Read, Reflect, Share, and Repeat...

Ruminating Out Loud 02/03/2012

2012-02-03T15:31:00.001-08:00

http://www.downes.ca/files/books/FreeLearning.pdf#
Sometimes when you read something it just makes sense. This is one of those times. I'm thirty pages in and seeing some things I think I've read before, but really loving this ride.

"But even where the concepts are not explicitly attributed to me (and very frequently, they are not), I do
not consider this to be theft. For what I have done is to throw an idea or a concept out into the public
commons, using a medium explicitly designed for that purpose. I expect it to be shared, and if it is a
good idea, replicated throughout the online world. I have no problem with that."
tags: downes free Open openlearn

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Ruminating Out Loud 02/01/2012

2012-02-01T15:32:00.001-08:00

Initial iPad Setup

Nice collection of resources for a school or district looking at using iPad Apps with kids. There are a lot of resources out there, but this one has a nice tips page, that I will definitely be sharing.

tags: iPads

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Ruminating Out Loud 01/27/2012

2012-01-27T15:31:00.001-08:00

Free Technology for Teachers: Seven Tools for Creating Data Visualizations

Definitely something to come back to. We have been crunching a lot of numbers and data lately around the office. This will give us some options for how to display them

tags: tools data visualization datavisualization technology

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Ruminating Out Loud 01/25/2012

2012-01-25T15:31:00.001-08:00

Image via Wikipedia

iPod Physics
What a tremendous compilation of nearly 700 videos and lectures from a Denver public Schools physics teacher!
Great stuff Derrick!

tags: physics

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Ruminating Out Loud 01/22/2012

2012-01-22T15:31:00.001-08:00

Online Diagram & Flowchart Software | LucidChart

I am going to be trying this tool out soon. I know some of my colleagues will be excited about this. I especially like that the designers built it on top of HTML5 which in the long(er) run it will make it a viable tool to train folks on how to use because it will be relevant. It also plays nicely with vis.io which is a plus, too.

tags: flowchart diagram mindmapping collaboration mindmap tool software web2.0

KnowU: Where Social Meets Learning - YouTube

At first glance, I like this a lot. It combines existing social spaces and incorporates or provides the opportunity to fracture them into learning spaces as well. I've heard folks ask before if this is even where our students want us to be. good question. I think the tool, whatever it is, will need to allow for layers or (ahem) circles so that we can organize the input and output cleanly and easily.
I still lik edmodo in this type of space as THE go-to tool because of the ability to work with kids and teachers P-12.

tags: edmodo sociallearning

WatchKnowLearn - Free Educational Videos for K-12 Students

SO MANY great videos to save and revisit.
My only wish would be for them to be more easily intertwined into Google plus so that students could hop into a hangout and take notes or ask questions interactively.

tags: videos students

Write an ebook! - Learning Continuity

Not a fan of the iBooks Lock Down on format and output/ reader? There's still easy-ish ways to write an e-book.

tags: ebook ipad publishing googledocs epub publish

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Playing with Summly

2012-01-21T14:58:00.001-08:00

The article I found was called, "Where's the Debate?"
It was a nice article that I would recommend anyone involved in "Ed Reform" conversations.
The following was pulled from a "summly summary" I wanted to play around a little but with the app today and my first search was on Ed reform. This was the third link provided. Not bad. It was enough to make me want to read the entire article. It did not satisfy as a substitute to reading it though.
"- Students in well-funded American schools from high-income families outscore nearly all other countries on standardized tests, yet our aggregate scores are low."
"- Schools need to hire more social workers, psychologists, and nurses to make sure students are healthy enough to take their learning to the next level."
"- These small class sizes showed to be especially beneficial to students attending schools in poor districts."
Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kenzo-shibata/education-reform-wheres-t_b_11850...
Visit www.summly.com for more information on Summly and its technology.

3 Social Learning Trends to Watch in 2012

2012-01-21T08:16:00.001-08:00

Stumbled across this article this morning. I can't help but think that 2012 is the new 2009.

SO MANY of these conversations were occurring on the twitter three even four years ago.

Saying that, I still think it is a really good thing to have these conversations and ideas taken to the next level.

It seems businesses have always tried to find ways to leverage employees personal knowledge and strengths in their organization. What we have now is access to "read, reflect, and share" quickly, and across multiple platforms with folks both inside and outside of our organization. This allows us to push back and glean ideas from and with one another in an unthreatening and productive way.

It's going to be important for us to find the tools and spaces that are the most easy to use and pliable with what we want to share. I'm thinking that we need the ability to layer permissions when sharing and collaborate for these spaces to be useful.

"Here are three of the developing topics that combine social with learning — and should be worth integrating in your business during this year."
3 Social Learning Trends to Watch in 2012
MASHABLE! | JANUARY 21, 2012
http://pulse.me/s/5d3ql

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about ... Read more

1. Social Learning

Tony Bingham , president and CEO of the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD), is leading the discussion about defining social learning. “Social learning is learning with and from others, often — but not always — with social media tools,” Bingham explains. “Social learning is a powerful approach to sharing and discovering a whole array of options, leading to more informed decision-making and a more intimate, expansive and dynamic understanding of the culture and context in which we work.”

There are many benefits to incorporating social learning into an organization: “Incorporating social learning creates networks of knowledgeable people to work across time and space to make informed decisions and solve complex problems,” Bingham says. “Learning happens more quickly and broadly. Innovation happens faster. And tacit knowledge can be retained and reused.”

Companies are paying attention to the benefits. In ASTD’s research report ,Transforming Learning with Web 2.0 Technologies, findings indicate that 87% of respondents predict that in the next three years, their companies are more likely to use Web 2.0 technologies than they currently do. Bingham offers several examples of how companies are applying social learning in his book, The New Social Learning .

2. Social Networking Techniques

While defining social learning is still a work in progress, many trainers are using social networking platforms to create activities and exercises for their programs.Jane Bozarth , eLearning Coordinator for the State of North Carolina and author of Social Media for Trainers explains how using social networks can enhance training: “Social media tools help to amplify the social and informal learning already going on in organizations all the time, every day, and make the learning available on a much larger scale. They provide ways to connect talent pools and expertise in an organization or within a practice area, and can offer just-in-time solutions to problems and performance issues.”

The reaction from participants is very positive. Bozarth explains, “Participants are happy to engage with one another using social media tools for training purposes. They find it convenient, useful for learning at the moment of need, and [that it helps them] develop a greater sense of control over their learning.”

Trainers shouldn’t fear adding a social component to their programs. According to Bozarth, it’s pretty easy to do. “Social media tools are just tools and can be effectively employed to support the gamut of training activities, from introductions to role plays to discussions of video clips, and anything in between.” But she does offer one recommendation: “I hope we see learning and development practitioners moving toward partnering with learners and away from feeling their role is to direct them.”

3. Gamification

A frequent training request is make subjects fun — and what better way to learn a new topic than by playing a game? Karl M. Kapp , professor of instructional technology at Bloomsburg University and author of The Gamification of Training: Game-based Methods and Strategies for Learning and Instruction , shares the concept of using games for learning. “Studies indicate that games, when designed properly, motivate learners, improve learner retention and encourage students who aren’t typically ‘academic’ to partake in the learning process,” he says. “There is no reason learning has to always be hard or difficult.”

It’s important to note that not all games are created equal when it comes to learning. Kapp discusses two reasons why gamification is becoming popular, and the first one isn’t necessarily relevant for learning. “Some people see gamification simply as the process of adding points, badges or rewards to the learning process and instantly creating engagement, interactivity and motivation for learning. This view is wrong.”

Kapp suggests looking at the real reasons why games are popular and then apply those elements to the process. “When done correctly, gamification provides an experience that is inherently engaging and, most importantly, promotes learning. The elements of games that make for effective gamification are those of storytelling, which provides a context, challenge, immediate feedback, sense of curiosity, problem-solving, a sense of accomplishment, autonomy and mastery.”

Adding social networks and games to training programs has the potential to shake up the learning experience. It can create constant learning opportunities, real-time knowledge sharing and improved participant engagement.

Ruminating Out Loud 01/18/2012

2012-01-18T15:31:00.001-08:00

The Rise of the New Groupthink - NYTimes.com

I read this and initially took a similar, "Oops, what are we doing," mentality. When I started thinking more about it, I came to the conclusion that "group think" (which is similar to an echo chamber I think) is not what collaboration and "team learning" is designed to be.
Like most educational strategies, if we misuse or rely too heavily on them, our learning environment becomes stale, static, or worse yet, dysfunctional.
What is not mentioned in this article, is the power of push back; folks culling ideas from their own creative processes and building something amazing. Apple, came up with the original iphone thirty years ago, but it wasn't until teams of folks chewed on, reflected, pushed back, and collaborated did we get anything near what we have today. http://www.digitaltrends.com/apple/1983-apple-prototype-pictures-show-iphone-ancestor/
What this means for me is that as we continue to move and shift traditional teaching models into blended learning environments, it is important that we use the power of collaboration for what it truly can be. An environment where learners digest, reflect, share, and repeat the cycle. If we aren't given opportunities to challenge, adapt, and modify our existing paradigms the teaching profession will look drastically different.
Let's own the shift.

"Sharing lesson plans or classroom management strategies—“what works and what doesn’t”—transforms teaching from an art into factory work. It presumes that the unique relationship between the teacher and his/her students is transferrable to other teachers and students. I just don’t think it is, unless that relationship is merely superficial to begin with."

http://coopcatalyst.wordpress.com/2011/08/29/teacher-collaboration-is-important-but-not-for-the-reasons-we-might-think/

What do you all think?

tags: collaboration groupthink

Technology Integration Matrix

Just "found" this site again. I remember the original and at the time I thought it was amazing. This matrix and website is a nice addition to a PD library as it incorporates some examples and videos for folks looking to try to integrate technology into their classroom. I was messing around and went to transformational collaboration in Language Arts. The Matrix took me to a page with some examples and a video of a teacher using technology and collaboration with older students to create videos and exemplars for students studying phonics.

"The Technology Integration Matrix (TIM) illustrates how teachers can use technology to enhance learning for K-12 students. The TIM incorporates five interdependent characteristics of meaningful learning environments: active, constructive, goal directed (i.e., reflective), authentic, and collaborative (Jonassen, Howland, Moore, & Marra, 2003). The TIM associates five levels of technology integration (i.e., entry, adoption, adaptation, infusion, and transformation) with each of the five characteristics of meaningful learning environments. Together, the five levels of technology integration and the five characteristics of meaningful learning environments create a matrix of 25 cells..."

tags: technology matrix integration edtech techintegration technology_integration education resources

Centre for Learning and Teaching Resources

There are SO many resource sites like this out on the web. truthfully, it is almost overload. This one seems to have been built and then abandoned as there has been little acton on it for awhile. All the same, I like the resources and its worth peeling back some of its layers.

tags: teaching resources

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Blended Learning’s Impact on Teacher Development | via the Innosight Institute

2012-01-18T08:54:00.001-08:00

Blended Learning’s Impact on Teacher Development | Innosight Institute

A couple of quick takeaways for me are that it's nice to see professional development called out as something we need, but we really have to get away from the paradigm of thinking it's something we do "to" teachers or is done "to" us. The other takeaway I have after reading this is around a question I've asked before. If we're truly "blending" our teaching and environment, what does the space look like? How can we professionally develop as teachers to be better prepared to adapt and modify our existing learning spaces to better meet the needs of a flexible, student centric, tech infused learning environment? If shifting the ENTIRE teaching model paradigm upside down is NOT an option, what is?

Is this something that needs to be built, modeled, and then iterated?

tags: blended learnin

I culled some nuggets from the reading.

Responding to student data in real-time is a paradigm shift for today’s teachers and a rich area of exploration for training and development.

this is a necessary and meaningful PD opportunity.

Relationships will evolve as students spend less time in large impersonal classes and more time in small, personalized groups where they can have higher-quality interactions with adults.

This is a student centric model I could really get excited about

They will help create learning playlists and/or learning paths

Blended learning operators will disaggregate the teacher role in new and interesting ways that support novice teachers, make the profession more sustainable and increase the impact of expert teachers.

First, technology is not a panacea, it enables schools to provide greater individualization which is the focus of much of the above. Learning how colleagues effectively individualize through technology will just be part of “the work,” not a stand-alone discipline. Second, social networking is creating communities of “early adopter” teachers beyond the walls of your organization. Teacher preparation programs can help connect their educators to the best “influencers” of education technology in the field via Twitter and other communities. EdModo, for example, has done a good job getting teachers to blog about their experiences with emerging tools.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Stop SOPA/PIPA Plugins for Blogger and Wordpress

2012-01-18T07:13:00.001-08:00

Image via Wikipedia
Stop SOPA/PIPA Plugins for Blogger and Wordpress
If you want to add a ribbon to your blog or website here at the bottom of this post a snippet of html code you can add to do it. I'm doing my part. All 5 daily viewers will see this meesage today :) Seriously though, I was listening to Democracy Now yesterday and it sounds like SOPA is stalled, but that Senator Reid is ramming PIPA through. Take some time to look closer at the PIPA bill, it is also censorship and crippling for the open web. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57360665-503544/sopa-pipa-what-you-need-to-know/
Image via Wikipedia

tags: plugins blogger wordpress

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Ruminating Out Loud 01/16/2012

2012-01-17T16:49:00.001-08:00

SciGirls | Home

This is an interactive multimedia site designed to get Tween girls excited about Science and reaffirm that it's cool if you already do. I spent a little time poking around the videos and games, and they wer nice, gave an overview, seemed engaging. What I especially liked though was the Projects page, where you're given a ton of options, including submitting your own projects. Another gem on the site is the "For Teachers and "For Parents" pages. This quote especially caught my eye. "Every girl can be a SciGirl with a groundbreaking new TV show and interactive website that will transform the way tween girls look at science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). " Here is an additional link that takes you to the site's Educational Philosophy. http://www.pbs.org/teachers/scigirls/philosophy/

tags: science pbs scigirls elementary education STEM math resources

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Ruminating Out Loud 01/14/2012

2012-01-14T15:30:00.001-08:00

CK12.ORG - FlexBooks

Why pay for one-size-fits all textbooks when you can get customizable standards-aligned FlexBooks for FREE!
http://t.co/Li2VbShV

Math, Science, and now they've expanded to other subjects as well. There is some real potential in this model for textbooks. I'm in favor of looking at all of our options and changing the current delivery and consumption methods.

Social Networked Learning

Great stuff coming from +George Siemens in this slide deck. Paid particular attention to slide 40 "Reed's Law." I personally and us as a team have been looking at different change models. I had not thought about the tipping point in relation to what we're doing with edmodo and getting enough users to hit that point where the sub groups have teeth and the hill from which I've been dancing alone becomes filled with other crazy hill dancer people. :) h/t +Derek Sivers

tags: social networked learning

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Favorited tweets from Yesterday

Idioms: Slides, Tools, & Resources
Idioms: Slides, Tools, & Resources http://t.co/OhfEyLK8 #eltchat #ellchat #engchat #esl #twinglish #langchat
tags: eltchat ellchat engchat esl twinglish langchat
EdTechTrek | A quest for learning, unlearning and relearning…
@jerridkruse How funny... just posted a a new blog post this morning on this very thing http://t.co/DFSKbMzW
Welcome to FluencyFast!
@mrmosesdotorg Welcome to FluencyFast! http://t.co/QzG5MAwv

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

The Learning Network Blog: Teachers Teaching Teachers, on Twitter: Q. and A. on 'Edchats' (learning.blogs.nytimes.com)
It's All About The Hashtag (web20classroom.org)
Why Teachers Should Join Twitter...What I have Learned as a Twitter Newbie (adaptivelearnin.wordpress.com)
Edu-Twitter Superstars Q & A in the NY Times (19pencils.com)
Building a Personal Learning Network (PLN) Using Social Media (edtechsandyk.blogspot.com)

Loving the "Search Plus Your World"

2012-01-13T16:24:00.001-08:00

I'm seriously in love with the new search. I anticipate it getting smarter and smarter with me. I just searched for analytics (thought I typed in the address for Google Analytics, but no) and it brought up this image that not only connected me to add the developers, certified trainers, and other analytics folks to my circles, but coupled with my evernote and diigo, it pulled all the stuff I already had bookmarked, saved, or taken note about. Very, Very Cool IMO

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/search-plus-your-world.html

Ruminating Out Loud 01/12/2012

2012-01-12T15:31:00.001-08:00

Image via Wikipedia
How Colorado compares to other states | EdNewsColorado
Sad state of Affairs when our state receives a B- in standards, assessment, and accountability, but doesn't fund induction, mentoring, and it is found that their pay for teachers is "lacking."
Not surprised though, we love mandates and accountability, but according to the report we fail to fund it or reward our teachers for their work, expertise, or professional earning and transfer to the classroom.
tags: colorado states
- The only other better-than-average grade, a B-, came in the area of standards, assessment and accountability, where Colorado’s system of school accountability achieved a perfect 100. But it flunked the standards portion of the category, because the state’s standards are not course or grade-specific.
  In particular, the state was dinged because it doesn’t fund induction, mentoring or reduced workloads for new teachers and it doesn’t allow pension portability across state lines.
  Colorado’s teacher pay was found lacking and not at least equal to comparable professions.
Christopher Johnson - Google+ - A visual refresh for Google+ Hangouts When we launched…
Google Hangouts keeps getting better and better. I've been really impressed thus far with its consistency, ease of use, and functionality. Screensharing is a must, Bigger video, less so for me, but the ability to draft, ,collaborate, and draw out ideas in this setting seemingly super easy is great.
As an aside, I'm wondering how much I'll be using gmail, since Google plus, pretty much does everything I would need from an email already and then some.
tags: G+ hangouts

- Screensharing: share what’s on your computer screen with everyone in the hangout. This is the first of many extras we’re graduating to Hangouts proper. - Bigger video: we’ve put more emphasis on the live video itself by optimizing white space and other screen elements.
Image via CrunchBase
Photo Pin : Free Photos for Your Blog or Website via Creative Commons
I'm always looking for creative comons photos and images to use and share with colleagues. This seems to do a decent job of aggregating those from the sources that many of us check already, like creativecommons.org, flickr, etc. I like the layout and the options to purchase images as well.
tags: photos creativecommons search creative_commons

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Ruminating Out Loud 01/11/2012

2012-01-11T15:31:00.001-08:00

Image via CrunchBase
SpedApps2 - HOME
I've been looking for something as robust as this and to be honest haven't found anything quite this good. I really like how it has been culled by real professionals that are familiar with and comfortable with technology.
Currently there aren't ANY "game" apps, and I'm cool with that actually.
tags: ipad Apps sped education special wiki
no homework at our school. They practice AT school
Image via Wikipedia
Great nugget from @michellek107 tonight, referencing homework and what they do at Anastasis Academy. Good practice is more important than just "practice"
@mramidon @mwacker @apstechgoddess no homework at our school. They practice AT school, where I can help ensure practice is GOOD practice.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

How to Set Up Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Contacts (Properly) on iOS

2012-01-11T12:53:00.001-08:00

via lifehacker.com

This is very cool. We were having this conversation the other day and sure enough, @ginatrapani shared this three month old post on twitter today and it was PERFECT timing! I love it when it works like that. This is super easy to set up.
note: One thing you wanna be careful about though is the duplication or deleting of contacts and calendars.

Steps from the post itself:
Open up the Settings app on your iOS device and go to the "Mail, Contacts, Calendars" section. Hit "Add Account".

From there, choose Microsoft Exchange as the type of account (again, don't choose Gmail).

Type in your Gmail address under Email. Leave the Domain field blank and enter your full Gmail address under Username (including the @gmail.com, @googlemail.com, or other suffix). Type in your password and give it any description you like. Mine's just called "Gmail".

Press the Next button at the top of the screen. It should pop up a message saying Unable to Verify Certificate—if it does, just hit cancel. Then, type m.google.com in the new "Server" box that shows up at the top of the screen. Then tap Next.

Ruminating Out Loud 01/10/2012

2012-01-10T20:30:00.001-08:00

Image via CrunchBase

Can Schools Take a Google Approach? | Education Recoded | Big Think
There is no patent medicine, potion, quack elixir, quick fix, remedy, for what ills our structures despite what soem would have you believe. It really is about relationships, empowerment, and community in my opinion. This quote below, summed up the silo-ness we live in within the EDU community in my opinion.
"Today's school system is set up into disparate parts and silos."
What could happen if we really try to flip the script in our schools? I mean space, schedule, teacher roles, etc...
tags: education reform
Are school leaders losing students (i.e., as physical, emotional, or intellectual dropouts) simply because they are trying to control the system? What would happen if students and teachers had more control over the learning process?
January Webinar – Aaron Sams and the Flipped Classroom | CoLearning Network
Looking forward to the conversation. Hope i can make it. Aaron's been doing this for awhile, look forward to hearing more about how the skill has evolved as access is increased.

"Join us on Tuesday, January 17th, at 3:30pm Mountain time for a visit with Aaron Sams, a science teacher at Woodland Park High School in Woodland Park, Colorado, as we talk about the flipped classroom – what is it, it isn’t and the many forms that it can take."
tags: Flipped FlippedClassroom

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Ruminating Out Loud 01/09/2012

2012-01-09T20:30:00.001-08:00

Image via Wikipedia

Mystery Apple event to focus on education, iTunes U, digital publishing? | ZDNet
Digital publishing you say?
This could be pretty rockin awesome, actually. Once again, I ask the question, "What if we put the content and publishing of content, materials, learning objectives, etc.. into the hands of our students." Maybe instead of palavering on about what it might look like, I should spend some time actually thinking through this on an ECE-12 level. I get that our Primary kiddos aren't going to be writing deep level texts, but what if there was a "for us by us" movement of sorts. Would it allow us to dive deeper into conversations and topics?
tags: education itunes publishing
40 of the Best Websites for Young Writers
Image via Wikipedia
This is a pretty sweet collection of resources for teachers to cruise through and glean nuggets of cool for their students. All kinds of sites to support each stage of the writing process, as well as content from MI, OWL, and the like. As well as ways for students to get published, watch videos, and get creative.
I'm not a huge fan of lists, but this is a nice collection.
tags: writing publishing websites education English languageArts grammar ela

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Ruminating Out Loud 01/08/2012

2012-01-08T05:31:00.001-08:00

Image via Wikipedia

Big Study Links Good Teachers to Lasting Gain - NYTimes.com
I like that this article address the obvious gaps of research and lack of control of multiple variables that could eschew results. Nevertheless there are some great data points on why keeping and retaining the best in our profession needs to be a continued focus and conversation. Is it enough to use test scores, of course not. But a balanced system that helps us speed up the process for removing ineffective folks in our profession can't hurt.
tags: study links teachers nytimes nytimes com com effectiveness
- Elementary- and middle-school teachers who help raise their students’ standardized-test scores seem to have a wide-ranging, lasting positive effect on those students’ lives beyond academics, including lower teenage-pregnancy rates and greater college matriculation and adult earnings, according to a new study that tracked 2.5 million students over 20 years.
Gooru - Home Page
18,000 Resources, 1,200 Lessons, and a great space for students to search, study, and practice. I like this site quite a bit. It is run by a nn-profit, which has me hopeful for what's to come.
tags: gooru platform education resources OnlineLearning edtech lessons teaching
The Power User's Guides to Chrome and Firefox
Image via CrunchBase
If Chrome continues to be the fastest growing browser, this resource may be helpful for soem folks helping to "sell" IT on the idea of supporting it. If you're a chromebooks school or program, then this is a super useful tool to put in the hands of your teachers.
tags: firefox chrome
- The more shortcuts you know, tricks you master, and tweaks you understand, the more quickly and efficiently you can use your browser
The SIOP Institute
Would love to look into the possible purchase of some or all of these resources to share them with our teachers. Wondering about cost and work load that would be taken on. This could be a great resource for the developers and curriculum specialists designing ELA certification trainings and courses.
Look forward to see what if anything is possible to work out.
tags: siop el ell
15 Tricks to Get Your Adult Learners Talking
I came across a nice "Top 15" list that I thought was worth passing on. I'd love to hear what you all think. Are these enough? Is there something missing that you would add? They don't call out "directly" any of the Adult ID experts, so is that a place where they may be missing a key strategy? Feel free to pass on to any groups.
tags: adult Professional Development

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Flipped Classroom Resources

2012-01-08T03:20:00.001-08:00

If you're wondering how to get started using this teaching strategy or tool, This article from The New York Times does a great job of laying out things highlighted here and also specific tools for the job like this...

"Sometimes teachers create lectures and other resources themselves using resources like Teacher Tube , the Show Me app or a voice recording tool . Or they might provide a link to an available resource, like a video from Vi Hart , Khan Academy , the Teaching Channel or YouTube EDU . They can even supplement student curriculum with material from an online course ."

An infographic that breaks it down in a very basic form.
"What is it and Why ar epeople talking about it?"

Additional Resources:

Flipping the Classroom: An Introduction (onlinecollege.org)
The Flipped Classroom -newly invented - but used in Austalia 20 years ago (julieboydeducation.com)
EdSurge: Mapping The Edtech World, Flipped Classrooms, And More... (fastcompany.com)
My Idea of Flipping My Classroom (educatoral.com)
The Flip-Flopped Classroom (digiteacher.wordpress.com)
December News For Those Who Learn In A Different Way (foundnewsthatmatters.wordpress.com)

Posted via email from Michael Wacker

Ruminating Out Loud 01/07/2012

2012-01-07T06:31:00.001-08:00

15 Tricks to Get Your Adult Learners Talking
I came across a nice "Top 15" list that I thought was worth passing on. I'd love to hear what you all think. Are these enough? Is there something missing that you would add? They don't call out "directly" any of the Adult ID experts, so is that a place where they may be missing a key strategy? Feel free to pass on to any groups.
tags: adult Professional Development
dy/dan » Blog Archive » Can Someone Tell Me What I’m Looking At Here?
Image by Getty Images via @daylife
Dan has done it again. Whenever any one involved in mathematics at a school or district level asks me about a blog to read, I always recommend Dan's. The guy is brilliant and a tremendous teacher. He "flipped" the script here and instead of the traditional let's work on something, or let me show you something, he threw out the "teach me something." LOVE IT! The comments are pretty great.
tags: math authentic real-world meyer
Image via Wikipedia
FollowMolly.com: Life after Internet Explorer- Welcome to Chrome
tags: chrome
MIT BLOSSOMS | MIT BLOSSOMS
tags: science math mit education opencourseware blossoms blended oer
Image via CrunchBase
Phraseology: iPad App Basics | Wandering Academic
tags: iPad writing app English

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An Original O.G. #eddie Award Post

2011-12-05T23:15:00.001-08:00

All this talk about #eddies http://edublogawards.com/ Makes me think about one particular blogpost that helped to kickstart my journey back in 07' (http://yongesonne.edublogs.org/2007/06/29/the-ripe-environment/ ) via someone I'm proud to call my good friend,@bhwilkoff +Benjamin Wilkoff
#eduwin #classic

"I am tired of talking about the tools. Many of us have been talking about the tools for a long time now. We have said that using technology for technology’s sake is counterproductive. We want to use technology as a tool, right? But the tools for collaborating and creating are the largest sticking points for others. Teachers get caught up on jargon, on the basic skills of one program or process. They are still so focused on “podcasting” or “dreamweaver” that there is no room for creating the environment in which people will actually want to go beyond the tools, into true learning (you know, what we want our kids to be doing). What, then, is beyond the tools? What should we really be reaching for? The Ripe Environment. The simultaneous personal and public experience of using all of the tools at the teacher’s disposal to tear down walls, collaborate with each another, and question the traditional role of technology in the classroom".
Worth the conversation...

Posted via email from Michael Wacker's posterous

Facebook Makes Massive Privacy & Tagging Changes [PICS]

2011-12-05T08:58:00.001-08:00

I just can't trust this company. People think I'm blinded by the Google-ness of G+, but I'll take perceived or mistaken transparency over a lack of privacy/transparency any day

Miguel Guhlin originally shared this post:

Privacy setting changes...again? Yeah, right. They're not changing privacy settings, they're scrambling them again.http://mashable.com/2011/08/23/facebook-privacy-changes/

Facebook Makes Massive Privacy & Tagging Changes [PICS]

Facebook today is launching a privacy initiative that will make it clearer who users are sharing their photos, updates and locations with.

Posted via email from Michael Wacker's posterous

Diigo Bookmarks this Week

2011-11-20T12:30:00.001-08:00

Image via CrunchBase

Evernote Clearly – one click for distraction free online reading – very cool – DEN Blog Network
Evernote Clearly – one click for distraction free online reading – very cool http://t.co/n9cEHJ5V
social networks
social networks http://t.co/63OvvVdw
Botting Twitter - CogDogBlog
Image via CrunchBase
CogDogBlogged: Botting Twitter http://t.co/aMw2Zv1d
letsgetengaged - Empowering Students Through Reflection and Feedback
Empowering Students Through Reflection And Feedback: http://t.co/8OPDjJrk

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Diigo Bookmarks this Week

2011-11-13T12:30:00.001-08:00

Image via CrunchBase

Teen Study: Social Media Is Positive Experience : NPR
tags: cyberbullying Social Media teens pew
"There are parents who clearly would hire fetal tu
tags: fallforum
"There are parents who clearly would hire fetal tutors in order to boost their children's apgar scores." @alfiekohn #fallforum
Learn to code | Codecademy
tags: webdesign html
EDTCRegis - home
regis documents and syllabi
belearnspacea › 247 Things you should know about MOOCs33
7 Things you should know about MOOCs http://t.co/xuPuhI24 via @gsiemens #MOOC #elearning #edtech
tags: MOOC elearning edtech
Creating interactive online video using YouTube | Technology with Intention
tags: creating interactive online online video video using youtube technology intention
for the love of learning: Change? We don't need no stinking change!
@ktenkely two anecdotes I use re:change http://t.co/lolLRWbi & http://t.co/8MWsm9Nd
Assignment 1
- - Curriculum Development tutorial developed by Leslie Owen Wilson, School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.
  - Writing Behavioral Objectives, tutorial prepared by Teaching and Learning Center, Elementary General Music.
  - How to Write Behavioral Objectives, Dr. Bob Kizlik, Adprima tutorial. Includes examples of objectives written for English language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies.
  - Learning Skills Program. Blooms' Taxonomy. Samples of verbs to use that capture various levels and kinds of skills.
This picture needs to be in all classrooms #elemchat
Mistakes. http://t.co/TvPo0IPS Shared by @plnaugle via @yfrog #elemchat #edchat
tags: elemchat edchat
You Should Read…(November 6, 2011)
You Should Read…(November 6, 2011) http://t.co/xAWC7i1M #cpchat #psd70 #edchat
tags: cpchat psd70 edchat
Top Ten List for Reluctant Teacher-Transformers « Cooperative Catalyst
Top Ten List for Reluctant Teacher-Transformers http://t.co/gneH9vHR Excellent post...great advice! #edchat #cpchat
tags: edchat cpchat
Effective professional learning (again)… « What Ed Said
RT @whatedsaid: If anyone is interested here's what goes on behind the scenes at #elemchat http://t.co/uIqVHpZn
tags: elemchat
edcamp - Complete edcamp calendar
Sad you haven't been to an #edcamp yet? There's still 25 more scheduled for this school year. Check out the calendar! http://t.co/dztSr1gN
tags: edcamp

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Diigo Bookmarks this Week

2011-11-06T12:30:00.001-08:00

Image via Wikipedia

The O’Sullivan Foundation Grants $5M To Online Learning Platform Khan Academy | TechCrunch
The @KhanAcademy receives $5M grant & teams up w/@SmArthistory - both avail via #CC BY-NC-SA: http://t.co/c3bbHN0e
tags: CC
Get your students reading with the help of these:
Get your students reading with the help of these: Top 12 Young Adult #Books for Reluctant Readers http://t.co/rktZYtL4 #elemchat
tags: Books elemchat
The Classroom Strategies Series
Get free resources from 4 of @robertjmarzano's best-selling books: http://t.co/7euRjT63
Education Solutions
Bottom-Up Education; Focusing on Students' Unique Talents & Educator's Perspectives: http://t.co/UP1YXeia
TechLearning: Flipping the Classroom: What, Why, How and Where?
Flipping the Classroom: What, Why, How and Where? in 30 mins through @techlearning http://t.co/em2XnyB5
Handout from Bob Eaker and Janel Keating - Every S
Handout from Bob Eaker and Janel Keating - Every School, Every Team, Every Classroom http://t.co/vIm5h0Tr (PDF) #authorspeak
tags: authorspeak
10 Resources on Teacher Effectiveness | Getting Smart
tags: resources teacher effectiveness getting
The Google Apps Mail Merge Solution You’ve Been Looking For | EdReach
The Google Apps Mail Merge Solution You've Been Looking For | http://t.co/2dvvC3nO #gct @googleapps
tags: gct
Political Participation Unit
This is the unit I am teaching with G11 right now - http://t.co/PaCZW2Yi #sschat
tags: sschat
Education Week Teacher: Community Forums
How are you using the Internet for #PD? Which online tools offer the best #PD options? Join the discussion: http://t.co/aVHCuHJP
tags: PD

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Diigo Bookmarks this Week

2011-10-30T13:31:00.001-07:00

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Miss you so much Dad! They did it!
tags: gocards
Miss you so much Dad! They did it! #gocards
Shifting Learning | Scoop.it
Online Learning: Effective Online Teaching | @scoopit http://t.co/ujIVIh3z via @biemr2 #ECI831 Now commenting http://t.co/NcEFPhnm
tags: ECI831
How important is the level of academic rigor in your child’s preschool? « Cooperative Catalyst
How important is the level of academic rigor in your child’s preschool? http://t.co/iUM74GPh #edreform
tags: edreform
Crazy awesome -> RT Behind our set here at bus
Crazy awesome -> RT @karlravechespn Behind our set here at busch stadium http://t.co/TyjaBfYO
eKevin Stranack1 33 » Open Education 2011 Conference Experiences28
.@stranack from #eci831 reflects on #opened11 http://t.co/h4q03dSG I wish I could have gone!
tags: eci831 opened11
David Truss :: Pair-a-dimes for Your Thoughts » Accessibility failure
Thinking about TEACHER 'accessibility failure' http://t.co/vrqFrfpe ~Many struggle with Moodle, Sharepoint, Blackboard~ bumpy entry points
50 time-saving Google Docs templates | News | TechRadar UK
“@DoremiGirl: RT @jkpacelli: 50 time-saving Google Docs templates http://t.co/UiP0M6oS”

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Diigo Bookmarks this Week

2011-10-23T13:30:00.001-07:00

Image via CrunchBase

Share Spotify Playlists at ShareMyPlaylists.com
tags: spotify music playlists playlist social sharing tools socialmedia

Image via Wikipedia

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Teach Like A Champion. (Videos of Practice with Voice-Overs)

2011-10-18T08:26:00.001-07:00

Without Great Teachers, Nothing Else Matters | Uncommon Schools - http://goo.gl/Uf7A2 this is a collection of instructional techniques gleaned from years of observations of outstanding teachers in some of the highest-performing urban classrooms in the country.

If you have read or are planning on reading Teach Like a Champion, this site is a great resource for some sound instructional strategies that are modeled and are accompanied with voiceovers.

Posted via email from Michael Wacker's posterous

Diigo Bookmarks this Week (weekly)

2011-10-09T13:30:00.001-07:00

howlawsmadeWIRTH2.jpg (3215×1584)

tags: government visualization law infographic laws politics legislation congress
Canter, Lee - WikEd
- Lee Canter's Homework Tips for Parents*
  
  1. Establish daily homework time.
  2. Emphasize the importance of homework.
  3. Gather homework supplies in one place so your child does not waste time looking for pens and pencils etc.
  4. Enforce the homework time; check to make sure your child starts on time.
  5. Check completed homework every day.
  6. Put homework in a place where the child will not forget to take it to school.
  7. Work with the teacher to correct any persisting homework problems.
- - Not sure about "emphasize the importance of homework," but these tips are pretty good.

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Diigo Bookmarks this Week (weekly)

2011-10-02T13:30:00.001-07:00

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Diigo Bookmarks this Week (weekly)

2011-09-25T13:30:00.001-07:00

social networking with students

tags: edmodo
- Don't forget to do at least 7 References - post by Angela Henderson
- Sticky notes too - post by Angela Henderson
- cool - post by Kenneth Coppens
Education Week Teacher: A Checklist Approach to Reading Interventions

tags: interventions decoding
Curriculum 21: Cell Phones For Educators - LiveBinder

tags: LiveBinder curriculum cell phones

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Diigo Bookmarks this Week (weekly)

2011-09-18T13:30:00.001-07:00

Seagate GoFlex Satellite Review: A Truly Portable Hard Drive | Popular Science

Like a personal could for you and your family.

tags: Clous
FTC Proposes Stricter Youth Online Privacy Rules | Threat Level | Wired.com

@budtheteacher the FTC proposed new verbiage http://t.co/wEMSTJj2
Syllabus - edpolitics

tags: syllabus
Creating Authentic Learning | Thinking In Mind

tags: creating learning thinking mind authentic learning authentic_assessment
Home - ESL Lesson Plans for teachers, students or parents.

tags: esl lesson lesson plans plans teachers students parents

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"What Happened Wednesday" GDocs

2011-09-10T20:45:00.001-07:00

What Happened Wednesday http://pulse.me/s/1AQEU via Gdocs blog. Just read this, nice explanation. It was a tough day for me, but not devastating. Makes me curious as to just what is your backup plan for this situation. Paper/ Pencil? Word? Other?

Posted via email from Michael Wacker's posterous

Edmodo as our Social Community Space for Teachers, Coaches, and Admin

2011-09-08T07:48:00.001-07:00

Image via CrunchBase

We are moving along with rapid speed as we roll out an intra-outra social space and environment for our teachers and students. By attacking the social learning platform via adults first; our hope is that the ridiculously easy user-interface, familiarity with other tools that most teachers already use in their personal lives, and direct relevance to their professional growth plans and objectives for the coming year, make it a tool they are comfortable using with students. By not explicitly laying out any mandates or requirements, my hope is that our communities grow organically and purposefully over time.

What we are learning is that, while there are SO many reasons to use this tool with our students, its use for professional learning needs some features that are not available by default. And, rather than create workarounds, we are hoping (fingers-crossed) that Edmodo can address these issues in their next iteration or update from the development team. Here's a quick synopsis of what we feel would make this the killer social learning tool for adults we are needing.
Collaborative folders stories…

When collaborating between teachers on grade level, vertical, admin, and data teams it would be helpful if we could have a "shared folder" option where any of the three teachers could upload a lesson plan into one space.
- Taking the idea of data teams one step farther, the largest complaint we hear is that folks want the opportunity to share and collaborate on the data virtually. This would require us to be able to allow ALL team members to upload and download documents into a single folder.
For the teacher effectiveness coaches; we would like the ability to have a central repository in edmodo where lesson plans, instructional tasks aligned to the common core, and evaluations or coaching templates could be uploaded and then downloaded or shared with other coaches. We NEED the ability for any of our coaches in these groups to be able to upload what they believe to be best practice templates and models without having to go and hunt them down via older discussions or posts.
The Teacher Leadership academy is 300+ teachers strong. Edmodo will be a great place for us to centralize the sharing, but we are attacking this as an organic bottom-up and top-down approach; which requires us to trust the leaders that they could very well have better examples of what the central staff believes are best practice lessons, or tasks aligned with the common core.
- We HAVE to avoid more top down sharing. If it's central uploading all the documents, tasks, templates, etc there will be a large decrease in buy-in. We want and need everyone to have the opportunity to upload to folders.

Email selected as the default in notification stories…

As we bring more and more less techie teachers and administrators into edmodo we need the ability to send important blasts to individuals and teams of teachers. We don't want to lock the ability for them to change their notifications, but we want the default to be that if they are a member of a group, they receive notification of the post (what they do after is their choice, read, delete, etc)
If we decide to use edmodo for the new teacher cohort (400+) we need to know that they will receive our messages and notifications by default. We are trying to save time from doing one-offs and instead we would like to be abel to answer a troubleshooting question or other in one space and that everyone would receive notification of this response.

PLN Group codes avilable in a menu, two stories for this one…

First, if I'm a teacher interested in collaborating with other 4th grade teachers across the district, it would be great to be able to search and request access to an existing 4th grade group.
Secondly, as the admin, I would like to be able to push codes and "suggest" networks of teachers for a teacher to join around a specific idea or expectation. Each teacher is working on two expectations in their growth plan, (example classroom management and standards based goals). We want the communities of practice to become a machine of sharing, learning labs, and collaborative discussion and planning. We can only do this if folks know who else is working on similar goals and if there are groups already in existence that they can join…otherwise we will have isolated and siloed sharing occurring.

We are really excited about the interest that our teachers, curriculum departments, instructional superintendents, coaches, leaders, and community managers are showing in the possibility of this tool.

images courtesy of edmodo and inGenius

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Diigo Bookmarks this Week (weekly)

2011-09-04T13:30:00.001-07:00

K-12 Student Resources for Writing and Reading Comics

K-12 Student Resources for Writing and Reading Comics http://t.co/ilSIcEy via @zite #edchat

tags: edchat

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Diigo Bookmarks this Week (weekly)

2011-08-28T13:30:00.001-07:00

Open University research explodes myth of 'digital native'
tags: digitalnative research
ESL-Methods - Content & Language Objectives
tags: ESL-Methods content language objectives
2dGoals are good. Actions are better. « 38Thoughts are Free
New post: Goals are good. Actions are better. http://t.co/7atVj6C
K-5 iPad Apps for Remembering: Part One of Bloom's Revised Taxonomy | Edutopia
tags: iPad apps blooms_taxonomy taxonomy bloom's edutopia blooms bloom
K-5 iPad Apps for Understanding: Part Two of Bloom's Revised Taxonomy | Edutopia
tags: iPad apps Bloom's blooms_taxonomy taxonomy edutopia understanding blooms
K-5 iPad Apps for Applying: Part Three of Bloom's Revised Taxonomy | Edutopia
tags:
Google Web Fonts
tags: fonts google typography webdesign web design webfonts resource
Effective Online Facilitation
"What have we learnt about ...Effective Online Facilitation"
Nice but dated guide for lessons learned about student motivation, tips for facilitation and the breakdown of managerial, pedagogical, technical, and social components to the job
Untitled Document
tags: lessonplans lessons curriculum edtech library technology

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Diigo Bookmarks this Week (weekly)

2011-08-21T13:30:00.001-07:00

TwitLonger — When you talk too much for Twitter

"Most students crave opportunities to use their knowledge, their energy, and their sense of justice or injustice in... http://t.co/gofVwP2
Too trusting are others. Access to secrets and des

@mwacker Too trusting are others. Access to secrets and destruction have I been given. Mmm.
Phillip Toledano - Days with My Father

RT @courosa: This photoset story still brings on the tears http://www.dayswithmyfather.com/ incredible, reminds of my last days with my mom
Doug's Work Blog, 10 Major Mobile Learning Trends to Watch For | MindShift

10 Major Mobile Learning Trends to Watch For | MindShift - “Mobile learning, focuses on learning through... http://tumblr.com/xmm3umldpw
How microblogging is changing China

How microblogging is changing China http://t.co/LjeoBe6
Kibin - Your editing community

I love the idea of getting support for your writing and I love the idea of tecahers volunteering to help and support students.

tags: Proofreading Editing writing crowdsourcing
40+ High Quality Free Icon Sets in PSD Format

Great icons sets to use in web design that are free.

tags: free icon sets psd

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TinEye needs your support...do you know what they do?

2011-08-20T20:49:00.001-07:00

I use this image A TON for my snarky response to people that feel they may have hurt my feelings. (which they don't) But I was surprised in a tineye shot that more and more people use it, too. I love Tin Eye and they need donations, so if you take pics, use pics, or just love free stuff, think about pitching a buck towards http://tineye.com.

Posted via email from Michael Wacker's posterous

As we come back to schools and meet with technology steering committees I BEG you to please re-read and share this great post by @wfryer

2011-08-19T20:48:00.001-07:00

Share what's new...

As we come back to schools and meet with technology steering committees I BEG you to please re-read and share this great post by +Wesley Fryer from March earlier this year.
http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2011/03/24/ipad-as-an-interactive-white-boar...

Moving at the Speed of Creativity - iPad as an Interactive White Board for $5 or $10

Weblog of Wesley Fryer. Home. About. Wes (my bio); this blog; my digital footprint; my eBook. Book Me. Keynote Samples; Recent Workshops; My Itinerary; Program Photos; My Presenter Setup; Videoconfere...

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Google+ Hangouts can now be initiated from YouTube

2011-08-19T20:39:00.001-07:00

Google+ Hangouts can now be initiated from YouTube

This is a really cool integration that seems to make sense -- watch YouTube videos together in a Hangout.

Google is definitely moving quickly to realize the synergies between its various properties -- this reaffirms the idea that Google+ is a "social layer" rather than a social network.

What else should they integrate Google+ with?

http://mashable.com/2011/08/18/watch-with-friends-youtube/

Google+ Hangouts Can Now Be Initiated from YouTube

Google has quietly rolled out yet another feature of its Google+ social network, letting users initiate hangouts to watch videos together from YouTube.

Posted via email from Michael Wacker's posterous

Diigo Bookmarks this Week (weekly)

2011-08-14T13:30:00.001-07:00

Preparing Your School for an iPad Implementation - iPads in Education

iPad implementation tips and "stories" from an adopter

tags: ipad implementation Education iPads deployment school preparing
- STORIES (527) Be online and have fun of reading online stories in urdu,hindi and pakistani and indian stories.Just go on to http://www.stories.pk and enjoy. - post by suhailrizwanali bukhari
http://www.dkfoundation.org/blended2011/Jeffco.pdf

tags: www.dkfoundation.org Jeffco.pdf blended
Blended Learning in Finland

Worth the time read on blended learning in Finland.
Map : Gadgets - Google Docs Help

Very cool way to incorporate the power of google Spreadsheets with Maps.

tags: map google docs
WebQuest Examples: Grades 9-12 Science

Hmmmm...not sure if this is where I'm heading if looking for High impact Instructional moves integrating technology, but it is a starting point, right?

tags: scichat Science

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Forwarding Email to a Group in Gmail via a Filter

2011-08-13T13:48:00.001-07:00

Today Cathy Nelson, posted this question out that seemed like a reasonable request and something you should be able to do, so I tested it out.

Here's how you can do it.

Create a group in Google Groups

Next, add that email under forwarding email addresses in the settings on gmail (you will need to confirm that address)

Now you need to add the filter itself. Click on more and then "filter messages like these"

Insert the New Google Group Address and Voila, your emails will now be distributed to any groups that you want. This can be a powerful way to automatically share emails to folks that need to be "in the know" in your organization!

Posted via email from Michael Wacker's posterous

Do our school and central leaders need to be comfortable with and engaged in the exploration of technology tools in learning?

2011-08-11T12:55:00.001-07:00

I'm really trying to flesh out some biases I feel I have and may need to dismiss or try harder to address.

Do our school and central leaders need to be comfortable with and engaged in the exploration of technology tools in learning?
When (if ever) will it no longer be okay for our 3rd grade students to be more adept than the teacher, principal, director, etc?
Would that answer fly with other disciplines?
Is there a baseline of knowledge you should be able to demonstrate before leading a classroom, school, department, or district?

My biases tell me that most certainly this is not okay, but I'm not sure I'm right. Someone that I work closely with is brilliant, his expertise on coaching, and use of data to enrich instruction is tremendous. His technology skills are a gaping black hole in his toolbelt, but I'll take him leading us ANY DAY!

As we all start to go back to our schools, take a look at yourself, your peers, your leader. Are you more prepared to teach and lead this generation of students and teachers than you were in June? What did you do differently? Did you spend time improving your craft? Were you establishing a baseline of technology skills? Did those worlds intertwine? Tell me how it went down, I'm a learner and a teacher and I want to understand.

Posted via email from Michael Wacker's posterous

Google Apps Individual Purchased Storage

2011-08-10T19:26:00.001-07:00

I must've missed this if it's been around for awhile, because this is REALLY cool!

Google Apps storage

Individual Google Apps users are able to purchase storage if their domain administrator enables the User Managed Storage setting in the Apps Control Panel. However, an individual Google Apps user's purchased storage will not apply to Gmail storage. Learn more about Google Apps storage.

At $.25/GB for storage, this is kinda a no-brainer. Tie in the fact that it is SUPER easy to take your stuff off of Google products, and I wonder why small schools, independent schools, and even smaller districts don't look at this as a serious cloud solution.

I see the 1GB per file limit, but that doesn't bother me really.

What am I missing?

Posted via email from Michael Wacker's posterous

5 Components Needed for a Blended Learning Model...conversation starter

2011-08-07T19:17:00.001-07:00

Shared awhile back by +Stephen Ransom 5 Components Needed for a Blended Learning Model

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/blended-online-learning-heather-wolpert-gawron

Off to a good start here with this list. I still think that what +Ryan Bretag is talking about as far as the blend of social, content, play, instruction, etc is closer to where we need to be.http://www.ryanbretag.com/blog/?p=2432
But making a list that starts with "5 components needed for blank grabs my attention.

Blended Learning: Combining Face-to-Face and Online Education | Edutopia

logo. Learning Style Quiz; Guide: Summer Rejuvenation. Sign in or Join our community with. Browse by Grade Level. Grades K-2; Grades 3-5; Grades 6-8; Grades 9-12. Core Strategies. Overview; Comprehens...

Posted via email from Michael Wacker's posterous

My (I need to Check this Out again) Weekly List (weekly)

2011-08-07T13:30:00.003-07:00

ToonDoo.com: A comic can bring topics to life | EdReach

tags: ToonDoo.com comic

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Find your school’s 2011 growth numbers

2011-08-04T08:25:00.001-07:00

This compares apples to apples. If you were advanced previous year you are scored against other advanced kids in Colorado. One of a handful of states that do this. Gives the best "glance" at teacher impact over a year. Low growth should be unacceptable year after year; although there will always be outliers and anomalies.

Find your school’s 2011 growth numbers
EDNEWSCOLORADO | AUGUST 4, 2011
http://pulse.me/s/10qbM

Search the EdNews' database to see 2011 growth numbers for your school and district - and find out what they mean Read more

Posted via email from Michael Wacker's posterous

Stop Talking About EDU ALL the Time, Wacker!

2011-07-17T23:15:00.001-07:00

This is a note to myself. I'm passionate. I love learning. While this post isn't about all the things I wanna make better, it is about my acknowledgment that my closest friends are probably tired of hearing it, I need to do more about it…and so do YOU.

I try not to do this often, but this is a post of mine taken out of context (of course) from a siloed walled garden that none of you can participate in..too bad really, because I could totally be wrong. But, you will only have this comment box below to voice your disagreement and even if everyone else in my little discussion agrees with you; you will never know ;)

My closest friends would tell you I'm obsessed, but I'm driven by where we are, where we were, and where we need to go. I purposefully directed the now in the forefront, because we are at a critical time for education. We need to be flipping the script so to speak and the hardest shifts need to happen here in these conversations. I believe professional development is heading that way with all of the informal learning going on today via twitter, ning, edmodo, Google Plus. etc. I want to be a shepherd and lifeline for folks excited to join communities of online practicioners. I build and design these courses/spaces but I still have so much to learn! (A huge missing dynamic piece of this flow is that I can't share the awesomeness here (Regis online), with the outside world.)

We need to get there.

It pains me that we close off these conversations even from ourselves. If I want to reference or footnote this in a future piece, it's not possible because of our siloed walls. This is not unique to Regis but is instead a flaw in the design of 99% of online spaces designed for learning.

Am I crazy?

Michael

 
Michael Wacker
Online Professional Development Coordinator
Work Profiles: Twitter 
 
Google+ 
 
Edmodo DPS Moodle

Posted via email from Michael Wacker's posterous

Why a social community of practitioners?

2011-05-09T12:50:00.001-07:00

This week we're looking at beginning the heavy lift of creating a consortium and community of teachers across colorado.

Not sure if i'm right, but I am trying to replicate twitter Pros and eliminate the Cons on a district and statewide scale at the same time.

Trying to frame the why; if I boiled it down into five quick pieces; the value for a social community of practitioners is:

“Always on” reflection forum
Authentic opportunity to bounce ideas off and expand on others via a network of professional learners
Provides the space where ideas and philosophies are shared, critiqued, expanded upon and developed.
Personalized search database
Allows us to be participating or are involved in, what is perceived as, the pulse of the education (not just ed tech) community

Posted via email from Michael Wacker's posterous

Are we missing the boat? Am I crazy?

2011-02-21T19:51:00.001-08:00

We really have so far to go in regards to what conversations look like in 99% of online courses and what I believe would be useful community experiences.

Re-reading this post tonight, found myself a little frustrated with how we/I design online courses/spaces

http://mashable.com/2010/08/06/online-education-social/

Maybe it's the way I see and want online learning to be heading. Maybe it's
the stunning lack of application or transfer into the classroom that I've watched be applied from online courses in my experiences. But, I'm really struggling with the way we are "providing" online courses for our teachers. Love the idea of having courses be open, accessible by all, and assignments being optional, but I think there's more to that. Every course should be facilitated by our experts in the field and in our department. I also think that the objectives, and essential questions should be what drive the materials, conversations, and more, not the other way around. Each "course" would then be a live community...

I would really rather see the entire process as a social, connective (ism),
and live experience, as opposed to an isolated, silod(sp.), stagnant space.

I want a utopian blend of live, self-directed, facilitated, and social learning, without mindless rigor or false accountability. Seems easy enough, right? :)

Are we missing the boat?
Am I crazy?

Posted via email from Michael Wacker's posterous

Dear Firefox, I am sorry we haven't spent much time together lately...

2011-01-03T10:03:00.001-08:00

Dear Firefox, I am sorry we haven't spent much time together lately. First of all, let me say, it's not you it's me. It's just that the Google Chrome browser does everything I need and more. I know you were there for me a lot over the past couple of years, when other browsers seemed destined to make me quit course design and facilitation, but you've been exposed recently as "less than safe" in wifi environments and that's just a bit risky for me. As recently as a few weeks ago, you were my only option in editing in moodle, but not anymore. Now that we have the chrome/safari patch installed I've ignored and kind of abandoned you; I’m truly sorry about that. I am grateful for the "add ons" and speed of browsing you showed me a few years back, this was without doubt what made me fall in love with you in the first place. I've heard good things about the latest BETA update, so I will try and come by your place again sometime soon. Take care of yourself and again thank you for everything, I hope we can remain friends.

Posted via email from Michael Wacker's posterous

Delicious is Closing...how to import your bookmarks into diigo in 5 minutes #dpsk12

2010-12-16T11:39:00.001-08:00

First thing you need to do is set up an account with diigo if you have not already done so.

Next, open up two tabs

One with this link http://www.diigo.com/import_all/prepare?service=Delicious
The second with http://delicious.com

*Log into both accounts

Then click on settings in your delicious account

Next Click on Export/Backup Bookmarks

Follow that with Export file

Now that the file is saved go back to diigo and Import

Finally you will receive notification that transfer is in process

Posted via email from Michael Wacker's posterous

Create your own ³motivational² images/posters. http://wigflip.com/automotivator/

2010-12-05T19:55:00.001-08:00

You can create your own “motivational” images/posters, etc really quick and easy here. Even as a self directed goal or mission statement.
Here’s the website: http://wigflip.com/automotivator/

Posted via email from Michael Wacker's posterous

Sharing a Document with a Google Group? >Workaround

2010-11-15T12:21:00.001-08:00

Sharing a document with a Google group?

Looking for a workaround to the fact that it doesn't automatically show up in folks doclists?

Here's a quick easy way to do just that.

Hat tip to Dana Nguyen for sharing how to do this.

First of all, set up a group (you can do this with both Public and Apps accounts)

Secondly, take the address that was created for the group (i.e. http://groups.google.com/group/NAME-OF-GROUP) and add the groups address as collaborators and/or editors.

Here's where the workaround starts:

They will need to know the name of the document they were invited to (this could be accomplished by emailing the group or posting it in the group discussion board)
They will need to search for it, and then open it
Once it is searched and opened they need to "star it" so that they can come back to it if need be.
Unfortunately, if they want to add it to their doclist then they will need to add themselves to the document (via sharing)

The benefits to doing it this way are that as folks are added or deleted form a group they then lose or gain permissions to all documents, folders, sites, etc.

TREMENDOUS management and organization tool for teachers and admin

Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation TED vid here: http://goo.gl/XnQU...a lot of good ideas #dpsk12

2010-11-07T18:45:00.001-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y

Reflections...

"If you do this, then you get that..."

Mismatch between what science knows and what "business" does.
For 21st century tasks, carrot and stick doesn't work and often does harm.
"If/then approach" works really well for simple set of rules/clear destination tasks.Rewards narrow the focus and concentrate the mind...(i.e standardization.)

There are some things he talks about that I know we could use with our Teacher Leaders, Teacher Effectiveness Coaches, Online Learners, etc, but that also require a major paradigm shift....can we get there?

Motivation is a necessity to achieve a "butterfly effect" scale of change I believe.

Right brain, creative, conceptual abilities... truth is, the problems we face at work are mystifying and solutions are surprising/non-obvious. We all have our own "candle problem."
autonomy, mastery, purpose...

sounds a lot like an andragogical approach to learning.

"if you want engagement self direction works better"

half new products at Google are burst during their 20% time.

ROWE: Results Only Work Environment

http://gorowe.com/know-rowe/

Drive to do things because they matter
Lazy, dangerous, ideology of carrots and sticks

Michael Wacker
Online Professional Development Coordinator
Denver Public Schools

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Reflections on "in the beginning, educator's technology use may not be pretty" Where are the mentors? #dpsk12

2010-10-29T13:38:00.001-07:00

Today, (10-29-10) Scott McLeod had a great post that really made me think about a couple of things. First, about how we allocate and organize our coaching in schools in my district. Secondly, about how we set each other up for failure by labeling each other in derogatory ways. Third, about how can we support each other in these mediums instead of beating each other up, really there's just no value in that in the long run.

The following was a comment from Joe Bower and subsequent response from Scott.

"TECHNOLOGY + POOR PEDAGOGY = ACCELERATED MALPRACTICE" Joe Bower

I actually like Joe’s pithy phrase a lot but, as I said in my comment: we usually have to give people the time and space to transition from old practices to new. This usually means that new uses of technology look very much at the beginning like old educational practices but with a few more bells and whistles - what Bernajean Porter likely would call 'Adapting Uses' rather than 'Transforming Uses' [see http://bit.ly/porterspectrum]

Here was my intial response to Scott,

@mcleod, makes me think mayB we need 2 C ourselves as brand new teachers again, which is FRIGHTENING 4 most, b/c whr R the mentors? #edtech

So what are we doing to mentor and coach up folks? It seems to me that we are doing very little of that in our schools. If we are fortunate to have full time instructional coaches in our schools, it's been my experience that these folks while sound in pedagogy, lack transformative technology integration skills. So why would I as a teacher that has been teaching for a number of years submit myself to the crazy, scary, insecure feeling that I had my first day of teaching all over again? Why should I put myself in the postion of vulnerability that we in the ed tech community believe is a necessity in today's classroom?

If you believe like me that there is tremendous power in technology in curing many of the ills of our classrooms and schools, then we need to do something. I can jump around throughout a given week and find some tremendous thinkers and educators trying to do some heavy lifting for the rest of us, with no sense of entitlement or credit given. The concept and philosophy of sharing as much as we can, because what comes back is powerful and valuable, is on stage all the time. Here is a great list of the twitter chats that are available throughout the week in a Google Calendar format (add it today!) There are amazing folks that we can lean on in the ed tech/curriculum world. Stand on the shoulders of giants. I think about the issues in the schools like meeting the needs of special education students and I look to folks like Deven Black and the powerful #spedchat going on. Folks conversing, sharing, and trying to help each other out, but the number of people in this and other chats is so small compared to the number of people looking for answers, ideas, and solutions. Looking for ways to meet the needs of English Language Learners in your classroom? Look no further than the great minds ofLarry Ferlazzo and Miguel Guhlin, who not only get it, but LOVE to share with us all! And yes, there's a chat for that #ellchat. Core curriculum subjects are represented in #mathchat, #scichat, etc. But the folks doing some amazing things are also trying to share. In Math, you have the Khan Academy and Dan Meyer; who rocked an awesome tedx talk awhile back that will make you stop in your tracks and say, yeah, we should probably think more about that. Science has some great thinkers doing great things, like Glen Westbroek, English has Angela Maiers, and Zac Chase among others. Humanities has Russell Tarr and Diana Laufenberg leading and sharing some great stuff. The Open Source movement has Alec Couros and Dave Cormier, and the thinkers and thought pushers like Bud Hunt and Becky Fisher are pushing thinking to new levels. I could go on and on, barely even scratching the surface of the folks that are out there, but you get the point. There are folks out there looking to help, wanting to help, and not judging you for being new a bit.

Why do we feel the need to label each other as incompetent teachers when we are trying something new, like a Google Quiz that has automatic grading, (which was what I guess set Joe off.) Why should we assume that ignorance equals incompetence?

Let's help each other as we walk into unchartered territory for many of us.

Let's allow each other to fail, then pick each other up and say that was AWESOME that you tried that.

If we integrate technology across the curriculum then in my opinion at least we will be putting tools in the hands of kids that even if our lessons aren't transformative, at least they have access to a tool that will allow some self direction, discovery, and sense making.

I'm also here to help, let me know where you are, what you're looking to try and let me/us help you! :)

Posted via email from Michael Wacker's posterous

Google Apps Script - Using Google Forms to Populate a Calendar

2010-10-20T20:50:00.001-07:00

Section 4: Scheduling appointments with users

http://code.google.com/googleapps/appsscript/articles/helpdesk_tutorial.html#section4

via code.google.com

Do you use Google Apps Script? You should... whether it's the killer integration of Gmail and Mail Merge or this nifty trick of using a google form to add a calendar event. These scripts are easy to use (seriously, I'm not as geeky as I act) and tehy add productivity to your workflow. Try em out, if you get a chance share with me your favorite. I'll be showing this to some folks next week.

http://markosullivan.ca/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/googlecode.jpg

Audioboo

2010-10-18T11:33:00.001-07:00

Audioboo. Because sound is social. audioboo.fm

Love this site! The ability to record, embed, and share is awesome. Also, love the ability to add a map and an image to the audio! Five minutes is plenty of time to tell your story!

Posted via email from Michael Wacker's posterous

RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms >a powerful message, both in listening and viewing

2010-10-17T06:37:00.001-07:00

via youtube.com

Not only are the words of Sir Ken powerful as a standalone, but the animation done here is absolutely amazing and inspirational! Why aren't these the conversations, around design, structure, and paradigm shift, that our self-appointed change agents in #educationnation and
#waitingforsuperman are having?
Why don't we look at this time of economic flux as an opportunity to disrupt the status quo. If we come out of the situation we are in currently, where there is some attention being paid towards educational reform, and have done little but create rubrics for effectiveness and fired some lousy teachers we blew it!

Posted via email from Michael Wacker's posterous

Zac (@mrchase) nailed it this week with this post! "Talk TO me"

2010-10-15T19:35:00.001-07:00

http://autodizactic.com/blog/?p=563

Talk TO me

To the “superintendents, chief executives and chancellors responsible for educating nearly 2 1/2 million students in America”:
Hi.

I’m a teacher.

Please talk to me and not about me.

Lost in all of the education nation conversations are the teachers who are
doing the right thing day in and day out.

A reminder that as we have these conversations we need to bring teachers and students to the table for more than just aesthetics.

Posted via email from Michael Wacker's posterous

Reflections from a post by Damian Bariexca @damian613

2010-10-12T18:54:00.001-07:00

http://www.apaceofchange.com/2010/10/12/when-teachers-struggle/comment-page-1/#comment-1196

Great post! Maybe if we put our heads together we can come up with an evaluation system that not only encompasses student achievement, but also self evaluation, peer observation, student feedback, admin feedback, and community comments. Then when we receive this (and I would love to have this feedback as a teacher) we will be able to provide and have access to: differentiated, targeted, specific PD, that has been vetted by my community and peers. While we are at it, I would love instant access to teacher leaders in my school, my district, my state and beyond; and the spaces and places where real collaboration, sharing, and learning can take place.
We can do that, right?

Posted via email from Michael Wacker's posterous

Ed Tech Experts Choose Top 3 Tools (link to the article) and my thoughts (top 3)

2010-07-31T21:19:00.001-07:00

via thejournal.com

Ten years into the new century, we’re still trying to find the web 2.0 tools that best facilitate collaboration—one of the fundamentals of 21st century learning. As the number of tools continues to grow, and fuzzy terms like cloud computing, hashtags, and synchronous live platforms are introduced into the lexicon daily, even the most tech-savvy educators can have trouble determining which technologies have a role in a collaborative academic environment and which are simply new toys.
http://thejournal.com/Articles/2010/08/01/3-for-3.aspx?Page=1

This is in no way a review, critique or criticism of the article from the Journal. I think that each person brings great discussion and ideas to the edu-sphere and I am grateful for that. I would just like to add to the conversation and give my 3 top tools.

I love that Steve Hargadon, didn't give a name of a tool, but instead the idea. Blogs, for example, if you use wordpress, blogger, edublogs, or any number of others, that's great, the idea of the web log is still the "tool" though.

So my number one would also be blogging...still. I love the idea of creating authors, publishers. and writers with purpose without really having to change a classroom, as we know many teachers aren't ready for this. Blogging can be a literal, adaptive, and also transformative use of technology. It allows for scaffolded and secure use, while naturally lending itself to differentiation in the classroom.

A teacher with little or no tech skills can begin blogging with kids in a safe environment, dangling the carrot and opening doors of digital responsibility, footprints, and authentic publishing.

My number two would be community as content. Yeah, I know that sounds obscure, and I can't link One single tool to it directly, but I can say that leveraging the 100's of web 2.0 tools out there into a means of changing classroom practice can and should be a priority. Today, you can literally walk into your class, state three objectives, give a timeline, and then allow the collaboration and conversation to fill the annals. Social networks open doors previously unimagined, Skype invites authors and experts into rooms, and backchannels, blogs, and live document collaboration (Google Docs recent updates and purchase of etherpad make this THE tool) changes and guides learning. Learning becomes more about who you know, how you can contribute, when to shut up and listen or lurk, and then pushback or modify. Which leads me to my number three Open-ness.

Open-ness, yeah that's what I'm calling it today, is high potential, somewhat controversial, and potentially culture changing. Take anything we do on the web, tear down the walls and let others glean, modify and adapt; and what you have is a culture that grows exponentially and rapidly. Creative commons has done so much heavy lifting around this that it's time to run with it, especially in education. (btw-- the recent ruling on jailbreaking iphones opened some doors in edu) Open building, sharing, and designing of content will do wonders in closing divides between haves and have nots and do wonders for our enabling and empowering of our future creators. I've written about this before, here, but I really believe open course, open sharing, open content, and open communication will give us the transparency that everyone seems to claim they grant and expect!

Thoughts?

Posted via email from Michael Wacker's posterous

Re-reading some old blogpost faves this AM and this one by @karlfisch stuck out to me....

2010-07-27T06:33:00.001-07:00

Below is an excerpt from a post by Karl Fisch back in 2006, linked to a "most influential post" of 2007. Three almost Four years later are we any closer to answering the question? Take some time to read through the comments, see if, like me, you find yourself saying; "Wow, I still have these conversations pretty daily if not weekly'

When is it going to change?

http://thefischbowl.blogspot.com/2007/09/is-it-okay-to-be-technologically.html

I think there's a general feeling among teachers (not all teachers, but many) that it's okay to be technologically illiterate. It reminds me of when I was a math teacher. In about 80% of the parent conferences I had with students who were struggling, at least one of the parents would say "I was never any good at math either." While I don't doubt the truth of the statement, it was the fact that they said it and almost seemed proud of it that bothered me (and of course the message it sent to their student). I can't imagine a parent saying "Oh, yeah, I never learned how to read" and being proud of it.

When are we going to unlock computers so that adlt can play, download, and learn how to use these tools better? When will we enable and celebrate the opportunity for failure in regards to technology. I sent a video yesterday to a tecaher who was so frustrated by the fact that she was gong to need to get her site tech or central tech support to download Quicktime, that her exact words were:

So I downloaded the file and then I couldn’t run it because I don’t have a media player on this computer. When I tried to download one, I found that I don’t have administrative rights to download a new program. I have sent a request to the Hotline to become an administrator. Ahhhhh technology, so much fun, such a pain.

It shouldn't have to be that way! Especially if we can draw comparisons between technology skills, and reading or writing; do we make it this hard for tecahers to check out books? Is that eve a fair comparison, if not what parallel can you see?

Here's a final nugget from Karl's post four years ago, I think it sparks great conversation and debate.

If a teacher today is not technologically literate - and is unwilling to make the effort to learn more - it's equivalent to a teacher 30 years ago who didn't know how to read and write.

Posted via email from mwacker's posterous

Learning Management System...Blackboard has it all? Who pays the price?

2010-07-16T07:05:00.001-07:00

Last week Blackboard announced that they had purchased what in my opinion are the two most dynamic e-learning tools available today, Wimba and Elluminate.

Yesterday they announced the addition of powerful e-learning texts;

“McGraw-Hill, a top academic publisher, as well as Follett Higher Education Group and Barnes Noble, two major distributors that operate a combined 1,500 college bookstores in the United States and Canada.”

For me this is a tough pill to swallow; not because a big company is getting bigger, creating a virtual monopoly on the Learning Management System business, but because I believe in Open Source as a viable, sustainable model for education. These acquisitions help to facilitate the delivery of dynamic content and synchronous and asynchronous deliveries via online, but a cost that is prohibitive for most districts and schools.

The McGraw-Hill partnership <http://www.blackboard.com/Company/Media-Center/Press-Releases.aspx?releaseid=1447807> will allow instructors to search the McGraw-Hill catalog for relevant course materials, then assign them to their students, without ever leaving Blackboard. Students can then purchase and access the assigned materials, also through the Blackboard portal, via the Follett and Barnes & Noble online bookstores.
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/07/15/blackboard

I want to believe that the open source community will close the gap and continue to build better and more dynamic venues/tools for video conferencing (big blue button), e-text delivery (ck-12) and more venues for open content (MIT Open courseware); because I think that it's what is best for our schools. I'm not opposed to paying for tools, but I know there are far too many districts in my state that will NEVER be able to afford an LMS like this, and for those kids I want it open and accessible. So who pays the price when big companies get bigger? The rural outliers, the schools and communities where digital access and inequity isn't just a rallying cry for more tax money, but is instead a reality, a crippling reality where preparing our p-12 students for college, creative entrepeneurship, or life beyond high school, just got a little bit tougher and more expensive.
There are people working hard to get these tools into the hands of schools and districts slashing costs and trying to balance budgets, and i'm sure there are many more besides the few listed above, but if you want to learn a little more about them you can find them here.

E-texts

CK-12 Foundation is a non-profit organization with a mission to reduce the cost of textbook materials for the K-12 market both in the U.S. and worldwide. Using an open-content, web-based collaborative model termed the "FlexBook," CK-12 intends to pioneer the generation and distribution of high quality educational content that will serve both as core text as well as provide an adaptive environment for learning.
http://about.ck12.org

Video Conferencing

BigBlueButton is an active open source project that focuses on usability, modularity, and clean design -- both for the user and the developer. The project is hosted at Google Code BigBlueButton is built by combining over fourteen open source components.
http://bigbluebutton.org/overview

Open course

MIT Open Course: Unlocking Knowledge, Empowering Minds. Free lecture notes, exams, and videos from MIT. No registration required. http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm

Open Source LMS

Moodle: Moodle is a Course Management System (CMS), also known as a Learning Management System (LMS) or a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). It is a Free web application that educators can use to create effective online learning sites http://moodle.org
EDU20 Free and easy LMS. Free cloud-hosted LMS, with nothing to download or install.
http://www.edu20.org

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Love it when people I admire poke me in the face and challenge me to challenge others

2010-06-24T06:56:00.001-07:00

via @davecormier "We learn from each other, through each other, from each other’s learning, from our ideas, our shared and unshared contexts and, maybe more importantly, we learn to continue to do this" http://davecormier.com/edblog/2010/06/17/community-as-curriculum-and-open-learning/ Powerful message, and something that I think shifts conversations from content to process and back to content, tapping into our most powerful resource, each other.
It also reminds me that if we say there’s a “beginning” to the conversation we are implying an end, and that can be dangerously limiting.
Check out the video from Dave’s site

What are you investing in? People or Tools? Content or Community?

2010-06-23T21:40:00.001-07:00

If you are investing in tools and programs while also cutting staff and people, you are missing it and blowing it! Is it crazy to invest in social media "expert" for your district instead. Someone that can navigate the waters of the world wide web, that can tap into the open learning community and can ask the right questions about where there may be more or better answers.

Now, I’m no genius; but it seems to me that someone who has the skills and capacity to link the vast amount of resources, conversations, keynotes, videos and more into a coherent and useable space, would cost you thousands less than a video delivery tool claiming to align pd, or a tool that “streams” video and also allows you to create antiquated a,b,c,d type of quizzes.
Or, maybe I am the one who is missing it and blowing it?
Just seems we prefer to buy things, than to invest in people that can build, maintain, design, and develop capacity.

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Vision and Intro statement for our e-learning online PD environment (Jargon alert) :)

2010-06-17T06:49:00.001-07:00

Chop full of jargon and buzz words, here is our vision statement that will appear on the landing/front page of our Moodle (online Pd) LMS

Any time you say 21st century learning, just in time or always on, the shenanigans meter goes into overdrive, but I feel strongly that open sharing and collaboration will open up so many opportunities for our teachers!

Here it is, please be kind. J

Welcome to the next frontier of professional learning and development.

In DPS, we believe that learning is a collaborative and team sport. We believe that "just-in-time" and "always-on" learning can and should be an option for all professionals looking to study and grow. We believe that creating and nurturing a 21st century learning environment where this can take place is essential and vital to our work in the Office of Teacher Learning and Leadership. By capitalizing on our hyper-connectedness and possibilities that e-learning and today's tools bring, we can maximize near and far transfer in the classrooms; with student growth and success driving our e-learning community. We believe in an open model of design where organic course and resource creation enables and lifts up our teacher leaders and builds capacity for professional development in our district and beyond.

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Personal/Professional Google Account Connectivity

2010-06-14T07:20:00.001-07:00

I for one send a lot of shared documents to co-workers via their work email address. This doesn’t always work out as cleanly as I hoped as many times “Google Accounts” are not synced/linked with your work email address. So one of two things usually happens, either the person I send the document to creates a new account with their work email (doesn’t really make sense to keep creating accounts, when do we check them?) Or the other solution is one of frustration, where the user never accesses the document and therefore misses out on the contribution possibilities. Below is a solution I recently shared with a couple of teams I work with, hoping that they will not meet the fate of one of the aformentioned results.
One “mistake” that I often see when sharing Google Documents across work and personal accounts is in the permissions setting. To insure that you will have access to any documents shared to your work address taking the initial step of adding another email address to your account solves this.

To do this you will need to:

sign in to your account
click on settings

click on account settings

click on edit email settings

then click on “add an additional email address”

Lastly confirm the new address. This should allow you to access all documents sent to your “work” email address via your Google account

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PD design Team focusing questions for the meetings ahead of us

2010-06-14T06:49:00.001-07:00

I like these ideas in particular, and I think they align with our conversations we’ve been having:

How does the score on a teacher evaluation rubric trigger PD?

And what types of PD does it trigger?
What are the options?

How should a year-long personal Pd plan be developed?

What should be included in it?
What data is it based on?
Who is part of the conversation?

However, I worry about being bogged down in the minutia of accountability and where that falls w/o looking at models that explicitly address that piece. I think it can be part of a conversation down the road, but maybe the team’s focus should be around Pd connectivity, data, and “personalization.”

Am I off base here?

What do you think?

"Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn." - Benjamin Franklin

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Question asking, Facilitation, and Course Design; help me think through this...

2010-05-30T22:16:00.001-07:00

Do you just want to throw content into an online shell?
I want facilitators that are effective, (there's that word again) at asking
the right questions? I'm curious how to teach, lead, or model how to do that well. I don't want to get caught up in design, understandings and essential questions, though I believe there is a real responsibility in doing that well, I want the facilitation to be a living and breathing learning environment. How would you model question asking in a way that makes the "content owners" take responsibility for and ownership in transfer? Am I wanting too much too soon? Thanks to Dave Cormier for once again, challenging and nudging the conversation?

photo courteys of Valerie Everett

Creating an environment where risk taking and failure is celebrated...

2010-05-07T06:59:00.001-07:00

As a professional adult learner do you allow yourself to fail? Is it encouraged by your admin...what about your site techs? If so...how do you foster that environment? Is it something that we can expect as professional learners or is the idea of failure embarrassing and likely met with ridicule and or finger pointing. I'm reminded of a story by Tami Thompson (@teacherspirit) that she shared with me months ago. She was working at home on her own time seeking out the professional learning so many of us in our field do without even thinking about the extra hours or time away from family. Trying new technologies, downloading apps, finding ways to engage, enhance, and design learning where technology is embedded and not added on. While doing this she downloaded a virus or worm.

When she took the computer into her site tech, was she met with understanding and support for trying something and seeking out more learning. No, she was ridiculed, called out, and spoken to like a child for "downloading on a school computer"
This drives me batty! I've been there, I know what an awful feeling that is; being on a perceived island where you think that not only are you one of only a few trying these new technologies, but you are pushing your peers, offering to help, and now you've made a mistake. A mistake that is not your fault, a mistake that could be met as a celebration and a learning opportunity!
Jason Kern (@jasonmkern) told me when we talked about this, the conversation shouldn’t be about, “What did you do to this computer.” It should be more like, “Wow you must’ve been trying some really cool stuff to jack this thing up this bad.”
I guess, my point, if there is one, is that as adults we need to break things, we need to be able to learn from our mistakes, and creating an environment where we as teachers can do this, will go a long way to establishing a risk taking and self driven professional learning culture in our schools and buildings.

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Community Learning and Sharing via Moodle Tutorials

2010-04-27T10:32:00.001-07:00

Welcome to Moodle Tutorials
Educating Educators
http://www.moodletutorials.org

About 2/3 of the way through my 30,60,90 plan here at DPS and I am still on schedule. It is important to note however, that there is no way any of this would be possible without the crowd and community that supports Moodle and open source in general. This is another example of people doing it the right way. Not only are they sharing and sharing a lot here in the Moodle community, but they are sharing tutorials that I would be spending a lot of time building myself if I had to.

Between the collaboration and networking of friends and communities like this, many of us would still be replicating the work of so many others.

It makes me wonder though, how else can we outsource, crowdsource, and delegate tasks to better the education community as a whole?

Image via Dave Duarte

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Love My Job! My Team! and Our Work!

2010-04-22T07:26:00.001-07:00

image by lumaxart
I am so excited about my team at DPS (Denver Public Schools) primarily around Professional Development, we are the Office of Teacher Learning and Leadership. Denver Teacher Residency is a part of that, (along with Teacher Effectiveness Coaches and the New Educator Institute) I threw this Google Site together for them today, I really cannot wait to see what comes http://bit.ly/cE1Pz3. Capturing videos, discussions, and reflections in an open environment will be a shift from out traditional closed model of discussion. I know that with Nikki spearheading the groups vision and work, there will not be a lack of excitement and motivation!
When you are part of a team that challenges you professionally, intellectually, and respects you, it is a fantastic and invigorating feeling!
Motivation comes easy when you want to do something, and that includes wanting to see your teammates and direct supervisor succeed. If I am doing a good job and doing well, then my hope is that my team will be recognized. I see great things on the horizon for this group, I’m so proud to be a part of it!

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How Do You Measure Transfer?

2010-04-13T22:43:00.000-07:00

photo by shareski

If you are designing PD (esp Online)
"How are you measuring transfer?"
"How are you seeing the classroom change?"
"We don't want to see whether you can play "school" more interested in whether or not your classroom has changed because of the learning?"
"How can you show me your classroom is different because of course "x"?"

This was from a conversation with my executive director this week, and I can’t stop thinking about the back and forth. We can agree that accessing the learning, and “proving” the learning in traditional sense is not an option for us.
Don't fall in the trap of expecting or asking teachers to "do school" they know how to do that, they're teachers, if all they are doing is commenting on discussion boards, or journaling...you are missing a big piece.
Is the learning changing their practice and classroom?
if so how...
What evidence is there?
Does listening and interacting via webinar on classroom20 develop you professionally? Did listening to Don Tapscott talk about millenials and the digital generation, change the way you looked at your classroom..if so let’s have that discussion...if not, then what will?
Measuring transfer and changing your practice is hard...often times however playing school and “earning” credts is not.

You’ve taken in-seat and online courses...did your practice change, if so, how, and what would quantify/qualify that statement?

My reflections on the conversations I've been wanting and trying to have lately

2010-04-12T07:22:00.000-07:00

photo attributed to ecastro

Shifting the conversations in our schools from “How can we improve test scores,” to “How can we design learning opportunities that engage and motivate students,” is a great conversation to have. Looking at what other countries score is one way of measuring our effectiveness but it is not the only or best way. Recently, standardized testing has come under fire and the idea that teachers are teaching to the test is disheartening, because if it is true we are doing a disservice, if it is not then perception is overshadowing reality. I recently left the following comments on Ben Grey’s blog, The Edge of Tomorrow.

I think assessment is necessary, and yes even the state mandated assessments are necessary. It’s mining the data that can and should change, what does the data tell us, is it growth, is it teacher effectiveness, is it both, is it neither?
A lot of brilliant people disagree with me, and I would just ask that they think of better solutions and ways to improve the collection methods, not just “rant” against the current design. I want accountability for my child’s school and teacher, I want it as a teacher myself as well. I want to be able to measure if I’m doing “it” well, whatever “it” is. We need to shift a lot of old school thinking in schools, that’s been talked about and debated ad nauseum, continuous and standardized assessment is a piece of this conversation.
Why are we so afraid of national standards and assessments? I think for me, the “it’ is the objectives, or the scope and sequence around what we are teaching. Ongoing assessment drives our planning and instruction, if there is some consistency in how we are assessing and the results are reliable, I’m all for it, but unfortunately that doesn’t always happen across grade levels, districts, and states.
You bring up a good point about the gap between an ongoing assessment and yearly assessment, that is where something needs to happen, that is a flaw in one or both of the assessments.

Alfie Kohn back in January shot holes in the case for National Standards, here, Not sure that I agree, but here are a couple interesting bits from that article.

“On 8th grade math and science exams, eight of the 10 top-scoring countries had centralized education systems, but so did nine of the 10 lowest-scoring countries in math and eight of the 10 lowest-scoring countries in science.”

I do agree with this statement though,

“Offered a list of standards, we should scrutinize each one, but also ask who came up with them and for what purpose. Is there room for discussion and disagreement—and not just by experts—regarding what, and how, we’re teaching and how authentic our criteria are for judging success?”

A couple of recent pieces that extend and promote discussion on this conversation one form the NY times and another from the BBC.

One possible solution is to allow the government to maintain control over standards, as I listed above, I’m not sure I agree with this, the stats can be picked apart, but I do think some sort of “national” accountability would be a good thing, I honestly don’t have that solution in my pocket as of yet. So, how can we maintain the “uniqueness of our system, while still meeting global benchmarks?

America’s system of standards, curriculums and testing controlled by states and local districts with a heavy overlay of federal rules is a “quite unique” mix of decentralization and central control, Mr. Schleicher said. More successful nations, he said, maintain central control over standards and curriculum, but give local schools more freedom from regulation, he said.
“The question for the U.S. is not just how many charter schools it establishes,” he said, “but how to build the capacity for all schools to assume charter-like autonomy, as happens in some of the best-performing education systems.”
“In one way, international education benchmarks make disappointing reading for the U.S.,” he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/education/10educ.html?emc=eta1

So more time and teacher contact is the answer you presume, well that is not necessarily so.

Finland's schools score consistently at the top of world rankings, yet the pupils have the fewest number of class hours in the developed world.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/world_news_america/8601207.stm <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/world_news_america/8601207.stm>

As usual, I don’t have the answers, this is just my reflections on the conversations I’ve been wanting to have lately, I am a lifelong learner that will continue to push my own thinking on this and other educational topics that interest me. We should all be a part of these conversations if we have a passion for education, and (in my opinion) we need to be prepared to listen to people that disagree with us.

Reflections on a conversation around teaching to standards from @paulawhite blog

2010-04-07T12:31:00.001-07:00

Recently I was lucky enough to engage in a great conversation with Paula White around standards and teacher impact, followed up on her blog here: http://tzstchr.edublogs.org/2010/04/04/kidsmattermore/

My take on teaching to standards and not students is straightforward; I think that when we do that we have a chance of losing the focus and the ability to engage every child in our class. When we feel like there’s little or no point to what we are doing, or that standardized assessments are driving instruction, looking at a case study like the one Paula outlines reaffirms just how important our jobs are and how much of a great teacher just comes innately. Measuring the effectiveness of any position can be tough to quantify, with teachers, it’s even harder.

I had the opportunity to sit down this weekend with an amazing person, “Sebastian Hirsh” @cervus Our conversation quickly glided towards what makes successful schools, and how is the learning designed to empower and engage students. His experience coming from Berlin where they are wrestling with similar questions, gave me perspective and led me towards my own assumptions around pedagogy/andragogy, and why are they so different.

As adults we do not pursue anything that we cannot see the value and transferability in (for some reason, IMO, media doesn’t fit this description though) L

So why are we surprised when we engage students in authentic learning, real applicable skills, and projects that have meaning in them, that they thrive and blow our minds. Sometimes meaning to them comes from seeing us excited, sometimes it is innate and hard to put a finger on, either way an engaged and motivated student is always reachable and teachable…getting them to that point should be our focus.

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Measuring Teacher Effectiveness, fingerpointing, and community support... my reflection

2010-03-18T20:37:00.001-07:00

Measuring teacher effectiveness has gained a lot of press recently and the methods of doing so vary by state. When I think about the fact that principals are in charge of managing and evaluating 30+ staff members a year, my first thought was; What would a business administrator do if he was asked to evaluate that many employees? Not being in that sector I don’t know, but it seems laughable. I am excited as a Coloradoan to see what our governor has proposed. Is it pe4rfect, no I do not think so, but trying to gain the thoughts and ideas from different perspectives including students is a good first step.

Colorado’s experiment in crafting a new educator evaluation system kicked off Thursday with the first meeting of the 15-member Governor’s Council for Educator Effectiveness.
The council, created by Gov. Bill Ritter as part of the state’s Race to the Top application, is based on the premise that more effective and durable reforms can be achieved through a process representing a broad array of education interests, from the Colorado Education Association to administrators and from school board members to one lone student.

http://www.ednewscolorado.org/2010/03/11/teacher-effectiveness-council-starts-18-month-run

The question I ask I guess is how are we going to engage and create the support of the community at large that right or wrong is soured on our profession at this time?
Seems there are many fingers being pointed at teachers; blame being leveled at us for scores not measuring up around the globe and dropout and literacy rates that are stagnant. This article from earlier this month was met by a variance of cheers and jeers.

A new generation of economists devised statistical methods to measure the “value added” to a student’s performance by almost every factor imaginable: class size versus per-pupil funding versus curriculum. When researchers ran the numbers in dozens of different studies, every factor under a school’s control produced just a tiny impact, except for one: which teacher the student had been assigned to.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Teachers-t.html

David Andrade point out in a recent TL blog post that it isn’t one single solution that we need to really take a look and decide if we are doing right by our kids and again, the community involvement is the key.

So, who is responsible for failing students and failing schools?
EVERYONE!
http://www.techlearning.com/blogs/28314

I’m excited to be a part of a professional development team and vision that is looking at measuring teacher effectiveness, measuring online professional development effectiveness and differentiating to meet the varied needs of all of our educators. I hope as we learn more and more about our profession and we continue to look at the ways to facilitate learning and discovery, I hope we stop pointing fingers and start working together to find feasible and productive solutions. I want my kids to go to a school where the teachers are working collaboratively, where student’s learnings and passions are ignited and fed by good instruction and question asking. Our kids are different, our teachers are different, our strategies for measuring that effectiveness must be adapting as well.

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When professional networking works it is a magical blend of collaboration, productivity and resourcefulness, Big Blue Button Rocks

2010-03-18T14:02:00.001-07:00

How completely awesome is this? When professional networking works, it is a magical blend of collaboration, productivity and resourcefulness.

I can cite countless examples where my peers have been there for me in more ways than I can count. Sanding on the shoulders of brilliant minds is not a unique skill, but I am so proud of my network and their tremendous helpfulness and propensity to give in time and resources. It is inspiring! However, this feels different, big blue button is not out there trying to make money at least not yet.) They are an open source platform for videoconferencing solution, which means that they are in it for the right reasons in my opinion

Not even a minute after posting this…

I get this…

To which I respond…

Then minutes later I receive this..

I will certainly share the end results with anyone interested, this could be a tremendously powerful solution for us in online PD!

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Looking at Building a case for Laptops in schools for teachers and/or students? Examples and Research here

2010-03-18T06:54:00.001-07:00

My executive director shared these with me today and I wanted to share because it seems to me that many of us are looking at various laptop initiatives and when asked to support their reasoning we can cite a few examples or word of mouth success. These examples and research assessments do a great job of really diving into the data and looking at what works, what didn’t, and then opens up the discussions as to why something did not work. Thank you Debbie, for sharing these:

In Boston Public Schools, we deployed 5,000 teacher MacBooks to all teachers K-12 last year. The teachers have been placed into cohorts and provided with a variety of APD opportunities. Boston College has assessed this project and information can be found by going to: http://www.bc.edu/research/intasc/researchprojects/L4L/L4L.shtml.

In the School District of Philadelphia, all high schools are part of the Classroom for the Future project which has provided each core content teacher and their classroom with a mobile cart of MacBooks. This project has been driven by the State of PA and has been assessed by Penn State University. Here is the link to the assessment reporting on the CFF project: http://cff.psu.edu/public/Home.html

In New York City, the iTeach/iLearn project provided teacher MacBooks and 1:1 student deployment in 21 schools with 12 using Apple. A quality report from MS 202 can be found at: http://schools.nyc.gov/OA/SchoolReports/2006-07/Quality_Review_2007_Q202.pdf.

In Maine, all middle school and high school teachers across the state have been issued MacBook computers. All middle school students and approximately 50% of all high school students also have MacBooks 24/7. Quantitative research on a variety of aspects of the Maine initiative can be found at: http://www.usm.maine.edu/cepare/. In addition, the Technology and Assessment Study Collaborative at Boston College has completed a number of studies looking at both teachers and students in the Northeast equipped with computers. Their work can be found by going to: http://www.bc.edu/research/intasc/.

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"Educator: 'Race to the Top's' 10 false assumptions" article by Marion Brady, (http://bit.ly/ck7WTs) My reflection here

2010-03-15T07:20:00.001-07:00

"Race to the Top? National standards for math, science, and other school subjects? The high-powered push to put them in place makes it clear that the politicians, business leaders, and wealthy philanthropists who’ve run America’s education show for the last two decades are as clueless about educating as they’ve always been.
If they weren’t, they’d know that adopting national standards will be counterproductive, and that the "Race to the Top" will fail for the same reason "No Child Left Behind" failed—because it’s based on false assumptions.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/guest-bloggers/educator-race-to...

This article was written six months ago, but I watched it blow up when I posted it to twitter last week. Partly because we are now down to the "final 16" states and with that many feel jaded, and underappreciated or undervalued. There is an undercurrent of skepticism when looking at race to the top funding and selection, which makes sense in an environment where it feels like there are winners and losers. I've heard the terms "race to the middle, and race to nowhere" in recent weeks; signs that there are divisive opinions on the entire process. I haven't dug as deep as I would like, but I wonder why certain states weren't chosen, and why Colorado is the most western state.
After reading this article my thoughts are that...

More work doesn't mean better work.
How we measure teacher effectiveness, is just as important as measuring student proficiency.
Teaching kids is more important than teaching curriculum
Assigning blame for the ills of our schools do little than create a finger pointing circus.
If we can set aside our own bias and agendas (government, unions, community) we can come together because our goals are the same, we share a vision of creating successful environments, and experiences.
We continue using terms like incentives, transparency, and accountability, but what does that truly look like?

With the availability of online pd and teachers looking to apply these learnings in their own settings and labs, why aren't there better examples of measuring teacher effectiveness in place. How do we measure the true value of professional development without losing the ability to meet teachers where they are and deliver learning opportunities just in time, that are relevant and useful?

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Colorado has new standards P-12; how are you sharing this with teachers, looking for witty ideas

2010-03-13T18:33:00.001-08:00

Colorado has new standards pre K-12 http://www.cde.state.co.us/cdeassess/UAS/CoAcademicStandards.html

I need some people to help me deliver the highlighted changes and overall key points in a new and media rich manner. I'm thinking video, maybe a glog, or some interactive pieces. If you are doing similar work in your district or if you know someone who is let me know, so that we can avoid replicating each others work. @ScottElias is interested...any other takers? I think quick videos or tutorials (preferably with a little humor) would be a great way to get the message around changes and implementations out to the field.

One suggestion I heard that I like A TON is to mock, or poke fun, at existing commercials, but with an education bent. If you are interested in helping please let me know, or if you just have some witty ideas for shooting the commercials, or specific ones you think are prime fodder for a fauxmercial, I'm all ears.

http://www.cde.state.co.us/cdeassess/UAS/CoAcademicStandards.html
Colorado P-12 Academic Standards
Dance
Drama and Theatre Arts
Comprehensive Health & Physical Education
Mathematics
Music
Reading
Writing and Communicating
Science
Social Studies
Visual Arts
World Languages

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MoodleShare is growing... do you walk the talk of collaboration, sharing and change? Join us...

2010-03-11T07:16:00.001-08:00

Moodleshare is young but growing in content by the day as consistent inbound traffic comes from every continent. By design, the project generates no direct financial return for its creators. According to Mr. Fila,

“The essence of the project is simply to create more awareness of the Moodle movement, in Minnesota, the US and world at large -so as to increase the quality of content taught in schools around the world. I believe that if even 1% of the teachers within the US started Moodling their curriculum, a snowball effect will occur that will forever change the archaic US education system.”

http://tech.mn/news/2010/03/11/moodleshare-aims-to-revolutionize-education-one-class-at-a-time

What does this mean for educators/ It means that our propensity to keep things to ourselves, lock lessons and coursework down, and close our virtual classroom doors is antiquated. The time for sharing with design and collaboration in mind is now. Is your course or Moodle space the best in your school, district, or state? Maybe, but I bet there is someone that can add to it, make it better and share that with you!

A few of us have started a conversation around crowdsourcing a course and resource bank designed to get people creating more courses in Moodle. You can find that here. It led to the building and set up of a course that can be accessed here.

From Ben Wilkoff, Benjamin Wilkoff –“So, upon Michael's suggestion, I have set up a Moodle course for us to play in. My hope is that we can develop something that we all might be able to use in the future for PD (and that might be a resource for everyone. Here is the link: http://online.dcsdk12.org/moodle/course/view.php?id=6141 You will need to set up an account and enroll in the course. After you have done that, put a note in the buzz and I will promote you to a teacher of the course.
If you have Moodle backups that you can restore into the course, that would be a great place to start.”

Image courtesy of daveduarte

Please jump in, add to it and help us make this the best resource available. We want to give people credit for their work and we are trying to find some way to do that. Everyone will have full and open access to the backup of this course, so your work will not be lost in the ether, it is yours whether you add to it or not. (but it just makes sense to make it the best possible before “puling your backup” out of the space. For now, the point is that this will be for the betterment for all, and as the article above so succinctly states, “if even 1% of the teachers within the US started Moodling their curriculum, a snowball effect will occur that will forever change the archaic US education system.”

<div xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#" about="http://www.flickr.com/photos/daveduarte/2817722169/">http://www.flickr.com/photos/daveduarte/ / CC BY-SA 2.0</div>

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Why We Must Fire Bad Teachers article: http://bit.ly/9G1raH My thoughts here:

2010-03-10T08:05:00.001-08:00

The relative decline of American education at the elementary- and high-school levels has long been a national embarrassment as well as a threat to the nation's future. Once upon a time, American students tested better than any other students in the world. Now, ranked against European schoolchildren, America does about as well as Lithuania, behind at least 10 other nations. Within the United States, the achievement gap between white students and poor and minority students stubbornly persists—and as the population of disadvantaged students grows, overall scores continue to sag.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/234590

Nuggets from the article and my take…

“often the weakest teachers are relegated to teaching the neediest students, poor minority kids in inner-city schools”

In Denver, we are no longer requiring schools to "accept involuntary transfers" and these schools also do not have to hire within the district. This is a small step, but a good one IMO.

“In most states, after two or three years, teachers are given lifetime tenure.”

This is the problem, tenure is interesting in that it gives us security, but enables mediocrity.

“KIPP schools don't cherry-pick—they take anyone who will sign a contract to play by the rules, which require some parental involvement”

You mean parental involvement can be measured? And these measurements show that scores and learning improves when community embraces education. What a concept. :)

“Many more teachers are overworked, underpaid, and underappreciated. Maybe they'd get more respect if the truly bad teachers were let go.”

There may be something to this, but it is tough to read all of this and then finally see some acknowledgement at the very end that there are tremendous teachers out there working hard.

This article spells out the ills facing our schools on a grand scale. I often hear my “non-teacher” friends talking about how easy our job is, or that we get summer’s off. I am not sure that the majority of people really understand just how secure our positions are. When the article mentioned the fact that it is nearly impossible to fire teachers that have tenure, they are right and there is something to that. On the other hand, teaching does require an upkeep of licensure and “professional learning” is a big part of that. I am not sure if there is a magic bullet or resolution, but I do wonder if our unions sometimes are our own worst enemy. Public employees need unions and I understand that, but I cringe when I see or hear about mediocre teachers or forced placement of sub standard teachers being moved around, as the article called it “the dance of the lemons."

Seems to me that creative solutions around effectiveness and motivation are keys to improving education; I am always interested to hear what others think about this and if they see tenure, unions, and transfers as a deterrent to improving our schools. I sense the landscape is changing; we are in the middle of a shift, so there are growing pains. Accountability is going up, does that mean that we will agree with all of the policies and plans that are outlined and executed, probably not, but it’s up to us as educators to become a part of these conversations and continue putting the learning first.

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Open Letter on Behalf of the National Writing Project (cross posted) *Thanks for the nudge Zac

2010-03-08T19:06:00.001-08:00

Zac Chase whom I have tremendous admiration for and love the way the man thinks and lives; wrote this blog and has since really connected the network in a way that I haven't seen in awhile. The main point is that funding is being cut for the NWP and that just seems wrong at a time when collaboration, sharing, and professional development are being sought out and celebrated by the Education Secretary. Here's his post, I'll be taking 10-20 minutes tomorrow to call our reps and ask them to push for this if possible. I'm never the type to blindly pass on something but I think all of us in education have an obligation sometimes to really stand up for something that has shown results and celebrates a core subject like writing.

This post is cross-posted here and was written by Mr. Chase.

The Gist:

The current draft of the federal budget cuts direct funding for the National Writing Project.
The NWP has been one of the few extremely successful examples of a nationally-networked effort to improve K-12 writing for 36 years.
We must communicate with Congress to change the budget.

The Whole Story:

Dear Rep. Fattah, Sen. Casey and Sen. Specter:

I write to you on behalf of the National Writing Project. More precisely, I write to you on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of students and teachers the program has transformed over its 36 years.

Under the budget proposed by President Obama, national funding for the NWP would be cut. In a Feb. 1 press release from the U.S. Department of Education, the NWP was lumped in with 5 other projects losing funding because the DOE claims they “duplicate local or state programs or have not had a significant measurable impact.”

As the NWP is unique as a networked writing instruction program with 200+ local sites serving all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, I am left to believe Sec. Duncan is claiming the NWP falls under the category of not having a “significant measurable impact.”

This too is untrue.

A 1987 longitudinal study on the effects of the NWP by Kathy Krendl and Julie Dodd found participating third through twelfth graders showed an increase “in interest in learning about writing, in their level of confidence, and in their association of self-esteen with good writing.

Not only that, the study also found a decrease “in students’ feelings of discomfort about completing writing assignments and in their feelings that they do not write well and that writing is difficult.”

In a 2007 study of the NWP’s Local Site Research Initiative, across nine localities students showed significant or non-significant favorable results in all seven categories.

This should not have been surprising considering the DOE’s own data listed the NWP as exceeding its performance targets in 2001. Indeed participants’ ratings across all categories ranged from 95-88 percent reporting positive impact at their follow-up assessment of the program. This went well above the program’s target of 75 percent in each category.

Were this simply an impassioned plea, I would have hesitated to write. The data speaks for itself, the National Writing Project has offered a significant return on investment in its 36 year history. Federal funding for the NWP must be maintained if we are to continue striving to meet the Project’s goal of “a future where every person is an accomplished writer, engaged learner, and active participant in a digital, interconnected world.”

I thank your for your time and attention to this matter. Please, let me know if I can be of any assistance.

Sincerely,

Zachary Chase

English Teacher

Science Leadership Academy

Philadelphia, PA

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Disaster Recovery by Google; where are you backing up your work? And can you take it off the cloud? My thoughts...

2010-03-08T07:58:00.001-08:00

"Google Apps customers don't need to worry about any of this for the data they create and store within Google Apps. They get best-in-class disaster recovery for free, no matter their size. Indeed, it's one of the many reasons why the City of Los Angeles decided to go Google."

http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/03/disaster-recovery-by-google.html

Online storage is a fascinating frontier for many businesses, individuals and schools. Tracking student work can be a full time job, couple that with the seemingly endless passing of jump drives; and storage solutions are a big deal for teachers. This article speaks to the viability and usability of “the cloud.” Google makes a strong case on why “their” solution is better than “your” solution. If you are comfortable with someone else hosting your digital content, then I have to wholeheartedly agree with much of what was said in this article. Personally, I live on multiple computers every day, so storing things on my computers doesn’t make sense and I’ve lost more jumps than I’d care to admit; this means that “cloud’ saving is vital to my productivity. Google’s solution of offering 1GB for $.25 is pretty awesome in my opinion. This means I can have a 40 GB storage for 10 bucks, that’s a better price than I’ve paid for any jump I’ve owned.

But what about when I need to pull my data off? How can I ensure that I still “own” my stuff? Where does it go if I abandon it? What if there’s a sudden change in terms of service and ALL of my documents go public or worse yet, I have 30 days to remove my stuff because there will no longer be such a thing as Google. J I know it’s stretch…stay with me here…

If any or all of these circumstances come into play then I need to know how to get my stuff off. The Data Liberation Front (an engineering team from Google) works on quick, easy, and painless ways to do this no matter what type of tool or resource you are using.

The Data Liberation Front

"The Data Liberation Front is an engineering team at Google whose singular goal is to make it easier for users to move their data in and out of Google products. We do this because we believe that you should be able to export any data that you create in (or import into) a product. We help and consult other engineering teams within Google on how to "liberate" their products. This is our mission statement:

Users should be able to control the data they store in any of Google's products. Our team's goal is to make it easier to move data in and out.

People usually don't look to see if they can get their data out of a product until they decide one day that they want to leave For this reason, we always encourage people to ask these three questions before starting to use a product that will store their data"

http://www.dataliberation.org

<div xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#" about="http://www.flickr.com/photos/olly247/2735520956/">http://www.flickr.com/photos/olly247/ / CC BY-SA 2.0</div>

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Ministers want power to change laws on online copyright in future without the need for further legislation

2010-03-05T06:12:00.001-08:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8549112.stm

Seems to me that more and more countries are struggling with how to regulate the internet. Reevaluating the copyright laws seems to make much more sense than this ridiculous attempt to block those sites that are infringing copyright.

And once again it is Google, Ebay, Facebook and co. coming to the rescue of our digital spaces, ironically touting their plans as an issue of privacy over the end users content. Though their recent track record doesn't quite support this it seems that they are often times standing up for these issues in an open manner.
Quote from the article:
"The government has been defeated in the House of Lords over measures to tackle online piracy after opponents said the plans could hamper digital innovation. Ministers want the power to change laws on online copyright in future without the need for further legislation. The Lords said the "blanket nature" of the clause was "objectionable". But their chosen replacement - giving courts the right to block internet sites which are infringing copyright - has also prompted criticism."
Related Articles:
Web giants unite against Digital Britain copyright plan
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8390623.stm
Is it time to defend our rights? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8544935.stm

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Budget Cuts getting interesting out here in Colorado (article) http://bit.ly/brjgoE and my thoughts;

2010-03-03T20:52:00.001-08:00

Quote from story: Around the state, the realities of budget-cutting hit home and hit hard Tuesday night as a number of districts started locking in some of the budget cuts they’ve been ominously talking about for months.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/peasap/ / CC BY 2.0

Ouch! This hurts quite a bit! I am fascinated by the idea that Douglas is choosing to let "schools" determine cuts and budget reductions. I wonder if that includes recommending and supporting freeware and opensource tools to be used in classrooms.
And Pueblo going to four day weeks to save money is a creative solution as well.
We're all going through budget cuts it seems; what are your reflections on this?

Colorado’s status as the only state west of the Mississippi to make the finals in the Race to the Top is “purely coincidence,” U. S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said Thursday.
http://www.ednewscolorado.org/2010/03/05/duncan-answers-questions-about-r2t

Visual Bloom's discussion @crafty184 and @fisher1000 got me thinking...

2010-03-03T18:00:00.001-08:00

http://digigogy.blogspot.com/2009/02/digital-blooms-visual.html
I hope @crafty184 doesn’t mind me pulling this comment, but it got me thinking about how we oversimplify sometimes and complicate others. When I have shared this resource with teachers, they fall in love with this image, I think it’s because we like things to be in a nice and neat package. Explaining, discussing, and analyzing Blooms and Instructional Design during PD is enjoyable by some educators but not all, and then couple that with the depth of knowledge discussions and you may clear a room.

So, when some, not all, teachers see this they recognize some web 2.0 tools they are using or have heard about, and they see the Anderson Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy model which still doesn't necessarily connect, design, delivery, and assessment.

I guess my thoughts would be that if you share these images, that it lead to some conversation around what Higher and Lower order Thinking Skills really means and how can we differ and deliver our instruction in ways that lead to application, synthesis, and ownership of learning and knowledge. As Chris has said before, Bloom's is a way of categorizing, we shouldn't make it in to something that it's not. If we want to really dive deeper into design and tech integration, it would be a good idea if we spent some time rediscovering UbD http://ubdeducators.wikispaces.com/ and Multimedia Learning
As always I would love to hear what others think and how they address e-learning design and delivery.
Here is Chris’ comment and the site that sparks this discussion….http://digigogy.blogspot.com/2009/02/digital-blooms-visual.html You can find Chris' blog at www.crucialthought.com

“I think this is a misapplication. Bloom's Taxonomy was never intended for this, and therefore does not fit. Sure, you *can* create using some of those tools, but creating something out of nothing was not the intent of Bloom's Taxonomy (nor the Anderson revision, as you've used here). The taxonomy was designed to categorize test questions.
As in, when one learns about haiku poems, the creating section would require one to write their own haiku. An oversimplified answer, but nonetheless valid because it requires the synthesis of the knowledge learned about what constitutes a haiku.
Me simply creating a wiki and putting digital graffiti on it does not satisfy the requirements of Bloom's, I'm afraid.
Not to say the list of applications isn't useful, but take Bloom out of the picture and just call it a cloud of 2.0 or something.
-Chris Craft"

For more look at Paula White's wiki crowdsourcing the rubrics to align with the tools

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Free-E-Learning Platform Odijoo http://www.odijoo.com/ My thoughts here;

2010-03-03T08:08:00.001-08:00

http://www.odijoo.com/

Hmmm, this is interesting, but I’m not sure if you can call it a free e-learning platform if there's a charge for "seats." The idea of creating a community where you can sell your courses, may lead to the moodle sharing becoming more easily accessible and useful I hope.

How many of us are creating and sharing full courses both for professional and student learning. How can we share better? Do we need a space like odijoo that enables and encourages this? But we can share in Moodle already, it's just not very user friendly.

http://moodle.yeovil.ac.uk/moodledev/file.php/1/moodlenetwork/Community.png

I think the more important question or issue is what does your LMS do for you?

Are we trying to make them into more than a great space to turn in assignments and have organized discussions via forum or discussion board? Should we be trying to make our LMS' into something they aren't?

http://www.psdgraphics.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/check-and-cross-icons.jpg

Are we making our e-learning more dynamic via multimedia, video, audio, and animation? Or are we building Online PD using old models and poor design? Are we working together enough to maximize our time and courses?

Odijoo free eLearning Platform - create, deliver and monetize online courses with Odijoo

Odijoo is a free web-based eLearning platform that allows users to sign up for free and create online courses, share online courses and monetize online courses from their own online space.

Ideas for schools & teachers to use to save money! via tech learning (http://bit.ly/9JTo2d) my thoughts...here

2010-03-02T07:12:00.001-08:00

Everyone in education knows that money is always a problem. We never have enough for our classrooms. But, there are ways around that. Free stuff means that you can allocate your limited funding to things you can't get free.

http://www.techlearning.com/blogs/27896

When budgets crunch and money gets tight, in education we go to the taxpayers and government and ask for more money to do our job well. Have we spent enough time and thought reflecting on the ways that we spend that money though? Are we accountable to ourselves enough?

It seems that there are stories and investigative reports via media reports that find cracks and holes in how we spend money. Do we set ourselves up for failure when we lack transparency in our budgets? These are some ways to save some real money in education. Now, anyone who knows me knows I think there are always "free" alternatives to doing something. But, I don't begrudge an organization for spending money well, for the right reasons, I just think we should really reflect on how we spend and ask the tough questions around copy costs, textbooks, technology, and expensive curriculum programs that require annual replacement.

Images via rysac1 and borman818

Flickr CC

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Innocentive, which connects small businesses with problem solvers via the web

2010-03-01T10:15:00.001-08:00

Innocentive, connects small businesses with problem solvers via the web. Whoever solves the problem gets cash for solving that problem.

An example from the web site involved a small oil company in Alaska that had a problem with its oil pipes freezing in cold temperatures. After the company posted its problem online, a construction developer solved the problem in hours because his construction sites had the same problem with freezing concrete pipes. The solution was to vibrate the pipes to keep them from freezing. After drawing a proposal and calculating a few other technicalities, he submitted his answer and received $20,000.
http://www.eschoolnews.com/2010/01/18/what-every-21st-century-educator-should-know/2/?_login=0f196a24b6?_login=0f196a24b6

Is there a place for students to go to that connects them to real problem solvers. I don’t mean Dr. Math, eHow, or any other homework helpers site, but real people doing real stuff that connects them? That would be a pretty useful network for kids, it would be similarly to how I and many other peers use twitter I think for coalescing the social and professional spaces of our lives.

What structure would need to be in place before his could be used? Would it be a redundant space, that already has outlets via facebook and twitter?

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5 Ways We're Diminishing Learning by Assuming Face-to-Face Instruction Is Best http://bit.ly/d9hxOj

2010-02-28T09:20:00.001-08:00

Great take-aways from this article:
http://thejournal.com/articles/2009/09/02/5-ways-were-diminishing-learning-by-assuming-face-to-face-instruction-is-best.aspx

· While individual teachers can experiment with online technology and new forms of delivery, it should be legitimized as an effective mainstream form of instructional delivery, rather than an alternative for a few students.

· Often in an online environment, immediate contact with students and direct communication opportunities mean that teachers are more likely to understand their students' thinking and intervene in a relevant way that will support their learning progress.

· Those teachers who are the early adopters, those fearless teachers who have experimented with new technology and new teaching methods and who have been tireless in their pursuit of teaching excellence and learning effectiveness, should not be marginalized, as they often are, but should be encouraged.

· as learning is an extension of social interaction and cognitive processes, we can engage students more effectively by integrating these technological tools rather than excluding them from the learning environment.

What are you doing in your classroom or educational environment to experiment, connect, support, and engage your peers into blending our traditional face to face models for learning and collaborating?
I hope that I am modeling a blended learning environment by connecting with peers face to face and then extending conversations virtually.

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As we come back to schools and meet with technology steering committees I BEG you to please re-read and share this great post by @wfryer

Google+ Hangouts can now be initiated from YouTube

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Sharing a Document with a Google Group? >Workaround

Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation TED vid here: http://goo.gl/XnQU...a lot of good ideas #dpsk12

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Audioboo

RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms >a powerful message, both in listening and viewing

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