Reflections on Chapter 3 of Digital MakeOvers

Note: This is the one of several chapter reflections on the excellent book written by Dr. Liz Stephens and Kerry Ballast on "Using Technology to Improve Adolescent Writing: Digital Make-Overs for Writing Lessons." Read all contributions in this series.

We only think when we are confronted with a problem.
-John Dewey

As much as I enjoyed the previous two chapters of Stephens' and Ballard's book on Using Technology to Improve Adolescent Writing, I have to admit Chapter 3 really caught my attention. That's probably because it introduced me to some concepts I hadn't heard of before!

In responsive writing, share the authors, "students work in groups that communicate in person as easily as they do online through the use of blogs, wikis, and course management systems. They may also use online tools to collaboratively write with people beyond their school and community." They go on to write that "adolescent writers engaged in responsive writing share and reconstruct their knowledge by interacting with each other in small response groups." At the risk of interjecting personal stories, I'm reminded of how the small community of writers my daughter subscribes to interact and share ideas/feedback about written pieces they publish online. How a small group--3 of them--interacted via the Web, employing a discussion forum and YouTube to video-illustrate a story my daughter had written.

Some other key points:

• Adolescent writer understandings are tested when their conclusions are examined by others, and by examining and evaluating conclusions, students broaden their own knowledge and develop open-mindedness.
• Collaboration among writers leads to finding just the right language to capture what they know, to explore solutions to problems, to explain new constructs, or to redefine known ones.
• Responsive writing gives students valuable opportunities to sort information gathered and answer 2 important questions: 1) What do we have? and 2) What can we do with it?
• Collaborative learning in a responsive writing frame is the lively interaction that occurs when minds are in the act of inquiry, of discovery, of making sense of a construct by attempting to define or label it. It is a process that involves questionning, challenging and validating the ideas written by each member of the group.

One of the neat concepts I ran across that I did not know about was "Group Mapping Activity." Davidson (1992) describes this in the following way (as cited in the book):

A strategy design to help students make sense of information. By using concept maps created on paper and/or online, students arrange information in ways that depict the meaning of terms and concepts and the connections between and among them.

In the book, the authors make a distinction between collaborative and cooperative learning. They point out that the former is student-focused, while the latter is teacher centered. In collaborative learning, the goal is "to arrive at a group consensus, to rely on creativity and innovation in order to make sense of and solve complex problems." When in the responsive writing mode, students try to make sense of a construct by defining it or labeling it. This reminds me of "Define or be defined" quote...essentially, what we do as human beings! One key point representing the research was the idea that "Students who learn in small groups think at higher levels and retain information longer than students who work alone." Collaboration is important because it reduces anxiety about writing and helps them overcome writer's block. Some steps Students take when starting responsive writing include the following, as I understood them:

1. Explore/investigate a topic via inside writing
2. Share information with a group of peers
3. Try to validate one's own knowledge
4. Question the info peers have gathered as much as one's own knowledge

Another interesting point was the one made like this:

Multitasking digital natives might be more motivated to create online conceptual maps that are rich, multi-dimensional representations of their thinking and that are pinned to a virtual wall and can be modified at any time.

I don't know about you, but that virtual wall thing reminds me of Glogster EDU! Some Glogster examples include the following:

• Tracy Blazosky is a first grade teacher in Pennsylvania who is a “guru” with Glogster. She has many examples on her wiki http://b-7bobcats.wikispaces.com/. Also, if you scroll about halfway down on the Edu Glogster website, there is a collection of student work as well. http://edu.glogster.com/
• Nina Peery's Glogster projects
• Classroom 2.0 Glogster EDU information
• Glogster Introductory Page from integrate Technology into the Classroom

One of the nifty quotes in this chapter included this one:

Web 2.0 tools are vehicles for deciding what it means to be a responsible human in charge of a seemingly fragile earth.

Although that quote was in the context of a lesson, I thought it strangely appropriate when you consider sites like GlobalVoices. Some other neat points include the following:

• Moodle and Nicenet as Internet Classroom Assistants. An ICA is an "online communication and classroom management tool that provides web-based messaging and conferencing between a teacher and students. It also allows designated members to post and share documents, links, messages, and schedules so that all members have access to classroom conversations, information and resources."
• Student quote: "I have more freedom when I work on the web."
• Quality of content knowledge = what information students know
• Procedural knowledge = what skills students have
• Responsive writing processes include labeling (using graphic organizers and Office software), questionning and challenging (blogs/Moodle), and validating (wikis, collaborative writing spaces).
• "How does a teacher evaluate something less tangible than a poster on a wall?" An interesting question...but isn't a Glogster pretty tangible?
• "Information drift - distraction that occurs when adolescents are learning information that may not be useful to them."

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

Take a Stance - Reflections on Chapter 2 of Digital Makeovers

Note: This is the one of several chapter reflections on the excellent book written by Dr. Liz Stephens and Kerry Ballast on "Using Technology to Improve Adolescent Writing: Digital Make-Overs for Writing Lessons." Read all contributions in this series.

Image Source: http://www.freshpromotions.com.au/products/magnet-connect-puzzle1.jpg

In reading Chapter 2 of Dr. Liz Stephens and Kerry Ballast's book, "Using Technology to Improve Adolescent Writing: Digital Make-Overs for Writing Lessons," I was struck by the wide net the concept of "inside writing" casts over many of the activities edubloggers are well familiar with. Acts of inside writing include online searching that yields access to text, graphics, sound, video, while wikis and blogs allow opportunities for person-to-person exchanges that "help students construct knowledge" as well as make claims about what they know. The list of thinking processes relevant to inside writing include:

• Exploring
• Investigating
• Gathering Data
• Brainstorming
• Organizing
• Defining/Redefining

The authors point out that "inside writing" is a process that addresses every student's need to become a part of the learning enviornment in order to participate fully in the act of communicating unique thoughts, of drawing conclusions, of developing...in other words, it is difficult to imagine inside writing happening without the wealth of creative material that surrounds the writer.

The authors assert the following:

Before a student can become engaged in learning and using language purposefully and effectively, she must make personal connections with concepts in order to claim her place in the larger community that embraces the classroom....

My first reaction to this was, "One hopes the embrace is not inappropriate." As I indulged in a private chuckle at the expense of "network nazis," as one colleague described those who lock down school district networks so as to exclude Web 2.0 tools, I realized that the perception of digital tools as bridges into and out of the classroom are easily perceived as pathways for pedophiles and fruitcakes, ways of letting the danger in. Yet, these connections do have to be in place, they make the difference between a piece written in isolation (no such animal) and the rich writing that flows from lived experiences or knowledge gathered.

When a young teacher, I was fascinated by Frank Smith's concept of schema, a theory of the world around us which he described as a "shield against bewilderment." It was critical to help children build a scaffold for learning, of gathering schema for different forms of writing FIRST so that they would be able to write in that form afterwards.

The authors share the following:

Schema theory...an understanding of how we organize our perceptions of the world and how what we hold in memory shapes how we perceive new information...prior knowledge provides a mental framework that we use to make sense of new information.

This concept of schema is one I first encountered in my Master's program for Bicultural/Bilingual Studies with ESL Concentration. That is, working with English Language Learners. I found this part of the the Digital Makeovers book to build on what I had learned early on. For example, consider these points:

Teaching practices based on schema theory are built on the idea that students should learn broad and generic concepts in order to be able to make connections among specific ideas...English Language Learners need support for drawing from their cultural knowledge as they learn English while at the same time learning new concepts.

As the authors move forward with the idea of constructivist approaches, I was reminded of George Siemens' connectivism. It seems the idea of inside writing with its dependence on outside factors, it's focus on making connections would be better suited by the embrace of connectivism rather than constructivism:

Learning is a process that occurs within nebulous environments of shifting core elements – not entirely under the control of the individual. Learning (defined as actionable knowledge) can reside outside of ourselves (within an organization or a database), is focused on connecting specialized information sets, and the connections that enable us to learn more are more important than our current state of knowing.

Connectivism is driven by the understanding that decisions are based on rapidly altering foundations. New information is continually being acquired. The ability to draw distinctions between important and unimportant information is vital. The ability to recognize when new information alters the landscape based on decisions made yesterday is also critical.

Source: George Siemens, Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age

This is especially relevant to inside writing because of this frame that is so dependent on online searching, on the internal dialogue the writer has with him or herself and what is to be included, organized, shared. Connectivism, rather than constructivism, seems to be more supported by the quote included in the book by Jacqueline G. Brooks (2004): "The learning and teaching dynamic is a process of negotiation."

A process of negotiation. Dynamic. Ever-changing. What if the following paragraph were changed...instead of this...

Writing in a constructivist classroom is based on a perspective of the learner as self-monitoring but guided by knowledgeable adults.

Consider the idea that instead of knowledgeable adults IN the classroom, there are knowledgeable learners outside of the classroom, connected to student learning, traversing the bridge or pathway into the classroom. We might say that writing in a connectivism classroom is based on a perspective of the learner as self-monitoring, self-organizing and in constant interaction with other global learners.

Is the difference just sophistry or is there a difference in focus from the adults in the classroom to outside of the classroom? Does our traditional approach to teaching and learning in schools support that idea?

The authors certainly allude to the concept of connectivism when they write the following:

Inside writing for digital natives...means making connections via the electronic tools they use to find information to make sense of the world and to construct knowledge for themselves.

Inside writing and the kinds of thinking going include: exploring, investigating, gathering information, brainstorming, organizing and synthesizing. Inside writing is the first engagement in the activity that will culminate in a product or project that communicates students newly acquired understanding.

Some other points that are worth considering:

• 20th Century Classroom: Students are willing to absorb and repeat information that is given to them.
• 21st Century: Students are in search of information that is relevant to them and that connects them to a larger, global learning community. They exchange ideas, insights and knowledge, and they sift through enormous reserves of good and bad info to find what is most meaningful and true to them...They can take a stance on a topic and establish voice in their writing as they express themselves with authority in responsive writing (doesn't this sound like blogging?)

My favorite line in this chapter is the last one in the paragraph above...taking a stance and establishing a voice in their writing as they express themselves with authority is critical to any writer's development. And, isn't that exactly what we do as bloggers?

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

Inspiring Education

Source: http://bit.ly/9w1MtA


This morning, my secretary laid a few magazines on my desk. One of them was EdTech Focus on K-12 with a neat article on writing and technology.

The article is entitled, "Inspiring Education" and is descirbed as "Littleton Public Schools watches test scores soar after utilizing netbooks in its language arts program." Some of the key take-aways from the article for me, which I intend to share with our District's Reading/ELA director, and encourage folks who facilitate writing instruction to review include the following:

1. When asked for feedback on the first year of what LPS calls its Inspired Writing program, more than 150 students posted similar insights on the blog..."I used to not like writing...Now I keep looking at the time and inside I am saying, 'Is it time for writing yet?'"
2. School officials say access to technology--in the form of Asus Eee netbooks--engages students and makes them excited about learning.
3. Students use the netbooks to post on blogs and wikis and collaborate with other students on assignments.
4. The netbook program is so successful that the district's "pencil and paper" scores for the writing portion of the state standardized test sky-rocketed after the program's first year. Scores rose by double digits in seven of the 10 schools with Eee PCs. "In those one to one classes, we're reaching 3,675 students throughout all of our 24 buildings," says Dan Maas.
5. In 2007, we began an initiative that ultimately changed literacy instruction to organize around a writer's workshop model. This model includes a short lesson, followed by independent work time, and then critiquing session all within the class period.
6. Various formats for the critiques include use of what sounds like socratic seminar. With netbooks, perimeter students (outer circle) are more engaged as they find pictures or video that can be displayed on the classroom smartboard.
7. Students post on the classroom blog, or create and revised related content on a wiki. Even students who usually prefer not to talk in front of the class are more involved than before
8. From the posting times on our blog and wiki, we can see students continuing the discussion long after class...because students publish and revise continuously, it creates a community around writing in which students truly see themselves as writers.
9. As a means to display student work, school-developed blogs and wikis proved to be the perfect vehicle.
10. When used daily, students became better writers even on pencil and paper standardized tests. Unlike standard training classes where you walk through all the technical capabilities, we suggested teachers select one writing tool to start. So one teacher chose blogging and focused on becoming comfortable and proficient with that tool.

Littleton Public Schools certainly has captivated attention with how they have combined using writing and technology.

Responding to GoogleApps for Education Questions

Source: ePortfolio MashUp with GoogleApps, Helen C. Barrett, Ph.D. - See More about this


A colleague recently posed these questions; my responses (enhanced with benefit of time) follow. I posted those responses to the Google Certified Teacher email group, expecting to be corrected if they were inaccurate. A reasonable amount of time has gone by, so they must be in the ballpark!

Questions posted:

• Is Google FERPA compliant?
• Will Google DOCS integrate with a local Active Directory
• Will Google DOCS allow CPS staff to access student data?

- Is Google FERPA compliant? 
While Google does not specifically address FERPA, it does state that it maintains privacy/confidentiality of information shared. FERPA is really a local policy issue that is handled by the School District and professional development for education staff members. GoogleApps for Education content are not scanned for advertising generation, etc. Emails are scanned only to protect from inappropriate content. Google is currently working with various State Education Agencies to sign state-wide agreements that address FERPA concerns, but these discussions have not yet been finalized.

Note the

- Will Google DOCS integrate with a local Active Directory
Yes, GoogleApps for Education can integrate with local Active Directory. It would be helpful to review Prince George County Public Schools well-documented transition, which included Active Directory and MS Exchange. It is an education in itself to see how they accomplished this!

They are a very large school district in Maryland. You can find the info I collected on them online at:
http://www.mguhlin.org/2010/01/googleapps-in-education-prince-george.html

The state of Oregon's Department of Education is opening the option for any school in the state to use Google Apps for Education, a free service that gives K-12 schools access to the application suite.

According to Google, Oregon is the first state to take advantage of the program. The estimated statewide cost savings for school districts using Google Apps for Education is about $1.5 million a year for email. As the OS is in the browser, other cost savings are expected in reduced hardware and software upgrades.
Source: ReadWrite Cloud

It's also worth reading this piece about Oregon's adoption of GoogleApps for Education:

Google Apps Education Manager Jaime Casap wrote in a blog post:
With Google Apps, students in Oregon can build Websites or e-mail teachers about a project. Their documents and e-mail will live online in the cloud -- so they'll be able to work from a classroom or a computer lab, at home or at the city (or county) library. And instead of just grading a paper at the end of the process, Oregonian teachers can help students with their docs in real time, coaching them along the way.
The department noted that it expected to save $1.5 million per year in e-mail across the state thanks to this switch, with additional cost savings in reduced hardware and software upgrades.

After all, Google hosts all of the data on its servers, so schools needn't purchase servers or pay for software maintenance.

"Educators and students now have access to the same cutting-edge technology used in the business world with added federal student privacy and confidentiality protections," said State Schools Superintendent Susan Castillo. "In a time of dwindling resources, I am grateful for Google's partnership. Our students have a wonderful opportunity to prepare for the workplace by using workplace technology in the classroom."

- Will Google DOCS allow CPS staff to access student data?
Not sure what CPS data is, unless you are referring to Child Protective Services. At the District level, the GoogleApps administrator--in conjunction with Postini document archiving and recovery (which is available at a flat rate of $11 per user, about a $60 discount from Enterprise costs)--has the ability to access content in the GoogleApps domain.

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

What is Shared, Endures

Sometimes, it's true that the only thing that remains of what you've done is what you've shared with others. Such is the case with an old Technology & Learning blog entry I wrote that has "disappeared" but is found on Chris Lehmann's blog, Invest in People, Not Things.

The remnant of truth which remains true today:

I do know that the more money I save on the equipment, software, and traditional textbooks, the more I focus on technology to to foster collaboration and information literacy, on "people as the curriculum," the more I can invest in people. Let's invest in people, not things.

The return on investment is in what children learn to do in spite of life's obstacles, of how they can use one technology to prepare them for the next. That process, the "how" of learning and "what they do with it," is what I want them to get out of using the technology. MS Powerpoint, Moviemaker, Photostory, iMovie? Who cares? Activities like digital storytelling, blogging, podcasting, problem-based learning engage us all as human beings. . .if a cheap pencil will do as well as MS Word in today's schools, then our money, time and effort has been going to the wrong people.

Maybe, it's time to invest in children, teachers, administrators, and parents...instead of Microsoft, Apple, and other proprietary software vendors.

I also wrote a comment that I want to save:

Thanks, Chris, for the "powerful argument" affirmation...they come so few and far between. We often forget that the past is full of visionaries preaching how technology will change the world. 

In truth, it's been a "conversation" of sorts between people using the technology that has advanced us all. Whether it's Microsoft, Apple or whomever making that technology is irrelevant. Do i really care who made the iAudio so long as it provides functionality I need and can use to innovate with?

The solutions will come about because people are involved, not because the technology comes from this company or another.

For example, storytelling has been around...that it's gone "digital" is really just the latest. Tomorrow, what will digital storytelling look like? The elements won't change because there are people involved, but how we innovate using what's available, will.

When companies push digital rights management (DRM), they are trying to hold back the conversation people have as they use technology to do what they want to do. Let's not forget that it's people making the technology, and lawyers trying to lock down the technology. I prefer to identify with the creators and innovators, the ones who are tuned into the creative conversation. I like to think that they're as imprisoned as the rest of us are in the technology, wanting the function and hating the garbage the other people--the leeches, so to speak--are doing with their creations. They need to see a new frame for the work they are doing.

We need to see change in schools, but that change can't flourish and spread there. Instead, we have to change society and the environment. This is part of what I've written here about crafting a new frame (a variation on telling a new story)...I appreciate your feedback...I read your stuff all the time.

http://www.mguhlin.net/blog/archives/2006/03/entry_1291.htm

The link above is broken...the pages it refers to no longer exist. What have you shared in the past that endures today?

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Silent Enemy - Reflection on Digital MakeOver for Writing Lessons

Note: This is the one of several chapter reflections on the excellent book written by Dr. Liz Stephens and Kerry Ballast on "Using Technology to Improve Adolescent Writing: Digital Make-Overs for Writing Lessons." Read all contributions in this series.

"Like any other social structure, School needs to be accepted by its participants. It will not survive very long beyond the time when children can no longer be persuaded to accord it a degree of legitimation."
Source: Seymour Papert (1993) as cited in Stephens and Ballast's "Using Technology to Improve Adolescent Writing: Digital MakeOvers for Writing Lessons."

Over the last few weeks, a stack of books has accummulated next to my desk. All invariably are about writing and the teaching of writing and how it's changed over the last few years as a result of technology. Yet, as wonderful as they all have been, I have to admit at how readable I'm finding Dr. Liz Stephens and Kerry Ballast's "Using Technology to Improve Adolescent Writing." The title of the book is poor, given that technology currently is how many teens ARE writing these days. That the writing falls into the category of what--my apologies for my informality, but it's my blog (smile)--Liz and Kerry call "non-school" writing is...well...unfortunate for them. The real title is "Digital MakeOvers for Writing Lessons." The truth is, perhaps, that it is educators who need the makeover, albeit this is a quiet cry for change, from two friends close to those who need to change.

Over the next few weeks, but I hope in less time, I'll be featuring take-aways from their book. Rather than make a laundry list of take-aways, I've decided on the slower approach because it is truly a book worth savoring since it calls into question what we know about THE WRITING PROCESS.

Chapter 1 of the book shares important ideas that all educators need to be aware of. I'll skip over those for now because, for edubloggers, we already are familiar with the silent enemy encamped outside the walls of schools, broadcasting/narrowcasting to our children and those unafraid to embrace technology for communication, collaboration and social networking.

Liz and Kerry share that the purpose of their book is to "recognize how secondary school students are proficient with technology and to think of ways to motivate them using digital tools that they use outside of school." They go on to point out some important ideas, including the following:

* More than 50% of teens enjoy the act of exchanging email, instant messages, texts, and social network posts, while only 17% said they enjoy writing at school.
* Teens are most motivated to write when they can select topics that are relevant to their lives and intersts and when they are challenged and supported by engaged adults.
* Secondary school students are increasingly frustrated with campus rules that limit access and restrict, if not prohibit, use of the very tools and devices that they use "constantly outside of school...in all aspects of their lives." To eliminate the discontent, teens would like to use personal laptops and mobile learning devices, take online classes and have access to technology tools at school."

On reflecting on these 3 points, one has to ask, "So what if kids are engaged? So what if they are frustrated? Isn't that a part of life? Who cares if they don't see school as relevant? As adults, they will have to do many things that are irrelevant, frustrating in spite of their personal feelings." It was at that point I was reminded of a recent post by John Spencer at Teaching Unmasked Blog.

John points out that what makes a class relevant includes these points:

• It's relevant if it's personal
• It's relevant if it's practical
• It's relevant if it's philosophical
• It's relevant if it relates to now but gives a glimpse of the future
• It's relevant if it connects to student interests
• It's relevant if it's challenging
• It's relevant if it connects to a story

Relevance is important because if, as Seymour Papert points out, students decide not to play along, what real power will school administrators, teachers have to enforce it? Liz and Kerry point out that teens are most motivated to write when they select topics that are relevant to their lives...isn't that true of anyone?
In my own experience, trying to write about arcane subject matter that is irrelevant to my own interests means I just won't do it...or I'll do it poorly.

Another part of Liz and Kerry's work that appealed to me was the "critical stance" they represented, citing Cummings, Brown and Sayers 2007 work. In that work, it's pointed out that there is "a pedagogical divide" that "separates those students who receive information through top-down dissemination models of teaching from those students who engage in construction information through meaningful inquiry." They also point out that "the cognitive divide describes how some use technology to drill and some use it for dialogue and discovery."

Wow, I love it.

What powerful observation that all technology directors and school district superintendents need to take a long look at before investing in an integrated learning system or technology that perpetuates the way teachers do things now (e.g. Interactive Whiteboards might be such, as Bill Ferriter has pointed out in the recent past).

Such a perspective is reminiscent of Patrick Finn's "Literacy with an Attitude" book in which he makes the following point:

First, there is empowering education, which leads to powerful literacy, the kind of literacy that leads to positions of power and authority. Second, there is domesticating education, which leads to functional literacy, literacy that makes a person productive and dependable, not troublesome.

Empowering education certainly is not the term I would use to describe the pedagogical divide students face. . .but domesticating education is! I am also reminded of Gwen Solomon's quote:

Those who cannot claim computers as their own tool for exploring the world never grasp the power of technology... They are controlled by technology as adults--just [they were]...controlled [by] them as students.
Source: Toward Digital Equity: Bridging the Divide in Education Editors: Gwen Solomon, Nancy J. Allen, and Paul Resta

This "current policy marginalizes students into instructionally constricted learning environments because they are viewed as having deficits that can be remediated with direct instruction." Cummings et al go on to say:

By limiting low-income and culturally diverse students to learning activities that use technology for remedial purposes--drill-n-practice--educators are marooning students.

That said, this is a sad but true reality that exists in schools today. Whether we are discussing empowering education vs domesticating education, technology as a tool for exploring the world or technology as the controlling tool of some elite group (I'm tempted to grumble rich people who have fled public schools and enrolled their children in rich private/charter schools..."white flight" that I witnessed first hand in East Texas schools as immigrants from the local chicken plant found their way into public schools). That it endures what seems a lifetime to me later, well, that's an indictment of something, isn't it?

For me, the heart of the chapter is the struggle our children face in becoming literate, and the interplay between technology and literacy. To cement their point, they cite Wes Fryer's "Moving at the Speed of Creativity" blog (I bet Wes doesn't know!!):

Literacy can be more accurately measured than ever before by not only the texts that are consumed by learners, but rather by the authentic knowledge products they create (in a read/write context) as a result of their exposure to those ideas (p.18-19).

One of the reflections that is fighting its way to the surface of my awareness is that writing a la Atwell and Calkins IS empowering education...but as a result of the changing media and technology, it is insufficent. It threatens to be as domesticating to teach our children how to write with pencil and paper as it once was to just assign them a theme, "What I learned over Summer Vacation." Or, perhaps worse, to write within the context of a grammar lesson, rather than learn grammar in the context of writing a piece over which young authors have ownership and the time to develop.

Against this backdrop of students struggling to seize their power as writers in a connected world where technology access is ubiquitous except in schools where it is prohibited/banned, the authors make this point that resonates with me as a writer:

How each mind approaches the process of composing ideas and communicating them is highly individual, particularly, how technology complicates that endeavor forces us to rethink and question traditional ways of teaching the messy nature of "the process."

It is a sobering thought to consider that some may find technology too much of a complication and abandon their charge, turning a blind eye to the "enemy outside the gates" that, in truth, holds the means to transformation and salvation in its hands.

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

DiigoNotes - Libraries deal with Disruptive Change

Thanks to Carolyn Foote for sharing this article with me. Profound implications for libraries. As Blue Skunk Blogger Doug Johnson points out, you can't just be a Book-Librarian anymore.

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  Gutenberg 2.0 | Harvard Magazine May-Jun 2010 - Annotated
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    Gutenberg 2.0

    Harvard’s libraries deal with disruptive change.

    by Jonathan Shaw
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    Increasingly, in the scientific disciplines, information ranging from online journals to databases must be recent to be relevant, so Widener’s collection of books, its miles of stacks, can appear museum-like.
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    Google’s massive project to digitize all the books in the world will, by some accounts, cause research libraries to fade to irrelevance as mere warehouses for printed material.
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    The skills that librarians have traditionally possessed seem devalued by the power of online search, and less sexy than a Google query launched from a mobile platform.
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    Yet if the format of the future is digital, the content remains data. And at its simplest, scholarship in any discipline is about gaining access to information and knowledge, says Peter Bol, Carswell professor of East Asian languages and civilizations
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    where the research horizon is constantly advancing, much of the knowledge created in the past has very little relevance to current understanding.
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    “you want to be riding the crest of the tidal wave of information that is coming in right now. We all want access to information, and in some cases that will involve building collections; in others, it will mean renting access to information resources that will keep us current. In some cases, these services may be provided by a library, in others by a museum or even a website.”
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    That’s a vision of librarians as specialists in organizing and accessing and preserving information in multiple media forms, rather than as curators of collections of books, maps, or posters.”
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    • - post by mguhlin
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    “Internet search engines like Google Books fundamentally challenge our understanding of where we add value to this process,” says Dan Hazen, associate librarian of collection development for Harvard College. Librarians have worked hard to assemble materials of all kinds so that it is “not a random bunch of stuff, but can actually support and sustain some kind of meaningful inquiry,” he explains. “The result was a collection that was a consciously created, carefully crafted, deliberately maintained, constrained body of material.”
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    Internet search explodes the notion of a curated collection in which the quality of the sources has been assured.
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    When you get into the Internet world, you tend to get a gazillion facts, mentions, snippets, and references that don’t organize themselves in that same framework of prominence, and typology, and how stuff came to be, and why it was created, and what the intrinsic logic of that category of materials is. How and whether that kind of structuring logic can apply to this wonderful chaos of information is something that we’re all trying to grapple with.”
  • 
    
    How the flood of information from digitized books will be integrated into libraries, which have a separate and different,
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    contradictory, logic remains to be seen.
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    • - post by mguhlin
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    Bol’s vision of future librarians as digital-information brokers rather than stewards of physical collections is already taking shape in the scientific disciplines
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    In fields faced with information overload—such as biology, coping with a barrage of genomic data, and astronomy, in which an all-sky survey telescope can generate a terabyte of data in a single night—the torrents of raw information are impossible to absorb and understand without computational aids. 
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    There is growing awareness of the need to have an “information-processing approach to medicine baked into the core education of doctoral and medical students.” Otherwise, Kohane says, “we’re condemning them to perpetual partial ignorance.”
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    “How do we make information as useful as possible to our community now and over a long period of time?” 
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    “The digital world of content is going to be overwhelming for librarians for a long time, just because there is so much
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    librarians need to teach students not only how to search, but “how to think critically about what they have found…what they are missing… and how to judge their sources.” 
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    Actually delivering a physical book from the HD, on the other hand, costs $2.15—much more than the delivery of a digital book to a computer screen.
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    If students want to read a book cover to cover, the printed copy may be deemed superior with respect to “bed, bath and beach,” John Palfrey points out. If they just want to read a few pages for class, or mine the book for scattered references to a single subject, the digital version’s searchability could be more appealing; alternatively, students can request scans of the pages or chapter they want to read as part of a program called “scan and deliver” (in use at the HD and other Harvard libraries) and receive a link to images of the pages via e-mail within four days. 
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    “the notion that we are going to abandon the codex as we have known it—the traditional book—and go digital overnight is very misguided. It is going to be a much longer transition than anyone suspects, just as the transition in the past between the oral tradition of literature in antiquity and silent reading as we’ve known it for almost two millennia was a long transition, taking the better part of a millennium itself.”

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

Typing Test Results @drezac

Wow, haven't had such an easy typing test in awhile...try it out yourself!

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

Shape Poems

Note: Another blog entry I didn't want to lose and I'm reposting here.

To begin my search, I decided to pursue an interactive that matches this screenshot below:

As a writer, I’m always looking forward to sharing writing tools–interactives according to Thinkfinity–with those I work with a class of grade 3-5 students. Shape poetry is fun to do!

Shape poems, or poems that look like the things they describe, are a fun way to introduce children to poetry. In this activity from ReadWriteThink, everyone can be a poet using the online Shape Poems tool.

When you get to the resource, you’ll find some specific suggestions…here’s what that looks like:

You’ll find a link to the Shape Poem Tool. That will take you to something that looks like this:

There are a few steps to go through, but it’s clear that children are guided through the process of developing a Shape Poem. Some reminders from the lesson:

• You can use the child’s senses to help come up with words. What does the object look like? What does it feel like? How does it sound? How does it smell?
• It can be helpful to type in phrases if the child has come up with words thatrhyme or start with the same letter to see how the words look on the same line.
• You can type only 20 characters in each of the fields, so do not use words likea or the. You can use these words later in the poem itself if you choose.
• If you run out of space but not ideas, use a piece of paper to write down extra words.
  Source: Shape Poem

At the end of the process (gee, I’d forgotten how hard it is to write poetry), you can printsomething like this:

Or, what I think is really neat, maybe take it and drop it into a VoiceThread and have your kids read it aloud and then ask folks to give you comments…like this:

(I’m hosting my pictures via Skitch, but you could just upload the screenshot).

For fun, I took the picture generated by Read-Write-Think and dropped it into a new VoiceThread. Then, I recorded my poem and it looks like this…drop by and leave a comment!

And that’s it! A quick lesson combining ONE Thinkfinity Interactive–Shape Poems Maker–with VoiceThread.com to create an interactive poetry book. How would you revise this?

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Teaching with Comics

Note: I wrote this blog entry awhile back and didn't want to lose it. You'll want to read the update at the end to take advantage of a special offer.

Earlier this week, a 2nd grade teacher came by and asked, “I want to teach kids dialogue in their writing using comics. Is there a free program that helps me do that?” The answer is a definite YES. There are several programs online that you can use. Although we quickly stumbled upon BitStrips.com as a simple tool–which is what I used to make the comic above–I knew there were other tools available, as well…through Thinkfinity.org. Before we talk about the tools, let’s discuss HOW comics are helpful; here is a short list of web sites for teaching with or through comics in grades 3-12:

1. 
   

   Creating Comics and Cartoons! (Grades 3-5)

2. 
   

   Buzz! Whiz! Bang! Using Comic Books to Teach Onomatopoeia (Grades 3-5)

3. 
   

   Comics in the Classroom as an Introduction to Genre Study(Grades 3-5)

4. 
   

   Comics in the Classroom as an Introduction to Narrative Structure (Grades 3-5)

5. 
   

   Book Report Alternative: Comic Strips and Cartoon Squares(Grades 6-8)

6. 
   

   Comic Book Show and Tell (Grades 9-12)

Find a lot more through the Thinkfinity.org Search!

Here are some popular tools available via Thinkfinity.org that you can use:

• 
  

  Comic Creator

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  Comic Creator Tool Tip Sheet

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  King Tut Cartoon Fun: This Nationalgeogrphic.com Kids resource, part of the National Geographic feature titled “Egypt: Secrets of an Ancient World,” is an interactive cartoon into which users can type dialogue. The cartoon features a man and a boy looking at King Tut’s tomb. Users can type in what they think the man and boy are saying and print out their custom-made cartoon. There are also links to an archive of other cartoons.

Update 04/2010: National Writing Project members can access BitStripsforSchools.com and get access to a free trial that grants complete access until August 31, 2010. Definitely worth checking out, even if you're NOT an NWP member!

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Job Posting - District Instructional Technology Specialist

Woodville ISD has posted an opening for a District Instructional Technology Specialist. Go to www.woodvilleeagles.org for application.

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TCEA MoodleMoot 2010 Presentation Proposals

Below are my presentation proposals for the TCEA MoodleMoot taking place June 22-23, 2010. Find out more about the MoodleMoot online. Anyone else going?

PROPOSAL #1

Title: Moodle-izing the Writing Workshop

Short Description: In this session, participants will work on "moodle-izing"  the writing workshop. Learn how you can use Moodle to facilitate 4 components of the Writing Workshop with built-in modules, as well as safe, free, easy-to-use multimedia-focused Web 2.0 technologies.

Detailed Description: In this session, participants will focus on the 4 components of the Writing Workshop, including 1) MiniLesson, 2) Status of the Class, 3) Write and Confer, and 4) Group Share. Exciting Moodle modules, as well as Moodle, itself are available to facilitate the flow of the Writing Workshop, as conceptualized and described by Nanci Atwell, Donald Graves, and Luci Calkins. Participants will leave with access to a copy of a Moodle course set up to facilitate Writing Workshop in their classrooms using Moodle, as well as be invited to join MoodleMayhem, an online email group and collaborative wiki site to share ideas and course content. More information will be shared online at http://bit.ly/moodlemayhem

Strand: Curricular Applications

PROPOSAL #2

Title: 5 Must-Have Moodle Modules

Short Description: Participants will learn about several different modules that enhance Moodle functionality and use for professional learning and/or instruction.

Detailed Description: Out of the hundreds of Moodle modules available, which ones should you choose for use in YOUR Moodle? If that is the question keeping you up late at night, then this is the session for you!  Participants will have the opportunity to experiment with various Moodle modules, as well as hear the presenter's recommended Moodle modules. 

Strand(s): Moodle for Beginners, Technical Aspects

PROPOSAL #3

Title: Achieving NCLB 8th Grade Technology Literacy with Moodle

Short Description: The San Antonio ISD has implemented a moodle-based 8th Grade Technology Applications course that it is using with Middle Schools students to help prepare them for 8th Grade Technology Literacy Assessment conducted each year. Come hear our story of how Moodle played an instrumental role in changing how we approach teaching and learning in Middle school with blended instruction.

Detailed Description: In the last few years, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) has been requiring school districts to share how many 8th grade students have completed a technology literacy assessment. The requirement has meant rethinking how we approach technology literacy in schools and its assessment. Since funding for third party assessment was not provided, school districts have struggled to find ways to assess their 8th graders. In the face of this, the San Antonio ISD decided to construct a blended course with assessment that focuses on Technology Applications:TEKS. Developed by Molly Valdez (San Antonio ISD), the course--with accompanying assessment--is available for sharing with other Texas school districts. Hear our story and share your own wisdom about course design and Moodle as a lever to shift thinking about how to approach unfunded requirements for technology literacy.

 

Strand(s): Moodle for Beginners, Curricular Applications

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Job Posting - Instructional Technology Facilitator

The Education Service Center, Region 20 in San Antonio, Tx shared the following:

Education Service Center, Region 20 is seeking applicants for a full-time Instructional Technology Facilitator position. The application is available at www.esc20.net > Employment

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Meeting People I've Already Met

One of the most annoying things about the way my brain doesn't work is that if I've read or seen your photograph, my brain translates that into "We've met this person before, say 'Hello!'" It's darn confusing to walk up to strangers, say "Hello" like we've known each other, then realize we never have. Worse, my brain seems to work just the opposite with people I have met, but can't remember. So, I'll be one of those folks staring at someone thinking, "Uh, did we meet before?" To which they reply, "Yes, but you probably don't remember me" and I end up feeling like a heel for forgetting them. But given time and retelling of stories, my brain catches on.

So, when I walked up to Kevin Honeycutt at TCEA TEC-SIG, I felt like we'd already met through blog posts, his podcast, Wes Fryer's stories, etc. only to find out we hadn't actually met face to face. Sad to say, I was getting him mixed up with someone I met at ISTE/NECC Conference in San Antonio...and no, I don't remember that person's name. Heck!

Anyways, Kevin was kind enough to snap a picture with me....

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Podcast - 2nd Session of GoogleApps for Education in Texas #tecsig #googleapps

Listen to Podcast - Second Session

The podcast for the second GoogleApps for Education in Texas panel discussion session has now been posted and is available. You can find out more about it online at http://bit.ly/tecsig2010

Some fascinating discussion and perspectives in this one that did not show up in the first session, although naturally, there is some overlap.

Enjoy!

Listen to Podcast - Second Session

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

San Antonio Public Library Fair May 1 and May 13

On Saturday, May 1st the San Antonio Public Library will host a Reading Fiesta and Concert by Jose Luis Orozco at the Mission San Jose.  The event is free and open to the public.

 
Also, the Scholastic Warehouse is having another sale from May 13th to May 29th. This one promises to be the biggest sale of the year and everyone is invited.

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