The Thinking Stick

Reach now 15% off at LuLu and available at Amazon

Jeff Utecht — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 17:57:29 +0000

Two great birthday gifts came my way today via LuLu.com and Amazon.com.

First LuLu.com is giving everyone 15% off the purchase of Reach meaning it now cost $8.14 through August 15th.

Secondly Reach is now available via Amazon.com.

I’m still working on the Kindle and iPad edition…shooting for August with those.

If you happened to get in on the free download of Reach in June, or if you have purchased and read the book, I’d appreciate anyone leaving a review of the book at Amazon or Lulu to help others.

Thanks again for your continued support!

Jeff

Overcoming Our Fears

Jeff Utecht — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 22:20:50 +0000

(Cross Posted on November Learning)

When it comes to keynote speakers, nobody can ever match the line-up that the November Learning team puts together for BLC. Once again an amazing line up of thinkers outside of K-12 Education stretching us to think where we need to be taking kids and schools.

Mitch Resnick opened the conference with a very simple message:

Students should be creating on the web

I couldn’t agree more and not just creating for themselves and their classmates, but for the world. Using Scratch as his basis for his talk, Resnick took us on a journey of how students are using Scratch to create, share, remix, and collaborate on creating some pretty cool projects, most of them outside of school.

Resnick’s message aligned perfectly with an article I read in Inc. Magazine last week titled: Revitalizing the American Dream. A fascinating read on how entrepreneurship needs to be revitalized in America.

It’s important to note the view point in which I’m coming from on this next bit. A little history on me: I’ve lived overseas for the past 8 years and when people ask me where I’m from..I hesitate, as do most expats. It’s a hard question to answer. I’m an American and proud to be one, but in the past 8 years America has felt less and less like “home” and more and more like a foreign land. Over these last 8 years, I’ve had the opportunity to visit America only during the summer holidays and at the same time visit 35 other countries.

What I have observed being a some-what outsider to America is the fear that has captivated our country. A fear that I believe is stifling creativity in the country, in our schools, and in our daily lives.

What saddens me most is this country was founded on the idea of anyone can make it. The “American Dream” is written into our Declaration of Independence.

In the American Dream, first expressed by James Truslow Adams in 1931, citizens of every rank feel that they can achieve a “better, richer, and happier life.”^[1] The idea of the American Dream is rooted in the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence which states that “all men are created equal” and that they are “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights” including “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”^[2] (Wikipedia, 07/14/2010)

(Too bad the writers didn’t include an unfiltered Internet in that!)

Does this still hold true? Do kids today feel like they can grow up to be anything within our schools? The same schools that block much of the content that allows them to be creative, to communicate with others, and to create opportunities for themselves?

“There’s no way my district will ever let us use any of these social tools, they’re scared”

I’m sure many of you have either said this or have heard someone who has said this.

Alan November kicked off the conference today with one simple message:

We need to break down the Firewall fear

The same country that believes in free speech and the freedom of the press is the same country with some of the most restrictive filtering systems in its schools.

I lived for three years in Shanghai, China behind what is known as the “Great Firewall“. As much press as the “Great Firewall” gets for censoring some information and some tools, it is less restrictive than most filtering systems here in American Schools.

We need to break through this culture of fear, we need to empower students to make decisions, to analyze and evaluate good content and learn how to avoid the bad stuff. We need to empower students to protect themselves.

Mitch Resnick asked the question: How can we help students become makers of things in the digital world?

To do this we must first overcome our fear of putting student content out on the open web. It’s not as scary of a place as the media makes it out to be. At my school (International School Bangkok) we have over 1,000 student blogs with over 6,000 blog posts. In the two years we’ve been using blogs we have not had one bad comment or one bad blog post. Yes students get spam comments from time to time, and much like the spam they get in their e-mail they just delete it (Have you ever heard a student complain about spam? They don’t, it’s just a part of digital life that they’re used to).

It’s not just making things in the digital world, because making thing is only half the battle. The other half is finding ways to share those artifacts with the world. Creating something isn’t fun unless you can share it. Very rarely do we create anything just for ourselves. We create things to be shared with others, to share with others, and to be proud of. Once we overcome the fear of access we must overcome the fear of sharing.

Of course once we share our digitally made creations they can be remixed and as Resnick stated, “Being remixed should be an honor.”

We should be encouraging our students to remix, to use, and collaborate with others on ideas. We should be encouraging students to join Facebook groups around a cause, or remixing a Scratch game, or editing a Wikipedia article. Being remixed is an honor, it’s having someone take your blog posts and enhance it with their own ideas, it’s being retweeted on Twitter, and being talked about in a podcast.

Creativity and fear do not mix. Trying to be creative in a culture of fear is nearly impossible. It’s difficult for teachers and it’s difficult for students.

Adora Svitak ended the day on the same note in which it started. This time coming from the mouth of a 12 year old, Adora talked about how our fear of the tools as teachers, our fear of change, is blocking what she calls innovative classrooms. If we are to be innovative in our schools, as well as society, we must overcome our fears of the unknown. If we truly want our students to be creative and we believe that we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights including “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” then we need to overcome our fear of the Internet and embrace the global audience that awaits.

ISTE 2010 – Reflections

Jeff Utecht — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 21:29:15 +0000

I have 30 minutes before I leave for the airport and head back to Seattle for what’s left of my summer vacation.

As I reflect on this years ISTE conference a couple things come to mind.

WiFi:
A HUGE shout out to the organizers and the Convention Center. By far this has been the best WiFi access at any ISTE conference since I’ve been coming (this is my 5th). It was slow at times, but overall the ability to keep a connection running among 13,000+ geekie educators was very smooth. I hope it stays this way in the future.

iPads:
They were everywhere! I know they sold 2 million in the first two months, but I swear half of those were here at the conference! I’m not sure what the future holds for this device, but all I heard about was battery life, battery life, battery life! Looking forward to seeing how they are used in schools next year with students.

My first ISTE presentation:
This year I finally made it in the program and gave my first ever ISTE presentation. I hope it was useful to those who attended. You can find the handouts here along with the videos that people seemed to enjoy.

Conversations:
Once again I’ve been reminded on what’s the real reason we still fly to conferences like this. It’s for the conversations. Those planned like the ones at EduBloggerCon and those unplanned like the one’s we have here at Blogger’s Cafe. In the end, we like being with others in person, we like the human factor of sitting and chatting with those we learn from year round. I spent more time offline rather than online this conference just enjoying being here with others. I’m online with them the rest of the year…..I only get three days of being with them in person.

Where do we go?
I keep asking myself if anything has changed in the 5 years since I’ve started attending ISTE (NECC) conferences….and I’m not sure if anything has. There are more people hanging out at the Blogger’s Cafe, there are more blogging educators and that’s fantastic. But looking through the sessions I didn’t notice much of a change. There was no sessions on RSS this year, yet some educators I talked to who are attending for the first time had never heard of RSS.

The theme of “Mobile” and “Global” were prominent and I’m seeing the same trends in conferences around the world. Everyone is talking about mobile devices and how do we help students become more globally minded.

I believe it starts with teachers. We need more teachers to think globally. The tools are here, the ideas and lessons and connections are out there….now we just need to do it.

We need to help teachers to learn to reach (shameless self-promotion) out and create connections that they can bring back into their classrooms in supporting kids.

We can’t help students be globally minded if we are not globally minded ourselves.

So there’s your focus this year. How do you become or help others become more globally minded? How do we help students teach students the power of connecting and understand the networks that this new digital landscape is made of?

Those are the questions I’m walking away with this year from ISTE.

Policies, Safety, and Social Networking ~ Steve Dembo ISTE10

Jeff Utecht — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 17:56:28 +0000

“I want my student to be found, he already has 3,000 hits on Google.”

How many people are uploading pictures of their babies the day they are born? First and Last name with Birth Day.

84 Billion Dollars spend on a filter in Australia cracked in 30 minutes by a 16 year old.

Over 50% of schools in the US prohibit social networking….and there is no law saying they have to.

Most policies are vastly different than most educators think.

CIPA

11/08 Update: Educating minors about appropriate online behavior

CIPA left vague on purpose.

All you have to do is try your best to block porn.

Mapping the Filter: What do you Block ~ Will Richardson

“We’ve decided that we will no longer use the web filter as a classroom management tool.” ~ Bud Hunt

Walled Garden Wiki ~ Miguel Guhlin

College Confidential ~ Students create a site to help other students get into college

Are we teaching Networked Literacy

Jeff Utecht — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 05:10:44 +0000

The two best sessions for me at Edubloggercon today at ISTE2010 ended up talking about Networks and teaching how to use networks with students. For lack of a better term we called it “Networked Literacy”

I first started thinking about this back in August after reading Writing in the 21st Century by Kathleen Yancey (worth your time).

Based on that reading I created this diagram that looks at today’s literacy development.

The pyramid represents the amount of time we spend teaching different types of literacy. Print Literacy is still the bases of our teaching in schools. Some of us and some schools are starting to bring digital literacy into the equation, but few of us are touching on or teaching Networked Literacy. In August as I started to think about this idea of Networked Literacy I came up with this working definition:

Networked literacy is what the web is about. It’s about understanding how people and communication networks work. It’s the understanding of how to find information and how to be found. It’s about how to read hyperlinked text articles, and understand the connections that are made when you become “friends” or “follow” someone on a network. It’s the understanding of how to stay safe and how to use the networked knowledge that is the World Wide Web. Networked Literacy is about understanding connections.

After today’s conversation I think it’s pretty close to what we were all thinking. It’s the idea of teaching students that they have networks in Facebook and through other web connections. We need to teach them how to use those networks to spread their message. Today many of us ed tech people do the networking for students via our twitter accounts, our own blogs, and the whole of our PLNs. Students today have networks, the issue is most of them are blocked in schools. We do not think of them as idea spreading networks but instead as social-networks that students must be kept from during school hours.

Learning networks are Social networks.

There is not one of us here at ISTE that does not use Twitter strictly for learning. We share our days, our lives. We share jokes, stay in touch and communicate on things that are personal to us. If we are allowed to use our learning-networks for social connections why can’t students use their social-networks for learning connections?

Of course Facebook is just a popular example. There are many other networks that we should be teaching students to use, networks to help them spread their message.

There’s another part of Networked Literacy that we touched on today. The idea of using social-connections to curate information. It’s asking your Twitter network for resources instead of Google, or asking your Facebook friends dinner ideas rather than looking up a restaurant yourself. Learning when to ask these networks for help and why you would you them rather than Google is a type of Networked Literacy we need to be teaching.

The conversations we had today are just the beginning. I’m looking forward to discussion this idea in the Blogger’s Cafe in the coming days as I think we’re starting to define a new powerful literacy that I hope we will be able to teach our students how to use.

Are Wikis Dying?

Jeff Utecht — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 23:43:04 +0000

ISTE 2010 Conference here in Denver is starting off on a positive note for me. Today was the EduBloggerCon, and as usual we had some great discussions around the future of tools and learning.

I facilitated one of the first sessions of the day titled “Are Wikis Dying?” It’s a question I’ve been wrestling with every since Dennis Harter made me think about it earlier this year in a meeting.

What really made this session fantastic was not only the conversation around what a wiki is, where is its niche, but the fact that the creator of wikispaces one of the most popular wikis in education joined us.

So are wikis dying?

I’m not sure they are dying as much as their niche is becoming more defined. Before Google Wave, Google Docs, and other real time collaborative tools we tried to use wikis (usually without success) to be real time content builders. Now that we have a tool that fills that gap wikis don’t need to….or does it?

We discussed the place of a wiki and how some schools are just starting to embrace wikis and are hoping they are not dying anytime soon. They are an easy “beginner” tool to get teachers and other Web 2.0 Newbies into the tech world.

After the session my thoughts are changing a bit. I’m not sure wikis are dying the slow death I thought they were earlier. There is a place for them. Much like a tool belt, they are just another tool. What I think is happening is, they are becoming a very specific tool for a specific purpose. We need to continue to define what a wiki is. Is uploading some word documents to a wiki page actually a wiki?

I believe a wiki is and always has been about mass collaboration around content. A wiki with four attachments is just a web page with links. A wiki is about allowing people to collaborate and create content around a specific purpose or idea.

As other tools continue to mature it will be interesting to see how they merge or if they merge. Will Google Docs look more like a wiki in the future? Or will wikis start to look more like Google Docs? Only time will tell and it’s exciting to think where these tools will take us into the future.

What are your thoughts….are wikis dying?

2,669 Downloads of Reach!

Jeff Utecht — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 04:43:34 +0000

Thank you for helping to support the launch of my first book Reach.

Here are the final numbers of the downloads in case you were wondering.

This Blog: 2,151

U Tech Tips Blog: 77

Twitter: 403

LinkedIn: 1

Facebook: 37

Completely blew away any expectations I had on giving away the book. I appreciate your support, your comments, and your help in getting the word out about Reach.

803 Downloads to cap off a week to remember

Jeff Utecht — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 19:45:20 +0000

(Prepare yourself it’s a long one!)

(Read to the bottom to find out why it took me over 12 hours to post this reflection!)

What a week this has been and with the launch of the book today, it’s made it all the more amazing of a week.

As of this writing, Reach was downloaded 801 times today. My networks and communities once again surpassed my expectations. As I told my wife yesterday, I’d be tickled if 200 people downloaded the Free PDF. To have 800+ do it in the first day alone is just mind boggling. As I say in the book, once you become connected to this network, professional development like you have never known before starts to flow your way. This book as been as much a part of my own professional development this year as anything else. On top of that I get to reap the benefits from people posting about it, quoting it, and thinking about it on their own blogs, twitter updates, and everywhere else on the network.

Some have asked if the book is OK to share with others. I have released Reach under a Creative Commons 3.0 License as found on the copyright page of the book. Meaning you are free to distribute it as you wish to your school community or to your own network within the guidelines of the Creative Commons Copyright.

Part of what I wrote about in the book, and part of what I believe overwhelms people, is this idea that you have to be everywhere and that every site is a silo. When really, once you understand the connectivity of the Internet, it can all come to you in one place, and you can talk to your network through one channel.

So in sharing Reach today I decided to do a little experiment on where my network and community (and yes they are different….you’ll have to read the book to learn how) are coming from and how they are connected.

So I released the Free PDF within all my networks and communities. This blog, the U Tech Tips blog, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Here’s how the downloads panned out (as of 10pm June 15th).

This Blog: 511

Twitter: 228

LinkedIn: 0

U Tech Tips: 32

Facebook: 32

I was surprised at first that more people downloaded Reach via my blog than via Twitter. I was expecting the ReTweets on Twitter to help push that to the top spot.

But here’s what I forgot. My blog is connected to everything. So when I posted the link to download Reach to this blog it went to Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Plus to a lot of RSS readers. My blog has always been the center of my connected universe and still is today. LinkedIn surprised me. I don’t use it that much, hardly ever post anything there, and although there are a lot of people there looking to connect, not too many people are reading that stream. Of course my LinkedIn network could have used any of the other links as they all feed into LinkedIn, again that’s how that site fits into my personal learning network.

Why give it away for free? It’s my first book and we’ll wait to see what you all have to say about it as a book and me as a writer. Some of you have commented already that you can hear my voice in the book, and I found that I’m a much better writer of my thinking than a technical writer. We’ll see if it translates to a book.

Let’s be honest. If I wouldn’t have given this book away for free, I’d have been lucky to sell 100 copies (thanks to the 15 people who bought copies today!) and I have a day job that pays. It was more important to me to get the message out there. To basically throw my writing out there and see what you all think about it in a different form. My “Reach” is much greater with the free copies than it ever would have been with a book that had to be bought.

Yes…some of you will still buy the book. As Seth Godin (who’s idea and thoughts on this I have followed) has said, “We buy books as a souvenir”. I believe in that. Some of you might buy the book because you’ll want it as a souvenir, and for that I’m greatly honored. But, for most of you it will be a one time read and never thought of again. It’s information that will be out of date as soon as Facebook decides to change it’s privacy settings again.

The PDF passwords will work until Friday night around 10pm PST. After that I’ll shut them off. The first two chapters will always be free via the Reach website. If you come to any of my 8 presentations this summer you’ll be given a code for the free PDF as well…and who knows I might always give it away free again at the start of school.

Of course this has me very excited, that I was able to give something back to the community. But the launch of Reach today was over shadowed by a more amazing gift this week. A gift that….well…..can not be topped.

Last Tuesday I sat in a crowd of about 200 people watching the Class of 2010 from Aberdeen High School recieve their scholarships and awards for the year. I had been invited down by a former 4th grade student of mine, Claire. She had written me a letter saying there were a bunch of students that I had taught who are now graduating that would like to see me again. Little did I know that Claire and my wife had been planning for months to get me to Aberdeen for something very special.

I sat there in the crowd listening for names of past students, trying to recognize my little fourth grade students in these now 18 year old bodies. Some were easy, others I couldn’t believe the changes.

Claire had received a couple scholarships and awards and then without warning she started giving a speech.

“Each year the Renaissance Action Team senior members along with many other seniors recognize teachers that have made a difference in their lives. This year 21 seniors participated in the program started by the Renaissance team called honorary diplomas. This program allowed these seniors to dress in cap and gown and go visit a teacher that made a huge difference in their life. These seniors prepared brief speeches and presented diplomas to their teachers while telling them exactly what it is that changed their outlook on life.

For some seniors this was easy, they just walked down the hall, into a classroom, and made the presentation. Six teachers at Aberdeen High School were honored this year. For fourteen others, they went back to their elementary or junior high school to tell a past teacher of the impact they had. With thirty pairs of eyes watching them these seniors presented diplomas to their teachers. For one, the process even included tracking down a retired teacher’s family and making a surprise visit to him, and then, there was me.

In this audience is a man who has no idea what is about to happen, in this audience is a man who changed my life. For the past month or so I have been working to make this moment happen, and right now, as I stand here, I really hope he is out there, and possibly catching on to why his wife was so insistent on him making the trip here.”

About this time Claire’s mother takes a picture of me and I catch the flash out of the corner of my eye. I look at her and she’s smiling….and then it hit me.

I’m not going to share the whole 3 page speech that Claire gave…it’s way too special and humbling for me to share it (sorry…but true).

I will share my favorite two sentences out of the speech and the two that sent tears rolling down my own cheeks.

“Mr. U found things we liked, and created a way to learn around them. He talked to us as if we were equal, not like we were ten, and Mr. U was always smiling. It was obvious and still is that Mr. U is passionate about what he does, and he cares about the students he has.”

That meant more to me than anything…for the simple fact that it was my own fourth grade teacher Mrs. Hubble who always referred to us as “Ladies and Gentleman”. She told us that we are all equals and should be treated as much. That has stuck with me through the years and to this day, I have always only referred to a class as “Ladies and Gentleman”. I do believe we are all equals in a classroom, and sometimes it’s as little as how you refer to people that makes all the difference.

Claire, if you’re reading this, know you have made my teaching career. Your speech was simply perfect and how you remembered ever project we did in such detail after all these years I’ll never know. Please know that for all you feel you have learned from me, I learned from you ten fold! Thank you for being such a special person in my life.

It’s been one amazing week that has reminded me why I love learning.

“Education is not the preparation for life; It’s life itself” ~John Dewey

——————————————————————————
As I’m ready to post this last night I get a phone call from my brother. My nephew was on his way. At 4:40 this morning I became an Uncle for the second time. I’m not sure one person deserves this much amazement in one week. What a week to remember!

FREE BOOK DOWNLOAD

Jeff Utecht — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 16:07:34 +0000

The free download period has now ended. You can purchase a copy of the book by clicking on the link below.

Thanks for your support!

Best Plan for SIM Unlocked iPhone in the USA

Jeff Utecht — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 03:22:03 +0000

OK….so I’ve done my research over two years now and I think I’ve finally found the simplest and cheapest way to get your Unlocked iPhone to work in the USA when you are visiting.

All you need is an AT&T friend!

1. Find a friend who has AT&T service

2. Go with them to an AT&T store and have them ask for an additional line on their account. It cost a one time fee of $10.

3. Next have them activate the new number/SIM card with an iPhone account. They’ll ask you what data plan you want. $15 for 200MB or $25 for 2GB a month. Choose your plan and hand the money over to your friend as it will come on their next bill.

4. That’s it! Of course check with your friend to see what plan they are on and how many minutes they have. My buddy has unlimited text messaging and unlimited nights and weekend minutes with a large amount of roll-over minutes so we’re good to go (I’ll buy him tickets to an M’s game and we’ll be good )

$35 total cost and you have cell and 3G data on your iPhone for a month. Beats what I went through last summer!