Interesting Video - Pay Attention

After our discussions on Prensky's views regarding digital natives vs. digital immigrants, this was very interesting.

"I" guess "I" am finally a member of the cult...

I finally did it. (Pardon the pun). I received some Best Buy gift cards for my birthday, and I picked up an Ipod. I thought I would never do it, as I am perfectly content listening to my CDs in my car, Internet radio early in the classroom, and even singing myself (I am not very good, but I entertain myself without causing too much distress on others). I struggled with what I could do with the gift cards. I already have a good digital camera, a digital camcorder, a fairly new laptop and desktop computer. In my classroom I have a good scanner as well. What more do I need? My wife asked if perhaps I wanted an Ipod, so yesterday I picked up a Shuffle.

Over the summer, I started riding a bicycle again. It was awesome, especially in the early hours of the morning. When I think back to the first truly portable audio component (the Walkman!), it felt like such a revolutionary item to have. It was relatively small and light compared to that boom box my buddy Scott used to wheel around. It made it possible to take your tunes with you, although more than one cassette (remember those???) made it quite cumbersome. Now, I can bring this teeny tiny thing with me and bring 1GB of music with me. I am not one of those people that need 300GB of music files. I don't have that kind of time or interest.

I loaded up some songs without going to that insane ITunes Music store. My musical tastes run the gamut. I have Dr. Dre and Eminem sharing drive space with the three tenors. KRS-1 from old school BDP and LL Cool J sit contently alongside Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and Louis Prima. Pink Floyd and Led Zepplin can jam next to Public Enemy and Rage Against the Machine. My musical motto is ABC. "Anything But Country" - my apologies go out to country music fans.. I just don't get it.

Anyway...
I chose the picture above because this is the world of our children. Everything is accessible. This includes music, but also any information that is needed. It is also a place of personal space. Ipods and bluetooth headpieces make it easy to close out the rest of the world, and that is a double edged sword. As I type here I am listening to my IPOD, but I don't think I oculd hear a knock at the door (I like good music kind of loud). On one hand, is this helping to create a society that is so self-absorbed that they don't care to or understand how to interact with others? On the other hand, is this helping to create a society that can more easily multitask and thus make the insanity of this on demand need it now world more manageable?

Is this how our students should be learning? This is how many of them are spending a good of time. Think about your answer for a bit.. a good JayZ song just came on, and my bike is calling my name (as if I can hear anything now).

Pioneering Into the Unknown with Exciting but Useless Tools

I consider myself a digital pioneer, but let me explain. The teachers that showed me how to use the Commodore Pet in elementary school were digital pioneers. The teachers that taught me how to use Bank Street Writer on the Commodore 64 to replace the typewriters that prior classes had used were digital pioneers. The teachers in high school that showed us how to use the Apple IIc were digital pioneers, and the college professors that showed us how to use the Internet to perform effective research were digital pioneers.

Pioneers are termed as "a person who is among those who first enter or settle a region, thus opening it for occupation and development by others." While the Internet is certainly not new nor is technology as a whole, the ever-changing digital landscape would support the fact that as each of us enter "technology" in a different place, time, capacity and goal. It is for that reason that I consider us each pioneers to some level.

So here I am doing my best techno-Lewis and Clark exploration of applications that I can use. I am very comfortable with blogging, and I very much enjoy using it with my students. This year has afforded me the opportunity to use our class wiki in a very constructive way. Last year I tried to find a spot in my curriculum for it, but now we are using it to build a true research based knowledge base. I will be exploring digital video again, but who knows where this new class will lead me. I am thinking that we will be doing some very cool things based on their interest and enthusiasm.

What does the title mean? Well, I have been exploring applications and gadgets since the beginning of the school year, and they usually fall into one of the following categories:

1) Useless and boring
2) Engaging but cumbersome
3) Engaging but disconnected from curriculum
4) Engaging and connected to curriculum

In my quest to find 4s, I have found a few 1s, a good amount of 2s, but a whole lot of 3s. Just try a Google search for something like "technology in education" or "web 2.0 in education" and you will soon be overwhelmed with a ton of leads. It can be disenchanting when you find something that makes you think "Wow! My kids would love to see this!" but when it comes down to it, it might not be developmentally or skill level appropriate for them to actually have them learn, apply and create from, so you end up with teacher created entertainment materials that might not even be connected to curriculum. That is not (in my opinion) appropriate or effective use of technology. That's why I don't like to see educators using technology just for the sake of using technology. Add in the constraints of the school year time limit, the reality of state assessments, district mandates and student learning styles, and you can imagine how immense the challenge is.

I don't know where the answer lies, and I am not sure how to really find examples of #4 without searching on and on. It's too bad that we couldn't find a digital Sacajewah to show us the way.

TMI in the Technology Age?

This past summer, I took a grad course that explored art and architecture through technology. In all honesty, it was one of the best courses that I have ever taken. One of the selected readings was "Information Anxiety In the Internet Age" by an American architect and graphic designer named Richard Saul Wurman. One quote from Wurman really stood out to me. He writes:

We are like a thirsty person who has been condemned to use a thimble to drink from a fire hydrant. The sheer volume of available information and the manner in which it is often delivered render much of it useless to us.”

What a great picture that paints with a connection to the digital world. It seems that there is always so much information out there for us to access that demand just cannot ever exceed supply. Even though information requests are constant and we can agree that users are using more and more of the information, the digital landscape is growing at such an exponential level it is unreal. Also keep in mind that much of the information is bogus and unreliable, but it is there just the same.

Think the on-demand classroom that can go to youtube and view Obama's acceptance speech from the DNC just as easily as it can watch a schoolhouse rock video without looking for the tape or DVD. Think of the conferencing classroom that can Skype! with any connected classroom at any corner of the globe. Think of the movie star classroom that can create movies of their own and publish them for the world to see.
The Internet has brought the world to us, and us to the world.

Now let's consider the other side. All of this information has to go somewhere for us to use it. For grad school, I have been asked to dig deeper on some Web2.0 tools. I blog, my kids blog, we have a wiki, we have avatars, we have made movies, we have communicated through Skype! - although in a few days I will have a brand new class and have to start from scratch again!

If you are anything like me, you have more than one email address. I have 3 that I use often, 1 that I use sometimes and 1 that I rarely use. I have my blog, my class blog, blogs of educators that I respect and admire, my class wiki, my youtube and teachertube accounts, my rss feeds, my google docs, my Internet forums for various groups, not to mention the vast craziness that to me is the unorganized Internet.
I started to check through my list of Web2.0 sites and resources, and I found a few cool ones that I never knew about. One is EasyBib. I like it because it helps students to create bibliography entries, but they must input all of the information. So while they think that it is doing the work for them (as in formatting), they are still finding and noting the information. I found countless other tools. Some were good and some were not. Some were more appropriate for middle, high school and even college students. Some were questionable, while some looked to be trustworthy. Now I spent about 20 minutes looking at stuff, and no doubt I have only seen the tip of the proverbial iceberg, so I can only imagine the time I would have to invest to see 'a lot of it'. Add to the that the dynamic nature of the Internet, and the idea is very overwhelming!
Now if it is overwhelming to me (and I consider myself to be tech-savvy) how will an elementary school student feel? How will a high school student feel? It's like a funnel with a 500 mile input opening reducing to a 1 inch output. TMI!

I'd love to hear what the blogopshere thinks! Please feel free to comment!

Have a happy and safe Memorial Day holiday! 2 more days.. ugh..

The Culture of Going Green

I'd like to introduce you to my newest set of wheels. I have been riding this over the summer both for leisure and to run errands. I am hardly what anyone would call an "environmental activist" by any means. While I try to responsibly use our natural resources, I do not walk around preaching the end of fossil fuels and harnessing the power of the sun and wind. My desire to pedal for myself is more about personal wellness and fun. A little of it has to do with saving some gas money in the process I suppose. It is amazing how "Going Green" is not only responsible in our culture; it is also fashionable and cool.

I sometimes look over at the person in their Ultra Low Emission Vehicle or Hybrid and wonder if my V8 car that might see 3000 miles per year (and the other sees about 150 miles per year) will actually have lower annual emissions than the "green car" that sees 20K miles per year. That would be interesting wouldn't it?

Part of Social Studies is to teach our students to become responsible adults and citizens of the earth. I find it humorous (and sad) that many of the people that wrote education standards and today's laws are members of the same generation that created most of the environmental problems to begin with, so we really only have one choice. Teach the future to be more responsible. We aren't saving the Earth; it isn't going anywhere. We are saving ourselves and our future.

Aside from Earth Day, when else do we speak about personal responsibility to the Earth? I am in the early stages of designing a new Science unit on natural resources. In fourth grade, we do speak about them in the sense of renewable and nonrenewable, conservation and the like, but I'd like to do more with it. I'd like to speak about it from a Scientific point of view for my students to really understand it, but I would also like to go into the Social Studies perspective to have them really take on the responsibility and understand the value to living things.

So when the cold moves in later in the year and my bike rests waiting for warmer temperatures, it will be my mind racing to build an experience for my students that is my own contribution to a better tomorrow (I guess... and I know it sounds corny)

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

If you have ever seen the Staples commercial with the parents celebrating their children's return to school, you know the significance of this song. My very own dear mother used to tell everyone that she was "hanging out the flag." I can't recall whether or not she actually did it, but for some reason I do recall Old Glory fanning in the breeze on one or two September mornings.

As I prepare myself mentally and curriculumly (can I make that a word?) for the arrival of 26 new faces eager to explore, I have to wonder how things will go? Will blogging be a success like it was last year? Will I be able to explore multimedia with this class like last year? Will we Skype! with another class? I bought a brand new web cam for us! Dare I ask if I can go farther technology-wise with them? I don't know, but I certainly hope so.

I have a little less than 2 weeks left to go, and even though I am sad to see the summer end, I did enjoy it. I spent a great deal of time with my family and working on (and finishing up!) some projects. I read some good books, and I bought a bicycle that I have been riding early in the morning while the air is crisp.

Having said that, the first day of school holds so much excitement and hope for me. My mom tells me that I was the same way as a student; barely getting any sleep the night before and waking up way early to start what might be a wonderful day. I'm not saying that I won't feel like I need another vacation in the middle of September, but I am saying that this year can be anything. We can explore anything and create anything that is possible as a class, and I look forward to the possibilities as much as the realities.

Now where did I put that flag......

Second Life Part Duex

So here I am after spending another few weeks with Second Life. I have attended a few seminars. I have met other educators. I have put together an inventory of cool clothes, cars, boats, airplanes. I can dance many different ways. I have created a persona on there that does things that I can only dream of doing, but I still have not found any way to use it with my students.

No disrespect to anyone using it, as there are many that appear to be doing so, but I can't see anything that I can directly do with my kids. There are people that are very into SL, but in my experience it has been more of a sim game than anything that will change my teaching.

Oh well... I gave it a shot. I will continue to 'play' with SL, but at this point I don't think that it will become anything more than playing.