In this podcast, recorded on my way to the second day of the 21st Century Learning Navigator’s Conference, I discuss my thoughts on day one of the event, as well as an update on one of the challenges of my new job and some of my other work and travels this month. Oh — Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point gets mentioned, too, as well as a congratulatory message to Ben Wilkoff, a totally wired teacher.
While so much of my network is off in Atlanta, the rest of us have to keep on working. I’ll be spending the next couple of days at the 21st Century Learning Navigator Conference put on by the Council on 21st Century Learning.
I hope it’s useful. I’m looking forward to digging in with policymakers and other educators.
If you’ll be there, drop me a line.
I hate creating a new profile every time I go to a new place on the web. Even worse is that when some of my information changes, like, say, my job for example, I am in update unhappy place.
Wouldn’t it be cool if there were a way to create an RSS feed of my profile and "about" information? Then I could give the feed of that info to each site I maintain a profile with — and every time I changed the info in one place, it would get changed in all of them.
Has anyone done this, and I just missed the memo? I know OpenID is a protocol for login stuff — but I don’t see it working in the way I’ve described.
This week finds me doing a little state to state hopscotch. I began the morning at home in Colorado, am writing now from Baltimore, and will return to Colorado in a couple of days and drive straight to our state’s big technology conference.
I’m in Baltimore to participate in a conversation facilitated by the National Writing Project as a way to gather information about how teachers are teaching with, and, I think (although I’m not sure — we haven’t begun yet), influenced by technology. I’m looking forward to the conversation, and I’m honored to have been invited. (If you want a little background on the event, here’s a link to a recent Teachers Teaching Teachers that will fill you in.)
As I’m here in the conference center with a little time to kill prior to the opening of the conference, I’ve had a chance to catch up on some of my reading. Found a very interesting conversation going on in the comments of David Warlick’s blog regarding the nature of information.
I won’t rehash the debate here — you should really read the threads, as some very, very smart folks are hiving some good conversation on the subject — but I did want to mention something. In one comment, Gary Stager mentions, and this is almost out of context and quite tangential of me to reference it here, but give me a second and I’ll make my case:
What I am against is the simplistic notion that this technology leads
to “School 2.0″ and that it represents a revolution in learning.
Yeah. I’m against that, too. See, while I’ve been participating in and am learning lots from the whole "School 2.0" conversation(s), I find that so often, the presence of technology, to some people, means that the school of the future is here. But it ain’t. The technology by itself changes very little. Having a blog or a podcast or a really neat-o wiki doesn’t mean a thing in terms of school design, school reform, or doing business differently if the underlying philosophies of education don’t change. Sitting in rows and watching the teacher type on a blog via the projector isn’t a revolution in amazingly new pedagogy — it’s just a really, really expensive use of virtuo-chalk.
The change comes when we begin to realize the power of sharing the information, of making the walls more transparent. I think.
And I’ve been guilty of that expensive use of tech stuff sometimes, but my larger point is simply that, if all we’ve done at the end of the day with these new fangled tools that have amazing potential is turn them on and blast the old school stuff out into the new school world, well, then we haven’t really done all that much. Have we?
I know this isn’t all that original an argument — in fact, I think I’ve made it here before — but I felt the need to reemphasize the point for myself. Learning is recursive, right?
Information is not changing — the tools that we have to fiddle with it are. Drastically. So, too, then are the skills one needs to be able to work with the stuff.
But a bit is still a bit, an irreducibly lovable essential unit of info, and it always has been.
(I’ve been reading a little information theory lately, and it’s powerfully fascinating stuff. You might be interested in this book — it’s a good primer on the subject. Well, I think it is, but I don’t yet know any better.)
Well, with that reminder taken care of for myself, I’ll head off to the meeting. Hopefully, lots to discuss and learn about and share over the next few days.
Today is the second day of my three day Moodle course. Thanks to those of you who left suggestions and tips in the comments already.
Day one was a time to explore and go through Moodle as a student. At the end of the day, I set up all course participants as course creators and we’re going to spend much of today building our own Moodle courses for use in the Fall. I thought it might make sense for those of you with Moodle experience to offer tips that you have for new course creators. What should we avoid? What should we definitely make sure to do? How do we deal with limited access to technology and still create resources that students will use? How are elementary teachers using Moodle? (Some of these are questions the course participants have, others are my own.)
I’ll be sharing your comments with the class today, in real time as we work, as well as providing the link to this post for later perusal. Our class runs from 8am to noon MST today and tomorrow. Please offer your tips and advice!
Thanks in advance.
Next week, I’ll be teaching a three session course on Moodle to teachers and other professionals in my district. I’m excited to have so much time (about 12 hours total) to teach the software and how and why to use it. I’m most excited because so much time means that I can do the most effective thing I know to do — provide time for folks to fiddle around and to build resources for their buildings and courses with some help available in the room. I don’t think teachers get enough time to simply explore and discover and play.
I plan to have folks sample the different resources and activities available using activities that I am creating. I plan to give folks time to build. Then I want for everyone to spend time in each others’ courses, basically as "students" for each other as a workshop of sorts for folks building online course components. With that said, what would you do with Moodle if you had 12 hours and a receptive audience? How would you measure "effective online course components?" Is there an essential demonstration that you would show or do with folks? Anything you’d avoid like the plague? What questions should we consider during the workshopping?
I’ll share this post and all your comments with the group in some fashion. Thanks in advance.
I’m teaching several courses for my district next week, including one on blogs and wikis. That makes this video very, very timely. Thanks, Louann, for the pointer.
I wanted to thank all of you who took the time to drop a nice comment or e-mail after the birth of my second daughter. Teagan and her mother are doing fine, and Ani‘s got some really good "big sister" instincts. It’s been pretty perfect around here lately. Pretty crazy, too.
Teagan was born on a Thursday. About 24 hours later, I accepted a new position in my school district as an instructional technologist. In about an hour and a half, I report for my first day in the new position. While I’m going to already missing my own students, I’m looking forward to the opportunity to work with teachers throughout my school district as we all work to better integrate technology into our instruction. I’m also pretty nervous about the whole thing. But that’s a good thing — nothing worth doing right isn’t worth getting a little nervous over.
So, anyway, the nature of this blog is going to change a little bit, as I both negotiate the new workplace and transition from language arts to a wider scope of reading, writing, and thinking. I’m pretty excited about the change — I hope you’ll stick with me as I learn and continue to better understand how technology and education intersect.
I’m kind of counting on you. This blog and the connections that I’ve made through it are a big reason why I’ve learned enough to be a viable candidate for this job. In some ways, this space is my own personal professional development school. As I get acclimated to my new position, I’ll probably be asking lots of questions and seeking information and guidance.
It’s going to be a pretty great summer. I’m ready. You?
