This afternoon I had the opportunity to connect up with a whole bunch of schools for a video conference from all around North Carolina put on the by the North Carolina Connectivity Council.  It was really cool.  We could see all of them and they could see us.  There should be an archive of the video posted soon.  Here is the excerpt from the announcement.  

The challenge for North Carolina educators is to ensure that every public school student graduates from high school, globally competitive for work and postsecondary education and prepared for life in the 21st Century.  Web 2.0 technologies, such as blogs, wikis and social networking sites, provide students the opportunity to communicate, create and collaborate in new and exciting ways.  However, some educators and parents are concerned that these “just in time”technologies create an unsafe environment for our children.

Technology specialists from four NC school districts will describe their school systems’ approach to using Web 2.0 in teaching and learning.  Panelists will present the best practices from their respective districts while discussing the challenges of implementing these new technologies. 

Ideas from around North Carolina that Teacher are currently using that IS working:

• Teacher Created Wiki’s
• Teacher Created Blogs for Professional Development
• District Blog to model, share resources, and collaborate. 

Things Students are doing that is working.

• Green County Schools have a 1 to 1 laptop program.  (Wow)
• Student created Wiki’s – Creating based on the information that is created in class.  Do it in the class while the teacher is speaking. 
• Kids created blogs and commenting on other blogs. 
• Book Study through Wiki

Tools that People ARE using

• PBWiki (safer than Media Wiki and WetPaint)
• WikiSpaces (Private domain that is password protected)
• Blogger.com or EduBlogs
• Google Docs – Collaboration across district
• Teacher Tube (Block YouTube) (Use Tools to download YouTube if Teacher’s Want)
• DimDim – Collaboration
• Skype – Global Connections
• Animoto – Video Creation
• Glogster.com – Poster Creation
• Moodle - Learning Management System
• PRIVATE Ning Social Networking Group in School
• TakingItGlobal.org  - Place to find some collaborators for all sorts of subjects

Challenges

• Time on Task… there are a ton of kids online and it is hard to monitor what they are doing.  
• Social Networking (Teachers are no longer allowed to be friends with students in some schools… good idea.)
• Keeping Acceptable Use Policy up to date
• Time… there are so MANY tools… not enough time to address them all. 
• Expanding the global learning network so that learning can be global.   Finding people to collaborate with people around the world via Skype and other technologies above. 

Trainings for Teachers

I found it interesting that in many cases the instructional technologist are working with a group of teachers to train and prepare them to use this web 2.0 technology.  It is sometimes done as a monthly meeting, a mandated technology hour requirement, training classes, an annual fall conference, or using the web 2.0 technologies themselves.

• Shift Happens – Did you Know 2.0 - Used as a starting point for Faculty discussion.

For those who don’t know Michael Wesch, he is the author of the classic Web 2.0 video’s on YouTube that I wrote about a while ago.

This presentation was really great. A lot of it was taken from his “A Vision of Students Today” video. If you haven’t see it.. start out with that!

Notes:

Starts out with description of annual summer trips to New Guinea – no water, no running water, no electricity, and certainly no internet.

Built a house (240 people that helped build) – installed solar panels for computer – no email, but they give it a pilot once a month or two and will send emails off when he gets to somewhere.

Lessons we can learn from the small village in New Guinea

• Sustainable – they can continue to live the way they do now for thousands of years
• Equality – they share everything.

Tragedy of our time and problems with Education

We are clothing ourselves in the global fabric. Everything comes from all around the world… but we don’t realize it.

The most significant problem in higher education is the problem of significance itself.

This means they are just getting by and trying to figure out who they are and what they are doing.

Question – How many students don’t like school – 1/2 of them. How many don’t like learning – No hands. They don’t like the model we’ve set out for them to learn…

So… how do we engage them?

Solution

THIS is NOT just a TECHNOLOGY GAP… it is a CULTURAL GAP!

Teaching has not changed… but learning has.

8 books read – 3000 webpages read – profile reads – That is what they are reading.
They are writing in emails… not that much in papers.

Students are learning through technology… not as much through traditional methods.

Problems with Current System

He gave a great example about what the traditional lecture hall is teaching the students.

Students are not seeing the significance of the learning beyond the grade.

How things are Changing

There is something in the air… the web. WiFi. They have access to the entire human body of knowledge.

There is a massive amount of knowledge that is going to be created this year.

Digital information is different. This is how it being created.

What he is doing in his classroom and what we can do.

Focus less on content but connections. Content is still important, because that is what is used to make connections, but by focusing on connections, students become voracious learners trying to make connections.

Students become experts on some part of the world.

It should become less of an information dump and more of an interactive learning experience!

World of total information is that is enveloping us right now – This is what is going on with iPhone and GPS and always on Internet. A meta-level of data for the world. Imagine standing next to a tree and looking it up on wikipedia and seeing other pictures of that tree from others, and maybe even a history.

We need to move from just simply creating students who are knowledgeable, to those that are knowledge able. One’s that are able to use that knowledge to do good and make a difference!

How I can apply this at UNC-CH and my organization

You know… I’m not totally sure. This is all good information. I think we just need to really take a critical look at the way we are teaching our courses. Is there anything else we can do to engage the students? How can we use the tools here? Not just to incorporate them, but to use them if they are useful.

Anyone want to talk more about this?