Category Archives: The Teachers

Making Childhood Dreams Come True

Watch this video of a lecture by Randy Pausch. Be prepared. Get a snack and a drink – it’s about an hour and a half long but it is worth your time!

Pausch received his bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Brown University and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University. He has been a co-founder of CMU’s Entertainment Technology Center (ETC), a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator, and a Lilly Foundation Teaching Fellow. He has done sabbaticals at Walt Disney Imagineering and Electronic Arts (EA), and consulted with Google on user interface design. Pausch is the author or co-author of five books and over 70 articles, and the founder of the Alice software project.

Battle with cancer

Pausch has been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer and was told in August 2007 to expect a remaining three to six months of good health.

Pausch delivered his “Last Public Lecture”, entitled “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams”, at CMU on September 18, 2007. This talk was modeled after an ongoing series of lectures where top academics are asked to think deeply about what matters to them, and then give a hypothetical “final talk”, i.e., “what wisdom would you try to impart to the world if you knew it was your last chance?” Before speaking, Pausch received a long standing ovation from a large crowd of over 400 colleagues and students. When he motioned them to sit down, saying “make me earn it”, some in the audience shouted back “you did!”

Wikipedia

You can also go to his homepage and get a PDF transcript and more information
Dr. Gabriel Robins has a website with more links and a wonderful Halloween picture of the Pausch family.

That gives you the who and what but not the why. I completely forgot about the cancer as I watched and listened and even took notes. There is so much in this video and I will tell a few of the ones that remember best.

How about going out for football and showing up at practice and finding you will be playing with no football? If you know me at all you know I know nothing about sports. There are 22 men on a football field at one time. Only one has the ball. This coach was teaching what the other 21 should be doing. Fundamentals…

Sometimes you run into brick walls when you are trying to make your dreams come true. “Brick walls exist for a reason – they give us a chance to show how badly we want something – they stop the other people”

“Sometimes brick walls are flesh”

“most of what we learn, we learn indirectly (or by “head fake”)”

“If you are going to do anything that is pioneering you are going to get arrows in the back – put up with it”

(he got an award that consisted of a vest that had arrows sticking out of the back)

He advises that we learn to recognize the moments that change our lives, don’t bail – the best of the gold is at the bottom of barrels of crap, and don’t complain – just work harder. Jackie Robinson’s contract said that he would not complain even when fans spit on him.

Be watching for the two head fakes about this speech – he will explain at the end. After the video – go to Alice.org and download the software. It will walk you through and give you an idea of his his work. Anyone who wants to get girls more interested in programming…..

He is definitely someone worth knowing.

Overheard In A Teacher Chat!

I am amazed, amused, and awed!

  • “I got my truck stuck in a Blog
  • He looks naked without a Starbucks cup next to him.
  • What system is Halo on?
  • Halo who?
  • does the audio sound like…chipmunks to anyone else?
  • the minds of our school board members are boundaries
  • their boundaries are in their minds
  • …..and in our firewalls
  • I think we are sometimes our own limiting boundaries!
  • I can’t search google images or right click!!!
  • The IT department often are boundaries
  • I think his point today about needing to create and define new boundaries given the “loss of boundaries” was an important statement
  • my boundaries are clear and blocked
  • Ignorance is a boundary… must educate more teachers!
  • networks are our information
  • traditional school has focused on information, but david is right, the focus on OVERWHELMING quantities of info is new
  • remind me to thank my district IT guys tomorrow…despite our differences in vision, they are nowhere near as obstructionist as what I am reading here…
  • We discussed the value of YouTube for education at school today.
  • I can act individually with information but its nowhere near the experience if I work with that same information in a network of people.
  • Policy’s simply need to be more accomodating. Things don’t move in 5 year plans anymore.
  • we just rewrote our tech plan around ideas instead of tasks
  • who will decide the content?
  • they can’t make decisions ahead of the changes
  • Kids may not all be more information literate but they are actively engaged in social networking. That’s why I think David said we need to provide the traction and learning to help them learn to teach themselves.
  • intellectual capital will be the value
  • that point David is addressing is the ATTENTION ECONOMY
  • relearn, unlearn & Learn
  • Our IS department was pointing out that their own jobs are now 24/7
  • Educators can’t be afraid to right/click
  • creativity almost entirely defies traditional measurement methods
  • Hard to assess W 2.0 using AD 1950 multiple choice
  • we can each recognize creativity, but we can’t put that in a bar chart in the same way we can with test scores
  • opportunities to fail and learn
  • How do we emphasize balance video games with real world experiences?
  • I think a big part of having a learning engine in the classroom is writing hyperlinked texts
  • effectively writing hyperlinked texts is a measurable outcome of the learning engine classroom
  • digital doppler
  • I’m a proponent of gaming, but balance is so important
  • Something wrong with my kids, they don’t like gaming
  • I’m TOTALLY unbalanced, but I love it (though I need to exercise more than my mouse-finger)
  • they have treadmills with computers built in to the front now.
  • We had some success with getting them to participate in gym class by using DDR.
  • Wii rocks!
  • i think “digital discipline” is a good term in this context. we all need it. balance fits in there too.
  • DDR is a blast
  • I think we all strive to have some “grounding” with the flexibility to fly a bit (or more)!
  • Heard a discussion on ReadingTeacher this week where they said balanced doesn’t mean equal time for everything (as in balanced literacy).
  • if you ban it, kids never learn to balance their lives. We have to let them fail. That’s where lessons are learned
  • how do we bring down the walled garden at school?
  • I think the best advice is to throw out the textbooks
  • I still see way too many teachers thinking integration is focusing on the technoogy instead of the content…
  • I’m launching a year-long classroom blogging unit (major overhaul from last year) – key elements: they claim their blogs on Technorati, they link to at least one blogger from the real world that they admire, they blog about what THEY’re interested in (within limits), and their goal is to grow readership network and extend self-directed learning.
  • if only we had time to learn with the kids – partners
  • I’m finishing a degree in assistive technology, and I signed up for a lab class this semester that has no lab… its all lecture
  • it’s because librarians don’t get enough partnership with teachers!!
  • so the teacher becomes the affective filter
  • The teacher is the model – not the information giver
  • I’m finding that it’s really tough to move students beyond the “consume and remix” stage in information processing. They love the creative aspect of playing with the tools, but to many the tools are more important than the message. I’d like students to take the time to “digest” the info and build it into an existing framework, or better yet, make a case for revamping the framework – then creatively communicate the learning.”

WOW!

For more on filtering there is a very thought provoking article on Doug Johnson’s blog.

(posted on my school blog)

K12 Online Fireside Chat and More

Today was just a day but wow – exhausting, frustrating, exciting, enlightening. I was busy all day because grades were due to be exported and it was taken a little more seriously than the three weeks progress reports so there were a few problems to be ironed out underlining the value of that first export. Troubleshooting that should have been done happened today when we were under the gun.

The day that seemed to not end did and I came home and ate supper while I signed in to Elluminate for the K12 Online Conference Fireside Chat with David Warlick. This was my first experience with Elluminate which is a fee based meeting software package that donates the space to the K12 Online Conference. There are multiple windows. On the far left is a window that contains first a picture of an old-fashioned microphone, To speak you click on the picture and then click again when you are done. There is a hand icon that you can click to virtually raise your hand. There are emoticons and as people enter the session the list of names grows and automatically adjusts to remain in alphabetical order. There is a running tally of how many people are in the session. When things got going there were 105 people from all over. Mostly from the U.S. but some from other parts of the globe as well including Sudan, Seoul, Mexico, Canada, Australia, Scotland Click the thumbnail to see a screenshot.

firesidechat1

There was a white board and video and as the session went on, questions were asked on the white board as a rapid, unending discussion by the attendees. I went crazy trying to concentrate on what David was saying as well as keeping up with the “stream of consciousness” instant messaging. I managed to speak a bit when we were divided into separate rooms at the beginning and I was able to text once or twice but by the time I could type a question the conversation would have changed. There was serious energy. These folks are jumping in the deep end of the pool and splashing for all they are worth. They are calling out to the rest of us to tell us to come on in – the water is fine. Some of us are dipping a toe in and shivering, some are paddling around with nose plugs and life preservers. Some of us are sitting it out and some are underwater with flippers and scuba gear.
firesidechat2

There was a 14 year old student in the session and the possibility of adding a student strand next year was mentioned.

My favorite quote was ” become the guide on the side not the sage on the stage”.

I watched the keynote by David Warlick this morning and I’ll blog about it later. I want to let it marinate a bit but it was awesome. It is well worth the time – if you right-click and save link as you will have a copy of it to view whenever you have time. – which is the beauty of an online conference!

K12 Online Conference Connections

One of the things that I have learned about conferences that are related to technology is that bloggers will write about them. The presentations begin conversations that continue throughout the blogosphere and even when the conference or event is not an online conference people who are not present can participate. If you want to have a way to keep up with those conversations on the K12Online conference here is a tip.

Go to technorati and in the search box put k12online. You will see a list of feeds of all the blog articles about the conference. There will also be the little orange RSS button you can click to subscribe. You can then choose from several – blogline and google are two of the choices. Subscribe in the reader of your choice and throughout the conference, blog articles that reference this conference will show up in your feeds.

You can also look here and here – David Warlick has set up a wiki for the conference.  You can also check out the hitchikr site.

K12 Online Conference!

It will be here any minute!! well pre-conference starts October 8

3 Reasons Meme

Three reasons to participate based on my experience from last year!

1. It is staff development the way I like it – at home, in my jammies, with a cup of decaf latte.

2. No Crowds! No driving! No hotels! No airports! (yes I know – technically that’s four – so sue me)

3. You can go back and review the sessions at anytime (unlike virtual conferences where you have to get everything you can right then because when its over, it’s over)

Ya’ll come!

Links For Education

As I write this post I am listening to a podcast found at LearningOutLoud.com. There are sections on biographies, great speeches in history, Literary summaries, founding documents in audio form, free audio book of the month, art history, all categorized and subscribeable.

There is a section on test taking. You can wander through a very large online catalog of subjects to integrated podcasts into your classroom.

Here is a great article with an interesting way to talk about internet safety with students. Instead of giving them a list of “don’ts” here you can find a list of questions to open up a discussion with them. One of my favorite questions was:

If people were to Google you, what conclusions would they make?

Students can take online quizzes that look more like games but are tagged according to quiz subject matter at PurposeGames. Creating an account is optional but if you do you can see your score history. You can also create quizzes if there are none that fit your needs.

Another link for today is VoiceThread. You can upload pictures, record audio and create a multimedia show and tell online presentation. There are plenty of examples and instructions to make the process pretty painless. Even if you are not planning on creating one of your own it is very interesting to play some of the examples!

I finish with another podcast link – I’m listening to Thomas Friedman lecturing at the Sydney Institute after dinner on The Flat World. This podcast is nearly an hour long so I would plan on listening to it on a car trip or load it on your mp3 player and exercise your brain while you are at the walking track exercising your body!

I had to add one more link. Thanks to Dan Meyer for this one – the site is called Mango and you can sign up for free to learn languages. I spent a short time today learn a little Japanese. It was fun and painless! The site includes Chinese, Japanese, Russian, German, Englich for Spanish speakers and more! Arigatou (Thank you!)

Update and Link To A Web Application

It has been a long day. I attended a UIL conference today and am planning on coaching Computer Applications this year. I found that there is still much I need to learn! If anyone out there has any helpful hints and suggestions I am all ears and eyes!
My blog has a non-theme right now because I am still trying to resolve my theme issues so please be patient – I hope to have things cleaned up soon.

In the meantime check out ANIMOTO ! You need to sign up for an account and as an unusual way to request that you create an account the question is asked why? The answer – because Steven Seagal did. OK, that was different and so is the rest of the site. I created a short video in moments using some images I had on Flickr and Animoto’s music. I would have preferred some more music style choices but hey it was quick and free. It’s look reminds me of some of the applications for the Mac and I am hoping that Google pays attention as they get ready to roll out their presentation piece. This is a very pretty and easy to use application!

K.I.S.S.

“Keep It Simple Stupid!” Is a motto I should have etched into the inside of my glasses lens so I would constantly have it in the corner of my line of vision.

One of my favorite websites that I feel embraces this idea is CommonCraft and they had a wonderful piece recently titled “Super Simple vs Needlessly Complex“. It showed a picture of a young man pulling a device called the Q-drum which is basically a rolling container for water with a rope attached. One person can easily haul 20 gallons of water with this simple tool. The comparison image showed a Japanese toilet that had 17 buttons on it. The picture of the Q-Drum came from an article on simple design that can be found here. My attention was grabbed by this quote:

The world’s cleverest designers, said Dr. Polak, a former psychiatrist who now runs an organization helping poor farmers become entrepreneurs, cater to the globe’s richest 10 percent, creating items like wine labels, couture and Maseratis.“We need a revolution to reverse that silly ratio,” he said.

Amen Dr. Polak – sign me up.

So how do I make these changes on a personal level? I am starting with some of the suggestions in the article Simple Living Manifesto on the Zen Habits blog.

For the cynics who say that the list below is too long, there are really only two steps to simplifying:

  1. Identify what’s most important to you.
  2. Eliminate everything else.

Of course, that’s not terribly useful unless you can see how to apply that to different areas of your life, so I present to you the Long List.

The long list contains 72 ideas with links to help on some of the individual suggestions. This seems like a “complex” list but if you start with the first which tells you to identify the four or five most important things in your life and make those your priority. The next two are evaluate your time and your commitments and ditch whatever is not in line with your most important things. Everything else flows from there. The blog author states that the entire list will not work for everyone – to just choose a few that work for you and concentrate on them.

I’m going to spend some time working on my “Most Important” list and post about it later. I also want to think about how simplifying would translate to education.

The internet is the great “leveler”. Anyone can find information on anything – anytime. That information doesn’t mean a thing if the learner can’t read, comprehend, or aggregate it into something meaningful to them. If we distill what is the most important skill in education today wouldn’t it be reading even in the higher grades?

We work harder to have more which means we need more to organize and take care of the more we worked for which means we need to work more to pay for it all. We eat junk because we don’t have time to cook good healthy food because we are working so hard so we have to work more (or at least make more money) to afford the junk food that ultimately makes us sick which means we have to make more money to pay for the medical bills. We teach our kids that they need a good education so they can have nice things and a nice job but if the above life is what we are showing them and if they are seeing it all as pointless I vote with them.

I don’t think simplicity is the goal so much as the way to achieve the goal. If we are so tied to all the stuff and the working to sustain it then where is the meaning? How often do we even have time to stop and think and question if there is meaning in our lives? Why should this generation educate themselves to have a live that has no meaning?

That’s the context for the questions I am asking myself while I work on my most important list. I want to be productive. I want to have meaning. I want to be present in my life, in my family, and in my job. I want a little solitude. I want to be as healthy as my choices can make me. I want my kids to see meaning in my life.
Do you have a list? Am I the only one who struggles with this?

Matching Classes With Real World Experts

I stumbled across a wiki called FieldFindr. The wiki is a mock-up of a website that would help match a class or class project with a real world expert in the related field.
The wiki was created by blogger David Truss after he posted on his blog about the idea.

“Fieldfindr: A space where teachers can meet global citizens who have skills that they are willing to contribute to a class.”

Some of the comments on his post were concerns about how to validate the person’s credentials and how to protect the students. I hope someone can address those issues and run with this. The blog article was posted back in February so no one has jumped in but I can see a lot of value in this. We already do some of this within our community and maybe this is a project that would be best tied to a community portal. It would be easier to monitor and because of geographical proximity allow for the person to actually visit the class.

My Favorite Ways To Use Del.icio.us

This is a cross post from my school blog but it really is one of my favorite tools so I wanted to share it here too.
While teaching a blogging class the other day I was explaining about feed readers and I showed some teachers Del.icio.us and how you could actually have feeds set up to work for you. An example would be to type in a URL like this: http://del.icio.us/tag/scotland then look at the bottom of the page for the orange RSS button. If you right click on it and go to properties you can copy the link into your news aggregator (feed reader) and as people add links to their del.icio.us accounts tagged scotland, you will see those links as a feed. You can also do the same thing but add another criteria to the search http://del.icio.us/tag/scotland+history you can narrow down the search to items tagged scotland and history.If I wanted to keep up with what sites are popular on a particular subject I could type http://del.icio.us/rss/popular/scotland and this would generate the most popular links tagged on del.icio.us for scotland.

You can do the same thing with people instead of tags. If you have someone who is in your “circle of learning” you can subscribe to their tags (unless they have designated them private).

These and other tips can be found at Likehack.org if you would like to read more.

I’m Still Here – Really (And Some Del.icio.us Hints)

I am working on learning to create a WordPress theme and I am making progress but slowly! I have gotten to the part where I have to verify my code and I have managed to get down to four errors from eighteen so I’m getting there. I evidently have a few things open that need to be closed but my eyes are crossed and I can’t seem to find them tonight.

Part of me wants to go ahead and move on to the fun part but I know I need to get this part right or I will have problems later. I have typed the entire thing twice just to makes sure there were no typos and I think it was good for me because it is making a little more sense. I still can’t always follow the flow and I feel like that is what I need to understand so I can tell where these tags need to close.

Sometimes if I just put something like this aside for a bit and let it percolate I can come back with a fresh eye and do better so I’m going to shift gears for a bit.

While teaching a blogging class the other day I was explaining about feed readers and I showed some teachers Del.icio.us and how you could actually have feeds set up to work for you. An example would be to type in a URL like this: http://del.icio.us/tag/scotland then look at the bottom of the page for the orange RSS button. If you right click on it and go to properties you can copy the link into your news aggregator (feed reader) and as people add links to their del.icio.us accounts tagged scotland, you will see those links as a feed. You can also do the same thing but add another criteria to the search http://del.icio.us/tag/scotland+history you can narrow down the search to items tagged scotland and history.

If I wanted to keep up with what sites are popular on a particular subject I could type http://del.icio.us/rss/popular/scotland and this would generate the most popular links tagged on del.icio.us for scotland.

You can do the same thing with people instead of tags. If you have someone who is in your “circle of learning” you can subscribe to their tags (unless they have designated them private).

These and other tips can be found at Likehack.org if you would like to read more.

Great Educational Science Video Site

SciTalks is a video site for science videos.  Registration is free but you do have to set up an account if you want to be able to add videos to your favorites list.  You can see the videos in one huge list or break it down into different disciplines like astrophysics or biochemistry.  There is some wonderful material here and did I mention it is free??

Computer Centers for the Classroom

In a post on a student leadership panel by David Warlick, one of the students made the statement that she was tired of going to the lab to do technology. The statement was made that we do not make employees share computers at work (which isn’t entirely true, at least in education) the students felt that all students should have a laptop. If that isn’t an option but creating some project centers in classrooms utilizing xtenda boxes is – I’m thinking about what we could include in the way of software that would give maximum use for students. The following is my list but I would be glad to here any suggestions. Most of what I have listed is opensource and I’m concentrating of budget-friendly, but if you have a software piece that your students just couldn’t do without, let me know.

  • Firefox – of course for the browser
  • VLC – media player
  • Audacity – audio editing
  • OpenOffice – office suite
  • Abiword – basic word processing
  • GimpShop – graphics editing
  • Inkscape –
  • Google Earth
  • Comic Life
  • TuxPaint (graphics for lower elementary)

I’d like to know about a video-editing program that is either opensource or at least low priced and fairly easy to use. I have been spoiled by my Mac and want somethings that are “Mac easy” for the students to create with. I have included software ideas for elementary through high school. I know there is more out there and I will add to this list if I think of some more.

Software additions!

MovieMaker

Are We There Yet Blogging Style!

We had our second blogging class today. I have three more classes to go this month and so far at least 6 brand new bloggers out there. I hope I am teaching them what they need to get started – but here is what they do NOT know:

The new bloggers don’t know that I am sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for them to post, excited about new voices in the blogosphere.

They don’t know that I will come to their school, meet them at the local coffee shop, whatever it takes to help them get comfortable with their blogs.

They don’t know how excited I am to have new friends blogging!
They don’t know how much FUN it can be!

They don’t know that if they give it time they may find themselves traveling some surprising paths because of who they “meet” and what they learn.

baby.jpg
Welcome to the world new bloggers! As soon as you are ready I’ll add links to your blogs to my blogroll here. In the meantime – I’ll try to be patient and not peek.

Flickr Goodies

I’ve seen some interesting new things on Flickr this week and decided to consolidate the links in one post. I love Flickr and they just seem to get better and better.
Alan Levine has a post on a new “toy” SlideFlickr which allows you to quickly and easily create a slideshow from a flickr set. Lawrence Lessig has an interesting article on Web 2.0 Ethics and “sharing sites” comparing Flickr which makes it easy to download images and Youtube which does NOT. He discusses some other sharing sites and made me think about the subject of sharing and which sites actually embody the concept and which ones just ride along on the bandwagon. Definite food for thought.

If you haven’t visited Flickr:Creative Commons yet you are missing out. The first page defines the type of creative commons licenses you will run up against and then you can search photos and use them for non-commercial things (like your student’s project!!) without the copyright violation issues.

The last one for today is just gorgeous. I could just sit here and click and feed myself eyecandy. It’s called ColrPickr and it’s by KrazyDad. You choose a color on the beautiful color wheel and it displays a group of Flickr photos that fit the color. Now if this was just mashed up with Flickr Creative commons (hint! hint!)

colrpickrkrazydad

You can also visit BigHugeLabs and find all kinds of toys that let you create new things with Flickr photos.

Have fun – I would love to hear from you and see what you are creating with Flickr!

Blogging Basics Today

I taught a class on blogging basics this morning. We had a few technical difficulties that I had not expected. I had planned to get to the room and check it out prior to this class and paid the price for not doing so. The data projector kept giving a message to check air flow and then going off. Because it was hanging from the ceiling it was a little difficult to see where the filter was – one of the class members climbed up and tried but the “tech guys” showed up with a ladder and it turns out that the filter is actually located on the top front of the projector which makes it even more difficult to find.

That problem fixed we moved on though time and momentum were lost. I still tend to throw too much out too quickly and will have to work on that before next week when I teach it again. It will help that I’m to be back in my own room. I’ll be a little more comfortable having the home court advantage so to speak and if I’m less nervous things will go better.

The hard part for me is teaching blogs without teaching tagging and feedreaders. I am going to have to just say NO! to those voices in my head that want to teach it all and show the connections.

I need to work on timing some as well. I hope some of the class will create blogs and that some new voices will join the conversation.

There is a short article on my school blog about it with some links to resources on my wiki.  These are specifically for WordPress and Wikimedia within our system.

Education Democratically

To me the read/write web displays the best (and worst!) of the true meaning of democracy. People vote with their keyboards on what is the best/worst, hot/not, good/bad.

A couple of good things have happened recently. One, a middle school student from Falls Church entered a video contest on C-Span that not only one him a prize, but improved upon a situation that needed to recieve attention.

The 13-year old Wilson of Luther Jackson Middle School won first prize among middle school entries in “StudentCam,” C-SPAN’s National Video Documentary Contest for his documentary “When the Boys Come Home: The Controversy at Walter Reed.” Wilson took home $1,000 in prize money, and his video will be played at 6:50 a.m. on C-SPAN on June 14.

Wilson’s video, which runs just under 10 minutes long, highlights the controversy surrounding the cleanliness and medical care provided at Walter Reed Hospital, which takes care of wounded American soldiers returning from battle. Wilson relates the issue to his own family, as his brother Sgt. Gordon “Gordy” Hamm is currently serving in Iraq.

“What would happen to my brother should he be injured in Iraq?” Wilson asks during the narration of his documentary.

You can see him on Fox News and others or read the article in the Falls Church newspaper here. You don’t have to be a big Hollywood producer to get your story out there anymore!

Another great thing is a new section that has been added to the iTunes store called iTunes U. You can read more about it on the Apple website but basically what it entails is different universities have some of their classes on podcast and videocast and you can subscribe. Now you can go to M.I.T. and Berkeley and never leave your living room!