Knitter Chats | Main / OpeningLovejoyDistrictPD2011

The most commonly used aggregator is probably Google Reader. But I'm wondering how much tablets are going to change all of that, as they become the device you go to read/learn. - dfw

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That's why you have to be selective. It's one of the advantage of Twitter, that you can read ideas from so many people so quickly. - dfw

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Yes! But I would suggest that librarians can also help teachers learn to be better discerners of valuable information. - dfw

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Hmmm! So many ways I could respond to that. First of all, learning is not an assignment today. It's not work. It is a lifestyle. But I would also suggest that teachers share their learning even if it isn't related to their curriculum. In a time of rapid change, the skill and practice of learning has almost become as important as what you are learning. It's why I keep harping on teachers to be "public learners." - dfw

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I am increasingly seeing my iPad as a creation tool. I think that in some cases, people are pushing it a bit. But I do a good bit of my blogging on my iPad. There is also some very cool photo editing software and effect generators out there -- some actually working better than on my laptop. I also have a very fine music composition program on my iPad, the results of which were playing during our breaks.

All that said, I believe that the tablet will not replace more powerful laptops and other production technologies. It's why I insist that if a school is using iPads for 1:1 implementations, it is critical that they also have centers with more powerful work stations for students to do the more digital heavy lifting. Think Kinkos for kids. Your library might be a great place for that. - dfw

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The iPad 2 will project to a smartboard just like a laptop. It's the main argument I'm using to convince my wife (business manager) that I need to upgrade ;-) - dfw

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People love Instagram. I do not use it because it seems to limit where I can put my pictures. I still use Flickr (http://flickr.com) as the upload place for my digital photos. - dfw

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Hummm! I don't know. I use Facebook, but frankly I think we might be better served to leave it alone and let the students figure out how to use it to help them with their learning. The ask them to talk about it. We need to help them learn to do serious learning with their social networks, but they may be the best people to invent ways of doing that. - dfw

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This is what I mean. I suspect that they do have PLNs, but they don't know it. I don't think we should muck up the waters by trying to label what they are doing. Instead we should ask them how they use their Facebook environment to learn. We need to help them understand that they can use this experience to accomplish serious learning. - dfw

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I'm still pretty confused by Google+. I don't completely understand it, though I am convinced that it's a very useful network space. I just have a hard time believing that I need another network. But I'm there and continuing to explore it.

One thing that's interesting about Google+ is that my educator friends who are going there, are there with more professional intent. Whereas, many of us initially went to Facebook for more social reasons. - dfw

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ST? - dfw

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Yes! Think about an iGoogle style page as what's displayed on your interactive white board as students are walking in. Think about it as the classroom dashboard ;-) - dfw

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I used to use that, but haven't in a long time. Does it trend the social network (blogosphere/twittervers), or does it trend what people are searching for? Both are valuable, but they tell a slightly different story. - dfw

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Yes! Yes! Yes! It's an area that I don't go into much, because there are others who do a better job. But students do need to understand that transparency of their online behaviors and its possible implications. Lots of stories out there to use for discussion.

But one of the things that I hear consistently from teachers who are having their students blog, is that they are having these kinds of discussions about responsible use of the Internet more than they ever did before. What I'm saying, is that it becomes easier to help students learn to be responsible networkers, if networking is part of their formal learning experience. - dfw

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A great sine on ed technology. - dfw

---- This seems to be where the afternoon session began

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Well said! - dfw

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I think that an important quality of 21st century learning is that it designs learner responsibility and accountability into the experience. - dfw

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This is totally off the subject, but it's why I am so intrigued by infographics. They connect content, number crunching, and design. In schoolese, it's a combination of Social studies, science, or heath; mathematics; and art. - dfw

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Again, here's where your librarian comes in. They might help teachers identify these sorts of data-rich and/or primary source information, and help them to maintain and grow their own digital library of resources - Delicious (http://delicious.com/) or Diigo (http://diigo.com/) - dfw

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Digital natives, I believe, are looking forward digital resource, but it's those resources that help them/you accomplish your goals. How often do you research the Internet looking for the solution to a problem you are having with a video game? You research it and assure the validity of what you find because you care about the outcomes. You formal learning experiences should also be structured so that it becomes something that you care about. That doesn't mean that it has to be something that you are necessarily interested in, but willing to invest your self in -- valuable. - dfw

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When it pertains to their school work, you're probably right. It's one of the things that came out of the conversation we were having at lunch. One of our goals is to help students come to "care" about their formal learning. - dfw

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Ah! Now many educators would be uncomfortable having themselves described as entertaining. I prefer to believe that I try to communicate on both a practical and emotional level. I also believe, and research has proved this out, that surprise is a powerful pedagogy, that when I'm talking about one thing, and then suddenly you find that I was actually leading up to something else -- that surprise is a powerful learning experience. - dfw

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I taught math for one year, and I was a miserable math teacher. But I've often wonder since then that we might get further if we started out with the word problem, reason through it, and then discover that mathematical concepts that will solve it. Work in the information environment first, play with it, and then discover the math behind it. - dfw

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But part of the video has to be the conversation about the video and how they made it. They have to be able to explain why they did it this way or that, prove that they were trying to enhance and/or clarify their argument. Another word that came out of the lunch conversation was that they need to be able to "defend" their learning. - dfw

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I'm in the plane right now, and Internet is two expensive for a 2.5 hour flight. But I'll look at this when I get back to my office... - dfw

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I've often wondered the same thing. I've seen many inspiring videos from YouTube that I'd love to have playing as students are entering the classroom. - dfw

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Learningtrack? ;-) - dfw

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With the Internet, you can easily find radio stations from difference parts of the world. With my hearing problems, I have a special problem with accents. So I often listen to foreign radio stations to get my ears tuned to the accent before I go there. - dfw

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Talking money - US Debt Live Statistics...http://www.usdebtclock.org/

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Talking money - US Debt Live Statistics...http://www.usdebtclock.org/

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The ethical piece will be the hardest

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Another one is an infographic called the Billion Dollar-o-Gram. It illustrates the difference between 50 billion and a trillion dollars. - dfw

The ethical piece will be the hardest

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Yes! Which is why it has to start with kindergarten. It has to be part of the conversation. - dfw

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Yes! Or one might say that because of them, humankind is doomed. One reason why I think it is so important that students learning how to manipulate information and compellingly experss ideas is that they may become more sensitive to how others try to manipulate them. - dfw

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Yes! - dfw

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So is it effective learning? Do you learn it better than the learn that you do in the classroom? If so why? This is what we refer to as metacognition. It's thinking about the learning that you are doing, coming to understand yourself as a learner and how to make yourself a better learner. We all learn in different ways, "learning styles." - dfw

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Couldn't have said it better! One might say that how you learn has become as important as what you learn. - dfw

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..and there is more than one way to Google a thing. For instance, if you suspect that the best answer is going to be in a web site called Video Games for Learning, then you could google "metacognition site:videogamesforlearning.com" Or if you want to know what people think of a certain web site, you can Google "link:gamesforlearning.com" which will show sites to link to that site. Many people do not know how powerfully flexible Google can be. - dfw

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Yes! We need to respect their tech skills, at the same time that we expect them to learn with them. Respect the learner. - dfw

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Yes! I would hate to be in the bookcase industry ;-) Just think how much room I'd have in my house without all the bookcases ;-) - dfw

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And I think that the power of that reward (points, coins, gold) is that it's something you can talk about with your friends. It's something you all identify with. How might we reward you for your formal learning in a way that you'd want to talk about it with your friends? - dfw

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In the world of Web 2.0, the currency of reward is attention. My blog is valuable because so many people read it and comment on my articles. That I have more than 10,000 followers on Twitter is a reward. It's a form of currency. Actually, I've had people offer to buy my blogging tool, because so many teachers use it. It's attention that they want to buy, not the tool. - dfw

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But in watching my own children with video games, I find that there is also a willingness to help each other. - dfw

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Do you have ask your self if the competitive skill you are gaining in playing the game might be a skill that will be valuable to you in the future? - dfw

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I urge teachers, rather than integrate the game into the curriculum, that they integrate the conversation about the game. I'm teaching about Caesar, and I know that you are playing Age of Empires, and I know that you are currently building an empire. I ask you, "Hunter, what might your empirer do, if he was facing the situation that Caesar faced here?" "What do you think would be the outcome?" "Well here's what Caesar did?" "If your emperor did this, what do you think would happen in your empire?" - dfw

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That's an excellent question and one of the current arguments going on in the field. There is a school of thought that says we should be incorporating off the shelf games like World of Warcraft or Minecraft. Others think that the games should be curriculum-specific. Some believe that if you make a standards-aligned video game, it stops being a game to the students. The students' term for it is "creepy treehouse." - dfw

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My ongoing question is, "Why?" What is it about the game that makes the learning more motivating? This is what we need to understand. Is it the game, the competition, the technology, etc. - dfw

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Care to elaborate? I know of classes in North Carolina and New York (or NJ) that are integrating World of Warcraft (HS) and Minecraft (MS). The actually have a class called World of Warcraft in the english department. The classes are taken mostly by at-risk students. - dfw

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Yes! I use Scratch because it is easy to demonstrate in just a few minutes. But you're right. This is the real power of virtual worlds, in my opinion. These worlds are defined and described with numbers, and if math students can work that world, build in it, then they are doing so by working the numbers. Math becomes the "working of numbers" instead of the "doing of math." - dfw

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Sure sounds like it to me. Many schools have tech nights for the community, where folks can come in and see how technology is being used in their classrooms. One element of this might be to have students demonstrate some of the video games and talk about the learning that they do while playing. - dfw

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I chuckle at that. At the end of the first afternoon that I spent teaching myself programming, I got on my knees and thanked every algebra teacher I'd ever had. There was finally a reason for algebra ;-) - dfw

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Yes! Lots of reasoning -- higher order thinking skills... - dfw

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I understand. But technically, according to the copyright law of 1998, all information is automatically copyrighted. - dfw

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There are some famous education researchers who are saying the kids who are growing up not playing problem solving-styled video games are going to be disadvantaged in the future. (James Paul Gee - University of Arizona). - dfw

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If I had to come up with one word to describe 21st century education, it would be "conversation." - dfw

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I've sometimes suggested that students should become more active while teachers should become more passive. Of course, the issues are far more complex than that. - dfw

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Research is showing that the hyperconnectedness of Millinneals has a lot of benefits. For example, this generate is actually more sociable than the pre-video game generation. But there are problems as well. Are today's youngsters as skilled at the sustained reading that is necessary for deep or contentious issues. - dfw

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It's part of being human, and I believe that humans will also want to do at least part of that face-to-face. Human nature. - dfw

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Again, it's part of the daily conversation of the classroom. - dfw

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One might say that today, the truth has become anything that people are willing to believe. - dfw

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You have far more conduits for learning than your parents did. It's one of the reasons why teachers should be public learners, even in front of your parents. - dfw

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Yes! "Socrates Plugged In!" - dfw

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But many teachers are uncomfortable with that. They are responsible for your learning, and when there are no boundaries, then there is less control. It's something that we all need to adjust to. - dfw

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But this brings up an interesting question. What is educational value. What gives something educational value. Is building a museum in Second Life of educational value? If you grow up to become an architect, it might be. Personally, I have found no value in having learned to balance chemical formulas. But it was taught to me in high school. That's not to say that Chemistry was without value. I have a valuable understand of how matter works, because of Chemistry and what I've taught myself about quantum physics since. - dfw

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Well, one hopes so :-) - dfw

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Very cool! Spore is a very cool game, because just about all of the content is there because of the evolution dynamics of the game and the behaviors of the player. - dfw

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Gold and they get physically punishednwhen they don't meet gold quotas

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Yes, and it's a complex issue. Learn what you can about Creative Commons. It's where people and describe exactly the rights they are giving to their information consumers. For instance, if you are looking for photographs to use in your presentation slidedeck, you can go to http://flickr.com/creativecommons, and your searches will reveal only those photos that the photographer licensed for people to use (cc) without having to get permission. - dfw

Gold and they get physically punished when they don't meet gold quotas

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I'm surprised that I haven't heard of one happening at a school. - dfw

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That's one way. Another is to send out an audio file for people to load into their MP3 players and instructed to be someplace and to turn the audio on at a specific time. So everyone gets the same audio instructions at the same time, and so they are, in mass, doing the same things. - dfw

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It is possible to game the system, and people try to with varying degrees of success. - dfw

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Having the skills, to use your prevailing information environment, to learn what you need to know, to do what you need (or want) to do. - dfw

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Yes! - dfw

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Well yes! But I heard someone say recently that it is in those moments when we are disconnected, and have only our own thoughts as "distractions," that we are learning to become ourselves. I'm afraid that many of our children are not getting enough of this time to themselves. I know that I'm not! - dfw

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Thanks to everyone. This was among my very best backchannel conversations!

-- dfw

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I like his jacket.

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Hmmm! Are you talking about my jacket? ..my brown jacket? Not heard this one before. Perhaps it's because you haven't seen anyone wearing a jacket in such a long time. ;-) - dfw

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These things always start like this... - dfw

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I have lots of first grade teachers using my blogging service. Kids either do the typing or the teacher scans their writings and adds them as images to the blogs. Kids love it, because they are "published." Wouldn't you? - dfw

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??? - dfw

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I'm waiting for an educationally designed virtual world for primary level children. The constructivist potential are amazing, when it's looked upon like a sandbox. - dfw

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i want a interactive board in my home office.

Shawnea' - 18 Jul 2011 - 10:04:37

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Didn't know about this. Is this here? Here is a news story from the Telegraph: http://goo.gl/WwG4L - dfw

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Don't know. This was in Hong Kong, and they see tech gadgets before we do. We should be ashamed. We were soooooo far ahead of the rest of the world not so many years ago. - dfw

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:-) Personally, I think that books will be around for some time, though my confidence in that is waning a bit with the sudden popularity of ebooks (Kindle, Nook, etc.) Some people like reading books on their iPad, though I find them a bit heavy. But books are so much a part of our culture. - dfw

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I have little doubt that we could be going in this direction. I think that devices that know about us, the conditions of various aspects of our bodies to detect potential upcoming health problems is an almost certainty.

I liked this TED also. Think about this in elementary classrooms: http://goo.gl/fT6m - dfw

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There's a ton of them out there, but they are mostly commercially oriented and they teach material consumption to children. I do not approve. There are a number of projects underway to create educationally sound virtual worlds. One I'm interested in is OpenSIM, which is an open source product you can download and install on your own servers. They you dress it up for what ever level of children you want using it. Since you can run it on your own servers, you can control who has access. There are also a number of companies will host OpenSIMs for you for a fee. - dfw

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I know a high school in NYC where students were taught, as freshmen, to use a word processor, presentation software, video and audio editing software, and how to do some basic HTML coding. After they class, every assignment, through their school career, was required to be turned in digitally. In most cases, they could decide whether they wanted to make a presentation, video, digital document, or what ever. However, they had to defend their decision, explaining why they though it was an appropriate way to convey the information or accomplish the goal. - dfw

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We need to agree on what STEM (education as a whole) should look like, and then fund it. Personally, it should be students learning science, by becoming scientists, and learning history by becoming historians... - dfw

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Well it is certainly a huge part of the rhetoric right now. But rhetoric is not always reality. - dfw

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Here's another good Friedman video: http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/266 - dfw

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Yes! But we first need to tell the new story about teaching and learning in a time of rapid change. If people think they are increasing funding for their notions of what education is about, they'll balk. We need a new story that is so compelling that is shatters their old visions of classroom, teachers, textbooks, etc. - dfw

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Yes! Context is a huge part of video games. Assassin's Creed, a very popular game, is based on what Venice really looked like centuries ago. The first version was based on a real 12th century French village. - dfw

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That's an excellent question. I agree that they need to learn by manipulating the real world, not just the digital. - dfw

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Yes! But a huge part of it is human behavior. Video game design is about channeling human behavior in such a way that it become fun work. To that end, video game design is a lot bigger than just games. - dfw

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I didn't know about this. Very powerful. Just did a run on 8th grade scores based on selected countries and use of computers at home. - dfw

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Interesting question. I think that Facebook has already affected it significantly. We've had only a few, fairly stale reunions, but last year one of my classmates held one based on Facebook friendings that had happened in just the last year. It was much more exciting if only evidenced by the pictures that were uploaded onto Flickr and Facebook. - dfw

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That is the question. But is it one for us to answer. Isn't it their question. "So, Johnny, how do you know that is the correct or appropriate answer?" If they can't answer that question, then their work is incomplete. - dfw

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Yes! But it's not a step by step process. They need to be developing the reasoning skills and knowledge of how today's information environment works, so that they can be resourceful in their searching. It's a thinking skill. - dfw

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They do this in video games all the time. They know it's the right answer, because it worked. :-) They need to be doing things in their formal learning environment, where the assessment is It worked - dfw

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Another good question. Probably not as much as producing paper. But this is a huge problem that technology is working on. Longer batter life will be a major plus. - dfw

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Wow! I didn't know that. But it's not a country. It's a bridge. - dfw

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I saw a wonderful presentation at the Games Learning and Society conference in Madison a few years ago about research that a woman did on cheating. Fascinating. She concluded that much of the cheating that players do is actually just the kind of resourceful thinking that we want our children to develop. We need more than one word for cheating. - dfw

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Excellent video... - dfw

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Bingo! Lifelong learners think about their learning. - dfw

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That was a good question in afternoon discussion. You might look at the writings and doing of Michael Wesch. His videos are here: http://goo.gl/dqUD - dfw

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In a way, post-secondary is even more at risk, because people choose to use them, and it's increasingly expensive. I can see college changing radically in the next few years because of a number of factors. - dfw

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True! But it has the effect I'm looking for... - dfw

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Would love to hear your thoughts about Rooster Teeth, and their Machinima empire. - dfw

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Same here! I'm wondering where I'll get my material when he's left the house ;-) - dfw

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Yes! And I'm becoming increasingly excited about their using Infographics to do the same thing. Part of this is learning where and when which medium is most appropriate. - dfw

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I wonder what your teacher thought of it. What questions did she/he ask about your work and why you chose to do it that way. - dfw

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I actually have some problems with these sorts of things. I think that they are useful, but I'm afraid that they become a crutch for teachers, who think that the just need to use this as a guide rather than truly understand the tool and how it applies to the states of Blooms Taxonomy. What do you think? - dfw

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There are actually people in Second Life who you can get to film your machinimas for a fee. It's their second job. Amazine! - dfw

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And perhaps we should question what we read in front of them. It's one reason why we should share our own daily learning with our students and talk about how we learned it and what questions we asked. - dfw

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I do not agree. But you may very well be right. I don't think that learning should be something that is managed. It should be something that is empowered. - dfw

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:-) - dfw

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Look at the future of e-Ink. Basically about to turn any flat surface into a digital display. - dfw

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I've stopped here. Time to go get on the plane, but I hope to finish this during my flight back to Raleigh. - dfw

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Backchannel for Opening Day of LoveJoy PD 2011

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Backchannel for Opening Day of LoveJoy PD 2011

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