METC 2010 will be held February 8-10 at the St. Charles Convention Center in St. Charles, MO. Call for presenters is currently up until August 20. Online registration begins October 1! Cooperating School Districts recently announced 2010 keynotes: Wesley Fryer and Deneen Frazier Bowen.

Wesley Fryer is a digital learning consultant, author, digital storyteller, educator and change agent. With respect to school change, he describes himself as a “catalyst for creative engagement and collaborative learning.” Wesley serves as a co-convener for the annual K-12 Online Conference and is the co-director of the statewide Celebrate Oklahoma Voices digital storytelling project. His blog, “Moving at the Speed of Creativity” was selected as the 2006 “Best Learning Theory Blog” by eSchoolnews and Discovery Education. He was named an Apple Distinguished Educator in 2005. He was an elementary classroom teacher for six years in Texas public schools before serving as a college director of distance learning for five years. Wesley is completing his doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction at Texas Tech University, studying the impact of podcasting and coursecasting on student learning in higher education.

Wesley will conduct a preconference workshop on Monday, February 8. On Tuesday, February 9, he is keynote speaker and presents two additional breakout sessions.

For more than a decade, Deneen Frazier Bowen has been applying her acting, teaching and technology experience to help teachers and schools expand students’ learning opportunities through harnessing new technologies. She has traveled the country consulting with and speaking to schools, school districts, foundations and organizations.

Deneen spent several years working first as an elementary and then as a high school academic technology coordinator. In 2000, she designed and directed the Catalyst Communities program to explore how online communities can strengthen local schools. In 2001, she moved to Austin where she directed the online learning community for Teachscape, a developer of online professional development courseware for teachers. Since 1992, Deneen’s consulting business has provided technology-based professional development consulting services to educators nationwide. She holds a bachelor’s in communication from the University of California-San Diego and master’s in secondary education from George Mason University.

In her ‘spare’ time, Deneen is an accomplished and versatile actress who loves to bring life to the characters she portrays. With ActWith, Deneen masterfully weaves together her insights as an educator, talent for engaging audiences and technology expertise.

Teach Digital: Curriculum by Wes Fryer wiki / copyright via kwout

Check out Wes Fryer’s copyright resource wiki and his newest presentation at SlideShare for his materials on copyright, fair use, and educators.

Last month at the MassCue conference I attended a fabulous workshop focusing on Twitter as a form of professional networking by Beth Knittle (with Wes Fryer).  Many of the themes arising from my work this semester were also ones voiced by Beth and Wes.  For example, Beth reported that she had learned more in the past 4 years involving  instructional technology than her entire career as an educator.  I can certainly understand her comment.  There is so much to learn (and it changes weekly) and so many venues for that learning to occur, that the knowledge can seem exponential. I have to say that my own learning curve has also increased significantly these past few months, and I am still a “newbie” about it all. Another remark that resonated with me was made by Wes when he said that as educators we must personally use these web-based tools before we can effectively figure out how to use them in the classroom to enhance the goals we have for our students.

His statement made me recall the initial intent of my semester-long study about Web 2.0.  I naively thought that I could study the applications of Web 2.0 in the classroom before I really understood how individual tools (and there are many) work.  After a few weeks reading about what teachers were doing in their classrooms through blogs and wikis, I quickly realized that I needed to know far more about these tools, and I could only learn about them by exploring them on my own.  This maneuver is not only new to Web 2.0 tools, but to any educational content worth teaching.  The idea of “playing” with the tools reminded me of the notion of “messing about” which Eleanor Duckworth at Harvard Graduate School of Education not only wrote about but incorporated in her assignments for graduate students.  “Messing about” is necessary to understand many concepts in math and science (before they can be taught) and it is equally necessary (if not more so) in regards to educational technology. So, even though my graduate experiences were long ago, they echoed back to me quite emphatically this semester.

Back to Twitter…Beth framed her work with Twitter within the context of creating professional learning networks.  Twitter, a site for micro-blogging, allows educators to quickly find answers to their questions or pose solutions to issues that other educators are experiencing.  Twitter (along with Plurk) are widely used by educators for a variety of reasons and content specialities – Web 2.0 among them.  This social networking tool is very effective for quick communication for specific purposes, and within a short amount of time individual educators can acquire many “followers.”  Followers are an important means of connection – connection being a recurrent theme throughout the conference.

Beth and Wes left us with some useful advice and some blogs and wikis to access for futher our learning.  Thus, I have taken their advice to “play” by signing up for a Twitter account.  I welcome some followers at http://twitter.com/slaw33.  Thanks to Beth for getting me started.

I have discovered a wonderful new addiction- audiobooks!  I know, these have been around forever, and I am slow to come around, but I never realized I had a reason to listen to a “book on tape”.  This summer, I spent many hours in the car taking my kids to see their dad.  We drive through the Flint Hills of Kansas and my favorite radio station just doesn’t get that far! 

One day, we were stopping at the library before heading out and I decided to look at the audio books.  I found one of my favorites, that I hadn’t read in a while in a CD version- The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown.  I listened to is all the way up, and all the way back, and so the addiction began!

I am an avid reader and am even the founder of a local bookclub.  I have now started listening to books on the way to and from work.  For 30 minutes each way, I can immerse myself in a story.   I have found it the perfect way to unwind from a crazy day, but enough about me already!

Today I was catching up on my Google Reader, and ran across a post by Wes Fryer.  In his blog, Moving at the Speed of Creativity, he posted about a great service offered to Kansans who enjoy audiobooks.  Please head over to his blog to find out more.  Leave it to an Oklahoman to hear about it before this Kansan.  Oh well, as long as the information gets to people, the how isn’t important, right??

Wes Fryer sent out a link to his blog over the weekend highlighting ‘cite this page’ in the left sidebar of Wikipedia titled toolbox. He’s never seen it and I have to admit that I’d never taken note of it either. Maybe it’s been there for awhile or maybe it’s new. Regardless, it’s useful for the students you teach.

Whether you like Wikipedia or not, you’d be foolish to not have recognised that your students are using it as a source of information. My 12 yr old daughter completed an assignment over the weekend and three of her reference sources were from Wikipedia. I see it in the bibliographies of many of my students.  Wes’ post led me to the cite this article link to check it out and see if it could help my daughter with her bibliography. It could.  

When you click on the link you are taken to a page with some useful advice that you can use when you teach students about Wikipedia as a reference source. Very responsible information from the Wikipedia team;

Couldn’t have said it better myself, and I won’t from now on because I’ll be pointing students to this information. Below this information comes this;

How cool is that! My students are going to love this. Some might say that it reinforces the cut and paste attitude of some students, but I see nothing wrong with it. It is a laborious process putting together a bibliographic record, especially for a website.  What’s important is that our students know that a bibliography is essential and that it should follow a required format – if they are able to cut and paste it in more power to them I say.

Wish this was around when I was studying. Honestly, it must be so different being a student today.  I can remember having to hole myself up in the State Library of Victoria’s Reading Room for over a week because it was the only place where I could access a resource I needed. Somehow, I don’t think that would be necessary today with the wealth of resources available via the Web. Today’s challenge for students is sifting through the vast array of resources to find quality information. Maybe Wikipedia is a quality resource, maybe it’s not. At least they are providing apt advice and assisting the students of today.

I’m frightened I’m going to sound like a braggart in this post but I’m pretty darn chuffed about being a guest panelist for Sheryl Nussbaum Beach’s workshop in West New York State on Wednesday night last week (my time 11.00pm to be exact!). Been so busy haven’t had a chance to write about it. Sheryl asked me to join a panel to discuss inquiry and project based learning utilising Web 2.0. The intention was to highlight that Web 2.0 tools are not to be taught in isolation. They need to be integrated into meaningful authentic learning tasks where they can take students to new places with their learning.

When Sheryl sent me the link to the wiki I was amazed to see who else was on the panel. Chris Lehmann, Wes Fryer, Kevin Honeycutt and Australia’s own Dean Groom (an expert in Project based learning using Web 2.0 as the driving force behind creation of tasks). Such illustrious company for little old me to be involved with. The session was for educators from West New York (State) near Buffalo. It was held using elluminate. I could see the names of the participants but couldn’t see or hear them. They could see who was speaking as we enabled our webcams to be accessed. It was a fantastic opportunity to share my experiences with people in the United States and let them know what a transformative experience it has been for me writing this blog. I was able to share with them how making connections has enabled my students to have experiences wider than the classroom walls we habitate.

You could hear the passion for the idea of Learning 2.0 from Chris, Wes, Kevin and Dean. I think it was obvious that all of us were student focused in our belief that it is transformative adopting new technologies to transform learning experiences for the students we have dealings with. I hope the participants got a sense of this and that they reach out like we have done to make connections for their students. Sheryl recorded the session so when I find out where the link is to that I’ll post it.

I’ve been involved in helping to establish the Australian arm of a global cohort for Sheryl and Will Richardson’s Powerful Learning Practice. I see it as a means of increasing the capacity of our teachers to move with change and see the potential of Learning 2.0/Web 2.0 for their classroom practice. We’re still seeking a couple of schools so if you’re an Australian educator and want some detail contact me through this blog and I’ll pass on some info.  

Thanks Sheryl for the invite. It made my week.

The past two days at NECChave been full of great learning and excellent experiences. I received a tweet asking our favorite session. I was having trouble deciding on just one, so I responded with several sessions. Most of the sessions have had something to offer, but Chris Lehmann’s School 2.0: Combining Progressive Pedagogy and 21st-Century Tools stood out.

In this packed session (notes below), Chris gave us his take on education first and then took us, as a group, the process of developing an UBD lesson. Along the way he masterfully facilitated the development, asking refining and clarifying questions, redirecting as needed. I could almost put myself into his school and see how he works with his staff through this process. really, really good stuff. I think I want to work at the SLA.

Although they appear below, they bear repeating when considering our approach to education, leadership, and related technologies “Tools don’t teach, but they change the way we teach. AND It’s not about the tool; it’s about the teaching.”

That’s the truth.

One of the other benefits of the session and also the conference is that I got to meet several of the authors of the blogs I read including Wes Fryer, Will Richardson, Karl Fisch, Bud Hunt, Stephanie Sandifer, Chris Lehmann, and Ewan McIntosh. For all of our online interactions, it’s very nice to shake hands and talk with people face to face.

By the way, before Chris Lehmann’s session ended, Ewan McIntosh had already posted about the session. When Dean Shareski asked how he could post before the session was over, Ewan tweeted in response “McIntosh always posts before the session’s done. I’m tomorrow’s NECC today “ Good humor.

Chris Lehmann’s Session Notes

In our hurry to learn “What’s new,” we can’t lose sight of “What’s best?” Examine using the new tools in a school-wide, constructivist manner.  Recommended by ISTE’s SIGTC

·         http://ubd21c.wikispaces.com/

·         We work best and learn best when it matters to us

·         Create caring institutions

o    Who the direct and indirect objects of our sentences are

§  We teach kids first, subjects second

·         It’s not about us

·         It has to be inquiry driven

·         It has to matter

·         It needs to be metacognitive

·         Technology infused

o    Ubiquitous, necessary, and individual

·         It has to be driven by understanding

·         How do we get there?

·         Pedagogy matters a lot

o    (it matters for everything)

·         Progressive teaching

o    Using 21st Century Tools

·         How to prevent Technology Overload

o    What’s good is a better question than what’s new

§  The best one is the one we decide to use

·         5 things for kids

o    Research

o    Collaborate

o    Create

o    Network

o    Present

·         A Convenient and Reasonably False Taxonomy

o    Tools for each

·         Tools don’t teach, but they change the way we teach

·         What are your goals and what tools get you there?

o    It’s not about the tool; it’s about the teaching

·         Understanding by Design

o    How much more could kids learn if they didn’t have to spend all this time figuring out the adults

§  Transparent Learning

o    Step 1: Desired Results

§  What transfer goals and content goals will be met?

§  What should students come away understanding?

§  What essential questions will students explore and address?

§  What knowledge & skills [content] will students leave with?

o    Step 2: Assessment Evidence

§  How do we authentically assess?

§  What performances and products will reveal evidence of understanding?

§  What other evidence will be collected to reflect other Desired Results?

§  (the schools we need) Tests and quizzes are dipsticks to see if kid get the skills

§  (Authentic assessment is not just an end game)

o    Step 3: The Learning Plan

§  What activities, experiences, and lessons will lead to achievement of the desired results and success at the assessments?

·         http://www.scienceleadership.org/drupaled/keywords/showcase

MODLA’s annual conference is July 9 and 10 at Tan-Tar-A Resort in the Lake of the Ozarks.  The conference theme this year is ‘Keeping Pace with Distance Learning.’  For a complete list of all the sessions (including mine on our Author Visits!), click here.

Strands include:

• ABC’s of Distance Learning
• 21st Century Technologies
• Distance Learning Content Development
• Instructional Practices in Distance Learning
• Interactive Video Conferencing & Online
• Distance Learning Support and Assessment

This post started out as a comment on Wes Fryer’s Looking beyond coercion, tests and seat time post from May 19. I found myself with rather a lot to write about on the topic and didn’t think it was appropriate to post an entire blog topic in a comment. Even so, I’m not sure I said exactly what I wanted to say in the way I wanted to, but here it is for your consideration. I encourage you to read Wes’ post first.

Having been a high school assistant principal, I have often been accused of being a poster child for coercive education. Indeed, the coercion passes from the Compulsory Attendance Laws through the office of the assistant principal right into the laps of kids who, because we have sold out to corporate mentality of money for time, are told they have no choice in the matter. We threaten with truancy proceedings and grade jeopardy, but we simply miss the fact that we must do a better job of demonstrating to them why it’s important for them to be there. We undermine our message of importance when we engage in ridiculous “traditions” like letting seniors (not underclassmen, mind you) out a week early or penalizing students 50% or more for not writing in cursive.

We are coerced, ourselves, by flawed national and local educational policies that reduce educational pursuits to little more than industrial-era performance metrics, workforce preparation, and college readiness (which has of late become a euphemism for workforce preparation). This is a recurring theme for me previously on this blog here, here, and here . Plainly, we have abdicated our social-moral responsibilities in favor of power, prestige, and money.  When the specter of school finance looms over every single decision we propose or make, we have no choice but coercion so we can keep our funding dollars. The priority simply becomes the money and not the kids.

Wes writes that “We must move beyond our current school finance systems which pay school districts based on seat time.” I submit that movement beyond is not enough; we need the complete and utter destruction of the current methods of school finance. This means obliterating capitalistic and corporate influences and mentalities in education and that’s not going to happen in a global society where our primary indicators of success are largely economic. I’m not advocating for setting up any “ism” here (before anyone accuses me of doing so); it goes beyond that.

Nearly everything about education is about competition: the highest funding ratio, the best grades, the best test scores, the best colleges, the best jobs, the best schools, the best technology. As with every competition, there must be loss. It’s here that I agree with Dr. Cook,

“The purpose of education  in a free society must be to liberate the full powers of the individual toward the common good…The common good is not served by the loss of any person…No democracy has any business accepting, much less supporting, any endeavor that does not hold the good of the individual  and the good of the society to be the same…To put it another way, education must not be the means by which individuals pursue their own goals to the detriment of others…And it is not a contest to be won…it is on this point that democracy and capitalism collide” (p 129-130, Unencorporating Education).

Some will probably accuse me of being un-American right about now; that’s not my intent. I think Wes and Dr. Cook have hit upon something that goes to the core of our culture and, for all of our rhetoric (mine included), I’m not sure we have the honest will to do anything about it, if may also echo Gary Stager as well.

Subtitle: Education Reform Legislation Update -4.19.08

On Thursday (4/17/08) this week I received my BriefCASE from the Colorado Association of School Executives (CASE) detailing the legislative updates and amendments for Senate Bill 212, also called Colorado Achievement Plan for Kids (CAP4Kids), that passed the second reading of the bill in the Senate. I have referenced this initiative-turned-bill in two of my previous posts on March 19, 2008 and March 30, 2008.

CASE writes (I’ve added links): “These amendments will put Colorado on a fast track to piloting EPAS (Educational Planning and Assessment System) for purposes of data collection in the 2008-2009 school year. The next phase would call for the elimination of 9th and 10th grade CSAP and adoption of ACT College Readiness Standards for reading, writing, math, and science. It would move forward the following assessment package: Explore in 9th grade; PLAN in 10th grade and ACT plus ACT writing in 11th grade. All assessments would be administered in the spring.”

Later that day, I received a news release from the Colorado Department of Education(CDE) that detailed Commissioner Dwight D. Jones‘ “concerns about rush to adopt assessments before standards.” CDE Communications can be found at http://www.cde.state.co.us/Communications/index.html. Here are some quotes from the press release.

Colorado Commissioner of Education Dwight D. Jones today expressed his concern that amendments to Senate Bill 212 approved today may tie the hands of the department in choosing the best possible standards and assessments for Colorado students.

Specific concerns (abbreviated and bulleted, read the full text here)

• Alignment with standards. The ACT/EPAS products are not based on content standards adopted by 178 school districts across the state.
• Achievement gap information.“The Colorado public needs an assurance that any proposed system would provide a similar or better view of achievement gaps.”
• Costs. “No state in the country has gained federal approval for what is being proposed today,” said Commissioner Jones. “No costs have been projected or identified for the process of gaining federal approval…
• Growth model. “It’s unclear what adjustments are needed to fit a new test into the growth model,” said Commissioner Jones.

This appears to be the first skirmish in the highly publicized legislation. The legislative amendments definitely seem to be an acknowledgement, albeit political, of the general (correct or not) perception that CSAP is an irrelevant (at least in terms of usefulness to students beyond high school) exam. CDE has spent much of their time and energy on a longitudinal growth model that has CSAP scores at its heart. See Reference 1 and Reference 2for more information. There’s a sort of disconnect since the legislature, in House Bill 07-1048, required CDE to work with a technical advisory panel appointed by Governor Ritterto “to revise the growth model developed under HB 04-1433 to better quantify student growth (CRS § 22-7-604.3). The statute stipulates that the analysis of longitudinal growth should serve as the cornerstone of Colorado’s education accountability system.” (Note: HB 07-1048 is in the appendix in Reference 1 and mentions CSAP specifically. See the press releasefrom the technical advisory panel from March 6, 2008.) Apparently the House, Senate, Governor, CDE and the 178 school districts have lots of work to do before this becomes a practical reality. Is practical too hopeful of a word?

As an additional point the people over at ACT must be absolutely drooling over the prospect of getting an entire state of 9th and 10th grade students taking their tests. Of course we have mandated the ACT for our 11th graders already. Let’s not forget that although ACT is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit company, they aren’t giving their tests away and it’s in their best interests to capture as many kids as possible to give weight to their college and workplace influences. Their continued corporate health directly depends on their sustained growth. Their National Career Readiness Certificate and the associated WorkKeys assessment can’t be far behind if we go down the currently proposed legislative path. 

CSAP or EPAS, I could go on, but I already have: Fit: Corporational Education; State Standardized Test Questions. Let’s just hope there’s not more Death Threats for Test Scores (Thanks, Wes!)

The science assignment, in all its wrinkled, photocopied paperness, emerged from the depths of my 5th grader’s backpack. It contained, smacking of “parental involvement,” directions about how to display the results of the experiment on a tri-fold posterboard…due the next day.

The parental involvement I don’t mind, but when it comes to tri-fold poster displays, it becomes less about parental involvement and more about uh, parental guidance -and I don’t mean Mike Parent’s blog. (Although a blog does eventually play a part in this tale -read on, Digital Reader).

I dispise tri-fold poster displays and their inbred cousins, construction paper cut outs and foam display boards. They’re the so analog, so last-century, remnants of ancient business presentation expectations that have infiltrated our classrooms and science fairs. They’re very useful for the static displays of parental creativity and competition in gymnasiums converted to exhibition halls. Some may publicly look down their noses at the neatly arranged, heavily parent-influenced items on the tri-fold, but secretly covet the blue ribbon hanging on the corner of the board. And that’s where it starts. The pitiful tri-folds find themselves stuffed in the far less-traveled corners, assuming they even make it out of the classroom. So, in an effort to help our kids present themselves in a positive light, we parents make suggestions that turn into directives that turn into maddening scrambles and searches for mom’s special scrapbooking scissors that add some flare to this border. I wonder how many Sunday nights have ended with parents meticulously gluing display doodads while the kid is off in the other room playing video games. Nobody else? Must just be my house.

No longer, I resolved this time. (Plus, all the craft stores were closed and we were fresh out of foam board having used it all up on a quite beautiful State of Ohio display, which, by the way resides behind a door in the spare room downstairs as a monument to a maniacal frenzy of parental involvement.) It was time to take a chance with our kid’s education. Risky, I know, but I just didn’t have it in me to top the Ohio display.

About then I made a crazy Web 2.0pian decision and suggested that we put the required pieces of the assignment on a blog. Since this would be my son’s first foray into the blogosphere, I would set the blog up for him and give him a basic how-to after he had recorded all the required elements in a Word document. I wanted the initial blog experience to be more about the learning and less about the technical manipulation.

So he proceeded with his experiment, recording the materials and his hypothesis and the procedures and and the data and taking pictures as required. I set his blog up so he could copy and paste his text from the laptop. I made sure to make his blog viewable by invitation only because I knew I’d have to convince the hand-wringing, Internet fear mongers that this wasn’t a digital terrorism plot or would jeopardize his safety on the Internet. The really radical part was that we had several discussions about safe online behavior and what to include on the blog. We spoke about the type and amount of pictures he would be using and what he hoped to communicate with them. We talked about design and formatting and how each of those could help his audience understand him more clearly. We had more meaningful conversations that connected more of his past, current, and future learning to what he was doing just then. Certainly much better than the strained interactions of previous display-type projects. We’ll have more of the same conversations, I’m sure -and that’s just great.

With the entry edited and posted, I turned my attention to the science teacher and the district. This was going to be a surprise for the science teacher and I didn’t much appreciate those when I taught. I figured, more hoped, it was worth a shot. Just in case, I made a PDF of the blog post and emailed it to her after the blog invitation. She was able to see the blog from home and later on at school. She made some meaningful comments with questions and my son responded with thoughtful answers. I thought their exchanges were much better than a grade written on the back of the poster. Even more, she was very encouraging with the next assignment asking him to make another post.

For us and the teacher, it’s a dynamic resource easily accessible, not shoved in a corner or behind a door. We can look at the difference between the two entries and see the improvement -although he didn’t initially proof his spelling and mechanics on the second one, but we’ll work on that. His teacher shared it with some of his other teachers, who asked us to invite them so they could view it and we did. I was glad to see his excitement and his teacher’s. When the time came for the second assignment on the blog, he needed very little direction in the creation and organization. In fact he planned from the beginning how he was going to use the digital tools to accomplish his task. Score one for the Web 2.0pians.

The people at Virtual High School, Liz Pape and all, have done a great job with the Advancing Online Learning Conference including some engaging speakers and breakout sessions. Dr. Mark Milliron delivered our keynote Wednesday morning, giving his take on current learners, the future of education and its relationship to the world. At lunch Dr. Jesse Harriott, VP of Research for Monster Worldwide spoke about preparing students for competition in a global workforce. Allison Powell from NACOLand Steven Ruscito from Middletown High School in Rhode Island took part in a panel and broadly discussed among the topics above the October 2007 Blackboard report Learning in the 21st Century: A National Report on Online Learning. Sessions I attended over the two days included Online Instructional Programs & Models; New Approaches to Online Science; Non-traditional or At Risk Students in Online Learning; Current Research in Online Learning; and using Virtual Classroom Tools. 

Today’s (Thursday, 4/11) keynote featured Robert Currie from Michigan Virtual High School who discussed, among other things, Michigan’s online learning graduation requirement and the CareerForward initiative created in conjunction with Microsoft’s Partners in Learning ”to help Michigan students understand how to plan their work lives and career opportunities amid the implications of the global economy.” Specifically, students ask and attempt to answer the following “challenge” questions: What am I going to do with my life? What is the world of work like? What will I need to succeed? What’s next for me? 

Those are compelling questions for sure and Mr. Currie gave his presentation in the context of 21st Century Learning Skills. However, are those questions really anything new? Do we see them afresh in the spotlight of the future? Ask Gary Stager about his take on 21st Century Learning and he’ll probably tell you something like those are nothing new. Ask Will Richardson, Dave Warlick, or Wes Fryerand they’ll paint a slightly different picture. Regardless of where you (or they) land, the spectrum seems to support a deliberate and reflective approach to purposeful, relevant, engaging, and meaningful education. Additionally, if you haven’t read Alan November, Scott McLeod, Mike Parent, Karl Fisch, George Siemens, Clay Burell, Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, Jon Becker, and others to get a flavor of the varying perspectives, you must and soon. Feel free to contribute “must reads” of your own in a comment.

The TxDLA has wrapped up but not before Gary Stager called himself a crackpot and gave a thought provoking presentation. The crackpot reference to himself came in the context of one who proffered so-called “crazy” ideas. I don’t know about crazy, but he definitely has some serious upstream opinions. He gave us a serious drink from the Stager firehose. In fact I’m still processing some of those ideas and deciding where I land. People like Gary Stager are like that, though. One minute I’m nodding my head in complete agreement and the next I’ve got the mental brakes pressed to the floor. Regardless, he’s a passionate educator who will leave you thinking.

Here’s some ideas from his presentation as they are filtered through my processing and frenetic note-taking. I have added the categories above the bullets for reflection more than anything else.

Right On! 

• Stager cites a quote from Daniel Hillis’ Pattern on the Stone book [extended slightly for context]: “The computer…is a device that accelerates and extends our process of thought. It is an imagination machine, which starts with the ideas we put into it and takes them farther than we could ever have taken them on our own.”
• If your classroom questions can be answered with a Google search, then let them.
• Learning occurs in a community of practice where expertise is distributed.
• Eliminate self serving and schizophrenic practices and policies.
• We shouldn’t think of education as a competition.
• Be open to emerging technologies and decentralizing tools.
• The tools don’t matter unless they get in the way.
• Collaboration begins at home.
• We have operated on the SDSU curriculum for too long (Sit Down and Shut Up).
• He routine meets kids who have never had a meaning conversation with an adult.
• For faculty, collect the experts you want to study with.
  • Create a community of practice.
• We should use technology to create authentic experiences in more domains in ways never possible before.

Hold On!

• Stager doesn’t really care for Dan Pink’s A Whole New Mind and wrote an article called The Worst Book of the 21st Century – a review.
  • It would seem to be a little incongruous for me to have a few posts ranting against the corporate influences in our school and then write so much about a business book. Essentially, I think we must look beyond the rigid structure of American education and begin the discussions that will take us there. That’s the take-away of Pink’s book for me even though Pink never intended this book for education.
• ISTE should take a stand on how computers should work.
  • He said something like this very quickly and got a smattering of applause. I’m not sure where he was going with this, but to generally discount the efforts of ISTE leaves me cold.
• An educational revolution will not result from web 2.0.
  • Maybe not completely, but it certainly could provide the spark. Indeed, many have suggested it already has.
  • Also, I think he may have thrown a backhanded insult at those of us who consider ourselves bloggers for education, saying we are standing outside the circle of expertise. He seemed to contradict himself when he asserted that a way to join the community of practice was to learn from our [experienced] elders and emulate their behavior and practices. I’m not sure what to do with that. Maybe I should ask Karl Fisch, Wes Fryer, Alan November, George Siemens, David Thornburg, Dave Warlick, or any of the other educational leaders that write on The Pulse blog.

Go on…

• There’s nothing new about 21st Century Skills. They are simply the skills that rich people wanted their kids to have in the 20th century.
  • I would like to see a little more from him here than a simple dismissive attack.
• Every course should be taught as liberal art.
  • He didn’t spend enough time here to give me a good picture and I’d like to know more.

More about Gary Stager so you can check it out for yourself… 

• “Stager-to-Go is the place where Gary Stager can share news & views not suited for his professional outlets.” He’s the Senior Editor for District Administration and its blog The Pulse.

Wes Fryer posted about a report in the February-March 2008 issue of American Psychologist titled “Online ‘Predators’ and Their Victims: Myths, Realities, and Implications for Prevention and Treatment.” Wes and LiveScience’s ”Bad Science Columnist writer, Benjamin Radford, outline the myths of the report that says in its opening paragraph, “The publicity about online ‘predators’ who prey on naive children using trickery and violence is largely inaccurate.” Later, the authors write “The purpose of this article is to provide an accurate, research-based description of the characteristics and prevalence of this high-profile social problem; make recommendations for effective responses; indicate needs for future research; and give professionals basic resources to help manage issues that arise in practice and other contexts.”

Say what? A rational, research-based, purposeful approach to a problem? What will the social activists on NBC and in Washington, DC say? What will all the school Internet filter managers say? What about CIPA?! What shall we do?!

Here are my suggestions -lingua en buccae,

1. Ignore the research and the professionals in the field and make decisions based on hysteria and sensationalized media reports.
2. Don’t educate yourself by reading Internet Safety and Social Networking for Parents or Safe Digital Social Networking. They’re posted on wikis and everyone knows those are unreliable. In fact, did you know wikis lure our children to their intellectual demise and are completely unreliable? People who want to corrupt our children use, ugh, wikis…and blogs and social networking sites and all of those newfangled tools of destruction.
3. Let your preconceptions make your decisions.
4. Avoid tough topics and conversations about the nature and sources of the problem. They may make you and others uncomfortable.
5. Scare people by telling them only part of the truth. It’s best just to tell people only about the bad stuff that’s out there -so they can know.
6. Fool yourself into believing that you can monitor and restrict all your kids’ online interactions. Who uses text messaging anyway?
7. Blame the schools.
8. Underestimate others and overestimate yourself. After all it worked for Great Britain and the colonists, the church and Martin Luther, Hitler and the British, South African people and the apartheid-South African government. 

Social networking isn’t just about the high profile online sites, it’s about the millions of blogs like this one. In fact, if you’re here and you don’t think you’re a social networker, think again. Do all of us need to be aware of the risks? Absolutely. However, I’m still waiting for the media frenzy and social activism for the greatest risk of all to our kids, one we actually expect most of our kids to participate in. I shudder to think of the rights violations arguments and lawsuits that would happen if we took the same fear and control approach.

Wes Fryer:

The biggest mistake made in this case was by the Virgin Mobile Australia marketing team that decided to use this image without permission, from either the Flickr user who posted it (Alison’s camp counselor) or from Alison and her parents, since she is a minor.

No. The biggest copyright-related mistake was committed by the person who put the image on the web without permission from the subject (a minor) of the photograph. Virgin was in the right to use the work as dictated by the license they saw. Placing that kind of responsibility on Virgin is unrealistic. A model release is the responsibility of the publisher (update: see comments), not Virgin. Wes asks:

Why did the Virgin Mobile Australia marketing team not send a message to Alison’s counselor, asking for his permission to use the photo he’d published?

Because the CC license said they didn’t need permission so long as they respected attribution.

Wes continues:

While it was true the camp counselor published the photo under a Creative Commons license, the Virgin Mobile Australia marketing team failed to meet the most basic requirement of a Creative Commons license: Providing attribution for the source of the photo.

Is this claim of failure to attribute true? I’m not so sure it is. However, it’s a secondary issue because if it’s true that a model release was never obtained, then the buck stops with the publisher, not Virgin.

While Wes correctly notes the bogus title of this article, it seems that the only lawsuit possible is not one of copyright but of libel. Apparently, the advertisement came with a tag-line “Free text virgin to virgin” – which the plaintiff may (absurdly, IMO) attempt to argue caused suffering to Alison Chang.

Perhaps I’m missing something that someone can point out. Otherwise, I don’t understand Wes’ advice that:

If CC permission is granted and your publication is high-profile, get additional explicit permission.