App-titude For Learning

RSCON3 starts tomorrow. I'll be presenting our app on Sunday July 31 at 8:30 EST.
Here's a link to the presentation. https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?sid=2008350&password=M.45049C6A256C8981875FABF3CA54BE S
Just type a user name and you'll be in. No password needed.


Prizes. Prizes are always good. Attend the conference, complete the survey and be eligible to win some great prizes, including the app project for your school or an Ipad2. Here's the link. http://reformsymposium.com/conferences/rscon3/official-grand-prize-raffle/
The main page of our app is on that page by the way.

Twitter - Why I Like

Twitter has allowed me to access and explore ideas that have never previously been on my radar or that I've glossed over because of the effort required to seek out more information.

An example to illustrate my point:

Through one of the people I follow, I came upon an article about antimatter.  Before twitter it would never even have occurred to me to search for these types of articles. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-07-fundamental-matter-antimatter-symmetry.html  I now follow a number of physicists, astrophysicists and mathematicians because I find their work interesting.

The article makes a reference to pitch and how pitch changes as an object making a sound approaches and passes. Think of an ambulance siren.  Right away a blog post of another person I follow - the amazing Matt Henderson (@matthen2) came to mind.  Matt is also someone I found through twitter.  He's a computational linguist about to begin his PhD at Cambridge.  Matt creates animations of mathematical concepts and is one of my favourite people to follow because he helps me understand my world. He not only makes math and physics easy to understand, but his work is stunningly beautiful. http://blog.matthen.com/archive

The post in question was created a few months previously.  It was an animation of the Doppler effect and has stayed with me.  When I went to Matt's blog to search for it, I couldn't find it so I DM'd (sent a direct message) to Matt via twitter asking for the link.  Within an hour I had it.
http://blog.matthen.com/post/5521271088/spin-around-something-which-makes-a-noise-and-you

Matt's tweets and blog entries have led me to people whose epaths would never have crossed with mine had it not been for twitter.  Twitter is not like Google. With Google, you need to already know what you are searching for. Twitter allows for randomness.  It is much like wandering through a section of a library that you do not normally visit and finding a book on a topic you know very little about.  The book captures your interest and keeps you reading into the wee hours of the morning.  The difference? With a library you must then go back and find more books on the topic - a pleasurable  pursuit.  With twitter though, you can simply click on the hashtag or examine someone's follow lists  and find a vast array of  people and ideas related to the topic.

Thank you Twitter. You've made my life richer.

RSCON3 Meet the Presenters

Yesterday I took time to view many of the You Tube preview videos for RSCON3.  http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=rscon3&aq=f
What struck me was the simplicity of  it all. These are not "stars" in the usual sense of the word. There are no Kardashians here!!  (And thank goodness for that!)  What I did find was a group of  educators and those with an interest in education whose biggest glory occurs every day in unobserved spaces. They are taking time to share a thing or two about what they've learned.   This is an opportunity to see and hear about what is happening globally in education from those most directly involved.  This is a chance to learn about meaningful change from those at the forefront, those who are shaping a vision of how learning can be. It's going to be quite a weekend. Don't miss out!

And now, here's my attempt:

RSCON3

In a few days, nearly 8000 educators from over 40 different countries are expected to attend a free 3 day virtual conference, The Reform Symposium, #RSCON3. This free award-nominated e-conference is going to take place on July 29-31st, 2011. Participants can attend this online conference from the comfort of their homes or anywhere that has Internet access. This amazing conference provides educators new or currently active on social networks the opportunity to connect with educators and professionals in the field of education worldwide. With over 12 Keynotes, 80 presenters, and 3 keynote panel discussions you are bound to be inspired!

• View the schedule to plan which presentations you will attend!

Download the flyer to share with your school!

• Watch this Youtube video of January 2011's conference!
• See if your school will count this as continuing education credit!
• Consider hosting a viewing party!

We would like to thank the incredible organizers- Shelly Terrell, Kelly Tenkely, Chris Rogers, Lisa Dabbs, Melissa Tran, Clive Elsmore, Mark Barnes, Ian Chia, Cecilia Lemos, Jerry Blumengarten, and Kyle Pace- and Steve Hargadon of Classroom 2.0 and The Future of Education online communities for making this incredible conference possible.

We hope you can join us for this incredible professional development experience!

The Culture of Curation

A few weeks ago I realized that I needed to create some structure to the over 900 people that I follow on twitter.  I was losing track.  Some tweets were no longer appearing in my feed as the most recent followees take precedence over older ones.  I was losing contact with some truly innovative thinkers and and was becoming frustrated by the time it took to find their tweets.  It was time to organize and create lists.

Going through the names and sites was interesting as followees are listed chronologically and reflect my interests at particular points in time.  I had to look at each person or organization and decide where to list them.  I ended up creating 16 different lists:

singularityu
aboriginal
assistive tech
finned
math/science
RSCON3
researchers
developers
media
industry
thinkers
AR
educators
interesting
Web 2.0 tools
edcampto
Minecraft
Class 62 (which is locked)
Real World Learning                                and began placing people where I thought they belonged.   Some people I follow may appear on more than one list.

Creating these lists was time consuming, but has made my twitter life much easier.  I can now click on a specific list and see the tweets of everyone on that list.

The skill that I used to categorize and create my lists is called curation.  If you are not yet familiar with this term, you need to learn it.  Curation skills are essential for survival in this world of fast information. (Steve Wheeler has just written a good explanation here: http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.com/2011/07/great-collective.html )

Creating my twitter lists has caused me to reflect on how we organize information.  I remember when there was only one way to do this  -  the Dewey Decimal System.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey_Decimal_Classification  In order to use libraries (the kind you walk into) you had to know this system.  We were all taught it in school and used it to find books on specific topics, complete research projects and pursue our own interests.

What strikes  me now about this practice is that the Dewey Decimal System was not just a method for organizing information, but a cultural reflection of our thinking.  We all agreed that information would be organized in a specific way and then adhered unquestioningly to that system.  While perhaps efficient, this method, is none-the-less very limiting.  It limits the way we think about content and stifles creative connections.

Curation and the tools of curation allow greater flexibility and richness to our organizational choices. The beauty of curation is that each person is able to organize information in ways that are meaningful to him or her .  The way I curate will be different from the way you curate.  It is interesting then to examine people's choices.  I've been visiting peoples'  lists on twitter to see how they have chosen to organize their followees   People's lists reflect their thinking and interests. They are cultural.   Each is unique.  It is as fascinating to see how someone curates as it is to see the actual content that is curated.

Rather than relying on predetermined categories, learners now have to think about how and why they are choosing to organize and connect information.  Curation allows for deep thinking, creativity, meaningful organization,   divergence and for connection of ideas that may not be obvious to everyone.  We are developing complex personal systems. Our content ecosystems are exploding and we are all richer because of it.

Given the rich possibilities of curation, there is no point bemoaning the loss of Dewey Decimal skill. We must look forward and teach students the skills they require today to navigate and organize information effectively.   It is incumbent upon educators to learn  how to use the tools of curation. 

I'm Just Playing with Crayons

I have come to a realization this week.  I'm not being innovative at all.  I'm actually working in the past. I'm merely colouring with crayons.


What prompted this?


Singularityu. "Singularity University  is an interdisciplinary university whose mission is to assemble, educate and inspire leaders who strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies in order to address humanity’s grand challenges. With the support of a broad range of leaders in academia, business and government, Singularity University hopes to stimulate groundbreaking, disruptive thinking and solutions aimed at solving some of the planet’s most pressing challenges. Singularity University is based at the NASA Ames campus in Silicon Valley. http://singularityu.org/

I've been following tweets of attendees and more significantly visiting their websites and blogs.  My brain now hurts. What I have seen is the future, visions of how the world might be.  Which has made me realize that as educators who are blogging, who are connecting our classrooms globally, who are developing models for project-based learning, who are exploring how to encourage our students to develop personal learning networks, who are integrating technology into our practices, we in fact are toddlers playing with the tools of the past.  Our tools and possibly processes are already outdated.

One need look no farther than the 2011 Thiel Foundation candidates: 20 remarkable under 20s to confirm this.   http://thielfoundation.org/index.php? ption=com_content&view=article&id=15&Itemid=19  These thinkers have already left behind the world that the rest of us are busily constructing and are working in a sphere well beyond what some of us can even comprehend.

Centres like Singularityu and the Thiel Foundation  make me realize just how outdated most current educational practices are.  We are changing at a snail's pace and failing to provide the kind of thinking opportunities that learners require in order to fully participate in the vision.  I'm worried.  How many learners are going to be excluded from this new world because they haven't been provided with opportunities to think in the way that innovation requires? How many brilliant ideas will never have the opportunity to surface because the thinkers have been too busy learning how to write standardized tests rather than engaging in deep thinking and problem solving?

As I restructure my practice knowing that an even more profound shift is required,  I'm asking those at the forefront of this vision,  what should I be doing?

Edcampto: What's Our Purpose?

Last evening a second planning session for Edcampto took place in Toronto. I must commend Michelle Soloman and Stephen Hurley and (??? I know other names need mentioning, please let me know) on the work they've accomplished to date.  The website is up and running http://www.edcampto.org/blog/ and looks wonderful.  It is exciting to see progress - from conversations to ideas to something concrete. It is happening!

The underlying theme of our conversations last evening centred on two elements:

What exactly is our purpose and who will be our audience?

It was a good discussion. Every single person at the table had a slightly different vision of the purpose and audience of edcamp.  They ranged from learning how to engage disinterested and alienated learners to providing educators with practical ideas, to how to create richer learning environments to the role of technology in learning.

 Was one person's idea though, more valid than another's?  No.  Each person's contribution to our discussion was relevant because it caused us to think deeply about education.  This, I think, reveals the nature and purpose of edcamps.   Edcamps allow diverse voices on education to be heard, rich discussion to ensue and deep thinking to take place. They are an opportunity for those who are passionate about learning to collaborate with others.  Edcamps are very different from traditional professional development.  There are no "experts", but there are interested, knowledgeable and skilled groups of people willing to share their thoughts and engage in debate about education. Given that the very nature of school is about to change dramatically edcamps provide a forum for exploring how these changes might unfold and allow anyone with an interest in education to participate: educators, students, parents, industry, public schools, private schools ... all are welcome.

Our hook for Edcampto is still being written, however, I will leave you with phrases from our conversations to mull over.

   ... changing visions of education ... what is this place we call school?   .. engagement ... collaboration ...community  ..... conversation ... technology ... ideas ... colearning .... do you have questions? ...  you're invited to a passionate discussion on education ... do you perhaps have some answers?  ...  learners.  ... a conversation among equals ... passion ... building connections ... creating a network of learners ... change ...  sharing ... learning from others ... learning with others ... no experts, but expertise ... open ... imagination ...possibilities ... getting rid of the hierarchy ... personal learning ... the role of technology ... what's relevant to you is not necessarily relevant to all ... inclusion ... the power of personal learning networks

Together these phrases create an impression of what we are trying to prompt through Edcampto.

What happens at Edcampto will be dependent upon who attends.  Our overall goal though is for participants to leave at end of the day  feeling excited, enriched and passionate about the possibilities for learning in the 21st century.

Tweeting Our Way into Community

This year a number of items have come to light about my family heritage that have caused me to consider what it is that we are actually accomplishing as we evolve into global learners.

My aunt who is now 86  (and a living testament to eat right and exercise!)  is visiting from Germany.  She brought with her documents that haven't been shared before but that she wanted us to see.  The first set of documents pertain to the Italian side of our family. They include our family tree on my grandmothers side: the Martinis.  The original Martini crest dates back to the early 1400's and surprisingly is still in existence. It hangs in the home of a cousin in Berlin and on it is our family motto which roughly translates as: Loyal, Steadfast, Knowledge.  I find this fitting given that we are a dynasty of teachers.

The second set of documents I found disturbing.  They pertained to the German side of my family and were created in 1942.  The documents are also a kind of family tree.  They proved to the Nazis that our heritage was aryan.   They were a curious item to hold in one's hands.  The first two pages explain the "rules" - how it would be determined whether or not one's family was truly aryan. The rules were lengthy and detailed. Next came pages and pages of  family history. Each person was listed on a separate page with name, date and place of birth. The record traced my grandfather's  family back to the 1700's where it suddenly stopped. Each person was listed on a separate page and each page had been stamped by a clerk.  Each stamp shows clearly the eagle and the swastika.  The family had met with approval. They had been allowed to survive.

I tried to imagine what it would have been like for my great-grandfather to fill in the pages, bring them to the Nazi officials and nervously await approval.  I wondered why it stopped in the 1700's.  Was that as far back as could be determined or was there questionable lineage that might put the family at risk? Did my great-grandfather choose to exclude anyone?  What was it like to have the entire family's future lie in a clerk's hands? I wondered what happened the moment someone was told their family was not aryan or aryan enough.  What did the people waiting their turn, the clerks, the observers do at that moment?

This is particularly disturbing as another piece of the family puzzle came to light this year as well.  We learned  that my father's family were gypsies from Poland.  Before my grandfather and his brothers had immigrated to Canada as homesteaders,  they had been itinerant carpenters,  colourful wagons and all.  My grandfather and his brothers had been fortunate enough to leave Poland for Canada in the 1920's and had thus avoided the disaster of the Nazi invasion. Most Polish gypies did not survive the war.  They were either brutally murdered on the spot by death squads or sent to the gas chambers.  In fact we discovered that roughly  500 Siwaks had died  in the gas chambers.

This is indeed a curious heritage to have and it doesn't sit well. But what does it mean?  I'm not quite certain yet, but it has caused me to reflect on my responsibilities as an educator and to think about what is happening at this time in history as we connect our classrooms to world.

It does confirm for me that as we reshape our practice we're doing more than simply learning how to use cool tools; we're doing more than blogging, or designing apps or skyping. We're building bridges of understanding.   We're tweeting our way into community.  Already my students feel connected to the world in a way that wasn't possible before.  They "know" Australia because they know Ian.  They know Finland and New York City because of Esa and Cynthia.  Through our app project we are constructing new ways of interacting, ones that don't involve fear and hatred, one's that are based on respect and understanding.  Our work is important.

         It makes me wonder ..    why aren't all schools, teachers and administrators jumping on board?
           
                      Why on earth is anyone holding back from this remarkable moment in time?

Why do They Have to Sit on the Carpet? or at a Table? or at All?

Institutional flaw. A brief moment illustrates problems with directed education.

This winter we had a wonderful snowstorm. It left a great coating of thick ice on the school yard that caused excitement in the kindergarten pen. It was my day to supervise the children during Nutrition Break which involves 20 minutes of eating time, followed by 20 minutes of outdoor play time. Anyone who has ever had to get a 4 or 5 year old into a snowsuit should raise eyebrows at this. Yes, there are some children who only get outside for a few minutes during the winter as it takes so long for them to get dressed. This time, however, is driven by a schedule - necessary in a busy school.  It is also the time

Natural Play Spaces

I've been thinking a great deal about space lately and in particular, play and learning spaces which in my mind are really one.  I'm looking at my classroom and thinking about how I could redesign it so it looks less like a 20th century exhibit and more like a collaborative learning and play environment.
Through this exploration I've been following the work of one of the parents in our community: Adam Bienenstock.

Adam is dedicated to designing play spaces that encourage imaginative, co-operative play and connection to  nature.  He is one of the many people in this world who has vision, who knows that we can do better for our children.  Adam has already transformed one park in our community and has begun to work with schools to help them reimagine outdoor spaces.  What Adam has observed is that when you change the design of space, the nature of play also changes.  Let's design spaces that encourage imagination and collaboration! If you'd like to know more about Adam and his work you can find him at:
http://www.naturalplaygrounds.ca/

We're Not Just Teachers-Students-Classrooms Anymore!

It has been fascinating observing the ebb and flow of ideas on education in social media and on twitter, in particular.  When I became active on twitter last fall,  tweets centered on Web 2.0 tools.  It was all about the tools and the phrase Web 2.0 was bandied about as we excitedly explored our options and experimented in our classrooms.  Now I rarely see the term. It has become simply: tools - no defining terminology necessary.

With the exploration of the tools came the revelation of exceptional creativity and willingness of educators to embrace technology  and share how to use these tools in our classrooms. I tip my hat to Aviva Dunsinger (@grade1  on twitter)  who showed as all that grade 1 is a whole new world once students have access to the tools.

The tweet topics then shifted to a growing awareness of the power of  our global professional learning networks and the impact they are having on our classrooms.  To suddenly have access to thousands of knowledgeable, skilled and dedicated educators, as well as to talented innovators from other professions has left me in awe.

Within this network came the discovery that we no longer need to invent tasks for our students that mimic the real world. Instead, students can actively engage directly in meaningful work that has impact. They can set their own agendas, build collaborative teams and work to accomplish a task.  'Two remarkable projects that demonstrate this are The Thomas Tallis School of Creativity's new uniform project.  Students worked with designers, sourced eco-friendly fabrics, surveyed the community, debated through social media and finally settled on a design. http://tallisuniform.tumblr.com/The%20Brief  for their new uniforms.

A second remarkable project involved redesigning classroom furniture.  Students at http://theschool.columbia.edu/ worked directly with professionals to create prototypes and finished products.  http://www.fastcompany.com/pics/kids-can-create.   People who have to use the furniture (ie students) designed it to meet their own needs.  They thought of design elements that address their frustrations in dealing with their work and storage spaces. Brilliant!

What stands out for educators who are involved in this kind of work is the exceptional level of engagement and commitment from students that authentic, real world learning provides. Social Media enables us to connect with expertise so that these types of projects can proceed.  My own class has learned that we can connect globally with anyone to accomplish anything.

So what's next?  Where's this going?  A new thread is emerging and about to explode and it has me more excited than anything so far.   Students are beginning to build their own professional learning networks to pursue their own goals.  Tom Whitby has noticed it. http://tomwhitby.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/a-digital-social-media-educator-in-an-analog-system/  (See the last paragraph of his post)  Others are beginning to mention it.

I've observed this in a few of my own students: the ones who've not just completed an app, but have seen the bigger picture.  They are beginning to use social media not just for typical preteen and teen interactions but to reach out to those from whom they wish to learn. This has been an indirect result of my teaching practice this year.  My role now becomes to assist them in learning how to do this well.

Which leads to a dilemna for me as an educator.  I feel an incredible sense of responsibility and commitment to this group of students who are now moving on. They are beginning to build a different digital footprint and I want them to be successful in the process.  Their footprint now has greater consequences and I don't feel that I can just abandon them to explore PLN's on their own.  We've built an exceptional collaborative team that has only just begun it's work and there is a core group who feels that our work is not yet done.

As we redesign and explore models of  education how do we factor in that we're not just teachers-students-classrooms anymore?  We're collaborative teams in the process of learning. When students are committed to learning why should they be cut off in June simply because of grade levels and school calendars?   It's a question that we'll need to address and a discussion that must happen soon.