The Fischbowl

Twitter Lists & Aggregated Content: Are We Responsible?

2009-11-03T14:51:00.000-07:00

I was part of an interesting discussion on Twitter Friday night and I wanted to share it here, as well as add a few final thoughts. Participants that I reference are Bud Hunt, Brian Crosby, Dean Shareski, Anne Van Meter, Barbara Barreda, and Karen Fasimpaur. Thanks to all of you for helping me think through these ideas.

The discussion started with a tweet from Bud Hunt where he shared some of what his school district is doing with Twitter. Here’s part of the tweet trail (I’m sure there were comments from other folks as well, but these are the ones I remembered and grabbed).

I just want to add a few concluding thoughts. First, full disclosure, Bud called me on his way home from work and we talked for a while about this.

Second, I wasn’t arguing against what Bud’s district is doing. In fact, I really, really like what they’re doing, I was just trying to explore the ramifications and think through some of the issues.

Third, I wanted to “finish” my part of the discussion with Karen that was interrupted by my having to go make dinner. This is what I would’ve tweeted next (is this then a set of retroactive tweets?):

@kfasimpaur It’s not so much the linking that I see as the problem.
It’s the creation and the encouragement.
By creating the Twitter list, @budtheteacher’s district has created something *new*, not just linked to something.
I think the act of creation does imply some type of “ownership” and “responsibility”
And when they publicize it & encourage folks both to add themselves to the list & to follow, that also blurs the lines.
So, say a student in Bud’s district joins the Twitter list. Then he tweets that he’s . . .
. . . planning on hurting himself or others. Is there some kind of monitoring in place? . . .
. . . Should there be? Or say he tweets something offensive, then what?
The fact the district has a disclaimer http://blogs.stvrain.k12.co.us/twitter/opt-in/ that they . . .
. . . “reserve the right to determine the membership of the SVVSD’s Twitter Lists” implies some ownership . . .
. . . and that some quasi-monitoring might be going on.
So, again, I support what his district is doing and love the transparency and the community.
But I do think it’s really complicated and there are many things we still need to think through.

Now, I actually might have tweeted something different because there probably would’ve been some replies in there that would have altered my thinking, but you get the idea.

Transparency and community building by teachers, schools and districts is something I very much support, and I think what St. Vrain is doing is very compelling and very interesting, but I also think it’s uncharted territory and there are some pretty complicated issues involved. This is a really important conversation to have, so I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

How Do You Use Diigo Instructionally?

2009-10-26T12:48:00.002-06:00

I asked a couple of weeks ago about Google Forms and the response was so great, I figured why not ask about Diigo?

Do you use Diigo instructionally? If so, I'd appreciate you sharing that information via this Google Form, it will only take a couple of minutes at most. Feel free to share a description of how you're using it, including any links to blog posts, wikis, etc. that demonstrate how you're using it. You can also optionally include your name and email address if you don't mind being contacted by folks having additional questions (I will be sharing the results on the web, so please keep that in mind before clicking submit).

You can, of course, also leave information in the comments to this post so that everyone can see it immediately as well (although it would be great if you would also add them to the Google Form so I have them in one place). Thanks in advance for anything you're willing to share.

Update from the comments: We are doing a show this Saturday on Classroom 2.0 LIVE about the new features on Diigo v. 4 with Maggie Tsai, Miguel Guhlin and Russ Goerend. The focus will be on using Diigo instructionally and I'm sure there will be lots of sharing in the chat room and via the mic in the Elluminate session. We will announce your survey during the session and invite people to contribute to it. We'd love to have you and your readers join us to participate in the conversation/presentation. Saturday, October 31, 9:00am PDT, http://live.classroom20.com for additional information and login link.

Neither Snow Nor Rain Nor . . . Tonsils

2009-10-26T10:59:00.000-06:00

Maura Moritz's daughter just had her tonsils out. Being the good Mom that she is, she's staying home with her until she's feeling better. Being the good teacher that she is, she didn't want her class to lose out on valuable instructional time. They were scheduled to do a fishbowl with live blogging over Fahrenheit 451, so what to do?

Well, it's a fishbowl with live blogging. The first thing she can do is participate in the live blog (period 3, period 4). The second thing she can do is Skype into class so that she can see and hear the in-class fishbowl discussion.

Just one more example of how Skype is becoming more and more valuable in a school setting. Tell me again why Skype is blocked by so many school districts?

Warrior Work 10-23-09

2009-10-23T10:13:00.005-06:00

Some recent work from our students and teachers.

Michele asks:

In a complete paragraph, starting with a focused topic sentence, agree or disagree (or somewhere in the middle) with the following statement: The individual is more important than the group.

Greg wonders:

Who is more heroic: Jason or Perseus?

Who doesn’t want to know about:

A summary of ionic bonding and Lewis dot structures along with a summary of lattice energy.

Lary asks for Thematic Thesis Statements from Whale Rider.

Jesse asks for reactions to the cadaver lab.

What are you views on Censorship?

1. Is it okay to have books on making bombs in the school library?
2. Will banning books keep people from reading them?
3. Television shows are censored, so are song lyrics—what makes books different?

A little live blogging of a fishbowl discussion on Fahrenheit 451: Smith 2, Moritz 3,Moritz 4,Smith 5

Google Form Ideas: Results from my Previous Post

2009-10-21T09:56:00.005-06:00

I posted a couple of weeks ago asking folks how they used Google Forms instructionally. Several people asked if I would share the results, so here you go (a quick-and-dirty Google Site I used for a brief lunchtime staff development session on this).

Please note that the Google Form I used for this is still active, so you can still add to it if you wish (and please do). Since the results are embedded on that Google Site, they will automagically update if folks continue to add to it.

National Day on Writing: Kylene Beers Leads By Example

2009-10-20T07:28:00.005-06:00

Today is the first (hopefully annual) National Day on Writing. It includes the National Gallery of Writing, a live webcast from 9 am to 8 pm EDT, a U.S. Senate Resolution supporting it and, most importantly, lots of writing and smart folks talking about writing.

One of the smartest folks I know talking about writing is Kylene Beers. She’s done a lot of thoughtful work around reading and writing and is currently serving as the President of NCTE. Now, in addition to her tireless efforts to help us all become better readers and writers, Kylene has launched a blog of her own. As she says in her first post:

I’ll be using this space for an on-going conversation about literacy in the twenty-first century.

I really appreciate the fact that Kylene is not only talking the talk, but walking the walk. She is leading by example even though, and I think she would admit this, blogging does not come naturally to her. But see, that’s the thing, I don’t think blogging has to come “naturally” to any of us. It sure didn’t come naturally to me. But what does come naturally to Kylene is the ability to write thoughtfully about these issues, and blogging allows her to not only write about, but learn with, other really smart people thinking and working on literacy. As she says to conclude that first post:

We do write to be heard because it is in listening to one another that we do become a part of a community. Perhaps what this space is really about is community, a community of learners in the twenty-first century. Welcome!

I couldn’t have blogged it better myself.

This I Believe Goes Global - We Want You!

2009-10-19T12:51:00.007-06:00

(This post is written by Anne Smith and cross-posted on Learning and Laptops. So the "I" in this post is referring to Anne.)

For the past three years, I have had my classes write their versions of National Public Radio’s “This I Believe” segment. I was introduced to this idea by a colleague and have been always impressed by what my students hold as their personal values and beliefs. Writing these essays has allowed for them to do something they don’t get to do all that often at school - express their heartfelt beliefs. After writing the essays the first year, we submitted them to NPR, but we also decided to podcast them ourselves – no need to wait to see if NPR might choose to broadcast them. The writing was good at expressing their values, but once their voice was added to their written expression, WOW, it simply transformed that personal essay. Instead of the words simply being words, the words conveyed deeply held emotions. Now, this is the standard.

Previous class examples:
Period 2 06-07
Period 5 06-07
Period 3 06-07
Period 2 07-08
Period 5 07-08
Period 3 07-08
Wiki 09-10

We are approaching that time of year, when I am going to start the kids on this writing adventure, but this year I wanted to invite you in the blog-o-sphere to join us again. I want “This I Believe” to go global. I want my students to benefit not only from knowing what their peers believe, or what the other AHS classes believe, but to hear and see what the world values. What do kids elsewhere in the U.S. believe in? What do kids elsewhere in the world believe in? What do some of the learned professionals that I know believe in? I want my students to walk away from this experience realizing the power they have as professional writers as well as connecting to other teenagers and adults from around the world. I want to see them exchange ideas, foster relationships, and appreciate the variety of perspectives. Maybe you can challenge your principal, your school board members, your local politicians, heck, maybe your entire school. Maybe we can even get our President to write his own “This I Believe.”

So, how do we accomplish this? Karl Fisch, of course, is willing to be my master facilitator. He has set up a wiki (still a work in progress) that will provide the guidelines for the classes to follow. I am making Maura Moritz’s classes join us again, so there will be four classes (ninth grade, 14 and 15 years old) from AHS writing and podcasting their essays: Moritz 3, Moritz 4, Smith 2, and Smith 5. We are hoping to attract at least three other classes from around the world, one each to pair up with each of our four classes. If we get more than four classes that are interested, then we will try to pair up any additional classes with another class somewhere in the world. If your class(es) are interested, please complete this Google Form with some basic information (your name, your email address, school name, location, grade level(s)/ages, how many classes, number of students in each class, and time frame that you’d like to do this) so we can setup those partnerships. (Our thinking is that pairing one class with one class will keep this from becoming too overwhelming for the students, although of course anyone can read/listen/comment to any of the essays on any of the wiki pages). We will create a wiki page for each set of paired classes and each student will upload their written essay as well as their podcast (the podcast can either be uploaded directly to the wiki, or you can use a variety of other services for that and then link to them). Each pair of classes will be in charge of their own wiki page and we’ll use the discussion tabs on each page to give feedback to the students. If you are an adult interested in writing a piece yourself, simply add them to the “adults” page on the wiki. I am hoping to get some notable edubloggers as well as my superintendent, CIO, and others to participate. It would also be helpful to include a brief bio so the kids can know who they are reading about. Obviously you don’t have to do this with us or on our wiki, you can create your own. But we thought it might be interesting and helpful to have one wiki that aggregated all these essays/podcasts, one place that students (and others) could visit to learn about beliefs all over the world.

Wondering where to start? NPR has a number of education friendly links to help you along the process:
For Educators
For Students
Essay writing tips
How to contribute an essay to NPR

Timeline: For our classes we are going to start writing our essays, November 6th with a final due date of November 13th for their essay. The following week they will begin podcasting their essays. The paired classes don’t have to match this timeline exactly (although that would be great), but we’re hoping they can have theirs completed by Thanksgiving so that the students can start commenting on each other’s essays/podcasts.But for other pairings you can set whatever time frame works best for you – that’s the beauty of the wiki, it’s a living document with no “end” to the assignment (although that’s why we need you to include your time frame when you email us so that we can try to match folks up). We would really appreciate any feedback (now or as this progresses) to make this an experience that is truly relevant and meaningful for these kids.

Warrior Work 10-13-09

2009-10-13T14:42:00.003-06:00

I often write on this blog about various things that teachers and students in my school are doing. But I find that I don’t always post as often as I could because I want to write a well-crafted, meaningful blog post to go along with each one. Since I can’t always find the time, or the necessary wisdom, to do that, many things that I could share end up not being shared.

While I still plan on writing those more meaningful posts when I can, I’m going to try to do a better job of just quickly sharing links in occasional “Warrior Work” posts like this one. So, here goes.

Anne Smith is wondering about writing conferences:

With increasing my student numbers in all my classes, this semester I have had student conferences at every single off hour plus before and after school, so I know that the conferences are meaningful. I am just wondering if I need to focus more on the preconference or post conference. Maybe I should let the kids pick which one works better for them?

Students react to the poem “Invictus”:

Choose a line from it that captures the theme of the piece, makes you think about your life, America, our freedoms, etc.

Breaking the Frozen Sea:

According to Franz Kafka, “a book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.” What you think this quotation means? Which short story or personal essay (“Lamb to the Slaughter,” "Born of Man and Woman," "The Lady or the Tiger," "The Utterly Perfect Murder," "Fish Eyes," "The Scarlet Ibis") has broken the most “frozen sea” inside of you?

Post Puritanism:

Pretend you’re living in the decades following the Salem Witch Trials.

You’re well educated (obviously), and, as such, you have the power to recreate society.

What concerns would you have about the way the past decades were governed?

The way community was formed?

The way people were punished?

How people gained and maintained power, etc.?

What might you change?

Soldiers’ Bodies:

Should the U.S. military put soldiers in harm's way in order to rescue or recover other soldiers? Why or why not?

Periodic Trends

What’s Core?

2009-10-11T19:07:00.016-06:00

The Common Core State Standards Initiative is a joint effort by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) in partnership with Achieve, ACT and the College Board. Governors and state commissioners of education from across the country committed to joining a state-led process to develop a common core of state standards in English-language arts and mathematics for grades K-12.

As Tom Hoffman points out, we really need to take a closer look at the draft standards. Why? Here are his Top 10 Reasons:

Your state has probably already committed to using them.
The federal Department of Education is exerting heavy pressure on states to adopt the Common Standards.
An impressive and powerful list of partners and supporters are backing the Common Standards initiative.
These "college- and career-ready" standards, if implemented, will become the basis of all subsequent K-12 English Language Arts standards.
These standards, if implemented, will become the basis of all subsequent K-12 English Language Arts curriculum and assessments.
The results of those assessments will, if implemented, be used to evaluate not just schools and students, but the performance of individual teachers.
The creation of data systems to attach test scores to individual teachers is a basic requirement for federal Race to the Top grants and a top priority for the federal Department of Education and other powerful interests.

But . . .
The Common Core State Standards Initiative English Language Arts Standards are not actually English Language Arts standards.
The Common Standards for English Language Arts are narrower, lower, and shallower than the Language Arts standards of high performing countries.
We are inviting testing companies to determine the future of our schools with virtually no accountability or public input.

Tom expands on these in his post, please go read it now. Tom’s also written many other posts about this (too many to link), so visit his blog and scroll down. Other folks have recently written about this, including Bud Hunt, Chris Lehmann, and David Warlick.

Now, since most if not all of those folks used to teach Language Arts, I’m not sure if I have much to add to their perspective. Instead, let me throw out some questions from a non-Language Arts teacher perspective. As always, I’m just thinking out loud here.

What’s Core?

People use different buzzwords – some use core, some use essential learnings, your school or district may use something else, but I think this is a critical question for all of us. Tom is very concerned that these standards are too narrow and shallow and are not reflective of the fact that English Language Arts is a discipline. On the one hand, I agree with him. If you just read the list of standards in isolation, they do appear to be somewhat shallow, and I worry that the following observation from Tom might be accurate:
the obvious interpretation is that they chose to define the standard as "support or challenge assertions" rather than "construct a response or interpretation," as every international example they cited did, because the former is much easier and cheaper to score reliably on a standardized test.
When I explore the full document (pdf), I do feel a little bit better based on the examples they give, but certainly Tom makes his case that other international standards seem to go much deeper, and that it’s possible these standards are being tailored in a way that makes them easily assessed on a standardized instrument.

But, on the other hand (and yes, I know, I always seem to have a lot of hands on hand), I worry about Tom’s suggestion to add more and more levels of detail into these standards. Because this runs into my own personal dilemma with standards, that in some respects they are too comprehensive, too overwhelming, too restrictive, and perhaps not wholly necessary.

This is a real struggle for me, because I do think that students around the world need many of these skills, and much of this content, yet I can’t help but think that we all are so in love with our content areas that we lose sight of what’s truly essential. I say this from the perspective of a parent of a nine-and-a half-year old who wonders if “literacy criticism” or “the concept of genre” are essential. They may be, I’m not sure. But I can’t help but think of that study a few years back (sorry, can’t find a link at the moment) that indicated it would take something like 26 years to “cover” all the various standards in place at that time (and we have more now). Is this what education – and life – is supposed to be about? It just seems to me that, somehow, some way, what’s essential, what’s really core, should be a much shorter list.
Malleable or Inflexible?

Chris makes a good point about national testing and the resultant depersonalization:
Once there is a national curriculum and a national test, we will see a further blurring of the line between "education" and "training" where kids are given online instruction and online assessment that can be delivered to any student, regardless of geography.

. . . It has the risk of the ultimate deprofessionalization of teachers and depersonalization of education.

And the NCTE’s Definition of 21st Century Literacies state that
These literacies . . . are multiple, dynamic, and malleable.
So the literacies are malleable, yet standards are fixed and inflexible? We want all kids to flourish and live up to their individual potential, yet we’re going to achieve that by standardization? How do these things coexist?
Necessary, but not Sufficient?

While the full pdf includes more examples that take this into account, the list of standards themselves seem to ignore the current technological world we live in. Only three of the standards (Reading #12 and #13, and Writing #12) seem to even come close to acknowledging that we live in a rapidly changing, technologically enabled, globally connected - and interconnected – world. These standards could’ve been written fifty years ago. That doesn’t make them bad, as many of these abilities are certainly still necessary, but are they sufficient?

These standards don’t seem to address that reading, writing, speaking and listening are all very, very, very (did I mention very?) different in our current world than they were one hundred, fifty, twenty or even ten years ago. Yes, many of the standards apply in our world today, but I still don’t think that fully addresses how we read, write, speak and listen in a read/write, always on, always connected, participatory world.

I think their definition of text is way too narrow, and way too limited. While one would hope that the more complete document would be taken into account, I could easily see the assessments targeted solely at the stripped down standards. Which then would mean instruction would be targeted only at the stripped down standards. Which then would mean our students would be perfectly prepared to graduate high school . . . in 1985.

So, as Bud points out:

The validation committee’s pretty light on language artists.

I would add that the workgroup that developed the standards also seemed to be pretty light on actual practitioners, although testing companies were well represented. In fairness, the NGA points out in the FAQ (pdf) that teachers were consulted:

NGA and CCSSO have asked for and received feedback from national organizations representing educators, such as the National Education Association (NEA), American Federation of Teachers (AFT), National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), and National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). These organizations each brought together groups of teachers to provide specific, constructive feedback on the standards. The feedback was used to inform the public draft of the college- and career-readiness standards. Numerous teacher organizations are also involved with the initiative through the National Policy Forum, which provides a means to share ideas, gather input, and inform the common core state standards initiative.

I would strongly suggest that you take some time to review the standards and some of the thoughtful posts about them, and then provide your feedback. Particularly if you’re a Language Arts teacher, but even if you’re not because, as Tom points out, as they are currently worded all teachers will be responsible – and held accountable – for students meeting these standards. And, as he points out in another post, it appears as though the end goal just might be high school graduation requirements.

Where can you provide some feedback? NCTE has issued a statement and is soliciting feedback, and you can provide feedback directly to the validation committee by October 21st. If you’re a member of NEA or AFT, you might also consider letting them know what you like or dislike about these draft standards.

How Do You Use Google Forms Instructionally?

2009-10-08T11:01:00.008-06:00

Do you use Google Forms instructionally? If so, I'd appreciate you sharing that information via this Google Form, it will only take a couple of minutes at most. Feel free to share a description of how you're using it, including any links to forms, blog posts, wikis, etc. that demonstrate how you're using it. You can also optionally include your name and email address if you don't mind being contacted by folks having additional questions. (It's possible I'll share this info out at some point beyond my staff, so keep that in mind before clicking submit on the form.)

You can, of course, also leave information in the comments to this post so that everyone can see it as well (although it would be great if you would also add them to the Google Form so I have them in one place). Thanks in advance for anything you're willing to share.

Update: Here are the results.

Anne Smith - One of 20 to Watch

2009-10-07T15:16:00.004-06:00

Congratulations to Arapahoe's very own Anne Smith for being named one of the National School Board Association's "20 to Watch" for 2009.

The National School Boards Association’s Technology Leadership Network (TLN) has named its annual list of “20 to Watch” emerging leaders in education technology. These individuals are recognized by the organization for championing technology initiatives that make a difference for students, teachers, school districts, and the greater education technology community.

Anne is a remarkable Language Arts teacher in my building. Here's an excerpt from her nomination letter.

All [Anne's] students not only have the opportunity to demonstrate their thinking, but the expectation that they do so. I think that this is perhaps what is most striking: Anne's use of technology has created higher expectations for her students and herself. And those high expectations are indicative of her leadership.

Congrats, Anne, you deserve it.

On another note, Chris Moore, a fabulous 5th grade teacher in my district, was also named as one of "20 to Watch". As far as we know, this is the first time that NSBA has named two folks from the same district in the same year. And that makes three from our district in the last three years. It seems to me that these are the kinds of things schools and districts should really "brag" about (especially given the tough budget climate we have in Colorado). Because I think all of our communities should know that, despite the difficult budget situation, we have many educators who are worth "watching."

Jason Shellen Ustream Archive

2009-10-06T14:05:00.004-06:00

For anyone interested, here's the ustream archive of Jason Shellen speaking with our students that I blogged about previously. He starts speaking right about the 5 minute mark. Ustream allowed me to "cut" the video so it should start at that point, but it appears to be inconsistent so you may have to fast forward to the 5 minute mark. (It appears that if you go to ustream and watch it there, it starts at the almost 5 minute mark. If you play it in the blog, it starts at the beginning.) My live tweets are below the ustream.

108. Starting ustream now. Class starts in about 5 minutes. http://bit.ly/13MP8H about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

107. Students are hearing from @shellen started with Pyra labs, bought by Google when they brought in Blogger, then prod manager 4 Google Reader about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

106. He's now at Thing Labs, makers of Brizzly. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

105. He was an art major in college. Didn't think he would need any business knowledge. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

104. Graduated college in 96, web was just coming on the scene. He took a class called "web publishing" about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

103. He thought it was fantastic as an artist that he could put his work out there on the web and control the way it looked. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

102. http://bit.ly/16U1hw for the live stream about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

101. In 1999 started Blogger - a way to get yourself online easily about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

100. about five of them working together in a basement in San Francisco about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

99. He joined them and worked with them to build relationships with larger companies to try to make a little money with Blogger about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

98. In 2003 we had the opportunity to sell to Google - so we did. We had about a million users at that point. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

97. We could accept venture financing and see what happens, or we could join Google and hope that blogging explodes. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

96. We chose to join Google to raise awareness of blogging. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

95. Once he joined Google they though things were going well, but he wanted to find a better way to read and keep up with blogs about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

94. Built a prototype called Fusion (looked a lot like Facebook does now) with one other guy at Google about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

93. It then developed into a product called Google Reader. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

92. It's one of the best ways to subscribe to content on the web. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

91. Stayed at Google for about 4.5 years. 600 people when he joined, 16000 when he left. He liked working in small teams. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

90. He wanted to get back out there and solve problems with people, so he started Thing Labs in June of 2009 about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

89. In January they launched their first product. It's done okay, but he's not really excited about it. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

88. So now he created something he likes better. Brizzly. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

87. A social web reader. Twitter integration, coming out with Facebook support next week. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

86. Trying to streamline your interaction with Twitter, Facebook, etc. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

85. Also focused on the growing phenomenon. People are talking about current events on the web. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

84. Easier to get your news from real people now, not just CNN, MSNBC about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

83. Live stream at http://bit.ly/16U1hw about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

82. You're okay with hearing things through a status update, doesn't have to be highly polished. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

81. Tries out new things and see what sticks. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

80. None of these tools wouldn't be anything without the people involved with it. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

79. Now kids are going to ask questions. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

78. Q: What actually happens when a large company approached a small company and offers to buy it? What's the process? about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

77. They were approached by a friend of a friend. Sergie Brin approached them through a friend. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

76. He thought they were going to talk about a business deal, not buying them. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

75. .@shellen is speaking to a Business Principles class, so they're asking about how to run a business, startup issues, venture capital about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

74. Hard to value these things. Google wasn't a public company, so hard to value them. We said we think you're worth $1 billion, they came back about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

73. with we think we're worth $3 billion - hard to figure out what things are worth when no public share price. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

72. Q: Kylie asks: How does a product like Brizzly make money when you don't charge for it? about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

71. Difficult to make money from day 1. For any sight that deals with people, it's visually repellent if you ask for money up front. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

70. We do have a long range plan, a way to monetize something other than just visiting the web page. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

69. Try to build users first, then monetize it. Now talking about Twitter in relation to that. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

68. Facebook didn't turn ads on until they had 100 million users. The economics change when you have enough users. Can make large amount . . about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

67. of money from a small amount of ads. Not as intrusive. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

66. Most models are advertising based. Next model is subscription or pay for upgraded services. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

65. With Blogger they had a free offering, but you had to pay for more features (images, spell check) - sounds silly now, but it was new then. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

64. Q: Eric asks: What will Thing Labs work on after Brizzly? about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

63. They just launched Lets Be Trends dot com about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

62. It's an application interface. Brizzly shows lots of the trends on the web. Last night it was football as a trending topic. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

61. Lets Be Trends open up that data, and let Brizzly users explain what's trending on the web. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

60. We might develop Lets Be Trends into something else, but we're asking our users right now to make the data more attractive to other people. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

59. But it's too early to really tell what's going to happen with it. We're working hard, but things change quickly. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

58. Q from Ryan: If you want to setup a website for a group or club, but didn't want to use Blogger, what would you use? about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

57. Talking about weebly.com - met the guy at a ball game. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

56. Turns out Blogger is very bad at creating a group web site. He would suggest checking out weebly - his Mom is very happy with it. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

55. Lots of people are also using Facebook fan pages, but he's not a fan of having Facebook bradning on everything. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

54. Q from Shelby: Did you ever think of a product or service, but never tried to start it? about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

53. Yes, more good ideas than there is time to implement them. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

52. The execution is so important, doing it really well. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

51. When he has an idea, he thinks about how hard it would be to do well. about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck

50. Sometimes it's crazy to try to build your idea. So he thinks about the simplest possible thing he can do that people can use, about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

49. and is transformative for people, and that I can do really well. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

48. Save the good ideas, because sometimes they pop up again in unlikely places. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

47. 2nd Question: Do you ever have regrets over not going with an idea? about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

46. Not really. He has regrets over poor execution of ideas, or not seeing a different angle on his products. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

45. Q from Richard: How do you account/track for every action that a person can take on Brizzly? about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

44. He's now talking about Google Analytics in terms of analzying what's happening on your page/product. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

43. The trouble is there's too much data, so they aggregate all user data to see trends. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

42. Brizzly is a little different - it's javascript. So they are implementing some of their own, also using Kiss metrics (sp?) about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

41. There are always bugs in any software. But he hires the right people in the first place, tries to minimize that. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

40. They use "test driven development" - write some code, test it, make sure it should work, then try it themselves. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

39. Users are then pretty vocal about letting them know. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

38. Started working on Brizzly in May - it was part acquisition so he brought on a good engineer about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

37. Rolled it out to users in the beginning of August. So about 2 months - that was fast, and it wasn't ready for prime time about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

36. It's still in private Beta, but rolling it out to more folks every day. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

35. Q from Matt: How do you name your products? about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

34. There's a saying in computer science that naming is one of the hardest things. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

33. He wasn't particularly happy with the Google Reader name (he liked Fusion). about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

32. With Brizzly they came up with two terrible names. A new employee was joining them and he asked about it. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

31. They shared the names and they hated even saying what they had. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

30. Went to Brand Market (sp) dot com - found what was available. Really hard to find something not taken. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

29. Q: How do you advertise your products? about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

28. Started by talking to the press. After a a few thousand users, let their users give away Brizzly invites. So relied on their users to say about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

27. they liked the product and invite their friends. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

26. Some call it viral marketing, he prefers organic. Nobody wants a virus, everybody likes organic. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

25. Q from Katie: Did you ever think you'd be where you are when you were a kid? about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

24. I thoughts I was going to be a cartoonist, working on my drafting board each day. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

23. Q from Adam: Where did you get your inspiration to create Brizzly from. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

22. Talking about Evan Williams and Biz Stone. They left Google before him, they created Twitter. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

21. When they created Twitter, they invited a close group of friends, including him. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

20. By using that early version of Twitter, he got to thinking about all the ways Twitter could be better. (Facebook too). about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

19. He's always thinking about optimization, how to make thinks a little bit better. It's not revolutionary but evolutionary. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

18. When he thought about how to make Twitter/Facebook better, he thought about trends. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

17. The thing that would make this better is to have your friends with you on websites. That then moved to trends. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

16. Q: How do you find a domain that hasn't been used, then purchase and use it? about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

15. There's a huge market - he uses namecheap but there are others about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

14. You enter something in, search for it, see if it's taken. There's also an aftermarket - like Brizzly was already taken, he bought it. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

13. There are also word combiner tools, help you come up with permutations, then you see if it's available. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

12. Q from Alex: How difficult is it to create your applications? about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

11. (Sorry if this is too much - thought some folks might benefit from it) about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

10. Start out with a huge list of what you'd like to do, then figure out what you can actually do. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

09. IF you like sleep, then it was hard. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

08. People bring their ideas to me, because I'm sort of known for this. It's a great position to be in. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

07. Thanks @shellen, that was great. Archive should be on ustream a little bit later. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

06. .@shellen Well, did you think it went as well as when they do it on Oprah? From our end we thought it went great. Thanks again. 41 minutes ago from TweetDeck

05. Archive of the ustream with @shellen is available at http://bit.ly/lIL5N - starts about 5 minutes into the recording. 37 minutes ago from TweetDeck

04. Check that. Ustream now allows you to "cut" your video so I'm able to position it so it starts playing right before he starts speaking. Nice 31 minutes ago from TweetDeck

03. Apologies to everyone if it [the massive number of tweets] was annoying. 30 minutes ago from TweetDeck

Is the Pen Mightier than the Keyboard?

2009-10-05T16:04:00.001-06:00

The National School Board Association has a companion blog to their Board Buzz specifically for their Technology and Learning Conference coming up in October in Denver. A recent post pointed to research comparing students’ writing with a pen versus with a keyboard. Board Buzz said:

Virginia Berninger, a University of Washington Professor of Educational Psychology, discovered that children write better and longer essays at a faster pace when using a pen.

When I read the article it referenced, though, it actually stated:

"Children consistently did better writing with a pen when they wrote essays. They wrote more and they wrote faster." said Berninger.

I would first point out that writing “more and faster” is not necessarily the same as writing better, so I think NSBA might want to update their verbiage in that post. (The article did state that the students wrote more complete sentences in that portion of the study which might be considered “better,” but that wasn’t the essay portion.)

The study also left me with more questions than answers (which is not necessarily a bad thing). The study looked at second, fourth and six graders, and they had to complete a variety of tasks on paper using a pen and on a computer using a keyboard. But nowhere in the article (not sure about in the research itself as there’s no link) did it mention what kind of keyboarding skills the kids had or how much experience with computers they had - that seems like a pretty major thing to leave out. If the research actually didn’t take that into account, that seems to be a major oversight in the methodology.

After all, I think we can assume that the students have had plenty of practice writing with paper and pen, but how about on a computer? Did they have keyboarding skills or were they hunting and pecking? With the common wisdom of the moment being we shouldn’t start keyboarding practice until about the fourth grade, that really makes you wonder about the keyboarding ability the students had. Had they received instruction on composing on a computer, or was it just a test-taking tool? Since the article states that ,"We need to learn more about the process of writing with a computer, and even though schools have computers they haven't integrated them in teaching at the early grades,” that seems to indicate they have not received much instruction. Both of those factors – if they were not addressed in the actual research – would seem to suggest the results really don’t tell us very much at all. The students should do better with paper and pen if they don’t have keyboarding skills and haven’t practiced writing on the computer.

Now, having said that, I don’t necessarily disagree that young students should be writing by hand first. While I can’t find the link at the moment, I do recall some research connecting the physical movement of writing with helping students learn their letters and then to read and write. And I do think that around third or fourth grade is probably not a bad time to wait to start keyboarding in earnest based on developmental factors (although I know there are folks that start it earlier and it seems to work out fine). So the line that states, “We need to help children become bilingual writers so they can write by both the pen and the computer. So don’t throw away your pen or your keyboard. We need them both” is not bad advice, at least at the elementary level when students are learning to write.

So the article itself, and the NSBA blog post based on it, appear to be a little misleading. I also think that their definition of writing is too narrow. As the chair of the English Department at Rutgers states, writing/composing in the 21st century is a very different endeavor, and the power of the keyboard is not simply to process words, but also images, audio and video, and the resulting connections to others and their ideas that you can make. I don’t think we can make a broad statement on pen versus keyboard based simply on typing the alphabet, writing isolated sentences, or writing ten-minute essays on a certain prompt. My concern is that someone just skimming the NSBA blog might assume the research – and the NSBA itself – is saying something it really isn’t, and will apply this to older students as well as younger. That, I think, would be a mistake.

My CIO and a bunch of Anne Smith’s ninth graders have left their comments, so I encourage you to visit the blog and leave your thoughts as well.

Photo Credit: Writing or typing?, originally uploaded by Stefan Koopmanschap.

We Have the Technology

2009-09-27T13:20:00.006-06:00

When I was growing up I liked watching the Six Million Dollar Man on television. Looking back, it was a pretty hokey show, but I really liked it at the time. In the opening for the show, there’s a line that says, “We have the technology.” I thought of that – for pretty obvious reasons if you’re familiar with the show - when viewing the video for the Bionic Eye iPhone application.

This is a nice little app for what it does, but imagine what it’s going to evolve into: a portable heads-up display for everything. Yes, right now it lists restaurants, subway stations (in certain cities), and wifi hotspots, but it’s not that hard to extrapolate a few years into the future where this app – or something like it – connects you to all the available information about whatever you’re looking at.

It doesn’t really matter whether it’s on an iPhone-type device, or whether it’s mounted on your eyeglasses, it’s going to be with you effectively 24/7/365 (only “effectively” because you can still choose to turn it off), have 99% uptime, and is going to get better every hour of every day as more information is added to it. Practically every urban location will be geotagged and infotagged (think Google Street View on steroids), extending further and further beyond urban areas with each passing year. In fact, I imagine the app will evolve into a two-way app, with users adding to the database as they go about their daily routines, constantly adding more locations and more data to the database.

Perhaps a few more years down the road artificial intelligence object-recognition software will be embedded, maybe even with some simple sensors to analyze the material it’s looking at, so that the app will be able to peer into just about any object and return information about it’s chemical composition, various useful facts about it, and ways the object can be used.

I know that scenario is frightening to a lot of folks, and certainly there are going to be more and more privacy/ethical issues we are going to have to figure out as a society. But, for the moment, let’s focus on the incredibly positive side of this – what kind of learning apps can be built on this platform? What will we be able to do as teachers and students that we can barely even conceive of today, but will be commonplace in the very near future? What happens when the sum total of the world’s knowledge – updated in real time - is available in a portable heads-up display?

Just imagine the possibilities. How many years is it going to be before we see something of this sophistication? I don’t know. My guess is more than three and less than thirty. So you’ve got to ask the question, does your school/district want to be ahead of the curve in figuring out best practices, or behind it?

Parents, We Would Love Your Input . . .

2009-09-24T18:48:00.000-06:00

Michele Davis had a great post on her ninth grade blog the other day. It was for her students, but she didn't ask them to comment. Instead, she asked their parents to.

Parents, one of our focuses this semester is writing persuasively. We start with an effective paragraph with strong topic sentences and move to a multi-paragraph persuasive essay, literary analysis essay, narrative writing, poetry, summaries, and online writing.

We would love your input on how writing is important in your line of work.

Some good, thoughtful comments from the parents on the importance of good writing, and a great way to get parents engaged with the work their students are doing at school.

Who Ya Gonna Call?

2009-09-24T14:49:00.001-06:00

Carolyn Orf is one of our Business teachers and her students are learning about entrepreneurship and starting a business. Carolyn was interested in having an entrepreneur speak to her students about their experiences and remembered that she went to college with a guy that had gone on to start a couple of companies. She saw him at a wedding about three years ago but otherwise really hadn’t kept in touch with him. So, how to find him? Facebook of course.

She made contact through Facebook (from home, naturally, because our filter is “protecting” us) and asked if he’d be interested in Skyping in to share his experiences and do a question and answer session with her students. He said yes, so we’ll be Skyping during her 5th period class on October 6th, from 12:14 – 1:12 pm MDT. Her other classes can attend via an in-school field trip (if they don’t have anything pressing going on in their 5th period class), and a couple of other Business teachers will bring their 5th period classes as well. We’ll also be ustreaming it out so parents can watch (everyone is welcome to drop in but, as always, we’ll focus on making sure the technology works for the students, the ustream is a bonus).

Oh yeah, the guy? Jason Shellen. He’s currently CEO of Thing Labs. Previously he was an employee of Pyra Labs and worked on Blogger as it was acquired by Google, and he was the founding product manager of Google Reader.

Once again, it's great to see teachers and students reaching out to others, and others being kind enough to give some time. It's so darn easy that I'm wondering what everyone is waiting for? Who could you bring into your classroom?

H1N1, Skype, and a Possible Tipping Point

2009-09-23T10:10:00.007-06:00

Anne Smith has a nice post up about how she has students who are home sick Skyping into class in order to stay connected.

What was really impressive was that the students’ willingness to be connected back into our class when they are at home feeling crummy. They want to participate, they want to stay in touch, they want to continue to learn and aren’t letting the flu get in their way.

I think this is a nice use of Skype, and I'm sure many other teachers are doing similar things. I know other folks have said this, but I wonder if this outbreak turns even more serious with lots of absences or school closures, if that might accelerate how quickly schools start to move more of their instruction online (in some shape or form). Could H1N1 end up being a tipping point?

Did You Know? 4.0: The Economist Media Convergence Remix

2009-09-14T11:48:00.001-06:00

The Economist Magazine is hosting their third annual Media Convergence Forum in New York City on October 20th and 21st. Earlier this year they asked if they could remix Did You Know?/Shift Happens with a media convergence theme and use it for their conference. Scott McLeod and I said sure, they got XPLANE to create the presentation, and the result is farther down in this post. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to attend the Forum, as I’m already missing school a few days this fall and I just couldn’t justify missing a couple more (it was very kind of The Economist to invite Scott and me), but it looks like an interesting event.

A few anticipatory FAQ's about this version.

It’s the first one that I’ve been part of that does not have a specific education focus (although I certainly think the media convergence ideas discussed in the video have great relevance for education). The idea behind the original (and subsequent) presentations was to start/continue/advance the conversation around certain ideas, so I see this hopefully doing the same thing around media convergence (and, selfishly, it will hopefully get some of the folks attending The Economist’s Media Convergence Forum to perhaps focus on some of the education ideas in the previous DYK’s). And, given the Creative Commons license on the previous versions, folks are not limited to remixes that only talk about education.
They decided to designate it version 4.0 even though there have been only two previous “official” versions. But the Sony/BMG remix that is currently the hot version is typically referred to as version 3.0, so who are we to argue with the wisdom of the crowd?
I should not get much, if any, credit for this one. I sent along a fair amount of statistics for their consideration, and certainly provided some feedback along the way, but otherwise didn’t have nearly as much to do with this version. Laura Bestler, Scott McLeod’s graduate assistant, did most of the research for this one, and of course XPLANE did all the graphical work. (I should, however, still get most or all of the blame if you don’t like it, since I started this whole mess.)
Like the previous versions, this one is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license, so you’re welcome to use/modify as you see fit, as long as you follow the terms of that license.

Finally, an observation. In a recent email Scott McLeod wrote, “It’s amazing, the legs this thing still has.” I would have to agree. The various versions have been viewed well over 20 millions times (my guess is that with downloaded versions and audience showings it’s probably closer to 30 million times, but 20 million would be the safe number). It’s been shown to audiences large and small, educational and corporate and everything in between. It's been shown to the leaders of our national defense and to incoming congressmen. It’s been shown by university presidents and kindergarten teachers, televangelists and politicians, folks just trying to make a buck and those trying to save the world. And this week it even made an appearance in Nancy Gibb’s essay in Time Magazine.

What does it all mean? (Well, besides the self-referential and now self-serving answer of “Shift Happens.”) I think the fact that a simple little PowerPoint (some folks would say simplistic and they would be right – it was meant to be the start of a conversation, not the entire conversation) can be viewed by so many folks and start so many conversations means that we live in a fundamentally different world than the one I (and most of you reading this) grew up in.

I know some folks would dispute that, and that’s an interesting conversation in and of itself, but if you buy that – if you buy that on so many levels the world is a fundamentally different place – then it just begs us to ask the question of whether schools have similarly transformed from when we grew up. If your answer to that question is no, as I think it probably is for a large majority of you, and if you see a problem with that, then what should we do? What is my responsibility, and your responsibility, for making the changes we believe are necessary? What are you willing to step up and do?

Here’s the presentation. Source files will be uploaded to the wiki shortly.

A Low-Fidelity Education?

2009-09-07T18:20:00.008-06:00

This article from Wired Magazine has been making the rounds, and the combination of a focus on technology, a mention of Clay Shirky, and the inclusion of Christensen’s disruptive innovation ideas made me want to consider it in relation to our current school system. This post is definitely a thinking-out-loud, draft-thinking post, so bear with me.

The basic thrust of the article is that “good enough” is beating out “really good” or “perfect” in the marketplace, and that “accessibility” and “ease of use” is trumping “power” and “number of features”. So I want to look at our current school system in relation to both the online and hybrid alternatives that already exist or soon will, in the context of what is the “value add” of our current face-to-face system.

Now, this gets tricky when talking about education versus talking about a “product.” Yes, in the end education is a product (or at least a combination of a product and a service), but I still hold onto the idea that it’s still fundamentally different, and therefore the metrics we use to measure “success” have to be different. Having said that, however, I think there are enough similarities to explore this idea.

With that caveat in mind, let’s look at a few quotes from the article.

So what happened? Well, in short, technology happened. The world has sped up, become more connected and a whole lot busier. As a result, what consumers want from the products and services they buy is fundamentally changing. We now favor flexibility over high fidelity, convenience over features, quick and dirty over slow and polished. Having it here and now is more important than having it perfect. These changes run so deep and wide, they're actually altering what we mean when we describe a product as "high-quality."

“What consumers want . . . is fundamentally changing.” Is this true in education? I would say yes, to a certain extent. People want to learn when they want to learn. They increasingly don’t want to work around somebody else’s schedule, they want the goods and services at the time, place and pace that works for them. If I want to learn something I don’t necessarily want to wait until 7:21 am the next day to learn it (7:21 is when our first period starts).

I could have a great learning experience at 7:21 am, or a good experience at 9:30 pm the night before when I want to have it. Would I rather have the great experience? Yes, I would. But at what point does the ability to have a good experience whenever I want it start to overtake the possibility of a having a great experience on somebody else’s schedule? At what point is it no longer “great” if I have to do it on somebody else’s timetable?

Are we actually changing what we mean when we say “a high quality” education? This one is tough for me, because when I think about education, I always want high quality for our students, not just “good enough.” But I think the point is still an important one – our very definitions of quality are changing based on factors like flexibility and accessibility. I don’t think we can afford the mindset of “we’re the only game in town, so they have to come to us and learn what we say they should learn, on our schedule.” We have to adapt to a much more flexible and accessible time, and make our teaching and learning much more personal, while still trying to bring the high quality that we’ve always valued.

Suddenly what seemed perfect is anything but, and products that appear mediocre at first glance are often the perfect fit.

So is a mediocre online learning experience better than a perfect face-to-face one? I would say no, but the problem is that’s asking the wrong question. Rightly or wrongly, most folks view our current face-to-face schooling experiences as pretty mediocre. Even when they’re better than that, I think all of us would agree that they rarely approach perfect. And while many online learning experiences (I’m talking about formal, accredited learning experiences at the moment) are mediocre, they are increasingly getting better (and certainly informal online learning experiences are already pretty darn good in a lot of cases.)

So I think I would rephrase the question as, “What is it about our face-to-face learning experiences that provides a vastly superior learning opportunity as compared to what students can get online? What’s the value add? Why should they come to us?” And before you have a gut reaction to those questions, really think about them. Really think about how you might provide many of your initial responses in an online/hybrid environment, and whether our current environment really provides those things for all students anyway.

What record labels and retailers failed to recognize was that although MP3 provided relatively low audio quality, it had a number of offsetting positive qualities.

How about we change that slightly?

What public schools failed to recognize was that although online and hybrid classes provided relatively low quality, they had a number of offsetting positive qualities.

At what point does the “relatively low quality” get good enough that the “offsetting positive qualities” outweigh it? When does the ability to learn what you want, when you want to learn it, in a location you want to learn in, outweigh the (current) advantages of face-to-face? When does a changing workplace, which is allowing more and more folks to work from home, remove the daycare factor which, right now, is perhaps the biggest obstacle in the way of this disruptive innovation?

Jonathan Berger, a professor of music at Stanford University, recently completed a six-year study of his students. Every year he asked new arrivals in his class to listen to the same musical excerpts played in a variety of digital formats—from standard MP3s to high-fidelity uncompressed files—and rate their preferences. Every year, he reports, more and more students preferred the sound of MP3s, particularly for rock music. They've grown accustomed to what Berger calls the percussive sizzle—aka distortion—found in compressed music. To them, that's what music is supposed to sound like.

At what point will online/hybrid classes be what education is “supposed to look like?” We can wring our hands all we want about how education is different, and about how we shouldn’t cater to the lowest common denominator, and that there is a higher purpose to education (and believe me, I wring my hands as much as the next person), but what if our definition of what it means to be educated changes?

If you were designing an education system right now, in today’s world, with today’s technology, and access to most of the world’s information at your fingertips, and the ability to communicate and collaborate on a global basis both synchronously and asynchronously, would you design our current K-12 system? If we tossed all of our preconceived notions of what “school” is supposed to look like, could we come up with an online or hybrid system that actually provides a better education than what we currently do? Not just a more convenient education, but also actually achieves all those nobler aspects we all value?

I’m not sure exactly what this would look like, but I’m positive of one thing: it would not look like our current system. So, if we can agree on at least that point, doesn’t that pretty much require that we figure out what it does look like, and then implement it? Because if we don’t, somebody else will, and we may not like what it looks like.

The attributes that now matter most all fall under the rubric of accessibility. Thanks to the speed and connectivity of the digital age, we've stopped fussing over pixel counts, sample rates, and feature lists. Instead, we're now focused on three things: ease of use, continuous availability, and low price.

How about:

We’ve stopped fussing over accreditation, graduation rates and test scores. Instead, we’re now focused on three things: accessibility to all, meeting individual student’s needs, and demonstrated proficiency in authentic contexts.

What if instead of using proxies for quality as our metrics, we actually used quality?

Simply put, elawyering makes certain legal services more accessible.

There are trade-offs, of course. "The relationship has less richness than what you'd get from sitting in a lawyer's office," Granat says. "And if you have an issue that's more complex, then you still need to see a lawyer face-to-face." In other words, it's a lower-fidelity experience.

. . . "Elawyering will be mainstream in three years," Granat says. "I predict that in five years, if you're a small firm and don't offer this kind of Web service, you're not going to make it."

I think what face-to-face has (right now, or at least it can) is more “richness,” a more high-fidelity experience. But for how much longer will that be true? And at what point can an online or hybrid class match the vast majority of what we do and we’re reduced to a niche role in education? Could this rephrasing be accurate?

I predict that in ten years, if you’re an education institution and you don’t offer this kind of service, you’re not going to make it.

I don’t know, but how convenient. Ten years would be 2019, right about the time that the research Christensen cites predicts that more than 50% of high school classes will be taught online.

What they found is that the system performed very well. Two doctors working out of a microclinic could meet 80 percent of a typical patient's needs. With a hi-def video conferencing add-on, members could even link to a nearby hospital for a quick consult with a specialist. Patients would still need to travel to a full-size facility for major trauma, surgery, or access to expensive diagnostic equipment, but those are situations that arise infrequently.

If that 80 percent number rings a bell, it's because of the famous Pareto principle, also known as the 80/20 rule. And it happens to be a recurring theme in Good Enough products. You can think of it this way: 20 percent of the effort, features, or investment often delivers 80 percent of the value to consumers. That means you can drastically simplify a product or service in order to make it more accessible and still keep 80 percent of what users want—making it Good Enough—which is exactly what Kaiser did.

This relates back to my previous point – if an online or hybrid education can meet 80% of what students need (and I think we’re not that far from that happening) – then when does the tipping point occur? When does a critical mass of the public vote with their feet and decide to flip the current situation, and they decide to get their primary education services online and “supplement” with face-to-face?

Look, I’m still an advocate for schools. Schools where face-to-face still plays a huge part. But articles like this one, combined with many of the things I’m seeing done in schools today, make me worry. They make me worry that we’re going to dismiss online and hybrid schools as “low-fidelity” alternatives to what we do and therefore we can’t be bothered with them. But when does that “low-fidelity, good enough” education actually surpass the quality that we’re providing now in the eyes of our stakeholders? In our dismissiveness and our hubris, are we going to collectively miss the opportunity to shape what future schools look like?

The Possibility of More

2009-09-07T15:51:00.007-06:00

Jeff Krause is an excellent Language Arts teacher in my school who is trying to get even better. Who can resist a post that starts with this sentence?

As with all crazy ideas, it occurred at approximately 3 a.m. – the time when you can convince yourself that just about anything will work.

Jeff has three posts about something he's trying in his American Literature class that are worth your time (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3).

Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?

2009-09-05T21:37:00.005-06:00

Will and Bud both have thoughtful posts up about "the speech" next week. I'll just point you to some fifth graders at East Elementary in my school district who will be watching the speech and live blogging it. They'll watch, ask questions, and - knowing their teachers Chris and Niki - have a meaningful discussion about working hard and the importance of a good education.

Huh.

Linux on Netbooks and Whiskers on Kittens

2009-08-28T14:31:00.002-06:00

This is going to be a long post, but I think (hope?) it will be worth it to many of you.

I’ve blogged previously about the Inspired Writing project that began this summer in my school district. Briefly, all 5th grade classrooms, all 6th grade Language Arts classrooms, and all 9th grade Language Arts classrooms now have ASUS EeePC 1000 netbook computers. (We hope to expand it to grades 5-12 eventually.) Those teachers also went through staff development this summer based around improving reading and writing skills through the use of technology.

At Arapahoe this means that we have 198 new EeePC 1000’s this fall. This gives us a 1:1 ratio in our 9th grade Language Arts classrooms (we have a few sections using Dell laptops that we had previously purchased with grant money), plus we purchased an additional twelve for our Special Services Department, four for our Study Center, and twenty-four for our media center for student check out. (For now, students can check out a EeePC for use in the media center for a class period at a time. Once we get settled in, we’re hoping to expand that for longer time periods and not restrict it to the media center.)

Our district settled on the EeePC’s for many reasons, two of which were licensing costs and imaging issues. We ordered EeePC’s with Xandros Linux, and they utilize our PODnet wireless network to connect to the Internet, meaning that we don’t have to worry about Microsoft licensing costs (they’re running Open Office). And the Eee’s have a built-in restore mechanism that will reset them back to factory condition, thereby minimizing technical support issues (which is critical as my district, like most these days, has had to cut positions).

So one of my self-assigned jobs this summer was to learn more about Linux in order to both support and hopefully improve the implementation of this project. So at NECC I approached Steve Hargadon, who is my go-to person in my PLN for all things open source. For those of you who know Steve, you won’t be surprised that when I finally tracked him down he was running from one presentation to another, but he kindly gave me several names to contact that he thought could help me out. They all did, but one in particular ended up helping me out more than I could’ve expected.

Jim Klein is the Director of Information Services and Technology for the Saugus Union School District in the Santa Clarity Valley in Northern Los Angeles County. When I contacted Jim with some questions, he answered them, but then also mentioned that he had an imaging process I might want to take a look at. Well, not only did he have an imaging process, but he had extensive, step-by-step documentation for how to do it. This documentation is so good that even I, pretty much completely new to Linux, could figure it out. (Jim and I did end up trading well over fifty emails over a variety of questions, which was way above and beyond the call of duty on Jim’s part, but that was mostly due to one typo on the documentation that we eventually figured out and my apparently inexhaustible capability for asking questions.)

So why am I blogging about this? Because I think this is a process that many of you should take a look at for your schools. Basically, here is why I think this image is so good:

Jim (and his team) have created a custom Ubuntu Netbook Remix image that's optimized for battery life and made it available for anyone to download and use (with step by step directions). You can use their image or modify it for your own needs. (For my school, this included customizing the launcher to add the apps and shortcuts we wanted available to students on the main screen, changing the default save settings in Open Office, changing the homepage and security settings in Firefox, adding the Diigo toolbar to Firefox as well as the Compact Firefox extension, adding the right printer, and running a script at startup to change the keyboard settings – more on that below.)
This image installs from a flash drive in about six minutes.
It uses open source software, so less of your limited dollars are going to licensing costs. Linux is also a relatively "thin" OS, so it runs pretty well on netbooks even though they have less horsepower.
The image has a built-in, 10-second system recovery option on reboot (adds 10 seconds to the normal reboot time). Yep, I said 10 seconds. Wait, it gets better. The recovery preserves user documents. (You can also choose to wipe out user docs, but that process takes a little longer.) And, unlike the built-in recovery option in the ASUS Xandros distribution, this doesn’t restore to factory settings, but to your image – with all changes, settings, and printers preserved. This is also a recovery process that a teacher can do, without having to track down a tech support person or wait until they have time to troubleshoot it – they can restore on the fly in the classroom (assuming it’s not a hardware issue), so it minimizes impact on instructional time.
It uses the Netbook Launcher interface, which I think is more productive for students and also looks nicer. (IMO, the Xandros interface doesn’t look as professional, which I think makes a difference for high school students, and also requires more clicks to get to what you want.)
It doesn’t lock things down (although you could if you really wanted to) – students can make modifications as they need to. And the beauty is that if students make a modification that causes a problem, you’ve got that 10-second restore option. To paraphrase something Jim said to me, instead of trying to lock everything down, let’s allow students the flexibility to do creative things with their devices. We protect our servers and infrastructure with solid security, but instead of locking down their devices we focus on quick recoverability. (This fits in well with my school’s overall philosophy of having high expectations of students and trusting them to do the right thing most of the time.)

So, what did this mean at my school? After tweaking Jim’s image I then put that image on sixteen 4 GB flash drives (the image would actually fit on a 2 GB drive). Creating that initial set of flash drives did take several hours, but now they are ready for any subsequent image I want to put on them. (And you can quickly add two files that Jim calls “Simple Updates” that I used for adding the printer I wanted for each cart.) We have 32 in each of our carts, so I then imaged half of the cart in about 10 minutes, then the other half in another 10. After about 20 minutes, I had a cart of 32 done, with all the apps, shortcuts, printer and settings I wanted, and with a built-in recovery option. Compare this to the Xandros distribution, where I was looking at 30-45 minutes per machine out of the box to get them ready to go, and without a recovery option that kept my settings. (Plus the Xandros by default doesn’t have things like Audacity or Gimp that are part of my image.) When I went to the next cart all I had to do was replace two small files on each flash drive to add a different printer to the image. I was able to have all 198 netbooks ready on day one with students, with the apps, interface and settings we needed.

Here are some screenshots:

Now, full disclosure, it did take me longer than twenty minutes per cart, but that’s because I decided to do one more thing – switch the functionality of the right-shift key and the up-arrow key. On the Eee 1000’s the up-arrow key is in the place where you naturally press when you try to shift with your right hand. During our staff development, that meant that every time someone tried to capitalize something on the left side of the keyboard, they ended up arrowing up instead of capitalizing. So I went out and found a script on the web, figured out how to modify it for the Eee 1000, and that’s now part of my image. It runs at startup and switches the functionality of those two keys. The reason it took me more than twenty minutes per cart is that after I imaged them, I also took the time to physically switch the right-shift and up-arrow keys on the keyboard. This is not difficult, but it is a pain, and about every ninth or tenth one I messed up the little connector and it would take me anywhere from two to twenty minutes to get it fixed. But, if you chose not to do this, it’s about twenty minutes a cart.

If you have netbook computers in your district, or are considering them, I would urge you – or your tech folks – to take a look at the wiki documentation Jim and his team have created (which includes a ready-to-go image you can download). Also, keep in mind that his image should work on most netbooks, not just Eee’s, although you may have to do a little tweaking. Thanks Jim and team, for making a difference for the teachers and students at my school (not to mention for me personally), and for being willing to share your hard work.

With apologies to Rodgers and Hammerstein . . .

Linux on netbooks and my great P-L-N;
Jim Klein, his wiki and Steve Hargadon;
Meaningful learning tied up with (virtual) string;
These are a few of my favorite things.

When NCLB bites,
When the filter stings,
When I’m feeling sad,
I simply remember my favorite things,
And then I don’t feel so bad.

More Than a Passing Trend Part II

2009-08-25T21:04:00.008-06:00

On the heels of my previous post I came across this video by Erik Qualman - some interesting observations in the comments to his post. I'll present it here without comment of my own, other than I think there are some interesting ideas to consider here.

Oh, one more thing. I believe this falls into the category of "D'oh!" Any chance you think they'll do retroactive revenue sharing?

How Many People in Your Family?

2009-08-23T10:27:00.015-06:00

This post is more of just an extended tweet than it is a blog post, but I thought it might be interesting to share.

My daughter had a math assignment where she was supposed to gather data on how many people were in people's families, then graph it and determine things like median, mode, range, maximum and minimum (interestingly, not the mean, although they've done that for other problems - which is probably good since median makes much more sense for this problem). Just for fun I created a quick Google Form and tweeted it out.

The only required question was "How Many People in Your Family?" with some directions on how to define that for this problem, but then I also asked (just because I was curious) two optional questions: your location and your age.

Well, that quick tweet generated 95 responses (so far). Since Abby is at the point where it's still really hands-on with the data and you generate graphs by hand (to get a better understanding of the concept), that was a little more than she needed, so she decided to just use the first thirty-two. Here are her results:

In case you're curious, here are the results for all 95 data points:

The median and the mode were both 4 and the standard deviation was 1.54.

For those of you curious about the ages of the respondents, the mean was 40.37, the median and mode were both 39, and the standard deviation was 10.96. (It might be interesting for someone to do a more randomized survey of educational tweeters to see if anything could be deduced from the results - both age and family size data.) We had responses from all over the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and Thailand.

So, nothing profound here, but I just thought it was interesting in several respects. First, how many folks responded to a tweet that obviously was not going to have much benefit for/impact on them. Second, how easy it was to generate data via a tweet and a Google Form (not randomized, I realize, but still interesting). Finally, I found the age and family size of the folks who responded interesting, even if I can't draw any major conclusions from it. (Perhaps: The mostly educational twitterers who follow me and responded to this tweet are typically between the ages of 30 and 50 and have two to five people in their immediate family - not a huge surprise.)

Thanks to everyone that helped Abby with this assignment and, if you have anything more profound you can generate from this, feel free to leave it in the comments.

More Than a Passing Trend

2009-08-15T15:57:00.015-06:00

I wrote an email to an editor at the Denver Post last Sunday in response to an editorial titled, Twitter: A Medium without a Message (please read it before reading the rest of this post).

Now, this is somewhat ironic because, while I certainly use Twitter, I'm not a frequent user compared to many folks and I don't necessarily think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. But I truly felt like he was missing the point somewhat, and he generally seems like a thoughtful guy (even if I don't always agree with him), so I dashed off a quick email in about eight minutes or so.

I then tweeted about it (of course) and wondered a couple of things. First, I wondered:

Why did I feel like email was a more "personal" way to connect with Dan Haley?

Then I wondered this:

And:

Why would I give less thought and care writing an email to an editor of the Denver Post then I would to a blog post? Perhaps Jenny Nash got it right that it's due to the perceived audience:

In any event, I've obviously decided to repost it here, with the caveat that, again, I'm not sure it really does justice to the argument I was trying to make. So, I'm counting on you guys to add to it in the comments or link to posts that are already created about the value of Twitter, just in case Dan Haley stops by.

So, here's the email I sent (unaltered, much as I would like to refine it before posting it here)

Dan,

I read your editorial today about Twitter and wanted to share a few thoughts. While I'm not a huge Twitter user, and I won't argue that it's the greatest thing ever, I think one of the reasons you're not finding it valuable is that you're following the wrong people. Part of that you can't help, as you said politicians are "the people you 'follow' for a living." The problem is that most politicians use Twitter in one of two ways. As you indicated, they either use them as glorified press releases, or as a way to appear "folksy" to their constituents. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's not all that interesting and, as politicians, they're somewhat constrained from being "real" on Twitter because it could come back to haunt them. You also mentioned celebrities and, well, unless you're really interested in a particular celebrity, most of them aren't that interesting either.

I would suggest that if you want to see the real power in Twitter, you need to follow people that are passionate about the same things you are passionate about. Since politicians are interesting to you, but are somewhat constrained as indicated above, then find some folks that are writing about politics and follow them on Twitter. Then find some folks that are passionate about journalism (I'm assuming you are) and follow them. And then find some folks that are passionate about some hobby of yours and follow them. If you do that, I think you'll find more value in Twitter.

As an example, I'm an educator that's passionate about trying to meet the needs of our students in a world that is vastly different than the one that most educators grew up in. So I mostly follow other educators who are thinking and writing and linking and tweeting about education. There is a bias toward tech using educators, partially because that's my role in my school - technology coordinator, but also because those folks have a higher presence on Twitter. But I also follow interesting folks that aren't specifically educators writing about teaching and learning but are always finding interesting and relevant ideas and information that help me do my job as an educator - and as a citizen. Every time I dip into Twitter I always find a relevant resource or tool I can share with the teachers in my building, or a link to a blog post or a website or a podcast or a video that helps my thinking around what education should look like. I have teachers on six continents - most of whom I've never met face-to-face - but I learn from them every day.They are part of my own Personal Learning Network, an extended network of people around the world that I can not only learn from every day, but that I can connect teachers and students in my building with to help them teach and learn in a rapidly changing, technology-rich, globally-interconnected world.

Yes, I also find many tweets that aren't along those lines, that are more "personal" if you will, but that's a huge part of community building. Just as in face-to-face communication, folks that establish trust and some personal connection have a much better chance of connecting around more significant issues as well. I would guess that at the Post, teams of people that have some personal relationship and connection are more productive in the long run, particularly around big issues or projects, because they have a relationship that's more than "just" business, and they have some common frame of reference. It's the same on Twitter, and some of those "this is what I'm doing" type tweets help establish that.

So, while I agree that there is a lot of hype about Twitter right now, I would ask you to take a closer look at it. I would ask you to get beyond the press releases and the celebrity gossip, and talk with some folks that were using it before the hype and that find tremendous value in it. (I can connect you with some very thoughtful folks using Twitter if you'd like.) It doesn't matter if Twitter is the particular tool that has staying power, or whether something else comes along to replace it. What matters, and what should be interesting to you as a journalist, is how thoughtful folks are using it to help them learn, grow and be more productive. Surely that is more than simply a "passing trend."

Thanks for reading.