21apples

I planned to go to bed early tonight after I finished writing my parent-teacher pre-conference writeups. Instead, I started watching David Warlick video keynote address for the K12 Online Conference and I couldn’t stop. As usual, David was spot-on on everything he was talking about and finished his keynote talking about how we all need to be 21st century learners – obviously I liked that since my blog is called 21apples (find out why) and my weekly webcast with Alex Ragone is called 21st Cenutry Learning.

This “conference” is so interesting because it is all going to be conducted online. You can read about it, participate in live events, check out the agenda, see a map of who all is involved, visit/edit the conference wiki and more.

A wonderful opportunity for teachers, technologists and everyone in-between to learn more about technology in education. How can we do it, why should we do it and more. If you want to use the Internet, computers and tech in general in your school, “be at” this conference. You can even get graduate credit for participating in this online conference.

On a side note, David Warlick’s Hitchhikr website will be charting all the blog posts and Flickr pictures connected to this conference.

Technorati Tags: conference, David Warlick, graduate school, K12 Online Conference, k12online, K12online06, Learning Blog, NYSAIS-EdTech-2006, NYSAISEdTech2006, school, schools, students, teachers, teaching, technology, wiki

As a tech director in a 1:1 laptop school I have the opportunity to see a wide range of student treatment of their computers (see picture). We start our program in the 8th grade. In a whirlwind of excitement we do our best to keep students from overloading their computers with questionable software that’s going to inflict spyware, popups and the like onto their machines.

In the most recent drama, some of our pro-Mac students (we use Dell’s) have installed software that makes their Windows machines look just like Mac OS X. They also convinced lots of others to do the same. They soon realized that their hacking around caused a number of functionality issues (like not being able to see their address bar in Internet Explorer). In the process of cleaning up the machines we learned that we had to insert the Windows XP CD to replace missing system files – wow, is this Windows 98 or what? Couldn’t remember the last time I had to insert a XP cd. When installing the software students were asked if they wanted to overwrite “essential operating system files.” What do you think they did? They clicked “yes” to everything. In fact, students who were helping other students made sure to tell them to click yes to everything.

After all our discussions about operating systems, reliable software, etc, at least 10 students (out of 40) took the leap. Did they have to individually learn from from the negative experience? Was there a way as teachers we could have prevented this? Is this just normal teen behavior? Some students certainly don’t take those risks, but is that more about their innate risk-taking or does it have to do with the education they receive? If only the answer were so cut and dry. I think it is a mixture of all these things, but letting older students mentor younger students might be a way to “learn from experience,” even though Peter Senge thinks that doesn’t exist (read his great book). All I know is, we should be able to get better and better from year to year. Less trouble, less of the same mistakes made each year. But we don’t. We are a school, but are we not a learning organization?

Do you have particular grades that go through the same challenge each year? How do you deal with it?

Technorati Tags: 1:1, Dell, education, laptops, learning, Mac, Peter Senge, experience, software, teachers, teaching, technology, teens, The Fifth Discipline

I planned to go to bed early tonight after I finished writing my parent-teacher pre-conference writeups. Instead, I started watching David Warlick video keynote address for the K12 Online Conference and I couldn’t stop. As usual, David was spot-on on everything he was talking about and finished his keynote talking about how we all need to be 21st century learners – obviously I liked that since my blog is called 21apples (find out why) and my weekly webcast with Alex Ragone is called 21st Cenutry Learning.

This “conference” is so interesting because it is all going to be conducted online. You can read about it, participate in live events, check out the agenda, see a map of who all is involved, visit/edit the conference wiki and more.

A wonderful opportunity for teachers, technologists and everyone in-between to learn more about technology in education. How can we do it, why should we do it and more. If you want to use the Internet, computers and tech in general in your school, “be at” this conference. You can even get graduate credit for participating in this online conference.

On a side note, David Warlick’s Hitchhikr website will be charting all the blog posts and Flickr pictures connected to this conference.

Technorati Tags: conference, David Warlick, K12 Online Conference, k12online, K12online06, Learning Blog, NYSAIS-EdTech-2006, graduate school, school, schools, students, teachers, teaching, technology, wiki

A benevolent programmer at Wired Magazine used his skills to create a script that crawled through the MySpace user directory looking for registered sex offenders who are using the site. Guess what he found? Over 744 sex offenders, over 400 of which were registered child sex offenders using their real names on MySpace. His search technique was only good enough to locate people using their real names who identified their zip code within 5 miles of their real address. They could have beat his system by using a fake name, fake picture or fake zip code. Not very hard to do.

There is real danger with these sites. Criminals are using these sites for their own malevolent purposes. In the article, the author argues that MySpace is still a good thing for kids, but warns:

It’s all up to MySpace. We can’t count on parental supervision; howmany teenagers looking for a space to hang out in with friends will accept one occupied by parents? We can’t count on peer policing; nobody reported Lubrano for his inappropriate comments.

We definitely can’t count on teenage street-smarts. Swagger isn’t judgment. Young Jacob is a smart guy, but even after he politely rebuked Lubrano for hitting on him, he made plans to meet the man at a Pennsylvania amusement park.

His argument is one for technical solutions, perhaps influenced by his own “success” of finding predators electronically. However, there are much bigger questions to be answered here: what kind of men are we raising who could do things like this? What kind of situations are we exposing our children to if they are able to go meet strangers in real time? What kind of decision-making are we teaching if our children can’t understand these risks?

I am an educator and have always believed that education is the answer. However, just educating children on social-networking is not enough. We must also be educating on how the media portrays men and women, how our own biases impart patriarchal views of women and how all of this is contributing to the violent world to which they are constantly exposed.

Technorati Tags: article, children, education, educators, Internet, legal, MySpace, online, safety, school, schools, social networking, teaching, technology, youth

I spent my day off for Native American Peoples’ Day (formerly known as Columbus Day) hanging out at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. I was most interested in the architecture and design exhibit – Daniel Pink’s book A Whole New Mind has me thinking about how right-brained (more artistically, less algorithmically oriented) folks are about to take over the world. One of his pieces of advice on how to get the right-half of your brain going is to get to design museums. I heeded his advice and had a great time.

While looking at some furniture I came across Jean Prouvé school desk (France, 1937). I thought the desk simply and elegantly displayed what a collaborative school was all about. It was a shared desk. One piece of furniture, two students, having to learn to work together and share a space. In my grade school days, we had double-desks, but each had a distinct area of its own, separated writing/working surfaces. This desk is just the opposite. One complete top for both seats. There are many ways to do this in modern classrooms of course, but I like the idea that this desk is fixed. There is no opportunity to pull apart (as we often do in modern classrooms). Even if you are working on separate tasks, with the Prouvé desk, you are in it together.

How many people think this desk would sell now? Anyone have furniture like this in their school?

Technorati Tags: A Whole New Mind, collaborate, Columbus Day, Daniel Pink, design, desk, furniture, Jean Prouve, MOMA, museum, Native American, France

MySpace is such a clever name for a website. People think of it as theirs. Our students often get into that argument with teachers and parents. “Why are you in our stuff? It is not for you it is our space.” According to latest study, over half of the people on MySpace are over 35 years old and only 30% are under 25. Teens make up just 12% of the MySpace members.

Does that make it uncool for kids? Probably not, but it might make other sites like Facebook and Bebo more appealing. That is until the adults come in and ruin everything. Is there a space where adults and younger people can live harmoniously? I wonder if there is a way to create that space relatively safely. I just think schools need to be organizing the online social network to provide some kind of insulation while giving students the social contact that they so obviously crave.

Technorati Tags: AP, article, Associated Press, Bebo, Facebook, MySpace, parents, safety, school, schools, social networking, students, teachers, teens

Business Week continues its observant coverage of social networking sites and young people with MySpace For The Sandlot Set (see my earlier post on their MySpace article). This article however is not about MySpace. It is about Club Penguin a MySpace-esque social networking site for 8-12 year olds. Yes you read correctly – 8-12 year olds. In August Club Penguin reported 2.1 million visitors.

Basic access to the site is free, but they sell memberships which give you access to advanced features (jee, do you think your 10 year old will want that?). When you sign up, you can choose 8 and under, 9-12, 13-17 and 18 and over. If you choose to sign up as an adult you get this message:

You also have to agree to a set of rules:

They mention that the entire website is moderated by their staff. It is amazing to me that people are willing to take such risks setting up a site where young people could be vulnerable. I would rather see groups who are interested in getting kids online to work with schools and teachers to create spaces where classes could safely and effectively connect with other classrooms around the world. These sites unfortunately just seem like market-research tools. What do 8-12 years olds like? Once we find out, let’s sell it to them.

Groups in the process of making a profit while “helping” young people put themselves in a challenging ethical situation. They are for-profit groups who as a mission want to help kids. I wonder if those two goals often find themselves in direct or partial opposition. Anyone think they can hold on to their ideals while still trying to land a profit?

On a side note: when I asked my 5th grade class at the beginning of the year to introduce themselves along with something they love to do on the computer at least half of them said Club Penguin.

Technorati Tags: Business Week, Club Penguin, education, MySpace, children, social networking, students

My school has leapt into blogging in a big way. We have blogs for every academic department, the heads of the lower, middle and upper schools and each K-4th grade teacher uses a blog as their class news page. I was worried about overwhelming teachers/administrators with yet another thing to do, but most of the responses have been very positive.

We are using Google free Blogger to power all of our blogs. We set them up to publish directly onto our web server, thereby allowing the blogs to be password-protected and just for our community. Eventually I would love to see the blogs become open to the public, but we wanted to start small (concept-wise) and build up.

I think that blogs could easily replace fancy, professionally-designed school websites. Many independent schools hire serious web-design groups to build flashy sites to attract potential families. I subscribe to the Cluetrain Manifesto philosophy which talks about how most marketing is seen as just that by your audience, canned marketing. The book argues that visitors to fancy sites know that it is all marketing and they read them with skepticism. Blogs however give off an air of authenticity. The writing is informal and honest. The topics are micro level instead of macro. People feel like they are getting a real look into the happenings of the school instead of a carefully-crafted image piece. It will take one school to start using their blogs as the public face of their Internet presence and the rest will surely follow. Ok, maybe not surely.

So who will be first? Is it your school? Share the link below so we can all show them to our admins.

Technorati Tags: blog, Blogger, blogging, education, Google, The Cluetrain Manifesto, school

I took the rest of the summer off from blogging and webcasting. I was so exhausted I didn’t even post a goodbye post. But here is my welcome back post. As are all the other teachers, I am working to learn all my new students’ names, get my classrooms set up and get my roll book ready. I also coach soccer so I have been working with my team for a few weeks now (preseason).

The beginning of school can be tough for ed tech folks as we have been working feverishly all summer to get the entire school ready tech-wise. Teachers come back refreshed and ready to go and most of us have bags under our eyes. That doesn’t mean I haven’t had any time to relax, I certainly found some. I spent a week in Belize snorkeling, scuba diving, visiting Mayan ruins, sailing, swimming and just plain relaxing. Scary that I was diving with sting rays (and nurse sharks, see pic below) a few short weeks before Steve Irwin was killed by a sting ray.

I am looking forward to the start of a new school year and a star of the new webcasting season. We are trying to figure out our final weekly schedule, but Alex and I did our first show on Friday. As soon as I know the weekly times for our show, I will post them. In the mean time, grab the RSS feed and plug it into your iTunes or other podcast software.

Technorati Tags: 21st Century Learning Webcast, Alex Ragone, Belize, nurse shark, podcast, Mayan, schools, Steve Irwin, sting ray, teachers, vacation, webcast

Way back in December, I called on MySpace to create MySpace School Edition. I never did hear from them, but luckily Alex Ragone decided to start up EducationBridges.net: Teachers Collaborating with Teachers – it is a social networking site for educators. (If you know WorldBridges, we’re all connected. Alex and I put on our weekly webcast with them.)

First thing you need to do: go to the site and sign up for a free account (your information will never be sold, traded or given away in any form. You decide what is private and what is public, I promise!) Make sure to fill out your profile. Most things can be left blank, or set to only show to site members, or the public. Be as secretive or as open as you’d like. But, make sure to indicate what your “interests” are on your profile. These interests are then searchable by anyone. So if you list “blogs” as an interest, anyone looking for blogs will find you. See how it works? We can then connect teachers together who are interested in blogging. I sense a joint-school project, don’t you?

After you create your account, try posting to your blog. Just click on “your blog” at the top, and then, “Post a new entry.” Write up whatever you’d like, then put some “keywords” at the bottom. If your blog post is about pedagogy then put that, if it is about laptops, then put that. This helps people find your post. If you want to see my page, it’s here. If you are involved in education in any way, please join us, we’d love to expand the network.

Technorati Tags: Alex Ragone, arvind grover, blog, education, Education Bridges, Elgg, educators, social networking, teachers, Worldbridges