I've moved...

All of my blogging is now taking place on the ISEnet ning. We hit the 2,000 member mark last month!

Updating my blog

Ok, so it's been almost a year since I've posted here on my own site. But that's because I'm no longer confined to this little island on the web. I'm now doing my blogging over at ISEnet, (now nearing 1300 members) and also just posted to PBLnet(a new site for project based learning.) Stop on by...

ISEnet Ning Nearing 500 Members

I've been spending time nurturing the ISEnet ning (with Fred Bartels) rather than blogging here. It's been interesting to see it develop and grow. It's certainly more interactive than a single blog site (unless you're a blog superstar), since it has so many users visiting and commenting on the discussions, blog entries, and other content. Fred & I got interviewed by Alex & Arvind for EdTechTalk on Wednesday. Some key points that came from this discussion:

• The ISEnet is a good safe place for educators to experience online social networking.
• At this point it is mostly tech coordinators and librarians, but could balloon as it is shared with schools' faculties
• It provides an identity based network separate from larger ning networks like classroom2.0
• It aggregates content from participants, including discussions, blogs, videos, etc.
• It may have more appeal to right-brained people than more logico-linear communications vehicles like listservs & wikis
• It may be an ok place to have student interaction, as opposed to facebook

Caffeinated Showering Revelations

I love the first hour of the day: quietly crunching down Cheerios, reading the online NYTimes, no distractions, dark french roast, hot shower. This morning I had something of an epiphany about how to feel more progress in school change process. For years I've been working within tech departments to create conditions for changing classroom dynamics towards more student-active, authentic, creative, thought-provoking, project-based, problem-solving activities. I always work with curricular and professional development coordinators, department chairs and the faculty. My realization this morning is that expecting change to originate from within the tech dept is a misplaced conception. We know that change comes slowly, is a "messy" process, and requires collaborative relationships of trust. We have to build consensus, demonstrate proof-of-concept, and celebrate successes. Keeping the network flowing stably and abundantly through the infrastructure wires is important, but it's only the stepping off place, and not the engine that will drive meaningful improvement. So this leaves me thinking it's time to focus more change efforts with the curricular directors.

More Notes From David Warlick

Will Richardson recently asked this question: How do you keep track of the snippets of info and quotes you want to remember? This is one of the things I do with my blog. The last few posts I've been cataloging notes from David Warlick, and here is one more... As I watched his pre-conference keynote to the 2007 K12online conference I took a few notes: On his son's multimedia project: "he learned how to create it because he's part of a network... because he's connected." David also talks about his son's game world and how they collaborate inside that virtual world. On the skills necessary in the information economy, David says, "information must compete for attention... the nature of information has changed. Our notion of what it means to be literate must also change." And in speaking about the opportunities for publishing which the web now provides, David notes that, "from the publishing perspective, many of our students are more accomplished than their teachers!"

Ethics & Integrity within Information Literacy

In another post, David mentions the importance of ethics/integrity as part of information literacy. He breaks it into four categories: Respect for intellectual property (copyright, etc.), Respect for intellectual integrity (respect truth), Respect for each other (cause no harm), Respect for the information infrastructure.

Loving what you do

In another of David Warlick's blog posts, he quotes Steve Jobs, "The only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do." This really resonated with me, because I've been trying to put my finger on what could make our tech department stronger.

Less formal professional development

In a blog post about how to improve schools, David Warlick, writing about teachers' professional development proposes that for every hour of instructional time, that a teacher have an hour of prep time. Teachers need time to prerpare for instruction and to explore new tools. He also says that in his presentations when he asks an audience of teachers "to raise their hands if they could say that they learned at least half of what they do with technology by teaching themselves," that almost all the hands go up.

School Change

Once again, Will Richardson has nobly articulated an idea which has been rumbling as an undercurrent through the educational technology blogging and professional development community. His blog post, "School as Node" discusses the future of School as becoming one "node" within an individual's approach to learning and education.This blog post is the closest thing I've read to outlining a concrete philsophical kernel for an evolutionary/revolutionary development of schools operating systems to adapt to the socio-cultural changes being enabled by information technology. Read it!

Here Comes Interactive Video Streaming

Somebody, in analyzing how new technologies come to be used by the general public described the adoption process as a bell curve. The early adopters (5-10%) are on the left of the curve, the masses are in the middle, and there are some late adopters on the right. One of the reasons I like reading blogs, is because you can tap into the early adopters knowledge of new technologies without having to try everything yourself. I'd put myself at the end of the early adopters on the curve. This week I've heard about two new sites that support video-conferencing in different contexts. Will Richardson mentions UStream which is a site that allows you to stream your webcam and/or watch others doing this. Obviously not a new concept, but this site makes it easy enough that it is reaching a wide part of the bell curve. The implications for education and professional development have to do with the ease with which you could now stream yourself out there. Oovoo got mentioned at the School 2.0 ning site. It allows up to 6 simultaneos video streams to be shared for video conferencing and also includes a feature to send video emails. Pretty cool stuff.