Here are the presentations I attended today:

(reminder all important websites for the conference I am posting at
http://del.icio.us/mehines/necc2008

Chris Dede: Immersive Collaborative Simulations and Next Generation Assessments

Web site marked in delicious

he mentioned knowing what students know

cognition, understanding, interpretation

cognition is distributed across human mind, tools/media

marketing video from MicroSoft about distributed learning “unify your communications”

Types of rich datastreams

MUVE: immersion in virtual contexts with digital artifacts and avatar based identities

wikis and other forms of groupware
asynchronous discussions
intelligent tutoring
games
augmented reality

how do we make sense of these kinds of observations

formative assessment – provides more leverage for improvement than summative
particularly formative assessment – much more rich and more accurate than summative – need to use this one the fly to know what is going on.
potentially, formative , diagnostic assessment could take the place of summative!! (he believes this idea)

analogy/metaphor – barcodes on items allow formative assessment in stores so current inventory

new technologies to support this idea
his case for this – alice in wonderland interface

3 types of worlds

worlds to the desktop – accessing distance experts and archives for knowledge creation, sharing, an mastery

MUVE – *alice in wonderland)

ubiquitous computing (wearable always on – augmented reality)

His focus – MUVEs – his argument is that this provides the richest data stream to tap into (he refers this as alice in wonderland)

he is going to use rivercity as an example of assessment

he mentioned that they re still looking at implementation sites – if anyone is still interested

post testing – (traditional)
higher self efficacy on sci method, knowledge gains,

these instruments don’t tell you why, how they succeed

evidence of student work

assessment date – pre/post, embedded (formative) performance a(summative) (letter written to mayor)

contextual data: attendance, demographic, school data, observations, interviews

ACTIVE Data: team chat, notebook entries, tracking of activities, (data gathering, pathways, etc)

event logs provide time stamps on all activities (things like where, who they talked to , what objects they interacted,etc)

what makes this unique is students don’t have to stop for assessment so they don’t behave differently

this approach generates LOTS of data for analysis

he explains river city a little
work as team, keep track of clues, etc

examples of the new assessment info – how much time, range of data collection, saliency of data collected, clustering (grouping evidence)

how to make sense of all this data – ideally live feedback to teachers based on data to improve student learning
if you could get this it would empower student learning

examples – charts of data that show areas of sue tools use, etc

analysis – boys data orient, girls social orient

hand coding of the chat is powerful, but too time consuming?

three levels of diagnostics
Simple: how often to talk,
less simple: what sequence of interactions
complex = follow the pattern of knowledge building through the behavior and of the student

Data-mining:
process of selecting exploring and modeling large amounts of data

Evolution over time

what about something other than second city

distribute learning course:
f2f
ivc
wireless/handheld device
small group collab –

Groupware: (like wikis)
small group discussions (google docs)
convenient access
students find voice
sharing and annotation

issues: master new rhetoric, collective time management, rapid reading and typing, recognition of time and effort, requires time and effort to install and master

chris reflected on past issues with group work – who is doing what work and how we know – now groupware allows better understanding

sociosemetic networking (social tagging) – generates an event log

summary – a huge amount of data is being generated – we have to learn how to mine data and make meaning of it – if a record is kept, this would allow time of involvement, knowledge build – etc – would allow

chris just got two more grants to develop more ideas on this

mark’s thoughts – there is a great area for research here about assessment and the use of data mining for formative assessment – need to share this with the etec group

Classroom 2.0: Exploring the Potential of Web 2.0 
(this was a panel discussion of 5 including vicki davis and Steve Hargadon)

first definitions of wen 2.0 (using O’Reilly as reference)
web as platform (amazon)
collective intelligence
wisdom of crowds (wikipedia)
data as the intelligence inside (amazon)
end of the software release cycle (google)
loosely couple systems – like netvibes
software beyond a single device (facebook)
rich user experience (swivel)

Active vs passive – “participatory web”, read/write web

problems? inappropriate content – concerns about safety
vicki – ‘first penguin off the rock’ – same in schools

one of the challenges to do this is to have assessment for students clear up front so they know what they are expected to do

where to begin to start – teacher needs to get connected to other people who are doing this (mark wonders how to connect some of our teachers)

these tools engage (content rich fun – mark’s definition)
teachers need to find something that will connect to your class
this drives working with students instead of talking at students – they will honor that

vicki ( and most of the rest of the board( use wikis with their classes and using ning)

vicki – wikis – knowledge building (structured information), ning first person conversation/sharing – evolving

great idea – hire IT from apple geniuses

there is a federal plan called dopa – to force fed funds to block social networking

i got the chat saved too- think about the collective wisdom idea – fantastic way to think of classroom learning and outside resources- yay!
Chat (pdf format) is located here:
http://pueo.midpac.edu/technology/classroom20.pdf

Web 2.0 meets Grade 2.0 Gail Lovely

zoho was running tool ppt like tool
280 slides

session – special requirements due to age – keep in mind population

look at some of same tools but with young chid lens

http://glovely.wetpaint.com/ – where se has it posted

wikis
showed insect wiki
just like kwl –

showed counting project – monster project

kids write for detail,other kids draw based on the descriptive writing

she distinguished wikis (collaborative) vs blogs (leader with responses) – not editable

blogs – showed and example of students gr 2 who wrote a blog and 388 people gave feedback – cool

mrs cassidy’s web site blog – very cool!

showed bubbl.us

very nicely layed out wiki of her presentation – I like that she made it model her thoughts, and opened it up for collaboration

again – worth goig to: http://glovely.wetpaint.com/

Live streaming video – will richardson

ustreamtv.com

example of use – stream live performance with archive capability password protection
classroom productions

This is the continued notes from Jukes presentation – was a lot to digest – some people find him a bit too much, but I attribute it to him all consuming passion to be well read and understand what is happening… any way, here goes:

What will kids need to know? In answer to question about how much is too much, he kept revisiting the idea of BALANCE – need to honor both the things that we know plus include new ways to thinking.

Mentioned a book he is planning on reading : turning it off (delicious link)

Another BIG idea – too many things happening – whether you are an experienced tech user of a beginner – take baby steps – just pick one thing and start incorporating it – don’t over immerse (just like training – if you go too hard, you will hurt yourself and not come back).

on the topic of Photonics: Gilder: Telecosm: The world after Bandwidth abundance (delicious link)

Talked about the emergence of wimax and wibro in the next few years

Art Costa’s habits of mind was a reference point for discussion of ways to work with whole person/whole brain (delicious link)

Talked a bit about how student brains are different – the have received different stimuli and therefore have developed different

When pushed about how to prepare classrooms and teachers he referred to two resources – pdf document “Getting it Right” – a resource for technology planning, and “No more cookie cutter schools” where he is going to talk about classroom deign with architect Frank Kelley: New High Schools: Strategies that Work for Teaching and Learning Using Technology

Talking about what technologies have transformational power – he talked about the new samsung smartphone that has voice to text capability of 80 wpm – with 90% accuracy – this is available this year.
Coming soon – interpretive telephony – language translation phones. Some discussion about how often when you talk into a computer system on a cell phone, they are recording your voice to use for dialect analysis.

{{lunch break}}

Recent Brain research focus
Term – Screenagers – what are new brain imaging technologies showing us about how teens brains are different? The amount of exposure to computer technology has made young brains different.
Kids that have been exposed to digital bombardment show different wiring in their brains than older adults – they have different capabilities – most focused around better visual recall and stimuli. Even when kids learn the same things as adults it is stored and accessed differently. MMORPG (Massive Multiple online role playing games) and other inputs are the main cause of this.

He talked about the human brain project (delicious link) that is trying to really understand how the brain is structured and learns. Neuroinfomatics is the field of study – a government and multi-university project

showed examples of brain imaging fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) – shows digital learner brains activate different areas under the same stimuli
New imaging technique – harvard Brainbow (delicious link)

Scientific American Mind article the myths of the teen brain (pdf posted on delicious)

Interesting study on how adults and teens look at text on a page through this technique – adults scan in a relative z pattern – but teens start at bottom, look up the sides of the page and rarely focus on the bottom right. They basically read in an F pattern – that part of the text activates their brain.
Also – color of text – teen brains are more active if text is green, red or hot pink (think wired) – most teens dislike black on white and avoid it.
Mentions prensky’s work on understanding teens use and amount of media – how they have better mastery of CPA Continuous Partial attention (coined by Linda Stone) – which is different from multitasking – CPA is a particular teen feeling for always wanting to be “a live nide on the network”.” (this last part is marks notes from the Summer 08 edutopia article by prensky)

Talked about the difference between kids and adults and how they learn – images vs text, hyper ink vs linear, etc.

Important to state kid are NT the same as they were 25 years ago – especially in their private lives
Two books in this thread of how to engage – “Thinking in Future tense (Jennifer James) Wiggins and McTighe Understanding by Design

jukes: If *we’re* still teaching kids the same way, knowing they’re different, WHO HAS THE LEARNING PROBLEM?

Jukes talked about three ways that technology is used (studies by Hank Becker – link on delicious)

70% are Literacy – how it works
20% are integated/augmented – example word processing – if you took it away, kids would still be able to write
10% is transformational – new things and new ways – if you took it away, the classroom would not work

Balance on this should be equal (1:1:1) – Juke stresses over and over – not throwing out old cherished proven ideas, but finding balance – still ned to teach how to do things, BUT need to include more relevant uses

Any teacher who can be replaced by a computer, DESERVES to be.

Not surprising he makes the case technology use in classrooms is about headware, not hardware

Running out of time – Jukes lists 7 steps to change classroom practice:
1. Catch Up – commit to a digital diet – try new things – blogging, delicious, video streaming, play a MMORPG…etc – he has a link on his site (ianjukes.com for this)
2. Teach to both sides of the brain – he arges (correctly, I think) that success for teaches is usually measured by how the top third of class performs and he feels it should be the bottom 2/3. He argues the top third would have achieved anyhow – they are the survivors. Uses Pink as a source here
move from being consumers to prosumers of information and content
Technologic Fluency
Media Fluency
Information Fluency (5 steps):
* ask good questions
* access and acquire good resources
analyze and authenticate – weigh information for value
apply – context – real life problem
assess progress and product

Social Fluency – webkins, club penguin – start purposefully building an honoring this side of the brain

3. Shift the instructional Approach
4. Let them access info natively
5. Let kids collaborate (example – wikinomics – social wisdom)
6. Products that reflect content and process
7. Re-Evaluate evaluation

(as I was typing this up I found a live blog that ginger ? posted that follows many of my notes – posted here: http://www.plurk.com/p/utg6)
Ginger’s live blog posting is a good counterpoint to mine