Seattle Public Schools builds social-learning site for its tech-savvy teens

• Quote: The L3RN tool has amazing potential for students, teachers and
  schools, said Ramona Pierson, who heads the district’s department of
  education technology and oversaw the creation of L3RN.Schools can create “channels” where they can showcase their best
  student work, such as class projects and school newspapers, she said.
  Teachers at schools at opposite ends of the city could develop lessons
  together. The district could begin offering online classes, or post
  videos of teacher-training sessions or School Board meetings.

  Note: Very cool. This sounds like a school that is beginning to understand the pedagogies of connecting and publishing, though it’s unclear how widespread the use is in the curriculum.
   - post by willrich

Plain and simple, despite some down moments, this was the best NECC I’ve attended. It was, for the most part, a fun, creative, good space to be in, and I learned a great deal even though I realized yesterday that I hadn’t attended a formal session. (That is actually kind of bizarre, isn’t it? And now of course I realize I missed a great deal.) But it just felt like I was getting so much from the conversations in the Blogger Cafe/Camp and at the other meet-ups throughout the five days that the sessions felt kind of unappetizing. And when I was prepping for my spotlight yesterday, I kept struggling with the same thing…the feeling that that model of someone standing on a stage talking for an hour paled as compared to just having a conversation. The whole experience has challenged my thinking a great deal.

And one other thing that kind of blossomed out of this whole thing was the Twitterish, synchronous conversation that started popping out everywhere. Jeff posted the Skypechat transcript that a bunch of people were having during my presentation. Many of them were in the room, but Clarence Fisher was supervising a science exam in Manitoba and Dean Shareski was out in Moose Jaw. And as Jeff Twittered out the fact that the chat was taking place, more people joined in along the way. It reminded me of ILaw at Harvard a couple of years ago where they actually projected the back channel IRC chat onto the screen as the presenter was presenting. (Now THAT was chaos.) For me, the benefit of tracking the reaction and thinking as I read through it a day later is really fascinating. The learning continues.

So I’m leaving NECC with a lot more optimism, not necessarily that things are going to move any faster or that the challenges are any smaller. But with a real sense of glue. We may not have succeeded at EdBloggerCon at crafting the elevator pitch or figuring out what the new story is, but there is now a sense, at least to me, of more of a collective mission. One that we can already start thinking about for next year in San Antonio. What are our goals? What do we want to have accomplished by then? What are the benchmarks? I took the liberty of adding a new page to the EBC site.

There is an election next year, you know…

Many thanks to everyone who contributed to my learning this year. Hope I added something useful to the conversation.

Technorati Tags: necc07, necc2007, education, learning, blogging

Yesterday at NECC was one of those yin/yang experiences, with one of my worst conference moments ever, which, as these things go, preceded probably the best conference feel good ever.

The Yin: I was on a panel with two other featured speakers that I thought was supposed to be a discussion about how Web 2.0 and School 2.0 are playing out and what it all means for the public education system. What it ended up being was about a total of 15 minutes total of actual conversation and 45 minutes of attempting to coax the audience into submitting best practices for the panel leaders’ new book about Web 2.0 tools in schools. Not to say that the ideas that many of the people submitted weren’t interesting and of value and worth listening to. But I have to say, I felt pretty used. And the total irony of the moment was that in this “Web 2.0″ and “School 2.0″ session that was supposed to celebrate the uses of the tools, the random notes were being taken on screen in a very un Web 2.0 tool called Microsoft Word. No transparency. No collaboration. No thought to sharing.

And no surprise.

I’m sure this is going to come across as conceit, but as much as there are many sessions about 2.0 this and 2.0 that, as much as the exhibitors are trumpeting all this great 21st Century learning stuff (all labeled “Safe for Your Students!” btw) there is still very little real “getting it,” real understanding of how these tools change everything, real appreciation for the transformation that so many folks at EduBloggerCon expressed on Saturday. Yep, everyone is on the train, but hardly anyone still knows what’s feeding the engine.

But the folks at the Blogger Cafe do. And that’s the yang. I don’t know how many of them will blog about it, (probably most) but the cafe is turning more into camp as people basically say “forget the sessions…this is SO much better.” And so we linger and talk and teach and learn and bond and I swear this is the best experience I have ever had at a conference (and I’ve been to a lot of conferences.) It’s just too much fun sticking around all of these people who share this itch and want to continually keep scratching it. (Check out Jeff’s Twitter feed to see what I mean.) The passion is palpable. In some ways it’s extended what started on Saturday, and it feels like more of a classroom of the future than most of the other models being bandied about.

The important thing for me is that even though we’re all heading out today, class is still in session. We’re just moving over to the virtual cafe where the pace slows down a bit and the laughter isn’t as loud. And just like the physical space, we drop by, hang out, speak up or listen when we’re able. And the learning continues. That’s what’s so powerful about all of this. That’s what I keep hoping more people will experience.

Technorati Tags: necc07, necc2007, learning, blogging, education

Don’t get me wrong, NECC is great this year. But he highlight of my week was an e-mail I got from one of my former students who has a novel coming out this fall. Seems I played a small role in saving her from a dreary life as an investment banker and helped nudge her toward a professional writing career. (Financially, of course, this was a dreadful mistake.) Absolutely gave me a warm fuzzy, and made me, just for a few minutes at least, long for the classroom and the kookiness and creativity and angst of teenagers. Diane was a great one.
And the best part? She’s got a blog, too.

Technorati Tags: necc07, necc2007, blogging, education, learning

Chart: Who Participates And What People Are Doing Online

• Chart that indicates the level of participation in Read/Write Web tools.
   - post by willrich

Pretty amazing that the 40 computers in my open source session at 8:30 were claimed by 7:45 and that a good 150 people (if not more) crammed into the room by the start time. (The photo was taken at about 8:15.) And even more amazing that the Internet connection basically went dead but I think the presentation went pretty well anyway. I’d guess about 40% of the people raised hands when I asked how many were bloggers or used blogs. And some really good questions saved me from tap dancing too much.

But what was really amazing was that totally unannounced, the superintendent at my own kids’ school up in New Jersey showed up. (And Laura, if you’re reading this, it was great of you to come.)

The Blogger’s Cafe has been the place to hang this morning, and yes, it’s official…”we” have “arrived.” At least on the surface. Maybe David has already done it but I wonder how many Read/Write Web sessions there are going this year. Must be close to if not over 100. And “2.0″ is everywhere on the exhibit floor, where I did my annual 30-minute walk just to see all the stuff I wouldn’t buy. (A couple of exceptions, but once again, if you totaled up all the money being spent on displays and schwag and the carbon footprint for getting it all here, you could easily buy a laptop for every kid in the country who needs one. And I’m sorry, but from the “let’s see how much junk we can give away that will end up in a landfill” category, Best Buy needs to be outlawed next year. This sound eerily familiar to a post I wrote last year, I think.)

Not to be cynical, (just can’t shake it) I’ve been wondering (and having great discussion with Cafe-ers) about just what station we have “arrived” at, however. It’s feeling like “I Can Blogville” which I guess is somewhere on the route to “I Can Help My Students Build Their Own Learning Communitiesville” or something like that. At the Google booth, I watched a line 10 deep snake up to take a turn at trying out Blogger. One after another, the Google guide showed people how to post. One after another, you could see the “Gosh, that was easy!” reaction. It was pretty cool just lurking, watching it. But again, I wonder to what extent that will somehow lead to an understanding of what changes in a network, where the real power is.

It’s not in the publishing. But I guess we have to get there first.

At any rate, if anyone from the session is reading, thanks so much for coming…would love to hear what your reactions are, and welcome to the blogosphere.

You’re halfway there.

Technorati Tags: necc07, necc2007, blogging, education, learning

So I added the “I” in the above because I have absolutely no doubt there will be many more of these unconferences to come. This has been a good day, on a number of different levels. I’m really, really fortunate in that over the years I’ve had the pleasure of meeting many of the people in this community, and it’s been very cool seeing them all again and being all in the same space. But there are many folks here who I don’t know or haven’t met, and it’s great hearing those perspectives and voices as well.

I’m not going to dive too far into the topics and the readouts…lots of other folks are doing that. But I’m really thinking about community in the physical and virtual contexts. We had a pretty provocative discussion led by Sheryl that reminded me how different these spaces are, and how complex they are to navigate. It’s something that, once again, has to be folded into our curricula throughout our time with students. And I really believe that we have to have our own brains around these different iterations of community that our kids will be working in.

I’m not sure how far down the road we’re getting on answering any of the big questions. But we’ve started some conversations that I’m sure are going to continue. Steve, who has done such a great job of making this happen, said at the outset that he’ll be interested in seeing what transpires from this six months out. I’m feeling, at this moment at least, that we may have actually pushed further forward by that point. And I’ve come away with at least one “big” idea that’s relevant to my own search. But I’m still trying to listen and divine (if that’s the right word) some guiding principles for this conversation…

Anyway, so far, so good.

Technorati Tags: edubloggercon, edubloggercon07, necc07, learning, education, blogging

Those of you who have read this space for a while know that Lawrence Lessig is one of my heroes. I know…it’s somewhat of a geeky choice. But he’s without question been one of my greatest teachers in the last six years. I’ve seen him speak on about half a dozen occasions, and each time I am just inspired by his passion and dedication to challenging the traditional thinking about intellectual property and copyright. In many ways, I’ve tried to emulate him in my own presentations, albeit badly.

The news is that Lessig is moving on to different challenges, leaving the focus of the last 10 years to take on political corruption for the next 10. In his recent blog post about the subject, he talks about how he has come to believe that while we will eventually come to our senses about IP and copyright issues, real lasting change is incumbent on changing the system that makes the laws first. “Our government can’t understand basic facts when strong interests have an interest in its misunderstanding,” he writes, noting that this is at the heart of the corruption of the process. And later, “I’m convinced we will not solve the IP related issues until these “corruption” related issues are resolved.”

As I read the post, I heard all sorts of echoes to the school reform conversation we’ve been having in this network, much of which I’ve articulated here already from time to time. It’s no secret that I have not been optimistic of late that systemic changes can be made to this thing we call public school education through grassroots understanding of why change needs to occur, a position that in itself has not been made exceptionally clear to date. And that while I still really believe that helping to start conversations around these ideas and these changes can have a positive effect (in terms of in some way helping to generate some thinking and discussion around where we need to go,) I’ve been feeling myself moving away from the school reform conversation of late. I’m not so much interested in figuring out what School 2.0 means or is right now as I am just looking at my own kids and asking what are the skills and literacies that they are going to need when they their life’s work and what’s the best way to help them acquire them. I know this: it’s not their school in it’s current state (again, nothing new if you’ve been reading for a while.)

And so, as I write this (and post it) while barreling down I-95 somewhere in North Carolina, about three hours behind schedule, I’m heading to NECC with some real questions on my brain. My hope is to do a lot of listening and thinking, and less talking. I’ve gotta figure some stuff out…

Technorati Tags: necc07, lessig, education, learning

Blogger’s Ejection May Mean Suit for N.C.A.A. – New York Times

• Quote: In a statement sent via e-mail, the N.C.A.A. said: “Reporters covering our championships may blog about the atmosphere, crowd and other details during a game but may not mention anything about game action. Any reference to game action in a blog or other type of coverage could result in revocation of credentials.”

  Note: My question is what if I went to a game with my computer sucking down some free wifi goodness and blogged pitch by pitch…would I get thrown out to? Probably no one would care…but…could the newspaper suck down my RSS feed? Oh the complexities. This is the fun stuff, to me, watching the messiness.  

   - post by willrich

This may be a first for a huge national conference, but Steve Hargadon and NECC have put together a list of every session being offered in Atlanta and given each a specific tag that presenters and attendees can use with blog posts, photos, video…whatever content they want to publish. Just bring all those tag feeds together with a tool like PageFlakes and you’ll have your own session magazine. Pretty cool.

Which has me thinking about how to use that tag as a presenter… I’m open to ideas.

Technorati Tags: necc07, n07s584, n07s167, n07s688, education, learning, Richardson

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Technology and education | Mandarin 2.0 | Economist.com

• Quote: It is early evening in Berkeley, California, and Chrissy Schwinn, a sinophile environmentalist, walks ten feet from her kitchen to her home office for her Chinese lesson. She has already listened to that day’s dialogue, which arrived as a free podcast, on her iPod. She has also printed out the day’s Chinese characters, which arrived along with the podcast. Now her computer’s Skype software—which makes possible free phone calls via the internet—rings and “Vera”, sitting in Shanghai where it is late morning, says Ni hao to begin the lesson. One might call it “language-learning 2.0,” says Ken Carroll…
  
  Note: So I’m thinking this is a great example of what we can do if we want to do it. If, of course, we have access.

   - post by willrich

New Presidential Debate Site? Obviously, YouTube – New York Times

• Quote: The quadrennial ritual of presidential debates has long followed a tried and true format.

  A guy in a suit asks mostly predictable questions of other suits. The voter is a fixture in the audience, motionless until he or she gets to address the candidate, briefly and respectfully. Everything is choreographed.

  Now imagine a kid in jeans and a T-shirt asking a question, less reverentially, more pointedly and using powerful visual images to underscore the point. Maybe he or she will ask about the war in Iraq — and show clips from a soldier’s funeral. Or a mushroom cloud. If global warming is the issue, the videographer might photoshop himself or herself onto a melting glacier. The question might come in the form of a rap song or through spliced images of a candidate’s contradictory statements.

  The presidential debates are about to enter the world of YouTube, the anything-goes home-video-sharing Web site that puts the power in the hands of the camera holder. YouTube, which is owned by Google, and CNN are co-sponsoring a debate among the eight Democratic presidential candidates on July 23 in South Carolina, an event that could define the next phase of what has already been called the YouTube election, a visual realm beyond Web sites and blogs.

  Note: And with the first primary coming at MySpace on Jan. 1 and 2, can we safely say that politics may never be the same?
   - post by willrich

So, this may be a bit of a flier, but I just threw the following session description up on the EduBloggerCon Unconference page:

Getting Our Blogs in a Row: Crafting a Compelling, Cogent Message for Change…ok…terrible title, I know. But is there anyone interested in taking an hour to discuss the creation of a short list of talking points regarding the uses of the Read/Write Web in education? What key points should we be making? What key points CAN we be making? To whom should we be making them? What questions do we need to have answers for? How can we best package all of that? I know this sounds like the beginnings of a marketing campaign, but it might be worth a try…or not. Maybe we can start a wiki to dump ideas in beforehand? Will Richardson and Chris Lehmann.

If you think that’s something worth throwing some time at, go put your name on the list. If you have any ideas on how to make it work, leave a comment here. And if you haven’t added your name as an attendee to this free, all-day Saturday before NECC extravaganza, whadda ya waitin’ for?

Technorati Tags: necc07, edubloggercon07, learning, education, unconference

Psychology Today: Trashing Teens

• Quote: Teens in America are in touch with their peers on average 65 hours a week, compared to about four hours a week in preindustrial cultures. In this country, teens learn virtually everything they know from other teens, who are in turn highly influenced by certain aggressive industries. This makes no sense. Teens should be learning from the people they are about to become. When young people exit the education system and are dumped into the real world, which is not the world of Britney Spears, they have no idea what’s going on and have to spend considerable time figuring it out.

  Note: Via George Siemens. Thought provoking piece that’s worth a read in the context of some of the other discussions we’ve been having.

   - post by willrich

Andrew Keen at the Britannica blog writes something so diametrically opposed to my own take on things that it’s startling and, frankly, amazing on some level (as well as ironic):

The only way to efficaciously fight back against the radical democratizers is by exposing Web 2.0 to serious public scutiny. People outside Silicon Valley get it when they are exposed to the Web 2.0 nonsense. Teachers, politicians, business leaders, editors, librarians, broadcasters, and, above all, parents are aware of Web 2.0’s destructive consequences…The intellectual life of our society is at stake. This is a critically serious debate that will determine the credibility and the very viability of our information economy. If we want our kids to be ignorant, then accept the fashionable inanities of Web 2.0. If not, join the cause. And fight against the flattening of our culture into a wasteland of collectivist nonsense.

Whoa. Talk about getting out of the echo chamber.

I do agree with one thing…this is a critically serious debate. And I can predict which of the people who frequently comment here will line up on which side, should they choose to engage it. And looking at Keen’s new book’s page on Amazon, it’s clear the game is on at some level. (Though at the moment I write this, my book is a couple notches ahead of his on Amazon’s sales rank…shameless self-promotion, I know.) But the interesting thing as you read through the Amazon blog post (oh, the irony!) of the myriad of interviews and debates that Keen has been doing, nowhere does it appear he’s meeting up with anyone representing education. It’s all business or technology or media types, which is pretty telling when it’s all about our “kids being ignorant.”

Which brings me back to what Tom Hoffman wrote the other day about the “Big Problems in Ed Tech:”

Utter chaos around privacy, safety and liability. The “practical” advice being promoted seems out of sync with empirical evidence, but much worse, there just doesn’t seem to be any doctrine to guide decision making. I have absolutely no clue how we work our way out of this mess, because ultimately, the problems are driven by anxious parents, who aren’t exactly rational actors.

My first thought was we don’t have a clue because we’re not in the right conversation on some level, and because who, on a large scale, acts rationally when it comes to education? At times like these when I’m pretty dour on things any way, I really wonder what systemic impact we can have by pushing at the education door. Yeah, we can impact individual teachers and subsequently lots of kids and that’s all good. But at the end of the day, the bigger conversation is about paying kids to get good grades and doing whatever it takes to get those state test scores up, the ones that don’t mean all that much anyway it seems. (Oh, and by the way, so much for Nebraska being an oasis of sanity in terms of testing.)

And I’ll say it again, our collective reach is still very small.

I’ve seen more posts of late that talk about simply scrapping the current system and starting over. And that may be the best route (or not,) and it may be the inevitable outcome of where this is all taking us (not just “Dangerously Irrelevant” but “Fatally Irrelevant.”) And speaking of Scott, (congrats, btw), did you see this post from his “Change Week” last week?

Our current system is . . . incapable of changing itself. Most people know – even if they are loath to admit it – that it’s easier to start from scratch than to try to salvage what’s already there. We may wish otherwise, but we ought not to be wishful thinkers. Systemic, transformational change in public education can only happen if we are willing to start from scratch.

But I’m wondering if what rises from the ashes is much of a system at all as opposed to some type of free agent, personal learning process that looks more like the way things work once we leave school.

Of course, that’s my own fashionable inanity.

Let the screaming begin, and don’t forget to answer the poll.

Technorati Tags: Web20, education, keen, learning

So, it’s pretty obvious that I’ve been in the midst of a fairly intense case of edublogging ennui of late, thus the pretty shallow link blogging that’s been showing up here. I’m in one of those grim spaces that I get into with all of this from time to time, the one where it feels like everything is pretty much of an echo, that there’s nothing moving, that I have nothing new, important or even intelligent to say, that there’s nothing new to read. That the world is moving too fast. That the conversation about schools is moving too slowly. That I’ve hit some sort of ceiling.

Blog paralysis.

Thus I’ve been continuing my little respite from deep thinking and air travel (the second of which ends tomorrow with a trip to North Dakota) by playing with my kids, running (10K in 53 mins on Saturday…oy) and reading lots of books, some of which actually have nothing to do with education and learning. (What a concept!) And there have been pony club competitions and soccer games and recitals and parties. And I think I’ve reached the point where my kids are almost…almost…wanting me to go back and spend more time on the computer.

Yep…it’s been that good.

But the most interesting piece has been watching my son’s blooming passion for baseball. I think I may have blogged about this before, but a couple of months ago I was rooting around in my garage for some rust-laden gardening tool when I found a old, faded-red, Converse shoe box packed to the gills with my Topps baseball card collection from the late sixties that somehow had trailed along with me all of these years. The mold on the box was enough to get me wheezing, and the cards had that gritty, hadn’t seen daylight in a while feel, so I turned the cache over to Tucker and said “Hey, you can have these if you want them.” I don’t even think he knew what he was looking at when he first opened the box, but some atavistic baseball gene must of been set afire because ever since he’s been a non-stop baseball question machine, mostly along the lines of “Hey Dad, was Carl Yasertski good?” with me responding “Yas-trem-ski, Tuck, and yes, he was good.”

Over the course of the last couple weeks, he’s actually shifted his computer use from Club Penguin to the Beckett online price guide site where we anted up $4.99 for a month’s worth of searching their gazillion card database to see how much all these “treasures” were worth. And he’s gone through all of them. As in about 750 of ‘em. (Picture a seven-year-old typing in “Red Schoendienst.”) And, since we’re talking about a seven year old’s nascent attempts at creating an organizational scheme to keep track of all of it,  we’re talking about, I’d say, 1200-1500 searches at this point. Think teetering piles on the desk, the floor, the couch and an evil sister who “accidentally” knocks them over.

But he’s made some finds, like the Thurman Munson rookie card that in “mint” (not “pseudo-moldy”) condition is worth $100. (We’re calling it $75 for now.) And the three…count ‘em…three Pete Rose cards from 1968 that are each worth $60…er…somewhere around $40. And all the ones he’s found that are worth over $5 and set off a mad dash through the house along the lines of “Dad! Dad! I found a Harmone Killaber for $12! Was he good?” “Kill-e-brew, Tuck, and yes, he was pretty good.”

Anyway, all of this has led to a couple of quality, highly stereotypical father-son moments of Tucker and me lazing on the couch watching a Yankees or Phillies game, (the Mets are forbidden) his new card album in his lap, incessantly asking questions about the game, soaking it all up, and me thinking wistfully how cool it would have been to (wait for it…) have a father to do all this with me when I was growing up. (Sniff.)

But here’s the thing…the intensity of his passion for learning about these badly posed baseball players from 40 years ago and about how the game is played today has really amazed me. And I’m thinking, what does he need second grade for? He’s learning all sorts of math (he really gets batting averages and earned run averages, I think) and geography (think Google Maps of baseball stadiums) and history (“No Tuck, they didn’t have steroids when Hank Aaron played”) and economics (“Why are some cards worth more than others?”) and physics (“How does he make that ball curve like that?”) and reading and spreadsheets and globalization and…you get the idea. There is a lot to learn from baseball, but more importantly, there is a lot to learn from passion. And none of it is happening on a WORKSHEET!

Too. Much. Fun.

Oh, and by the way, there is one thing I’m modeling for him, and that is what passion can do for your memory. My wife sat in complete, dumbstruck silence yesterday as for 15 minutes Tucker waded through a big stack of cards and threw names at me.

Tucker: “Sal Bando”

Me: “Oakland A’s, third base.”

Tucker: “Cookie Rojas”

Me: “Phillies, second base.”

Tucker: “Jim Frogose”

Me: “Fer-go-si…Angels, shortstop.”

And so it went. I missed one…I had Wade Blasingame on the Twins instead of the Astros.

Let’s see, now what do I remember from high school…?

Technorati Tags: baseball, cards, passion, learning