more mcauliffe

David Weinberger and Deneen Frazier Bowen were the Wednesday and Thursday keynote speakers. Weinberger talked a lot about traditional knowledge and how it’s changing with the advance of web 2.0 tools like blogging, social bookmarking and wikipedia. See the previous post to access his presentation. Fraizer Bowen gave an amazing performance for her keynote presentation. It’s about forty minutes long – but its highly entertaining. Watch it and you’ll never think about kids and technology the same way again.

Reoccuring themes at the conference were blogging, podcasting, and other web 2.0 techniques. A resounding message: that these web 2.0 tools make it quicker and easier for individuals, our students included, to post content to the web. As a result, more and better critical thinking needs to be applied to that content by the viewer. Who created this? For what purpose? Is it credible? Why or why not? And how do we know?

Another focus was on building digital portfolios in compliance with the new ICT Literacy standards – which is in the works here in our district already.

Newfound representatives Blessing and Tripp presented their blogging project to approximately fifty participants on Wednesday. Again, the project was really well received. We’ve had many requests for our templates and rubrics.

Finally, running through most of the keynotes and the sessions was the message that schools need to be engaging and empowering kids with technology in a seamless and integrated way that supports learning. That, for their future, our students will need the creativity, critical thinking and problem-solving skills that working with technology now affords.

 

christa mcauliffe technology conference

A great conference again this year, hosted by NHSTE and featuring keynote speakers Alan November, David Weinberger, and Dineen Frasier Bowen. All three speakers ran two sessions to follow-up their presentations – I like that about this conference.

Alan November started out by stating that we’re not preparing kids for a New Hampshire economy – we need to be preparing them for a global one, and that kids need to understand others’ points of view to work globally. That seems like such a far-reaching idea for an elementary teacher. But in roughly ten short years, our kids will be facing that scenario. It also struck me when he said technology has made kids equal to teachers as far as having, or being able to find, the information they need to learn. He thinks blogging is a good tool for writing since blog comments critique the work, and not the writer. He talked more about Web 2.0 tools – blogs, wikis, tools for collaboration. That teachers should be modeling for students the power of these tools as well as modeling appropriate tech behaviors. He told this great story about kids in a high school algebra class taking notes and posting them online for their peers – and having younger kids in the school access them and learn from them. One final note: November swears by AltaVista for searching! Also, I have his book – Empowering Students with Technology – if anyone wants to borrow it.

More about the other speakers soon……in the meantime, if you want to see the keynotes for yourself, they’re online at http://www.nhcmtc.org/2006/Keynote.html. Another thing I love about this conference.

 

searching

Good information here – tips on how you can search more effectively using Google…
Ten Tips for Smarter Google Searches

 

webinar success

The David Warlick webinar is over and it was wonderful! He was presenting at the MASSCUE (Massachusetts Computer Using Educators) Annual Conference to a group of educators. Two hundred more joined him through the web and a toll free phone number. David’s slides showed up in my browser window, I could hear his voice through my speakerphone, and I took notes on the presentation through a private wiki he set up. I was able to type in questions to David or comments to the group in Massachusetts, and there was a steady stream of online chat going on throughout the presentation (which I actually found a bit distracting – sort of like when the folks behind you talk while you’re trying to listen!). The content was incredibly thought-provoking, the hour flew, and I was sorry to see it all end.

David’s slides are still online, here. Webinars are a great way to do professional development. They often feature well-known presenters, the content is always relevant, there are online resources for follow-up and goodness knows it’s inexpensive – or even free. And can I get professional development hours for this? I bet if I log it, I can!

 

webinar

A webinar is a seminar – only it’s on the web! One’s coming up next week that looks particularly good. Through the Discovery Education website, David Warlick – author, blogger, presenter, educator – is presenting a session called Flattening World & Flat Classrooms. Here’s the link for the description of the webinar and how to register. It’s at 5pm Wednesday, November 18th – so act quickly. They’re only allowing 200 registrants. Actually, 199 more.

 

gaming

An interesting article about video games in today’s issue of USA Today states…

The Federation of American Scientists — which typically weighs in on matters of nuclear weaponry and government secrecy — declared Tuesday that video games can redefine education…the theory is that games teach skills that employers want: analytical thinking, team building, multitasking and problem-solving under duress. Unlike humans, the games never lose patience. And they are second nature to many kids.

This idea is not new. Marc Prensky has been promoting it for over five years and has written several books about the link between games and learning. Chris Dede from Harvard has been designing engaging virtual environments to teach science concepts, with the financial support of the National Science Foundation. And there are others. If you want to read more about the educational implications for gaming, here’s an article from Edutopia.

What is it about games that keep kids engaged? What makes them learn from games? How can our teaching capitalize on what we know about games? And should it?

 

in defense of google

Yeah, another Google post. But this one’s to point out a few of the great features of Google – other than the search engine.

First, Google Calendar. It looks a lot like your Mac’s iCal except it’s online. You can have multiple calendars for multiple functions. You can show one calendar at a time or all of them at once. Posting is a breeze. But the real beauty of Google Calendar is that it can be edited or viewed from any computer connected to the internet. So I can have my calendar at home and at school. Works for me!

If you have not seen Google Earth, download it now. It’s free and it’s amazing. Viewers can zoom in on any section of the earth, tilt the view so that elevations are evident, and mark borders and boundaries and landforms. And more. In third grade this year, we’ll be studying regions of the US. I can’t wait to use this tool with kids. What other content areas/grades could Google Earth be used for?

Finally, Writely, an online word processor recently acquired by Google. Accounts are free and multiple users can log in to create or edit the same document. Writely spell checks, saves automatically, and tracks changes. This summer I collaborated with a group of seven educators on a document for our ICT Literacy Summer Institute and we used Writely to do the work. It was so productive to have many minds working together, even virtually. Next time you have a committee document to draft, try Writely. If you want your kids to do some collaborative work with another class, this might be the tool for them, too.

If you try any of these offerings from Google, let us know what you did and how it went. And keep an eye on Google (especially Google Labs) for more wonderful innovations.

 

be different

This is an old movie (2001) but it’s still a good one. A little inspiration for your new year – may it be a great one!
When I become a teacher…

 

sharing with friends

This month, results of a poll dealing with kids’ habits and attitudes with regard to sharing music were released. The report deals with what the Recording Industry Association of America calls “schoolyard piracy” – the burning and sharing of purchased music. It reads in part:

Among teens ages 12 to 17 who were polled, 69% said they believed it was legal to copy a CD from a friend who purchased the original. By comparison, only 21% said it was legal to copy a CD if a friend got the music free. Similarly, 58% thought it was legal to copy a friend’s purchased DVD or videotape, but only 19% thought copying was legal if the movie wasn’t purchased.

It’s interesting that there’s a difference in numbers between purchased media and downloaded-free media. How did kids learn to make that distinction? What does it mean?

Whether you agree or disagree with the RIAA is not the point. The reality is that technology keeps making it easier to do things like share favorite songs with your friends. But should increased ease of use lead to changes in individual responsibility? How does this relate to other areas of our lives that technology has simplified? And most importantly, what’s our role as educators in this issue?

Here’s the link to the article. Is Copying A Crime? Well…

 

google

I’m a huge fan of Google. Their maps are the best, the calendar feature is wonderfully handy, and I love to check in on Google Labs periodically to see what the Google Folks are up to. Of course, Google is also an amazing search engine – for adults. But here’s another reason to reconsider using it with kids in school.

In an attempt to keep up with the popularity of sites like YouTube, Google is now letting users upload amateur video. Go to to the Google site and “Video” is simply displayed along with Web, Images, and all the other Google choices. But a click on “Video” leads the viewer to a page showing the opening frames of the most popular videos and their titles. And many of them are simply not for kids’ eyes. I tried changing Preferences (right next to the Google search box) in Google’s Safe Search to “strict filitering” but still, the same objectionable videos and titles appear.

The teacher in me constantly struggles with issues like this. Is it possible to teach kids to ignore this kind of content when there’s so much of it right there in front of them? Do we let it come their way, hoping they will make responsible choices? Or do we take steps to keep them from seeing it in the first place? And, if we do that, how do our students learn the discrimination skills they’ll need to have in place when no one is there to make the decisions for them? Any ideas?

Thanks to Steve Dembo at Teach42.com for blogging this to my attention. If you’re looking for a Google alternative to searching with kids, here’s the Reference & Research page I compiled last year. It’s a list of kid-friendly search engines and directories – perhaps not as good as Google, but certainly safer.