Ed Tech Kit

Monday, June 28, 2010

Planecasting from 35,000 ft. On my way to #iste10 #edtech

Update: Here's my ISTE 2010 reflections planecast which I made on the trip home.

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Using Audioboo to make podcasts on the iPod Touch without wifi #ttdn #edtech

Friday, June 25, 2010

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.

Monday, May 31, 2010

Houston we have a problem - Help crowd source our Professional Development

I'm preparing to help facilitate a Summer professional development institute focussed on helping high school teachers integrate technology to foster 21st century learning. And I think we have a problem. The problem isn't the brand new laptop, iPod touch, flip cam, microphone headsets and software we are giving teachers who participate. The problem I think is reflected this anecdote from Will Richardson's blog:

At a collection of school leaders and IT people, one of the participants told the group that his school had bought a number of iPads for teachers and that they had scheduled a chunk of training on how to use them. Unfortunately for him, I had just read an exchange on Twitter where Gary Stager had made the point that I quickly made to the group: “You know, something like 1.3 million people have bought an iPad and I doubt any of them have gotten any “training” on how to use it.” The people in the room half chuckled, but one woman said “Our teachers won’t do anything with technology unless we give them training.”

After reading this my first thought was, hey, we're giving out the same consumer level devices which are sold without training by such high minded institutions as Walmart, yet we've slotted significant chunks of our training time to how you connect the device to the computer and how to download an app. Are they really that hard to use?

It does get a little more complicated when we look at the applications and software. Our plans call for training on Moodle, Google Apps, social media, and screen casting (multi day trainings in and of themselves in a traditional model). But aren't we really just saying make your teaching and learning environment accessible, authentic, interconnected, and multi-sensory.

So I'm throwing out a few smaller brainstrorms in the hopes of pulling in some big guns from the interwebs. *yes, that means you all, in the hope that our little problem will demonstrate a bigger picture solution. Or just tell me that I'm wrong. It's how I learn.

I call this Challenges not Training:

1. "Use your iPod touch to share with a friend the fact that you just got an iPod touch" Skills needed - Turn it on, connect to internet, set up e-mail or go to web based e-mail, compose a message, send. Variations: Set up facebook app, set up twitter app, record a voice memo and e-mail it, etc.

2. "Use your flip camera to share a video or a picture with a friend the fact that you just got a flip cam" Skills needed- Turn it on, record video or take still shot, export to computer, share via e-mail, facebook, twitter, upload to youtube, etc.

Make it a race, make it a cooperative activity (first group to get all to accomplish task), give prizes.

3. As for the applications: "You have several students who are failing your course. They are disengaged during lectures, they consistently misplace their work, they seem more interested in texting notes to their friends than taking notes, and your worst fear is that they are recording your classroom using the camera on their cell phone. What strategies and resources could you integrate into your lessons to engage your learners, make the material multi sensory, personally accessible, authentic and interconnected?"

I hope that at least few folks will take a moment to reply. I and my group thank you in advance.

Friday, May 28, 2010

Tweeks! for the week of May 22-28 #ff

All is quiet on the Twitter front it seems. Nevertheless, I did favorite a few tweets that are worth mentioning.

Google gravity isn't exactly what you would call "useful", but I could imagine using this to wake up an audience in the middle of a presentation. A nice conversation starter perhaps.

I've also been researching alternative and progressive assessment methods and enjoyed the Edutopia article shared by @valerieturpin.

I'm super excited to be heading to ISTE2010 at the end of June. If you are going, check out the tweet-up link below.

Finally, I'm always interested in the abundance of free learning resources offered by University's and individuals. Check out the open courseware links for Yale and UC Berkeley.