innovation3

…. Once upon a time there was a learner, a squire named Dennis who lived and learned in the kingdom of Twitter & Plurk. This learner thought he was very attentive. Many years of schooling had prepared him for facing the challenges of life. He was about to learn an important lesson…

Much of his learning occurred online with people he rarely got to see in person. When an invitation went out from Lord November to the citizens in the kingdom of Twitter & Plurk for the conference of BLC08 he got excited. Now he would be able to see and talk to his friends in person.

The day came for the conference and he had an opportunity to talk to some of his friends. He was happy, but really looking forward to the cruise in Ye Olde Boston Harbour that Lord November had planned for a thousand people. Now he could spend time with his friends and tell them about his hopes and dreams for the children and adult learners of the kingdom.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the cruise. In the Kingdom of Apple a plot of distraction was brewing. King Jobs know he could grab the attention of our squire learner by making a new talk tool that he had dubbed the iPhone 3G. Squire Dennis got the talk tool during the conference. He was excited to use it. He arrived early in Ye Olde Boston, 6 o’clock by most estimates. Be at the boat dock by 7 o’clock was his misguided conception.

Thinking he had time to spare he fired up his new talk tool. What magic! He was able to travel to the village of blog with this iPhone 3G. Sir Wesley Fryer from Moving at the Speed of Creativity had written a wonderful tale, a Quick-Start Guide to Audacity. That was a treat for Squire Dennis, our learner, to read. He wants to learn more about Audacity, he thought pensively and bookmarked the tale.

Sir Norman at Relexions had ironically written a tale of Teaching Attention to the young and old. Squire Dennis would have benefited from this teaching on this fateful night. In the tale it was written…

The ability to pay careful attention isn’t important just for students and air traffic controllers. Researchers are finding that attention is crucial to a host of other, sometimes surprising, life skills: the ability to sort through conflicting evidence, to connect more deeply with other people, and even to develop a conscience. Boston.com

So be it… Our learning Squire Dennis knew this was true. He distraction into these tales could be a problem if not managed well. At that point he cooled down his talk tool and tucked it into its leather case on his trusty belt. It was time to depart for the dock to board his boat for the cruise with his friends. Be there by 7 he mumbled to himself.

He had trouble finding the dock. Other citizens gave him incorrect directions that took him along a wayward path and he lost fifteen mintues, but he was not deterred. He persevered and found himself near the place he need to be and saw a lovely lass in a blue shirt with Ye Olde Boston Cruises emblazoned on its frontispiece.

When he asked this lass where the Provincetown II could be boarded, her face grimaced. Squire Dennis instinctively knew this was not a good sign. She paused turned to Ye Olde Boston Harbour and with a stalwart lunge of her body and thrust of her shoulder, arm, hand and pointer finger, an imposing figure that reminded him of Sir John Davitt’s illustrative pose from the morning lecture on diversity amongst the population of the kingdom’s learners, she directed our squires obviously untaught attention to the boat chugging away from the dock bound for the inner depths of the sea with a boatload of his friends. Alas, Squire Dennis will have to wait until next year to attend a f2f meeting with his friends on the cruise.

Later, as Squire Dennis bemoaned his tragic fate, he pulled out the sheet of paper in his pocket. Across the top above the directions was words he miss read. Boat will depart at 6:30 from the dock. Let this tale be a lesson to all of those in the kingdom of Twitter & Plurk with similar multitasking distractions as our still learning Squire Dennis…

Story Version 2.0

In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists. ~ Eric Hoffer

The Future is Upon Us

The world my grandson Aidan will inherit is not the world of my childhood. A few weeks ago, for example, I learned that seeds are now more important to our future than I could have ever imagined. Norway has decided to help the planet bounce back from disaster by establishing the Svalbard Global Seed Vault on an island that lies in the Arctic Ocean only 620 miles from the North Pole.

The Seed Vault can store up to 2.25 billion seeds and exists to preserve the biodiversity of the planet. Over 100 countries are contributing seeds to the vault. This is truly an international effort aimed at research, food preservation, and hope in a time when the world is predicted to experience drastic global climate change over the next 100 years.

This is the world my grandchildren and our communities’ children will inherit. Are we equipped to prepare our students for it? Does the Svalbard Global Seed Vault and hundreds of stories like it have a place in our curriculum?

I virtually attended the February 26, 2008 opening ceremonies inside the vault and you can too. It really is a trip to the future. Coincidentally, February 26 was Aidan’s sixth birthday; he is a kindergartener looking forward to a life of learning. What skills or literacies does he need for the 21st Century?

21st Century Literacies

We are well on our way to answering that question. A Google search to define 21st Century Literacy turns up 246,000 hits. A perusal of the top ten sites reveals references to multimedia literacy, information literacy (three mentions), digital-age literacy, multicultural literacy, visual literacy, media literacy, computer literacy, technology literacy, and network literacy. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that technology is having a tremendous impact on the thinking about what students need to know for the future.

Mary Devaney Columbo in an article New Literacy Skills for the 21st Century discusses the work of the Internet Reading Group at Clemson University and the New Literacies Research Team at the University of Connecticut. They have identified five new literacy skills students need to acquire for online reading. In On the Road to New Literacies Nancy Gustafson and Grace Maley discuss how their school district is implementing the Framework for 21st Century Skills developed by The Partnership for 21st Century Skills. Both articles appear in the spring 2008 issue of MASCD’s journal Perspectives.

Three more important sources for information on 21st Century Literacies are:

• Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. Project New Media Literacies,
• National Educational Technology Standards for Students, Second Edition. International Society for Technology in Education,
• enGauge: A Framework for Effective Technology Use. North Central Regional Educational Laboratory. Learning Point Associates. (Unfortunately there is this notice on the enGauge website: Effective 3/31/08, the enGauge website will no longer be available.)

Toward A Definition of 21st Century Literacies

Recently the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) issued a statement they called Toward A Definition of 21st Century Literacies that summarizes a lot of what I have learned about this topic.

Literacy has always been a collection of cultural and communicative practices shared among members of particular groups. As society and technology change, so does literacy. Because technology has increased the intensity and complexity of literate environments, the twenty-first century demands that a literate person possess a wide range of abilities and competencies, many literacies. These literacies—from reading online newspapers to participating in virtual classrooms—are multiple, dynamic, and malleable. As in the past, they are inextricably linked with particular histories, life possibilities and social trajectories of individuals and groups. Twenty-first century readers and writers need to

• Develop proficiency with the tools of technology
• Build relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and cross-culturally
• Design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes
• Manage, analyze and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information
• Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multi-media texts
• Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments1

The digital universe where these literacies are evident is far removed from the world in which most parents, educators, researchers and politicians live. It is at best a foreign country and at worse the “dark side.” The language, behaviors, norms, tools, and learning environments, although at times virtual, are very real for those who use them; however, unless you experience them yourself, you will not be able to understand them or realize their importance for learning in the 21st Century. Perhaps if we acknowledge how difficult change is for us, we can overcome our resistance to the dramatic shift the digital world represents.
Resistance to Change

Frank Duffey in I Think, Therefore I Am Resistant to Change describes the psychological barrier we have to overcome if we are to understand these new literacies and transform education to prepare our children for their Svalbard-Global-Seed-Bank future.

Mental models resist change. People don’t like to change what they think they know. Given new information to consider, individuals will search their existing mental models to ensure that the new information is consistent with what they know…. If the individual cannot link … new information to an existing mental model, he or she may … discard the information as irrelevant, unimportant, or wrong.2
Building Learning Communities

I was introduced to the digital world of learning at a conference in Massachusetts last summer, Building Learning Communities 2007, http://tinyurl.com/2rv9lv. It was the first time in my life I sat in a conference room to hear a keynote address where every other person had a computer open on his or her lap, and most if not all of the laptops were connected to the Internet. What I was slow to realize then was that some of the computers were communicating with colleagues who for whatever reason could not be physically present in the room, but who were nonetheless present virtually via computer They could be any place on the planet with an Internet connection.

K12 Digital Instructional Development

I went on from that experience to learn more about the digital world of learning that is currently evolving and, I predict, will continue to do so for some time. In October 2007 I attended a free three-week online conference called K12 Online Conference 2007 that is archived on the Internet at http://tinyurl.com/24h2o6 and will be held again in October 2008. Mark it on your calendar! What I learned at the conference opened my eyes to teaching and learning environments that were virtually unknown to me. Since then, with the help of a few people I met online at the conference, I have developed an online network of teachers, administrators, technology specialists and librarians from across the United States and the planet. They have helped me experience and understand the potential importance of the National Council of Teachers of English defined 21st Century Literacies to education for the future. They are part of my Twitter.com virtual network, and I cannot thank them enough for all they are doing to prepare our profession for education in the future.

Collective Intelligences

The MIT Center for Collective Intelligences, http://tinyurl.com/2zo9yl, was recently established to answer one research question: How can people and computers be connected so that—collectively—they act more intelligently than any individuals, groups, or computers have ever done before? For the sake of my grandson Aidan and all the children, I urge you to take the first step.Drop any resistance to the new literacies paradigm, commit yourself to learn more about it, and as you do, invite the colleagues from your professional learning community to join you on the journey I have begun into the digital universe our children will inherit. I am convinced, as MIT apparently is, that collectively we have an opportunity to pool intelligences globally in ways we cannot imagine today to answer the questions of tomorrow. We have to claim these opportunities and help our students to claim them. I suspect it may be the only way we will be able to live creatively and successfully in a world that could be very different from the one we are equipped to live in, a world that is rapidly disappearing.

1 Toward A Definition of 21st-Century Literacies, Adopted by the NCTE Executive Committee, February 15, 2008

2 I Think, Therefore I Am Resistant to Change. Francis M. Duffy. Journal of Staff Development, Winter 2003 (Vol. 24, No. 1). National Staff Development Council. http://tinyurl.com/37cl66

This article is in the Spring 2008 edition of Perspectives, MA Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development.

The two images come from Classroom 2.0.ning.com and are used with permission of the site creator.

I think this is an interesting development in the world of networked learning. Although I don’t like the corporate slant to the applications of research, perhaps we could have some influence on directing part of the energy of the center to education.

While people have talked about collective intelligence for decades, new communication technologies—especially the Internet—now allow huge numbers of people all over the planet to work together in new ways. The recent successes of systems like Google and Wikipedia suggest that the time is now ripe for many more such systems, and the goal of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence is to understand how to take advantage of these possibilities.

Our basic research question is: How can people and computers be connected so that—collectively—they act more intelligently than any individuals, groups, or computers have ever done before?’

The Center for Collective Intelligence brings together faculty from across MIT to conduct research on how new communications technologies are changing they way people work together.

MIT Center for Collective Intelligence Launch Video (Requires RealPlayer 8.0+)

The Apple Tour of 21st Century Learning I attended this week offered a lot to think about. I created a mind42.com (a really useful free online tool) MindMap Apple: A Tour of 21st Century Learning to represent some of the ideas that were presented in the Opening Presentation and three hands-on-the-computer-they-give-you sessions. The differences between this event and EduCon 2.0 in Philadelphia in January 2008 were striking:

1. These were very “teacher-at-the-center-of-the-learning” controlled experiences of technology and core subject content.
2. The questions on control of technology and by implication of student learning were noticeable from the participants in the one session where we had time to talk.
3. These were rehersed presentations and carefully orchestrated to deliver content through a simulated hands on use of the loaned computer.
4. No Ustream.tv broadcasts; no wiki to go to for follow up resources to support ongoing learning.
5. No conversations except over lunch (no Philly steak and cheese).
6. No free applications/technology tools.
7. No students.
8. None of the energy, excitement, sharing, or audience-presenter interaction.
9. Ideas on technology were “corporatized,” a real word in case you are wondering.
10. The “core values” for 21st Century Student Learning presented at the beginning of the day (Creation – Distribution – Access – Collaboration) were invisible beyond the scripts we followed in the classrooms.

Despite these failings, I praise the Apple team for their efforts. Their hearts are definitely in the right place and they worked hard to deliver a good day. I just think we all have a lot to learn, myself included, before we know how to consistently push learning off the charts for students and educators. All children need to be healthy, safe, supported, engaged and challenged every day. We’re not there yet.

Guy Kawasaki in the video on the Art of the Start speaks about passion and a desire to save the world as key ingredients for a start-up company’s success. Guy claims these ingredients were keys to Apple’s success. I wonder if Apple remembers that history? It sure didn’t seem as if they did in the learning environments we experienced last week. They said the right things. Now they need to learn how to walk the talk. Keep the focus on Claiming What We Imagine for our students!

Some Questions

1. Do we know how to build passion and a desire to save the world into the way we educate children?
2. Would it help students learn?
3. Can Apple help us answer the questions?
4. What would an AppleCon 2.0 look like or are corporations and the conversations we had at EduCon 2.0 antithetical?
5. What would the world be like if Apple and Microsoft found the passion to learn from the lessons of EduCon 2.0? Could they help to “save the world?”

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!

Thanks to David Jakes’ first post of the year on The Strength of Weak Ties, I learned how to create a placemark using Google Earth. I noticed on Twitter that David had created his first post of 2008. Mixed Media-Extreme Environments was a tutorial on how to use an online HTML editor to create a placemark for GE. When I learn how to upload and embed files to Blogger posts, I’ll let you see the results. Impressive. Text, picture, links, video link (David helped my over Skype and we learned after much trial and error, that GE does more support videos in placemarks for Macs), and resource web page for National Geographic.

A Question

Why not start [teacher's modeling for students] earlier, right from the moment our students sign in [to their blog] for the first time?

Patrick Higgins, who works for the Sparta Township, NJ Public Schools, posted on his blog, Chalkdust: the latest incarnation of my professional self, about the help he gave to one of his colleagues who wanted to set up a blog for her class. His protocol for assistance in this case involved

… showing her what the other Civics class blog looked like, including the types of assignments and assessments the class was using, and the general pattern we followed to allow the students to transition into writing on blogs. A couple things stood out to me as I was describing the process to Carole on Friday:

• allowing students time to get used to the space is essential
• rigor is also necessary; time given to assimilate onto the blog should be limited and have a definitive end time where the students know that they can still play, but they are being held accountable for their content.

After we had set her up to play with the blog and finalize her vision for where she wanted to go with it, which she will have time to do over the holiday break, I headed home, still thinking about how I described the process to her.

Later in the post Patrick comments that he read a post by Kim Cofino.

When reading this passage from Kim Cofino, something new was apparent to me about the blog spiel that I deliver to teachers:

All too often, teachers set up an online space for their students and then just “let them have a go” – basically leaving the students on their own in this new environment (sometimes because the teacher is not sure where to start). Not only does this provide fertile breeding ground for misbehavior, but it is definitely not something teachers would do in the physical world, so there’s really no rationale for letting them go in a virtual environment. Teachers must be the model for appropriate behavior online, just like they are in the physical classroom.

It makes perfect sense: teachers rarely give students directions so vague and expect anything of quality to return. As Kim states, it’s a breeding ground for trouble to begin. We ask our teachers to be present online, as it insures that they are an integral part of the process the students undergo online; our most successful teachers with students online are our most frequent commenters. Why not start that process earlier, right from the moment our students sign in for the first time? Instead of “hey, let them play for a couple of days,” I think I will advocate having the teachers model how to customize their page and require that they “assign” a few of the layout changes to the students by a specified date.

I responded to Patrick Higgins post with the following comments on the educational context I believe is very relevant to the question raised by his post.

The Education Context

Patrick,

As you know, it is not about technology, it is about learning.

We need to professionalize PK-21 leadership and learning. The way to do that is for everyone in the profession to always use our knowledge base to guide our decisions and actions each day for each student. We meet with student 180+ days a year to help them learn. Each of those days is precious and must include relevant learning activities and formative assessments guided by three beliefs: 1) What we are doing today is important; 2) You can do what I am asking you to do; 3) I(we) am(are) not going to give up until you have learned what we believe is essential for you to learn. It is critical that we communicate these beliefs in our words and actions to students throughout school day, each and every day.

Are activities using technology any different?

A blog provides a tool for learning. “Students, what we will do today with this blog is important, you can do it, etc.” Prior to that event in the class, our grade-level team or department team should have asked what is essential for the students to learn? We decided that using the blog is the best way to help the kids learn the essential “it.” During and after students have used the blog, we check (formatively assess and then summatively) to see if the kids learned what we believe is essential for them to learn.

But what do we do if students do not learn what we consider essential?

As a team, department, and as a school we must have a plan in place to ensure that students will receive emotional and academic support from a variety of different angles and providers to ensure that we find a way for students to learn the essential “it” that, so far, they have not learned.

Providers that could be part of the plan for helping students learn the essential “it:”

• Guidance counselor
• Administrator
• Faculty advisor
• Upper class student mentor
• Teaching team members with special skills
• Grade-level or cluster team leader
• Department head
• Special education teacher
• Volunteer mentor
• Volunteer tutor

When it comes to the essentials, I think we need to trim down the learning standards that the academic associations and the states have set as targets for student learning and integrate the Framework for 21st Century Learning (21stcenturyskills.org) and the new literacies for powerfully using the internet for learning. We need to act on “What are the essential” standards students need to learn.

FYI, I am collecting information related to 21st Century Net Literacies on a wiki in case you are interested.

Thank you for the prompt your post provided. I hope my comments are helpful!

Regards,

Dennis

The Implementation Context

Kim Corvino on her blog, always learning: teaching technology abroad, posted about the first year implementation of social networking with elementary school students at the International School, Bangkok, Thailand. She pushes the profession to take Web 2.0 very seriously, as serious as any other effort to establish a meaningful learning environment. Kim models what we need to do to advance the knowledge base in this area. It is an excellent commentary on academics, technology, implementation, change, learning and leadership. Thanks Kim.

“The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning examines the effect of digital media tools on how people learn, network, communicate, and play, and how growing up with these tools may affect peoples sense of self, how they express themselves, and their ability to learn, exercise judgment, and think systematically.

Thanks to the generous support of the MacArthur Foundation, open access electronic versions of all the books in this series are available. Follow the links … below to read these editions.”

What? So What? What’s Next?

The Digital Media and Learning series is a major six-volume publication by the MacArthur Foundation in collaboration with MIT Press on the effects of digital media on young people and learning that will be used as a framework, beginning in 2008, for the new International Journal of Learning and Media. The IJLM will continue the investigation of the relate topics introduced by the framework. The prominence that this publication and associated journal lends to this emerging field of study seems important, certainly, but what really makes the effort significant in my eyes in addition to the content is “…the participatory and open online review process [used in the initiative that] is helping to establish new collaborative approaches to scholarship.” “Open discussions were held in virtual worlds and on a wiki hosted by the Monterey Institute for Technology and Education.

Excerpts from December 12, 2007 Press Release

The MIT Press today announced the publication of a new series on digital media and learning supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The new six-volume series

examines the effect of digital media on how young people learn, play, socialize and participate in civic life.

The series’ release marks the launch of the new International Journal of Learning and Media, through which

core issues facing young people in the digital age will be explored.

In a departure from traditional publishing, articles were subject to a robust review process that took place in a series of online conversations among the authors, editors, and the public. These open discussions were held in virtual worlds and on a wiki hosted by the Monterey Institute for Technology and Education.

A Framework for the Emerging Field of Digital Media and Learning

“The series and the new journal are critical tools in providing a framework for the emerging field of digital media and learning,” said Jonathan Fanton, President of the MacArthur Foundation. “Of equal importance is the way in which the articles were written and developed. In a field made up of diverse researchers and practitioners,

the participatory and open online review process is helping to establish new collaborative approaches to scholarship.”

Vol. 1 ~ Civic Life Online: Learning How Digital Media Can Engage Youth

Lance Bennett points out that the future of democracy is in the hands of the young people of the digital age in Civic Life Online: Learning How Digital Media Can Engage Youth.

Michael Xenox and Kristen Foot tackle the generational gap in online politics. As they point out, it’s “not your father’s internet anymore.”

Vol. 2 ~ Digital Media, Youth, and Credibility

The contributors to Digital Media, Youth, and Credibility look particularly at youth audiences and experiences, considering the implications of wide access and the questionable credibility of information for youth and learning.

Vol. 3 ~ The Ecology of Games

In The Ecology of Games, noted game designer Katie Salen of the Parsons New School of Design has gathered essays not only from those who study games and learning but from those who create such worlds

… the volume contains an article on participatory culture by Cory Ondrejka who as CTO of Linden Labs helped create Second Life and a case study on collective intelligence gaming by Jane McGonigal, premier puppet master of the new genre Alternate Reality Games.

Vol 4 ~ Youth, Identity, and Digital Media

Youth, Identity, and Digital Media, edited by David Buckingham explores how young people use digital media to share ideas and creativity and to participate in networks that are small and large, local and global, intimate and anonymous.

Vol 5 ~ Digital Youth, Innovation, and the Unexpected

The range of topics touched on in Tara McPherson’s volume Digital Youth, Innovation, and the Unexpected is perhaps the widest of all in the collection. Lest we forget lessons learned from other eras she includes essays by Justine Cassell and Meg Cramer of Northwestern on moral panic in the early days of the telegraph and telephone and Christian Sandvig of Illinois and Oxford evokes the collective imagination applied in the early days of wireless technology and analogizes it to that of the era of short wave radio.

Vol 6 ~ Learning Race and Ethnicity

Anna Everett of the UC Santa Barbara draws on the work a diverse group of scholars including Chela Sandoval and Guisela Latorre from her own campus, Raiford Guins of the University of the West of England, Anotonio Lopez of World Bridger Media, Jessie Daniels of Hunter College and Doug Thomas of USC and others who in Learning Race and Ethnicity draw out lessons from Chicana/o activism, Hip Hop, and digital media in native America as well as hate speech and racism in online games.

International Journal of Learning and Media

Beginning in 2008, the new International Journal of Learning and Media will continue the investigation of the effects of digital media on young people and learning. Supported by the MacArthur Foundation, the new journal will be published quarterly by The MIT Press in partnership with the Monterey Institute for Technology and Education. Funds also have been provided to support an on-line community for discussing the articles in the journal and the issues that are central to the emerging field.

MIT Press Digital Media and Learning

Beginning on December 12, 2007, all the books in The MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning will be available in bookstores as well as electronically at MIT Press Digital Media and Learning.

About the MacArthur Foundation

About MacArthur Foundation Digital Learning Initiative

About The MIT Press

About the Monterey Institute for Technology and Education