Our Constitution -- What Does It Mean?

There are times when I wonder if we, as a society, spend enough time pondering things that we take for granted. Like what? Well, I think we Americans talk a lot about our freedoms and the rights we have in this country, but I don't think we spend enough time looking at the Constitution itself, read its language, and think about what it means and why it's in there at all. Why did the Founders think those principles were important enough to be in that document.

The American Bar Association has a site to promote just this kind of analysis and reflection. Called Conversations On The Constitution, this is a site that provides plenty of concepts and principles to discuss. There are interactive pages that "test" your knowledge of this crucially important document.

I hope to be spending much more time there.

News To Wake Up To

If you've ever wondered about the caffeine content of some of your favorite brews (tea, coffee) or soft drinks, check out this site courtesy of the Mayo Clinic. It lists a set of common beverages that many consume, yet we/they may not know how much caffeine your downing.

Click here to find out!

Music From All Over The World

Wesleyan University offers this site where you can see and hear instruments from all over the world. Offered by region or by instrument type or by material they're made from, this is a terrific place to plunge into the wide, wide world of world music.

Click here to check out the Virtual Instrument Museum.

Traveling Nightmare -- Airport Division

I don't travel that much but I was intrigued by this site: The Budget Traveler's Guide to Sleeping in Airports.

As a concept, the whole idea seems like torture, surely banned by the Geneva Convention. But take a look at the ratings and where the airport near you -- or the one(s) you're going to be traveling to -- compare. Naturally there are tips for where you'll get the best chances for shut-eye.

Good luck!

Automobile Longevity

As the owner of a car with (real) miles now approaching the 150,000 mark, I hope I qualify as someone who understands the value of proactive car repair and maintenance.

For those who have yet to learn the advantages (and virtues) of taking care of those wheels so that don't fail you at the worst possible inconvenient hassle-inducing moment, take a moment and visit CarCare.org.

Who knows? Not only might it save you money, but a lot of time, anxiety, and money (to pay for the anger-management sessions).

Get A Load Of These Match(less) Wonders!

In case you've ever wondered what some people do with their spare time -- especially if you've wondered about people who have a lot of spare time -- check out the Matchstick Marvels Museum.

Amazing, amazing, amazing.

Remember, I Promised Variety!

The whole premise of this blog is finding things all over the map. I would certainly consider the following to be in the relatively off-the-wall category and of almost not improtance....but kinda fun!

We've all seen the ads or found the phonebook listings for companies who have phones numbers with words in lieu of just numbers. A oft-use example in our household -- as Earthlink subscribers -- is 800-EarthLink (which, of course, is actually 800-327-8454).

Not that I've thought about it all that often, but I've occasionally wondered if my own phone number spells anything.

Guess what! There's a site that will take numbers you type in and tell you what words can be made of it.

Give it a try. It's PhoneSpell.Org.

Rich Stores of Educational Resources

I came across two extensive groupings of Internet resources related to education. Housed at Kean University, they are:

Educational Links for Middle School People

Educational Links for New Teachers

I haven't had time to check out all the links here -- and there are many, many of them -- but these look like valuable resources. They are double-chedked a couple times every year so should be both there and reliable.

The many links on each page are organized by subject area and, though, the pages are long, they have anchor links and "back to the top" links that make navigation fairly efficient.

I know I'll be coming back to these pages often in the future.

A Less Renowned Presidential Assassination

I'm old enough to have the indelible stamp of the moment when I heard that President Kennedy had been shot. I realize that more than one of our past presidents have been killed while in office. I just finished reading the most fascinating book, Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer by James L. Swanson.
I've come across a website that covers the assassination of another of our presidents, William McKinley. I haven't explored this in depth yet but it looks like a well-done site and has, no doubt, a number of fascinating details about what happened. Click here.

Giving "Voice" To Our Literature

I just found out about a website dedicated to producing audio versions of all books in the public domain. Called LibriVox ("acoustical liberation of books in the public domain"), volunteers read chapters from works in the public domain. These audio files are then made available for downloading and can be accessed in a similar manner to a podcast.

What a wonderful communal effort on the part of people who both love literature and believe strongly in making these books available in more than one format.

Not Just Your Run-Of-The-Mill Fiddle

For those of us interested in music -- and perhaps in sounds and timbres in general -- here's a site which has a gallery of unusual instruments. It's the Gallery at Oddmusic.com.

Click on the link for the instrument that piques your curiosity and you'll typically see a picture or pictures of the instrument. Many of them also have sound files available to listen to, as well.

Check these out: LightHarp, Skatar, Uncello, Triolin, Cymbalom, Bazantar, Aerolian Wind Harp, and many more!

Historical Yo-Yos

I don't know about you, but I certainly went through a phase where I couldn't get enough time playing with a yo-yo. Not that I mean to imply that anyone, any age, couldn't while away their time quite usefully learning all the fancy yo-yo tricks and techniques.

Well, whether you want to look back through the prism of nostalgia or just check it out because you love your yo-yo, check out the Museum of Yo-Yo History.

The (Record-Making) Wrap on Gum

Chewing gum and I have a checkered past. I've had times when a wad of bubble gum or Juicy Fruit was something to relish. But there were also all those years as a music teacher and the iron-clad rule of "no gum." (How can you play the clarinet or even a string instrument with gum in your mouth?)

Why then am I directing you toward a site that celebrates an almost unimaginable level of gum use? A site dedicated to a gum wrapper chain clocked at 48,077 feet in length as of March, 2006? Why?

No good reason really. Just one of those feats that seems unbelievable.

The man who has accomplished this is Gary Duschl of Viriginia Beach, VA. The guy has earned your visit to his site. Click here.

The Vincent van Gogh Gallery

For those of you who are fans of van Gogh, he is an online gallery that purports to have all his works available for viewing via the web.

What a resource! Visit The Vincent van Gogh Gallery

An "Elemiddle" School?

I had never heard of the term "elemiddle". Period. Turns out it is a termed coined by those who advocate K-8 schools as the most effective model for educating those years. If you're intrigued by the notion at all, you might be interested in the article linked below:

American Association of School Administrators - Publications - The School Administrator - The Rise of the ‘Elemiddle’ School

Digital Photography Lessons

Check out this site (I think it's really a blog) for what looks like some very good tips on taking photos with a digital camera.

Need To Take A Snooze?

Maybe you really should get more rest. Turns out sleep is very important, even though it's not fully understood why humans, let along most other organisms, check out of consciousness and zone for hours every day. Enough of us learned in college, at least, that no one can go that long without a good snooze.

Check out a wealth of information at the National Sleep Foundation. This may be one case where what you read will put you to sleep....and that's a compliment!

Harold's Lausanne Log -- Day 3

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

No keynote address today. After breakfast it was off to a workshop..

Session 1

Direct from NECC: Debut of Inspiration’s Brand New Software – InspireData!

Presenter: Jennifer Wagner

This session was actually added at the last minute. Jennifer had attended NECC which was about a week after InspireData was released by Inspiration. She saw it at NECC and found it to have much potential and was excited about this approach to having kids work with databases.

As before, I think it will be better to link her presentation here and retype it all. There is, of course, information available directly from Inspiration, too, that shows what InspireData can do:

http://www.inspiration.com/productinfo/inspiredata/index.cfm?fuseaction=features

I came away from the workshop pretty enthused about what we might be able to do with InspireData. The only drawback was clear in the demo today: it’s still so new that much remains to learn about it and, as a brand new product, there are glitches, some of which we saw today (some freezing of the program, for example). InspireData is definitely worth a second and third look.

Since this is the last day of the conference, and the final group session takes place in just a bit, I finally sat down and took the time I needed to go online and complete the evaluations for the sessions I had attended and for the conference itself.

Everyone gathered back in the Elder Performing Arts Hall for the much-anticipated final get-together which included – yippee!—door prizes. The potential booty ranged from laptop cases to software licenses to a tablet PC (!). It was a nice concluding event – and, no, I didn’t win any of the door prizes. However, in these three days, I was definitely a winner in the sense that I was exposed to a range of new thinking and ideas that will give me plenty to chew on for some time to come.

As I look back to my days at the 2006 Lausanne Laptop Institute, I am extremely grateful for having had the opportunity to attend this event. As was the case last year, as much as I’ve enjoyed the other conventions I’ve attended both in Seattle and other parts of the country, my Laptop Institute experiences outpace them all as interesting, effective, and engrossing experiences (I must say that this year’s first PNAIS Tech “Share” Conference was also very, very good). I can’t believe it’s all flown by so fast! Everyone here has been incredibly friendly, approachable, energized, creative, and dedicated to their work with students. The weather was a drag with the triple digit daytime highs but, then, pretty much everything here is air-conditioned so it didn’t really put a kibosh on anything except long walks in the afternoon.

If I were to assign “tags” to this year’s Laptop Institute, the ones that come to mind first include tablets, blogs, wikis, podcasts, RSS, moodle, collaboration, “the world is flat,” and constructivist teaching and learning. Allowing for hype, there does seem traction to the notion that we’re coming to a realization of the power of sharing information and collaboration through online tools and resources. It’s a very exciting time to be in schools and, at the same time, in educational technology, where change and creativity seem everywhere. Remembering that you can do only so much “online,” I can’t forget to repeat that it was wonderful to think, listen, and learn in the midst of such a great group of people with such dedication and passion about their work in schools. Blogging or IM-ing or posting to a forum are all great ways to communicate these days but nothing yet can substitute for meeting with and talking to people face-to-face. Great conference!

Harold's Lausanne Log -- Day 2

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Keynote Address

1-to-1 Learning: Laptop Programs That Work

Speaker:

Pamela Livingston, The Peck School, Morristown, NJ

Tuesday began with the second keynote address of the conference. Much of her presentation derived from the book she just finished and is (or will soon be) published by ISTE.

Her main points were:

• laptop programs do exist out there that are successful
• laptops promote self-directed learning and support constructivist instruction
• laptops help students stay organized.

All these things can contribute mightily to learning, especially in 7^th grade and beyond, according to her research.

She went on to list a number of observations about 1-to-1 laptop programs that applied to teachers:

• increased planning, teaching, and communication
• access to a wealth of curricular resources
• increased communication with students, colleagues, and parents

Some observations for schools with 1-to-1 laptop programs:

• student attendance and enrollment can be improved
• student achievement can be improved
• home-to-school communication can be improved

Pamela seemed quite taken by the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) Project and showed a picture of the $100 laptop, had us use a pipe-cleaner to form an imaginary crank. We weren’t sure why, but we turned this “crank” for 30 seconds. Her point? In those 30 seconds of cranking, a person with the OLPC computer would have a number of minutes of computer use time since the OLPC Project computers have a built-in hand-crank generator. These portable computer can truly be used anywhere; lack of AC or battery power won’t be a hindrance. It gives a new spin on “anywhere, anytime” computing. The OLPC program apparently has the goal of distributing 150 million of these $100 laptops worldwide.

Here are the components Pamela listed of successful 1-to-1 laptop programs:

• planning
• steering body or committee
• multiple constituencies
• learning from what other schools/districts/states have done
• professional development
• logistics – networks, firewall, anti-virus measures, spam, spyware, etc.
• just-in-time tech support
• attention to teaching approaches that evolve to take advantage of the laptop in the classroom and with the student at home
• effective classroom management

(she suggested videos on this subject from the Irving School District in Texas)

Some successful programs she cited from her research (I don’t think she did much research in the western portion of the US):

• State of Maine
• State of Michigan
• Forney ISD (Texas)
• The Peck School (where Pamela works)
• St. Thomas Episcopal Parish School (Tampa, FL)
• Henrico County Public Schools (Richmond, VA)

Pamela also made special mention of an examination of adult learning espoused by Malcolm Knowles. The term he coined is “andragogy”. Background on Mr. Knowles and his theories about adult learning can be found at the following site:

http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-knowl.htm

Session 1

Tables, Tablets, and Technology – The Rocky Hill Model

Presenters:

Stephen Farley, Head of Upper School, The Rocky Hill School

Scott Young, Science Department Chair/Physics, The Rocky Hill School

Mr. Farley began by emphasizing what he feels schools should promote:

• a culture of thinking
• a culture of authentic participation
• a culture of reflection

The Rocky Hill Model, which extends from the design of the building to the way classrooms are run to the way administrators make decisions for the institution:

• transparency
• communication
• accountability

(some examples: the building is filled with light and rooms are separated by walls of glass which keeps that feeling of transparency and contant reminders of an environment of learning)

He also emphasized the importance his school attaches to being

• partners with our students
• willing to be patient, to fail, and to evolve
• welcoming to innovation, to invest in the “humanware”, and to celebrate faculty accomplishments

Scott took over and showed some examples, illustrated by pictures from the classroom, or the use of tablets and the Harkness table. Students and teacher all face each other at the table, an installed projector and screen (wirelessly accessed and available to all students), and the transparency, communication, and accountability are built into this format. The whole class is gathered face-to-face (no hiding in the last row), the layout strongly encourages discussion among all, and the ability to display student work for all to see reinforces the accountability.

He also displayed examples of student and teacher note-taking using the tablet and made the case that the teachers liked the ability to be able to hand-write comments/corrections on student papers and return to kids, and that kids liked the ability to take notes by hand. He did point out, though, that there are a number of kids who use their tablet in the “notebook” mode (clamshell opening style) rather than the flat tablet mode because many feel they can type faster (or at least far more legibly) than they can write.

There were a number of presentations at this year’s Institute that featured discussion about the use of tablets in the classroom. There was enough “buzz” about tablets this year that I’ve begun to wonder if we should take a harder look at what tablets might offer in our setting, as well.

Session 2

Paper to Electronic Delivery

Presenters:

Rachel Holsinger – US Science Teacher – Sayre School, Lexington Kentucky

Debbie Wheeler – US Science Teacher – Sayre School, Lexington Kentucky

Website for presentation materials:

http://sparta.sayreschool.org/faculty/rholsinger/

The presentation PowerPoint plus some of the documents used in the demo are available at that link.

Rather than retype everything, I will link the presentation here in the online version of my Lausanne Log.

What I will say is that these two gave one of the more effective presentations of the conference. Why? 1) the information they shared was valuable; 2) their delivery was positive, energetic, and responsive to the audience, and 3) their materials were attractively and effectively designed.

This session was an example of a session where the focus was clear and effective. I believe Rachel and Debbie attended last year’s Institute, took home some ideas and tried them. They found that they had to tweak things to make them work in their school. Their presentation, then, seemed very practical and quite a bit less theoretical than a fair number of sessions I’ve attended over the years. By showing their “problems” they encountered in fulfilling their goal to become as “paperless” as possible in the classroom, their solutions taught us methods that will work for us, too.

Besides, as I said, Rachel and Debbie were both tremendously effective as presenters. This was a winner!

Session 3

Moodle, The Free Open-Source CMS

Presenter:

Peter Richardson, Director of Technology Serives, Rutgers Prep School,

Peter pointed out that Moodle is a Content Management System (CMS) and that it is an open-source program supported by many worldwide. It came about through the work of people deeply interested in social constructivist pedagogy.

Mr. Richardson shared his PowerPoint with me so I have that for reference.. He put great emphasis on the ease of setting up Moodle, especially with the help of a download from a group (in Germany) called apachefriends.org (www.apachefriends.org). By downloading one of their files (I believe he said the package is called XAMPP), the php, MySQL, and other component requirements will get installed automatically. Sounds kind of too good to be true but I’m going to look into it more when I get back.

Unfortunately, since some sessions in different strands overlap in the schedule, I had to leave early from this Moodle presentation in order to get to…..

Session 4

Using Wink to Create Custom Tutorials

Presenter:

Melissa Wert – Harpeth Hall School mwert@harpethhall.org

We had gotten an e-mail just before the conference to download the current version of Wink, if possible, so we could go through the steps of creating a tutorial during this workshop. I was ready to go.

Melissa walked us through the steps of creating a tutorial for a simple set of operations in Paint. After thinking about the potential for something like Wink, one of the reasons I really wanted to attend this presentation was to see if there was any potential for Wink to be used to do some kind of assignments in Laptop Prep next year. Why not ask 7^th graders to create tutorials with Wink to demonstrate that they know how to run a ChkDsk, or update and run SpyBot, or set McAfee for scheduled updates and system scans? Some might even be good enough to keep in a library of tutorials for other students and/or adults.

Be all the above as it may, Melissa’s presentation showed that Wink is good at what it does although it is not quite “fall off a log” easy. It’s quite likely that the kids will have an easier time of using it than I guessing from this exposure to how Wink works. The potential is definitely there for curricular use in Prep class. There’s also the option of my creating tutorials for adult or student use quite apart from Laptop Prep, so I’m glad I attended Melissa’s session.

End of day two. It's been a pretty packed experience and very rewarding!

Harold's Lausanne Log -- Day 1

Monday, July 17, 2006

As the shuttle bus from the hotel made that last turn toward Lausanne Collegiate School in Memphis, I felt that sense of anticipation and familiarity as I recognized the place I had had such a rewarding experience a year ago. Yes, I had been at last year’s Lausanne Laptop Institute and that experience was very positive. I was sure, as I disembarked from the air-conditioned coach, that the 2006 session was going to be a great experience, too.

After a bit of granola, coffee, and fruit, I was off to the Elder Performing Arts Center for the opening keynote address of the conference.

Keynote Speech

Redefining Literacy in the 21^st Century

Speaker:

David Warlick, The Landmark Project

As most conferences do, this one opened with an address from an invited “expert” or “guru” and Lausanne was no different. David Warlick, of the Landmark Project and many other educational technology initiatives, was set to speak on the subject “Redefining Literacy in the 21^st Century”. But before he spoke, a few minutes were dedicated toward welcome to the 460 (!) attendees of this year’s Laptop Institute. Stewart Crais, Lausanne’s Director of Technology and Lorrie Jackson, the person most responsible for organizing this year’s Institute (she’s a tech integrationist at Lausanne, I believe) made sure we all felt welcome and ready to start a stimulating conference.

Not surprising in this day when Internet access is viewed by a large cross-section of people as a daily activity and routine, David’s talk began with a list of online resources up on the big screen These were designed to illustrate various points he was about to make in his address to us. They included:

About Wikis:

http://davidwarlick.com/wiki-warlick/index.php?title=Redefining_Literacy_for_the_21st_Century

Web links related to this specific presentation:

http://davidwarlick.com/wiki-warlick/index.php?title=Web_Links_Related_to_this_Presentation

David Warlick’s own Wiki:

http://davidwarlick.com/wiki-warlick/index.php?title=Main_Page

Presentation handouts:

http://handouts.davidwarlick.com

The homepage of Mr. Warlick’s Landmark Project:

http://www.landmark-project.com/index.php

David directly launched into an example he felt illustrated the importance of teaching our students the “new literacy”. He asked, “Does a social studies teacher need study guides anymore?” Instead of a study guide produced, printed, and distributed by the teacher, he invited that hypothetical teacher to consider creating a wiki page devoted to the particular curricular unit. Assign students to make their own contributions from their own research to the collected information that the wiki will form. David maintains that today’s literacy is marked by communication and collaboration. Why not use the power of the group to find the information and collaborate on a study guide rather than doing the traditional teacher-centric version yet one more time?

But what about making sure each student knows the body of knowledge needed for that curricular unit? Wouldn’t the social studies teacher be abandoning her/his responsibility to monitor each student’s learning by doing a wiki or allowing group work and collaboration?

David would argue, no. There is nothing in this model that means minimum requirements for each student are gone. It does mean the teacher would have to re-think the assignment, perhaps adjust the goal of the assignment and certainly the method for completing it. She/he would also have to re-design – or at least re-think – the way to assess student learning and what constitutes completing the assignment. David reminded us that even as wiki pages evolve, are edited and re-edited, the previous versions are archived. All page edits are identified with the author which means that all individual student contributions could be identified and assessed.

Even factoring in a little inborn skepticism on my part, I thought such a methodology would be well-worth trying. I certainly agree that all our online resources make collaboration very easy. Why not use those tools to build student knowledge, too?

After just a few minutes of speaking, David took us a little by surprise saying he was going to skip to his conclusion: Stop integrating technology in our schools.

Instead, we need to teach our students the primary importance of verifying information (in this day of information overload), as well as techniques and tools for sifting through the stuff they don’t need and find the material they do.

We must teach our students (and probably ourselves, too) how to uncover the origins of information we access and use.

On the subject of information and how much there is out there, David gave us a statistic to the effect (I may not have this absolutely correct): In 2003, the amount of new knowledge added that year amounted to 5 exabytes*…or 37,000 Library of Congresses-worth. That’s a heck of a lot of data!

I have been well aware that there is a near-unlimited about of data out there but hearing that rather dramatic statistic does underscore the need on all of our parts to know how to make sure the material we’re reading/hearing/seeing, is legitimate and trustworthy.

To illustrate this last point, David displayed a web page with background and biographical information about Martin Luther King. No author or sponsoring organization was listed but there were pictures and paragraphs of text. The page itself had a polished and professional look that certainly looked authentic.

However polished, David warned, without clear information about authorship and/or organization responsible for the page (or site), one can’t consider this a trustworthy site and it’s not possible to verify the content.

We have to verify.

And to illustrate why, David tried to find out who was the author or sponsor. By deleting the page name in the URL, he found the parent page, which was an introductory page about Martin Luther King with, of course, a link to the page we started with. The parent page had the same great professional look. Yet, there was still no indication of an author or sponsoring organization.

At the bottom, you could click on a link to contact the webmaster. David looked at the mailto: link, found a name and a domain. He didn’t recognize the web master’s name or the domain. He could have searched on the person’s name, but decided to start by seeing if there was a website with that domain name. He inserted the domain in a URL. To our collective surprise (and shock) we were looking at a white supremacist website! The sponsoring organization for this ostensibly authentic website about Martin Luther King was really a white supremacist organization! These specific pages have since been removed but this scenario certainly illustrates the importance all of us need to accept to verify online content.

The Literacy Tasks David laid out include:

• find the information
• decode it
• critically evaluate it
• organize the information into personal digital libraries

David showed a study of a group of online retailers (Rhapsody, Amazon, and Netflix) which showed there to be a so-called “long tail” in terms of availability of content. A link to the actual study is at: http://www.wired.com/wired/images.html?issue=12.10&topic=tail&img=2

The upshot is that there is a body of titles – music, books, movies – which amounts to common core of titles widely available. The titles, you might say, are the core group that you’d find at brick-and-mortar retailers. What has changed in recent years is the “long tail.” If you look at the right portion of the group, the “long tail” is the much flatter part of the graph that represents titles published in far few numbers than the core group. What has changed is availability. Before the advent of online bookstores, music download sites, and other online venues for buying content, you’d be looking at “out of print” notices. Now, however, there is far greater access to content that is way off the best-seller charts which gives us yet more access to information and points of view.

David gave the example of his own book. Once he finished writing and editing it, he used a self-publishing site on the web (http://www.lulu.com/) to get it “out there.” David claimed his book was available for purchase about two hours after he finished submitting it online. This is, obviously, much different than the way authors used to publish their books. Similar opportunities are available to composers, musicians, and film makers.

Not to mention our students: students can upload their movie to any number of sites (i.e. YouTube). Or their digital pictures to Flickr. Or they can put their short stories on a blog. Or they can podcast an audio diary to iTunes. The landscape for accessing and sharing information is changing!

It has never been easier for anyone to get their work distributed to a worldwide audience.

Another concept David put out there is that it should be one’s goal in her/his writing expresses ideas in a compelling fashion.

Unfortunately, due to lack of time, the final tenet of the new literacy that David had up there on the screen he had to skip. The word up there was “Ethics”. Even though he didn’t have the time to spell this out, it certainly makes sense to me that just as we must verify information, we must also bear in mind the importance of ethics with respect to the production and use of ideas and material. This is copyright and fair use, certainly, but I imagine David would have elaborated in more detail about the role of ethics as it plays out in the day of wide dissemination and sharing on information and ideas so often accomplished with a mere click of the mouse. I’m sorry he ran out of time.

As you want any keynote address to do, David Warlick’s talk gave me much to think about. I’ve bookmarked a number of his sites and will look for time to go back to them, re-read his thinking, and do a better job of digesting it all.

[By the way, David requested that, if we blog about this presentation, we include these three words in the blog text or tag:

redefine --- literacy --- warlick

Why? Our networked world makes it possible to share information in ways not possible before. By including those specific words a search/gathering tool he has set up will add that blog entry to all the others that contain those words, forming an ever-growing and ever-changing collection of thinking and observations. People can read and think about other people’s ideas and perspectives while sharing their own. Amazing!]

David’s contact info:

david@landmark-project.com

919-414-1845

*In case you’re interested – and I was because I had never heard the term before – an exabyte amounts to a billion gigabytes.

Now begins the conference and the scheduled sessions.

This year, the sessions are organized in various strands. There are strands for Integrationist, Teacher, Support, Administrator, plus some for exhibitors and so on. My first session was in the Integrationist strand.

Session 1

Tech Goal-Setting Strategies

Presenter:

Deidre Brown – Staff Development Coordinator – Randolph School – Huntsville, AL

Ms. Brown comes from the Randolph School in Huntsville and she is the Staff Development Coordinator there. Her focused on aspects of the professional development system at Randolph

To begin with, at Randolph each department has a Technology Integration Consultant (known as a TIC [sic]). They are the go-to people for members of their department. Randolph has a tech team as well. The way Deidre described the set-up of TICs, it must work pretty well. The TIC is a contracted position with a signed contract and stipend.

Randolph asks each faculty, staff, and administrator to come up with an annual Individual Learning Plan (ILP) in which specific technology goals are set by the individual. Each ILP is presented to the person’s respective TIC and to the department head, and perhaps the division director. At some point in the year, the TIC will check on the various goals the individuals have specified; Deidre puts all the people and their goals on a spreadsheet of her own. That way, come late winter or spring she can approach her colleagues, ask how the progress of attaining their tech goals are going, and offer help with any still unmet These tech goals are not part of the individual’s yearly evaluation and, if they miss making a goal, they can roll it over into the next year. The ultimate goal of the program is not to admonish failure but, rather, to encourage learning, professional growth, and success.

Deidre gave us samples of ILP forms – blank and filled out.

Another document she shared was a skill sheet which gathers skill lists, various programs, and assorted other tech information for reference. Why? People can’t decide on a tech skill goal if they don’t the skill they don’t yet have. This sheet offers a wide array of possible opportunities for new learning. Think of it as a way to “prime the pump” for setting tech goals.

At some point in the year, the each department head presents the group department goals at a department meeting.

Teachers at Randolph may apply for grants to present their own summer technology trainings. If their proposal is accepted, they receive a small stipend.

Session 2

A Guide to Web 2.0: The Changing Shape of Information

Presenter:

David Warlick (see background info above)

In some ways, an extension of his keynote this morning, David Warlick focused on the future and information, if not literacy per se. Information, he said, in the last ten years, has become:

• networked
• available in digital form
• overwhelming (which I took to refer to the flow and breadth of information coming at us every day)

Furthermore, he said, in the last two years:

• content is created more and more based on conversations (blogs, forums, e-mail, wikis, etc.)
• content depends on the behavior of readers and users
• content is increasingly connected with others through ideas

David recommended a downloadable book by Terry Freedman called Coming of Age. I’ll try to get around to downloading it and see what it has to say.

David recommended another book – The New Shape of Knowledge, by Dave Weinberger

David went into mashups which he defined as websites that gather information from a collection of other websites and makes something new of that info. The Wikipedia definition of mashup is at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashup_(web_application_hybrid)).

One example of news tracking David showed was Buzztracker (http://buzztracker.org/). Buzztracker monitors news and notes where the news is from or about. It compiles these feeds, tallies how many refer to what place, and then indicates this activity with dots on a world map. The larger the dot, the more news there is about that city or place. To quote its own introductory blurb:

Buzztracker is software that visualizes frequencies and relationships between locations in the Google world news directory.

Buzztracker tries to show you how interconnected the world is: big events in one area ripple to other areas across the globe. Connections between cities thousands of miles apart become apparent at a glance.

Buzztracker keeps an archive of each day’s activity and map. Going back in the archive is a way to watch the change in the news from day to day

David has created a mashup called Hitchhikr (http://www.hitchhikr.com/) which is focused educational technology events, conference, blogs, and other resources.

To quote his introductory remarks about his site:

In changing times, we need to raise our heads out of the water every once in a while, take a drink of kool-aid, network, learn, and energize. Yet, we can't always make it to the conferences we need to attend to mix with the people we need to see -- face-to-face. This is why Hitchhikr was invented, to provide you with a virtual space where, thanks to blogs, podcasts, and RSS, we can connect, share, respond, and grow knowledge out beyond the place and time of the event.

An example of how this works: To assure that any blog entries about this particular presentation gets linked to other entries about the same event, David requested that people be sure to include “web20” and “warlick” (without quotes, of course) somewhere in the text (or as tags). That way the entries get picked up by Hitchhikr and collected with other entries with the same terms. This, then, being an illustration of how information can be shared widely and immediately to interested audiences in a way not possible even five years ago (or two?!).

How to do wade through all this content? A tool David pointed to was RSS. He demonstrated his favored aggregator and explained, for those who had not encounted RSS feeds before, what they were. I’ve used SharpReader as a stand-alone aggregator as well as the online options such as Bloglines. I’ve gotten the RSS “habit,” too, but I still struggle with how to wade through all the content, even with aids like RSS.

David reiterated the point that “we connect to each other through the content” we seek.

As people use tools like blogs, RSS, wikis, and so on, they create their “personal learning network.” Building one’s own personal learning network is what we must teach our students.

Note about aggregators: David showed the group Bloglines as an online way of subscribing to RSS feeds along with other online content. He also made mention of a new(ish) tool he has started using called Netvibes (http://www.netvibes.com/) which offers a bunch of configurable tools you can add to your page (plus add other tabs for more content) including RSS, Gmail, and other options. Right now in beta, this is a free service out of Paris. When I get a chance, I’m going to set up my own netvibes page.

Tonight is the big dinner of the conference and will be held here at the Hilton in one of the large ballrooms/dining rooms.

Dinner was held in one of the very large convention dining rooms that are here at the Hilton. This year they suggested we find a table with our “strand” indicated so that we would be grouped according to our job focus. In other words, tables were labeled Teachers, Integrationists, Administrators, Support, etc. I sat at one of the Integrationists tables and recognized one person I had already met earlier today, a couple folks familiar from last year, and a group of people new to me. The geographical range at our table ranged from Florida to Tennessee to Iowa to Seattle. We had a nice meal (grilled boneless chicken, grilled veggies, and grits [that’s what the Tennesseans at the table said it was!]).

This has been a great start to the Laptop Institute. Now to get ready for tomorrow