PBL in Online Course

Playing around with a PBL lesson in an online course...this is rough, rough, rough.

Geology 112.49 (2C), (8B,C)

Stratigraphy

(2) Scientific processes. The student uses scientific methods during field and laboratory investigations. The student is expected to: (C) organize, analyze, evaluate, make inferences, and predict trends from data

(8) Science concepts. The student knows the processes and end products of weathering. The student is expected to: (B) identify geologic formations that result from differing weathering processes; and (C) illustrate the role of weathering in soil formation.

Making the Lesson Collaborative, High-Level and Student-Centered
To achieve the 3 objectives of collaborative, high-level and student-centered lessons, we would take the following steps:

1. As teachers and online learning facilitators, identify a way to accomplish the following:
• Engage students as stakeholders in a problem situation
• Organize curriculum around a holistic problem, enabling student learning in relevant and connected ways.
  
• Use a problem map to outline areas of exploration for the unit of study.
  
• Create a virtual learning environment in which teachers and students can coach student thinking and guide inquiry, facilitating deeper levels of understanding.
  
2. To engage students as stakeholders in a problem situation, these steps could be followed:
• Meet the Problem - Choose a relevant problem of worth to stratigraphy
• Help Students Identify their Hunches, What They Know for a Fact, and What They Need to Know to Help Solve the Problem.
  
• Identify Key Stakeholder Roles
  

MEET THE PROBLEM

To introduce students to the problem, considering using a narrative like the one below that introduces "the problem" to students:

"Quick, Jennie-girl," cried Grandma, "cover the beds!" The clouds appeared on the horizons with a thunderous roar. The turbulent dust clouds came in from the North and dumped a fine silt over the land. Mom, Dad, Grandma, and I stayed inside the house. Sheriff Marcus would always come by afterwards--"How you farmers doing?"--to check on us after a dust storm. Each of us wore a handkerchief over our nose and mouth. When Pa went outside, he wore googles over his eyes because the wind was so hard. My job was to plug up all the holes, ripping up cloth and sticking them into cracks in the walls, doors and windows. It didn't make much of a difference, though. The silt, like Ma's talcum powder, found its way into everything. During a storm, Ma waved wet gunny sack through the air and tied damp sheets over our beds so the dust wouldn't settle into our sleeping sheets. Pa's face was gray; the wheat crop was dead. "Oh," I cried, "how can we stop this from happening?"

HUNCHES, WHAT WE KNOW, WHAT WE NEED TO KNOW
Ask the following questions and have students work to identify their responses to the following:

1. What hunches, or guesses, can we make about the problems, the people in the problem?
2. What do we know for certain about the problem? Be sure to explain to students that these are certainly in the text kinds of answers rather than extrapolations based on what they have read.
3. What do we need to know in order to help Jennie?

ONLINE ACTIVITY - To get this activity going, use a wiki page for each area with the titles above. Group students and encourage them to fill in this information.

STAKEHOLDER ROLES

Now that we know what we need to know, what stakeholders can we identify in the problem? Some sample stakeholder roles for this problem include the following:

1. Farmers
2. Local authorities, like police
3. Crop buyers
4. The Government
5. Children/Spouses of Farmers
6. Local Business people
   

ONLINE ACTIVITY - Have students construct a Glossary in Moodle where they contribute stakeholders who are represented in the problem, and/or need to be consulted. Students can use asynchronous discussion forum to discuss what stakeholder roles are needed, and rate the forum posts with stakeholder roles so that the top 5 can be identified.

PROBLEM-SOLVING

Now that students have identified stakeholder roles, group students into the different stakeholder roles and ask them to come up with solutions from that perspective. Their solutions should follow a decision-making matrix, which can be developed in a wiki, and should address these key areas:

1. Strategy
2. Pros
3. Cons
4. Consequences

In the wiki, this would look like this:

Stakeholder	Strategy	Pros	Cons	Consequences
Farmers perspective	Employ new farming methods and techniques.	Farmers can prevent dust bowl scenario Farmers become less dependent on government support	Costs money to learn techniques Farmers may not have time to learn new techniques	Change people's minds and behavior Potentially eliminate dust bowl problem

Note: This lesson could be developed a lot more, but for now, it addresses weathering and erosion.

References
Meet the Problem adapted from the paragraph below from the 1930' Dust Bowl web page:
The clouds appeared on the horizons with a thunderous roar. Turbulent dust clouds rolled in generally from the North and dumped a fine silt over the land. Men, women and children stayed in their houses and tied handkerchiefs over their noses and mouths. When they dared to leave, they added goggles to protect their eyes. Houses were shut tight, cloth was wedged in the cracks of the doors and windows but still the fine silt forced its way into houses, schools and businesses. During the storms, the air indoors was "swept" with wet gunny sacks. Sponges were used as makeshift "dust masks" and damp sheets were tied over the beds.

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MyNotes - The Knowledge Building Paradigm: A Model of Learning for Net Generation Students

• 
  
  Innovate: The Knowledge Building Paradigm: A Model of Learning for Net Generation Students
  • 
    
    The Knowledge Building Paradigm:

    A Model of Learning for Net Generation Students

    Donald Philip
  • 
    
    Recently, I met some middle school students who carry laptops in their backpacks. One boy told me how technology should not be a machine you go to, but a machine that goes with you. He said, somewhat impatiently, "It's part of my brain. Why would I want to leave it behind in a computer lab?" (xxii)
  • 
    
    Computers and the attendant technology can no longer be considered desirable adjuncts to education. Instead, they have to be regarded as essential—as thinking prosthetics (Johnson 2001) or mind tools (Jonassen 1996). But, like any other tool, thinking prosthetics must be used properly to be effective.
  • 
    
    Knowledge Building paradigm, a learning model particularly suited for a social environment in which cognitive prosthetics have become indispensable, as well as for the professional settings these students can expect to confront in their future careers.
  • 
    
    The Net Generation (N-Gen) is defined as the population of about 90 million young people who have grown up or are growing up in constant contact with digital media (Tapscott 1998)
  • 
    
    Tapscott has identified eight shifts caused by interactivity learning:
    • from linear to hypermedia learning,
    • from instruction to construction and discovery,
    • from teacher-centered to learner-centered education,
    • from absorbing material to learning how to navigate and how to learn,
    • from schooling to lifelong learning,
    • from one-size-fits-all to customized learning,
    • from learning as torture to learning as fun, and
    • from the teacher as transmitter to the teacher as facilitator. (142)
  • 
    
    the Knowledge Building paradigm promulgated by Scardamalia and Bereiter (2003). This paradigm, which is based on the manner in which research communities work, takes a sociocultural perspective on human-computer interactions, seeks to virtualize the process of education in keeping with new trends in the technological circulation of knowledge, and privileges a less hierarchical model of learning based on flexible organizations of small teams.
  • 
    
    Our intelligence is distributed over the tools we use (diSessa 2000; Hutchins 1995).
  • 
    
    "It is a truism that we cannot know what the task is until we know what the tools are" (114). Computers are a particular sort of tool known as cognitive prosthetics; they augment human intelligence, freeing humans to do what humans do well.
  • 
    
    tools often become invisible as we come to accept that they are part of our normal environment. As a result, we tend to see any intelligence in them as part of the person, not the object (Pea 1993). However, human cognition is mediated by the symbolic forms and tools we use, and the computer, a kind of omnitool, is rapidly becoming our principle cognitive mediation tool. The Net Generation is growing up in a tool-rich environment and this needs to be taken into account in designing pedagogical systems.
  • 
    
    virtualization, a process in which "[an] event is detached from a specific time and place, becomes public, undergoes heterogenesis" (74). He outlines five characteristics of virtualization:
  • 
    
    • deterritorialization (the prying loose of an object or event from a physical place and moving it to a non-territorial space, essentially to cyberspace);
    • detachment (the prying loose of objects and events from their original context);
    • sharing (the distribution of conceptual artifacts among communities interested in them);
    • elevation to a problematic (the arguments, or ideas, and the problems that arise from the consideration of the logical relations among them); and
    • heterogenesis (the change that occurs as one shifts from traditional media to digital media, and the personal changes that occur to individuals as their thinking is increasingly shaped by digital media). (74-75).
  • 
    
    many businesses are now finding that the pace of change demanded by the global economy and facilitated by various technologies is requiring them to rethink how they are organized. Many are restructuring themselves as learning organizations—organizations in which new learning and innovation are the engines that drive the company. These companies have flattened layers of management and tend to work in the manner suggested by Kelly (1994), Johnson (2001), and Gloor (2006): bottom-up, swarm-like organizations with fewer hierarchical barriers between ideas and decisions.
  • 
    
    In such organizations, goals are fluid, driven by new learning among the organization's members; goals are emergent properties of the system (Holland 1998), guided by general principles, and as such are unpredictable. In such companies, teams form around an interest in ideas for new products and services.
  • 
    
    Fisher and Fisher (1998) note, "These teams are difficult to describe to outsiders because their membership shifts from time to time, forming and reforming like rapidly splitting amoebas" (106). In this environment, Bennet (2003) notes the need for tools that support collaborative work to virtualize the knowledge of the team, distributing it onto the artifact and thus making it available to all team members.
  • 
    
    "Innovation tends to bubble up from these bright young minds . . . . Every employee is meant to divide his or her time in three parts: 70% devoted to Google's core businesses, search and advertising; 20% on pursuits related to the core; and 10% on far-out ideas" (28). This means that approximately 30% of an employee's time will be spent on pursuing new learning and developing innovative ideas.
  • 
    
    The educational system will have to produce individuals who can work in such organizations and who understand the processes of innovation and creativity.
  • 
    
    N-Gen students already regard computers as part of their brain; they are accustomed to distributing their knowledge across its various functions and collaborating virtually via e-mail, instant messaging, and any other available tool.
  • 
    
    the best way to develop these skills is to create a learning community in which students can practice the essential skills required by learning organizations.
  • 
    
    knowledge-building theory, a pedagogical approach in which students work in a computer-mediated environment in the manner of a research community
  • 
    
    As Bereiter (2004) notes,
    

    Sustained innovation, progressive research, and idea-centered education are all basically the same knowledge building process, carried out in different contexts. Thus the skills and habits of mind acquired through classroom knowledge building are essentially the same skills and habits of mind that figure in workplace contexts of creative knowledge work. (3)

  • 
    
    the Knowledge Forum—is designed to make advanced knowledge processes accessible to all participants, including children; to foster the creation and continual improvement of public artifacts or community knowledge; and to provide a community space for carrying out this knowledge building work collaboratively
  • 
    
    n a knowledge-building classroom, learning is a by-product of the creation of new knowledge, but the focus of classroom work is the continual improvement of ideas.
  • 
    
    The focus here is to make student ideas, rather than predetermined activities or units of knowledge, the center of the classroom work.
  • 
    
    The next step is to get the students to generate ideas about the topic and write notes about their ideas in the Knowledge Forum (KF) database, an online environment with metacognitive enhancements to support the growth of the knowledge-building process. In generating these ideas, the students form work groups around similar interests and topics they wish to explore. These groups are self-organized and dynamic; the teacher does not select the members, and members can join or leave as they choose. Idea generation can take place during these group sessions, during which all students are given the chance to express their ideas, or in individual notes posted directly to the KF database.
  • 
    
    While in a typical classroom setting ideas or comments generated in discussion are usually lost, the KF database preserves these ephemeral resources so that students can return to them for comment and reflection. Students are then encouraged to read the notes of other students and soon find that there are differing schools of opinion about the problem. The teacher's job is to ensure that students remain on task and work towards the solution of the problem under study by reading each other's notes and contributing new information or theories to the database.
  • 
    
    The students, rather than the teacher, chose the civilizations to be studied and, facilitated by the online environment, the students organized themselves into groups around the civilizations that interested them. The inquiry ranged from commonly studied civilizations such as Rome and Egypt to the Vikings and even to the skeletal 'hobbit-like' hominids discovered on Flores island. In each case, students explored whether these societies were civilizations and why. Students classified their contributions to the database using built-in metacognitive scaffolds (cognitive labels) such as "new information," "my theory," "this theory cannot explain," "I need to understand," and "putting our ideas together," and they made extensive use of both the reading and responding functions.
  • 
    
    Students are encouraged to research their ideas by accessing a variety of authoritative sources, or by designing experiments, or by any other means that is practical and safe. They bring the fruits of their research back to the class in the form of more notes in the KF database, either supporting or invalidating their positions. Typically, one inquiry runs into another in a flow dictated by the output of the previous research, not by direction from the teacher. This process continues until the topic has been exhausted or time for study of that unit runs out. During the process, the students often far exceed curriculum expectations and develop a deep understanding of the topic under study.
  • 
    
    Using social network analysis, Philip (2005) found flexible work groups spontaneously forming and breaking up in the live-class setting; in an analysis of note-reading patterns in the database,
  • 
    
    Philip (2005) also found a high density of note reading (92%)—a strong indicator of teamwork in the class, and generally consistent with the extensive patterns of collaborative communication otherwise observed among students
  • 
    
    Further observation of these sessions yielded additional information regarding the relative degree of focus and digression on the part of students as well as the need for resilient moderation skills on the part of teachers; moreover, the communal process of note reading among students suggested that actual levels of database access may be substantially higher than the levels recorded by the system itself
  • 
    
    While the high levels of free exploration afforded by this pedagogy may require a greater degree of monitoring and discretion on behalf of teachers, the approach allows students to adopt strategies of small-team collaboration that will suit them well in their future professional careers.
  • 
    
    whatever online environment is used, "attention needs to be paid to developing a sense of community in the group of participants in order for the learning process to be successful" (20). In other words, a knowledge-building community must be allowed to develop in order for the learning to succeed
  • 
    
    the Knowledge Building approach, through its idea-centric focus, shifts the locus of classroom control from the teacher to the students, with the teacher acting as a facilitator. In this shift, the students become the directors of their own learning, catalyzing the transformation from one-size-fits-all to individualized learning; from instruction to building new knowledge; from learning as drudgery to learning as fun; and towards learning how to learn in a non-linear way geared to produce the innovative ideas our society will need in order to solve the problems of the future (Homer-Dixon 2001).
  • 
    
    Online learning environments such as Knowledge Forum, which helps students create new knowledge and new understanding in a collaborative manner and through diverse media, can prepare them to work in the distributed, virtual workplaces of the future.
  • 
    
    Copyright and Citation Information for this Article

    This article may be reproduced and distributed for educational purposes if the following attribution is included in the document:
    

    Note: This article was originally published in Innovate (http://www.innovateonline.info/) as: Philip, D. 2007. The Knowledge Building paradigm: A model of learning for Net Generation students. Innovate 3 (5). http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=368 (accessed September 30, 2009). The article is reprinted here with permission of the publisher, The Fischler School of Education and Human Services at Nova Southeastern University.

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Running for Office - TCEA Area 20 Director

As I shared a short time ago, I've decided to pursue the TCEA Area 20 Director position. Why? The reason is simple--TCEA as an organization needs to change. A year ago, I articulated a vision for TCEA in this blog entry. I also acknowledged how far TEC-SIG had come making change, change that I had worked towards in the face of stiff opposition from incumbent Board members and TEC-SIG. Here is an excerpt of what I wrote that symbolizes the need for change:

Colleagues, I have sometimes despaired that our state organizations and leadership were mired in the past. But time and time again, those fears have proved groundless. Change is slow and woe to the person who tries to speed the process. . .yet as educational technologists, we ARE change agents.

With each connection, each small step forward we come closer to achieving community rather simply being a collection of individuals paying dues to a state organization. We are each called to be more than that.

And, have no doubt, TCEA has dragged its feet in making change. While it is reforming its approach in light of the consistent efforts of its membership, that change must continue and be reflected in the decisions of its Board members.

At that time, I was advocating for a significant change in the executive leadership...and TCEA hired fellow "Making IT Happen" award recipient, Lori Gracey...definitely a step in the right direction as we see new initiatives and professional development (be sure to read the full disclosure at the end of this post).

Should I be elected to the TCEA Area 20 Director position, here are some of the goals I'll be working towards and advocating for:

1. Increased presence in online learning area. As an online learning advocate, I've had the opportunity to influence PBS TeacherLine of Texas in the content they can make available to public schools, how they might make it available, and what organization they might partner with to make it happen (e.g. TCEA has always been my first choice). TCEA needs to make this a priority service for Texas schools.
   Action Item: Encourage partnerships with online learning organizations like Texas Virtual School Network (TxVSN), PBS TeacherLine of Texas and PBS TeacherLine National, as well as other providers of online professional learning, and develop a clear plan for moving Texas forward.
   
2. Collaborate to develop strategic plans and policies of the Board and be transparent about the success AND failure. At a time when communication tools are readily available--blogs and podcasts--there's no reason why each Board member couldn't do MORE than engage in one-way communication. That's why I pledge to blog about my experiences as a Board member so long as they are not confidential human resource issues. I will REFUSE to sign anything that bars that transparency and will be sure to share that with my constituents.
   
   Action Item: I will also advocate that at the end of each Board meeting, clearly identify what strategies will be used to achieve Board goals, and share them with the membership via a summative blog entry, reporting on progress--or lack of it--periodically, transparently and openly as possible.
3. Encourages change relevant to the organization and the stakeholders. Although we've all seen that blogs, wikis, podcasting, Read/Write web (Web 2.0) tools are prevalent, we need to also consider Web 3.0, immersive technologies (e.g. Second Life) and consider how these will play into K-16 education...then we need to take the lead in facilitating schools in adopting and accepting these. For too long, educators have had to fight on their own to bring technologies into the mainstream; and TCEA has played the role of supporting what is accepted. By embracing organizational change, by being committed to our children by envisioning a tomorrow different from yesterday, TCEA's leadership can completely change the conversation in Texas.
   
   Action Item: Encourage review what the Organization is doing and works to streamline management and makes recommendations for improvement--such as the adoption of free, open source software solutions like Moodle and other RSS friendly tools--to the Board.
4. Enhance the Interfaces between organization and community. Again, TCEA has had a failing grade when it came to communication and long-term political advocacy. Though folks like Jennifer Bergland have done a tremendous job in advocating for political change, continuous organizational support involving multiple individuals is needed. Advocacy for Technology-using teachers in every core content area, administrators in offices can't be a "volunteer" effort...we need a lobbyist organization.
   
   This is for the Board to take action and make itself more transparent in its decision-making and policy formation rather than waiting until everything is "perfect" before deploying it. Unrealistic? No...21st Century? Yes.
   
   Action Item: Establish a wiki--with trusted content moderators--that enables the Community to contribute their knowledge and skills around core mission of TCEA, a mission founded on the needs of stakeholders and the vision of the leadership. (Note: This was a suggestion one of our legislators made previously).
   
   
5. Manages financial and physical resources. One of my favorite examples of problems TCEA encountered was when they moved from the old building to the new one, nearly going into serious debt and having to deal with building contractor problems that left the new site (which is still beautiful) incomplete. It's critical that this kind of work be done.
   Action Item: Re-examine what is being done to ensure it's aligned to achieving Board vision and mission.

Finally, whether I win or lose to my highly esteemed colleagues--incumbent Jennifer Faulkner (Alamo Heights ISD Director of Technology) and Joel Adkins (Kerrville ISD's CTO)--I do hope that all TCEA members advocate for these specific changes in their organization. and not be content to leave this issue alone...advocate for change at the campus, district, area and state level.

It's important to our survival as educators who value the teaching, learning and leading that can happen with technology that change be achieved and that reciprocal dialogue be in place that seeks to change how things work.

Full Disclosure: Please note that TCEA has hired me to deliver two workshops, one at TCEA Area 9 Conference this Fall 2009 and another in late Spring 2010. I am grateful for the opportunity to serve.

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MyNotes - Schools Tweet a Double-Standard

Source: Mobile Communications Video via Personalizing Learning with the iPod Touch
Is it right for school districts to establish a Twitter/Facebook "digital presence" for the community but then block access for teachers and administrators on campuses? Is this a social media double-standard? And, isn't this action encouraging educators to use their own mobile devices--and networks--to bypass the school district's network?

"We thought we should be part of the conversation as opposed to just looking in." This quote appears in the news article below...it makes me wonder, since teachers and staff are blocked from using social media, are they NOT supposed to be a part of the conversation?

• 
  
  Schools use Facebook, Twitter to get out their message | Oregon Education - OregonLive.com
  • 
    
    Schools use Facebook, Twitter to get out their message
  • 
    
    Community forums and newsletters sent home in backpacks are so old school.
  • 
    
    Social networking isn't just for kids, trendy parents or curious grandparents anymore. Schools are getting into the act.
  • 
    
    In the Portland metro area, at least eight districts made the leap this fall, signing up for Twitter or Facebook.
  • 
    
    At the same time, the new domain comes with a new set of questions about how to maintain the district-sponsored sites, what kind of content is appropriate and who should have access to the sites during the workday.
  • 
    
    "We're not talking about a real viable communication tool yet," Shelby said. "As more people sign on and more people are viewing and interacting, there will be a variety of uses we can find for it."
    
    Salem-Keizer joined Facebook more than six months ago, using the site to help tell people about tough budget choices. The district was inspired to join Facebook by a group of community members who supported the district's bond measure last fall using its own Facebook page, said Simona Boucek, a special projects facilitator with the district.
  • 
    
    "If it's constructive criticism, we answer it," she said. "If it's offensive or derogatory, then we take it down and give them an opportunity to rewrite. People might have a bad opinion of us and that's OK."
  • 
    
    Students and staff in Portland Public Schools are blocked from accessing Facebook in schools and at the district office. The district is maintaining its ban on the social networking site to cut down on distractions, but the information technology department has allowed access for the people who will be adding new content.
    
    Karen Kleinz, associate director of the National School Public Relations Association, said most school districts will have to create clearer policies about what's OK and what isn't.
  • 
    
    "One size doesn't fit all anymore," said Forest Grove communications director Connie Potter said. "In the old days, you could put something in the newspaper, send out a newsletter and hit most of your constituents. That's not the case anymore."

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Google Apps Education Edition at Maine Township High School District

Thanks to Henry Thiele for organizing this event...

Time: October 6, 2009 from 3pm to 4pm

Link to Webinar (available on day of)

Event Description:
Maine 207 has been steadily adopting more of Google's Apps over the past 2 years. These free resources have been quickly accepted by our students and staff. Sign up for our webinar next week and find out why and how we chose to partner with Google with their Apps solution for student Email and Documents. We will also share where we think we are headed with the Apps Suite from here.

Joining us will be representatives from Google and SADA Systems (the company we have hired to automate our account maintenance).

Please sign up and attend if you are able.

Google Apps Education Edition at Maine Township High School District
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
11:00 a.m. PDT (GMT -07:00, San Francisco)

See more details and RSVP on School CTO/CIO/Directors:

http://schoolcto.ning.com/events/event/show?id=2615713%3AEvent%3A2228&xgi=2OFgSjWScis7fv

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Biography and Ethnicity

Just received this note and thought it worth sharing for researchers....

Dear All,

I would like to inform you that FQS 10(3) -- "Biography and Ethnicity" (http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/issue/view/32), edited by Michaela Koettig, Julia Chaitin, J.P. Linstroth & Gabriele Rosenthal -- is available online (see http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/issue/archive for former issues). In addition to articles relating to "Biography and Ethnicity", FQS 10(3) provides a number of selected single contributions (on [auto-] ethnography, grounded theory methodology, discourse analysis, and many others), two contributions, belonging to the FQS Debate "Ethnography of the Career Politics," as well as one, belonging to the FQS Debate on "Social Constructionism," and various articles within FQS Reviews.

A) FQS 10(3)
B) Articles from Former FQS Issues
C) Conferences and Workshops
D) Links
E) Open Access News

Enjoy reading!
Katja Mruck

Ps: FQS is an open-access journal, so all articles are available free of charge (see http://open-access.net/de_en/homepage/ for additional information about open access). This newsletter is sent to 11,464 registered readers; registered readers can comment on each article online.

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MyNotes - Technology Night - EDL 628: Educational Law and Ethics

I was engaged by this wiki by the story on globalization. In fact, I would have thrown out everything prior to the first paragraph appearing below. What other stories are out there about how globalization has changed your life? And, what do you intend to do about that?

As an educator, I see only one possible response in the face of everything--innovate, create. It is the only sane response but it can't be done alone, although alone is where you feel before you start innovating, before you give yourself permission to create.

Consider this quote....

If courage you lack, I hereby give you creative license to speak your own truth; to tell your story, as my fourth grade teacher used to say, “in your own words.” I give you permission to create indiscriminately, just as you wish — wildly, freely, and without asking permission from anyone. Tell your tale, paint your masterpiece; sing your song. Tango with the Muses. I send you inspiration, strength, creative energy, and my wildest hopes and dreams.
Source: Permission to be creative

Are you ready?

• 
  
  Technology Night - EDL 628: Educational Law and Ethics
  • 
    
    The day I understood Globalization was a fall day in 2002. I was just starting law school and my wife and I had bought a new home. That night I had planned on buying $500 worth of lumber to build a patio in our backyard when my wife called on the phone, crying; she had lost her accounting job in Saint Louis. She had lost it to an accountant in ... India. The accounting firms in the U.S. have become so good at outsourcing that now they are advising others how to do the same. Needless to say, the patio was never built. Something that would have been unthinkable to my parent's generation just happened to me and my family. Globalization is not something distant or foreign ... its personal, its real.
  • 
    
    the pace of innovation in non-tangible hardware areas is perhaps even more dramatic. The following video is a great explanation of how innovation operates in today's world. We invent something, and then we exponentially improve it.
  • 
    
    Our pace of human innovation is an exponential curve. With some certainty we know that we will create more, faster in the future, just as we have created more, faster than in the past.
  • 
    
    We have fundamentally changed the way information works to the point that has become what we are known for ... we are living in the "Information Age," pushed by "Information Technology" since the "Information Revolution."
  • 
    
    Do you know any schools these days that don't use e-mail? When is the last time you wrote out a paper long-hand? You literally cannot get a diploma or high school degree in this country anymore without understanding and heavily utilizing digital information. We are less than 30 years into the information revolution and already it has fundamentally altered society ... and there is no going back.
  • 
    
    once everyone started participating in the conversation and helping to do the work of organizing, finding, sharing, etc ... we started to work together, a lot. Instead of just one person writing, sharing, organizing ... we started to work in groups to do all that stuff. Its more fun, it gets more done, and it starts to create a sort of community and communities allow for reputations and respect and other things people naturally want. And, people were willing to work together to get these things. No one is paid to edit wikipedia, but a community exists nonetheless that regulates it. It is just not regulated with dollars. It is regulated with responsibility.
  • 
    
    We have seen massive changes to our society in the recent past. We have not seen the same kinds of changes at schools.
  • 
    
    we are facing more systemic challenges than just encouraging teachers to blog. If we are having to redesign information ... don't you think we might have to redesign schools? Information is our stock and trade, is it not? And if information is fundamentally different, maybe we need to be fundamentally different too.
    
    But here, I don't have the answers. There is no instructional video for remolding the education system. Everyone is so busy catching up that no one is thinking ahead ... yet, anyway.
    
    Your challenge as school leaders is to come up with answers for your school in the near term and help all of us solve the more systemic challenges in the long term.

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

Monkey See - Guard Those Little Eyes

Thanks to Joel at The Twain Blog for bringing this video to my attention. The video--hosted on YouTube--represents a particular point of view...that is, that the world is evil and we must guard what our children are exposed to. And, I don't disagree with that perspective entirely. Somehow, we must developmentally help our children understand what is out there, not that it's all evil but help ensure that their theory of understanding is strong enough to help them see what something is about, understand whether it's helpful to them or not, and then make other decisions.

As I watch this video again, I'm reminded of a conversation I had with a dear friend. She shared that she just didn't want to have THOSE kinds of conversations with her children. At the time, I pointed out that such conversations would happen regardless of whether she had them or not. Better that she choose the time and place rather than circumstances.

The video also reminds me of An American Teenager, that show where every other word out of the actors portraying sex-crazed high schoolers is "sex." Are these conversations that are being had in people's homes, or are we blocking them?

I'm divided on the issue. As much as I recognize the value of dialogue, I'm tempted to close up my youngest's ears and cover his eyes....

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Transformative Power

Source: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_8YphtkAHyDU/SaGmZTmh0RI/AAAAAAAAAGo/JuGLw5MR8qc/s400/pearls.gif

This evening, as I worked my way through a few blog entries in my RSS reader, I stumbled upon The Ethic of the Link by colleague and friend, Wes Fryer. These paragraphs jumped off the page to me:

One of the reasons our students and teachers need to be regularly blogging and creating hyperlinked content on wikis is to gain competency and understanding of the power of hyperlinked writing. . .Sharing knowledge digitally through hyperlinks and embedded media IS foreign to many, however. Hyperlinked writing is one of the most important topics we can address, share, and encourage educators to learn ABOUT and how to DO personally today.

There is a natural parallel to the behavior we have seen when it comes to mainstream media ‘repurposing content’ online and many school organizations and teachers who see the online world as merely a place to “do school” the same way we’ve done it for decades in face-to-face classes. This tendency is unfortunate and a mistake.

While we certainly can (as Marco Torres points out in some of his presentations) to simply ask students to read pages 1 – 10, and answer questions 1 – 10 at the end of the chapter using online websites and electronic whiteboards, such a use of technology fundamentally “misses” the transformative power of digital and social media. Blended learning is about knowledge CREATION and knowledge SHARING, not simply content consumption. We must encourage learners of all ages to become media PROSUMERS rather than simply consumers, to develop media literacy skills as well as a host of other dispositions and skills vital for success in the 21st century knowledge landscape.

I often encounter folks who just don't get it. And, honestly, I ask myself whether it's an act of casting pearls before swine. Then, I remember...once upon a time, I hadn't a clue. I was swine. That's the power of transformation, isn't it?

"I am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me."
— Isaac Newton

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Comment Hoist - Suzanne Dreyer on Moodle Messaging

Last week, I reported on my experience with staff in a district choosing to "cease the teachable moment" by turning off Moodle messaging. There were some excellent comments offered, but I have to confess, I truly enjoyed one posted today.

I was delighted to read this comment from Suzanne Dreyer that offered a different approach.

So delighted that it's worth sharing here as a comment hoist! Suzanne also introduces a Message Log Report module. A little about that module:

Admin report that provides log of messages sent by users in your Moodle install. Report can be sorted in several ways and filtered by the user involved (both to and from), or just by the user it is from or to.

To see the user's profile, click on their name. To see messages involving that user, click on the [more] link below their name. Or type a username into the Involving, From, or To fields to get a user's messages.

PLEASE NOTE: This report is compatible with Moodle 1.9, but you must add a line to core Moodle files to make it work with Moodle 1.9.1-1.9.3. It works as expected with Moodle 1.9.4, simply copy the messagelog directory into the /admin/report directory of your install.

Here's Suzanne's comment:

I love the messaging system in Moodle, and with the help of the Message Log Report for 1.9+ downloaded from moodle.org, we were able to have an authentic lesson on digital citizenship.

Sixty, 6th graders 'discovered' messaging all by themselves, and managed to generate 1,000 messages in one week's time! Not one message had anything to do with classwork, and many of them were sent during class!

I generated, hid the usernames, and printed the message log report. Then I showed up in their classrooms, and explained appropriate ways to use this feature. You should have seen how big their eyes got when they realized administrators can see what they write within this school resource. I explained that their 'free-play' with messaging was over, and they were now expected to use this feature for class business only. Since then, not one inappropriate message has been sent.

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A Message from Your Superintendent

As I've mentioned previously, I'm participating in an Online Instructor Training course to get certified as a Texas Virtual School network educator. While it's unlikely I'll actually be facilitating any actual K-12 classes, I've enjoyed the first week of class--100% online--because it's an excellent review of what I've learned in PBS' OFT but also an opportunity to learn more stuff. Incredible what I've learned in regards to that...I need to blog about that new learning.

I honestly do feel I have quite a bit of freedom in learning and the ability to make mistakes. Having gone through the PBS Online Facilitator Training (OFT)--a great course in retrospect from which I learned more than thought at first, and to which I refer to again and again--I am enjoying my second jaunt through learning a course that is supposed to teach how to be an online instructor or facilitator. However, I have to say that I've been well-prepared by the discussions ongoing in the edublogosphere and K12OnlineConference.org. What's been missing is easy access to research to back up much of what has been said.

Yet, no matter how much I've blogged, read via RSS, there's always more to learn. While some in the online class may be surprised to read this--if they even read my blog--I spent a significant amount of my morning (all of it, in fact) trying to get ready for two conversations happening this week that I'm responsible for...an asynchronous discussion and a synchronous conversation.

For the asynchronous component, participants had the opportunity to watch Michael Wesch's video--which kicked up some controversy some time ago among notable public figures, including David Warlick, Gary Stager, with a whole interpretative blog post by Michael Wesch himself--which was a mashup of Wesch's video and Warlick's commentary.

Here are my two suggested approaches (the first is the one I ended up using with my week of asynchronous discussion forum facilitation...wish me luck!):

In lieu of the 4 questions for the asynchronous discussion, might we try one of the following approaches?

Approach #1 - Ill-structured Problem
(a.k.a. A Message from Your Superintendent)

After watching Michael Wesch's and David Warlick's video combo at an ESC presentation, your gung-ho, "Have you read my blog yet?" superintendent in your school district has decided to embrace Web 2.0 tools. Your cracker-jack technical team has setup Moodle, and is ready to administer new contracts with blog (e.g. Edublogs.org) and wiki (e.g. PBWorks and/or Wikispaces). Yet, although technically, everything is ready to go, your superintendent knows you have just finished certification as a TxVSN online learning facilitator and have seen the same video.

The Superintendent has left you--and your team of online facilitators--in charge of crafting the online professional learning for teachers and administrators. What are the key topics that you believe need to be discussed and planned for?

and in case my teachers thought it was terrible, I proposed the second...this was based on David Warlick's blog entry and the bitter discussion in the comments (mostly the 2nd bullet below):

Approach #2 - Questions

• How can we arrange our "virtual classroom" so that it reflects the virtues of Web 2.0 learning environments?
  
• If you were one of the students featured in the video, what would you write on a card to show the education world? As a teacher, what would you have them write?
• "Create" is the new item on Bloom's Revised Taxonomy. How would you introduce teachers and students in your district to Web 2.0 vision of creativity as shared in the video?
  

Although I wouldn't share this link with the folks, I do want to cite the conversation on this blog as inspiring the questions and might introduce them as the conversation progresses:
http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/?p=1396
http://mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg/?p=124

I'm honestly curious to see how my deviation from the standard 4 engaging questions used as discussion starters will be received by my fellow learners. While I may feel comfortable and free in stepping out of the box, they may not appreciate that...I've already been tarred with the "long" discussion forum blog entries.

Gee, didn't they know I'm a blogger?
;->

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MyNotes - A Plan for Effective Discussion Boards

In reading Rob Kelly's "A Plan for Effective Discussion Boards" appearing in Synchronous and Asynchronous Learning Tools: 15 Strategies for Engaging Online Students Using Real-Time Chat, Threaded Discussions, and Blogs at www.facultyfocus.com, I found the following helpful:

Types of questions to ask...Six Socratic questioning techniques as delineated by Richard Paul to get students involved in discussions that go beyond simply opinion:

Conceptual Clarification Questions

Questions that get students to think about concepts behind their arguments:

• Why are you saying that?
• What exactly does this mean?
• How does this relate to what we have been talking about?
• Can you give me an example?

Probing Assumptions - questions that get students to think about the beliefs that they base their arguments on.

• What else could we assume?
• How did you choose those assumptions?
• How can you verify or disprove that assumption?
• What would happen if...?

Probing rationale, reasons, and evidence - questions that get students to think about the support for their arguments.

• Why is that happening?
• How do you know this?
• Can you give me an example?
• What do you think causes...?
• On what authority are you basing your argument?

Questioning Viewpoints and Perspectives - questions that get students to consider other viewpoints.

• What are some alternate ways of looking at this?
• Who benefits from this?
• How are x and y similar?

Probe Implications and Consequences - questions that get students to think about the what follows from their arguments.

• Then what would happen?
• What are the consequences of that assumption?

Questions about the Question - questions that turn the question in on itself.

• What was the point of asking that question?
• Why do you think I asked this question?

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MyNotes - Teaching and Learning Social Studies Online

Here are my notes from Doering, hughes, Scharber's "Teaching and Learning Social Studies Online," chapter 6 of What Works in K-12 Online Learning:

1. There are about 74,600 students nationwide who enroll in distance education utilizing computer technologies and then receive credit from institutions in distant locations.
2. Social studies is the study of the social sciences and humanities to promote civic competence.
3. The nation's expenditure on technology has been a "black hole" with minimal return (Oppenheimer, 1997; Cuban, 2001).
4. Although the research on technology integration reveals little additional impact on student learning, the descriptive evidence of tech's effect on student social experiences is strong.
5. The disciplines of social studies and learning technologies should work together, learning from each other, to establish the potential and best practices for technology in the social studies.
6. Authors provide a framework to highlight the range of technology resources available for integration and are integrated into social studies education in 4 ways:
   a) individual lesson plans distributed online that enhance existing face-to-face curriculum;
   b) online lesson enhancements that augment individual face-to-face lessons;
   c) completely online courses and curriculum where current face-to-face courses and curricula are supplanted; and
   d) an all-inclusive online courses, curriculum and online learning environment where depending on pedagogy, the online learning environment flexibly provides all 3 earlier forms: individual lessons, lesson enhancements and completely online courses and curriculum.
7. Teachers' own pedagogy impacts their decisions in adopting and using the resources, which may or may not honor the online environment/curriculum's intentions for the learners' experiences.
   
8. Social studies teachers have most commonly accessed the Internet for individual lesson plans to assist them in teaching certain concepts within their F2F classrooms. Lessons in this category are typically found online; are used without adaptation; may offer authentic updated data also accessible on the web; and do not require students to do anything online.
9. Standalone lesson examples are available at Thinkfinity.org. This content is peer-reviewed, standards-based, and classroom-ready.
   
10. Online lesson enhancements (where students or teachers, or both, are using an online activity) come into play when teachers are teaching an individual concept or theme within an individual F2F lesson.
11. Teachers identify a small online activity--the enhancement--which they include as a part of a larger lesson.
    
12. Lesson enhancements can be placed into 3 subcategories that describe a learner's involvement within an activity's pedagogy:
    a) direct instruction: BrainPOP videos
    b) active direct instruction: includes online enhancements in which students are directing their own pace throughout the experience, but with limited acquisition or application of data. Students become motivated at this level because they are actively participating; they are self-directing the pace and the experience itself.
    c) constructivist instruction: includes online enhancements with which students direct their own pace, acquire their own data, and apply the data within the environment. That is, students decide what data they need, ask questions about the data, and use the data to analyze a certain situation. This kind of approach capitalizes on students' use of tech for learning with a "mindtools" approach, engaging in Webquests to acquire information through online resources, and participating in multiuser virtual gaming environments.
13. During the 2002-2003 school year, approximately one-third of public school districts had students enrolled in distance education courses, which translates to an estimated 8,200 public school districts, or about 9% of all public schools nationwide.
    
14. Almost one quarter of these students are enrolled in social studies courses.
    
15. Recent research found that the wide variety of approaches to the curriculum, lessons and online tools adopted in each online classroom.
    
16. While students in various online courses evidenced meaningful learning, Kerr recognized that this might have been heightened if both teachers and students had made more use of the available technologies' affordances for learning. For example, Weblogs (blogs) were a key component of one course's learning model...students did not use blogs' inherent collaborative communication features, such as reflective journaling, commenting, and collaboratively constructing blog entries. Rather, they simple posted answers to content-related questions posed by their teacher in the blog.
17. Focus on the technology overshadowed focus on social studies learning.
18. Little to no peer-peer communication or collaboration within these courses, which may have been due to smaller enrollment in her sample of online social studies courses.
19. Adventure learning (AL) is a learning theory that situates learning within a hybrid online collaborative environment that provides students with opportunities to explore real-world issues through authentic learning experiences. It allows learners to connect online when separated by either distance or time, or both, while also providing access to online resources and opportunities for interaction with the real world.
    
20. Teachers motivated to use an AL program over traditional approaches to classroom instruction did so because of seven main reasons:
    a) The content is authentic.
    b) The content is real time.
    c) Teachers have the opportunity to collaborate with their colleagues for pedagogical ideas and support.
    d) Students have the opportunity to collaborate synchronously and asynchronously with their colleagues.
    e) "Local" case studes are tied to current field research.
    f) Learners and teachers feel a sense of community.
    g) The environment is "ready-to-use."
21. Adventure learning is one example of an all-inclusive program that is motivating teachers and students where traditional approaches to integrating technology into social studies have not.

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Free Webinar - Success with Virtual Learning

I just became aware of the following:

"Drs. Blomeyer and Cavanaugh will summarize new research and policy analysis explaining how virtual learning can support instructional improvement and improved academic performance in America's public and charter schools. Drawing on their co-edited book entitled What Works In K-12 Online Learning (ISTE, 2007), Drs. Blomeyer and Cavanaugh will emphasize the crucial role of professional development for supporting effective uses of virtual learning environments to increase meaningful, discipline-based learning and improve students' academic performance."

(http://www.wimba.com/company/events/1718-supporting-schools-success-with-virtual-learning-environments )

Read OTA PRESS RELEASE for more information

Register early. Space is limited and the price is right - FREE.

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MyNotes - Online Teaching and Classroom Change

Interesting article on online teaching and classroom change...here are my highlights:

• 
  
  Innovate: Online Teaching and Classroom Change: The Trans-Classroom Teacher in the Age of the Internet
  • 
    
    Online Teaching and Classroom Change:

    The Trans-Classroom Teacher in the Age of the Internet
  • 
    
    Is an online course in such-and-such subject more or less effective than a face-to-face course in the same subject?
  • 
    
    those who teach online leave the familiarity of the face-to-face classroom for the uncharted terrain of the online environment, whose constraints and affordances often lead to very different practices. The trans-classroom teacher who moves between the two environments, transferring ideas, strategies, and practices from one to the other, is a mental migrant. The transformations—of the teacher and of the course—that occur in these migrations and the two-way interactions between face-to-face and online teaching are the focus of this study.
  • 
    
    most VHS teachers also teach face-to-face courses in their own schools at the same time that they are teaching online, and second, VHS requires that all its teachers prepare for teaching online by taking a demanding professional development course—delivered online—on the pedagogy of online teaching (Pape, Adams, and Ribeiro 2005).
  • 
    
    As part of their professional development, new VHS teachers either create new courses or, with increasing frequency as the catalogue is built, take ownership of existing courses by adapting them to fit their own knowledge base and teaching styles.
  • 
    
    VHS professional development emphasizes student-centered teaching; collaborative, problem-based learning; small-group work; and authentic, performance-based assessment.
  • 
    
    only a third were familiar with the principles of backward design.
  • 
    
    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.
  • 
    
    finished courses are the result of intensive reflection and look very different from the courses they have been teaching face-to-face. As one VHS teacher described it, "By developing my course, I have had the opportunity to introspectively analyze what I am teaching, why I teach the way I do, and how I can change and improve my communication with students" (quoted in Pape, Adams, and Ribeiro 2005, 125).
  • 
    
    kinds of changes that might be expected in the move to an online venue
  • 
    
    online (Internet-based) readings
  • 
    
    group projects or assignments
  • 
    
    adding whole-class discussions
  • 
    
    debates, and peer reviews
  • 
    
    respondents required their students to use the discussion forums, and almost all reported that their courses included multiweek projects (98%), collaborative group work (95%), and peer reviews (84%), while 69% reported that they had their students complete multimedia assignments.
  • 
    
    As teachers migrate to the online environment, they find that a whole host of issues—including teacher-student and student-student communication, the extent and nature of reflection, student accountability, and assessment—must be approached differently than they are in the face-to-face classroom.
  • 
    
    Teaching the online course led these teachers to develop ways to communicate with students they could not see, to find ways to know if they were meeting their students' needs, and to assess whether, and what, students had learned.
  • 
    
    How do teachers teach without personal communication? In the online environment, teachers struggled to work out ways to reach and evaluate students when they could not interact with them face to face on a daily basis
  • 
    
    How do teachers provide instructions that are clear enough? Online teachers also contended with a slightly different issue in terms of teacher-student communication: how to provide instructions that were sufficiently explicit that students could follow them.
  • 
    
    How do teachers know when their students are confused? In face-to-face classrooms, teachers know if their students are confused by their questions or by the looks on their faces, but in online courses this type of just-in-time assessment has to be done through text, which presented some challenges
  • 
    
    How do teachers get all students to participate? These teachers were concerned about making sure that all students participated in the discussions and that student-student communications, particularly in the discussion forums, were meaningful learning experiences
  • 
    
    How do teachers manage pacing and scaffolding? Some of the respondents were concerned with the loss of flexibility in course organization that was the result of planning an entire course ahead of time (a VHS requirement) so that they could not adapt on a just-in-time basis to the student population. This concern surfaced in their descriptions of their struggles with how to pace the course, how to break it into manageable pieces, how to provide scaffolding, and how to organize groups
  • 
    
    How do teachers know if students are learning? Many teachers were concerned about how to assess whether their online students had learned what the teachers wanted them to learn
  • 
    
    75% of the 158 responding teachers who taught both online and face-to-face reported that teaching online had a positive impact on their face-to-face teaching
  • 
    
    The most frequent changes (defined as those made by 60% or more the respondents) involved course design or redesign, including eliminating lessons that now seemed poorly designed, designing or redesigning lessons using backward design principles, and adding lessons or units from the online course.
  • 
    
    The second most frequent set of changes (those made by between 40% and 60% of respondents) involved the transfer of a range of strategies learned from teaching online to the face-to-face classroom, most of which revolved around fostering better communication. These strategies included changing how groups were organized, requiring class contributions from all students, providing more timely feedback, providing more written instructions, using class time more efficiently, and providing additional ways to communicate with students.
  • 
    
    Those who reported making the most changes taught math, science, social science, and foreign languages, while those teaching computer science or programming reported making the fewest changes. English language arts, art, and art history teachers were in the middle of the ranks of changers (Exhibit 9). It seems possible that the teachers in the first four disciplines made the most changes either because these are particularly difficult subjects to adapt to the online environment and so require a lot of rethinking (math, science, foreign language) or because the online environment opens up the range of resources available (i.e., social science, which was primarily history)
  • 
    
    four areas were class participation, independent learning, questioning techniques, and metacognition/reflection.
  • 
    
    In online classes, full participation in discussions can be mandated by requiring a certain number of posts each week or by requiring that students respond to one another's posts. The teacher can easily monitor the quantity and quality of the participation, including who is participating, when, and how often.
  • 
    
    To be successful in online courses, students need to be self-motivated, well-organized, independent learners; at the same time, taking online courses can help students develop these characteristics.
  • 
    
    teaching online led to a subtle but potentially far-reaching shift in their attitudes toward their face-to-face students, as teaching online made them realize that they could require more independent work. This realization was accompanied by a shift to a more learner-centered pedagogy in the face-to-face classroom
  • 
    
    Questioning Techniques
  • 
    
    To work well, online discussion forums need thoughtful facilitation, including careful attention to how questions are asked. Teachers wrote about how they imported what they had learned about asking questions into their face-to-face classrooms. They also wrote that they were now more confident using open-ended questions with their students and were less likely to provide answers. Others linked this shift to larger changes in pedagogical approach, including a reduction in the amount of time spent lecturing and a shift to a facilitator role
  • 
    
    Another affordance of the online environment is the time for thought or reflection allowed by the asynchronous nature of the discussion forum. Although posts can certainly be composed off the cuff, in general the fact that they are written and often graded forces students to think before they write. In addition, well-constructed questions can lead to reflective answers.
  • 
    
    there is as yet little research on the effect of teaching online on teachers and even less on how teaching online can shape teaching in the face-to-face classroom.
  • 
    
    the trans-classroom teacher's migratory journey to and from the online classroom can transform that teacher's face-to-face classroom practice in subtle and important ways.
  • 
    
    Can we, and should we, find ways to develop more trans-classroom teachers or to make nascent trans-classroom teachers more so, by encouraging more teachers to teach in both venues and by encouraging online teachers to reflect on the changes they make when teaching online? Can we, and should we, deliberately find ways to encourage the transfer of successful aspects of online pedagogy back to the face-to-face classroom, capitalizing on what these trans-classroom teachers have learned by treating them as resources for their face-to-face classroom counterparts?
  • 
    
    This research, exploratory though it is, suggests that giving more teachers the opportunity to teach online, as well as deliberately encouraging those who do teach online to share what they have learned with their fellow classroom teachers, provides an opportunity to strengthen teaching in both environments.
  Note: This article was originally published in Innovate (http://www.innovateonline.info/) as: Lowes, S. 2008. Online teaching and classroom change: The trans-classroom teacher in the age of the internet. Innovate 4 (3). http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=446 (accessed September 27, 2009). The article is reprinted here with permission of the publisher, The Fischler School of Education and Human Services at Nova Southeastern University.

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

Over 800 Videos in Core Content Area Instruction

Thanks to Ken Task who shared this collection of videos:

Over 800 videos in categories like Arithmetic, Pre-algebra, Algebra, Geometry,
Linear Algebra, Chemistry, Trigonometry, Biology, and Physics (this list is not complete ... see the site for more!)

There is a collection for Finance, Venture Capital and Capital Markets, Banking and Money, Current Economics, and Brain Teasers as well.

Source: http://www.khanacademy.org/

Resource acquired from a TCEA tweet:
http://twitter.com/tcea

The entire video library is shown below. Just click on a category or video title to start learning from the Khan Academy!

Calculus | Precalculus | Trigonometry | Algebra | Finance | Pre-algebra | Arithmetic | Geometry | Physics | SAT Preparation | Probability | Linear Algebra | Differential Equations | Credit Crisis | Banking and Money | Paulson Bailout | California Standards Test: Algebra II | California Standards Test: Algebra I | California Standards Test: Geometry | Venture Capital and Capital Markets | Statistics | Geithner Plan | Current Economics | Brain Teasers | Valuation and Investing | Chemistry | Biology

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3 Presentations/Videos

Interesting presentations/videos...thanks to Free Tech For Teachers Blog for highlighting them. The beauty of an RSS feed juxtaposes all these together.

32 Technology Integration Tips (via Free Tech for Teachers Blog)

Digital Storytelling from Curriki:

http://www.youtube.com/v/zP6CeGLPuOY

A Guide to Annotating Using Diigo by Jose Picardo
(via Free Tech for Teachers)

A Guide to Annotating using Diigo from José Picardo on Vimeo.

http://vimeo.com/6706341

Note: It's in Vimeo...if you don't have access to the Vimeo web site or YouTube because it's blocked, consider using http://clipnabber.com to download the video as an mp4. Works well! I used it to download PBWorks Video Tutorials!

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