I learned about it yesterday, just after finishing my contemporary literacy keynote (what does it mean to be literate in a networked, digital and information-abundant environment) at the NOEL Literacy Conference in Thunder Bay, Ontario. We were all enjoying a delicious buffet of roasted vegetables, sausages and chicken (of course), and a teacher stood and asked for our attention. By the time I was able to focus my hearing on her, she was reading something to the effect of,

Earth is catching up with Mars in an encounter that will culminate in the closest approach between the two planets in recorded history. The next time Mars may come this close is in 2287. …It will attain a magnitude of -2.9 and will appear 25.11 arc seconds wide at a modest 75-power magnification. Mars will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye. Mars will be easy to spot. …Mars will rise at nightfall and reach its highest point in the sky at 12:30 a.m. …NO ONE ALIVE TODAY WILL EVER SEE THIS AGAIN

I know now, after looking for photos of this planetary alignment that hasn’t happened in 60,000 years, that the whole thing is a hoax. It is an email message that has been circulated every year since 2005, and originates from an authentic message calling attention to the actual close encounter that occurred in August 2003, when the planet Mars can within
55 million miles of us. But even at that, it appeared to be just a bright star.

Astronomers, seeking to debunk the hoax, say that if Mars came close enough to the Earth that it appeared to be the size of the Moon, life on our planet would end. The gravitational influences of both planets would hurl us into new elliptical orbits, dramatically altering our climates and causing devastating tides.¹

It was likely not a malicious hoax, resulting more from an awkwardly worded sentence and a lack of understanding of Planetary science. The sentence originally read,

At a modest 75-power magnification Mars will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye.

Looking through a 75-power telescope, the moon would appear as large as the moon. Even after having giving that speech and saying several times, “Being literate today means asking questions about the answers that you find,” I was taken in and considered staying up. She was a teacher, after all.

When, as a child, I sat before my teachers in the 1950s and ’60s, I had no Internet. There was no fact-checking. I was not encouraged to question what I read or heard. Education was based on the assumed authority of the teacher, the textbook, and what was available in the school library.

I think that the issue here is not about that teacher (and the rest of us ooh’ing and aah’ing) were taken in. The issue is, Will we admit it to our learners tomorrow that we made a mistake and use the mistake as a learning opportunity?

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

1. ”Mars hoax: .” HindustanTimes 27Aug 2010: n. pag. Web. 27 Aug 2010. .

One of the most passionate and hard to ignore voices is Gary Stager, and Gary is trying to expand the audience for his passion by proposing a presentation at the next South by Southwest Conference (SXSW) to be held in March.  SXSW selects its speaker by crowdsourcing the activities of potential attendees, asking people to vote on the presenters they want to hear.  Gary is asking that we go and give him a vote.  He writes about in a blog post, Help Me Change People’s Minds!, and includes instructions for voting.  I’m including them here for your convenience.

In order for me to be invited to speak at South-by-Southwest, (SXSW), I need for you and your colleagues, friends, relatives and students to spend a few minutes voting for my session. I apologize for how clumsy the web site is. That’s why I’ve included the following step-by-step instructions below:

1. Go to: http://bit.ly/cxq78J
2. Follow the instructions for creating an account
3. An email will be sent to you containing a link to click that will return you to the voting site
4. Click the link in the email
5. Login using the email address and password you just created
6. Click on the Explore the Interactive Proposals » link (http://bit.ly/bk31Hl)
7. Type Stager into the Organizer field
8. Click the SEARCH PANELS button
9. My session, The Best Educational Ideas in the World, should appear
10. Click the icon of the THUMBS UP to vote for my session.
11. If you wish, click on the title of the session, scroll to the bottom of the page and leave a message of support. Every bit helps!

I am really grateful to each and every one of you who takes the time to follow the steps outlined above and votes for my session. Reaching multiple and varied audiences is the most effective way I can influence public opinion and help kids.

Great luck to Gary Stager!

New York Times app on iPad at launch at San Francisco Apple Store 141 by Steve Rhodes

I’ve been enjoying some time off last week, mostly just knocking around in my office, filing some old cables away (found two parallel printer cables and an Appletalk adaptor), changing the template on my blog (trying out a three column look), and experimenting with BuddyPress as a replacement for the soon to expire Classblogmeister Ning.

In the process, I’ve been playing around with my old Acer Aspire One (ZG5) netbook — and feel almost sacrilegious in saying this, but I’m finding it to be refreshingly delightful to use, especially for some functions that I have been (admittedly) pushing my iPad to fill.  Many have complained that although the iPad would be an excellent consumption device (much better than a textbook), you cannot use it for information production. Others have challenged this suggestion, saying that, “My grandchildren love drawing in my iPad.” I’ve seen some interesting drawing tools for the device with some amazing results.  There are many clever and well executed educational games and applications, and with an external keyboard, the iPad makes a descent writing tool.  I am, after all, sitting on a sofa and writing (thumbing) this blog post on my iPad.

But the question we have to ask is, “What is the iPad really great at — best at?”  My answer, from my experience with the device, is that it is a “great” device to watch.

Of course, if that was all we were going to do with it, we’d have been satisfied with the Kindle. I think that the iPad, as a platform, is amazing, and we certainly haven’t seen the end of its capabilities.  I’ve written before that what truly interests me about the device is that “we” will be the ones who discover and invent its place in helping us accomplish our goals.  But from an educational point of view, I think that we have to continue to ask, “What is the best technology for the learning experiences we want to craft?”

What’s weak about the iPad, from my point of view, is the OS. It is a wonderful consumer electronic product.  It looks good in Best Buy.  But I see little indication that formal education was one of the aims in its design.  They didn’t build a literacy tool.

So what is a literacy tool. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, considering how information has changed (as a result of technology) and what that means in terms of essential literacy skills (Redefining Literacy 2.0).  I usually describe contemporary literacy by expanding the three “Rs” in a way that accounts for the networked, digital, and abundant (overwhelming) nature of today’s information landscape.

A literacy machine not only enables us to find and read information. But it also facilitates a deeper examination of the information, uncovering the evidence of it’s value, utilizing elements of what Alan November has called “web grammar.” A literacy  machine assures that the learner develops the habit of “asking questions about the answers that he finds.”

A literacy machine is also designed to help us work the information, to process not only the massive amounts of digital data that we have access to and need, to make important decisions, but also to be able to process the ones and zeros that now defines almost all information — text, images, sound, video, and animation.  A literacy machine empowers, by helping us to realize that content is a raw material, ready to be remixed, shaped, and assembled into the answers of questions, solutions of problems, and the means to accomplish our goals.

Today, communicating requires far more than the ability to write.  To compete for the attention of your audience, you must be able to produce a message that effectively conveys your ideas and compellingly draw attention.  A literacy machine enables us to communicate, not merely with words, but with pictures, sound, and motion.  It enables us to get the attention of those who can help us accomplish our goals.

As I’ve said already, I think that the iPad is an amazing device.  It is an information slab with seemingly mystical abilities.  And it is exactly the sort of instructional tool that I would like to see all children carrying into their classrooms.  But what I would like to see and what is truly the best personal learning device for helping our children to become information artisans, may be two entirely different things.

I would expand yesterday’s final question by asking:

What ICT is going to help my children learn by helping them to become literate, resourceful, and habitual learners — engaged in a learning lifestyle?

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Edited on an iMac using MarsEdit

Just another … on your back?

A Compillation of (cc) Flickr photos from Seeit_Snapit and Alan HL performed with Pixelmator on an iMac

This will be a two-part entry owing to some comments that I’ve heard over the past few weeks at conferences I have been working. The comments are simple and they go something like this. It’s a computer administrator, coordinator (starting to dislike the term “integrationist”), a principal or head of school, who in conversation about 21st century education mentions that, “We are implementing a 1:1 initiative, handing out Apple iPads to our 8th graders at the beginning of the year.”

To be perfectly fair, this rant could have more to do with a short bout of insomnia I am experiencing right now, but “21st century leaning has nothing to do with iPads, iPod Touches, or any piece of technology.  The only thing that is one to one that we should be concerned with is equitable access to rigorous, relevant, and irresistible learning experiences that reflect and harness the times, environment, and ultimate goals of the learning.

• The times, “..they are a changing,” exceedingly beyond the imagination of the prophet, Bob Dylan, when he wrote the song almost fifty years ago.
• The environment we are preparing our children for and preparing them within is one of challenges.  It is also an environment of opportunities.  Another characteristic of our environment is an emerging new information environment, where information and communication are networked, digital, and abundant.
• And our goal is to give our children a good start on the next 50, 70, or 100 years of their lives.

21st century learning is about the experience, not about the tools you are using. The experience defines the tools, not the other way around. Any statement about handing out iPads (or netbooks or laptops) should begin with the word “So…”

“We want to facilitate … learning experiences for our students, ’so’ we are handing out iPads (or netbooks, or laptops) in September.”

So what kind of experience is it that we want to facilitate? What is 21st century learning? How might our children spend the first years of their lives?  What can learners do that reflects and harness the times, environment, and goals?

To use the verbiage I have been sharing with educators over the past few months, it is an experience that is responsive. Learners are not simply passive vessels to be filled.  They are players within a game that plays back.  It is inquiry fueled. It provokes conversations that factor in the learner’s identity and measures his standing. It inspires the personal investment of time and skill.  ..and it is guided by safely made mistakes.

When the conversation finally comes down to the appropriate information and communication technologies (ICT), then the question should become, “Which ICT best channels these experiences?”

In my opinion, if that question strings like this, “Does the technology help me to teach?” then you haven’t had that first conversation yet, or you still don’t get it.

But if it strings like this, “What ICT is going to help my children learn by helping them to become resourceful and habitual learners — engaged in a learning lifestyle?” then you’re well on your way.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Edited on an iMac…

A Compilation from several photos on Flickr

Brenda and I had dinner last night with some dear friends from my teaching days, back in the 1970s and ’80s. Frank and Karen Braswell both graduated from college around the same time that we did, majoring in technology education at Appalachian State University (archrival of mine and Brenda’s alma mater, Western Carolina University — “Go Catamounts”).

Karen was a graphic artist for an ad agency in Charlotte, where Brenda worked as a bookkeeper. We drifted apart when Brenda and I moved to Roxboro and to Raleigh. Meanwhile, Frank built up an innovative printing company and Karen joined Bojangles as art director (I think that was the title). After many years Karen burned out on the corporate world and was recently hired by an innovative middle school principal. He seems to have been looking for an outside the box approach to teaching the school’s technology course.

Karen and I have had numerous conversations about her teaching, specifically how she should rely on her experience as an art department director more than her notions of what a teacher is supposed to be/do. Some pretty interesting ideas have resulted from these conversations usually about making her classroom operate more like a workplace than a traditional classroom, where her learners engage in a more “on-the-job” fashion of learning.

Last night, we built up the following idea, in response to her principals desire for a digital yearbook.

Rather than establishing a class or club as responsible for collection, selection, laying out and publishing of the yearbook, based on some Josten supplied template, they would set up a social network for the school. It would be designed as a place where student interaction would generate the content that they would need for the yearbook. Students would create and maintain their own profiles, with pictures, favorite classes, etc, and then comment on each other’s profile. They would then select the content and comments to be included in the yearbook.

Students would earn points (coin, gold, permissions, whatever) by contributing to each other profiles, earn even more points when their contributions are chosen by the profile owner for inclusion in the yearbook.

The students in Karen’s class would manage the social network like a company, setting policy, policing the site, adding and removing features.  At the end of the year, they would extract student flagged elements from the profiles and combine them in a digital yearbook, which would be burned to a CD, or DVD (with optional print versions, available through an on-demand book printing service).

So what do you think?

Click the image to link over to the YouTube video

These things are like lightning bugs on summer evenings. You wonder at them initially, but soon they are just background noise. But Jeff Whipple, who is facilitating a conference in a couple of weeks for teachers who will soon be working in 1:1 classrooms in New Brunswick, shared this one with me and others who will be contributing to the conference virtually.

First of all, it is fresh, and not just a remake of Karl Fisch’s landmark Did You Know (now at over five million views). It was also produced by the New Brunswick Department of Education, and it is polished, professional, and not overdone. Their stated purpose is to,

..stimulate discussion among educators and other stakeholders in public education in the province of New Brunswick. The 21st Century presents unique challenges for education worldwide. In order to keep pace with global change we must focus on 21st Century Skills and public education must adapt to keep students engaged. Rigor and relevance are key.

You can get a pdf of their plan here.

The only fault I have with the video is its length, five and a half minutes. Like many of these things, we tend to go too long with them. I don’t know how long they should be, but there is a point in many of these promotional videos that I watch, where I think, it should stop here.

But that’s the only constructive criticism I have. I am thrilled at what New Brunswick is doing, and having worked with and come to know many of the people involved, I feel a bit of comradely pride as well. Great luck to Nouveau Brunswick.

Être…ici on le peut!

Flickr photo by Ya-Ko of a young person looking for meteors during the Orionid Shower

My neighbor and self-educated space exploration authority, Paul Gilster, wrote a blog entry today about the Perseids meteor shower, which reaches its peek on the evening of August 12. Debris from the comet Swift-Tuttle, Perseids gets its name from its origin — from our visual perspective — the constellation Perseus.

Even though this is a fairly prominent meteor shower, there has never been a spatial analysis of the Perseid meteor stream, according to Chris Crawford. He (she) asks, via his e-mail to Gilster,

what if we had hundreds or thousands of people all over North America and Europe observing Perseids and somebody collected and collated all their observations? This is crowd-sourcing applied to meteor astronomy.

Apparently a person with a fairly eclectic set of interests, Crawford has developed software that can be downloaded from his project web site. He asks that people download the program to their laptops and then carry them out Wednesday and Thursday nights (Aug 11-12) and watch for meteors.  As one comes into view, we click the mouse button on our computers.  The software records the time of the event into a log file.  Afterward, we enter our latitude and longitude into the program and then send off the file.

Presumably, the data will be used to assemble a three dimensional map of the debris stream.  Gilster closes his entry with…

Usually I write about celestial debris in the context of the clues it can offer up to astrobiology, or as examples of the need to develop the technologies to fend off larger objects like asteroids. But a fascinating outgrowth of our ever more powerful desktop technologies is the ability to put in just a small amount of time to achieve a widely distributed result, one that looks at a natural phenomenon in a new way. Here’s to the success of the Perseid Project, with the hope that it’s a forerunner of future skywatch collaborations.

I am extremely sympathetic to this sentiment. But would we rather close his schools, layoff the rest of his family, leave his continued good health to chance, watch his roads and bridges crumble, continue to arrogantly dominate the consumption of dwindling resources and deface the planet?

I don’t know if Obama’s spending is going to solve our problems. I do not know if we possess the creative energy to leverage that spending for change. But I am certain that giving money back to the rich, turning a blind eye to irresponsible greed, invading the wrong country, grossly underestimating the strength and resolve of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, and continuing to divide this country did not and will not work.

I watched a little bit of Fox News — “know thine enemy.” I try not to vent my political views here, but I’m tired, my judgement is probably diminished, and I’m getting worried.

I report all of my income to the government. They get a lot of it and I wish that it wasn’t so much. But I’m not complaining. I am lucky to be in a position to be able to pay a lot of taxes. I am proud to pay it. It is my patriotic duty.

America does not come cheap, and its costs are more than the blood that we so eagerly celebrate. It’s our work, our dedication to a great experiment, and our patriotic willingness to invest in that experiment — to invest in this country. It is my opinion that those who seek offices of power by promising lower taxes are selling out the country.

The government is not perfect. It is far from perfect. ..and this country is very sick. But anyone who says that the medicine should not taste bad, that the cure is simple and cheap, that it’s the doctor who is responsible and not the disease — is actually trying to sell you something else!

(CC) Photo by Enoch Lai

I’ve been struggling for quite a few days with a question that has actually been on my mind (and tongue) for quite some time. The question emerged most recently a couple of weeks ago when I was sitting in the only session at the Laptop Institute that I had a chance to actually attend. It was Convincing Your Constituencies by Fort Worth Academy head of school, William Broderick. He skillfully outlined the DOs of selling a 1:1 initiative to teachers, parents and boards — and the DON’Ts.

One of the DON’Ts that Broderick shared, and one of the mistakes he said that his team had made in their initial campaign to promote a 1:1 program at their school, was selling the technology instead of the learning. “Technology” was actually a fairly easy sale. Most people equate computer technology and the Internet with the future and consider technology skills to be synonymous with 21st century skills. The problem came when they started implementing the program. The approach was to teach teachers how to use the computers rather than helping them learn to use this new connective environment to craft and manage effective and relevant learning experiences.

So we say to each other, “Its not about the technology. It’s about the learning.” But even that is not good enough, in my opinion. It Does not sufficiently answer the question, “If it’s not about the technology, then what is it about?”

Certainly, it’s the learning. But what kind of learning? How is the learning different? What is fundamentally new about learning with a computer in front of you, instead of a textbook? ..and perhaps an even more practical question is what does the “teaching” look like?

To answer these questions, I think that it is far more useful to take an approach that I shared today with a group of school administrators from across East Texas. I suggested that rather than wondering how learning might be accomplished with technology, we might, as I often urge people, think about the information. Rather than focusing on the machine, we should explore the new potentials of learning with, and within, an environment of networked, digital and abundant information.

What does learning look like when networking enables us to facility multiple channels of conversation that transcend classroom walls, school campuses, and bell schedules? What does the learning look like when digital information has less to do with something to be taught,and more to do with providing learners with information raw materials that the can shape, mix and remix to construct their own learning? And what does learning look like — for that matter, what does it mean to be educated — when we have increasingly ubiquitous access to increasingly abundant amounts information? The technology is simply the window.

As for the teaching? Well a simple way of expressing this might be the vision of the textbook equipped classroom, with the teacher in the front of the class, leading the way. In a classroom that is equipped with networked, digital, and abundant information, well the teacher stands behind the learner, looking over his shoulder, suggesting questions, provoking conversations, rewarding success and celebrating mistakes, and, expressing the wonder that new learning causes — because she, perhaps, might be learning something new as well.

Taken over North Carolina, July 29, 2010

It’s like dreaming — so real, until you’re back on your feet and navigating your terrestrial world. But when I’m in the air, flying above the clouds, it is a different place, so removed and foreign from the environment that nurtured by growing. I’ve mentioned before that I was already middle-aged the first time I flew in an airplane.

But I was reminded of the magnificence and beauty this morning, when I slide my pocket Canon’s SD card into my MacBook Pro, and downloaded about 40 shots of Chris Lehmann’s keynote yesterday (I find I can get at least one good picture when I just lay down on the shutter button and let it go, click, click, click, click…)

I took several pictures of the cloud, from the plane window yesterday as we’d started our initial descent into Raleigh. It was a thunder boomer and there were lots of other thunder boomers in the area, though we had a conveniently clear corridor into RDU.

The sun, which had already passed beneath the horizon was evidently still high enough that it still shown directly on the very top of the cloud, producing this gold crown.

Sometimes I just have to shake my head at what molecules, atoms, and subatomic particles can shape themselves into. It’s magic!

Flickr Photo – by ViaMoi

NPR calls him an education “technology leading light.” Some who know Gary Stager might rather call him an education “bold of lightning,” inspiring some and irritating others. Regardless, what ever Gary says, we listen to it — and National Public Radio (NPR) was listening yesterday.

The issue was India’s recently announced $35 Tablet for Education, and NPR heard it when Gary tweeted…

Newsflash: India invents schools so its children have a place to store their useless “$35 laptops.” #vaporware¹

Contacting him as a source for his story (A $35 Tablet For Education? Cost Isn’t The Only Factor To Consider)?, NPR contributor, Wright Bryan, asked Gary to expand on the tweet. I’ll let you read what he said in the article, which is pretty much what his readers would expect when a fully charged Gary Stager faces any initiative that short-changes learning for the sake of being able to say, “Look how we’re advancing education so cheaply.”

I want to point you to a part of his statement that really nailed it for me. This short paragraph shows why Gary is so much more of a contributor on Twitter than I am — he can put in a few striking words a quality of ideas that expand my own thinking regarding topics that take me an hour to express on a stage.

He says that a computer,

..especially if it’s the only one we can be sure they (students in India) have access to, must be capable of making the poems, musical compositions, movies, radio programs, simulations, video games, scientific breakthroughs and acts of civic participation that we know children are able to create with the right software, support, time and high expectations.²

Boom!

Learning is Work!

..because, today, Work is Learning!

In case you are not reading the comments, last night Gary Stager provided this link to an open letter from Nicholas Negroponte (the visionary behind the the One Laptop Per Child) project.  It was sent to the Times of India.  You can read the text here.

1. ??Stager, Gary. 24 Jul 2010. Online Posting to Twitter. Web. 29 Jul 2010.
2. ?Bryan, Wright. “A $35 Tablet For Education? Cost Isn’t The Only Factor To Consider.” All Tech Considered 28 Jul 2010: n. pag. Web. 29 Jul 2010. .

Technology Operation & Concepts Students demonstrate a sound understanding of technology concepts, systems, and operations. Students: understand and use technology systems. select and use applications effectively and productively. troubleshoot systems and applications. transfer current knowledge to learning of new technologies.

ISTE was about conversations

I was worried when the conversation was about to start.  It seemed that Tech and Concepts were not terribly interesting to anyone, except for an enthusiastic educator from Vietnam, and two venders — both of which shared valuable perspectives, but not broad enough to even begin the conversation.  But, when the time finally came, folks started coming in, and we had wonderful input from teachers, administrators, technology educators and directors, international educators and vendors — and it was one of the most exhilarating conversations, of which I have been a part.

We had almost no guidance on where we should steer the conversations except for the goal of excellence.  We wanted the cafes to take the discussions in their own directions.  It was my job to keep it productive.

We looked at each of the goals of the Technology Operations and Concepts standard, and our conversations broke down into what does the learning of the items look like, and what kind of teacher/learning environment would nurture that learning.  There was an enormous amount of overlap.

Here is my own condensing of the ideas down to an almost manageable list of teaching/learning characteristics that I think extends way beyond technology operation and concepts.

Minor additional editing July 23, 2010

Speaking to school leaders at the NPLI in NYC

After a wonderful week at home, I headed up to New York City for the National Principals Leadership Institute. Here, leadership teams from a criss the US and Canada gathered to talk about leadership and to answer three questions.

1. how might I describe these times?
2. What are the imp,ications to education?
3. what does it mean to me as a school leader?

A ruin on the Hudson I was lucky enough to capture from the moving train

Nothing more need be said here

Where I found a delicious pulled pork omelet while waiting for my room at the Peabody

Participants worked in mixed teams, formed by the event staff, spending part of each day loosening to speakers and the rest of the day working together on the questions and the ultimate presentation of their answers. Among others, the institute invited soledet O’Brien of CNN, legal activist Cornell West, and students of local performing arts high schools. The day after my presentation, they were to visit local institutions, including a hospital, police department, and Panasonic, one pf the sponsors of the event.

From NYC, I took a train up the Hudson River to Syracuse, for the Central New York 21st Century Conference, three days of presentations and discussion work. Organized by several of the Onondaga-Cortland-Madison BOCES, the group listened to Ken Kay, formerly of The Partnership for 21st Century Skills, Bernie Trillin, author of 21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times, Yong Zhao, myself, and Debra Adams Roethke, of Henrico County Schools. The challenge here, for me, was to follow two of the most successful articulators of 21st Century skills and Zhao, who speaks so compellingly and authoritatively about many of the same ideas that I discuss.

Today, I am finally in Memphis, for the Lausanne Laptop Institute, perhaps the premier laptop (1:1) event in the nation and beyond, as evidenced by the number of attendees coming in from Asia, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and South America.

This is one of those very unique conferences, the quality of which I first saw when I keynoted the state ed tech conference (ACTEM) in Maine a number if years ago. It took me months to realize what was different — what that quality was, even though it was really quite obvious. It was a prevailing sense that anything/everything that was being suggested, introduced, taught, or discussed at that conference could be taken back to the schools and implemented.

The educators here to Memphis are coming from schools where ubiquitous access to networked, digital and abundant information is assumed. It is a part of the culture of the school. This is a huge distinction in a world — in a country — where most students are still learning via information and communication technology that was invented in the 15th century, and that’s if the budget cuts haven’t limited access to textbooks.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Ian Jukes and others are high energy presenters, not lecturers. There are many styles of communication.

I believe that it was the queen of EduBlogs, Sue Waters who introduced me to Jenny, where-upon I asked her how she liked the conference so far. She said that it was not like the conferences she’d attended in Australia.  She continued, mentioning the stage band at the opening keynote and the speakers she’d already seen, and stated that there seemed to be a need to entertain or to be entertained — that it was almost like Disneyland. Then she gracefully softened her statements admitting that she’d only seen two presentations and the opening keynote and that it was probably a cultural thing — and now here I am blogging about it.

No worries, it’s actually something that I’ve been wondering about for a number of years. First of all, it is important to note that the two presenters she’d seen were Ian Jukes and Steve Dembo, two fantastic speakers, who are both high-energy performers — in my opinion.

I have only recently become comfortable with the idea that this is what I do much of the time.  I perform, and I do not think that this takes anything away from the importance of what I talk about or degrades it in any way.  Someone said once that public speaking is a contact sport.  You have to connect with your audience and there are a number of ways to accomplish this, many of them involving performance.

But I use to worry about it, beginning with a NECC, a few years ago, when Terry Freedman, from England, mentioned that in his country, speakers always left time at the end of the speech for questions. I rarely did this and admitted to myself, a little ashamedly, that I’d not really thought about it much. Sometimes there was time for questions, and I’m always happy when there is. But it’s always after a full hour or more of presentation.

So I started to wonder if an hour (or more) was too long.  But as I’m planning my presentations they always seem to settle on that time frame, an hour, and there never seems to be anything that I can leave out without breaking the story — and it simply goes way against my nature, as a southerner, to talk faster.  The story is important.  I’ve seen too many speakers who get up and simply tell us what we should be thinking and often without any logical sequence.

I want my presentations to run, with a beginning, some fun as background, and some twists for tension and suspense.  It needs to surprise but not be entirely unexpected.  There isn’t anything I can share with you that you haven’t already thought at some point.  It needs to come full circle and it needs to evoke ideas, rather than just deliver my ideas.

I worried about my style of presenting when I started working abroad, wondering, Should I lecture? Should I stay behind the lecturn? Will I lose respect if I get out and start walking around? Should I not tell stories? ..or should I be myself?  I am a former middle school teacher and entertainment/performance was part of the job for me, because I didn’t want to scare the tikes and I certainly didn’t want to bore them.  ..and I find adults to be little different. They are typically more motivated (mostly). But we all deserve to have a good time, and if I can make you laugh, or bring a jolt to your understanding through a surprise ending, then I think that’s part of teaching — and I do not feel any less professional in the process.

As for the conference, I think it possibly has more to do with its being huge than its being in the U.S.  When you get that many people of similar mind together in one place, with so much at stake for educators, administrators, and exhibitors and so much kinetic energy being generated by the sharing of so many important ideas — well a little bit of glee is necessary, stirring it in with all that vigor. ?

That said, there may be one more factor that, sadly, is an American thing.  I get the impression that teachers in the U.S. are not held in the same regard as they are in other countries, especially Europe and much of Asia.  We are second class professionals, and unfortunately that has become part of our professional culture.  With this in mind, we do what we can, when we can, and with what ever we can afford, to make teachers feel special.

You think the four-piece stage band was wild.  You should have been with us in New Orleans!

Since the conference, I’ve taken another look at iThoughtsHD and although its interface is a little less smooth, it has more functionality and exports to a slew of other applications and in a number of ways, including WiFi.

The practical affect for me is that I have a set of distinct notes organized logically, that take me back to the presentation rooms rooms and in front of the speakers.  This is preferable to the hodgepodge of notes written down on a note pad, either analog or digital, requiring careful interpretation later on.  To the right are my notes for Doug Johnson’s presentation, exported to my MacBook Pro via WiFi and imported into XMind.

Of course ISTE (formerly known as NECC) is a place where smart people go to learn.  But it is also the place were we go to care about their own ideas.  There are proclamations, exaltations, disagreements, confusion, support for some approaches and recrimination of others.  People are made to feel good and made to feel bad because of what they think and sometimes because of how they’ve spent their money.  Interactive White Boards are an obvious current example, as many (myself included) are weary of the technology because of its evident support and potential perpetuation of teacher-centered classrooms.

And then comes Doug Johnson’s Change from the Radical Center.  Author of the Blue Skunk Blog (one of my favorites) and a range of books for teachers and librarians, Doug brings a practical and mature approach to modernizing our schools, classrooms, and libraries.  In his online handouts, Johnson writes…

While polarized views of reading methodologies, filtering, DRM, Open Source, copyright/copyleft, constructivism, e- books, computer labs, fixed schedules, Mac/PC/Linux, and the One Laptop Per Child project all make for entertaining reading and a raised blood pressure, radical stances rarely create educational change or impact educational institutions enough to change kids’ chances of success.

With his Minnesota humor (and no mention of Ollie), Doug compellingly suggests ten principals to follow to cut through the passions of heart-felt beliefs to approaches that may succeed in affecting positive change in our classrooms and libraries.  You can read them all here.  I’m going to comment on just a few.

I had to reach all the way back to NECC 2007 to find this picture of Doug

One of the first cut through much of the controversial proclamations made in the presentation rooms and during hall and lounge conversations that I witnessed and participated in.  He suggests that we “Adopt an ‘and’ not ‘or’ mindset.”  I feel pretty strongly that every student should be walking into their classrooms with computers under their arms.  I’m increasingly convinced of the power of focused backchanneling during presentations (lectures) and conversations.  But this does not mean that students should have their laptops out every minute of the school day, chatting with each other about what the teacher or a classmate is saying.  There is room for laptops open and for laptops closed.  There is room for lower end Netbooks for the lion’s share of the learning work, and a garden of high-end work stations in the media center for video productions and data visualization.

Johnson also advocated that we look for the truth and value in all of our perspectives and practices.  Because someone says or promotes something that appears objectionable to me our you, doesn’t mean that it is all worthy of objection.  Find the value and work with that.

Another one that resonated with me was being comfortable saying, “I don’t know.”  I think this is important, because it embraces the fact that we are all learning.  When I give myself permission to say, “I don’t know,” then I’m give those around me comfort with what they do not yet know — but will learn.

The one that I continue to struggle with was, “Understand that the elephant can only be eaten one bite at a time.”  First of all, I’m not to keen on eating elephant.  It probably does not taste like chicken.  But I fear that the luxury of “small steps” is more than we can afford.  I don’t know if our children have the time for their educators to take their time in adopting more contemporary approaches to teaching.  How many more years are we going to excuse ourselves as immigrants?

How many more students are going to graduate, perfectly prepared for the 1950s?

I’m not a buyer of the hand-held solution. Although I think that there are some amazingly useful ways that smart phones and PDAs can be used in learning, I keep going back to what Nicholas Negroponte said when asked why he was promoting laptops when so many children in the developing world already have cell phones. He said that learning about the world should not be happening through a keyhole.  This comparison possible comes from an observation he makes in his 1995 book, Being Digital, about an Admiral’s preference to a large map, of a small computer display.¹

That said, the takeaway from the Soloway and Norris session that I am already taking into other conversations is the distinction between essential and supplemental technology use. They made a compelling case that the research being done to assess the instructional benefits of technology that are looking at schools and classrooms where the technology is being used to merely supplement existing techniques, is not giving a true picture of the teaching and learning that those who advocate transformative technologies are calling for.

My iPhone and iPad are essential for me. They are where I go for the latest news from Afganistan or the Gulf Coast, movie showtimes, the weather forecast, or a synonym for “anticipation.” Without them, I have to lay my hands on the daily paper, hope that my wife hasn’t already put it in recycling, or that my son isn’t currently using the local section, or that the whole thing isn’t in the bottom of the bird cage already.  The iAccess to the information that I need is essential.

Today, we are working, playing and living in a networked, digital, and information-abundant environment, and learning today requires tools that are essential for accessing, working and expressing ideas and knowledge within this environment.

Supplementing old-school does not prepare our children for their future.

1. Negroponte, Nicholas. Being Digital. New York: Knopf, 1995. 97-98. Print.

I may (or may not) remember ISTE 2010 for receiving the first copies of my new book, A Gardener’s Approach to Learning. I gave copies to some of the educators I’ve worked with repeatedly over the years. Here, Jeff Whipple, New Brunswick, Canada, receives the first copy. Doug Peterson blogged about the book here, after reading it on the plane home.

It seems like each year we come away from this international conference realizing some new big buzz, some new technology or application to wrap our technology integration attention around. It’s been digital story telling, blogging, podcasts, Twitter, and others going back — probably to The Print Shop.

This year interactive white boards (IWB) had a big presence. But their prominence owed to two related factors. Many schools, ripe with stimulus money, invested in their classrooms by installing projectors and IWBs. It was an obvious choice, from a perspective of supporting teachers, (though not so much from the view point of transforming teaching and learning — I’m not getting into that in this blog post). Secondly, with the sell of who-knows-how-many IWBs, Smart, Promethean, and others were able to impose a heavy visual presence on the conference.

But that doesn’t make a buzz.

Apple’s iPad also made its presence felt with far more lit of faces than I would have ever imagined. I carried mine with me everywhere and will report on that experience later.  But just about everyone I talked to felt that the jury is still out on how much transformative impact this device will have on teaching and learning.

All in all, I think that Chris Lehmann said it best in his ..ISTE reflections.

..This year, to me, it felt like there was a deepening at work. People weren’t running around as much for what’s new. Many of the people I talked to were looking to figure out how to make sense of what they already had learned.

I felt drawn to sessions and conversations that seemed to be taking me to where we need to go with what we’ve got. There seemed to be two kinds of conversations going on in the presentation rooms and in the halls. There was training, and then there was professional development. There were those who pursued new tools and their mastery. And then there were those who wished to walk away from the presentations and conversations with new insights, better understandings, new stories, more philosophical backing, and a richer and more practical vision of contemporary education.

I think that both areas were exceedingly covered by ISTE 2010.

After re-reading this post several times, it occurs to me that there was one word that kept popping up in conversations.  ..and it is fitting that I share this on July 4th, the celebrated date of my countries signing of its Declaration of Independence.

The word was Revolution.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

I know that I am usually blogging throughout the conference, but this year there seemed to be no time reflecting, much less writing. In fact, on Monday it was 9:00PM before I had time to eat, and that was only because I was so starved that I left TEDxDenverED early.  But I did take notes using concept mapping software on my iPad, and many of them I tweeted out just after the sessions.  I am hoping that the next few blog posts will include some of my reflections from the conference, feeding off of those notes.

The first event of the conference was EduBloggerCon, masterfully organized again by Steve Hargadon.  We started off with people writing down unconference topics and then signing their names to the ones that were most interesting.  The conversations with the most votes, were worked into a schedule, which was posted on the event wiki.

One of the conversations that I attended to was “Technology Literacy.”  It was a useful conversation with a lot of complementary viewpoints.  Here are some of the statements that I jotted down with my comments in grayed italics:

• There’s doing technology, evaluating technology, and tech knowledge.  All three are part of being tech literate.
• Our students do not know how to use technology to learn.  I’m not sure I wholly ?agree with this one.  They do not know how to use technology to be schooled.  But they do, I think, know how to use their information environment to learn.  That’s not to say that they do it well and don’t need our guidance.  They certainly need that.  But it’s a distinction that I think is worth making.
• We need to be teaching computer application, not computer applications.  This is something that I’ve written about before (What Difference Might One “S” Make?).  The distinction is learning how to apply ICT rather than learning discrete computer applications.
• Two barriers to implementation of technology literacy development are lack of time and the fact that many teachers are not independent learners themselves.
• There was talk about learning by tinkering, and that most of us, in the group, agreed that we developed our technology skills by tinkering.  The problem is that the nature of tinkering is not very “schooly.”
• Sylvia Martinez observed that nearly all conversations about technology literacy seem to automatically evolve into conversations about education reform.

I also attended to one of the conversations about iPads, entitled, “What Ipads/tablets are going to change education?.” I think that would have been an excellent conversation. But, instead, we witnessed a back and forth on why the iPad might be an important learning tool and why it wouldn’t. I got the impression that much of the push back came from IT folks, and that at least some of their objections were based on misinformation.

I must admit that the jury’s still out for me, though after a few weeks of using my iPad, I’m increasing intrigued by its prospects in the classroom.

It was an interesting and useful conversation sharing ideas that need to be shared. But, on the whole, I think that it’s a premature conversation. The iPad is new, it’s an infant, and what we’ll be doing with it five years from now, one year from now, three months from now depends more on a community of application developers than it does on Apple. I would hate to see us, though, try to push applications into classroom relevance, just so that we can integrate the iPad, the way that we often do with handhelds and other technologies.

One observation that I thought was extremely interesting was someone’s suggestion that when China can come up with an alternative device, the iPed, two months after iPad is introduced, running on Android OS, we have to wonder how Apple, with its constrained App Store, is going to keep up with the innovations of it’s competition.  I’ll have more to say about that later…

A final conversation that I participated in was called “Interrogating the Concept of ‘PLN’.”  This was a challenge to the term, “Personal Learning Network.”  The argument seemed to be that being able to connect to people and information sources that help us do our jobs has been around for a long time, and that we should be explaining exactly what this is about, rather than referring to a term like “Personal Learning Network.”

I don’t think that the conversation got us anywhere, except that it forced us to think hard about what we are doing and how we are talking about it.  I honestly do not think that the challengers got any traction with the term’s defenders.  For instance, several folks said that they would never start explaining networked professional learning with the term PLN.  We start with an explanation and demonstration of some of the practices.  That’s what teachers do!

I asked on several occasions, “What would give the term credibility?” and did not get an answer.  but I think that there is something bigger going on here which I mentioned to a few people in passing.  The suggestion didn’t seem to resonate, so I’m going to hold onto it for the time being.

All-in-all it was a great EduBloggerCon, perhaps the best yet.  The conversations were fruitful, even when there were few conclusions.  They pushed us to think and express, and there was not nearly as much complaint about the barriers that we’ve listened to in the past.  I think that, as a concept, the EduBloggerCon, or at least the community that this one draws, is maturing.

Possible follow-ups: My reflections on presenters such as Elliott Soloway, Gary Stager, Kathy Schrock, Doug Johnson, Jean-François Rischard, my whirlwind tour of the exhibit hall and ISTE as Disneyland for teachers.

But I would like to make one observation here, which I tried to make to the speaker, Brian Cosby, in the hall, during the break. But he was way to distracted by all of the people who wanted to shake his hand.

I can’t go into a lot of detail here, but Cosby said something early in his presentation that really struck me. After describing the lack of knowledge that his 4th graders (mostly poverty-locked and transient student) had about their world and their local geography, he asked, “How can you imagine what might be, if you don’t know what is?”

This was followed by an inspiring story of how his students started blogging, making connections with other blogging classrooms around the world and then generated a collection of comments from their new global community, comments about their wishes for their greater and local communities.

At the same time, they decided to make a hot air balloon, and then equip it with a camera, and a payload, to carry that mass of world-wide wishes. Brian included a moving video of the launch — and watching the event, it occurred to me that he was demonstrating that to know what is, you can’t just be taught it. You must connect with it.

I’ve seen Mr. Cosby present before, and I wasn’t expecting to be surprised. Thank you for surprising me, Brian.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Of course, the benefit of using concept mapping software for taking notes is that you are organizing the notes at the same time that you’re writing it down. After the event, it is easy to adapt the structure to your particular work needs. In addition, many concept mapping tools will easily output your map to a number of formats, including image files — and some provide web space for posting your maps. This enables us to share our notes easily and quickly with our learning networks.

The main challenge and number one deal-breaker, as I have sought out mapping software for note-taking has been the interface — and the most important consideration is that I be able to take my notes without having to leave the keyboard. If I have to grab the mouse, reach down to the touchpad, or reach up to a menu or an icon to start a new sub-topic or sibling topic, then it interrupts the flow and requires unproductive angles of thought.

So, the tools that I have found to be easiest to use are:

• Laptop (Macbook Pro), it is, hands-down, XMind. XMind is open source, and therefore free. The include a web service where you can upload your maps and even make them available as embedded windows. To navigate, you simple press [Tab] to create a new child topic and [Return] to create a new sibling topic.
• For iPhone, it’s SimpleMind. The organic flow of the maps is interesting and flexible, but that it doesn’t do automatic spacing and visual branching might be a disadvantage. Navigation is not quite as convenient as XMind. Pressing [Return] will start a new sibling topic. But to create a new child topic, you have to reach up and click a plus icon at the top of the screen.

  SimpleMind, as well as XMind will output in a number of formats, including FreeMind, which seems to be the default mapping software. Evidently, most tools will output to FreeMind and import FreeMind maps.

• I’ve probably spent about $30 looking at various mapping programs for the iPad, but the one that is easiest to use taking notes, is Mind Pad. Navigation, like SimpleMind, uses the [Return] key to create new sibling topics, but to spoon a new sub-topic, you have to leave the keyboard. Mind Pad also shares files very easily with XMind, though you have to change the file extension. Also, Mind Pad does not seem to offer any web space for uploading work.

  I’ve been looking forward to the iPad-native version of SimpleMind and have been in conversation with its developers about the possibility of its release before ISTE. Alas, it appeared in my SimpleMind search last night, I downloaded it ($6.99), and found that it does not have the navigation easy that the iPhone version has. Disappointment! I’ll continue to check out the updates and look for an efficient keyboard navigation.

At any rate, I suspect that ISTE 2010 is going to be where I more fully developing my thumbing skills on the iPad. I am looking forward to not having to lug a laptop around with me, except for sessions I am presenting at.

Finally, a quick reminder, that if you are taking pictures at ISTE, and uploading them to Flickr, be sure to tag them with iste10. Here are the photos already tagged for the conference.

See you in Denver and at EduBloggerCon.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad