A couple weeks ago, Karen Blumberg and Don Buckley sent out a great article on teenagers social networking behavior. Instead of an article warning parents and teachers about online safety which has been the focus of discussion for many years regarding social networking, it referred to the MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning. The report finds that youth engage in peer-based, self-directed learning online. Below are some notable quotes:

“Teens share their creations and receive feedback from others online. By it’s immediacy and breadth of information, the digital world lowers barriers to self-directed learning.”

“New media allow for a degree of freedom and autonomy for youth that is less apparent in a classroom setting,” the study said. “Youth respect one another’s authority online, and they are often more motivated to learn from peers than from adults.”

“Implications: New media forms have altered how youth socialize  and learn, and raise a new set of issues that educators, parents, and policymakers should consider.”

You can also find more information about the research at the link below:
http://digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu/report

From this discussion came the topic for NYCIST’s December meeting, which will be held as Spence today, December 17, 2008 at 4:00PM EST.  After sending out a Google Form, I received several responses with quality additions to the topic. Adam Kenner, from Horace Mann suggested that we spend a little time also talking about Michael Wesch’s collaborative learning method using web 2.0 tools. I’m looking forward to hearing more from Adam on this topic.

The meeting will be streamed live at starting at about 4:15 EST at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nycist. Join us and participate! You can also go to http://nycist.net anytime to view the meeting notes, and the video recording of the session.  We are looking forward to hearing from you!

Here I am testing out ustream.tv and camtwist!

The NEIT unconference has been excellent so far. The best conversations still happen at the dinner table, but otherwise unconference style definitely works very well to promote discussion and sharing. So far I’ve gone to the following sessions:

• David Shipley’s keynote
• Moodle Language Learning Labs
• Smartboard Tips and Tricks
• Games and Game Design in the Classroom - There are a TON of great links from this session
  
• “The Golden Triangle” - working with OD and AD. The podcast is below for your listening pleasure!

So far the Games and Game Design in the Classroom was my favorite session. Sylvia Martinez from Generation Yes lead the session and gave so many great resources in the session that it will take a while for me to digest them all. Thanks Sylvia!

 

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I’m about to head up to Mohonk Mountain House and I’m getting very excited for the NEIT (NYSAIS Education and Information Technology) unconference. With the use of Twitter, a conference wiki, and many other web 2.0 technologies I think this will be a great unconference. In enjoyed the format very much last year and think it will be even better this year now that most everyone has experienced the format. While these technologies were relatively new last year, they seem to be much more ubiquitous this year and I expect more participation from everyone at the conference.

If you are interested in listening to a NEIT2008 preview, check out EdTechTalk with Arvind Grover and Alex Ragone.  They were nice enough to have me on as a gues to discuss potential topics. Below are some of the topics I’m interested in this year:

• Moodle Language Learning Labs (with Covcell or Gong)
• Site Visit Program (Technology Evaluation similar to NYSAIS 5 and 10 year evaluation but much more geared at technology and evaluated by many academic technology and IT specialists)
• Peer Mentoring Programs
• Professional Development
• Setting Up the NYCIST wiki (http://nycist.net)

See all of you up at Mohonk!

It seems everything is going to the cloud. Email is going to google or exchange offsite. The web is being hosted by whatever company you choose, and many other cloud hosts are available: moodle rooms, mosso or whatever you choose. I even noticed that Blackbaud is now going to the cloud… kind of. Senior Systems has been there for years. Will file servers be a thing of the past? I doubt anytime very soon, but as ISP’s increase speeds so will the need for off site file hosts. Is the server room a thing of the past?

Adopting the cloud mentality might be hard if you’ve held a server room for some time. It is hard to deny that the savings will happen with the cloud, and it is inevitable that this will happen as ISP speeds increase. Backup and maintenance are very costly and can be easily done by an outsourced cloud company. This might sound threatening to a Network Admin, but I don’t believe will change the need for a position to maintain and control these servers. As more people connect to a network, the need for technicians increases. Even with the cloud Network Admins are needed! The role will change slightly as servers go offsite. The minutia of server maintenance will be gone. I hope this only helps Network Admins understand their role in the future. That time is soon!

So the big question - How is your institution respond to increased demand for speed? Fiber is the obvious choice. If you have it, love it. You can probably turn up your speed with a phone call (and a lot of $$$). For others, this might be a problem. You are probably looking at a multiple T1 situation over copper. This gets expensive and frustrating because the speed is not what you want for the price. Towerstream just offered our school a great deal for and 8Mbps symetrical speed for an excellent price. This is not to say this is the only provider you should go with. A backup is always a good way to go. We went with a Time Warner Business backup solution and used Promenet to provide the failover solution for both ISP’s. I’m keeping my fingers crossed, but so far Towerstream is super fast.

Increasing bandwidth is really the most important institutional decision in the coming years. The cloud is growing….

I’ve been discussing the possibility of moving our school to Google Apps instead of Firstclass for some time now. The benefits are a no brainer for the IT side of things. No server work, lots of space (6 gigs), and it’s free. There are also plenty of benefits from the academic side of things. Teachers and students can share documents, calendars, and sites. I don’t want to write about the features of Google Apps. Go here for more features with Google Apps for Education. I am most interested with how teachers will respond to change with such a critical technology such as email. More specifically, I am very interested in trying to create a community that is excited by new technology and inspired by the possibility of better communication and interaction.

Last week Ewan McIntosh wrote an excellent post about community-building. It inspired me to look at my own practices as an educational technology advocate. What are the best practices for building a community of teachers willing to learn and improve on their current teaching methods? Ewan is certainly right that finding grass-roots initiatives and supporting those will foster change and improvement. The bottom-up resulting in a top-down approach seems to be a good system. Also, identifying faculty willing to change and evaluate projects/curriculum is one of the biggest challenges as a technology integrator.

I also think planting the seeds for a grassroots bottom-up approach is important. So when thinking about changing to Google Apps, I know that I need an “ambassador” of change in each academic department. This worked very well for our change to Moodle. We first had a trial period, in which the early adopters took to it quickly and loved it. I also did a little bit of “selling” to Faculty that I thought would be interested. This gave a strong base of people comfortable with Moodle before implementing it school wide. The Faculty room was then full of “ambassadors” for Moodle and were very helpful to others. I’m hoping that the same can happen with Google Apps. Of course it helps when the technology is great to begin with, much like Moodle and Google Apps!

I was extremely happy to see students blog discussions continue after the class is over and grades finished. Watching my students blog activity really reinforced the fact that students need an outlet for discussing current events. Learning is a life long activity that we as teachers should try to facilitate if possible. With the Internet now acting as a life resume that everyone seems to be checking now, shouldn’t we as educators help them build that portfolio?

Integrating blogging into the curriculum can be a serious challenge. What is the appropriate use of blogs in the classroom? Should student papers be blogged instead of turned in? Maybe English essays should be blogged and commented on by students for the “first draft” in which they receive feedback from other students and teachers. Some teachers would argue that students need teacher feedback rather than student feedback due to the quality of feedback (or lack thereof) that students would supply. I tend to think that the more eyes that look at something, the better.

Is it ethical for students to be asked to publicly post work? Provided you allow them to use a pseudonym, it seems like an ethical practice. I would like to see more examples of actual classwork completed online in a K-12 setting. Please comment if you have great examples.

Talking to Jeff Lebow of World Bridges at dinner on Thursday sparked a great discussion on how to get students discussing current events. The Internet is an obvious great resource for an Inquiry based process of students form questions for research, evaluate online sources, create content, discuss and taking action on an current issue. The challenge for educators is to facilitate that process. For my masters project, I developed http://trackcurrentevents.org to help facilitate this process. While I think Tracker is a great resource, there are so many web 2.0 options out there that can do so much more.

One site that I see a lot of potential is http://voicethread.com/. Voicethread allows people to upload pictures, video, and documents and then have a community easily comment on each of the items. If I had all the time in the world I would go back to developing Tracker to include more web 2.0 elements like voicethread uses.

My thoughts on an ideal website for current events? A mashup of voicethread, digg, newsvine, twitter and tracker. The overall idea is that people login and can either create or participate in a tracker based on a current issue. Anyone can submit a news article, picture, video or document to a tracker, and based on votes the article gets moved up the queue of the tracker. For each item in the tracker, a voicethread like discussion takes place. An option to only follow comments within your own network would allow people to narrow their audience in a popular tracker.

This is just an abstract of what I would like to see created someday. I programmed and tested http://trackcurrentevents.org in grad school when I worked for a grant project that paid me to produce my masters project. It was some of my favorite work I’ve ever done. I would love an opportunity to go back to development, testing and presenting the project. My ideal “day job” would have me working only 2 or 3 days a week. Jeff, you have a great thing going at World Bridges! Keep it up!

A common topic that has come up in every session I’ve attended is copyright issues. I myself am guilty myself of letting students get away with too much in regards to using images that students googled. While the students do cite the sources, they do not always have permission to use them. A great way to get around copyright is to begin using http://creativecommons.org.

The creative commons search feature allows students to find material that is not copyright protected. We should be teaching students about creative commons to help students understand copyright.

Fair use is being stretched beyond what it’s original intent. The United States Copyright Office clearly states, “There is no specific number of words, lines, or notes that may safely be taken without permission. Acknowledging the source of the copyrighted material does not substitute for obtaining permission.” So, unless you have students find and contact the source for every singe image (which is a nightmare), creative commons is your solution.

Email was the tipping point for technology. It was the golden child that brought asynchronous discussion to the masses. Email became wildly popular, and was even romanticized with You’ve Got Mail. People began talking about it’s “instant” communication ability. A decade later, it no longer seems like the freeing application it once was. Some might call if “golden handcuffs” of current technology.

Arvind Grover recently began campaigning against it’s current use in education. Is it possible to get rid of email entirely? To me it’s like trying to get rid of the post office. It would require an entire shift in practices of a whole lot of people.

What can we do to improve communication? The question actually might be better phrased as, “what can we do to prevent miscommunication?” I think a basic re-education of communication tools is needed. Below is a basic outline for communication priority:

1. Asynchronous communication (email, discussion boards, facebook wallposts, etc) are considered low priority. Response time is considerably less than other forms of communication.
2. Synchronous distance communication (phone, video conference, skype, etc.) Slightly higher priority, needed immediate feedback, but immediate action not always required.
3. Synchronous face-to-face (a meeting). Hight priority. Action is needed ASAP, or according to timeline.

I am curious to find out other peoples vision of life without email, or a reformed email world. Has email actually improved our production? Is it a better communication tool?

Notes from this session can be found at:

http://neit.wikispaces.com/digital_citizenship

 

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