innovation3

The challenge is a lot larger than most people realize. Most, I suspect, don’t even think about this issue much.

Are the educational leaders in your community actively learning about, using and promoting web 2.0 tools and pedagogy as natural complements to skillful teaching and learning?

I was recently perusing my state superintendents’ web site (Massachsetts Association of School Superintendents) and noticed a PDF in the technology section. Our technology committee issued a PDF in the Documents and Reports section titled M.A.S.S. Best Practices in Technology that is worth reading if you want to gain an insight into the mindset of an influential group of educational leaders on pedagogy and technology. (Note: I had to right click on the report link and save the document on my computer to view it so I have inserted it at the end of this post. ) The twenty page “report” has nothing about web 2.0 tools or pedagogy. What you do find in the report, which is actually a listing, are plenty of references to schools using student management systems, biometrics, school security, one-to-one computing, wireless technologies, testing and student assessment, etc., a total of 21 headings.

I hope this is not the case for educational leaders throughout the world, but I suspect it is for many if not most. Scotland, Northern Ireland and Australia and some individual schools come to mind as exceptions I have encountered in my online network and self-directed learning on the web. I respect my Massachusetts colleagues, but their education in this area has a long way to go. To their credit, this fall, 2008, their technology conference is advertised as an attempt to reach out to the latest knowledge on technology best practices. They approved me as a presenter to speak about web 2.0 tools and pedagogy so I am optimistic.

The real story is not about adding technology; it’s about a vision of technology as a way of life infused throughout the application of the knowledge base of skillful teaching and learning in all our schools and classrooms. Until educators and influential people such as parents, school boards, teacher union leaders, and politicians understand what this vision of teaching and learning looks and feels like by experiencing it themselves, our progress will be limited to a few courageous souls fighting the status quo to no significant avail.

I hope organizations like CoSN and The MacArthur Foundation can help to significantly and rapidly advance the understanding and aceptance of web 2.0 tools and pedagogy by educational leaders and influential people who make the key decisions in this area. Here is a CoSN video Changing to Learn, Learning to Change.

The web is now about learning, dialogue and community. Speak to us. Let us know what the status is in your school or district.

This post was prompted by a press release on August 28, 2008 issued by the MacArthur Foundation:

The CEO of the Consortium for School Networking and a Professor Emeritus at Western Michigan University discuss a new initiative designed to assess how school leaders are affecting the use of Web 2.0 applications in schools. To read the full release, click here.

M.A.S.S. Best Practices in Technology 07

Experimenting with this new tool that I discovered through Konrad Glogowski’s blog. Not quite there yet, but willing to take the risk of publicly failing. Try number 4 is the gem – got it! Cool…

I got a tip to check this tool out from Jeff Utecht. Thanks, Jeff. Here is my first Live Blog, archived for the world to see. Just a test run!

Here is my comment on the comment Patrick Higgins left in response to my December 23, 2007 post.

[This is my attempt to walk the talk. Online engagement in conversations about our practice. Can we get better at our student learning? I really think so, but we are going to have to stop doing some things and start doing other things if we hope to succeed.]

Hi Patrick,

Glad you dropped by and shared some thoughts.

I do think the ideas I presented in the December 23rd post are replicable in any school or district. If I can elaborate, feel free to get in touch. You can direct message me on Twitter at dennisar.

I think the come-on-along-and-blog with me challenge is much more daunting than you let on. My little experience with it (my web 2.0 birthday – July 2007) tells me that initially it has nothing to do with PD. This is going to seem like a radical notion, but, face it, in education, we don’t read and we certainly don’t write about the art and science of our practice. I’d go so far as to say that even though we are the learning profession, we do not truly invest in self-directed learning for ourselves. The culture of our profession is more prone to build walls than bridges. For example, I have my degree. Now leave me alone so I can teach.

I make these comments with affection for my colleagues because I count myself a member of this class. I certainly did read about our practice and did write occasionally, but nothing like I have done since creating my wiki in August 2007 (now I have a second one) and this blog. It takes a lot of intellectual scaffolding to gear up to engage in this effort. Learning every day is hard work.

I try to post at least once a week, if not more. I read twitter comments and investigate leads about new ideas , tools, resources, blog posts, articles, and books, and meet people who have similar interests as I do and develop important professional relationships. It is a very stimulating environment that few in our profession want to participate in for a whole variety of reasons. In ten minutes I’m sure you and I could brainstorm a top ten list of reasons teachers and administrators would give for not engaging in reflecting, reading, writing, thinking, and communicating with others about their practice on an ongoing basis, even if it is off line! Isn’t that a learning environment? Until that issue is confronted, I do not believe teachers and administrators, in general, will

• significantly improve schools for students and ourselves,
• experience the exhilaration of efficacy, regularly,
• actively participate in online networks,
• create blogs.

The later two actions, as you and I know, have a synergistic impact on the first two. First, we have to find teachers and administrators willing to our schools into learning cultures.

It is also worth pointing out that although we want students to be life-long learners, we never confront the fact that we may be modeling just the opposite for students. How much richer would our schools be for students if we expected the Framework for 21st Century Skills of ourselves ~ all teachers and administrators, even unions negotiating for learning cultures in all our grades, teams, department, schools, and districts.

I’m not really sure who to blame (I’ll take my share) or what all the answers are (I strive for answers in my face to face work and through my online professional network). We need the critical mass of teachers and administrators involved to get beyond blame so we can think critically and creatively so innovative solutions can be owned by all of us for the profession that cherishes student learning above all else.

As a former English teacher, I agree with your comments about the writing process. Writing within the online environment of blogging is similar to other writing. I think it is very intense if presented correctly to students. Others are much more skillful doing that and writing and speaking about that than I am. I think blogging can help students learn a lot and develop net literacies that will serve them well in the future as the world becomes more and more digitally oriented.

Thanks again for stopping by; your comments got me thinking. Without them I would not have posted this morning. That is one reason I blog: the commitment to post causes me to think and write; the comment by someone about my post causes me to think and write in a way that extends my thinking. Well, Patrick, let’s see if anyone else offer us their insights on our exchange.

Patrick Higgins left the following comment in response to my December 23, 2007 post.

Dennis,

I figured I would come here and drop my comment off and continue the conversation a little bit.

You lay out a great plan for implementation as a thought and planned process, and I must admit, since reading Kim’s post initially, I have had visions of how to organize this meeting with our ed tech and curriculum staff. We need plans like this for addressing exactly how an why we ask our teachers to introduce technology, or better, to embed it into their planning.

As you probably can tell, I am a blog “evangelist” among our district’s teachers; There is so much power right at the fingertips of students when you give them space, guidance, and freedom to choose their voice. But that is not to say that we put them there and let them go, yet. We’ve got much scaffolding to do in order for our students to understand the parameters of writing online and for a relatively unknown audience.

Does blogging or any form of connective writing differ from traditional paper and pen writing? Absolutely; however, there are so many things about it that easily translate: drafting before you publish, proofreading, prompt writing, process writing, relevant topics, finding voice, bringing in expert sources, etc. My biggest stumbling block has been to pull teachers on board to show them how similar the two can be and that the shift, while significant, is not much of a change for them or their students.

December 25, 2007 7:12 AM

You’ve seen the word, you’ve seen the web sites and you may even have one. But have you ever wondered: What’s the big deal about blogs?

This is blogs in plain English. Here is another video production from Commoncraft.

San Diego County Fires
[ Last Updated 1:20 p.m. Oct 23 ]

Major wildfires are burning throughout San Diego County. We’ll update this map as information comes in. Burn and evacuation areas are estimated. For more information visit www.kpbs.org.

Live radio stream: http://www.kpbs.org/kpbs64k.asx
Live updates via Twitter: www.twitter.com/kpbsnews
Email: webnews@kpbs.org

Yellow: Evacuation Areas
Red: Burn Areas

With some help from AllanahK and Chris Betcher I was able to understand how VoiceThread works. But to really make it stick, I decided I needed to create my own.

Along the way I watched a VoiceThread on New Zealand money that Miss K’s class produced and titled Money, Money, Money. In their own words, “Today we recorded our comments for our Voicethread about New Zealand’s money. We used a resource from the Reserve Bank to find out more about our coins and notes.” The students’ work inspired me to use this tool in a very familiar way to say thank you to them.

Because I occasionally visit classes to read stories, I decide to use VoiceThread to read a story to Miss K’s class in New Zealand.

Hope you enjoy it kids! Mr. Richards

PS When you start the story thread, you can use the magnifying glass to zoom in and out with a click and to move around the screen by moving the cursor left and right. You can also record an audio comment or a text comment by clicking on the appropriate button and clicking save when you are finished. Click the arrows to move to the next screen shot. The cluster of four small photos can be clicked to bring up a screen of all the pages. Click a page to go to it.

Can someone tell me how I attach a file to my blog? No problem doing it on my pbwiki.

November Learning ~ Building Learning Communities 2007

I am new to blogging, but I’m willing to learn. In fact, learning for me and the adults and students I work with is at the heart of what we do each day. Our school system’s mission, for example, is

… to educate students so they are engaged in their education in a way which develops their capacity to pursue their goals and fosters life-long learning.

Our core beliefs are enthusiasm, collaboration, and continuous improvement.

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach was kind enough to spend a long time with me yesterday on Skype answering my questions about web 2.0 and filling me in on her incredibly exciting work with schools in Alabama. Thank you to Sheryl for leading the way.

In my simple minded way, among other things, I learned that a blog is not a wiki. That is obvious to most of you reading this, but it was a useful insight for me. I won a wiki, a pbwiki, at a BLC07 workshop offered by Darren Kuropatwa and thanks to the generosity of the folks at PBwiki.com. I titled it www.innovation3.pbwiki.com and jumped in feet first to use it and learn it along the way. Three months later, I have posted to it a respectable number of times and I am using it it as a vehicle in my work. Very helpful, I would say. The problem for me is community is lacking at the site. I post, people may read, people go on their wiki way. Now what?

I need a blog to share my personality and point of view. As I understand it (you can help me with this),

• a blog is a place visible on the internet where I can share a point of view on the world and invite people to comment;
• A wiki is a platform for collaborative work.

So now I have www.innovation3.blogspot.com!

I posted an excerpt from a poetry site I visit from time to time sponsored by the Poetry Foundation.

I’d appreciate hearing from you about these comments, the excerpt or other thoughts I post in the future or themes related to the posts.

“Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.” GK