NECCing in San Diego

My final word: It's all about "Taking It Global"

 

My last NECC session was one of my favorites, not because it had lots of bells and whistles, but because it featured one of my favorite grantees in the Microsoft Mid-Tier Partners in Learning program – TakingITGlobal.

TakingITGlobal is an online community of over 120,000 students in 200 countries. These emerging young leaders can use the TakingITGlobal web platform to blog, participate in discussions, share their creative work, and even join or organize action initiatives. Many of those initiatives promote cross-cultural understanding and the dream of a peaceful world.

What’s SO cool to me about TIG is the folks who run it. They’re mostly under 30—barely past childhood themselves, at least from the perspective of this 58-year old blogger. Emily Kornblut, who leads TIG’s newest initiative—TakingITGlobal Education or TIGed—is 26 according to her online bio. These youthful professionals bring a 21st Century perspective to the work, and I suspect they are able to relate to the many thousands of teenagers in the TIG network at a level many boomer (and even Gen X) teachers cannot.

Emily shared a truly sad statistic with Friday’s session audience. In a recent global study, only 14% of young people around the world agreed with the statement, "The world is becoming a better place."

"There isn't a lot of optimism about the future,” Emily told us. “But we ARE seeing optimism in our TIG community." One reason for that optimism: TIG offers many opportunities for young people to raise their voices on behalf of their own futures.

This TIG initiative is exciting work, bypassing the often calcified top layers of adult societies and going straight to the youth. The World Wide Web makes it possible, of course. And just think what it might mean for groups like TakingITGlobal if Nicholas Necroponte’s dream is realized and we’re able to put a computer in the laps of another billion children on Planet Earth!! (Now I’m getting chills…)

Michael Furcyk, another of TIG’s young professionals, helped us sort out the various web tools and factors that make TIG an idea whose time has come. Unprecedented access to the Internet. “Super connectors” like RSS. Social networks like MySpace. The emergence of Web 2.0 with its emphasis on personalization and co-creation of knowledge and content. The prevalence of web environments where it’s common for peers to critique each other’s opinions, push back, and test the quality of ideas. TIG, Furcyk said, has incorporated all of these trends into the TakingITGlobal community.

Furcyk reviewed research about the most important factors that influence the learning styles of today’s youth, including multiprocessing, multimedia literacy, discovery based learning, a bias toward action, a need to stay connected, a zero tolerance for delays, and a ready acceptance of the blurring between consumers and creators.

“Learning needs to respond to learners,” he said. “How many of these (factors) shine through in the pedagogy we are using today in most of our schools?”

Sigh. Not many. We’ve got a lot more work to do, 21st Century Learning team!

The good news: TakingITGlobal’s new program for educators looks terrific, and it’s something we can promote as part of our own work in Alabama.

The TIGed virtual classroom system gives teachers and students the opportunity to interact with TakingITGlobal’s worldwide community in a secure, teacher-controlled environment. Teachers can set up their own private space within the TIG platform and use that space to develop “rich, interactive” lessons and projects. Teachers can also find other teachers around the world who are interested in cross-collaboration.

“Students are not only posting content to teachers but to each other,” Emily Kornblut told us. “They are commenting on each other’s work, getting feedback from their own classmates and from youth around the world. All learning together.”

Within the TIGed website (at Educators Central), teachers will find a section on “Curriculum-Linked Activities” that suggest ways teachers can tap into TIG’s vast activity base and integrate some of what’s going on into local curricula.

Teachers can also help TIG develop new projects. One example: TIGed is looking for teachers willing to pilot a new Virtual Classroom on Tobacco Control, developed in partnership with TeenNet. The curriculum, which can be completed in four class sessions, will introduce students to some of the global issues surrounding the tobacco industry, and the global impact of their choices.

There are modest fees to participate in TIGed—$39 a year for individual teachers and about $200 for a school license (up to 15 teachers). The TIG staff shared a special code with us that allows teachers to try it all out free for six months. If you’d like to do that, get in touch with me and I’ll share the code with you! Also, the TIG team is willing to come to school districts and introduce their work. Hmm…that’s something for us to think about in our ABPC 21st Century initiative. Maybe they’d like to do an Elluminate workshop with our 21st Century schools?

Microsoft’s Mid-Tier grants program deserves a lot of credit for singling out the enthusiastic youngsters at TIG and giving them a substantial grant to develop the new TIGed program. Back in my 20s (the early 1970s), some friends and I established a weekly newspaper in South Carolina that we hoped would be a force for positive change. We lasted for seven years, and I think we made a difference, but the costs of communication in those days eventually pulled us under.

I think TIG grows out of that same impulse that so many of us have as young adults—to do something to make the world a better place. And these “kids” don’t have to rely on paper, ink and postage, nor are they limited by state and national boundaries. More power to them!

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and I had a wonderful time at NECC and loved sharing some of it with all of you. I think we should all take up blogging when we go to important conferences about 21st Century learning. It’s one more way to push this agenda out there. See you soon!

John

A Web of Connections

Went to see my blogging friend Will Richardson speak. I knew him from working with him on Skype and Elluminate, so I figured I was going to be moved by what he said-—but what I didn't expect was the power and authority with which he spoke. His passion was evident. I can honestly say I would be willing to follow him into battle—(and I do not follow easily). It was obvious from what he shared that he has vision, context, experience, commitment, and, most important to me, creativity. His style is commanding. As I watched the audience, they caught the vision. Many were on the edge of their seats.

Will asked the audience members to raise their hands if they were blogging his session, and the number of hands showing really revealed the wild growth of the blogging phenonmenon since I last attended NECC three years ago, when finding a blogger was a unique experience.

In fact, the whole focus of NECC seemed to revolve around Web 2.0, which was a very cool thing. Even the US Dept. of Education is on board with their newly unveiled idea of School 2.0. US ED was talking blogging and podcasts—incredible.

Will points out what we are all doing is not so much about technology anymore-- because the technology is more seamless now due to the ease of use and application. What we are doing now is all about imagination.

He began with "One Red Paperclip",  a story about how Kyle MacDonald traded one red paperclip for a house. He started with one red paperclip on July 12, 2005 and 14 trades later, on July 12, 2006, he will trade with the Town of Kipling (Saskatchewan) for a house located at 503 Main Street.

Next he shared a Mashup from Anime Music Videos that had been published to the Internet as another example of what folks are doing and how so much of what is happening is about imagination.Will asks, " What can we do with these tools now that we have the power to publish ideas so easily?"

There are a billion folks connected to the Web and we'll have another billion by 2015. One trillion places you can click. The emerging reality is the read/write Web. Where we do not just consume content but we create content and share it with the a wide audience as well. It is really changing the way we communicate with the world. This is not about just technology—this is about the history of the world and the way we relate to one another. In relation to the changing world, Will shares that there are 1.2 million posts each day. He pointed everyone to Technorati as a way to track the blogosphere. It is about linking the types of things that isolated folks couldn't gather around before. An example he gave was a Flickr group that communicates and shares pics about vegefetti (graffiti on plants). His point: anyone around the world can now connect around whatever interests them. As he speaks, I made a mental note of how thankful I am to be living in a time such as this.

He describes blogs as published conversation and that the power is that they are interactive. We are truly in the era of collaboration. We are uploaders. We upload ideas and content. Our Web today is a very active and participatory Web. He points to Creative Commons and how we can take more control over our content. And then he challenges the audience to consider what it means when everyone can be a journalist and comment and record for public view about the things happening in our lives. He stresses how what is happening is a powerful shift and for us as educators it is imparative that we understand what these changes are and how it should impact our thinking about what is happening in our classrooms.

Will then shared a podcast by Matthew Bischoff  who is/was one of the first podcasters in the US. He started as a 13 year old podcasting from his bedroom-- another example of the powerful shift. Even Will's 8-yr old daughter Tess's Flickr cookbook has been hit over 1000 times—and she is teaching and sharing! He also shared Darren Kuropatwa's students work.

Student content is going far beyond our classroom walls. It is literally going around the world. It is changing how we learn. Leveraging technology is really all about what can we do with it.

How can teachers be enhanced as professionals by using these tools?  We can't continue to see our classrooms as being contained in a building of brick and mortar. We must truly see our classroom as global. Will shares a time travel story about teachers frozen in a glacier and how if it unfroze they could step back into teaching, because not much has changed. To stretch our thinking he shared MIT's Open Courseware as a way to ask-- "Just where is our classroom?"

I love this...Teachers typically encourage students to "do their own work" and yet now with these tools we encourage them to work together! Using Web 2.0 tools, the collaborative creation of content is incredible. Our world is becoming more aligned together with the idea that we all should get together and be creating together. Our classrooms simply aren't limited any longer.

Take a look at this... http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/South_African_Curriculum --Wiki books is hosting this... imagine! Books that are being created collaboratively! As teachers we can pull from this source and add our lessons. What if teachers worked together to create these kinds of things?

Rip Mix and Learn!

The Web is changing teaching. Teachers need to be connected. Will has learned more as a blogger than any way he has ever tried to learn before in his life. The connected learning has been transformative in his life. We can learn anything, anywhere, anytime! He reminds us that learning is a social activity.

The Web is changing curriculum. Kids are publishing their homework rather than handing it in... Students become teachers. The classroom becomes a learning environment where everyone learns.
The curriculum doesn't have to just be text anymore! It can be so much more creative. We have to be willing to step aside and rethink the ways we are teaching is we want to remain relevant.

Will also challenged all teachers to create a My Space account. We need to help students understand what being a responsible part of a community means. How can we do that if we aren't there in the community? If we are afraid and block it, will we teach kids discernment? He tells us to teach My Space and help them to know how to navigate with purpose. There are endless opportunities to teach our kids about being safe and sensible by using My Space.

Will delivered the message—the message we all need to hear. I liked him before I saw him (and I met him in person for the first time at NECC), but now I feel connected. He is truly a like-minded colleague, one who understands that we are doing this for the children's sake.

Random Genius

  David Thornburg 
  Originally uploaded by john_croft_norton.

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach tells me that futurist/educator David Thornburg has been saying wise things about schools and technology for a long time. One of her favorite quotes goes something like this: "For too many schools, a big technnology purchase leads to nothing more than a higher electricity bill."

Thornburg, who back in the 1970s worked with the team at Xerox that "invented" the graphical interface for the personal computer, offered several memorable quotes during his Thursday session at NECC. He titled it "Visual Learning and Generation M," but he didn't feel obliged to stick to that theme. A better title might have been: "An Hour of Random Genius."

The only technology to ever truly permeate schools, he said, has been the book — and that took one hundred years after the invention of the printing press. Early printed books were seldom "visual," he said...graphics were too expensive and difficult to include. Thus, education's obsession with textual rather than visual learning "is an accident of history."

Outside of school, today's kids live in a world that is full of learning choices. These choices, he told us, lead to the personalization of experience. "The iPod is the perfect example," he said. Then kids come into a classroom and are told "there is only one way to learn and this is it." We don't invite students to personalize their learning experience at school. "I'm not saying they should dictate their own content," he explained. "But surely we can give them more choices about how they learn it."

Memorable quote #1: "It took 40 years for the overhead projector to make it from the bowling alley to the classroom."

Memorable quote #2 (which he borrowed from another author): "You don't make a butterfly by gluing wings to a caterpillar."

Here he was making the case that schools need to go through metamorphic, not incremental, change.

Memorable quote #3: "In the 21st Century, the most desirable college degree will be the Master of Fine Arts." (See the entry about David Warlick's session and his comments about 400,000 jobs in creative fields!) Since my daughter recently earned an MFA in writing, I was relieved!

Random genius, but fascinating to sit and listen to.

-- John

$100 Laptops for All the World's Children?!

  $100 Laptop 
  Originally uploaded by john_croft_norton.

Can a $100 Internet-ready laptop computer revolutionize access to 21st Century learning for underserved children in developing countries? Nicholas Negroponte is willing to bet up to $100 billion that it can.

At a NECC keynote presentation, Negroponte described his plan to put these durable, no-frills machines in the hands of as many as one billion children around the globe. My wife Janice whispered to me, "This is giving me chills. It's truly a world-changing idea."

Negroponte, a co-founder of Wired magazine and chairman emeritus of the MIT Media Lab, first announced his wildly ambitious scheme in January 2005. In his introduction of Negroponte, NECC president Kurt Steinhaus reminded us that the vast majority of the world's children are on the wrong side of a digital divide "that only innovation and smart policy can bridge."

On the plane here, I read an article (in Wired magazine, appropriately enough), "What Kind of Genius Are You?", about some new research into "conceptual" and "experimental" artists and thinkers. The article described research by an economist who posits that while many people we identify as "genuises" do their culture-shattering work in bursts of brilliance before they're 30 (Picasso, Mozart, Orson Welles) — a group he calls conceptualists — there's another group of "experimentalists" who make their way slowly, perfecting their particular brand of genius over many years. Individuals in this group (Twain, Beethoven, Frank Lloyd Wright are examples) often do their best work in their 50s and 60s. I can't tell you how relieved this baby boomer was to hear this!

Negroponte, who appears to be a 50ish fellow himself, seems to fall into the second category. And his idea is definitely a paradigm-buster, if he can pull it off. He just might...he's lined up a lot of impressive support, and the "proof of concept" work is well underway.

Negroponte debuted the first prototype last fall during a UN conference. NECC attendees got to see one of the latest models at a booth in the Convention Center's atrium-like pavilion. This prototype was orange (they give each version a bright new color for easy reference), about the size of a portable DVD player, covered in a thick rubbery material that's designed to resist rough use — even an ice cream dump! Negroponte and his colleagues have gotten the price down to about $100, in part through the sheer volume of computers they intend to purchase.

The cleverly designed display, which is visible in the shade and in bright sunlight, is the most expensive element (around $35). All the software is open source, very lean and robust, which allows the computer to run very fast with less Mhz and memory than our "obese" American laptops. It uses 2 watts of power (ours typically draw 25-40 watts) and can be charged with a hand crank fixed to the AC adapter. The laptop connects to the Internet via a WiFi Mesh Network (I'm way over my head here!) that is actually created when a number of the laptops work in proximity (at least one every 600 feet). If that's not possible, there are cheap $10 signal boosters that, Negroponte told us, "can simply be nailed to a tree."

You'll be hearing a lot more about the One Laptop Per Child initiative. Negroponte has many schemes to finance his dream, including options that would make it possible for more affluent citizens of the world to buy one of the devices for $2000, take a $1900 tax write-off, and allow OLPC to purchase 19 machines for distribution to the world's poorest children, who are eager to take their place in the Digital Age.

OLPC is already road-testing their ideas with children in several developing countries. The first word of English they are learning, Negroponte told us, is "Google."

Tom Carroll

I attended the session "Learning in Networked Classrooms" because I was interested in what Tom Carroll, the President of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, would talk about. We featured an audio clip by Tom in our 21st Century Schools curriculum, pulled from Microsoft's 21stC leadership CD ("strapping steam engines to sailing ships"). I went in with great expectations. Tom didn't let me down, but it was a 4-person team and Tom went last.

The presentation began with Dr. Mary McNabb giving a justification of why online learning was important. She continued with basic information about hypertext and how folks process it differently than a print-based medium. She claims many may feel disorientation and cognitive overload while reading a nonlinear hypertext page. Her point about how teachers tend to not monitor online reading comprehension the way that we do text-based comprehension was interesting. She shared about how effective e-mail and IM are for communication. However, she lost me at her slide that said, "Digital natives don't do books." I have to disagree!!!

Then Carol Ann Lee, a retired teacher, shared a free site called the Collaboratory that can be used for threaded discussions with students around a topic. It is basically a first generation site -- but could be a simple tool for novice teachers.

David Barr was the next presenter. He is Director of Online Learning at the Illinois Mathematics and   Science Academy and a member of the leadership team of ISTE's National Educational Technology Standards project. He was an engaging speaker;most of what he discussed was around the 21st Century Information Fluency Project.

He mentioned solid research and ideas from others that I agree with such as "proximal learning" and "backward design." The one thing David said I really liked is that practice makes permanent. That is why guided practice is so important -- so that you practice it correctly before achieving mastery. Otherwise you will master it incorrectly.

Then what I had been waiting for... Tom Carroll! He stressed how teachers need to be continuously teaching and learning in teams...not alone. Amen. Then he shared a terrific example of a principal in SC who had been very creative in his approach to getting 900 laptops in the hands of his neediest students. He set the goals of improved parent participation, increased student achievement, and teacher collaboration and used Title One funds to purchase the laptops. For a student to be eligible the parent had to attend laptop training and use the computer with their child.

The results in achievement and parent participation were amazing.

Gotta run to the next session-- more later---> Sheryl

More NECC

There are lots of ways to follow NECC thanks to all the folks that are writing--
In Flickr there are hundreds of photos. Search tags NECC and NECC2006
There is a daily publication that reviews the top presentations--
And there are podcasts and webcasts of sessions...Video on Demand
Del.icio.us tags
Technorati is following too
Presenter's Handouts

Highlights from NECC Daily Leader
Download the complete Thursday Edition of the NECC Daily Leader (PDF, 1.3KB)

Download the complete Wednesday Edition of the NECC Daily Leader (PDF, 1.2KB)

Download the complete Tuesday Edition of the NECC Daily Leader (PDF, 1.8MB)

I have to scoot over to the conference but cant wait to blog Will's presentation. He will rock your world! There will be a podcast of his session I attended too-- so you can hear it for yourself.

More later---

Sheryl

Extraordinary Visions

The best keynote I have ever attended was by Dewitt Jones.

Dewitt Jones is one of America's top professional photographers with a career stretching over twenty years. As a motion picture director, he had two films nominated for Academy Awards before he was thirty. Twenty years as a freelance photographer for National Geographic earned him a reputation as a world class photojournalist.

His mantra is Vision, Passion, Purpose, Creativity!
He used his beautiful photographs as the backdrop for his motivational talk. He had me with his opening story. He is a masterful story tellers that weaves humor, inspiration and art throughout his tales.

For Dewitt it is all about falling in love. He talks about how once you fall in love you only see possibilities. He encouraged us to fall in love with our advocation and then unite it with vocation.
He encourages us to embrace change not ignore it-- to push yourself beyond your own boundaries.

Here are four main Points from my notes--
                   

• There’s More Than One Right Answer- when you look at the questions and problems that surround the work you do look for multiple ways to address the issue. Dont ask what is the right answer... but rather what is the "next" right answer.


• “Reframe” Problems into Opportunities- It is all in how we frame what we are up against. By truly looking at what potential the circumstance holds and falling in love with how we are approaching it-- we can turn problems into opportunities. Ask yourself-- What will I be given today and will I be open enough to embrace it. Celebrate what it right with the situation...rather than what's wrong. If you will celebrate what is right--then you will find the energy to celebrate. He quoted Michaelangelo saying that he saw an angel in the stone and carved to set it free. Ask yourself-- What is here to celebrate?
  
  
• Train the Technique- Train and over train. Get your technique down. Then in times of potential right answers will follow. Vision without technique is blind. Technique takes days, months, years to perfect-- but once you are there-- put yourself in the place of most potential and the answers will keep on coming.
  
  
• Who We Are Counts-- It isnt just what we do.. it is who we are. It isnt enough to be the best in the world-- we have to be the best for the world. We have to work not only on our outter edges, but our inner edges too.

Dewitt says that the greatest possibilities are riddled with turbulance. We need to expect it and then look for the next right answer.

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach

Teaching Zack to Think

I attended Alan November's session. I am sure it was the same thing he presented at AETC but I didn't get to hear him. His description of the session: Too many students are not sure how to separate fact from fiction on the Internet. The Internet can provide any version of the truth to support almost any belief. We can teach students how to read the “grammar” of the Internet and to apply strategies to validate information on a website. His workshop provided tips that help students and teachers think critically about Internet information.

I heard his primary message as two fold:
1) That teachers need to teach students how to tell the authenticity of the information they are accessing on the Web by teaching them to use the tools available.
2) That teachers need to expand the authentic audience for our students across the digital community. That we need to share our student's content with the world.

He pulled up Darren's work but didnt mention him by name to show how Darren's students are collaborating with the world around adavance mathematics.

He challenged all teachers to have a My Space acct. so that we can understand the culture of the students we teach. He felt by doing so that we would help to reduce the fear and by being there we can show them the kind of content that needs to be presented. We need to put up their content-- if we dont, they will put up content of their own based on their understanding through their popular culture.

Alan stressed how we need to teach our students to be digitally literate. A prime example of that is teaching them to know who has authored a Web page, looking at the links contained in the page and who authored those, and understanding how to determine the crediblity of sources.

For example,(one many of you have probably seen before)  he took us to http://www.martinlutherking.org/ which by first glance looks like a great resource. However, on closer examination-- (scroll to the bottom) it is hosted by Stormfront, a white supremist group.

Using Who Is you can type in the domain and determine exactly who is publishing this propaganda. Many in the crowd loved his tips and tricks--so the rest of the session was spent doing things like visitng The Way Back Machine which will show any past versions of a Web page.

The one thing that was new to me was using the search engine Alta Vista's commands to sort and organize searches by domains and extentions. Most of those tips came from his following Danny Goodman's Search Engine Watch. I am subscribing.

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach---- who spends too much time networking and not enough time blogging....

Kathy Schrock's Three-Hour Tour

  Kathy Schrock's Three-Hour Tour 
  Originally uploaded by john_croft_norton.

If you've been teaching with Web resources for more than a year or two, you've probably heard of Kathy Schrock, the trailblazing media specialist from Massachusetts whose massive resource site for teachers is still one of the most comprehensive on the Web (it's now at the Discovery Education website). My wife Janice and I were among hundreds of NECCeteers who attended Kathy's "Three Hour Tour" of primary resources available on the Internet. Of course it all began with a group-sing... the theme song from Gilligan's Island. True to her librarian nature, Kathy cut the song at exactly the right moment to avoid a copyright violation.

She wrapped up her talk with what she felt was a harrowing tale of false identity at MySpace -- someone created a Kathy Schrock account, complete with friends, favorite places, etc. etc. It had been up about a year when Kathy heard about it! Lawyers ensued.

Lucky for all of us, she posted her entire presentation on the Web.(Well, not the MySpace link. At least, I don't think so!)  It's a gold mine. Check it out!

Kids are rocking the world

  Kids are rocking the world 
  Originally uploaded by john_croft_norton.

Rock Our World helps students on seven continents collaborate to compose music, make movies, hold video conferences and generally learn about one another. These kids from Imperial Elementary School (CA) are in a blended after-school program where visually impaired and sighted kids work together on ROW activities. At NECC, this trio explained their "lunchbox project" to passers-by. Basically, they asked kids all over the planet to show them what was in their lunchboxes. Then they sent "CARE packages" to each other and began eating lots of strange stuff! Find out more at the Rock Our World site.