These are a few of my favorite things...

Before this year is officially out, I thought I'd share some of the things I've stumbled upon over the course of this year, and those things which have stuck in my mind as my favorite things. Hope you like 'em...

VoiceThread

VoiceThread allows users to upload images, and accompany them with comments - typed comments, or audio comments recorded live, uploaded as an audio file, or even called in over the phone. It takes visual presentations one step further by providing a sound component. Voicethreads can also be made public, allowing others to comment on photos. It's an interesting alternative to creating presentations with Google Docs or presentation software (such as PowerPoint or OpenOffice).

I made a VoiceThread a while back (albeit, without actual voice) about the Civilization project I was working on.




James Cameron's Avatar

I saw this movie yesterday - just squeaking in before the end of the year - and was taken completely away for almost three hours. I've always been intrigued by movie or television projects that engage in innovative methods of storytelling (I'm still a huge fan of 24), and I was very interesting in Avatar because of James Cameron's development of some incredible technology to film the picture - such as real-time CG actor enhancement using motion-capture techniques, and new 3D filming techniques and equipment. (See this article on the Guardian for a short run-down.)

Zoho Apps / Google Docs

I've always been a proponent of Google Docs, but a few years back ran into Zoho Apps - a web-based productivity suite with many more applications that Google Docs. My district has recently run into a lot of consternation over switching from Microsoft Office (which cost us seven figures in licensing) to Open Office (which, while free, realistically doesn't fully compete with MS Office - especially for users who are used to MS), and it's gotten me thinking about whether web-based apps will truly be where this type of work will move towards. No web office app that I've seen has even close to the number of features of desktop software, but how many of those features are needed by the average end-user?

In any case, at the end of this year, I started looking at using one or two of these apps for some school-related projects. I'm using Google Docs presentations much more for embedding PowerPoints from parent nights directly into our school website - it allows users to view the presentation without the need for uploading it in a variety of formats. I'm also working with our counseling department on using Zoho Creator - an extremely powerful online database application - to help manage the graduation information that comes through their office.

Brad Paisley's Welcome to the Future



I've always been a fan of Brad Paisley, and this song got in my head from the first time I heard it - I even went on to create a professional development session starting out with this video (on the topic of collaboration outside the classroom - "video chat...with Tokyo"). Several teachers came up to me afterwards and told me that 1) they really liked the song, and 2) it was interesting to hear it in the context of teaching and learning, and caused them to take a moment to think.

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Still Behind the Times

One of my assistant principals recently sent me an article about young students using a wiki to publish poetry. It discussed several points that I believe about how to "raise the stakes" in student work:

1. Publish to a wider audience. By having students publish their work on the internet, it becomes work that will be seen by more than just themselves and the teacher. If they know a larger audience is going to read it, they will invest more time and energy into letting it represent what they can do.
2. Allow students to critique themselves and others. Wikis naturally lend themselves to group collaboration, and students can comment on each other's work. They can also revise their work, and review those revisions to see how their work has progressed.
3. Make open-ended assignments. The article makes reference to the teacher allowing students to add to their class poetry whenever they want. If students have home internet access, they can add to the wiki from there; they could also do in the classroom, the school or public library, etc.

While I applaud The Boston Globe for the article and the teacher for using the technology to enhance the students' learning, I'm a bit disappointed that this type of classroom behavior is considered news-worthy. Not that it isn't a story worth telling - it's just that, ideally, it would commonplace enough that it wouldn't have to be reported in the news.

Ward Cunningham invented WikiWikiWeb in 1994, and while no one expects schools to adopt new technology right away, fifteen-year-old technology seems tried and true enough that it should get plenty of use in schools.

I know that there are plenty of teachers using wikis for teaching - why aren't there more, I'd like to know? If we're talking about 21st century schooling, shouldn't this kind of collaboration be commonplace now?

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K12 Online Conference - free online networking and learning starting next week

I've stumbled across the K12 Online Conference before, but this year is the first year that I've registered for it and plan to attend. Between now and the keynote (read: this weekend), I plan to look back through the archives to see past presentations and resources. If you're interested, you can find the main website at http://k12onlineconference.org/, or sign up for the conference on their Ning site, http://k12online.ning.com/.

Once we get back to school next week, I'll probably send the info to a couple of my more tech-savvy teachers. I don't know yet how this model of collaboration and learning might fit in with formal professional development - I think I'll also run it by my Assistant Principal in charge of PD. In this era of tightening budgets, perhaps it'll be more well received...

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Semi-synchronous Learning, or Keeping Up with Everyone Else's Self-Pace

Our district earned the oppotunity to participate in a distance online learning opportunity through Cybersmart! I am one of the registered participants in the Authentic Learning & Creativity, which looks at adding the idea of authenticity to teaching and learning in the classroom. More on that in a near future post... this post is about an interesting observation I made about the pace of online learning.

Most online learning is divided into two categories related to the timing and pace of the course. Synchronous learning utilizes tools like live video, interactive whiteboard applets, and chat rooms to allow participants to interact with each other in real-time, at the same time. Learning takes place "in synch" - for everyone at the same pace. Asynchronous learning, on the other hand, lets participants move at their own pace. Learners can add their input to the course through tools like discussion forums, blogs and wikis, and other learners can log on at different times and read and respond to that input. Every learner can be in the course at different times, however.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both methods. Some learners need the pseudo-"face-to-face" learning and more immediate feedback that comes from synchronous learning, but learners must adhere to a preset schedule in order to participate. Asynchronous methods allow learners to move at their own pace, but often requires greater independent reading and research - and consequently some more self-discipline.

I did a brief Google search - but found very little already out there - about a third type of time-based learning, essentially a hybrid of the two: semi-synchronous learning. I discovered this when, for the Cybersmart course, two things happened to me: 1) I didn't receive my login information until about 5 days after the course "started"; and 2) I got a little bogged down with work and home stuff for about a day and a half. Consequently, once I was finally able to log in to the course and take the time to participate, I was faced with an interesting problem.

By design, there were no synchronous elements to the course - participants could access all the materials at their own pace. However, it was also designed so that each unit would be completed in one week. That is to say, the moderator would post information, participants would respond, and the moderator follow-up, within a limited window of time. I found myself two weeks behind everyone else in the course - not quite the example I wanted to set. I also found that, while I could still post in the "out-of-date" forums, because the other participants were focusing on later sections, most likely my input would not be as beneficial to the group as a whole because they most likely wouldn't see it.

In reality, I would guess that most online learning courses that are labeled asynchronous are, in fact, semi-synchronous. Receiving the benefit of interacting with other participants in other locations still requires all participants to be in the same "conversation space" (or, one could say, conversation time) as everyone else.

I hope to get caught up tomorrow and Friday, and use this opportunity to reflect on the online learning process as a whole. I want to bring the other four teachers from my school who are also in the course together to develop some redelivery options - it'll be interesting to hear their perspective on my "delayed participation." Stay tuned.

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Classroom Cool Tech Gets Small

While most classroom technology is assumed to be large-scale - laptop and desktop computers, interactive whiteboards, projectors, etc. - it's sometimes the small stuff that's the coolest.

Google recently hosted the Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age forum, intended to shake up and reform teaching and learning. I'll be taking a little more time to look at the blog created for the forum, as I wasn't able to attend nor watch the webcasts. (Unfortunately, I haven't found that they've archived any video footage yet.)

As I browsed their website, I stumbled across one of the exhibitors in the Tech Playground, Siftables. Their website was pretty spartan, but included an 8-minute clip hosted on TED that left me saying, "Cool!"




Considering how much phones, music players, GPS units, PDAs, and other smaller technology has advanced in the past several years, more powerful computing power will be placed in smaller devices - perhaps to the point that classroom desktop computers become themselves obsolete. Imagine a classroom which wasn't crowded with bulky desktops, but rather a class set of PDAs with subject-specific software and hardware interfaces; netbooks that can turn a traditional classroom into a computer lab; or, like Siftables, manipulatives that are "smart" in the context of how they're being used.

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Disconnected for a day

Yesterday, half of the schools in my district were without email because an Outlook Exchange server was on the fritz. Normally, these issues are resolved by county technicians within a couple of hours at most, but whatever the problem this time, my entire school was email-free. (With one exception - me, being on a different Exchange server.)

In speaking with folks and asking around at the end of the day, I learned some interesting things:

• Almost unanimously, teachers felt like they were more productive without the constant distraction of email. The few exceptions were the fact that if they had documents they had to send to someone else, they weren't able to do so (unless they used their personal email).
• The few teachers who said that it didn't make a difference to them commented on the fact that they rarely sit in front of their computers checking their email - even during their planning periods. (I know from observation and experience that we have a range of teaching "locations" - from in front of their computer to up at the board constantly.)
• Most administrators, secretaries, and support personnel felt they were only somewhat less productive - there were plenty of things they could work on that didn't involve email, but the fact that they were out of touch with their normal circles made work a little more interesting.

One teacher longed nostalgically for the first school she taught at - it didn't have email, but instead had a large announcements board posted in the faculty workrooms for communicating with staff.

While email is an incredibly convenient communcation method, I think the point is taken that we (educators, technologists, people) can get "addicted" to it fairly easily. It takes some effort to simply close your email program for an extended period - however, that may be for a variety of reasons: you need your email "fix," much of your job function depends on email, users expect you to reply fairly quickly, etc. I wondered to some of my teachers how it would go over if our county adopted a one-day-a-week moratorium on email, or at least a school-wide pact on not checking it on a particular day of the week.

Not everybody was against it...

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Cartooning for the Artistically Challenged

I stumbled upon a very cool site tonight - ToonDoo, where you can use a very robust Flash tool to create panel cartoons from scratch. With a wide selection of backgrounds, characters, and scene accoutrements, there's a lot of fodder there for creative students to tell a story using comics. You can also upload images of your own and even draw objects from within the program (and save them for later use).

by techieteachr | Create your own Cartoon at www.toondoo.com

I spent about 30 minutes playing around with the program, and as I did, it reiterated the idea that creating media like this must be planned first - I didn't really create anything of quality until I had come up with the idea for the comic. Once I did, it only took me about 15 minutes to create the actual cartoon. Once created, you can embed the toons in blogs and websites, email them to others, post to Twitter or Facebook, or even download it to your computer. Very cool.

The only thing about it that bugged me - someone beat me to my user ID, so I had to go with techieteachr. Not really even a large learning curve, given about 30 minutes just to play.

Hope you like it - it's a humorous way to comment on some of the things I hear at work. Maybe it'll become a semi-regular feature!

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TED: Ideas Worth Spreading

I stumbled upon TED a while back when looking for other video resources besides YouTube and Google Video (both of which are blocked by my district's internet filters). It's a sleek website containing videos on Technology, Entertainment and Design from people in all areas related to those three categories - futurists, computer gamers, scientists, educators, artists, etc.

There are some very interesting and thought-provoking topics, but more importantly, the video interface has some nice features that aren't found in some other video sites. Many of the videos have closed captions (most in English, some in other languages) that can be played in real-time along with the video. Many also have interactive transcripts, in which a user can click on a portion of text and have the video jump right to that segment of the video - ideal for teachers who find part of a video which is appropriate for class, but doesn't need the whole thing.

Here's one that I particularly like: creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson discusses how modern-day school systems are killing creativity. I've embedded it below, but to check out the interactive transcript, closed captioning (in 30! languages), and even to download it as an MP4, you have to visit the video's page itself.

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Civilization Project - Step 2

I've been using Civilization in a co-teaching project with Mr. Hawkins' World History class for about three weeks now. I think we're approaching the end of our whole class civilization, but it's been interesting. (For those of you not familiar with the game, you can find some more information in a couple of places.)



In most classes (5 in total - two Honors classes and three on-level classes), over half the students are engaged in the progress of the civilization. The most interesting level of engagement has come from the impromtpu debates between students (2 or even more) about what the next choice for our class civilization should be - do we develop a military unit, or one that will improve our cities? Do we research Animal Husbandry to be able to utilize Horses (and therefore faster weapons later), or Bronze Working to build better weapons sooner? Do we declare war on Mongolia, or remain on peaceful terms (at least for now)?

The students seemed to react well to having a teacher (or more of a "game expert") navigate the board itself, and they provide input into the civilization's advancement. However, this method does allow for some students to fade into the background by choosing not to make suggestions. (One could argue that that is no different than in a normal World History classroom, but part of the reason for using this game is to see if it could lend World History appeal to students who aren't otherwise engaged in the classroom...)

As a sign of the modern-video-game times perhaps, almost all of the classes wanted to see some military action. This might have been as drastic as declaring war on a neighbor (although no class actually went so far as to follow through with that desire), or purposely attacking local Barbarians (which sometimes turned out for the worse).

Here are my anecdotal observations from the past three weeks:

• Students were initially very interested in playing a game in class. It would be a departure from traditional lecture, and perhaps more of a "time-waster" than an actual lesson. That's our primary challenge - structuring the lessons and the use of the game in class to provide some educational benefit.
• The broader-picture, conceptual nature of the game is starting to be apparent, but only through teacher guidance. It's unclear whether the students are picking up conceptual knowledge on their own.
• There is definitely a desire for war and action in the game. Across all five classes, comments from students wanted to see at least some combat to have the game "do something." Mr. Hawkins and I agree that this stems mainly from the types of video games that students are used to - turn-based strategy are not in the milieu of most teens.
• The pace of the game is pretty slow - slower than it should be to effectively hold students' attention. This might be remedied by allowing students to play independently (individually or in small groups) - the only problem with that is having enough copies of the software.

Our next step is to try to give the students a more hands-on experience with the game. We'll let them play in small groups, one group at a time, playing a civilization of their choice in the same game world as the rest of the class.

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Civilization Project - Step 1

I've posted a couple of times about using the off-the-shelf game Civilization as a teaching tool in World History. This year, I'm starting a year-long co-teaching project with Mr. Hawkins, a World History teacher who has been excited about using the game ever since I presented the idea a couple of years ago.

Based on my observations from a pilot last year with a World Geography class, I chose to use Civilization IV, the latest incarnation in the game series. It has the most appeal visually for students, and it incorporates some other simulation elements that don't exist in earlier versions (such as the concepts of religion and cultural borders/influence).

Our school schedule incorporates two 90-minute block period days - even periods on Wednesdays, odd periods on Thursdays - so we decided to use the last 40-45 minutes of those block days to play the game. (The same schedule was used last year, and Mr. Hawkins felt that the latter parts of block periods were underused in Social Studies.)

We started the lesson by playing the game as an entire class. Because most of the students were unfamiliar with the game (and this type of game, known as turn-based strategy), we are planning on spending several weeks with a single civilization for the whole class. I started Wednesday and Thursday playing through only two or three turns, because at each step, game play elements had to be explained - what the map shows and represents, what each of the icons are, what information is presented to the player, etc. In the course of making choices in the game, Mr. Hawkins would also chime in with questions about ancient history concepts already talked about in class, and why the class was choosing an action.

I recognize that Civilization is neither intended nor suited to teach actual World History - while the game contains concepts and structures (military units available only to certain civilizations, technological advancement, World Wonders) that do exist in history, the fact that these structures can come into play at various different times de-emphasizes their values as facts and instead focuses on their values as concepts - how certain technogies might affect a civilization on a larger scale. The game supports concepts, not details.

At least, that's our working model, and why we're using the game. We're using the game to see how it reinforces students' conceptual historical knowledge. One challenge I expect we'll face is finding the best implementation of the game in class to support students learning or reinforcing their conceptual knowledge.

Stay tuned...

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Bad blogger, ba-a-ad blogger...

Wow, time flies when you're busy with work. I'll keep this short - I apologize for being out of network for so long. It turns out my school year kept me enormously busy with work and child(ren), and I let my blogging slip. Although I did learn one thing: blogging takes work. Maybe the reason tools like Facebook and Twitter have become so popular is that "micro-blogging" takes a lot less time.

My work schedule has changed dramatically, and I've been doing some self-reflection that has led me back to techieteacher. Sorry I was gone.

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