I had the good fortune to be invited on to the Edtech Posse Podcast once again last week. I joined Rob Wall, Dean Shareski, & Heather Ross for a conversation about teaching digital safety & awareness, as well as discussion on the concept of digital resident vs. digital tourist. Unfortunately, the Posse missed having Alec & Rick join the conversation as I hardly filled their role. As a noob, I learned that the clicking of a mouse can be picked up by the mic and so could my wife’s cello practice. Sorry Guys. Thanks for the invite.

Listen here

image credit: courosa – http://www.flickr.com/photos/courosa/3400178819/

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.

Dean is one of my many mentors that have modeled these major learnings. I have learned how to use social web tools to connect and collaborate with strangers and new friends around the world; access knowledge and information I never knew existed; share resources, thoughts and opinions; discuss pedagogy, book reviews, teaching practices; build a personal learning environment; feel confident playing with new media creation; and think about my future classroom in a way that is more social, more active, more engaging, more empowering and more meaningful. I have learned to be a better learner.

With all of this said, here is Dean’s podcast recording from the class.

Podcast42…student voices

Not only was Dean’s class influential, but I am fortunate to live in the same town as Dean. This has lead to extended personal learning through a number of invitations to sidekick him on classroom adventures to observe and work with students in Prairie South Schools and to sit in on training sessions he offers to his teachers. Together we had a post-conference run down and reflection on ride home from the TLt Summit in Saskatoon last spring. He just is there when I have a tech/ed related question. Because of all of what he means to my own learning, and all leadership he offers so many educators, I was more than happy to sit in and visit his class for the evening.

Alec Couros has invited me to participate as an assistant with his EC&I 831 Course. Tonight was the first class via Adobe Connect. I am very excited about this opportunity. Not many folks are teaching assistants without first taking the course, nevermind a graduate level course.

Dean Shareski made my day brighter by inviting me to join him on Friday to shoot video and later accompanying him to work with classrooms within Prairie South School Division.

Having these mentors is quite a honor and definitely a testimony to my learning of educational technology over the last while. These two individuals are instrumental to my personal/professional development and I am honored to work this closely with them so early in my career.

Later in the day, I returned to the University of Regina to complete the final course of my Education Degree. The course is on the the teaching of writing, so I have no doubt this blog will see improvements in my writing. Returning to class feels odd. I don’t know if it’s because it’s a second year course and I am ready to graduate with my second degree. It may be that I feel ready for the classroom, I feel ready to teach. Perhaps, it is because I have taken control of my own learning process and the class is disconnected from the network (so far). I had some ideas for bringing web 2.0 to my peers. I am going to speak to my prof about creating a common tag for internet resources. Hopefully I will coerce somebody to join me on del.icio.us. I already have plans to create a wiki for my major project, and hopefully I will be able to push the idea on my group members.

I continue to explore, learn and develop professionally. Thanks be to the network.

Here are some sites he shared. I will add links and descriptions later.

9:00 – Alec shows us some tools from a brainstorm list

• Chacha - Live online Search
  
• Skreemer - Music Search
• Google Sketchup -
• Remember the Milk – Remember tasks through online tasks. Idea to share assignments and reminders with students.
• Gmail accounts for students and teachers – Couros Blog – Watch the Jing Cast

• Dandelife – Lifecast – Student Biography Projects – Personal Time Lines
• Slideshare – share powerpoints – Add audio with slidecast
• Gliffy – Online Drawing Tools
• QiZiQ – Online study help. Created by 15 year old
• Dynamic Images
• FD’s Flickr Page – Motivational posters
• Let them sing it for you
• Edutopia. Great source of ideas for teachers.

9:45 – A short explanation of Creative Commons. Re-useable content, crediting

10:00 - Dean Shareski is getting us Geocaching. I have looked forward to this presentation for some time.

geocaching.com

Dean is going to share how geocaching is applicable in a variety of ways. Technology doesn’t have to be sedentary. Anecdotes of GPS in dogs, senile grandparents, agriculture (GPS in tractors), prior to 2000 the satellites were only used for military use.

video from howstuffworks.com

video Simpsons on Google Earth

video – geocaching on UNC-TV

What is GeoCaching. Hidden Caches like a treasure hunt. Multi-cache sites, Dozens of forms of geocaching. Scratching the surface of how we can use it in the classroom.

People are starting to use GPS for all sorts of businesses and hobbies.

How to: look up on web, get coordinates, find location with a GPS

10:20 Getting Ready to go outside. Passing out devices to go over interface. Looking at geocaching.com
viewing the online map, clues and cordinates. Finding the location on Google Earth. Read the logs of other people that went looking for the cache to make sure of existence of the cache.

Fun way for students to learn coordinates, longitude, latitude. Need to learn more about mapping marked points. I will need to spend some time geocaching and thinking about classroom implementation before I get students going.

More to come.  This is something I want to learn more about