It must be the timing of when third graders learn certain things. Recently, I read a post by Karl Fisch about a geography project his daughter is engaged in. My son, who is a third grader here in Texas, was just assigned a similar project where he needs to gather information from around the country and the world. Specifically, he chose to send the actual paper request to our good friend in Oregon (who also happens to be a middle school social studies teacher). Since we lived there for nine years, it was an obvious choice.

So, in my most transparent (and shameful?) manner, I am going to flatter Karl with imitation (and maybe some extra Map 2.0 stuff) and ask you to post some information about where you are from. There are two places to make your mark...

1. Ben's Geo-Journal Wiki Page (similar to Karl's) to post information about your area of the world.
2. Ben's Geo-Journal Google Map where you can post a place mark from where you are.

Thank you all for doing this. My son will appreciate it and will send a Thank You email to anyone who posts information and their email address.

Tags: maklary, edtech

In what was a nice run-up to NECC next week, last Friday, June 20, I had the opportunity to participate in Classroom 2.0 Live in Houston, Texas. Steve Hargadon and Stephanie Sandifer co-hosted the event and there were many eager-to-learn participants that enjoyed discussing the many web 2.0 tools that can help classroom teachers.

This workshop was a great opportunity for me personally to meet, face to face, many of the folks I converse with online. One of the ideas that came from it that I'd like to see happen in the future is for Houston-area ed tech (and non-ed tech) folks to gather face-to-face periodically to extend the conversations about all things tech and more Texas and Houston specific topics. This idea was originally put out there by Chris Duke and I hope it will take fruition soon.

Steve shared one site of note that I thought was interesting. It is Weebly, a really cool and easy way to create websites by dragging and dropping embeddable components. My eight year old took an immediate liking to it and started dropping all sorts of media to create his first page. I think this tool could be a great way to introduce younger children to creating content that is dynamic and fun.

See many of you at NECC next week! I am SO looking forward to the conversations and the networking and ways to better implement technology for my teachers and students.

Eat more ribs! ;-)

I just received an email from TCEA yesterday announcing that both my workshop offerings for the 2009 conference were accepted. Yea!

1. Google Earth - Ideas for the Classroom (3 hr.)
2. GarageBand in the Classroom (3 hr.)

Note to self: Next time, come up with more interesting titles!

Now, I have some work to do.

Viral Professional Development is emerging in education as a viable method of increasing teacher engagement and learning. Using tools such as Twitter, rss readers, blogs, educational networks, and wikis, educators are collaborating on a grassroots level. This year at NECC, a panel discussion of educators on July 2nd at 1:30 pm CDT will be discussing and live Ustreaming a session to discuss viral professional development.

How did this panel discussion originate?

On Monday, September 17, 2007, Google launched the Google Presentation web application to their suite of services. News of this new service spread quickly through the blogosphere and Twitter and soon more than fifty different people made over 500 edits in a twenty-four hour period to one Google presentation. Since introduced, this presentation has been used by hundreds of people to begin conversations centered on free online tools used to weave a web of connections between people around the world.

As a result of this transformational experience, educators begin discussing the importance of sharing the changing nature of professional development and documentation of best practices in VIRAL professional development. The proposal was written in Google Docs and since acceptance, an expanded group of educators around the world has used a wiki, elluminate, and a variety of tools to bring a collaborative, immersive viral PD experience to NECC and to people around the world.

Presenters

• Vicki Davis, moderator
• Darren Draper
• Kelly Dumont
• Kristen Hokanson
• Robin Ellis
• Ryan Bretag
• Beth Ritter-Guth
• Carolyn Foote

Backchannel Presenters/ Moderators

• John Maklary
• Stephanie Sandifer

How can you participate?

At 1:30pm CDT on July 2, we will be participating in a NECC panel discussion that centers on the power of the network. During our presentation we hope to demonstrate to all those attending our session in person (and virtually), just how powerful global collaboration can be. Hence, we are asking for your participation in our presentation as well.

1) Join our Ustream.

We will be streaming the presentation live on the Open PD Ustream channel at 1:30 pm CDT on July 2nd. You may watch here and participate in the conversation (and even ask the panelists questions).

2) Leave a comment on our VoiceThread.

One way that you can participate now is by adding your voice to the VoiceThread below. Please take a few minutes and add your thoughts about the different tools depicted through images in the thread. We would truly like as many voices possible, offering a wide range of thought on the usefulness of the common tools we all use in our collaborations.

• How do you use these tools? How are they important to your professional development? Please add your voice.

3) Join the conversation on the NECC Educational networking site.

We've created a discussion thread to converse on this panel discussion at the NECC educational networking site.

4) Follow our most recent announcements.

All announcements and events pertaining to this session will be announced at the Walls Came Down wiki.

Tags: necc08, neccprep, global, ustream, twitter, googledocs

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Will Richardson posted an entry entitled Dispatches from the Front Lines #346 recently telling a story of a student serving in-school suspension who texted a teacher for homework help. Maybe it's the mood I'm in but it really struck a chord with me.

OK, I have mixed feelings about this. First, I question the student's motive for texting. Was he really looking for help or was he trying to assert his independence (defiance) by telling the teacher that he was in in-school suspension? Granted I don't know the entire context and what the student did or didn't know about the policy of the suspension.

Let's assume his intentions were noble for the sake of argument. Kudos for trying to get the information he needed. BUT, should we applaud a student for this "creativity" in contacting his teacher even though it runs smack into the face of school rules and policies? Should the benefit of the doubt for students be revoked when they are suspended?

If the student was texting the teacher, who's to say that he wasn't texting other people? Obviously the person watching the students didn't see what was going on.

Now, I'm not going to debate the issue of in-school suspension because I have mixed thoughts on that as well. However, rules are rules (however harsh and un-student centered woo-woo that sounds) and where do we draw the line between academic initiative/problem solving and blatant breaking of the rules?

Why couldn't the student extend his/her problem solving skills by realizing that cell phones were banned and simply write down questions on a piece of paper and then handle it at a later, more appropriate time.

Yes, we should foster creative thinking and problem solving in our students. No, we shouldn't necessarily allow them to break school rules to achieve this. Society places parameters on human beings and we need to learn to think and work within the parameters placed upon us. THAT is a skill that many millennials don't seem to grasp today. There's a right place and a right time and we, as educators, have a responsibility to teach students to do all these wonderful things..but within the context of acceptable behavior. The term consequences seems to be remiss throughout this discussion. Shouldn't that count? The student WAS suspended and it seems, from previous comments to Will's post, that we should just ignore the rules because the student showed some level of genius by circumventing the rules themselves.

I'm all for promoting and acknowledging the digital native and the ways they learn and acquire information. We do it here at my school in many transparent ways. However, I think it is important to honor and respect the rules laid forth. If one doesn't like the rules, then go about to change them in an appropriate manner, not by celebrating the sneakiness of a student.

This has been a week from HECK for me professionally. First off, I wear many hats at my job. My responsibilities consist of:

• network administrator
• desktop support
• SIS/Gradebook administrator
• webmaster
  
• technology teacher for middle school
• administrative technology planning
• budgeting and purchasing
• training (and re-training...and re-training)
  
• instructional technology
• professional development
• manual labor when needed (I am one of a small handful of males on staff..go figure)
• fixing anything that plugs into a wall socket

Now, I LOVE my job. I have lots of autonomy in our small pond (700 student parochial school). I receive good support from our administrators and I have a say in the direction of instructional technology in our school. But with the breadth of my job, sometimes there isn't a lot of depth. I'm a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none kind of guy. That said, when something goes wrong technically, it is a major ordeal because it takes me away from the rest of my duties.

Enter the well-intentioned person who knows enough about technology to get them into trouble, but not enough to get them out of trouble (or even realize they are IN trouble). On Monday, I was sitting down to enjoy my lunch of beef macaroni, green beans and canned mixed fruit (Mmmmm!) when our assistant principal came to me and said that the network was down. Oy I said, slurped down the remainder of my lunch and headed to the server room (I always go there first). Yep, the network was being flaky... sporadic Internet access and network file services, half our network printers wouldn't work. After I poked around, I decided it wasn't a server issue but

probably an issue with one of our switches. Our MDF looks a lot like this:

The really Ha-Ha but not in a funny way moment came when I realized that the patch panels were not marked correctly (installed prior to me coming on board). Trying to identify the issue ended up taking two days. I did discover which port was causing the problem, but not where that port led to in the school! I did unplug the cable from the patch panel (and the network magically came back to life) and decided to wait until someone called me to say their computer didn't work. Well, the next day that happened. I went to the classroom and yes, there was no connection. Bingo, found the right room. I then discovered that the teacher, because one of her student computers wasn't working, unplugged the cable from the back of one of the computers (the other end plugged into a small hub) and plugged it into an empty port on said hub thereby creating a loop on the hub. Now, as said before, the depth of my knowledge is not great in any one area so I can't explain the technical reason but this one little loop crashed our entire network. I asked the teacher if anyone had been messing with the wires and she stated that she had because one of the computers wasn't working. Oy again! She thought that randomly unplugging network cables would magically fix the issue. Double Oy! Needless to say, I reminded her that I get paid to fix problems and if she experienced issues, she should call me and I would happily come down and fix it.

Lessons for me...

1. Never assume certain levels of knowledge of your users
2. Always make sure you overstate directions and what not to do, even if it may sound patronizing
3. Make sure all your patch panels are properly marked so you can identify problems quickly
4. Take a deep breath!

OK, rant done.

This post was inspired by a perfect storm of three influential education advocates.

1. Last week, David Jakes wrote a blog post entitled Reality Bytes about bridging the heady ideas of education reform with what is, could and should be the practicing reality in the classroom. He took a big risk of possibly alienating some in the blogosphere by illustrating the disconnect between the "enlightened" and with those that "aren't." I commented on that post stating that there seems to be many out there who are vocal about the "conversation" being the most important part of seeking the holy grail of student achievement. I sense there is much frustration from those folks regarding others that don't "get it." I just laugh/cringe when I read such things. The most ironic thing is that many of these conversation disciples are not currently teaching students. Talk about a disconnect! How can one state authoritatively what teachers should or shouldn't be doing if they aren't in the classroom themselves? This is especially true when we are talking about new, innovative, and, is some cases, radical ways of learning.

2. Gary Stager comment at EduCon this past weekend.. "Get off your box and show us something in reality." Whoa! Talk about the 800 pound gorilla in the room. I think Gary contends that a lot of what we're talking about is window dressing and that we don't bridge the gap between what works in practice and what might work in theory. I love it when Gary lobs a grenade into a room full of educators. He challenges the conventional (or unconventional in this case) wisdom and he. makes. me. think. Whether you or I think he's right, he brings up compelling issues to discuss. I'd like more to embrace these bombs as opportunities to re-think our positions and how we might better communicate our message. We have to stop pointing out that some get it and some don't. If you were to divide your class along such lines, you would alienate half your students! Folks, it's time to stop getting your shorts in a wad and to try to understand who the audience should be.. the teachers that you are trying to enlighten. Maybe it's not their unwillingness to learn, but rather the message getting lost in sanctimonious rhetoric.

3. Clarence Fisher's response to Gary's comment. I certainly can see why Clarence was personally taken aback by Gary's comments. Sometimes Gary seems to take a shotgun approach to articulating his point. Clarence obviously uses technology to artfully connect students to others and, more importantly, foster academic expression to create a more rich learning environment. Clarence is a diamond in the rough who can talk the talk and walk the walk. Personally, I have much to learn with how I facilitate knowledge to my students.

That said, Gary's words should resonate LOUDLY to those who, unlike Clarence and some others, aren't directly working with kids on a day to day basis. While it can be worthwhile to jet off for the weekend to hob nob with the Who's Who of the Ed Tech world, I think we're getting bogged down with the buzz word "conversation" and not fully focusing on good teaching practice and learning. Furthermore, as I stated above, there is a big rift that needs to be bridged. We can NOT expect teachers to get it if we don't validate where they are coming from.

Don't get me wrong. I think promoting the conversation is a worthwhile and noble goal. But there seems to be a huge gap between what is conventional teaching wisdom (status quo?) and with new, innovative and sometimes controversial practices. Shouldn't we scaffold the process to help those "unenlightened" teachers to begin understanding this "new way?"

I applaud those teachers who practice what they preach in their own teaching. It adds credibility to the message and I tend to listen more closely. This is not to say that I don't listen to the non-classroom instructional technology folks. Their job is a critical piece to the puzzle and I value what each of them say. However, it is even more critical to show professional empathy with what classroom teachers are dealing with each and every day. The classroom is not a sterile laboratory where one can neatly control variables. It's dynamic from minute to minute and all the theory without practice won't make it work.

For me, I'm trying to get away from the conversations that are so intoxicating and hypnotic and get back to my teachers and meeting them where they are....much the same for my students.

Flame away!

Photo Credits:
Public Domain: Atomic Cloud Over Nagasaki, 1945 (NARA) -

Scott Floyd recently sparked my attention with a post about his school using Google Apps. He mentions a glitch he encountered with using older versions of Internet Explorer and how to successfully deal with it.

Our school has signed up for GAFYD but we haven't taken the plunge school-wide....yet. On a personal/professional level, I use a single Google account for most of my online activities:

• Gmail
• Calendar
• Docs
• Reader
• Picasa Web
• Notebook (with a few more social features, this could be a viable alternative to del.icio.us)
  
• Blogger
• and even Groups (for all the archdiocese tech folks to communicate and to facilitate the rewriting of our technology plan)

All of these applications fit nicely with each other and make sense for me as it provides a seamless and easy way to keep me organized, informed, and most importantly, connected.

I'm inching closer and closer to migrating our school staff to a Google solution. We are relatively small with about 80 staff and 700 students (PK-8) so I believe it would be manageable. I also like the way we would be able to provide accounts for students and have administrative access to those accounts.

However, while the tools Google Apps provides are the core of the suite, there are some that are notably missing:

• Reader
• Picasa Web
• Notebook
• Blogger

To use Google Apps tools AND the tools listed above, you would also need a regular Google account in addition to t Google Apps account. This can prove to be cumbersome as the two accounts can start stepping on each other producing some weird results. I suppose using Firefox for one account and then IE for the other might do the trick. But c'mon Google, please add more of your excellent tools into the GAFYD fold.

I keep dreaming of the power of having an "enterprise" Google solution for our school. I'm interested in hearing from those who are using it, both the good and the bad.

Would you consider dumping your current email, calendar, and document sharing methods and jump on the Google Apps bandwagon?

Nancy McKeand's post, via Mark Wagner's shared Google Reader items, shares Quintura for Kids, a safe and interactive search engine for kids. The really cool feature is that as you move your mouse over a tag cloud, the cloud dynamically changes to present related tags or search terms. At first glance, it seems intuitive as you drill down from general topics to the more targeted and specific. Check it out.