Just a reminder – all my links are posted at del.icio.us/mehines/necc2008

Notes from sessions and thinking…

Workshops from Tuesday July 1

Kathy Schrock Get a MUVE on – power of synchronous online environments (Tues 11-12)

background of tool – how to use

http://kathyschrock.net/muve – this is the one stop resource for Kathy – all the resources from her presentation (including the slides) here. Her pdf is a complete capture of her slides.

goals
history
components of online spaces
selected resources
new gen of muves

history – from MUDs to MOOs to MUVE

Dr Barry Ellis (1997)- research on learning in these environments
live interaction
indiv and grp work
varied preset formats
learn from teacher and studets
resources to share
activity monitoring
engaging and motivating

components: (compani and mornigstar – reserach teams)
communication,
collab: whiteboards, annotations, apps share, screen share, co browse
present{ view, file share, response, session record}

selected resources:
tapped in – 1997 nsf & sun
acrobat connect (used to be macromedia breeze) – new version has virtual breakout rooms
next monday (830 est):Web 20 and You

elluminate: (mark knows and likes)

WiZiQ – free

Wimba – (we know)
second life (she considers next gen)
joe sanchez – utexas – exploring virtual worlds

why second life
a new frontier
experience a new interface
learn skills
distance education and other events
second life groups: ex k12 educators iste discovery ed
global networking
collaboration

examples of sites
teaching and learning:
main grid and teen grid

$ us = $1000 lindens
$2395 for and maintain ed for a year

she had a bunch of sites posted

literature alive – in sl

commonspace for progressive organization

virtual morocco

roma

ibm – tennis simulation
second life pioneers – (from web quest – meet the immigrants)

Her real passion is pd in second life

where – iste – good home
terra incognita – phd to explore learning in sl
discovery ed network
lighthouse learning island (her second life presence for her staff)

she bought an island in 2007 june
talked a bit about her island – structure, how it is set up
she showed a video of her PLC in Sl fro 10 hrs of training

she talked about the difficulty giving a presentation in sl

skoolaborate

quoted research from Bagi and Crooks

user centered environments?
transform of learning practice by learner?
constructivist practices
authority in virtual space
change in class roles
altering of assignments

pertaining to my research – is this a place to be looking toward – or is the hardward/bw requirements too much still – for how long?

Alan November (Tues 1230-130)

on his site – free resources for learning

He polled the audience o ask about what ways technology has changed their schools – he asked questions about things like when we will have open book tests (use resources to answer an original problem instead of testing for memorized content), when are students acting as self directed learners, instead of receiving information from teachers, etc. Essentially the vast majority of responses indicated a very traditional structure to schools. And this was a very advanced group – that’s why we were there!

essentially he said 30 years of tech in ed have made almost no impact – he gave some specific examples – sad but true –

He talked about his sons recent experience – traveled with him to china – very funny but sad story – bottom line was he was given detention for missing school – even though it was an educational trip, even though he offered to blog and find connections for the classes he was missing, even thgouh he did all the work his teachers assigned when he was away, even though other students were excused for other trips (athletic, college tours ,etc) – INSANE!
One Alan’s big drives is to have students understand mre about the power and structure of the internet – how to look for and understand information searches – example – if you look at an event like “middle east riots” it only shows us and european resources on the first page of google – by using restrictors (like site:tr or view:timeline) there are better ways to get info. It is reminiscent of the “How People Learn” book talking about strategies experts use when solving problems – they have a hierarchy of strategies that enable better thinking and depth. He has geat web literacy tools o his website.

Give kids problems to solve that aren’t about memorizing but empower them to think

One of his running idea is breaking up classroom activity to enable rootating jobs in a class – for exampe a coupe of kids who are the class web researchers for the day – checking and adding information to the class

he showed the advanced search feature in google (under more…still more)
you (anyone) can build their OWN search engine that has only pre-chosen web sites to search wthin – or you can use ones already nmade by others

Some strategies for teachers he proposes that requires a student’s job description of active learner:

Have kids build a search engine for their class – or an elementary teacher lead a group of students to build one together
Kids produce learning objects – for example they each need to make a tutorial for class usig a tool like jing. He showed an exampe of a math teacher (who happened to be in the audience) who has his 6th grade students make math tutorials) – needs to be short (under 3 minutes) clean, undestandbale, trasportable to ipod, dvd etc, so ther kids can use it.Then publish it on the web!
He calls Jing “low hanging fruit” – “We are spending too much time teaching teachers to use tech – start sending 2 student with each teacher to become their class experts o technologies.” This is a genyes model
Alan pointed out that reserach on audio books sows that the narrator’s voice changes the impression a listener has on content – he poonders student vioces – male female, cutural would have an impact
Curricukum deisgn teams organized by students (this lines up with effect history instruction from ch 7 of How People Learn) he has links on hs website on how to do this as well
Official scribe for clas (this is an idea Bob and I were just talkig about this month) appoint a few students each class to be scribes in google docs so all can share at end. Takes th ecognitive load off most and put quality pressure on the scribes as they ned to share at the end “too many kids are using the laptop as a $100 pencil” another example – instead of making each kid doa sperate powerpoint, have then create a common ppt in google docs – thank of the power shared knowledge, tracked usage for formative assessment, feedback loop from peers…
Ad value to the world – he asked – how many teachers had added an ebtry to wikipedia? (a few) how may had their students add? (almost none)
he gave an example of a 3rd grade class that went on a field trip and built a web page in their visit (pitot house) – the kids created it, took ownership – very empowering – the =comments and edits that occur after are the real powerful part of it
another example – kiva.org – students contributing to a needy world project -there was a teacher in the audience that has 16 ongoing kiva projects – very cool!
his site has a link in resources: digital learning farm

Lead21 Meeting

This a team of professors from Johns Hopkins Univ looking at a program for Leadership teams or individuals form schools – they used this venue as a chance to get feedback on the program –

data driven decision making

modules – establishing an infrastructure, etc

after kick off – school leadership team walks through a supporting module

month or so – online community is a support network – both support and expectation

{{mark wonders if this might be too top down – ownership}}

one of their predispositions is that teachers want o know how to make kids succeed – is that our problem? Are our teachers struggling with this? (mark thinks not)
one of their targets is reg and spec ed teaching – not applicable for us

one of the modules – monitor how teaches are doing and working on what goals they should have in pd

their checklists align with iste standards

They initiate the data collection and the content

It looks like they are looking for schools that want to be involved integrally for the use of these

the importance of a school team —

Strategic Thinking about Technology in Education – Panel discussion
leadership from ISTE

First question – new president – what to tell him about needs and role for tech and ed

what should feds role be – usgov – built the infrastructure for transportation – need the same for tech in ed

robust authentic assessment model – not just bubble tests