Ramblings on Shelf-life and FB in the Afterlife

I have the attention span of a gnat until a thing grabs me and pulls me along with the gravitational force of the sun. Things capture my attention and I follow them like Alice through the rabbit hole until I realize I am lost in time and must escape before I become a permanent part of the matrix. On one such excursion I was following the growth of online freely available courses. I attended a webinar on the subject, browsed and clicked my way though the MIT open courseware offerings and something struck me. No, I wasn’t hit up the backside of the head by my dear neglected husband! It occurred to me that lectures have a shelf life as do videos or moments captured in any venue. Food for the brain may grow stale over time and we may become ill if we imbibe that rancid milk and honey. So what is the solution? I propose expiration dates for lectures. Just as with food or aspirin we all know the expiration day is vigilantly in favor of the short term usage but may still be good for a length of time thereafter. So too, information.

My other fleeting thought was just the pie-in-the-sky hope for the future when science(or religion establishes that our very existence is just like a nonlinear graphic organizer and that time is ever-present and not on a linear continuum. Non-the-less, I would like to suggest that social networking span the afterlife. It’s silly, really, to keep out our friends and family members simply because they no longer reside in physical form on the planet. Now that would truly make technology ubiquitous, although contact lists might become a bit unwieldy. Writing prompt: What are the pros and cons of expanding social networking to people in other dimensions?

What do you think about on rainy days?

This is just a portion of the twists and turns in my thought process. (Let’s not call it procrastination) It all started with a search to establish the best possible was to introduce division to 3rd graders. Still looking!

Like a New Litter of Kittens!

Our long awaited XO’s finally arrived with very little fanfare on a summer day during kindergarten screening several weeks before the start of the new school year. Ten small square cardboard boxes rested on top of the circulation desk in our Media Center. Diane, our amazing Media Specialist told me I could be the first to open a package. I relished the thought like a child who can’t wait to see what Santa has deposited beneath the tree. As it happened, she and I were in school the same day and with the help of one of our Creek View families who came for the screening, together we broke open the contents and revealed the adorable smiling, squeaky clean little laptops eager to play.

ox out of the box

They had a slightly bumpy surface for easy gripping and rounded corners making them very safe and easy to handle. First step, pop in the battery pack. I was a little disappointed that they didn’t come with the crank generator as they do in the third world, although I know that whole system tanked resulted in the need for more energy exceeding predicted costs and bringing the program to a standstill in Nigeria.

The batteries were 80% charged and ready to go. We all ogled the rubbery lime green key board with its tiny keys. Back up, it did take several minutes to discover how to open the unit, very clever design! The children seemed intent on cracking these nuts and while Diane and I started a chat we encouraged Jimmie to join in. She is entering 1st grade this year. She found us and I noticed the look of satisfaction when she sent a quick ‘HI’ and got our responses. It was time for DJ and Jimmie to head back to the screening room so Diane and I found ourselves surrounded by these cute little devices, admiring them like a new litter of kittens. She took two home as did I. We left three for our Tech Specialist (he has three girls) and set aside three for the family who contributed half the money we raised to make out Give One Get One purchase last December. We have plans for the 10 and they include forming project based learning groups from grades 1-5 and hosting a reception for the contributors, PTA and community leaders mid September.

I keep up with the OLPC wiki and news blog and despite the seemingly endless number of setbacks and

User Group meets in WDC

failures I feel proud to support their efforts to connect our world. I’m an idealist at heart and I have faith in the God given abilities in each and every one of us. Tapping into the vast human landscape of the third world holds the key to a brighter future for all of us. I really believe that. There is a child, children, and people connecting who hold they keys we need to make the world a better place. Technology provides the launch pad for these big ideas. Americans have long held the belief that anything is possible. It’s a feeling no one should go without. The OLPC is a beacon of hope and an agent of change. The concept has inspired many rival designs and identified a need to pursue affordable technology for all.

new small voices vodcast on podomatic

I just completed editing and posting episode 31 of small voices.  This is my third annual play based on a piece of childrens’ literature.  A friend and coworker of mine, Heidi Holcomb, soon to be EdS in EdTech loaned me a containing examples of literature illustrating the butterfly effect.  I wondered how readily my students would make the connection between the cats in our story and the safety of the island. They listened intently to the tale.  I told the initially to listen carefully to see if they could solve the problem on the island. They each wanted to be the one to find the answer! Stories can be excellent teachers when students assume a role/purpose within the context of the a book.

My role was to ask questions and to help the students take ownership of the play. I call it a play but in reality it would take months to be able to produce this kind of thing sequentially and before an audience. Videotaping is the answer.  It enables the teacher to reduce each the play to scenes or even parts when filming. With 18 enthusiastic kindergarteners, the rule is divide and conquer!  Parental help is key as is a mind reading assistant.  I had both!  See for yourself. The editing is so so but I think you’ll agree, the movie is a living lesson for these children.

I found this lesson plan today based on the book I used.  Some of you may find this helpful in creating your own plans.

YOU are your child’s best teacher.

Question posted in recent forum I frequent: I heard that up until about 20 years ago, you could buy from the Broerderbond in South Africa a child development pack for the first 6 years of you’re child’s life so that they can read, write a bit, etc… by the time they go to school (as well as exposing other parts of the brain to development). Does anyone know if there is anything good around like that today? I suppose there may be more than one company competing with that sort of thing. Does anyone know who the market leader is?

My response: Do you really think sitting your child in front of a computer is the best way to go? I teach kindergarten and my experience has been that children gravitate to reading and writing when they are developmentally ready. This happens between 4-7 years of age. My own children love to read. (They are older teens.) I attribute this in part to my good friend Pam who insisted I start reading to my kids from the day they were born. I took her advice and my children began to associate reading and listening with the pleasure of bonding with their parents and caregivers. I read to my children until they were 12 and they no longer had time. We all missed the togetherness. Visits to the library and bookstore were frequent. Gifts of books were common and interest in books praised. And yes, they also read independently! The read aloud experience is invaluable. If there had been http://www.starfall.com when my children were small I would have exposed them to it, but never require them to do it. My kindergarten students enjoy the program and the students who entered as readers tell me they learned to read from http://www.starfall.com which is a free phonics based reading program. I also know from meeting their parents that education is an intrinsic family value and they have exposed their children to countless classics in children’s literature. I can guarantee for FREE that if you take the time to read to your child and elicit their responses to reading by asking them to predict, identify common words and engage them in the illustrations they will love to read and learn to read more easily and more naturally from intrinsic motivation. You are your child’s best teacher. Model enthusiasm for reading and the power of the written word. Don’t completely outsource this very important role in the early years. By the way, I am very high tech in the classroom and do lots of great things with my students using technology to extend literacy skills so I am not opposed to a little software extension or intervention.

Short Post

Several weeks ago during center time I discovered my kindergarten students had access to Youtube.  They were searching for Disney movies, cartoons and apparently a recently posted video of someone’s brother. At first I was simply shocked that our school firewall didn’t catch this since it keeps me from even accessing BubbleShare or any other file sharing site. I informed the students calmly that Youtube is not permitted in school and that they should only use it at home when they are sitting with their parents who can help guide them to make good choices. I got a lot of “why, my parents let me use it at home?” I haven’t taken a poll just yet but I have a hunch that they may not be exaggerating the extent of the freedom they have online in the home.

So I ask you.  How do you feel about free exploration of the internet by children of all ages?  Would you encourage your child to search for funny movies on Youtube?  I need a little perspective and I’m afraid that since my own children are in their late teens, I can’t fully understand the point of you of the young parent. Maybe some of you can help me in this regard.

Geocaching is News to Me

Today I experienced an Alphasmart training session prepared and facilitated by a recent PhD in Edtech and Curriculum. Her name, Diana Freeman and she works part time for Alphasmart developing and delivering training. Her other job is sizable. She is the  Media & Instructional Technology Director for Johnston County schools in North Carolina. It sounds like they have a very unified vision for technology in their school system. I will write more about this later. In her spare time she is a philanthropist and a Geocacher. She is the quintessential teacher completely engaged in living, giving and learning.

Diana managed to introduce us to the wide ranging capabilities of Neos, let us play and practice and interspersed activities with vignettes about her passion, Geocaching. I am familiar with this hobby, activity or ‘cult’ but I had never encountered an active participant. She is so active in fact that she left our training session and headed for a Geocache in Alabama! A mother and grandmother, she has the entire family involved. She lives her discovery learning philosophy. She has peaked my interest in technology-based treasure hunting. Has anyone been using this in kindergarten? How’s it going? If like me, you are wondering how Geocaching might enhance your curriculum then read this August post by Silvia Tolisano in her Langwitches blog. Here is The Official Geocaching website. (photo from Bob and Renee on Flickr.com)

Mathcasts 500 Project from Math Playground

Tuesday evening with Women of Web 2, yielded the usual rich chat room conversation and engaging speaker content. Colleen King a math teacher/consultant and the host of Math Playground talked about the Mathcast 500 Project. Her tagline rings true for me, “When students become teachers, learning become inevitable.” The Mathcast concept makes full use of Voicethreads technology. User friendly, this web-based teaching tool can turn students into effective peer teachers. This new project promises to become a repository of student created resources. I did some experimenting today and my students seem to be very receptive to recoding their reflections about math activities. I did run into a technical glitch. In some cases the recording cut off after only several seconds so I wasn’t able to complete the project. Here is an example of what some students created to explain how they use Rocket Math. If Voicethreads can be this effective for math, just imagine the numerous other ways it could be used by students to reinforce and extend learning. Colleen’s Math Playground is deep and wide. I plan to return regularly for the latest math tools.

Kindle, Kindling and Book Burning

This week I am taking the easy way out! Here is my response to another notable post on the TechLearning Blog by Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach. Can you imagine a world without paperbacks, big books or magazines? How is technology enhancing the desirability that digital print? Isn’t a paperback created using digital print? Discover what generated my response by seeking her post The Future of Reading.

I used to be far too impatient to read. I too wanted to “unlock the secrets” more quickly. Actually I really wanted to live the book, not read about it! Now I can see the beauty of listening to a story unfold inside my head. It is an extraordinary experience and like you Sheryl, I wanted my kids to absorb the wonders of reading so I amassed a varied collection of children’s books and read aloud to them until they reached middle school.

My first impressions of Kindle, from what I can tell by its’ size, shape and concept are appealing. The preview, however, reveals a black and white screen and I recoil slightly wondering how I would manage to live without seeing the book cover in color. It occurs to me that the new book smell would also be absent and while this could be remedied with a spray my reluctance festered. The texture of cold plastic, versus the feel of soft, smooth paper sheets made me wonder how comfy I would be propped up on my pillow viewing a screen like the one I stare at most of the day. The words organic and sensual came to mind. Not that I read lurid, torrid tales, I prefer engaging tales of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The kind with human struggles, drama and hard won happiness.

No, Kindle holds little interest for me. I like variety in my modes of reading from cereal boxes to traffic signs to computer screens to good old fashioned paperback books. I hope I don’t offend anyone if I admit that I prefer the real thing in bed. (books that is) Recently I wrote about an electronic magazine medium which I do think has promise. It is every bit as satisfying as a high quality glossy magazine. See what you think. http://preview.tinyurl.com/3834c7

The surveys quoted perplex me. I wonder how they account for the text messaging explosion. If all of the messages could be converted to book quantities then would we find a decrease in reading and writing or just a change in the way we read and write? If literary readers are more likely to engage in politics or volunteering then how do we account for the recent Pakistani protests coordinated by massive texting networks? Things are changing, shifting and the quality is changing. If people decide they love the Kindle then it will continue to be on Christmas lists for years to come. If not then it may just become kindling for a bigger fire.

Posted by: kathy shields | November 27, 2007 2:06 AM

Jeff Giddens Super e-Sleuth, Uncovers Over 350 Visualization Resources

Remember when you were small and your brother/sister used to tickle you until it hurt? Well I was so tickled by what Jeff had to say in his GaETC workshop that I begged him to continue filling my brain with new concepts even though it grew nearly painful to find places to store all of his wonderful ideas.

Jeff shares the authorship of the SEGA Tech blog. He and his cohorts provide educational technology support for Southeast Georgia schools from elementary to higher education. I attended Jeff’s GaETC workshop entitled, Seeing is Believing: The Power of Information Visualization. I consider myself to be a fairly savvy user of educational technology tools and frankly the GaETC held little mystique for me. Having met Jeff at a previous conference I suspected he would be able to deliver rich content and offer concrete examples of how technology can enhance student engagement, learning and skills. He didn’t let me down.

Jeff has an affinity for science and technology. His expertise is particularly poignant on the subject of science technology integration in middle and High school. I could not even begin to enumerate the best practices he bequeathed at this workshop so I give will pass on one suggestion. Subscribe to his blog SEGA Tech and spend some time reaching into the recent past by reviewing his archival posts. Oh, and one more thing … Make sure you have delicious in your tool bar so you can expand your personal set of technology resources exponentially!

Why Tuesday Night is My Favorite

You may be saying to yourself, I know why, Lincoln Heights, Biggest Loser or Beauty and the Geek! As far as I’m concerned, those shows have nothing on Cathy Evanoff’s Making Connections or WOW2.0’s Women of the Web. I get such a rush from the fast-paced drama, excitement, back channeling and scintillating technological tidbits that I just can’t wait for Tuesday night. I know at first it is hard to conceive of a live interactive webcast involving some 60 people in the chat and 5-sometimes 8 in the live streamed conference but it beats asynchronous TV any day.

Last night was particularly exhilarating. First Cathy E. an award winning edtech educator hosted an innovative experimental show featuring uStreamTV. Jeff Lebow, Webcast Academy founder, his bio which I snagged from the TESOL conference site:

Jeff Lebow

Jeff Lebow’s educational career has included teaching 3rd grade in New Mexico, ESL in Thailand & Korea, and Computer Assisted Language Learning in New Hampshire. He founded Worldbridges in 1998 and has been experimenting with live, interactive webcasting and collaborative community building ever since. Worldbridges met the Webheads during EdTechTalk#1 in 2005, and the EVO2007 Webcast Academy session was only the latest in a series of webcasting adventures that have resulted.

---

During our meeting Jeff was able to host at least 5 streams simultaneously and feed them into the edtechtalk page in a single embedded window. He is quite simply a magician. Cathy E is very technologically adventurous and infuses her audience with confidence. In new age jargon I felt like my being was vibrating on a higher plane after the show.

An hour later and somewhat subdued and philosophical I joined the Women of Web 2.0 group who include: Sharon Peters, Jen Wagner, Cheryl Oakes and Vicki Davis. The special guest was Melinda Miller – The Podcasting Principal. Upwards of 50 people, fingers flying in the chat room while the talk begins. Melinda is redefining what it means to be a principal by modeling a feet first approach to experimenting with new forms of communication to enhance community. She is full of surprises. For example, she made a very personal announcement via her Meez character which is embedded in her blog page for her staff. By changing the background of her avatar she provided a clue to baby news. Can you imagine a leader so dynamic and spirited? Well actually, my own principal could give her competition when it comes to the element of surprise. I think random acts of kindness started with him because they come so naturally. But back to Melinda and the WOW ladies. The banter over their Skype conference call is witty and personal. I’d liken it to the view only without the political barbs. It’s kinder and gentler but manages to pack the hour with more content than you imagined a brain could hold. Fact is, you can’t hold it all so you have your tabbed browser set up and your delicious tool bar to capture any of the amazing links they mention.

So when people ask me how I know so much about technology. I tell them it’s all how you spend your Tuesday nights! Catch me in the next Tuesday chat with Cathy Evanoff or WOW2.0, I’m sendkathy.