Taste of Tech

I always enjoy reading JDub’s Technospud Blog. She does a lot of reflecting about technology and education, and frequently asks some great questions and provokes some wonderful discussions. Earlier this week, she commented on teachers’ reluctance to use technology. She’s frustrated by the perspective that her teachers have of technology as an add-on. It’s one more thing they have to do. They don’t voluntarily use technology in their teaching, or in their professional work, even though it can be a rewarding experience for both students and teachers.

Those sentiments sound familiar. It’s been more than a decade now since we put computers in our elementary classrooms. We’ve had Internet access in every classroom in the state of Ohio since 1996. Teachers in my district have had email accounts since 1997. Yet they’ve been very slow to embrace technology.

We used to say that it would take a generation. A lot of these older teachers are set in their ways. They’re not going to change now. We just have to wait for them to retire, and when we get some new blood in here, things are really going to take off. But all those people have retired. I’m in my 15th year in education. Half of the teachers are younger than me. We should have the critical mass by now.

I first used a computer in the fall of 1981. I was in fifth grade. No one had any idea what to do with them, but our school had a few Apple IIs. So we played around with programming in BASIC. But there wasn’t anyone to teach us because no one knew anything about programming. I remember playing lots of math games. I think they had some other “educational” software, too, but mostly it was math. After a few trips to the computer lab, we stopped going.

Twenty-six years later, our students are still going to the computer lab to play math games. Sure, the software’s a little better. But the teachers aren’t any more involved than mine were. We use Successmaker in our K-3 schools for reading and math instruction. The software provides instruction, helps the kids practice basic skills, and provides an assessment tool. We’ve had it for years, and stopped upgrading it several years ago. Two years ago, we took a comprehensive look at instructional software with the hope of replacing it. We wanted something that would assess the students, program instruction for them to meet academic standards, continually assess their progress, and provide enrichment and remediation as necessary. We also wanted the product to be engaging, and to allow access both at school and at home. And it needed to be less expensive than hiring teachers to do the same thing. We found that the product didn’t exist. I’m sure I’ll have lots of vendors contacting me now, so I’ll add this: we ended up spending the money on other things, so we’re not in the market anymore.

For the labs, we ultimately decided that our current Successmaker license could be used as needed by the classes in the labs, but that the labs should really be used by the teachers with their classes to do other types of projects. They all have the Office suite and Internet access. They have graphics programs and audio programs and hypermedia tools and keyboarding software. This is a great environment for doing interdisciplinary projects, and helping to address 21st century skills. Plus, the students would gain better technology skills at the same time. But the adoption rate has been glacially slow. The computer lab has been a place where we let the software teach the kids. Anything else we do with it is adding more work.

A big part of the problem is that I haven’t pushed it. Unlike Jennifer, I am the technology coordinator. I should be doing professional development, and working with teachers on projects, and fulfilling the role of the supporter/helper/facilitator. But with all of the hardware/network/security/email/website issues forcing their way onto the priority list, those things rarely get done.  I also know that the teachers have been in many situations where the technology hasn’t worked, and that tends to diminish the credibility of those championing for its adoption and use. So I’m focusing on the basic needs — get the technology to work reliably. Then, we can move on to the more productive applications.

I was listening to the September 11 edition of Women of Web 2.0 this morning when a comment by Vicki Davis stopped me in my tracks. She was talking about how difficult it is to teach students to be critical of information they find on the web. If it’s in Google, it must be true. While making her point, she sited this example:

When email first came out, some of us clicked “reply all” and sent messages that we didn’t want to send to all kinds of people. That was ten years ago. But now, hitting reply all and sending an ugly message — you can be fired for that. At the beginning, everybody said “ha, ha, ha” you didn’t know. Well now, it’s standard digital citizenship knowledge that you should know the difference between “reply all” and “reply.” I think that if it becomes standard generally acceptable knowledge that it should be taught, just like how to cross the street and how to drive.

I have to admit, I try not to send emails to large groups of people because this problem is so widespread in my district. As often as not, I’ll send an email to myself and blind copy everyone in, so they can’t reply to all. In the interest of public service, I’ll provide a little remediation:

When you REPLY to an email message, it sends a message back to the person who sent the original. If I send an email out to the high school staff, and you receive it, you can REPLY. The message you send will go back to me.

REPLY ALL is used when it is necessary to respond to everyone who received the original message. In the example I just sited, if you use REPLY ALL, your message will go to the entire high school staff.

When replying, ask youself this question: is it necessary that EVERYONE on the original list knows what I have to say? If it’s not, just reply to the sender.

While I’m at it, I might as well talk about my other email pet peeve. Lately, this has been an increasing problem in my school district. When you compose an email, you’re asked to enter several things. First, you have to enter the addresses of the people you want to send the message to. Most people don’t have a problem with that. You can then enter CC: recipients. Those are the people to whom you are providing a courtesy copy of the message. Some people are confused by CC:, but most people seem to understand that when you’re writing a message that refers to someone, but is not specifically to that person, you should CC: them.

The third thing you need to enter is a subject for the message. This is where, for some reason, a lot of people have been lazy confused lately. Leaving the subject blank tells the recipient that you’re too busy to let them know what your message is about. They’ll just have to open it and see. It’s the digital equivalent of leaving a voicemail message saying “please call me as soon as possible” without leaving any information about what it is that you want. It’s unnecessarily inconsiderate. To make matters worse, most email programs warn you when you’re about to send a message without a subject. It’ll say “hey, you know you’re sending this message without a subject? That’s really not nice.” And you have to say “I know it’s not nice, but I don’t care. Send it anyway.” How rude.

For those still confused, I’ll summarize: don’t send me email without subjects, and don’t reply to all unless everybody has to know what you have to say.

The main criticism of Wikipedia is that anyone can edit it. I don’t know the first thing about the Napoleonic wars. But I can go to the Wikipedia article and edit the entry and act like I was there. I can change anything I want. When I save it, it looks just like the rest of the information on Wikipedia. But it’s not accurate.

A few weeks ago, WikiScanner was all the rage.  When you edit Wikipedia anonymously, it records your IP address. That IP address is assigned to the organization from whom you get your Internet access. So people can do reverse lookups on the ip addresses of Wikipedia authors, and find out who their Internet providers are. Who cares, you may ask. Well, as it turns out, sometimes you can get a lot of information about an editor by knowing how they’re connecting to the Internet. What if your Internet provider is, say, Proctor & Gamble? Chances are, you work there. What if it’s the U.S. Senate? Same thing. And what if people in these organizations are editing the wikipedia entries about their respective products, people, or issues? We then have biased data that’s not easily attributed with its source.

WikiScanner allows you to search for an organization. It then looks to see which IP addresses are assigned to that organization. Then, it checks to see which pages in Wikipedia have been edited by those IP addresses. Pretty cool.

Another technology that’s helping to assert the quality of Wikipedia articles is the Wikipedia Trust Coloring project from the UCSC Wiki Lab.  While this is only currently available as a demo, the idea is pretty neat. The text in Wikipedia articles is color-coded based on its stability. So text that doesn’t change much is the normal black color. Selections that change frequently, or are edited by people who haven’t contributed much to Wikipedia, are color-coded orange. The darker the orange, the more suspicious the information.

Last week, Alvin wrote about Scholarpedia.  This tool overcomes the credibility problem by only publishing items that are peer-reviewed by scholars knowlegeable in the subject. Because of the significant requirements to be approved to edit an article, there’s not nearly as much information in Scholarpedia as there is in Wikipedia. But you can bet it’s a lot more accurate.

To whom it may concern:

I would like to add my endorsement for Jeff Lebow as Technology & Learning Leader of the Year. Through his Worldbridges communities, he has made it possible for countless education professionals from all over the world to interact with one another, share resources, and build personal learning communities.

My involvement with Worldbridges began in 2005 while searching for education-related podcasts. Jeff was a pioneer in this area, producing the weekly Ed Tech Talk podcast. What I didn’t realize at the time was that this was the tip of a much larger iceburg.

Ed Tech Talk isn’t just a podcast. It’s an audio archive of a real-time conversation held by participants from all over the world. Listeners tune in live to the webcasts of these conversations, and can interact with the hosts and show participants in a text chat. This makes the show a uniquely interactive experience.

I soon found that Jeff had built an entire community of communities in Worldbridges. While Ed Tech Talk is one aspect of this diverse group, there are also groups devoted to professional development in the CMS Academy and Webcast Academy. The EducationBridges community is attempting to help teachers better incorporate technology in their teaching by providing support and funding for innovative projects. Puscanweb and TibetanBridges encourage free speech in Korea and Tibet. The Webheads in Action group represents an energetic and devoted collection of teachers from throughout the world who are embracing the need to improve our students’ knowlege of world cultures and global connections.

Within the Ed Tech Talk community, a number of shows have developed, following different formats. There are shows available for teachers at any grade level, and there are resources that will meet the needs of any teacher’s technological level. In addition, the community is not afraid to debate many of the controversial issues in educational technology.

As I gained a better understanding of Jeff’s work, I also became more involved. I have participated in several of his “webcastathon” marathons, where teachers are encouraged to share ideas, debate issues, and solve problems over the course of a 36-hour webcast. I have listened live to most of the nine weekly shows on the Ed Tech Talk network. I have also participated regularly in the Ed Tech Weekly roundup of news and resources. Thoughout this process, I’ve met some outstanding educators, learned about some wonderful resources, and changed my view of how professional development should be conducted. Jeff is responsible for all of these changes.

As a humble, unassuming person, Jeff downplays his importance in all this. The reality is that Worldbridges is his vision. He developed the idea, got it off the ground, and still pays the bills to keep it free. He contributes countless hours each week to make sure everything is running smoothly. He encourages people to get involved, and pushes them to provide more, better content for the community. He is a strong believer in collaboration, and is willing to help just about anyone with a good idea and a little ambition.

I know of no other person working in educational technology who is more deserving of this award.

John C. Schinker, M.Ed
Technology Coordinator
Brecksville-Broadview Hts (OH) City Schools
http://www.tasteoftech.net

Update: Lots of people agree, including Dave Cormier, Jennifer Maddrell, Alex Ragone, Sharon Peters, Dave Cormier, Lee Baber, Jeff Flynn, and probably many others.

The Worldbridges community is planning a an Equinox Webcastathon this weekend (September 21-23) to give webcast academy participants the opportunity to hone their skills. I’ll answer your questions now.

What is “the Worldbridges community?”
Worldbridges is a collection of communities that use new media tools to help people connect, learn, and collaborate. Let’s say you have a group of people who are all interested in the same subject, but they’re spread all over the world. They can come together in a Worldbridges community to share ideas and resources and interact with one another.

This is mostly done through a “webcast.” A webcast is an audio conversation that is streamed live over the Internet. While this is taking place, listeners can participate in a text chat on the Worldbridges site. The hosts of the webcast are also in the chat room, so you can interact with them while they’re talking. Additionally, they sometimes use screen sharing tools to do software demonstrations and other presentations. In many cases, listeners are encouraged to use Skype to call in to the show and provide their own perspectives. The audio is typically released in podcast form afterwards, so others can listen to it later. There are also online forums on the web site to continue the conversation.

Worldbridges encompasses a number of different communities that all use these types of technologies. I’m mostly involved in the EdTechTalk community, a group of people discussing educational technology. This active group produces nine weekly webcasts. But there are many Worldbridges groups as well.

What is a “webcastathon?”
Most webcasts are an hour long or so. There’s one nearly every day, but they’re on at different times and attract different audiences. A few times a year, the group gets together to present a continuous weekend-long webcast. This gives new webcasters the opportunity to hone their skills and try out new ideas. It also gives listeners the opportunity to see what this is all about without having to tune in at a specific time.

“Webcast Academy?” I’m still lost.
The Webcast Academy is the place to go to learn how to do all of this stuff. It’s taught by volunteers and it’s free. You can sign up, take the class, and become a webcaster. The problem is that you need some practical experience, and the webcastathon gives you the opportunity to get some of that experience. The shows are generally very informal. Mistakes are expected. Everyone’s learning here.

Why should I care?
What are the 21st Century Skills? Globalization. Innovation. Information. Collaboration. They’re all here. This is a very welcoming and helpful community. It doesn’t cost money to participate. What are you waiting for?