The embedded video below has information that should give the world of education some things to consider. Are we using available technology to teach 21st century skills? Are we using available technology to engage students? Are we using available technology to make global connections?

I have been experimenting with a variety of open source applications during the last few years. The ESU is currently running Moodle (Learning Management), Elgg (Community Building & Blogging), WordPress MU (Blogging), phpESP (Survey), and Gallery (Photo Storage). The whole open source community is very intriguing to me. The creators of this software are willing to share what they have developed. There are open source options for nearly any application you may currently be running on your MAC or Windows machine.

The open source environment has now moved into the course development arena. One of the first items I became aware of is the Free-reading.net site. Free-Reading is an "open source" instructional program that helps teachers teach early reading.

The long term success of the open source environment requires the contribution of a large community of people.  The technology is in place to allow anyone that has an interest to become an active contributor.

The fear of students' use of social networking sites, such as MySpace, is eliminating what could be a valuable learning opportunity. Student use of the internet in general, and specifically social networking, continues to grow. I recently became aware of a couple of wonderful resources to help adults understand digital kids. Wesley Fryer has created a wiki devoted to internet safety and social networking for parents. A recent PBS broadcast, "Growing up Online", is also available to view online. If schools are going to be to be given the opportunity to use these valuable learning tools, teachers, parents and school policy makers must understand appropriate uses of this technology.

 

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Second Life is an online 3D virtual world created by Linden Labs, and was originally launched in 2003. Second Life provides an online world for users to play and interact in, allowing residents to create their own virtual spaces. Recently there have been numerous examples of the educational opportunities that can be realized within this environment.  Sean FitzGerald and Jo Kay have created a  Second Life in Education Wiki that has a wide variety of resources for any educator interested in exploring Second Life.

Online learning has recenty seen dramatic growth at the middle/high school grade levels. Michigan became the first state to require high school students to take at least one online course for graduation. ESU #13 is planning to incorperate online and hybrid courses into the current two-way interactive schedule. Over the last two years the ESU #13 Moodle site has become fairly active. It is currently being used to supplement face-to-face course, but planning for actual online courses is scheduled to begin this week. An email was sent to member schools seeking teachers that might be interested in beginning to use online courseware. With the rapid growth of online course delivery at the post-secondary level, students should be given the opportunity to participate in this type of learning environment as part of completing their secondary course studies.

This is going to be great! A group of students from around the world writing about education, teaching, and learning. The logo below is linked to their website, which contains a "What", "Why", "Who", and "How" section. This is an exciting post for me. I have been reading EduBloggers for some time, but the time has come for student voices to be heard.

I was recently listening to a podcast, sorry I don't remember the actual podcast to give credit. One of the statements that caught my attention was a reference to a video conferencing application called dimdim. The main reason it sparked my interest was that the integration pack required to make this application work within  Moodle had been developed. I have only experimented with a couple of short practice sessions, but the possibilities are exciting. The dimdim integration with Moodle allows an instructor to add an activity to a course, set the start and duration times, and have the ability to have two-way audio and video interaction with remote students. Dimdim also includes the ability to share documents, applications, and an interactive whiteboard. I hope to share more specific information about uses of this application as I have more time to explore its capabilities.

The Responsive Classroom approach focuses on practical ways of meshing social and academic learning. It is interesting to see how web 2.0 tools have the power to support all of the seven key principles of this 20-plus year old program.

I am helping start an online professional development community as part of our Elgg site.  My role will be to encourage and model the professional growth opportunities that are possible with this technology. That being said, I have a surface knowledge of school improvement and assessment, and when I come across information that may be valuable to this group I will share. I was doing a little research to find other bloggers posting on topics that will be valuable to this community and came across this post by Konrad Glogowski.

Here are a few of my thoughts related to the above post. Given my limited knowledge base of assessment, I may tend to over-simplify what I know is an extremely complex issue. Accountablility is important, but if the process is so complicated that teachers are never able to use the data to impact instruction...What's the point??? Another issue related to K-12 assessment that causes me a little/lot of concern, is the transition higher-ed has on K-12 curriculum and assessment models. The ACT/SAT test, courses, and grades a student accumulates during their high school years is all important to their promotion to post-secondary education. In the traditional "industrial age" model of education the transition from K-12 to higher-ed has been pretty smooth.  The changes underway in many K-12 schools is designed to prepare students for future success, but the courses and grades may not be what those at the post-secondary level are used to looking for. The last issue that I would like to address, is the whole student driven content and assessment. How can the education process be more student directed? This includes the assessment process. The use of web 2.0 tools allow students to be actively involved in self-evaluation, peer-evaluation, share with a world-wide audience, and become a participant in collaborative learning communities.

This post is actually a spin-off from some comments that were made to an original post by Sarah Richter. The focus of the post was related to school improvement and professional development. The first comment took a different spin, and asked the question..."What if  we have identified the wrong goal?". What skills should today's students master? If the goal is to have students write effectively, they should be able to perform the task with and without technology. If the goal is to solve mathematical problems, they should be able to do this with and without technology. It can no longer be an either/or argument. Students need to master some basic skills, but they must also use current technology tools to extend their learning. It is time to stop focusing on the technology, and really determine what skills will be valuable to them outside the classroom.

In my stumbling around looking at cool things people are doing with web 2.0 tools I came across the EdTechLIVE recordings page. One of the podcasts on the site is an interview with "Arthus", a 14 year old student, talking about his use of web 2.0 tools and how schools are missing an opportunity to use these tools to enhance teaching and learning. This site also has podcasts from Gary Stager, Will Richardson, Martin Dougiamas, David Warlick, David Thornburg, and others. Even though "Arthus" may be considered a "high-tech" student, he does a great job of explaining how a wide variety of web 2.0 tools could be used to extend teaching and learning beyond the walls of the classroom.

There are a few items of interest that I would like to share with the network managers from our member schools. The key information today will be related to the network upgrade that is planned for the summer 2008. If time permits I hope to share a little information about some  web 2.0 tools, implementing 1:1, and acceptable use policies. The ESU is currently running a variety of web 2.0 applications that are available to teachers in our member schools. The reason for running these locally is to maintain a level of control of student accounts and content. The applications that we are currently running include:

Moodle: course management software similar to Blackboard
Elgg: blogging software and file storage for e-portfolio development
MediaWiki: community developed content, same software used to maintain Wikipedia
Gallery: photo storage, similar to flickr

As schools begin to use these tools it will become necessary for them to revist/revise their acceptable use policy (AUP). There have been a few recent posts that will give people a place to start.

AzTEA AUP for 2.0 Resources
EdTech K-12
InfiniteThinkingMachine

The other topic that I hope to have a little time to discuss is the implementation of 1:1. There is one of our member schools that is beginning a 1:1 program, and a few others that are talking about it. 

Apple Education
Anytime Anywhere Learning Foundation (AALF)
Thinking Stick

All three of these topics should be explored/implemented together. The web 2.0 collaboration/communication tools will allow students and teachers to be involved in active learning communities. The AUP has to be revised to include the use web 2.0 tools, and responsibilities related to the 1:1 implementation. 

This is an interesting video on how the definition of information has changed in today's digital age. The video was created by the digital ethnography working group, a team of cultural anthropology led by Dr. Michael Wesch, exploring the impacts of digital technology on human interaction and human interaction on digital technology. This is only one of numerous videos that have been created by this group, and can be found at their site.

This is also my first attempt at embedding a video into one of my posts. It took a little research on the Elgg site, but it does seem to be working. 

The educational leadership for the state of Nebraska is moving toward the inclusion of technology and 21st century skills in core content standards. Dr. Doug Christensen, state Commissioner of Education, created a short presentation to share his thoughts with ESU technology staff worked through issues related to this topic. This may be a little over simplified, but in looking at ISTE NETS and 21st Century Skills, if educators would embrace “Communication and Collaboration” in online learning communities most of the other skills could be easily attached to these two topics.

In preparing for my upcoming workshops, I have been doing some research on the individual topics. Here is a link to the flyers for the workshops. Although the topics of the workshop are fairly distinct, I began to notice that there were a handful of key terms that kept jumping into my mind. The workshop topics include Blogs & Wikis, Moodle, Digital Citizenship, e-Portfolios, and Right Brain & Flat World. I have also been gathering information on the new ISTE NETS (student technology standards) and 21st Century Skills. The terms that kept coming to mind were communicate, collaborate, produce, publish, and audience. I plan to incorperate these five terms into each of the workshops. It will be interesting to see what people think if they are able to attend multiple sessions. There is great power in these words when tied to web 2.0 tools and put in the hands of students.

I downloaded a couple of podcasts from the EdTechTalk site last night while watching the baseball playoffs in a motel room. Listening to this content is a great way to fill a five hour drive home, and get excited about what cool things are being done in education. One of the sites that was talked during the podcast was Worldbridges. After getting home, I found a little time to explore this site...Amazing! There are numerous video posts, and links to a wide variety of blog sites. The second half of a presentation by David Cormier has a interesting demonstration of an open source version of second life that can be run, and completely controlled locally. This is definitely something I need to learn more about. I have been hearing and reading about educational applications of using second life, but now it's time to move beyond surface knowledge and dig in. There is also a keynote presentation by Will Richardson. He has a great vision of how web 2.0 tools change the way people learn, and in turn the way we should be teaching today's students. One of the things he said during a panel discussion was that the learning has traditionally been a dependent experience. Educators are no longer the gatekeepers of information. Students now have the ability to independently design their learning. The real irony in this statement is that many students are participating in extremely large and diverse collaborative learning communities.

The K-12 Online Conference 2007 starts tomorrow!

Given our location, many of us may never have the opportunity to attend a national conference. The K12 Online Conference (http://www.k12onlineconference.org/) has oustanding presenters from a number of countries. The entire program is being delivered online. This means you can attend every session from anywhere you have access to the internet. There are a variety of sessions available. Most of them have a video of the presenter or a screencast of the concept being presented. The topic strands for the conference are "Web 2.0", "New Tools", "Professional Learning Networks", and "Obstacles to Opportunities."

In many instances, Internet Safety has become the the sole topic of focus of schools and parents, when dealing with digital citizenship. Yes, internet safety issues should be included in a comprehensive digital citizenship curriculum. But not allowing students to participate in online collaborative learning experiences will likely have a much stronger negative impact on their future. Vicki Davis “Why is Digital Citizenship an Issue?” and Nancy Willard “A Web 2.0 Approach to Internet Safety” have posted valuable information related to this topic. Most students are actively involved in using a variety of digital communication tools. If schools do not begin building this technology into the teaching and learning process, they are missing the opportunity to model and teach appropriate uses of these tools.