Plan B: The Next Generation

Hi Everyone

The introduction to my lesson plan (Plan B: The Next Generation) follows below. I tried to upload the full document on our EdTech Leaders Online classroom site, but it exceeds the maximum upload size permitted. So I’ve posted the full lesson here as a Microsoft Word attachment.

This has been a very exciting class. I’m sorry to see it end. I look forward to continuing our work together on Jim’s Ning.

Carol

Introduction

“There is a growing recognition that kids’ passion for digital media has been ignited more by peer group sociability and play than academic learning…This gap between in-school and out-of-school experience represents a gap in children’s engagement in learning, a gap in our research and understandings, and a missed opportunity to reenergize public education. The daily practice of teaching is drastically improved if educators can come from a perspective that understands the behaviors of their students. If all they see from their students are behaviors that appear foreign or are prohibited by the school (e.g. cell phones and texting), then educators are missing out on the myriad of ways to connect with their students and youth culture. Because of the gap between in-school and out-of-school experience with digital media, making a conscious effort to empathize with life for today’s teenagers is a prerequisite for good teaching.”

Digital Media and the iGeneration: A High School Teacher’s Guide to Debunking the Myths and Understanding the Reality of Today’s Media Savvy Youth [from the Description and Rationale in the Book Prospectus, Corwin Press (In press). [More information about the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation funded project carried out by researchers at University of Southern California and University of California, Berkeley can be found at Digital Youth Research: Kids' Informal Learning with Digital Media, http://digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu/.]

Every fall, I teach a 13-week course titled Impact of Technology at Hampshire Educational Collaborative (http://www.collaborative.org) in Northampton. That course focuses on technology tools for teaching and learning. Participants are typically teachers seeking certification or pursuing advanced degrees. Since they range in technology skill levels and abilities, we start by exploring conventional software tools like Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Excel, Inspiration, ReadPlease! (text-to-speech), and Adobe Photoshop Elements (introductory image editor). Other classes cover: media literacy (copyright, plagiarism and how to determine the legitimacy of Web content), Internet resources for teaching and learning (lesson plans and best practice strategies), Weblogs (Blogs) for communication and collaborative learning, and assessment to meet the needs of diverse learners.

A recent meta-analysis by Cisco Systems and Metiri Group (2008) examined evidence from several research studies on the value of multimedia for education. Researchers concluded that “multimodal learning–using many modes and strategies that cater to individual learners’ needs and capacities–is more effective than traditional, unimodal learning, which uses a single mode or strategy” (Stansbury 2008, p. 6). In other words, “adding visuals to verbal (textual and/or auditory) instruction can result in significant gains in basic or higher-order learning, if applied appropriately. Students using a well-designed combination of visuals and text learn more than students who use only text…” (Stansbury 2008, p. 6). Since our students also exhibit a passion for digital media, and these media support multimodal learning by facilitating the integration of text, pictures, animation, and narration into classroom instruction, it stands to reason that lessons incorporating multimodal designs can both motivate and encourage learning while simultaneously helping students to learn more efficiently. The research confirms that: “students engaged in learning that incorporates multimodal designs, on average, outperform students who learn using traditional approaches with single modes, the report says” (Stansbury 2008, p. 6). To accommodate both the multimodal and “digital native” (Prensky 2001) propensities of 21^st century students and give teachers access to additional technology tools they can use with students, I will provide learners with hands-on training in several conventional and Web 2.0 technology tools for enhanced productivity, information sharing and collaborative exchange.

Standards:

TL-V Productivity and Professional Practice (http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForTechnologyFacilitatorsandLeaders/Technology_Leadership_Standards.htm#Product)

Educational technology leaders design, develop, evaluate and model products created using technology resources to improve and enhance their productivity and professional practice. Educational technology leaders:

A. Use technology resources to engage in ongoing professional development and lifelong learning. Candidates:

1. design, prepare, and conduct professional development activities to present at the school/district level and at professional technology conferences to support ongoing professional growth related to technology.

2. plan and implement policies that support district-wide professional growth opportunities for staff, faculty, and administrators.

B. Continually evaluate and reflect on professional practice to make informed decisions regarding the use of technology in support of student learning. Candidates:

1. based on evaluations make recommendations for changes in professional practices regarding the use of technology in support of student learning.

C. Apply technology to increase productivity. Candidates:

1. model the integration of data from multiple software applications using advanced features of applications such as word processing, database, spreadsheet, communication, and other tools into a product.

D. Use technology to communicate and collaborate with peers, parents, and the larger community in order to nurture student learning. Candidates:

1. model and implement the use of telecommunications tools and resources to foster and support information sharing, remote information access, and communication between students, school staff, parents, and local community.

2. organize, coordinate, and participate in an online learning community related to the use of technology to support learning.

3. organize and coordinate online collaborative curricular projects with corresponding team activities/responsibilities to build bodies of knowledge around specific topics.

4. design, modify, maintain, and facilitate the development of Web pages and sites that support communication and information access between the entire school district and local/state/national/international communities.

Resources:

• Cisco Systems and Metiri Group (2008). Multimodal Learning through Media: What the Research Says. http://www.cisco.com/web/strategy/docs/education/Multimodal-Learning-Through-Media.pdf.
• ISTE (2008) Technology Leadership Standards (http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForTechnologyFacilitatorsandLeaders/Technology_Leadership_Standards.htm).
• Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5), 1–2. Available: http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf
• Stansbury, Meris (March 26, 2008). Analysis: How multimedia can improve instruction. eSchoolNews May 2008, Vol. 11 (5), p. 6. Retrieved from Web May 15, 2008 from http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/?i=53243

Originally posted in: Learning and Teaching with Web 2.0 Tools

Saturday, May 10, 2008, 01:54 PM

Posted in response to the question:

1. Discuss the strategies you can use to keep your students safe while allowing them access to the tools on the Read/Write Web.

The world of K-12 safety (or its dangers) has a different appearance depending on your place in the grand scheme of bytes. (Think “Blind Men and the Elephant!”) Are you an administrator, a teacher, a parent, a student, or an IT (Information Technology) technician?

Let’s use me as an example. I’m a Technology Coordinator, with an education background. My network technicians, on the other hand, occasionally view education as the enemy. They want to lock software down, make the network(s) safe from hackers or unwanted visitors, stop kids from using proxies to get around AUP (Acceptable Use Policy) rules, and more. They see instructional requirements as being too dangerous, intrusive, and messy. I do understand their point. They must care and feed nearly 900 computers. The tighter their lockdown of network and system resources, the less downtime and fewer problems they have.

Teachers, on the other hand, have content to teach. They view technology as the bridge they can cross to “talk” with and engage their “digital native” students. The last thing they seek is a Content Filter that blocks access to a teachable moment. A case in point as illustration: A couple of years ago, a tech-savvy teacher in our district thought to teach a lesson on media literacy using a well-known “hate” site titled Martin Luther King, Jr.: A True Historical Examination (http:www.martinlutherking.org). Her culturally and ethnically diverse students learned a lot in that class particularly with respect to evaluating Web content for “authenticity, applicability, authorship, bias, and usability” (Schrock 2008, http://school.discoveryeducation.com/schrockguide/eval.html). Youngsters engaged in animated thoughtful discussions about racism, hate, and the dangers of accepting Web content at face value. In the end, that lesson helped students understand and use critical evaluation skills needed to make wise decisions about content validity.

To do the lesson, however, she needed access to the site, which was then (and remains today) blocked by our Content Filter. I did unblock it unreservedly and without hesitation for the duration of her lesson. When I shared my decision with the District Superintendent, he reacted in a way that surprised me. “If the student goes home and logs onto the site to show his parents what he learned in school, we’ll get calls from angry parents wondering what in the heck we’re teaching their children. If the newspaper gets wind of what we’re teaching and takes the lesson out of context in a less than sensitive article with a sensationalist headline, we’ll have to spend hours putting out those fires. I’d rather that not happen. Block the site. Have her teach media literacy using a different resource.” I hadn’t thought about the issue from that perspective. I was thinking like an educator. He was thinking as an administrator. His position made sense (in a sad way of course).

That happened a couple of years ago, but on Friday this week, one of my techies conducted his routine remote investigation of Web sites being visited at the high school. Our tech office has a “protocol analyzer” (aka “sniffer”) that we can use for off-site investigations. This technical solution is in keeping with Nancy Willard’s Education World article suggestion that states: “Staff should periodically and randomly… [use] technical monitoring tools, such as real time remote access monitoring tools in computer labs or even intelligent content analysis monitoring….” Cyber Savvy: Supporting Safe and Responsible Internet Use A Web 2.0 Approach to Internet Safety (2007, http://www.education-world.com/a_tech/columnists/willard/willard008.shtml).

In our District, teachers are supposed to supervise student Web access. I’m sure they do the best they can, but on those occasions when supervision is less than perfect, it’s always best to have a Plan B. Our technician randomly (but regularly) investigates who has been surfing to which sites on the Net. He enters the URLS of unacceptable pages (i.e., proxies or back door paths to outlawed social networking sites) into our Web blocking content filter database. It’s a tedious manual data entry process that is never ending. That day he discovered several students visiting MySpace. Those very smart “digital natives” were using “proxy” sites to get around the fact that our Web blocker had locked out access to MySpace.com. This reality is in full keeping with Willard’s finding that: “Even the most die-hard techies now recognize that filtering systems are not the solution they were promised to be. In many schools, students regularly bypass the filter — not to get to porn sites, but to access their favorite social networking sites.”

We all know that the Internet poses “risks to young people in terms of increased exposure to sexually inappropriate content, contributions to negative beliefs and attitudes, stranger danger, cyberbullying and access to inappropriate content from sites which may promote harmful behaviours [sic]” (Byron 2008, p. 4). But there’s also the question of their using the Internet to chat with friends rather than for educational purposes. For example, even though our students receive instruction on the District AUP each year and even though they sign the AUP agreement, many of them blatantly ignore their signed contracts to use sites like “hideeverywebsite,” “unblock Myspace proxy,” “autobypass.com,” “unhideweb.com” to head for sites like MySpace. Proxy sites to MySpace are as plentiful as dandelions in springtime. If I had a nickel for every proxy site I could use to access MySpace, I could travel first class to Paris and have money left over to pay for a ticket to the top of the Eiffel Tower.

Willard recommends that “Schools must shift focus from reliance on filtering to better supervision and monitoring. Schools must create conditions in which exists a high potential that misuse will be detected and lead to a consequence.” Those filters don’t really do the job as well as we’d like. We choose to block social networking, shopping, and music sharing sites, but the filters are ineffective. Our random back-door monitoring does detect who is visiting what, when. But we would need someone monitoring full time to be able to catch ALL culprits (including teachers) shopping online, downloading ill-gotten MP3 files, or using the Internet for non-educational purposes.

We have been very successful in catching students contravening AUP guidelines. We know which computers visit what sites. I’ve called assistant principals at both the high school and middle school on a few occasions to send them down to the computer labs to confront the students who are surfing inappropriately. Their computer privileges have been revoked as a result. But again as Willard points out: “… it should be recognized that suspension of Internet access privileges just causes more work for teachers.

I’m for requiring a service contribution to the school rather than suspension as Willard suggests, and also for continuing to maintain “close monitoring status.” Appropriate online usage also requires that we role model proper behavior (no shopping please!). Additionally, we must teach students how to evaluate Web content, what to do when they find inappropriate content (i.e., turn the monitor off and report the site to a teacher), and how to use Internet resources responsibly. Understanding the nature of this huge online elephant is a good first step.

Resources:

• Byron, Tanya (2008). Safer Children in a Digital World: Executive Summary. Retrieved May 9 2008 from http://www.dfes.gov.uk/byronreview/pdfs/Executive%20summary.pdf
• Schrock, Kathy (2008). Teacher Helpers: Critical Evaluation Information. Retrieved from Web on May 9, 2008 from http://school.discoveryeducation.com/schrockguide/eval.html
• Willard, Nancy (2007). Cyber Savvy: Supporting Safe and Responsible Internet Use A Web 2.0 Approach to Internet Safety. Education World, Retrieved May 9 2008 from http://www.education-world.com/a_tech/columnists/willard/willard008.shtml

by Carol Holzberg – Sunday, May 4, 2008, 03:17 PM

Posted in response to: Session 5: Incorporating Podcasting and Video Streaming (April 21 – May 4)
1. Discuss the benefits and challenges that you anticipate from integrating streaming audio and video into your classroom, school, or district. When discussing the challenges brainstorm the steps you might take to overcome these challenges.

Hey everyone, Welcome Back!

Podcasts, Video, Audio, oh my. Anne Marie did a terrific job of enumerating the challenges of integrating streaming audio and video in classroom instruction, so I’m not going to reinvent the wheel. For challenges she lists: “bandwidth constraints, inferior technology and budgets” (Now all I need to do is…”Just Do It!”, Anne Marie Salvon – Friday, May 2, 2008, 04:51 PM).

Stephen adds another constraint commonly faced by dedicated educational technologists like us, i.e., the reluctance of older, experienced teachers to integrate new tools in their instructional toolkit. He refers to an English teacher colleague who is both cynical and skeptical about new tools, reducing Web 2.0 technologies to “a bunch of bull____!” i.e., a nefarious plot hatched by “corporate America selling billions of dollars of technology.” (I feel the trend, Stephen McCabe – Wednesday, April 30, 2008, 10:55 AM).

Convincing technophobes to give technology a try may not be where we should focus our efforts. The gadgets we like so much probably won’t work for them anyway. Stephen’s colleague reminds me of the Peanuts’ cartoon character, Pigpen. No matter where he goes or what he wears, a cloud of dirt always hovers around him. Regrettably, it spreads to those who hang out with him too. (Pigpen Hoedown, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ4c7E57P8Q and Peanuts Snoopy Pigpen Regina Carpet Cleaner Commercial, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXghPWDCjXM.

Folks who are anxious about technology may be anxious for a reason. Perhaps they have technology karma! All we can hope for is that our students wax poetic about how much they learn from our Web 2.0 rich classes and how much they enjoy learning the content we teach. And, if they also score higher on those standardized tests (much like the students at Elk Grove Calvine High School who achieved higher scores when teachers integrated unitedstreaming clips into classroom instruction (Video Goes to School, Part 1, http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/index.cfm?i=36294&page=2), administrators will take note and reluctant teachers will be motivated to improve their teaching bag of tricks.

Even students don’t score higher on those tests, if it’s the technology that helps them stay focused and on task for longer periods of time doing something well because it has become personally meaningful and becoming better at writing or communicating because of it, heck that’s a big plus for me!

The benefits that Anne Marie and Stephen list as reasons why we should persevere and continue to use Web 2.0 tools with our students are quite compelling. Anne Marie points out that more 90% of her 6th graders learn to use a computer before they learn to ride a bike and notes that: “The fact that the Millennials have been engaged by audio and video since they were born is the number one benefit to the integration of it in their classrooms.” Stephen writes: “These technology tools are interesting to students and will motivate them. This is their electronic medium and they love to explore and communicate via these technology tools.” You bet!

We should probably think of these technologies from several vantage points. Integrating streaming audio and video into our classes does add a dynamic instructional component confirmed by the following quotes gleaned from some of this week’s reads:

• [video] “makes the teachers better by modeling different ways to explain the same content (Video Goes to School, Part 1, http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/index.cfm?i=36294&page=2).
• “video collections available via the internet allow teachers to easily locate and show small portions of the video that complement the lesson–and that correlate with specific state or national standards” (Video Goes to School, Part 1, http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/index.cfm?i=36294&page=2).

However, Wes Fryer adds another dimension that we must certainly consider when looking for the benefits associated with streaming audio and video, i.e., the potential for students to produce for an audience outside the classroom (and by audience I mean more than just their friends, parents, or relatives). Fryer writes:

• “The potential of publishing for a global audience is precisely the characteristic of podcasts which gives them so much motivational power for student writing…Students can get very fired up when they realize other people besides their classroom teacher are listening to and responding to the ideas they are sharing via a classroom podcast.” (Fryer, Wesley A., Tools For The Teks: Integrating Technology In The Classroom: Classroom Audio Podcasting, http://www.wtvi.com/teks/05_06_articles/classroom-audio-podcasting.html) [The same thing can be said for students producing their own vidcasts!]

This second point reminds me of Ron Berger’s work from back in the day before “Wikinomics.” Berger is one of those nationally acclaimed teachers championed by the likes of Howard Gardner, Deborah Meier, Theodore Sizer and Carol Holzberg (me!). He wrote a book titled: An Ethic of Excellence: Building a Culture of Craftsmanship with Students (2003). In the text, he describes how he teaches kids to do their best work, take pride in what they do, and produce work that is worthy of pride. When students perceive that people care about how well they do, they do better work, preferring not to let their audience down. He believes this craft of excellence develops with support from a school culture that encourages kids to “volunteer, to work together, and to care deeply about the quality of what they [do]…an ethic, a culture, which supports and compels students to try and to succeed…It’s a long-term commitment. It’s a way of life.” (Berger 2003, p. 4).

I guess what I’ve decided as I write this is that while I am committed to Web 2.0 technologies (living and breathing them excessively to try and figure out how I can use them for teaching and instruction), there is more than one way to use them. Some may appreciate them as tools to make content more intelligible; others may appreciate the way these tools motivate students to produce content for larger authentic audiences interested in the results of student work. When students produce for the outside world, they are more likely to develop a passion for quality work.

Bye for now,
Carol

P.S. I watched Robert Thompson’s 4 Generations: The Water Buffalo Movie (http://t2.com/waterbuffalo/) and like Beverly, I found it very moving. Heck…I cried. It’s only 8 minutes long, but very powerful. I’ve already shared the link with others. The video reminded me of the beautiful work that Marco Torres and his students do with film, teaching the art of representation without being literal, using audio to create mood, writing poetry with moving images. Take a look at some of the videos by Torres’ students, e.g., Ham and Eggs (http://www.sfett.com/html_movie/Ican5/ham_and_eggs.html) filmed by Elizabeth and Rosa Ruvalcaba. Or, if you teach elementary school science, Marcus Marcal’s You Don’t Know Beans is a must see too (http://www.sfett.com/html_movie/Ican5/you_don’t_know_beans.html)! Finally, just because sometimes I need to step back and give thanks (you might too), watch Hero by Joe Perez (http://www.sfett.com/html_movie/Ican6/hero.html). It does have a happy ending.

P.P.S. I have a Skype account. I have used it to chat with my anthropology mentor of days gone by. When it works, it works really well. But sometimes like cell phone, it cuts out. A PhD student at Capella University wanted to have me join in on a conference call with her mentor (I sit on her committee). If memory serves me correctly, all 3 of us we chatted simultaneously using Skype’s conference call capabilities.

I access my Skype account from a Belkin Wi-Fi Phone for Skype. This amazing wireless device makes local or long distance calls without connecting to a computer or a telephone jack. It’s “wire free!” All it needs is access to a secure (WEP, WPA or WPA2 with PSK) or open Wi-Fi 802.11b/g network. Think free hot spots like Internet cafés, hotels, conference rooms, airports, local libraries, or municipal access points! (Belkin Corporation, http://www.belkin.com/skype/howitworks/, 877.736.5771, $180 from Belkin). It looks just like a phone. I’ve also Skyped from my desktop computer but it requires that I hook up a headset so I can talk and listen and I find the headset a bit awkward.

Resources:
Berger, Ron (2003). An Ethic of Excellence: Building a Culture of Craftsmanship in Schools. Heinemann, ISBN-10: 0325005966, http://www.amazon.com/Ethic-Excellence-Building-Culture-Craftsmanship/dp/0325005966

Branigan, Cara (April 1, 2005) Video Goes to School, Part 1. ESchoolNews, retrieved from the Web, May 4, 2008 from http://www.eschoolnews.com//news/top-news/index.cfm?i=36294.

Fryer, Wesley A. (2005-06). Tools For The Teks: Integrating Technology In The Classroom: Classroom Audio Podcasting. Retrieved from the Web May 4, 2008 from http://www.wtvi.com/teks/05_06_articles/classroom-audio-podcasting.html

Another Voice Heard From
by Carol S. Holzberg

(Originally posted in class on Thursday, May 1, 2008, 07:57 PM)

Hi Everyone
The assignment for this week’s EdTech Leaders Web 2.0 forum requested that we discuss the benefits and challenges we anticipate from integrating streaming audio and video into our classroom, school, or district, then brainstorm the steps we might take to overcome these challenges. So I began working through the assigned readings and gathering my thoughts for a response. But in the interim another article crossed my path and I got distracted. So my first post in Form 5 isn’t about streaming audio/video. It’s about blogging. I want to share my thoughts about a blogging article I just read. I promise to reflect upon audio and video streaming before the end of the posting period.

Here goes:
As if we needed vindication and proof that our efforts to integrate Web 2.0 resources are indeed right on target, here is some information about a report that will (hopefully) make you purr with delight. It’s titled Blogging helps encourage teen writing and the subtitle reads: “Survey reveals that student bloggers are more prolific and appreciate the value of writing more than their peers” published in eSchool News on April 30, 2008 (http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/?i=53663;_hbguid=e0da166a-2d66-434d-9c7c-01286ec3b126). You’ll need an eSchoolNews account to access it, but registration is free.

The headline and article grabbed me right from the get-go because it shouted:

Teens write a lot, but they do not think of their emails, instant and text messages as writing. This disconnect matters because teens believe good writing is an essential skill for success and that more writing instruction at school would help them.

So I used Diigo (http://www.diigo.com) to make it more accessible to me and also to highlight important ideas in the article. Diigo would let me share those highlights with you through any Web browser if I so choose, but I’ve not made my highlights public yet. So I used Diigo to extract all my private highlights to the computer clipboard (it has a highlighter to note important points) and now I’m posting those excerpts here (through a simple Paste).

Here are the article clips (quotes) I think are VERY important:

• Blogging is helping many teens become more prolific writers. [We knew that!]
• Survey conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project [this is where the data come from.]
• Teen bloggers, however, write more frequently both online and offline, the study says. [students don't like to write, but if students blog for whatever reason, they tend to write more and in this case more = better because they practice, practice, practice]
• Forty-seven percent of teen bloggers write outside of school for personal reasons several times a week or more, compared with 33 percent of teens without blogs. Sixty-five percent of teen bloggers believe that writing is essential to later success in life; 53 percent of non-bloggers say the same thing.
• Bradley A. Hammer, who teaches in Duke University’s writing program, says the kind of writing students do on blogs and other digital formats actually can be better than the writing style they learn in school, because it is better suited to true intellectual pursuit than is SAT-style writing. [this is key for me…it's a home run really!]
• “In real ways, blogging and other forms of virtual debate actually foster the very types of intellectual exchange, analysis, and argumentative writing that universities value,” [this Bradley dude] wrote in an op-ed piece last August.

So why do I think this is so signficant?
Teens write for a variety of reasons, the report notes:

as part of a school assignment, to stay in touch with friends, to share their artistic creations with others, or simply to record their thoughts. Teens say they’re more motivated to write when they can choose topics that are relevant to their lives and interests, and they report greater enjoyment of school writing when they have the chance to write creatively. Teens also report that writing for an audience motivates them to write well and more frequently–and blogs are one way of providing this type of audience.

[Contrary to] conventional wisdom, the study also found that:

the digital generation is shunning computer use for most writing assignments. About two-thirds of teens say they typically do their school writing by hand. And for personal writing outside school, longhand is even more popular–the preferred form for nearly three-quarters of teens.

[This really threw me. I'm still not sure I understand the implications of this finding. I really don't understand how it is possible that students prefer to write longhand when they understand at a gut level how much easier it is to correct, edit, improve, and re-draft something that's already in electronic format. This suggests they write on paper when they are not at the computer, e.g., on the subway, at the lunch table, in a car, whatever. Or does it mean something else?]

Bottom line!
The gist of what the article suggests is that blogging can help your students become better writers. I know that blogging is not the ONLY way to help students become better writers. I for one don’t like to blog! But blogging may make sense for some students and because of that fact, I guess it’s up to us as technologists to provide a blogging option for students who will appreciate it.
Carol

P.S. THANKS JIM for letting me know about Diigo. It’s truly an amazing tool because if I read any online article at work, I can Diigo that article and have it available to me at home or wherever, with all the comments and annotations that I attached during my first reading.

P.P.S. One very important question!!!!! How do we grow the writing skills of students (or educators like me) who would prefer to become better writers in a less public arena than a blog?

Resources

• School News staff (2008). Blogging helps encourage teen writing. ESchoolNews (Wednesday, April 30, 2008) retrieved from Web May 1, 2008 from http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/?i=53663
• Lenhart, Amanda, Arafeh, Sousan, Smith, Aaron, et al. Writing, Technology and Teens (2008), retrieved from the Web on May 1, 2008 from http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Writing_Report_FINAL3.pdf

Some schools/districts ban YouTube videos from the local network. Maybe that’s a good idea. But if managed appropriately and supervised by teachers, and if students are taught the importance of responsible Internet access, then YouTube can be mined for the fabulous resources that it has.

Here’s a link to a great movie that explains what a wiki is and why wikis are useful tools for group planning and collaborative projects. Think group projects for class work!

I found the video by following a link to a resource posted on the Wiki category at Classroom 2.0 Social Network Discussions (http://www.classroom20wiki.com/Wikis). The video is by Lee LeFever and it’s one of many in his Common Craft Show Series of short explanatory videos in plain English. This guy sure has a knack for making the difficult simple.

So here’s the link to the YouTube video Wikis in Plain English (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLY). It makes me want to go camping.
Carol

If it’s Friday it must be time for figuring out how to use a new tool.
This Web 2.0 class I’m taking with Jim Walker and Pioneer Valley (MA) colleagues has been a real roller coaster ride of ups and downs. Ups because I’m learning a lot; Downs because I haven’t figured out how to use the new tools as seamlessly as I use my Web 1.0 tools (i.e., grab and go).

So thanks to Jim, I’m now playing with Diigo (http://www.diigo.com/). But because it’s all Geek to me, I’ve headed right to Diigo Help page (http://help.diigo.com/), where I will park myself and read all about how to “Bookmark, highlight, and add sticky notes to any web page.” I also intend to learn how to pronounce “Diigo” and why it’s named so strangely.

I’ll keep you all posted.

Carol

Greetings,

Blogging is not my style of communication. I prefer email because I like to write with a face in mind. Plus, I’ve discovered the hard way that it’s really best to compose in a word processor, then paste to my blog. The last time I tried to post directly online, a single glitch at upload wiped out my bytes of wisdom and I had nothing to show for my efforts after 45 minutes of work. Microsoft Word is so old school I feel guilty about using it for composition and wordsmithing. But I know it saves regularly and that’s pretty reassuring.

This week’s blurb will be about a program I just reviewed for Technology & Learning (http://www.techlearning.com/content/about/tl_current.php0). It’s not Microsoft Office 2008 (Macintosh), although my review of that product is currently online at the magazine’s Web site (http://www.techlearning.com/showArticle.php?articleID=196605064). Rather, it’s the new version of Kidspiration by the folks who also publish Inspiration. Kidspiration 3 brings concept mapping to the K-3 desktop. Folks at Inspiration claim the program is for grades K-5, but Kidspiration 3 has a “kiddie” look to it which older students find too young. They prefer Inspiration because it’s a more “grown up” tool.

There are those who say that concept mapping applications like Kidspiration or Inspiration accommodate the visual learner because users can work with pictures to represent words and ideas. But that would be doing Kidspiration 3 a disservice. The versatile program has tools for visual, auditory and tactile learning and this version has really beefed up kid-friendly tools aligned with NCTM (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics) Curriculum Focal Points for grades K-5 (http://www.nctmmedia.org/cfp/focal_points_by_grade.pdf).

Like previous versions, Kidspiration 3 features the familiar Picture and Writing views. In these workspaces kids use pictures to represent ideas, convert pictures to words, hear text read aloud, and transfer work to a word processor for further editing. The added Math View includes 5 highly interactive math activities targeting problem solving, reasoning, and critical thinking in Numbers and Operations (for whole numbers and fractions), Geometry (angles, orientation, and both 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional shapes), Measurement (including area and length), and even Algebra (multiples, factors, patterns and number sequences).

I haven’t seen an educational product this good in a really long time. It has several activities you can use with your students, plus really good online help with more resources if you want to build on the work of other educators (http://www.inspiration.com/productinfo/kidspiration/using_kids/index.cfm). If you teach younger children or work with students who could benefit from visual, auditory and tactile learning supports, this product is certainly worth a second look. Download a 30-day free trial (http://www.inspiration.com/freetrial/index.cfm) and give it a test drive.

Company: Inspiration Software, Inc, http://www.inspiration.com, 800-877-4292
System Requirements: Macintosh or Windows; Will work with older (PowerPC G3 or Pentium II) or newer processors running at 266 MHz or faster (Windows) or 300 MHz or faster (Macintosh); OS X version 10.2.9 or later; Windows 98 or later; 192 MB RAM or more (Macintosh); 128 MB RAM or more (Window), 75 MB free hard drive space.
Price: $69 (single copy); $310 (5-computer licenses); $550 (10-computer licenses); $895 (20-computer licenses); volume pricing available.

About the Author: Carol S. Holzberg, PhD, cholzberg@gmail.com, (Shutesbury, Massachusetts) is an educational technology specialist and anthropologist who writes for several publications. She works as District Technology Coordinator for Greenfield Public Schools and the Greenfield Center School (Greenfield, Massachusetts) and teaches in both the Licensure program at Hampshire Educational Collaborative (Northampton, MA) and online in the School of Education at Capella University. Send comments or queries via email to: cholzberg@gmail.com.

The non-profit OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) foundation provides full-featured low-cost XO laptops to elementary school age children in developing countries. Considering the high percentage of American youngsters who qualify for either free or reduced lunch vouchers and the fact that the Federal government is projecting a reduced technology budget for K-12 public schools in FY 2008-09 (http://www.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/budget09/summary/edlite-section3.html#eliminations), I’m thinking there should be a parallel initiative targeting American elementary school students too.

The petite XO is about the size and weight of a small textbook. It has a built-in kid-size carrying handle, tiny 80+ key-sealed rubber membrane keyboard, and two rotating adjustable bunny-ear antennae. Despite its toylike demeanor, this device is NO toy! It’s a full-blown computer equipped with:two sets of four-direction cursor-control keys

• one touchpad
• two internal stereo speakers
• one stereo monophonic microphone
• one standard 3.5mm 3-pin switched stereo audio headphone jack
• one standard 3.5mm 2-pin switched mono microphone jack
• three USB 2.0 connectors (I connected a 2-button scroll wheel USB optical mouse that worked without my having to install any drivers)
• one expansion slot for an MMC/SD card
• an integrated color vision video camera capable of 640×480 resolution at 30FPS (frames per second)
• a pivoting, reversible 7.5” dual-mode TFT (Thin Film Transistor) color/monochrome screen capable of 1200 (H) × 900 (V) or 200 DPI (Dots per Inch) resolution (optimized for computing in bright sunlight).

The XO connects to the Internet via Wireless Access Point (WiFi hotspot), School Server (mesh network), or Simple mesh network (i.e., other XO devices). It supports 802.11b/g (2.4GHz) Wi-Fi, but lacks an Ethernet port. In a “mesh” network, each laptop becomes a “node in the mesh” of other local users. Every computer connects directly to each of the others. If one computer stops working, the rest can still communicate with one another, directly or through one or more intermediate devices. The XO is even capable of mesh operation when CPU is powered off.

As far as software is concerned, the XO is no Windows or Macintosh computer. It’s outfitted with the free Fedora Linux-based open source operating system and features built-in support for Java virtual machine, Adobe’s Flash Player and five programming environments: (1) Python, for the user interface, (2) Javascript for browser-based scripting; (3) Csound, for music and audio; (4) Squeak, a version of the object-oriented programming language called Smalltalk; and (5) Turtle Art, a kid-oriented Logo programming language that supports critical thinking activities for mathematics, language, music, robotics, telecommunications, and science.

Additionally, this kid-friendly laptop comes with several applications (which it calls “activities”). These include:

• Browse, a Web browser built on the Firefox browser engine
• Write, an open source word processor
• Record, a multimedia still video and audio authoring and playback environment
• Paint for creative painting and digital doodling
• TamTam for music composition, jamming, and synthesis
• Read, a PDF Reader
• Calculate, a simple calculator
• News Reader, an RSS subscription reader to handle the feeds that download to your computer when you click those orange RSS buttons on certain Web pages
• Etoys, a media-rich authoring environment with 2D and 3D graphics, images, text, videos, sound and MIDI elements for the design games and other projects
• Gmail, Google’s email client
• Chat for instant-messaging text talk
• Journal which keeps a record of all that users do so they can retrieve or delete a document or photo, return to an activity, or access external media like flash drives and the school server’s backup system
• Measure, an Oscilloscope and Data Logging tool
• Memorize, a memory game
• Terminal to control the XO directly from the Command Prompt, and more.

Users can easily download additional activities, connect to the Internet to access online references like encyclopedias and dictionaries, or work collaboratively with online tools such as Buzzword (http://www.buzzword.com/#o) or Google Docs (http://docs.google.com/). XO Operating System updates, complete with installation instructions can be downloaded from http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Olpc-update. New OLPC applications are available from the OLPC Activities page (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activities), complete with installation instructions.

The XO works best in an unsecured wireless network environment. It usually takes several attempts to connect it to a secure WEP-enabled wireless network and with each attempt you must enter the 13 hex digit pair security. Technology-comfortable folk can try connecting to a WPA-PSK secured network rather than Web because WPA supports a human-readable (e.g. English) passphrase. But to use WPA-PSK you must first download a special script (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/WPA_Manual_Setting), then launch the Terminal application and enter a few Linux commands. I managed to connect via WPA-PSK at my office in the Greenfield Public Schools, but had no luck with WPA at my home office. There were too many unsecured networks competing for my attention. I also tried to connect to my home network via Cat 5 cabling using a $20 XO’sTRENDNet TU2-ET100 USB to Ethernet network adapter (http://trendnet.com/products/proddetail.asp?prod=150_TU2-ET100&cat=14), but the TRENDNet adapter only came with Windows drivers. Where’s open source support for Linux when you need it most?

Additional frustrations with the XO will revolve around its small 1024 KB flash storage and its turtle-slow operating speed. Activities and Web browsing proceed at a snail’s pace. Perhaps that’s to be expected because of its limited 256 MB RAM and 433MHz x86-compatible processor? Moreover, the computer has no built-in printer drivers so it can’t print and the word processor lacks a spelling checker. However thanks to its open-source roots and the community of stalwart developers that has built up around it, I’m convinced that those capabilities will soon become available. If education is about providing all youngsters with options and opportunities for success, then one can only hope that the XO is the first of many low-cost laptop initiatives (http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS9292516116.html) aimed at delivering the digital tools and community our K-12 students need.

Product: XO Laptop
Company: One Laptop Per Child, http://www.laptopgiving.org/
Price: $200
Photo credit: Mike McGregor mikemcgregor.com, pictures on http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Category:Laptop_pictures

About the Author: Carol S. Holzberg, PhD, cholzberg@gmail.com, (Shutesbury, Massachusetts) is an educational technology specialist and anthropologist who writes for several publications. She works as District Technology Coordinator for Greenfield Public Schools and the Greenfield Center School (Greenfield, Massachusetts) and teaches in both the Licensure program at Hampshire Educational Collaborative (Northampton, MA) and online in the School of Education at Capella University.

this blog journey begins!

I feel as if I am being dragged into this exercise with flailing arms and deep reluctance, a mighty tech cart dragging a very stubborn horse. I’m not ready to put words into cyberspace. I have little that I want to say at the moment.

I am reminded of some words in a very famous Dylan Thomas poem:

…Though wise [wo]men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good [wo]men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas (1914-53), Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night (1951)

So this being the first of posts to come thanks to Jim’s Web 2.0 course requirement, I’m going to sign off.

Carol

P.S. If you want to listen to Dylan Thomas read his famous poem, visit http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15377

P.P. S. The image for my blog comes from http://www.eharmony.com/labs/blog/2007/09/superwomen/