Google Project Glass

I just read about Google Project Glass today, wow! Published in 2002, The Feed by M.T. Anderson, references this type of technology, as a chip embedded in your brain in the future. How are we preparing our students in schools today for this type of world when there are places that turn off cameras on mobile devices instead of teaching students how to be responsible digital citizens. How do we reach students like Thomas Suarez, unless we push the envelope to innovate in education?

How Do You Connect the Dots?

Tonight I read about the the Extreme Makeover - School Edition where the school district highlighted won the 2009 Sylvia Charp Award for District Innovation in Technology. What struck me the most about what this district did was it's focus on "technology as the foundation for a whole new instructional program." Simple, yet not really. Their focus was based on well researched pillars of instruction. In Glen Cove School District the purpose of technology was to "inspire students, feed curiosity, stimulate critical thinking and problem solving and facilitate communication."

They connected to NETS and 21st Century Learning and worked for seamless integration through the lens of instruction. Curriculum, Assessment and Technology connected...there has to be some kind of line, straight, triangular, spiral, wiggly...I can't figure out any way to actually, literally connect the dots without a line to show the connection between the two. Can you?

Maybe seamless integration really can only occur through explicitly drawn connections.

Now We're Talking...Let them Bring It In!

Almost three years ago I wrote a blog entry about a crazy idea...allowing students to bring in their technology and provide for those who can't afford it. Today at our Montgomery County Technology Directors meeting we had a discussion about it and how it is inevitable. So, we are (finally) starting the discussion! : )

Not that this "solution" won't be without it's challenges, but what good positive change ever is?!

Cooking Robots?

So if there are cooking robots now, what comes next?

I found the most interesting part of this NY Times article the ethnographic study that the woman did to understand what kind of behavior a hot dog vendor would exhibit and then worked to program the robot to replicate it. I wonder if hot dog vendors in Pittsburgh act the same as those in Philadelphia.

Makes me a little confident that it will be a long, long time before robots can even assist teachers! :)

With or Without Technology

I am teaching an online course for UMass Boston on Computers, Technology and Education. It is part of a strand of courses teachers can take to receive a certificate in Instructional Technology for Educators.

For their first blog post, I gave them the following prompt: What is the role of technology in education: the role of the teacher and the role of the student - in relation to this topic.

Today at our local Technology Directors meeting we discussed the challenges of taking "technology" out of the equation for professional development, in other words, embed it, integrate it. It is very hard to do, many people, curriculum folks, districts are just not ready to work towards true integration of technology as a tool.

As an experiment, I took their blog posts and imported them into wordle. With and without the word technology. Here is what came up. What do you conclude from this?

Sit in a Different Chair Today

So the new Apple iPad was introduced today and there were a lot of disappointed folks out there twittering and blogging and writing crude comments. As I discussed it's possibilities with some of my colleagues, they too were disappointed. Everyone was looking for the computing Utopia and they feel like Apple fell short. I would say, as a few other writers have, David Pogue and Dan Katt, to name two that I have seen, that Apple is again thinking outside of the box.

I heard, no USB drive. I said, hmmmm, been using my iDisk and cloud computing since 2002, what do I need USB for? I heard, no camera. I said, hmmmm, I have two cell phones both with cameras that can upload to the web, which I could then use to download to iPad. I heard it can't print. I said, hmmmmm, the world is going green, costs for printing is up and encouragement for LESS printing is also up. I don't print my google docs, do you?

Hmmmmm....I challenge all of you naysayers to tell me, really, what can't it do that you want it to do? I bet you don't even know because you haven't even tried it yet. For those of you around long enough to remember when Apple came out with a computer without a floppy drive, think about that and then think about the iPad.

I am not saying it is a perfect device. When I get one I will probably see some challenges, however, I will either figure out a different way to do what I need to, or I won't do it. I would encourage you to sit in a different chair today, maybe you'll get a different view. And maybe, someday, you'll be reading my blog on your iPad! : )

Discussion Starter...

Wow, I just learned about this tool from our CFF Coach - Wolfram/Alpha! This type of tool has the power to show educators just what Web 2.0 is all about.

It should also challenge them to think about what they are teaching their students. Here is a link to the screen cast that explains the website possibilities.

A computational knowledge engine....Think about the "what if" questions it can answer for students. I challenge you to discuss with one other person the potential that this type of tool has to change teaching and learning in the 21st century.

On Changing the Discussion

I named my blog for a reason...changing the discussion...I have believed for years that we need to be talking about teaching and learning and NOT technology. Today in my school district, we had our CFF Flip the Switch event. It was amazing, the students showcased great projects, big and small, the teachers shared the successes and challenges of the CFF program, the board members listened and watched and thought and the discussion changed....

The teachers actually said, with no prompting, no scripting, it's not about the technology, it's about our teaching. At the end of the panel I had to speak up and honestly got very choked up as I shared my thanks with them. Thanks for taking the risk and for showing me that if you have a vision, if you work hard with the right team and leaders to support that vision, if you put technology in their hands, and give them a tech support staff and sustain a coach, the discussion will change...

I came to education to make a difference, to be an advocate for technology for teachers, sometimes it is hard to see from where I sit now that I am making a difference, today our CFF teachers and CFF coach showed me that I do. Sometimes we have to stop what we are doing and take time to celebrate all that we have done. We all make a difference. I would not have been able to move things forward so quickly here without the support of my upper administration and my tech team. They say it takes a villiage to raise a child. I also think it takes a "village" to change the discussion. Thank to all of my mentors, colleagues, friends, supporters, challengers, my "village" for being a part of changing the discussion.

ps - Check out our MS on NBC 10!

New Technology Learnings 09-10

This is a wordle of what my Technology Learning Commitment Team celebrated today at our final meeting for the year. What Good stuff!

Change is messy. Many in my district were resistant to the change in technology this year. Mac to PC, stationary to Mobile, static to dynamic, flood gates were opened, some felt naked. We had a number of struggles this year but our teachers and technology support specialists all celebrated today. We discussed three pieces of the Horizon Report 2009 K-12 Edition

1. Technologies to Watch
2. Key Trends
3. Critical Challenges

We shared our ideas about the following questions on our TinyChat;

• What practices should we be changing (if any) in our classrooms?
• How important is assessment in these classrooms?
• How do we make progress in the short term?
• How do we make progress in the long term?

(Thank you Kyle Peck who posed similar questions at the 1-1 Conference at PSU this year.)

We did not come up with any perfect answers but we did find that we had learned a lot and we are excited about more technology, changing teaching practices AND not forgetting to balance technology use with teaching to read, write and play in the mud!

School on a Bus

A colleague of mine sent me this article from the NYT over the weekend that talks about buses in Arkansas being wired for Internet so students can learn on their long commutes to school.

Harnessing idle time for learning, what a great idea!

Remember Who Your Followers Are

Last week Jodan Burnham visited our school. I tweeted about it...a reporter who follows me saw my tweet and then wrote a story about it. A few days earlier, a colleague of mine was referenced in a Tweet, only it wasn't really about him, it was a mis-tweet and I am wondering who looked him up and got as confused as I did about what he had said that promoted the tweet.

Interesting times we live in, just a reminder to think before you tweet and make sure you know who may be reading.

Great 2.0 Ideas

Space for me to explore my ideas and experiences of ICT in my classroom.

http://tbarrett.edublogs.org/2009/02/25/using-instant-messaging-to-engage-children-with-reading-comprehension/
~Thank you Tom Barrett!

Ideas to Inspire
http://www.ideastoinspire.co.uk/
~Thank you Jigar Patel!

KOCE's Film on the Fly!
Film on the Fly! is for people who love to make movies on mobile phones.
http://filmonthefly.ning.com/
~Thank you Kathy Schrock!

Some interesting facts about Twitter in light of our GMA twitter today! Check out Dave Ramage's post regarding the Twitter mis-tweet that occurred.

Meaningful Use of Technology for 5 yr Olds

Just...wow, great post Dr. Fritz!!

http://mokmfritzblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/meaningful-use-of-technology-in.html

A must read for technology leaders, principals, curriculum directors and the like!!

TinyChat

We are getting there...

Years ago in a former district I remember planning a staff development day where we had identified 6 categories or tracks to plan for; Math, English, Science, Social Studies, Technology and Special Areas. As we worked toward an agenda with lead teachers of those subject areas and the Curriculum Director, in my role of Instructional Technology Coordinator, I also attended these planning meetings. This particular time I sat quietly listening to all that they were saying. After about 45 minutes of listening to ideas they asked what my thoughts were (now this is going back at least 6 years ~ 2002) and I said "I'm sad to see that we have technology as it's own strand instead of embedded into each of the other strands."

The room was quiet and no one knew quiet what to say...they couldn't really conceptualize that even though our teachers had laptops for 4 years already...

Fast forward to today...I am following "spillarke's" comments on twitter about the keynote that she is listening to by Marc Prensky at the National Conference of English Teachers (NCTE)...when you google NCTE...you can find their ning...http://ncte2008.ning.com/ with the heading of...NCTE Annual Conference, Because Shift Happens, Teaching in the 21st Century. We are getting there!

Building Virtual Global Communities

US-China Virtual Symposium Presentation

Online Enhanced Podcast
http://blog.netbriefings.com/virtualconference/2008/11/07/dr-kristen-kozloski-dr-megan-fritz/

Archived Panel Discussion - Best Practices in Technology Use
http://144.118.68.54:8888/moodle20/mod/resource/view.php?id=34
(if prompted first, login as guest)
I was 1 of 5 panelists of the evening.

Emerging Interactive Media and Neomillenial Learning Styles

Chris Dede
Harvard University
www.gsd.harvard.edu/~dedech/

Authentic Learning and Scaffolding

This past week in my Drexel class we had many challenges with the podcast upload. Hopefully we will all get the kinks worked out and shortly you will be able to see my students' podcasts on iTunes U!! : ) For them, this process was a very good example of authentic learning and also of some additional scaffolding that we should have provided to make the upload process a bit easier.

As teachers, and technologists, when we design a learning environment that incorporates technology, we must think about our student audience and where they are with their level of technology use. It is clear to me today that my students needed a bit more scaffolding as to what a VPN was and WHY on earth they would connect to it and HOW from that connection they could upload their files. That information (along with some not so complete directions) was not provided so the students had some challenges in understanding the context for what they were doing and then completing the task.

We will discuss this in our live classroom. They all persevered very well in the process and are finding success in uploading their podcasts. They will be discussing the science of learning and how this can be applied to instructional desgin. Podcasts certainly worth checking out under Drexel's iTunes University!

Self-Engagement at 8 Years Old

This morning I watched my 8 year old son show his morning sitter how to enter the world of Alice. Being a retired teacher, she was amazed at what he was doing.

He and I had dabbled in this 3D programming world when he had said to me, mom, I want to create a web-page...like Webkins....you can teach me that, right? Well, how could I say no?

I downloaded Alice and went through the tutorial on my own and then showed it to him. He learned how to load a world and start to manipulate objects in that world.

We need to find ways to harness this self-engagement for the 21st Century Learner so that all of our learners get this excited about learning on their own.

Web 3.0

Some new blogs I'll be following...

http://web3next.blogspot.com/

Tim Burners-Lee

Learning about these projects...

The Tabulator project is a generic Semantic Web data browser. Using outline and table modes, it provides a way to browse RDF data.

Policy Aware Web, funded by NSF, a collaboration between MINDSWAP and DIG to work toward creating discretionary, rules-based access for the World Wide Web.

The Transparent Accountable Datamining Initiative (TAMI) Project, funded by NSF, is creating technical, legal, and policy foundations for transparency and accountability in large-scale aggregation and inferencing across heterogeneous information systems.

http://dig.csail.mit.edu/

I also added some other Web 3.0 resources to my wiki.