Technology In Education Online

I arrived wondering what I will discover during my time here.  The trip down went fairly well.  For those who can relate, my anxiety of getting from school to the airport was happily relieved when I was sitting in the airport reading a book on my Kindle.  It is nice having a Kindle to pull out and easily carry around my book collection without taking up a lot of space in my carry-on backpack.  Also, when going out to dinner once I arrived being able to take it with me to read sure makes it nice! 

Getting ready to go I fine tuned my presentation, The Project-based 2.0 Buffet! Eating it all up!  In presenting in the fall at CECA 2009 conference on this topic, I wanted to refine what I presented to make it a valuable experience for those that will attend the presentation at FETC 2010.  I believe that in any presentation it is imperative to be open to changing directions according to what the audience is looking for.    I think in the presentations I’ve attended in the past, I’ve always worried when the presenter will not move away from their PowerPoint presentation.  It is as if  the audience doesn’t even need to be there for the person to continue their presentation.  I know I’m in trouble when I see the presenter being chained to their laptop.  They dare not venture being arms reach of the laptop.  And to make matters worst, they basically read their bullet points to you. 

So as I get ready for the confercence, I will see how far as stay on my presentation and how far a stray from my initial thinking on what I will present.

Here we were talking about opening up schools to current technologies yet when attempting to go to several sites while here at the high school I was blocked from using them. A couple notes about blocking – YouTube, Ning.com, Web-based email, TeacherTube, SchoolTube.  How are we going to bring this gap between students everyday life experiences and the experience at school?  Alan November gave a great presentation about the use of various Web 2.0 tools. Yet, I’m here at the conference and couldn’t even use them!

It isn’t a knock on the conference location. It is more of a reflection on how restrictive we are in our schools.  It is a subject that we don’t talk about even though it needs to be discussed.  Where you might ask?  Anywhere there are administrators placing restrictions on their use.  It is as if the emperor isn’t wearing clothes and no one wants to say anything.

I think several components come into play regarding Web 2.0 restrictions. One is power and control. The other is fear of the unknown.  Let’s talk about the first one: Power and control.  If I restrict the use of these tools I am in a powerful position.  I am fulfilling my responsibility as an administrator.  And if I don’t know what these Web 2.0 tools do, what would it mean if allowed myself to be vulnerable to the statement “I don’t know what Web 2.0 is.”  The other part of not knowing is it leaves you susceptible to dismissing the use of Web 2.0 tools.  If I don’t know I simply can state that we restrict the use of these tools.

For technology coordinators, I can easily show that I’m doing my job if I can show all of these sites and Web 2.0 tools that are restricted.  See I’m doing my job!  Much easier to explain then if I just leave open the use of these tools.  It helps with job security!

We must open up the dialogue to discuss these issues.  If we don’t teach students how to use these tools appropriately who will?

There were four sessions throughout the day. Here is a brief review of the sessions:

 Session 1 – Project Based Learning That Works - Great Ideas for You – Thematic Planning – The LEADS model (Literacy is Essential to Adolescent Development and Success ) is built around thematic, cross-curricular units.  The core reading materials, novels and expository/informational text are utilized to incorporate this cross-curricular approach.  The presenters gave an example of Project-based Learning by presenting YouTube videos showing this model in action.  Integrating curriculum through ideas – LA teacher, SS teacher, and Math teacher are thinking of ways to integrate these themes/ideas.  They pointed out that collaboration time is essential.   

Session 2 – Drop-in Time- Web 2.0 tools- They spoke of how they could be used in the classroom with students. The presenters demonstrated interesting sites:

For more information go to: http://dropintimewithweb20.wikispaces.com/

Session 3 – I presented “The Project-Based Web 2.0 Buffet! Eating It All Up! I spoke about the collaborative 6^th grade project. I’ll be posting my presentation on my website.

Session 4 – Developing and Supporting Teacher Leaders – The Academy of Teaching and Learning – http://southjerseyacademy.com/. It is run by teachers for teachers and started in 2000. 

All sessions are free. The only responsibility of the school districts are providing teachers with substitutes while attending.

There are 4 components -

1. governance committee – gets feedback from others to determine who are speakers, i.e. teacher leaders in the area then plan/organize
2. EIRC – take care of cost, meeting place, etc.
3. Quarterly meetings – meet on a specific topic – teachers drive the topics based on feedback
   1. Keynote in AM, breakout, lunch, return for big group activity, burning issues
4. Website – collaboration, professional growth

Once again a very enjoyable day at this annual conference. Thanks to all the folks at SRI – ETTC for putting this together!

OK, it’s time to vent a little…

My list at conferences is a small one but one I need to state:

1. Not enough plugs – I know I can run on battery power but running from presentation to presentation, going through the main gathering hallways, it’s a bit of a mad scramble and dash to see who gets to the plug first.  Please, please, please more places to plug in.
2. Hotels charging for Internet service – I get nickeled and dimed to death with additional services. Come on now!  I know it can be done at no charge. I’ve stayed at many hotels around the country that offer Internet service for free. So stop charging me $12.95 per day!
3.  Another network bug – Please provide consistent network connections during the conference. Yes, I like being able to be wireless wherever I go around the conference, but when I keep getting dropped off the network or have a really slow connection it makes it frustrating.

So there you have it. I’m done. Just some things I had to let go of.   Has anyone else had these issues? Let me know.

I’m ending the first couple days here at the conference. It has been a very busy two days.  I ran a full-day workshop on Mondy, “Getting Started on the Moodle”.  Tuesday, I completed a half-day workshop on Joomla and just finished a presentation, “Moodle and 21st Century DETAILS: A Constructivist Approach to Teaching.”So as I reflect on the first couple of days, what are my thoughts?  Well, after completing these workshops I am more convinced that giving educators the opportunity to participate in the process is critical. My afternoon presentation on reflecting on how you need to take a more constructivist approach while using a Moodle. One interesting point came when I was discussing about the Workshop component whereby students could participate in peer evaluation and grading, following the guidelines of a rubric. One teacher emphatically stated she would never allow students to participate in grading.  The bottom line for me was her not having a level of trust in students to fairly access another students work.  Now here is the rub, why can’t teachers trust their students to be responsible and accountable? The other question is: Is there a power and control issue here?  I think, at times, it is really hard for some teachers to empower their students.  Do they see their role as commander and chief and students don’t have enough expertise to enable to handle the responsibility?  My thought here is, and it may relate or not, we don’t  teach students what is involved in the process of working in groups yet we throw students together a lot of times and expect them to handle the responsibility.   All I’d ask people to do is to reflect back on their own experiences of group work in school and ask the question: how did it work for you?  I’ve heard from educators the thing they disliked most when going back to school was having a class where the instructor would state that there would be group projects during the semester.  Inevitability, i would hear such statements as: “I wound up doing most of the work” or “Person A didn’t do anything. What happened? What went wrong?  The biggest problem is that we never teach, and perhaps because we were never taught our self, what makes up the group process. How group dynamics work. How you look at members or potential members and determine where their strengths and interests are and grouping students based on their strengths and interests.  Why do group members usually get disinterested? Usually, my experience has been due to people in the group being the controllers.  They want the project to go their way.  On the other extreme you have those that simply tune out due to feeling the group wasn’t hearing what they had to say. So how does this relate to peer review, which was the main point in begin with?  In today’s world students are going to be working collaboratively.  They will also have to know how to peer review.  So if we make the same fatal error with not teaching peer review, we are going to repeat the same errors we have made with group projects. We must step away from this thinking that my role as an educator is to hold all power and control in the classroom.  We have to open up our classrooms to be interactive, peer-review, and restructure group dynamics.

Today’s theme has been my quest today. All sessions I’ve attended have been Web 2.0 related.  If I were highlight the day I’d say there are just an incredible amount of “cool” stuff coming out all of the time related to Web 2.0.  Just when I thought I was catching up to things, something new comes along.  The run down of sessions today:

Starting off the morning attending Alan November’s presentation: “Cultivating a World-class Work Ethic”.  If I were to reflect back on the session the key thing is that we must think of our learning from a multitude of perspectives.  If we study, for example American History, do we only source out of Google only from an American perspective?  Do we, with all of this technology available, open ourselves up to a more global perspective?  And if we restrict what we teach and our approach to how we teach  what are we preparing our students to become.  There are so many great things available to students today, especially with Web 2.0 tools that by placing all of these barriers in our educational approach we don’t create life-long learners.  We are leaving our students the job of teaching themselves outside of school. Students must and should have a say in their own education.

The remainder of the day I spent going to various Web 2.0 sessions.  I think when you talk about creativity and empowerment Web 2.0 is the future….for now. Who knows what the next big thing is coming around the corner!  This can be looked at in two different ways: 1) Why learn this stuff if it is going to be passe in no time, or; 2) This is some exciting stuff and it allows me to continue to bring in new ideas to students!  People were talking about YouTube, Digg, Blogs, Second Life, Habbo & Club Penguin, MySpace,  and Facebook to name a few. The whole idea is taking a bottom down approach rather than a top down approach towards education. Forget about memorization and regurgitation. Let’s move away from this focus on standardization especially since we can’t even get the “experts” to agree what these standards are and how we measure students’ progress.

The final thought of the day is this: If we talk about transforming our teaching methods with Web 2.0, we must think about how we teach ourselves.  If we are attending conferences, I think we need to develop conferences more towards being interactive and hands-on.  People may argue that with larger conferences this is an impossible task.  However, lets’ think about how a conference might work/ look differently. Attendees come to the conference, for those that don’t have a laptop, attendees are given a loaner system to take with them throughout the conference.  An attendee walks into a session, round tables are setup where people sit down, open up their laptop, and begin to walk through using these Web 2.0 tools.  How can we afford this?  I’ve seen vendors, such as Gateway, Dell, and HP, at the conference. Why not tap into their resources to provide the loaners?  The same with software. We have Apple and Microsoft at the conference. Why not have them participate in this process to provide the operating systems.

Actions speak louder than words! Why not re-invent our conferences and make them more like what we talk about when we talk about Web 2.0 philosophical approach to learning.  Let’s remove the chairs lined up in rows and create a a round table experience with a more collegial, interactive experience!

As the saying goes, the best laid plains of mice and men often go astray….I’ve always been one to be on time and prepared.  So this AM I get up, get ready for the conference, walk out of the hotel, walk down the street, enter the civic center, and no one is around! I look around and then quickly check my confirmation for the conference and it is at the Convention Center!!! Back to the hotel, take the shuttle, and I’m sitting here at this conference getting ready to present.  I sit down and go to check over everything on my computer for the day and I have no plug to plug into and I can’t get a wireless network connection.  I scramble around find a wireless connection and I’m sitting here typing out this blog. </p>

When preparing for my presentation at this conference I wanted to change things up a bit to how I’ve presented it in the past.  I have often thought about how do explain a Moodle to someone who has never heard of it before or if they’ve heard of it,  how do you share your excitement over the use of a moodle? The best example of the excitement is to watch a teacher who heard about this “Moodle thing” but weren’t sure what it was. After taking them on a brief tour, they are off and running. As they discover what they could do with a moodle the ideas start flowing from them on how they can use a moodle. And this is what I want to share with those that attend my presentation today.  The technology is great but the excitement is the real payoff

Now it’s on to the keynote address

More to come as the day progresses.

As I arrived to setup my presentation this afternoon I wondered how many people would show and whether people would walk away as excited as I am about using a Moodle. It is always amazing to me when talking to people about using a Moodle they are absolutely stunned when you tell them that it is free!  The next comment usually is ….”so what’s the catch?” It’s always a re-energizer for me to present at conferences. The energy that I get from peoples’ interest always sends me back to my usual work with a renewed sense of energy (of course after I’ve caught up from all the traveling). I will be posting my presentation here later on this week as a podcast. I’d like to hear back from people that attended today’s presentation

This website will focus on technology in education. Discussions will revolve around how educators are utilizing technology in the classroom. Topics such as integrating vs. use and the confusion around wht the difference is between the two will be included. Other topics will include reviews and comments on software and hardware. I hope people find this blog useful and will contribute to its’ development.

Alan