Class Reflections

My Reactions to “Going Global with Alan November”
This podcast is well done…it holds your attention and challenges you to seek solutions. Alan November describes a serious situation involving our students and their ability to compete in a global work arena. He states that our students need to be able to handle massive amounts of information…this is a time for students to learn something new without being told to do so. Our students need to empower themselves so they can control, at least part, of their own learning. We need to include more emphasis on art, music, social skills and especially collaboration skills. Instead of the current emphasis on memorizing content, we need to teach our students to apply content, to be more creative and to invent new things. The future “global work ethic” values creativity, inventiveness and entrepreneurism . According to November, our students need to work harder to compete with other students so they can succeed in the global economy. Otherwise, they will not make the kind of money they expect to make when they enter the global work world. November paints a gloomy picture for these students…and he offers the following 4 suggestions ways teachers can help their students…1. Learn to use “skype” phone; 2. Start using podcasts; 3. Use blogs to store podcasts and feeds; and, 4. Empower students to start taking control over their own learning.
When I finished listening to this podcast I felt somewhat frustrated because although November describes things teachers can do to create changes in the global competitiveness of our students, major changes in education historically have been very slow to come here in the US. A shift from content memorization to application of content information, creativity, inventiveness and entrepreneurism is a major change in current US educational practices….I feel overwhelmed with this endeavor. I believe his ideas are needed but his solutions are not enough…they just “scratch the surface.” So I tried to find additional blogs by November to see if he goes deeper in his suggestions. Here are some sites I visited:
http://www.novemberlearning.com/?gclid=CO_9iKi2jZACFQlZHgodoWVoiA
http://www.edtechnot.com/notnovember.html
I’m still reading!

My Reactions to “How Creativity is Being Strangled by the Law.
I loved this video-cast and plan to use it with some of my training lessons! So far I’ve watched it twice and I will probably watch it again. He is a very effective speaker/presenter. From his dramatic beginning, his 3 stories about communication, “trespassing” and the development of BMI and then his 3 examples of remixing, I listened, watched, and processed his major points. He presents a very reasonable argument against the current copyright laws and explains how important it is to establish “balance” between copyright laws protecting the work of the artist and the use of 21st century techniques to recreate/remix an artist’s work when the intent is for creativity rather than profit.
I plan to use this session as an example of using visuals to encourage your audience to process what you are saying (rather than reading what you are saying)….a training session on creating powerful presentations rather than traditional powerpoint programs.

Lessig obviously agrees with November about the importance of creativity and inventiveness! He gives us a different perspective of the same problem. So again, I’m searchIng for additional information about the speaker and his work:
http://www.lessig.org/blog/
http://www.law.stanford.edu/directory/profile/39/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Lessig

I have to say, this was an interesting way to attend a conference. No travel expenses…no registration…freedom to attend what I wanted when I wanted!  The assignment indicated we were to watch/listen to at least one session in each of the four sections of the conference. I ended up watching many more because I wanted to see the variety of techniques used to communicate session messages and I was having a hard time deciding what I liked. I’ve decided there are some things I really like about this media format.  I can watch them whenever I choose …and when I lose focus, I can replay all or part of it. If I start a session that I don’t find interesting I can cancel it and look for another one without offending anyone. I like the videocasts that are divided into segments …1) I can follow the author’s organization more easily…and 2) the length of the segments are easier to handle.

There were some sessions I definitely did not enjoy as much as others.  I decided I liked the ones that included visuals better than the ones that were audio only. And, if it were audio only, I liked the shorter ones better than the longer ones. All of the narrations seem to have a distinctive style…a low, quiet voice…as if someone is telling you a secret.

Here are some of the sessions I watched/listened to:

Keynote - David Warlick- “Inventing the New Boundaries”

A videocast

Interesting ideas about boundaries and redefining the classroom and teacher/student roles

He talks about a new information landscape and an unpredictable future…the world is changing so rapidly, it is impossible to predict what the world will be like for our students in 20 years. So much change…we are preparing our students for a future that we cannot describe.

Another interesting point - To read is not enough to be literate…you need to know how to locate information and evaluate information…and information must compete for attention…how true!

He also talks about celebrating change. You have to know the territory. He learned because he is connected to a community who can help him learn. There is power in the community that collaborates.  Some of the teachers in my school are trying to develop collaboration in their PLCs…many are well established and the idea of this type of collaboration is an easy transition.

Section 1 - Classroom 2.0 I listened/observed the following two sessions in this group:

1. Initiating and Sustaining Conversations: Assessment and Evaluation in the Age of Networked Learning”
2. “Release the Hounds”

I liked the format of the second one. It included four narrated powerpoint programs. The length  of session 2 was just right and I learned more from the second session than the first session.  “Release the Hounds” had interesting visuals and some great links. I spent a lot of time clcking my way through these links and learned a lot about many of the new tools

Section 2 – NewTools

1.      “Oodles of Googles”- a series of six short movies describing how to put a report together online by using Google Tools…uses notebook, web history, docs, page creator and the group tool for summation and reflection. This session was well-organized and easy to follow but the mention of the use of copy and paste was bothersome…it could be misconstrued as an appropriate way to “write” a paper. There was no mention of citing references, extracting main points and rewriting the material in one’s own words.

2.      “More Than Cool Tools” -I couldn’t get the main movie file to load properly and the teaser was a little strange. Tried several times.

Section 3 – Obstacles to Opportunities

1. The Technology Specialist as Teacher Leader: Strategies to Ensure Successful Technology Integration and Student Learning in Schools” Patrick Ledesma  FCPS! A videocast. This session was interesting because it created by one of our colleagues. He had many good points but I wonder how he would balance his 5 points at a secondary school  300+ teachers and staff members and 2400+ computers.  I especially liked his point about highlighting teacher instructional technology best practices
2. “Web 2.0 Share the Adventure” - Sylvia Martinez- A podcast about including students as partners …as allies, mentors and  teachers. Lots of ideas for projects.

Section 4 – Professional Learning Networks

1. “The Collaborative ABC Movie Project” -  A mixture of podcast, spresent, youtube, jumpcut… a collaborative project…includes steps taken…great potential…one difficulty navigating from one technique to another…if we did this type of project, we could use blog or wiki as central station for keeping group members on task.

Some conclusions about K12 Online Conference 2007 - The quest ion is would I have watched/listened to as many sessions as I did if I had not had this assignment? Honestly? Probably not. It was time-consuming and I feel I have only scratched the surface. Also, at my school, we have only a handful of teachers who are ready to try out these new techniques. We are still very busy trying to help our teachers feel comfortable with the many initiatives that the county has already developed. Currently, we are trying to re-instill a positive feeling about technology at our school. We ‘ve just been migrated from child domain to the main domain and we’ve experienced many frustrations including extreme slowness logging on to the network (5 to 20 minutes). It has been very disruptive to instructional time in the classroom and many teachers are very disgruntled. We have to be very careful about what we introduce to our faculty these days…it is very important that it works , that it works with ease and that it has positive instructional value.

Can I use this music as background music in my slideshow?

According to Hall Davidson at TechLearning.com, a teacher or student may use up to 10 percent (max. - 30 sec) of a copyright musical composition if the slideshow or multimedia project is being created for educational purposes.

A possible solution to this frequent problem is to find music in the public domain. A public domain work is a creative work that is not protected by copyright and which may be freely used by everyone. 

A list of public domain music can be found at this url…http://www.pdinfo.com/list/a.htm

This week’s assignment was to design a rubric for a technology project…. a project which allows student to decide the technology which “best suits their learning style, the audience, and the content.” Sounds relatively easy but I found myself agonizing over all kinds of details and decisions. I discovered that I had to redefine parts of the lesson plan/project assignment as I designed my rubrics. Defining the assignment and developing a rubric seemed to work best when I constantly re-evaluated my assignment as I worked on the different parts of the rubrics. I began the assignment wanting to keep my rubric simple…easy for the student to follow. I wanted the rubric serve as a checklist for the student to follow as he/she planned, researched and developed his/her project. I also wanted the rubric to be simple so the student would be able to calculate his/her grade easily. I started with a simple list of project characteristics that could be evaluated by “yes” or “no” (1 point or 0 point). Eventually, I decided to go to the 4 point system. I tried to define each category in easily identifiable behaviors/actions…this was difficult. Needless to say I know I will certainly be modifying and adding to it as I find opportunities to use it. 

The Lesson Plan - Assign each student a different topic or part of the unit of study. For example,  in a history class studying World War II, students might be required to do the following project:

Students will research and collect information about the causes and events that led to American involvement in the World War II, including the attack on Pearl Harbor.  Each student will select a topic from a given list and use at least 3 appropriate resources from the web to summarize the important information for one of the following causes/events leading to the war:  Rise of dictatorships, United States isolationism, Facism/Nazism, National Socialism, Appeasement Policy, Treaty of Versailles, Axis Powers Alliance, Nationalism in Asia, Economic cycles of inflation/depression, Military aggression.Each student will work individually.Each student will be able to explain/ show evidence that their resources are authentic  and accurate.Each student will be required to present their summaries in any technology format that can be posted on Blackboard. (The teacher can post these projects on FCPS 24/7 as study guides.) Presentations will be restricted to 3 minutes or less. The project will be graded using this  Rubric . This rubric can be made available to students through their FCPS24/7 account in an excel spreadsheet. And it can be set up so the student can use the rubric to assist in the design of the project as well as to calculate the student’s own grade. My revised rubric http://sbtsclass07.edublogs.org/files/2007/11/my_rubric23.xls