Connecting 21st Century Students with 21st Century Technology – Videoconference…

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

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.

By Jeff | Posted on: January 22, 2009 at 4:13 pm | Comments (3)

Online Reading & Writing with Wikis

Taught by Edward F. Gehringer from NC State (Associate Professor of Computer Science)

Advantages of Wiki’s

  • Co-editing: Howework done on wiki’s promote collaboration between students
  • Co-assembly: Different people can contribute different parts
  • Write more than a traditional word document
  • Don’t have to worry about location and version (it’s all online and available)

Pitfalls

  • Other’s can “deface” wiki pages (bots) – Precreate accounts and disable login, or don’t put links in public_html space.
  • Some techonlogy-adverse students have trouble learning to use wiki’s
  • Under FERPA, students need to consent for their required work to be posted publicly.
  • Some students are uncomfortable with public writing
  • Wiki’s use their own markup language, wich is not as flexible in HTML

Assessing Wikis

  • Instructor/TA assessment (but there is a lot to go through and it can be time consuming)
  • Student Assessment – Students write up short commentaries on their contributions and collaborations and suggest a grade.
  • Wikis are new, so not everyone assesses …
  • Peer Assessment – Score authors based on a rubric. (This seems to be the best in his opinion)

Advantages to Peer Assessment

  • Adds a new dimension to collaboration
  • Electronic peer review of wiki contribution like real world and real job.

Types of Assignments:

  • Posting Links to other online resources
  • Posting an assignment (using links to online resources and articles)
  • Collaboration on Research Project
  • Post class notes
  • Comments on Articles
  • Vocabulary List
  • Research Report
  • Online Debates
  • Class Discussions
  • Peer Review
  • Really almost anything that can be done online… :)

There is a correlation between those that do a type of research assignment and those that responded that the wiki had helped them “think critically.”

How this might be important at UNC-CH and for me:

I support several foreign language departments and I think that the literature courses could really benefit from a classroom space where they can discuss what they are reading and link off to other spaces.

The real beauty of a wiki is that it is a webpage that is being built in real time.

I can also think that departments that need a lot of coordination could use a wiki to get stuff together. It is always updated and always available… at least on our campus. :)

Anyone at UNC want to get together and talk more?

By Jeff | Posted on: August 21, 2008 at 10:00 am |

Lessons from New Guinea for the Global Village with Michael Wesch

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?

By Jeff | Posted on: August 21, 2008 at 8:30 am | Comments (2)

Elon University “Innovation in Instruction” Conference

So today I am attending a conference at Elon University. It is their 5th annual summer “Innovation in Instruction” conference.

You can see the the schedule here. I will post updates throughout the day. This is my schedule.

Oh, and of course there will be a poster session. I will see what I can find out there too.. :)

By Jeff | Posted on: August 21, 2008 at 8:00 am |

Books of the Future Using Twitter and Google Maps

This morning I came across an interesting article about book publishing in the future.  Apparently Penguin Books is doing an experiment called “We Tell Stories” with delivering six different books through six different medium channels over the next six weeks.  The first two are already done…  Google Maps for the first week and a  Blogging/Twitter combination for the second.  The third is an interactive writing of a fairy tale…

The google maps mashup, “The 21 Steps” is very creative.  There are certainly stories that would benefit from something like this.

I like the blogging/twitter combination book “Slice.“  Blogging is a pretty good way of reading a book.  RSS and twitter for little extra’s.  That seems cool to me.

The third one “Fairy Tales” is interesting because there are many, many different outcomes to the story.  Very clever… and interactive.  Should keep our attention.

What do you think?  What other mediums do you think they will use?  Is this progression, or regression?

By Jeff | Posted on: April 4, 2008 at 7:55 am | Tagged , | Comments (2)

Web 2.0 is the Future of Education from Steve Hargadon

Yesterday Steve Hargadon published an article entitled “Web 2.0 is the Future of Education” that every educator should read. Here are a couple of excerpts”

“I believe that the read/write Web, or what we are calling Web 2.0, will culturally, socially, intellectually, and politically have a greater impact than the advent of the printing press. I believe that we cannot even begin to imagine the changes that are going to take place as the two-way nature of the Internet begins to flower, and that even those of us who have spent time imagining this future will be astounded by what happens.”

He then goes through ten trends that are important for education and learning and seven steps we, as educators can take to make a difference.

Trends:

  1. A New Publishing Revolution
  2. A Tital Wave of Information (Great statistics on how this information is growing, but he encourages more creation… with good reason.)
  3. Everything is Becoming Participative
  4. The New Pro-sumers (combination of ‘producer’ and ‘consumer’)
  5. The Age of the Collaborator
  6. An Explosion of Innovation
  7. The World Gets Even Flatter and Faster
  8. Social Learning Moves Toward Center Stage.  (I especially like this one.)
  9. The Long Tail (Availability of specialization)
  10. Social Networking Really Opens Up the Party

Steps we can Take:

  1. Learn about Web 2.0
  2. Lurk
  3. Participate
  4. Digest This Though: “The Answer to Information Overload Is to Produce More Information.”
  5. Teach Content Production
  6. Make Education a Public Discussion
  7. Help Build the New Playbook

What are your thoughts? Did you see this yesterday?

By Jeff | Posted on: March 6, 2008 at 9:05 am |

SharePoint 2007: Wikis, Blogs, and Enhanced Search – EDUCAUSE2007

I heard about SharePoint last year as a way to share content among each other. I know we have a campus agreement with Microsoft right now and as far as I know, all we need to do is enable this option on our servers. I am hoping that if I know more about the abilities of SharePoint I will be better able to persuade the systems guys to enable it for me. :)

Roles:

  • Collaborative Solutions
  • Portal Solutions
  • Content Management Solutions
  • Search
  • Forms Solutions
  • Business Intelligence Solutions

This class was more of a workshop so I didn’t have much time to type out stuff as we went through it. Suffice it to say that there are a LOT of options, including easy creation of Blogs and Wiki’s. This product makes it really easy to create and customize all sorts of information with click and drag, or simple select.

Microsoft is going a long way toward creating easy configurable products with many, many customizations for users. I only wish more Educators could afford products like this…

By Jeff | Posted on: October 25, 2007 at 5:14 pm | Comments (1)

There Has to Be a Better Way: Zotero and Research 2.0 – EDUCAUSE2007

I came across Zotero about 6 months ago and thought it looked very promising. I installed it then, but have rebuilt my computer several times since then and lost it in one of the rebuilds. When I saw this session I decided I had better check it out again. It looks like they have been working hard on it… let’s see…

Notes:

  • Scholarship has been radically transformed with the onset of web tools and massive online databases!
  • Word processing has changed the way people write and think about writing…
  • On yeah… don’t forget… IT’S FREE for everyone, everywhere! I love these type of tools!!
  • Many translators that can grab metadata and import it into your Zotero Library
  • UNC Libraries, New York Times, Amazon… pretty much anywhere… :)
  • Export into multiple formats
  • Save Pages locally and organize according to a hierarchy that is easy for you.
  • Add notes and comments to pa
  • Plugin for MS-Word and Open-Office that allows you to insert citations… GREAT! Replaces Refworks and Endnote… but it’s FREE and incorporates searching all sorts of online databases and webpages!

    • So what does the future hold? Zotero 2.0 – Zotero SERVER!

    • Beta available the beginning of next semester… new options and features!
    • This will be available to sync my collections and share my collections with others!
    • Group ability – Set up micro- and macro- groups for disciplines.
    • Recommendations
    • Bibliographic Feeds (RSS) and ability to make certain things public.
    • API’s for building tools to work with all this.

    Wow… this really seems like a great tool! (Again.) I need to work on getting this out and known in the University! So as a start… if you don’t have it yet… download it today! (Download link on the right hand side at the top.)

    By Jeff | Posted on: October 25, 2007 at 2:33 pm | Comments (13)

    From Information Literacy to Scholarly Identity: Effective Pedagogical Strategies for Social Bookmarking at EDUCAUSE2007

    There are some handouts (PowerPoint, Teacher Handout, Student Handout) are available here. You should really check these out, especially if you are charged with teaching others about social bookmarking.

    A very interesting title… think about it. How can social bookmarking help students screen and use resources online to helping scholars collaborate about things that they think are important? What are the pedagogical implications of social bookmarking?

    The tools that they are using is Blackboard Scholar. It is available as part of Blackboard LMS, or by itself… and all for FREE (Don’t you just love that word?)

    • Getting students involved allows students to collaborate and contribute to the content of the course.
    • The information they gather can become part of a lifelong learning effort that they can access later on as well.
    • Used as a way for students to find resources that can be shared with the entire class.
    • Thought: we should create tags for each of our classes. We can then search that tag online and find resources for that course forever (in theory).
    • Social networking is a great way for students to find information and share it with the professor and other students.
    • You can create a course page by creating an unique tag for the class and tagging any information with that tag.
    • If students are not doing it already, they adapt very quickly. (Digital Natives)
    • The Blackboard Module allows much more customization as well. (See Powerpoint for great examples). Each class can have certain tags as well for group projects.

    How can we use Social Bookmarking:

    • Personal Productivity
    • Course Content
    • Teamwork and Projects
    • Professional Development
    • Discovery, Tracking and Networking

    Thoughts:

    • This really is a great way to get the students collaborating and working together.
    • In a way, social bookmarking is our way of annotating the web… at least organizing it in a way that is useful for each of us.
    • I logged into our blackboard system and tried to find a way to add a social bookmarking module to our class, but I couldn’t find it… hmmm… anyone else know how to enable that on blackboard? Do the admin’s have to do that?
    By Jeff | Posted on: October 25, 2007 at 10:52 am | Comments (9)

    Empowerment by Sharing: Tools for Today’s Classroom at EDUCAUSE2007

    Stacey Kizer, EdD Doctoral Student at Pepperdine University.

    I chose this session because it is supposed to be about “Best practices in developing, sharing, and using course content online
    through wikis, blogs, podcasting, RSS feeds, and social bookmarking.” These are all new Web 2.0 technologies that I already work quite a bit with. I am interested in seeing what others have to say about them…

    Notes:

    • In an almost ironic beginning to a Web 2.0 presentation, she started out her presentation and had some immediate problems playing video because she was using a presenters laptop. Hee Hee…
    • Web 2.0 gives students a voice that they might not normally have. Video blog, regular blog, or just blogging in general will get those high-risk students not only involved, but deeply involved.

    Podcast:

    • We need to take the knowledge we already have and share it with others.
    • All you need is a computer, an internet connection, and iTunes and you are good to go!
    • Even getting teachers to stream podcasts is a GREAT start!

    Video Blogging:

    • Producing Video’s that document your life/classroom teaching/classroom activities.
    • TeacherTube.com
    • Animoto – The end of slideshows… beginning of student blogs! Project to get still pictures and put it with appropriate music

    Social Bookmarking:

    • Diigo.com – Not just social bookmark a page, but annotate that site as well!
      • This leads me back to a big point from earlier today… when can I annotate with INK?!! I have a tablet and with the onset of multi-touch technology it is going to become more important. I want something that is like real life, but with the power of digital tagging and searching…

    Unfortunately because we had problems at the beginning we ran out of time she didn’t have a chance to get to a lot of what she had planned… so… Email Stacey to get a copy of her handout… it’s a great resource!! Ask for the powerpoint as well!

    By Jeff | Posted on: October 24, 2007 at 6:24 pm |