AntiVirus for Free Education Use

Source: http://common.ziffdavisinternet.com/util_get_image/25/0,1425,i=251349,00.jpg

Some time ago, I highlighted a point made by one TCEA member that noticed the TCEA Conference computers all had AVG AntiVirus loaded on them. Fortunately, there was no license violation since AVG wasn't loaded on the computers beyond the trial period.

But this discussion did highlight the need for schools to have access to an anti-virus solution that, while free for their use, IS NOT just available for personal use. This means, students and teachers can use it on their personal computers but NOT on work computers.

When you consider how many virtualized instances of Windows there are, how many older machines running Windows that are vulnerable, and how much school districts pay for anti-virus solutions like Symantec AntiVirus, the question becomes, is there a solution that is available for free?

Panda Cloud AntiVirus may fill the niche. In their discussion forums, the following statement is made:

Panda Cloud Antivirus is not only free for home users. It's also free for education. In order to install it into multiple PCs, simply create an account and install into all PCs using the same account.
Source: Pedro Bustamante, Panda Senior Research Advisor

Imagine if schools have access to an award winning antivirus...for free. PC Magazine gave Cloud Antivirus it's stamp of approval (check out the comparison chart):

Cloud Antivirus eliminates known malware immediately on detection. Files that aren't known malware but seem to be malicious get sent to the cloud for analysis. Until the results come back, they're not allowed to launch. . .Panda Cloud Antivirus is impressively effective at keeping malware from infesting a clean system. It's less effective at fixing an infested system—it finds almost all the threats but doesn't always clean them up thoroughly. Still, it's a very good, very lightweight tool even when measured against the for-pay security antivirus available. And it's the best free antivirus software available. If you're going to use it, I'd just recommend making extra certain that you're not already infected before you install it. Wipe your machine: start with a clean install of your OS, and Panda should do an excellent job of keeping viruses out. And Panda Cloud Antivirus Free Edition 1.0 is our Editors' Choice for free antivirus.

Worth checking out? This will work well on Windows computers connected to the Web and probably mean dumping Malware Bytes since that tool is less effective according to my reading of the PCMag article.

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WatchKnow YouTube Search - Blocked!

Could the District unblock WatchKnow.org? We can't view the videos on the site!

Should WatchKnow be blocked in your school district? Well, only if you block YouTube and GoogleVideo. More about that later in a sample letter (featuring some tweets from the edublogosphere)...for now, here's the press release:

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (Nov. 12, 2009) - Dr. Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia, has launched a new website designed to gather and organize educational videos for students ages 3 to 18.

The site, www.watchknow.org <http://www.watchknow.org/> , launched in October and currently features more than 11,000 videos across 2,000 categories on subjects such as math, science and history. The nonprofit site features new software, specially developed for the site by Dr. Sanger, which allows wiki-style collaboration among users.

"Think of it as YouTube meets Wikipedia, filtering out everything but quality educational videos," says Dr. Sanger. "WatchKnow.org links together content from traditional sites, and also allows users of the site to improve the organization of the video categories, which makes finding the video you need much easier."

The site, which features videos from National Geographic, YouTube and Google Videos among others, took more than 18 months to develop and has been endorsed by educators from schools including Harvard, Stanford, Brigham Young and more. WatchKnow.org is designed to complement and enhance the traditional learning experience for students as they study concepts that are traditionally hard to learn.

"Many of our country's educators are unaware of the enormous amount of good video content available for free online," said Chareen Snelson, an advisory committee member and professor at Boise State specializing in online educational videos. "Having a central repository of organized, quality videos is a blessing for busy teachers and students."

WatchKnow.org is funded by the Community Foundation of Northwest Mississippi (CFNM), which has set the goal of offering more than 50,000 videos on the site by the end of 2010. The site offers tips for video searching, separate pages for students, parents and teachers, and a guide for contributors.

"Technology is playing an ever-increasing role in the development of our children, and WatchKnow.org can be a big piece of that puzzle," says Tom Pittman, president of the CFNM. "We believe that with the help of educators, we can create something very important and useful to the future of education."

As wonderful as WatchKnow appears to be, know that WatchKnow's content comes straight from other video providers. What would be your response if someone in your district asked you to unblock WatchKnow.org so they could access the videos?

Here is one possible response from the perspective of a district that currently blocks YouTube:

WatchKnow's "content" is hosted by other providers, such as YouTube and GoogleVideo (to name two video providers that are blocked in our District). While YouTube use in K-12 can be appropriate--as many school districts in Texas have proven--the District's current policy is to restrict access. Since YouTube videos are a part of the content displayed on WatchKnow, the District would have to unblock YouTube video access.

SEX IS TABOO

Furthermore, consider the content of some videos (You're Not Alone - http://www.watchknow.org/Video.aspx?VideoID=12082) might be inappropriate from a Health/PE perspective when filtered by the parent. As a parent, *I* want my daughter to know where to turn...but is this a video I want her accessing at school without supervision? Regardless of your response, it is a question that parents need to answer in the context of a dialogue with their teen and school system.

While you and I may agree that access to videos on children learning about sexual assault may be appropriate, my experiences with the digital video distribution system--where a whole series of videos dealing that mentioned "sex" were blocked because parent committees had not approved viewing--signal caution.

Until the District is willing to convene parent committees and engage in deeper dialogue about the video content available through YouTube, C&I agree to use YouTube video, and teachers/instructional specialists/Principals receive the proper training to implement CIPA-compliant usage, I seriously doubt WatchKnow as a search window into YouTube and GoogleVideo will be allowed in our District.

VIDEOS YOU CAN WATCH

You can always search TeacherTube and SchoolTube videos directly on their web site without an intermediary...they are not blocked. Google Video and YouTube video, because of their content, will probably remain blocked.

DOWNLOADING YOUTUBE VIDEOS

Using ZamZar.com, you can obtain downloadable copies of YouTube videos for viewing. Be aware that downloading videos for use in the classroom--rather than watching them via the YouTube web site--is a breach of copyright, as well as a violation of the YouTube user license agreement. In a recent survey of educators, some of the following perspectives were shared:

• "It seems odd to teach kids not to plagiarize and grab stuff off the web when the teacher does it," Derek Baird
  


• "As far as copyright goes, I always ask the creator for a copy (and always get one!) when I see something I want to use locally," Kathy Schrock
  

Please take these perspectives into account when considering use of YouTube videos you have downloaded for offline use in the classroom.

TIERED CONTENT FILTERING

A more enlightened perspective is for the District to change its policy on YouTube videos. As long as we have an "ON/OFF" content filter, it is my understanding that blocking will continue. However, I'm sure the District's Chief Technology Officer can speak to steps being taken to allow for tiered filtering that block student access to certain content but allow it for teachers.

Would this be YOUR District's response to the question of YouTube in K-12 classrooms? How would you approach this issue?

And, finally, thanks to all who tweeted their opinion about YouTube downloading, including the following folks:

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AudioTools - Encoding to OGG Format

One of the comments on a previous entry--Converting Videos on Various Operating Systems--asked the following question:

Anyone knows a good program to easily encode/transcode to Ogg Theora?

Here's a brief overview of the Ogg format:

Ogg Vorbis is an open source, high quality audio compression technology that free for anyone to use and build encoders/players for. This is different from MP3 which is controlled by patent companies like Fraunhofer IIS that charge a fee for every copy of an MP3 encoder. Ogg provides better compression without loss of quality due to the improved encoding process.

Source: SailorMusic.net

There are a variety of programs for getting the job done...I keep encode from my audio CDs to OGG format. To get the job done, here is a list of my current favorites, but if you have another, please don't hesitate to share!

Windows

• Use WinFF to Convert MP3 files (or strip the audio out of video files) to OGG format
• Quintessential Player - allows for easy conversion of audio to OGG format with the appropriate add-on. It's an excellent player as well.

Macintosh

• Max -  Max can generate audio in over 20 compressed and uncompressed formats including MP3, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, AAC, Apple Lossless, Monkey's Audio, WavPack, Speex, AIFF, and WAVE. (note that you may need a program like GUI-TAR to uncompress it)
• OGG Drop X

UbuntuLinux:

• Convert m4a to OGG en masse
• Convert MP3 to OGG en masse - Use mp32ogg (install it) and then run it at the command line with this command that will delete the original MP3 file - >mp32ogg -delete
• Convert WMA to Ogg format using Sound Converter
• Using VLC Media Player to Save Audio to MP3/OGG from Video

If I've left out your favorite OGG encoder, please share it!

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Top 7 Software Apps I'm Thankful For

Source: http://www.psychologytoday.com/files/u58/seven.png

What are the top 7 apps you're most thankful for on Windows? Macintosh?

Macintosh:

1. TrueCrypt - allows me to keep my data secure no matter whether it's on the hard drive or USB flash drive.
2. Tweetdeck - easily manage tweets, etc. using this.
3. MPEG Streamclip - easily convert video on a Mac, something that was missing when Visual Hub disappeared.
4. The UnArchiver - allows me to easily handle zillions of compressed files, no matter what the format.
5. TextWrangler - great, easy to use text word processor.
6. Skitch - just incredibly awesome tool to annotate images, etc. I use it every day for everything.
7. Jing Pro - Best $15 I've spent on an application for video screen captures. Wow, like Skitch, I use it every day.

Windows

1. PSPad - great text/php file editor. One of my first installs on any Windows computer I touch.
2. Filezilla FTP - FTP program that I use on both Windows and Mac, but it's essential for my work on Windows computers.
3. CCleaner - great for cleaning out the registry, uninstalling programs, just a great all-around tool.
4. FormatFactory - audio/video conversion tool that's easy to use and works most of the time.
5. VLC MediaPlayer - wonderful audio/video player that just works. I love that it plays Quicktime without me having to install Quicktime Player on my computer.
6. SpywareBlaster - innoculate your computer against spyware...what else need be said?
7. 7zip - easy to use compression program that makes extracting/compressing files a breeze via right-mouse click.

So, what software are you thankful for?

Update:

• Read Wes Fryer's list for iPhone and Mac

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Gorge No More

Source: http://supersmallgallery.com/London/gorging.jpg

PjHiggins (Chalkdust 101) asserts the following:

There shouldn’t be any educational technology conferences anymore.

And, regrettably, I find myself agreeing with him. We've moved from sharing new technologies that are available to how to convince the mainstream educators that they should use them. It is a disappointing venture to convince folks...as Benjamin Disraeli once said, "A man convinced against his will, is of the same opinion still."

How many people have you convinced that technology is the way only to find out their opinion really hasn't changed? In fact, isn't a traditional conference to match faces to Twitter handles?

A community of followers or readers is a powerful learning tool. It’s the reason why some of us in the blogosphere continue to blog. We have a community of people that we feel obligated to blog for. Whether true or not, there is a sense of obligation to people who have bookmarked your site or have your RSS feed. Audience as Community allows you to engage that audience into becoming what Dean calls an “Audience of Co-Learners“, or an “Audience of Teachers“. I believe before you can have either of those audiences you need to have an audience as community. Only after you have turned your audience into a community can you make something of them, empower them to help you, to teach you, to learn with you.
Source: Audience as Community

Jeff Utecht shares the above point, summarizing some of the ongoing conversations regarding community of co-learners. Essentially, isn't this what a variety of social media tools--Twitter and Facebook--allow us to do, to more closely engage with each other in ways that go beyond the reflective writings shared in a blog? But what if some don't want to engage more closely? What if the blog is THE publishing engine for their internal thoughts, the reflective dialogue of a mind trying to learn, to find empowerment?

As a blogger, I find that I'm thrilled to be sharing with 2000+ people on a daily basis. But is such a thrill unseemly? Couldn't this be the same reaction we have to someone who craves the spotlight?

I'm not sure if I want to make something my audience...I'm grateful that people are reading, that they deign to comment and share what they've learned back with me (when they do). But I often feel that things are moving so quickly that neither the blogger or the commenter can keep up. We are caught up in swiftly moving streams of thought that take us in a variety of directions.

Ed Tech Conferences, as unnecessary as they are, remind me to slow down and interact with others one at a time...I recently found myself writing in a paper notebook, eschewing the technology...somehow, slowing down by writing in a notebook helped me process the information.

As Dean Shareski pointed out today in a tweet to Will Richardson...

Stop gorging yourself on information.....slow learning is good too. ;)

Has our edublogging culture suddenly made gorging desirable? Just because we can connect in infinite ways to each other, should we?

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Living in the Midst of Apathy

If a previous blog entry--Living in Constant Fear--caught your attention, you know that it sought to explore why technology-based initiatives didn't seem to generate that "sense of urgency" needed. It may be OK to talk about how the world will end--for the United States at least--if our children don't graduate prepared to connect, collaborate, create online and at a distance using Read/Write Web tools and social media, but the fact is, the education establishment could care less.

At least, that's what I get from reading Doug Johnson's response blog entry, Important but not Urgent:

But don't count on "urgency" as a mover in educational change. I suspect were a kid's hair on fire, for most educators it would take at least a couple studies, a few Education Week op-eds, and maybe a Ning discussion or two before they are firmly convinced that while something needs to be done, there is no consensus on just what it ought to be...

Is it possible that we--as edtech advocates--are finding it tough to admit defeat? Consider this finding:

Fine (1991) asserts that educators generate belief systems because they need to explain their efforts in ways that give them a sense of accomplishment. These belief systems may help educators feel more successful, but may also prevent them from imagining what could be. Read Source

Are we generating stories of failure or irrelevant success because we need to explain our efforts in heroic terms? If we accepted the following beliefs, would things be different?

• School systems are guided by multiple and sometimes competing sets of goals.
• Power in school systems is distributed throughout the organization.
• Decision making in school systems is a bargaining process in order to arrive at solutions that satisfy a number of constituencies.
• The public is influential in major and sometimes unpredictable ways.
• A variety of situationally appropriate ways to teach is allowed and desired so that teachers may be optimally effective. (p. 7-8)

Perhaps instead of constancy of fear to do the right thing, we should be looking at a different descriptor for the situation? How open are we to "situationally appropriate ways to teach" and their inclusion of technology? The word "apathy" comes to mind...it is defined as "Lack of interest or concern, especially regarding matters of general importance or appeal; indifference."

This web site outlines some ways to help apathetic learners...maybe we can apply some of this to school district educators who lack a sense of urgency to change themselves so that students and their Nation can prosper? Probably not, but let's do it anyways for fun....

1. Take an interest in the student. This really boils down to the now old adage that bloggers know well about education change--build a relationship (BAR). That's right, if you want to get anywhere with human beings, you have to build a relationship with them even if you don't want to...reminds me of sales approach. This reinforces my perception--correct me if I'm wrong--that administrators are more about public relations and management than anything else...and since social media has changed the public relations field, it's certainly critical that we transform how we BAR with others. Yet, there is no escape that whatever form that relationship takes, it must be built.
2. Find out what is causing apathetic behavior. It's clear that we know what is causing apathetic behavior in school districts...too many rules (anomie), too much one-way communication from people too far from where the real work happens, to much disconnect between what is expected, the methods on how to achieve the expectations and the creativity to explore the gap. An administrator must stand up and ensure that educators have the authority to create in the face of rules, to defy them even if it means censure, jamming a spoke in the wheel if necessary.
3. Don't be judgmental towards the apathetic student. This is certainly a perspective I've had trouble implementing, but reading the blogosphere, I'm not alone. It's so easy to look at those responsible for assuring AYP is achieved and criticizing and advocating for what they SHOULD be doing. In truth, aren't they doing what they are told? Who has spare change in their pocket to find another job if they fail to do what they are told? So, one has to convey a sense of understanding and appreciation for the struggle and work to extend the sense of conscious awareness that we can't get there from here if we keep doing what we're doing. Even then, upper admin may be so disconnected or driven by other priorities that the best rank-n-file can do is make the journey a little less difficult.
4. Realize that it's up to the apathetic learner to change their attitude. In the end, a changed attitude is the best that can be accomplished. A changed attitude can lead to more substantive changes...but if you lack one, you won't be able to grasp the opportunities in front of you because you hadn't been open to them.

If you're living in the midst of apathy, the only way to transform your organization is to change your own attitude, accept new beliefs, and encourage others to do so. Only then can more lasting change be achieved. In truth, it does seem it's easier to switch organizations than try to transform one.

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Converting Videos on Various Operating Systems

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

Last week, someone asked, "What I'm really looking for is Format Factory for Mac but I don't think it exists. Can someone recommend a good free media converter for Mac?"

Since Visual Hub is no longer available, I offered up MPEG StreamClip:

MPEG Streamclip is a powerful free video converter, player, editor for Mac and Windows. It can play many movie files, not only MPEGs; it can convert MPEG files between muxed/demuxed formats for authoring; it can encode movies to many formats, including iPod; it can cut, trim and join movies. MPEG Streamclip can also download videos from YouTube and Google by entering the page URL

You can use MPEG Streamclip to open and play most movie formats including MPEG files or transport streams; edit them with Cut, Copy, Paste, and Trim; set In/Out points and convert them into muxed or demuxed files, or export them to QuickTime, AVI, DV and MPEG-4 files with more than professional quality, so you can easily import them in a DVD authoring tool, and use them with many other applications or devices.

Supported input formats: MPEG, VOB, PS, M2P, MOD, VRO, DAT, MOV, DV, AVI, MP4, TS, M2T, MMV, REC, VID, AVR, M2V, M1V, MPV, AIFF, M1A, MP2, MPA, AC3, ...

Of course, I was thinking that another solution exists on UbuntuLinux-read this post on converting videos on Ubuntulinux using this solution--known as FFMPEG. This free, open source converter works well but is command line only.
That means that Windows users may have a bit of trouble. At least, they did until this new solution came out: WinFF.

WinFF is a GUI for the command line video converter, FFMPEG. It will convert most any video file that FFmpeg will convert. WinFF does multiple files in multiple formats at one time. You can for example convert mpeg's, flv's, and mov's, all into avi's all at once. WinFF is available for Windows 95, 98 , ME, NT, XP, VISTA, and Debian, Ubuntu, Redhat based GNU/Linux distributions....

Nice to be aware of the various solutions available for converting video, especially since they are changing constantly! So, a quick review of video conversion tools:

1. Mac: MPEG Streamclip, ffmpegX ($15 shareware)
2. Windows: MPEG StreamClip, Format Factory or  WinFF
3. UbuntuLinux/Debian: WinFF with specific instructions for installation here

Update 11/25/2009: Thanks to Wes Fryer's contribution of ffmpegX GUI interface for Mac. Unfortunately, it is shareware...and it didn't work for me. So, give it a shot if MPEG Streamclip doesn't work for you.

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Living in Constant Fear

Doug Johnson (Blue Skunk Blog) shows his leadership in switching his district to GoogleApps for students and staff...actually, just working to bring about the change is prime leadership material.

We are currently undertaking two major projects in our district that will impact lots of staff members. We are installing 157 mounted LCD projectors and 120 interactive white boards between now and winter break throughout the district. And we are switching our e-mail service from Microsoft Exchange to GoogleMail and providing GoogleApps for Education to faculty.

In his post, Doug asks a fundamental question that all leaders face: Any secrets for maintaining one's sanity when "undertaking an order of new things," as Niccolo put it? Maintaining a positive attitude in the face of criticism and change is all-important.  One of the challenges in switching to GoogleApps is the fear of what MIGHT happen.

“The greatest mistake we make is living in constant fear that we will make one.”
John Maxwell

Some of those fears include:

• loss of control over district data
• FERPA issues with student work
• lack of security
• relying on a 3rd party vendor, even if it is Google, to take care of your district's needs
• trying to hold a 3rd party vendor accountable for a "free" service
• challenges from others in the district that you're not making the right decision

As I reflect on this more, I realize that *I* am not the one with the wrong attitude, it's those who live in constant fear they will make these mistakes, who are frozen on the doorstep of change, afraid to open the door to opportunity.

Attitude takes a beating whenever you try to bring about change because people just don't want to do it...you're "borrowing unnecessary trouble" is THEIR attitude and they'll go through all sorts of trouble to stop you from taking steps.

Any change agent has to be aware that the changes they bring about will seldom be sweeping in an organization paralyzed by fear...but they should do it anyway. I have hope that small changes that are brought about will transform the District over time...perhaps more so than the "going out in a blaze of glory" changes that I advocated for in my youth.

So, in light of Doug's leadership, what changes does he inspire me to advocate for?

• Switch to cloud computing provided by GoogleApps for Education
• Put a netbook in the hands of every teacher along with required online learning
• Ceiling-mount projectors
• Drop-kick scope and sequence out the door and rewrite from scratch AFTER every staff member gets training on 21st Century Learning skills, strategies, and expectations. Pedagogy should be focused on "a pedagogy for “knowing what to do when you don’t know what to do” (Read more)
• Require every teacher in high school to be online learning certified for their state (e.g. TxVSN certified) so that we can capitalize on the benefits of being a Trans-Classroom Teacher. This includes central office level type curriculum people who make decisions, often in isolation of the practical realities of school. As teachers adapt their courses for the online environment, they are forced to reexamine the course design, reconsider curriculum strategies, and make many decisions about what to take out and what to keep, what to add and what to substitute. (read more)
  

 The problem has never been knowing what changes to bring about, but how to accomplish those changes in ways that everyone is connected. I like "Our Iceberg is Melting" approach...but I find that in very few situations, Step 1--creating a sense of urgency among the right people--doesn't happen. It isn't because the right people aren't getting the message, but they have other priorities and don't recognize the urgency of change.

While Doug is writing about the challenges he faces, I'd like to see him write about how he created the sense of urgency to bring about the changes he's referring to. . .it will make for a great campfire story, not unlike one of my favorites:

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DiigoNotes - Meddler in the Middle

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  Unlearning How to Teach
  
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    Creativity or Conformity? Building Cultures of Creativity in Higher Education
    
    

    A conference organised by the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff in collaboration with the Higher Education Academy
    
    

    Cardiff January 8-10 2007
    
    
    
    
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    Unlearning How to Teach
    

    
    

    Erica McWilliam
    
    
    
    
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    arguing the need for a more interventionist role for academic teachers and a greater emphasis on an experimental culture of learning, rather than a culture in which curriculum and pedagogy is fully ‘locked in’ in advance of engagement. The challenge for academic teachers is to promote and support a culture of teaching and learning that parallels a post-millennial social world in which supply and demand is neither linear nor stable, and in which labour is shaped by complex patterns of anticipations, opportunities, time and space.
    
    
    
    
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    To develop the sorts of learning dispositions that are appropriate in such contexts, academic educators will need to spend less time explaining through instruction and more time in experimental and error-welcoming modes of engagement. If higher education is to play a key role in capacity building for graduates’  professional workforce futures, then a pedagogy of induction into disciplinary knowledge needs radical reworking into a pedagogy in which teachers and students work as co-creators and co-assemblers (and dissemblers) of trans-disciplinary knowledge applications for digital work futures.     
    
    
    
    
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    ‘unlearning’ will be as important to social success in the 21^st millennium as learning has been in the 20^th millennium, then the habit of ‘lifelong learning’ will need radical re-thinking in terms of the nature and purposes of pedagogical work. Put simply, we will need to see a further shift from sage-on-the-stage and guide-on-the-side to meddler-in-the-middle (McWilliam, 2005).
    
    
    
    
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    The challenge for academic teachers is to promote and support a culture of teaching and learning that parallels a post-millennial social world in which supply and demand is neither linear nor stable, in which labour is shaped by complex patterns of anticipations, opportunities, time and space, and in which new combinations of ‘creative’ skills and abilities are increasingly in demand. It also takes up the challenge posed by Pat Kane (2005), that of getting universities and other learning organisations to become more serious about play. 
    
    
    
    
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    University graduates, as potential future ‘creatives’ (Cunningham, 2005, 2006; Florida, 2002; Florida & Goodnight, 2005: Pink 2005), will be performing work that is much less focused on routine information-seeking, executing transactions and routine problem-solving and much more focused on forging relationships, tackling novel challenges and synthesising ‘big picture’ scenarios. The challenge of the “Conceptual Age”, as Daniel Pink (2005) describes it, is not just the ability to work in high technology environments, but to utilise “high concept/high touch” abilities to make and re-make our personal and professional environments in ways that serve both functional and aesthetic needs simultaneously.
    
    
    
    
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    the de-routinisation of present and future creative work has profound implications for what university teachers do and how they do it. Yet there is little evidence that the nature and purposes of teaching and learning have changed in any substantive way in recent times. Mainstream pedagogical practice within the academy very much parallels a work culture focused on accessing information and using it to solve relatively predictable problems or complete routinised transactions of one kind or another. Lectures allow students to ‘access’ the wisdom of ‘the best’; tutorials allow students support as they seek to ‘master’ the knowledge of the ‘master’; assessment tasks focus on how well the young apprentice has been able to perform ‘knowing’ the discipline.
    
    
    
    
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    “an English speaking thirteen year old in Zaire with internet connection can find out the current temperature in Brussels, or closing price of IBM stock or name of Winston Churchill’s second finance minister as quickly as the head librarian in Cambridge university” (pp.100-101).
    
    
    
    
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    young people increasingly experience formal learning and work in parallel
    
    
    
    
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    engage with the challenges of the less predictable, less routinised work made possible in the “Conceptual Age”, higher educational policy has certainly been saturated with calls for more innovation and/or creativity within the sector.
    
    
    
    
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    The collapse of calls to innovation is evident in the framing of what is sanctioned as evidence of literacy, numeracy, citizenship and employability skills. The evidence is overwhelmingly drawn from standardised test results (see Corson, 2002). In broad terms, the funders of education, both government and non-government, have come to fix almost exclusively on performance data that can be standardised in order to allow for intra-national and international comparisons. In a performative culture that makes it possible, in theory, to quantify the value of higher education on a national and even global scale, winners can be highly visible and valued, however that calculation is arrived at.
    
    
    
    
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    The capacity to learn and reproduce appropriate social behaviours, he argues, is no longer the key to success. Instead of opening up possibilities, such learning may actually be unhelpful because it assumes a fixed or predictable social world. Bauman elaborates:
    
    

    Just as long-term commitments threaten to mortgage the future, habits too tightly embraced burden the present; learning may in the long run disempower as it empowers in the short…. ‘Your skills and know-how are as good as their last application’. (p.22)     
    
    
    
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    To develop the sorts of learning dispositions that are appropriate in such contexts, academic educators will need to spend less time explaining through instruction and more time in experimental and error-welcoming modes of engagement.
    
    
    
    
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    This is supported by findings from neuro-science about the way in which the brain is ‘changed’ (see Zull, 2004) through hands on, minds on experimentation and how it is not changed by instruction-led pedagogy.
    
    
    
    
  • 
    
    a pedagogy of induction into disciplinary knowledge needs radical reworking into a pedagogy in which teachers and students work as co-creators and co-assemblers (and dissemblers) of trans-disciplinary knowledge applications for digital work futures.     
    
    
    
    
  • 
    
    Put simply, we will need to see a further shift from sage-on-the-stage and guide-on-the-side to meddler-in-the-middle (McWilliam, 2005).
    
    
    
    
  • 
    
    “What holds people back from taking risks”, he asserts, “is often as not …their knowledge, not their ignorance” (p.4). Useful ignorance, then, becomes a space of pedagogical possibility rather than a base that needs to be covered. ‘Not knowing’ needs to be put to work without shame or bluster. This sort of thinking is echoed in Guy Claxon’s (2004) call for a pedagogy for “knowing what to do when you don’t know what to do” (p.?) .
    
    
    
    
  • 
    
    value creation
    
    
    
    
  • 
    
    shifts thinking from consumers to co-creators of value, and from value chain to network.
    
    
    
    
  • 
    
    As co-creators, both would add value to the capacity building work being done through the invitation to ‘meddle’ and to make errors. The teacher is in there experimenting and learning from the instructive complications of her errors alongside her students, rather than moving from desk to desk or chat room to chat room, watching over her flock.
    
    
    
    
  • 
    
    if we consider the student’s learning network as a type of value network, then, we must also accept that such a network allows quick disconnection from nodes where value is not added, and quick connections with new nodes that promise added value - networks allow individuals to ‘go round’ or elude a point of exchange where supply chains do not. In blunt terms, this means that the teacher who does not add value to a learning network can - and will - be by-passed.
    
    
    
    
  • 
    
    The rhizomatic capacity of networks to flow around a point in a chain means that teachers may be located in a linear supply chain of pedagogical services but excluded from their students’ learning networks. That would be an effect of being perceived by students to be doing things that do not add value. And digital technologies can and are being used both to identify value-blocks and options for getting around them. Once again, this is not a just matter of how much take-up of technology is evident in the pedagogical work (Sassen, 2004), but whether or not pedagogical processes bring student and teacher together in their shared ignorance and mutual desire to make something new of their world.  
    
    
    
    
  • 
    
    If the rethinking of pedagogy as co-creation of value re-positions teacher and student (or one student with other students) as project partners, as co-directors and co-editors of their social world, who then is the rightful assessor of the value of that cultural assemblage? What does it mean to make judgements to credential individuals on the basis of the quality of the co-creation? What new dilemmas does this set up around ‘objectivity’ and assessment?
    
    
    
    
  • 
    
    “[t]he opposite of play isn’t work. It’s depression’ (Sutton-Smith, cited in Pink, 2005: 179)
    
    
    
    
  
  
  

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Image Source: http://rlv.zcache.com/meddler_in_chief_tshirt-p235891275245774893adc0r_325.jpg

DiigoNotes - Empowering Principal Leadership Behaviors

The following are my notes from Maxfield and Flumerfelt's article entitled "The Empowering Principal: Leadership Behaviors Needed by Effective Principals as Identified by Emerging Leaders and Principals" appearing in the International Journal of Teacher Leadership.

1. Too often teachers experience isolation and a lack of opportunity to collaborate with colleagues in taking on the difficult work of improving student learning. Ingersoll (2001) cited this as a major factor in the alarming “drop out” rate of early career teachers.
2. Schools have tended to embrace the traditional stratified view of leadership, which assumes that there is a fundamental divide between the service delivery role of teachers and the leadership role of administrators.
3. not only will shared leadership enhance the prospects for improving student achievement, but it will also provide important opportunities for individual teachers to experience fulfillment while freeing principals from the sole responsibility for improving student achievement.
4. Too often teachers are frustrated when their training as leaders is not acknowledged and they are not given opportunities to exert leadership.
5. today’s schools principals are faced with three options: “Do everything themselves or with a few chosen teachers, sit back and let leadership occur in a chaotic manner, or intentionally plan and facilitate the process of collaborative leadership” 
6. A principal’s disposition to share leadership with teachers (or others) appears related to personal security. Many of us have observed that the weaker the principal is personally, the less the principal is likely to share leadership. Stronger, more secure principals are more likely to share leadership. It makes sense. 
7. Effective principals promote collaboration and shared decision-making through the development of professional learning communities supported by encouraging staff 
8. principals should provide opportunities to lead, listen carefully to the teacher leader and nurture development of authentic professional learning communities.
9. “One of the most promising strategies a principal can use to support teacher leadership is to build an infrastructure that systematically provides opportunities, space for teacher leaders to emerge.”
10. Principals felt that it was important to create a climate of trust and confidence in the leadership of others, to promote ownership of vision and goals, and identify potential leaders and get them involved. One principal suggested that empowering principals must “Set the stage for leadership to be shared.”
11. “Developing a positive/trusting relationship in the building is a must before teachers will risk a leadership role. It’s the adage-- Go slow to go fast.”
12. “Identify all the ways teachers can demonstrate leadership within a building. Try to break through the ‘scarcity’ mentality and show that all should be leaders in various situations.” Another teacher leader advised principals to “abdicate responsibility for certain areas requiring leadership and increase teachers’ capacity by offering scaffold opportunities for leadership. Letting go and supporting.”
13. Principals were consistent in citing time, peer pressure, and union issues as the strongest barriers encountered by teachers assuming leadership roles. A practicing principal identified, “A sense of separation from teaching colleagues, perception by their peers of being arrogant or seeming superior, perception by peers as being part of the ‘inner circle’ of administration, and favoritism” as barriers. Another principal cited, “The union, the ‘old guard,’ fear of reprisal, and jealousy” as the mitigating barriers to teachers assuming leadership roles.
14. The notion that leadership stems from personally-based, rather than organizationally-based power is a critical point of learning from this study. For many practicing principals and emerging teacher leaders, this represents a reconceptualization from traditional leadership paradigms. 
15. While transactional behaviors are needed to operate any school, in terms of empowerment development, transformational actions emerged as a critical theme.

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The Agony of Defeat - TCEA Area 20 Election Results

YouTube Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yvkT2uMnIY

This is one of those moments that reminds me many a time in my youth when I watched the video above. Of course, it's not really a valid comparison...but it's fun to make the connection.

Wednesday morning, the call came in regarding the TCEA Area 20 Election Results. The news? Jennifer Faulkner, the current Area 20 Director, will continue to serve as Director for another two years. I immediately sent her a congratulatory note. Although my initial reaction was relief, I have to admit to disappointment. Both feelings--contradictory as they are--are ones I can reconcile (don't forget, I'm a Libra striving for balance (smile)).

Thanks to all of you who voted for me in the TCEA Area 20 election!

This past weekend, I was reflecting what I'd like to see happen in Area 20. While I've explored that in some detail in previous blog entries, I'd like to quickly touch on these items and expand a bit:

1. To increase transparency in Area decisions, we really do need a blog that shares what is going on, what activities, etc. While I've certainly seen more activity in the last few months via email from TCEA Area 20, it would be great to see these emails appear via blog post with automatic feed into Twitter and Facebook. Using a tool like Friendfeed would make that process a one click operation.
2. Setup a monthly podcast that features best practices in TCEA Area 20 to start with, and then moves on from there to other topics and issues. Sharing what is happening in TCEA Area 20 is the important thing.
3. As I shared before, TCEA Area 9 employs an area council. The area council in TCEA Area 20 would maintain an Area President, a Vice-President, a Secretary, and Treasurer. These positions are voted on through the TCEA Area 9 membership...no reason why they couldn't be for Area 20.
4. Scholarships for Area students. One of the wealthiest Areas, Area 20 should consider what Area 9 does...using funding, generate $750 scholarships to area graduating seniors related to a TCEA member to apply. Also, offer a $1000 mini-grant to an area TCEA member who is a teacher.

The TCEA Area 9 folks organize their officers in this way...

Area 9 TCEA would be directed under a council consisting of the following seats:

Area Director

President

Vice-President

Treasurer/Secretary

Communications Director

One Member-At-Large from each steering committee

All functions of the association would be presented to and approved by this council.

Council seats would be elected every 2 years on a rotational basis of: Area Director/Vice-President/Communications Director and President/Treasurer/Secretary on alternating years. Members-at-large would be selected by respective committees each year.

Steering committees would include the following:

Education – Chaired by the President

• 
  

  Charged with planning and implementing educational events and activities for students and educators in Region 9.
  

  
  

Area Conference – Chaired by the Vice-President

• 
  

  Charged with coordinating Area 9/ Region 9 ESC Technology and Media Conference
  

  
  

Contest – Chaired by the Secretary/Treasurer

• 
  

  Charged with planning and coordination of area and state contests
  

  
  

Membership – Chaired by the Communications Director

• 
  

  Charged with coordination of member recruitment, membership correspondence including the Area 9 website.
  

  
  

The Area Director would serve as a liaison member on all committees. The President would serve as the liaison when the Area Director is not able to attend.

Of course, those are just suggestions! I wish Jennifer a great term and can only hope that TCEA will continue to evolve.

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Update on Moodle Inappropriate Access

An email came out today to Moodle admins...I've put in bold the areas I found fascinating. The Moodle security issue aside, the bold section raises the question as to whether any organization has a reasonable expectation that exploits will be kept private until they can fix them and announce the problem and solution. Is this really realistic?

One of my expectations--perhaps incorrect, and therefore worthy of being challenged--of free open source software is that software is MORE secure because the code is freely available. And, as a result, all programmers--foe or friend--can study it and identify exploits that they can share back with the community. In fact, when discussing the issue with a "Microsoft shop" technology administrator, it was exactly this reason that made free, open source software so undesirable for a business.

What arguments would you offer in support of Moodle? Are these security exploits just ones that happen and we just deal with it as best we can? Can such exploits really hurt Moodle deployments?

Hi Moodle admins,

You're getting this email because you chose to receive important news
by email when you registered your Moodle site with moodle.org.

I'm writing to tell you about an exploit that was recently published
on the internet (intentionally bypassing our official security policy
of responsible disclosure published at http://moodle.org/security and
so increasing the vulnerability of many Moodle sites).  The exploit
demonstrates how a Moodle teacher could potentially gain administrator
access to their own site.

In Moodle 1.9.6 and earlier, backups saved with the option of "user
data" would contain accounts of all the users enrolled in that course,
to promote data consistency if the backup was restored on another
Moodle system.

This included the md5 one-way hash calculated from the user's password
(eg e4d909c290d0fb1ca068ffaddf22cbd0). These can't be directly
decrypted to reveal the password, so they used to be seen as
reasonably safe to distribute.  However, with the advent in recent
times of large databases of md5 reverse lookups on the internet, many
simpler passwords can now be determined quite quickly by searching for
their md5 hash (reverse mapping).

The demonstrated exploit basically involved a trusted teacher account
enrolling an administrator into their own course, then making a backup
of the course including user data, extracting the md5 hash of the
password from the backup file and then reverse mapping the hash to
discover the password.

Note that the exploit requires that (a) the user is a trusted teacher
on the site, and (b) that the admin is using a fairly weak password.

Moodle development policy has always generally been "we trust
teachers".  However, we know that YOU may not trust them all and will
want to lock down your sites as much as possible.


NEW RELEASES ARE COMING SOON

The core dev team is working hard on Moodle 1.9.7 and Moodle 1.8.11
right now.  Among other things, there are fixes to 11 known issues
that are related to backups and user data.  We will let you know when
these releases are ready, via this mailing list.  It should be within
a week.


WHAT YOU CAN DO RIGHT NOW

Your site may be vulnerable if you have any users with full backup
rights on your site that might have a reason to try and crack your
admin account, if they saw the published exploit.  Here are some
things you can do to improve security on your site right now:

1.  Disable backup functionality for teacher roles.  You can re-enable
backups later with the new Moodle releases, because the permissions
for saving user data will be separate from the permission to create
backups.

HOW:  Admin > Users > Permissions > Define roles:  Edit the teacher
roles and change the capability for moodle/site:backup to "PROHIBIT".


2.  Turn on site-wide password salting (in all versions of Moodle
since 1.6), this adds information to the md5 strings to make them
practically impossible to reverse (next time they log in or change
their password).  Note that this will affect your ability to restore
backups containing user data on foreign Moodle sites - the admin of
the destination site needs to include your salt in their config.php
for user creation to work.

HOW:  Add a line like this to your config.php (for the best security,
there is intentionally no way to set this in the Moodle interface)

$CFG->passwordsaltmain = 'some long random string here with lots of characters';


3.  Turn on Password Policy for your site, this forces people to use
stronger passwords.

HOW:  Admin > Security > Site policies > passwordpolicy


4.  Change passwords for all admins.  Now that you turned Password
Policy on you'll be forced to choose a stronger one.  :)   It also makes
any old backups useless for the purposes of the exploit.

HOW:  Edit your user profile directly, for other admins you can edit
their profile and check this box:  "Force password change".  They'll
be forced to change it when they next log in.


Good luck, thanks for using Moodle and I'll talk to you again soon.


Cheers,
Martin (Moodle Lead Developer)

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Tools - Banned and Mobile

Thanks to Jane Hart coming up with a list of tools. There is a lot to like in the list but I can't help but ask, "How many of these tools are banned in public schools?" For example, here's the list of top 50 that includes tools that are banned in Texas school districts I'm familiar with...of course, not ALL school districts ban all products at the same time, although some districts sure try to! (smile)

Aside from how many of the tools are banned, what does the selection of these by voters mean? If many of these tools are banned, how many are accessible by mobile phone? How many are used after-hours?

Ah well, just playing with the list. What other questions would you ask?

Current ranking in 2009	2008	2007	TOOL			# Votes
			Name	Platform	Cost
1	11	43=	Twitter BANNED in K-12 MOBILE PHONE Microblogging tool	O	F	159
2	1	2	Delicious MOBILE PHONE Social bookmarking tool	O	F	95.5
3	18	22=	YouTube BANNED in K-12 Video sharing site	O	F	79.5
4	3	7=	Google Reader MOBILE PHONE RSS / Feed reader	O	F	79
5	7	14	Google Docs BANNED in K-12 MOBILE PHONE Office suite	O	F	78.5
6	5	6	Wordpress Blogging tool	O	F	69
7	20	31=	Slideshare BANNED in K-12 MOBILE PHONE Hosting presentations	O	F	64
8	6	3=	Google Search BANNED in K-12 MOBILE PHONE Web search tool	O	F	56
9=	12	11	Audacity Sound editor and recorder	W M	F	54
	2	1	Firefox Web browser and extensions	W M	F	54
11=	16	31=	Ning BANNED in K-12 Social networking platforms	O	F/C	49
	4	3=	Skype BANNED in K-12 MOBILE PHONE Instant messaging/VoIP	W M	F/C	49
13	8	5	PowerPoint Presentation software	W M	C	47
14=	10	9	Blogger BANNED in K-12 MOBILE PHONE Blogging tool	O	F	45
	9	12=	Moodle Course mgt system	S	F	45
16	17	17=	iGoogle Personalised start page	O	F	37.5
17	13	26=	Wikipedia Collaborative encyclopedia	O	F	36
18	15	16	flickr BANNED in K-12 MOBILE PHONE Photo storage/sharing site	O	F	35
19	23	101=	VoiceThread Collaborative slideshows	O	F	33
20	26=	-	Jing Screen captures/ casting tool	W M	F/C	30.5
21	14	7=	Gmail BANNED in K-12 MOBILE PHONE Web-based email	O	F	30
22=	27	17=	Adobe Captivate Demo and scenario tool	W	C	29
	35=	72=	diigo Social annotation site	O	F/C	29
24	25	22=	Articulate Presenter/Engage/ Quizmaker	W	C	27
25	21	26=	SnagIt Screen capture tool	W	C	26.5
26	26=	50=	Camtasia Studio Screencasting tool	W	C	25.5
27	-	-	Evernote Note taking tool	O	F	25
28	-	-	Prezi Presentation software	O	F	24
29	19	15	Wikispaces Wiki tool	O	F/C	23
30	-	-	Wordle Word cloud generator	O	F	22
31=	-	-	animoto Create videos from your images	O	F	21
	24	17=	Facebook BANNED in K-12 MOBILE PHONE Social networking site	O	F	21
	50=	43=	iPhone/iPod/ Touch and apps	-	-	21
34	35=	43=	PBworks (prev PBwiki) Wiki tool	O	F/C	19
35	59=	50=	Adobe Photoshop Photo/Image editing tools	W	C	17
36=			Blogs	-	-	16
	22	10	Word Word processing software	W M	C	16
38=	38=	43=	Flash Animation authoring tool	W M	C	15
	66=	101=	Google Apps BANNED in K-12 Google application suite	O	F/C	15
	30=	31=	LinkedIn Professional social network	O	F	15
41=	66=	72=	Adobe Connect Web meeting/ conferencing	O	C	14.5
	28	26=	iTunes/iTunes U Music/podcast player and site	W M	F	14.5
43=	-	-	Dimdim Web conferencing	O	F/C	14
	50=	50=	Elluminate Web conferencing	O	F/C	14
	40=	40=	Google Earth Satellite and aerial imagery	W M	F	14
	-	-	Tweetdeck BANNED in K-12 MOBILE PHONE Desktop social software client	W M	F	14
			Wikis and wiki tools	-	-	14
48	65=	72=	Keynote Presentation software	M	C	12
49	59=	72=	Edublogs Educational blogging tool	O	F	11.5
50=	29	36=	Google Calendar Web-based calendar	O	F	10

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Digital Crescent - How Does YOUR Team Collaborate

Source: http://www.earthhistory.org.uk/wp-content/FertileCrescent.jpg

Ask me any day of the week what my best work experience has been, and I default to a golden age when I worked on a team that allowed me to be very creative in the situation I found myself. The context or culture of the organization did not limit the creativity, but rather, served as raw materials for that creativity...such experiences, I've found, are rare. They endure for a short time and then slip away...changes in leadership, staffing, the magic only lasts a short time.

Although I could work alone--and often did, since that's part of the education approach I grew up with in schools and became comfortable in--I found incidents of collaborative creativity to emerge over time as interests converged between my teammates and I. Today, few would argue that increasing collaboration within teams and team-to-team across the digital crescent is critical.


Yet, what tools do you use to facilitate that collaboration? Early last year, I introduced GoogleDocs to my team and we started working with that to solve problems. I found GoogleDocs to be great to throw stuff out there and work our way through various issues that arose. When I had to shut down GoogleDocs--it wasn't in line with the philosophy of our parent organization--for use in my team, it forced some reflection about what tools we could use in lieu of GoogleDocs...in the end, we found little that would equal what we had had.

When you've been working in the cloud, how do you "shrink yourself back down" to the ground, trying to fit into the old limits? Let me tell you, it's difficult.

Attending the Virtual School Symposium in Austin, I found the decision to use technologies like Skype and GoogleDocs--which are sometimes blocked or unauthorized in public school districts--to be increasing in popularity among education professionals who are not limited by their culture's philosophy. This was driven home by one presentation slide--all about webinar creation--such as the one shown (entitled Team Project Management Tools). I have to compliment these folks for the effort and detail they put into creating webinars. In fact, they inspired me to want to do more of this.


One of the tools RETA:NMSU embraced was Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro...check out Jonathan Finklestein Learning Times (they mentioned it). Some of the benefits this group shared in their presentation:

• Multiple presentation file types,
• audio, video, recording and archive, chat, application sharing, white board, polling, notes

So, instead of Skype, we'll be using Adobe Connect...but how to replace GoogleDocs? More importantly, how can we model technologies that are collaborative AFTER they are banned? How does lack of access to collaborative tools limit what we can accomplish in schools?

Will the that even make a difference at all in public schools today caught up in top-down, assessment-focused activities? Or could it mean the difference between success and failure for America vs the world?

Does it even matter? Maybe everyone is getting too excited. This afternoon, a man sat next to me with a pad of paper, futilely taking notes just as I managed to type a few words. His only audience was himself, while my audience was everyone who reads my tweets and access my notes for the event.

In the end, the difference meant nothing to him, but everything to me. . .was the difference significant? How does YOUR team collaborate, and what have you been able to accomplish that you wouldn't have been able to before through the use of tech tools?

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TEA Announces State-wide Professional Development Portal

Image Source: http://tea.epsilen.com/Public/Home.aspx

The Texas Education Agency announced a professional development portal...

Project Share provides an elearning platform to support a community of practitioners dedicated to improving teaching and learning through an interactive and engaging environment.

Project Share will utilize a single online platform to leverage existing and new professional development resources for teachers across the state and build professional learning communities where educators can collaborate, share, and tailor professional development to meet individual needs. Read More...


Project Share will invite participants to apply beginning in January of 2010. The first phase involves a community of practitioners dedicated to improving teaching and learning through collaborative professional development and ongoing support. During the initial enrollment period, teachers, administrators and education service center (ESC) staff will have the opportunity to participate in various components of the project.

Beyond the initial launch, Project Share will also pilot the use of ePortfolios that allow teachers to assess students using methods other than pencil/paper assessments by giving students the opportunity to showcase work representing a wider range of their capabilities.

A series of webinars, presentations, and training opportunities will be provided to acquaint educators and other stakeholders with the various components of Project Share.
Read More Online

 via Lori Gracey, TCEA Executive Director

 

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DiigoNotes - 100 Excellent Open Access Journals for Educators

Source: http://guides.library.umass.edu/content.php?pid=11494&sid=174624

Wondering what the latest research is, but lack access to Gale Resources or Proquest? There are now ample resources, and thanks to the list compiled by the OnlineCollege blog linked below. Although there are many peer-reviewed journals online at the site below, here are a few of the ones that I'll be following and subscribing to.

There's no reason why teachers need not know what the latest research has to say about their work, and no reason why "ivory tower" academics can't share their research with the very people who need to read it most...and be able to do it while securing tenure through publication in peer-reviewed journals!!

Read the Complete list online at 100 Excellent Open Access Journals for Educators | Online College Tips - Online Colleges

• The following open access journals provide top-notch scholarly information available at no cost. Most of these journals are published just once or a few times a year, so subscribe to several so you can keep up-to-date on the latest research coming out of the field of education.
  
• Journal of Curriculum and Instruction. The articles here focus on research and practice relevant to pre K-12 education.
• The School Community Journal. The mission of this journal is to unite the entire community of teachers, parents, and students to work in the interest of successful education.
• Insight. This annual journal focuses on research-based articles, case studies, and innovation in teaching, learning, and assessment.
• Networks. Kindergarten through postgraduate teachers share research on classroom practices in an effort to improve effectiveness.
• International Journal of Progressive Education. Explore the possibilities of the future of education by looking at such issues as multicultural education, new literacies, and globalization.
• Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation. This journal provides scholarly articles on research and ideas about educational practices
• Research in Middle Level Education Online. Read studies, cases, and research relevant to middle school education and young adolescents.
• The Open Education Journal. This open access journal offers information on contemporary education and learning.

Education Next. This evidence-based journal highlights current research in education policy and school reform.

Education Policy Analysis Archives. Available in both English and Spanish, the articles here focus on current policy in American education.

Florida Journal of Educational Administration & Policy. Publishing peer-reviewed articles on education administration and policy, this journal invites readers from K-12 and higher education settings.

Current Issues in Comparative Education. With voices from teachers, students, policy-makers, and academics, this journal explores contemporary educational issues.

Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies. Examining a variety of policy approaches to education, this journal is specifically an exploration of Marxist and Left analyses of education.

Academic Leadership. Learn about cultivating leadership in both public school and higher education settings.

International Journal of Teacher Leadership. This peer-reviewed journal offers information on the practice and research of teacher leadership in their annual publications.

The ALAN Review. This journal provides information relevant to teaching literature to teens.

Kairos. This journal explores the language arts and rhetoric through the use of new media.

Computers and Composition Online. Learn about technology as a tool to teaching and learning literacy in this journal.

The Journal of the Imagination in Language Learning and Teaching. Aimed at teachers of language in K-12 and college, this journal examines the use of imagination in teaching first and secondary languages.

Language Learning & Technology. This journal is specifically for teachers of second and foreign language and how teaching and learning can be enhanced through the use of technology.

Journal of Museum Studies. Students and faculty involved in museum studies will benefit from the articles in this publication.

Journal of Educational Technology & Society. These articles serve to unite those who design technology systems for education and those educators who implement and manage these systems to work together for the greater good of education.

Meridian. This journal provides information on technology in middle school education.

International Journal of Educational Technology. A joint venture between the US and Australia, this journal provides scholarly articles on technology in education twice a year.

THEN: Journal. This journal offers a humanities-based approach to learning about research on the use of technology in education.

Journal of Online Behavior. Read the research being done surrounding online behavior.

Journal of Technology Education. Explore topics in technology education with this academic journal.

Innovate. Explore the current practices and trends in online education with this journal.

Journal of Interactive Online Learning. Read manuscripts, essays, and reviews discussing perspectives of online learning.

School Library Media Research. Learn about evaluating and implementing successful school library media programs with the articles here.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Moodle Problem with Inappropriate Admin Access

Update 11/17/2009: Moodle responds to the issue.


Update 11/15/2009: Ken shared an update on the issue as discussed in the Moodle forums, but unfortunately, I'm not sure WHERE such a solution should be applied. Any suggestions?

$CFG->passwordsaltmain = 'very-long-as-random-as-possible-string-with-lots-of-symbols-digits-lower-upper-case-letters';

Here's an update from the Moodle Forum discussing "the fix:"

It can be added to site config.php but if that setting actually causes problems for taking course backups and particularly restoring backup files with salted passwords (said Petr in http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-18807 ) - because salting should be moved with backup/restore process - it might be easier to change just Password Policy - see http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=137569#p601941


Thanks for Iñaki for the note - it works pretty well at least against current cracker scripts. I suppose the most important thing is to use at least one non-alphanumeric character (other than a-z & 0-9) in passwords and make sure that all current users change their old weak passwords to new strengthened ones. None of the 10 strengthened passwords (after change of Password Policy setting) that I tested with hash seek script could be cracked. (Now - but it is possible that in the near future those scripts can break all MD5 hashes)
Source: Moodle Forum post - Mauno Korpelainen

Ken Task shares the following Moodle security issue with Texans, and it looks pretty authentic...I haven't had a chance to try the process outlined in the YouTube video below, but if it's true, oh my gosh! Here's a quick overview from the EduChalk.org blog entry:

If you are a Moodle administrator, teacher, student, or even if you have ever simply created an account on a Moodle Learning Management System (LMS) site, you need to read this post and watch the videos. It’s no secret that Moodle has suffered from some pretty serious security and user privacy issues over the past few years, but nothing before, that I am aware of comes close to the severity of the Moodle security/privacy vulnerability I discovered a few days ago. In the videos below I will demonstrate the problem and show you how you can verify the problem on your own Moodle site using nothing more than a normal teacher account.

Simply put, it shows you how to get the Moodle Admins password (in MD5 Hash encrypted) and then use a third party web site that will unencrypt the password. This means that any teacher/course creator who has rights in the system can--with malicious intent--login as admin and do whatever they want.

This affects the latest version of Moodle according to the video (1.9.6+). You can "fix" the problem by going into admin permissions on a Moodle for two roles--teacher and course creator--to PREVENT backups.

If you've made backups of a course with user data, you will need to get rid of those because they may share admin info, as well as confidential data.

Just saw a blog posting AND a YouTube movie demo of how a teacher or course creator in Moodle could acquire the admin password and login as the admin user.

http://educhalk.org/blog/category/moodle/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1BDHZED4yU

Fix?
http://educhalk.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/moodle_md5_hash1/moodle_md5_hash1.html

Explanation:

Teachers/Course Creators have the ability to enroll students in their course. IF they enroll the admin user (or any user they know has global admin access levels) and then backup the course, they can acquire the passwords of those users.

The "work-around" is to edit the Teacher and Course Creator role definitions and take away those role abilities to backup a course.

Very few Teachers take the time to backup their course anyway, so ... If you have been using course creator account level users as Moodle server assistants, you might evaluate how trustworthy those users are.

IF one doesn't trust ANYONE, how does one backup courses then?

There is a setting for backups in Site Admin -> Courses -> Backups in which defaults for all backups are set.  At the bottom of the form, "Save to" would allow backups to be sent to an existing directory for all backups - the full path.

IF you create a system admin category and course and assign NO users - not even yourself as the admin user or regular login account, one could point the backups to the system admin course's data directory.

Explanation:
Create a system admin cat. and course.  Hide both the cat. and the course.  Assign NO ONE to the course.  When IN the system admin course, note the ID number and backup the course just once.  This will create a /var/www/moodledata/ID# directory.

Then, in the settings for all backups, point all backups to go to:
/var/www/moodledata/[SA_COURSE_ID#]

Since only System Admins can see the System Admin category and course, other courses can be restored by admins only.

Another question running around in my mind, is why the author didn't share this with Martin at Moodle so they could release a fix rather than just throw it out there?

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DiigoNotes - Batch GoogleDocs Upload

• google-docs-upload - Project Hosting on Google Code
  • 
    
    
    A tool for batch upload documents to a Google Docs account with recursive traversing of directories. The tool supports PDF upload.
    
  • 
    
    Total list of supported formats: csv, doc, docx, html, htm, ods, odt, pdf, ppt, pps, rtf, sxw, tsv, tab, txt, xls, xlsx.
    
    
    
    
  • 
    
    the ability to replicate folder structure in Google Docs has been implemented.
     java -jar google-docs-upload-1.2.jar /home/kevin/uploads --recursive
    
    
    
    
  • 
    
    Google Docs Batch Upload
    
    
    
    
  • 
    
    Download:
    google-docs-upload-1.2.jar
    

    
    

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Download a la Mode: Reimaging Solutions

The following is another article I submitted for publication to TCEA's TechEdge...those of you that have been following this blog may find it a summation of some tough learning about the different tools.

Download a la Mode: Reimaging Solutions
by Miguel Guhlin

"Does anybody use other software or method beside Norton Ghost, to clone their computers?" This is a question shared on the TCEA Technology Education Coordinators' Special Interest Group (TEC-SIG) listserv recently. It's a question that often arises as technology coordinators at the campus and district level work to reformat new and old computers with the software that needs to be loaded on them for school use. While software applications like MS Office and antivirus are the same from one computer model to another, there can be tremendous differences in the software drivers (consider using DriverMax mentioned in this article to help with this problem) computers use to handle built-in video and sound, as well as bluetooth and other devices that come on today's computers. As a result, technology users struggle to find the right software. For the technology director at the beginning of this article, the specifics of the problem can be as straightforward as what he shares after the question:

We just bought 30 HP 610 laptops, and I’m having a hard time getting the bootable CD to work. The error I get is “Device driver not found…” somehow it cannot find the cdrom driver to mount the CD.  My config.sys and autoexec.bat files look right. Any suggestions and help are appreciated.

This article explores some of the solutions that technology coordinators--but also every day users of technology who want an inexpensive way to back up their Windows, GNU/Linux, or Macintosh computer--can put to work right away at little or no cost. As a bonus, also mentioned in this article is a strategy for creating bootable flash drives with operating systems on them, as well as what software is available for DVD/CD burning.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION
An image of your hard drive is essentially a digital copy of everything on the hard drive. This is important to have because the more we use--add/remove software, suffer virus attacks, etc.--a computer, the slower that computer can get. Most folks don't have software programs like Raxco's PerfectDisk ($40) to defragment the hard drive or Macecraft's RegistrySupreme ($12) to clean up the computer's registry. Of course, you could use free programs like UltraDefrag (http://ultradefrag.sourceforge.net/) or Defraggler (http://www.piriform.com/defraggler) instead.  As such, you can have problems develop as programs are installed, removed (sometimes improperly), eventually degrading the speed of your system. Sometimes, the problem is not just the standard slowness of a system that results from installing/uninstalling programs.

Problems may develop after a spyware/malware or virus infestation, causing problems that even reinstalling your operating system can't fix. The answer is obvious if you have ever had a virus or spyware program slink its way past your computer's defenses and "trash" your computer. Consider the case of Michael Fiola, a former Massachusetts government employee who was mistakenly arrested in 2007 for child porn on his computer. Apparently, malware had found its way onto the computer and was able to download 40 child porn sites by minute. It took almost a year for Fiola to be found innocent (Source: http://bit.ly/3DUVRF).

Although previous issues of Download a la Mode have discussed how to protect yourself from malware--and clean it out--on a Windows computer, sometimes it's easier to just wipe your computer and start over. In fact, I have had to do that for several teachers' home computers where their computers were so infested with spyware and malware, they had no other recourse but to "blank the slate" and start over.

When you reach that sad state of affairs, you have several options:

1) Reformat your computer, and reload all software. This can be very time-consuming. Only a short time ago, this process could be done fairly quickly in 1-2 hours. However, the size of software and the time it takes to copy it from CD to hard drive can be lengthy (4-5 hours). Worse, as a result of spyware/malware/viruses, you must complete Windows System Updates, install firewall software, antivirus software, and innoculate your computer against malware.  Although programs like the free DriverMax (http://www.innovative-sol.com/drivermax/) can help you save all your special software drivers unique to your computer and reload them quickly, you will have to save them prior to infestation. If you're not careful, when you connect to the network to install these updates and get the programs, viruses will invade your computer BEFORE you can "put your shields up." I recommend downloading the firewall, antispyware and antivirus software, putting it on a CD and having it ready. That way, your system is protected PRIOR to connecting to the network.

2) Using a previously saved image of the hard drive, re-image your computer. This means wiping out everything that was on your computer at the time of re-imaging with a copy of your hard drive. To ensure complete privacy, you may want to use Darik's Boot-n-Nuke prior to reimaging, but that is only if you want to ensure all previous data was erased from the hard drive. "Erased" in this case means making the data completely unrecoverable, even by computer forensics. The copy of your hard drive that you have saved previously is a "pristine" copy or a snapshot of your computer system the way you wanted it to be before you started installing/uninstalling programs, had to deal with spyware/malware, etc. It's a fresh start without the time consuming problem of reloading all your software.

Several questions come to mind, however, for option #2:
a) Where do I save a copy of my hard drive? The copy is obviously going to be very big and can't be on my computer at the same time. So, where can it go?
Response: CD-ROMS and DVD media are not really the best way to save a copy of your media. While they are often used by technical support specialists, regular folks like you and I may find the process of creating an image of the hard drive, then burning it to CD problematic. Instead, I recommend purchasing an external 120gig USB hard drive. These hard drives are easy to connect to your computer and should be formatted when you receive them as FAT32. FAT32 is the most "easy to read" format for various operating systems (such as Windows, Mac, and Linux). Reformatting an external USB hard drive is as simple as reformatting a floppy.

Once reformatted to FAT32, you have a drive that will allow you to back up your data. Most hard drives, even though they may be 80gigs or more, rarely have that much on them. That is, an image of your hard drive may only take up 4-6 gigs of your 120gig drive. So, you'll be able to use your external 120gig HD for more than just a backup image of the hard drive.


b) How do I make an image of my hard drive? Don't I need expensive, special software to make an image?
Response: While there are a variety of programs you can use, I prefer free, open source software (FOSS), as opposed to a program like Norton Ghost.  Even if you're not familiar with a Linux Operating System, you will be able to use FOSS solutions to save a backup image of your computer.


Questions to Ponder:

1. What free software is available for cloning computers?
2. What free software is available to burn DVDS/CDs?
   

Scary stories aside, school districts and educators CAN afford the approaches outlined in this article.

1) What free software is available for cloning computers?
In my search to find a worthy response to the question posed at the start of this article, I have stumbled across various programs that can be used. There are a variety of approaches one can take. From my experience, they divide up into 2 approaches:

• Reimaging from a Networked Drive: Start the computer but instead of booting from the hard drive, boot from a CD or USB Flash drive that points to a networked computer where an exact copy of all the software on the hard drive is stored. Typically, school districts pay quite a bit of money for software that will pull a pristine copy of a computer's hard drive and put it on a series of computers. With this type of software, you can boot up on multiple computers in a lab setting and all of them can be reimaged within a short space of time. Some of the challenges to using this approach is that you must have a computer designated as a server (whose setup may be "outlawed" on a District network in school settings) and know how to connect to that computer over the network. If you are not sure how to do that, then you have already hit an almost insurmountable roadblock.
  
• Reimaging from a USB Flash Drive or DVD (less used now): Since large capacity, external USB hard drives have dropped in price, you can now boot up off a small USB flash drive and then reimage your computer. Instead of storing the "image" of the hard drive on a networked drive, you can use a copy stored on your large capacity external USB drive. The only challenge with this approach is that you have to "touch" every computer. Yet, for home users or small numbers of computers, you can reimage. This is my preferred approach.

A) REIMAGING FROM A NETWORKED DRIVE
"I'm a daily user and huge proponent of the FOG Project," shares Mark Cockrell (HoneyGrove ISD).  "It's a free, open source hard drive imaging system that is fast, reliable, and simple to use (though somewhat tricky to set up initially).  I'm pretty sure I'd pay to use it if it weren't free." The FOG Project is only one of several tools available--for free--that you can use. Leslie Sessions, Technology Coordinator for a small Texas school district, was kind enough to teach me about FOG. Like any person with a lab or two of computers, I needed an easy to use solution that would work. These Windows XP computers have to be reimaged frequently, and doing so can get to be a pain. Ms. Sessions shared that she's an avid open source seeker, and was quick to point out that she's using FOG (http://bit.ly/2gXoDz), a Free Computer Cloning Solution. A description of FOG appears below:

Fog is a Linux-based, free and open source computer imaging solution for Windows XP and Vista that ties together a few open-source tools with a php-based web interface. Fog doesn't use any boot disks, or CDs; everything is done via TFTP and PXE. Also with fog many drivers are built into the kernel, so you don't really need to worry about drivers (unless there isn't a linux kernel module for it). Fog also supports putting an image that came from a computer with a 80GB partition onto a machine with a 40GB hard drive as long as the data is less than 40GB.

Fog also includes a graphical Windows service that is used to change the hostname of the PC, restart the computer if a task is created for it, and auto import hosts into the FOG database. The service also installs printers, and does simple snap-ins.

Jeremy Fluhman (Winters ISD) offers this advice in regards to getting FOG working in an Active Directory environment:

Before uploading an image to FOG that you would like to use with Active Directory, please ensure that the image:

•    is NOT a member of the domain, change the computer membership to workgroup instead.
•    has support tools installed.
•    has the FOG service installed.

Another alternative to FOG is Clonezilla. Clonezilla (http://bit.ly/4znHvH) is described in this way:

You're probably familiar with the popular proprietary commercial package Norton Ghost®, and its OpenSource counterpart, Partition Image. The problem with these software packages is that it takes a lot of time to massively clone systems to many computers. You've probably also heard of Symantec's solution to this problem, Symantec Ghost Corporate Edition® with multicasting. Well, now there is an OpenSource clone system (OCS) solution called Clonezilla with unicasting and multicasting!

When you consider that these solutions exist, it makes one wonder why certain school districts spend thousands of dollars for alternate, non-free open source software solutions. Unfortunately, while others have experienced success with both these tools, I have not. I suspect that it may be my inability to setup a server with a static IP address. Having seen how FOG functions--thanks to Leslie Sessions--I imagine that the tool of choice I would use would be FOG. So, I had to find another approach.

B) REIMAGING FROM USB FLASH DRIVE OR DVD
If you have ever reformatted a computer, reloaded it with software by loading the programs one by one, you know it can be a time-consuming process. As a matter of fact, I recall spending many an hour loading software with a book in hand (pleasure reading, not a manual!) just clicking "NEXT" at the appropriate moments. Of course, this was before I knew about creating an image of your hard drive. Now, with an image, the process can take as little as 20 minutes (unattended by me) to be up and going. This is a time-saver for me.

Some of the software programs to reimage a computer from an external USB Flash Drive include the following:

1. For Macintosh computers, use Carbon Copy Cloner. It is free and provides very easy way to make an image of your Macintosh computer's hard drive. Even more helpful, you can boot off the external hard drive on ANY Mac and continue to work on your hard drive. From their web site:
   Have you ever wanted a simple, complete, bootable backup of your hard drive? Have you ever wanted to upgrade to a larger hard drive with minimal hassle and without reinstalling your OS and all of your applications? Have you ever wanted to move your entire Mac OS X installation to a new computer? Then CCC is the tool for you!
   Having used CCC on 20-30 Macbooks, various Macintosh Desktops, this is an incredibly easy to use program. It sets a high standard in the area of reimaging computers. Get it online at http://snipurl.com/t7b1c
2. For Windows and GNU/Linux computers, try Partimage (longer tutorial online at http://snipurl.com/t7b1l) or, if you feel adventurous, try DD (http://snipurl.com/t7b3t) or FSArchiver (http://snipurl.com/t7b3h). From their web site you can see that "FSArchiver is a system tool that allows you to save the contents of a file-system to a compressed archive file. The file-system can be restored on a partition which has a different size and it can be restored on a different file-system." I've used all three of these tools successfully but they are not for the faint of heart. A fourth option is an automated tool known as PING. What is nice about PING (PartImage Is Not Ghost) is that it uses menus to simplify the process. You are not stuck at the command line typing in commands. Find more out about PING--along with a short tutorial--online at http://snipurl.com/t9fqt

Another handy resource to have in your toolkit for option 2 above is UNETBOOTIN. It's a fantastic tool for creating bootable USB Flash drives using popular GNU/Linux distributions (e.g. SystemRescue which includes the tools mentioned above in option 2 in software programs...get it online at http://systemrescuecd.org).

Finding the right free tool can be tough, but having investigated these, I encourage you to explore these tools for your own use, as well as in work settings for casual reimaging.

2-What free software is available to burn DVDs/CDs?
Although creating bootable USB flash drives with a rich variety of software that allows you to burn CDs/DVDs, sometimes there are other need. One of these came up at a workshop I offered in August of this school year. "Is there an application," asked me a Languages Other Than English (LOTE) teacher at the end of a day of workshops, "that I can use to burn videos to DVD?" As I pondered the question, I wondered if perhaps I hadn't fallen into a state of comfort. On Mac and GNU/Linux operating systems, free programs abound for burning DVDs...but on Windows, could the same be true? For example, on Macintosh, I could turn to the software that came on my Mac, or use other software freely available. On GNU/Linux (I prefer UbuntuLinux), software like Brasero or K3b is available that gives you much of the functionality of commercial DVD burning programs.

Here is a short list of the free software available for Windows.
Completely Free Software:
(Updated to reflect Danny Maas' suggestion of DVD Flick)

1. DVD Flick - http://dvdflick.net/
   
2. AVSMedia - http://www.avsmedia.com/AVS-DVD-Copy.aspx
3. ImgBurn - http://www.imgburn.com/

When I chatted with the LOTE teacher, I thought the following programs would work since they were free but I discovered they don't handle DVD burning well, but they work well with CDs:

• InfraRecorder - http://infrarecorder.org/
• CDBurnerXP - http://www.cdburnerxp.se/

CONCLUSION
From optimizing your computer's hard drive to reimaging your computer to burning data on CDs and DVDs can all be done using freely available tools. Take advantage of them to achieve your goal of backing up your content.

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Creating an Oasis of Virtual Learning: 7 Steps to Avoiding the Mirage #moodle

Here is an article submission I wrote for TCEA TechEdge earlier this evening, but I'm not sure if it's going to find its way since it's a third article submission..."a third wheel," so to speak. It's also a quick way to capture some of the new things I learned on a site visit to Northside ISD in San Antonio, Tx. It is a bit of an adaptation from an article I wrote for publication for onCUE, but the whole oasis thing is new, as are some of the 7 steps. If I were rewriting this article for a longer piece, I'd flesh out those 7 steps more but space and time did not allow (the deadline was yesterday).

Creating an Oasis of Virtual Learning: 7 Steps to Avoiding the Mirage
by Miguel Guhlin - mguhlin@gmail.com



"An oasis is a fertile spot in the middle of a desert," shares WiseGeek, "an island of life in an ocean of temperature extremes. Any oasis always contains one or more springs. Oases make it possible to survive long treks through the desert. In large deserts such as the Sahara, towns cluster around sources of water such as oases and rivers." I often imagine that Moodle course management systems serve as oasis where learners cluster together to find nourishment and sustenance in an Internet desert teeming with life, albeit harsh conditions. It is for that reason that I embarked on a learning journey to find more about using Moodle to impact professional learning in my district.

Having built my professional learning network--composed of a global education community that reached as far as Spain, New Zealand, Australia using tools like Twitter and my blog--I was able to rely on the help of many who have gone before. Doing this kind of work is nerve-wracking, because you are facing the equivalent of a "blank slate." You simply don't know what you don't know.

Like any wanderer knows, straying from the beaten path can be all too easy and the consequences dire. The water holes are clearly marked and if you walk away from them, you are taking your professional career in your hands. The power of the network enables us to take chances we would not otherwise take. It is critical we learn to rely on each other so that we might arrive at our final destination, whether that be a professional learning community or a more enriched learning experience for learners, whether they be adult or K-12. Helping each other connect with one another

In a recent MIT Press report, the following quote underscores the importance of building professional learning networks that employ easy to use technologies:

"New technologies allow for small groups whose members are at physical distance to each other to learn collaboratively together, and from each other; but they also enable larger, more anonymous yet equally productive interactions."
Source: The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age, by Cathy N. Davidson and David Theo Goldberg

Moodle is one of those new technologies that enables teachers hoping to facilitate online learning to learn together and from each other. The exact logistics of accomplishing that facilitation, though, caused me some angst early on. It became apparent--due to our lack of knowledge about online learning--that the desire to teach online would require some serious deliberation and consideration. To that end, I turned to my team of talented professionals, begging them to join me in my effort to learn how to facilitate professional learning in my urban, inner-city school district.

In retrospect, I would recommend a different series of steps, such as the ones below:

1. Establish a team of professional learning facilitators who will commit to learning how to design online classes and facilitate online courses. My team of one coordinator and four facilitators--all past classroom teachers who work in Instructional Technology--can boast various online learning certifications. For them, building online professional learning is about continuous improvement. For example, my team began with PBS TeacherLine courses and is now moving to get certified by the State Education Agency in facilitating online learning for students (http://txvsn.org). These individuals do a lot more than just sit around and design online courses. However, we all made a commitment to learn how to do this together and then, to do it.
   
2. Create your own online courses about a week in duration to start with and then grow from there. Pick out the top five to six courses that you think will be worthwhile for your teachers and then go for it. Design of a week-long course takes about 20-25 hours of work. Thankfully, using Moodle, you are able to easily structure learning activities that can engage your learners in ways that simply posting information online could not. Diana Benner, a fellow virtual voyager, shares her checklist for designing a comprehensive course syllabus in a sidebar.
   
3. Purchase courses--such as from PBS TeacherLine or LOTI Connection--that address content you do not know how to organize for online learning. This allows you to learn the structure and content of a course and then to create your own course using Creative Commons Copyrighted materials available via the Web. Or, your district may have purchased books that can be used.
4. Collaborate with District Stakeholders, such as administration and Information Technology colleagues* and give them time to learn how to best support your Moodle. For example, Northside ISD has at least two people providing technical support needed to ensure success...and that does not even include those managing the Moodle to ensure implementation is successful, working with teachers to establish Moodle Mentor programs, and modeling content development with tools such as Xertes (http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/xerte), which is a free, open source course content creation tool.
   
5. Map out all possible uses of Moodle* and identify who your target audience is, who will be using the Moodle as a teaching tool, as a learning tool, the purpose of the Moodle, what kind of access is required (such as via LDAP authentication or external database), and who in your District will be responsible for it.
   
6. Create a Moodle Tools Inventory* that maps out all activities--such as new modules you may have added to enhance your Moodle--available to those in your organization using Moodle as a teaching tool. Such an inventory could include a list of activities, types of activities, assessment, and gradebook integration, to mention a few. 
7. Standardize on your Moodle Activities, including modules and blocks, and try them out in a "sandbox" environment to ensure they work well before moving on.
   

*Thanks to Northside ISD in San Antonio, Texas for sharing their tips on Moodle implementation. This short article cannot do justice to all they shared.

The biggest mistake I made in our first year of designing online professional learning opportunities was that I tried to jumpstart the process by buying commercial offerings. Instead, we were better served by developing a rubric or template for what a course we wanted to teach should include. The next draft of our course design will match our work to iNACOL's (http://www.inacol.org/). From that point we developed the course as a team, moving forward together and buliding clarity about the common elements and structure. You can find some of our early work--including Moodle courses you can download--online at http://sn.im/saelearning.

CONCLUSION
Online learning design has been a most exhilirating experience, sparking new growth for myself and my team. While teachers are locked away in their classrooms, in boxes locked tight by federal and state expectations, using Moodle to build online learning communities has had a profound impact. The impact has been on those of us who design and facilitate virtual learning experiences, but also on teachers who thought they had forgotten how to learn, who never imagined their district had the wherewithal to craft engaging, authentic, high-tech professional learning. I invite you to join us, not as expert designers of online learning, but as voyagers sharing life-giving learning in the virtual oasis that Moodle provides.

NOTE: The table included in this article does not appear here.

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Pass-Ed Publishing Company

The following is a guest blog entry from the owner of Pass-Ed.com. In the interests of full disclosure,  I did not receive anything in compensation for sharing his post here.

Would you agree there is a large discrepancy between the use of technology, and the learning of the core content subject matter within schools?  To me, at least, it appears many technology teachers focus solely on technology, while core subject area teachers focus on teaching core subject matter-with no mixing of content and technology.  When I realized that this divide existed, and that it was detrimental to Twenty First Century learning, I decided that it was time to start a publishing company dedicated to the development of core curriculum resources atop Web 2.0 technology.

My new publishing company, Pass-Ed, has already developed two suites of products: one built on Google Earth and one built on Twitter.  The Google Earth units were developed for middle school and high school social studies classes, primarily U.S. History.  The five units:  Colonial Economic Regions, Considering the Realities of the Holocaust, Cuban Missile Crisis, Gatsby of the Twenties and Okies Head West are each problem-based and student centered.  For example, in the Cuban Missile Crisis unit, students imagine that they are the only person in the world who has a friendship with both Soviet Premier Khrushchev, and U.S. President Kennedy.  After learning about the events of the crisis, students must develop a multi-media proposal for world peace.   In the Realities of the Holocaust unit, students develop multi-media presentations to refute the revisionist claim that the Holocaust never occurred, using information contained in the unit.

Typically when people think of using Google Earth in schools, they think of geography.  However, the Pass-Ed units do not use it as a geography tool; instead they use it as a wrapper for high quality content found online.  Through their studies, students access written text, images, and audio visual files.  Of course, by using the tools contained within Google Earth, the students are developing manipulative skills as well.  For example, when studying the Colonial Economic Regions, students will draw the triangular trade routes onto the Google Earth layer.

I find students love working with Google Earth because it is digital and the activities contained in the units are quite engaging.  One student recently said, “This doesn’t really feel like learning.  It’s fun.”   I wonder then, was he saying that learning shouldn’t be fun?  Unfortunately, I worry that learning is seen as a cumbersome activity which takes time, but doesn’t really have any practical reward.  Therefore, when developing the Pass-Ed units, I strive to combine educationally valuable material with excitement and meaning.  Isn’t that what real learning should be about?

Here is the link to my website: http://www.pass-ed.com 

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Xertes Course Content Creator Tool for Moodle

View YouTube Video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMEzQKin488

This is the first in many blog entries trying to share what I had the opportunity to learn today visiting Northside ISD's Moodle team. I'm grateful to the following folks for hosting my team and I in learning about Moodle...and reminding me how much more I have to learn:

• Lori Jones, Director, Integrated Infrastructure Services
• Joyce Stevens, Director, Instructional Technology
• Amanda Hefner, Moodle Maven (yes, I made that title up but it's no less accurate)
  
• Lisa Gerlich, Moodle Tech Support
• Alex de la Pena, Moodle Tech Support
• Lorraine Traiwick (not present)
  

What's amazing about this team is that they plan and work together...a combination that is NOT present in other school districts where one team often works independent of the other. Kudos to NISD for developing this culture of teamwork and collaboration!

One of the amazing things they shared with me was Xertes, a course content creator tool that integrates well with Moodle. Apparently, it enables non-techie end users to develop SCORM modules for free. Xertes can be used to build a lesson that includes a wide variety of activities, such as puzzles, diagrams...one of the examples Amanda Hefner shared with me was the creation of a diagram of a frog where all the parts need to be labelled. As such, Xertes is a content development tool that is server based and requires login via LDAP.

An equivalent, but costly, alternative to Xertes is SoftChalk. SoftChalk describes itself in this way, and I share that here because it might be helpful for users to understand what these course content creation tools can do:

• Create interactive web pages for your e-learning course...It's easy, quick, and your lessons will look like a professional designer created them.
  
  
• Engage your students with lessons that include pop-up text annotations, self-assessment quizzes, and interactive learning games.
  
  
• Package your lessons for delivery via CD-ROM, Intranet, Internet, or integrate with your LMS (Learning Management System).

Alex De la Pena pointed out that it's important to build a walled garden, to bring the "cloud" inside. He mentioned that the biggest liability is that while you can contract out to 3rd party vendors for the work, you can't contract out the criminal liability. It was a fascinating point to hear him make.

I'll definitely be exploring these tools further, especially Xertes.

Installing Xertes is pretty easy on XAMPP:

Download the software. You can install Xerte Online Toolkits on a standalone computer, or a web server.

Download Xerte Toolkits v1.0.

Installation for Local Installation

A brief tutorial showing how to install Xerte Online Toolkits on a standalone computer can be seen here: XAMPP Installation

Download and install XAMPP accepting the default settings, from http://www.apachefriends.org/download.php?xampp-win32-1.7.0-installer.exe.

Download Xerte Online Toolkits from http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/xerte/downloads/xertetoolkits.zip

Unzip the folder 'xertetoolkits' to c:\xampp\htdocs\, giving you c:\xampp\htdocs\xertetoolkits Start Apache and MySQL in XAMPP control panel.

Visit http://localhost/xertetoolkits/setup Click the XAMPP button.

Are you using Xertes in your Moodle environment?

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Virtual School Symposium PreConference

It's hard to believe that the Virtual School Symposium (VSS) is already here! On Sunday, I'll get a chance to share the stage with some awesome folks, as shared below. I'm definitely nervous but have started organizing my materials for the event online (view them here). Kirsten Peterson has organized a slate of presenters under the general title and description as a PreConference Session:

Web 2.0 and Emerging Technologies for Online Learning - Kirsten Peterson

This hands-on session will provide an overview to emerging technologies for online learning. The session will engage participants in conversation around creating successful learning communities, promoting collaboration, and enhancing instructive techniques with Web 2.0 tools. Participants who bring laptop computers will have an opportunity to try out a collection of Web 2.0 tools and think together about strategies for selecting and incorporating the ones that most meet their identified virtual school needs.

For those of you that plan to attend the Pre-Conference session, what are you looking for out a hands-on Moodle session?

Web 2.0 and Emerging Technologies for Online Learning

Pre-Conference Session
Sunday, November 15, 2009

1:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Welcome and Introductions: Kirsten Peterson, EdTech Leaders Online


Social Networking and Student-Teacher Communication

Steve Hargadon, Social Learning Consultant, Elluminate, Inc.

Jay D. Bennett, Instruction and Course Coordinator, Michigan Virtual University

Discussion and Hands-On Activity

Web Tools for Professional Development: A Focus on the Pedagogy

Barbara Treacy, Director, EdTech Leaders Online

Kirsten Peterson, Project Director, EdTech Leaders Online

      Discussion and Hands-On Activity


Virtual Learning for Real World Engagement

Stephen Harris, Director, Sydney Centre for Innovation in Learning

Jeffery Piontek, Head of School, Hawaii Technology Academy

Discussion and Hands-On Activity

Beyond Web 2.0: Using Course Management Systems to Teach Today’s Learners Effectively

Miguel Guhlin, Director of Instructional Technology and Learning Services, San Antonio ISD

Jeff Borden, Senior Director of Teaching and Learning, Pearson eCollege

      Discussion and Hands-On Activity

Wrap Up / Q&A: Kirsten Peterson, EdTech Leaders Online

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Catch the Wave in West Texas

I'd love to present (in person) in San Angelo for a small fee! How can I get invited? In the meantime, if you're in the area and have something to share, be sure to submit a conference proposal!


Looks like Moodle will play a significant role at the TCEA Area 15 Conference...definitely worth checking out!

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DiigoNotes - Online Courses

• Source: The Daily Beacon

  • Online courses simplify scheduling process
  • Robbie Hargett - Staff Writer
    Thursday, November 05, 2009 issue
  • “Most of the lectures are uploaded to the Blackboard site, and students are able to download and listen to the lectures at their own schedule,” Singh said. “The participation from the students in the course is via assignments and discussion boards.”
  • “The main advantage a person wants to get from an online class is scheduling flexibility,” McClanahan said.

  • The issues of limited class sizes and, consequently, timely graduations are other factors that promote the usage of online courses.

    Singh and McClanahan both agreed that this method of learning can help students when they enter the workplace as well.

    “These courses introduce the students to distance learning technologies and tools and teach them how to collaborate in online environments, how to use online tools to effectively communicate, and prepares them for the distributed workplace of current and future times,” Singh said.

    The results of the current online courses are extremely positive. McClanahan gave her students a survey that asked whether they would choose a traditional class over one online, after experiencing both.

    “Sixty-five percent said they would register for the online version over the traditional one,” McClanahan said.

  • “She said that after experiencing it, she had completely changed her point of view and now would like to take at least one online class per semester, because she really likes the flexibility of choosing when and where she attends a class session and simplifying course scheduling,”

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

LOTI Lounge Down for Maintenance

LOTI Fans, the Lounge may be down for awhile...check out this recent announcement:

Attention All LoTi Users!

In order to keep the LoTi Lounge running smoothly so that you are able to easily access Profiler, Observer and all the LoTi resources, the LoTi Lounge website (www.lotilounge.com) will be undergoing routine upgrades and maintenance during the week of Thanksgiving.

This maintenance will require the LoTi Lounge website to be unavailable November 23-27, 2009.

During this time you will not be able to access the LoTi Lounge which includes the LoTi Digital-age Survey, Profiler and Observer. Please plan your activities accordingly around these dates. We apologize for any inconvenience.

If you have any questions, please contact Fred Saunders.

Fred Saunders
fred@loticonnection.com
760-522-8567

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80gigs of GoogleSpace

As a paid member of Google--I pay for storage space--I was overjoyed to receive this message:

We wanted to let you know about some exciting changes to your Google paid storage plan. While storage costs have dropped naturally in the past few years, we've also been working hard to improve our infrastructure to reduce your costs even further. On Tuesday, November 10th, we increased the size of each of our tiers to make storage even more affordable and accessible. For the same $20.00 per year, you’ll now get 80 GB, 8 times as much storage as before. Your current plan will be automatically upgraded and your new quota will automatically show up in your account in the next 24 hours.

We hope you’ll like the extra space, but if it’s more than you need you can always change your storage plan or renewal preferences for next year in your Google account settings: www.google.com/accounts/purchasestorage. Feel free to visit our Help Center for more information.

Way to go, Google!

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Charting the Course Ahead - TCEA

Isn't it great that TCEA is doing all this great stuff for it's members? I love the new survey out from TCEA that members received via email today...why? It addresses critical issues, such as legislative and policy issues that have long gone unaddressed as fully as they need to be. As wonderful as having a part-timer has been, hiring a full-time political advocate/lobbyist is essential to getting the TCEA members' message out there in front.

I also like the survey because it signals an openness to more feedback from the Membership, and a willingness to take head-on the technology needs of our students. Consider the debacle of high school Technology Applications courses. For years, these courses were funded and taught by the rich districts--whether new rich with grants or old rich with local funding--while those same courses languished in poor Texas school districts. Worse, even if districts could fund the hardware and software needed for the High School TechApps courses, when you throw in the cost of a teacher, that pretty much breaks the bank. As such, districts that lacked funding OFFERED the courses without students ever actually taking the courses. The illusion of TechApps offerings at the high school is the sad reality in many districts.

In regards to Middle School Tech Apps, those courses have pretty much also almost died on the vine. The only incentive to keep MS TA:TEKS was this past year when schools had to show 8th grade technology literacy assessment results to get funding. Even though school districts might have failing students, EdTech professionals were grateful that at long last, some accountability was being brought in. But that accountability is weak with no standard assessment across the State of Texas. Simply, school districts can do whatever they want to report 8th grade technology literacy.

So, do they lie and say their children are doing well, or tell the truth and report abysmal results because technology applications courses have been under-funded for years? Another option, of course, is that your district does well. I've only encountered a handful of Districts where the children did well, and to be honest, those that did well did not find themselves by creating a TA:TEKS program overnight.

TCEA wants to know what you think about some important topics that will impact Texas students now and in the future.

We have created a quick survey to get your opinion on what legislative and policy issues you feel TCEA should focus on with the state legislature and the State Board of Education.

The survey will be open until November 23rd. Please take time to let your voice be heard.

 A few of the questions from the survey:

• Rank the following indicating which you feel are the items that should be a priority in the TCEA legislative program for the 82nd legislative session.
• Increase the technology allotment to meet the demands of the 21st Century learning environment.
• Provide for a standardized technology assessment for all Texas 8th grade students at no cost to schools.
• Require students who do not meet established proficiencies on the standardized technology assessment for 8th graders to take a required technology course for graduation.
• Require a technology credit for high school graduation in all graduation plans.
• Embed technology applications TEKS in the core content courses in grades 9-12.
• Add a required Technology Applications course at the middle school level.
• When districts choose an instructional material (textbook) that costs less than the state allotment for that adoption, the district should receive 100% of the savings as opposed to the current 50%.
• Require 6 hours for professional development for teachers, librarians, and campus administrators in the use of 21st Century technology tools to improve instruction.
• The following technology application courses are currently offered at the high school level. These courses were created in 1998. Which of the courses do you think should still be offered? [Miguel's pick of courses appear below]
• Digital Graphics/Animation
• Video Technology
• WebMastering
  
• Computer Science I
• What other technology related courses should be developed to meet the demands of the current and future workforce?

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DiigoNotes - Trusted Computing Rears Its Head

Trusted computing, that practice where when you buy a computing device, control remains in the hands of the seller rather than the buyer, rears its head. While few would argue that "software piracy" is a valid approach to obtaining software, it is important that "the users" challenge this idea that any company can simply flip a switch and block your access to technology because of modifications made.

Do you agree with Microsoft's move to ban Xbox users for modifying their consoles--computing device--to enhance what it can do?

• BBC NEWS | Technology | Microsoft disconnects Xbox gamers

  • Thousands of gamers may have been cut off from Microsoft's online gaming service Xbox Live for modifying their consoles to play pirated games.

    Online reports suggest that as many as 600,000 gamers may have been affected.

  • Microsoft said that modifying an Xbox 360 console "violates" the service's "terms of use" and would result in a player being disconnected.

    "All consumers should know that piracy is illegal and that modifying their Xbox 360 console to play pirated discs violates the Xbox Live terms of use, will void their warranty and result in a ban from Xbox Live," Microsoft has said in a statement.

  • Many gamers modify their consoles by installing new chips or software that allows them to run unofficial programs. Some chips are specifically designed to play pirated games.
  • Microsoft has not said how it was able to determine which gamers to disconnect.

  • "We do not reveal specifics, but can say that all consoles have been verified to have violated the terms of use," the firm said in a statement.

    Affected gamers were met with a message during the login process. It read: ""Your console has been banned from Xbox".

  • the ban does not stop the console from working and only affects a gamer's Xbox Live account.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Leaders and Laggards: Recommendations

• Leaders and Laggards: Recommendations

  tags: no_tag

  • Our analysis of the innovation gap in American education leads us to recommend the following reforms.
  • Empower schools and principals.
  • Develop student-based funding policies and other more flexible approaches to school funding
  • Reinvent education management.
  • Reinvention calls for nothing less than a seismic shift on the part of states, from micromanaging districts through bureaucratic and irrelevant funding schemes, program initiatives, and policies to creating a flexible, performance-focused management system that is loose on inputs and strict on school outcomes.
  • Rethink the school day and calendar.
  • Better Accountability
  • Reform teacher pay and reward teachers whose performance improves student achievement.
  • Develop statewide longitudinal data systems and provide better information to schools, teachers, and the public.
  • Provide teachers with focused professional development on key topics such as use of data and technology. High-tech tools are of little use unless teachers in the trenches can take advantage of them.
  • Support state efforts to create common academic standards linked to rigorous assessments.
  • Support state reform organizations.
  • Encourage entrepreneurial organizations such as Teach for America and Wireless Generation.
  • the status quo needs to be disrupted for purposeful innovation to thrive. Only then will our nation's students receive the kind of education that they deserve.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

DiigoNotes - Leaders and Laggards: Findings

• Leaders and Laggards: Findings

  tags: no_tag

  • Among our major findings:
  • Rigid education bureaucracies impede quality schooling. Ninety percent of teachers say that routine duties and paperwork interfere with their teaching, according to our analysis of the 2007-2008 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS), a nationally representative survey of teachers and principals administered every four years by the National Center for Education Statistics. Only about one-third of teachers approve of how their schools are run. Throughout our educational system, a traditionalist school culture limits autonomy and innovation.
  • State finance systems are opaque, inefficient, and undermine innovation. The jumbled patchwork of spending programs in each state provides schools almost no room to spend resources in more effective ways.
  • The teacher pipeline fails to provide a diverse pool of high-quality educators. In some states, such as Iowa and Nebraska, almost no teachers enter the profession through alternative certification programs, which make it easier for talented liberal arts graduates and midcareer professionals to enter the classroom without conventional teaching preparation. At the same time, school leaders lack the authority to recruit the best candidates: Fewer than half of the principals in states, such as Oklahoma and North Dakota, report having a major degree of influence over teacher hiring.
  • Teacher evaluations are not based on performance. State systems for evaluating the effectiveness of teachers are focused almost entirely on inputs such as training and years of experience, even though these factors have been shown to have little impact on student achievement.
  • Major barriers exist to the removal of poor-performing teachers. Seventy-two percent of principals say that tenure policies are a barrier to firing ineffective teachers, according to our analysis of federal SASS data. Another 61% say that teacher unions are an obstacle. Without the ability to remove ineffective teachers from the classroom, school leaders cannot build a cohesive school culture, create an environment of accountability, and ensure that all students will learn.
  • The outcome of state technology spending is unknown. Despite a systematic effort to examine the Web-based materials available from every state department of education, we found no evidence that any state had conducted a large-scale technology return-on-investment study. Instead, states collect data largely on student access to computers and the Internet. While technology has the potential to reinvent education delivery, without information on outcomes states will not know whether their investment in technology is well spent.
  • State data systems provide limited information on school operations and outcomes. States have made substantial improvements to their education data systems, but they still barely skim the surface of school operations, failing to answer basic capacity questions such as the degree to which professional development improves student outcomes.
  • Schools provide too little access to college-level coursework. In most cases, dual-enrollment programs (in which students attend high school while enrolling in select collegiate courses) are a win-win educational strategy. They allow high school students to take advanced coursework and gain college credit while boosting college readiness and breaking down the often meaningless boundaries between high school and college. But our research shows that fewer than two-thirds of schools report having such programs.
  • In almost every state, education dollars do not follow students to the schools they attend according to their needs. Instead, funds are distributed based on factors that have little to do with students, such as the number of teachers in a school or the kind of educational programs that a school provides. Such financial practices make it nearly impossible for principals to allocate resources in new and innovative ways.
  • States lack a culture of education advocacy. Innovation-focused reform will require deep reserves of political capital because entrenched interests will fight meaningful changes. But few leaders have stepped forward to create the political conditions for reform.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Interactive Map: Leaders and Laggards

• Interactive Map: Leaders and Laggards

  tags: no_tag

  • Two years ago, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Center for American Progress, and Frederick M. Hess of the American Enterprise Institute came together to grade the states on school performance.
  • In this follow-up report, we turn our attention to the future, looking not at how states are performing today, but at what they are doing to prepare themselves for the challenges that lie ahead. Thus, some states with positive academic results receive poor grades on our measures of innovation, while others with lackluster scholarly achievement nevertheless earn high marks for policies that are creating an entrepreneurial culture in their schools. We chose this focus because, regardless of current academic accomplishment in each state, we believe innovative educational practices are vital to laying the groundwork for continuous and transformational change.
  • Roughly one in three eighth graders is proficient in reading. Most high schools graduate little more than two-thirds of their students on time. And even the students who do receive a high school diploma lack adequate skills: More than 33% of first-year college students require remediation in either math or English.
  • Our aim is to encourage states to embrace policies that make it easier to design smart solutions that serve 21st century students and address 21st century challenges. The impulse to either dictate one-size-fits-all solutions from the top or simply to do something--anything--differently will not address our pressing needs. Instead, this report seeks to foster a flexible, performance-oriented culture that will help our schools meet educational challenges.
  • The challenge is to boost the chance that creative problem solvers will ultimately make a real, lasting difference for our nation and our children
  • Too often, reformers tend to embrace only those advances that we can conveniently measure with today's crude tools, such as grades three-to-eight reading and math scores. The principal virtue of the No Child Left Behind Act, for example--a much-needed focus on outcomes and transparency--has been coupled with a bureaucratic impulse and an inflexible, cookie-cutter approach to gauging teacher and school quality.
  • we should also embrace what might be called smart quality control. That means measuring the value of various providers and solutions in terms of what they are intended to do--whether that is recruiting teachers or tutoring foreign languages--rather than merely on whether they affect the rate at which students improve their performance on middle school reading and math tests.
  • Capacity building is
  • the need for a variety of new providers that deliver additional support to educators in answering classroom and schoolwide challenges.
  • To examine the degree to which states have developed such a culture, we focused on eight areas:
  • School Management
  • Finance (including the accessibility of state financial data)
  • Staffing: Hiring & Evaluation (including alternative certification for teachers)
  • Staffing: Removing Ineffective Teachers (including the percentage of principals who report barriers to the removal of poor-performing teachers)
  • Data (including such measures as state-collected college student remediation data)
  • Technology (including students per Internet-connected computer)
  • Pipeline to Postsecondary (including the percentage of schools reporting dual-enrollment programs)
  • State Reform Environment (an ungraded category that includes data on the presence of reform groups and participation in international assessments)

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

TCEA Board Minutes

The Texas Computer Education Association (TCEA) took one step further towards increased transparency in posting its Board of Directors' meeting minutes online. Kudos to the sitting Board for sharing their deliberations and making it possible for the TCEA members to know what is actually being discussed. My only suggestion, as unwanted as it may be, is that the format be in HTML web page rather than PDF. However, a PDF document sends the message that the minutes can't be changed willy-nilly...right?

What a fascinating development for TCEA members since it the Board Minutes hint at some critical issues that the Association is facing, including the following:

1. Paying down TCEA's debt and the relevance of the term "financial exigency" relevant to the upcoming conference. This raises the question, is it possible the Conference attendance won't be all that it needs to be to meet the costs of the Conference?
   
2. The recognized need for a full time advocate on behalf of topics relevant to all of us.
3. 2010 MoodleMoot (which readers of this blog may remember was proposed by this blogger) plans
4. The use of GoogleApps for TCEA - At a time when some districts are balking at using GoogleApps in Education for their school districts, TCEA's leadership in this area is VERY welcome.
5. The use of Naylor Publications to produce the TCEA TechEdge magazine.
   

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onCUE Publishes Moodle Article

The long-awaited Fall, 2009 issue of OnCue by the Massachusetts Computer Using Educators association appeared in my mailbox today featuring my article, Engaging Learners Online: Part 2 - Building Online Professional Learning Environments. It was the cover article! (Woohoo!).

Thanks to the MassCue folks for publishing my work in their State! While it's nice to be global, it's also nice to find you're worthy of being published in another state in a print magazine that's actually mailed to people! Thanks to Jean Tower, Managing Editor, for soliciting and publishing my two articles!

You can read Part 1 of my series online, but here's the lead on Part 2 (read the whole thing):

A year ago when I actively started working to use Moodle to impact professional learning in my school district, I had no real clue as to what I was doing. Having built my professional learning network--composed of a global education community that reached as far as Spain, New Zealand, Australia using tools like Twitter and my blog--I was able to rely on the help of many who have gone before. Doing this kind of work is nerve-wracking, because you are facing the equivalent of a "blank slate." You simply don't know what you don't know.

This short article highlights our discoveries of ignorance, and then recommends steps to take. It also includes our best thinking on the subject of online learning facilitation, the essential elements an online course should have, and links to sample courses designed with this in mind.

In a recent MIT Press report, the following quote underscores the importance of building professional learning networks that employ easy to use technologies:

• "New technologies allow for small groups whose members are at physical distance to each other to learn collaboratively together, and from each other; but they also enable larger, more anonymous yet equally productive interactions."
• Source: The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age, by Cathy N. Davidson and David Theo Goldberg

Moodle is one of those new technologies that enables teachers hoping to facilitate online learning to learn together and from each other. The exact logistics of accomplishing that facilitation, though, caused me some angst early on. It became apparent--due to our lack of knowledge about online learning--that the desire to teach online would require some serious deliberation and consideration. To that end, I turned to my team of talented professionals, begging them to join me in my effort to learn how to facilitate professional learning in my urban, inner-city school district.

Read the rest.

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DiigoNotes - 16 Security updates available for Shockwave Player

• Adobe - Security Bulletins: APSB09-16 Security updates available for Shockwave Player

  • Security updates available for Shockwave Player
  • Release date: November 3, 2009
  • Critical vulnerabilities have been identified in Adobe Shockwave Player 11.5.1.601 and earlier versions. The vulnerabilities could allow an attacker, who successfully exploits the vulnerabilities, to run malicious code on the affected system. Adobe has provided a solution for the reported vulnerabilities. It is recommended that users update their installations using the instructions provided below.
  • Shockwave Player 11.5.1.601 and earlier versions
  • Adobe recommends Shockwave Player users install Shockwave Player version 11.5.2.602 available here: http://get.adobe.com/shockwave/.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

DiigoNotes - Malware Can Download Child Porn To Your Computer

Makes me glad I'm running on Mac and GNU/Linux 99% of the time. Why can't schools catch on?

• Slashdot IT Story | Malware Can Download Child Porn To Your Computer

  • "The Associated Press tells the story of Michael Fiola, a former Massachusetts government employee who was arrested in 2007 after child porn was found on his state-issued laptop computer. He was eventually cleared of all charges after some digging by the defense found that the laptop was infected with malware that was 'programmed to visit as many as 40 child porn sites per minute — an inhuman feat. While Fiola and his wife were out to dinner one night, someone logged on to the computer and porn flowed in for an hour and a half. Prosecutors performed another test and confirmed the defense findings. The charge was dropped — 11 months after it was filed.'

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

DiigoNotes - On the Precipice of Change: 3 Obstacles to Technology Use in K-12

• On the Precipice of Change: 3 Obstacles to Technology Use in K-12

  • On the Precipice of Change: 3 Obstacles to Technology Use in K-12
  • We are often stopped by obstacles that we perceive. Warren Greshes' shares that for most people, there are 3 obstacles that they just cannot get around (Source: Read More) .
  • Those obstacles include 1) Fear of failure; 2) Other People telling you that it can't be done; and 3) Old habits that keep us back. As I reflect on the question, and Warren Greshes' 3 obstacles, I had to ask myself, what are some perceptions that stop the bulk of Texas educators from integrating technology into their work? We all know that there are individual successes, but what about the rest?
  • Greshes shares that fear of failure is the “single biggest obstacle to our success.” In Instructional Technology, it may very well be defined as fear of trying to use new—or even old—technologies in the classroom.
  • Some might characterize these new technologies in this way:

    The next crop of terrorists are still at school, preparing for their SAT tests. They are probably bright, politically disinterested and easily susceptible to the ideology of the Read/Write Web. They receive a daily diet of anti-school establishment propaganda through Web 2.0 and so-called social networking websites. Young children of immigrants still at school are among those linked to guerilla conspiracies.
    
    The path from adolescent dreamer interested in moblogs to flash mob radicals ready to engage in peaceful school walkouts to immigration issues and posting embarrassing videos of irrelevant teachers on YouTube can be frighteningly short. Web 2.0 guerilla-teachers are looking to groom and brainwash our children as advocates for passionate action, conflict over harmony, transparency over invulnerability, and commitment to virtual friends, and real life strangers. The teenblogosphere is without restraint.

  • Yet, perched on the precipice of change, administrators and teachers have a different perception of what is keeping them from integrating technology. What is that different perception? What are the obstacles that keep schools from integrating technology?
  • Mark Ahlness
  • We cannot not surround and change the educational technology establishment by external force. And we do not have the time or patience to quietly play by the rules of that establishment, hoping somebody will eventually notice....
  • We will not go away nor shut up. We are guerillas in their midst.
    Source: http://www.ahlness.com/
  • It's so easy for other people, Greshen points out, to keep one down, to push you down a path that is more convenient for them. For those that find daily mind-changing exchanges too confrontational, heart-attack inducing, these 3 strategies might be more effective:
    
    1. Build successful instructional practices in your classroom, enabling your students to do that which will make them shine. Focus on enhancing the power of their voices, gathering work that proves they are ahead instructionally and reflects their technological expertise. Use whatever is necessary.
    2. Once you have a body of student work, ask if you can celebrate that work by sharing it in the hallway, online via a web page (blog or otherwise), and share it with parents via newsletters (also online and/or paper). The goal is to get their voices out there as loud as possible...once you have a "bully pulpit," then you can advocate for change.
    3. Fly below the radar on all projects until your students' success becomes apparent to all.
  • These four points could easily translate into obstacles I could share.
  • Point #1 - Inability to accomplish change in the adoption of technology innovations that impact teaching and learning.
  • There seemed to be so many factors in educational settings, factors I had little control over in my “non-positional” area of authority, that I felt unable to achieve systemic change. I was the Jurassic Park mosquito caught in the amber. Or, as a venerable elementary school principal once put it, “a skeeter in a nudist colony,” unsure of where to strike first.
  • How does one address the reluctance 1) on the part of district administrators to incorporate technology in meaningful ways to the scope and sequence, 2) of curriculum specialists to learn how to use technology to redesign their own teaching of adult learners, 3) of campus teachers and administrators failing to use online technology textbooks, 4) competing elements within the curriculum department that chase after technology solutions without putting a plan together to ensure successful implementation?
  • Point #2 - Inability to mandate/require professional development for teachers, and provide incentives for achievement of professional development objectives, that directly impact teaching.
    With the inability to mandate professional development, and lacking the funding to provide incentives, professional development in the area of technology suffers.
  • Point #3 - Lack of budget sufficient to establish ubiquitous access to hardware and software teachers need to redesign their teaching environments. School districts continue to use proprietary software tools to accomplish their instructional objectives, even though free open source software (FOSS) offers a powerful alternative. One teacher characterized the lack in this way: “There are tons of open-source offerings, but having the staff on hand and available to get it installed and running is a struggle when the district budget does not show any importance in that area.”
  • we are on the precipice of change. How we navigate the change will be a testament to our ability to overcome our fear of failure, as well as let nay-sayers know that while they may not be able to get the job done, they don't know Texans! It's a long, tough journey, but onward, if not forward, is the only way possible. Perhaps, we need to consider what Diane Quirk writes in her blog, Technology to Empower Student Learning:
    
  • The challenge for us as educators is to examine our practices in terms of being either obstacles or conduits to the learning of our students.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

DiigoNotes - 5 Steps to PBL-Enhanced Professional Development

• 5 Steps to PBL-Enhanced Professional Development

  • 5 Steps to PBL-Enhanced Professional Development
  • Problem-based learning, however, provides a different approach you can take. It focuses you on an ill-structured problem. The story, the characters in the story, all come from the experiences of your students and real life. Follow these steps to enhancing professional development through the use of PBL. Even if you don’t adhere to the strict process or flow of problem-based learning, you will have transformed the experience for your adult learners. . .and these days, that can be the difference. The difference between another boring presentation people gulp coffee to stay awake in to a transformative experience.
  • 1) CRAFTING A TRANSFORMATIVE EXPERIENCE
    When working with John, the first step was to map out what it was we wanted our students—all adult learners—to learn. We could have used Inspiration, but John was a bit skeptical about the use of this approach, so we grabbed the nearest whiteboard. We began to write on the board, asking ourselves questions such as,
    
    — What did we really want them to learn?
    — Why was it important that they learn this?
    — What problems or issues would they be able to resolve with the information?
    — What process, if any, did we want them to follow? Was that process governed by policy? Which ones in particular?
  • We asked ourselves, “Who is affected by the information we’re sharing, by the solutions that will be developed?” Of course, it’s also important to discuss who will develop the solution.
  • 2) ENGAGING THE LEARNERS
    Mapping the problem had been easy. We were now ready to move into the phase of the process that is problematic for professional development facilitators—writing the engaging narrative, or, the problem. It is challenging since some do not consider themselves good writers, or able to write a ficitional problem that integrates the elements addressed by the graphic organizer in step 1.
  • “ What you have to remember, John,” I shared, “is that you are not writing a fiction story exactly. You are writing a story that encapsulates the issues, stakeholders in a way that grabs your learners.” From my perspective, the writing of the story problem is the most exciting of all the steps. But, it doesn’t have to be a written problem. You only write it if you lack another medium to use and want to remain consistent. You could use radio, television, video-record yourself or use a skit to introduce the problem elements.
  • make sure your main character is the one who has to solve the real life problem.
  • 3) FACILITATING THE PROCESS OF PROBLEM-SOLVING
  • In traditional professional development, we are so caught up in what happens after the introductions, in setting the stage and sharing what people are going to learn today from us, that we miss the point. Adult learners arrive with one set of expectations, you have another, and sometimes, we are frightened into “getting down to business” that we miss the opportunity. We miss the excitement.

    To help him understand what his adult learners would be going through, I decided to ease the process of facilitation by modeling the first few moments for him. Modeling the first engagement of the problem was important for John. It enabled him to see the potential energy in the PBL Approach.

  • First, I asked him to read the problem. Then, I asked him the question, “What hunches do you have about this problem?” Hunches are intuitive guesses we have about the problem. They are what we think may occur or be the motivations for some of the stakeholders in the problem story. After we jotted these down on another whiteboard (although you can easily use a word processor, flip chart), we were ready for the next piece. Before moving on, I stepped back out of facilitative role and pointed out that their guesses had hit on the main issues in the problem. This is an important piece because it tells us our story involved us in the manner we hoped it would.

  • The next thing was to write down everything we knew for certain in the problem. For example, you might phrase it this way, “What do we know for certain about the problem?” This is a wonderful approach because, now that we’ve gotten the hunches out of the way, we’re ready to focus in on th problem. No guesses or hunches are allowed. We are strictly “in the text.” These are the facts of the matter and are critical to solving the problem.

    After we’ve nailed down the facts, we ask, “What questions can we ask that will get us the information we need to help the protagonist solve the problem?” Of course, one never says protagonist. By this time, everyone is using the protagonist’s first name. A list of questions is produced. An exciting activity, the question generation shows how engaged your audience is. It is often the “proof” that those reluctant to use Problem-based Learning as a staff development technique need to experience to see its efficacy. Before you move on to the final activity, be sure to prioritize—with the group—the most important questions.

  • The final activity in facilitating the problem-solving is to have them identify all the potential stakeholders. This last piece allows them to see the big picture, not just try to solve problems from a narrow point of view. It fosters empathy, and being able to view a problem from multiple perspectives. At the end of this activity, you have a list of potential stakeholders. Using the stakeholders as a guide, divide the class into stakeholder groups. It is from these perspectives that the class will explore the issues.
  • 4) ORGANIZING THE RESEARCH
    A tremendous amount of work was accomplished in the first few hours of professional development. Depending on the length of your problem, the third step of enhancing professional development could have taken 1-4 hours. Now, you will notice the benefits of PBL Approach among your adult learners. Not one of them—honest—is falling asleep. All are self-engaged, almost driven, to solve the difficult, no easy solutions problem that “sprang” from the mapping activity in step 1.
  • Whatever resources—books, newspapers, online—the point is that they have to find the most effective way of doing their research.
    At this time, you can introduce new techie tools, graphic organizers, information problem-solving strategies (like Big6). Whatever the process is, make sure that your adult learners keep track of what process they are going through. You’ll want to evaluate its effectiveness later.
  • 5) SHARING POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS
    Now that your adult learners have spent some time doing research, working through the information they needed to develop a possible solution, ask them to share what they have come up with. More importantly, ask them to first develop criteria for what would be an effective solution as a group. Use this criteria to assess the solutions that are brought forth, as well as what process they followed in information problem-solving.
  • This feedback is important for adult learners and allows them to fine-tune the solutions they develop. The wonder of the PBL approach as employed with adult learners is that they will no perceive your workshop as a long, boring exploration of a topic at the periphery of consciousness. They will not sit in your class problem-solving the real life challenges they face, or will encounter, back at their campus. Instead, you will have tapped into their creative energies, engaging them, making them feel as if they, not you, had planned out the experience.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

DiigoNotes - Using Google Docs in the Classroom by Tonia Johnson

• Office of Instructional Technology---San Antonio ISD - Using Google Docs in the Classroom by Tonia Johnson, Guest Columnist

  tags: no_tag

  • Adams City High School: E105, my desk is piled with newsletters, bulletins, magazines, books, articles, student gifts and few coffee mugs. What you will not find on my desk is piles of student work needing to be graded. This is not a testament to my organizational skills, nor does it reflect a teacher staying late into to the night to take care of grading. My student essays and papers are stored on Google Docs.
  • At the beginning of an assignment, I have students “share” their document with me. During the term of the assignment I can monitor and collaborate with them. My students have a rare ability to work amazingly hard at looking busy, they can seem to be working feverishly all week on an assignment, but on Friday have nothing to show for it! Using Google docs, I know exactly how they assignment is really coming and can give instant feedback.
  • Turning in papers through Google Docs is still a teacher to pupil model. However, if I have students share their documents with other students their writing becomes collaborative from the beginning. This becomes a less artificial feeling environment. As a learner, I frequently share my writing with colleagues and classmates during the writing process. Having students collaborate this way gives them a greater sense that their writing is for everyone, not just the teacher. They have a greater audience. I believe that this fact alone can give students a greater voice and create an environment where their best is all that is acceptable.
  • “The five, key 21st century skills,” says Brenda Musilli, president of the Intel Foundation, “are: problem solving, collaboration, communications, digital literacy and creative thinking.” (New York Times 9/27/2007).
  • Having students collaborate on their assignments sill does not delve deep enough into the opportunities that Google Docs offers along the lines of collaboration. As a high school teacher, I have my students “code” their reading assignments. I have them mark their text according to what kind of text it is and what we are looking for. Transferring this into digital literacy, I copy and paste an article into Google Docs. I then ask students to pick a color and highlight the article for things they find to be the most interesting, the most important or the something they need to remember. When they are finished we are left with a colorful article that has everyone’s ideas on it. As a class, we now have the opportunity for a discussion. Students can even go in and add comments next to the “coding” of other students. Activities like this not only get students into the text, but push them to use higher order thinking skills. Since their input will be seen by the whole class, and sometimes my other sections, they feel a sense of ownership.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

DiigoNotes - Using Google Docs in the Classroom by Tom Barrett

• Using Google Docs in the Classroom by Tom Barrett
  

  • Today we explored resting pulse rates and we used an online spreadsheet to share our results, hence the title of the post. (This work is similar to some online spreadsheet action we had last year with my Year 6 class) I decided to use a Google spreadsheet as I have been using the Google Docs application for a while - but you could have easily used EditGrid as an alternative.

    I set the spreadsheet up so that all of the children’s names from both classes were present in the first column. Then 10 other columns were labelled, “Resting Pulse1, Resting Pulse 2…” It was in these cells that the kids added their resting pulse after counting for 30 seconds and doubling.

    I then accessed the same spreadsheet through my Google login on all 8 laptops (per class) that I put around the room - so in effect I logged in 16 times (plus my PC and SMARTBoard, so 17) to the same document from different locations.

    We talked a little about how to find our pulse and then asked the children to record 10 readings of their resting rate into the spreadsheet.

  • It was great! With the live update feature we were able to see individual results popping up all over the place and even from next door in Rick’s class who were doing the same. Google Spreadsheets has an Auto Save option which makes life much easier and gives you the opportunity to see the live data. Not only did the hardware hold out fine, but accessing the spreadsheet was excellent - even with 17 simultaneous users on a single login. The children really enjoyed seeing each other’s work and it gave them a great overview of not only the class year group working together, but also to the sorts of data people were adding. With the IWB on I could see at a glance who and what was going on in different groups. Children from the other class were nipping across the corridor and questioning the validity of results from children in my class.

    Within the space of about 40 minutes, perhaps less, we collected approximately 600 individual results all in one file. No doubt they will be quicker next time. This method of data collection also allows us the ability to then manipulate the results afterwards, working out averages of the whole year group etc. I would highly recommend doing this if you have the reliable kit in your classroom, we have already said that it will be an excellent data entry method for our maths lessons on data handling.

  • The sharing functionality was proven in this activity and the next step for our year group is to share a similar data pooling task with other schools. With this success very much in my mind I woke on a recent Saturday morning to find an email from a teacher in a British school in Muscat, Oman. He had seen a past post on my blog about using EditGrid and sharing science investigation data. I emailed back and before long he had created a Google spreadsheet with my EditGrid work in it. I received an email from him to collaborate and before long I was sipping my second cup of coffee whilst chatting and live-editing a spreadsheet for our classes to work in!

    From email and eye rubbing to collaboration: less than 10 minutes. I have never met, spoken to or emailed this teacher before but here we were 2000 miles from each other editing a spreadsheet together.

  • Sharing and working collaboratively has never been so easy. Google spreadsheets has a discuss/chat window allowing for a simple dialogue, as you see above. This will be excellent for children to use to communicate as they work. Along with a third school in Scotland we will be collaborating on a simple exercise / pulse rate investigation using the spreadsheet. I am in no doubt the children will be able to better understand the importance of multiple sets of data for accuracy when we share our work and hopefully continue to question what they see.

    The walls of the classroom tumble much easier these days.

  • Tom Barrett
    http://tbarrett.edublogs.org
    
    ICT Subject Leader
    Assistant Headteacher
    Priestsic Primary and Nursery School

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

DiigoNotes - Google Docs in Schools by Art Gelwicks

• Office of Instructional Technology---San Antonio ISD - Google Docs in Schools by Art Gelwicks, Guest Columnist

  • At the beginning of this school year we began a bold new experiment. Our goal - to implement a collaborative method of document development and processing for the staff of our school with the eventual release to the students of the same technology. The tool that was chosen: Google Docs. Whoa, hang on a second...Google Docs? Why not go with some big, powerful package that could be completely manipulated, controlled, and overseen by the administrative powers that be? The choice was Google Docs because it's not some big, powerful package that can be completely manipulated, controlled, and overseen by the administrative powers that be. We signed up for Google Apps for Domains and switched our email over to the Gmail platform for all the staff members. Since email is such a "killer app" it made it easy to bring the added functionality of Google Docs along for the ride. Once users started churning email, we were able to get them to start writing and sharing documents using the word processing and begin to use the presentations (as soon as they came available) with a minimum of muss and fuss.
  • The ability to work on a document, save and close it, and know you will be able to get to it from any other Internet connected computer is liberating. No longer is there a fear of floppy failure or virus spread, USB drive disappearance, or accidental deletion due to a mistaken mouse click. The word processor is basic to be sure but it handles 80% of the things that most users need when writing documents.
  • The ability to collaborate within documents is the shining star of this suite. It's best explained by example: A teacher writes up an assignment and shares the assignment document with their students via an email link. Students write their responses and rather than emailing them back to the teacher, adds the teacher as a collaborator to the document. The teacher can now sign in, review the document, and comment directly on the paper in an interactive mode. This back and forth can continue to refine and improve the result until it's ready for final submission. Make a mistake? Use the Revisions function to back up to a prior version. Need peer review? Add other collaborators. Want to create a pretty, paper version? Export your document to [insert your favorite word processor here].

  • About the Author

    Art Gelwicks is the Director of Techology for Coventry Christian Schools in Pottstown, PA and a long time technologist. Specializing in educational technology on the web and in the classroom his primary goal is using the Internet to expand and improve the interactions between students, teachers, staff, and families in the educational journey

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

DiigoNotes - Why The Pursuit Of Innovation Usually Fails - Forbes.com

• Why The Pursuit Of Innovation Usually Fails - Forbes.com

  • Why The Pursuit Of Innovation Usually Fails
  • few businesses are any good at innovation. For all their brainstorming exercises and "open innovation" programs, they mostly just come up with reformulations of existing products, new pricing plans and basic updates--the same old things just a little cheaper, faster or better.
  • When companies launch innovation programs, management invariably wants to make sure they are carried out "effectively" and "efficiently."
  • The core business isn't usually doing so well, but it gets first call on resources because management feels it needs to defend what already exists. In tough times that leaves little if any investment money for innovation. Any money that can be spared must get a return within a year or two. No manager wants to put his bonus at risk by investing in something that could hurt profit performance.
  • Most managers don't feel effective unless they obey the old 80-20 rule, which states that in almost any activity 80% of the results come from 20% of the causes. That is, they feel compelled to kill four out of five ideas. Do that through three layers of evaluation and you've eliminated 99 out of 100 ideas. Now, that is efficient. Of course, it also means the survivor is highly unlikely to offer much of anything in the way of real innovation.
  • Even the famous Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, wants to rein in innovation. He says the most important thing for management to do is make sure innovation management is efficient. Be sure only the right things get funded, and there's a robust system for killing funding quickly when projects don't achieve immediate results.
  • Many failed companies have constantly sought excellence. Their managers weren't incompetent or lazy, yet their approach failed them. More of the same couldn't help.
  • Defending and extending your past can't be good enough when market shifts mean you have to do new and different things.
  • We all know we need to innovate. But we just can't help ourselves. Everything we've been trained to do as business leaders is about staying on course--even when headed straight for disaster. Rather than do something different, we batten down the hatches and sail into calamity like Captain Ahab.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Support is Welcome, Even when mis-spelled

I got a kick out of this supportive button posted on a colleague's web site endorsing me for TCEA Area 20 Director. You know, I welcome that vote even though the button mis-spells my last name!!
;->

Nevertheless, I do encourage you to vote for TCEA Area 20 Director, no matter whom you choose! The election will close at midnight on Nov. 13....

Here's the updated button, thanks again for the support!

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Get Your GoogleDocs in a Zip File

In dealing with a recent ban on the use of GoogleDocs--which means backing everything up, saving it locally, and then deleting it from GoogleDocs--I sent out a tweet asking how to get it done...last time I asked, there was no set process.

Alec Couros suggested one approach using a script (DownloadThemAll), but another presented itself via Google and through two tweets (HenryThiele and @starryhope01):

• Document export is now built into Google Docs. From docs inbox Select all - More Actions - Export.

Sure enough, the approach worked great! Thanks to Henry and StarryHope01 !

• Download All Your Documents from Google Docs as a Zip File

  • Download Google Documents for Offline Use
  • While there are third-party tools that let you easily download Google Documents to the local drive in one go, the good news is that the batch export feature is now available in Google Docs by default so you don’t have to hunt for external tools to help you do so.

  • Select Google Documents for Exporting

    

    Just open your Google Docs account and select the documents that you want download locally.

    Then use the Export option from “More Actions” and within minutes, all your Google documents will be available on the desktop as one large zip file. You may even convert Office files to PDF or HTML format before exporting them out of Google Docs.

    Choose the Export Format – PDF, Word, etc.

    

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

K-12 Online Conference

The K-12 Online Conference invites participation from educators around the world interested in innovative ways Web 2.0 tools and technologies can be used to improve learning. This FREE conference is run by volunteers and open to everyone. The 2009 conference theme is “Bridging the Divide.”

This year’s conference begins with a pre-conference keynote by classroom teacher and international educator Kim Cofino the week of November 30, 2009. The following two weeks, December 7-11 and December 14-17, over fifty presentations will be posted online to our conference blog and our conference Ning for participants to view, download, and discuss. Live

Events in the form of three “Fireside Chats” are scheduled on our conference events page, and live events will continue in 2010 through twice-monthly “K-12 Online Echo” webcasts on EdTechTalk. Everyone is encouraged to participate in both live events during and after the conference as well as asynchronous conversations.

Over 122 presentations from 2008, 2007, and 2006 are available, along with archived live events.

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Everything posted on Miguel Guhlin's blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. Read Full Disclosure

TCEA 20 Robotics Competition

Another announcement regarding TCEA Area 20 events from Jennifer Faulkner, Area 20 Director:

Update on Robotics Training for TCEA:

Saturday, December 12, 2009

New Braunfels High School

Deadline to register: November 24, 2009

To register and review the rules, please go to:

http://www.tcea.org/StudentContests/Robotics/Pages/default.aspx

Schedule for Saturday:
8am-9am All teams register (grades 4-8 only)
9am-10:30am Arena competition (grades 4-8)
9am-10:30am Inventions competition (grades 4-8)
11am Awards Ceremony for Grades 4-8

11:30-noon Lunch for sponsors, judges, teachers
(Food will be sold by NBHS Student Council)

noon-1pm Registration for team in grades 9-12
1pm-2:30pm Arena competition (grades 9-12)
1pm-2:30pm Inventions competition (grades 9-12)
3pm Awards Ceremony for grades 9-12

It's going to be a great day!

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TCEA Area 20 - Day of Discovery

Folks, check out this announcement from Jennifer Faulkner, TCEA Area 20 Director, regarding the Day of Discovery on December 5:

Hey, San Antonio Educators!

TCEA, KLRN, and Discovery Education are happy to offer a FREE Day of Discovery for all educators in the San Antonio area! (see attachment)

Date: Saturday, December 5, 2009 (8:30am-3:30pm)

Location: Woodridge Elementary, Alamo Heights ISD, 100 Woodridge, San Antonio, Texas 78209

Cost: FREE!! And it includes lunch!!

From Malinda McCormick at KLRN:

Exciting news! We are hosting our annual KLRN Connect PD event and this year we are featuring the �San Antonio Day of Discovery�. Never before has the DoD made it�s way to San Antonio and we are really happy to bring this opportunity to you! This is a great day for your classroom teachers to get really engaged with DE streaming and go away ALL FIRED UP to do MORE with the service at your schools!

To register: https://discoveryed.wufoo.com/forms/san-antonio-day-of-discovery/

See you there!

Jennifer Faulkner
Area 20 Director
TCEA (Texas Computer Educators' Assn)

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Everything posted on Miguel Guhlin's blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. Read Full Disclosure

Poor Ignaz and Edublogger Buddies

Seth Godin hits us all between the eyes with some nifty examples and a question:

It took Ignaz Semmelweis more than twenty years (he died before it happened, actually) to persuade doctors that washing their hands could save the lives of mothers giving birth. He had the data, he had the proof, but that wasn't enough to change minds.

Data mining and the proximity of the internet to most of what we do is changing the proximity of proof to decision. Now, you don't need to do a lot of research, the data is just a click away.

What are you going to do when your hunches don't match the data that's now pouring in?

Not surprisingly (I don't follow medical history anymore since I decided I wasn't going to be the next Arrowsmith), I didn't know about poor Ignaz. But his story makes me want to ask, where's the data for the hunches edubloggers have in abundance?

If I wanted to play Seth's game here, I'd have to do several things:

1. Identify the hunches people have
2. Find data on the web that don't match those hunches or oppose it.

Part of the ill-structured problem-solving process is to identify the hunches we have. But to get those hunches, we have to have an ill-structured problem, identify stakeholders and then develop a decision matrix to consider all the angles and possible solutions.

These scenarios are present in abundance, right? I mean, consider Dangerously Irrelevant's Dr. Scott McLeod. He has a few of those every other post. Other edubloggers have them too. Consider Will Richardson's problem as outlined in one of his latest posts. He's run into a problem--it's a repeat all of us who "do" staff development have encountered--that I remember when *I* first ran into it over 10 years ago. The issue? When technology is a part of the solution--whatever that solution is for--it becomes THE definitive thing people refer to. It's frustrating. You want people to use the technology to accomplish the solution but people get bogged down in the technology.

Will highlights this in the following:

Unfortunately, most of what I got back (on the first go round at least; I asked them to do it again) was about how to use the tools in the classroom, and very little about what they wanted to learn about learining around their own passions with others who share them.

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The Home Run

Moodle vs Elgg - Teacher vs Learner-Centered

Source: http://21stcenturylearning.wikispaces.com/file/view/change.jpg/35223089

Mark at Learning Conversations shares the following chart comparing Moodle and Elgg. After reading it, I'm not entirely sure of the features of either, only that I must confess to a certain disappointment that I have yet to install Elgg in our learning environment. The key difference between the two tools is put succinctly in this way:

Jane is a very effective advocate of Elgg, the open source social networking and social publishing platform. She calls it [Elgg] a social-learning platform, and uses it as the base from which a whole load of activities are started, and to introduce the concepts involved in social learning.

The distinction appears to be made that Moodle is teacher-centered platform for design for "formal, directed learning" while Elgg provides "a space to explore informal, learner-led activities." This is a powerful distinction to make and might mean for those who think Moodle is too...teacher-oriented that Elgg is an acceptable, walled garden solution (that is, one you can install on school district servers and therefore enjoy "complete" control over rather than one installed, as Dan Rezac suggests, on some third party host or in the cloud, which for most districts I know has yet to become popular or acceptable or come into vogue).

I suppose that the one word that is true of Elgg in both comparisons Mark makes is that it's confusing to the learner. Why?

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