apple juice

i had the great opportunity to see thomas friedman speak on friday in downtown mpls. a few of our students won an essay contest, giving them the opportunity to go, and i lucked out and got to go along for the ride. i figured that i had a pretty good angle in going, besides my admiration for mr. friedman‘s work, he has a lot of good and interesting things to say about education and the internet.

how do you live and act in a horizontal world? information, facts and opinions galore can be downloaded from the internet. what can’t be dowloaded though is your values and judgement. your “internal software” as mr. friedman puts it. that internal software is written by you and you alone. your parents, your teachers, and your spirtual leaders will help you write that software (and maybe even try and write it for you) but in the end, only you can write that software.

mr. friedman states this far more elegantly than my “grandma rule”, but I think the concept is the same. in the dark corner of the internet, what will you do? stripped of any external social, parental, or educational guidance, how will you act?

most people reading this will not jump up and down in unison at this moment and yell “like a numbskull! we’re going to act like numbskulls!” but that is in fact how a lot of people act when they get behind the false anonymity of the internet.

take a public space like the wikipedia. it is one of the greatest experiments of our time. but, hand a fifteen-year-old point a can of electronic spray paint and watch what happens. in a public, physical space, (the mall for example), teenagers are (mostly) able to keep themselves in check. head to the internet, get behind the screen and it’s not only teenagers that can’t keep it together.

so the internal software becomes more important. a closer relationship with your parents becomes more important. good teachers that teach the love of learning are more important. moral and ethical guidance is more important today than it ever was.

in the places where no one is watching, how will you act?

At 71, Physics Professor is a Web Star

Professor Lewin’s videotaped physics lectures, free online on the OpenCourseWare of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have won him devotees across the country and beyond who stuff his e-mail in-box with praise.

If the rising tide lifts all boats, I hope that education around the world can be lifted through the internet like this. What’s stopping a kid from learning physics now? Basic needs, a laptop and the internet.

I gave the following speech at our school’s chapel on Tuesday in preparation for loosening the Internet filters a bit. I built it around a recent op-ed by Thomas Friedman entitled “The Whole World is Watching“.

It’s 1995, and I’m a skinnier, geekier version of myself. I’m holding a 3.5” floppy disk in my fingers, and I slide it into the drive.I’m in the Hopkins High School Library, in the office of our Computer and Network resource person. I don’t remember his name. What am I doing here?

I’m looking for oscar the grouch.

Back in 1995, we carried a floppy disk around to hold all of our papers. In English class when we would work on a paper, we’d all have our disks. We’d dutifully type away at our papers. And when the bell rang, we’d drag the disk down to the trash, pull it out and head off to our next class.

Oscar the grouch was a system extension that would change your system in one subtle way. Whenever you emptied the trash, Oscar would rise up out of the trash can and sing, “I love it because its trash!”

I had hatched a plan to install this extension on every one of the lab’s Macintoshes, so that at the end of class, the 24 computers would sing in unison.

But I needed the file, and this man had it. So I waited in the library until he had left, and I sat down at his computer, and quickly copied the file. As I ejected the disk there was a knock at the door.

“What are you doing on my computer? Nobody said you could use my computer. You should NEVER use someone’s computer without asking. What are you doing?”

I explained that I was trying to copy oscar the grouch.

After sticking the disk back in his computer to verify that was, indeed, all I had copied, he lectured me a bit more about using other people’s computers without asking, and then he asked if I had learned anything. I asked if I could have my disk back, I was late to class.

Well, even if I hadn’t learned anything that day, that story has stayed with me until today.

And now everyone has a computer in front of them in class here at school. There are even more lessons to learn with the computers than there were 10 years ago.

Some of these lessons are the same, never use someone else’s computer without permission. But some of the lessons are new, and different.

We didn’t have to worry about being distracted on the internet in my English class, well, because there was no internet on those computers.

I didn’t have to worry about the repercussions of posting some video on YouTube, or a cell phone pic on Facebook.

The level of responsibility required of you is much higher now than it was just 10 years ago because the level of temptation is higher. And it’s a good thing that you have this computer, and that you have to be responsible now. In the future, assuming society continues down this path that we are on, this responsibility is going to grow, and the stakes will be much higher.

Thomas Friedman wrote recently:

“When everyone has a blog, a MySpace page or a Facebook entry, everyone is a publisher. When everyone has a cellphone with a camera in it, everyone is a paprazzo. When everyone can upload a video on YouTube, everyone is a filmmaker. When everyone is a publisher, paprazzo or filmmaker, everyone else is a public figure. We’re all public figures now.”

This responsibility extends to your actions on the internet. As of today, we will begin loosening the restrictions on the internet filtering. The many educational websites that are blocked by the current filtering are the main impetus for this change, but I often draw the analogy of Magazines in the library. We have magazines in the library for which the websites are unavailable to you.

However, teachers don’t allow you to sit class and read Sports Illustrated, EGM, or People magazine during a lecture, and just because there is a screen up between you and the teacher, it doesn’t give you license to read those things online, either.

You are the ones that hold this responsibility in your hands, and you are the ones that must make the most of this change. We continue to expect that you follow the values of this institution, both in the physical world and on the internet. We continue to insist that you will respect the time that you have in class with your teachers, and with one another. And we continue to expect that what you create on the computers is the highest reflection of yourselves.

Last year we created Breck Technology Values to help guide actions on the computer. We’ll continue to talk about them, remind you about them, and do our best to practice them in our classes. You’ll see these posters going up shortly in your classes as a reminder. The values read:

Treat your laptop with care, Use your laptop for academic work, be honest and respectful in your communications, Be responsible for what you create.

The first two are straightforward. Treat with care. Use for academics. The second two are harder, and more important. Be responsible for what you create. Be honest and respectful in your communications. What you create and what you communicate on these computers is a reflection of you. How you go about creating and communicating is of the utmost importance.

In that same article by Thomas Friedman, he quotes Dov Seidman, the author of a new book, simply titled “How”. He says:

“For young people, this means understanding that your reputation in life is going to get set in stone so much earlier. More and more of what you say or do or write will end up as a digital fingerprint that never gets erased. Our generation got to screw up and none of those screw-ups appeared on our first job resumes, which we got to write. For this generation, much of what they say, do or write will be preserved online forever. Before employers even read their resumes, they’ll google them.

“The persistence of memory in electronic form makes second chances harder to come by. In the information age, life has no chapters or closets; you can leave nothing behind, and you have nowhere to hide your skeletons. Your past is your present. The only way to get ahead in life will be by getting your “hows” right.

So, as this community continues to learn about how computers affect our lives, let’s start by looking at the how’s: How you treat the computer, how you conduct yourself in class, how you present yourself in an email or online.

We all need to get the How’s right if we are to succeed in this technological world.

I’m back home in Mpls after my trip out to San Diego for two conferences. My couch has never felt so comfortable!

The second conference I attended was the iSummit conference held by the Coalition of Lighthouse Schools. This was the second time I have attended iSummit, and it was again a great conference. Part of what makes this conference great is being able to connect with a great group of people for the second year. I’m already looking forward to sharing our experiences with the group throughout the coming year.

Bernie Dodge, creator of the WebQuest, was our keynote speaker, delivering a speech entitled the iToo model. In his own words, he recently came up with the name, and we were some of the first to hear this presentation. He spoke briefly at the beginning about the WebQuests, and then moved on to the iToo model. iToo is an acronym for inputs, Thinking, outputs and outcomes, and it was a simple, powerful framework for designing lessons. Not specific to technology, but it provides great structure for projects that involve tech.

This idea swung back to the WebQuest after the keynote when I had a chance to speak with Bernie. As I reported last week, I had attended a session in which WebQuests were described as shallow task-lists for kids to check off. After hearing Bernie speak about the WebQuest, and thinking more about his model for creating them, I’d like to amend what I said before. Bernie made clear the distinction between what he called the Web Experience, going out to the web to find facts, and the WebQuest, which is a deeper thinking task, supported by all of the disparate inputs that are available on the Web and elsewhere. I stand corrected. I think that it is ever-important that we guard against simplistic and shallow tasks.

The second presenation he gave was entitled GeoTeleWikiPodBlogCasting for Understanding. This was, as you could guess, focussing on many of the new collaborative social web technologies. This presentation was great because these ideas were presented for their value to education, which is of course, why we were there. Unfortunately, (I fall in to this as well) too much time is usually spent on the technology, and not enough time on the reasons for doing it.

Well, I had a day of sleep today, and tomorrow I’m going to spend a little time at work taking care of some loose ends. This summer is going to pass very quickly, and I have a lot of ideas wrapped up in my head for the coming year!

[tags]iSummit, iSummit 2006, Bernie Dodge, WebQuest[/tags]

This being my first time at a large, education and technology conference, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Honestly, I expected a lot of superfluous crap on the vendor floor, and I got that. It was disheartening to see scores of people milling around presentations for little clicker devices, rigid software, and tablet PCs (sorry I just don’t see it). I think those things may have a place, but they are certainly not the end-all, be-all fixes for all that ills.

My hopes, however, were also confirmed and enhanced. I believe the best technology is the technology that allows infinite possibilites, and endless options. Too often, I think, technology is viewed as a way to enforce that everyone do everything the same way. The best sessions and presentations I saw were the polar opposite. The future, I believe, will be in unlocking the individual’s creativity and voice. Allowing for interpretation in a way that suits each person.

So, from the sessions on podcasting, blogs, wikis, and storytelling, I felt that excitement. Tools that allow the individual’s voice to shine. I did see one new commercial product I was very enamoured with: InspireData. It looks to be a great data collection and analysis tool, and it seems to be crafted in a way that allows great flexibility in the interpretation and presentation of data.

The other wonderful thing about the past few days has been the turbo-overdrive web browsing I’ve been doing. I’ve come across a bunch of new websites, tools, and ideas. (This post is being written and posted with Qumana, a free, open-source, and cross-platform blog editing tool.(which needs a Window menu, I just noticed))

So now, a couple days off, I’m going to watch some soccer, visit some family, and gear up for iSummit 2006.

Tags: necc, necc2006, necc06, qumana, inspiredata, iSummit2006

I am feeling the swell of information and excitement today after a series of great sessions.

The keynote speech today was given by Nicholas Negroponte, creator of the one laptop per child initiative. It was very exciting sitting in the audience and hearing him describe the transformative power of placing this tool to connect with the world into the hands of a child. Especially a child who takes nothing for granted, and where the only hope for advancement is through education.

As is now the case with any sort of conference with even a smattering of tech connections, many people have written up their thoughts about his speech:

• Andrea’s BlogQuest – Educators First to Test Negroponte’s $100 Laptop Prototype
• David Warlick – Negroponte Moblogged
• Ian Jukes – Move over Microsoft, Dell, Negroponte’s $100 laptop has arrived
• eLearning Blog – Nicholas the Great!

Favorite quotes from Negroponte’s speech:

Supporting Windows on your laptop is “like a fat person using their energy to move their weight.”

and

“If Intel and Microsoft are against it… we must be doing something right.”

and

I’m paraphrasing this one: “It broke my heart to come to cambodia, and find that these kids were learning Word and Excel, like that was somehow going to secure them a job”

My next source of inspiration came in the form of Gary Stager, who delivered a rousing, shoot-from-the-hip presentation entitled: Preventing your one-to-one dreams from becoming nightmares.

I decided to attend this session in a very last minute fashion, and I stationed myself close to the door, in case things got ugly.

I could not have been more wrong.

A number of things stuck with me from his speech, things that perhaps were in the sub-concious, or things I have been simply unable to articulate to the right people. The real power of the internet is the opportunity for collaboration, and the opportunity of empowering yourself to publish your ideas. As he said, the power of the internet is not “dopey notions of things like webquests.” Going to some website to write down when Abraham Lincoln was born doesn’t somehow make it more exciting or engaging, because it is on the internet.

Another idea floated, that some of my teachers have picked up on, is the idea that assignments should be broad enough to be satisfied in a number of ways… meaning a number of methods of problem solving and a number of methods of production and communication.

Also, he dissed the clicker/voter things that seem to be all the rage at the moment. Companies would love nothing more than to sell thousands of those things and “turn all the teachers into Vanna White.”
Both Negroponte and Stager hit on the idea that teaching computer programming is all about teaching kids to learn, think and problem solve. Both used Logo as an example. (Don’t I feel special for having written down this spring in my draft curriculum, “LS – Logo”)

Okay, enough from me, here’s some from the community:

• Julie Lindsay – Gary Stager – One to one computing visions

Finally– Will Richardson on the Read/Write Web. Again, an excellent, excellent presentation. “Why web 2.0 changes everything”. It’s not about the technology, as Will says, its again this idea that the empowering and amazing thing is that now every kid is a newspaper, a textbook, a radio show, a television show and a movie. Students can publish to a worldwide audience and it is incredibly powerful.

One moment from Will’s speech was especially poignant. He showed a Coors’ beer commercial from about 5 years ago, I love football and the Twins, etc. And then presented some teenager’s MySpace profile. The link was obvious. “We should not be afraid of MySpace, we need to teach MySpace.” And by teaching MySpace, that means teaching about society, culture, ethics, and what is of value in this world. MySpace is not some separate little thing that we can block kids out of. MySpace is real life. And if we’re worried about what our kids are doing and saying in that virtual space… we need to be teaching and leading in every space.

We’re fighting a battle of relevancy with our students. We block access, we cut off communcation, and we dictate how technology will be used, and in the end, schools are losing relevance with kids.
What can we do to regain relevance? We change the way we teach. Teaching in the past was linear. Life is not like that. Life is not a linear set of steps to get from Point A to Point B. Life is a mess, the internet is a mess, myspace is a mess, we need to teach how to navigate, interpret, understand and shape the mess. I’ll bet you have heard the phrase, “How are you going to learn if you don’t get your hands dirty?”

[tags]necc, necc06, necc2006[/tags]

I’ve been working a lot lately on trying to articulate my message about what myspace is all about and what my response is when asked about it (or asked about filtering it).

Then, I came across this post at Ed-Tech Insider in my newsreader that sums it up nicely:

It isn’t just MySpace.com that we need to be concerned about, it is any web site that students tend to use. The predators, scam artists, etc. will follow. We need to teach students safe, appropriate use of the Internet rather than just block them from these sites.

We block MySpace.com and Xanga.com to keep kids from reading and posting during the school day, but you can’t stop them from posting when they are at home, and you can’t enforce school discipline on them for what they post at home.

I’m against the filtering and blocking of websites in general, for this reason. If we can’t educate kids about these sites, what’s going to happen when they leave school?