Blogging Breeds Web Developing Skills

As my students are using classblogmeister (created by David Warlick), I am noticing an additional side benefit. No... this has nothing to do with a digital voice that transcends the classroom. No, it is not technology as a positive force of communication. This is something new and unexpected. My students are becoming web developers! While they might not be creating html and server side scripts, they are learning about how to change the look of text on the web and the purposes of doing so.


It all started earlier this year, when one of my students started playing with the "graphical style" text editor that David rolled out this year. Instead of simple text input for their entries, students are greeted with a familiar MS Word-ish interface with font faces, styles, weight, sizes, alignments etc. I remember seeing the first student use a different color. It became the talk of the class. Soon thereafter texts became larger, smaller and brighter and duller. Smileys invaded blogs, but it was used in the interest of personalization. I told my kids that as long as it was 'readable', meaning bright yellow was out, I was okay with it.


About a month ago, a girl in my class changed the text face color, but this time it was in a specific way and for a specific reason. She made the text white. Why, you might ask? She did this because white text with a white background means invisible text. She left a note to the reader to "Scroll over with your cursor slowely to see the hidden message below." Genius!


Soon, news of this new feature spread. Who's side would I be on the French and Indian War? Scroll over to see! Matching text color to background color! I do the same thing in hiding things on my SMARTboard, but here 9 and 10 year olds are doing the same with excitement! Is this cool or what? Yes, it is! It sure is!


And then? One of my kids the other day, in a blog letter to King George, wrote the following:





By putting something as simple as a "strikethrough", one of my students was able to voice his opinion on King George without even writing it! I was very excited to see this kind of thinking. It wouldn't be possible without technology. I often hear that 'words on a screen' lack emotion without the physical traits of the speaker's voice and actions (emoticons aside), so is this a good way to overcome this alleged shortcoming?
What's next??? I don't know! ;-)

What's the Story With Daniel Pink?

Last year we were asked to read "A Whole New Mind" by Daniel Pink. I am always skeptical when reading the latest educational theories and research, but this one looked promising. To be honest, I was barely able to put it down and I read it, or rather digested it, in only a few short readings. Wow! It surely touched a nerve with me. In my previous life in the business world, I felt much like a hamster on a wheel. Sure I was "moving" but was I making progress? I was a marketing analyst, a technical support specialist and a database administrator. My last effort to remain in the corporate world was my position as a web developments specialist and team manager. I was able to work on projects and infuse a certain amount of creativity within the guidelines and constraints of brand identity and corporate direction.
When I finally decided to take the leap of faith into the world of education, I was immediately greeted by a world that not only allows independent creation and direction, but it fosters it. When I read Pink's book I did immediately think of my own personal voyage into creating my own classroom and myself as an educator.

One of the six essential senses that Pink speaks about is "Story". Story refers to the art of narrating information. Instead of merely retelling facts in a mindless list, using them in a story offers a much greater impact. He speaks of how commercial advertising has embraced this as a strategy for selling products to consumers. Technology is a natural for this sense, as it offers students a means of telling a story to get facts or information across to their audience. Since their audience can be the entire world for the sake of argument, the tools need to be powerful and outreaching, but given the user they cannot be overwhelming, cumbersome or overcomplicated.

Digital storytelling, blogs, and video logs are just a few of the tools that are at our fingertips. Twenty or even ten years ago, to make a movie and make it available to the whole world took a great deal of technical knowledge, high level hardware and a network of people "in the business". Of course, let's not forget the bank account that usually accompanies those with the last names of Spielberg, Lucas, Tarantino and the like.

This evening, I decided to revisit Daniel Pink's own site (http://www.danpink.com/), and I found a most interesting video. It was created by Tomas Nilson, and he used infographics to tell the story of Little Red Riding Hood. It is so dry and riddled with facts. It lacks story, but it does paint a very interesting picture of how important story can be. Imagine how difficult it would be to understand what was happening if you didn't already know the story. It is quite entertaining though.

Is that not a huge example of the importance of story? As an educator, I strive to use story to create meaning in my classroom. In addition to simply reading about events in history, we sometimes act them out. We view movies based on history with characters that tell the story. We create silly stories to help students to memorize concepts in math. Of course, literature allows us to use story all of the time.

On the other hand, students can be creators themselves and use stories to demonstrate competency. On my most recent social networking history site, my students are creating blog entries as if they were that historical person using information gathered from research and their own creativity. They are writing autobiographies from the first person point of view. Instead of regurgitating facts and dates, they create meaning and connect themselves to the lives and experiences of that person.

What a journey this has all been, but that's a whole other story...

When Social Networking Becomes Social Studies...

In a moment of pure insanity, I decided to tackle a new project with my students this year. I found in "Instructor" magazine the idea of starting a social network for students using people that would be studied in history. How cool would it be to have Thomas Jefferson "befriend" John Hancock, post pictures of himself and some biographical info, just like Myspace and Facebook? So, with the idea, some motivation and a whole lot of optimism, I decided to embark on "MyHistorySpace".

My class studies the Golden Age of Exploration and the people that saught fame and fortune to find the new world. People like Christopher Columbus, Ponce DeLeon, and Ferdinand Magellan might have a lot to say if given the opportunity to be part of a social network.

My library media specialist provided the students with a myriad of web sites that they could start out with. We spoke about the suffixes at the end of web sites and what they mean (.com, .net, .gov, .edu, etc.). We spoke about how those suffixes have an impact on whether or not you should 'trust' the information that you find. It went very well, and we knew that we were ready to move on.

I started with our class wiki. It became a data warehouse or a knowledge base of sorts. Using questions that asked for various biographical information, students scoured the web. They saved images that they found on a network drive. Things were moving along, but what next?

I had played with animated avatars at www.gizmoz.com before. They were quick and relatively easy... so I had my kids write "status quote" type sentences with authentic information about their explorer. They then animated a head shot picture and recorded their voices saying their quote. Of course, I had them speak (or attempt to speak) in the accent of the country that the explorer was born in.

After searching and researching, I decided to use a ning. That's where we are now. Today I formally introduced "Social Networking", the Ning and how to use it. Today, they embedded their avatars, uploaded profile pictures (of their explorer, not themselves), and they have started to write their blog entries. This class is amazing. They take it and run, and their 'tech-savviness' is wonderful. They have managed to become bloggers, wiki collaborators, multimedia producers, social networker and digital researchers. I am so proud of them! Pity the school year is coming to a close very soon.

Is this the end of the traditional biography report? I doubt it, but perhaps it is "natural progression." I'll let you know how the rest of the project goes! Feel free to check us out at http://myhistoryspace.ning.com

Earning Your Digital Citizenship

I remember getting into fights on the playground as a kid. I remember my parents sitting me down and explaining how what I did was wrong, and then they told of stories from their youth when they had experienced the same types of situations. These discussions could be used for many challenges that have faced children of many generations. I bet even the kids of colonial America were caught cheating on tests or hiding their report cards.

The challenges that face students of today are similar in concept but radically different in the manner and form in which they manifest themselves.

The video by Dan Topscott "Grown Up Digital - The Net Generation is Changing YOUR World" is very interesting and worth the minute forty eight. He begins by essentially berating the digital generation. He tells them that they are lazy, lack motivation or interest in the world around them, that their only concern is of themselves, they spend too much time in front of their technologies, yadda yadda yadda. Once the viewer is fully irritated by his words, he breaks the news that all he has said is, in reality, unsubstantiated. He also says that this new generation is the smartest generation and possesses the capability for real change.

In Passport to Digital Citizenship, Mike Ribbie takes this and runs with it. He speaks of nine elements of digital citizenship that are aligned with the new NETS student standards. While I do believe them to hold a good deal of merit, the question on my mind is "On whom should this responsibility lie?" Should this duty be placed in the hands of parents, educators or both? Is the digital realm solely the domain of technology educators or should technology as an extension to learning be part of every subject area's curriculum? In this crazy world that we live in, who has the time to invest in this most important part of socio-digital development? Perhaps we should ask "Who has more time (but surely not enough?)

Remember the bully on the playground when you were a kid? What about when you were cyber bullied as a kid? Remember when someone stole your identity? Oh my gosh.. remember the time that you accidently commited to buying something on the Internet without permission? What about the time you installed a virus on your mom's computer by clicking on the link in the browser? Chances are, aside from the first example, you didn't have any of those experiences as a child. How do you prevent your children from making those mistakes when you don't have your own life experiences to draw from? As cyber bullying becomes more and more prominent, bully prevention programs (as antiquated as they usually are) are being forced to come into the 21st century and address this. I had this happen in my classroom about 3 years ago, so I began an "Ethics of Technology" program with my students. If you type the word "dog" into the search field of a search engine such our beloved Google, you will be face to face with nearly 100 million results (as of this writing). How can you distinguish "good" sites from "bad" sites? This has less to do with any kind of digital divide and more to do with being an informed and intuitive web surfer and person.

I have long been opposed to 'filters' or 'blocking software' or whatever soft and fuzzy name makes you feel like you are helping kids (NetNanny comes to mind.. what the heck kind of fuzzy name is that?). It's like teaching someone to drive a car in a parking lot, giving them their license and then giving them directions to get home on the Long Island Expressway. Filters are nothing more than putting bumpers up in a bowling alley, but they don't teach the student how to filter and censor for themselves. When they get home, odds are they won't have those filters. If they do, they won't be up for very long. We need informed Internet participants, as Web 2.0 has now transformed the Internet and its power. Once again... who is to teach it?

Who am I? I am Adam Dugger, and I am probably not what Marc Prensky would call a "Digital Native". To Mr. Prensky I most respectfully say that I disagree. While I did not have an Ipod or the Internet as part of my childhood (I remember the Internet coming about when I was finishing college!), I was a digitally immersed. Dare I say a "digital pioneer?" You see, I had a Commodore 64 in my bedroom. I did my programming in BASIC computer language, and I made my own games. I used my external modem to dial up into CompuServe and surfed text based "sites" if you can call them that. I did my word processing on a dot matrix printer that made so much noise I couldn't use it too late because it would wake my family up. I had cassettes and CDs. Although we couldn't burn CDs we did "dub" cassettes. Same thing? Nobody said that was wrong, but I suppose we had to buy the first copy...

I am able to navigate technology with relative ease. I would much rather 'play' with something and figure it out than be told how to do so. I like trying to make things better by "tinkering" and these are all extensions and evolutions of what I did as a child whether with Legos, bicycles, cars or computers. Having said that, rights and wrongs must be taught, learned and to some degree experienced.

I think that the ethics of technology should begin in the home. Parents must accept technology and the collaborative nature of the Internet as "here to stay" and treat it that way. Lack of information breeds fear and distrust. Just look at how "Internet security" is viewed on news shows. Tell someone that you are on a social networking site like MySpace or Facebook and immediately the glares come out. My own mother tells me that Facebook is bad news, and nothing I can do to explain to her the positive of social networking will help sway her.

Parents alone cannot handle the burden alone. We infuse technology into our lessons and explorations all of the time. We ask our students to grab hold of this resource and use it as a tool for their learning and expression. How can we as educators ignore the "right and wrong" part of that?

Morality has always been subjective, and it comes from your experiences as a child. Right and wrong are clearly defined with a wonderful little area in the middle we lovingly call "gray". If we are to share this digital environment, not as digital immigrants or digital natives, but as digital citizens, we must coexist with respect and keep the cyber landscape lush and green. The "not so good areas" must be allowed to stay, but students should be educated citizens that can quanitatively and qualititively make informed decision based on what they have learned.

The question is "from who?" I wish I had an answer... but this brings up even more questions for me.

Get a Charge Out My Flash Project!

Yeah.. I know.. horrible pun.. Then again I don't charge by the chuckle.. or should I..

Anyway.. part of my electrical circuits unit plan is to show my students how electricity passes through a circuit and lights up a bulb. I decided to use my flash project to show this step by step and point out the parts of the bulb that perform specific jobs.

So here it is.



This is the second incarnation of this project. The first was not as specific with words and vocabulary. I am thinking of redoing it again; this time adding an interactive switch to show how a switch works within the circuit. The teacher in me says that since the objective of the lesson would be to explain "why a light bulb lights and how", I should leave the switch concept for another (flash) lesson. Only time will tell.

My Next Vista Video

Drumroll please...

While I certainly won't be walking the red carpet and having my picture taken by relentless paparazzi, I have completed my video for Next Vista through Long Island University's T.E.A.M. Educational Technology program.

I chose to create mine to help students use Classblogmeister with their teachers and classes. I suppply documentation to my students, but a video just felt like natural progression and a better way to help them on their way to blogging.

The End of Social Studies Education?

A few weeks ago, I participated in a workshop discussion entitled "Digital Technology and the End of Social Studies Education." As a Social Studies buff (it is my favorite both as a student and as an educator), I was intrigued and somewhat worried. How could it be "the end?" Isn't the person that ignores history doomed to repeat it?

I was asked to start by looking at the following quote:

"Our beliefs about learners and tools come via Dewey and Vygotsky, and have been informed by the 'cognitive revolution' that in the last thirty years has given these ideas scientific weight:

~ Technologies as tools that amplify and extend fundamental human capacities to observe, understand and communicate about the world- tools that give us rich data, help us manipulate and think about it, and connect us with others around it in new and powerful ways." - Bill Tally (p. 308)

Where did this little bit of quoted text come from, do you ask? It comes from an article written in the Spring 2007 edition of Theory and Research in Social Education written by Bill Tally. Ordinarily, I find articles of this nature very interesting, but I have to be honest when I say that I was less than excited when viewing the pdf and seeing "Page 1 of 17". Yep.. I was all smiles thinking of how I would be able to digest this digital dilemma in one sitting. Boy, was I in for a surprise. The article was lengthy, but it was very thought provoking and I am glad that I read it. By the way... the "end" is not speaking of finality but of cause and purpose. Rest assured, we will still be teaching Social Studies.

In many ways, I agree with Tally. He wonders why technology has not infused new life and a deeper sense of being to Social Studies education. While there are some educators that have embraced it to (in Tally's words) slow down learning, Social Studies has not "come into its own" just yet.

Why is this? Hold on.. Let's discuss the "progressive tinkerer" that Tally speaks of. These are the people that modify and shape what technology designs will best compliment instruction and support the learning of students. Being a tinkerer myself, I am intrigued even more. I am a firm believer in tinkering with something to best understand it and to find faults and/or improvements.

So let's point the blame. It must be someone's fault. First in line were the teachers. Surely they were resistant to integrating technology for whatever reason. It is sad that this belief still exists today when so many educators are using technology as a resource and investing a great deal of time into them. Do other professions reinvent themselves as well?

After that notion was dispelled, the schools were next in line. Surely you have heard the old joke about Rip Van Winkle, who awoke after a great many years of sleep to find the world a very different place. When we walked around, he was so amazed to see all of the changes in society, but when he came to a school he immediately knew what it was. He recognized it as it was, and this drives home the belief that while our world has changed, our schools have not. Tally goes on to say that technology was quickly integrated into schools, albeit at a very light and refreshing superficial way. He says that the "tasks are ruled by format and as riddled with convention as the business letter. (311) If the task is so defined and the student's expected (required) tasks are so clearly layed out, the grade will be constructed by following them and not the content or what has been created.

Tully also seems to discredit "Webquests" which have become all the in educatopia. I don't particularly care for them, as they seem too "cookie-cutter" for me. I would rather give a task and allow the students to come up with the project or outcome with me as a guide instead of restrictor. The amount of time required for technology rich projects can be staggering. This can be unrealistic to assume that teachers will invest this time willingly without issue.

This really hits home. I consider my classroom to be technology rich, and I am proud that I am able to provide such a setting. Having said that, such projects are very overwhelming even for me, and I am a tinkering tech junkie. Why do I continue? I don't know.. either I am glutton for punishment or an idiot.. or maybe both.

Tally goes on to dispell the rumor that students have some inborn ability to pick up anything digitally. I totally agree that this is not true. While the media is more natural to use, the competencies that would be taught can still be challenging. The digital world is their world (and ours too btw), but how natural is learning in this new landscape?

Tally says (last quote I promise)...

Many children who are fluent at at ease with the 'Commercial Web' i.e., who fluidly find and browse their favorite popular media sites, play games, and communicate with friends, share photos etc., have difficulty when it comes to even basic uses of the 'informational' or 'academic web' - things like executing a competent search; reading and making sense of text and graphics; identifying the source of information; copying, saving and citing information, etc

Very interesting indeed.

Looking at Museum Box (http://museumbox.e2bn.org/), I really like it. It allows the students to go as deep as they want to. It also doesn't define what type of artifacts that can be used (good or bad depending on grade level). I just looked through a few student created boxes. There was one titled "The Treatment of the Jews by the Nazis." It used text from student research and images that they had found. I would like to see the teacher directions and/or task description that brought this Museum Box to fruition, as I am interested in perhaps using it in my own classroom. It's open ended nature does lend itself to "slowing down thinking" a good deal.

When I envision Social Studies in my classroom, it is more than just facts and dates. It is a series of stories in the lives of real people. We study their experiences so that we can perhaps apply them to our own. We celebrate their triumphs and learn from their errors. We objectively validate their choices and relive their journeys through their eyes and our minds. History never repeats, right?