Leading from the Edge: Moving Forward without Falling Off

I just listened to the podcast of this session from NECC, Leading from the Edge: Moving Forward without Falling Off , by Chris O'Neal from the University of West Virginia (July 5th). He has some really good advice for technology leaders to help get people on board and moving forward with you, teachers, adminstrators, board members, and so on. Some of what he talks about isn't 100% relevant to the types of jobs we have, but a great deal of it is. I highly recommend you listen to it.

On the NECC conference website he has a link to his presentation also. He gives permission for people to use all of his resources, including his presentation.

This is a case of "I would never (and didn't) have thought I was interested in going to a session like this one" but it really was full of useful information for me. I'm so glad it was podcast so I got a second chance to listen!

Interesting NECC Podcasts

I just listened to 2 very short podcasts from the NECC podcasts. One is called, "From the Escalator" and the other is called, "Man on the Street." Both are hosted by Ryan Panchadsaram. You can find these both by going to iTunes and searching the podcasts for NECC. Or you can find these (and all the NECC session podcasts) by clicking here.

Here's the description from From the Escalator

In the spirit of podcasts, we decided to try something new at NECC 2006, we call it “From the NECC Escalator.” It takes 45 seconds to go from the first floor to the second and that’s all interviews have to have to answer why they are here at NECC. Come join us as we take a ride with attendees, vendors, and Apple’s Vice President of Education, John Couch.

I really liked this format and I think these are both kind of unique ideas for creating a podcast at an event like NECC. I think I'm going to try to use the format for some podcasting in my district.

Guidelines for Educational Revolutionaries (1-7)

I've been listening to some podcasts I lost track of in the last few weeks of June and the beginning of July while I was finishing the school year and getting ready and then going to NECC. If you have never listened to Wesley Fryer's blog and podcasts at Moving at the Speed of Creativity, I highly recommend you give him a read and/or a listen.

Wesley has done a series of podcasts on "Guidelines for Educational Revolutionaries" and I think that part 2 in this series really connects to what I was reflecting on in my post below of July 6th, SIGTC Membership Breakfast. He gives what started out as 14 Guidelines for Revolutionaries but has now expanded to include 16 guidelines. He explains these guidelines more fully in his blog and in his podcast, but here is the list:

1. Make time in the classroom for activities that matter: Tasks that are authentically “educative.”
2. Focus on level 2 (transformative) technology use.
3. Seek and celebrate incremental victories.
4. Promote conversations and messy assessment.
5. Embrace reasoned risk taking, along with trial and error / discovery learning.
6. Celebrate failure! Adapt and learn, teach, model and use the “failure bow.”
7. Seek leaders who support this vision, and support further development of administrative technology leadership vision.
8. Be patient and have faith. Changing is coming, but the process often seems too slow to visionaries.
9. Resilience and persistence will win the day more than short-term enthusiasm.
10. Seek novel, safe experiences that invite curiosity and stretch existing perceptions.
11. Feed dreams and imagination: For yourself and your students.
12. Be flexible and adaptable. (Live in a truly flexible frame.)
13. Use the language of teaching and learning, more than the language of technology.
14. Maintain a spirit of humility and servanthood to others, never an attitude of arrogance or exasperation.
15. Seek edification and renewal locally and globally, through F2F conversations and the edublogosphere.
16. Be courageous: instructionally and ethically. Remember Margaret Mead’s quotation: “A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

I think that his #3 guideline, "Seek and celebrate incremental victories," really hit home with me and brought me back to gain some perspective on the challenges I was reflecting on in my previous post. In the podcast he says that we have to remember that "pioneers" are just that. They are not the majority. He draws an analogy to the early westward moving pioneers in our country saying that we didn't have 50% or more of our citizens taking the plunge and moving westward. It was a relatively small number of people who did that, it was the country's "disruptive time," and it took a long time before it was regarded as less of a risk and the majority began to follow. However, without those pioneers who were willing to take an enormous risk and give up all that was comfortable to move westward, the rest of the country never would have followed.

So, I'm going to keep plugging along, remembering to celebrate incremental steps forward, and try to have faith that we will move through this disruptive time and eventually more and more people will join us.

Tabula Digita

I went to a session which was a panel discussion on digital content. The session was fantastic and everyone made real valid points. I was very impressed with one panelist, Ntiedo Etuk (NT), who is the Chief Executive Officer at Tabula Digita.

For those of you at the closing session will remember that they announced that next year at NECC there would be a gaming tournament. They showed a movie previewing the game - one of the taglines was "Learn math or die trying." It is a very interactive game focusing on algebra. The game is from Tabula Digita called Dimenxion. There is a demo version on their site.

Of course they have had a challenge integrating into the school systems so have been focusing on after school programs to introduce their game. They do have some research data from a summer program in addition to some white papers on games and learning.

I noticed that Marc Prensky will be the keynote speaker at the NYSCATE Summer Leadership Summit. If you saw Marc Prensky last year at NECC, you know that he is a promoter of game-based learning in education. Games for learning is a really hot topic in education right now.

Check out Dimenxion and share it with your teachers and students - who knows maybe the tournament champion will be from one of our schools!

IVC at NECC 2006

I meant to blog 1000 times at the NECC conference – but I kept running out of time! So now that I am settling back into work, I wanted to share a few things about my learning experiences.

I was able to meet up with my friend Carol – who I met in an online course about videoconferencing taught by Janine Lim. We also ran into Janine a few times and even got mentioned in her blog!

I attended a Birds-of-a-Feather session hosted by Scott Merrick (Snacks 4 the Brain) and Joan Roehre. It was a real thrill for me because I got to meet Scott and I have been reading his work for so long it was like meeting one of my idols. The session focused on desktop videoconferencing and they showed us a tool called iVisit. It is a desktop videoconferencing solution. It has the capabilities for multiple people and locations to conference together. It really has a lot of potential as a cost-effective alternative to room conferencing systems. We also looked at SightSpeed which is a video calling tool for desktops and the Polycom Communicator speaker to use with Skype for enhancing audio on computer calls.

I also attended the 1st Annual SIGIVC (Special Interest Group Interactive Video Conferencing) business meeting. It was exciting for me because last year, at my first NECC, I was able to sign the charter and here we are already having our 1st annual meeting! Our SIG decided to break off into 4 sections (based on survey input we collected earlier in the year) – Communications; Professional Development; Research and Technology. I joined the Research group alongside of Allen Greenberg of Wainhouse Research! Again, a total honor since each Wainhouse Research Bulletin and Forum are my lifeblood to the IVC industry.

I blogged on 3 sessions for eSchool News – They were:
Online Lessons: As Diverse as American Minds!
21st Century Education: A Blended Learning Environment
Experience HyperMirror Videoconferencing!

I really wanted to be able to attend more IVC showcases – but the ones I did were fantastic!

I attended Enhancing Visual Thinking Strategies and Promoting Acceptance through Videoconferencing which was actually a project done from the Mohawk RIC! This was absolutely fantastic. It was a cross-curricular project where students from South Jefferson Central School videoconferenced with students in France. The students created self-portraits, videos and worked on collaborative websites together. In addition, the project was shared with 25 future teachers at SUNY Oswego where they could see the impact and results of global project. The work the students did was fantastic and they also had opportunities to discuss current events like the Parisian Riots.

I also attended K20Connections: Virtual Field Trips between University Research and Pre-College Classrooms. Quyen Arana from the K20 Connections center at the University of Oklahoma created a mobile videoconferencing unit - fitted with a wireless bridge – which he used with scientists and researchers in the lab environment. The scientists and researchers were able to bring the videoconferencing unit into their labs, show the students around and answer questions. To show us an example we were taken on a tour of the Super Computer Lab at the University of Oklahoma. The researcher in charge of the Super Computer enthusiastically explained all sorts of aspects of the machine. The goal of this type of project would be to increase student interest in Math, Science and Technology while linking them with local universities. It was a terrific example of learning from an expert and seeing their enthusiasm for their life’s work!

Another IVC Showcase I attended was K2K Connections and Collaborations: Get Your Project and Partner Here! – hosted by Joan Roehre. It was a take off on speed dating, where we all partnered up for about 3 minutes discussed some collaboration ideas we had and made connections with new people and schools. I feel even luckier since Carol was at the same session so she and I were able to double-up on our resources!

Throughout the conference I met so many people who want to make connections with our schools – either through videoconferencing, blogging, collaborative websites and/or podcasting! I feel like the conference did a fantastic job on showcasing the power of kid2kid (or class2class) collaborations.

I have a lot of ideas for the upcoming school year – so start recruiting your teachers!

Copyright and Ethical Issues: Avoiding the Copyright Police

Click on the title above to read the story I wrote for eSchool News Online about this session. All of the resources for this session are also available on the NECC website. If the link on the eSchool News article doesn't work for you, try these links below.

Barnett_Policy4printer.pdf (Short version of policy to post at each copy machine)
Barnett_Copyright2.ppt (Copyright Presentation)
Barnett_CopyrightEthics.pdf (Avoiding the Copyright Cops: Copyright and Other Ethical Issues)
Barnett_CopyrightPolicy.QuickGuide.pdf (A Quick Guide to Copyright Policy)

All of these materials are shared with permission for educational use.

A One Hour Tour: Navigating Primary Source Materials on the Internet

Click on the title above to go to the story I wrote about this session for eSchool News Online. It was a very informative session packed full of information. The article on eSchool News has URLs to Kathy Schrock's resources for this presentation as well.

Digital Natives: Transform Learning through One-to-One Computing

Click the title above to go to my story at eSchool News Online about this session. They had some interesting differences in their one-to-one project that makes it a bit unique from other one-to-one initiatives.

Eduscapes

I've now taken 2 half-day, hands-on workshops from Annette Lamb and Larry Johnson. Yesterday I took one called, Flash in a Flash: Practical Applications Across the Curriculum, and today I took, Extreme Website Makeover: Javascript, CSS, and Multimedia. Both were excellent hands-on workshops and Annette and Larry did an wonderful job of providing support for approximately 30 people in each session, which is no small feat! Although I have had previous experience with both topics, I learned new things, was reminded of things I had forgotten about, got new tips and skills that will help to make me more successful as I use these tools.

I mentioned in both my posting below on the Flash in a Flash workshop and in my podcast discussion of this workshop, that Annette and Larry provide numerous resources on their website to support the content of these classes. Click on the workshop titles in the paragraph above to go to the respective pages for these workshops on their site.

After thinking about and reflecting on the topics discussed at the SIGTC Membership Breakfast this morning, it occured to me that Annette and Larry are great examples of the changing landscape of information.

• They freely share all the content from all of their online courses, workshops, presentations, etc. on their website for the whole world to access. They aren't trying to control who has access to this information. Information without a container. How many professors or teachers do you know that let anyone, anywhere access their course content at anytime without any restrictions? You don't need a password, you don't even need to have attended a workshop or to have registered for or to have taken a course. It's all right there for you to use anyway.
  

• They live the idea of anytime, anywhere content creation and access. They work for Indiana University but they don't teach on campus. Annette says, "if the students don't need to come to the campus to take the class, why should the instructor come onto the campus to teach the class?" They teach online from a motorhome with a satallite dish on the top, that could be anywhere in the US.

What a wonderful example of "the new story," as David Warlick put it!

SIGTC Membership Breakfast

The Role of Technology Leadership in a Changing Educational Landscape

Panelists

• John Hendron – Instructional Technologist, Freelance Designer
• Thor Prichard – President/CEO of Clarity Innovations
• Will Richardson – blogger, author, educator
• Tony Vincent – Educational Consultant
• David Warlick – Consultant, Educator, Author
  

The breakfast meeting began with a panel discussion facilitated by Ted Sakshaug. This was an excellent discussion on a variety of Web 2.0 related topics. The use of del.icio.us for social bookmarking and tagging bookmarks was demonstrated. We were also introduced to the wiki that SIGTC has begun as a place for all of us to contribute and collaborate on content. Details of what people said during the panel discussion can be found on the SIGTC Knowledge Wiki. In small groups we all got a chance to use these tools to begin to add content. I think this is a great opportunity to use and model the things this group was talking about today.

Panel Discussion
First each panel member tried to kind of define what kinds of technologies, what skills, what components are a part of what we call Web 2.0.
Comments included:

• The new shaping of information
• Information without containers
• The new literacies and the need to consciously teach students and teachers how to use these
• The presence of very authentic audiences
• The ease of publishing allows us to focus more on the content than on the tools themselves
• There is a change in the relationship between individuals and institutions. Institutions are no longer the controllers of information.
• For the first time students have a place to put there knowledge in a permanent database.
• There is great power in the ability to publish
• There is also great power in the immediacy of publishing and we need to figure out how to leverage this power/potential for education
  

Ted posed the question . . .
How do we handle the fears of teachers about covering content, boundaries and roles so that they will use these Web 2.0 tools?
Comments included:

• Students need models of responsible blogging. Teachers have a responsibility to use and model these things appropriately for students.
• There is a conception that social tools cause problems. They don’t. They allow a great transparency into the real lives of students and we should be learning from this.
• When publishing to the web, there is great power and learning opportunity in the use of voice and other elements of the traits of writing.
• Kids understand the power of this communication better than adults do, and they are using it. We need to take the opportunity to actively teach skills, ethical and responsible use. We aren’t going to stop them from using these tools so we should take advantage of the teachable moments rather than imagining that we can just block it all and keep it all out of schools.
• When this publishing and communication becomes a conversation, responsibility multiplies. We need to define and describe ethical use of information and this must be an integral part of literacy instruction.
  

Ted asked the panelists . . .
to describe what types of technology they see coming along other than blogs and Wikis.
Comments included:

• The increasing presence of web based applications rather than applications that must be downloaded and installed on the client computer.
• The web is becoming a platform and a personal learning space
• Content is dynamic
• Teachers know a finite number (maybe 5 or 6) of applications and how to use them. However, 5 to 7 new applications are appearing on the web every week. Must invest in helping teachers figure out how to put it all together. Kids already know how to put it together.
• The power of RSS (Real Simple Syndication) to pull it all together and aggregate it in one place.
  

Personal Reflection

This was an excellent discussion and a nice way to summarize a very complex topic. None of this information was new to me. I’ve been listening to the podcasts and presentations and reading the blogs of all of these panelists for some time. I understand these things, am trying to use them, and integrate these things into my life and my teaching and learning. I feel a responsibility to use these technologies with students as well. I think as educators, if we don’t take advantage of the technologies that are a way of life to our students, we are missing the boat completely and increasing rather than decreasing the disconnect students see between real life and school.

However, I find it a great challenge to get teachers to invest in even looking at these technologies, let alone understand their power and use them in meaningful ways to enhance teaching and learning. In fact, I’ve met other educational technology “specialists” who have never even heard of the term, Web 2.0 and are unaware of many of the technologies we talked about today and how to use them. If people who should be technology leaders don’t bite, how can I get classroom teachers to? I am sometimes overwhelmed by how far away the horizon is and am at a loss as to how to move people toward it, before it’s a completely new horizon!

Podcasting and Podcatching for the Absolute Beginner

Presenters
Ted Lai – Apple Distinguished Educator
David Warlick
Tim Wilson
Larry Anderson - Director/Founder - National Center for Technology Planning
Lucy Gray – Apple Distinguished Educator

Although I'm not an "absolute beginner" in the world of podcasting, I really wanted to attend this session for 2 reasons.

1. I know there are still bits and pieces of helpful information about podcasting that I don't know and sessions like this help to fill in those gaps and help to expand my knowledge and make it more global.

2. Many teachers in my district are becoming interested in podcasting with their students. Several have already dabbled in it a bit and more are asking me about it every day. As an instructional technology specialist its my job to teach and support these teachers and students, to help get them started, and to help troubleshoot and keep things moving along. I was hoping this session would help me organize how to present podcasting to "absolute beginners."

I won on both counts. This was an excellent session that did just what I was hoping it would do for me. In fact, it was even worth sitting on the floor for it, which I had to do and don't do very well.

Additionally, David Warlick set up a wiki page for the session information, outline and handouts and invited us all to participate in the wiki by posting our notes there.

Podcasting and Podcatching for the Absolute Beginner Wiki

Notes pages of the participants

Here are my notes in outline form as to what was covered. This will help serve as a way for me to organize training and support in my district.

What is it?

• Audio that you can subscribe to
• Time shifted (narrowcasting)
• Can be downloaded to a player but doesn’t have to be
• 20 minutes is a good length (average commuting time)
• not platform specific
• democratization

History

• Began in 2004
• Adam Curry and Dave Winer
• “podcasting” term coined in 2004
• about 60,000 podcasts in iTunes directory today

Vocabulary

• XML
• Aggregator
• Syndication

How the simple technology works

• David demonstrated the back end of his blog, or at least tried to 2 Cents Worth
• “Entirely unimpressive” click, write, submit - It's that simple
  
• only difference between blog and podcast is one is text and other is audio file
• drag XML chicklet to iTunes to subscribe

Podcatching – software

• iTunes
• iPodder
• iPodder X
• Playpod
• Poddum Feeder
• Etc.

Lucy demonstrated using iTunes to find and download podcasts

• still need to have access to a server to host your files

Ideas for using podcasting in education

• Next stage of publishing
• Gather content to enhance learning
• Provide school and classroom updates
• Find or produce “Sightseeing” tours
• Dramatize or re-enact key moments in history, science, literature, etc.
• Communication tool between home and school
• Produce radio shows with Reader’s theater
• Design professional development

Examples shared

• Radio Willow Web – Tony Vincent
• Tech Savvy Girls – 5 year old (Ted's daughter)
  
• Ask an Astronomer – video – produced by NASA and free
  

Equipment

• Something to record with
• Apple iPod with Griffin iTalk
• iRiver
• Olympus digital recorders ($90) has built in USB cords
• M Audio Micro Trak – records on Compact Flash card ($300)
  

• Microphones
• Can find lots on eBay
• Podcast Rigs .com (link in wiki to this)
• Q 1 U by Samson ($49 with a tripod)
  

• Mixer
  

Software (for creating)

• Garageband - really the simplest and Larry rates as the best
• says if you are a PC district it's still better to get 1 Mac to use for podcasting
• gave quick demo

• QuickTime Broadcaster
• Audacity
• Amadeus (Mac only software)
  
• Mixcast Live
• iTunes (not for recording but for compressing and converting files
• Podcast Maker

Flash in a Flash

I attended my first hands-on workshop at NECC today, Flash in a Flash: Practical Applications Across the Curriculum. The presenters were Annette Lamb and Larry Johnson.

I’m usually overwhelmed by Flash. I’ve had a smattering of instruction during a web design graduate class. I’ve bought several books and downloaded how-tos from the web, but somehow I’m still overwhelmed by this program. I do use it to some extent and I know how to do a very few things with it that I use on my website. I really feel like I need a whole course in Flash in order to improve my skills to a level where I really feel comfortable with this program. I knew this workshop would be “a quicky” but figured that any opportunity I have to take some instruction in Flash is an opportunity I should take advantage of.

Today’s workshop was good. It was amazing how fast the time flew by! It wasn’t anything to new for me, but it was a good refresher for beginning skills. The instructors were very knowledgeable and they have a wonderful website with a wealth of materials that I know will be helpful to me. Their website, Eduscapes, has information about all of their courses, and a page specifically for Flash. I think this might have been better as a full day workshop, especially for people with little previous experience with Flash, but I think the website will be helpful as a follow-up for everyone.

Annette and Larry also provided links to many examples of things that can be done with Flash. I think this is helpful also. I liked that they included high end kinds of things, but also some examples of beginner projects as well. There was a neat canoe map of a creek and when you mouse over either a road or a town marker on the creek, a window with the name pops up and clicking on it opens a window with a photo and links to more info. Another was a kind of a slide show about Harriet Tubman. It allowed a standard click through slideshow-type mode but also a “quick version” that was a self-playing animated movie of sorts. Both of these had interactive components, but seemed fairly easy projects to do and things I’d like to try by myself and maybe also with students and teachers.

So, I think I’ll go back and spend more time with their website, beginning with their “Basics” tutorial and then moving on from there. and my other books and tutorials this summer and see if I can continue to try to reach a state of comfort with Flash!