Draft from the past: Whiteboard blues

So, sometimes I start blog posts and abandon them for some inexplicable reason. They sit on my Blogger dashboard.  Here is one from Summer 2009:

What does a summer-school lecturer (me) do at a major, state-funded, flagship university (the
University of Tennessee-Knoxville) when she wants to capture and concretize her classroom ramblings and has no effective medium through which to do so? Interactive whiteboard? Anyone?. . . Anyone??

Well, in the absence of an interactive whiteboard — and there is NOT A ONE in the entire UT college of education building, at least that I know of — I did the next best thing. I took a picture of my class notes with my phone, sent the image to myself, and then used a web-based visualization tool to smooth out the rough edges.

I transformed this:


Into this:



Not too shabby, huh?

Draft from the past: Whiteboard blues

Low-tech student response system

These past few weeks, I have been preparing the guestroom/spare bedroom as a home office space, the quintessential "room of one's own" for this, my final year -- I hope! -- of the PhD marathon. (Note: I did not say final year of education. That will never end.)

In the process, I have been going through boxes from my teaching days and purging things I could not bear to part with when I left the classroom in 2005.

This time around, some stuff was easier to let go of, such as the crate of office supplies that no longer fit my paperless lifestyle. I hope the ladies at the church rummage sale find a good home for all those notebooks, dividers, and packages of loose-leaf paper.

But other items proved more difficult to dispose of, perhaps because they represent my past life as a classroom teacher in ways that a generic, 3-ring binder never could.

For instance, I located a box of multiple choice "flip-cards" and a set of laminated pinch cards that contain some of the more challenging homophones from our local 9th grade English end-of-course test.

Students used the flip-cards or pinch cards to indicate their answers to sample test questions that I read aloud during whole group instruction. A sort of kinesthetic twist on (yes) the very worst form of call-and-respond, teacher-centered instruction.

These "relics" are less than ten years old, but in these days of automated digital response systems, I was struck by the elegant ingenuity that inspired these homemade tools for active learning and student engagement (inspiration I completely stole, mind you, from another teacher somewhere along the way).

Although these low-tech precursors to modern-day clicker technology were used to prep students for the oppressive onslaught of AYP testing, they also remind me of how teachers improvise and innovate to make time in the classroom (a little?) fun. And when you think about it, the flip-cards and pinch cards and clickers and text-message polls do what the mass-administered, standardized tests will never be able to do: they support real-time, classroom-level assessment with instantaneous feedback to the learner.

So, I am keeping these handmade artifacts, if for no other reason than to remind me of those fast and furious days of NCLB test-prep. And, besides, no one would buy them at the church rummage sale.

Low-tech student response system

What is TPACK?

I am really interested in the theoretical framework called TPCK or "TPACK" (Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge).  What follows is a fake radio/video show created for the International Society for Technology in Education 2010 conference by Michigan State's Punya Mishra with Matt Koehler (and a bunch of other people who are thanked in the video).

In the words of Mishra and Koehler: "We were asked to create a video for ISTE, a conference that neither of us could attend. Our goal was to create an engaging 15 minute video that would convey our ideas about technology integration in teaching, specifically the TPACK framework."


TPACK Radio/Video Show ISTE 2010 from Punya Mishra on Vimeo.

What is TPACK?

Digital storytelling with iMovie

In the technology course for preservice teachers that I am facilitating this summer, we spent the past week creating digital stories with iMovie. Here is the story I created. I like it. What do you think?

Digital storytelling with iMovie

Competing copyright curricula

A recent eSchoolNews article about dueling copyright curricula couldn't have surfaced at a more opportune time, seeing as how I literally just days before had utilized some materials from one of the curriculums in question.

On the one hand, the Copyright Alliance Education Foundation (CAEF) recently published Think First, Copy Later, seen by some as slanted toward the interests of copyright owners.

On the other hand, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), unveiled Teaching Copyright. The EFF is characterized as an advocacy group that serves the interests of users and consumers of digital media.

Admittedly, I was not aware of the CAEF curriculum when I recently selected and distributed some of the EFF's support documents to a group of pre-service teachers at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. But I am inspired by the prospect of having access to and using "dueling curricula," if and when I teach about copyright again in the future.

What an opportunity for teachers to exercise professional discernment! What an opportunity for students to see copyright law presented from two different perspectives -- owner versus user, industry versus consumer! What an opportunity to engage higher-order thinking and some good, old media literacy skills, such as evaluating audience, authorship, message, and meaning!

Teachers need these resources now more than ever. It was not too long ago that teacher training on the vagaries of fair use doctrine were conducted in the faculty workroom, usually between classes, as we waited in line at the photocopier. We traded in stories, myths, and half-truths and competed for bragging rights to the title of "Greatest Copyright Infringer." We made half-joking references to a sinister, Gestapo-like "Copyright Police" waiting in the wings. (I know. I was one of those teachers.)

The surge of web-based information and communication technologies makes it easier than ever to facilitate content creation and sharing in our classrooms, but we must first be equipped to engage students in conversation about content creation that is safe, ethical, and legal.

The alternative is to do nothing for fear of violating the law. This phenomenon was documented by Hobbs, Jaszi, and Aufderheide in their 2007 report for the Center for Social Media, The Cost of Copyright Confusion for Media Literacy. In 2008 the Center published the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education, which states that fear and confusion about copyright:

detracts from the quality of teaching. Lack of clarity reduces learning and limits the ability to use digital tools. Some educators close their classroom doors and hide what they fear is infringement; others hyper-comply with imagined rules that are far stricter than the law requires, limiting the effectiveness of their teaching and their students’ learning.

Check out the accompanying video:

technorati tags: copyright fair use participatory culture media literacy student engagement

Competing copyright curricula

Featured student blog: meet Ann

Cross-posted at Fireside Learning and Classroom 2.0.

Many teachers shy away from contemporary music. Why? It could be because their own teachers did the same.

That quote comes from Ann, an aspiring music educator at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. She and 14 other pre-service teachers are enrolled in a section of IT486, Intro to Instructional Computing, that I am teaching this summer. The course examines how to use technology to support teaching and learning and is designed to prepare novice teachers to integrate a variety of computer-based technologies.

One aspect of the course design that I really enjoy and value is the blog for reflective journaling. This is a required component. During the first week of the course, each student signed up for a blog at Google's Blogger. They were given a certain amount of license in the look and feel of the blog, but the overarching rationale for the pre-service teacher blog is the same: to develop and practice the reflective process. (More on that later.)

But why blend an introspective mode of writing such as journal writing with a public medium such as blogs?

As Christopher Sessums maintains:

Collaborative weblogs promote the idea of learners as creators of knowledge, not merely consumers of information. A collaborative environment like the one I'm suggesting can allow peers to be seen as valuable sources of knowledge and ideas; a connection that participants can rely on beyond any formal classroom structure, i.e., collaboration leading to a community of interest.

So to that end, I have been making readerly comments on each pre-service teacher's blog, and I am encouraging the class to follow, read, and comment on each others' blogs.

And now, to go a step further, I seek to shine a spotlight (or, in the case of our music major, "sound a trumpet") on some provocative posts in hopes of inducting our novice edubloggers into some of the wonderfully generous and nurturing networks of teacher/learners that have supported me in the past -- communities such as Fireside Learning and Classroom 2.0.

Ann's commentary on the state of music education strikes a chord because she describes a phenomenon that transcends content area and grade level: teachers tend to teach in the manner in which they were taught. Why is this so? How do we press forward into new realms of teaching and learning and resist falling back on tired and familiar practices that have outlived their effectiveness for today's learners?

What do you think? I invite you to visit Ann's blog and share your thoughts and feedback with her.

technorati tags: collaboration communication teacher/learner teachers edublogs blogs reflection mentoring uTenn

Featured student blog: meet Ann

Know the feeling

I love this sentiment! It perfectly encapsulates the classroom teacher's state of mind when faced with the full potential of the read/write web.

The quip belongs to Peter Lane, a California middle school reading and technology teacher.  I stole it from his profile in Classroom 2.0, an online professional network that, if you are a teacher even remotely curious about technology, you must visit!  In fact, Peter's expression could serve as the tagline for the whole Classroom 2.0 site, which exists, in part, for those "beginners" who seek a "supportive community and a comfortable place to start being part of the digital dialog."

For his part, Peter is engaging his students in the "digital dialog" using a mix of young adult literature, blogs, and wikis. Take a look at Mr. Lane's Effective Reading Blog.

technorati tags: instructional technology teachers networking teacherLearner Classroom2.0 web2.0

Know the feeling

Wikipedia in the classroom?

This is of interest to classroom teachers and anyone else who cares about teaching and learning information literacy. If you are one of the lucky ones who gets to evaluate (and teach the evaluation of) online resources in the classroom without arbitrary content filters or system-wide bans, then here is some good advice regarding Wikipedia, framed in terms of curriculum:

If the curriculum is a closed body of information and skills to be transmitted to students, you should ignore Wikipedia and direct students to proven resources such as textbooks. Wikipedia—with its uneven quality, vandalism, and distractions—will disrupt this transfer. If your curriculum is an opening into critical thinking and knowledge construction, however, teachers must use flawed sources such as Wikipedia, alongside more authoritative texts.

It comes from the Point/Counterpoint column in the March-April 2009 edition of Leading and Learning with Technology from the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). The author is Thomas Hammond, a former classroom teacher and now professor at Lehigh University.

Some might take exception to Hammond's reference to "proven resources such as textbooks." Textbooks, along with all classroom materials, reside somewhere on a continuum of accuracy and authority and should be judged accordingly. They are not immune to critique.

Overall, I think Hammond does a fine job of cutting through the fog of fear and apprehension that shrouds Wikipedia. Quite possibly, educators could use his suggestions to teach about and through not just Wikipedia, but other collaboratively constructed knowledgebases and online communities as well.

And, no, that doesn't make me feel all "warm and fuzzy," as suggested by counterpoint author, David Farhie. Instead, Hammond's argument gives me hope and a glimpse of the kind of classroom where I would like to teach again some day.

What do you think? Is there room in your curriculum for Wikipedia?

technorati tags: wikipedia wikis information literacy participatory culture

Wikipedia in the classroom?

From analog girl to "digimom"

My mother thinks I should hang a calendar in the kitchen so my son can learn his days of the weeks and months of the year.

He is two years old.

"Well, maybe not now, but in the next few years you should consider it," she said.

I told her that in the next few years, I fully expect my son to be able to turn on a computer and launch an Internet browser, much in the same way he can now turn on the TV and even navigate TiVo. At that point, what's to stop him from accessing the web-based calendar my husband and I currently use to organize work, church, and household events?

"Well, it's still an analog world," she said.

No. It isn't, I say.

I am about to be graduated from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville with a master's degree in instructional technology. Had the above conversation occurred at another time and place, it likely would have ended differently, with me earnestly shopping for the perfect calendar per Mom's suggestion.

The 2008 Land of Liberty calendar by Thomas Kincaid looks nice, with the added benefit of exposing my first-born to a bygone era when subtle Christian imagery and blatant patriotism intermingled to form resplendent, light-filled tableaux.

Yechhhh.

If I were going to buy a wall calendar to support my child's intellectual and cognitive development, I would choose one with more transparent instructional value. How about a calendar that not only reinforces concepts like time management and days of the week but also promotes responsible citizenship, the democratic process, and important mathematical problem-solving strategies, like counting down? A civics lesson on every page!

It is an election year, after all.

The point is, my child is not developmentally ready for a calendar, and in the next few years when he is, paper-based calendars will be even more irrelevant than they are today. I haven't owned a calendar or date book in close to ten years since the acquisition of my first handheld PDA, and I don't expect my son will ever have use for one.

Although, I suppose that even by 2010 when he starts Kindergarten, I can count on him seeing and using plenty of analog calendars -- at school.

I joke about being "an analog girl in a digital world," in part because I love the Guy Clark song, but I am serious when it comes to the "unfolding 'literacy dialectic'" described by Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel in New Literacies: Everyday Practices and Classroom Learning, 2nd edition.

I read New Literacies this spring as part of a semester-long seminar on redefining literacy. The book is largely framed by a "tension" caused by the rapid onset of digital and mobile technologies in daily life and the complex demands this places on teachers and students to merge "old" and "new" literacies -- the "dialectic."

At stake are two divergent worldviews about the role of 21st century information and communication technologies (ICTs) in contemporary culture. Lankshear and Knobel label these worldviews as "mindsets."

The "newcomer," or "outsider," mindset values digital technology for the way it supports old business models and conventional, print-based literacy practices. The "insider" mindset sees opportunity in technology to radically innovate and abandon the business-as-usual approach. The bulk of New Literacies examines insider practices, giving readers a glimpse into the worlds of fanfiction, anime, memes, blogs, podcasts, and mobile computing.

Educators, school leaders, and instructional technologists are struggling to respond to all this change as it relates to the effective integration of technology into classroom learning. More often than not, they "simply end up reproducing familiar conventional literacies through their uses of new technologies" (p. 30).

New Literacies concludes with a challenge to teachers, administrators, and policymakers. Lankshear and Knobel do not advocate unflagging allegiance to wholesale technology adoption that does not honor "insider" sensibilities, nor do they believe schools should be left behind as the exclusive domain of print-based, conventional literacies (p. 259).

Rather, the authors encouraged their readers to just “take a look and see,” to try out the new technologies and experience the new literacies and social practices for ourselves. In doing so, we will begin to understand the implications for teaching and learning. These insights will guide the integration of 21st century ICTs into instruction in a manner that compromises neither the integrity of the cultural practices nor our educational aims (pp. 246-247).

This is my biggest take-away from New Literacies: I don't have to be a practicing classroom teacher to feel the tension of the mindsets. (Note above conversation between dear, ol' Mom and me.) The shifts are playing out all around me as I perform in roles as student, parent, and citizen, and I have an obligation to respond.

It's why I still can't stop thinking about the Rolling Stone March 20 cover story on Barack Obama's campaign strategy. It's a strategy in which the field operations consist of voters organizing themselves with web-based technologies, particularly social networking tools: "In the process, the Obama campaign has shattered the top-down, command-and-control, broadcast-TV model that has dominated American politics since the early 1960s."

It's why I helped my babysitter set up a Gmail account and MySpace page so she could stay in contact with her many geographically dispersed cousins. The babysitter, by the way, is a 44-year-old grandmother of three.

It's why I keep needling my local school board representative to take steps toward re-visioning our school system's outdated appropriate use and web publishing policies.

It's why I am determined to master the text-message function on my cell phone. One of these days.

And it's why I won't be buying any Hallmark calendars for the rest of my natural life.

From analog girl to "digimom"

Education informatics and the teacher/learner

It's been more than a week since Clarence Fisher delivered his K-12 Online Conference keynote about web-based tools and their potential impact on relationships, pedagogy, curriculum, and information access in the classroom.

Arguing that "technology is not about skills, it's about connections," Fisher concludes his presentation by calling for reform of technology assessments that are too narrowly focused on the acquisition and demonstration of skills. Fisher says that what is needed instead is a tool for generating "education informatics." This application would allow teachers to track students' actions and activities on the Internet and to monitor and assess their progress as they build out virtual networks.

I’ve been thinking on this for several days. Now, as I am currently immersed in the Professional Learning Networks strand of the K-12 Online Conference, the concept of education informatics is growing more relevant and urgent.

By all accounts, the old model of "sit and get" professional development delivered by high-priced outside experts is on the way out. Like student learning, teacher professional development has the potential to become more personalized and self-directed within the new Web landscape.

And, as with students, education informatics for teachers could provide invaluable feedback and transparency about the breadth and depth of their online learning.

In my community the local school system recently reduced the number of systemwide professional development days and tripled the number of hours (from 6 to 18) that teachers must document unscheduled inservice learning. There is a tremendous opportunity here for teachers to set aside time for unstructured experimentation with the many cutting-edge, web-based tools and receive credit for their effort!

But how many of our administrators are equipped or even willing to acknowledge learning pursued via wikis, webcasts, chats, forum discussions, and so on? I think documentation and accountability would be huge issues to overcome, unless they had access to a state-of-the-art technology assessment such as Fisher describes.

If teachers are to be the models of lifelong learning, we must be willing to allow others to examine that learning under the microscope of education informatics.

And that's what I think.

technorati tags: teachers teacherLearner informatics education informatics k12online07 k12online07c101 professional development

Education informatics and the teacher/learner

Will better school policy provide "traction"?

Cross-posted at Classroom 2.0

It has been almost a month since I posted a call at ThinkTime for educators and educational technologists to share examples of progressive policies that embrace web-based tools for content sharing, creation, and collaboration.

Realizing ThinkTime is not as high-traffic as some other "super-hubs" in the edublogosphere, I also posted my question at Classroom 2.0.

And I've been tracking comments on other blogs, such as Think42.com where Steve Dembo issued a similar call, also in September.

To date, the response has been zero, zilch, nada. Why is that?

I'm so confused. There are threads all over the blogosphere about Internet filters, censorship, and CIPA. (See recent dust-ups at blogs by Wesley Fryer, Doug Johnson, and Kurt Paccio.) But where are the parallel discussions about the need for proactive, systemic policies that embrace, or at least acknowledge, the changing information landscape?

To extend David Warlick's flight metaphor from the K-12 Online Preconference Keynote, is our focus on filters essentially because they equate a grounding of aircraft? Without access to web content and the web-based tools that empower sharing and creation of content, educators and students can't take flight much less contemplate detours, lay-overs, and emergency landings.

I get the problem of filters. I really do.

I have firsthand experience with blocked web sites in the classroom context. I resented the administrative process to remove a block from an educationally valid site. But, in truth -- and please don't mistake me for an apologist here -- my system was reasonably responsive. I never once lacked access to Internet content I needed for instruction (provided instruction was planned several days in advance).

Yet, that was prior to 2005 -- before my interest in interactive self-publishing sites and social networks.

Now, in 2007, the best that I can gather from my teacher and librarian friends is spotty, inconsistent blockage of blogs, wikis, and networking tools persists in our county. Enough to stifle creativity and production? Maybe, but that is only part of the problem.

You see, in my community we have a layer of system-wide web publishing policy that also acts as a "blocker," of sorts. The filter blocks access to content; current policy as stated in the procedures handbook for web pages blocks administrators, teachers, and students from creating content. I may be interpreting the procedures incorrectly, but they seem only to address teacher- and student-generated web content on officially sanctioned web pages hosted on local servers.

So, provided teachers, librarians, and administrative leaders are vigilant about requesting access to appropriate sites, it is possible to operate under the flawed filter. But who is evaluating the web publishing procedures? Who is advocating that these procedures be refined to be a more accurate reflection of the new web landscape?

There is hope. Some folks in my community are willing to consider a new approach, but they want to see models.

I am begging for some outside perspective here!

I have considered the possibility that some educational systems and institutions have acceptable use policies (AUPs) that encompass both the access and creation of web content. I actually would love for that to be the case, as I am in no way advocating adding another layer of policy upon policy.

But what I fear is more likely the case is an overall lack of intentionality or conscious policy making regarding the read/write web.

Thus, we have situations like this, described to me in an email from a librarian friend who works in a school system here in the Southeast U.S.:

We go by the official AU policy . . . . And as you noted, there is really nothing about blogs, wikis, social networks, etc. I think our district shies away from getting too detailed because they don't want to open a can of worms. I am just speculating it, but sometimes I think they take this approach in hopes that if they don't draw attention to it, then they don't have to deal with it. I do know "Wordpress" is the officially approved blog host by curriculum, but there is nothing in writing about this -- it is just what has trickled down to us, and I truly doubt most teachers know this.

In his keynote posted on Oct. 8, Warlick describes three brand-new conditions converging on our classrooms: info-savvy students, a new information landscape, and an unpredictable future. He warns, "We've tried to ignore them, we've tried to contain them, and to even block them out. But the best thing we can do is to realize that these three converging conditions can actually become new boundaries off of which we can gain traction."

Warlick uses the metaphor of airplanes, which travel in invisible but established flightpaths and which still need runways for take offs and landings.

I am starting to wonder how we can pilot the aircrafts without flight manifests and air traffic controllers. How long is this under-the-radar, ask-forgiveness-not-permission way of doing things going to persist?

How desirable is it, really, to Build this Plane While It's Flying?

What do you think?

technorati tags: AUP school reform k12online07 k12online07pc school tech leadership web2.0 instructional technology web publishing policy

Graphic: Photograph of Icarus and Daedalus by Charles Paul Landon, from WikiMediaCommons

Will better school policy provide "traction"?

My first VoiceThread project

I have been watching and listening with great interest as teachers and other tech enthusiasts have been posting creations made with VoiceThread. I first encountered VoiceThread at Ddraig Goch's blog. More recently, there has been a lot of sharing of success stories in the Classroom 2.0 forum.

As a language arts teacher, I am especially interested in how individuals with little or no technical expertise can use this free, web-based application to seamlessly integrate words and images into beautiful little multimedia presentations.

And the creators promise that teachers and students will always enjoy free access to VoiceThread in the classroom. (A new souped-up version is set to premiere on October 10.)

VoiceThread is a compelling tool for the English teacher. A thoughtful lesson that incorporates VoiceThread draws on all the language arts skills -- reading, writing, listening, speaking, and representing.

Every semester my students conducted PowerPoint-supported book talks; it seems a VoiceThread book talk would have greater reach and impact. First, the students' voices are permanently embedded in the slideshow for repeated viewings over time. Second, rather than rely on ready-made templates, students would have to carefully select or create their own digital images. Third, a more rigorous writing component is possible if students are required to script and rehearse their commentaries prior to recording. (I've always been bothered by the way PowerPoint reduces thought to the proverbial three bullet points.)

Moreover, students who share books in common can leave comments, reactions, and insights on each other's VoiceThreads.

Wesley Fryer has posted a number of projects that demonstrate VoiceThread's value in the English classroom as well as its tremendous interdisciplinary potential. Check out his Great Book Stories project as well as his VoiceThread about the Shanghai Cricket Market.

My first VoiceThread is more modest, but I am excited nonetheless because my son, who just turned two, also joined in the action. Here is my first little VoiceThread demo, celebrating Henry's second birthday.

So, what do you think? (For reasons beyond my level of comprehension, VoiceThreads cannot be embedded in blogs hosted by Wordpress.com. So, you will have to go offsite to view my project. Sorry!)

technorati tags: instructional technology web2.0 voicethread

My first VoiceThread project