Disconnected: at work

It is interesting how disconnected my work at the University feels sometimes. Today I was sitting in a curriculum meeting approving courses for our College. A group of eight of us reviewed curriculum and made recommendations on how to improve each course before it moved forward to the University Curriculum Committee for final approval. After approving several courses the conversation drifted into a discussion about content and overlapping content between departments and colleges. It boils down to "turf" and control of words or content such as "social," "management," "health," "exercise," and "leadership."

As I learn more and more about what confronts students when they enter the innovative / creative economy, I realize how counterproductive these "turf" wars are to their future. We need to be breaking down the silos and find ways to combine majors / content not isolate them. A great example of a program working to combine content to create relevant education is Georgia Tech's Computer Science program. They are leaders in this effort. We all need to be thinking about this type of integration.

Learning rewards: Watching others sharing what they learn

Today, Melissa Ring and Melissa Peretich invited me to attend an in-service training that they were facilitating at Rocky Mountain High School. It is so rewarding seeing these two taking what we had learned about Web 2.0 tools and teaching others. As a learner, it is so great to see other learners taking co-created ideas and passing them on and expanding on them.

Between the two to them they discussed Slideshare, Google documents, Ning, and Creative Commons. Google documents and Slideshare seemed to be of great interest to those attending. There were many concerns about inappropriate content on Slideshare. Someone suggested the use of a Webquest to direct students to particular Slideshare content, however, we quickly realized that students may still be exposed by related content that is inappropriate. After the in-service training, I had an idea that maybe teachers could embed Slideshare content into a "safe" blog, subsequently minimizing exposure to inappropriate content.

I want to say thank you to Melissa Ring and Melissa Peretich for continuing the discussion and learning that we started in EDUC331... I am very proud to be your colleague. Keep up the great work.

Is this how you feel?

Following Karl Fisch's post, I read the interview by Dan Pink of Thomas Friedman. The part of the interview that resonated with me was their conversation about how schools have become the "receptacle of all our unmet social needs and social problems." It should come as no surprise that we see these issues at the University level. We are all feeling the pressure to meet these unmet needs. How many good educators or "soon to be" educators are we losing because of these pressures. This video expresses the pressures of educational reform in a creative way.

We need to practice...

I am serving on a working group that is looking at technology within the Poudre School District. We have been charged with creating a plan for technology within the district. A bit of the conversation has centered on lack of support and training for staff and faculty. This ultimately led to a dismal conversation about budgets and lack of funding for things like training sessions for teachers. This conversation fascinated me for the following reasons…

First, learning has changed. Learning to me is less-and-less about instruction on “how to” do something, and more-and-more about an ongoing conversation with colleagues. Learning is less-and-less about structured training and more-and-more about just-in-time information that is accessed through community and connection. Learning (about technology or other subjects) is less-and-less about budgets and more-and-more about individual effort and interest.

Second, many of us are stuck. We are stuck in our old ways of thinking. It is hard for us to truly understand and appreciate how learning has changed. You see it is difficult to understand what David Warlick was actually saying when he said, “In the 21^st Century we learn from each other” because at face value it seems trivial. You might react by saying, I learn from others now, or… that is what I have my students doing when they work in groups. But, at this level of understanding you are missing the significance of the change. I would argue that “learning from each other”, requires a connection to the bigger world (the Internet). We need a broader audience than our local school or workplace. We need to connect to people who share our ideas and are engaged in learning about those ideas.

Third, we don’t practice. When we were first learning “how to learn” it took practice. Learning from books and other library materials took understanding. Understanding about how to use library catalogs, book indexes, references, and periodicals. Learning has changed. We need to practice with these 21st Century tools. If we don’t, as I mentioned above, we will not understand what David Warlick and others understand about 21^st Century learning. We need to provide teachers with access to the Internet and then let them practice. We need to get them to engage in 21^st Century learning so that they can understand and pass on the valuable lesson that, “In the 21^st Century we learn from each other.”

What is the world telling us?

David Warlick just directed me to a Will Richardson's post titled Open Texting and Open Phone Tests. Will's post discusses a CNN article titled, A day in the (digital) life of a South Korean boy both Will's post and the CNN article are worth reading as they point to many changes or shifts the knowledge world is facing.

Insoo (a 14-year old Korean boy) doesn't even have to take the phone out of his pocket to send an SMS. He knows how to slide it open, which buttons to push how many times to reach the "Send SMS" menu option, compose the entire text message, and hit the send button -- all without even looking at the phone.

Furthermore,

The first thing Insoo does after Hakwon (school) is, of course, turn on the PC. Insoo has a difficult math problem as homework. He posts it up on Naver Knowledge iN, a popular online Q&A service with some 70 million entries.

Within about 10 minutes of posting, someone chimes in with a good answer, and Insoo awards him with some "Knowledge Power" points -- knowledge-based economy in action among 14-year-olds.

These concepts raise many questions and highlight the significance of new media communications and changes brought about by these technologies. First, do you consider what Insoo is doing as wrong? If Insoo is tapping into his knowledge community to obtain answers is this cheating? Is Insoo learning? And, if so what is he learning? If some societies accept the power of distributed knowledge and collaborative intelligence (and begin to teach their youth to exploit it) and other societies do not, will those that do not fall behind?

$10 million prize from Google

According to the Technology Review Google is offering $10 million in prize money to developers who create the most innovative software for its upcoming cellphone operating system. The hope is to create innovative new uses for smart phones and allow users to connect with content via the Web using their phones. Innovation in smart phones is getting very interesting and should open up many opportunities for education and training. I am currently using a iphone... I love it... but I can't wait to see what comes next.

Voicethread: Improved look

Voicethread.com keeps getting better. I love its new look. Here is an example report from a second grade classroom. What a great tool.

Changing a System: K12 Online Presentation

My presentation titled "Changing a System: Network Centric Learning Communities" is now live on the K12 Online Site. For those of you interested you can view the video podcasts through that site by clicking here. I have also posted my three part video podcast on Youtube and embedded them below. I used a Pecha-kucha format. I receive the idea for the Pecha-kucha format from a blog post that Daniel Pink (author of A Whole new Mind) titled, Got Pecha-Kucha? It was a challenge to generate a presentation following a strict format of 20 slides automatically timed at 20 seconds per slide.

It forced me to be direct and attempt to write a provocative story while minimizing pontification. As I was producing these video podcasts, I realized that the stories that make me think, are often the ones that don't attempt to fill in all the details. They let me connect some of the dots and react.

Note that I have three segments (three Pecha-Kuchas) to my story The Setting, The Characters, and Collaboration (a solution). I didn't get my entire story in one Pecha-Kucha - I felt that I needed to provide 20 minutes worth of presentation. I know old habits are hard to break... I still think about time allotted for the presentation.

Also note that, each Pecha-Kucha (each segment) begins the story with the same introductory slides...

Anyway, I would appreciate any and all feedback on these presentations.

Part 1: The Setting


Part 2: The Characters


Part 3: Collaboration (a solution)

Who’s being educated? ME!

I teach a course on educational technology at Colorado State University within the teacher licensure program. We are eight weeks into the semester and it has been a very interesting ride so far. I must admit that I entered the class somewhat naively, thinking that my students, being “digital aboriginals” would embrace technology, embrace a more collaborative approach to teaching, how wrong I was…

Here are some of my reflections so far…

Entering the class I believed that “digital aboriginals” were students that were creating their own connections and building knowledge, but what I find is that the majority of my students are “digital facebook users” connecting to friends for social engagement. When I created a Ning site for the class they were more than capable of building a profile but getting them to engage in a community (either in Ning or in class) to build knowledge collectively has been a challenge.

I have spent many hours reflecting on how pervasive our current education system is and how difficult it will be to change the course of that system. I love Sir Ken Robinson’s TED presentation; he talked about how our education system models the university, placing university professors, many that don’t work well with others, at the top. This model runs all the way through our education system, as teachers leave their university preparation programs and model “expert” behavior, they act as experts of their classrooms. And why not, for the last 16 years they have been rewarded by a system that is built on “experts” and their existence and sense of self is based on these rewards.

Obviously, the importance placed on standardized testing only fuels this system. Students are rewarded for obtaining the correct answer, and these are the students that end up in my class. For the majority, when I give them an assignment that requires a solution (with no correct answer) they become uncomfortable. In fact, many get mad. I know I am writing this dialog to colleagues but everyone knows that we can’t produce another student that only feels comfortable spitting out correct answers. The “correct answer” skills are outsourced or automated. The system must change.

I am having my students respond by producing “reaction videos" to Karl Fisch’s “Did you know.” I also had my students watch the video “A vision of students today” produced by Kansas State University students within the Digital Ethnography program.

Little or no reaction! What is going on? I think I know…

It is like pulling teeth to get them to feel, to get them to react! It is like they are void of feelings or original thought. And, many of them revert back to what they know and where they are comfortable… their content area “expertise.” Those that get most agitated, “push back” in class and have said things like, ‘I would never use video in my classroom’, and ‘most of us are experts in our content area’ (indicating that changing their model of classroom delivery is not something they are contemplating)… they say these things with distain… I have touched a nerve… I am upsetting their system… a system that has rewarded them for years.

Furthermore, many appear to be afraid to create anything that is original, afraid to share their original ideas.

Wow, I am getting a great education out of this class.

More to follow…

Academia 2.0

This YouTube Video talks about how university professors can connect with 21st century students by embracing the use of technology. Kansas State University is providing a great service by opening a dialog about young learner and how they are shifting and different. My question is... are they fundamentally different? I remember sitting in class as an undergraduate listening to what I thought was irrelevant information. I was disengaged in many of my classes. The difference is that students today have an option. An option, to learn on their own through extensive online learning communities.

Glogowski's insites on Classrooms as Third Places

Konrad Glogowski wrote a very insightful and provocative blog post about creating Classrooms as Third Places. He borrowed the title and concept of Third Places from American Urban Sociologist Ray Oldenburg. I truly appreciate the work and research that Konrad is doing to create spaces for classroom communities to thrive. For those interested in these ideas please take the time to watch his SlideShare presentation (see below).

Open Educational Resources

Open educational resources (OER) is an Internet empowered worldwide community effort to create an education commons. The Hewlett foundation is working with Creative Commons (CC) to create a search portal for educational CC resources. This project is under development - you can read about the initiative @ Wikipedia, Creative Commons, or O'Reilly Radar. This will be an interesting one to keep eyes on.

In the meantime here are some active open-source educational sites:

Does your learning style fit the future?

I serve as an executive member for the Information Science and Technology Center (ISTeC) at Colorado State University (CSU). I have been promoting Web 2.0 / Classroom 2.0 ideas to the executive leadership informing them about how collaborative technologies will continue to change how we work and learn. Within the ISTeC leadership group these ideas are beginning to gain ground. Hunt Lambert, Associate Vice President, Economic Development (an ISTeC executive member) just sent me a link to the following article in Educause Quarterly. It is very exciting to see that these ideas are gaining support on many levels within CSU and within peer-reviewed journals such as EQ.

So my question is does your learning style fit the future?

Planning for Neomillennial Learning Styles: Shifts in students’ learning style will prompt a shift to active construction of knowledge through mediated immersion.