Monthly Archives: November 2009

Nov 11 2009

Just a Lot of Thinking

As I blogged yesterday, David Warlick spent the day with Computers in Education School Contacts, Principals, and the IT Department in a “Visioning Session”.  The goal was to help us with our thinking about what possibilities exist for students and teachers who want to learn and construct with our current and future connectivity realities.

Now, this could have been a session where you come in, sit down, and start taking notes because you are about to get the answers.  Such was not the case here – the answers and potential lie within.


Me, visioning by myself – thanks, David Warlick
So, the ultimate goal, it would seem to me would be for folks to walk away thinking and pondering all that was done.  Judging by the artifacts generated yesterday, it worked.David always starts his presentation by sharing something that he didn’t know until the day before the presentation.  In this case, he shared with us the website Twitcritic where you could get the buzz from Twitter about what movies are trending and popular to help you determine you movie going habits.  Neat concept but I couldn’t help but wonder a couple of things – first I think it’s very appropriate to share your current learnings with others if you want to model the fact that we should always be learning – and secondly, if I’m involved with a movie, I’m going to do my best to enlist folks to twitter about my movie.

So, the table was set and the visioning continued throughout the day.  For some, it was new learning and thinking; for others it was an affirmation that they’re already on a similar track; and for others it opened the doors to new possibilities.

With that in mind, we engaged in the process of thinking and imagining.  There were few “thou shalt” moments.  The tables were turned and we were forced to think about what is possible in our own contexts.  Through a back channel conversation, an electronic message board, to a graphic organizer where activities and ideas were held up to Bloom’s Taxonomy, we we challenged to seek a vision for what might be possible.  Everything had to be expressed in terms of verbs.

Overnight, I checked in with some of the CIESC group who were appreciative of the opportunity and are already talking with their principals about things that need to change in their schools and what types of opportunities are good for kids.  For me, I went to teach my course at the university and we had a good conversation about things and the skills and attitudes that their youthfulness brings to the profession.  Then, it was time to drive to Toronto for the Minds on Media session today and my mind was spinning with ideas and concepts for the entire drive.

I really like it when someone makes me think.  Yesterday, it pushed the entire group in the room to think about the possibilities.  Yes, there will be challenges but we need to keep an eye on the target.  As our superintendent noted yesterday, we need to focus on our students.  What type of graduates do we want leaving our system?  What are the skills and knowledge that they need?  What will prepare them to cope with a future that is so hard to define?

There was a lot of thinking as we left the session.

Social Bookmarks:

Powered by ScribeFire.

Nov 11 2009

links for 2009-11-10

Nov 10 2009

Tearing Walls Down

Yesterday was a incredibly momentus day in history.  It was the 20th anniversary of the tearing down of the Berlin Wall.  Those of us who remember the date, remember how powerful and emotional the event was.  One of the remembrances for me was President Ronald Reagan and his speech at the wall imploring President Gorbachev  to “tear down this wall”.  The moment has been captured for us to revisit at YouTube.

“Tear Down This Wall” Reagan speech June 12 1987
For today’s youth, what does this mean?  Chances are, it’s something that’s mentioned in class, and perhaps that’s it.  To many of the youth, the significance probably was a link on the Google Home Page.In so many ways, huge moments in time and history can be researched and played back as necessary.  Internet access tears down walls of ignorance when it’s used properly.

We are about to embark on an initiative that will help us tear through our own walls.  Shortly, we will open wireless access to all schools in our district.  We’ve done it in many of our schools but soon it will be them all.  More importantly, there will be a guest network that will allow teachers and students to bring their own wireless devices to attach and learn where it’s appropriate.

But, what’s the point of just opening access?

None.  In preparation for the event, we are assembling all of our principals, each school’s computer contact, and our technical staff to spend today with David Warlick to help shape a vision and a plan for school implementation.  While equity of access will be there for all ~85 locations, the actual impact and implementation will vary from school to school depending on readiness and a whole whack of other variables.  Our homework before attending the event was to think about engagement and student achievement.  One of our superintendents put it nicely at dinner last night “I could put on a video of any television show and kids would be engaged.  But, where’s the learning?”  Good question.  The other question was to define what the profile of a graduate from Grade 8 and Grade 12 should be.  What does this truly mean, and where does technology fit in.

These are tough decisions to make.  Flipping the switch doesn’t mean a change whatsoever.  Where does the change come from?  What can we do to make a difference?  While we initially set about to make wireless access to all teachers, it becomes very clear that all participants in education need to be supported as learner.

David asked an interesting question in his 2 cents blog yesterday.  Are schools liable for anything students access?  In our implementation, they’ll still have to go through the same content filter that we use for all schools.  The other question that arose over dinner last night was software.  In Ontario, we have an incredible suite of software titles licensed by the Ministry of Education.  Students will have access to that software on school machines but the software licensing doesn’t extend to student computers.  Will this inspire a change to accessing more resources online?  We are fortunate in that many of the recent licenses include web access and student home access.  But, it’s still going to require an assessment of just where the resources lie and how can they be accessed.  The promise to the guests attaching to the new network is that nothing will be installed on their device by our IT Department.

All of these are good problems to have to solve.  There will be a lot of smart minds mulling over this today and into the near future.

Social Bookmarks:

Powered by ScribeFire.

Nov 10 2009

links for 2009-11-09

Nov 9 2009

Pulling and Pushing on Twitter

I had a couple of unique posts fly by me that made me stop and think for just a second.  When I was in university, I had an HP RPN calculator and learned to be so more productive with it as opposed to a regular algebraic calculator.  By pushing and popping numbers onto and from a stack, the number of keystrokes taken to do some calculations was so much more efficient.

A couple of Twitter messages went by that reminded me of that calculator in that – one was a pull and the other was a push.  In both cases, though, we were connected.

Thanks, Divergent Learner – CC

First, the pull.

@zbpipe sent out a message to her “PLN” asking people to visit her blog and leave a comment.  Apparently, she’s doing a presentation and wants to show the reach that she has through Twitter and her blog.  Folks have headed over to leave voice and text comments.  I was going to do it last night but my headset was at work and the football game was just starting.  Thankfully, she reminded us again this morning.

Secondly, the push.

I’m checking the nights events and a message from @MaryKayG catches my eye.  The title was “As Not Seen on TV”.  It was just a link that she elected to just push out to her corner of Twitter.  I decided to check out the link.  After all, what’s better than a little Sham Wow in the morning.  What surprised me was that it was a link to an article from the Toronto Globe and Mail.  My immediate first reaction was that I had clicked on the wrong link until I started reading.  It was about a new television show from Vancouver talking the promotion being web based and the shows available on YouTube.  What an incredible concept!  I read the article twice and bookmarked it because I know that I’ll make reference to it at some point.

It’s interesting to see how both of these ladies contributed to the on going learning experience in completely different ways.  There are no rules so they’re just doing what seems right for them.  Where else in teaching and learning do we have such flexibility to learn and to share/interact with others?

So, thanks to both ladies for contributing to my learning this morning.

That reminds me.  Gotta go; I owe Zoe a message.

Social Bookmarks:
Nov 9 2009

links for 2009-11-08

Nov 8 2009

Just a Little Testing

It’s a Sunday morning and I’m just lazying around before the house wakes up and so decided to try something that I’ve wanted to try for some time.

I’ve been playing and testing Google Wave since I got my invites and it’s amazing how much functionality appears from day to day.  In my mind, though, there has to be someway to increasingly leverage things so that they become functional.  If Google Wave documents are truly going to be conversation and collaboration spaces, then we’ve got to start to see them used differently than just a glorified wiki space or a glorified email message.

The developers of content around Google Wave are an interesting collection of incredibly talented folks and so I’m sure that they’ll be the answer as we try to bring the power of all of this to our regular online routines.

So, I’m just messing around, and I mean that in the worst, ugliest way possible.  I’ve got some waves going one where I’m just learning with others and then I’ve got a bunch of private, me-only waves, where I can do really stupid things and nobody sees it.

Then, I’ve got a wave with just me and a robot.  The robot’s name is Embeddy.  Embeddy’s claim to fame is that she can generate code that will allow me to embed a wave into another document.  I’m ultimately thinking that this would be incredibly functionaly inside a wiki or in an e-learning course or wherever.  For the time being, I’m just using Embeddy to help me generate code for a webpage.  I’ve created many a webpage over the years and am always looking for tips and techniques to help me move on.  Embeddy may help me with this.

This is what I’ve done so far in my learning that I’m willing to post about publically.  Usually this means that I can replicate it at will and that it wasn’t just a dumb set of keystrokes that happened to work.

I started a new wave and entered a little text and brought in the weather extension.  Now, the key to all of this is that I have to add embeddy@appspot.com to my wave.  She agrees and hops right in.  Her immediate contribution is to generate some code for me.

You’ve got to love code.  We programmer types thrive on this stuff.  There will probably come a day when this becomes drag and drop or HTML editors have direct embeds of waves but for now, it’s a matter of putting the code into the source of a webpage in the right spot.  So, I do.  Now, we’ve got to make it available on the web so I’ve fashioned a little page here.
My learning now gets fuzzy.  If I’m logged into Wave, I can see the contents.  There is a really good reason to have multiple browsers on your computer.  So, I fire up Opera and go to the link and the embed is there but I’m challenged to log into my Google account.  Rats.  Opera isn’t supported by Wave.  OK, off to Safari then.  Hmm.  Safari doesn’t show it.  How about Google Chrome.  Bingo!  You HAD to know that that would work!  In fact, it works way better than Firefox where the Wave was originally created.

Now, my learning is on hold.  Sure, I should be able to see and work on it.  I created it and I’m logged in to it.  Why wouldn’t I?  Wave is still in limited testing but there are lots of folks with accounts.  I’ve given out a whack of invites.  Because this is a public wave, will anyone with an account be able to get in and start to collaborate?  Do I have to actually invite people and add them to the wave?

Where would you use this anyway?

Next week is the ECOO Conference.  Wouldn’t it be a real test if somehow we could get our heads around this functionality and make a backchannel Wave for those who could to share their thoughts, pictures, extensions, collaborations, all in real-time?  Wouldn’t it be awesome to have a couple of hundred people all keying content into a collaboration space all at the same time?

That’s going to take more than a little testing but I know that there are lots of folks up to the task.  Any ECOO-takers?

Social Bookmarks:

Powered by ScribeFire.

Nov 8 2009

links for 2009-11-07

Nov 7 2009

New Media Applied to Classic Content

Yesterday, @danikabarker sent out a Twitter message asking people for ideas for poetry related to ghosts and the supernatural.  To me, there is only one answer to a prompt like this — Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven“.  The poem isn’t necessarily about ghosts but the death of Lenore  and the onset of insanity shows how such things play with the mind.  This poem is so powerful for me.  I’ve actually purchased a copy of a book with many of Poe’s works in it.  They’re not easy reads and you need to revisit it many times to understand the meaning and the genius behind these writings.

I didn’t always like Poe.

Like many high school students, I suffered through reading and regurgitating the content long enough to get a mark and move on.  It wasn’t until afterwards that I fully understood what “The Raven” was all about.  I bought the Alan Parson’s Project Album “Tales of Mystery and Imagination“.  At this link, read about the album and you can even listen to the song streamed to your computer.  It may take a couple of plays but the setting and the insanity becomes so clear with this musical interpretation.  My other favourite from this album is “The Cask of Amontillado”.  For me, this was such a powerful way to help understand the original work.

With apologies to Poe, while I pondered weak and weary, I remembered another interpretation.  In one of its Hallowe’en specials, “The Simpsons” had included a dramatic reading of “The Raven”.  Or, at least as dramatic as a combination of James Earl Jones and Bart Simpson could be.  I don’t ever recall the raven saying “Eat My Shorts” in the original.

Through the wonders of modern media, we can get powerful interpretations of the original content.

The Raven – Simpsons

But a search reveals more than this interpretation.  The great Vincent Price gives a full reading of the story.

The Raven- Edgar Allen Poe

Looking around YouTube, you’ll see more video and more excellent interpretation of this incredible work.   I can’t help but thinking what a powerful way for students to watch and get further insights using the modern media that they find so engaging.

It’s also an opportunity to view others’ method of interpreting the original work.  The next logical step for students would be to take a cell phone or an RCA Small Wonder and create their own interpretive work.

New and affordably created media can certainly be used for more than watching a cat flush a toilet. Maybe they’ll be inspired to look up the word “quaff” and use it in their daily lives?

Social Bookmarks:

Powered by ScribeFire.

Nov 7 2009

links for 2009-11-06