NWHS RISES TO THE TOP.....

Congratulations to the students at NWHS who are writing the next chaper of the TECHLEARNING BLOG, SEPT. 14, 2006.

WHAT it is ALL About!

Techlearning blog

September 14, 2006

Students as Creators and Contributors

Today’s generation has an opportunity like none before it. The opportunity to freely create and contribute to society and a global audience from the confines of their own home, school, library or any other place they can connect into the network of information.

It’s this power of creating and contributing that draws our students to the rapidly growing sites of Myspace, Facebook, Xanga, and YouTube.

The Wall Street Journal reported some interesting data on the popular video uploading site YouTube. (Via Micro Persuasion)

* In a single month the number of videos on the site grew 20% to 6.1 million
* YouTube has some 45 terabytes of videos
* Video views reached 1.73 billion
* 70% of YouTube's registered users are American, roughly 50% are under 20
* The total time people spent watching YouTube since it started last year is 9,305 years

Students today do not want to receive information, they want to create it. They want to be a part of a social-network not just read about it. This is why sites like YouTube and Myspace are so popular. These spaces were designed for the purpose of allowing people to create information, not just receive it. Brian Crosby had a posting earlier this week on the Learning is Messy blog in which he states:

One of the issues I believe is that kids are perceived by society as only having the potential to contribute to society sometime in the future. If kids were appreciated for what they can contribute now, and that “contribution” was valued by society, perhaps society would be more willing to “invest” more substantially in them at an earlier age. One of the transformative aspects of technology is that it allows students to produce finished products that others have access to and can use: Other students, other members of the local community and members of the global community.

We are in a place and time when creating and contributing to a worldly audience is easier than ever; whether through the written media (blogs and wikis), spoken media (podcasting), or the visual media (videos). It reminds me of the educational idea:

Tell me and I forget
Teach me and I remember
Involve me and I understand

Creating is doing and doing with a purpose is contributing to society. So as educators how do we harness this power in positive, educational ways? We listen to our students.

Morning after morning my middle school students come in and head to one web site…YouTube. YouTube is the new entertainment center for teens, and I don’t blame them. Spend some time there and you soon find the minutes flying by as you get deeper into viewing what people have created and contributed to this social-network. Where was this when I was in school? I remember having to run to the computer lab to make sure I got one of the copies of Oregon Trail…the original Oregon Trail!

Watching this day after day, I decided to harness this power of creativity and have my students create digital stories. Using the free Microsoft application Photo Story 3 and the tutorials created by David Jakes, my students taught themselves how to use the program to create their stories for class. Then using the K12 group within YouTube that Miguel Guhlin created, the students uploaded the videos to share with a worldly audience. Students as creators contributing their new knowledge to the world.

Listen to your students; find what new web tool, web site, or social-network excites them. Find a way to harness their excitement of being creators and contributors and bring that excitement into the classroom and allow your students to create something that teaches or tells a story to a global audience.

Something Resonates Here!

September 04, 2006

Our Schools are Leaking!

In most schools, it has begun. We are forcing our children back into containers. For weeks, they have lived, played, learned, and worked without boxes -- through gadgets on their desks, on their laps, and in their pockets. Their schedule has been theirs -- often sleeping until 11:00, and playing and working until 3:00 and 4:00 the next morning. They have roamed a limitless realm of information with friends whose geography means absolutely nothing. Walls do not exist, because of the gadgets they carry.

And now, we are forcing them back into our containers -- container schedules, because they are back in learning containers (school and classroom), where they receive information from containers (textbooks and worksheets), tied to knowledge containers (standards) -- and we will seek to control their gadgets.

These gadgets are their links to information. They talk, text message, and google with their mobile phones, IM on their laptops, surf the world wide web, build and interact on MySpace, play Net-based video games and MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games). These gadgeted connections represent intellectual appendages to our children. They're like alien tentacles that grow from their bodies. We can't see them, but they are real. They are a part of how our children see and define themselves. These tentacles are the hands and feet that carry them where they want to go -- and as they enter our classrooms,

...we will cut those tentacles off.

The flow will continue. Their thoughts are still on the civilization they are building at home, the video they are producing with a friend from Norway, their new MySpace profile, or the song they're remixing for a boyfriend -- that is if they do not have their hands on a contraband mobile phone, text messaging another friend, with one thumb, under the surface of their desk.

Educators! Our classrooms are leaking!

Through their mobile phones, wireless handhelds, mobile game systems, their laptops, and a simple, yet pervasive sense of a broader world that ignores time and distance, our children’s attention is leaking out of our classrooms, our textbooks, and our state and national standards. The leaks have appeared and they will only expand and become more serious, the more we try to block, filter, and confiscate.

The question that confronts us today is...

Do we continue to container our children, amputating their intellectual appendages during “learning time?”

or

Do we try to integrate learning into the flow of their attention, taking advantage of the new porous nature of their lives, using these tentacles to connect children to the world that we are teaching them about?

This is a question that we can not put off another day, because our children are waiting. ..and it's answer is nothing less than the foundation of our future.

A Variation (and/or Validation) of OUR Theme!

Building the School of the Future

By Lindsay Oishi
URL: http://www.schoolcio.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=192501205

Microsoft and the School District of Philadelphia have worked together for three years to create the School of the Future, an innovative model for incorporating technology into education that opens on September 7, 2006. Rob Stevens, the project’s architect for software solutions, and Mary Cullinane, group manager for Microsoft’s Partners in Learning program, spoke to School CIO about how IT leaders can learn from the School of the Future’s vision and approach.

Q. How much has the school cost so far?
A. The entire project is funded at $63 million, which is a traditional budget for the School District of Philadelphi. The money required toa operate a school is mostly spent on maintenance. But we’ve used LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification guidelines, so that the overall cost of maintenance will be less than the cost for schools that don’t follow these guidelines.

Q. What technologies are you providing students with?
A. Wherever these kids go, whenever there’s a learning opportunity, they have access to an infrastructure has been built to give them an appropriate environment. That means wireless throughout the school, experts from around the world coming in via streaming media, and infrastructure allowing them to communicate with teachers and parents. The collaborative environment will be very powerful. The other area that will be very powerful is the Virtual Teaching Assistant and Virtual Library. With these, we hope to foster a community of learning.

Q. Tell me more about the Virtual Teaching Assistant.
A. One of the principles of this school is to create an adaptive learning environment. When we went to school, every kid had to turn the page at the same time. With the Virtual Teaching Assistant, the class can have an individualized pace. As a teacher, you can put together a quiz, give it to your students, and immediately ascertain where your class is. The quiz comes up as a window on the students’ machines—they each have their own laptop computer. The results go back to the teacher right away, and if a student gets a certain pattern of questions wrong, the teacher can give them extra help in that area.

Q. How do you keep student data secure?
A. We’re relying entirely on credentialed access. Once you log into the operating system, we know who you are. You don’t have to remember multiple passwords. We have very secure passwords that allow, for example, parents to be identified only with their children, so parents will not be able to get information on another child. We’re not custodians of extremely sensitive information. But we do have the ability to protect it. It’s a well-bounded community of learners—people from the outside will have great difficulty getting information.

Q. Which technologies offer the highest return on investment?
A. First, the multimedia capabilities available through Windows Media services give students a wealth of resources that are visual and online. These are the most valuable in terms of the ultimate product, which is educational accomplishment. The Virtual Library, for example, is a repository for different types of digital media. It allows movies, documents, Web sites, and other content to be stored together. Second, we have automatic mechanisms for student enrollment. Whenever a student is added to the school, they automatically get a Windows account for school portals, e-mail, and a personal Web site. This translates into savings of time and administrative effort, which also reduces cost.

Q. How do school portals work?
A. The school has portals for students, the extended community, and faculty and staff. When you log in to your computer, you’re automatically logged in to your portal. If you’re a student, the portal knows what classes you have and shows you a picture of everyone in your classes. The extended community portals allow parents to be more familiar with their students’ teachers, and to find out what happened in the classroom. Faculty and staff can also use their private portal to communicate about students or even view pay stubs online.

Q. Do you have advice about making public-private partnerships work?
A. CIOs shouldn’t limit themselves to the most obvious asset a partner can bring to the table. When someone thinks about Microsoft, they think of software. But the School District of Philadelphia got to see how we hire people, motivate people, and create the culture of our organization. The other thing to remember is that money is great, but people are better. Individuals and their thinking are valuable resources. We’ve had over 45 people at Microsoft touch this project in various ways, and you can’t put a price tag on that.

Q. How can CIOs keep informed about the school?
A. Every step of the strategic planning has been documented on the Web site, for all schools that are interested in following a similar process. U.S. Partners in Learning will host quarterly briefings with schools across the country, and there is also an annual global forum where school leaders can get together and discuss the results of these innovations.

Lindsay Oishi is a graduate student in Learning Sciences and Technology Design at Stanford University.

© School CIO

Just ONE of the MANY Reasons WE Are Doing WHAT WE Are Doing!

Digital divide still separates students

By BEN FELLER, AP Education WriterTue Sep 5, 3:39 PM ET

Many more white children use the Internet than do Hispanic and black students, a reminder that going online is hardly a way of life for everyone.

Two of every three white students — 67 percent — use the Internet, but less than half of blacks and Hispanics do, according to federal data released Tuesday. For Hispanics the figure is 44 percent; for blacks, it's 47 percent.

"This creates incredible barriers for minorities," said Mark Lloyd, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and an analyst on how communications influence civil rights.

Not using the Internet "narrows their ability to even think about the kind of work they can be doing," Lloyd said. "It doesn't prepare them for a world in which they're going to be expected to know how to do these things."

The new data come from the National Center for Education Statistics, an arm of the Education Department. They are based on a national survey of households in 2003.

Overall, 91 percent of students in nursery school through 12th grade use computers; 59 percent use the Internet.

Within those numbers, the digital divide between groups is a national concern.

Studies have shown that access and ability to use the Internet help improve people's learning, job prospects and daily living.

Schools have taken steps to close the gaps.

Virtually all U.S. schools are connected to the Internet. The gaps in Internet usage between whites and minorities, though sizable, are smaller during the school day.

That's not the case at home.

Some 54 percent of white students use the Internet at home, compared with 26 percent of Hispanic and 27 percent of black youngsters. Limited access at home can erode a student's ability to research assignments, explore college scholarships or just get comfortable going online.

Among other findings:

• Household income, parent education and whether the home has two parents all correlate with higher computer and Internet use.

• Public school students are more likely than private school students to use both computers and the Internet.

• The gender gap in computer use has all but disappeared; girls are as likely as boys to use the Internet.

Kids use the Internet most often for completing school assignments, the new study says. But they also count on it for e-mail, sending instant messages and playing games.

The racial divide in computer usage is tied to broader problems, including poverty in black and Latino communities and even a cultural reluctance to use the Internet, Lloyd said.

Among other students, 58 percent of Asian-American children and 47 percent of American Indian students use the Internet.

The numbers are growing for all groups of students — a bit of good news, Lloyd said.

"We should celebrate that, with caution," he said. "The sky is not falling. The numbers are improving. But there is still a gap, and we need to find a way to address it."

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On The Net:

National Center for Education Statistics: http://nces.ed.gov/