The last couple of days, the one picture I can’t get out of my head is the one of groups of Congressmen huddled around talking in hushed tones along the lines of:

“Ok, so what is a blog again?”

“Look, just think MySpace.”

“Ohhh, yeah. MySpace! Blogs are evil…dangerous!”
“Dang straight…and that Wikipedia thing is just a mess.”

“Wikiwhat?”

“Nevermind…just think prisoners taking over the asylum. We need to take back the truth!”

“Take it back! Absolutely! But…um…how do we do that?”

“Do what?”

“Take back truth?”
“No, no, no…truth doesn’t matter. This is about DANGER. We’ve got all sorts of people out there, predators I tell ‘ya, and our kids are in DANGER! We have to DELETE the PREDATORS!”

“Mercy! The people will love us, won’t they?”

“Absolutely!”

Ok, so maybe that’s a stretch. Bottom line is that too few of them have any idea of what is happening because they haven’t the experience to understand them. They don’t live in this world. They don’t live in kids’ worlds.
And that’s true for 90% of the non-kid population (and, to be honest, probably about 1/3 of the kid population too.) What I’m reminded of by the DOPA decision is that once again, this community, this “echo chamber,” is not representative of the real world when it comes to how these technologies can impact learning. We feed off of each other’s energy and passion, but that makes it so easy (for me, at least) to forget that there are about a gajillion people out there who still have no clue about this. And in my specific case, it hasn’t helped that I’ve been out there more and more having great conversations with inspiring and inspired teachers and administrators who get it and see the importance of understanding. I’ve been preaching to the choir, as we all have, but I’ve forgotten that the choir is infinitesimally small.

I’ve blogged about this before, this idea that we have to find ways to take this message to other groups outside of education, to parents, to school boards, to local politicians, to businessmen. And here’s the irony: we bloggers who believe in blogs in the classroom should be doing less blogging. I’ve been sitting here growing complacent because everyone who is commenting and linking and posting on their blogs and podcasting gets it or at least has the context for the discussion. And then, boom…DOPA passes by 400 votes. 400! I think that’s what gets me most…the sheer number. The fact that ONLY 15 voted against it.
15.

Amazing.

Despite the best efforts of bloggers and ISTE and CoSN and ALA and others, I’m not optimistic about turning the tide in the Senate. That number, 15, is a serious reality check. If it had been 150, or even 100…

But it was 15.

So, I’m doing what I can short term, but I’m thinking harder about long term. Those of you who have read this blog for a while know that I believe in the end, these changes are inevitably going to impact classrooms in profound ways. The only question is when. DOPA, if the Senate passes it, will be a setback, although we don’t yet completely know the impact. But in the long run, it’s just a bump.
But we have got to move this discussion into wider circles. This comment on my last post does a great job of articulating a different strategy. And again, the irony is, I think, that we’ve got to do it in Web 0.0 ways, by writing books, articles for print in magazines that don’t have anything to do with education or technology (read: Good Housekeeping), letters to editors, calling into radio shows, make CDs and DVDs, and maybe some Web 1.0 ways too like e-mail and discussion groups. We’ve got to stop preaching to the choir and spend more of our time “out there.” I’ve got a couple of ideas I’m pursuing that I’ll no doubt blog about if and when they happen, but the bottom line is, I’m looking more outward.

I’d love to hear others’ ideas of how best to articulate these stories to the wider universe..

technorati tags:dopa, read_write_web, education, blogging

So I got a chance to spend half a day with Chris Lehmann and his full staff at the Franklin Institute in Philly yesterday talking about how the Read/Write Web might work at their new school, the Science Leadership Academy which opens in about six weeks. It was the last day of an 8-day intensive planning session, and they were probably more tuned into the “closing ceremonies” to be held at a neighborhood restaurant in the afternoon than on listening to me, but I was extremely impressed by their attention, their questions and their thinking. And their thinking was all over the place…on a Moodle site where they have been capturing all of their work, on newsprint post-its all over the walls of the planning room, in their conversation. I sat there just envious as all get out that Chris had this opportunity to really build “School 2.0,” and I said as much to all of them.

I know I for one will be watching SLA with a great deal of interest, because it is already one of the first schools to be pretty transparent in the planning process and it will be pretty transparent in the product. At one point in our conversation as his teachers were working on their personal technology plans, Chris said something to the effect that his process had been informed by people all over the world, and that by being transparent about it on his blog, it had been a richer, more effective experience. (Chris, if you read this, maybe you could embellish that thought with a comment…but not from the beach!) And I thought it was interesting that one of the interview questions his teachers were asked was “How do you feel about teaching in a fishbowl?” Partially, that comes from SLA sharing the stage with the Microsoft-funded “School of the Future” which is also opening this fall in Philadelphia. But it also stems from the fact that part of the philosophy is to share widely and to be open about the process. Pretty cool.

So I won’t go as far as to say that this is the first big test of a Read/Write Web school. It’s not. But it’s a big step on that road. It’s a new model that we might all watch. It has an amazingly creative and forward thinking school leader at the helm, an eclectic and passionate group of teachers, and a very democratic vision that makes it unique in my experience. I am very, very excited to see what happens.

Technorati tags:School 2.0, education, Science Leadership Academy, school reform

I just finished my three-day stint at the High School’s New Face conference and I have to say I’m impressed and encouraged by the conversations here. Last night at dinner, people said their eyes had been opened and that for many at least, they felt had a real chance to make some changes at their schools. There was a lot of excitement about the technology, about the willingness to consider different models of schools (like The Met) and about the strategies for bringing those changes about.

But there was a moment in today’s last workshop session that captured the road ahead for this group and for the others that have gone down this path. I was just finishing up an hour on podcasting, showing them how to save Skype calls and mix them with music and other mp3 files, and showing them how easy it is to create an audio post and a podcast with Odeo. It was great, I mean, they even broke into semi-spontaneous applause at how easy it all was, and it was obvious they were getting juiced by the potentials. Life was good…

…until, of course, someone noticed that the number 9 listed podcast on Odeo is called “Open Source Sex.”

“So much for that,” the teacher who noticed it said. “They’ll never let this site through.” Talk about air going out of the balloon. I think I rescued it by reminding them how easy it is to do this with Audacity and OurMedia, but the point was clear. We may have great ideas and be thinking differently about learning, but it ain’t gonna fly when implementation time comes.

And so there it is. Another one of those nasty little truths about all of this. The biggest shift is not the technology, not the practice, not even the implementation. It’s the cultural, social shift that moves us from the idea that we must prevent our kids from seeing and engaging with this “stuff” to the idea that says, look…it’s a different world…they’re going to find sex and porn and bad stuff and bad people no matter how hard we try to keep them from it, but when we weigh that fact against the incredible learning potential that the Web provides, we’re going to choose to educate rather try to block and filter it all.

What kills me most about all of this is that I have yet to see anyone cover the eyes of their kids when they go into a magazine store and every skinny, big-breasted super model or super actress is right at eye level, or change the channel when scantily clad women dance provocatively in front of half naked, muscle bound men in the name of selling beer or music or whatever else, or stop them from going to movies filled with violence, abuse, objectification and the rest. Why is there no outrage over that? Is it because that’s done within full view of parents? Is it because we’ve just become so inured to it that we don’t see it. (I doubt that.) Is the Web different because the kids are at the controls? What is the mentality that says seeing it all around us in public is somehow less “damaging” than seeing a word on a Website somewhere?

Just to be clear, I don’t like it at all that this is a much more difficult, complex world for all of us to have to navigate. I’ve said this before, but every time I think what my own kids see and hear just in the course of their normal day, I get just totally disgusted with what we choose to subject them to as a society. But that’s the reality. And I deal with it by pointing it out at every turn, by making sure they have the editorial skills they need to deconstruct the image and get to the message and understand the motives behind it. And to frame all of it in a larger context of what beauty and health and happiness really is. I can’t keep them from that bad stuff. But I can help them understand it and to at least have a chance of making good decisions about it when they are confronted with it.

But we’re just not willing to deal with that in schools, it seems. Why is that?

technorati tags:media, education, society, Web

Blogged with Flock

So despite writing this while sitting on the tarmac at Midway (Chicago) airport after being canceled out of flying home last night and now being delayed AGAIN, I’m in a downright giddy Read/Write Web mood. Maybe it was spending the day with a roomful of energetic, geared-up Discovery educators yesterday who despite the roadblocks and barriers being thrown in front of them by their districts REALLY want to get their brains around these technologies. Or maybe it was listening to Hall Davidson talk about the ways in which we can integrate digital storytelling into our curricula so easily and effectively. Or maybe it was getting a chance to chat with Steve Dembo and Eric Langhorst (another logger added to my life list) about the stupidity and growing irrelevance of standardized testing and NCLB. Or maybe it’s just the affirmation of these ideas that can be found all over the place in this month’s Wired magazine (which, btw, has a picture of Ruppert Murdock with the words “MySpace” in huge print across it on the cover.)

Personally, I am happy as heck that MySpace is getting sued,that DOPA is floating around out there, that districts are blocking, filtering, shutting down, turning off, locking up everything in sight. (Boy, did I collect some stories from the DEN folks…) Everyone is up in arms, and that’s the first sign that people are finally waking up to what’s going on. They’re jerking their knees at all of it, but at least the discussion is starting, and now is when we have to engage it. Who was it that said “Bring it on?” (Just being giddy…)

Which is why I’m looking forward to NECC next week as a chance to get really energized about getting this message out there even more loudly and more convincingly with the growing number of educators who seem to be coming into the fold. David Warlick, Tony Vincent and I (among others) will be doing a panel with 150 technology leaders at the Wednesday morning ISTE breakfast with a heavy “Web 2.0 in Ed” emphasis (regardless of what the program says.) There are bloggy, podcasty, social Web sessions all over the place. The “Ed Tech Coast to Coast” crew will be doing a live podcast on Wednesday night, and Tim Wilson and I will also be doing a “NECC Live!” Webcast with Chris Walsh and Tom Marsh to talk about our favorite topic. There’s a whole slew of people blogging and podcasting the sessions, David is aggregating it all, and it’s just feeling more and more like the time for serious, broad discussions about the Read/Write Web has finally, really arrived. San Diego is looking like it could be a MAJOR event for this community, and I am loving the prospect.

Giddy, I tell you. (Someone bring me to my senses.)

technorati tags:necc, necc06, Read_Write_Web, Denri06, DOPA, How_many_tags_can_I_have?

George points to a couple of interesting articles that highlight the disruptions going on “out there” and encourages to read with education in mind. It’s something I constantly do, because i really believe that as traditions in those arenas begin to crumble and break down, there will be more and more pressure on the traditions of schooling to do so as well.

Case in point is Jay Rosen’s Washington Post essay titled “Web Users Open the Gates.” So much of it is easily reframed toward schools, as in when he talks about his ability to select the best sources of information for what he is interested in.

Simple example: The Net radically shifts principles of news distribution as all sites become equidistant from the reader.

In2003, I tracked Arnold Schwarzenneger’s gubernatorial campaign by reading California Insider by Dan Weintraub because the Sacramento Bee political columnist seemed more clued-in to the race than top national reporters. That I could choose his coverage (and links) over the Washington Post’s demonstrates the “unbundling” effect of the Internet.

Containers in which news had been packaged broke apart because the Internet could deliver content without the wrapping.

How about “the Net radically shifts principles of curriculum distribution as all ideas become equidistant from the learner.” Think about how much more freedom and choice we have as learners today, and how, if we exercise that freedom effectively, we can create a much more relevant learning experience for ourselves. We’re not hostage to one idea from one expert or one textbook. And in this way, if follows that “Containers in which curriculum had been packaged will break apart because the Internet can deliver it without the wrapping.

If you are interested at all in what the pressures on journalism are, you should give it a read. (I’ve added it to the EdBloggerNews page.)

The other link points to Jay Cross who points to a new book by Tom Johnson about business and the changes that are occurring there. George picks out the following quote:

As networks shrink the world, business priorities change. Efficient production used to call the shots. Make lots of stuff, gain economies of scale, and sell, sell, sell, even if what you were selling wasn’t quite what your customers were asking for. But now customers can buy whatever they want from anywhere in the world, whenever they want to.

So what happens when learners no longer need the business of schools to get the education they want and need? Even in the early years?

Interesting stuff going on “out there”…

technorati tags:read/write_web, education, change, journalism

Just a quick update on the Digg for educators experiment. In four days we’ve had about 2,500 views, are averaging over 110 unique visitors per day, and aggregated over 50 articles. There ave been over 100 votes for stories too, which has pushed Steven’s “Adults and MySpace” article to the top of the heap. So far so good.

Remember, if you are going to play, try to make sure that the articles are specific to Education 2.0, meaning that the articles deal specifically with the the Read/Write Web and education. And please, do play. The first few days have been pretty interesting…

technorati tags:social, digg, education, blogging

So says Joanne Jacobs in her essay “The Knowledge Tree Goes Social” which I listened to in podcast form on my drive up to Newport, RI today. (I’m speaking at EdAccess tomorrow morning.) She cites the blog search engine Sphere as the source though I couldn’t replicate the result. Regardless…

69,000.

Whoa.

Not to sound like an old blog fart, but if true, that’s an amazing number. I remember way back in 2001, I couldn’t find more than a handful of educators blogging on a regular basis. And I looked pretty hard (though I’ll admit that I missed Stephen Downes who had been edublogging longer than I.)

If true, that’s a pretty amazing number.

And food for thought.

This is getting serious…

technorati tags:blogging, education, teaching

I added this article from today’s Times about Wikipedia to the EdBloggerNews site (which if you haven’t gone there and signed up for an account and subscribed to the RSS feed and added the bookmarklet to your toolbar so you can start contributing yet you should) and this quote just jumped out at me:

Wikipedians often speak of how powerfully liberating their first contribution felt. Kathleen Walsh, 23, a recent college graduate who majored in music, recalled the first time she added to an article on the contrabassoon.

“I wrote a paragraph of text and there it was,” recalled Ms. Walsh. “You write all these pages for college and no one ever sees it, and you write for Wikipedia and the whole world sees it, instantly.”

What is it Dave Winer always says? “Bling!”

UPDATE: I just realized that Clarence already posted to EdBloggerNews and that two people commented on the post. I’m diggin’ it! (Shouldn’t you be?)

technorati tags:Wikipedia, Connective_Writing, EdBloggerNews

From the “Throw it Up and See if it Sticks Deptartment” I just put together a Digg-type site over at CrispyNews specifically for those of us who are focused on the Read/Write Web and the implications for education. Here’s how I think you could use it if you bought into it.

First, go over to the EdBloggerNews page and register for an account (left hand column.) Then, grab the bookmarklet (at the top of the left hand column) and drag it to your toolbar so when you find something of interest you can easily post it. Then, most importantly, subscribe to the RSS feed for the site so you collect all of the Web goodness we provide (with any luck).

I know this plays off the del.icio.us idea that I threw up yesterday, and it still might be better if we just collectively used the edblogreading tag that “ratcatcher” created. Suggestions welcomed.

And to be honest, this is all stemming from a bigger burr in my brain of late that has to do with the seeming randomness of all of the really great work that people in this community are starting to create. It’s just feeling like it’s all over the place, and that if we could in some way get our collective act together, we could start creating an incredibly valuable resource. I know it’s all about small pieces loosely joined, but wouldn’t it be great to point the newcomers to one spot that was a clearinghouse for all of this work? Not to mention the value it would have to us old timers in terms of bringing people in. I mean all of a sudden, it seems like everyone has a wiki, and most all of them have great intent and good content. But there’s also a lot of duplication of effort, and more importantly, dis-connection, at least that what it feels like to me.

Am I wrong?

And more importantly, what to do about it?

technorati tags:edblogging, tagging, read_write_web

So here is the not so subtle change that’s happening when teachers learn about the Read/Write Web and the tools that they can bring into their classrooms. As little as six months ago, there was a sense of “yeah, but” resignation in terms of not being able to really implement these tools in effective ways because of blocking/filtering, lack of support, lack of understanding, etc. But yesterday in Kennesaw, despite the many “challenges” that the 25 or so teachers in the room acknowledged were staring them in the face, there was anything but resignation. Instead, they were e-mailing their superintendents asking them to unblock sites that they have no access to, asking how to save locally or to usb drives or to Furl all of the sites that are being blocked so they could share them with their kids anyway, or trying to figure out the best ways to start using the tools despite the roadblocks. It was pretty cool to be a part of.

Two highlights: Anne Davis, who today gets to undo the damage I did yesterday, showed up just after lunch and we got a few minutes to catch up and compare notes. I know the group is going to be totally blown away by what Anne shows them in terms of classroom use, and I wish I could be there to sit in. It was great to see her again. Second, we had about a 15-minute Skype conversation with George Seimens who happened to be “stuck” in a café in Innsbruck, Austria nestled between two giant alps which, horrors of all horrors, was playing havoc with his connection. The call was crystal clear regardless, and really drove home the point of how our classrooms can extend all over the world. And it was just a lot of fun to boot.

If you want to find an area of the country that is getting really serious about the Read/Write Web in the classroom, look no further that Western New York. If nothing else, the last two days here speaking to and with the superintendents from about 50 districts and the staff developers from the Erie BOCES made it clear that these people either get it or want to get it and will do whatever it takes to move the schools in a new direction. It’s been really gratifying to be involved in some very provocative, challenging, and imaginative discussions, ones that I think bode really well for the students and teachers of the region.

For the last few months, the BOCES has been planning a series of blog, wiki and podcasting in services that will start up in September throughout the region. They’ve invested in servers and training, and it’s an attempt at least at the kind of support that’s needed to make their efforts successful.

That doesn’t mean that there aren’t hills to climb and roadblocks to navigate. But the good news is that there was real weight to the discussions these two days. These are educators who I think are starting to understand the importance of taking these conversations to larger and larger audiences and work together to find answers to the obstacles that remain. People who get what Barbara Ganley is talking about when she writes:

But now things feel more urgent suddenly, as though we’ve reached a crossroads. Much is in flux. Much is under threat. My students have changed, for one thing,—these young ones are now true digital natives and what that means has collided with our present model of education, exploding into an alarming reality.

For maybe the first time working with a group of educators, I felt that urgency too. The urgency that comes when more and more students feel disengaged, disenfranchised, and disinterested. And I have to thank all of you that contributed to my talk by posting to the blog, and especially Chris Lehmann, whose blog post I read to the superintendents to close my talk. It was and is a powerful statement of the world as we know it, and the world as more of our school leaders need to understand it.

We’ll see…

Jeff Jarvis posted one of those push-my-feeble-brain-to-the-limit posts last week which I think has resonance in a lot of ways. It starts with this:

In the future of media, which is now, everybody is a network. In the past, networks were defined by control of content or distribution. But now, you can’t own all distribution and content is controlled where it’s created.

He writes about how when we work and practice in a transparent, read and write environment, all of us become nodes in much larger networks. (There is a lot of

George Siemens in this.) I love this description:

Networks are about sharing now; they used to be about control. Networks are two-way; they used to be one-way. Networks are about aggregation more than distribution; they are about finding and being found. Networks are now open while, by their very definition, they used to be closed. You join networks and leave them them at will; you can join any number of networks at once and content can be found via any number of networks, there is no practical limit. Networks used to be static. Now networks are fluid.

It’s interesting how much this speaks to education, and how far we need to go. We are still about control, not sharing. We are still about distribution, not aggregation. We are still about closed content rather than open. We are static, not fluid. The idea that each of our students can play a relevant, meaningful, important role in the context of these networks is still so foreign to the people who run schools. And yet, more and more, they are creating their own networks, sharing, aggregating, evolving to the disdain of the traditional model of schooling that is becoming more and more irrelevant.

The biggest problem is how few of our educators still cannot relate to this description. They are neither networks unto themselves or nodes of a larger system, and they understand little about what it means to be either in a world that is more globally interconnected. And our students are not only left without models of what it means to be networked, they also get relatively little content that is contextualized through the network. So network literacy, the functions of working in a distributed, collaborative environment (Jill Walker), is an important aspect of learning and education that precious few of our students get a chance to practice. And it is only by practicing these skills, whether teachers or students, that they can truly be learned.

Anne pointed to this pretty amazing exchange that occurred on one of her student blogs recently, and it’s an interesting and effective example of how involved parents can contribute to their childrens’ learning in these more transparent spaces. I wonder how many teachers actively invite parents to at minimum read and perhaps respond to the work that their children are doing in their blogs. I know when I was in the classroom, I made a point of letting parents know what the URLs of the blogs were, but I left the decision to have parents comment on the sites up to the students themselves. Since it was high school, most opted not to let that happen. But a few did, and while the responses were not many, almost all of them were helpful, instructive, and relevant. And I do think for the students who allowed their parents to contribute it was a positive experience, especially for the parents who like the opportunity to be more involved.

Anyway, it’s nice to see such great discussion happening on student blogs. It’s rich, personal and, in this case at least, adds a great deal to the topic.

Tim O’Reilly’s recent commencement address at the UC Berkeley School of Information has been widely cited, and I’m not sure that all of it really resonates, but there are a couple of phrases and ideas that are especially relevant and worth noting. And since he wasn’t just talking to a group of educators, these points are worth remembering when bringing this discussion to a wider audience.

First is the idea that this is a turning point not just in technology:

In my remarks today, I hope to elaborate on this idea of turning points. Not only are you at a turning point in your lives, we are at a turning point in the technology industry, and perhaps even in the history of the world. Most of you probably know that I’ve been evangelizing an idea that I call Web 2.0, the idea that the internet is on the verge of replacing the personal computer as the dominant computing platform. And as you know, platform shifts are times of enormous disruption and enormous opportunity.

I think that bears remembering, that despite the very messy, difficult period that we’re entering here, there is also a real opportunity to make some much needed changes in the classroom. We need to keep focusing on how best to do that, but the good news here is that we’re advocating for rethinking education at the same time as others are talking about rethinking journalism and business and politics because of the same changes. I think it might be easier to frame our discussions in that context.

O’Reilly also discusses the importance now of the network:

The internet as platform is the sum of all connected computers and devices. True internet applications can be thought of as “software above the level of a single device,” applications that run not on any individual computer but on the network that connects them. Ultimately, the network ties together all those devices into a single vast computer.The applications that succeed on that new computer platform are those that understand deeply what it means to be network applications. It’s as simple as this: the secret of success in the networked era is to create or leverage network effects.

And then later…

But even more important than their enthusiasm, the users of successful internet applications supply their intelligence. A true Web 2.0 application is one that gets better the more people use it. Google gets smarter every time someone makes a link on the web. Google gets smarter every time someone makes a search. It gets smarter every time someone clicks on an ad. And it immediately acts on that information to improve the experience for everyone else. It’s for this reason that I argue that the real heart of Web 2.0 is harnessing collective intelligence.

This is exactly, I think, what George Seimens talks about when he says that knowledge resides in the network, and that to be truly educated these days, we need to know how to leverage that knowledge when we need it. And that we all get smarter as we link to one another and become a part of the conversations that are going on.

O’Reilly also talks about achieving “global consciousness” on the Web, but I think we are still a long way from that. There is still too much echo-chambering happening, and I think one of the biggest hurdles that we have to overcome in all of this is how to insure that our students (and ourselves) value both sides of the conversation.

Anyway, something to think about to start off the week…

One of the themes that’s been running through my brain a lot of late is the idea that with blogs and podcasts and screencasts and others we really have an opportunity to ask our students to become more than just receivers of knowledge. They can become transmitters of that knowledge, teachers of it in easy, meaningful ways. It’s an idea that I added into my MACUL presentations at literally the last minute, but it was one that I think really resonated with many who sat in.

If you’ve ever taught, you know that the best way to learn something is to not only do it but to teach it to others. (Many heads in the audience nodded in agreement.) In the “old days” of the traditional, non-connected classroom, we really didn’t have too many opportunities for students to teach back what they learned on a regular basis. And that’s because, obviously, it required a lot of planning to set up the communicaiton between the student teachers and a group of learners down the hall or down the street or, in some cases, around the world. And to be honest, those connections were somewhat contrived, based on the desires of the adult teachers in the classrooms. I’m not saying that some of these were not effective. But what I am saying is that they really weren’t a viable option for many teachers.

Not so today, assuming of course, you have a regular connection. Not only can we ask our students to teach back what they know to a potentially large audience, it’s not a contived audience, because the people who learn from it are motivated to do so. They will self-select it. And in doing so, there is the potential for connection and community building that can extend the learning that occurs in the classroom.

Ironically, this is especially true, I think, with the more multimedia technologies that we talk about. Podcasts, vidcasts, screencasts all give students the opportunity to take what they have learned and turn it into teachable content. That’s what I hear when I listen to Bob Sprankle’s or Tony Vincent’s kids. That’s what I sense with the Wheaton Academy vidcasts. And that’s why I am so intruiged with screencasting as a new medium for students to use to teach.

That’s an interesting shift I think. Instead of being focused on how well our students can test on the material, what if we focused on how well they can teach it?