The Wired Generation Reaches Out

I'm sitting here at home tonight, watching the last hour of the Hope for Haiti Now telethon on...well, every channel. I had just heard about it yesterday; I don't know how long it was in the planning, but it was quite a few A-listers.

What struck me about the telethon was, while I doubt the content and format of the telethon was very different than telethons thirty years ago, the ways viewers can donate are quite different. 30 years ago, there were no other ways to donate other than by phone and possibly post mail.

For Hope for Haiti Now, you can donate by:

• calling in (and talking to a celebrity);
• visiting the website;
• text messaging GIVE to 50555; 
• downloading music tracks from the telethon at http://www.itunes.com/haiti;
• downloading the video of the telethon from iTunes;
• downloading the Hope for Haiti Now iPhone app;
• and joining the cause on Facebook.

I'd like to see 1) what the demographic breakdown was of the telethon viewers was; and 2) what the breakdown of the telethon donors was. How many older adults (50's and up) visited Facebook or iTunes or texted their donation, and how many teens and twenty-somethings stuck to only the phone?

On an educational note, educators are like telethon organizers - endeavoring to reach out to kids to get involved, so to speak. Are we really using all the right tools in the right ways?

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Showing stuff when and where you want

Three recent articles I read about the next generation of multimedia display and interaction. They all seem to go together in the same vein...so here's that vein.

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New Projectors Make Any Wall an Interactive Whiteboard (eSchoolNews)

eSchoolNews reported on two LCD projectors - Epson's BrightLink 450Wi and Boxlight's ProjectoWrite2/W - which incorporate the functionality of an interactive whiteboard within the projector itself. What this means is that by using the infrared or wireless stylus that accompanies the projector, you can turn any surface - a pre-installed classroom whiteboard, a cafeteria, media center or gymnasium wall, or any flat surface in a teaching location - into an interactive whiteboard.

While I think IWB's have both positives and negatives, and that they're not the classroom-revolutionizers that they're always made out to be, these new projectors have some game-changing potential. First, it means that school districts wouldn't have to pay for both a projector and a whiteboard, thereby allowing them to redirect purchasing funds to other assets. Second, I've found in my district that our IWB's logically had to be installed in a particular location in the classroom - on top of an existing whiteboard - which then essentially locks the configuration of the classroom of a teacher who wants to use it. Without having a set IWB location, teachers can reconfigure their classrooms to, for example, permit easier student access to the IWB surface and allowing them more hands-on interaction with the technology.

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Are Pico Projectors the Next Big Cellphone Trend? (Yahoo! News/Reuters)

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas over the second weekend in January, Microvision, 3M, and Texas Instruments all demonstrated "pico" projectors - about the size of a bar of soap, and using laser technology to project excellent images. Commercials for cell phone projectors have even already started popping up, but the application can extend beyond cell phones. For example, with the advent of Windows 7 and it's support for tablet PC's, couple that with a pico projector, and you have the ability to take standard classroom technology and add the benefit of extreme portability.

Imagine if you couple that with the technology mentioned above to include radio- or IR-based IWB functionality. Wow - while I love being able to work in a classroom of today with projected interactivity, imagine what it'll look like in 10 years.

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CES: TVs From the Third Dimension... (CNET)

Also at CES, the biggest talk was about 3D TV. Several companies premiered their new 3D television sets, and while they follow on the heels of James Cameron's 3D masterpiece Avatar, there are some drawbacks (as there are with any first-generation technology): they are expected to be the most expensive in their respective companies' lines; they don't have much 3D content yet; and viewers will still need "the glasses", although not the cheesy cardboard red-blue glasses of the past.

While a very cool toy for some, I have no doubt that should these find their way into schools, it'll be quite a while. And I'm not sure I can envision an entire classroom of students comfortably keeping the glasses on. It may have the potential for creating even more interesting virtual field trips, but for the standard presentation in the front of the class? Seems kind of superfluous. Or am I wrong?

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All a-Twitter...or for the birds?

So I know Twitter is the rage right now - only 140 characters, people? - but I haven't really gotten the driving urge to get into it. However, part of me (part of the professional part and part of the personal part, in a bizarre Venn diagram of psyche) feels like I owe it to the blogosphere (twittersphere?) to do so. I guess, in a way, tweeting is a little like mini-blogging.

So despite the fact that 1) my phone has a busted screen and therefore no way of accessing a mobile Twitter app; 2) Twitter is blocked by my district (and yet the district uses it to communicate information to the community, oh the irony); and 3) as if I don't already have enough to check online when I get home, here I go.  You can find me as techieteacherga on Twitter.

1. As I build my list of Followers and Followed, let me know what your profile is. I'll be going through my blogroll and following any of those folks.
2. Check out the new Twitter badge on the right side of techieteacher.
3. Because I'll probably forget to check my own Twitter page regularly, I'm going to subscribe via RSS on my Google Reader account. Hopefully that'll get me using it more.

Anyone have any tips on what has made your Tweeting easier or more useful? Or more addictive?

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Whiteboards: Just a New Way to Conduct Old-Fashioned Teaching?

Photo found at http://www.musicteachersblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/whiteboardimage.jpg

As this second semester begins, I've been thinking about the kinds of trainings I want to offer to my staff. One very popular topic is how to use the interactive Promethean whiteboards and their proprietary software, ActivInspire (formerly ActivStudio). My concern about interactive whiteboards is that teachers don't really use them to their full potential.

I found a post on Michael Gorman's 21st Century EdTech blog referring to the "sage on the stage" syndrome. - that while teachers may embrace this new technology as revolutionizing teaching in the classroom, the same teaching behavior still exists in the classroom. On eHow, an article describing Reasons Schools Use Smart Boards even uses some odd language. The article talks about how, for example, a teacher in Michigan can "deliver material in a way that students are more used to seeing at home." [emphasis added] It goes to quote a teacher from a 2006 study of whiteboard use in the classroom as saying, "...Teachers will appreciate the selection of user templates and other great features that can only enhance their existing instructional methodologies." [ea]

That's the problem, as I see it - the "existing instructional methodologies" is just that, "delivering material." It still takes the position as the teacher as dispenser of knowledge and the students as receptacles. An interactive whiteboard is still positioned (usually) at the front of the room, where the teacher will stand and pontificate.

Don't get me wrong; I acknowledge the fact that there are times when the teacher must provide students with correct information to benefit their learning. But should the 21st-century classroom still be so teacher-centered? Harry Keller over on the Educational Technology and Change blog thinks that given all the glitz and glamour that an interactive whiteboard provides, they may not be as effective as everyone likes to think they are. I'm kind of inclined to agree with him...kind of.

I'd love to hear your comments about how a classroom with an interactive whiteboard can be truly student-centered. One example - and kudos to my math department - is that Promethean also markets an ActivSlate, which allows a user to remotely write on the whiteboard, but is the length and width of a textbook and can be passed around the room. Putting the whiteboard in the students' hands, so to speak. What do you think?

Once I get an idea of how I'm going to deliver this training to my teachers and incorporate using the boards in a more student-centered way, I'll make sure to post it.

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Authentic writing in a science classroom

One of my science teachers approached me before winter break about wanting to start a blogging project with her students. Any time a teacher is excited about using technology and approaches me about a project, I jump all over it.

She would like to revamp the notion of the traditional research project with her students. They will be researching particular science concepts that interest them, and write about the information they find. It will also incorporate feedback from professors, peers, teachers, parents, etc. in the form of comments to their blogs; they will also get to experience the different types of scientific writing that happens in the science community.

One of the reasons I'm a big proponent of blogging as a classroom instruction tool is that it "raises the stakes" for students. By widening the audience that will see their work, students will tend to become more invested in it. If a paper's only going to be read by the student and the teacher, and nothing is ever done with it, how much effort is the student likely to invest?

Very cool ideas brimming in this teacher's head... When she presented it to some of her students, they were excited about wanting to do this with it and that with it and so on.

We had an interesting discussion about the nature of blogs as technology - with the popular consciousness moving towards Twittering and Facebooking, is blogging actually outdated?

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Mobiles and learning

I stumbled across some blogs and sites devoted to mobile learning, described on one site as the following:

[Mobile learning is] the exploitation of ubiquitous handheld technologies, together with wireless and mobile phone networks, to facilitate, support, enhance and extend the reach of teaching and learning.

Mobile learning can take place in any location, at any time, including traditional learning environments such as classrooms as well as in workplaces, at home, in community locations and in transit. Mobile technologies include mobile phones, smartphones, PDAs, MP3/ MP4 players (e.g. iPODs), handheld gaming devices (e.g. Sony PSP, Nintendo DS), Ultramobile PCs (UMPCs), mini notebooks or netbooks (e.g. Asus EEE), handheld GPS or voting devices, and specialist portable technologies used in science labs, engineering workshops or for environmental or agricultural study. Mobile learning involves connectivity for downloading, uploading and/or online working via wireless networks, mobile phone networks or both, and linking to institutional systems e.g. virtual learning environments (VLEs) and management information systems (MIS).

 It's a pretty broadly-reaching definition, but in today's society, I think it needs to be. Devices that once had very specific functions - making phone calls, playing music or video games, etc. - are now easily fitted with additional hardware that makes them accessible to other types of functions. The lines defining these devices are very quickly blurring.

This has some increasingly large implications for educators. As children and young adults become - as usual - the first, quick, early adopters of these technologies, schools, school systems and educators must find ways to harness the powers of these devices. Those school districts that tend to forbid these items - either wholly or in part - are losing methods of reaching students.

But how can mobile learning be harnessed effectively? That's a question that I'm going to stay tuned for, because while I have a few rough ideas, I'm interested in how this develops elsewhere. I've added a new blog to my blogroll: moblearn, which focuses on this concept of mobile learning and the technologies, issues, and people involved in it. There are others out there, but I thought I'd start with this one.

Stay tuned...

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K12 Online Conference 2009 wraps up

[Sigh...] I'm really hoping that this year will be a year for more stuff that I want to do... The K12 Online Conference for 2009 wrapped up a couple weeks ago. I wasn't able to sit in on any of the live webcasts, but I am going to tune in to some of the twice-monthly events hosted by EdTechTalk - they'll be running archived webcasts and include some back-channel discussions. Looking through the list of 2009 presentations, there are definitely a couple that I need to go back and take a look at, including:

• Inside the Global Collaborative Debate: Eracism - I'm familiar with two of the presenters - Vicki Davis is very active in the blogosphere as Cool Cat Teacher, and Bernajean Porter has come into our district to work with the instructional technology coordinators - so I feel a bit obligated to check out there presentation.
• Googlios - A 21st Century Approach to Teaching, Learning, and Assessment - In my opinion, this is the direction that teaching needs to move: creating portfolios as living bodies of work that students can use to demonstrate what they know. I'm going to check out G. Alex Ambrose's presentation to see if I can learn something new to share with my teachers.
• Using computer games as a context for learning and social interaction - This is one that's close to my heart; as a long-time fan of computer games, I've always thought that they could be harnessed as an effective and interesting teaching tool. (See my posts about games, particularly Sid Meier's Civilization series.)

If you're interested in the K12 Online Conference - particularly about what's coming up for 2010 - subscribe to their feeds.

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