial to all staff.

The potential exists to not only collaborate with teachers within our own district but also with educators around the world.  That is the power of such social networking sites, and this resource is there for the taking with only the cost of time.  Time is always an issue, but I believe that through collaboration the time will pay off for teachers and students.

The following link is our initial repository of links:  NPPSD Online Resources.  It is a work in progress, but I am excited about the potential and power that it will have in our district.  If you have a del.icio.us account, please add us to your network!  We are all in this together, and  as we share we can save valuable time that can be spent working with our students.

How have you used del.icio.us in education?  Please let us know!

Technology Training Implementation: A First Year Reflection

One of the first tasks I was faced with as a new educational technology specialist was to offer sustained technology professional development to the teaching staff in my district. Time is always an issue in education, and it was not unexpected to find this resource limited. My initial approach to developing training for teachers, in particular, was to deploy a modified levels of technology implementation (LoTi) survey at the beginning of the school year. This data provided me with a snapshot of where particular staff members were in specific buildings concerning technology use.  The survey will be deployed again at the beginning of the new school year to measure growth from what has been implemented from the previous instructional year.

The survey results identified a majority of users at the exploration/infusion stage of the model and, along with information from a recent McREL report, I began the process of gathering resources to provide exposure to various technology tools that exist for educational purposes. With a limited budget, myself as the only instructional technology professional, but with some excellent tools such as a new training lab of 27 Windows XP work stations, I developed a strategy to offer one hour training sessions, immediately after school hours, roughly two days per week. The focus of the training was for certified teachers, but I allowed paraprofessionals to attend the trainings too. Continuing education credits were offered as incentive to attend the trainings, and attendance was voluntary.

Hardware was the driving force of the initial offerings with a focus on the new SMART Board and iPod technology in the district and the use of teacher workstations and the software contained therein as foundational tools. This was expanded to introductions on Web 2.0 technologies such as blogging (WordPress & Blogger), wikis (PBWiki & Wikispaces), and eventually spread to podcasting, digital storytelling, and video production. These trainings were offered multiple times and at varying levels to meet the needs of new, developing, and master users.

Utilizing the internet as a curriculum tool was also a focus as new labs required activities for students to use. In the past, CD software for Macintosh computers had been used, but with a move to a single Windows platform approach the situation required some ingenuity to not accrue additional costs through purchasing software. Several online activities were found to supplement student use of the new computer systems. This approach continues as some teachers utilize the Del.icio.us online tool to organize web related resources and with an effort to create a district wide online repository of these online activities.

Over time, it became apparent that teachers required a place to serve staff created content. Our First Class client software allowed the use of its web publishing feature to offer up such creations. A focus on utilizing this software was implemented during the spring semester to enable users to place their content on a server for student use. The podcasting feature of First Class (version 8.3) provided an easy way for staff to record student stories, poems, and reports and to share it online with the school population, parents, the community, and the world. Several teachers started blogs and wikis to also share their curriculum and student generated content and media.

Digital storytelling was a natural step in the progression of initial technology implementation. Photo Story 3, Windows Movie Maker, and Power Point served as ready to use software for the staff and students. Basic training in the use of this software was provided, and teachers and students began the process of using these tools to generate content. The district web site served as a gateway in sharing this content and led to an increased awareness and interest in learning how staff members were implementing these tools in their classrooms.

As staff members attended various trainings, individual support was offered on site and several projects were completed alongside the teachers and students on a daily basis. This approach supplemented the teacher’s attendance and learning during the trainings and led to increased application of the new skills. Many teachers were surprised by the level of competence that students already had in utilizing these tools even at the Kindergarten and first grade levels. Failed attempts were re-evaluated and modified to meet the demands of time, resources, classroom and lab management, and scaling back the expectations of initial implementation generally remedied initial complications. The combination of training, support, and guidance during implementation provided a recipe for success.

An Open Lab was also offered during the spring semester to supplement after school trainings. These were held generally three times per week and allowed staff to come to the central office learning lab and get one on one attention with their various projects. A limited number of students also attended some of these sessions to learn how to implement technology and create content. A combination of after school trainings, individual support, and Open Lab time provided a way to accommodate the use of precious hours that were in limited supply. These trainings were extended by utilizing continuing education days and via professional learning community days where whole district, building, and multiple staff trainings were offered. Some professional training was also brought in specifically through eInstruction and their CPS clicker systems. Over 460 staff members received technology training over the course of the school year with 25% of that number returning for multiple trainings. All staff had multiple opportunities for training via the two continuing education days offered over the school year.

With the end of the school year a summer training program was also implemented and staff voluntarily spent time in extended learning workshops during the summer months. This program is continuing and will be expanded for the next summer. In all 60 staff member have utilized the summer training sessions that provided time to work on blogging, wikis, podcasting, digital storytelling, video, utilizing the internet, and computer basics.

The key component to the success of this technology training implementation was the addition of a full-time educational technology specialist to facilitate and implement such a training program. The knowledge and experience of a former classroom teacher with specialized instructional technology training enabled this program to come to fruition. Instructional technology professionals can make a huge impact in a school district as they work together with a supportive administration, teachers who see a concerted effort to meet their technology integration goals, and via a technology staff that provides superior support for the district’s network, hardware, and software implementation.

“Linux in education: Open Source provides a better solution for schools”

Well, should it be so?

“The Science Education Myth”

Read this interesting Business Week article: “The Science Education Myth“

“Forget the conventional wisdom. U.S. schools are turning out more capable science and engineering grads than the job market can support…” by Vivek Wadhwa

Edusim

This is interesting: Edusim!

“The Edusim is a 3D interactive virtual educational environment built on open source Croquet. The Edusim on an interactive whiteboard surface is an extremely powerful way to engage your students by bringing a 3D immersive environment that allows the direct manipulation of the 3D virtual learning objects directly from the board. The Edusim is extendable allowing multiple classrooms to connect their boards for interactive learning session!”

NPPSD Embedding Technology

T+L Conference 2007 Reflections

I have returned home to my family, town, and school district from Nashville, Tennessee and the T+L Conference. The presenters that were most impressive to me include Will Richardson, Peter Diamandis, and Ian Jukes.

Ian was most impressive and captured the essence of many of the presenters in the fact that we need change and it is time to do it NOW! We can talk, converse, plan, analyze, and hope, but it is time to take action and bring about real, active change in education.

Here are some bits of information and excerpts from what Ian Jukes shared that put the situation into perspective for me and hopefully for many others:

The song remains the same…

“Just like 50 years ago many students still sit primarily in rows - for many, the oral tradition continues - many teachers still believe that chalk and talk is the most effective way to teach - many students are still expected to learn primarily by listening - most information still comes from the teacher or textbook - the primary focus in the classroom remains on content recall that is taught in isolation from the learning context.

We have access to some new technologies but their use is generally optional not integral and certainly not required of all teachers - and the technologies are often used to reinforce old practices and assumptions about teaching and learning and assessment and do not require the teacher to change their current instructional practices.

As a result it’s increasingly apparent that there is a fundamental disconnect between the way most kids think, learn, and communicate - and the way schools interact with them. And students are voting with their minds and feet, which is reflected in the data shows the seriousness of the disconnect between the real world of high-school student & the real world of schools.

According to the NCES Condition of Education report, report, 6% of white kids, 29% of African American and 24% of Hispanic kids are at-risk. Now, think of the exponential, the quantum impact of these numbers on our society and economy - unless we address all of the needs of all of these children.

Beyond this, children’s view of the relevancy of their school experience to their future lives has declined steadily and dramatically since the late 1980s. According to their research 28% of 12th-grade high school students believe that school work is meaningful; only 21% believe that their courses are interesting; and a mere 39% believe that school work will have any bearing on their success in later life.

And these statistics are even more shocking when you realize that these are only the opinions of those students who have remained in high school for four years. Students who find the high school experience the least relevant have already exited the system in huge numbers.

The Carnegie Institute reports that in the largest 32 urban districts in our country, only 50% of students who enroll actually graduate. Each day, 2000 U.S. high school students drop out. If their voices were included in the above poll, the profile would be far worse.”

Furthermore…

“Our job as teachers and parents is not to make this a matter of either or – either our world or theirs. Rather our job is to be a counterbalancing influence in their lives - to help them understand the world from many different perspectives. And if we are willing to do this - if we are willing to acknowledge their world, - we will set them free. And in doing so, we will be able to leverage their digital lifestyle and help them become better, more engaged, more independent learners.

Ask yourself this very important question - would your students be there in your classrooms if they didn’t have to be? Are they there because they want to be there? Or are they there because they have no other choice? And if they’re there only because they have to, what can we begin to do differently to help more students want to be in our classes?

If we want to unfold the full intellectual and creative genius of all of our children more of the time. If we want to prepare our children for the world that awaits them. If we want to help them prepare for their future, not our past - for their future, not our comfort zone. If we are going to march through the 21st Century and maintain our tradition of success. If we want our children to have the relevant 21st century skills - we must create a bridge between their world and ours because the way we define our schools today, the way we define teaching and learning and assessment, will define our societies tomorrow”

Consider this…

“If we truly want to make a difference in the lives of our children, schools must become a place where students are actively engaged in constructing their own knowledge and know how, develop an understanding and the ability to apply key content concepts and ideas, explore dynamically, discover, pose questions and question answers, solve problems, engage in complex tasks that enable them to address essential questions and participate in the processes that make up intellectual accomplishment, tasks that are generally inquiry driven, span different media, link different disciplines, have more than one right answer, multiple routes to each of these answers, an understandable purpose and a connection to the real world outside school.

The context of a significant event provides a frame of reference and relevance for remembering the specific information about what you were doing long after the event. By providing a context for the new information teachers are actually helping students with long-term memory. The power of context to assist with learning is worthy of note for teachers who are struggling to prepare students for large standardized tests. By providing a context for the information teachers are actually helping students learn the material so their short-term recall will be better when they write the test as well as with long-term recall. The starting point is to understand how much differently they learn from the way we learn and then to reconsider what we can do to modify what we teach and how we teach it and how we assess learning.”

Next, what have we been doing and how do we change…

Now…

“I’m going to stop right here for a moment to stress this point. It’s absolutely essential that we understand that Digital Natives come to school able to do and understand so many complex things. But if you REALLY talk to them, they will tell you that the curriculum they are given feels to them like they are being put in a strait jacket; or that their mind is being laced with powerful sedatives - and that every time they go to school they have to mentally power down.

The sad truth is that many educators just don’t understand how truly different digital natives are. They’re not just a little different they’re completely different and as far as I’m concerned the major problem is that today’s learners.

Today’s learners – Digital Natives - are not the learners our schools were originally designed for - and today’s learners are not the students teachers were trained to teach – this is a clash of the cultures. As Bill Gates once said, even when schools work exactly as they were designed, that can’t teach our kids everything they need to know.

And if we continue to do things that we already know aren’t working, we really have to consider just who really has the learning problem - and it certainly isn’t the kids.

Consider for a moment that that 50% of the world’s population is under the age of 25 years old - then consider what % of teachers are under 25 or what percentage of people in this room are under 25? And because we don’t get it, a lot of kids think they have to slow down when they’re dealing with us.

The bottom line is, that if we want understanding, if we want retention, if we want success on state and national exams, if we want to address and exceed the mandates state, provincial or national curriculum, if we want children to demonstrate proficiency beyond content recall, we can’t just lecture at them.”

Furthermore…

“LOTS vs. HOTS”

“The emphasis in the classroom can’t just be on simple data information recall, low level thinking skills, and lots of information – what we call LOTS (lower order thinking skills and LOTS of information).

If we want our children to be successful on the test, if we want them to be successful in life - if we want them to be successful in life beyond being able to successfully complete a written exam or fill in a bubble test - if we want them to graduate as more than just highly educated useless people - people who are good at school but not adequately prepared for life – then our emphasis as professional educators has to be on more than just LOTS.

It has to include more emphasis placed upon HOTS, higher order thinking skills and processes, on Bloom’s Taxonomy of Higher Order Thinking, on critical thinking, problem solving, project and process based learning, Gardner’s analysis of multiple intelligences, de Bono, 21st Century literacies that move beyond theory to the application of what is learned, metacognitive skills, and application of best practices based on an emerging understanding about how learning actually takes place.

This shift is so fundamental - the gap between them and us is so wide - that there’s no going back to the basics. There’s no going back to the way things were when we were kids.

The problem is that many educators just don’t get that there is a digital divide. Many of us pay lip service to the notion that this generation is different. We knowingly nod our heads but then we shut the door to the classroom and go back to business as usual where it could just as easily be 1960 all over again.

We really don’t understand their digital world and we never will until we take the time to honor and respect where they come from. But to honor their world and to create new schools and new opportunities for learners.

But to do this, we the adults need to have a 21st century cultural awareness. And we need to know and be able to use the very 21st century skills that we talk about our students having. In reality, most teachers know very little if anything about the digital world of their students - from online gaming to their means of exchanging, sharing, meeting, evaluating, coordinating, programming, searching, customizing, and socializing.

As a result, despite our best efforts and intentions, it’s often impossible for us to design learning in the ways our students need and want - learning that will engage and inspire them.

Most teachers know very little if anything about the digital world of their students - from online gaming to their means of exchanging, sharing, meeting, evaluating, coordinating, programming, searching, customizing, and socializing.

As Daniel Pink writes in A Whole New Mind: Moving From the Information Age to the Conceptual Age by Daniel Pink, there is an emerging world where critical thinking, problem solving, and a deep level of information fluency is increasingly more important than content recall by itself.

Research tells us that people who grow up in different cultures don’t just think about different things, they actually think differently. As educators we have to understand how truly different our students are. In the past most of the changes we experienced were about style.

As we grew up, we saw incremental changes in clothing, language use, body adornments, music, and lifestyle. But for anyone 25 and younger, the changes and differences go far deeper than just style and they are largely driven, by the arrival & rapid dissemination of digital technology in the last decades of the 20th century.

The bottom line is that we really don’t understand their digital world and we never will until we take the time to honor and respect where they come from. But to do this we have to be willing to acknowledge their world and start to educate ourselves about that world.”

Dale’s Learning Cone…

I know I have shared more information than I probably should in a single post, but these are fundamental, life changing, insights into what needs to be done in education. Ian repeatedly referred to “lip service” and unfortunately he is right. All talk and maybe a little action for a little while until it all fades into the sunset. The time is now, to do!

Read all of Ian Jukes article at:

http://web.mac.com/iajukes/thecommittedsardine/Handouts_files/ndl.pdf

T+L Final Day

We have reached the final day of T+L. I look forward to listening to Ian Jukes this morning. It has been a good conference, and I feel that our district has been validated in what we are trying to accomplish at this stage in our goal to integrate technology. There is much to be done, but opportunities like attending T+L provide ideas and resources to assist in the process. Notes from much of yesterday exist at my PBWiki. Enjoy!

UPDATE: Ian Jukes Keynote handout

http://web.mac.com/iajukes/thecommittedsardine/Handouts_files/ndl.pdf

Nashville, Tennessee

We arrived in Nashville this evening and at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel around 7:30 pm. What a wonderful atmosphere this place has. I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s sessions and events here at the T+L Conference, and I plan to take notes at my PBWiki for a start. I’m unsure what our wireless availability will be, but if you are following along you will soon see.

I have traveled with 9 other staff members from my school district, and it will be nice to share this experience with them and to have some meaningful conversations about what we need to do to better serve the students in our district when it comes to technology and learning. Our beginning of the year technology survey showed a majority of people at the exploration stage in integrating technology in the classroom, and we definitely need to facilitate moving to the integration stage and at a routine level. I’m sure we will get several ideas and find some good resources to assist each of us in that effort. Stay tuned!

A New PLC Group

This morning I had the opportunity to join my new professional learning community group made up of some of the administrators in our district. We chose to study the book “Whatever it Takes: How Professional Learning Communities Respond When Kids Don’t Learn” by Rebecca DuFour, Robert Eaker, Gayle Karhanek, and, Richard Dufour over the course of the school year. We discussed several issues we face in our leadership positions and best of all shared exciting things that are happening in our professional lives. It was a refreshing and uplifting meeting for me, and I appreciated the setting and especially the people that I will continue to share with.

Later in the day I had another iPod mini-class that went very well, and I feel the seeds are growing bit by bit here in my new district. There are so many people to reach, and I know it is important to continue to help build a network of learners that embrace technology and look for ways to integrate it into their curriculum.

As of late, there has been discussion of not merely integrating technology but rather embedding the technology in the learning process. Read Jeff Utecht’s post (see preceding link) and the thoughts of those that have chimed in to discuss this idea. I think it ties into the subheading of my blog: How to seamlessly integrate technology in the classroom. Oops! There’s that word integrate again!

As a side note, here is a humorous video clip from Late Night with Conan O’Brien on BG (Before Google), or has Google always been around!?!

Tara: One of Many Great Teachers!!!

Today I offered a mini-class on SMART Boards and invited a teacher who I have heard high praises on to assist in showcasing the basics of using the board in instruction. Tara is one of many great teachers in my new school district, and I am just in awe of the dedication and willingness to share, learn, and grow here. So many educators are pushing the frontiers of technology in education and even more are taking the steps necessary to take a leap into the innovative approaches that are making their way into classrooms across the globe. I have to admit I have had my doubts the past few years as to whether or not this whole education thing was going to turn around and make some gains in real, meaningful, engaging, and relevant learning for our youth. It is happening here. It is by no means easy, and the challenges that we face as educators at times is disconcerting, but there is hope, initiative, bravery, and desire. These things add up to the beginnings of a network of learners, and as we learn about and use the tools that can continue to link us together we become a learning community that can do, teach, and change anything. I see all of this more and more each day, and I am glad to be a small part of it.

Smart Tools for Smart Kids

Today I had the opportunity to be part of a SMART Board training with two of the elementary schools in my district. I am continually uplifted by the dedication and willingness to learn and share that the teachers and administrators exhibit.

After I went over some basics of using the SMART Board we split into five groups and spent a lot of time gaining hands on experience. Each school had their experts that really know their stuff, and the SMART resources that were shared are great tools. I also shared several online activities that I have collected over time that work well with interactive SMART Boards (See my wikis!!!).

The following are links to some of the resources we tapped into today:

SMART Board 2 Minute Video Tutorials

SMART Education Resources (Grade level lessons & more!!!)

SMART Board Training Printable Materials