International Education News

The meeting continues with something called the Fishbowl.  There are four tables in the middle of the room, with eight chiefs, sponsors, and partners discussing their reactions and insights about what’s been presented here.  The rules are interesting.  Once they have said two things, made two statements, then they have to leave their table, and anyone else in the room can come up and take their seat.

While the conversation continues, I want to mention some fun I had last evening.  I took a long walk through downtown Portland (saw Wadsworth-Longfellow’s home).  Along one road, a number of skaters were riding their skateboards down the hill.  I was impressed, and reminiscent of my own experiences.  Of course, back then (way back when) we built the skate boards ourselves.

I had my camera with me and it has a rapid shot feature.  So I took a range of photos of one rider, and then turned them into an animated gif this morning.  Click here or the image to the right to view it.

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This just got twittered out by John Pederson, of Pedersondesigns.

Welcome to ccLearn - ccLearn:ccLearn is a division of Creative Commons which is dedicated to realizing the full potential of the Internet to support open learning and open educational resources (OER). Our mission is to minimize barriers to sharing and reuse of educational materials - legal barriers, technical barriers, and social barriers.

I just realized that John included the same quote in his blog, so do click over there to take part in that conversation as well.

My take is that if the Textbook industry does not work really fast to reinvent itself in the image of a more participatory, reader directed, and people connecting information environment, then it’s going to happen without them.

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Yesterday was a good day, speaking to more than 300 first year teachers in Phoenix.  It was also one of those presentations where I kept thinking, “I wish I’d added this.  I wish I’d added that.”  As it was, I went over time with the ideas that I did include.  It was quite overwhelming to them.

I twittered about how only two of them were bloggers, no one knew about Web 2.0, only a handful knew what a wiki was, and no one had heard of RSS.  It really forces me to wonder if we’re stirring up a bunch of hype about “Web 2.0″ just to have something to be enthusiastic about.  It’s not a bad thing that these beginning teachers hadn’t heard of Web 2.0.  They’re certainly doing it.  Most of them IM, have MySpace or Facebook (etc.) sites.  They communicate online with individuals and groups, and they’ve used these conversations to teach and learn, though they probably haven’t thought of it that way.

One thing that did strike me was that almost none of them have traditional telephones.  To tell the truth, many don’t even own any furniture.  70% come from outside of Arizona.  But I suspect that with a mobile phone in their pockets, they won’t have much reason to get a land line.

They were very polite, and most of them have no idea what they are in for in the coming months.  But, and this I believe, those who stay will see a renaissance during their career.  The profession that they retire from will have almost nothing in common with that which they are beginning — and teaching will be the most exciting job on the planet.

Back to my question — I think that Web 2.0 is real, we need to be able to label it, and to talk about it, to deconstruct it, lay it out, and apply its parts.  It is changing how we use information, and this affects what and how our children learn.  It’s OK that these beginning teachers can’t do this — as long as doing it, taking part in this conversation, becomes part of teaching.

Maine teacher, Angela Roy, is taking some type of course on new technologies.  In her blog, which was evidently established for the class, she writes, “I would like to become familiar with (new) technology tools I can use in my classes to begin the process of implementing new technology tools into a course.“  She has read and written about Cool Cat Teacher (fellow southerner, Vicki Davis) and my blog, 2 Worth (and she cleverly figured out how to include the cents symbol).

In describing my blog, she writes…After reading some of the blogs and clicking around on the blog 2 Worth what I have come to realize is that these blogs not only have great information in them but they also have links to other great blogs with great information. (Blog writers) tend to be connected with other (blog writers) so I found myself reading blogs that (they) read - what a wealth of information!!!

Angela has captured so much of what blogging is about.  We blog to learn.  We blog to form and to become a part of online communities, social networks, from which we can learn buy sharing, adding, adapting, and building knowledge that helps us do our jobs in a rapidly changing world.

Great luck to Angela Roy!

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A screen shot that Scott took during the presentation.  The window to the left, with the arrow, is the slide show — via SlideShare.

It’s not every day that I get to do a presentation and stay home at the same time.  Scott Merrick contacted me a couple of weeks ago, describing a workshop he was planning for teachers in the Nashville area.  He asked if I would be available to Skype in to the workshop and talk a bit about Web 2.0 and its implications for literacy.  We tested our Skype connection in the morning, with no glitches, and then scheduled my presentation for 2:00 (east coast time). 

Of course, there were some glitches at 2:00, as I was not able to see my audience, via Scott’s camera, but my iSight worked well, and I’m getting better at presenting into a camera.  Use to terrify me — completely befuddle my mind. 

I re-worked one of my presentations, and uploaded it to SlideShare.  I then added a link to the online handouts blog posting for the session, that clicked out a small browser window, sized for the slides, so that each participant was able to follow along with the slides.

I also set up the Twitteresque chat page for the group, and this is what was interesting.  They participated in the chat, posing questions, making comments, saying, “Hi!” more than any group so far — and I wonder why that was.  Was it because I wasn’t there?  Was it that they didn’t feel the need of courtesy to keep eye contact with me?  Was it that they were all sitting with desktop computers in front of them?  Was it that they had command of the slide show?  I am curious!

After the presentation, I transferred the chat transcript over to a wiki for the group, and inserted a few comments of my own, responding to some of their questions.  All-in-all, it was an interesting experience that I am getting more accustomed to.  It isn’t like being there.  Nothing’s like being there.  But virtual presentations are working.  Who would have thought?

This is very cool.  I was just scanning through the transcript of one of the twitteresque chats that were happening during my sessions in Maine.  Someone, Amy, suggested a web site that offers tag clouds for major presidential speeches, mostly inaugural addresses. 

The URL is http://chir.ag/phernalia/preztags/.  The interface is not very intuitive.  There’s a bar above default speech, George Bush’s Jan 2007 State of the Union Address.  You’ll find a scroll tool at the far right of the bar.  Grab it and drag it back to the left to scan through other addresses, going back to “Foundation of Government,” Jan 15, 1776, by John Adams.

It’s kind of interesting to see references and prominence of education.  In the image to the right, Thomas Jefferson evidently made many references to education when he called for a Bill of Rights for the Constitution.

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I’m back on the grid now, more or less, sitting in the Maine maritime Academy in Castine, Maine — a beautiful little town next tome some beautiful water, dotted with beautiful sail boats, some made of fiberglass and some made of polished wood.

I checked in at registration around 3:00 and was immediately accosted by six — seemed like more — ed tech mentors asking about conferences that they should attend.  I listed just a few of my favorites and then just got them talking about what they looked for in a conference.  I don’t mean to imply that this was an unpleasant experience.  It’s just that after a day-long vacation with my wife, well I just wasn’t prepared

Then, one young woman asked (and I paraphrase quite poorly), “When you blog all this material, what’s left to teach?  What can you offer in person that’s better?   Again, I was still too addled by the drive up from bangor and an entirely disturbing book (fiction) on my ipod to give an adequate or even coherent answer.  I remember during my early days of blogging, that I was fairly guarded about what I would share, fearful of giving away the services that are, in part, my bread and butter. But that concern drifted away over the months — to where the revenue aspects of what I do no longer filter what I blog about.

Still, I suspect that the question was even deeper than that, and I think that it could raise some interesting discussion.  So what do you think?

“What does blogging replace?” 

“Does it replace anything that was already there?”

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Photo CitationStinson, Peter. “Blogging.” Tidewater Muse’s Photostream. 20 Jun 2007. 1 Aug 2007 .

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Original source here

Brenda and I are enjoying a one-day vacation near Bar Harbor, Maine.  It is beautiful here, especially in Acadia National Park.  We are even more anxious to find a way to spend some time in the Maritimes.

I’ll drop Brenda off at the Bangor Airport in the few hours, and then head back over to Castine for another gig — a curriculum conference with Maine teachers.  More about that later…

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It makes no difference — shade or out in the sun, it’s just plain hot in Raleigh today. I road my bike this morning, but no walk this afternoon!

NECC’s over.  But I suspect that I’ll have more to say as time goes on and I have a chance to review some of my notes and some of the stuff that I’ve pulled from the bottom of my computer bag. 

I was lucky enough to run into David Thornburg in the exhibitor’s hall on Tuesday afternoon, and he directed me to two pretty interesting products.  One was a portable computer called, one2oneMate.  It is an AlphaSmart style contraption that is actually a full computer running Linux and a pretty rich set of instructional and productivity applications.  The OS is tricked out for speed and memory management, so it is mostly not possible to install your own applications — which I think is a weakness.  But what’s there is better than anything else if seen for $399 (Volume discounts available).  If you can recommend some other inexpensive portable computers, please do.

Thornburg also pointed me to P3D, a virtual walk through of the human body.  It was very slick, when used with an interactive white board.  You can grab part of the body, expand, turn, and enter, exploring the visual aspects easily and interactively.  You can see some video demos by going to the web site, at http://www.p3d.com.br/.  Click your preferred language (the company is in Brazil), then products, then Biology 1, Biology 2, or Geography.  They are working on a Physics product.

One of the aspect of the product that I found intriguing was that there is no text utilized, enabling it to be used regardless of language and when appropriate, regardless of age.

At some point in the next few days, I’d like to write about about some of the trends that I saw in this years NECC Exhibit Hall.