Moodle :: Friends blog
Today's students do not have the patience to read though static math books or study pages and pages of class notes. They need interactive e-learning supports that reinforce what they have learned in class. Check out this you tube video. It really sums up students' attitude to education today. http://www.youtube.com/v/dGCJ46vyR9o&hl=en&fs=
Is this the biggest cultural change of our time?
Keywords: e-learning software, k-12, key stage 3-4, learning style., math
I believe that e-learning should be democratized for teachers. They should be able to customize e-learning modules for their students, if they so wish. Why? you ask, because it is crucial that e-learning modules integrate perfectly with class study in order for them to be effective. This makes it extremely important for teachers to be able to edit e-learning material that they have received from other teachers. For example, a teacher in the USA could edit a math assignment created by a teacher in China and so on. It is my aim to facilitate this by using certain open standards in Brain Power Math. Check out this new e-learning software for math. It's in beta and free to use in schools and universities.
Keywords: e-learning, math, rapid development., software
I am really excited at what math teachers will be able to achieve by using Brain Power Math. My favorite part is that any teacher can share and edit e-learning assignments with any other teacher(s) anywhere in the world. I think this has huge potential. I hope to develop this in the coming months. It's important that teachers can create and customize e-learning assignments for each class they teach and even for individual students if the teacher believes that it is necessary.
Brain Power Math has been available free from http://www.brainpowermath.com for the last 21 days. Overall, the beta is quite good with no major problems. However, we plan to upload an updated version in the next two weeks. Does anyone else believe that teacher created or customized e-learning content is infinitely better than prescribed content created by e-learning software companies?
Keywords: e-learning, math, rapid development tool
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/BudTheTeacher/~3/320216318/ The conversation I did last week with Teachers Teaching Teachers is now up as a podcast. Plenty of great information about some interesting summer professional development. You should listen. After some gentle nudges in the chat room, I’ll be talking more about CyberCamp at a NECC Unplugged session at 3:30pm on Tuesday in the NECC Blogger’s Cafe. I’ll make sure there’s a stream and will share the link when I know what it is.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/BudTheTeacher/~3/319760790/ Good morning from TIE. This morning, I’m in live blogging a session on data driven decision making facilitated by Chris O’Neal. Join me!
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/BudTheTeacher/~3/316536127/ I guess the biggest frustration to me regarding the “Oh no - we didn’t realize the policy and now we’re certain that ISTE’s out to get independent media and citizen journalists and quash the edupunks and destroy any chance of education reform ever in the history of forever!” hysteria over ISTE’s NECC audio/video policy is that so many of my colleagues, people whom I respect and value, are probably going to end today or start next week thinking that this conversation and its tone was/is/shall forever be a fine example of the power of blogs and new media to make change. And that would be wrong.
The problem I have with seeing this as a victory is that the bloggers in this one come out looking like a cross between Chicken Little and Tony Soprano. And that’s not a good thing. In the past 24 hours, I’ve read misstatements, threats, assumptions, and lazy research. “I’m taking my ball and going home” lines, too. From educators. Attempting to solve a problem. It’s disappointing. A rational, responsible, and patient tone would have been much better than some most of what I’ve seen and read in regards to this issue.
I’ll be the first to say that I’m pleased to see the policy changed, albeit temporarily. It was an old rule that didn’t fit the current media landscape. ISTE, I hope, would be the first to say that. And I’m pleased that so many bloggers felt compelled to address the issue. But I’d like to think that some more patient and questioning language might have been used in the “investigation.” Questions inviting dialogue, perhaps, rather than assumptions and anger. I felt like we were headed up the mountain to the monster’s castle, pitchforks and torches in hand.
We’d never let our students get away with this type of conclusion jumping and invective. And so, we shouldn’t be happy about the methods, but we should be pleased about the outcome. I hope the folks who make it to the table in future conversations on this and other matters of policy and disagreement are those who approach with patience and kindness, checking their assumptions at the door. And I hope that, if I’m ever guilty of such poor choices in language and attitude, that you’ll be quick to call me on it.
My goal here is not so much to place blame - but to suggest that perhaps we could all do better. I know I’ve been guilty of getting excited and forgetting to do a gutcheck in the past. Let’s all try not to do that. There are too many rules and policies and issues and problems and situations that need changing and will require our best work.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/BudTheTeacher/~3/314559627/ I’ll be talking about CyberCamp on Teachers Teaching Teachers tonight at 7pm Mountain Time as a piece of a show about summer professional development. I’ve invited all the CyberCampers, too, so I hope to include them in the conversation. I hope you can join us, too.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/BudTheTeacher/~3/311899728/ The more I work as a professional developer and teacher of teachers, the more I am resolved that I will do my best to never create a resource for one situation that cannot be useful in another. There are too few of me and too many needs in my district to do otherwise.
I think, though, the careful consideration of audience and purpose that I engage in before creating a resource is a valuable one for all readers, writers, and creators. Perhaps there’s value, in a connective writing class, in spending some time on rhetorical analysis, specifically in the vein of thinking about multi-purposed work.
This isn’t a new statement for me to make, either here or in my classroom(s), as I’ve always operated under the assumption that the best writing happens when writers consider their audience and their purpose for writing, allowing them to determine the focus they should take in a particular piece. This idea (often called the rhetorical triangle, with each of the points defined slightly differently by the person(s) doing the defining) can and should be expanded to include all kinds of composition and writing, not just print texts. This leads me to the teaching point that I would want to include in my connective writing work:
As much as possible, all texts should have a life outside of the classroom.
This “extra-curricular life” can take multiple forms, and won’t make sense for all types of writing and creation, but I strongly believe that we should never create something that will die after a teacher has blessed or cursed it with a grade. I’ve always believed that, but the more I learn, the less I’m willing to suggest that such multi-purposed work should only happen at the end of a course, after all the practice work is completed. Project-based learning, too, embodies this philosophy, as projects should have a life outside of the classroom.
What does “extracurricular life,” or multi-purposed work, look like in a professional learning experience for teachers? One way I attempted to create a multi-purpose-able resource in CyberCamp was through the series of Works in Progress (WiP) presentations that we asked every participant to do. As I explained at the beginning of CyberCamp:
One of the values of CyberCamp is sharing. Talking about what we’re up to is a good way to better understand our own work, and the act of sharing it with a group is useful, too, because it allows your fellow CyberCampers to help you out, be it through good questions, suggestions, or becoming an extra set of eyes and ears in the world seeking resources to help you with your project.
Because sharing is so essential, we’ve set up time here at CyberCamp for everyone to have a 20 minute block of time in which to share their work. Each day, we’ll ask two of you to share what you’re working on and then we’ll give ten minutes to the CyberCampers to give you some constructive feedback. We’ll be talking more about what “constructive feedback” looks at CyberCamp, but know that you’ll be getting help - not criticism.
Again, because sharing is so essential to what we do, we’ll be adding an extra level of sharing to your process. We’ll literally be sharing your Work in Progress conversation with the world and archiving your presentation here on the blog using a tool called Ustream. This will allow you to share your work with, and to learn from, the world. While that can be scary, trust us when we tell you that your work is important and worthy of being shared.
Not to toot our own horn (or whistle, to stick with the camp metaphor), but it seems to me that a twenty minute investment of class time here (thirty minutes if you leave time for some feedback) leads to an excellent archive/snapshot of a work in progress, a chance to get very specific feedback, and a permanent record of the event that is available for further scrutiny, reflection and commenting. Not bad, as far as multi-purposing goes. Add in the fact that these presentations also become resources for other people working on similar projects as well as models of our activity for future CyberCamp experiences, and we’ve got some handy multi-purpose resources.
Other examples of multi-purposing in CyberCamp include our project proposals as well as our blog. Pretty much, any well-written blog (as a whole, not each entry) is a fine example of multi-purposed writing. But perhaps that’s another post.
One of the struggles, of course, with trying to build multi-purpose resources, or to find ways to ask learners to do so, at least one that I worry/wonder about, is making sure that I’m never putting the needs of future learners or secondary audiences ahead of the learners who are the “primary” audience for a particular activity/event/experience. Let me try to say that better - we can sometimes create problems for our class when we try to create opportunities with “outsiders,” particularly if we’re forcing a connection that maybe isn’t organically or authentically there. Connections just for connections’ sake are bad ideas, maybe even educational malpractice. The trick becomes figuring out where those lines and boundaries are, and when to say no to kind invitations to meet/Skype/join up with others who may or may not be in a similar place, educationally speaking.
Another struggle, I suspect, is figuring out how to contextualize those creations in a way as to make them as useful as possible. I’m beginning to practically understand why so many higher ed folks talk about learning objects and repositories and a slew of related issues, and struggle with those things, too.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/BudTheTeacher/~3/305027755/ My wife sent me the following exchange via e-mail today, a conversation between herself and Ani, who’s three and not quite a half:
A lunchtime conversation:
Ani: My ice cream is too cold to eat.
Me: Well, you can wait and let it warm up, but it will melt.
Ani: I can eat it when it’s melted.
Me: Yes, but you might have to drink it through a straw. Ice cream is like Frosty the Snowman — it melts.
Ani: Chocolate melts.
Me: Yes. What else melts?
Ani: I don’t know.
Me: Does ice melt?
Ani: Yes.
Me: Do strawberries melt?
Ani: No.
Me: Do popsicles melt?
Ani: Yes.
Me: Do people melt?
Ani (in that of-course-not-you’re-so-silly tone): No! (Then matter-of-factly): They die, though.
Smart kid. Wise, maybe. Just saying.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/BudTheTeacher/~3/303772726/ At the risk of getting a little too meta, I’m going to be talking through my history of thinking about linking, or conective writing, today during CyberCamp as a part of our series of “Works in Progress” conversations. I’m inviting you, if you’re interested, mostly to help me model how a backchannel and uStream conversation can be of value to a face to face group, but selfishly, too, because I’m always interested in how others are thinking about these ideas. So, if you’re willing and able, join us at around 11:30am MST for a short uStream presentation. All the details are on our wiki.
Thanks in advance!
http://spajal.targeteil.org:80/?q=node/248 Systematic Acquisition
Right now I'm working on something I call Systematic Acquisition. The focus is vocabulary and grammar.
Vocabulary
On the vocabulary front, I'm doing two things.
First, I'm compiling a wordlist (currently 27746 words) from various sources such as the the Dolch Sight Word List, the General Service List, the Academic Word List and the Collins COBUILD Learner's Dictionary. It's all going into an Excel file called Multilist. Multilist includes information about presence in a list, frequency in a corpus, type of entry in a source, inflections and alternate spellings. All this information will be used to construct a systematic list which I will use to create vocabulary learning materials.
Second, I'm refining a vocabulary teaching technique which combines Language Item Management (LIM) and Discourse Loading (DL).
Language Item Management empowers the learner to rapidly assess his or her own knowledge of various language items (including vocabulary and grammar) and to make decisions about which items should be learned to which degree. It begins with a five-item (Lykert) scale called the NUMPY Scale (No-Unlikely-Maybe-Probably-Yes). Learners grade each item in a list (for example, the target words in a reading passage) according to their answers to the question: Would I recognize and understand this item if I saw it in a sentence? The instructor verifies the assessments by asking for definitions or examples. Faulty definitions are corrected and unfamiliar words are explained. In the full form of LIM, the NUMPY Scale is applied to five Acquisition Fields and objectives for all items are set based on an agreed assessment of how well each item should be learned. Each acquisition field is a box which combines two parameters: Production-Reception and Competence-Competition. Production is active use of an item in speech and writing. Reception is passive use of an item in listening and reading. Competence is current and constant facility with the item. Competition is opportunistic facility in response to an ephemeral situation such as a language test, an interview or a presentation. An item may be assessed as productive-competent, productive-competitive, receptive-competent, receptive-competitive or null (neither competent nor competitive in either production or reception). On the NUMPY Scale, Y corresponds to productive competence, P corresponds to receptive competence, M corresponds to productive competition, U corresponds to receptive competition and N corresponds to null. Items may be bumped up or bumped down as learner and instructor agree based on learner needs.
Discourse Loading is the practice of generating "teaching sentences". A teaching sentence is an individual sentence or set of sentences that contains sufficient contextual information to make the meaning of its target item unmistakable. Imagine the blank in a cloze item without an accompanying list of previously distinguished vocabulary. To draw the learner's mind to a particular word out of the thousands the learner may have acquired, the sentence must contain an abnormally large amount of distinguishing information. For the word ant, a sentence like "There was an ____ in my sandwich" would be woefully inadequate if the environmental context of the sentence provided no clues. Ignoring the phonemic clue of "an", the target could be any noun whose real-world counterpart was small enough to fit in a sandwich, anything from a bacterium to a pickle to a small mouse to a cigarette butt. If we add sufficient context to the sentence (or set of sentences itself), the possibilities become limited to one word or one set of words which share one meaning--and meaning is the desired element in a discourse loaded sentence. "There was an _____ in my sandwich. It must have crawled in there when I set the sandwich down on the blanket at the picnic. There were thousands of the little black insects hunting in the grass for food to take back to their colony" tunes the choices down to pretty well one. Crawl, blanket, picnic, thousands, little, black, insects, hunt, grass, food, take back and colony all work together to restrict the potential meaning of the omitted item.
The advantages of Discourse Loading are at least four. First, in order to imagine the context necessary to limiting the possible meanings of the target item, the learner must concentrate very keenly on the target item's meaning, creating a tighter association between meaning and form. Second, in order to build the required context, the learner must recycle previously learned vocabulary, thus refreshing or reactivating the selected vocabulary. Third, having generated the context-laden sentence, the learner has an example for future reference. Fourth, the example makes the meaning of the target item so unmistakably clear that even ten, twenty or thirty years later, the item will be instantly reactivated if the learner happens upon the sentence in notebook or memory.
Grammar
On the grammar front, I am developing an approach to teaching grammar called Behavioural Grammar. The impetus for this project arose from the realization that a Grammar Gap exists between those who are able and those who are unable to translate the conceptual grammars taught in most language courses into behavioural grammars. Grammar is traditionally taught as a concept to be mysteriously transmuted in the learner's mind from a set of ideas to a set of procedures. Communicative and interactional grammar teaching seek to facilitate the process of translation by making grammar immediate and urgent; however, translation of concept to procedure is still left to the learner. Just as some but not all would-be musicians take rapidly and apparently effortlessly to musical procedures, with or without conceptual training, so some but not all would-be language learners take rapidly and apparently effortlessly to linguistic procedures. Rapid and apparently effortless acquisition of any procedure stems from what I call operance, or a natural tendency or inclination to emit behaviours that naturally lead to acquisition of a procedure. A learner who is operant in regard to a particular subject will seem to learn it rapidly and effortlessly, while learners who are respondant or, worse, resistant, to the subject will either struggle or rebel. One advantage of teaching behavioural grammar is that the non-operant learner is not required to translate concepts to behaviours.
The relationship of operance to respondance can be clarified by analogy to genius and ordinary intelligence. The formula for calculating the length of the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is annually acquired and applied by millions if not billions of ordinary adolescent minds the world over. Yet never in a million or billion years would even the average engineer have come up with that formula on his or her own. It takes a genius like Pythagorus to discover or invent such a thing, but any normal mind can comprehend and commandeer it. Even the formulations of later luminaries like Newton and Einstein are perfectly accessible to ordinary minds. How is this so? It is so because each genius translated his conceptual insight into a procedural formula and nearly anyone can grasp and make use of a formula. In principle, anything can be taught to anyone if it is taught as a behaviour and all useful concepts are eventually translated into behaviours. In terms of achievement, the ordinary learner is equivalent to the genius if he or she is able to acquire and apply the genius's insight. The only difference is that the genius acquired the insight and developed the procedure operantly, by virtue of his or her own natural tendencies, while the ordinary learner acquired the procedure respondantly, that is, in response to instruction aimed at instilling the insight and conditioning the behaviour.
At present, I am working on verb inflection. I have distilled a formula for consistent correct inflection of English verbs and am developing activities for conditioning this behaviour in all of my students, from those in individual classes to those in large group classes. Preliminary results are encouraging and I am swiflty refining both approach and technique.
Differential Acquisition Theory
Concerned about helping my students really achieve real native-like fluency in vocabulary and grammar, I have been striving to understand how first (L1) and second (L2) languages are learned and acquired by people of various ages. From all this cogitation, based on experience as a learner/acquirer of an L1 (English) and four L2s (French, Haitian Creole, Russian and Mandarin), on observations as an ESL instructor in Ukraine and Taiwan, and on reading in language acquisition theory and learning theory, has emerged a theory I call Differential Acquisition. In brief, it recognizes that human beings go through three stages of development when it comes to language learning: innate, instinctive and intellectual.
The Innate Stage
The innate stage may also be termed the neural stage, because all language activity at this stage is essentially neural. The idiolinguoverse (individual language universe) is "hooking up" with its instruments of reception and production, the auditory and vocal tracts. This corresponds by analogy to the early development of the universe as a growing collection of elements under high energies. This elemental stage is characterized by high activity and low organization. All activity at this stage is random, the elements behaving according to their properties and under no other control than their inherent nature. It is the stage of speciation, at which the individual acquires the the characterisitics of its species, including a characteristic set of faculties, among which is the language faculty (whether or not this faculty is separate from a general learning faculty).
The Instinctive Stage
The instinctive stage may also be termed the social stage, because language activity at this stage becomes increasingly social. The idiolinguoverse has come into contact with the sociolinguoverse (group language universe) and is chiefly concerned with copying it. This corresponds by analogy to the development of life on earth with a focus on survival. This biological stage is characterized by continuing high activity and increasing organization. It is the stage of genius for most individuals, the stage at which activity and organization are both high, resulting in frequent environmentally responsive reorganization. Early activity is random, but becomes increasingly subject to a developing instinct, an instinct focused on survival within the group and therefore on becoming recognizably of the group, that is, acquiring the culture and so, by inclusion, acquiring the language of the group to a degree that marks the individual as belonging to the group.
The Intellectual Stage
The intellectual stage may also be termed the individual stage, because language activity at this stage becomes increasingly achievement-oriented. The idiolinguoverse focuses now on its own ends, which often do not entirely coincide with those of the group, usually as a complex, but occasionally as separate objectives. This corresponds by analogy to the development of technology in human culture. This technological stage is charaterized by decreasing activity and increasing organization. It is the stage of lost genius for most inidividuals. The tension between activity and organization has settled in favour of organization and reorganization becomes increasingly difficult. Activity at this stage is mainly deliberate or intellectual. The individual already belongs to a group and is seldom sufficiently motivated to fully acculturate with another group. Lingustic interaction with other groups focuses on specific material ends rather than general acceptance.
Efficiency
The overriding principle of lanuage acquisition is efficiency. Each stage is naturally tuned to maximize efficiency in handling its material. Newborns essentially ignore the sociolinguoverse because they must first develop the idiolinguoversal equipment to perceive, interpret and respond to it. Very young children indiscriminately absorb the characteristics of groups to which they feel they must belong because belonging increases the chances of being cared for and protected and therefore of surviving at a time when the individual is incapable of surviving without a great deal of tending. Teenagers and adults (and younger children not exposed to language under survival conditions) aquire only those elements of new sociolinguoverses they find necessary to achieving their ends (which may range from very basic interaction through various levels of communication to conscientious artistic performance).
A Cure for Efficiency
Systematic Acquisition provides a means to access or at least mimic the dormant instinctive stage. When language items are taught as behaviours and accurate behaviour is crucial to success, intellectual learners revert, at least partially, to a survival-oriented acculturation approach. Of course, the elements of the target culture to be acquired and the degree to which they must be acquired come under the control of the instructor, whose artificial culture, one which demands greater instinctive accuracy than does the natural intellectual culture of the real language world, will push the learner's achievement closer to the native standard than the non-operant learner could manage by simple immersion.
http://spajal.targeteil.org:80/?q=node/229 While the latest version of my wordlist uploads, I'll pop into this cooliris window and post a blog entry for the first time in six months or so.
It's been a fine time for me. Just got back a week ago from three weeks in Victoria (brother) and Prince George (parents). One of the big highlights was a two-hour canoe trip with my old friend Brock and my five-year-old son, Ben. Ben's a natural. With a little coaching and observation, he was dipping and feathering like a pro. Unfortunately, here in Kaohsiung, we won't get many opportunities to glide on lakes.
One little event that will have repercussions for the next several months at least is my invention of behavioural grammar. I had been reading Skinner's The Technology of Teaching and was just starting Chomsky's The Minimalist Program when it hit me that grammar-in-use is behavioural, not conceptual, and that I could develop a behavioural grammar that would guarantee consistently, continuously correct performance. I got on it right away and wound up with a good start on a behavioural grammar for verb inflection.
These days, though, I'm back to slogging it out over Multilist. I still have half a dozen sources to input, but yesterday I decided I had enough to start an acquisitional wordlist. Basically, I'm paring the list down to useful items, grouping the items by useable base form and splitting the result into two lists: the first containing the base forms and the second containing so-called derivations. The idea is to teach the base forms as a resource for extrapolative reading, add the derivations as fodder for extrapolation, and leave students with a solid intermediate vocabulary and trusty vocabulary building skills. Naturally, I'll eventually put together a complete basic-through-advanced list, but it will take time. I'm hoping to have the current project done by Saturday so I can test it on a new TOEFL student.
http://spajal.targeteil.org:80/?q=node/218 Missing in action might have been a more appropriate title, but most of what I've been doing away from the blogosphere is leading, I hope, to a well-earned academic title, among other things (fame and fortune, to name but two of the least).
Phased Acquisition Theory has turned out to be but a drop in the bucket of Differential Aquisition Theory, my current unified theory of language acquisition, inspired by reading in cosmology, evolution and computer programming and bolstered by reading in theories of language acquisition and theories of learning. Naturally, working out the theory, its hypotheses and potential research topics has taken a lot of my time.
Even more time-consuming has been the seminal phase of LIDbIT (Language Item Database of Integrated Tables), Multilist (Multiple Source Wordlist), a composite of wordlists from something like a dozen online and print sources. Got to View/Wordlists to take a boo.
I've also been developing this site, one of a complex of spajes, or student, professional and academic journals. The platform is Drupal and one of the kicks is setting up various content types to cover the range of contributions users might someday make. Another challenge is figuring out how to collect all of a single user's contributions to one view for feeding to other sites. At the moment I have My Blog and Subsites, but the blog module is not configurable and the Mysite module does not access user-generated content types. As far as I can tell, user-specific views are not yet creatable.
Testing Audio Post: [You do not have permission to access this file]
Each author has the cover flap to catch a reader's interest. Here is a brief intro to a book about a New York Teenager...
http://spajal.targeteil.org:80/?q=node/19 CTV and CBC have reported over the last couple of days on a piece of research involving babies watching videos of people speaking English and French. The study revealed that the children attended to the facial movements of speakers of the two languages in a manner similar to that in which they attended to the speech sounds of speakers of the two languages. Briefly, children in the process of acquiring language tend to attend more intently to sounds which differ from those they have already dealt with. This is considered an essential strategy in childhood language acquisition. The conclusion drawn by both news outlets is that small children can distinguish between English and French just by watching people's faces.
Although it makes perfect sense to me that children in what I'll call accelerated acquisition mode would be sensitive and attentive to differences in sound and sight, whether linguistic or otherwise, I do not think we are justified in assuming that the subjects of the experiment in question perceived facial movements as linguistic acts. As children learn to articulate the phonetic elements of languages, they most likely do pay attention to movements of lips and tongue. Mine, who happen to be bilingual Mandarin and English speakers, do, particularly when attacking their father tongue (English), to which they experience much less exposure. However, linguistically motivated attention to movements of lips and tongue is generally accompanied by attention to sound. In other words, it is quite possible, probably most likely, that the children in the experiment were responding to the facial movements in the videos as visual stimuli, not as speech acts and not as models of phonetic articulation.
I do not doubt that children combine attention to facial movement and attention to speech sounds as they acquire the phonetic inventory of languages they plan to acquire. Even adults do that. My objection is to the assumption that children interpret differences or sets of differences in facial movements as differences between languages.
I'd like to read the paper itself, but will have to wait, not doubt, some time for the electronic version to become available.
Other Sources
Yahoo! Canada News
Globe and Mail
University of British Columbia’s Infant Studies Centre: Visual Language Discrimination in Infancy
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/BudTheTeacher/~3/118828610/announcin The following announcement comes via Darren. If you read this blog, chances are you've something to offer the conference, and I strongly encourage you to submit a proposal. At the very least, prepare to spend some time with the conference -- it's a great opportunity.
One of the best things about the conference is that it's not too late to engage with last year's event. You can visit the K12 Online Conference blog for all of last year's info and presentations as well as information on this year's event. I'm looking forward to it.
Of course, now I've got to figure out what to offer the event via my own proposal. Any thoughts? Announcing the second annual "K12 Online" conference for teachers,
administrators and educators around the world interested in the use of
Web 2.0 tools in classrooms and professional practice! This year's
conference is scheduled to be held over two weeks, October 15-19 and
October 22-26 of 2007, and will include a preconference keynote during
the week of October 8. This years conference theme is "Playing with
Boundaries." A call for proposals is below.
OVERVIEW:
There will be four "conference strands"-- two each week. Two
presentations will be published in each strand each day, Monday -
Friday, so four new presentations will be available each day over the
course of the two-weeks. Each presentation will be given in any of a
variety of downloadable, web based formats and released via the
conference blog (www.k12onlineconference.org) and archived for posterity.
FOUR STRANDS:
Week 1
Strand A: Classroom 2.0
Leveraging the power of free online tools in an open, collaborative and
transparent atmosphere characterizes teaching and learning in the 21st
century. Teachers and students are contributing to the growing global
knowledge commons by publishing their work online. By sharing all
stages of their learning students are beginning to appreciate the value
of life long learning that inheres in work that is in "perpetual beta."
This strand will explore how teachers and students are playing with the
boundaries between instructors, learners and classrooms. Presentations
will also explore the practical pedagogical uses of online social tools
(Web 2.0) giving concrete examples of how teachers are using the tools
in their classes.
Strand B: New Tools
Focusing on free tools, what are the "nuts and bolts" of using
specific new social media and collaborative tools for learning? This
strand includes two parts. Basic training is "how to" information on
tool use in an educational setting, especially for newcomers. Advanced
training is for teachers interested in new tools for learning, looking
for advanced technology training, seeking ideas for mashing tools
together, and interested in web 2.0 assessment tools. As educators and
students of all ages push the boundaries of learning, what are the
specific steps for using new tools most effectively? Where "Classroom
2.0" presentations will focus on instructional uses and examples of web
2.0 tool use, "New Tools" presentations should focus on "nuts and
bolts" instructions for using tools. Five "basic" and five "advanced"
presentations will be included in this strand.
Week 2
Strand A: Professional Learning Networks
Research says that professional development is most effective when
it aims to create professional learning communities — places where
teachers learn and work together. Using Web 2.0 tools educators can
network with others around the globe extending traditional boundaries
of ongoing, learner centered professional development and support.
Presentations in this strand will include tips, ideas and resources on
how to orchestrate your own professional development online; concrete
examples of how the tools that support Professional Learning
Environments (PLEs) are being used; how to create a supportive,
reflective virtual learning community around school-based goals, and
trends toward teacher directed personal learning environments.
Strand B: Obstacles to Opportunities
Boundaries formalized by education in the “industrial age”
shouldn’t hinder educators as they seek to reform and transform their
classroom practice. Playing with boundaries in the areas of copyright,
digital discipline and ethics (e.g. cyberbullying), collaborating
globally (e.g. cultural differences, synchronous communication),
resistance to change (e.g. administration, teachers, students), school
culture (e.g. high stakes testing), time (e.g. in curriculum, teacher
day), lack of access to tools/computers, filtering, parental/district
concerns for online safety, control (e.g. teacher control of student
behavior/learning), solutions for IT collaboration and more --
unearthing opportunities from the obstacles rooted in those boundaries
-- is the focus of presentations in this strand.
CALL FOR PROPOSALS:
This call encourages all, experienced and novice, to submit proposals to present at this conference via this link.
Take this opportunity to share your successes, strategies, and tips in
“playing with boundaries” in one of the four strands as described
above.
Deadline for proposal submissions is June 18, 2007. You will be contacted no later than June 30, 2007 regarding your status.
Presentations may be delivered in any web-based medium that is
downloadable (including but not limited to podcasts, screencasts, slide
shows) and is due one week prior to the date it is published.
Please note that all presentations will be licensed Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported.
As you draft your proposal, you may wish to consider the presentation topics listed below which were suggested in the comments on the K-12 Online Conference Blog:
- » special needs education
- » Creative Commons
- » Second Life
- » podcasting
- » iPods
- » video games in education
- » specific ideas, tips, mini lessons centered on pedagogical use of web 2.0 tools
- » overcoming institutional inertia and resistance
- » aligning Web 2.0 and other projects to national standards
- » getting your message across
- » how web 2.0 can assist those with disabilities
- » ePortfolios
- » classroom 2.0 activities at the elementary level
- » creating video for TeacherTube and YouTube
- » google docs
- » teacher/peer collaboration
KEYNOTES:
The first presentation in each strand will kick off with a keynote
by a well known educator who is distinguished and knowledgeable in the
context of their strand. Keynoters will be announced shortly.
CONVENERS:
This year's conveners are:
Darren Kuropatwa is currently Department Head of Mathematics at
Daniel Collegiate Institute in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He is known
internationally for his ability to weave the use of online social tools
meaningfully and concretely into his pedagogical practice and for
"child safe" blogging practices. He has more than 20 years experience
in both formal and informal education and 13 years experience in team
building and leadership training. Darren has been facilitating
workshops for educators in groups of 4 to 300 for the last 10 years.
Darren's professional blog is called A Difference (http://adifference.blogspot.com). He will convene Classroom 2.0.
Sheryl Nusbaum-Beach, a 20-year educator, has been a classroom
teacher, charter school principal, district administrator, and digital
learning consultant. She currently serves as an adjunct faculty member
teaching graduate and undergraduate preservice teachers at The College
of William and Mary (Virginia, USA), where she is also completing her
doctorate in educational planning, policy and leadership. In addition,
Sheryl is co-leading a statewide 21st Century Skills initiative in the
state of Alabama, funded by a major grant from the Microsoft Partners
in Learning program. Sheryl blogs at (http://21stcenturylearning.typepad.com/blog/). She will convene Preconference Discussions and Personal Learning Networks.
Wesley Fryer is an educator, author, digital storyteller and
change agent. With respect to school change, he describes himself as a
"catalyst for creative educational engagement." His blog, “Moving at
the Speed of Creativity” was selected as the 2006 “Best Learning Theory
Blog” by eSchoolnews and Discovery Education. He is the Director of
Education Advocacy (PK-20) for AT&T in the state of Oklahoma. Wes
blogs at (http://www.speedofcreativity.org). Wes will convene New Tools.
Lani Ritter Hall currently contracts as an instructional
designer for online professional development for Ohio teachers and
online student courses with eTech Ohio. She is a National Board
Certified Teacher who served in many capacities during her 35 years as
a classroom and resource teacher in Ohio and Canada. Lani blogs at (http://possibilitiesabound.blogspot.com). Lani will convene Obstacles to Opportunities.
QUESTIONS?
If you have any questions about any part of this, email one of us:
- » Darren Kuropatwa: dkuropatwa {at} gmail {dot} com
- » Sheryl Nusbaum-Beach: snbeach {at} cox {dot} net
- » Lani Ritter Hall: lanihall {at} alltel {dot} net
- » Wesley Fryer: wesfryer {at} pobox {dot} com
Please duplicate this post and distribute it far and wide across the
blogosphere. Feel free to republish it on your own blog (actually, we'd
really like people to do that ;-) ) or link back to this post
(published simultaneously on all our blogs).
http://spajde.targeteil.org:80/?q=node/83 It's not fashionable to include the Almighty or any variation thereof in discussions of scientific inquiry, unless, of course, like Steven Weinberg, you're using a discussion of scientific inquiry as a platform to propound your own atheism. Frankly, I don't care a pig's situpon for fashion. You can see that, though subtly, in my attire. I am not loud about my faith and doubt, but neither am I timid. And I'm as happy to enlarge on my acceptance of evolution when confronted at church as I am to assert my devotion to the Maker when challenged in school.
That said, let me get on with my story.
After some excrutiating soul-searching, and both earthly and divine networking, I've come to the conclusion that it was in God's design for me and those I will influence that I take two courses in the master of distance education programme through Athabasca University, fully intending to complete the entire programme, only to run out of money for it for almost two years and inevitably conclude that I need a degree in applied linguistics.
You see, having taken those two courses in distance ed, I've seen my way pretty clearly to achieving the personal goal of building an online language school--and for now that's about all I need from the MDE. When I saw myself as a distance educator, I did all kinds of heavy thinking about the Internet, particularly what I now call logue, the study of online asynchronous communication, and I've come up with some nifty innovations I'll make when I've learned to programme. Once I'd done all that, it was time to get back to my real vocation: scholar of tongues.
I used to think being a scholar of tongues meant studying and teaching languages. I still think it does, but for me the definition now includes studying the learning and acquisition of languages. I've had some nifty ideas in that line, too, of late.
So now I'm in between. I had to suspend the MDE for lack of funds, but my GPA was such that I was given an extra year to get back with the programme, so to speak, and that has meant that although I won't be able to start the MAAL for another nine months, I have the resources and time to get working on the review of the literature and other elements of my thesis on Phased Acquisition Theory.
Now, what do I mean by God's design? I am not one of those who believes that God goes around ordering everything case by case. What I believe about God doesn't affect him at all, of course; I am only explaining my view of matters so that adding my voice to those of the faithful does not add fuel to any fire that I wouldn't want to see burning. I believe in a personal God, a personage, and that we resemble him in some way, although I am not convinced that the resemblence is as complete as we tend to believe. I also believe that our purpose in being on earth is to become as like him as we can in mortality as a litmus test of our ability to become as like him as we can in immortality.
My beliefs are not mystical. Some aspects of God and our relationship to him are a bit beyond our scope at the moment, but I believe that his nature and powers are tied up with the universe, just like ours. I also believe that some of our ideas about him are a little off the mark, and will continue to be, however carefully we correct them, until we reach a point in our ability to perceive and think that allows us to see him as he is.
The main thing here is that God is conscious of us and is willing and able to act in our lives in accordance with our desire for him to act and his notion of the appropriateness of any action he might take. In my case, that means guiding and helping me to accomplish certain assignments. My part occasionally requires charging ahead and sometimes requires standing and waiting. The standing and waiting seems to take up more time, but one thing that fits me for the work I've been given is my inability to sit around twiddling my thumbs. When I'm not sure what I should be doing, that generally means I should be figuring myself out and doing something to make the most of what I find. Such is the case at present.
I have been priviliged over the years to receive very specific and clear guidance about the path I should follow and the deeds I should do. I have also been priviliged to be left to myself for long periods, sometimes in the desert with nothing but sand on all hands, sometimes in an oasis with enough and to spare but always with a sense that the desert is just out there and the next leg of the journey not all that long away.
http://spajal.targeteil.org:80/?q=node/18 Titles, abstracts and introductions make interesting reading when you've got a narrow agenda in mind.
read more
http://www.learning-blog.org/2007/05/16/leadership-and-technology-ca A few weeks I wrote about school leaders needing to ‘get’ technology. Scott McLeod seems to be the epicenter of this movement. He is directly involved in UCEA Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE) which,
“was created to help address the critical nationwide shortage of administrators who can effectively facilitate the implementation of technology in schools and school districts. CASTLE is widely recognized as the nation’s leading authority on the technology needs of K-12 school leaders.”
They go on to descripe,
“CASTLE’s School Technology Leadership graduate certificate program is the only academic curriculum in the country that comprehensively covers ISTE’s National Educational Technology Standards for Administrators (NETS-A). The graduate certificate program has been found by the American Institutes for Research to have positive, statistically significant impacts on participants’ school technology leadership knowledge, skills, and abilities and has been acclaimed for its innovative incorporation of technology into its coursework.”
CASTLE has also created LeaderTalk, a blog from School Administrators, for School Administrators. This has quickly become my must read of the day.
I want to personally thank Scott McLeod for all he has done to bring the relationship between technology and leadership to the forefront.
This seems to be the beginning of what I was looking for during my first post on leaders and technology.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/BudTheTeacher/~3/117033697/hooray_fo The district just north south of where I live and just south north of where I work is going to begin offering e-mail accounts to many of its students if a vote goes well at a board meeting tomorrow night. That's not a super big deal. What is is the reason why they're considering it:
The district’s Technology Advisory committee members recommended the accounts so that students in middle and high schools could “communicate and collaborate locally and globally, and participate in and contribute to learning communities through e-mail,” according to a report detailing the e-mail account plan.
Under the plan, students could create school-related online journals and blogs, design Web pages, work on projects in teacher-created Internet spaces and produce podcasts.
Pretty cool, huh?
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/BudTheTeacher/~3/117029248/blast_fro Turns out my first ever scholarly publication, an article on book clubs and preservice teachers that I co-wrote with my friend and teacher Cindy, is | |
