Musings - Just Learning

Last night on our WOW2 webcast, we had the incredible privilege of enjoying a conversation with Elana Langer who is currently working on the educational features of the OLPC initiative. The initiative and the many issues and criticisms surrounding it has been well-covered by the media recently - BBC (great videos of OLPC in Nigeria), webcast with Leo Laporte and Cory Doctorow, TED Talks interview with Nicholas Negroponte, Sixty Minutes.

For a child’s view of the XO, watch the youtube video:

We spoke with Elana about a different focus - the educational features of the laptop. Unlike its competitor the Classmate, or just about any other generic computing tool, the XO has been specifically designed with education and learning thoughtfully in mind. This may well be its selling point over the “big guns” who have indicated through their brutal marketing attempts with the developing nations that they are feeling quite threatened by OLPC. The OLPC movement has become a little David going up against the Goliath combination of Intel and Microsoft.

We had a dedicated group of technology-minded educators in our chatroom last night, some of whom are raising funds for their school to purchase the XO machines for their own students as well as giving away a matching number. These teachers were also very interested in how they themselves to help out the OLPC program - besides buying and giving. Elana pointed us to the OLPC wiki, encouraged us to add to the teachers’ section (a sort of place for best practices), and also encouraged us to directly send her our best practice stories of using computers in the classroom. Our collective experience will be used to help train teachers who will be receiving the XOs in their classrooms - be it the developing nations or our own communities. Please consider sharing your own stories!

We also spoke of the possibility of creating mentoring partnerships between those of us who have taught with laptops and now own an XO and those teachers who are new to the XO and using technology as a tool in the classroom. Elana said this was something she very much wished to explore. Stay tuned for more on that!

Elana brings her experience as a maker of video documentaries to the OLPC project. You can find her work on youtube (OLPC Learning Project). She is also the video documentary maker of the Living Archives Project in PEI.

Please enjoy this video which features Carla Gomez, who works for OLPC in the communities where the XO has been introduced.

Self-regulation and independent thinking are two important goals educators seek to promote in their students. We should stand up and cheer for those students who have taken initiative and created meaningful products that are designed to support a higher cause. I am privileged to observe quite a few educators who are consistently striving to support learning situations and environments which propel students to be thinking outside of themselves and outside the classroom and school walls. This year has been a banner year for global student connections. Let’s hope for a critical mass during 2008 (although that is incredibly optimistic!).
Recently a few students took the initiative to begin an ongoing student blog, Students 2.0. Curiously, their audience seems more designed toward their adult teachers rather than their own peer group. It is an interesting glimpse into the thoughts of some intelligent young people who likely have a better grasp of the big picture of social networking than do most teenagers.

Student-driven social-networking initiatives are not entirely new. A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of attending another conference presentation by the young people of Taking IT Global. Once again, I was incredibly impressed by the achievements and vision by the young people who started TIG a few years ago. They were teenagers at the time and now maintain the world’s most popular and successful social networking site that is centred around global issues. I encourage you to watch the video and to visit their site - I am sure you will be impressed by the thousands of student voices who share the passion for bettering our world together. Taking IT Global also offers opportunities for teachers and students from around the world to collaborate and partner together. The education component of TIG is a recent addition - TIG’s primary mission is to connect individual students who join on their own initiative.

I am pleased to note that LEARN, here in Québec, has partnered with Taking IT Global so that our teachers and students can use the online environments and services of TIG for classroom global exchanges. If you are interested in knowing more, please contact me!

It was through twitter this morning that Ewan McIntosh pointed to a new web-based word processor - Buzzword. Move over Google docs, there is now competition! I played around with it for a while and was impressed by a few of its features which are improvements over Google docs - the tables, for example, really rock! Easier to use than a wiki or google docs and much cleaner look. Apparently, the word processor is flash-based, not html, which makes it a little less messy. I could not get the application to import docs or images, but others on the network had no problems, so it could have been my connection. Another small criticism I had was that there was no apparent way to insert html links.

I think the important point here about Buzzwords is that it shows that there will be an increasingly wider choice of web-based collaborative tools to use (and hopefully they will remain free!). With greater choices comes the competitive drive to create better, more facile, and lighter (on bandwidth) tools.

The number of web-based, easy-to-use tools that permit collaboration between many users is growing steadily. When I was in the classroom last year, my students used a number of the tools to facilitate their projects and assignments. While my school permitted wikispaces to be open to anyone on campus, I did not have the same luck with google docs. There was a concern about bandwidth if many users were working on docs collaboratively. I am wondering if that concern is justified. It will be interesting to see if buzzword faces the same hurdles. I would like to test its use of bandwidth sometime.

One of the first things I check out when using new applications - whether web-based or not - is what file types the app will import and export. This is critically important when designing or creating resources that need to be available cross-platform and in a ubiquitous computing setting.

In my new position at LEARN, I have been creating resources and tools to support the learning and evaluation situations and activities that are hosted on our site for the use of Québec teachers. As well, I have created several conference presentations in the last few months. Because of this, I have had to work with new applications and software. Oh yeah, and I moved from a PC to a mac, so I have become very sensitive about cross-platform apps.

Some of the new apps I am using:

Final Cut Express - pretty powerful, even if not pro version! It only runs on a mac, but more importantly, it exports to a variety of file types - wmv (imports this as well), flash, ipod, as well as .mov.

Omnigraffle - also exports to jpg, html, pdf and a variety of image file types. One has to go pro to export as a visio file type (which is handy to me because my colleague has visio and offered to help with some of my visuals!) Beware Leopard users! There was serious bug in omnigraffle that causes you to lose the data of a file when you export! Be sure to check out the Beta version so you don’t lose your data when you upgrade to Leopard!

Keynote (from iWork ‘08) - this version really rocks because it will export to ppt, flash, html, ipod, .mov and will import PowerPoints. Can we expect PowerPoint to do the same? I think not. Also the graphics and design of keynote is just plain elegant - much sweeter-looking than ppt. I especially like using this app when I am working with a visual resource or tool because I can export to so many different file types and permit some flash animation if I would like that in my tool.
Web-based Apps:

Google docs - exports as Word doc, html, pdf, OpenOffice, rtf and txt as well as its own Presentation slideshow mode

Wikispaces - does not currently export - but here is my workaround - send to printer, copy and paste onto a word processor doc and then save as you like (see google doc)

And for all those file types that cannot be converted within their own applications, there is always zamzar - free online conversion tool. Zamzar also will convert youtube videos as standalones. So, if you are like me, you will download the youtube video if the place where you want to show it off does not have reliable Internet access.

An educator I recently shared zamzar with was very concerned about this ability to convert documents so easily because of copyright and plagiarism issues. We are now very capable of taking something online and claiming it as our own work. It is the evil flip side of a web that permits user-generated content so easily. To me, this speaks of a GREAT NEED to change our teaching practices. Why are we giving assignments that can be so easily found on the Internet? The assignments and learning situations we give our students should challenge them to create (or re-create) information in meaningful ways that demonstrate their learning. A powerful way to get students to understand the value of intellectual property is to have them create their own IPs and share it on the web. Am I being too naive about this issue?

Every once in a while in the last month, I would experience a twinge or two of guilt for not dedicatedly blogging my thoughts, experiences, and reflections. There was a part of me that was resistant to the idea for some reason and I needed time to think that through. Certainly part of it was that I was incredibly busy with other tasks and quite overwhelmed even, with catching up, and staying on top. I was even struggling with the notion of who or what I was blogging for - me? others? anyone??

It only came to me the other day how very active I had been in the network “on the grid” during this month. I certainly had ample opportunity to share my voice and participate in many conversations - usually live or almost live. Besides having the privilege of webcasting with the Women of Web 2 every week, I also hosted on the K12 Online final event - When Night Falls for two hours of the 24 hour event. I lurked a lot in twitter and chimed in my thoughts, ideas and resources on many occasions. Many other educators have been using UStream (free video broadcasting service) to broadcast their conference presentations and I have joined in on many such times with that. And, of course, I skype chat daily with a number of educators from around the world about educational stuff. Even this morning, it is just past 8 AM and I have already chatted with an Australian teacher, Graham Wegner, about his global project and how he can show it off to parents tomorrow night, and an Israeli educator, my good friend Reuven, about information literacy. I shared a few resources with a colleague here in Quebec. Just another typical day.

I realize many people have been saying it as well, but I am amazed at how twitter has become a tool for really fantastic professional networking and support. I now have something like over 150 followers - an interesting variety of educators from around the world. Quite often, daily now, a few of us will throw out a request or a question. And there always seems to be a few of us that can almost immediately provide some aid or answers. Sometimes the discussion gets moved to a skype chat or conference to facilitate the aid that is needed or to extend the conversation. We share blog posts and other resources.

Yesterday was a particularly busy day for me on the grid. While working on the design of some curricula, I noticed that Dean Shareski put out a request for some of us to skype in to his grade 5 class in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan so the students could experience a sense of the global network as they work on this new project, Find a Story, Map a Story. Dean videoskyped me into the classroom and I had a lovely conversation with his students for a few minutes. He went on to invite 9 others in as well over the course of the next hour. A very effective way of showing off the power of these tools and the global network! I twittered my experience and within an hour, Derek Wenmoth picked it up and blogged about the project, inviting New Zealand teachers to look into it. In a few hours, the project went really global! Later in the morning, I noticed a twitter with a link to a live UStreamed student conference of grade 6 students in New Jersey on the topic of global warming. For a little while, I tuned in, joined in the chatroom and asked the students questions about their research and what changes in their own lives they were making as a result of their research projects.

Later yesterday, I had conversations with three colleagues who are not yet part of these networks but who work closely with educational technology. When I shared some of these experiences and tools with them, they were astounded. Then I realized that maybe I should be blogging about these experiences, because while twitter is great, it is still limiting the audience. Also, for my own professional development, it is important to chronicle my experiences and thoughts over time so I can see my own growth. A lesson I tried to pass on in one of my K12 Online presentations this year, but need to live up to!
Below I will note some new resources that I would also like to pass on:

LEARN - Expressions (one of the pages I am now responsible for in my new job)

Julie Lindsay’s awesome slideshow on wikis in education

Google’s SketchUp lessons for Autistic Children

Michael Wesch’s new youtube video “Information R/evolution”

Jeff Utecht’s UStream presentations on web 2.0 tools in Kuala Lampur

Teach Collaborative Revision with Google Docs

My twitterworld - join twitter and add me!

Yesterday I had the great privilege of capturing a conversation I was having with Elana Langer about her involvement in the One Laptop Per Child program by the MIT lab. This is grassroots broadcasting at its best - done quietly in a friend’s pantry because another live webcast was being videotaped in the living room and we can hear Dave Cormier’s toddler son, Oscar, getting grumpy before lunch time.

Elana is an instructor at SUNY in New York and is also the videographer documenting the Living Archives Project in Prince Edward Island. A few months ago she began work with the OLPC at the invitation of David Cavallo. She describes a bit of her own thesis work with him.

Elana mentions the new Get One/Give One program from OLPC. Guess what is top of my Christmas wish list?

My iPod hard drive that captured the conversation was spinning for some reason during the capture, so I apologize for the annoying whining noise in the background. If anyone has suggestions on what to do about that, please let me know!
Download Interview with Elana Langer of OLPC

Ogg download

 

 Interview with Elana Langer - ogg: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

In a very short compressed space of time of the last few days here in Charlottetown, I have met some cutting edge educators who are changing the face of education from the grassroots level.

Dr. Sandy McAuley is using the latest iteration of the former CSILE knowledge-building environment with his students at University of Prince Edward Island. He provided a demo of the environment for all of us to explore. It takes a sort of concept-map building approach to a content management system-like environment. While it has its limitations in being a very closed system, I particularly appreciated the tagging/keyword system that it uses. Another disadvantage, however, is that it is not possible to export the knowledge that is created there. Sandy worked with Scardamalia and Bereiter at OISE in the early 90’s developing and using the earliest iteration of CSILE up in the Canadian Arctic communities.

Sandy and I had a few conversations about whether new pedagogies were required to use the latest web 2.0 tools and environments or whether we were reinventing the wheel and ignoring the important research that has already been completed about the creation of knowledge and learning in online environments. As I have reflected upon my students’ conversations and multimedia products in the last few years, I have returned to the published research that has explored the benefits of online learning spaces. Much value has been documented along the way. On the other hand, it has remained in silos as web 2.0 tools and environments have proliferated in the last two years. Educators without any prior experience with online learning environments are discovering the tools and using them in very innovative ways. Accessibility to the research is sometimes prevented or not encouraged. There has been a huge disconnect between the teachers in the trenches and the researchers in the white towers. In the meantime, critics are quick to point out that little qualitative or quantitative research has been done on their use in the classroom. The fact that they have not been developed exclusively for the education domain makes them even more dubious. Those of us who see the benefits should draw upon the pioneers of online collaborative learning environments from the 1980’s and 90’s.

I also met the creator, Mike MacAdam, of Chuala, a language community and web-based pronunciation application that shows great promise for learners of other languages. My own son’s resistance to learning French could certainly be helped by this great tool.

Elana Langer was also at this conference as one of the presenters, but she also was with Dave Cormier from the beginning in creating the goals of the Living Archives. Besides being a videographer who will create a documentary about the project, she teaches in New York at SUNY and is also involved in the One Laptop Per Child program. Her involvement with the OLPC was what fascinated me in particular and I had an opportunity to have a couple of conversations with her about that. We actually audio-recorded our conversation in Dave’s pantry as he and Jeff were webcasting live in the living room!

The developers behind the XO (the machine for OLPC) have created a new platform for the machine (Sugar) which is based on a new pedagogical approach to education. Elana explains it much better than I can try, so you are invited to listen to the podcast (soon to be posted!). She has also agreed to come on to a WOW2 webcast on December 8th as our special guest, so tune in then to hear her live!

In the meantime, OLPC has just released an offer to purchase/give the XO laptop. For $400 a person will purchase a model of the XO and finance one to be sent to a developing nation. I am dying to see the XO for myself and play around with it to see how it can be used pedagogically in a school community.

Earlier this afternoon I was also able to help out with the WorldBridges videocast from Dave’s livingroom and then later capture a video interview with he and Jeff Lebow that will be featured in our WOW2 K12 Online conference presentation in about three weeks. Jeff Lebow’s vision for WorldBridges is more than 10 years old and it was fascinating and inspiring to hear his convictions and passion for webcasting at the grassroots level.

And, of course, we were all here in Charlottetown, PEI, to support the Living Archives Project which is a brainchild of Dave Cormier, who is himself also a visionary of education. Originally, he had wanted to use Second Life as the environment to support the project’s goal of student-created villages of digitized historical content. Due to the young ages of the student participants, he was not able to use SL so, undeterred, he has since discovered OpenSim. This program allows him to install and host the virtual world platform on his own server or even computer. Islands can be connected and disconnected with each other by user control. This provides him with a great deal more control and ownership over the project. The students appeared very enthusiastic when they saw the virtual world the other day. Students in Virginia also were invited to look over the virtual world and are watching this project carefully in the hope they can build their own world too!

It is exciting to be here at the University of Prince Edward Island to participate in this conference. I am sitting at a “blogger’s table” with Harold Jarche, Sandy McAuley, and Stephen Downes with Dave Cormier and Jeff Lebow hovering the background. Will Richardson is delivering the keynote and he is going through it to demonstrate how the world is changing and the social technologies that are being used by students, teachers, ordinary folks and even politicians. He points out in particular how Obama is using social networking sites in order to promote his campaign. Physical space can be transcended and we can now have meaningful conversations with people around the world. Will makes the statement that model of journalism has to change - we can add our own information so easily so instantly. I really liked what he showed about how a teacher was using twitter to teach about the student uprising in Myanmar just two days ago. Students were able to view photos and videos of Burma within hours after the incidents took place.

Will also looks at how business is changing and shifting as they exploit these web 2.0 tools. His wiki page is worth exploring for the information he has collected there. He reminded us, too, of the digital divide still due to socioeconomic disparities.

I like the way Will shows off his blog as a place where HIS learning takes place. “It is a powerful learning network.” However, there is a disconnect between this kind of learning and what is going on in classrooms. He also shows off FanFiction and MySpace (not a good site - he shows it as a bad model of how young people are using such sites).

Will and I both twittered before his session that the conference could be found live at edtechtalk.com with an invitation to join. Within a few minutes three of my twitter peeps had come back to say they were following us - Graham Wegner in Australia, John Pederson in Minnesota, and Alice Wells in Maine. How cool is that?

I particularly appreciated how Will put a focus on the importance of AUDIENCE. This is often overlooked as having any pedagogical value for students, but I think it is one of the most powerful and compelling reasons we should be using web 2.0 tools and environments. I have said it before - I think all student-created material should be up online. However, this is based on the premise that the material has authentic value. He mentions three great Canadian educators who have been so innovative in creating new pedagogies around these tools - Clarence Fisher, Darren Kuropatwa and Konrad Glogowski - and I heartily concur.

He challenges us to be participatory together during these exciting times - and to build our own learning networks. We also need to be modeling our own learning to our students.

Little did I know, some 11 or 12 months ago when I first heard of the proposal for the Living Archive project (yes, I made a few editing suggestions to the grant proposal - really, nothing much!) that I would be heading off to Charlottetown to participate in a conference to help carry out the goals of the project!

Kudos to Dave Cormier for pulling off a seemingly impossible and daunting task of a project - having young students collect and digitize content that would later be reconstructed in a virtual world (very short summary!)! It is student-driven social constructivism at its very best in concept.

I am honoured to be a part of the New Media Literacies Institute taking place at the University of Prince Edward Island (Charlottetown, PEI) Sept. 28-30th. Other (much more) notables include Jeff Lebow and Will Richardson.

What they *didn’t* tell me was that the presentations would be videocasted! And that Stephen Downes would be there. Okay, now I am a little … intimidated. Please note that both Will and Jeff are presenting simultaneously to me (phew!) and make your own choices!

This week I was able to finally finish and post the teaser videos to my K12 Online presentations. Please note that Vince takes most of the credit for our teaser on professional development. It was his idea for the scenario and he provided most of the slides for the opening and closing of the video. He also had a fun time screen capturing and editing together all the bits in movie-maker - a new experience for him.

See you all in PEI, Canada!