Raspberry Pi-- $35 computer!

The BBC web site is reporting that the minicomputer the size of a credit card is available for sale... $35!  There is so much interest the Raspberry Pi web site "went down."

Ya gotta wonder when we will accept the fact that the cost of technology is no longer an obstacle!

http://www.raspberrypi.org/

A sign of the times: Plastic Surgeon Invents Procedure for iPhone Users

Why can't I come up with a single idea like this?

http://www.cnbc.com/id/46555748

The Fear Factor

Very interesting article on TechReview this morning. The subject has some opinions that seem contrary to much that I see, but she also brings up some details that appear very valid.

1) we can't assume that digital natives are skilled

2) there is still a vital role for educators to lead students to become creative and critical thinkers.

I thought you might be interested in the following story on TechnologyReview.com:

"The Fear Factor"
An anthropologist says teenagers aren't the digital experts, or aliens, we think they are.

http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=39602&a=f

To view this story, click the link above or paste it into your browser.

- Dr. Gary Ackerman

Technology and student with disabilities

This article was sent to you by: Gary Ackerman

Message from sender: This article, reposted on EdWeek, is worth our attention. For decades, educational technology has been used to serve populations with disabilities. That trend continues. I have worked in small communities and so we often find ourselves trying to get up to speed to identify the technologies our students need, or to get old devices to work on new systems ("Can't we use the device we bought 15 years ago for a student who had the same disability?" asks the principal. "No replies," replies the technology coordinator, "that we have no computers with that operating system."

Digital Revolution Changing Lives of Students With Disabilities

February 27, 2012  by Frank Schultz, The Janesville Gazette, Wis. (MCT)

New technology is changing how children with disabilities learn and educators are scrambling to keep up with the latest developments.

http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2012/02/27/mct_digitalspeced.html?tkn=VWOFwF%2FH3iXHr%2BUHVeMf%2FVwAAk7S1UKYz40T&intc=es

© 2007 Editorial Projects in Education

Natural technology

During one of my AC presentations, I will be focusing some attention on natural technologies-- those technologies that one (or a group) experiences as adolescents and the influences those have on the expectations (both socially and cognitively) of that individual (or those individuals).

In a nutshell, what we experience as adolescents is perceived as the "natural" state for humans, and previous technologies were leading up to that which is natural, while following technologies are a deterioration of what is natural. This simple concept explains much of curriculum and instruction: "Of course, students need to learn how to do the math I learned, they won't develop essential skills if they don't."

I think we need to understand that students who are limited to our essential skills will be unprepared fror their future!

Hacking

This video showed up on TED this month...



It is a 17-minute introduction to the many different computers (all of which have software) that we encounter everyday, as well as some chilling stories about researchers and how they have been able to hack those devices.

This made me think back to the student who found a flaw in a system we were using a few years ago, and how relieved I was that he was an honest kid and pointed it out to me!

Technology acceptance

Here is the slide that has the outline for a presentation I will be giving at the annual conference coming up in a few weeks.

Technology acceptance has been used in the business world to assess technology tools and practices, and to identify those that are more likely to result in increased and expanded use of technology in the workplace. Also, to refine those that are in place to make them more effective.

I will be detailing technology acceptance and presenting it as a method whereby we can make changes in IT systems so they are well-used in classrooms, then offering some suggestions for how we can begin to break down barriers to technology use.

Digital books

Just watched this TED Talk, and it makes me wonder about those adults who think that technology somehow denigrates creativity and imagination...

Sync Your Data without the Cloud

While students are quick to adopt cloud computing to create files they can access from anywhere, many who have become used to storing files locally are reluctant to make that move. Also, I sometimes have large and complex files that I don't want stored on the web (drafts of books and articles, large data sets on spreadsheets are two examples). This software described in Tech Review may be the tool we need to access local files as if they were on the cloud.

I thought you might be interested in the following story on TechnologyReview.com:

"Sync Your Data without the Cloud"
New software lets you rouse a sleeping PC to retrieve data remotely.

http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=39772&a=f

To view this story, click the link above or paste it into your browser.

- Dr. Gary Ackerman

join.me

 A friend introduced me to join.me yesterday... quite simple. Download an exe file (available for Mac and mobile also) and you can share your scree with others. To join someone else's screen, point your browser to join.me and enter the 9-digit code that you get from the person whose screen you are going to join.

Much quicker and easier than the meeting rooms I have used previously.

WriteMonkey

Educators know a perennial problem in classrooms where students are using computers to write is the vast collection of tools that distract students (and the educators who blog about them). Anyone who has tried to have middle school students write anything on screen know what I am describing. We have tools to minimize those distractions, but, unfortunately, we don't seem to use them.

WriteMonkey is one of them. A small zip file to download and extract. When the application is launched, the screen is black with a blinking cursor and text that is green when one begins typing. Give the CTRL-S keyboard shortcut to save, and a dialogue box opens allowing the writer to save a .txt file (no other options) into any directory.

This is a great tool for getting ideas into words without distractions. Once the ideas are in .txt, the file can be opened in any word processing program and final edits and formatting changes made.

Nice.

Digital generations...

A manifesto appeared on the web about a week ago... need to understand why students appears to be disengaged with curriculum and instruction mandated by the No Child Left Untested community?... read this:

Communities of UN-learning?

I am still unpacking what Chris Dede said earlier this month in San Antonio. He was speaking to teacher educators, and so turned his presentation on blended contextualized learning communities (BCLC) to the question What do teacher preparation program look like?

Most interesting to me because  work with in-service teachers was his idea that we need to become communities of unlearners-- the inverse of the common phrase of communities of learners. His characterization is spot-on. If we hope to build classrooms that get to the  foundations of human learning, that prepare students for unimaginable futures, and use technologies that give us access to vast information and interaction, then we must first unlearn generations of now obsolete ideas and practices.

It strikes me that our students should be our role models for this...  they have become skilled learners... quickly accommodating new tools and news ideas into their communication practices.

Google+ page

I have finally found the time to explore Google+. I am yet to be convinced that it provides me with anything I can't find elsewhere. Anyways... if you are a users of Google+ and want to follow the NELMS.21 Blog page (or you want the page to follow you) find it (https://plus.google.com/b/100717369002733670984/) and we can begin a NELMS community on Google+.

Apple-- a model of innovation?

A report on Wired Enterprise suggests that Apple plans to power its iCloud facility-- a building that will house enough servers to store the data of 100 million users (according to the report)-- using solar and similar clean technologies. Also, it will incorporate rain water in its cooling system.

Technology gives us some very interesting and relevant curriculum-- I must conclude that when I share such stories with my students and they respond with "that's cool" and ask interesting questions about how it all works  that they are connecting with the ideas.

PhET simulations-- curve fitting

A colleague just texted me to ask "What is that place with the great physics demonstrations?" She was asking about the Univeristy of Colorado at Boulder's PhET simulations-- pages full of virtual experiments you and your students can manipulate. (Chris Dede's virtual environments for everyone to use!)

After I reminded her of the site, I went and poked around there as I hadn't used any since last fall. I am not sure if this one is new or not, but the curve fitting simulation is really useful. I have seen several other similar interactives, but this one seems to be far easier to use then the others and the ability to drag error bars adds an interesting feature.

21st century skills

As I have been preparing my presentations for the upcoming NELMS conference, I have been challenging myself to answer the question Why do we need to update our curriculum and instruction?

Although I think the 21st Century Skills folks have good ideas that have been misapplied by many, they do help us to understand the changing social context in which our students will live and work.Specifically, I like to show this graphic, which I adapted form some of their work:

This shows the relative trends in job skills anticipated for digital generations.... the routine cognitive skills that were the focus of 20th century classrooms are going to be decreasingly important for future generations. This sure seems to point to the importance of our giving students experience in BCLC and similar authentic settings.

BCLC-- continued

Earlier I mentioned blended contextualized learning communities (BCLC) as a model of 21st century curriculum and instruction that Chris Dede introduced at the Association of Teacher Educators annual conference earlier in the month. Dede suggested there are four components of a BCLC:

1) Virtual environments-- In the example Dede shared, the resources of Harvard have been used to create ponds and forests students can visit in a Second-Life-like environment. Even without access to such resources, middle school teachers can find virtual stores to run, virtual experiments to manipulate, and similar environments that cannot be be accessed in an in-person classroom but that can be accessed via virtual environments.

2) Social media-- The interaction available via social media is valued by the digital generations and they find it natural to interact via those networks. By using these networks, we are connecting our classrooms with their everyday experiences.

3) Mobile augmented reality-- Again, Dede used a specific example of mobile augmented reality to illustrate his point (and the example was impressive having come from Harvard), but mobile devices are allowing students and teachers to take their lessons and their cloud into the field. When students on art field trips in our school post their thoughts on what they see to blogs during the trip (we associate their phones with a blog on our site), we are approaching mobile augmented reality. When those students use their phones to view the resources connected with QR codes, they are also approaching mobile augmented reality.

4) Performance assessments-- Dede maked the point that students who experience BCLC perform as well as students in traditional classrooms on "tests measuring recall of information," but that students who experience the BCLC also develop richer thinking and problem-solving skills. The difficulty that he and his colleagues recognize and are working to address is defining those skill and then measuring them with validity and reliability.

AC presentation taking shape...

At the NELMS annual conference scheduled for April 2 & 3 (with a reception on the evening of April 1), I will be making three different presentations... one of which will be repeated on each day.

The picture to the right is the outline of the presentation entitled "Educational Technology: A Looming Mid-Life Crisis" which will be a 75-minute session. Most of the time will be dedicated to a considering the future including about five or six principles that educators should use hen they design curriculum and instruction for the digital generations.

Register for the annual conference here.

iBooks-- another update

Since it as released earlier this month, Apple's iBook Author has been on my "to use" list of software. I have been using it to collect presentations that I have made (and will be making); in addition, I am adding the final table of contents and related sections of my book that will be available later this year. My goal is that this spring, I can point those in the audience of my presentations to the iBook Store to download my presentations.

In addition, I have been drafting an iBook for an enrichment course I have been drafting for a couple of years.

I am coming to the conclusion that digital textbooks will indeed be a "game changing" resource for educators. The idea of turning a classroom upside down seems to becoming reality through digital texts. With these, I can direct students to excellent web resources that do a good job of presenting ideas (there are educators who are far better at lecturing that I am whose presentations are available) and I can use time in the classroom to work with students on more complex ideas and to troubleshoot their work with them.

Apple Ignored Warning on Address-Book Access

This recent article suggested that the apps we install may be invading our privacy. This seems a good reason to teach students programming so they can understand the potential uses (and abuses) of programs.

I thought you might be interested in the following story on TechnologyReview.com:

"Apple Ignored Warning on Address-Book Access "
The company knew in 2010 that an app was grabbing users' personal information.

http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=39746&a=f

To view this story, click the link above or paste it into your browser.

- Dr. Gary Ackerman

Can we please stop with student achievement?

For more than half of my career in education (I started in 1989), there has been this on-going focus on standards... curriculum standards, standards-based educations, updating tests to reflect standards, technology standards, sex education standards... you name it and there is a set of standards or a standards-based initiative (along with consultants focusing on the standards). This hyper-focus appears to arise form the assumption that the reason our students are "falling behind" (a claim for which there is dubious evidence) is that there is not an appropriately rigorous curriculum. (By the way rigorous and rigor mortis are derived from the same root.)

Associated with the focus on standards has been the focus on achievement. I have come to the conclusion that achievement is a meaningless term-- it is applied so broadly and with so little attention to the measures of achievement or the assumptions (many of which are based on no evidence) that it is likely two people will have vastly different concepts of achievement, and not even realize they have differences.

The Brookings Institute has released the results of a study that suggests there is no association between the standards that are in place in a state and that state's students performance on NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) scores.

If we accept that finding, then we must question (seriously question) the leadership of any administrator or politician who expends time, energy, or money on planning for the Common Core.

Annual Conference Update

31st Annual Conference
Rhode Island Convention Center
Providence, R.I.
April 2 & 3, 2012
(plus a free Sunday evening reception 4/1)

General Session Keynote Speakers

Monday, April 2, 2012
The "Best Stuff" is in the Middle
Dedra Stafford

Just like the Oreo cookie, middle level is where all the magic happens in education. A student's journey is guided and misguided by the impact people have around them. Come in and celebrate with Dedra as she makes you laugh, cry and remember the best kept secret of education, "The Best Stuff" is in the middle!

Tuesday, April 3rd
Middle Level Education – Living it, loving it, laughing about it!
Jack Berckemeyer

Looking to put a spark back into your teaching? Are you curious about what really makes your students tick? Looking for ways to connect with your students? This laugh out loud keynote provides ideas and strategies in the areas of connecting with your students, being an adult advocate for kids, and new strategies in the area of classroom management. A true crowd pleaser for any type of educator!

Hear these keynoters and many more educators at the
2012 NELMS Annual Conference.
Hope to see you there!

Click here for more information and/or to register

Game Star Mechanic

My fifth graders have been enthralled with Game Star Mechanic for the last week-- the idea is simple:

Students work through several stages of playing increasingly complex games, and then they enter the workshop in which they can create their own games.

Blended contextualized learning communities

Earlier this week, I had the chance to hear Chris Dede speak about blended contextualized learning communities (BCLC) at the Association for Teacher Educators conference in San Antonio. His talk described one of his current projects to create a BCLC with among middle schoolers studying ecosystems around Cambridge. Some essential definitions for BCLCs:

Blended-- This term is being increasingly used to describe classrooms in which technology is deeply and permanently embedded. In these classrooms, technology is a natural part of what happens and many of the activities would be impossible without the technology. Blended classrooms are different from classrooms in which technology has been "integrated." Where technology has been  integrated it is part of the instruction-- the curriculum is developed prior to the decision to use technology and then technology tools are selected to support instruction. Where technology is blended, it is a part of the curriculum as well as part of the instruction.

Contextualized-- Much curriculum in the 20th century was designed to simplify problems. Educators focused on only the simple aspects of the ideas in the curriculum. Even when based on real-world problems, curriculum was sterilized as complicating factors were removed as the problems went from the professions into the classroom. While this was done in an effort to reduce the complexity of the problems and make learning easier, cognitive and learning scientists have found that those complicating factors help learners connect with the problems and help learners to find relevance, and without either of those, learning does not occur.

Learning communities-- For several decades, educators have been rediscovering the social nature of learning and designing instruction to encourage interaction among learners and between learner and teacher.

Digital Textbook Playbook

On Feb. 1, the FCC released the Digital Textbook Playbook... I am not convinced that it is what it claims or what it might appear-- following this will helps schools begin to understand the infrastructure needs of ensuring that schools can be places in which digital textbooks can be used, but the issue of creating meaningful curriculum and designing meaningful instruction using these tools seems unaddressed (or at least seems of minimal importance).

Further, this seems full rhetoric that will garner support, but the claims are supported by weak or even no real evidence.

My suggestion is to review the book, especially if you are a school leader. Because those in leadership positions (in buildings, districts, and higher levels of organization) have not yet understood these ideas, we have been far too slow to transform schools in response to the technology we have available.

Aaron Swartz Hacks the Attention Economy

I am just back from a conference (details regarding what I learned coming soon) and getting caught up on reading-- I spent my time on the plane reading fiction for the first time in years!

On Tech Reviews app, there was a story about an Internet hacker who is on the cutting edge of Internet programming and use. His profile is interesting reading and gives insight into "the Internet's" side of piracy.

I thought you might be interested in the following story on TechnologyReview.com:

"Aaron Swartz Hacks the Attention Economy"
A digital guerrilla fighter explains what's wrong with anti-piracy laws, why the Internet and copyright law don't get along, and how he got into politics.

http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=39595&a=f

To view this story, click the link above or paste it into your browser.

- Dr. Gary Ackerman

PowerPoint!?!?!?

Jonathan Brinkerhoff from New Mexico has convinced me that PowerPoint can be useful!

- Dr. Gary Ackerman

I just heard Chris Dede speak about Blended Contextualized Learning Communities. I have several pages of notes that I need to digest and post later. A fellow New Englander did us proud here in San Antonio.
- Dr. Gary Ackerman

So I have found something worse than a presenter reading PowerPoimt slides... a presenter from across the country reading slides and speaker notes!

- Dr. Gary Ackerman

That didn't work

How about email?

- Dr. Gary Ackerman

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Quizlet

A colleague sent this my way today... it sure seems interesting to me... http://quizlet.com/

After taking a few minutes to click through some of the math quizzes, I see some interesting opportunities to point our students to items such as this as a way to reinforce those neural pathways that we build in class. Also, the interface is something that most students who spend all of their lives online will find familiar and natural.

Tools such as this will allow teachers to download (or is it upload?) some of the traditional instructional tasks to the cloud and thus make available more time for authentic learning activities in class.

"Tectonic Shifts" in Employment

This article is from late 2011, but it seemed relevant given the release of the report (see my post from yesterday) describing parents' and educators' expectations regarding assessments.

I doubt the "NCLB-style" punitive testing model is preparing any students for the tectonic shifts described in this article.

I thought you might be interested in the following story on TechnologyReview.com:

""Tectonic Shifts" in Employment"
Information technology is reducing the need for certain jobs faster than new ones are being created.

http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=39319&a=f

To view this story, click the link above or paste it into your browser.

- Dr. Gary Ackerman

More AC news...

31st Annual Conference
Rhode Island Convention Center
Providence, R.I.
April 2 & 3, 2012
(plus a free Sunday evening reception 4/1)

Some of the "Hot Topic" Sessions

Hot Topic sessions run during Monday and Tuesday. They offer you the opportunity to explore topics in depth. Here are the titles to a few of the "Hot Topic" sessions. 

Full workshop titles and descriptions can be found on www.nelms.org.

Content Literacy Instruction: The Key Comprehension Routine 

Elissa Arndt

Formative, Summative, Math, OH MY!! 

Deb Scarpelli

Reframing Classrooms for Technology 

Dr. Gary Ackerman

Bullying & Cyberbullying: Realistic Fiction & Positive Change 

Doug Wilhelm

Teaming – Let's Kick It Up a Notch 

Jill Spencer

Using Data to Shape Practice and Inform Instruction 

Sue Dumas

Is Your Team A PLC? 

Lyn Ward Healy

Any Time, Any Place, Anywhere: 

Bring Your Own Device for Digital Learning

Chris Toy

101 Student Motivation Strategies 

Dedra Stafford

Collaboration, Co-teaching, Inclusion, Mainstreaming: 

How Do We Make It ALL Work? 

Laurie Wasserman

Click here for more information and/or to register

Go read this!

The results of "For Every Child, Multiple Measures: What Parents and Educators Want From K-12 Assessments" a report from Northwest Evaluation Association and Grunwald Associates are now available... basically, the researchers surveyed parents an teachers to find out what makes assessment results effective and meaningful (and useful in supporting children and understanding schools and classrooms).

Key findings from the study include:

1. Child-centered teaching and learning is a top priority for parents and educators.
2. Parents, teachers and district administrators think it's important to measure student performance in a full range of subjects—and in the "thinking" skills that will be critical in life.
3. Parents, teachers and district administrators agree on local decision-making about teaching and learning.
4. Formative and interim assessments are perceived as more valuable by parents and educators.
5. Many parents, teachers and administrators question the money, time and stress spent on assessment.

Based on the findings, NWEA offers the following recommendations:

Recommendations for Assessment Developers and Policymakers

1. Broaden the dialogue beyond summative assessments and high-stakes accountability.
2. Focus on more than language arts and mathematics assessments.
3. Develop innovative ways to measure learning, thinking and life skills.
4. Encourage local decision-making on assessments that support learning.

Recommendations for State and District Leaders

1. Share decision-making authority and responsibility for teaching and learning with teachers, principals and school leaders.
2. Select assessments that provide timely and useful information.
3. Establish professional learning communities and provide time and training for educators to better understand the different assessments and effective use of assessment data.
4. Provide parents with comparative data on students at the district and national levels. 

After some reflection on iBooks...

So, I have been spending some time with iBooks... the app on my iPhone as a method of presenting ideas and the books available on the bookstore and as a method of creating our own content. It seems to me after a few weeks of messing about (Seymour Papert uses Claude Levi-Strauss' term bricolage to describe my recent work) with iBooks I have come to a few conclusions:

1) It is a good choice for presenting PDF files... anything I can get into PDF displays perfectly well using my $30 dongle and the VGA projector in my classroom.

2) The free content available is OK-- not great, not terrible. When I read the science books, I get the sense they were written by graduate students who drew from the textbooks on their shelves. Nothing to run from, but nothing to run to... sufficient to hold my attention and to cause me to want to watch the development closely over the next year.

3) The content I am creating falls into the category I described in point #2. But I do have the sense that things may be different as we explore the medium of the interactive textbook. I am reminded of the advise given to me by a progressive educator when I was learning the craft. He said, "plan your lecture notes to get yourself organized, then throw them all away and think about how to really teach the material." That advise seems to apply equally well to developing iBooks-- write it, then go back and find ways to get the interactive bits into it.

Voki

Educators who are interested in having a slightly more interesting element in their web site might want to think about Voki.

The site allows users to create talking avatars for announcements and even lessons.

 

Great intro to genetics and science and brains

John Medina is an author who is perhaps best known for Brain Rules (a book that should be required reading for everyone by the way). He is also an active blogger who continues to keep readers up to date on discoveries related to brains. In his February 7 post, he has a brief review of a discovery that was unconfirmed... it is a wonderfully written piece that brings science and pseudoscience and several other interesting and timely issues together.

http://blog.spu.edu/brainstorm/2012/02/07/of-weirds-and-sushis-and-people-who-use-chopsticks/

Can you run a school on a cloud- II

Continuing a line of though that started last week... there continues to be some chatter around Vermont anyways about the potential and limitations of running a school on the cloud.

I am adding my own experiences... as I have been teaching primarily on the cloud for several years now.

My students use local profiles to log on to Ubuntu and Macintosh computers (in some of my classes, there are not sufficient numbers of identical machines for my students-- rather than complaining about the obviously poor planning of our school and technology leaders, I kluge together enough machines and go to work. Those accounts are local administrators, so students can install updates and any software we require as needed.

Most of our work is then done on the cloud-- productivity suites, etc. Usually my students move to the Macintoshes for multimedia production projects.

All projects are handed in, via a Moodle classroom.

I gotta say, that my system (and the model that was presented last week) works-- and I find that it is dirt cheap. Once I get a machine in front of a student-- which costs only a few hundred bucks if we  buy a PC without an operating system and install Ubuntu, then the machine costs nothing.

About twice each year, I have students create a zip file containing everything that is stored locally (using zip files uploaded to the cloud-- a good lesson!) and then a single computer has the most updated version of Ubuntu installed (and configured to our network printers, etc.) and an image is made of that hard drive. (The imaging is also done using free software-- g4u is my favorite.

Downloading cognition

My fifth grade students must be studying square roots in math class (I wonder what happened to the plan that their content teachers were going to share with me-- a lowly "special" teacher--what they were studying so that I could find connections to their content and computers). They came in today and were asking about the square roots.

One student thought she could stump the old math teacher with "what is the square root of 144?" The they started asking about the square root of pi... the old math teacher said "let's see... more than one, less than two." They were unimpressed, but we quickly went to Siri on the iPhone.

After she gave us direction to two nearby restaurants that serve pie, we got the WolframAlpha page and found the value of the square root of pi. That led us to a discussion of the need to know how to find such numbers today. If we all have devices that allow us to quickly do such calculations, why don't we simply use the technology (make that learn how to use the technology well) and then think about the meaning of such calculations and the problems to which we can apply such calculations?

iPads in education

eSchoolNews has a story today about a school's experience with iPads... 

The more I read and hear about debates such as this, the more I sense they are similar to the Mac vs PC debates we all had in 1995 or so. My advice is to find something that appears to fit your budget and use it... use it well so that you know the features (both technological and pedagogical) that you need --not the ones the vendor or the blogger or the textbook says you need-- and then make further later decisions in a more informed manner.

Just like the Mac-PC debates were woefully uninformed and focused on something that didn't really matter; the current tablet debates are also uninformed...

Creativity index for schools

Last week, EdWeek featured an item on their web site in which the author described current efforts to include Creativity Indexes in school assessment and evaluation procedures. Basically, the idea is that if there is an expectation that students will develop creativity (and a method of measuring), then schools will become environments in which creativity emerges.

That all sounds great in principle, and I am not going to discourage any efforts to promote creativity as it is (in my opinion) the single most essential habit we can promote in our children. I am concerned, however, about centralized efforts to "tell teachers" how to promote creativity.

It all reminds me of the meeting at which we were reviewing writing that has been done by students. My group was assigned the procedure pieces and it was immediately obvious that the students had followed a recipe for writing the piece-- they had followed a procedure piece for writing procedure pieces. Ostensibly, the students had written something that would have been judged "meeting the standard," however, I questioned if the students would be able to write such a piece with independence- or even recognize when such writing was necessary.

So, let's promote creativity. Let's make sure there are art and music and science and math (yup real science and math are highly creative endeavors) experiences for students throughout their careers in school. Let's make sure the experiences are truly creative, however, and not just jumping the the creativity hoops.

Can you run a school on the cloud?

A school in southern Vermont (enrolling about 450 students in grades K-8) has moved their computing to the cloud. This is a particularly interesting case to me as "the cloud" seems to be all of the rage in IT circles, but many schools and organizations seem to be slow to adopt the procedures... perhaps we are being overly cautious perhaps we are too heavily invested in our current systems.

In a recent post to the list-serv for Vermont information technology, the system was described by those who set it up and manage it:

... basically we took a look at our system's capacity and assessed the needs of our clients (teachers, staff, and students....not in any particular order). The conclusion? Do everything we can to maximize our bandwidth and our networks' capacity by eliminating unnecessary traffic. The result - we no longer back up student or teacher documents. All accounts are local. We are a Google domain, so much is in the cloud. We back up only essentials - office staff, etc.. As a result, we are able to serve our school (over 400 computers, with over 200 in the hands of middle school students in a 1:1 program) with two Comcast lines providing 16 down and 2 up each. Our network consists of two Comcast SMCs, SonicWall device, old Mac Pro server, and 3 HP Pro Curve switches, and 32 Apple Airport Extremes. 

Many thanks to Keith Nemlich and Amanda Bickford from the Manchester Elementary Middle School for sharing their expertise.

FaceBook

Several of my students have been talking about the recent changes to FaceBook, and that has brought  the popular social network to the attention of students, and especially those students who do not have accounts. Also, this year, I am teaching 5th graders, and those students are at the age where they are beginning to seek permission to set up accounts-- which they are not supposed to of course.

The good folks at Common Sense Media do have great content for those adults who are still unsure about the whole FaceBook thing...

Technology planning

A colleague just left my classroom after showing up to vent after hearing "through the grape vine" that there was talk in our central office about no longer funding the digital video library she uses... the tech folks suggested "she can just use YouTube." After we ranted for a few moments about the ethics of that (I wonder who would be held responsible for teachers' use of the unlicensed media on YouTube in violation of school policy-- no actually I know who would be liable), we talked for a few minutes about the design of school ICT systems and who gets to make decisions about what gets installed and how it is configured...

It was a good preview of one of the images I will be using at one of my presentations at the Annual Conference:

I say we start at the top, and technicians get to design systems and then teach teachers how to use the systems... teachers have the responsibility to follow those instructions as presented. If the system then doesn't meet the needs of the users (teachers and their students) then the system must be redesigned. In my view technicians trump teachers on design, but technicians must accommodate each and every need identified by the teachers.

SlideRocket-- another favorite Chrome app

I know Slide Rocket has been around for some time, but I had not been on the site for some time. My students were recently looking for an alternative to Google Docs presentations and they wanted to be able to log in using their Google Apps accounts that are managed through school. (Originally that wanted to use Prezi, but some of them did not want use their home email accounts for this and we do not assign email addresses to students.)

We found the Slide ROcket app and it appears to fit our need--

• Students log on using their Google accounts
• They can create presentations with some more "eye candy" than is allowed by Google presentations
• We can embed the presentations

Check it out if your needs are similar to mine... and check it out again if you haven't been there for some time. The folks who produce SlideRocket provide some samples... like this one:

Wolfram Education Portal

The folks over that Wolfram-- the people behind Wolfram Alpha and Mathematica-- have made a new Education Portal available. Create an account and you can access a wide range of resources including information about their free tools.

The one complaint I have about the Wolfram people is that their marketing is heavy-- expect lots of emails from them trying to get you to buy their products (which are excellent but expensive).

Competition myth in education

Something has always "stuck in my craw" about the arguments that education would be improved by the introduction of competition. (In the "free-market" of the United States- another myth-- we are supposed to accept as obvious that competition will improve quality and decrease price.)

For educators, however, the difficulties have been several and the economies of scale that apply to many manufacturing processes do not apply to education-- in fact scaling appears to change fundamentally the process of education, that's why having a class of 50 students results in less education than s possible in classes of 15.

Seth Rosenblatt, writing on eSchoolNews web site, has an essay that presents the ideas in a cogent and detailed manner... it is well worth a read.

Digital Learning Day

Too late to plan for this year, as today is the day, but Feb. 1, 2012 is the first Digital Learning Day.

The web site of the organizers does have some good resources... look for the ToolKits.

Too bad we still need such days... I was hoping that learning really would be digital by now...

NELMS AC- mark your calendar

31st Annual Conference

Rhode Island Convention Center 

Providence, R.I.

April 2 & 3, 2012

(plus a free Sunday evening reception 4/1)

Explore more ideas to impact student learning

Advisory/Advocacy

Anti-Bullying

Classroom Management

Curriculum/Common Core

Data Driven Decision Making

Differentiated Instruction

ESL/ELL/ESOL/EFL

Leadership

Literacy

Mathematics/Science

Student Motivation & Engagement

Teaming

Technology

PLC's

and much more…

Click here for more information and/or to register