Some Things Can't Be Tested

Today I read about a girl with a passion to change the world, one day at a time. Her name is Laura and she has decided to dedicate the first 25 days of December to helping people. Each day she will be doing something different in helping people in her community and around the world, and she is posting her daily adventures on her blog.

In the about section of her blog, she writes about her grandfather who passed away two years ago and his influence on her as a person. She was inspired by the way her grandfather lived his life and support her in hers.

Now, it is great that a girl wants to change the world, but what stands out to me with this mission is that Laura is only 10 years old! Here is a child who has taken on a project to make a difference, and in turn, has influenced the lives of thousands of people around the world.

By blogging about her actions, she has made her mission public, a has made a challenge of sorts for everyone who reads it. Not even halfway through her mission as of today (12/11), there have been over 10,000 hits on her blog and it has been viewed all over the world! Now, instead of a 10 year old girl raising a few hundred dollars for a charity in her small town, she has utilized the power of a network to have multiple matching funds offers and thousands of dollars raised!

This is not as much a story of a 10 year old blogger (although there is surely help from her parents, the blog posts and ideas, etc. are seemingly hers), but about what a 10 year old child can do in the world when given a voice and the encouragement to use it. The blog gave her a voice to share her vision...her goal...her mission. Five years ago, the technology wasn't even there to support her in that. Her parents and grandfather taught her that she was capable of making a difference. And now, after reading her blog, I will be sharing this story with as many folks as I can, because Laura has taught me that we can all make a difference.

Show me a test that can assess that....

New Research to Be Done

In my school district, there has been a lot of negativity toward spending money on technology. The school board has questioned whether having students using technology in the classroom is even worthwhile in and of itself, much less spending millions of dollars for them to do it. They view technology as a distraction and they want to see concrete evidence to support its use.

Today, through a blog by Jim Gates, I learned about a research study that will be conducted by the University of Indiana. They received a grant for $3.1 million to conduct this research and it very well could provide some of the first real concrete evidence of the importance of students using a variety of technologies available to them.

I, for one, will keep a close eye on this one. It isn't enough for some people to see the connections, excitement, and real world application that these technologies provide...they need to see 'how it effects the test scores'. Personally, I think that we are helping our students learn and we are better preparing them for the world ahead by teaching them the skills they will need, regardless of whether scores go up or not as a result. Maybe this study will help convince those who view it in a different way...

Open Source Applications

A recent online article from CNET dissecting various open source applications that rival those that we pay thousands of dollars for! I, for one, have used 2 of the 10 applications highlighted in the article (Audacity and Firefox) and they are good alternatives to paying for applications. I will surely try out the other recommended apps, though. Let me know if you have used any of them and what you think!

Thanks to Jeff for the link!

Giving Thanks

So...today is Thanksgiving, and the start of a busy season in all of our lives for the next few weeks. As tradition has been upheld, today started with a parade (which we just finished watching) and will continue with food and family and some football watching later in the day. Beyond the traditional activities, though, today is a day to give thanks for what we have.

Today, I would like to give thanks for what I have....my wife and two boys, my family and friends, and a profession unlike any other where we see the joy of our students come out in many different ways. I give thanks for my social and professional networks, allowing me to grow as an educator and a person. I also give thanks for the tools that we have available to allow for all of the connections to take place. We are in a world we take some of these technologies for granted (my boys will never know what life is like without a high speed internet connection) and it is important for us to remember that we indeed are lucky people.

So, my friends....Happy Thanksgiving to you....and be sure to give thanks for the wonderful things in your own life. Feel free to leave a comment here to share with everyone what you are thankful for.

Modeling Use

I was inspired by a couple of blogs that I read this week, just haven't had time to respond to them until tonight. It is important for us as educators to 'practice what we preach.' and this is true for educational technology as well.

If we are working with students with different technologies, then we should be modeling that in our own lives. This idea of modeling the use of technology has never been more evident than when I read Karl Fisch's post the other day about Dan Maas. In his post, Karl explains the Mr. Maas is the CIO of Littleton Public School in Littleton, CO and he has maintained his blog for about a year now. The blog is intended to be an open line of communication with the public. Here is the explanation from the blog:

The LPS Community Conversations Blog, which can be accessed on the home page of the district website, provides yet another way for LPS key decision makers to hear from students, parents, employees, and community members. Periodically, a new topic will be posted, and fellow bloggers are invited to share their thoughts and converse with one another on that topic.

Recently, Mr. Maas had a post about Maine's 1:1 laptop initiative showing that student writing is improving. After he published the post, there were over 20 comments in response. Interesting enough, most of those comments were from the ninth grade class at the Arapahoe High School (in Littleton) who have laptops in their classes and the impact that it has on their own classes. I am very impressed that these students, without an assignment, without prompting, responded to the post by their CIO. It is surely impressive the voice that the students were given, but
the students have clearly benefited not just from the technology they have been given, but from the teaching and modeling that has taken place in their school district starting at the top!

The other post that was encouraging was from Jeff Utecht. In his recent post he posted two projects done by students in his schools using Web 2.0 tools (one is using Voicethread...very cool!). It was encouraging to see students engaged in their projects, not just doing the projects. Jeff was obviously pleased with the results, as he should have been. Talk about enhancing an experience! It is evident that the students truly benefited from the technology they were given, not hindered by it. It was available, it was accessible, it was embedded in their classrooms!

We, as teachers, spend a lot of time with and for our students and sometimes the fruits of our efforts are not immediately evident. In the field of educational technology, it is fun to see positive results from our students and leaders.

Diigo

So..the world of social bookmarking is well in force, but I wanted to bring to your attention Diigo. According to their site, the name "Diigo" (pronounced dee'go) is an abbreviation for "Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff." Essentially, it allows to not only save your favorite sites and share them with others, but it allows you to comment, highlight and annotate sites, as well! In a school environment, this is a great resource to share approved sites with students and grade level teachers!

To get started, you can simply create an account (takes about 3 minutes) and install their toolbar (another minute) or mini-toolbar called a diigolet (no install required) and you are ready to roll! As you are navigating the web and find a site that you want to share, simply click on the 'Diigo' button or right click and choose the Diigo option and it brings up a window. There, you can name the link, tag it for subject areas, grade levels, etc. and add your own comments about the site. Where ever you are, as long as you have an internet connectioin, you can get to your links!

Also, in Diigo, you can add a network of friends to share sites or create and share sites as a member of a group. In this case, you can have multiple Diigo users grouped together and their resources can be easily shared with each other. Let's not reinvent the wheel..it's fun and easy to share with each other!

There are other social bookmarking sites out there, but so far, this one is my favorite...go see for yourself!

Struggling

Wow...where does the time go...I have all of these ideas in my head, but no time to get them down. It has been a week or two since my last post. I have been struggling with the 'time' factor associated with our jobs. Technology today is changing daily. I am constantly reading blog posts by other tech leaders and there are new things to see and do everyday. I have hardly had time to read all of the feeds I've subscribed to, much less comment on those blogs. And isn't the purpose of blogging to connect and have a conversation, not just read and move on? (If I wanted that, I could go back to the good ol' days of Web 1.0 :)

The point here is being able to find a happy medium. When is information too much information? When does learning new things and trying those things out become a problem rather than a solution? A former colleague and mentor taught me that you can't do everything great all of the time....if you try to improve everything you do (math, social studies, writing, reading, etc.) all at once, then none of them will improve. Instead, she suggested, choose one topic to really focus on improving and do it well...next year, you can attack another one. With technology, though, next year could be too late!

Elementary classroom teachers are in the same boat with their subjects that embedding technology into the classroom seems like 'one more thing' for them to do. Part of my position is helping them integrate technology into their classrooms, I am struggling with the resistance. Time is an issue with them, too, so there is a fine line between pushing too hard and not pushing at all. How do we know where that line is? How do you handle your struggles...I know that I am not alone on this one!

It is early in the school year and it is the time to plant seeds with teachers and students. It is the time to make changes in a classroom so that the technology that is available is used to benefit the students in the classroom. It is the time to challenge our teachers and students to change what we do in education! It is surely a happy medium that I must find...I just hope I have the time to find it :)