International Education News

[live blogged — please forgive misspelling and awkward writing]

I’m now in an EduBloggerCon session trying to identify the elements of the pitch that people can use to promote social networks. Vickie Davis says that it needs to be simply, not a laundry list. David Jakes suggests that we look to the current political campaigns, what John Edwards and Obama is doing. Chris Lehmann is against preparing the 21st century workforce. He says we should be preparing the 21st century citizen.

The conversations seems to keep coming back to Internet safety. I agree, but it’s not the focus. It’s just part of the issue. It’s so much bigger than that. Chris to chiming in on this, that, “You put it out there, you educate the parents, and you midigate. Then you can get to the next piece of it.”

Doug Johnson has submitted the concept of intellectual freedom as part of the story that we tell. Technologists are seen more as the censors. This is an interesting concept. But what Chris describes as “gatcha moments” where anyprincipal at any time is at risk of getting fired. He says that “if you aren’t willing to get fired, then you aren’t doing your job.”

I’ve asked, “how do we make kids advocates?” Doug Johnson describes how his district has added students to their policy committees and that kids have actually saved them on several occassions with new ideas and perspectives.

Mark Wagner says that perhaps we are getting past fear as to motivator. I think that “opportunity” is the none fear leverage point. Steve Hargadon has just told us to break. I hope that Will has been creating three bullets.

Technorati Tags: warlick technology education necc07 edubloggercon07 ebc07blogs

I am flabbergasted at the transformation.  It’s just 7:00 and I walk into a conference center that was still in shambles last night when Jakes and I were here.  It’s a conference now, full of color, and full of people.  I’ve already run into Kevin Jarret, a Second Life bud, as well as Victoria (SL Name).  Diane Midness of iEarn was just behind me in the registration line along with a young woman she introduced me to (already forget her name) who is in charge of a program there that is turning students around the world into journalists.  Too cool.

And everyone seems so alert.  I’m in trouble!

More to come!

Technorati Tags: warlick education technology edubloggercon07 necc07

Dave Jakes and I found this huge window at the conference center last night that opens onto an exhibitor’s hall, whose size is just barely hinted by this picture.

Will Richardson referred to a recent post by Lawrence Lessig yesterday (Bigger Challenges), where the Standford law professor has announced a shift in his academic and activist work, away from the persistent mis-match between our copyright laws and the information environment that they address, to a broader curruption of how things are done here (U.S. governments).  These are my words, my interpretation.  Please read Lessigs extended post, Required Reading: the next 10 years. 

This shift in focus/mission is something that would catch Richardson’s ever observant eye.  Not only does he confess that, “Lawrence Lessig is one of my heroes,” but this broadening focus is also something that Will has talked about in his writings and in his conversations with many of us.

Teachers and school leaders are a hard audience to reach.  We work an education system that is not only seated in an archaic past with enormous momentum to resist change.  But we are also operating within a political environment that seems to have its own reasons for hammering our schools, our administrators, our teachers, and our children down to a vision of teaching and learning that is shallow, rigid, dis-empowering, and oriented toward a past that seems to give us  comfort and security — but no hope.

I respect and support anyone who is ready to commit themselves to knocking some of the rust off of the engine of politics, freeing it up adapt, empower, and to continue the great experiment.  My focus will continue to be on school, classroom, and curriculum, because I believe that to affect change, we have to be able to describe an alternative to factory style education, one that is logical, adaptable, and compelling.  I read, hear, and see a lot of great ideas out there, and even bold new practices from courageous educators.  But I am not yet satisfied that we have that story.

I hope to learn some new technology here in Atlanta over the next several days.  I already have.  But even more important than that, I hope to (and challenge you to) look for that story, to expand and refine your vision of what teaching and learning really should look like and how it should behave in your home, a vision that fits today’s and tomorrow’s market place, that resonates with deeply held values, and a vision that we can describe and model.

We need to tell a story that dissolves education practices that distrust, insult, and punish teachers and learners — one that builds an education vision that empowers, respects, and celebrates meaningful learning experiences and the people who engage them.

2 Worth!

Technorati Tags: warlick education technology willrichardson lessig necc necc07 necc2007 edubloggercon07

If my first evening in Atlanta is any indication, this is going to be one humdinger of a conference.  I’d just landed in my room, and was trying to get organized and to figure out how to move photos from my new Canon SD1000 digital camera to my computer when David Jakes called — just back from his afternoon health walk. 

“Dinner?”  “You bet!” 

After some Bison Chili, we took another walk, finding the conference center and walking the floors, eying the site of tomorrow’s EduBloggerCon.  What an amazing city.  It’s big and it’s modern, and there’s style — at least by my judgment.

But I have to take a moments like these to reflect, to find an equilibrium.  I think of myself as a learner, as one who is learning to use this new information landscape to keep on learning and growing.  But it’s nothing compared to what I learn when I sit down with someone like David Jakes, who’s smart, who cares about what we are doing as educators, and who is fortunate to still be able to use what he’s learning and inventing with kids, and see the moving effects first hand.  I suspect that I learned more and was exposed to more new ideas this evening than in the past several weeks of web 2.0′ing.

Thanks, Dave!

Technorati Tags: warlick education technology davidjakes jakes necc necc07 edubloggercon07 edubloggercon

I slept last night, in the room that I grew up in, two blocks from the train tracks.  The 5:30 freight woke me up.  When I was young, it was the 5:00 rooster, one block away.

Last night, my parents and I pulled up old skits from The Smothers Brothers and Laugh-In, and even visited some of Bill Cosby’s early recorded monologues — “Ding!” — all thanks to YouTube.  In a few hours I’ll head out for my last leg to NECC.  I noticed on Hitchhikr that the first on-sight photos from NECC are now appearing, thanks to Tim Wilson (see right).  Check out his NECC PodCave.

I thought it would be a good opportunity to share some tips for foreigners who are flying in from far away places.  It’s a different world, down here, where we talk slow, think slow, eat slow and consider it a virtue.  So, to get the most out of your conference experience, follow these very simple tips.

• If you want to employ a euphemism, find a way to include a tic and a hound dog — or lots of tics and a hound dog.

• If your last name is Sherman, find a way to hide it on your name tag with conference swag.  If that doesn’t work, learn to say, “..but my people are the Birmingham Shermans,” and have a white handkerchief ready.  If your first name is Sherman, affect a foreign accent and start with Nepal.
• Order the grits but don’t eat them.  Order Mint Juleps and drink them all.  Bein’ Atlanta, the bar tender may not actually know how to make a Mint Julep.  It’s:
  
  

  2 cups granulated sugar
  
  2 cups water (branch water is ideal)
  
  Fresh Mint
  
  Crushed Ice
  
  Kentucky Bourbon (2 ounces per serving)

• If you see an older gentleman wearing a seersucker suit, remove your hat.  If you don’t have a hat, then lower your self to one knee.  If you don’t know what a seersucker suit is, then have that handkerchief ready.
• It’s OK not to like CNN, but don’t order a Pepsi.
• Be ready to cite your lineage to before the Civil War (or War of Northern Aggression).  If you are from the North, find a way to work a Lee in there — or a Percy or a Beauregard.
• Finally, and most importantly.  Don’t even ask for unsweatened tea.  In Georgia, you want your spoon to stand up in the glass.

Have a fantastic conference and see you there. …and have that white handkerchief out anyway to dab the moisture on your forhead.  We don’t sweet here.  We sheen!

Technorati Tags: warlick technology education necc07 necc2007

I saw this story in USAToday, while in Atlanta, but wasn’t able to pull it up until I found the original source, (First-Ever State-By-State Report on Internet Connection Speed Shows U.S. Far Behind Other Industrialized Nations) just a minute ago — a report from the Communications workers of America.  It’s important to note that the union has a vested interest in working to increase Internet speeds in the U.S. 

The first paragraph of the report reads…

Washington, DC.-Results released today (Jun 25, 2007) of the first-ever state-by-state report on Internet connection speed reveal that the United States is falling far behind other industrialized nations. The report, based on aggregated data from nearly 80,000 users, shows that the median real-time download speed in the U.S. is a mere 1.9 megabits per second (mbps). The best available estimates show average download speeds in Japan of 61 mbps, in South Korea of 45 mbps, in France of 17 mbps and in Canada of 7 mbps.

I extracted the data from the PDF file, and imported it into an MS Excel spreadheet.  You can get it here.  The top 10 states (fasted) for download speeds are:

1. Rhode Island
2. Kansas
3. New Jersey
4. New York
5. Massachusetts
6. Louisiana
7. Georgia
8. New Hampshire
9. Delaware
10. Maryland

The bottom ten (slowest) are:

41. Arkansas
42. Utah
43. Idaho
44. Montana
45. North Dakota
46. Iowa
47. Wyoming
48. West Virginia
49. South Dakota
50. Alaska

---

“First-Ever State-By-State Report on Internet Connection Speed Shows U.S. Far Behind Other Industrialized Nations.” CWA. 25 Jun 2007. Communications Workshops of America. 30 Jun 2007 <http://www.cwa-union.org/news/page.jsp?itemID=28663094>.

Technorati Tags: warlick education technology bandwidth

I’m finally grounded again, sitting in my office, too early in the morning, with some nagging issues on my mind. ..and I wish that I could cause them to jell in my head so that I knew what I’m getting ready to write about. I guess I’m hoping that writing will cause it all to make sense.

TagsBlog PostsNECC0689NECC200616NECC07748NECC2007987StringsNECC 200664NECC 20073,149

The first thing I did, when I got up (afterchecking my Twitter listing), was to run a quick search on Technorati for the number of blog posts that mention NECC 2007 and compare them to mentions of NECC 2006. I searched for occurrances of necc06, necc2006, necc07, and necc2007. These, I reason, would pull up blog entries that are likely tagged, assuming that these are more sophisticated bloggers. As a second thought, I also search for blogs that mention “NECC 2006″ and “NECC 2007″ to include bloggers who are not yet tagging their entries.

As you can see, the blogging activity increased pretty significantly this year.  I suspect that there are a variety of reasons.  More educators are blogging, and many more opportunities to blog were available to us in Atlanta.  It was certainly a conference that shined like no other, as it has already reached position 35 on Hitchhikr’s sorting of visited conference pages (the #1 position held by NECC 2006).

Just a picture that I took in Charleston.  Lots of energy.

But I think my itch started with Steve Dembo’s June 28 Twitter..

Ok, I need feedback on this one. If EduBloggerCon and the Bloggers Cafe was the best part of NECC… Do we (bloggers) need NECC to do it?

and I very glibly replied

…i think we need necc. i also think necc needs us.

I just watched Chris Walsh’s NECC live wrap-up with ron Cravey, Donella Evonluk, Anita McAnear, and Linda Whitacre.  It was mentioned that there were almost 20,000 educators in attendance in Atlanta.  They were teaching, learning, conversing, and taking oh so much home with them —

and compared to that, we (bloggers) are just a cult. 

I think that what we are doing is extraordinarily important.  We are drilling through barriers that insist on keeping things the same.  But the barriers persist.  Too many schools still can’t view blog pages, podcasts, or other social sites.  Most teachers have no time built into their work schedules to participate in these conversations.  Way too many children do not have access to the technology they need to become in any way acquainted with today’s information landscape.  The concepts of Web 2.0 remain couched in tech-speak that is either to esoteric for many to understand or it down-right turns people off.

I guess I’m just trying to force a reality check on myself, now that I’m back home in my office and planning for more work over the coming months.  This year I’ll have a number of opportunities to speak to education leaders, both administrative and political.  It’s a huge and humbling responsibility, and I wish, so much, that I could just bring them NECC, or at least its energy.

I know one thing.  The cult is growing, and it’s happening because of the energy, passion, and inventiveness of the educators who are driving it.  If that’s all it’s going to take, then we’re home free.

Technorati Tags: warlick education technology edubloggercon necc07 necc2007

Just home from NECC 2007 and a side trip to Columbia for an all-day workshop with technology and media educators, and administrators from Richland Two School District, and scanning through some of the buzz about this years mega conference — only to run across a very interesting conference put on by a small school in New Zealand, Flaxmere Kid’s Conference. It’s kids, teaching kids, about how they are using contemporary technologies to do their work.

Educating the Dragon » Blog Archive » Flaxmere Kid’s Conference:

Iron Gate and Peterhead came together to showcase what they have been doing with ICT over the past couple of months. We had groups of children demonstrating how Google SketchUp, Art Rage and PowerPoint worked, we had some working with a green screen and my kids showed off their Talk and Write work with Taradale Intermediate School.

Alas, I think we (NECCsters) may congratulate ourselves a little too much   More about that later!

Technorati Tags: warlick education technology nz flaxmere kidsconference

Surprisingly, I do not have access to free Wifi in Penn Station. I’m waiting for the 6:31 train to Manhasset, where I’ll be picked up and driven to this morning’s workshop on Podcasting. They also want some explanations and demonstrations of Web 2.0. I wonder if I’ll have an opportunity to demo Second Life. Am I addicted or what?

However, the more I think about it, the more I’m seeing possibilities. The more I think about the little bit of scripted I’ve learned to do, the more it is occurring to me, “That’s how they make that work.” Do you remember (those of you in your 50s) the hover disks on John Quest. I’d like to make one of those. I’d like to make one, and then challenge a bunch of kids to make a better one.

I had dinner last night with Gwen Solomon and her lovely husband Stan. Before we left, I showed her a few things on Second Life, and we gussied up her avatar. She looks awesome now, though we couldn’t do anything with her hair. I know that Linden Labs is in San Francisco, but I can’t figure out whether Second Lifers got their hair style sense from New York City, or if it was the other way around.

Enough of such ramblings. Just killing time waiting for the train, which should leave in fifteen minutes. So I’d better pack back up and find the gate.

 Another contribution for Dave Jakes and his ever growing Jakes World collection.

I’m sitting in a coffee shop called the Soy Luck Club, on Greenwich Avenue.  My brother did a quick search as I was taking the train from Newark Airport and found this place with free Wifi.  But as I drop down the Airport listing from my menu bar, I count 29 wifi stations being sniffed out by my MacBook — and only one of them is called Linksys.

For everyone I promised to see the next time I was in NY City, I’m so sorry.  Deadline on a writing project, which I’m getting ready to do right now — as I wonder if they would fix me a Chicken avocado dill sandwich without the cucumber.  Yum!

Tomorrow I’ll be teaching a podcasting workshop for a school on Long Island for a friend with Midlink Magazine.

More later!