Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation

Again, Karl Fisch has taken the lead in Colorado by initiating and organizing a one-day conference on Learning 2.0. As Karl describes,

Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation is a one day conference/meetup for teachers, administrators, students, school board members, parents and anyone who is interested in education. It will be held on Saturday, February 23rd, 2008, from 9:00 am until 3:00 pm at Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colorado, USA.

The future of education does not exist in the isolated world of theory and abstract conference sessions. Instead, it exists in conversations. It exists in creating a robust learning network that is ever-expanding and just-in-time. Learning 2.0 is not the beginning of this conversation. It is merely a stopping point, a time to talk about the visible difference that we all seek.

Karl has asked me to give a brief presentation and to lead a discussion about professional development and learning communities. Following the theme of the conference, the emphasis will be on discussion. I encourage anyone that follows my blog to attend the conference and join the conversation. You can register on the conference wiki.

Reaction videos - "Did You Know" and Barry Bachenheimer's assignment...

Following up on Barry Bachenheimer's assignment that asked graduate students to...

Thinking about Friedman, Pink, Fisch, and the other authors and ideas you've been exposed to in class this week, create your own "mash up" video in the form of "Did You Know". The video has no set length but should question, ponder, expose, consider, inform any of the ideas from this class that you would want to share. You can select who your "audience" would be; a colleague, your department, your school, your principal, this class, the world. etc.

I have directed my students (undergraduates at Colorado State University) to watch the videos produced by Bachenheimer's students and then produce their own "mash up" videos about something that they have a passion about (related to education).

Here are the videos that my students produced. Several are on TeacherTube and the rest are on YouTube. I have included links to all and I have embedded two. I want to say thank you to my students! Great work! And thank you for sharing your insights into our shifting world.


Did you know...
Did you know: Accessing technology
Did you know the value of a dollar?
Facebook is always watching
How will your kids play?
Our World: Version 2.0



The importance of foreign language - Did you know



The transitioning teacher
Waste
Wealth of useless information
What's next?

Google outdone? Naver...

Interested in the Korean internet search rival Naver - I searched for relevant online articles on Google. Here is an article titled, "To outdo Google, Naver taps into Korea's collective wisdom." It is interesting to note (as describe in this article) Naver.com handles 77 percent of all web searches in Korea, while Google handles well under two percent.

As is described in this article, the success has to do with language (use of native language) and because of the, "...South Korean inclination to help one another on the Web has made Naver.com the undisputed leader of Internet search in the country."

Again, I have many more questions than answers. Are some cultures more inclined to assist strangers? And if so, are some cultures more apt to build collective wisdom and exploit it? And again, if some cultures build collective wisdom (and educate people to exploit it) will cultures that do not fall behind?

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?

Flickr Assignment

This is an interesting use of Flickr. It appears that a classroom assignment has been given to enter Flickr and add comments to the artwork being discussed. It is interesting to examine everyone's comments, some include URLs to references about the painting.