Open Learning....

This is a copy of the email I sent to the participants of one of our Summer Institutes held in 2007, June. Please feel free to comment.

When can we bring together a collaborative group who wants to work on, learn about, and discuss the same tool(s), pedagogy, and educational philosophies in the world today? I'm looking for suggestions or comments from YOU, the user/learner/teacher.

Sunday afternoons for a 3 hour workshop, once a month works for me. I've kind of gotten used to that schedule over the past 3 years :) A Saturday afternoon might work as well but not my first choice.

If you would be interested in "being present", teaching, or just learning amongst others, I'm up for some extra-curricular activities at the Tech Building and I would be glad to help host this as a focus over the next 4 months. You all have your book. AND I have 9 extras and would open up 9 spots to those committed to the task.

Before I send out my note to the other Laptoppers, I wanted to solicit some feedback from you first. Thoughts??? Interest or no interest? Blog your thoughts here!

Topics (chapters) in Will's book include:

The Read/Write Web
Weblogs: Pedagogy and Practice
Weblogs: Get Started!
Wikis: Easy Collaboration for All
RSS: The New Killer App for Educators
The Social Web: Learning Together
Fun With Flickr: Creating, Publishing, and Using Images Online
Podcasting
What It all Means (New Literacies - The Big Shifts - Just the Beginning

Thinking more about P.D.

I'm at the end of listening to Wesley Fryer's "Moving at the Speed of Creativity", Podcast 200: Moving Beyond the Fear Factor With Internet Safety. A must listen for all educators, in my humble opinion. Wesley reiterates what I've learned through Kal-Tech, journal articles, and the books I continue to read ..... that we must "cultivate" the leaders we need ... the teacher-leaders we need! Here's a clip of what Wesley is speaking about:

"Leadership has got to be inspired ... visionary. We need change agents. We need transformational leaders. Are these folks hard to come by? Yes they are, but we must "cultivate" them. We must cultivate the leaders we need, because THAT, more than anything else, makes or breaks any innovation that your going to try in schools."

This paragraph describes how I have felt about our teacher laptop initiative from it's infancy. That it was/is about building relationships and cultivating leaders...creating change agents. We can't just do this by learning/teaching/showing the technology and it's tools. It's still more about pedagogy and shifting of paradigms. It's about learning to unlearn. It's hard work and it takes more effort than a 1/2 day Focus Group can provide 6 times a year.

"Can change happen from the bottom up?" I used to emphatically say YES! What has become clear to me is my answer today ... "only when it hits critical mass". How much farther is critical mass?

Inspiring this moment...

It seems the inspiration is being sucked out of our minds with the happenings of systemic fallout within our own walls.

Kevin Honeycutt's three tweets tonight got me thinking...[thank you!]

1)I'm calling them learning networks rather than social networks so some don't fear we're socializing!
2)Kids will be on social networks, whether we are or not..why not build positive ones?
3)They are bionic (showed my age) environments that can empower engaged learning

I am reminded of the 2004 Keynote at T+L in Denver and how inspiring it was to hear Ken Robinson in person. I posted and shared his Ted Talks video with my last Kal-Tech team during our May 16, 2007 final team meeting at FHSU. I am constantly amazed at how much I can learn. It becomes more clear to me that information is always new even when it's old. This post only 5 days old...

I can now go back to a mentor at my school and explain to them in a mature manner why i left. I am so close to graduating but my school system is dragging me down. This lecture taught me so much and gave true expression to my views on education. This man is a visionary and has the proper ideas. For once an adult sees the value in youth. Thank you!

Do Schools Today Kill Creativity? (YouTube video)

All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education

Why does it have to be so difficult??

Are we listening to our peripheral voices out here? Are we choosing to ignore them.

Reflections....

After yesterdays meeting, I owe apologies to friends. Seems I'm doing that a lot these days and it’s only a slam on my own behaviors. You see, that's really what this is all about. I'm wrestling with my own behaviors and beliefs. My ability or inability to create culture change, the stress of many, many wonderful things that are HAPPENING in our district! The stresses of a few things that are mandated like KIDS and PowerSchool and some that aren’t…pedagogies.

As we try to move our classrooms into the new learning landscape, it's critical we learn how to unlearn.

Making sense of P.D.

The following message was typed in my e-mail program and intended to be sent via that form of communication, but I need to change my mode of communication. Not for everything, but for some things...

Dear Tech Team,

See you tonight. I'll have salsa and chips!! Arrive anytime for chatting! We do need to focus our discussion from 4 - 5 p.m. on Sunday night's event.

Would everyone take a look at Moodle sometime during the day today? Please explore our content from last year. We know it can't necessarily look the same, knowing what all we've learned over the past 15 months. Or can it?

I would like you to think about the many tools we have used, still use, want to use more of, want to use what's yet to be invented, and on and on. Tools come and go and we have some good ones on the shelf still; Moodle, iWeb, Wikispaces.com, Blogger.com, Classroom 2.0.

What I would really like to do with staff this year is take them in to Classroom 2.0. This is not a new idea, nor is it original but I've been thinking about it ever since I joined back in April. There was valuable learning there for me, my January 2007 Kal-Tech team, and for you guys too? :-) Originally conflicted about Classroom 2.0, only because I thought it might be a stopping point instead of a starting point. It's about learning to unlearn as Will Richardson and many others have said.

Nevertheless, this year it may be a great starting place for teachers who need to understand the "power" of networks. Right now, our staffs, in my opinion, do not understand the "power of networks", and only understand the peripheral version of working in the "wisdom of crowds", aka. Teams. It is assiduous work.

I still believe we need to create a mini Kal-Tech. The book studies, the small group discussions, the intensive learning. http://kaltech-team155.wikispaces.com/Agendas

And...we also want teachers to experience the creative side of content creation. This "side" has been the meat of our Sunday Laptop Initiative program from it's inception thanks to the power of teams. You know who you are. [smile] If we empower teachers in "knowing" how to create content ... in their personal lives, their professional learning, and with their students ... all the while, showing them prime examples of infusion with technology, we will have done well.

What tools are of must worth? For our district, here's my focused list; Blogs, Wikis, iWeb, Moodle. What is our audiences focused list? I'm sure this list must seem blah and life-less in the whole big picture of our teaming experience and our own individualized knowledge.

What's the temperature out there? Are we focused enough? Do we have a shared vision? What external factors do WE see as a negative force field?

Building on the power of team...

Today, I was not working in my zone, my erg, my strengths. I feel like, on a scale of 1 to 5, I preformed at 2.

I have an awesome team of teacher leaders forming within our district. It is so exciting I just can't stand not shouting about it! My lead tech team is awesome! The level of investment in professional staff development they give is passionate. They only survive through the intrinsic motivation that feeds their desire to educate all children who pass through our hands.

Our grass roots teachers are becoming practitioners equipped with 21 century pedagogy and skills. If you haven't been following our posts over at the usd352summerinstitute07 blog, we have had 12 students in class for four six-hours days plus two virtual students working in "Web 2.0 and the Digital Classroom". I know I speak for the entire team when I say we are so proud of you. So many had to have day-care providers for two and more children and the entire team has sacrificed family time to attend. These teachers are not getting paid extra. They come to learn! Bravo! Teacher leaders? Absolutely!

The trick is keeping the momentum going and remaining an active participant in the "social networks" we are creating.

I leave you with a great post by Will Richardson at Weblogg-ed who writes about passionate based learning.

Enjoy!

The meaning of tags..

Why would you think tags are important? Are they important?

Rethinking literacies?

How do we need to rethink our ideas of literacy when we must prepare our students to become not only readers and writers, but editors and collaborators as well?

Changes in teaching?

What changes must we make in our teaching as it becomes easier to bring primary sources to our students?

Changes in curriculum?

What needs to change about our curriculum when our students have the ability to reach audiences far beyond our classroom walls?

Musings about dictionary.com

Dictionary.com is a resource I use on nearly a daily basis. I keep it on my bookmarks tool bar. I'm such a bad speller. To have INSTANT feedback with a list of choices has been very powerful for me. How could I manage a paper dictionary of 500,000 words? I can only anticipate how powerful it will be for our students when they gain access all day to the tools that can empower their own learning. :)

Actually, I have not used Dictionary.com as much lately. Hmmmm, must be getting better at spelling? Sooo......when I wanted to make a note this morning about Intellectual Property Rights, in my "design" notebook, I was stumped. Told you I was a bad speller. hehe When I typed in my misspelled word for intellectual at Dictionary.com and choose the correct spelling, the following page just amazed me. THIS is just another Web 2.0 tool!

There is much to learn and much to do over the horizon!

Global Work Ethic

Name one thing you agreed with and one thing you disagreed with while listening to Alan November's podcast.

Thinking About Podcasts....

Did you find a podcast you could use with your class? What was it and how would you use it?