Leadership for the Digital Age with Alan November - Day 3

Tuesday, May 20th, was the third and final day of TASA's Leadership for the Digital Age with Alan November. This academy has truly been a privilege to be part of and a growth experience for me. November made me think deeply about what I already know and consider it from multiple angles. And the other districts which participated shared amazing ideas. I am full of things I want to do and try to further improve educational practice among the already wonderful educators I know.

The highlight of my day - Alan November sat at the table my boss and I were sitting at for lunch! So I was able to participate in a bonus conversation, face-to-face with a thoughtful, encouraging educational leader whose work I have followed for nearly 15 years.

There was much more Tweeting on this day of the academy than there had been on the first two days, so instead of taking notes on my own, I decided to curate the Tweets from the day. 

Just over 100 Tweets made it into my curation. I hope I caught them all! There are wonderful thoughts and resource links included throughout. You can view them in a slide-show format below, or view the original Storify in a vertical, multi-page format.

You may also be interested in my notes from the first two days of the academy.

• For my notes on Day 1 of this academy from January 15, 2014, click here.
• For my notes on Day 2 of this academy from April 8, 2014, click here.

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All original work in this post by Sandy Kendell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Please see specifics on my re-use policy in the right-hand column of my blog before re-posting/re-using any of my blog content.

Notes from Leadership for the Digital Age with Alan November - Day 2

Notes from day 2 of  TASA's Leadership for the Digital Age with Alan November. For my notes on Day 1 of this academy, which took place January 15, 2014, click here.

Notes from the Discussion

We no longer have to go to school if we want to learn.

edX -www.edex.org - MOOC site, courses are all free, people who teach the courses are from Harvard, MIT, Berkeley, University of Texas, etc. (Click here to see all of them.)

Coursera is another option for higher ed MOOCS.

November's son is taking courses through edX and will get an associate's degree from Harvard. Student needs 32 credits from another university, and 32 credits from Harvard. More info on Harvard online degree programs and certificates.

Students can graduate from high school with dual credit then get the rest of their college experience entirely online.

Swivl - Apparatus that lets you use an iPad to video record a lecture or presentation. Moves the camera to follow presenter around the room. (Use for teachers and students! Imagine sharing student presentations to the world!)

High school library prediction - Librarians will become resources to help students find online courses. Part of function of library will be to become an online learning center.

Close to 10% of students got into MIT by excelling in a MOOC. Did not go through traditional admissions process as we know it. For example, this young man from Mongolia.

Are we going to prevent, ignore, or encourage students getting college credit for nothing?

We should be advertising these opportunities to students!

Number one skill for being successful in learning: the ability to self-assess. 
Number one skill for being successful in teaching: ability to give quality feedback on student work.

When focusing on 1:1, iPads, etc: Focus on teaching teachers to give better feedback and students to self-assess instead of the technology. A participant in the room shared about an 8th grade Engilsh teacher using Google docs and going paperless - students walk in and go immediately to their Chromebooks because they want to see the feedback the teacher has given them. Now it is spreading because of the quality of teacher feedback.

Districts Sharing Ideas

Be positive with feedback! What you can say:

• I like that because...
• Have you thought about...
• I have a resource for you...

Distict #1: Principal of an elementary school shared that as part of their 1:1 initiative, they want to create a bank of lessons created by students based on http://clubacademia.org/ which Alan shared last time.

Speaking of, the 17 year old creator of http://clubacademia.org/ wants to give away her shell to any school that wants to use it, and then will link all of the shells together to make a global network of student lessons. 

Good apps for creating tutorials: Explain Everything, Screen Chomp, Educreations

District #2:  Revisiting their BYOD initiative. They brought in a panel of students to ask about their experience with BYOD. They videoed the students responses so they can use it in further PD with their administrators and teachers. Some students did not know that they were allowed to bring devices even three years after the initiative began. In other places it's off and running. It was found they were using it more at the middle schools than at the high schools.

Lessons learned from above district: Don't jump in to quickly. Pick teachers who are already strong in their content. If you push teachers to do things before they are ready, it can be detrimental to them and their students. Also, realize teachers who have been successful in the current system, with high test scores, etc, may be more resistant.

District #3: Next Generation Digital Classroom - moving away from laptops and desktops. Have narrowed down to four vendors to try iPads, Android tablets, Windows 8 tablets, Chromebooks. Teachers are applying to be the one teacher per school who pilots the devices at their campus, plus 8 librarians across the district. Goals based on Project Red and SAMR. Pilot will be evaluated for what tech works and doesn't, learning environment/classroom space to incorporate best instructional practice, and PD needs, all of which will be approached from an action research standpoint. Teachers will write their own questions and goals that they want to meet each fall and spring. They will complete video showcases at the end of each year to use as a resource for curating best practices through the project and informing future steps across the district.

• November suggests Stratosphere which talks about how to evaluate technology projects.

District #4: Instituting a technology apps elective for middle school students next year. (Have only had fine arts electives up to this point.) In individual classrooms, teachers are working with students who are ahead of the rest of the class to create a library of tutorials for other students. In library they are using stop motion technology to develop stories. Doing cross-curricular projects with students in other grades. Also starting a middle school coding class.

• Another participant suggested code.org which has a middle school coding curriculum
• November suggested Scratch; you can start with other kids' created programs and tweak them instead of starting from scratch (ha ha no pun intended!)
• November's podcast of an interview with Dr. Mitch Resnik, creator of Scratch.

District #5: Kindergarten teachers started class Twitter accounts! Here is Mrs. Cook's Twitter. They follow other Kinder classes and have connected with a class in Korea.

• November suggests you can follow someone on Twitter via text messaging instead of having to set up a Twitter account.
• You can also add a Mystery Skype since kids like learning about kids from other places.

More Discussion Notes

November suggests no more technology workshops. Integrate the technology into core content PD. Also tell teachers principal will show up 30, 60, and 90 days after PD to look for specific strategies that were communicated in the workshop. Example: Working toward self assessment of math. Are teachers using Wolfram Alpha, Khan Academy, Think Through Math, etc when principal observes. Then assess if the staff development paid off based on student achievement data. Workshop needs measurable goals, follow-up, and results based on data.  The key is the principal holding teachers accountable.

Often, the technology coordinator/director is reporting to the WRONG person. Org charts need to change.

November advises superintendents to have a student advisory panel that they meet with them once a month. Ask them things like:

• What's the best thing technology has done for your learning?
• Is there anything you've learned with technology that you could have done without technology?
• What are you doing outside of school on your own that helps you learn?

Are we showing kids how to do really good searching? Ask them to find an image representing American History. They will get this. But with a tweak, we can show them how to get this or this.

Key to getting workshops/PD to have effect in classroom: Have the workshop presenter/leader come and teach an actual class with actual students. All teachers watch the workshop leader run the class. Important for modeling classroom management. Make sure to debrief afterwards. (Can also use Swivl or something like it to record and archive master teachers.)

Here's an idea to empower kids: Let them lead workshops for their peers. For example, an after-school club for using Minecraft to create virtual environments. Check out this Egyptian Pyramid! (NOTE: Teacher does not need to know how to use Minecraft to let kids use it for producing a project.)

November says if he could teach teachers ONE thing, it would be how to be life-long learners with today's tools. Twitter is his favorite tool for professional learning. Every teacher should be following teachers who are sharing what they are doing. Then, if you are lucky, all of your teachers will have a blog. Use every bit of social media that you can. Pinterest. Instagram. Diigo.

• November Learning Popular Education Hashtags on Twitter

November makes his doctoral students join Diigo and participate in a Diigo group he created for them. Now he can see what they are researching and reading and the students can see what each other is reading and they can converse about it. Can set it to email you when people add bookmarks. (Great way to build community among faculty.) Here is November's Diigo library. (And here is mine. I LOVE Diigo!)

Leaders should be creating community using tools like Diigo groups!

PD Tip - Start with something teachers love to teach instead of a tool the presenter thinks is cool. Example: Tweak one of their favorite lessons. Hint: Look for hashtags that will help them get more info for the assignment. You can teach people the mechanics of a tool, but you also need to help them make connections to their curriculum. Give it context. Start with the question: "What's your favorite assignment? Let's redo it."

Principals need to make heroes out of their teachers. Start a podcast where you interview them and get them to tell their stories!

Homework Before Day 3 in May

The First Five Days - What would you do in the first five days of school to teach kids how to learn to learn?

• Podcast on Implementing the First Five Days

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All original work in this post by Sandy Kendell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Please see specifics on my re-use policy in the right-hand column of my blog before re-posting/re-using any of my blog content.

Notes from Leadership for the Digital Age With Alan November

Yesterday, I was privileged to spend a day learning from and with Alan November, a consummate digital age educator whose work I have followed for many years. My first exposure to Alan was the article "Teaching Zack to Think," which made me painfully aware of the work that must be done to promote literacy in our digital age. 

I'm grateful to my school district and TASA for this opportunity!

What I loved about Alan's presentation was it was organic. He had definite goals and topics to cover, but due to his vast knowledge he was able to customize the content as questions came up. Several times as he set us on an activity he said, "I haven't done this before, but let's see how it goes!" 

When I grow up, I want to be a teacher/lead learner/presenter like Alan November!

Before You Get to the Notes...

You'll probably glean a few gems from my notes, but notes being what they are, they won't give you a cohesive picture. If you've never had the chance to learn directly from Alan November before, I encourage you to watch this TEDxNYED Talk he gave in 2011.

Notes from TASA Leadership for the Digital Learning Age with Alan November 1-15-14

Notes from yesterday's same workshop in Ft. Worth - http://tinyurl.com/tasa11

United States has least amount of capacity for innovation of all the countries Alan visits. We are good at getting kids stuff, but the ability/will to make the culture shift seems not to be there. Poorer countries seem to understand that the internet is the ticket to learning.

Before we do technology there should be a clear vision for why we are doing it. The technology itself cannot be the ultimate goal.

The real revolution is information. The internet. Any answer to any question that has a known answer is available right on your phone.

In the age of the internet what is the value of the teacher?

Ex: Wolfram Alpha - Type in any equation and the site will show you the step-by-step solution. (When Alan showed this to high school students, at the end of the school year, the students were angry that they didn't know about it all year so they could experiment with variables, check their homework, etc. The math teachers, however, were mad at Alan for showing it to the kids because he had destroyed math as they knew it.)

www.wolframalpha.com/examples - See what Wolfram Alpha can do!

If you can get to vast amounts of data this quickly, you can move to higher-order problem solving.

How about this for authentic learning? Problems that can't be solved through Wolfram Alpha...

 http://novemberlearning.com/connecting-students-to-geometry-through-twitter/

The mind of the teacher is the most valuable resource you have in the classroom.

What is the best use of time/a teacher's mind in the classroom? 45 minutes to an hour a day...

A.    Transfer of Knowledge

B.    Teachers Speak Little & Listen to Students

C.   Teacher is Connecting Kids to Authentic Problems All Over the World

D.   One Room Schoolhouse - Get rid of grades as we know them. Kids work to teach kids.

E.    C & D

Books suggested by a colleague based on November's presentation:
Better Learning Through Structured Learning - book from ASCD

Role Reversal - another ASCD book

What questions should we be asking before we even think about technology?

• What is our instructional framework?
• What are the top variables in improving student achievement?
• http://grantwiggins.wordpress.com/2012/01/07/what-works-in-education-hatties-list-of-the-greatest-effects-and-why-it-matters/
• Student self-assessment/self-grading/control over their own learning
• What does life-long learning look like? (Information acquisition and organization).

We should have learning design committees/planning teams, not technology planning committees.

We should have learning design directors, not instructional technology directors/coordinators.

Games are scientifically designed to engage and motivate. Teachers should be learning game design theory and using it to structure learning. (Follow #gbl on Twitter for current info.)

1. You don't need grades, you need a leader board! (see mathletics.com)

2. Real time feedback - optimal design of feedback loop is half a second

3. Autonomy

4. Education - All kids love to learn. iN a game, kids choose a hard level just beneath what will kill them. Allow your students to pick their level.

5. Collaboration - The really powerful games that engage students allow them to interact with real people, not just with a computer. Kids want to win.

The real problem is telling teachers to stop what they are doing and start doing things differently.

It is a myth that the teacher needs to learn everything first.

Staff development as we know it is a myth.

Let every teacher bring two kids to the PD. Teacher's job is to watch the kids use the tech and implement pedagogy of using tech they don't understand. Learn how to assess. Let the kids learn the tech.

@LiveFromRoom5 - Kinder teacher sends about 10 photos home per day. Shows what kids are doing and tells parents to ask kids about it at the end of the day. Teacher sets up every parent's cell phone on open house night to receive these Tweets by text.

Schools are terrible at marketing. They need to tell their stories well. Superintendent should be podcasting. Principals should be Tweeting, being the cheerleader for their teachers and students.

A lot of parents aren't going to go to websites. We have to push information out to them.

What skills can we teach today that will outlast the technology? One-off projects are not the best way. The internet is not going to go away and information is the key.

Big Skill: How to deal with the enormous amount of information out there!

Huge change is students no longer get their information from pre-selected sources. They have to understand how to assess information.

We need to give students messy problems, not well-structured problems. When you solve real/messy problems, there is

• Too much info
• Not enough info
• Info in the wrong order
• Problems that change as you are solving them

Google Searching

• One of top criteria - if the search terms are in the URL
• Limit searches to a specific country - example: How do you get resources on the Iranian Hostage Crisis from Iran?
• Teach precision - search operators (Google wants to make money; won't give you best quality unless you search for it)
• www.powersearchingwithgoogle.com - Free online self-paced courses

We are still giving assignments as if we control all of the information, but we don't. We have to teach teachers and students how to find, evaluate, and manage/organize information.

Focus on teacher feedback. Audio feedback gets more attention from students than written feedback. (Teacher anecdote - when you record your voice, you give a lot more positive comments than you do when you are just writing comments.)

http://prism.scholarslab.org - Tool for collaborative interpretation of texts - FREE

http://www.subtext.com - Free starter version but have to pay for more robust version. Turns any book or document into a digital classroom. You can see what students highlight in the reading or questions they have. Teacher can access and see what students have accomplished.

clubacademia.org -  From Palo Alto, CA - Student created videos to explain core subject concepts

***In flipped learning, teachers work too hard. Let the students make the videos!!!!

Curse of Knowledge - Teachers know too much. First time learners think teachers are really really smart and never struggle to get answers. It's not good for kids to not understand the struggle needed to learn/understand.

mathtrain.tv - Free, educational "kids teaching kids" project from Mr. Marcos & his middle school students. Teacher NEVER grades the tutorials. He works with them to make them accurate, then approves and posts them. Kids are motivated by the number of other kids who view their tutorials.

RSA Animate version of Daniel Pink's Drive on YouTube - http://youtu.be/zTlmwsJHbzg

Teach kids to learn how to teach from a young age. Every learner a teacher. When you have to teach something, you learn it on a deeper level.

Change thinking on assessment - Mazur model - Take individual test, then have groups of students collaboratively complete the same test (come to agreement on answers), then have students create a new problem to demonstrate their understanding/learning of the same content. Average the three assessments to get the final grade for the content. Mazur creates the groups of students and changes them up every five weeks or so. Creates trust between students in class. [Requires shorter more frequent assessments.]

Questioning Toolkit - http://fno.org/nov97/toolkit.html - The single most important skill now is getting people to ask the most interesting questions. The teacher's job is to teach students to ask questions.

Verso - App that makes learning visible. Students answer & ask questions & can't see what other students say until they make a contribution. http://versoapp.com/#verso

How do you know what to teach tomorrow if you don't know yet what the questions are today? Administrators need to give up control over having lesson plans submitted ahead of time.

**Choose your apps wisely! Don't do 100 apps; just do 10 and make them count every day.

Essence of flipped learning is to ask an application question, not a memorization or regurgitation question.

Don't tell the answer; give more models until students get to the answer.

Ask the same answers twice to assess if there has been growth.

Teaching the technology is easy. What takes time (years even) is building a library of interesting application questions.

Kids can do well on tests, but can they apply their learning?

Ideas

Have one student be the scribe each day. Student takes notes and posts to class blog. Teacher conferences with student before post goes live. At end of year you have thorough record of the learning. Teacher also learns a lot about their teaching by conferencing on learning each day.

Students can also add extra resources to the learning.

Class Twitter account and blog to connect around the world. Let kids Tweet and write.

mscassidysclass.edublogs.org

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All original work in this post by Sandy Kendell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Please see specifics on my re-use policy in the right-hand column of my blog before re-posting/re-using any of my blog content.

Time-Saving Tech Tips

You can eat, breathe, and sleep technology, and still not come close to knowing all of the short-cuts which could save you copious amounts of time at work or in your personal life. I was reminded of this when a David Pogue TED talk came across my radar earlier this week. I personally learned six new things from his less than six minute talk! The first tip he shares is my favorite.

Take a few minutes to watch Pogue's presentation. It's entertaining as well as informative. Then, take some time to leave a comment. What's something you learned from this video that you didn't already know? What's your favorite tech time-saver that you think more people should know about? Please share, so we can all learn together!

How to Decode a Tweet

When you first start using Twitter, one of the things you have to figure out is how to decode Tweets. What does each part represent? What does it mean when a word starts with a #?

Below is a Tweet as it might be displayed on the Twitter website when viewed on a computer. Note that not all Tweets might include all of these exact attributes. If you are using an app or third-party service like Hootsuite or TweetDeck to read your Tweets, they might look slightly different, but the parts will still be there somewhere. Scroll on down under the sample Tweet to see brief explanations of the parts! (Accurate as of the time of this post. Twitter has a habit of rearranging these things once in a while!)

1. Avatar - A photo or graphic which represents the person or company sending the Tweet. If you click the avatar, an abbreviated version of the Tweeter's profile will display, and from it you can visit their complete profile if you want to know more about them.

2. Tweeter's Name - In theory, this is the real name of the real person behind the Tweet. Some Twitter users decide to use their username or another unique name here. It depends on what they set up in their profile when they signed up for Twitter.

3. Twitter Username/Handle - The name a person is known by on Twitter. Some users use their real name again here. Others, like Mark Warren in the Tweet above, use a representative name. In this case, Mark chose @MagisterWarren, representing the fact that he is a Latin teacher.

4. Shortened URL - A large number of Tweets include links to websites the Tweeter feels will be useful to their followers or which explains more about what they are saying in the Tweet. URLs will almost always be shortened in some way to help leave more room for other information within the 140 character Tweet limit.

5. Tweet Text - The meat of the Tweet. All of the text in black is part of the "message" the Tweeter is conveying.

6. Hashtag - Hashtags help categorize the topic of a Tweet on Twitter. Using them can help others who are not following you find your content, and they help your followers quickly scan their Tweet streams to find topics of interest to them. Occasionally, hashtags are used #justforfun to make a comment. Hashtags are very useful but can be mysterious at first. I encourage you to learn more about them and use them. The best explanation of hashtags I've ever come across can be found here. 

7. Time and/or Date of Tweet - This just lets you know how long ago the Tweet was sent out. After 24 hours, it will display a date. (NOTE: You can also click the Time/Date of a Tweet to be taken to a unique web page where the Tweet "stands alone". This will allow you to make a link to a specific Tweet if you wish, like this: Click to read a past Tweet of  mine.)

8. RT - Indicates a "Re-Tweet", or re-posting of someone else's Tweet. Third party Twitter clients like Hootsuite make it easy to send out RTs in this way. On the Twitter website itself, if you use the Retweet feature, it will simply repost the Tweet "as-is" out to your followers, with no RT symbol in front. Sometimes, RTs are also indicated by quotation marks around the entire Tweet. Multiple possibilities - with time, you'll come to recognize them all!

9. Mention of Another Twitter User - When an "@" is placed in front of a word in a Tweet, Twitter assumes you are mentioning another Twitter user. You can click on that user's name/handle and see their latest Tweets.

It's good etiquette to mention the original Tweeter of a Tweet in an RT, as was done in the example above. Sometimes, you might start a Tweet with a mention of someone's handle to let them know you are speaking directly to them. If you do that, the Tweet still appears on your public page, but only shows up in the timeline of the person addressed and anyone who follows both you and that person. If you want to mention a user but want all of your followers to see it, make sure you put their name somewhere other than the start of the Tweet. See examples below.

10. Click to Reply - Click the Reply link to reply back to a Tweet you found interesting. It helps the recipient if you reference the original Tweet. For example "Really enjoyed the story on BYOD. Thank you for sharing!" instead of just "Great story. Thanks!"

11. Click to Retweet - Is there some great information in that Tweet you just read that your followers would benefit from? Click the "Retweet" link to spread the learning!

12. Click to Favorite - You can keep a list of Favorite Tweets. Maybe there is a link to an article you don't have time to read right now. "Favorite" it, then go to the Me page on your Twitter profile to access it later. You can then click Favorited to "unfavorite" the Tweet when you are done with it.

13. Advanced Options - Currently includes the ability to email a Tweet to someone (maybe if you do that often enough you'll convince someone to join Twitter) or copy embed code to embed a Tweet in another website (embedding allows the Tweet to remain "live" in the website, so people can reply, retweet, etc, directly from the site).

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Ok, there you have it! Probably more than you ever wanted to know about how to decode a Tweet! If you are new to Twitter, or even if you've been on it for a while, I hope this has helped you become more comfortable with the platform. Happy Tweeting!

Shoutout to The Connection blog. I used this Anatomy of a Tweet post in a workshop I taught last year, and based on its model, decided to write an updated version.

If this post interested you, you might also be interested in the resources I've put together in a LiveBinder on Twitter for Professional Learning, and another blog post I've written called Grow Your Twitter Network with a Spiffed Up Profile.

Your Facebook Privacy is YOUR Responsibility, Not Your Friends'...

Social networking is a great way to share our lives and keep in touch with friends, but it's important that we all keep ourselves educated on how our settings work and only share information about privacy that is accurate.

For example, I've lost count of how many of my friends have posted the status below in recent weeks:

Hello, FB friends: I want to stay PRIVATELY connected with you. I post shots of my family that I don't want strangers to have access to! However, with the recent changes in FB, the "public" can now see activities in ANY wall. This happens when our friend hits "like" or "comment" ~ automatically, their friends would see our posts too. Unfortunately, we can not change this setting by ourselves because Facebook has configured it this way. PLEASE place your mouse over my name above (DO NOT CLICK), a window will appear, now move the mouse on “FRIENDS" (also without clicking), then down to "Settings", click here and a list will appear. REMOVE the CHECK on "COMMENTS & LIKE" and also "PHOTOS". By doing this, my activity among my friends and family will no longer become public. Now, copy and paste this on your wall. Once I see this posted on your page I will do the same. Thanks!

The information Above is Grossly Misleading and Inaccurate

• It's NOT true that the public can see activities on any wall. Unless the wall owner wants them to. You are still in control of the audience for your posts. (Scroll below for some links that will tell you more about your Facebook privacy.)
• If you read carefully and think about what the instructions say, you'll see that if they are followed, all your friends will succeed in doing is hiding your comments, likes, and photos from themselves. Don't you want  your Facebook friends to see these things?
• IF the instructions were accurate (they aren't; see previous bullet point), in order to work, they would depend on ALL of your Facebook friends reading them (how many of your friends log in only occasionally or not at all?) and ALL of your Facebook friends following them (just like you do everything your friends tell you to do in their posts, right?)

If the Information is Wrong, Why Is It Spreading?

This post is going viral on Facebook because it appeals to our trust in our friends and our desire for privacy, even in the online world. But how much do we REALLY care about our online "privacy"? Enough to copy and re-post an inaccurate set of instructions, but perhaps not enough to go to the little gear at the top right of our Facebook pages and click on our Privacy Settings to check them out or click on Help to search and try to confirm if the instructions we are posting really work. (I won't even delve into the irony of wanting "privacy" when we willingly post our personal thoughts and artifacts all over our profiles.) 

What If I Really Care About My Facebook Privacy?

If you really are concerned about how far the information you post on Facebook spreading, you might want to check out the links below. I found these by searching Facebook Help, which although still a complicated land, has been improved in its organization.

• When I Share Something, How Do I Choose Who Can See It?
• What Audiences Can I Choose From When I Share?
• What Does the "Friends/Friends(+)" Privacy Setting Mean?

Why Are You Writing About This on an EdTech Blog?

I'm writing about this because digital citizenship and digital literacy are topics I am passionate about. So much so that it's hard for me to sit quietly when wrong information is circulating. Ask my friends who have gotten personal replies on their walls after posting the notice that started this blog post! After seeing this too many times to count, I figured it was time to try and reach out and enlighten an audience larger than just my own friends. Also, it will be faster for me to share one link to this blog post when needed, rather than the multiple links I've been sharing (the bulleted list above).

No matter what our age, all of us need to be continuous learners when it comes to the online world. Because technology always changes. Because as young people we are growing up in a technology saturated world where there is no longer a distinct separation between the online and offline spheres in our lives. Because as adults we are responsible for helping young people (and our peers) navigate ever-evolving digital waters.

Don't Feel Bad If A Friend Sent You Here Because You Posted the Aforementioned Status!

First of all, your friend cares about you if they cared enough to help you accurately learn about your privacy settings. Second of all, Facebook privacy (and online privacy in general) are constantly moving targets. If you're confused, you're in good company.  If the sister of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg can get tripped up by her privacy settings, it's a good bet it can happen to any one of us at any time.

Now Go Forth and Educate Yourself and Your Friends!

Hopefully, you've learned a few new privacy tips from this blog post. Now, continue the learning and spread it to others. The two most effective things you can do are regularly check your own privacy settings to make sure you are sharing what you want with whom you want, and gently let your friends know if they are spreading inaccurate information or you suspect they might be sharing info with a larger audience than intended.

If each of us takes responsibility for our own privacy, we'll be protecting ourselves as well as our friends.

Education in a World of Social and Technological Change #SXSWedu

Notes from concurrent session, SXSWedu 2012

S. Craig Watkins, Associate Professor of Radio, TV, and Film, The University of Texas at Austin
theyoungandthedigitial.com
@scraigwatkins

After grad school, Watkins began immersing himself in the way young people use media. Trying to understand their  perspectives and sensibilities they bring to digital media. Recently he has been working with the McArthur Foundation on how young people's adoption of technology changes the way they live and learn. How are their learning lives evolving?

Teens between the ages of 12 and 17 are almost universally online. Previously via laptop computers, but more recently via mobile devices.

Social media has become central to their (and our) everyday lives.

The Digital Tipping Point - moment in a young person's life when they migrate to the digital world. As you get closer to high school, there starts to be enormous amount of pressure to becomed part of the online community. This pressure is now starting at younger and younger ages.

Preschoolers are using iPads and other handheld devices. They will have very different expectations of what a book will be and what learning will be even as they enters Kindergarten! Think of these 21st Century kids entering 20th Century classrooms...

The Digital Edge - Watkins is trying to understand role of digital media in lives of kids on the margins of digital access - second language homes, low socioeco environments, etc? Was inspired by the concept of digital divide - technology rich vs. technology poor.

Kids who we assume lack access to technology are increasingly getting access through mobile devices and resources in their commmunities. Studies show Black and Hispanic students are spending more time online than their Anglo counterparts, and their primary means of access is mobile.

Mobile is bridging the access divide, but the question of whether it is bridging the divide in terms of quality is not as easy to answer.

Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out - Friendship-driven and interest-driven access (Ito et al 2010) Found a large group of kids primarily went online for social reasons. Another group was found to be going online to pursue interests and passions. The passion-driven kids were using digital media to enrich their own learning. Example: A young woman receiving critique of her fan fiction online began using some of the skills she learned back in her other classes in school.

Connected Learning Project (need to Google this) - examples of projects schools are doing

How can we bring interests students develop outside of school into the classroom to leverage it for learning?


How can we leverage the peer culture in education?


How can we create more dynamic, more robust experiences in the classroom?


Learning gaps are not only shaped by what happens in school, but by what happens in their after-school lives.

Design Principles for Connected Learning:

• Openly networked
• Shared purpose
• Production-centered

Look up YOUMEDIA - a public library based program to help students explore their interests.

What happens when we block social media in schools? We block them from some of their connectivity.

NOTE: Large gap in notes here thanks to an antivirus update that brought my netbook to its knees...

When asked what they wish their computer s could do that they don't currently do, kids answered with things like:

• I want to go into the computer to visit other places (illustrates blur of line between in person and virtual worlds)
• I want to make my own game (1/3 of kids responded with a desire to create)

Students seem to have a design disposition. How can we leverage that? How do we craft design/learning spaces that are student-centered? Spaces that are hands-on, active, and dynamic. Spaces that are inquiry-based. Watkins is working with schools on this.

In areas of extreme poverty, such as Brazil, these kinds of learning designs are essential. (Leadbeater & Wong, 2010). Learning needs to be related to real world questions and problems. Making kids entrepreneurial, creative, and inventive. 

Concluding Thoughts:

Learning has to happen across all the nodes and networks that connect us to the world we live in.

Majority of births in this country are now happening among historically minority groups. Students coming into our schools are much more ethnically diverse than they ever have been. How can education respond to this? How can we respond to the diversity?

We need to understand the digital divide as a literacy challenge rather than an access challenge.

Been Thinking About CTRL+F & Technology Basics

I read an article, "Why Don't We Teach Kids How to Use CTRL+F?" a couple of days ago and it reminded me of two things:

1. We make a lot of assumptions about what people know about using computers.
2. No matter how much we know, there are always some basic fundamentals that we don't know. Technology has too many facets for anyone to know everything.

For instance, did you know that CTRL+F  is a key combination that works for searching a web page or document in every standard web browser and in Office and PDF documents? It's a shortcut that's been around for a long time. I think I learned about it a couple of years ago and still don't use it consistently. How much of my time has been wasted by scrolling when CTRL+F could have taken me to the info I need so much faster?

If you didn't know about CTRL+F, don't feel bad. According to the article, 90% of folks don't know about it. But now you know, so use it, and pass it on to others!

Why do 90% of us, teachers and students included, not know about such a fundamental computer skill? I encourage you to read the article, as it is relatively short and talks about more than just using CTRL+F, including a few observations about why basic computer literacy might be low on the priority list in education.

After you read it, come back here and share your favorite "computer basic everyone should know" and/or your thoughts on the conclusions drawn in the article.

Blog photo courtesy of Flikr user secretlondon123 with permission under a Creative Commons license agreement.