Clif’s Notes

NECC This Afternoon

Here are the presentations/discussions that I attended/ participated in during the first half of this afternoon.

A Plan for Wiki Adoption by Ken Pruitt
Ken’s presentation was an adaptation of Stewart Mader’s Wikipatterns. Ken shared suggested strategies for implementing the use of wikis at all levels.

Educational Technology and the Law facilitated by Jon Becker and Scott McLeod
While preparing for the Teaching and Learning with Web 2.0 seminar I’ve realized how important it is that I become more knowledgeable about copyright, intellectual property, plagiarism, and related topics. I especially liked how they were able to pose existing IRL analogies for the virtual situations under discussion.

I’m off to the the much anticipated (at least by me) poster presentation of the ISTE Classroom Observation Tool. I plan to share what I learn soon.

NECC This Morning

I’ve spent most of today participating in the following sessions and meeting online friends in the Bloggers’ Cafe. I’m looking forward to the presentation of the ISTE Classroom Observation Instrument (ICOT) later today. I’m curious to see how it stacks up against similar instruments like LoTi. Perhaps I’ll get a chance to post my thoughts about it. For now, here’s what I’ve attended to day.

Diigo: A Swiss Army Knife for Your Browser by Maggie Tsai, Diigo Co-Founder
Maggie gave a crash course in the basic features and use of Diigo. After her presentation she asked to interview me on camera and I reluctantly agreed. I shared some of the most common ways that Diigo is being used by my students, teachers with whom I mentor in professional development, and by me. She also asked me to share ways that I thought their technology could be improved and I reiterated ideas that I’d previously shared on Miguel’s discussions (here and here) related to this topic. I was pleased with her responses to my technical and design suggestions (She even contacted the engineers about one of the issues while we were talking.) and she provided Diigo’s rationale for why the ads, for now, will continue to exist throughout the tool. She assured me that they are indeed considering

Creating a Ning Network from Scratch by Steve Hargadon
If you want to learn about setting up your own Ning you might as well learn from the master. I’m comfortable using this “tool” but Steve provided useful insight regarding design and implementation which I found valuable.

Using Understanding by Design (UbD) to Create Technology Rich, Deep Learning Unit Plans by Chris Lehmann and Marcie Hull
There are oodles of similar models out there but I found this one to be practical but thorough. I’m going to take another look at Understanding by Design when I return home.

This Afternoon at EBC

Diving Deep into Google Earth and Google Maps

• Lucy Gray’s presenter notes
• Adding images in Google Earth
• Geotagging
• Maps, directions, and more
• Google Book Search Library Project

Web 2.0 in Teacher Education (Program Info)

1. My presenter notes
2. Alternative to the term Web 2.0 is the Read, Write Web
3. Teacher education and professional development that effectively helps teachers better integrate technology with teaching and learning
• Allow the teachers to select their own goals and help them reach them
• Online social networks can more easily provide the in-time assistance, coaching, mentoring, etc. that individuals during development/learning, but teachers often don’t think about using the networks
4. How do we prepare teachers to teach in the 1-to-1 environment?
   • The emphasis should change from "teaching" to designing learning that engages the students.
5. Resources for future teachers
   • Social Network
   • Bookmarks

Designing the 21st Century Global Learning Environments (Program Info)

1. Building on some online discussion that has been ocurring for the past year here and here.
2. If there were no barriers what would education look like? Brainstorming notes

This Morning at EBC

I’ll be updating this post throughout the day to alert you of things happening here at EBC San Antonio. The full list of sessions is here. I’ll be sharing information form the sessions that I’m attending. The session titles are in bold.

Social Networking for Professional Development

Scott Merrick is sitting next to me and streaming this discussion live.

1. Should it be organized or self-forming?
• Should the tool(s) be dictated?
2. An atmosphere promoting risk-taking is imperative.
3. Teachers know what they want to learn. Professional development should be tailored around them rather requiring them to attend PD in which they had no say.

Social Networking in the Classroom

Vicki Davis is sitting by me and is streaming this seession here.

1. Teachers in the room are using Ning, Elgg, and several private online communities.
2. Julie Lindsay and Vicki Davis updated us about the Flat Classroom and the Horizon Project.
3. How important are digital citizenship and pedagogy in these decisions?
4. If someone says a curse word in the classroom do we close the school? If there’s a fight at recess do we quit having recess? Why do we over react to these problems in online spaces?

Summer Wiki Challenge

I finally setup and began using my own wiki recently and have found it to be a useful technology. Use of the technology was quickly integrated into my productivity strategies and I’m left wondering how I ever managed without it. In a very short time I’ve already found the need to setup additional wikis and have begun collaborating with colleagues on several other wikis that aren’t mine. As with most Web 2.0 tools, wikis are very easy to use and offer a wide variety of possible uses.

I received an email from Wetpaint’s Education division stating that “wikis are a fantastic way to keep your students engaged in learning over summer vacation — and to help them prepare for the coming school year.” They suggest the following strategies to help you get started.

Create a summer reading wiki where students can choose summer reading titles and post their thoughts — all before the first day of school!

Share a preview of your syllabus with your students to give them a sense of what they can expect when school is back in session.

Collaborate with other teachers to share your ideas for a successfull fall semester.

Personal profiles let students get to know each other before the bell rings on the first day.

SOURCE: Wetpaint.com Education - Ideas for wiki-ing this summer

I had a few other ideas that might encourage teachers to begin using a wiki this summer come to mind.

• Use a wiki to collaborate with colleagues as you prepare instructional units, assignments, field trips, supply lists, and more for the coming year.
• Provide a weekly math challenge for students to encourage them to keep their math skills and knowledge sharp.
• Allow students to share their creative writing or poetry on your wiki. This would be an opportunity to encourage practice in writing, reading, critique, peer review and editing.
• Host an online art gallery, photo essays or video journals around a specific topic or theme.

Take a look at this list of ideas for using wikis this summer being compiled at Wetpaint’s Wikis in Education.

Discussion

1. What other strategies for using wikis do you suggest?
2. Will you accept the challenge to begin using a wiki this summer?

Newsletter on Educational Technology

Throughout the years many of the preservice and in-service teachers in my classes, workshops, and presentations have requested that I start an email newsletter. They indicate that in addition to this blog they would like to receive occasional emails sharing rich resources related to technology integration. I’m excited to announce that I have answered these requests.

Clif’s Newsletter on Educational Technology focuses on the effective integration of technology with teaching and learning. Subscribers of this free service will receive occasional emails providing valuable resources and information about lesson plans, activities, technologies, research, etc., related to educational technology.

OPEN TO PUBLIC
Subscription to this newsletter is open to everyone. You are encouraged to share this with everyone with an interest in education (teachers, administrators, homeschooling families, friends, classmates, co-workers, etc.). Everyone is invited to receive this free newsletter.

PRIVACY POLICY
Your email address will never be shared with others. You may unsubscribe at anytime.

MANAGING SUBSCRIPTIONS
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Teaching and Learning with Web 2.0

I’m teaching a special topics seminar this summer for graduate students. The topic will be Teaching and Learning with Web 2.0 Technologies. I began preparing for this course in June 2007 and I’m very excited about it. While we’ll consider common trends and issues and survey many of the popular tools and services related to Web 2.0, the heart of the course will be learning to effectively integrate Web 2.0 technologies and principles with teaching and learning. The focus will be on K-12 education but accommodations can be made for individuals from other fields (health, corporate, military, higher education, etc.). This draft version of the Course Topics provides an overview of the likely curriculum.

While the dominate driving force in the development of the curriculum and resources has been the upcoming class, I always planned for this to be a relatively open learning community. In keeping with the principles of Web 2.0 I encourage the participation of everyone with an interest or expertise in this topic. You may contribute to the discussion and fun by using the following tag/keyword: idt7078

Related Resources

• Course Wiki
• Google Reader Shared Items
• Diigo Group
• News Notes on This Topic
• More Coming Soon

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1 Thing

I’ve added a new feature to Clif’s Notes called 1 Thing. This special section is an area where guest bloggers can communicate “1 thing” they would like to share, suggest, say, demonstrate, etc. about a particular topic. This section will forever be a work in progress, so feel free to suggest guest bloggers and topics anytime. You can easily access this section by clicking on the 1 Thing link in the main menu.

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Wikis in Plain English

Another good video tutorial from the folks at Common Craft Productions.

Wikis in Education

GUEST BLOGGER

Gina von Esmarch

Schools are increasingly under pressure to incorporate the latest Web 2.0 technologies into the education process, since many students commonly use them in their personal lives to collaborate with their peers. They come to school expecting to access Websites and applications like MySpace, Flickr, Facebook, Wikipedia, instant messaging and blogging. The challenge for educational institutions is to find ways to best incorporate these existing tools into the classroom experience, while also identifying new tools that can provide value in the education process.

Boston College depends on web-based tools that facilitate learning and increase communication between faculty and students, as well as collaboration between the students. They chose to use a wiki-platform because:

1. They were looking for a social software to stimulate the education process and create lively interactions between students and faculty.
2. Had tried Facebook and found that it was not flexible enough for classroom purposes.
3. Wikis enabled up-to-date content development and active discussion, which ultimately led to students achieving better scores.
4. It was easy to learn and enabled email, RSS feeds, and search integration.

Educational institutions like Boston College, use the Socialtext wiki, a valuable framework for real-time discussions so that in-class curriculums can be modified on-the-fly to reflect the latest events in the business world, and incorporate input directly from the students based on topics they want to cover or have interest in.

‘How to make your wiki your text book’ is something that Intro to Management professor, Jerry Kane faced and based on his experience, he notes that using a wiki as new educational tool has made him move from being an expert teacher to at times being a moderator of content collaboration. In many ways, using a wiki decentralizes the education system but also drives the learning process forward.