Alan November is coming!!!

I am pleased to have the opportunity to be able to see and hear Alan November when he arrives to visit our school district next week. Alan’s writings have been important and they have influenced me to work to find ways to help students learn and grow. I had the opportunity to attend the Building Learning Communities Conference in Boston last July 2007, and the conference, workshops, and wonderful people I met and conversed with were inspiring. Our little part of the world is moving forward as we look for ways to embed technology in the learning process, and Alan’s influence is a big part in that process. I look forward to Alan’s time here, and I know my colleagues will benefit from what he has to say. My hopes are that his inspiring words will lead to more action. This is a really big deal!!! Can you tell I’m excited!?! 🙂

Next week is also the one year anniversary of when my wife, children and I visited to interview for my position as educational technology specialist and Dianna’s speech-language pathologist position.  If I had been told I would be in the presence of Alan November one year later I  would have thought it was a dream!  What a difference a year makes, and I am so fortunate to have had the experiences I have had over this period of time.  The heart of it all has been the wonderful people I have met and been blessed to work with.  We are in the midst of something great, and as I have had more opportunities to work with students as of late, I know more than ever we are working with precious souls that need our guidance in an ever changing and complicated world.  My fifteen years in public education is such a short period of time, but I have gained a better perspective because of people like Alan November.  I would call it focus, and that is what people like Alan help me to do:  focus on things that are most important and things that matter most!  Working with young people and shaping a better future is what it is all about, and my lens is aimed at doing all that I can to be a positive influence in that noble cause!

Digital Citizenship continued…

I have put together a presentation concerning digital citizenship based on information from a workshop I attended at the Building Learning Communities Conference 2007 given by Sue Loubser Director of Technology Hebrew Learning Academy of Atlanta.  I believe this presentation highlights the issues we must address with our students, their parents, and the community in today’s digital world.

Digital Citizenship

A key component to successful integration of technology in schools is digital citizenship, and this ties directly with acceptable use that I mentioned in an earlier post. The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) recently updated and released new national standards, and digital citizenship reigns as one of the main six areas (see National Educational Technology Standards for Students: The Next Generation). This is a standard that must be taught and practiced if we want our students to become responsible digital citizens. Any social skills training can easily incorporate digital citizenship into its curriculum if it isn’t already a part of it, but this training is vital in our digital world. I also feel it is paramount that parents/guardians are part of this process to help them understand what their children face each day, especially on the internet, and to provide information that can be used to transfer these digital citizenship skills at school, at home, and anywhere our children may go.

Another area of focus in the ISTE national standards is creativity and innovation. As Dr. Tim Tyson mentioned in his keynote speech at the recent Building Learning Communities Conference: we should ask our students, “What do you have to say?” What a powerful question! The key is to then enable our students by allowing them to utilize new technologies to “say” what they have on their minds and to share their ideas and products with a global audience. This gives meaning to what they have to say and lets students contribute to our society as a whole. Allow students to use blogs, wikis, podcasts, videos, etc. as a medium to share their thoughts, creations, and let them figure out new ways to tell their stories: innovation. However, teach students to be safe in this digital world and to think critically about the information they are exposed to while fostering creativity and innovation. The connection is important, but you already knew that!

Acceptable Use

There are so many issues to deal with in order to implement and integrate Web 2.0 technologies in the classroom. Acceptable Use Policies that were created by districts in the past no longer address the explosion of collaboration tools that exist in today’s world. I have spent part of my last few days, since attending the Building Learning Communities Conference, thinking about, researching, and defining/redefining acceptable use in my district.

What it comes down to is building a foundation and being proactive as I anticipate the use of blogging, wikis, podcasts, vidcasts, etc. It is part of being responsible and accountable for the learning and safety of our students, and I believe acceptable use must be addressed before immersing these technologies into our instruction.

Some resources I have come up with so far include (mostly from Will Richardson’s book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms):

http://www.eschoolnews.com/eti/2005/06/000877.php

http://www.budtheteacher.com/wiki/index.php?title=Blogging_letter

http://static.hcrhs.k12.nj.us/gems/centralISP/uses.doc

I would appreciate other ideas from the instructional technology and education community. Please share in the comments section. Thank you!

Scratch: Info & Media Lab Video

While attending the Building Learning Communities Conference in Boston, Mass. I had the opportunity to see and hear and learn from Dr. Mitchel Resnick an Associate Professor at the MIT Media Laboratory.  In his Thursday morning keynote speech he shared Scratch (See video below!):

“Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art — and share your creations on the web.

Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design.”

When I got home I showed the Scratch web site to my six year old son, and he was ready to download immediately!!!  Once installed, Nicholas and I played around for a few minutes to get our bearings; then, I turned Nicholas loose to program at will.  He did!!!  There are many possibilities in applying this application, and I especially like that young people can upload and share their creations with a global audience.  It is FREE, and can also be run on the web.  Try it, you’ll like it!

Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts,…Will Richardson

While at the Building Learning Communities 2007 Conference I had the opportunity to attend a couple of workshops by Will Richardson.  I have been reading Will’s blog for quite some time, and I finally purchased his book:  Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms.  I am a few pages into this text, and I am already considering this as a resource for professional development in my school district.  I believe it is a must read for educators in today’s schools, and an excellent, practical “how to” guide to using these web tools in the “classroom.”

BLC 2007 Reflections & Video Explaining a Wiki

I am back from Alan November’s Building Learning Communities 2007 Conference!  What an incredible journey, and I am excited to return to work tomorrow to organize my notes (I got so enthralled in the workshops my computer note taking at my PBwiki was lacking to say the least.  My apologies to those following along, but go back for a better review!).  Now, I am looking for resources to help explain and show all that I saw, heard, and learned.  I came across the following wiki video that explains the process of this tool quite well:  “Wikis in Plain English.”  Enjoy!

BLC 2007 Reflections

We have arrived at the final day of Alan November’s Building Learning Communities Conference. There are a few sessions left to attend before I head for the airport around 1 p.m. Eastern. This has been a wonderful experience for me personally and on a professional level. I have had the opportunity to hear, see, and meet many of the bloggers that I read each day. I have had my beliefs and practices validated by other professionals in my field, and I feel strength from that support. Now it is time to do, to act. My team will travel back to our district not only to relay the information that we have gained but to influence real change. This is the challenging part of this process, but it is also rewarding. It will be interesting to come back, maybe next year, to see where we are at that point: we have to be further along. We will!

Another Educational Revolution

My PBwiki with notes from the November Learning Conference.

(Alternative Title:  Another “American” Educational Revolution – My apologies to a world-wide audience and to my Mother from the UK!)

My career in education, officially, is in its meager 14th year. 13 years as a classroom teacher and now I am in my first year as an educational technology coordinator. Obviously education has been a part of my entire life: life is ultimately a learning experience. However, I focus and reflect on my past years as an educator and my experience working with students and colleagues in bringing about change. Since I first stepped into my first classroom there has been a revolution in education of one sort or another. Change is revolution, be it good or bad, and it seems it is always an experiment. That is not a bad thing, but oftentimes it is challenging and scary. Fear usually prevents change, and revolutions fail.

New technologies, blogs, wikis, RSS, and podcasts, are changing the game. These tools, among others, are revolutionary and provide an opportunity and an audience for learners to share what they know, what they are learning, and what they are doing with the world. The fear factor steps in once again for many who are digital immigrants. It is a fear of the unknown.

Bill Bagshaw, an educational leader from Topeka, Kansas, yesterday said: “Don’t be afraid!” He meant it, and I believe it! We always challenge our students to take risks in their learning. Many times we teach them about things they don’t know, and this elicits fear; however, once we learn things we feel better, at ease, the fear goes away until the next new thing!

I know we are in another educational revolution, but I think that this time it is different. There are tools that are appearing on a daily basis that are driving this change. To an extent it is like Samual Adams and the Sons of Liberty. At first there were rumblings in the colonies with talk of revolution, and people like Samual Adams began to get more “organized.” Other began to post their thoughts and ideas in pamphlets that were distributed around the countryside. The revolutionary ideas began to build and grow, and conversations, events, and action began to take place. As people took these ideas to heart and acted upon them, the revolution gained enough momentum and could no longer be ignored. It was not going away, it was not a fad, and it created fear.

The tools educators have access to today have gained momentum and cannot be ignored any longer. If we remain loyal to our practices of the past we will miss or ignore the shift that has and is happening today. This revolution is different as the Sons of Liberty are the children, kids who access rich media on a daily basis transmitted in the blink of an eye. For the most part they have the basic ‘R’s,” and they are taking this knowledge to new heights. The challenge is preparing ourselves as educators to go along for the ride that is real, scary, and revolutionary. Don’t be afraid!

Technology Policy Makers

PBwiki link for those who are following my attendence at the November Learning Conference!

I am sitting in my second presentation by Will Richardson at the November Learning Conference. He is sharing RSS ideas and skills, but I am still thinking about his last presentation! The other day Will posted on his blog “Why is it so Hard for Educators to Focus on Their Own Learning?” and he touched on this in the earlier presenation I attended. To me the suggestion is that we, as educators, need to take responsibility for our own learning. As we accept this responsibility we model behaviors to our students that I think we intend for them to have, but we often fail to transfer that or those examples when we don’t take the time to focus on our own learning.

Now I want to take this a step further with policy makers. I keep hearing my colleagues bring up the following questions: How do I get my staff to do this? How do I get my principal or educational leader to buy into this? How do I get IT to stop blocking various internet tools (YouTube, blogs, etc.). Will suggests not worrying about that and taking charge of our own learning. “Get your house in order” is a phrase that comes to mind here. I agree.

Now, I experienced an epiphany in the middle of all this!!! I also agree with the questions I share above, especially the desicion making process of our policy makers. Then it dawned on me (Which will seem weird as I continue to share here!): I am now one of those policy makers. As a brand new educational technology director I can help my staff learn about, try, and hopefully use technology as a tool in the learning process; I already have “bought” into new technologies and want to help facilitate their use in classrooms throughout my district (However, there is so much I continue to learn each day!); I can influence the unblocking of internet features that our students use in their lives each day; and I have some experience in taking charge of my own learning which brought me to my current position today! Oftentimes I felt powerless as a teacher (the past 13 years), but now I am in a position to empower my new colleagues. Taking charge of our own learning is powerful, but it becomes stronger as it builds and gains support from those around us. While I nuture my own learning, I can also help empower my colleagues in my new position, especially by sharing my passion.

I will keep reflecting upon this as more continues to seep in! 🙂

I am at the November Learning Conference!

After an eventful trip I am now sitting in an early bird workshop with Bill Bagshaw called “Friday Night Skype.” Once again, I will be keeping notes at my PBwiki where you can get the details of what I am learning. More to come…

Building Learning Communities 2007 on Hitchhikr

I am getting ready for my departure to Boston to attend the Building Learning Communities 2007 conference. You can follow the conference on Hitchhikr: Building Learning Communities 2007.  I am trying out PBwiki for a place to takes notes, etc. if you are interested in following along.

Going to the November Learning Conference?

I will be headed to the November Learning Conference in Boston on Tuesday July 17th. Are any of you going? It would be great to meet some of you all in person if you happen to be attending. Let me know!

I hope to post from the conference and to share what I learn. Stay tuned!