Edina Digital Age Learning

I've seen Howard Rheingold present online, and was looking forward to seeing him live. First we looked at Bing and the photos that they use on their opening page. There is a Wikipedia tab whenn you search in Bing, along w/ related searches on the left. You can see the tone of the related searches as you search through something like "global warming." If you search "Global Warming," you will see "myth" or hoax, as you go further, you can see how the tone shifts in thinking on the topic. They now have a beta Social Search in Bing as well. And "microsoft.com/maps/apps.aspx Microsoft has a site for teachers around critical thinking here . Finally, Howard started talking and began by sharing the resources for the session . We used the hashtag on Twitter #istect and people also added resources on the wiki page. This allowed for the creation of this .pdf at the end with resources created by the participants. The resouce mining included a Diigo Group c...

Tim Stack and Jared Covili from the Utah Education Network presented on how to use Google Wave as a tool and how to put it into the K-12 classroom. Education in our generation has been force fed, and then...the info is gone. They then showed Arne Duncan video on Digital nation discuss the future. 59% of students online talk aobut educational projects 50% of students are learning online They want choice . Today they have 150+ stations They want control How can Wave help some of these issues? They created 2 waves for this presentation, one for the presentation: And one for the comments and questions like a back channel. Replies that people make create new "Blips" on the Wave. By Control-Clicking on the second wave in your list, you can have 2 waves open at a time, then by closing the minimize button on the search panel, you can see both Waves side by side. Issues: when waves are public, the creator can be deleted, and people can change content. In fact about 3/4 of the way t...

I stopped by to listen in on Chris Craft ( @crafty184 ), Jonathan Becker( @jonbecker ) and Jeremy Brueck ( @brueckj23 ) discuss how to use Twitter more efficiently. It was interesting to see these three educators from different parts of the country collaborate and share their perspectives on how Twitter can be used effectively. I've been trying to grow things grass roots in Edina the last couple of years, as it has greatly benefited me professionally, and I was hoping to gain some insights from this ISTE Bring Your Own Laptop session. They actually began their session last week, by inviting those registered a Google Form Survey created by Brueck to gather background information on the participants skill level and to attend a Moodle course on Twitter providing introductory lessons and a quiz. Brueck also has this Wiki site with great resources for every level of Twitter user. They created three hashtags which formed a backchannel for the session : #isteask for people to ask que...

This session featured Ian Jukes and Lee Crocket in a "drive by conversation" on Teaching the Digital Generation. The presentation material can be found here if you sign up. He asked us to step back from our exsisting world and get a "swift kick in our assumptions." The powerful new technologies are affecting todays students. Most of the change that our parents and grandparents experienced were incremental. Anyone under the age of 25 the changes are more rapid and Understanding the Digital Generation book Highlights: As parents, citizens and educators need to understand that on the inside today's kids are completely different. Not because of them physically maturing faster, their clothing styles, or what they listen to. Due to digital bombardment, primarily outside of school, their brains are adapting to these new technologies. They have developed a cultural brain. Because of this bombard ment their brains are physically changing. They are neurologically differen...

In this session, Monika Hardy and students from Loveland , Colorado shared a new learning opportunity that they have been exploring called " Innovation Lab ". Students are designing courses and modules based on their passions, and creating peer learning opportunities for others. One student named Aimee shared how her teacher suggested setting up a Website for students to study for an AP test. Aimee asked if instead she could post it to Students 2.0 so that others around the world could benefit and prepare for the test. The teacher agreed, and A student named, Chase shared projects he has been working on, including student led tutorials, such as translating adult language into kid/student language by posting to Youtube and Voicethread . Here is an example of a video he created . Another student created her own audio files for students including her own "Rosetta Stone" for German, allowing students to learn the language from another student. Morgan will be studying...

This session after lunch gave people the opportunity to quickly share new tools. They had 2 minutes to share their idea or tool and then someone else stepped in. Many educators presented, but then the vendors showed up to start sharing their products. I struggle with this, as I would prefer to hear from educators rather than commercials. It seemed that the educators did a pretty good job of keeping to the 2 minute limit. The vendors...not so much! Surprise! Storybird -Social Tool to create a digital book (Flash Based) Goofram -Combines Google Search with Wolfram Alpha QR bar codes -A way to quickly generate them for use in the school or classroom. G-mail Labs -Lisa Thurmann shared how it can be used to enhance your G-mail experience. Mashpedia - A real-time Multi-media Social Encyclopedia. Paper.li -Create a newspaper with a Twitter stream or a hashtag. See more cool things here ! Shareaholic -Scott McLeod shared this as a way to easily share articles and resources. Readability -McLeod...

Background: This year we piloted 1:1 Laptop Learning in our district. Here is an overview of our experience, and our plans for the coming year: Our "Go Wireless" laptop pilot began during the 2008-09 school year when a team of 20 teachers were given laptops and formed a Community of Practice to study laptop learning, and how they would teach differently in a more student centered classroom where all of the students had laptop computers.. This past year, a team of teachers and 155 8th grade students had access to laptop computers to assist their learning. Through a grant, Dr. Cassie Scharber , a professor at the University of Minnesota conducted an independent evaluation of the pilot, utilizing surveys and focus groups. Dr. Scharber found: The concept of 1-to-1 was favorable (teachers, students, parents). Many technical/hardware/connectivity issues were encountered during the school year. These issues greatly hindered teaching and learning activities both at school and home...

Much of this session focused on policies for student blogging and people sharing their experiences. The #comments4kids Twitter hashtag and Comments4kids wiki were mentioned as great sites for publicizing student work and inviting comments from other students or educators around the world. Jeff Utecht shared these guidelines from the International School in Bangkok. Our Web 2.0 Code of Conduct (.pdf alert!) has some similar content, but perhaps too heavy handed in our wording? Note: #13 was actually added by our lawyers! One participant suggested that the forms permitting student blogging should be sent out a couple of weeks after the blogs have been set up, to be able to say, "Here's this cool thing your child did. May they have permission to continue?!" Others cautioned that it was important to get permission ahead of time, especially if the audience was public. This led Steven Anderson to wonder out loud over where permission should stop. Do we need parents to gr...

Today I traveled to Denver for the International Society for Technology in Education Conference . I grabbed an early flight so that I could attend the 4th Annual " Edubloggercon " an impromptu un-conference of "educational technology geeks" like me, who love learning and conversation. People were invited to submit ideas for conference topics, such as "Crap Detection and Student Research", "Cognitive Science and Education" and "Students Redefine School." I began the morning in conversation around "Crap Detection and Student Research." The term "Crap Detection" was coined by Howard Rheingold , who feels that it is a 21st Century Literacy. He has set up a wiki on critical thinking for study of this issue. Angela Maiers commented that students today struggle with first defining the purpose of their research. They often search only by the topic rather than breaking it down to figure out what they want to find out. Next...

Students in Claude Sigmund's 9th grade Government Class recently completed service learning projects. Students were asked to come up with a project that they were passionate about, and answer the following questions: 1) Why do you care about this issue? 2) What is the root cause/underlying problem? 3) Research your issue. Find 2 good articles to inform you on this topic. Write a 1 page description of how the information from these articles impact how you would interact with this issue. Use specific quotes, statistics from the articles and other pertinent pieces of information. 4) What are some resources/organization that can help you interact with this issue and/or accomplish your goal? Make sure you include contact information such as Names, addresses, phone numbers, web address. 5) What are potential projects you could do to affect and/or impact this issue (2-3 ideas) a. Name of project idea b. Basic outline/timeline of proposal (paragraph) c. Impact? How will your actions impact...