A Blast from the past - My 2011 RESA TV interview discussing the #ttdn technology integration pilot program

St. Clair County RESA has been producing educational videos and news segments for many years. They've recently published a RESA TV Youtube channel that has many great resources for schools and the classroom.

One video worth checking out features teachers and students at Belle River Elementary showcasing their Digital Learning Day activities and celebrations.

As I was watching some of the videos from the RESA TV channel I came across this April 2011 Dateline Schools interview of myself discussing our Tools for Teaching Digital Natives technology integration pilot program that we ran during the 2010-11 school year. I was surprised to hear how much of what we did in this pilot that is still relevant today. You can hear my reflections about this program from the 5-17 minutes mark and also hear how this program impacted one of our participants, Jill Parrot from Port Huron Area School District. Jill is an amazing educator who has gone on to do some amazing work in her classroom. Thanks for watching.

A glimmer of PD hope. I hope.

It's easy to get bogged down by the "we can'ts", the "I can'ts", and the "ya buts" especially when you are trying to plan Professional Development. Helping others to feel empowered and inspired by education technology often reminds me of the Louis CK routine "Everything is amazing right now and nobody is happy."

Yesterday, in our PD planning session we started discussing the absence of students from our process. It was like a light bulb went off and our conversation went from "ya but's" to "oh ya's!" Here's a glimpse of what we proposed.

Goals for the day are to:

• Reconvene the TTDN group and representative students to identify strengths and challenges with  implementation and to continue support of blended and 21^st century learning
• Change the conversation by adding the student voice to our learning about what works
• Plan for future support and expansion

We are still working out the details, but I found myself excited and inspired by the prospects of including students in our PD.  Having students and teachers work alongside each other to learn new ways of integrating technology in the classroom makes sense to me. It's actually the way we integrated technology in my school most of the time.

Do you have experience bringing students into the conversation? Please share your comments below.

MrMegawhat - The tale of a 6 year old's Youtube channel

We talk a lot about digital natives. You know, the kids who are running circles around us adults when it comes to technology. So the other night a friend is over for dinner, and her 6 year old son and my 3 year old son are on the computer showing each other their favorite websites and games using the Kidzui web browser.  The 3 year old navigates the Kidzui browser like he invented it. He doesn't need to spell. The 6 year old has never used Kidzui but has no problem find everything he's looking for. It's almost mundane.

Meanwhile, I am in ubber geek mode (i.e. ignoring everyone) because I'm facilitating a three day workshop on Teaching 21st Century Learning (whatever that means) and getting ready to go to the ISTE 2010 conference in Denver. But I overhear our friend in the kitchen say that her son has created his own Youtube channel to create videos of himself reading books. My ears perk up like a rabbit and I'm off the couch, into the kitchen, grinning and listening like a mad man. She goes on, though a bit perplexed by my over-enthusiastic looks. She explains how she wanted to support his request to make the videos for Youtube and how she always made sure she was in the room or nearby to keep an eye on things. She also helped him to format the channel and add some captions. "He loves Captain Underpants books," she says. "And one day, I'm at work telling a friend about his Youtube channel, and she asks to see it." But when they go online to view it there's a problem.

The 6 year old boy has taken an opportunity when no one is looking (he is super tech savvy) to make a video pretending to be Captian Underpants, and in this video he is dressed in only, you guessed it, his underpants.  The mother is horrified.  The video is promptly deleted, and the boy is banned from making videos.

I remember when I was 6. I had a tape recorder and a microphone, and I spent countless hours making news casts, radio shows, and reading books. Every tape I made is gone I'm guessing (unless my mom is holding out for my 40th birthday in an attempt to embarrass me). But this boy's videos may potentially live on forever, and yes, that might also mean his mistake. Our desire to express ourselves, to create and to share seems so ingrained. The difference is that MrMegawhat has over 6,000 views on some of his recordings and no one ever heard mine.

I don't want his videos to go viral. I question what will happen if I share this post. I do believe MrMegawhat has created a wonderful artifact of his passion minus the one video, so with his mother's permission I have decided to share. I have few answers to the obvious questions this tale tells, but I hope that telling will bring me closer to the truth.