Via @TerryFreedman:

Looks like Notre Dame high school in the UK is taking the bull by the horns and moving forward with an initiative to allow the use of mobile phones for educational purposes during class time.

Assistant headteacher Paul Haigh said mobiles, MP3 players and gaming devices were “untapped resources” for teaching and learning.

“We realise as a comprehensive state school we could never afford to buy every student all the IT and mobile devices we would like them to have.

He added: “But most students own many of these devices anyway – they’re just hidden in their schoolbags. What’s more they’re experts in using them, knowing all the short cuts and characteristics of their own equipment as they use it every day.”

Mr Haigh said there was little logic in allowing pupils to use a netbook in school while banning mobile phones, many of which could access the internet, record sound and take digital photographs.

This new school policy is running contrary to a nationwide ban of cell phones in schools. What’s interesting though is the source of the opposition. That the teacher’s union is against it isn’t all that surprising, but the other group that is currently opposing the change is…. the parents. While there isn’t much in the way of details on this front, it does say that parents are worried phones will be a distraction.

Whether you’re in agreement with the new policy, or with the opposition, it will certainly be an interesting story to follow. Hopefully they plan to publish the impact of this change throughout the year.

I think that many people (myself included) that share sites like Twitter at conferences inadvertently do our attendees a disservice. In the effort of attempting to demonstrate how wonderful, simple, powerful and dynamic it is, we make it seem much more effortless than it really is.

For example… How many times per day do you see somebody say, “Give a shout out to the people in Nepal who are attending my presentation about social networks about using the Luge to teach physics!” And then 30-40 people reply with a hearty “Hello”. So attendees believe all it takes it to toss a tweet out there, and dozens of responses will pour in.

What isn’t necessarily shown, or may just be glossed over, is the fact that it takes TIME and EFFORT to gain a few hundred followers. And without having a critical mass of people to message out to, your odds of getting a response from a general tweet are VERY small. If you have 40 followers, more than likely none of them are actually online at the same time as you. And even if they are, who knows if they’re checking Twitter? And even if they are, who knows if they’ll see your tweet? And if they do, how many people will see it and ignore it, versus will see it and respond?

For example, if I send out a “Please give these folks a shout out” tweet, I expect maybe about 30-40 responses on a typical school day during normal hours. If it’s a weekend, or in the evening, you can cut that number in half. I currently have about 5000 followers. So at best, that’s less than 1%. At that rate, if you have 100 followers, could you realistically expect an instant response from even a single person? I’m not sure… It depends on who is following you.

That’s not to say that everyone should run out and get more followers. My point is simply, things aren’t necessarily as rosy and simple as we may make them seem during presentations.

I can’t tell you how many times I see a Twitter newbie who has under 50 followers throw out a request like, “I’m trying to find schools that have updated their AUP this year. If you know someone, please tell me.” Then when they don’t get any responses, they get frustrated and may wind up quitting. While I can’t address what may be an issue with persistence, I do think that person has set themselves up for failure.

I really do think you need to follow/be followed by about 100 people at the least for Twitter to begin to be valuable. If you have a dedicated, highly focused group, that number may be smaller, but in general I think that’s a fair ballpark. If you have less than that, you need to be much more aggressive to get responses.

A few suggestions for people who are new to Twitter or have relatively small audiences right now.

1) Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with putting a message out there multiple times. If you’re worried about looking like a spammer, reword it. Mention that your STILL looking for information. But it’s entirely possible that people didn’t see your message. So give them another chance. And yet another.

2) Ask some people directly to respond. If you send a tweet that includes @TheirUsername, more than likely they will see it. It may take a day or two before they look for personal replies, but most people WILL see it. Unless they have fairly strict privacy settings, it should work. So if there’s someone you think might be able to help you out, send it directly to them by using this feature.

3) Reach out to the hubs in your network. Let’s face it, some people have more followers than others. Maybe they do a lot of conferences, maybe they just have too much time on their hands. Regardless, they may have a longer reach than you do. So contact them directly and ask them to retweet it for you! I’m extremely grateful to have the audience that I do, and I’m happy to share them whenever someone asks. By doing this, you maybe be able to ensure that your request has been seen by a few thousand people instead of a few dozen. Doesn’t guarantee a response, but it does give you better odds.

Of course, the best solution in the long term is to build up your own community. The only real way to do that is to maintain your own presence, to reach out to others, and to follow people and give them the chance to follow you.

For those of you that do present sessions including Twitter, do you see the same thing happening? Is it just me or is this something you’ve experienced yourself? And if so, how do you address it?

“It’s important to get kids interested at an early age and one of the hopes is that TEDxKids will be a meaningful experience for both us and other kids.”

The event was a couple of days ago and as of now, there haven’t been any videos released from it, but I did find this blog post mentioning it.

On Friday, the TEDxSMU team also hosted the first-anywhere TEDxKids event, bringing many of the speakers we saw Saturday to a group of middle school students. While I didn’t attend that event, reports were that the kids had as exciting a day as we did — we got to see a fun video from their day, including a segment where some of them filled in the blank on the statement: “My parents don’t know that _________.” (Our equivalent was “How I got this scar.”)

I love the idea and think it would be a magnificent addition to any conference. Allow students to share TED style presentations, stories to share, that they think would be important for teachers, educators, and decision makers to hear.

Any conference organizers interested in stepping up and adding this on to the agenda somewhere?

Unfortunately, yes you do need to already have a Wave account to see it, but them’s the breaks.

Looks like it works!

If you can’t see it, I apologize. But these are the eggs we’re cracking to learn how to make an omlette!

I have to admit, we had an absolute blast creating these. Hall is a creative genius and really had some wonderful vision for how to make these fun yet informative. We broke Web 2.0 down into 6 genre’s and in each video we shared anywhere from 3-5 sites. For each site, we tried to do three things: 1) Explain what the site does 2) Share why it’s significant and 3) How it can be used by educators. The end result is about one hour’s worth of Web 2.0 wonderment, broke up into 7 different video clips.

They recently updated the site to include an embed code, so now you can share these videos with your colleagues that may be beginning their Web 2.0 journeys or are just looking for more information.

I’ve embedded the intro video below. You can find the rest of them here. Hope you enjoy them!

In the past few years, I’ve been pretty darn lucky to be able to speak at quite a few conferences. I’ve also been blessed enough to include in my network dozens of people that do the same, whether it’s for a living or ‘on the side’. I’ve found that for the most part, presentations tend to fall into one of two categories.

1) What we (educators) should be doing.

2) What you can actually do right now.

I’ve always gravitated towards sessions in the former category. I like the ones that make me think, that encourage me to breakdown my ideas about what education means and h ow we do it, and then to rebuild them with new ideas and information. But rarely does that make much of a concrete difference in reality. When I do keynotes of this nature, I truly hope that I’m inspiring educators to reach farther, think bigger, and to become the very innovators that they currently look up to. But I always through in at least a few concrete ideas that people can do ‘on Monday’. Why? Because more often than not, those are the things that people scribble down and actually come back to.

I hear the same conversations on Twitter again and again. ‘We don’t need tools, we need pedagogy, we need understanding, we need new policies, we need leadership, we need political reform.’ And at the same time, I keep thinking to how many emails and comments I’ve received from people along the lines of, “Thanks so much for showing me Blabberize, I used it with my students and they were more engaged than they’ve been all year!” Will that change the education system in America? No. But for one classroom and one teacher on at least one day, it made a difference.

I’m not saying Blabberize is the most wonderful thing in the world. It just one of hundreds of Web 2.0 tools. But what is wonderful is that it made an old lesson new, that it energized a teacher who was then able to energize her students. To me, it just doesn’t get any better than that.

I’ve heard so much criticism of ISTE over the past few days because so many of the sessions at NECC are what many consider to be ‘low level’. They’re discussions of tools, of toys, of websites and widgets. That won’t create any systemic reform in education. But if even a fraction of the teachers who attend learn a few new tricks and perhaps hear about a network like the DEN, Classroom 2.0, Plurk, or Twitter… isn’t that enough?

I like to think that my Top 10 Web 2.0 presentation has more in it than just a list of websites. I try to really focus in on why it’s important for teachers to delve into that world, how they connect together, and how to change their mindset it the way they use them. But more than anything, I hope to make them look simple, accessible, and within their grasp. And if a roomful of teachers see that presentation and leave thinking, “Wow, I really believe that I can do that stuff he was showing” then I’d consider it a success. Maybe I won’t be the one making broad sweeping changes to the US Education system. I can live with knowing that in a small way I’ve helped a group of teachers look at their lesson plans through new lenses, and maybe inspired them to do just one thing differently. If they can use some of these new technologies to make learning exciting again for the students, then I couldn’t ask for anything more.

Is that such a bad thing?

Yes, it’s a comedy, but comedies are only funny if there’s kernels of truth in there. The kids are distracted by the phones. When asked what they’re using them for, they know the stock answers and can rattle them off without thinking. But there’s a big difference between a student rattling off an answer that they think will satisfy an inquiry, and a teacher actually using a mobile device for educational purposes. And all too often, the solution is pretty similar to what you see in the clip… lock it away and pretend it doesn’t exist.

Fact is, they aren’t going away. If anything, they’re only becoming more and more prevalent. School budgets are tight, and here we are with millions of dollars in technology that’s being paid for by the parents VOLUNTARILY… and most schools refuse to leverage it because of outdated policies and teachers that don’t want to modify their own classroom management strategies.

I’ve heard it thousands of times it seems, “cell phones are a distraction in class.” That’s great. So is the class pet, a window, a paper clip and pencil/paper. Isn’t teaching students to overcome these distractions part of what we do in the classroom? Heck, I used to focus on that in kindergarten! “Maybe you should put that toy behind you right now because it’s circle time. You can play with it again during choice time.” Saying that cell phones should be banned in schools because they’re ‘too distracting’ is a cop out. If your current classroom management model can’t incorporate mobile devices…. well, then it’s time to do some unlearning and relearning.

When I saw Jeremy Davis recently, he told me of an educator who uses cell phones in the classroom. In fact, this teacher requires that the cell phone be out and ON the desk. In plain site. Not hidden in a pocket or backpack. So if the student is using it, the teacher KNOWS. And if the student is using it when they shouldn’t… Well, that’s when there are consequences. Phone is confiscated until the end of the week, or the parent can pay a $25 fine to get it back for their student. Sure, there were plenty of students who lost their phones, and plenty of fines paid. They used the money to pay for a field trip before the end of the year. But the point is, the students learned when it was ok to be using the phone as a learning device, and when it was inappropriate. Believe me, no student wants to go to his parents and let them know that they need $25 to get their phone back… and explain why.

Sure, we can keep fighting to keep cell phones hidden or banned in schools. But it’s a battle that schools can’t win. Life progresses, things change. Like it or not, these devices are here to stay, and adoption rates are racing towards 100+%. I suggest teachers be proactive. Because there’s a tidal wave coming and you can either ride with it, or have it crash into you.

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I was talking to a friend of mine today about different videos on YouTube, and I was astonished by how many videos that I consider to be ‘mandatory viewing’ he hadn’t seen. I’m not talking about the video of my son’s bris (although it IS compelling), I mean some of the videos that have simply rocked me out of my chair and have caused me to spend days thinking about the implications of them. Or that I still pull out as examples during presentations or forward on to colleagues on a regular basis.

So with that, I figured it’s time to share some of my favorite videos on YouTube. Not necessarily the funniest, or the most popular, but ones that I think every educator should see at least once. Ones that I feel are significant for one reason or another. Not a complete list by any means either. Consider it a starting point.

Take a look through them, but also take a few minutes to consider what’s missing from this list. Are there any that you consider to be mandatory? If so, share a link to them in the comments so we can all add them to our lists.

Enjoy!

Seems strange to just be attending and not speaking at all, but the best part is… you can expect some live blogging and such! Feels like it’s been forever since I’ve been able to kick back and just enjoy an event like this. Look forward to sharing it with you.

If you want more details, head over here.

When a normal child tries to read or concentrate, he increases the amount of beta waves in certain parts of his brain. ADHD children don’t do this. Instead of increasing beta waves, they increase theta waves, the daydreaming brain wave. That means that where other children are concentrating harder to complete a certain task, ADHD children are drifting off. (source)

The machine I was hooked up to measured my brain waves and presented me with a video screen with an airplane on it. When I was concentrating well and producing beta waves, the plane would go faster. If I lost focus, the plane would slow down. I marveled at the idea and wondered whether someone could simply exercise their brain until they were no longer prone to ADD type behaviors. Of course the equipment involved made it difficult to find a location that could provide this sort of treatment, and the costs were rather higher.

Interestingly, now it seems to be available as a home game. With a Star Wars theme.

Yes I’m serious.

ThinkGeek.com has put up for sale the Star Wars Force Trainer, for about $120. As a Star Wars fan, I felt obligated to check it out. I stopped dead in my tracks when I got midway through the description.

Using dry sensor technology, the Force Trainer can determine the differences between the alpha, beta, gamma and delta waves present in your brain. You can control these different brain ’states’ by using your ability to focus and to concentrate. A micro-chip inside the Force Trainer then uses an algorithm to figure out which brain state you are in and then decides how to raise or lower the ball based on that state.

Sound familiar? I don’t know for certain what makes the ball go up or down, but if it’s keying in on beta waves, then isn’t it doing the exact same thing that I tried out in at the SMART workshop?? And if that’s the case… could this actually be a home version that ADD students could use to help train them to focus their concentration on demand?

I know it sounds crazy, but this just might be the most valuable toy a parent could buy for their ADD inclined student.

Now… when will we see a Bluetooth version that hooks into an iPhone?

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Every single day for at least the next two weeks, we will work together to identify excellent subject-specific blogs that are useful to P-12 teachers. Why? Several reasons…

* To identify blogs that P-12 teachers can use to initially seed (or expand) their RSS readers
* To create a single location where P-12 educators can go to see excellent subject-oriented educational blogging
* To highlight excellent disciplinary blogging that deserves larger audiences
* To learn from disciplines other than our own and get ideas about our own teaching and/or blogging

You can view what has been gathered together here, but I encourage you to contribute as well. Consider it an opportunity to pay it forward, a direct deposit to the next generation of bloggers and members of the EdTech community.

So here’s a link to the presentation slides, such as they are. Most of the presentation is live demonstrations, so they’re only of limited value by themselves.

Here’s a link to the ISTE broadcast of the session. Video looks and sounds great, but they didn’t record what I was doing on the screen until 20 minutes in.

Then there’s my own personal broadcast of it using Procaster and Livestream. It has what’s happening on my screen throughout the entire presentation. However, the camera angle isn’t exactly the most flattering one I could have chosen

ArtsCow.com is doing a sale right now on their custom Dog Tags. Using their designer, you can upload your own images and have them printed out on a dog tag. Normally, they cost 8.99, but through August 16th, they have a sale going on. If you use the coupon code 199DOGTAG, you can get a two sided dog tag with free shipping for $1.99. I don’t ordinarily post deals like this, but I think this could be a lot of fun for educators and it’s a pretty darn reasonable price.

So what can you do with a $1.99 dog tag?

• Create one for each of your students that has your School, Class Name, School contact info, and then their name and/or photo on the back. Be great for field trips, and early learners can use it to help learn how to spell/write their name.
• Random student grouping. Mix and match pictures and colors on each side, so you can use them for random grouping. For example, if you want to be able to do groups of 3, 4, 5, or 6 at different parts of the day, put 5 different animals on 3 different color backgrounds on one side, and then put 6 different shapes on 4 different colors on the other side. Then you can give each child a tag when they walk in, and call out groups as you need it. “All squares, come to the writing table.” “Yellow tags, go to music, green tags, stay with me.” You get the idea.
• Extension activities/centers. When students finish their assignment, they can pick an extension activity out of the bucket. Only put in as many tags in there as you can have at that activity or center. They were it as they play, and then put it back and pick a new one when they’re done.
• Job chart. List their jobs on the tags, and they can wear the tag to remind them what their job is until they do it. Then they just hang it up.
• Create permanent versions of Kevin Honeycutt’s Web2.0 keychain. A website on one side, a tip and a mentor’s email on the other.
• Bathroom passes, hall passes, Star of the day necklace, create yourself a cool keychain, etc. Hey, for 1.99, why not?
• Rewards for other teachers at your school. Create your own, Technology Teacher of the Month award! Give your colleagues a pat on the back for doing innovative things with technology in their classrooms. For $24 you could create one for every month this year.
• If you’re a geocacher, this would make a fantastic travel bug!

That’s about it off the top of my head. So let me toss the ball to you. What might you create custom dog tags for?

At large conferences like NECC, with hundreds of people using the #NECC09 hashtag in their tweets, some people speculated whether it would become a trending topic or not. The answer was a resounding No.

It has always been a mystery to me as to just how many posts were required to make it into the trending topics list, and recently Buzzgain published their own research of the subject. The results?

Between 12 (midnight) to 6 am PDT: approximately 1200 tweets and about 500 users to be trending

Between 6 am to 12 Noon PDT: 1700 tweets and about 733 users

Between 12 noon to 6 pm: 1500 tweets and about 812 users (this may be because there are more people during this time but they tweet a lot less)

Between 6 pm to 12 midnight: 1900 tweets and about 922 users

So at best, during the overnight hours when traffic is lowest, it would take about 1200 tweets using a given hashtag to become at trending topic. Not only that, considering that according to their research, a trending topic has an average shelf life of about 11 minutes, there would need to be more than 100 tweets per minute for it to attain the ‘weight’ needed.

While there may be 139,665 people in the education directory of Twellow, you have to go several hundred deep just to wade past all the social media junkies obsessed with gaining the most followers.

I don’t know how many ‘real’ educators there are on Twitter, but I do know that there just aren’t enough to make a dent in the Twitterverse on a mass scale. In fact, it’s futile to even put any efforts in trying to effect real change there. It’s wonderful for making connections and sharing ideas, but it’s just not the right place to effect any significant change. No matter how loud the choir sings, it’s just not going to be heard above the clamor about Harry Potter and Michael Jackson (no connection between the two implied).

As popular as Twitter is, as popular as Facebook is, they are both still used by only a fraction of educators, and within that fraction, they only reach the niche audience you have. I’m grateful to have a fairly large audience on Twitter, but even so that’s still less than 5,000 people, and of those I know a large number likely registered and never logged in again.

It isn’t that there isn’t value information being communicated via Twitter. It’s just a shame that it’s only causing small ripples and then disappearing into the ether.

The reality is, ‘old school’ communications are still the most effective for dealing with the masses. Email and newsletters still carry quite a bit of weight, and from my own experience tend to reach much farther than a tweet or blog post.

With that in mind I’m curious to hear your ideas for getting the ‘big ideas’ and key conversations out to the masses. Should we be aggregating them together and creating a “Tales from the Eduverse” mailing list? Sending out a newsletter in print or via email?

The critical question being, if the ‘right’ ideas are being shared in the blogosphere/TwitterPlurkoverse, how do we communicate them out to the rest of the education community?