Last month I had the great opportunity to attend the Saskatchewan iT Summit in Saskatoon.  Attending these conferences in a fantastic way to network face to face.  I met new colleagues, Sarah Hill & Kristin Dimini, online pals Clarence Fisher & Eldon Germann, and a number of my mentors and teaching friends from within Saskatchewan, including Alec Couros, Dean Shareski, Richard Schwier, Donna Desroches, Rob Wall, Kathy Cassidy, Dean Loberg, & Charles Paul Bazin Webster. I missed a few here, please forgive me.

Overall the conference was well managed. I was fed well and walked away with more ideas, motivation and inspiration for the day I get my own class of students. These events really do give me rush of teaching & learning adrenaline.

One of my purposes for attending was to live blog the event and test ustream & coveritlive in preparation for TLt 2009.  Unfortunatly, the internet was patchy at best. I used coveritlive for couple sessions and will embed below. David Warlick agreed to having his keynote ustreamed but I couldn’t get ustream off the ground.  For the remainder of the sessions I attended I made the following notes. While the intent was to live-blog, I must apologize that this was 5 or 6 weeks ago. No longer is it a liveblog but rather 5-6 week old blog.

David Warlick – Keynote

- starts by teaching us something he learned in past 24 hours
- **if we expect to teach with 21th century learners we must live & teach using those same skills

tags – redefine literacy, warlick

2nd life office – hhtp://davidwarlick.com/sl/ – demo of getting resources from 2nd Life office

tour of 21st century office – reg. telephone is redundant in mobile world. connected to ppl & family in new ways. Revolutionized our culture

With cell phones men can now shop in the grocery store – ‘I dont make mistakes anymore’

study – Berkely – How much information?  (is out there)  in 2002 we had 5 xo bytes of info to the sum of total info. 5 xo bytes + 37 more libraries of congress.  Only 1/100 of 1% got printed on paper.  We spend too much time teaching kids how to use paper

webcam – allows us to become more virtual – office wont need extra chairs bc we online

- MIT wearable computer. hi tech suit. – fully networked jacket, bluetooth – $640
- accessorize with tech – mic on pinky, speaker on thumb
- gps toe ring ( put in cord’s right vibrates for right turn, left for left turn)

***preparing children for a future we cant clearly describe.
**what do our kids need to learn in order to live in an unpredictable future
**stop intergrateing technology – instead integrate literacy

**best thing we can teach kids is how to teach themselves
**part of being literate is being capable to question, investigate

url backchecking – delete tail of URL – look for clues to digital literacy – find email of author – google vincent.breeding@stormfront,org -> http://stormfront.org

If all we’re teaching our kids to do is read, are children really literate? we were taught to read what someone handed to us. library, parent, teacher. now we read in a global electronic library that anybody can publish to. need to rethink what it means to be literate

wikipedia – NDP – biased? what’s the problem – info may not be reliable – wikipedia blocks ip addresses of capitol hill because they targeted opponents pages

what does it mean to be literate – expose what is true – find, critically evaluate, organize, apply it

arithmetic – the new nature of numbers – access earthquake info, generates huge data set – grab data paste info into excel – convert txt to columns wizard – put into scatter graph – graph comes out as map of plate technoics – map allows numbers to tell their story. – new skills involved in having #’s tell their story

words of humankind -> presidential inaugural address -> copy text & paste into tagcrowd -> look at 75 most used words of all the addresses in a tag cloud -> new ways to look at info
- compare president speeches, maybe war time addresses. george washiton to george w. bush

**put new lenses on info to get students to ask questions about info

keyboard & intuem 2 -> math – reworkign numbers in music to create new music

#’s are mechanism of our world – less time of levers & pullys

video not as powerful without music -> art & music are essential

communicate with text, image, sound, video,

contemporary literacy – exposing whats true – employing the info – express ideas compellingly – doing it in an ethical context – redefine literacy so it reflects today’s info enviro & integrate that

Spam – cost the world 50$ billion in 2005 expected to double by 2007
we could control HIV/Aids for under $27 billion

- imperative to have ethical use of information

It’s scary because we are redefining what we do – at core of reforming education today

no longer in industrial age – now the world is the currriculum and the world changes everyday

as teachers we need to be master learners

BEST Prezi I’ve seen

Clarence Fisher – Literate Online: Reading & writing are different online – Notes

7/8 Snow Lake – 7.5 hour drive to saskatoon

- Classrooms are most important. -> need to do everything we can to make sure classrooms are quality places to be
- Training kids for IBM accusation from director, rather Clarence helps kids become literate
- very tech advanced society. kids need to know how to access, find and evaluate information
- different to grow up knowing you have an audience. We didnt have that
- text today has many access points – hypertext is choose your own adventure
- print literacy is more important now because there is so much more – many components to a web page  —– *** very multi modal
-text has always been changing

- what could be coming – bumptop (emulate a real desktop), firefox auora (fluid interactive charts & graphs, search
-Information & access continues to evolve – we’re in the middle of change
- 1st time is history where literacy practices are going to be affected by corporations

-electronic vs static text – worries Clarence – Ipod itunes led to video & podcasting – Apple led to a great influx of use

-electronic is not static – not about message but about socialability – can change & view text with someone else

-collaborative nature of tools – google docs example international teen life project – kids in columbia, jakarta, georgia – choose a topic that is important to kids in their country (HIV, eating disorders) -  research then script then they made a collaborative video, north american schools responsible for video editting
leave questions, comments for each other

we do it to make connections, need to plan connections 4-6 months in advance

1. Access
2. Evaluate – what’s important, not info overload but filter failure
3. comprehend – text is one way of sharing info. some are text illiterate others may be video illiterate
4. Share – remix culture & copyfight
- different from traditional reader/writer workshops – now radio plays with 3000 listens + feedback & advice for improvement
- kids attitude is motivated to produce higher quality if they know they have an audience
- 24,000 views on one girl’s blog – gr 8 13 year old
- scratch – build animations.  Now has community & get feedback & audience from forum. download other peoples work to see how they may have down a certain build
- 35% of scratches are remixes
- how do blogs & wikis change media?  “You don’t have to be a rich old guy from New York to be heard”    -sudent response

145 blog posts in 190 days – comments are correlated

Students do 2 posts per week – 1 required – eg. what has your research process for _____ been?, 1 of choice
Blogs are hybrid spaces- develop digital citizenship skills,

igoogle account + RSS – subscribe to lists of blogs, podcasts, videos

- at beginning, give kids 5-6 places to read. Later they find their own resources.  Set list of required but kids can find and present their own sources. Sit down every couple weeks to find out what kids are learning from their feeds.

- no use writing gobblygoop – need to find % of info that is relevant

- **Filtering is so important – we dont teach our kids anything when we filter our internet tools

Protocol – hit back button if you get in the wrong place, hand in the air calling Mr. Fisher, then he asks how did you get there

**change from acceptable use policies to responsible use policies**

new kinds of communities emerge

cant give kids access to info & say that is enough – need to teach why access is important & how to filter & how to use it to learn

need to know how to use the tools

wikipedia as a starter then back it up. Need to understand bias

newseum.com track a story from around world

**internet spaces are complex spaces – sometimes advertising we can see – only 16% of kids can see the ads from the info**

textbooks has always been suspect but we weren’t aware of it.

David Warlick – Video Gaming

New info enviro – Unpredictable Future – Networked Learners (Kids are different)

UK huge into gaming -

not sure the answer is 2nd life – many many options (OpenSim)

Glen Wiebe – ESSDACK – research on literature – “Videogames are extremly tasty patterns of reality”

David Williamson Shaffer – about roles & rules

tech becomes simpliar but games become more complex – Wiebe says the brain at play demands complexity

google scholar search for Video games in education

games are learning engines – cnat get to next level unless you learn something

Book – Got Game by: John Beck & Mitchell Wade

Video Game generation is more social than previous generations – very good at collaborating

LAN parties – never more than 2 at a time – others sit and talk about the game – talk about plot and decisions of game developers

Pong evolved

Some games
- rollercoaster tycoon – design the coaster – business ed
- pitman – crash landed on planet, & you’re starving – figure out what you can eat – discover a plant with feet as roots – train these plants to do things for you, rebuild spaceship, build shelter, find food – no instructions – figure out goals & rules
- assassins creed – go anywhere in the game – whole world is wide open – characters behave in certain ways – based on 13th century french village – kill based on politics

- little big planet – make your own game

Applying this into the classroom – do we need to bring a bunch of vids into classroom? NO

Why do I need to learn about Caesar when I am building Rome everyday

dont need to bring game into classroom but bring conversation about the game into the classroom

Serious games – seriousgames.org

games, learning & society

Game cultures

study on how kids cheat and the benefits of it – cheating is problem solving

passively multi-user online games …or information as game – depth of research you builds an accumulation of points

machinima – script the game into a movie – would never occur to us to turn a game into a movie set – television can now be remixed

Sylvia Martinez – video on gaming – playing with actions help students understand concepts

Lastly, please check out the EdTech Posse: Live from Winstons for an overview of conference thoughts.

Though my education career has been brief, I have been the recipient of many unique experiences with fantastic mentors. Dean Shareski has taken me under his wing, and has given me a chance to observe a number of classrooms around Moose Jaw. Dr. Alec Couros, has brought me into a couple of his education technology courses as an assistant. Dr. Vi Maeers, has given me the opportunity to work with the University of Regina’s Centre for Teaching and Learning as a research assistant. Each of these roles have furthered my thinking about education and the possibilities that exist.

This semester I have the opportunity to work as a tech assistant on another intriguing and mind opening graduate class, Ed 870 – Social Justice and Globalization.  The description from the syllabus is as follows,

ED 870 explores the research and classroom practice of themes including how to be an activist teacher, health and nutrition, basic education, HIV/AIDS, child protection, gender equality, diversity/multiculturalism, First Nations, infrastructure services, human rights, democracy and good governance, notions of citizenship, private sector development, the environment/sustainability, how to make a positive difference; considers the implications of integrating these themes into the mainstream curriculum and into our professional lives.

Needless to say, I am learning a substantial amount from the course professor, Dr. Marc Spooner, as well as from the U of R’s Centre for Academic Technologies Manager, Glenn Enright and my fellow course assistant, Evan Thornton and of course, the graduate students. Dr. Spooner appreciates and embraces the realities made possible by technology to connect individuals both synchronously and asynchronously. The course runs face-to-face on Wednesday nights and full recorded broadcasts can be found here. The students have responded with blog posts, to snippets of recorded conversations from class recordings. Evan has done great work managing the course blog and creating this first assignment video. My role is to set up and run the in-class technology required to stream and record, as well as connect to virtual guest speakers and experts.

As I have mentioned, this course is one of the coolest episodes I have witnessed during my brief education career. I have seen global connections happen between a number of elementary and high school classrooms, and within several ed tech university courses. This, however, is one of the first non tech courses that has effectively used technology to reach beyond the walls of the course itself.  Last class we connected with Dr. Anthony Hall’s course on Globalization Studies from the University of Lethbridge. Dr. Hall & Dr. Spooner addressed both groups with their knowledge, introduced the students, noted similarities between learning and gave the students in both rooms an opportunity for dynamic conversation and questioning. Two classes, two universities, two smart professors, an awesome exchange. I ustreamed the whole event (in two parts) to the world live.

Our next class is two weeks away and the plan is to have Ignacio Chapela, a microbial ecologist and mycologist at the University of California, Berkeley, visit via skype to share knowledge of the biotechnology and food industries.

Later in the semester we hope to be visited by the controversial Bill Ayers, professor at the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Formal education is changing. The walls are coming down. I have front row seats.

You are scratching your head right now, thinking, what is S.O.E.E.A? Well, S.O.E.E.A, stands for Saskatchewan Outdoor & Environmental Educators Association, and they recently named me to the board, as Leader of the Communications Working Group. I am honoured to be be involved in this active association and hope to contribute philosophy that enables Saskatchewan educators.  This is excellent opportunity for me to pursue my love of the natural world, while gaining valuable professional relationships and experience.

The potential for using web tools to communicate and collaborate is tremendous. As a main effort, we attempt to encourage our colleagues to network across our fair province and share ideas, exemplary projects and pedagogies, as well as bask in the beauty of our natural wonders.

We are currently in talks to have our website re-worked to allow for open & social sharing; through current dialog about best practices and by creating a repository of resources for both students & teachers.

My recent tasks have included building a wiki to collect resources and for the board members to collaborate on upcoming newsletters and our brochure re-design. The response to this has be encouraging and we have quickly added convenience and accountability to some of our planning efforts.  In addition, I set up a flickr account for SOEEA and posted my images from a recent board retreat. I see this as a method to reach our members and share memories of SOEEA events. It is my hope that this leads to expanding our contacts as Saskatchewan photographers, enviromental education groups, students, educators, sponsors or anyone will be introduced to our group.

As we expand our profile, we appreciate anyway to you may contribute to the promotion of outdoor and environmental education. Let us know about relevant stories from your area. I bet each reader can think of a couple folks that would be interested in SOEEA or similar association. If you or anybody or any organization want to learn more about this group, please let me know.

September is a fantastic time of the year to try geocaching. The weather in Saskatchewan isn’t too hot or too cold. Autumn’s birth is on the horizon and by the third week we begin to see the leaves changing colour. The setting is almost perfect for an outdoor classroom.  Fortunately for me, I have been assigned to sub in grade 6/7 room for the last couple weeks. Prior to my arrival, the class had spent time refreshing their mapping skills and discussing location. Immediately, I saw this as excellent opportunity to experiment with GPS and geocaching to reinforce learning about direction, location and coordinates. Having never owned a Global Position System (GPS) unit, I had only a basic idea of how they worked but recognized the potential for learning.

Before we began to use the units outdoors, I knew we had to spend time discussing coordinates and distance until we all had a firm grasp on the concepts. Then we talked about how GPS units use 3 of 24 satellites circling the earth to triangulate our position and are then able to send exact coordinates of our location to the GPS unit.  To complete the overview we had a short study of the units interface. This helped to better understand the 5 different buttons, the 5 different screens and become aware of the vocabulary involved with marking or finding the coordinates of a location.

We used the GPS units in our outdoor classroom three times.

Our first outdoor experience took place on a Wednesday, in the school yard, where I had marked the coordinates of landmarks (soccer goalpost, the slide, a lightpole).  I gave the coordinates of the landmarks to the students, who in turn input the digits into the GPS units. The students were then asked to find which locations the coordinates were for. Each student found each of the locations, but mostly because they followed those walking in front of them.

Back in the classroom we debriefed. I fired up the projector and loaded Google Maps. On the satellite view of the maps we found Sunningdale School in Moose Jaw. I typed in the first coordinate for the goalpost and the students watch as the Google marker landed there.  I then asked “which direction the marker would go if the western coordinate was increased?” and “what if the Northern coordinate decreased?” and so on. We reinforced the concept of longitude and latitude.

The following Friday, we embarked on our second outdoor adventure.  Pairs of students were asked to mark 5 coordinates/landmarks for another pair. Once the locations were marked in the GPS unit, the students swapped units and went exploring to find the unknown destinations.  At this point I could hear students working together and making guesses as to which landmark the coordinates would take them to. They were all running, trying to find the best landmark and appeared extremely involved in the activity.

Upon returning to the classroom we discussed and watched a short introductory video on the growing outdoor sport of Geocaching.  We talked about guidelines and the ethics of the sport. About different types of caches and the types of “treasures” swapped when a cache is found. Then, to reinforce guidelines for geocaching, we recited the GeoCreed, (shared with me by another Grade 6 teacher in Victoria, BC, named Jan Smith).

On Monday morning one of the Gr.6 students appeared in the doorway before the bell. He told me of his Saturday adventure Geocaching.  He had signed up an account on geocaching.com, where he found numerous listings of geocaches. Each listing shows a map of the approximate area in which the cache is located and gives a hint as to the location.  Without a GPS unit, this student printed the map, hopped on his bike and went out geocaching. He came in early that Monday to explain how and where he found his first THREE geocaches. He went on to explain that after he found the caches, he logged back into geocaching.com and posted to the discussion board for each cache to show he had been there and note what he swapped. He was beaming with pride. The class was enthralled with this boy’s story and could not wait to find their own cache.

The next morning we set off to find the cache that I had hid the night before.  After hiding the cache in a park near the school, I hid 9 clues with coordinates for the next stops along the route.  The class worked together to find each of the clues in sequence and utilized their mapping skills to find the shortest route to the next destination.  The students learned that even though the GPS points the way to the coordinate’s location, sometimes houses would get in the way and they couldn’t go the way of the crow.  Upon finding each clue the students intensity grew, they reached a point where they knew the direction just from me reading the coordinates. By the last few clues they could have gone on without the device. They found the cache and thoroughly enjoyed the lollypops and pride that came with completing this challenging task.

There have been talks of continuing this outdoor pursuit in collaboration with a class from a nearby school if time allows.  We may plant a cache of items for them and email instructions for finding it. Then in turn they would take the container, swap items and plant the cache for us.  Following the activity, students from each class would correspond about their adventures to find the caches, explain to each other why they left and took the items they did. Ultimately, the students would benefit from interacting and building community with another group of students engaged in a fun learning experience.

A few weeks ago I created this video “Online Spaces: Real Places” for a University of Regina Education Faculty seminar. I created it with the hope that it would encourage thought and consideration for the potential the web for bringing people together in learning.

I have been asked to create a short (5-8min) video on the potential of online spaces as learning environments. The audience for this piece is, of course, the world, but more directly it will be presented to Faculty at the University of Regina next week.

Some of the ideas floating around

• Online identity & presence is just an extension of one’s self. Each of us will use networking tools to do many things. There is not just one way to use a tool, each individual uses tools as they are useful or offer benefit to their unique situation.
• New emerging environments encourage new connections and fascinating behaviors.
• Learning is no longer confined to classrooms.  We can open the door to people from around the world or just folks in our own province, city, even our own class. Online spaces allow for us to connect & collaborate.
• Fewer constraints than real life spaces. Time & Place are no longer issue. Many of us can learn & work anytime, anywhere.
• Online spaces have the ability to bring people together synchronously for online events, instant communication. or asynchronously, allowing learners independence in their learning while connecting with other folks that share interests, at any time, all over the world.

I will highlight examples of online spaces

• much untapped/unrealized potential for directed personalized learning & support.
• Mainly seen as a place for entertainment – celebrity gossip, sports, fantasy leagues, gambling, downloading, socializing with friends.
• I plan to show snippets of blogs, Ning, Second Life, Ustream, EdtechTalk & maybe even Facebook.

Finally, I want to touch on how educators and learners use these online environments. You can help with this. I hope to piece together educators from around the world speaking about how they use online spaces (very short, just a couple sentences). This could be done a number of ways, perhaps a response to my youtube video, or maybe just a quick Skype call that I could screen capture, or you could email me a short blurb.  The purpose for this experiment is to drive home the fact that people exist in online spaces all over the world and have the intention to promote learning.

I have created this short recording as a plea for help and example of how I use online spaces. Not all these videos have to look the same. Maybe you’ll be outside, maybe you will just hold a piece of paper, maybe the more talented would sing or something. Ok, I am getting silly, but you get the point.

Disclaimer: I am open to suggestions from readers on all of this. What am I missing?

Last week I was helping Moose Jaw teacher, Sandi Kerney, set up Skype. She was preparing for her class call to Sgt. Paul Park in Afghanistan. Unfortunately on that Thursday morning of the call, Paul had difficulty with his connection and Skype. The students were so disappointed and I hope they get another chance to chat with Paul. Visiting a soldier on a foreign assignment is an unbelievable opportunity.

As this was all happening, Sandi contacted me for a Skype call. Not knowing what to talk with the students about I decided on an impromptu virtual tour of the University of Regina campus. (Being a university student is one area in which I excel.) Thanks to the wireless network on campus, I carried my Macbook through the halls showing this group of students a few classrooms. We only lost the signal as I descended from the 6th floor in the elevator. From there, I lead them down hallways and explored the new gymnasium.

Connecting with these students for 10 minutes was the highlight of my day. They were interested in the University and I hope this experience will provoke future questions and investigation of higher education.

This is just a another brief success story of using Skype to connect to people outside the walls of the classroom.

For now I think I should be hired on at the University as a recruiter. Anybody else want a tour?

During my first degree, I was fortunate to participate in a co-operative work experience program.  I had the opportunity to learn the introductory ropes of the administration profession by building relationships in the organizations I worked with.  Then, just this fall I completed my teaching internship in a Moose Jaw school, where I was able to observe the professionals around me.  These types of hands on, in person learning experiences have guided much of my development and I think apprenticeship is an important stage of development in each of our chosen fields. We ask experts to lead us.  The faculties that I have studied under have done a fantastic job of creating these face to face mentorships.

Future students are going to have many opportunities to meet mentors in virtual spaces, by using virtual tools.  The  potential for this online mentorship is too large to disregard. In the future, training teachers will be introduced to experienced teachers from around the globe.  Apprentice engineers will correspond with industry leaders.  More and more people will learn from qualified people that span geographic boundaries.  This is the way it is for me, and the way it will be for our future colleagues.  We develop a inner circle of contacts, folks we connect with frequently that contribute to our professional growth.  In return, students participate in pushing discussion, by questioning practice and eventually entering their workforce with an experienced viewpoint.  A viewpoint that has heard and reflected on the various pieces of the profession.  By reading and chatting about best practices and observing exemplary models online, students develop a matured perspective of their chosen field.

I think it is important for teachers and faculties develop a strategy for connecting their students to experienced experts.  We now have tools that allow for communication, for collaboration.  New learning possibilities abound.

My friend Lowell posted this Video. 3 guys get together to create hollywood style filming. Very cool use of green screen.

An interesting thing happened tonight. Steve Dembo hosted Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind. Daniel spoke live at this Webinar through WebEx. Upwards of 190 people listened, some of whom participated in live chat. Great Learning happened. It became interesting when CoolCatTeacher, Vicki Davis created a google Doc for Show Notes. 29 people participated collaborating to create the document.

As I contemplate how learning happens, I see possibilities for Google Docs in the classroom and auditorium. In January, I begin a position with the Center for Acedemic Technology and The Center for Teaching and Learning. One of my tasks will be to present to faculty from around the University of Regina on relevant ways to adopt web 2.0 tools into their teaching practice. I think Google Docs is a good place to start. Whether it is compiling notes or participating in a larger scale project. A good example of this comes from Digital Ethnography @ Kansas State University and Professor Wecsh’s Video A Vision of Students Today. Students used Google Docs to compile stats and info.