Week 4: Thoughts on GoogleReader & Social Bookmarking

“Know where to look, Know who to ask.”

I now have GoogleReader, GoogleNews and Diiago. It seems that this trio will work well for my needs. I also use the whole suite of Google of programs. I love the fact that this information is “at-my-fingertips,” and that by using tags, I get to the relevant information more quickly.

I am in Boston this weekend. I like the metaphor of this city. To successfully navigate the city I have a few simple procedures. First, decide on the destination. Second, create a map in my head of how to get there. That does not mean it will be the most direct route. This map is dependent on time of day, weather and road work that I am aware of. Third, I have two other alternate routes at the ready in case of the “unexpected.” Without these in place I become very unfocused in my driving in Boston. Social Media, Bookmarking, Reader, Cloud, DropBox, and RSS are destinations with wonderfully diverse uses. My father used to say, “Use the right tool for the right job.......if you don’t have it, go out and buy it or hire a professional.”

Now the issue. My laptop is a few years old.  Memory nearly filled. In fact, I had to move forty-plus gigs onto a backup drive so I would be able to do what I needed for this week’s assignments. The Cloud, along with all the digital community is completely reliant on access, relative speed, processor and bandwidth. I don’t tend to use GoogleDocs because of my inability to maintain consistent access speed. 

As I see the possibilities I will start thinking about the possibilities to “leverage” as much educational power that I can from all the new communities. Christopher Lehman, principal of the Science Leadership Academy says, “Technology need to be ubiquitous, necessary and invisible.” Digital Media: New Learners of the 21st Century  This is how I feel.  Technology should be a natural extension of what we reach out for to enhance our lives.

Week 4: Digital Media: New Learners of the 21st Century.

Digital Media: New Learners of the 21^st Century

“Probably the most important thing for kids growing up today is the love of embracing change.” 

-John Seely Brown

This is probably the most profound statement in the video, and it happens in the first eleven seconds of the video.  The primary themes of this video are empowering students in their own education and developing educational systems that leverage current and potential technologies and digital communities.

So, you can see that we could imagine a day where learning and assessment are the same thing.  That is, we build such rich learning systems, they already assess themselves. Think about it - - that would be, in the end, cheap, because we wouldn't need the testing industry anymore. We... We would just need a learning industry.

--James Gee

I love this quote. I watched this video while waiting my turn to get my hair cut.  We have been going to Mario’s for over twenty-years.  Mario and Pepé have been cutting hair in Davis Square for over thirty-years.  They come from the old country and the majority of their staff is related to them or are Italian as well.  All communication in the salon happens in Italian and so to most of their cliental, it occurs in the background of our “normal” American English existence. So much so, they step in between these two world seamlessly.  “Tieem, you go wash your hair.”

“....learning and assessment are the same thing.”  

The digital communities, technologies and operations are becoming this seamless.  I remember the days of DOS.  You really had to understand some fundamental programming to use the applications. Then we moved to icon user interface where a click of a button completed a series of actions.  Now we are at the point were we turn it on and chat or shop.

This video does a really great job of showing the collaborative realities that new schools are making work and how they are helping to empower students.  

“I think a lot of what's happening with this program (Smithsonian Institution) is that the individual student is being empowered, and they're being empowered to sort of follow a different course, maybe, or to follow a very personal sort of path to understanding what the great artists have always done.”  

--Richard Koshalek

We have moved into an age of information creation through collaboration.  We are soon going to see more novels, music, art and media done through collaboration, yet evolving the idea of authorship and originality.  Kurzwell refers to “singularity” as the point of the machine becoming self-aware.  I believe the “singularity” will involve us all. 

“Most of our learning could very well come from the interaction with the peers in this particular collective that I'm a part of because we all know that one of the best ways to learn something is to teach something. So, in peer-based collaboration, you're both learning and teaching, and that sense of having to explain to other something is often the way you discover what you yourself know and don't know.”  

--John Seely Brown

"If we teach today's students the way we taught them yesterday, we rob them of tomorrow."  

--John Dewey

Flipped Classroom

Flipped Classroom

KWL Post

What I know?

I have been using technology personally, and educationially for as long and I can remember.  I believe strongly in the adage, “Work smarter not harder.”  The issue is, with this adage and technology, that every time I sit down at a computer, ipad, iphone  or keyboard (music), I end up doing number of other things, working on my learning curve or trying to figure out how to leverage what the software currently does not do to approximate what it is I am trying to accomplish.  

   

What do I want to learn?

I am always interested in leveraging what it is that I know with new ways to doing.  This is throughout my life.  For instance, I hate how much waste kCups create.  There is perfectly good coffee grounds inside the kCup, that could be used for compost and growing medium.  The coffee maker came with a do-it-yourself refillable kCup that fits in the coffee maker.  The problem is, it takes as long to clean and refill this as it would to make an entire traditional drip pot of coffee.  I also despise random coffee grounds all over my sink when I try to clean out the refillable cup as much as I dislike using the kCup.  So, the choices are, don’t drink kCup coffee or only make one cup and let someone else clean out the refillable cup.

Cleaning out the cupboard one afternoon I found some unused coffee filters from the unused drip coffee maker.  “Do I keep them......do I recycle them?  I am too cheap to recycle perfectly packaged and good filters......fast forward a week later.

Grumbling again about having to clean out my refillable pod container, the sink and now my shirt, I wondered, “Why don’t they make a make a miniature natural compostable filter that would fit inside the refillable container?”   “Wait can I?.......I look to paper towels....pause.... eureka.....I will cut down the unused drip filters into four inch circles....crimp slightly....put into the refillable.......presto fresh cup of coffee....take off lid....pull out soggy packet....toss into compost bin....rinse container....no pesky grounds in my sink!

So, your question is, “What do I want to learn?”  My response is, “Be my natural coffee filter,” I will use everything that you can offer, along with anything that assists me in making connections to my practice.

Though........in a perfect world.  My photo students use iPhoto to download and do minor edits.  Their assessments would be less fragmented, (handing in workbooks before doing the online aspect) if they could upload (drag and drop) from iPhoto into “googleforms” so the image would accompany the assessment portion of the unit.  I am thinking more integration rather than more steps and different websites...more paperless whenever possible.

What do I currently use?

All classroom management; attendance, announcements, schedules, handbooks, business forms are digitally available and, in some cases, fillable. 

I use technology in the home, work and in my music and art classrooms.  In art, students watch online videos to reinforce “throwing” on the wheel (ceramics).  Their handbook, that I created, used to reside online.  Students document their work digitally and include this photo into their assessment packets.  In my digital photography class, all formative / summative assessments are online.  I use GoogleForms, spread sheets and FileMakerPro.  In my Art History Class, I have implemented a student self designed differentiated homework quiz.  Individually, students create four questions based on the video, reading, vocabulary homework.  They also answer these questions along with one question that I include.  These questions will then comprise their final exam at the end of the semester.  This is all done electronically by exporting the googleForm into spreadsheet, then into FileMakerPro, and from there, I can print out individual exams.  

In music, students use iPads to access online music theory units, watch youtube performances.  My accompaniment music is on my iPad and I have a foot controller to turn pages.  I use software called “Sibelius” along with a digital USB keyboard. I input music manually, from PDF’s or through realtime direct keyboard input.  From this, I can make rehearsal CD’s, write and arrange music and print out the sheet music for students. 

I use technology throughout every day.  I look forward to new ways of extending, deepening and broadening my use of the media and connections in the digital communities.   

Week 3: Video and RSS My World Just Opened Up

Essential Question: Are schools exploring all of the free resources available to them, encouraging teachers to use this technology in the classroom to engage and energize all learners?

I have known about the exsistance of RSS feeds since when they were RDF feeds.  In fact, one of my earlier MacBook’s screensavers was an RSS Feed of the headlines for the day.  Didn’t have a clue though of what it was, what it meant and what it’s potential was.........until today. 

RSS (Rich Site Summary) Allows users to avoid manually inspecting all the websites they are interested in, and instead subscribe to websites such that all new content is pushed onto their browsers when it becomes available. --Wikipedia: RSS

So now through Google Reader I have subscribed to Huffington Post and Scott McLeod’s Blog.  I have also put the application FeeddlerPro on my IPad.  Thank you “Kathy’s basket”

Scott McLeod’s article is great.  I agree 100% about his ten points.  Of this ten, nine take little to no money to implement.  They do require a shift in our perceptions of what is important in technology and how it is used.  I think however, we are at the point in where we can only support the seasoned educators and encourage the new educators in the strategies that can be used and become leaders.  I would propose that research would say that when a major shift in education occurs it takes the generation that was taught within that shift to be able to implement it fully....perhaps up to twenty years.  

I feel like we are at one of those shifts.  I see two major areas of affect.  First, is the idea that technology is now integral to most aspects of an individuals life and will always be interactive and no longer passive.  Second, we are permanently shifting into online virtual hybrids of educational paradigms. 

It also make me think about the term “technology” and how it almost seems redundant.  For me, it implies that it is something separate and apart from other functions.  I see the term evolving just as “community” is coming to mean much more.  In fact, could “community” also come to mean those interactive technological parts that integrate the organic members.”  A point where we could not communicate or succeed without these nonorganic members.  In some aspects of our lives we are already there. 

What happens when we figure out to create a system that is 100% organic.  Systems that are biological, neuron, synapsis based instead of resistor and chip based.  Will one blend into the other and become invisible..........sorry another “Borg” moment.

Michael Wesch - Video: A Portal to Media Literacy

This video gives me a lot to think about.  For me the big takeaway is the idea of “Creating Significance” for our students.  Michael suggest the following three steps.  

1. “Find a grand narrative to provide relevance and context for learning (addresses semantic meaning)
2. Create a learning environment that values and leverages the learners themselves (addresses personal meaning)
3. Do both in a way that realizes and leverages the existing media environment (and therefore allows students to realize and leverage the existing media environment)

“The challenge for higher learning: Creating platforms for participation that allow students to realize and leverage the emerging media environment.”

He follows this comment with the following model graphic and definitions. 

Network = Participation  Hierarchy = "Obey Authority"  Mass = Follow Along

The challenge is how to leverage the existing and new media to enable and engage all students.  In an environment that they all become the experts.

“Move from being knowledgeable to knowledge-able.”  --Michael Wesch

Connections: Virtual Learning Communities: Chpts 1 & 2

Connections: Virtual Learning Communities 

Chapter 1: 

Community?

• “Technological tools have made the world smaller while expanding the idea of community.” (The Connected Educator, p. 55)

Is this the authors attempt to expand or refine the idea of “community,” simular to FaceBook's use of “Friends?”    But then are they really Friends?  Is it really a community?

• “Communities are collections of people who are bound together for some reason, and that reason defines the boundary of the community.” (p.17)

Great contrast to the optimistic “The Connected Educator.”  There is a “gritty” nature to digital interactions.  There is also that the reality that online digital learning communities can be “deep and shallow.”  I would suppose however that these communities, harmful or not, would not exist if people did not populate them.  This reality has created a crucial need in knowing what are the key characteristics of "healthy" communities.  “Healthy,” .......there’s another term for the melange that is the digital lexicon. 

The issue lies in the fact that a “common language” is only salient to those who use it in the applicable context.  Take LOL for instance.  I thought, in my early time, that on Facebook it meant “Lots-of-Love.”  I would be really confused when LOL tags showed up when I wrote something humorous........Lots of Love? 

“Learn, UnLearn, ReLearn” 

I get concerned about such a specific language that lives in a digital context and then our overwhelming reliance in our ability to contextualize the nuance.  I am responsible for the content area of Music Education the content area of the Visual Arts Education and my movement towards a doctorate in education.  I get contextualized nuance.  

“Learn, UnLearn, ReLearn”

Chapter 2: Common Features of Online Learning Communities

Great chapter at explaining the many facets to “Virtual Communities.”  As most of his information is not data based, I do believe in his intuitive observations.

Schweir’s makes a couple of distinctions and clarifications that I embrace.  The concepts of “Formal” and “Informal” communities.  He also states that these “Have Life Cycles.”  The fact that a “formal” community such as a course will just end.  Which he refers to as “rude, even callous.”  So my question about “formal communities” is, “Unless designed into a course how does one as a participant receive closure?” and “What does it look like?

He then endins with this ominous but apparent truth,  "Learn to adapt or prepare to die." (p. 47)

The Connected Educator: Chapter 3

The Connected Educator

Chapter 3: Learning to Learn 

“The most important thing any teacher has to learn, not to be learned in any school of education I ever heard of, can be expressed in seven words: Learning is not the product of teaching.  Learning is the product of the activity of learners.”

(John Holt, 2011)

I am unclear about what is meant by, “Learning is the product of the activity of learners.”  I would like to restate John Holt a bit differently.

Learning is not the product of teaching.  Learning is the byproduct of a fertile open mind.  

Which really seems to be the core learning from this book, at least in the first three chapters which is, in it’s way restated by the author as, “Teaching does not make learning occur.  Learners create learning.” (p. 82)

• As Dewey stated, “Education is a social process.  Education is growth.  Education is not a preparation for life; education is life itself” (Dewey, 1897, p. 78)

There seems to be a lack in teaching our students, especially in the younger grades that learning is interactive.  At some point during those formative educational experiences, inquiry is squelched.  

• “The illiterates of the 21^st century will not be those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” (Futurist Alvin Toffler, 2011) 

This is so true.  If the body of information and knowledge is changing at such a fast rate. 

(2007 video, “Did you Know 2.0” stated that “technical content doubles every two years, and that by 2010, it is predicted to double every 72 hours.”) 

We need to be open to the possibility that truth is only relevant to what is currently known.  Truth is a symbol.  A symbol’s power resides in it’s ability to support the creation of stability within the a chaotic world of ______________________.  (Fill in the blank)  

If we insert politics, we see two sides trying to create differing truths in an attempt to derail each opponent's campaign.  If we insert ethnicity, we see a small group of irresponsible individuals who, through their online “movie” their attempt to shift truth, thereby creating a global mayhem causing the American deaths. 

The Connected Educator: Chapter 2

The Connected Educator 

Chapter 2: Developing a Connected Learning Model 

When my daughter was baptized (20+ years ago) a friend sang “Ag Criost an Siol” in Gaelic, written by Sean O Riada.  It is beautiful song with a haunting melody.  I had spent years trying to find the octavos or Mass, of which this song was a setting.  Every few years I would contact local people in the music business.  The music was just not in print.  About four years ago, I was on line and decided to see how far I could get in researching the music.  In the end, I was in contact with a family member who was involved in Sean O Riada’s estate.  We had a wonderful digital exchange over a few weeks.  A few weeks after initial contact, a package came in the mail from Ireland with an audio tape and a copy of the out of print music.  Having the music is incredible, making the contact with Sean’s family and talking about him, his death, the condition of his estate, and the troubles with getting his music into print and out to the public, “IRREPLACEABLE.”  This could have never happened without the technology and the communities that facilitated my deep connection to those who love his music.

There seems to be a shift in thinking about sources or information.  It is becoming increasingly easier to move from secondary to primary information sources.  Today the guidance office announced a student with the last name Macaroni.  Amazed at the fact that we could have a student with that last name, I asked a student near by if it is indeed true.  He too was amazed at the possibility.  I choose to go to the primary source.....still waiting for the answer.  What do you think the chances are of the middle name, “Cheesey?”

I have found that there needs to first be the “willingness to participate.”  Our school tried mandating blogs through an unclear understanding of what is a “Professional Learning Community.”  There were no norms, reflective processes or prior training in appropriate protocols.  I am interested in how we can urge, without mandating, individual's participation in such collaborative blogging, external or internal communities develop and support.....building a “Trust Based Community.” (p. 73) 

“Technology allows us to create a virtual think tank of professional experts, students, parents, and many others, all learning forward as we determine what’s best for children in this fast-changing world.” (p.70)

The Connected Educator: Chapter 1

The Connected Educator 

Chapter 1 

“Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads.”  --Herman Melville

• “Theories of social learning--the learning that occurs within a social context such as school-based learning communities, online networks, or serendipitous connection--suggest that people learn best from one another.” (p.25)

Do-It-Yourself Learning

• “Technology offers constant opportunities for self-directed and self-selected learning.  Educators--through connections with each other, new research, and continually evolving content--have opportunities to interact, reflect, and focus without controls by experts.” (p34)

I appreciate how this self-directed, “do-it-yourself” attitude toward learning and technology begins.  Individuals initially connect to diverse communities where they begin to understand, knowingly or unknowingly, “How they best learn.” As learners connect deeper they become better at finding the communities that learn, create and express in ways that best extend their learning and interconnectedness.

• “Connected Learning is learning through relationships” (P65)

A shift in my own perceptions as a “do-it-yourself” learner happened in a way that has adjusted my ability to learn.  I have always referred to my self as, “Not being a reader.  I do not like to read as it is hard for me.  The idea of sitting and reading makes me feel like I am not accomplishing anything.  Terry, a friend who is the head of the Literacy Department at URI, said that I was a reader.  She said that, “You are constantly reading--magazines, professional journals, reports, texts, emails.  You do not like to read for fun, but you are reading all the time.”  I now preface, "I do not like to read." with, “Unless it has pictures.....” 

This created slight shift in my own perceptions of what learning is and from where it comes.  My idea of what reading was, was linked to leisure reading.  I maintained a misguided devaluing of the learning that comes from technical reading and “informational text,” which ironically is now a major aspect of the new English Common Core Standards.

Week 2: I Didn't Know I Couldn't Do That

Do we have to use this geeky technology in our classrooms?  Will it make our kids smarter, work harder, learn more?  Technology is changing at a rapid pace.  Are we changing with it?  How do we prepare our students for an "unknown" world? 

“Will it make our kids smarter, work harder, learn more?”

I feel that these three statements are by-products of one concept...Good Teaching.  In her book Mindset: the New Psychology of Success Carolyn Dweck uses the phrase “Effective Effort.”  This is how I visualize this concept to my students.  “You can expend a lot of effort going around in a circle with your foot nailed to the floor.  It is not until you understand that using the other side of the hammer, that you can pull the nail and move forward.”  Grant Wiggins calls this “Self Adjustment,” in his article, Feedback: How Learning Occurs Wiggins talks about a practicing basketball player not being able to improve until they analyze their moves then self adjust their technique.  It is what we do everyday when driving, biking or working to work......or in our classrooms.  Our jobs as educators is to give our students the reflective abilities that lead to “Effective Effort“ or “Self Adjustment”

I liked the statistic in Did You Know 4.0. “Among larger U.S. companies, 17% have disciplined an employee for violating blog or message board policies.”

This brings to mind the ethics and/or morality in this digital age.  What are we doing to really educate ourselves and our students in the “ethics or moralities” of the 21st century?  These, like many things are evolving with rules that change constantly.  What are ethics, what does morality mean?  Was it ethical that Shepard Fairey altered an AP photo to use as artwork that was then used for the Obama 2008 election?  Should people be allowed to create and disseminate hate under the guise of “free speech” with no moral or legal accountability for the death of an overseas diplomat and US citizens?  

There was an interesting interview on XMPR with an Middle Eastern woman who said, “We don’t need less free speech but more.”   Her point was that the US has a culture that accepts free speech, the good and the bad.  The Middle East would greatly benefit from the opportunity of working through the good and the band aspects of free speech to see that differing opinions are not the end of a culture, faith or society. I hope we can figure this one out.

Week 2: Whole Lotta Information Going On

Essential Question:

With instant internet connection and collaboration, is this a hindrance or a benefit to education?

“Is this a hindrance or a benefit?”  First, I feel that I need to say that It is a reality.  Within that reality are two facts.  It is not going away and it is always evolving.  If we can shift our thinking to that of the “glass half full” we begin move our potentials as educators towards the power of the web.  

There is so much to digest in what is presented in this weeks writings and videos.  Here are just a few ideas that struck a chord with me.

In the Fisch's 2007 video, Did you Know 2.0 presents that “technical content doubles every two years, and that by 2010, it is predicted to double every 72 hours.”  I am not sure if we attained that 2012 goal.  Whether or not we have reached that goal is secondary to the questions.  Are we educating our students in ways to identify, sift through, and decipher information so that appropriate content aligns with current learning and is authentic to what is truth? Are we preparing students in the varied ways of digital literacy?  How do they read for understanding, quickly?  How do we write across new and evolving formats?  How do we work collectively and collaboratively in presenting information?  These are the questions we have to ask our educational systems when challenged with the exponentially expanding universe of knowledge and information.  I can only think of the “Borg” when seeing the word collective and the “singularity” that is predicted in the 2020’s.

“We are currently preparing students for jobs and technologies that don’t yet exist...in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.” 

When I look at the state of the classroom in my school and in many schools.  Educators are shifting the presentation of understanding through Problems Based Education.  Students are presented with an issue and the ways to individually, or collaboratively “show their work” as they present their conclusions.  Are we also prepared and knowledgeable in the many facets of visual literacy?  A favorite quote that I have posted in my music and art classrooms is, “Know where to look or know who to ask.”  Part of my job as an educator is to encourage this as a starting place in students moving forward in learning and the initial steps to taking responsibility for their own education.  

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

-Albert Einstein

Week 1: The Robots Caught Again

Here is my first blog post.  This image that I am using for wallpaper on the blog, is the framed poster above Leonard's bed on "Big Bang Theory."