Dangerously Irrelevant

Tomorrow is Wolfram|Alpha Homework Day

Tomorrow is Wolfram|Alpha’s Homework Day. The company is inviting students to submit their homework problems to see if/how Wolfram Alpha can solve them. Should be interesting…

Will you or your students be participating?

ISTE 2010 conference keynote: The gloves are off!

Interesting conversations are occurring, well-known edubloggers are advocating for their topic suggestions (see, e.g., Vicki Davis and Brian Crosby), and, perhaps most importantly for ISTE, there seems to be a fair amount of interest in its ‘choose your conference keynote’ project.

After just a few days, my suggestion is duking it out with Kevin Honeycutt’s for the top position:

I think Kevin is a great guy, but I don’t think his topic should be a keynote over mine. It seems to me that 95%+ of the ISTE conference every year is the same thing: tools, teachers, and classrooms. These are important, but as I said in one of my comments under my topic suggestion:

We've been relying on teachers & teacher leaders & tech integrationists & tech coordinators for decades now. Where's it gotten us in terms of systemic reform? It's gotten us isolated pockets of excellence in a few classrooms. When a principal "gets it," nearly the entire school changes (minus the few resisters). When a superintendent "gets it," nearly the entire district changes (minus the few resisters).

I'll repeat... It is the formal leaders (administrators, policymakers), not informal leaders, that have control over ALL of the important variables: money; time; personnel hiring, evaluation, and assignment; organizational vision and direction; professional development; etc. All you have to do is look at a school like the Science Leadership Academy to understand the importance and power of a formal leader that "gets it."

Why such pushback on a leadership keynote? It's not like we have one every year. In fact, we'd be hard pressed to remember more than a small few in the history of NECC/ISTE. ISTE has five keynotes and I'm a big fan of Kevin Honeycutt. But one of the keynotes should pertain to effective FORMAL leadership. Otherwise we'll just keep talking about tools and teachers like we always do...

So the gloves are off, Kevin! I don’t know if I can pull this off, but I’m not going down without a fight.

Thanks to everyone who already has voted for my topic and/or participated in the conversation. Any assistance that you can continue to lend me would be most appreciated; I need more people to vote for my suggestion and to spread the word about the contest. I’ve got an uphill battle and am going to need all of the help I can get!

Related posts

• Please vote for my ISTE 2010 conference keynote suggestion

Related tweets

• Please RT!
• Right now leadership is losing to TOOLS yet again. Ugh.

Please vote for my ISTE 2010 conference keynote suggestion

ISTE is asking us to help select one of its next conference keynotes. I am asking you to please vote for my suggestion:

As of this moment, the top three vote-getters all have to do with technology tools. Technology learning tools are important, but helping principals, superintendents, school boards, and policymakers understand what effective 21st century schools look like (and how to support and facilitate their creation and ongoing operation) is much, much more important.

Please go to ISTE’s keynote suggestion web site and give my suggestion three (3) votes. We need this issue at the forefront of our educational technology conversations and we need it at the forefront of ISTE’s work. We continue to talk about students and teachers and tools in the classroom – all of which are worthy topics – but NONE OF THOSE HAPPENS if the leadership doesn’t get it.

Note that this is just a vote for the topic. We vote later on potential speakers. You’ll have to sign in to vote but it shouldn’t take you more than a minute or two.

Let me know if you have any questions. Thank you for your support.

ITEC 2009 - Tweetup videos

Russ Goerend posted a couple of short video snippets from our small Tweetup at ITEC 2009 (for some reason a host of Flip cameras suddenly emerged…). In addition to a number of us Iowa tweeps, David Warlick and Steve Dembo kindly joined in the conversation.

Here’s the first video: 

And here’s the second one (FYI, the first 2.5 minutes is a repeat of the end of the previous video): 

I love the end of the second video where Angela Maiers talks about the lack of teacher time to learn/do technology:

They have time to run copies. They have time to go make blackline masters. They have time to correct 15,000 true-and-false questions. They have time to make cute little art projects for kids to cut-and-paste for 45 minutes…

Happy viewing (and thanks, Russ)!

ITEC 2009 - PLN: A gardener's approach to professional learning

David Warlick is a wonderful speaker and an even more wonderful person. I was very fortunate to spend some time with him last night and this morning. I have very much enjoyed being a learner in his presence...

My notes from David’s second presentation at ITEC 2009:

• Blogging is about listening as much as it is about writing
• David is talking about who he reads (for example, Stephen Downes serves as a filter for David)
• PLN = personal learning network
• There's nothing new about PLNs; they existed long before the Internet; they were just more limited than they are now
• Everyone's PLN is different
• David: "I blog to learn. Many of my blog entries are questions from which I learn from others."
• For a lot of people, Twitter is the heart of their PLN. For others, it's their blog, Facebook, Second Life, Ning, Delicious, Flickr, or whatever.
• The Classroom 2.0 Ning has 31,705 members as of this morning
• The real power of PLNs is in mining the conversation. Because conversation is getting laid down, becoming part of the record, it can be monitored, mined, etc.
• Founder of Technorati: "Blogging is the exhaust of the human consciousness."
• Warlick: “As a 6th grade teacher, I learned very quickly that the amount of time students paid attention to me was directly related to the strangeness of what I was talking about.”
• David’s bookmarks are at www.delicious.com/dwarlick
• Social bookmarking is my personal digital library
• Tagging is a key function in the networked Internet

See also: A gardener’s approach to learning

Keywords: personal learning network Warlick

ITEC 2009 - David Warlick keynote

Group notes from David Warlick's keynote at ITEC 2009.

Keywords: redefine literacy Warlick

ITEC 2009 - Daniel Pink keynote

Group notes from Daniel Pink's keynote speech at ITEC 2009.

Tony Wagner speaks to Iowa educators, Part 3

Dr. Tony Wagner of Harvard University, who authored The Global Achievement Gap, is speaking to over 600 Iowa administrators and teachers today in Des Moines. Nearly 30 students are liveblogging their reactions to Tony’s presentation. Part 3 is below…

Tony Wagner speaks to Iowa educators, Part 2

Dr. Tony Wagner of Harvard University, who authored The Global Achievement Gap, is speaking to over 600 Iowa administrators and teachers today in Des Moines. Nearly 30 students are liveblogging their reactions to Tony’s presentation. Part 2 is below… 

Tony Wagner speaks to Iowa educators, Part 1

Dr. Tony Wagner of Harvard University, who authored The Global Achievement Gap, is speaking to over 600 Iowa administrators and teachers today in Des Moines. Nearly 30 students are liveblogging their reactions to Tony’s presentation. Part 1 is below… 

Video - Did You Know? 4.0

Three years, 20+ million online views, and many, many face-to-face showings later, the Did You Know? (Shift Happens) video still is going strong. Just this week it was mentioned in TIME magazine. Karl Fisch and I continue to get a bazillion e-mail messages about it…

Karl, XPLANE, The Economist, Laura Bestler, and I are very pleased to announce the release of Did You Know? 4.0, created for The Economist’s Media Convergence Forum in October.

I think XPLANE did an absolutely fabulous job with it, but let me know what you think in the comments. Downloadable versions and source files are available on the Shift Happens wiki under a Creative Commons license. Happy viewing (and please spread the word)!

Update: Be sure to read Karl's post on this too!

Two thoughts about President Obama's speech tomorrow (and my own speech the day after)

Much ado about nothing

I just read the text of President Obama’s hotly-contested speech tomorrow. I encourage you to do the same. Could it be any more innocuous? Whatever happened to waiting to see what happens first and THEN hollering about it? A lot of crying wolf has been going on lately…

If only these opportunities actually existed at scale

I was pleased to see this passage:

What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

I just wish I had more faith in our current schooling system to nurture the problem-solving and critical thinking skills and creativity and ingenuity that the President mentions. Right now I don’t think we’re doing so well in these areas…

On Wednesday I spend the day with 80 or so high school students (juniors and seniors, mostly) in Northwest Iowa. What should I be saying to them about their schools, technology, globalization, and their futures?

BlogBall09 heads into the playoffs

For those of you who are interested, here are the final regular season standings for BlogBall09, our edublogger fantasy baseball leagues. As league commissioners, apparently both Jon Becker and I got to finish in 7th place, one spot out of the playoffs. Ugh.

See you in Mumbai?

The American School of Bombay (ASB) in Mumbai, India is hosting a 1:1 laptop computing conference in February 2010. While the conference is aimed at other international schools, it should be an excellent learning opportunity for anyone who can attend. I attended (and keynoted) ASB's first conference two years ago, brought my buddy, Dr. David Quinn, and had an absolutely wonderful time. I met a bunch of really great international educators and learned a lot about effective 1:1 programs. I highly encourage you to try and attend; Mumbai's a fascinating city! The conference is a collaborative effort of ASB, the Anytime Anywhere Learning Foundation (AALF), the Laptop Institute, and the NESA Center.

If you'd like to submit a proposal to present, the deadline is September 5. The deadline to register and attend is November 15. More information on the conference - including how to register and/or submit a proposal - is at the ASB Un-Plugged Ning.

CASTLE will be sending three representatives to the conference. We're going to make sure we're there in time for the preconference with AALF, which looks totally amazing. ASB is the best 1:1 school I've seen to date; I'm looking forward to seeing how much progress they've made since my last visit. I'm heading up the leadership strand of the conference. Vicki Davis, Julie Lindsay, Doug Johnson, Scott Klososky, and Helen Barrett will be leading conference strands too. Hope to see you there!

Related posts

• Sharing the global stage: Musings on Mumbai
• Musings from Mumbai: Fostering a climate of innovation in the middle and high schools

New podcast channel - UCEA Interview Series

The University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA) has started a new podcast channel and will be interviewing top educational leadership scholars from around the world about school administrator research and/or preparation.

The first live podcast will occur tomorrow and will feature Dr. Karen Seashore, who holds the Rodney Wallace Professorship for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning at the University of Minnesota. Karen will be discussing the linkages between P-12 school leadership and student academic learning outcomes. As a former faculty colleague of Karen’s, I know her well and anticipate that this will be a great conversation.

• Listen live to the interview with Dr. Karen Seashore
• Download the interview afterward
• Learn more about UCEA’s interview series

We here at CASTLE have been working with UCEA to get this up and running. CASTLE is one of several UCEA centers; I also serve as UCEA’s Associate Director of Communications. Stay tuned to the podcast channel to hear future interviews and, while you’re at it, sign up for UCEA’s Twitter feed if you’re interested in more school leadership resources.

Happy listening!

Dr. Yong Zhao at SAI 2009

Here are my notes from Dr. Yong Zhao’s presentation, Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization, at the 2009 School Administrators of Iowa (SAI) conference…

• Dr. Zhao’s book will be out soon from ASCD.
• Thomas Friedman: “When I was growing up, my parents used to say to me: ‘Finish your dinner — people in China are starving.’ I, by contrast, find myself wanting to say to my daughters: ‘Finish your homework — people in China and India are starving for your job.’”
• When something bad happens in America, it has to do with education. When something good happens in America, it has to do with some politician.
• March 24, 1958 article in LIFE magazine comparing Russian students’ work with American students’ was very similar to the rhetoric of 2 Million Minutes.
• 1983, A Nation at Risk: “a rising tide of mediocrity” and “we are raising a new generation of Americans that is scientifically and technologically illiterate.”
• Achieve, the College Board, and ACT are writing the upcoming national standards. Ask yourself who stands to benefit from the new standards?
• 2 Million Minutes: now the ‘enemy’ is China and India. Dr. Zhao grew up in China and is back there almost every month. He disagrees with Bob Compton, the director.
• The USA continues to be the most economically competitive country in the world. We continue to be the most innovative, as measured by patents issued. And of course we are the most open, democratic.
• No other country comes close to the US when it comes to exports of intellectual property / knowledge (patents, royalties, copyrights, license fees). China dominates toy exports, not knowledge exports. China is a country built on cheap labor, not knowledge.
• If the US educational system is so bad, why are other countries (like China) trying to emulate us (see, e.g., China’s 2002 and 2005 curriculum and assessment reforms).
• Singapore is emphasizing the explicit teaching of critical and creative thinking skills.
• The correlation between the 1964 First International Math Study test scores (FIMS) and economic output, hourly productivity, quality of life, etc. 40 hours later are all negative. Democracy, creativity, livability all have no relationship or a negative relationship with the FIMS scores.
• Recommends reading Day of Empire: How HyperPowers Rise to Global Dominance – And Why They Fail, by Amy Chua, and The Rise of the Creative Class, by Richard Florida. Diversity of talents, creativity, entrepeneurship, and passion are what allow nations to thrive.
• We are busy closing the achievement gap. Asian countries are busy closing the creativity gap.
• The strengths of American education: school talent shows (value individual talents, inspires passion and responsbility, tolerate deviation, cultivate entrepeneurship) and children are popcorn (some pop early and some pop late; respect individual differences; have faith in every child; second, third, and fourth chances)
• Creativity is fundamentally to be different. America is a society that tolerates, values, and celebrates difference.
• We do face new challenges. For example, globalization (i.e., the death of distance). Columbus took about 3 months to get from Spain to the Bahamas. Now it takes 13 hours on airplane. Electronic information, money, voice phone calls, etc. now get there instantly.
• Global supply chains: corporations can fragment their production and distribute it wherever it makes sense (outsourcing of labor). Products are now made from parts that come from a multitude of different countries.
• New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce: “Today, Indian engineers make $7,500 a year against $45,000 for an American engineer with the same qualifications. If we succeed in matching the very high levels of mastery of mathematics and science of these Indian engineers - an enormous challenge for this country - why would the world’s employers pay us more than they have to pay the Indians to do their work? They would be willing to do that only if we could offer something that the Chinese and Indians, and others, cannot.”
• Equalling China’s or India’s performance on standardized tests doesn’t differentiate ourselves, doesn’t allow us to offer what others cannot.
• Problems in other countries also affect everyone now (e.g., swine flu, poverty, violence, financial meltdowns). We no longer can keep ourselves isolated.
• Where does the new hope lie? With Madonna and eBay! Many people don’t like Madonna. But across the globe, there are enough who do for her to be successful. Globalization allows us to find the other crazy people across the world who find value in what we offer. eBay allows us to find others outside our local area who will buy our trash. Globalization expands our audiences and allows our skills, talents, products, etc. to find new places that they can thrive. What do you have that others don’t? What can you contribute to other markets? What’s your niche?
• Societal changes create new job opportunities. Right now, for example, we need people who understand other countries’ cultures, languages, politics, etc.
• Technology demands new skills (e.g., virtual designers). Virtual “gold farming” is now a $2 billion industry worldwide.
• The Partnership for the 21st Century Skills framework is too long and complex. Our problem in America is that we keep adding, we never take away.
• See Jenifer Fox’s www.strengthsmovement.com.
• We need to take technology and the digital world SERIOUSLY.
• Every child should have a personalized curriculum. This is happening in other countries (e.g., United Kingdom).
• We should think of schools as global enterprises, not local entities, and draw on global resources.
• Never send a man to do a machine’s job. Let people and computers each do what they do best.
• Slides available at http://zhao.educ.msu.edu

NECC - Why aren't you having a bigger impact?

Both of my NECC 2009 presentations are now available!

As I noted earlier, my first presentation, Effective Leadership in an Era of Disruptive Innovation, is available at ISTEVision. My second presentation, Why Aren’t You Having a Bigger Impact?, was targeted specifically at technology coordinators and is now available from Learning.com.

I think Learning.com did a really nice job of highlighting some of the main points of my presentation. Two links on the left allow you to watch the first and second halves of the presentation. You also can download my slides and an audio podcast of the session. I thought the questions and conversations were quite lively given that the session was at 7 in the morning!

Here’s a quick quote from the presentation:

The tech coordinators [like you] that I meet are very dedicated and hard-working. They’re really trying their very best to do a great job for their school and make everything run smoothly. So why do I hear so many complaints about you?

Happy viewing!

BlogBall09 - Mid-season update

For those of you who are curious, here are the standings in our two edublogger fantasy baseball leagues at the All-Star break:

Two presidents and Lessig - Evening 2 of the World Technology Summit

Well, it’s not every day that one gets within six feet of two presidents. Last Thursday, just as my colleague at ISU, Dr. John Nash, and I were walking out of our hotel, the motorcade for President Obama came by:

A couple of hours later I was hanging out with Nkubito Bakuramutsa, head of the ICT department of the Rwandan Development Board, just a few feet from Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s President. Later that evening Kagame won the World Technology Award for Policy:

Lawrence Lessig won the award for Law. Here are two quickly-recorded videos of his statements:

New York City’s a fun place. There’s always something cool happening!

Photo credits

• Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda

Rotating buildings, petrofuel, and ICT in Africa - Day 2 of the World Technology Summit

Here are my notes from Day 2 of the World Technology Summit. I’ve been hangin’ with Dr. John Nash, my colleague at ISU. Today we learned about India’s Barefoot College (impressive!), Microsoft’s vision for the future, rotating buildings, petrofuel, ICT in Africa, and much more.

Bunker Roy, The Barefoot College

• 150 barefoot professionals reach over 70,000 people in 110 villages within a 150-mile radius
• 225 night schools in 6 states are attended by 7,000 children (5,500 girls) that can't attend during the day - school is lit by solar lanterns and run by the children
• Solar-powered campus - first solar-powered desalination plant in India - has extended its solar electrification work beyond India (e.g., 27 women in Afghanistan have solar electrified 100 of their villages)
• The cost of solar electrifying 5 villages in Afghanistan is the cost of one UN consultant sitting in Kabul for 1 year
• Have electrified a number of villages in Africa - men in Africa are untrainable - focus on women, particularly grandmothers

Christofer Toumaz & Keith Errey, Toumaz Technology

• Disposable, hidden, unobtrusive, personalized health devices
• Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Imperial College, London
• Sensium digital patch / BandAid - sits on chest and wirelessly monitors health signs 24-7 (e.g., for Type 2 diabetes) - can send signals to doctor - replaces tethered monitors
• Wireless silicon pancreas chip helps monitor glucose - therapy and diagnosis functions are combined
• Have figured out how to turn on/off semiconductors with DNA - trying to replace big DNA sequencers with small lab-on-a-chip

Andrew Beck, PetroAlgae

• Micro-crops (algae, angiosperms, cyanobacter, diatoms, etc.) are grown and turned into renewable, green fuel for cars, etc.
• 125x more productive than macro-crops (corn, soy, rapeseed, etc.)
• 98% of water is recycled - can use gray or brackish water - doesn't even need clean, drinking-quality water
• Micro-crops absorb twice their weight in carbon dioxide - can be placed next to carbon dioxide-emitting factories
• Physics combined with biochemistry - its light-management techniques are what put PetroAlgae ahead of competitors
• Micro-crops are the only economically viable answer to the biofuels feedstock problem - protein meal byproduct adds to the food supply
• Does not compete with the food supply, does not produce any toxic waste
• Large-scale open bioreactors - 4,700 to 6,000 gallons per acre per year - product can be run through existing petroleum refineries and pipelines - this green diesel system uses same infrastructure as current gasoline-based system - functions as a 'drop-in' replacement for fossil fuels
• 1 unit (5,000 hectares) produces ~75 million gallons of biofuel / year AND 140,000 tons of protein meal / year (the latter alone offsets the biofuel production costs)

Ian Sands, Director of Envisoning, Microsoft

• In charge of articulating Microsoft's collective long-term vision both internally and externally - a fine balance between dreaming and plausible
• Microsoft's video, A Glimpse Ahead, shows its future vision and embeds a number of principles, including natural user interfaces, mobile technologies, etc. 

 

David Fisher, Dynamic Architecture

• Buildings generate own energy, plus energy for other surrounding buildings - wind and solar
• Costs and construction time are lower than traditional building processes
• Core tower surrounded by rotating floors, which are built with modular components
• Drive car into core tower, elevator takes car up to your floor, floors can contain garages, swimming pools, etc.

 

John Maraganore, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals

• Harnessing RNA interference (RNAi) technology - potential for a whole new class of drugs that achieve therapeutic 'gene silencing'
• There are a number of 'undruggable' targets that might be addressed using RNAi
• Genomic medicine opens up a whole new class of possibilities
• Clinical trials have been published in a number of top medical and scientific journals

The underrecognized: A scenario planning exercise (facilitated by Art Kleiner, strategy+business)

• Every country in the world starts buying automobiles like crazy when average income hits $10K/year - China, India, Brazil, Turkey, and Russia are about to hit that threshold
• Imagine 2 directions in which the trend could go, and write a newspaper headline for each - avoid a simplistic utopia/dystopia approach
• GROUP 4: The evolution of learning
• • Speed of access to learning materials is much faster
  • We scan, find, and access information differently than before
  • More likely to find exactly what you want - also leads to self-selection of learning
  • Are we losing social interactions (or are they just changing)
  • Are we losing opportunity to be exposed to disparate opinions
  • Does it facilitate access to education by everyone
  • Learning will become even more powerful as mobile devices become more prevalent
  • Principles and process are more important than discrete facts
  • Current Internet can't handle tactile / sensory information
  • Current text-based Internet still doesn't work for many students
  • Are we seeing the emergence of a post-literate society?
  • Geography and time are no longer barriers to learning?
  • What does the role of a teacher mean in a computer-aided environment? Choreographers / facilitators / mentors instead of knowledge suppliers?
  • Greater individualization of learning is possible
  • Strength in diversity or latent costs that accompany the nichification of learning?
  • Is there still a place for face-to-face interactions, learning environments?
  • Is virtualization of learning more good than bad?
  • Who controls these learning environments (if anybody)?
  • Internal motivation to learn becomes more important?
  • HEADLINE 1: Barefoot College surpasses MIT in Engineering graduates
  • HEADLINE 2: Server farm failure erases all of human history
  • Other generated headlines
  • • Continued turmoil in online education leads to more students living with parents past age 30
    • Be careful what you wish for: last traditional school (or textbook publisher) closes its doors
    • All printed materials now obsolete
    • SmellTube & haptic interfaces revolutionize the Internet experience
    • The cyberwar between evolutionists and creationists continues to rage
    • Learn what you need for your career in 6 months

ICT for development, Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda

• Over last decade, there has been an ICT revolution on the African continent
• Between 1995 and 2005, over $25 billion was invested in ICT in Sub-Saharan Africa
• African mobile phone companies are regional and, sometimes, global players - leaders in innovation and entrepeneurship
• Africa is fastest-growing mobile phone company in world
• Working on a national fiber backbone to facilitate broadband access to corporations and individuals
• Electronic records system to deliver social, health, and education services
• National databases to help combat HIV/AIDS and target appropriate medical services
• Nationwide food stocks database / marketplace that can be accessed by individuals' mobile phones
• Digital content from world's leading universities now available to Rwandan schools, universities
• Rwandan economy grew at 11.2% last year; wages have increased as much as 30% each of the past 8 years?
• The future of Rwanda is dependent on its investments in technology and children

The future of media in a socially-networked world

• Presentation panel
• • Jessi Hempel, Writer, Fortune magazine
  • John Borthwick, CEO, betaworks (Summize, bit.ly, TweetDeck)
  • Brad Burnham, Partner, Union Square Ventures
  • Patrick Keane, CEO, Associated Content
• Associated Content: where folks can put their content and get compensated for it - a content monetization engine (makes money through ads, companies that pay to have content created for them) - has over 250,000 content contributors
• Twitter, for example, represents not only the atomization of content (140 characters) but also the atomization of distribution (inviduals rather than large organizations)
• The problem is not the production of content but the filtering of content - people now relying on others that they trust, rather than big companies, to provide much of their information
• The Internet is a medium of cannibalization

Philip Warner, Eden Park Illumination

• The light bulb of tomorrow is not a lightbulb - microplasma is a planar light source
• The problem with compact fluorescents (CFLs) is that they contain mercury
• Embedded lighting - floors, walls, windows, surfaces, furniture, ceilings - all will be able to contain lighting
• Very thin (2 to 3mm) - currently 4x as energy-efficient as CFLs (even greater efficiency is expected soon) - can be molded into different shapes
• Surface brightness 10x greater than OLED
• Lighting market: US = $15 billion, global = $75 billion

Photo credits

• New York City traffic
• Radio City Music Hall
• Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda

Fun in New York City - Day 1 of the World Technology Summit

Here are my notes from Day 1 of the World Technology Summit & Awards in New York City. My colleague at Iowa State, Dr. John Nash, and I have been having eating from Halal stands, learning about Twitter and the Iran election, and enjoying the enhanced police presence for President Obama’s speech tomorrow celebrating the 100th anniversary of the NAACP.

Jim Clark, How to save the future (and how to think about it)

• Encouraging serendipity
• the right 'raw materials'
• the right 'catalysts'
• the right questions
• the right amount of focus and flexibility
• the right attitude
• Thinking about the future
• Passive v. active players in history
• The necessity of a 'historical sense' / awareness of trends
• Worldviews (which influence what we emphasize)
• God(s)
• Great men
• Rational thinking/progress
• Natural/rightful rulers
• Human nature
• Class struggle
• Geography/natural resources
• Cultural traits
• Technology
• Some questions raised by the concept of 'saving the future'
• How much influence do we have on our collective future?
• Whose future are we saving (and how do we strike the correct balance between saving our individual and collective futures)?
• How do we know what to pay attention to?
• What are 'triggers?'
• Triggers are those forces or events that set into motion other larger events or trends
• What types of triggers have historically had the greatest ripple effects?
• Fall of a superpower and/or rise of new competing powers
• Major, long wars
• Major global viral pandemic
• and more?
• Major advances in technology
• How do we save the future?
• Create it!

Scott McLeod, Did You Know?

 

 

David Post, Next Island

• World market for virtual worlds is projected at 186 million total in 2009
• 2015 market projected to be 638 million
• virtual worlds are 'the next Internet'
• Virtual worlds range from World of Warcraft to Second Life
• Virtual worlds are interactive - everybody plays - everyone has a different experience
• Can travel back in time, can master different professions
• Players play for real money, not virtual currency
• Players purchase game cards to expand their functionality - this is how they'll generate revenue?

Jeremiah Jackson, Removing arsenic from drinking water (Kleinfelder.com)

• Current water arsenic removal solutions cost $53 to $300 per 1,000 gallons
• System uses the common cattail weed, a plastic-lined ditch, and a plastic hand pump
• Cost is less than $0.21 / 1000 gallons
• Larger ditch only takes 4% of surface area but can remove arsenic from well water used for irrigation before it reaches the rice crop

Erica vanderLinde Feidner, Piano Matchmaker

• She matches people with pianos
• Also has a patented method for teaching piano
• Invented a video game that teaches how to play the piano - most other piano games are simply rhythmic games
• She showed how it works (John Nash: it's Guitar Hero for the piano)

Usman Haque, Pachube

• Real-time data brokerage for sensors attached to physical objects (the Internet of things)
• Remote monitoring systems, networked buildings, energy meters
• Interoperable with construction industry standards and Web protocols
• The trend in Web and machine-to-machine communications is toward many-to-many, not just one-to-one
• The metadata about context, location, user tags, history, etc. is also important besides the data itself - this makes us stop thinking about sensors and starts us thinking about environments

Adam Somlai-Fischer, Prezi

• PowerPoint is linear - a holdover from slide projectors
• Prezi is spatial and relational
• After eating at New York’s finest Halal stand, John and I dialogued with Adam, Usman, and Michael Hansen, CEO of Issuu

 

Changing the world: NGOs, international development, and the Internet

• Shamina de Gonzaga, What Moves You?
• Timothy Anderson, World Computer Exchange
• Edwin Gragert, iEARN-USA
• Sarah McCue, BluMail/BluWorld
• Suzanne Grant Lewis, Partnership for Higher Education in Africa

Daniel Wilson, Where's my jetpack? A guide to the science fiction future that never arrived

• Translating complex science for the general public has turned scientific research into a commodity
• Many of the futuristic visions that we had in the early 20th century are here in some form (e.g., a version of X-Ray specs is at the airport; universal translators) or we've actively rejected them (e.g., food pills)
• Do we really want a jetpack or just the idea of a jetpack (i.e., a vision of a future)?
• Technology has not made us all happy, as was promised in the past

Zhengrong Shi, The future needs solar (Suntech)

• The developing countries are catching up to the industrialized countries - share of world energy consumption soon will be even
• Installation subsidies and feed-in tariffs foster growth in solar energy use
• China is aiming for 10% of energy from renewables by 2010, 20% by 2020
• China is largest solar panel manufacturing country in world
• Suntech is now at 1 Gigawatt (GW) per year production level
• 10 cents / kilowatt hour is the magic threshold

Innovation: Is this the best or worst of times?

• Presentation panel
• Stephanie Mehta, Global Editor, Fortune magazine
• Lowell McAdam, CEO, Verizon Wireless
• Peter Volanakis, President and COO, Corning
• Wireless cell phone industry is extremely competitive
• The Chinese auto industry is now bigger than the US auto industry?
• Great companies embrace recessions - they create an opportunity to break away from the pack of competitors
• My question: What kind of American workforce needs are you seeing? How well are K-12 schools / community colleges / universities doing at meeting those needs?
• Corning
• Corning is facing some visa / immigration issues… [translation: they are getting their employees from overseas]
• Corning is trying to invest locally to support schools and prepare workers (and doing less jawboning about national workforce deficits)
• Verizon
• In the past 10 years, EVERYTHING has stepped up
• Doing intern programs with universities
• Verizon Foundation / Thinkfinity curriculum is designed to help schools see what Verizon would like them to teach / is offered for free

 

Social networks and societal revolution: What happened / is happening in Iran?

• Presentation panel
• Lily Mazahery, Founder/President, Legal Rights Institute
• Reza Sayah, International Correspondent, CNN
• Mark Drapeau, Science & Technology Policy Fellow, National Defense University
• Sayah: none of the coverage you saw on CNN would have been possible without Twitter, Facebook, and some Iranian cab drivers
• Drapeau: everything is now happening locally/globally
• Drapeau: cyberspace is the new battle space for PR / propaganda = information warfare
• Sayah: TV news is a business that makes money by getting as many viewers as possible - should TV news cater to advertisers, viewers, the citizenry? - channels will do anything to get viewers, including burying important stories for unimportant ones (e.g., Michael Jackson)

Photo credits

• World Technology Summit & Awards 2009
• Ten cop cars and an ice cream truck
• The best Halal stand in New York City?
• Social networks and societal revolution
• Command Central outside the Hilton

Podcast - Conversation with Dr. Dan Willingham, University of Virginia

Many of you have been participating in and/or following the conversations for this year’s CASTLE Summer Book Club. 

I am pleased to announce that my interview today with Dr. Dan Willingham, professor at the University of Virginia and author of Why Don’t Students Like School?, is now available as either streaming audio or a downloadable podcast.

Happy listening!

NECC - Effective leadership in an era of disruptive innovation

For those of you who have asked, my Monday, June 29, afternoon presentation at NECC, Effective leadership in an era of disruptive innovation, is now available at ISTEVision: 

FYI, you also might be interested in my K12 Online presentation on this topic. Happy viewing!

15 questions to ask about the technology leadership in your school district

For Leadership Day 2009, here are some key questions that I’d ask about the technology leadership function in any school district:

1. Who is primary responsible for technology leadership in the district?
2. If the answer to Question 1 is not the superintendent, who is the primary technology leader’s direct supervisor?
3. If the answer to Question 1 is not the superintendent, does that person sit on the superintendent’s cabinet?
4. If the answer to Question 1 is not the superintendent, how often does that person meet individually with the superintendent?
5. How many other job titles (or what other job responsibilities) does the primary technology leader have?
6. Is the primary technology leader in charge of both networking / hardware / software support AND technology integration or just one?
7. Is technology leadership a shared function within the district or does it primarily reside in one person?
8. How big is the differential between the primary technology leader’s salary and what she could make in a similar corporate environment?
9. What kind of (and how much) professional development does the primary technology leader receive each year?
10. How big is the differential between the technology staff:computer ratio and what occurs in a similar corporate environment?
11. What percentage of technology-related expenditures go toward educator professional development?
12. What percentage of the technologies purchased by the district were primarily student-centric (as opposed to teacher-centric)?
13. When was the district’s last technology referendum? Did it pass? How close was the vote?
14. When was the last time (if ever) that students were asked about their experiences using (or not using) technology in their classes? What did they say?
15. And, what might be the most important question of all, how many minutes per week, on average, do students use digital technologies as part of their classroom learning experiences (and how do they spend those minutes)?

I’m sure that I could think of other questions too, but these are a good start. Here’s why the answers to these questions matter:

1. If it’s not the superintendent, it’s the wrong answer. No one else has the power to set and facilitate the district-wide vision for effective technology usage.
2. If it’s not the superintendent, it’s the wrong answer. The further down the org chart the primary technology leader sits, the harder it is for that individual to facilitate necessary change.
3. If no, that’s the wrong answer. Not including the primary technology leader on the superintendent’s cabinet sends a message to the entire organization (and the outside world) that technology is nonessential.
4. Ideally the primary technology leader would meet individually with the superintendent at least as often as the curriculum director, associate superintendent, business manager, and/or other top-level district staff. Desired frequency will vary by district, but I would say every few weeks at a minimum.
5. Many primary technology leaders wear other hats (principal, superintendent, director of facilities, business manager, etc.). Effective technology leadership is a full-time job. I understand that many districts – particularly smaller ones – need to job share, but the more this person’s work is diluted across multiple titles and/or responsibilities, the less successful the district’s technology efforts will be. Guaranteed.
6. If just one, that’s the wrong answer. Separating these functions is a potential recipe for disaster because it often leads to turf and/or resource conflicts, facilitates confusion by classroom teachers, results in the integration function being marginalized or nonexistent, and so on.
7. Ideally the technology function is shared across the district. Effective change is much more likely to happen when many pull together.
8. The lower this differential the better, unless you want to lose your technology leader.
9. Pay close attention to the number of days the primary technology leaders gets for her own professional learning. Also pay attention to whether those days are just focused on networking/hardware/software support versus technology integration, how to facilitate effective change within complex organizations, large societal/workforce shifts that will impact schools, building effective teams, and other non-technical, leadership-related topics.
10. The lower this differential the better, unless you want to lose your technology leader. Corporate computer:support staff ratios tend to range between 75:1 and 150:1. In K-12 education, ratios tend to be 300:1 or higher (and it is not uncommon to see 800:1 or worse).
11. Ideally this number would be between 25% and 50%. A corollary question might be How much of the computer equipment that you’ve purchased doesn’t get used very often?
12. The higher this percentage the better. It’s important for teachers to use computers. But it’s more important for students to use computers since they’re the ones that we’re supposedly preparing for their future lives.
13. A lot of districts have trouble passing technology referenda. Sometimes they’re close, sometimes they’re not. Taking a look at how a district pitches its technology referenda to its local community can tell you a lot about the district, the community, or both.
14. For most districts, the answer to this will be rarely or never. That’s the wrong answer. The correct answer is at least every year.
15. For most districts, the answer to this rarely will be more than a couple of hours (and often will be less than one hour). That’s the wrong answer in a digital, global era.

I’m looking forward to the rest of the posts for this year!

Tomorrow is Leadership Day 2009!

Just a reminder that tomorrow is Leadership Day 2009 here at Dangerously Irrelevant!

You can see the posts from previous years at

• Leadership Day 2007 – Summary
• Leadership Day 2008 – Summary

Hope some of you will participate. The past two years’ posts have been awesome. Be sure to read over the guidelines for this year!

Calling all bloggers! - Leadership Day 2009

Since the past two have been so successful, I am putting out a call for people to participate in Leadership Day 2009. As I said two years ago:

Many of our school leaders (principals, superintendents, central office administrators) need help when it comes to digital technologies. A lot of help, to be honest. As I’ve noted again and again on this blog, most school administrators don’t know

• what it means to prepare students for the 21st century;
• how to recognize, evaluate, and facilitate effective technology usage by students and teachers;
• what appropriate technology support structures (budget, staffing, infrastructure) look like or how to implement them;
• how to utilize modern technologies to facilitate communication with internal and external stakeholders;
• the ways in which learning technologies can improve student learning outcomes;
• how to utilize technology systems to make their organizations more efficient and effective;
• and so on…

Administrators’ lack of knowledge is not entirely their fault. Most of them didn’t grow up with these technologies. Many are not using digital tools on a regular basis. Few have received training from their employers or their university preparation programs on how to use, think about, or be a leader regarding digital technologies.

So… let’s help them out.

Guidelines

On Sunday, July 11 12, 2009, blog about whatever you like related to effective school technology leadership: successes, challenges, reflections, needs, wants, etc. Write a letter to the administrators in your area. Post a top ten list. Make a podcast or a video. Highlight a local success or challenge. Recommend some readings. Do an interview of a successful technology leader. Respond to some of the questions below or make up your own. If you participated in years past, post a follow-up reflection. Whatever strikes you. The official hashtag for your post and/or Twitter is

#leadershipday09

Please also link back to this post to ensure that I find yours. If you don’t have a blog, comment on someone else’s post and/or send your thoughts to me and I will post them for you. I will do a summary afterward of what folks wrote and talked about [bloggers, this means some new readers probably will head your direction; this is a blog carnival for technology leadership!].

Some prompts to spark your thinking

• What do effective K-12 technology leaders do? What actions and behaviors can you point to that make them effective leaders in the area of technology?
• Do administrators have to be technology-savvy themselves in order to be effective technology leaders in their organizations?
• What are some tangible, concrete, realistic steps that can be taken to move administrators forward? Given the unrelenting pressures that they face and their ever-increasing time demands, what are some things that administrators can do to become more knowledgeable and skilled in the area of technology leadership?
• Perhaps using the new National Educational Technology Standards for Administrators (NETS-A) as a starting point, what are the absolutely critical skills or abilities that administrators need to be effective technology leaders?
• What strengths and deficiencies are present in the new NETS-A?
• What is a technology tool that would be extremely useful for a busy administrator (i.e., one he or she probably isn’t using now)?
• What should busy administrators be reading (or watching)?
• How can administrators best structure necessary conversations with internal or external stakeholders?
• How should administrators balance enablement with safety, risk with reward, fear with empowerment?

Here are the ABSOLUTELY EXCELLENT posts from the past two years

• Leadership Day 2007 – Summary
• Leadership Day 2008 – Summary

A badge for your blog or web site

Please join us for this important day because, I promise you, if the leaders don’t get it, it isn’t going to happen.

NECC - Resources for those of you who missed the circus

Did you miss the extravaganza this year? Wish you were at NECC 2009 but couldn’t make it? Hate NECC and want to snipe from afar? Here are some resources that should help…

• If you want unofficial, raw (dare I say authentic?) coverage, many of us tagged our blog posts with necc09 or necc or necc2009 or ebc09 or edubloggercon.
• If you’re looking for more official coverage, see all of the posts at ISTE Connects and read the conference newspaper, the Daily Leader.
• Some of the sessions were filmed. Check out the videos at ISTEVision.
• If you’re interested in a particular session, the presenter may have uploaded his or her handouts.
• You can sift through the many thousands of photos on Flickr tagged necc09 or ebc09 or edubloggercon or ccdc09.
• Watch the video interviews at the Bloggers’ Cafe. I love it when Lisa Thumann says, “Helloooo, Joe!” [Oh, and VERY uncool of Joe to completely dismiss the Internet access issues.]
• For the brave (or foolish) who want to read through all of the tweets, the official Twitter hashtag was #necc09. See also #ebc09 and #edubloggercon and #neccunplugged and #necc09mg and #notatnecc09.

My final thoughts on NECC 2009

• A big THANK YOU to everyone who said kind things about my presentations. I believe that both my Monday afternoon (Effective leadership in an era of disruptive innovation) and Tuesday morning (Why aren’t you having a bigger impact?) sessions were filmed and will be available online. I’ll post the links as soon as I have them.
• As usual, Edubloggercon and the Bloggers’ Cafe were the places to be for fun, stimulating, thoughtful conversation. A big shout-out to everyone I met and/or hung out with in those two locales. If I never attend a formal NECC presentation again, y’all are still worth the price of admission. Steve Hargadon took a fair amount of heat for last year’s Edubloggercon. This year I heard nothing but praise. Steve, you don’t hear it enough but thanks for all that you do. This year’s event was FABULOUS.
• There may have been someone at NECC who was funnier than Dean Groom but if there was, I didn’t meet him/her. Thanks for all the laughs, Dean!

Photo credit: Waiting, Dean Shareski

Finally, for your viewing pleasure, David Warlick’s Edubloggercon ‘09 Animoto, which I think captures the informal, conversational nature of the experience quite nicely. See you next year in Denver!

NECC - Vendor excess (aka Do pink Cadillacs really sell printers?)

I am by no means anti-corporation. And many companies have been very good to me and CASTLE. And I know they’re an important part of the NECC convention each year. And yet, when I went into the NECC 2009 vendor hall today, I was struck by the sheer extravagance of many of the booths: exhibits two or three stories high, a bistro, a singing Elvis, giant computers hanging from the ceiling like Damocles’ sword, an enormous white cave, a two-part neon-illuminated complex that was larger than my backyard, and more…

I’m not the only one who left a little unsettled:

The Bloggers' Cafe is buzzing and Twitter has been all-#NECC09-all-day.

For the most part, it seems like the educators here are mostly interested in access, connection, and sharing info via Web 2.0.

I didn't find a single booth downstairs that talked about any of those things. [Shelly Blake-Plock]

I can’t quite put my finger on what I felt down there today. A little sick at the waste / uselessness of it all (is bringing a pink Cadillac really going to help OKI sell more printers? do they have data on that?)? A wish for more substance and and genuine engagement and less flash?

Maybe it was just such a sharp contrast to the authentic interactions I felt I was having with folks in the Bloggers’ Cafe. Or maybe my crap detector was just on high alert…

Photo set: NECC 2009 Vendors

NECC - NETS-A Release Celebration

Here are my notes from the National Educational Technology Standards for Administrators (NETS-A) Release Celebration here at NECC 2009 in Washington, DC.

• The new NETS-A are a big update from the previous NETS-A. They emphasize change, should be a systemic road map for leaders, and also are designed to be aligned with the recently-refreshed NETS-S and NETS-T.
• Here are the new NETS-A standards:
• Visionary leadership
• Digital-age learning culture
• Exellence in professional practice
• Systemic improvement
• Digital citizenship
• Intel: across countries, the building and/or district leader can either be a huge catalyst or a huge barrier. [Like I’ve said time and time again, “if the leaders don’t get it, it doesn’t happen”]

NECC - No Internet in Blogger's Cafe, NECC Unplugged - WRONG ANSWER

The Internet’s down here at NECC 2009. “Too many people – it overloaded the system” has been the response.

WRONG ANSWER. The convention center knew 14,000 techies were coming. If it couldn’t handle the bandwidth need, it shouldn’t have accepted the contract. Unacceptable response by the convention center.

I asked some ISTE people (staff? volunteers?) here in the hallway when the Internet will be back up and available. They said a reboot was occurring and hopefully everything would be fine in another 15 minutes. I said, “Okay. Well, sorry. I’m sure you’re taking some heat for this.” They shrugged their shoulders indifferently and said, “Oh, it’s no problem. We’re not worried about it.”

WRONG ANSWER. Indifferent to the Internet needs of the 14,000 techies who paid a boatload of money to attend the conference and who have expectations about access to the Web? Unacceptable response by ISTE.

Remember – your organization is only as good as the people who interact with your clients or the public…

UPDATE: I am pleased to announce that the Internet is back up again. Thanks, ISTE. Everyone, cross your fingers that it lasts!

NECC - You want coverage of Malcolm Gladwell? We got it (both good and bad)!

Count ‘em: Four, yes four, CoverItLive sessions for Malcolm Gladwell’s keynote at NECC 2009 in Washington, DC:

• Kristin Hokanson
• ISTE Connects
• TechChicks
• TeachPaperless

If you can’t figure out what Gladwell talked about after looking at all of these, there’s no helping you!

The Twitter hashtag for Gladwell’s talk was #necc09mg – you can read everyone’s comments there or at #necc09. Most tweets were restatements and note-taking. Many were positive. Some weren’t. The pushback already has begun. Personally, I love what is happening now that everyone can have a voice, but I also have to note that this is one reason why academics are very reluctant to embrace social media. They are NOT used to having much pushback on their ideas, particularly from “the masses!”

 

NECC - Constructivist Celebration

These are my notes from the 3rd annual Constructivist Celebration, hosted by Gary Stager at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, DC.

Gary Stager

• 150 participants here today
• See constructivistconsortium.org/books for constructivist teaching resources
• Tags/hashtags = constructivist celebration, constructivist consortium, #ccdc09
• Good ideas are incredibly fragile, bad ideas are timeless
• Regardless of what we’re asking educators, the level of resistance is relatively constant over time (so why not ask a lot more of the rest?)
• Computers are knowledge machines that allow you to go further than you could go on your own
• Educational computing is about software, not hardware, because software ultimately determines what you can do
• The only question we should be asking about computers in schools is “what are students doing with the computers?”
• Are the students programming the computer or is the computer programming them?
• Who has agency in the learning process?
• microworlds.com - design video games, not just consume them
• Getting the computer to do something it doesn’t already do is an important life skill
• Elements of an effective project
• Purpose
• Time
• Personally meaningful
• Complex, including serendipity
• Connected
• Discipline
• Reflection
• Shareable
• Access and constructive materials
• “Can you build an amusement park for kids?” is a more authentic, meaningful question/project than “Martin Luther King had a dream. What dream do you have?”
• Questions worth asking
• Is the problem solvable?
• Is the project monumental or substantial?
• Who does the project satisfy?
• What can they do with that?
• Less is more
• A good prompt is worth 1,000 words – if these are in place, you can do lots more than you expected
• A good prompt, challenge, problem or motivation
• Appropriate materials
• Sufficient time
• Supportive culture (including expertise)
• Maybe we should be adopting an artist’s aesthetic more often – is the work beautiful, thoughtful, personally meaningful, sophisticated, whimsical, shareable with a respect for the audience, enduring? does it move you? (we should ask more: “why should anyone have to sit through that crap?”)
• Good project-based learning (PBL) has a fighting chance of being enduring
• Technology matters
• When students come back years later and say “Remember when we … ?”, they never finish the sentence with “used all of those vocabulary words in a sentence” or “studied so hard for the state assessment” – it’s invariably some enduring project that they remember

Melinda (Lindy) Kolk

• Learning happens when children make things
• If students can text message their friends to get the answers, we’re asking the wrong questions
• Let’s focus on knowledge construction, not reproduction
• More than one right answer
• Collaborative
• Student-centered
• Requires high-level thinking

Peter Reynolds (author of The Dot and Ish)

• Great teachers notice kids
• Great teachers are not about managing data, they’re about loving kids
• Great teachers have an idea first and notice it later
• It’s not a tiger, but it’s ‘tigerish’ – the ‘ish’ concept tells the world ‘back off, I’m trying to figure this out, and right now this is the way I do it’ – gives us some room to play, experiment, LEARN
• Expose kids to big ideas and encourage them to have big ideas
• We often ask ‘what do you do?’ – we should ask ‘what’s your misssion?’ – adults often have trouble answering this – the sooner we ask that of kids, the better
• The best children’s books are wisdom dipped in story – they move you somehow
• There are so many kids out there that don’t get captured by the testing camera
• Be brave about your own artwork and be nice about others’ artwork

NECC - Thumbs up for unconferences!

The sign of a good unconference is when every session you attend goes over time, people don’t want to leave, conversation pushes into the next scheduled session, etc. EVERY session I attended today was like this. Awesome (and thank you, Steve)!

Now, how do I get this format as part of the annual educational leadership professors conference?

NECC - Edubloggercon, Web 2.0 Smackdown, Chicks That Click

NECC ‘09 and Edubloggercon ‘09 are underway! We had a quick intro from Steve Hargadon, then broke into sessions. I stayed for Vicki Davis’ Web 2.0 Smackdown. Here are the tools and resources that people showed:

• Vicki Davis, demonstrated Diigo Lists.
• John Costilla, demonstrated QR Codes.
• Rushton Hurley, demonstrated FreshBrain.
• Lisa Thumann, demonstrated Google Labs Similar Images Search.
• Angela Maiers, demonstrated CompFight, FlickrStorm. and Wibe7.tv.
• Kristin Hokanson, demonstrated CoverItLive.
• Jane Krauss, demonstrated a “thinkspace” for those of us who help others with Web 2.0.
• Adam Frey, demonstrated Wikispaces tags.
• David Jakes, demonstrated Fur.ly and Issuu.
• Scott McLeod, demonstrated Twoogle, Twitalzyer, Retweetist, and David Pogue’s article on typing expansion software (EVERYONE should be using this kind of software!).
• Leigh Zeitz, demonstrated Woot!
• Wes Fryer, demonstrated the K12 Online Conference and EdTechTalk.
• Lee Kolbert, demonstrated Tag Galaxy.
• Maria Droujkova, demonstrated TinEye.
• Chris Chater, demonstrated Noteflight and JamStudio and the Opus09 Ning.
• Jim Gates, demonstrated the WolframAlpha Firefox extension.
• Chad Lehmann, demonstrated the iPhone app Bump.
• Craig Nansen, demonstrated Tinypaste and Today’sMeet.
• Kevin Honeycutt (via Skype from a train in Missouri), demonstrated his new Web 2.0 keychain and album.

I’m now in a small break-out discussion regarding the lack of female students’ interest in technology / computer science careers (and also science, math, etc.)!

Recent publicity for me and CASTLE - Edutopia, T.H.E. Journal, Fort Dodge Messenger, ISU Talk About IT & College of Human Sciences

Thought I’d share some recent publicity that CASTLE and I have gotten. I’ve been sitting on some of these for a while and wanted to get them all out so I can focus on NECC ‘09!

Edutopia

Quick: Name ten excellent Web sites related to the grade level or subject area you teach.

Scott McLeod, coordinator of the educational-administration program at Iowa State University, recently posed that question on his blog, Dangerously Irrelevant. Many of the comments his readers left echo McLeod's assertion that the Internet delivers "a paucity of high-quality online resources for educators."

McLeod and others don't deny the abundance of online resources teachers have at their fingertips. The challenge is sifting through all that stuff to find what you need -- and then knowing how to incorporate the gems into your curriculum. 

Read more…

T.H.E. Journal

SCOTT MCLEOD SAYS the great sin in the way professional development is provided in this country is one of omission. On his blog, McLeod, an associate professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Iowa State University and the coordinator of the department's Educational Administration Program, writes, "Most of our school leaders have received no training whatsoever when it comes to 21st-century schooling."

It is not totally their fault, he says. Few higher ed programs for administrators even have a course dealing with digital technology, and if they do, the course generally covers basic software, not leadership. Neither school districts nor professional organizations offer workshops in the area either. As a result, no movement can be made toward 21stlearning environments: When leaders are clueless about technology and the impact it can have in classrooms, they are powerless to change their school or district into one that provides tech-enabled instruction for students.

Read more…

Fort Dodge (IA) Messenger (this link might expire?)

In a world where so much revolves around technology, high school students often only have the opportunity to use technology as part of their in-school learning process for an average of 30 minutes per week.

That is something that Scott McLeod, associate professor of educational leadership at Iowa State University, would like to see change in Iowa classrooms.

McLeod was the keynote speaker Tuesday afternoon at the Iowa Central Summer Science Institute at Iowa Central Community College, where he addressed a group of 25 high school and college science instructors on how they can implement technology in the classroom and why it is so crucial for students to be able to develop workplace skills and remain engaged in their course work.

Read more…

ISU Talk About IT

See the original here…

ISU College of Human Sciences

See the original here… (pp. 18-19)

Happy reading / viewing!

Technology boot camp for administrators

A few weeks ago we decided to offer a technology ‘boot camp’ for administrators. CASTLE is working with the School Administrators of Iowa to make it happen. For those of you who are interested, here is some information on what we’re doing:

• Promotional flyer
• Boot camp wiki 
• The signs we have all around the room

We started yesterday. Unlike our Transitioning Schools into the 21st Century workshops, which focused on technology leadership issues, the purpose of the boot camp is solely to ramp up school leaders’ technological skills. Our emphasis is on providing a safe space for administrators to learn and empowering them to walk away from the workshop with the ability to actually do this stuff. We’re taking our time, answering lots of questions, and covering whatever we can in the time that we have. We had participants blogging within the first hour yesterday. They were pretty excited!

We’ve got a great bunch of school leaders in this first boot camp. If today goes as well as yesterday, we’ll do a few more next academic year.

Any feedback that you have on what we’re doing would be most welcome. Anyone out there doing something similar? If so, how’s it going?

2009 Game Education Summit begins today!

The 2009 Game Education Summit begins today in Pittsburgh. If you’re not attending, the keynote presentations will be streamed live and also will be available afterward. The summit looks awesome; it’s “the only conference where the video game industry and academics from around the world can come together to have meaningful conversations about the future of game development.”

Wish I could be there! Maybe someone’s liveblogging or there’s a Twitter hashtag for the event?

CASTLE Summer Book Club - We have liftoff!

Whew! It’s consumed a lot of my time the past week but I am pleased to say that the 2009 CASTLE Summer Book Club is off and running! [Okay, more accurately, I should say that it has consumed a lot of the valuable time of Laura Bestler, CASTLE’s technology coordinator. Thank you, Laura!]

How to participate

Thanks to a few last-minute folks, our grand total is 246. Participants are busy introducing themselves (and learning how to comment on a blog!). If you want to follow the action, here are our four discussion groups:

• Group 1 (blue)
• Group 2 (orange)
• Group 3 (green)
• Group 4 (pink)

Even if you’re not an ‘official’ participant and thus can’t post to the group blogs, you still can play along at home by leaving comments (be sure to read the copyright notice in the initial Getting Started post). If you’re interested, each discussion group also has RSS feeds and e-mail subscription options for both the posts and the comments.

Social media

The book club has a Twitter and Technorati hashtag (#castlebc) and a Twibe.

Hope you’ll join us for our live podcast with Dr. Daniel Willingham, the author of Why Don’t Students Like School?, at 12pm Central on July 13!

CASTLE Summer Book Club - Update 3

[Update: If you registered, please check your junk mail / spam folders. Many of you who thought you had not received an e-mail from me later found my message in there...]

Registration for the 2009 CASTLE Summer Book Club has closed. We have 238 participants this year, including myself. Whew! Participants come from the following countries:

• Canada (6)
• Malaysia (1)
• Singapore (1)
• United Kingdom (1)
• United States (229)

I have divided us into four discussion groups. Last night I sent an e-mail to all participants that confirmed their registration and notified them of their group number. They will receive another e-mail this weekend that includes the URL of their online discussion area. The links to the four discussion areas will be posted here as well. Our conversations will be public and anyone can join us on an ad hoc basis as desired.

We start on Monday!

Mark your calendars

Dr. Daniel Willingham, author of the book that we’re reading, Why Don’t Students Like School?, has graciously agreed to do a live podcast with me on July 13 from 1pm to 2pm Eastern. Questions will be generated from our book club participants.

Related posts

• Our discussion timeline for the summer
• Some FAQs
• Another update

CASTLE Summer Book Club - Update 2

Registration for the 2009 CASTLE Summer Book Club closes this Wednesday at midnight. To date we have 159 participants, which blows the doors off of last year’s total of 125. A week ago we had 81 participants, so we’ve effectively doubled the size of the group in the last seven days. Awesome!

We’re reading Why Don’t Students Like School? by Dr. Daniel Willingham, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia. I selected this book despite the fact that my alma mater, The College of William & Mary, is a fierce in-state academic rival of UVA so you know the book has to be pretty good! Sorry, those of you who have asked for a Kindle version...

Stay in touch as you have questions. I’ll see some of you online starting next week! 

CASTLE Summer Book Club - Update 1

We’re down to two weeks before the 2009 CASTLE Summer Book Club starts and we’ve got 81 participants signed up already. That’s great!

We will be reading Why Don't Students Like School? by Dr. Daniel Willingham. I'm still deciding what online platform we’re going to use to facilitate our discussions. Last year we used Lefora. It worked pretty well but so far I’m leaning toward something different this year.

Here are some answers to a few questions that people have asked me:

1. Will our conversations occur on specific dates or at specific times? No, our discussion will be completely asynchronous. We don’t care when you participate. Whatever’s most convenient for you.
2. What are the expectations regarding participation? We ask that you don’t sign up if you’re not committed to being fully engaged in the entire 5 weeks of discussion. That means that you’re keeping up with the reading (no more than 40 pages each week), visiting our discussion space at least several times a week, and participating rather than lurking.
3. What happens if I change my mind or need to drop out? Well, this is all self-organized and voluntary so there’s not much we can do about it. We lost participants last year because they didn’t like the book, their summer schedule changed, they couldn’t get into the online discussion format, etc. No worries. It’s your life! That said, we hope most of you will make it to the end (it’s only 5 weeks!).
4. Should I participate if I’m not a K-12 educator? Maybe. We’re surely not going to kick you out and probably will benefit from your different perspective. It depends on how much you’re interested in how people learn and what that means for cognitively-appropriate teaching practice in K-12 classrooms.
5. Will our discussions be private? Nope. So be thoughtful as you write, particularly if you’re discussing people you know or the organization in which you work.
6. What’s our reading schedule again? You can find that and other information (including how to sign up!) at my original post announcing the book club.

Got other questions that aren’t answered here? Leave a comment below or drop me a note; I’ll do my best to answer them quickly.

Second annual CASTLE summer book club starts June 15

After much deliberation, I’ve decided to do another online summer book club. I’m supposed to be taking the summer off but last year’s discussion of Influencer: The Power to Change Anything was so much fun that I can’t resist doing it again…

This year’s reading for the CASTLE summer book club will be Why Don’t Students Like School? A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for Your Classroom. The author is Dr. Daniel Willingham, Professor of Psychology at The University of Virginia.

Getting started

1. Complete the online participation form by midnight, June 10 (Central time).
2. Buy the book!

Commitments

• We start June 15. Be ready.
• Keep up with the reading. No excuses.
• Be an active participant in our online discussion area.
• Dissect ideas vigorously but also be nice to other discussants.
• Help foster interesting dialogue and connected community.

Schedule

1. 6/15 to 6/21 – Introduction, Chapter 1, and Chapter 2 (40 pages)
2. 6/22 to 6/28 – Chapters 3 and 4 (40 pages)
3. 6/29 to 7/5 – Chapters 5 and 6 (32 pages)
4. 7/6 to 7/12 – Chapters 7 and 8 (34 pages)
5. 7/13 to 7/19 – Chapter 9, Conclusion, and Wrap-Up (20 pages)

This offer is open to all leaders and change agents, at whatever level they’re operating (hint: this might be a good summer activity for some of your local principals or superintendents!).

I’m looking forward to some interesting discussions. Hope some of you will join me this summer!

Related posts

• CASTLE Summer Book Club - Update 1

Dangerously Irrelevant now available for the Kindle

Thanks to instructions from the kind folks at Mashable, this blog is now available in a Kindle edition. I think you now have at least four different ways to connect with Dangerously Irrelevant: going to the web site, RSS, e-mail, and Kindle. Just trying to create a variety of options for you…

Happy reading!

Constructing Modern Knowledge '09

Hmmm, let’s see…

A learning institute in Manchester, New Hampshire in July. Well, Manchester routinely appears on lists of best places to live. It’s in New England, which will be all green and lovely that time of year. AWESOME.

And the conference is hosted by Dr. Gary Stager, so I know it will be thought-provoking and brain-stimulating. DOUBLY AWESOME.

And the featured faculty will include Deborah Meier, Herb Kohl, Sylvia Martinez, John Stetson, and others. And attendees get a free copy of Kohl’s new book if they sign up by June 5. And there will be an evening reception at the famed FableVision Studios as well as a night out in Boston. TRIPLY, QUADRUPLY, and QUINTUPLY AWESOME.

Yep, sounds like a winner to me!

4 Guys Talking - Episode 6 (Chuck Heinlein)

If you’d like to know what a good statewide 21st century school leadership development program looks like, have we got a podcast for you!

This morning we had Episode 6 of 4 Guys Talking, the ‘talk radio’ podcast series from CASTLE. We spent the first 40 minutes talking with Chuck Heinlein, Director of the Leadership Center for 21st Century Schools at the West Virginia Department of Education.

I think this was one of our best podcasts to date. Chuck shared a wealth of information about the statewide principal institutes that he’s running, and we learned a ton about the legislative supports, Department of Education commitments, funding and policy mechanisms, and other supports that are in place in the state. I have the sense that West Virginia really is trying very hard to move its schools (and its school leaders) forward in a thoughtful, progressive, sustainable manner.

You can download the podcast or listen to a Web-streamed version here:

• www.blogtalkradio.com/uceacastle

You also can subscribe to the 4 Guys Talking feed using iTunes or a RSS reader.

Thanks to those of you who joined us live. I’m not sure when our next episodes will be but I will blog about them when I know. Happy listening!

Update: I deleted the embedded BlogTalkRadio player that used to be in this post. Since it started playing automatically, I thought it was too annoying!

4 Guys Talking - May 26 guest, Chuck Heinlein

Chuck Heinlein, Director of the Leadership Center for 21st Century Schools at the West Virginia Department of Education, will be our guest tomorrow on the 4 Guys Talking podcast. Chuck has an incredible job. Over the past few years he has run hundreds of administrators in his state through year-long institutes on 21st century schooling. As far as I can tell, West Virginia is far ahead of other states when it comes to investing in a statewide model for 21st century leadership development.

You can join us and Chuck on May 26, 1pm Central, for the live podcast. Feel free to call in and join the conversation yourself and/or help us brainstorm some questions for Chuck beforehand. The podcast also will be available for download afterward. Thanks!

What if you could find every school, district, or university Twitter feed in one place?

Continuing the theme of my last post, how great would it be if every school, district, or university Twitter feed was in one place? The aggregated posts would give us a sense of what each level of schooling thought was worth publicizing. I’m guessing that we’d also discover lots of interesting information that is typicallly hidden from the view of most of us…

Schools Twibe:

Districts Twibe:

Universities Twibe:

What if every Iowa educator on Twitter could find each other?

After a recent presentation here in Iowa that included some discussion of Twitter, a superintendent came up to me and said, “Okay, I’m in. But how will I find people that I want to follow?” That fantastic question led me to create the Iowa Administrators group at Twibes:

While I was at it, I also created the Iowa Teachers group at Twibes:

Shari Barnhart, Technology Coordinator for the Oskaloosa Schools, then created the Iowa Technology Coordinators group at Twibes:

So what we have here is a burgeoning effort to create spaces where Iowa educators can find others in the state who are on Twitter, see what they’re saying, and sign up to follow them. Maybe there’s a better way to do this but for now I think this has some promise, particularly if folks are willing to sign up and pass this along to others. I believe there are some great conversation and resource-sharing possibilities if most of the Iowa educators on Twitter are following each other.

Badge ribbons for NECC 2009

I’m getting excited for NECC 2009. Just a few more weeks and I’ll be griping about the hot, muggy weather in my hometown of Washington, D.C. I can’t wait!

Those of you who attended Edubloggercon last year may remember that I brought a bunch of buttons for attendees. This year, after consulting with Steve Hargadon and Anita McAnear at ISTE, I decided to spend some CASTLE funds to purchase name badge ribbons. You can see mockups below. The white one will be left-justified, not centered, and I’ll bring Sharpies so that folks can write in their Twitter name. The green and white ribbons will be available at Edubloggercon. Whatever’s left over will be put with the blue ribbons in the NECC Unplugged lounge. First come, first serve. Hope to see you there!

Model 21st century schools - Update 2

Here’s how we’re doing at collectively creating a list of model 21st century schools that are doing a nice job of infusing 21st century skills, digital technologies, problem- or inquiry-based learning, and other innovative practices into their school organization:

Those 59 United States schools represent 26 states. The International schools are in 10 different countries.

So we’re making GREAT progress. However, we still have a number of states (and countries) that don’t have a single school organization listed. I know that there are schools in every state that are doing wonderful things in the areas of problem-based learning, 21st century skills, or technology integration. Would you help us identify more model schools, either by adding them yourself or passing this quest along to others? We are in desperate need of good models that educators can learn from and visit. Thanks!