Alternatives to PowerPoint

Here is an interesting collection of tools that are alternatives to PowerPoint... this list includes options for creating web-based slide shows and for uploading directly to YouTube and similar services.

It sure seems like a good spring standalone to have students create a presentation on perhaps their favorite sports team (may I suggest the Boston Red Sox!) with the expressed purpose of finding the one that is the best (easiest to use and most useful).

http://cogdogroo.wikispaces.com/StoryTools

Makes You Wonder...

Now, I am a fan of online learning. When it is done right, it can be a very meaningful experience for students. "Doing it right" means students who engage in the content and with their classmates on a regular basis and teachers who do the same.

I was recently offered a contract teaching at an online college that offers masters degrees for educators. During the interview, I was told that the pay was $2300 per course. An amount about 30% less than I earned for teaching at the local community college last fall, but about 25% more than I earned for teaching at a similar online college about a year ago. Well, the fine print of the contract showed that the $2300 is only if the course has 55 or more students! If the course has a reasonable number of students, let's say 20, the pay is less than half what I was told I would earn, and further, this contract is as an independent contractor, so I would be responsible for all taxes.

I did a little math, and found that-- even before I include any additional time for completing the tax documents necessary for being an independent contractor-- if I work the expected number of hours teaching the course (55 which I think is too few to give students reasonable feedback on their work) , I will bring home less money per hour for teaching graduate students in education than my kids do working at the local supermarket.

This makes me think back to when I first started teaching-- in 1988. My salary back then was $15 per week more than I got paid mowing lawns. But that was in take home pay... my school also paid my benefits, so that is not really a fair comparison.

This makes me wonder about the future of online education... as for me, I intend to ignore that contract... I would prefer to donate my services to NELMS than to allow the owners of a for-profit college to make such profits from my work.

More Homework for Teachers

I just received and email from the folks at TED (I joined their TED-ED list a few months back) and they are seeking submissions from educators... come up with your most creative idea and submit!

The list of categories they are seeking submissions to fill \is here:

http://education.ted.com/content.php?368-submission-categories

Something to Think About

Yochai Benkler has spoken and written about how information technology is changing the economic, political, and social dynamics of societies around the globe. In this talk from more than five years ago, he summarizes some of his important ideas... this is not really a presentation for students (although I am sure it can start some good conversations in many classrooms).. my goal is to get educators thinking about the future for which they are preparing their students.

Your Summer Reading

OK middle school teachers... time to prepare your own summer reading list as well as you students' list. Here is your assugnment:

1) If you don't use your school's full-text databases, talk to your librarian and find out how to access any that you have available.


2) If you don't have access or if you are familiar with your database, then visit the Directory of Open Access Journals, a site that links to more than a thousand peer-reviewed journals. Find one that is of interest to you (not your students, this is for you!) and read abstracts, articles, and reviews.

I used to work with a superintendent who said that part of his job was to help teachers who had become burned-out rediscover the enthusiasm that brought them into education. He tried to achieve that through supporting professional learning. I keep that spirit alive in myself by reading... I have a tall stack of books awaiting me and my porch this summer... and the titles have little to do with education... there is biology and cognitive science and other science. I also intend to read a dozen open access journals!

http://www.doaj.org/

Gotta Share

Here is a little humor, but also one pointed commentary on nature of the world today...

http://www.ted.com/talks/gel_gotta_share.html

Spring Standalone-- Crayon Physics

A group of students have been playing Numpty Physics in my computer room lately... this is a version of a game that is available in several places... such as here.

Many kids find it an interesting challenge and they are frequently observed collaborating on solutions. Not necessarily the greatest academic activity ever, I am sure it is not "covered" on any test, but I will take a young person who can collaborate on these and solve these well over a young person who can answer tests questions any day!

Non-neutrality of Technology

I have recently finished Andrew Feenberg's Questioning Technology.... it is a book on the philosophy of technology from last century. He responds to many of the philosophers who presented ideas about technology and how technology influences society. Such authors have been on my reading list for most of the winter and spring, and so I was surprised when I found myself-- while reading the final chapter of his book-- coming to the conclusion that the reason schools have not changed since the arrival of digital technologies is that we have ignored the influences technologies have on how we think and communicate. Many scholars refer to this as the non-neutrality of technology.

So, if technology is non-neutral-- which it is-- then any attempts to integrate it into what we are already doing in our schools is sure to fail. Our schools emerged in response to other technologies and other social systems. Those technologies and systems are largely irrelevant today. Once we all realize that, then we can go about the work of reinventing our schools and our practices to reflect the new realities.

Spring Stanalone-- Science

I am a science guy at heart... I started life as a scientist and continue to harbor the dream of spending my life in the biology lab... anyways.

A few recently posted TED Talks show some amazing science... use these to engage the students who are left in your class when the other half is on the filed trip this spring.

OpenCulture

Here is a great resource for media-- books, courses, audio, video.

http://www.openculture.com/

Bridge Building Spring Standalone

Here is a standalone that my middle school students enjoy...

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/buildingbig/bridge/challenge/index.html

A Great Resource

I recently asked colleagues for a list of sites they have stumbled upon, but have not had a chance to use. My intent is to add these to my "to mess with" list for the summer, so that I can be better prepared to help them use the sites in the fall. DocsTeach is a project of the National Archives to create activities using primary sources.

http://docsteach.org/

Online privacy...

Over the weekend, I had the chance to listen to an episode of Click, a production of the BBC. This particular episode addressed issues of online privacy, including several interesting perspectives.

• Some countries require users of web 2.0 sites where posting comments is allowed to register using their real names, so that "flamers" are identifiable. 
• A filmmaker attempted to hide himself and challenged detective to find him. His story was documented in film.
• Several tools are available for anonymizing your web sessions.

Very interesting ideas, worth talking about with middle schoolers, I think.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00glj6v

Questia

Just as I was posting about DeepDyve, a librarian colleague mentioned Questia as a similar choice for reasonably-priced online research.

DeepDyve

My school purchases access to full-text databases (as I am sure most others do), but our subscriptions do not always include the articles I need to read. There are choices for purchasing articles from publishers, but the cost is high (like $25 per article!). In an attempt to find other choices, I found DeepDyve-- a site that allows members to rent articles (viewable in a web browser and no downloads or printing).

I am not sure it is a great option, but I am always looking for choices!

Teaching is...

An article made its way to my inbox recently... the question "Is teaching a part-time job?" has arisen again, and a commentator on EdWeek has responded. Of course, I am always wondering why those what shout so  loudly about how great we have it aren't applying to our local state college for the post-bac program in teacher education... anyways.

I have a little different take on what teaching is... for me, teaching is knowing my stuff... really knowing it. I read and write all of the time to find out what we need to do to making school relevant. When colleagues (and principals and school board members and others) ask me questions, I find answers that come from the best scholarship I can find.

Once I understand what the answer is, I craft the answer for them, and typically they ignore it. Too often today, education is a political issue-- a community or school board member or principal or teacher who seeks personal benefit takes on the "challenge" of leaving no child behind or winning the race to the top.

We forget that teaching is about young people and their brains. Teaching is about helping young people develop the skills they will need for a rapidly changing world.

If you think you know how to do that, you are wrong... you can bring your skills and experience to a new group of students each day and try to create it every day and in every class, but you cannot talk someone else's talk and walk someone else's walk in hopes of replicating their success.

How Do We Teach Without Technology?

Here we are, May 2011. Computers and digital tools and data are everywhere... on our desks, in our backpacks, in our pockets, in our cars.

I worked with first and second grades yesterday and we were using online collaborative tools. The task was simple, several students writing sentences about frogs on a single document. At first, they were apprehensive and unsure, "hey someone else is writing on my paper!" was heard from several students-- and several rooms as we had spread the students out to get the idea of collaboration at a distance. Soon they had the idea and were chatting with each other to point out mistakes, and the smiles were amazing when they saw that someone had fixed a mistake they had pointed out.

Then in came my middle school kids--who are a wonderful group of seventh graders who try anything and everything I give them and they have a great sense of humor and are risk-takers. I told them to open up a spreadsheet so that we could first gather some information from their play of Spent, then practice graphing the data. The students told me they had not made a spreadsheet all year!

I am really unsure how one can claim to be teaching math in 2011 without giving students experience creating spreadsheets and programming them to manipulate the data.

Stress and math... is this really a surprise?

An article on EdWeek's website seems to have pointed out the obvious: Kids perform worse on math tests if the test are given in high-stress situations. The article does point to some research that is identifying some of the causes of math anxiety, so it is worth a look:

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/05/18/31math_ep.h30.html

Spent-- An interesting game

I heard an interview on NPR today of a woman who was involved with developing the game called Spent.

In a nutshell, you lost you job and have to go to work at a low paying job and your goal is to live a month without running out of money. It was developed in collaboration with a nondenominational ministry in North Carolina. I played a few games this afternoon, and have become convinced that it is worth a look. (It is now in my "spring standalone" collection.

Zotero Again!

Last Friday, I discovered Zotero and I posted it here because I was so excited about it... as I have been exploring it and researching some more, I am even more convinced it is a tool we need to introduce to our students.

Basically, this is a Firefox plug-in that allows you to build references as you surf or as you conduct online research (I am talking about using full-text databases not Wikipedia).

If I am using Firefox and I find a book on Amazon that I want to add to my bibliographic database, I can click the icon in my address bar. If I have a book in my hands, I can enter the ISBN and have it added to my bibliographic database. If I am on a full-text database and I find a reference with an DOI (digital object identifier), I can copy and paste it and it will be added to my bibliographic database.

Once I am ready to add a resource to my reference section of my paper, I can drag it from my web browser into my word processor. I little reformatting (e.g adding italics to to title in my word processor) and the references are complete.

I am a researcher, I take referencing seriously, and I think we need to be sure we are teaching good researching skills to everyone today as it is becoming more important in the information-overloaded world of the 21st century.

This video comes from Zotero's site:
http://www.zotero.org/static/videos/zotero_1_5_cast.flv

Zotero

Did you ever find something and wonder how you could have missed it for so long?

Here is one I missed...

http://www.zotero.org/

Check it out... seriously.

Spring Stand-Alone Lessons

In every school I have ever worked in,  spring has been a very disrupted time. (Field trips, end-of-the-year concert rehearsals, incoming students visiting, outgoing students leaving to visit... fill in with your favorites!!!) I am not complaining, I think all of these activities are essential and I have never done anything to limit my students' participation. These are, however, disruptive.

One strategy I have come up with to minimize the "damage" done by these disruptions is to try to keep a folder of ideas for single-period activities in my desk. Simple labs when I taught science-- the ones with explosions were the most popular; logic games and puzzles when I taught math. In recent years, my folder has included online activities.

Teachers' Domain-- a resource I have posted here before-- from the good folks (and fellow New Englanders) at WGBH is an excellent source of what I call spring stand alones.

For example... in this months newsletter from Teachers' Domain there was a link to several resources dealing with careers. My favorite includes interactive and video profiles of men and women which work in the sciences.

Games, Games, Games...

I am sure many are familiar with the buzz surrounding educational games. The general thinking is that kids are so used to gaming and human brains are adapted to respond to the reinforcements used in games in a positive manner, that educators should begin adopting games to take advantage of those aspects of games.

The difficulty arrises when we consider the breadth of gaming environments and the breadth of cognitive skills we can practice and in gaming environments. "Games" include everything from arcade style puzzles (think Pac-man) to games that require complex strategies and analysis to solve. Games can also be used to teach simple recall to analysis and synthesis-- the entire range of Bloom's taxonomy.

The teacher who allows students to play arcade-style games as a reward, the teacher who has students record a diary of their Oregon Trail mission (anyone remember that one?), and the teacher who uses FoldIt to introduce the organization of proteins can all claim they are "using games," but the thinking required, the products that result, and the nature of the experience will be much different for students in the different classes.

Given all of this, I am always on the look out for games that are educational in the sense that they:

• Introduce students to accurate and relevant information.
• Require more than simple recall of "facts" to understand, play, and win the game.
• Are not arcade-style games and do not make excessive use of eye and ear candy to motivate students.

One source for such games is the education section of the Nobel Prize web site.

StoryBird

The librarian with whom I work showed me storybird.com today. It is amazing. I set up my account (it is a teacher account, so I can create and manage student accounts and create assignments for them.

When a user creates a storybird, they can choose from artwork that has been provided, and then drag and drop the artwork and add text to tell the story. Storybirds can be group projects... students can invite others in their class (or anyone else with an account).

The site is free to use, and the company makes money by selling the stprybirds... I can see a school book fair that features the kids' books... that is real books, bound and all!

http://storybird.com/

MeetingWords--simple online collaboration!

Yesterday, I was researching communities of practice, and I found an online document that had been created using MeetingWords which is the easiest online collaboration tool I have ever found:

1) Click the button to create a pubic document.

2) Copy and paste the URL into an email (or onto a web page).

3) Visitors follow the link, and type their name.

4) There is a document that everyone collected can edit. There is a chat window.

5) The file can be exported as a text file (there are other options listed for export, but there did not work when I tried to use them).

6) Oh yeah... you can upload a file to the document window.

An interesting change...

The spring 2011 issue of Action in Teacher Education arrived in my mailbox yesterday. As I skimmed the abstracts of the articles, I slowed down to read the one summarizing the research on pre-service middle school educators' experiences with technology. The article is on my "to read" pile, but the most interesting thing to me was that PowerPoint was referred to as an "old" technology along with magazines and similar media in the abstract. As I mentioned, I have yet to read the entire article so I am not sure why the authors choose to so categorize PowerPoint, but the observation that technology to present information is more similar to magazines than to other interactive technologies illustrates a more sophisticated understanding of information technlogy than I observe in many colleagues.

Physics Games

A colleague recently asked for some games to keep kids thinking over the summer. I asked what subject she had in mind... science was the response, so we googled "physics games." We found physicsgames.com (and .net and .org) that all have pretty much the same games. I don't see these as too academic, but there are some interesting and challenging puzzles in the mix.

WolframAlpha

In the past, I have mentioned WolframAlpha and other products by the folks who make Mathematica on this blog and on the blog I used to maintain for NELMS. It is worth a reminder, however... if you have forgotten about it, then follow the link explore it for a few minutes.

Technology Acceptance Model

In have been preparing resources for the series of courses I am going to teach for NELMS this summer, and one of the topics I anticipate discussing is the Technology Acceptance Model and how it can be used to plan for ICT in middle school classrooms...

Digital Generations in School

School leaders like to talk about the need to transform schools for the digital generation. Unfortunately, they missed the chance. Most scholars mark the beginning of the "Digital Generation" as 1990-- children born in that year (the year when the protocol for the World Wide Web was first published) have never known a world without computers and similar technology. They entered school just as the schools were connecting and they graduated with smartphones in their pockets. Those kids are now young adults, and doing what young adult do, so their children-- the second digital generation will soon by arriving in our schools.

Educators must recognize the changing nature of the media landscape. Whereas older adults are used to being consumers of information and being broadcast to, today's digital generations are used to engaging and interacting with information and others through technology.

There is beginning to be a trend away from encouraging educators to "teach with technology" and towards engaging students with ideas and technology. Technology needs to become transparent part of what we do and how we do it. Still, today, many teachers approach a technology-based lesson.

Larry Rosen, who wrote, Rewired, a book previously reviewed here, contributed an article to Educational Leadership that is available on the web... it points out the reasons why transparent technology is important and directs educators to sources of curriculum and instruction ideas...

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/feb11/vol68/num05/Teaching-the-iGeneration.aspx 

Digital Generation

While preparing some presentations for colleagues, I was reminded of some very instructive YouTube video from the folks are the Kaiser Family Foundation who have focused much attention on the transition to digital life in the United Staes:

It is worth looking at again...

This genre of video showed up about 5 years ago... I am a fan for several reasons... one of which is the they can remind us in a few minutes that the world we grew up in (even of you are younger than me-- I am 45!) is gone:

Priorities

I understand finances. I really do... money comes in... money goes out. I understand the role of government also. Collect money from the people and spend it for the public good.

This graph makes me wonder, however:

The story where I obtained this graphic is here:

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/04/29/30technology.h30.html

As an educator who is concerned with the future of our children in an ever-changing world, I am concerned about the priorities of a government (or our political leaders) who decide to cut funding for maintaining even a minimal level of technology in our schools when oil companies receive millions upon millions of dollars worth of tax breaks.

Wikipedia

Yesterday, I was working with a group of students and we were researching performance-enhancing drugs. The conversation quickly turned to appropriate sources for academic research, and (as you can probably predict) students tried to argue that Wikipedia was fine for school research. (As you can probably predict also, I argued that it was fine for initial research, but not for academic research that requires references.)

A student made my point for me... he edited the page we were all looking at and told everyone to reload the page... we all saw how the list of substances banned for Olympic athletes now included some items that I do not think should be there. I thanked the student for proving my point that we have to triangulate!

Excuses, excuses, excuses

The conversation in education seems never-ending... "how do we use technology to teach?" (Of course, the "use technology to teach" in my question could be replaced with most any initiative one wants to pursue.

The scary tendency I have observed is that educators seem to be really good at starting... we decide we want to use technology (again replace that as fits your situation) and we go in search of a way to do it, and we start...

and as we begin to make progress, we get uncomfortable... and we claim we need more professional development... and we claim we need more time... and we claim the test scores need attention... and we claim there is no money...

and we fail...

and we start over again.

I call this horizontal progress.

Filter Bubbles

An interesting video appeared on TED in the last few days...

We assume the Internet is an open and democratic information source... the speaker suggests that is not so:

The World is Getting Scary (More Scary)-- More Evidence

Sony has been in the news recently for a security breech which exposed customers' personal information (including financial accounts) to unauthorized access.

I am also ready a book called Click: What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why it Matters (I won't give full details as I don't think it os worth many educators' attentions). In that book, the authors goes into detail of the search habits of Americans and what we can learn from it. (For example why "prom dress" is such a popular search in January and where in the country "plus size prom dress" is most popular.) The author reassures readers in the introduction (I did not find his words reassuring), that the data he used for his book (and that he uses in his work as a search analyst) has been "scrubbed" of personal data including locations, financial account information,  social security numbers, and similar data.

Now, I am not sure if the editor added that caveat in order to avoid problems with readers, or if the authors added that in because his organization actually does anonymize the data they use, or if the author wrote that with his "fingers crossed" and was actually misleading his readers. We are all left to wonder if the data are being collected without our knowledge. I am increasingly worried about this...

The World in Changing...

Check this out... as much as I love books I  realize that medium is for the most part going to be replaced...

Interesting...

Reports of the news out of Pakistan this morning demonstrated an interesting trend in this decade...

Many authors point to the events of September 2001 as the motivation for many to begin blogging. Many who witnessed those events went to the blogosphere to share reactions and thoughts. Since then, user-created content has become a natural part of the web.

This morning's BBC reports of the reaction in New York to the events in Pakistan included the presenters reading Tweets of those who were on the streets in New York as well as the presenter noting the hash tag that was being used to contribute to the on-going online reactions.