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.

---

Subscribe to Around the Corner-MGuhlin.org

---

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

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!

---

Subscribe to Around the Corner-MGuhlin.org

---

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