Saturday, December 22, 2007

Minneapolis and St. Paul on Google Street View

Earlier this fall I blogged about Google Street view. Recently I learned they added Minneapolis and St. Paul to the list of cities with this function. Since I first learned of this feature in Google Maps this fall every time revisit the site it seems they have added more cities. I wonder how long before they have captured the whole world.

Below are some screen shots of Google Maps Street View in Minnesota:

View from the former 35W bridge.


Wiesman Art Museum



Uptown


State Capital in St. Paul



Friday, December 21, 2007

Collaborative Storytelling

About a month ago our 5th graders started a collaborative project with a school 100 miles away. They have been taking turns writing a story using 21classes. This is not simply a story though. We have framed this project for the students as a game. Each student is paired with a student from their class. While one student is writing the other is out taking a picture. The student whose turn it is to write has to read all the blog posts in the story and find a way to incorporate the last picture added into the story. When they are finished they post the photo their partner took for the next group to write about. Their photography goal is to find a picture that the next group will struggle with finding a way to incorporate into the story. I predicted that this would force the students to be more creative and ultimately come up with more interesting stories. This project also promotes reading because to do the assignment they have to read the whole story that has been written so far. This project has, from what I observed, increased the engagement level of all students involved at both schools. Seeing that this has been successful in its trial run our next goal is to do this project, perhaps next year, with more than one school and hopefully on a global scale. Such a project could potentially involve as many as ten different schools granted that half are from Europe, Asia, Africa or Australia, and the other half are from the Americas.

To read these students blogs you can go to Grade 5 Collaborative.

Voicethread

Yesterday I wrapped up a three day project with our three first grade classes using Voicethread. Our teachers wanted to do something with the students that could act as a culminating presentation of a project they worked in teams to create. They did a lesson about communities and then worked together to create paper and cardboard models of communities. These teachers wanted this activity to be something multimedia that could be shared with parents. I first learned of Voicethread in October and have been eager to find a teacher at Goodhue who would let me try it out with their students. The three presentations below are the results of our first trial:





Wednesday, December 19, 2007

RSS Feeds for Teachers



I just finished stage one in a grand experiment. I set up Bloglines accounts for every teacher in our district. Prior to handing them over I preloaded them with feeds in four categories: News, Education News, Technology Integration, and Content Area Feeds. I have been using Bloglines since this summer and have found it to be an absolute essential part of my day. Using Bloglines, or any other RSS aggregator, I have found my capacity to process large quantities of information has greatly increased. I have also found it to be an essential component in establishing an online learning community between other bloggers both in the education realm and out. I believe this tool will save teachers time, keep them informed on latest trends, and give many of them the same opportunity to connect with other educators to share ideas and form collaborations. I also see this tool becoming essential down the line. As more and more of our teachers take to blogs, wikis, and other web 2.0 media for student projects and assignments a tool like this will allow teachers to easily monitor, manage, and assess student work.

I am wondering if there are any other school districts out there that have tried a simmilar initiative with their teaching staff. Listed below are some of the feeds I included on these pages. Of course, I am always looking for suggestions that could be added to this list.


RSS Feeds by Topic and Content Area:

News:
CNN
Star Tribune
Pioneer Press
KTTC(local news)
The Republican Eagle (local news)
Postbulletin (local sports)
Pawprints (School Newspaper)

Education News:
Education Week News and Information
Teacher Magazine News and Information
Edweek
This Week in Education

Education Technology:
2cents (David Warlick's blog)
Dangerously Irrelevant (Scott McLeod's blog)
Techno Constructivist (my blog)
Moving at the Speed of Creativity (Wesley Fryer's blog)
One Trick Pony (Bernie Dodge's blog)
Weblogg-Ed (Will Richardson's blog)
Cool Cat Teacher (Vicki A. Davis' blog)
THE FISCHBOWL (Karl Fisch's blog)
Remote Access (Clarence Fisher's blog)
Education with Technology (Harry G. Tuttle's blog)
The Infinite Thinking Machine
Crucial Thought (Christopher Craft's blog)
Alan November Weblog
Kathy Schrock's blog
Marc Prensky's blog
Resource Shelf
Blogging Pedagogy: Computer Writing and Research Lab University of Texas at Austin

H I T - Hokanson’s Instructional Technology

SMARTboard feeds:
SMARTboard chat
SMARTboard Lessons Podcast
Teachers Love SMARTboards

Technology (not necessarily education):
Slashdot
Gizmodo

Science Feeds:
Wiley Interscience
National Center for Science Education
Steven Spangler

Music Feeds:
MENC
The International Journal of Music Education
Music Education News
Research Studies in Music Education recent issues
Music and Education blog
Music Education Magic (free sheet music)
Music, Technology and Education: Mustech.net

Admin Feeds:
Principal's Policy Blog

English:
The Open Classroom: Using technology, transparency, and discussion to transform education (Tom McHale's blog)
Ask the English Teacher (Crawford Kilian's blog)
WatsonCommon (Christopher Watson's blog)
The Open Classroom (Jo McLeay's blog)
Gardner Writes (Gardner Campbell's blog)

Social Studies:

World History Blog
IB Geography
Google Earth Blog
My Wonderful World Blog
socialstudies.org: Professional Development
Random Observations for Students of Economics(Greg Mankiw's Blog)
Econlog

Art:
The Art History Newsletter

smARThistory
Art Teacher's Guide to the Internet
Art 304
Art Ed + Web 2.0 + Technology Blog
Eye Level (Smithsonian)
Off Center (Walker Art Museum)
Art Teacher Forum
Art News Blog
ArTechTivity
PhotoshopBlog.net
The Photoshop Roadmap Blog

Math:
Mathematics Weblog
Math-Blog
Mister Teacher
Math Playground - Teaching in a Tech Savy World
Mathematics Education Blog

PE
Peaceful Playgrounds
Get Your Blog in Shape
Fizzikal: PE Sport and Physical Activity in Scotland
The Assistive Technology Blog
European Physical Education Review current issue
NAKPEHE.org

Spec. Ed.
Special Education Law Blog
SPECIAL EDUCATION TEACHER in WASHINGTON DC

Elementary:
marlyn's blog
EPGAGA

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Technorati

Technorati Profile

Gary Prest: What It Takes (closing session keynote) - notes

TIES Wiki
It is more important to put the student needs fist and empower the student than just manage the situation.

MPLS - lets idenity the students we don't know, put a sticker by the names of students they knew, those students who had no stickers the teachers focused on and made an effort to meet and get to know

There is no way a single teacher by themselves can get a child to achieve their full potential. We need collaboration. People working together achieve a lot more.

Teaching is a public activity. Students learn early how to draw lessons from a teacher's character.

There is very little literature on what motivates teachers.

Teaching is intensly personal.

It is our responsibility to act as tallent scouts with our students and identify their strengths.

Susan Patrick: Community of Interest Discussion: Virtual Schools and 21st-Century Skills - notes


Susan Patrick, North American Council for Online Learning
North American Council for Online Learning (NACOL) Website
TIES Wiki

The big trend is we see schools moving more toward a blended model of online and traditional learning.

The % of classrooms where professors are in front of students giving a lecture is 3% at MIT.

What is driving this is the need to access information databases.

We are creating a bigger disparity than ever (digital equity). We need to find more ways to get technology to the students and involve them in blended instruction.

50% of high school courses offered online are AP.

Algebra I is the most requested course. (credit recovery)

Credit recovery is in huge demand for those students who are struggling (I have noticed this recently in how many course management system companies have contacted me wanting to sell our district their services).

The latest SLOAN report states that 1 in 5 students take an online course.

If students are going to do this in college they need exposure to it in high school.

"I'm so sick of it. I know I am smart enough to graduate. But I have to go through these metal detectors....Online instruction was the only thing that kept me in school."

The Gates Foundation Silent Epidemic Study - first study that really looks at dropouts
88% of our dropouts had passing grades
Most felt frustrated, disenfranchised, unchallenged.
Recommendations: need more personalized instruction, need more rigor and relevance

We are not focusing enough on the gifted kids!

We are having the wrong discussion by aiming at the middle. Other countries are focusing on their gifted.

Because of the flexibility of online instruction we are seeing teachers who have left the profession for one reason or another coming back. Online is also giving teachers the flexibility to work part-time in the evenings to supplement their full-time teaching jobs (I am a perfect example of this).

One of the problems we have is figuring out how to give students the absolute best education with the funds we have.

When we talk about the future we are talking about 2 years from now.

Our teacher training programs are not teaching teachers how to teach online. They need to because they are missing the boat.

We will soon enter a teacher shortage like we have never seen before. We will not be able to deal with this problem without online learning.

Last year Georgia only graduated on new physics teacher. This is not uncommon nationwide.

They are coming out with national online teaching standards.

Jennifer Oxenford & Kathy Kraemer: Community of Interest Discussion: International Applications of Internet2 - notes


https://wiki.ties.k12.mn.us/Kathy+Kraemer
https://wiki.ties.k12.mn.us/Jennifer+Oxenford

Muse
CILC
TWICE
informs.k12.mn.us
CAPS

Before using Internet2 you should do a test.

In April there will be a back to back presentation day for MN students.
Megaconference JR on February 21st

Organizations who are offering things for muse:
International Wolf Center
Science Museum
Minnesota Zoo
Guthrie
Cleveland Museum of Art
(there are many others, these are just the ones they rattled off)

Various Authors have also done things with muse (book readings, discusssions, etc.).

Artists have also done some work with muse.

You can also host events and offer them to schools in other states too.

You usually have to make arrangements to participate in events.

Often content is recorded and made available as a streaming video.

Collaborations Around the Planet looks very promising not only for finding other classrooms to videoconference with but also a possible launching point for collaborative blogs, wikis, podcasts, videocasts, etc.

I would like to find a school in South or Central America that has Spanish speaking students who are just learning English partnering with our High School Spanish class. Each teacher could have their students interact. The instructional activity that comes to mind now is having each group give directions to the other class in the language being learned. Assessment can be done by comparing how well the other group followed the instructions. A game of 20 questions would work well for this too.

PGAP - Polycom's grant assistance program

Other possibilities at internet2.edu

TIES 2007 - Kristin Straumann: Using Scratch in the Science Classroom - notes


Kristin Straumann
Science Instructor
ACGC Public Schools

How I use ScratchScience Explanation Stories
- Naming Compounds
- Balancing Chemical Equations
- Element Stories
- Earthquakes
- Collisions

This session is basically an introduction to Scratch. A lot of time was spent demonstrating how to do simple things in Scratch. I am not blogging about it because I already have used Scratch and all this information can be fund on Kristin's presenter handout page.

One thing she showed us that I did not know was that you can download Scratch programs that are published and see how they were programmed or even edit them.

Monday, December 10, 2007

TIES 2007 - Brock Dubbels: Teaching Literacy and Composition Using Video Games, Six Traits and Collins Writing - notes


Brock Dubbels website
https://wiki.ties.k12.mn.us/Brock+Dubbels
Brock's Slideshare
Video Games as Learning Tools Ning
Video Games as Learning Tools Wiki

Started with yoga exercises. -followed complex instructions

game theory comes out of a combination of literary theory and math

use machinima to tell stories

Worksheet culture - teacher gives students a worksheet, students know they will have 15 minutes to do whatever they want because there are 4 students in the room who will do it and let them copy while the teacher surfs the web, possibly for their nest job.

Established reading Friday - one day a week devoted to reading whatever they want.
-assessment -10 pts if you bring a book, 5 pts if you read one of mine, points for other things as well
-walked around the room and discussed the books with students giving students a rating on a fluency scale (not for a grade, students know this is about identifying performance, scale could be different for different books for different students, a ph.d. could get a low score depending on what they are reading).

Comprehension can be achieved even by those with low fluency depending on their prior experience. Inversely, a high fluency student can have poor comprehension.

Many of the same literary elements are present in games that are present in literature and film.

Structural organization and format - micro level: decoding text, translating, etc macro level: genre, themes, ideas, communication

Games have storyboards

comprehension comes from making sense of the world, talking about it with others...reading is not just decoding

Games are built upon the idea of assessment because each move is evaluated.

A game offers a complexity that a novel cant.

You know playing a game that it is built so that you can win it.

Replicate
You are a virus and your job is to go into the body and replicate. To do so you have to learn about the human body.

Global Conflicts Pallestine
You are a journalist in the mideast.

"You don't understand. It's just like the Odyssey. Sonic has to find his way home just like Odysseus."

Chris Dede - Community of Interest Discussion: Role-Playing Games and Simulations in K-12 Classrooms - notes


https://wiki.ties.k12.mn.us/Chris+Dede

What if we did this without the media?

-the control in the River City experiment used a traditional lab instruction
-these paper based control curriculum, they believe, are better than average instruction
-Kids liked the technology/media complimented approach better

Are we doing kids a disservice by banning cell phones?


-At Harvard they have invested a lot of $ in making each seat tech ready with power outlets, Internet access, etc.
-Instructors are saying, "put the cell phone away, turn off the laptop"
-We are not going to integrate these things fully in the short term
-We can find activities for students to use cell phones sometimes.

How are you assessing that learning is taking place? (with the augmented reality project)

-have pre and post measures that measure the high stakes tests
-have diagnostic information from the handhelds to show what functions the kids are using
-include things like attendance records
-look for things beyond the test that show evidence of real learning

Jigsaw pedagogy - collaborative learning where each student must find and contribute a piece to the problem for the success of the entire group.

What professional development?

-smallest part is how to use the technology (kid can learn in 5 min, adult in 15 min.)
-Rivercity - 8 hours of professional development
-biggest part of 8 hours is how to have a collaborative discussion
-Rivercity already takes care of classroom management and engagement and allows teachers to dive right in to a collaborative discussion. (I suspect this is true of nearly all virtual world based instruction)

It looks like you have applied a progressive movement of education to technology. How does this stem from prior educational movements like progressive education movement?

-it stems from progressive education, Montessori, and Dewey
-technology making three things possible
1. society is valuing higher order skills that cannot be taught through traditional instruciton
2. technology helps standardize the learning process
3.

How does something like this scale?

-There are a couple things that will happen over time that will help
-we have a bad sense of first generation curriculum and assessments
-hope the next group of stakeholders takes a look at second generation curriculum and assessments
-argues with colleagues that say school is too hard to change and that we need to focus on informal learning

How do you see a students day evolving to blend the old and new?

-I would be horrified by a school that uses only immersive technologies for instruction
-I would like to see these immersive technologies three times in a course. First in the beginning and students would be lost and see the relevance of the learning. Second, midway as a diagnostic tool. Finally in the end as a summative experience.
-This is a nice blend of the old and the new.
-We must be much more nible in learning how to use web 2.0

What can we expect the web 3.0 to look like?

-unresolved contradiction between 1.0 and 2.0
-Web 1.0 gives you a way to listen to an expert at any time
-Web 2.0 is bottom up giving users the ability to tell us what they want
-Web 3.0 recognizes that both sides have merit
-building a social tagging project with students -www.edtags.org- looks like other social tagging systems - goes beyond by giving a concept map that shows how other people's tags are related- ranks users from top to bottom showing users whose tags are most like yours to those whose tags are least like yours

How might this stuff migrate down to the primary grades?

-would rather see students in the elementary schools learning the classic literacies
-we know that kids need real world sensory stimuli when kids are young - we don't want students to learn how to look up and down by having their avatar look up and down

How does ESL apply to your work with Rivercity?

My hypothesis with River city was students who were dyslexic and ESL would not do as well.
-All studies prove this wrong
-All students with these disabilities do as well because students collaborate as a team.

What about chronic behavior problems?

-We see increases in attendance.
-Teachers report that behavior issues go way down.
-Problem is kids who are engaged but not learning, kids are fooling around but not learning.

TIES 2007 Chris Dede: Immersive, Collaborative Simulations and Neomillennial Learning Styles: Implications for Education - notes


https://wiki.ties.k12.mn.us/Chris+Dede

Today's information is to vast and coming at us too fast for anyone to keep up with alone.

Rapid advances in information Technologies

Worries about whether our children are being prepared for the new information environment.

Division of Labor - which jobs are done by machines, which jobs are done by people

2 skills people are better at than machines
1. Expert Decision Making
2. Complex communication

Why teach something you can look up on Google in 15 seconds or less?

Learning Styles
-Sensory-based
-Personality-based
-Attitude-based
-Media-based

It is the media you use today that shapes your learning styles.
Some kids today do not act or learn like "digital natives" because of how they use digital media.

Juggling between digital media devices is not necessarily good or bad but it is characteristic of 21st century work.

Thinking has become distributed.

Cognition is distributed across human minds.

Showed video illustrating how necessary it is to be connected and be fluent with new communication technologies (cell phone, text messaging, IM, videoconferencing, etc).

New literacies are evolving as technology evolves.

The challenge is not to solve the problem but to understand the problem.

Multi-user Virtual Environments and wearable devices are next generation tools.

Most people see Muve's through the lens of video games.

Content in most online games are garbage.

We want to build things that are game-like because we want to harness the engagement of games.

Rivercity.

Fire is a wonderful technology because just by being near it you get a benefit from it.

Computers unfortunately you have to use to benefit from it.

The pedagogy is important.

Situated Learning - powerful in life but classrooms are removed from the real world
-can we have situated learning with muve's?

Ubiquitous Computing
-Augmented Reality
-Today no one really knows how many motors or microprocessors they own.
-Not necessarily good - Minority Report
-We now have the ability to create intelligent objects
-Handheld Augmented Reality - Alien Contact -Aliens landed outside of school and students work in teams to figure out why the aliens are there and what they should do about it. They have to work in teams to connect the information to get a clear picture.

Students are inside some sort of collaborative simulation and are using it to develop some sort of 21st century skill.

Soon cell phones will be capable of doing augmented reality.

Your students are struggling...lets give them something harder.

Neomillennial Learning Styles-Learning based on experience
-Students in the web 2.0 environment like to co-design their learning experience. They like to co-teach.
-They like to work together to construct knowledge

Unlearning is much harder than to learn

Changing adult behavior patterns is emotional - exactly the single biggest challenge in my role as technology curriculum integration specialist

media shape their messages
media shape their participants
infrastructures shape civilization

Solution to dark future is education

We need to avoid a world where an avatar world thrives while the real world rots away.

TIES 2007Opening Session Notes


Dr. Kurt Steinhaus, Ph. D. - Keynote Speaker
session wiki

School administrators

...a lone amateur built the ark while a group of professionals built the Titanic.

Take Action On:
1. 21st Century Skills
2. Robust Support Systems - needs to be "just in time"
3. Innovative Teaching and Learning

What is T time?
from STEM to STTTETMT
T-Using technology as an essential part of learning science, engineering, mathematics...

Music educators in Minnesota have put more on YouTube than anyone else

1:1 program - Oakland Jr High
"If our curriculum continues to be about information, our kids don't need us. If it's about personal development, they need us desperately." -Milt Dougherty

Spoke with a teacher at Stillwater High School who said he was not a tech guy and that he only uses technology to teach Science but when he visited his class he noticed he had 3 computers running with motion detection field cameras.....

Even poor schools in MN are using technology to connect to the world.

Talked about New Country School. I personally wish there were more schools like this in MN. I like the idea of teachers in private practice who act as learning coaches and let the students mainly guide their own learning through a technology enriched environment.

See about our science teachers visiting Mahtomedi High School to watch Scot Hovan teach AP Physics. He is doing great things with the SMARTboard.

What are PenPalls?

Overall Trends in MN Schools:
1. Relentless Intense PAssion
2. Support System
a. Technical
b. Teaching and LEarning
3. More Schoolwide Integration

Moving from:
-a distributed model to a participatory model (purchase licens to "free" open source)
-Application-based to Web-based, mLearning
-Isolated & Offline to Colalborative & Online
-Copywrited Content to Shared Content
-Submitting Reports to Blogs and Web Publishing

Strategies for Moving forward:-identify decision makers
-locate those who have had success convincing decision makers
-are there potential champions? (is there a school board member who has a lot of influence?)
-Who is connected to the potential champion?
-Start small
It is important to note that this speaker has a political background. It makes sense that he speaks about change as a political action.

Where are we? Formulate a vision or goal. Meet stakeholders where they are and use "bag of tricks" toward achieving the vision.

Stresses the importance of giving praise to those who you are trying to influence.

Seek first to understand - triangulate your data, look at history

It is important to have stories and data.

Pick a name.

Communication tools:

One-pager - "Your Best Friend"
1. name
2. Compelling Vision
3. Brief Overview or History
4. Rational
5. Funding Request - recurring - non-recurring
6. Research Base - Put on the back of the "One-Pager"

Elevator Pitch - "2nd Best Friend"
1. Once clear message
2. Be passionate and concise

Letters to the editor can be powerful

Educational Technology Act - In New Mexico - MN Doesn't have one
-Recurring $
-Equipment and Connectivity
-Professional Development
-Educational and Administrative

When big things get done in the Gov. office it is usually one person

We scored badly on our capacity to use technology.

Technology Deficiencies Act In New Mexico
-Vision of Equity
-ISTE Nets
-Based Upon Clear Standards
-5-year Phase-in

Students have incredible power in grabbing attention when preseniting to adult decision makers and stakeholders.

"It doesn't matter who gets credit as long as you acheive your objective."

Had success in convincing Bill Richardson that technology is important by giving him tools that he found usefull.

Saturday, December 8, 2007

Machinima




I just found this video about Machinima, a budding video art form. This video describes very well what Machinima is and is very entertaining as well. Beware, this video does contain some violence and may not be appropriate for young children.

http://www.machinima.com/film/what_is_machinima

http://www.machinima.com/

TIES 2007 Conference

I have been feverishly getting ready for next week's TIES conference. Cara Hagen and I are presenting a workshop Sunday, December 9th and a session on Tuesday, December 11th on Virtual Worlds titled, "Online Virtual Environments in Education." In this session we will explore virtual worlds such as Second Life and Active Worlds and their potential for professional development and integration in the classroom. I have prepared a wiki for this session at http://ties2007vles.pbwiki.com/. I invite anyone interested in virtual worlds and education to edit this wiki.



Information on these and other sessions offered at TIES 2007 can be found at https://wiki.ties.k12.mn.us/Conference+2007.