Room With A View

Several weeks back Google announced job cuts and cuts to some of its on-line apps. Among others it announced that Google Notebook will no longer accept new users and Google Video will no longer accept user-uploaded content. I use Google Notebook with my classes.

I’m not surprised it’s getting shut down. Of all the apps I use with students and teachers it’s the least understood. Many people are happy just to make their notes in Google Docs. Though Docs and Notebooks are similar I like the ability to right click on content and have it saved to a notebook. Regardless of how one feels about Google Notebook it points out the potential downside of cloud computing.

Cloud computing put users at the mercy of others. Other than more traditional websites that schools control, cloud based sites can be shuttered quickly and with no guaranteed input from users.

I find the concept of cloud computing very attractive. Someone else has to worry about the cost of storage and data backup. Also, it makes client software support easy because it’s browser based. But as attractive as I find it, the fact that someone else controls accessibility makes it not a viable option for schools as a primary solution. Anyone who suggests otherwise has their head in the clouds

Stephen Downe’s and Tom Hoffman’s posts about an e-learning project called Kusasa that is being shut down are more than a little disconcerting.

“Lesson? If a project depends on teacher training, it will likely fail.”

This year all teachers at my school received laptops. That’s not so earth shattering but it is a step in the right direction. It hasn’t been without controversy but generally I think things are going okay.

The reason for giving teachers laptops was to improve their tech skills with the result that they will integrate more technology into their teaching. I hope it will be successful but I’m concerned that the potential is being limited by laptops that are locked down.Teachers cannot customize them in any way. They can’t add software or configure them to work the way they think. Even something as simple as adding Google Notebook to I.E. is not possible.

I understand why the IT folks have done this. They are concerned about security. They want to keep everything working. I understand this yet, I don’t think we’ll achieve the full potential for learning if teachers can’t customize their machines. Unless teachers can customize and make the machines theirs, I don’t think we’ll see the gains that people are hoping for.

I’m not a fan of writers and others who have little first hand experience in education pontificating on how to “fix” our schools. Having said this, there is value in listening to divergent views. (We just can’t allow those with the divergent views to make policy decisions without input from those with first hand experience in the system–i.e. teachers.)

I’ve been a reader of Robert Cringely for many years–since I watched Triumph of the Nerds on PBS. His column last week is about education and is entitled War of the Worlds. It’s worth a read but basically his thesis is that students are so empowered by communication technology that they are ready to “dump our schools.”

I don’t see this in the students I teach but perhaps it’s evident with high school and university students. Having said this, students have been ready to “dump schools” for many years regardless of technology. (I wasn’t a big fan of my high school experience. Though I enjoyed university.)

Cringely also states that “we’re moving from a knowledge economy to a search economy.” Without the knowledge what does one search? I do agree that students are not good searchers. We need to teach them to be effective searchers.

Finally, he suggests that students don’t need a certificate from an institution with a good reputation i.e. Stanford but rather students need a certification that shows what they can do–some kind of ISO certification. This is an interesting idea but I’m afraid the certification may reduce education to the lowest common denominator in the same way the No Child Left Behind and the standards movement have.

As I mentioned in my last post, I spent four days last week in Bangkok attending the Apple Distinguished Educator Asia Institute 2007. It was a great experience that other conferences should emulate. I was concerned before I went that it would be just an Apple marketing session but it wasn’t. Of course, there was that element to the event but it was about learning front and teaching and center. Apple brought a bunch of people together, helped us form into small teams, gave us access to a bunch of way cool tools and then let us go out and create.

My group focussed on the Chao Phraya River which runs through Bangkok. We gathered media–video, stills, and audio–to answer the question, How do rivers effect the lives and culture of people that live near them? We still have some work to do but the project will end up on Apple’s Learning Interchange website. Our goal is that our work can serve as a model for others that live near rivers and can look at their river to see how it impacts the lives of those who life along it.

The Institute was great. There were some “sit and git” sessions but the majority of our time was focussed on doing useful and meaningful projects.

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Google has a section for Educators. Recently they’ve teamed up with Writing For Teens magazine and created a a series of articles about the writing process and specifically using Google Docs to help promote collaborative writing and editing skills. Though the articles are geared to using Google Docs they’re worthwhile reading/using even if you’re not yet familiar with Google’s on-line word processor. The article titles are:

• With a Little Help From My Friends: The Gifts of a Writing Buddy
• Writing’s Top 10 Tips for Revision
• Collaborative Revision Checklist
• Individual Revision Checklist

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I attended Alan November’s session entitled Creating A New Culture of Teaching and Learning. He was entertaining and provocative. In fact, there was an un-conference session following Alan’s. He went right through it. His session was to end at 2:00 but he didn’t realize it. At 2:30 he asked us what time he was supposed to finish. He was told 2:30. We all laughed and someone in the group said, “You’re on a roll. Keep going!” So he did. He ended up finishing at 3:00. My head was spinning after his session.

Take aways from the session include:

• All high school students should have to take an on-line course as a graduation requirement.
• “Cisco is a learning company.”
• My goal as a teacher is to help students create the infrastructure for life long learning–their Personal Learning Networks (PLN)
• Empower students to have a global voice

Links from the session include:
http://nlccommunities.com/communities/setonhall.defaul.aspx
http://www.epgy.org

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I’m attending the Learning 2.0 conference in Shanghai, China. My brain is spinning from so many great ideas. I thought I’d take advantage of my blog being unblocked to jot down a few thoughts.

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I attended Gary Stager’s session entitled Papert Matters: Thinking About Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas. If you’re not familiar with the work of Seymour Papert I can’t do it justice in a blog post. He’s worked with Piaget, was instrumental in the creation of Logo, LEGO Mindstorms, and was a founding member of the MIT Media Lab. His thoughts on learning and teaching go well beyond math or technology education.

Gary’s session was delivered in his usual entertaining and at times acerbic style. As usual, he was spot on in what he said. Below are some of my take aways from the session.

The Differences between Constructivism and Constructionism

• constructivism describes the process of constructing knowledge inside the head of the learner.
• constructionism is through active creation of something tangible/shareable outside of your head

Eight Big Ideas Behind Constructionism

1. we learn by doing
2. use technology as a building material
3. hard is fun –fun and enjoying doesn’t mean “easy”
4. learning to learn –you have to take charge of your own learning “Many students get the idea that the only way to learn is by being taught”
5. taking time “To do anything important you have to learn to manage time for yourself”
6. “you can’t get it right without getting it wrong. Nothing important works the first time. The only way to get it right is to look carefully at what happened when it went wrong. To succeed you need the freedom to goof on the way”
7. teachers must be models. We need to let kids see us struggle to learn.
8. learn how to learn with computers

I’m off to The National Education Computer Conference (NECC) in a couple of days. I realize there are only a couple of us going from ISS but don’t despair. Many of the sessions are being podcast via The Conference Connections podcast. Just follow the link to the site or use this link to subscribe via iTunes.