Agree with the tactics or not, isn’t it interesting that the Martin Luther King DOT org site that we’ve been reverse Google Bombing has already slipped from the number one result in the Google search results for Dr. King to fourth or sixth, depending on what browser I use. (Now why would that be?) Don’t get me wrong…I’m glad it’s sinking. But there is something unsettling about this whole process in terms of how, for ourselves and for our kids, do we get our brains around the scope of the potential manipulation of ideas and information on the Web? And I’m sure it’s only going to get more complex. Pity the poor kids who aren’t being taught any of this because it’s too “dangerous.”
My brain, as it often does, hurts…

technorati tags:literacy, Martin_Luther_King, education, learning

(From Steve Hargadon on the SupportBlogging Google Group)

Calling all educational bloggers! After the EduBlog MeetUp in San Diego last year at NECC, there was some feeling that more time for interaction between the educational bloggers would be of great value…and so…announcing EduBloggerCon 2007. While the exact date and details of EduBloggerCon 2007 are not finalized, it will likely be for one day before NECC 2007 begins–Friday, June 22 or Saturday, June 23, being good candidates. We may wait until the NECC pre-conference materials are published so we don’t conflict with something important.

We want your ideas and suggestions. Right now we are leaning toward an “unconference” format, with some number of actual pre-determined keynotes. Go to the EduBloggerCon website, and also join the Google Group for EduBloggerCon to start giving feedback.
Topics for discussion: final date(s), publicity, youth bloggers invited?, keynote speakers wanted, format for “unconference,” venue, activities, etc.

(More info coming soon…)

technorati tags:edubloggercon07, blogging, education

It’s been a months since I revisited EdBloggerNews, the Digg-type site I created earlier this year and then pretty much forgot about. But after noticing a couple of references to it today, I took a quick trip over and lo and behold, there’s some diggin’ goin’ on. Here’s a link I found to very informal yet link-filled top ten list of most Web 2.0 colleges and universities out there. Kinda interesting to see what’s happening at the higher levels…

technorati tags:higher_ed, education, learning

So the project wiki run continues with this entry from Chris Craft in South Carolina whose students are prepping for a flat-ish Skype call with students at the American School in Lima, Peru next month. In this iteration, groups of kids are studying various aspects of the Peruvian culture and economy that will serve as the basis of their discussion. Chris is going to try to capture the event and hopefully he’ll be able to share it out later.

On his blog yesterday, he was talking about a “dry run” that he did with the Peruvian teacher. At first, the technology didn’t cooperate very well, but when they got it going, it was electric. Here’s a snippet:

When the video flipped on the class went wild. They quickly settled down and we chatted with a teacher down there. My kids were nervous but thrilled! They stepped up to the mic (figuratively and literally) and did a great job muddling through basic Spanish. The teacher there spoke perfect English, and she was gracious about it.

Then the cool stuff happened. Her room started to fill up with kids.

Then my kids got to talk to their kids.

That was cool to watch.

Isn’t that what we want our kids to be? Nervous but thrilled? That’s the edgy-ness that these technologies bring, a nervousness that’s built on a couple pinches of newness and risk at pushing through your limits, and a thrill of doing something real and immediate. Aren’t those the times when we really learn about oursevles and really cement our knowledge?

Compare that to taking tests when our students are mostly just nervous. Which would you want for your own kids?

Go, wikis! Go!

technorati tags:wiki, education, learning

I didn’t realize until I saw Karl Fisch‘s latest video that next year’s kindergarteners will be the class of 2020, and just the phrasing that we need a “2020 Vision” for that group is too good not to remix in any number of ways. (Hey Karl…have you trademarked it yet???) This new video is a great remix of the Epic Video and offers a very hopeful storyline for educational and change in this world. I’m not sure, unfortunately, that I’m as optimistic as Karl is, and I’m almost hoping the world isn’t as Google-ized as he represents, but as he himself says, that’s not really the point:

Let me also be clear that this “future” is not necessarily what I would like to see happen, although there are pieces of it that I would certainly be in favor of. The goal is not to debate the plausibility of any specific predictions, but to envision a time in the not-too-distant future when the world is significantly different – and hopefully schools are as well. Then, based on what that could look like, what should we be doing now to help prepare for and transition to that future. Hopefully this “2020 Vision” will help get those conversations started.

The creativity and interesting thinking that he displays in the piece are amazing and well worth the 15 minutes to watch. (I especially love what happens in 2013.)
But dang, I just love that title…almost as good as “Shift Happens.”

(“Eye HD” photo by Gabsriel)

technorati tags:vision, education, schools, 2020_vision, karl_fisch

Ok…sit down before you check this out.

If you want to see the potential of what we can do with this stuff, take a look at what Julie Lindsay and Vicki Davis have created in their Flat Classroom Project. Julie, who is at the International School Dhaka in Bangladesh, and Vicki who is at Westwood High in Georgia, have collaborated on an amazing undertaking that will connect their kids in a study of the 10 Flattners from Thomas Friedman’s book The World is Flat. In small groups comprised of students from both schools, they’ll be taking the next few weeks to really dig into what’s happening in the two countries from a global perspective and report out in a variety of ways using Read/Write Web tools. In the end, if the grading rubric is any indication, these kids will know a heck of a lot more about their places in the world, the complexities of the age, and the ways in which these tools are changing the way we do business in more than one sense.

Pinch me, but is there all of a sudden a little string of interesting examples of Read/Write Web projects coming together? I know…this example in particular is the result of some amazing and intensive planning. (Did I mention the rubric?) But it makes clear what I think are the two most important aspects of using these tools…first, we have to stop seeing our classrooms as spaces with four walls. Teachers must be willing to be connectors. And second, in the context of those connections, we can give our students real, meaningful, relevant opportunities to teach the rest of us what they know. The fact that the work of these students will be published in its many forms to the world as a whole is just so radically removed from the ways most educators still look at what happens in the classroom. If we are simply content to shuffle paper back and forth only for the sake of slapping an assessment on the work, we are doing our students a grave disservice.

Go and listen to the voices of these kids. (And don’t forget the rubric.) And trumpet this work far and wide. Perhaps Thomas Friedman, who actually sent Julie an e-mail acknowledging the project, will be impressed enough to really give this community a boost (like maybe an op-ed piece in the New York Times???)

Congratulations Julie and Vicki…can’t wait to see what happens next.

technorati tags:wiki, education, learning, The_World_is_Flat, Thomas_Friedman

So last week I decided to give my directionally challenged spouse an early holiday gift…a window-mounted Garmin i5 GPS…and we tried it out on our trip to Connecticut this weekend. All I can say is “Oh. My. Goodness.” Now I fully admit to being naive about many things technological. But this little device is just blowing me away. Not only does “Abigail” (so named by my daughter) give us incredibly accurate directions no matter where I want to go, she can also find all sorts of kewl stuff that will surely (if it hasn’t already) render the yellow pages and 411 obsolete. Kids want a tuna sub? Hmmm…let’s see…the nearest Subway is 1.6 miles away…start navigating…we’ll be there at 12:34…go straight, make a left at the light, park.

Or on our way home I remembered that I’d forgotten my LCD to MacBook connector at one of my recent presentations and needed a new one. Could Abigail know where the nearest Apple Store might be? Um…yeah. Even gave me the phone number so I could find out if it was open. (I know, I know…there must be a built in system that will even dial the number for you…) Start navigating…be there in 14 minutes…but, sweet bejeepers it’s a huge mall crawling with shoppers…hurry, Abigail…navigate me HOME. “In point two miles, turn right then stay left…” Ahhh…peace.

Abby (my nickname for her) knows every street, shows rivers and lakes (when we were on the Tappan Zee Bridge her little monitor blazed blue aside from our narrow strip of road) and will even tell us how fast we’re going. (I wasn’t going nearly as fast as I thought I was.) But the best part is knowing exactly when we’re going to arrive at wherever it is we’re going.

Aside, of course, our final destination…

technorati tags:GPS, Garmin

I’m really getting frustrated with Skype on a variety of levels. My troubles with 2.0 on my MacBook never got resolved, so I went back to 1.5 and got it working for a while, but now the same thing is happening again. No one shows up online in my list of contacts. Nothing I do fixes it. And despite repeated requests for help from Skype, I’ve never gotten a reply. Now I know the folks at Skype have more pressing issues, but this is seriously getting me down, and it is a known issue. I’ve come to rely on Skype to keep in touch with a whole bunch of folks, and now unless I boot up my Tablet PC, I can’t. Really stinks…and what stinks even more is that I have no clue what to do about it.

UPDATE: So I take it back for now…I just downloaded the new beta and it seems to be working. And, it may have been user error…seems my profile got set to offline somehow…ugh. Must have been my kids. Yeah. That’s it. Those kids messin’ with my MAC again.

Color me embarassed…

technorati tags:skype

This isn’t much different from doing it with SuprGlu (in fact it may not be as elegant) but since it’s the first use of a public Google Reader page to collect a classroom full of student blog posts that I’ve seen, here’s a link to it. The posts are from a 6th grade social studies class whose teacher Mike Hetherington is “mother blogging” here and offers up some pretty good “rules for blogging,” a wiki, and some podcasts (though nothing recent.)

Mike latest post on his blog is, I think, another great example of a teacher using a blog to build community among his student bloggers.

technorati tags:blogging, education, schools

Last night at our Thanksgiving get together, I got into a long conversation with a family member who is a long-time high school English teacher and who has begun dipping his toes into the Read/Write Web. (I had nothing to do with it, I swear…almost.) While he has been impressed with the work that his students have been doing on the blog, he’s said he is feeling conflicted at many levels about the ways in which traditional literacies are changing, lamenting the fact that by and large, his students have no interest in reading traditional texts. At one point, he looked at me and said, “You know, it’s like reading is dead to them.” As two people who grew up loving books, I know we both found that statement unsettling. But I’ve gotten to the point where I rarely look at these changes as being anything more than just different at this point, that labeling them “bad” or “good” denies the complexity that goes with the discussion.

We talked at some length as to whether reading for our students is much different than reading was to us. Whether they are reading in different ways, specifically through video or other media, and whether those reading literacies are equally as important as text literacy. Whether we are just chained to our old definitions of what reading should be because that’s how we’ve experienced it. Whether now that we can connect to so many different texts we shouldn’t be surprised that most students find Of Mice and Men irrelevant and uninteresting. Whether we should be rethinking what reading literacy means.

I watch my own kids developing as readers and I believe in my heart that it’s a crucial step toward their literacy. But I wonder how much textual literacy they are going to need in their futures when so much more of what they create will be done in non-textual terms. And to be honest, my brain is still very muddled about all of this. But it could be an interesting discussion…

(“Rusty Chain” photo by LinBow.)

technorati tags:literacy, reading, education, learning

So Tom has been doing a great job of teaching all of us the intricacies of Google ranks and white supremicism, and as his last few posts suggest, he’s become a bit obsessed (in a good way, of course) with knocking martinlutherkingDOTorg down a few pegs. To be honest, I’m feeling somewhat chagrined at the fact that I’ve had something to do with the advancement of the MLK.org site (whatever small) and just for the record, I’ve gone back through all of my content that I can and removed any links that I might have still had. (That includes a couple of old blog posts, my presentation wiki, and my H2O Playlist. I’m sure Tom will let me know about any others that I may have missed…) To put it succinctly…”my bad.”
Tom has also taken the step of setting up NOTmartinlutherking.org so that if you REALLY have to link to the site, you can link to Tom’s page and it will redirect you with a nice, pithy disclaimer to make sure you know what you’re really getting. He’s even gone so far as to keep that page from showing up in the Google link list for the offensive site.
All of this of course serves as a great reminder of the complexities of the information world in which we live these days. And of how much there is to learn and make a part of my practice.

technorati tags:tom-hoffman, literacy, google, education

Among the many things in my life I feel incredibly thankful for, I just wanted to acknowledge how grateful I am to be a part of this most excellent community of learners. To everyone who reads, responds, and supports my learning, my most sincere appreciation and best wishes for a safe and happy Thanksgiving.

technorati tags:weblogg-ed

An encouraging headline (there seem to be a few of these popping up) from the trenches that “Erasing Divide, College Leaders Take to Blogging,” though a closer read shows how tenuous and how timid these first steps are.

While some colleges and their presidents have seen their reputations shredded on student blogs, and others have tried to limit what students and faculty members may say online, about a dozen or so presidents, like Dr. McGuire, are vaulting the digital and generational divide and starting their own blogs.

Veterans of campus public relations disasters warn that presidents blog at their peril; “an insane thing to do” is how Raymond Cotton, a lawyer who advises universities and their presidents in contract negotiations, describes it. But these presidents say blogs make their campuses seem cool and open a direct line, more or less, to students, alumni and the public.

Still, part of getting through to the other side is wallowing in the disruption for a while.

technorati tags:education, college, blogs

Since we’re getting practical around here, I just wanted to share a Pageflakes page that I’ve been using in my RSS workshops to show how anyone can create topic specific portals with feeds. This page on Darfur/Sudan (not the most uplifting topic, I know…we have much to be thankful for) is built on tag feeds from YouTube for videos, Flickr for photos, the New York Times AND the Sudan Tribune for news, del.icio.us for what people are bookmarking, and Google Blogsearch for, well, blogs. What you get is a dynamic, constantly updated page of content about what’s happening in that part of the world and what’s happening in other parts of the world in response.

From a teaching standpoint, pages of this type can be pretty effective for bringing in potential content and then making decisions about what to do with that content. Not everything that shows up here will necessarily be suitable for some ages. (I have, however, created a same page for my daughter Tess about horses that I let her read at her discretion…she’s nine.) From a student standpoint, I think it’s a great way to introduce RSS, to give kids some ownership over the type of page they create (assuming you’ve had all the responsible use conversations already) and let them start working out their own processes for consuming and deciding about content in this content rich world. And the good news is that they can keep these pages private, or they can share them with groups (or teachers) so they don’t have to be as transparent as this example.

Additionally, the Pageflakes folks have been creating some interesting edu-specific “flakes”

that teachers can use. See this page, for instance, that has among other things a grade tracker, message board, to do list, and contact list. Again, since the student has the ability to keep these portals private, there are all sorts of ways that we can start introducing RSS and content management types of skills.

Finally, let me just emphasize the idea that in this environment when we can start collecting information from so many different sources around the globe, it’s imperative that we be modeling ways to do that. Imagine the types of global newspapers you could build around relevant topics with something like this. If we continue to just get the US perspective, I think we’re wasting a huge opportunity to expand and challenge our thinking.

technorati tags:pageflakes, darfur, education, learning, reading

Two fifth grade reading classes in Georgia have put together what I think is a great example of a book study wiki filled with information about the book itself and contextual information including photo slide shows, audio recordings of student performances, interviews and historical reports. The book is Patricia Beatty’s Turn Homeward Hannalee. One thing that I think is especially cool is that the teachers took the time to add their reflections to the site which is a great way for the rest of us to learn and think about how this might work in our own practice:

This project gave the students the opportunity to “become the teacher” and is a great example of authentic learning. The students immediately took ownership of this project, so I was able to simply facilitate the process. I was pleasantly surprised that everything ran so smoothly even though I had never attempted to create a website on my own or with my students. Since the students were each given a different area to work on they were able to express what they had learned in their own unique way. This activity allowed the students to integrate what they had learned to create something new. Also, it gave the students a confident feeling to see their work in a format that will help other students and teachers learn about the two thousand Georgia mill workers who were shipped north by the Union Army during the Civil War, and the many other historical facts and interesting information from Turn Homeward, Hannalee.

I know I say this a lot, but this is a perfect example of giving our students the opportunity to teach what they have learned. This work now has a chance of becoming a part of other students’ study of not only this book but this part of the state’s history. In Marco Torres’ words, this is work “that has wings.” BTW, the teachers are also looking to get feedback from other educators, students and readers.

technorati tags:education, wiki, learning