Observations and Reflections from the New England 1:1 Summit

Andy Marcinek is a thoughtful educator who served
on the panel at the New England 1:1 conference,
April 10, 2015. He is currently the Director of
Technology at the Grafton Public Schools.
Previously he served as instructional
technology specialist in the Burlington
Public Schools where he played a major
role in launching a 1:1 environment.

Here's what becomes readily apparent when you visit a school that is 'high tech' (ie-1:1): It's NOT about the tech. It's about Learning. Schools are places of learning, first and foremost.  This too: The device doesn't matter.  Tablets and laptops and Chromebooks facilitate learning and access to the greater world. They are in service of existing learning objectives. 

Here's what I observed at Marshall Simonds Middle School in Burlington on Friday April 8 at the New England 1:1 Summit (in no particular order):

• A high level of awareness and social responsibility
• A high level of community engagement
• Students as problem solvers
• Students as leaders
• Students as teachers
• Students as fund raisers
• Students as engineers
• Students as innovators
• Students 'tuned into' the Big Picture of responsibility to the local and global community
• A respect and appreciation for the responsibility that comes with having tools to connect with the world at large.

• Technology Directors and Integrators that put access and learning front and center.
• An EdTech Team that solicits feedback from ALL stakeholders- students, teachers, parents, the community at large.
• Integrated, professional development (student-led)
• Teachers teaching subjects not 'technology'

• A cheery, respectful, upbeat school culture
• Password-free Guest WIFI with social media sites whitelisted
• A learning environment connected to the REAL world 

Some of the above touches on intangibles- those difficult to quantify aspects that can only be felt and observed. Every student-every single one!- that I and our group came in contact with was respectful, helpful and generous in sharing information. They were also enthusiastic when explaining their involvement with various activities that were connected to the community and real world outside of school (ie: fundraising for mental health awareness or developing a prosthetic hand for the son of a teacher born without a hand).

Ever since researching and writing 'Schooling and Student Perceptions' I've been interested in the ways students experience school and where and how they find relevance to their real lives within school contexts.  In the last few years as technology has allowed for more and better access to resources, people and places, the lines are effectively blurring between the real world vs. school(ing). Tablets, laptops, chromebooks, apps and ubiquitous WIFI are game changers.  More than that, they are culture changers when thoughtful educators use them as utilities to connect students to the real world, to real problems, especially when they challenge and empower students to find solutions to those problems.

That's what I saw in Burlington.  It was powerful.  And it should happen everywhere. It's not a stretch to say that our future depends on this kind of cultural transformation in our schools.  Thank you Dennis Villano and the BPS EdTech Team, Patrick Larkin, Andy Marcinek, etc for bravely leading the way and being the change we need to see in our schools. You offer a solid and successful example of how to integrate technology to accelerate and enhance Learning.

Twitter Is For Real: The Learning Paradigm has Shifted

Source: http://bit.ly/1ylhCLa

Here's a question: Would you decline an opportunity to attend an all-expenses paid education conference that promised sessions and recourses related to your work as an educator? Furthermore, would you decline if the session leaders shared their presentations and resource material? 

If the answer to these questions is yes, then you have no need to use Twitter. Because Twitter for educators is exactly that- a FREE, global education conference you have the choice to drop in on 'sessions' and gather resources whenever you want.

Connecting and sharing resources with other educators and communicating/collaborating in real-time conversations (chats) throughout the globe is exactly how Twitter is used by educators.  Evident is a culture of sharing, generosity and gratitude. Whenever "tweet-savvy" educators attend conferences, they share information they are learning in real-time via the conference-issued hashtag. Which means: you can learn along with them from wherever you are (and whenever you want to "tune-in").

By following educators and education leaders, you have access to their blogs and resources that they have shared over time. Arguably one can 'curate' enough resources that, if read, synthesized and put into practice would equal a graduate degree's worth of learning in a relatively short time. Along these lines, it will be interesting to see if personalized learning routes will be accepted as a valid 'credential' by employers in the future if an individual can demonstrate a strong knowledge base on a topic/subject despite never having attended a traditional college or earned a degree in the area of expertise.  

This is for real. The learning paradigm has shifted and, leaders in education have pointed out: It is now a choice for an educator to remain in isolation and ignore the opportunity to connect, learn and become better teachers for their students. Tens of Thousands of educators across the globe are personalizing their education and professional development because they recognize that they are the lead learners in their schools and classrooms. Twitter and other online networks (ie, Google+) are accelerators of this process

Join the Learning Revolution. It's time.

10 Google Things to Try for Digital Learning Day

Digital Learning Day is March 13th. Here are ten things to try. All compliments of Google.

1-Use Google Timer to time activities in the classroom

2-Unsend an email

3-Create and Use the built in Task Feature (Google’s To-Do List)

4-Add new fonts to Google Docs.

5-Do Smarter Google Searches Tailored to your exact needs.

6-Find Lesson Plans  sorted by App, Subject and Grade Level.

7-Explore Museums  and curate your own gallery with the Google Art Project or explore the Google Cultural Institute

With Google Cultural Institute you can find landmarks and world heritage sites, as well as digital exhibitions that tell stories behind the archives of cultural institutions across the globe.

8-Create playlists in You Tube for use in class.

You Tube is owned by Google and you already have You Tube account.  If you regularly use You Tube videos in class, you may want to create a playlist with different topics to help organize them.

9-Manage your classes with Google Classroom

Google Classroom helps teachers create, assign, and collect student classwork and homework paperlessly. More Google Classroom resources here

10-Finally understand what Google+ is. Join/follow communities related to your interests and/or communicate with fellow colleagues.

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Get better and learn more about any Google App using the Apps Learning Center

Superbowl Commercial 2011: Be That Teacher!

I may or may not watch the Superbowl each year but I always watch the commercials because they tend to be a bit more creative and/or edgy than the usual commercial fare. This is possible on You Tube almost immediately after the commercials air.

This year, 2011, the Volkswagon Passat commercial gets a two thumbs up vote. The Education takeaway for me is this:

Teachers: BE the Dad in this commercial. Whatever that means to you. However you define it-BE that Dad. The one who effortlessly and invisibly empowers young people to BELIEVE in their own efficacy, power, beauty, creativity. The one who inspires a sense of AWE. The one who empowers students to believe in themselves.

10 Things All Teachers Should Know How to Do (Edited)

After viewing @todmafin's tweet about how it's simply not funny to claim 'Luddite' status anymore, I thought about what might be important-from a tech perspective-to know as a teacher teaching in these times. Here's my top ten...with many exclusions.

These, to me, are basic competencies I think all School Districts should assess and provide professional development in.

All teachers should be able to..........
1. Subscribe to an RSS Feed
2. Bookmark, tag and annotate websites in the Cloud
3. Create and use a Blog
4. Create and use a Wiki site
5. Create hyperlinks (in e-mail, at blogs, websites and wikis)
6. Create a PDF file for Free
7. Capture, Remix and upload Photos (free of copyright restrictions)
8. Capture, Remix and upload Audio/Video
9. Use Google Docs or other collaborative file sharing system.
10. Locate and Participate in Social Networks on Education, Useful Tech Tools for Learning, 21st Century Learning and content-specific Education Sites.

What would you add?

What Teachers Can Learn From Ingrid Michaelson

Ingrid Michaelson is as real as one can get when one is a successful touring musician and when one's music has been featured in episodes of several popular television shows, including Scrubs, Bones , Grey's Anatomy and One Tree Hill, as well as in Old Navy's Fall 2007 Fair Isle advertising campaign. When 'I Just Want to Be OK' is the chorus of one of your songs-you have wide appeal. Looking like the attractive girl next door doesn't hurt.

Attending a live performance of one of her concerts as I had the great fortune to do this week (at Pearl Street in Northampton, MA) , one learns that Miss Michaelson is smart, quirky, talented, playful and fully in touch with and manipulative of the vibe in the room. It's exactly what we teachers need-to be able to control the vibe in the room, with finesse. Here are some other Micahelson-isms that worked and are worth noting.

• Tap prior knowledge (She had the audience sing TV theme shows-Full House, Golden Girls..this happened spontaneously when she began humming a few bars of each.)

• Mix it up (she played different instruments, we can change the delivery, tools, venue). -DO same thing in new ways (she sang The Way I Am twice..once as known and then again-as an encore- as a punk rock parody. Brilliant!)
  

• Show gratitude (genuinely)
  

• Connect and be accessible (she asked questions of audience members close to her and made reference to the new information we learn later. We can do the same w/students)
  

• Tell stories (we now know that she once taught Children's Theater and the kids has a hard time walking in a straight line--her telling had us all in stitches.)
  

• Have fun (You can't fake this)

Song Demo- Walk Away (just for a little extra)
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

Defining a PLN: What PLN? Whose PLN?

If you teach, at some point you realize there is no such thing as a "class" to a student. If you address any assembled group of students as "the class", you've already communicated to your students that you are out of touch with them.

Now we have the way-too-often-used term "PLN" or "Personal Learning Network" which, to me, is synonymous with the misnomer "class". Let me be clear-->There IS NO SUCH THING AS A P.L.N. just as there is no such thing as a class. The way one goes about learning online is personal. One may belong to a handful of social networks, subscribe to a handful of feeds, do some bookmarking, use Twitter, or not. A PLN is not a thing. It's not something you go and "get" (as in: "Why you need to get a PLN").


Go ahead and use the term if you want to but realize that it means absolutely nothing to anyone who is not YOU. Using 'PLN' with the first person possessive determiner "my" is even worse, as in, "I love MY PLN". What? Might as well say, "I love my REALITY! Thank you, REALITY!". The point is that a PLN is exactly that: a PERSONAL. LEARNING. NETWORK. which is defined specifically and exclusively by the one who is doing the surfing of the networks that make up the specific PLN. It doesn't have an absolute reality that can be defined or fixed. Which makes it's use problematic.

I am genuinely glad that so many educators are finding their way to social media, tools and technologies that may help them be better, more informed, relevant teachers. But so many have recently been deceived into thinking they have to bind their learning inside a cocoon of this thing called a PLN (which usually means Twitter and one other Social Network). It's like thinking New York is the United States. It's not about individuals or groups of individuals controlling information. Information is free and you should be able to gather it wherever you like without feeling that you stepped outside the bounds of "your" "PLN".

It's about learning, after all--yours and your students. OK- AND the learning of your colleagues and peers. Go ahead, though, and drop the acronym PLN once and for all and you will discover this thing called the Internet. On the Internet there are multiple, unbounded places to learn anything, anytime, anywhere--from anyone. You can share what you discover if you want to but you don't owe anyone anything. You should be free to go where you like, when you like. And that's the way it should be.

Go ahead:

• Join conversations on Twitter
• Participate in Social Bookmarking and Annotating
• Create blogs and write blog posts
• Jump In on Twitter 'Chats'
• Join Social Networks (note: NetworkS is plural)
• Subscribe to podcasts
• Watch and comment on videos
• Connect with people at conferences who you met online

Just, please, don't call doing these things your P L N (Awesome video, by the way). It's just you learning and contributing in the world of ideas and information.

So. Be polite. Give credit where credit is due but if you win Teacher of the Year, please...please don't thank 'your PLN' while tears run down your grateful face. It would be like thanking 'Your' Consumer Goods Network for all of the material possessions you have acquired in your lifetime. It's like thanking your 'Reality'. Try defining THAT.

Teaching Digitally: The Power of PDF

The Paradigm is shifting. One word encompasses the new global paradigm which affects everything and everyone: DIGITAL.

It's about creating and keeping things in a digital format. It's about sharing information digitally. It's about reading and writing digitally. Creating music digitally. Sending invoices digitally. Keeping medical records digitally. Archiving family photos digitally. And, hopefully,TEACHING digitally (as TeachPaperless and others have been advocating for some time). There are strong environmental reasons to support this since going digital means fewer trees are sacrificed for use as paper which also means fewer chemicals are used to process paper but there are other reasons, too. For some, even those that understand and support 'going digital' it's tough to break from the tactile comfort that 'things' bring. As a bibliophile of sorts I understand this. Books, to me, have an 'aura'. They have a look. They have a feel and yes, even a smell: the sweet, slightly mossy smell of pulp. The cover art also conveys something powerful causing an 'emotional' experience even when a book isn't being read. And one can curl up with a 'good book', a cup of tea (and perhaps a cat or other favorite pet). It's a tactile and somewhat romanticized vision. However, sales of books in digital format (e-books) are on the rise. For one, Amazon's Kindle E-Book Reader makes it easy (and relatively inexpensive) to download and read a book digitally. So, books are not being spared digital treatment.

The reality, though, is that so much information beyond books simply doesn't need to be printed out anymore. All information can be converted to PDF files. Portable Document Files were originally created by Adobe Systems in 1993 and were opened up as an open standard in July 2008. This simply means anyone can view, use and create PDF's now. Think of them as Mp3's for text and images. Mp3's can be played on ANY Mp3 player. PDF's can be viewed on any computer regardless of software, hardware or operating system.

BENEFITS of PDF's FOR TEACHERS
If you are a teacher, anything you 'hand out' to a student can be delivered digitally. (See below for how to distribute your PDF documents). One way to create digital documents is to scan a worksheet or lesson and let the scan software create an automatic PDF file of the document. PDF (Portable Document File) files are powerful for a number of reasons. First, they are relatively small in size so they take up little hard drive space. Example: a 500 page PDF file of jazz standards I own takes up only 18MB of hard drive space. To understand how small this really is nowadays, Google's e-mail program Gmail allows users to e-mail an attachment up to 20 MB. This means, I can e-mail you a 500 page document right now. Not only you but all 12 (or 1000) of you that might happen to read this blog post. Second, PDF files can not be edited by others (well, they can be, but not easily). That's the main idea behind PDF's . What you want people (students, parents, staff) to see is what they see. Think of it as a 'picture' of your document.

VIEWING PDF files
How do you view PDF files? Adobe Reader is probably the most popular way to view PDF files and most computers have it installed but I prefer Foxit Reader. It's free and less bulky than Adobe Reader. I encourage anyone to download and use it instead of Adobe but, in the end, it doesn't really matter which program you use.

HOW TO CREATE A PDF file
If you type up a document, worksheet or handout and want to turn it into a PDF file there are several ways to do this. I will highlight two methods:

1-Get a -Gmail account and begin using Google Docs instead of MS Word or some other 'stand alone' word processing program. Once you create then save a document in Google Docs, you can download it as a PDF file. All of this is done free of charge simply by creating a Gmail account. The benefit is that all of your work lives "online". This is what is referred to as "cloud computing". You can access your documents from anywhere at anytime. It de-emphasizes the power of PLACE (a future blog post). At any rate, the PDF file you create can now be 'delivered' to the audience of your choosing. It can be posted at a website so students can download it or it can be e-mailed directly as well.

2-If you prefer to use the word processing (ie. MS Word) program that resides on your hard drive, you can still create a PDF file for free. The concept to understand at the outset is that you will "print" the document as a PDF. But first, download the free program called PDF CREATOR. Once installed, just choose PDF Creator as your "printer" when you choose to print. Voila! You just created a PDF file which you can distribute to anyone, anytime, anywhere.

When we get right down to it, we buy books for the information contained in the books even if the covers are attractive. At school we don't put fancy covers on our handouts (though we may jazz them up with "fun" fonts and clip art), we simply create them and hand them out because it's about the INFORMATION contained in them. That's what digitization does: it cuts to the chase. It gets to the heart of the matter-the essence, the message, the objective, the point. Welcome to the digital world. What will you digitize today?

It's About Connection

As a middle school teacher, if I have learned anything about being an effective teacher, I have learned it's all about connection. Not connection with 'the class' because there's no such thing as 'the class'. The connection(s) you must cultivate are those between you and each and every student.

Students will largely forget what you say to them but they will never forget how you made them feel. Connection offers the opportunity for you to build trust in students. Sometimes all it takes is eye contact and a smile. That is connection. In other cases, perhaps you offer feedback quickly or you answer an off-topic question (showing your humanity and interest in the student as well as the subject).

In the digital age, we can add e-mail to the list of ways a teacher can connect with a student. Far from being a "cool" medium (as in 'not personal'), I have found that using e-mail increases the opportunity to connect with students. I'm not talking about casual, social e-mails sent from my personal e-mail account to a student over the weekend. And I'm not talking about contacting students through social networks which I feel is Very Bad Idea. (I have told my current students that they can 'Facebook' me when they are 21 years of age, if they still are interested in a connection). Limitations and restraint are essential in the digital age--that's where media literacy comes in which I believe should be mandatory in school now.

What I AM talking about is using class-related e-mail on closed-system accounts such as can be created using Google Apps. All my students have an account at a domain of my choosing. It's closed to the world but all students in the class have the ability to share information, projects and ideas with me or the whole class with the push of a button. My music classes are project-based by design and the instructions for each project are delivered to all students via e-mail. As all teachers know this is where the need for differentiation begins. Some students will read the instructions, do what they say and bang out a quality project in a few class periods. Others will get stuck on Step 1.

If they are stuck, I encourage students to e-mail me questions. It may seem silly (like students texting to each other when they are 2 feet away) but the use of e-mail provides a one-to-one connection with a student. It also provides documentation (data) for me as to what instructions students are unclear about so I can revise as necessary. As I have learned, too, some students embellish their e-mails with smiley faces, color, funky fonts etc. I've also learned that students are more apt to let me know they "don't get it" because e-mailing me is a 'private' communication. I could ask 'the class' as I stand in front of the room if they understand the instructions at which point we could hear the crickets chirp because no middle-schooler is going to admit that they don't get it publicly. One student I taught recently who struggles in school and is somewhat disengaged, sent me 3-4 e-mails per day until she "understood" what to do with each project. I could see the level of trust and connection build as she would add 'random happiness' to her e-mails (in the way of the aforementioned smiley faces). Most of the time when she needed assistance I read her e-mail and her question, I responded (data, again) then I got up and went to her midi station and assisted her directly-in person.

But the catalyst for this one-on-one assistance was an e-mail. A valid connection. Which matters for students. They yearn for it. Connect any way you can. Make them feel that you care about them not just your subject.

The Changing Nature of Professional Development In Education

(push play to read w/relevant music or simply read post..)
This blog and it's sister blog has as its focus bringing to light the game changers of 21st century technologies and globalization as related to Education and how teaching and learning gets done in (U.S.) schools. The very first posts were critical commentaries about the perceived fear and obstruction of schools in terms of adopting new and potentially transformative learning tools.

Around this time online resources were being born where like-minded teachers began to mingle online to share ideas, resources and experiences as they, too, struggled to make sense of the paradigm shifts they saw around them and how they could use new tools for better, more relevant learning in their classrooms. Some examples are Social Network sites like Classroom 2.0, The Future of Learning, Fireside Learning. Individuals emerged as leaders in the field: namely Steve Hargadon (founder of Classroom 2.0/Future of Learning), Will Richardson (of Weblogg-ed), Dean Shareski (of Ideas and Thoughts) among others.

Projects and organizations were created to dive deep into the new world of learning through technology. One example is the Flat Classroom Project. The Flat Classroom Project is a 'global Hands-on working together project for middle and senior high school students'. It was founded by Vicki Davis (Westwood Schools, USA) and Julie Lindsay (Qatar Academy, Qatar) in 2006.

At this point (May, 2009) there are literally thousands of outstanding blogs, wikis, videos, social networks, essays and articles all dedicated to the advancement of learning in networked environments. An upstream battle ensues for many brilliant, creative educators as they find resources and websites blocked in their schools. Appeals are being made to unblock the good stuff. But it goes beyond just websites and tools: As TeachPaperless says, "After all, it's not just tools and sites we're trying to get unblocked. It's attitudes and preconceptions that we're trying to unblock."

Which brings me to Professional Development. The traditional brand of professional development was to bring in an 'expert' for in-service days to teach staff about some initiative related to good teaching/learning. The topic was usually backed up by research (ie..Cooperative Learning, Standards-Based Education). The problem with this mass approach was that topics had to be general enough for teachers of all subject areas. How to go about implementing the initiative was up to the teacher which usually meant a low adoption rate. Surveys of teachers about professional development offered by districts paints dismal pictures about the relevance of in-service in schools. But that was yesterday.

The reality we have before us now is the potential 'decentralization' of professional development and the rise in the autonomy of individual Educators. All the blogs, wikis, videos, social networks, essays and articles are available 24/7 for any interested Educator to investigate, study and use. In other words, the opportunity to learn for teachers, as well as students, has exploded online. Professional development, after all, is learning for grown-ups. When that learning is put to strategic use in a classroom by a teacher for the benefit of student learning, professional development has been achieved.

Official recognition of this type of learning is what's needed now. It will require a leap of faith for school districts to 'trust' staff members to independently pursue their own relevant professional development but that's exactly what's necessary now. Imagine a professional development day where the in-service memo indicates that "all teachers will independently find, read, investigate, and synthesize any information they may find relevant to their classroom teaching assignment and share that information on the school professional development network. PDP's will be issued once a reflective essay is published on the school's server indicating the learning you achieved and how you will apply it to classroom teaching."

That would be meaningful Professional Development, 21st century style.

Do Your Administrators Advocate for Music In Schools?

The fact of music and art programs being cut from schools flies in the face of the reality of what they bring to the lives of students enrolled in these programs.
I am convinced that school-based administrators and superintendents themselves need to advocate for music and the arts because when music and arts teachers do, school committees believe they are just begging for their jobs.

Here's a principal talking about how her daughter finds great value in her musical studies.

Education, Howard Gardner and Globalization

For the second time in my teaching career I had the opportunity to hear Howard Gardner speak on issues relevant to Education. The first time was in 1995 when he was explaining Multiple Intelligence Theory-his revolutionary idea that people are smart in multiple ways (at least 8, now maybe 9). MI Theory is now widely accepted and curricula have been devised around it. This time the talk was on Education in An Era of Globalization (at the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield, MA as part of the Legacy Bank Education Lecture Series).

Having read several books lately on Globalization (A Whole New Mind, The World is Flat), I was excited to hear what Dr. Gardner had to say on the topic. Turned out that the one hour talk was simply an overview of his book Five Minds for the Future which I also just finished reading. Five Minds for the Future outlines the specific cognitive abilities that will be sought and cultivated by leaders in the years ahead (according to Gardner). In many ways, it is a distillation of points made in Pink and Friedman's books. I had the thought while reading the book and again while listening to Gardner talk that the points he makes also echo-to me- Confucian Ideals (The Analects).

The 5 Minds include:

* The Disciplinary Mind: the mastery of major schools of thought, including science, mathematics, and history, and of
at least one professional craft.

* The Synthesizing Mind: the ability to integrate ideas from different disciplines or spheres into a coherent whole and to
communicate that integration to others.

* The Creating Mind: the capacity to uncover and clarify new problems,
questions and phenomena.

* The Respectful Mind: awareness of and appreciation for differences among
human beings and human groups.

* The Ethical Mind: fulfillment of one's responsibilities as a worker and as a
citizen.

5 Minds Charter School anyone?

This Is Your Brain On Google

In the book iBrain, Dr. Gary Small, one of America's leading neuroscientists and experts on brain function and behavior, explores how technology's unstoppable march forward has altered the way young minds develop, function, and interpret information. iBrain reveals a new evolution catalyzed by technological advancement and its future implications: Where do you fit in on the evolutionary chain? What are the professional, social, and political impacts of this new brain evolution? How must you adapt and at what price?

While high-tech immersion can accelerate learning and boost creativity, it also has its glitches, among them the meteoric rise in ADD diagnoses, increased social isolation, and Internet addiction. To compete and thrive in the age of brain evolution, and to avoid these potential drawbacks, we must adapt, and iBrain—with its Technology Toolkit—equips all of us with the tools and strategies needed to close the brain gap.

Creative Breakthroughs Like Deadlines

One of the best ways to be truly creative--breakthrough creative--is to be forced to go fast. Really, really, really fast. From the brain's perspective, it makes sense that extreme speed can unlock creativity. When forced to come up with something under extreme time constraints, we're forced to rely on the more intuitive, subconscious parts of our brain. The time pressure can help suppress the logical/rational/critical parts of your brain. It helps you EQ up subconscious creativity (so-called "right brain") and EQ down conscious thought ("left brain").

(One of the best ways to quickly test the dramatic power of shifting from left to right is with Betty Edwards Drawing on the right side of the brain work.)

partial post from Creating Passionate Users

NCLB Accountability Illusion

The Thomas B. Fordham Institute just released a report finding that academic standards vary widely from state to state under the No Child Left Behind Act, creating an “accountability illusion.” 

To Grade or Not To Grade

In a recent article in NEA Today, Paul Barnwell makes the case for classrooms without grades. His website and blog is called Questions for Schools.

The Questions for Schools blog promotes the thoughtful critique of educational status-quos. It is Paul's belief that challenging conventional wisdom, as it relates to classroom structure, philosophy, homework, curriculum, and discourse--among other issues--will result in positive changes in our public school classrooms.

Educational Paradigms agrees. Questions for Schools can be found here.

How to Bridge the Conceptual Divide in Education?

Many divisions are creating obstacles for learning in Education. The digital divide is real and some efforts are being made to bridge this gap. Defining the digital divide is fairly straightforward: Those with access to high speed internet and content-rich websites have a distinct advantage over those that are not so connected. The divide is evident in rural areas in the U.S., in particular.

But there remains another divide perhaps more threatening to progress in Education than the digital divide: It is the conceptual divide that exists between teachers who have educated themselves in the area of 21st century learning tools (sometimes also called Web 2.0, Education 2.o, e-learning, ed tech, etc..).

Attempting to tag websites bookmarked at del.ici.ous or diigo highlights the problem. Depending on the site, all of the following terms potentially describe the content in them:

• Web 2.0
• Web 2.0 in Education
• Education 2.0
• E-Learning
• Education Technology (or EdTech)
• Digital Learning
• Digital Teaching
• Web-Based Learning
• 21st Century Skills
• 21st Century Learning
• Classroom 2.0
• New Education Paradigms

As Sylvia Martinez points out, all of these terms are open to (mis)interpretation. Depending on one's level of experience in the "2.0" realm, many of these terms can be taken to mean anything from student's word processing on a single computer in a Language Arts class to asynchronous, media-rich, web-based learning activities received through multiple wireless access points.

What is becoming evident is that specific professional development initiatives in the very general umbrella term of 21st century learning tools is essential so that ALL Educators can join the "__2.0" party in the proper spirit and with the proper conception of what this all means for potential quality student learning. These professional development efforts need to be led by folks keen enough to understand that "Education 2.0" represents a shift in dominant paradigms in education as well as ever expanding web-based tools for learning and teaching.

Other thoughts/efforts are most welcome.

Web 2.0 in Education for Teachers

This is a presentation I did on the topic of Web 2.0 in Education. It was geared for beginners. Hope it has value to others.

How to Use Tech in Elementary Education

Looking for ideas and inspiration of how to use technology in Primary Grades? Here is a great example of a 3rd grade class using tech on a regular basis. And here are some great resources to get anyone started using Web 2.0 in Educational settings.

What If We Didn't Speak?

So, I was watching some films over at Cause Global and it prompte these thoughts:

1-A big criticism of today's learners is that teachers "talk to much".  The old paradigm has the talking head at the head of the class with students sitting in rows supposedly "listening".  Charles Schulz parodied this perfectly with his trombone "wah-wah" voice representing Charlie Brown's teacher.

2-So much "instruction" can be delivered non-verbally.  Actually,  nearly anything that needs to be learned can be delivered non-verbally....and creatively.  Or, the "talking" can be pre-recorded and put into a"fun" package connected to either a podcast or a film/video or slideshow or some other format.

3-So, what if we didn't speak? What if we tried to deliver instruction in a completely different way?  Can the classroom call to attention be something other than "listen up, class...."? Isn't it about getting student attention and sustaining it in the first place?  What if instruction was compelling, non-verbal, web-based with meaningful, enagaging expectations and assessments?  What if students had to e-mail a question/problem instead of speaking?

How would this change the atmosphere for learning?  It might take time but my gut feeling is that things might be better.  Instruction can be tailored to the individual as problems/issues arise and as we teachers point students toward potent web-based, media-rich resources.  But the most important point is that we would be slowly weening students from dependence on the voice in front of the room and redirecting it to the voices in their heads-an  empowering shift in attention.