Today's podcast, one of several recorded today, is a reflection about my upcoming session for Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation, recorded on my way home from the Colorado Podcast Summit. I hope to post more audio from the summit as time allows. (But, since time won't ever allow, I'll try to do so anyway.)
Today's podcast, recorded yesterday, is a short recording about Myra and her work with our district library clerks as they learn more about he read/write web. Enjoy.
Links
Myra's course
The "23 Things " project - which is formally called Learning 2.0
An article about our school district's Tech Fair (which I don't mention in the podcast, really, but I'm pretty excited about)
One of the teachers taking our K12Online Conference course writes (in a forum that's private - so no linktribution):
There are so many conference sessions to choose from. Some conferences have catchy titles, but don't grab me when I click on it.
Will you give me a few recommendations? I teach high school social studies (including psychology.) I am interested in Moodles and blogs and any way to combine interesting social studies sites into one place for my students to explore. My goal for the end of the course is to have created something that will serve this purpose.
What sessions or directions would you suggest for her? Any projects outside of K12 Online that she should be considering? I'll share all of your suggestions with her - and also use this post to model the power of the network. Thanks in advance.
I'm writing this morning from the first general session of T+L, listening to the multitude of announcements that usually make up the bulk of first such sessions at conferences everywhere. So far, I've seen some cool student PSAs.
I'm looking forward to a few days of conversation with colleagues from my district and from other schools around the country and world. If you're here, too, drop a comment here. I'd be curious to know where you plan to spend your time at the conference. (Okay, I'm also interested in picking folks' brains - never been to this event before. What's the good stuff that I shouldn't miss?)
I'll probably (and already have been) be posting regular updates via Twitter, my choice bits tool of, ahem, choice, at least as long as my battery hold out.
K12Online 2007 begins tomorrow (or today, depending on your time zone) - and really doesn't end. Since the content is perma-hosted, it's always available as a learning tool. It's good like that.
Looking forward to the learning. I hope you'll be there.
In this podcast, recorded Friday, I talk a bit about some of the professional development experiences I've had recently, as well as some of my thoughts about how we should try to bridge authentic experiences with the institutional experiences that we are, in US schools, required to have.
Links from the 'cast
I'll be a guest on the Women of Web 2.0 webcast from EdTechTalk next Tuesday, Sept. 25th. I sure hope you can join us at 7pm Mountain Time for some conversation and chat and fellowship and whatnot. Any suggestions for conversation topics?
Dana nails the issue of "excused" technological illiteracy:
Teachers have to realize at some point that exhibiting ignorance with this sort of pride is not OK. It is OK not to know something and to try to fix that, and I would hope that most teachers would do so. I don’t know everything. That’s true. At the end of my life, I still won’t know everything. I would hope, however, that when I reach the end of my life, I will never have exhibited pride about being ignorant of anything.
Dana nails it because she's not necessarily focusing on a particular skill or skills, but more on the desire of those involved to be in a constant state of learning.
Karl's post, which inspired Dana's (and was inspired itself by Terry's) gets really, really interesting in the comments, particularly as the discussion gets going into literature, and literacy, and technological literacy. You've got to read it for yourself, but let me contribute that I love both the words and the ideas of great literature. Particularly poetry, which is, to me, the near-perfect (or completely impossible) marriage of both.
As for technological literacy, the US federal government, via NCLB, now requires that all 8th graders be technologically literate. Well, actually, that's not true - the federal government has required that all states test 8th graders to measure their technological literacy. Each state gets to define technological literacy, though, as well as the standards that they will use to measure it, which might explain some of the confusion in Karl's conversation. Neat, huh?
It's sure hard to teach something that you don't know yourself. Of course, the question that I'm not going to attempt to answer at the moment is whether or not technology is a content area or something, like reading and writing, that transcends content. That's a blog post for a different day.
** If you know the definition of technological literacy that your state is using , jot it down in the comments - I'd be curious to see the range of definitions. My fingers are crossed that there's not much variance from state. I know that Colorado is going with the refreshed ISTE NETS as the state technology standards, with some minor revisions.
In this podcast, I manage to define a network as a group (gulp - forgive the error) while attempting to explain some of what's been on my mind as I've been getting used to my new job. Yeah, that theme's getting a little old around here - but I think it's going to be that way for a while. Feel free to let me have it in the comments.
I've been reading lots of folks lately writing to the effect that this whole read/write web world is not about the tools, it's about how we use them. I agree with that notion. Mostly.
In some of the conversations I've been having recently, I've been arguing that, at least at some level, the focus should be on the tools, for a couple of reasons. One, we need to have a handle on what the tools can do so that we can apply them to our particular teaching and learning situations. If I don't know how to publish to the web (or that it's completely safe for students to do so), then I can't consider it as a possibility in my classes. Further, if I don't know that most wikis won't allow for same-time multiple edits/editors, then I won't realize (until it's too late) that having everyone edit the same piece of text in class is just won't work.
The second reason is a little trickier, but was really brought home to me this week as I was involved in some training on a web-based gradebook.
This particular tool, the one that our district provides to teachers as an electronic gradebook, appears to require a letter grade as an output. What I mean is that, as it's currently configured, the only possible output for a student grade is a percentage tied to a letter. While we could tinker with what percentages resulted in what letter, that was all the tinkering that we could do. So this particular tool (certainly, not a read/write tool, but a technology tool nonetheless) only allows for a particular type of output. Not using letter grades is not an option with this tool. (I know - I've really, really stated that - but I think it's very important.)
While I'm not going to make a case right now for eliminating letter grades, I want to point out that, if my school system decided tomorrow to eliminate letter grading, we couldn't. Our computer system would not "allow" it.
Currently, many of our middle schools have assessment systems that are standards based and don't involve letter grades. The software that creates those is aging and might not be compatible with the new system. See the potential for a problem?
I'll end this post for fear of beginning to lose my point, which is this: Sometimes, it is about the tools, and about how those tools shape what is and is not "possible" in particular situations. The tools and their use (or misuse) can completely drive a classroom or management scenario. Pretending that it is never about the tools, and is only about the pedagogy or philosophy, is shortsighted and ultimately problematic.
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