ISTE13 – Adam Bellow

Adam Bellow

Thankfully, I was able to see half of this keynote before I had to go to the airport. Powerful stuff. I had seen him throughout the conference with the Google Glass — very fun to see his video of his experience — and a video of his experience delivering the keynote!

The messages from the keynote were obviously powerful for his fellow educators — the tweets and blog posts following the keynote are amazing.

For me, the important pieces were:

  • The Scantron video (Adam with a “new” machine to read Scantron tests — a shredder!!!) This starts at about 39:40. He has a strong anti-testing theme.
  • His admission that he new little about Minecraft until this conference.
  • Message of change
  • Power of visual communication. Bellow is a master at slides, and it makes a difference.
  • “Technology can’t be the icing. It’s in the dough.”
  • 20% time  — he thinks this is low. Kids should be passionate all throughout school.

If the video starts at the beginning, go to 23:00 to start with Adam. The rest isn’t essential.

ISTE13 – Chris Lehmann

I just returned from  at ISTE13.  I am fortunate and grateful that I am able to attend this conference. This is not yet my reflection post. I’m still processing and find I need space to do that. As always, I wrote a great deal on the flight home – it’s the best place to immediately process. I will be posting thoughts from the flight later.

The next few posts are a spot for me to store the video from the conference that I will reference later. I love that ISTE does video on demand. It’s impossible to get to all the sessions you want during the conference — especially when they schedule Will Richardson and Chris Lehmann at the same time!

Chris Lehmann

I’ve blogged about Chris many times. It was watching him at ISTE 2011 and online that really started me down this path. He talk at ISTE13 is no exception. I’m sorry I wasn’t there in person.

Take a look through this video. Think about the questions he asks. These questions would make a powerful faculty experience. I may, in fact, take the questions and write a session even for the staff where I work.

The questions he asks – and is looking for a 10 word answer – include (paraphrased):

  1. Schools should help students become?
  2. How does technology help this?
  3. What are your “Legacy Apps” and how do you change?
  4. What will you do to change in 2013-2014?

Look for the responses on Twitter, #istetransforms. Powerful.

I was also empowered by Chris’s reference to parents. ISTE doesn’t always mention parents as much as I think it should, and it is often about how to convince parents to like tech, to move away from traditional grading. But how about us parents who want our schools to move away? Chris uses the term, Parent Activist. I love it. He encourages these passionate educators to use their role as parents in their kids’ schools to become activists, to encourage change there as well.

 

Be Nice to Mobile

I’ve been a web developer for many years. Web design has gone through many phases, but by now it seems quite obvious that sites need to be optimized for mobile. Like many people — students included! — I use my phone for intense web browsing and reading.

My current pet peeve is websites that make you click from page to page to read an article. It’s fine for a browser, but NOT for mobile. I don’t understand why these sites don’t have a mobile optimized version.

Screenshot of lifescript.com on an iPhone browser. How to design a site to be unfriendly to mobile!

Screenshot of lifescript.com on an iPhone browser. How to design a site to be unfriendly to mobile!

In one, there are so many ads and extraneous information, besides having to tab from page to page — at least NINE pages — it’s nearly impossible to read the article.

While this doesn’t directly relate to education and technology, it is definitely is something content providers — whether they focus on education or not — need to consider. Any site with content needs to be mobile friendly. It’s just better customer service!

Sugata Mitra Strikes Again

Another fabulous article about Sugata Mitra from The Guardian and his thoughts on education. It is going to be the basis for a much longer blog post — when I have a few minutes to write, which just might be on the plane to ISTE!

To entice you, here’s the first paragraph:

Would a person with good handwriting, spelling and grammar and instant recall of multiplication tables be considered a better candidate for a job than, say, one who knows how to configure a peer-to-peer network of devices, set up an organisation-wide Google calendar and find out where the most reliable sources of venture capital are, I wonder? The former set of skills are taught in schools, the latter are not.

 

Read the Rest. It’s worth it.

Disrepectful

My 7th grader has had an iPad at school this year to help him organize and keep all his work in one place.

Yesterday, he came home in tears. His math teacher took away his iPad and humiliated him in front of his whole class. My son admitted he had been deleting music from iTunes so he could update his Notion app (a music notation app for music scores, not for listening to music). He knew he shouldn’t be doing this during class.

Should he have had his iPad taken away? Should he have been humiliated in front of the whole class? This is a kid who never gets in trouble. In 8 years, I’ve had two teachers say one time each to me that he was talking too much in class… that’s the extent of the trouble he’s gotten into. He’s never had another issue with the iPad in nearly 9 months of school.

The teacher emailed us that he’s not sure he can “trust [my son’s] responsible use” now.

Wow. Seriously?

This is a teacher I know has a strong dislike of technology. He feels there is no role for technology for a student. He told me once that the math games on the iPad mean kids are more interested in popping balloons or getting the sharks than learning the math…. You think? Maybe learning math facts isn’t fun for some kids and they need the added motivation to pop balloons. Or maybe they’re so sick and tired of paper timed tests that popping a balloon puts more interest into the process. I honestly think he’s been looking for an opportunity to catch my son doing something so he could take away the iPad.

We feel the punishment was a significant overreaction. Could he not have given my son a warning? Asked him to put it away? Instead he threatened to take it away for the whole day. I give my son credit for pointing out that his entire planner and all his assignments are on the iPad. My son suggested giving it up for the math class, then getting it back.

I mentioned this to two colleagues who know my son. They guffawed. Their first reaction was that the class must’ve been boring and my son (who “gets” math easily) must have known what was going on and was frustrated listening to repetitious instructions.

I’m having a difficult time sending my son back into that class.  In nearly 9 months, this is the first problem we’ve had with the iPad. I have heard from no other teachers about issues of inappropriate use. So why now? Why this? And why this much reaction?

Redefine Cheating: MOOCs

Recent article in the Chronicle for Higher Education,“MOOC Teachers How to Cheat in Online Courses, with Eye to Prevention” brings up the need to redefine cheating and why we need to redefine education. The article talks about an online course (a MOOC) being taught by a Wisconsin professor all about how to “redesign learning environments.”

Let’s hope that’s what he focuses on.

The very last paragraph of the article defines cheating as “It’s meeting at Starbucks and taking a quiz together, or texting a friend….”

Seriously? Isn’t this really collaboration? We need to redefine assessment. Is the quiz about getting a right answer or about thinking through a problem? If it’s a basic multiple choice test, then getting the “right” answers from a friend may be cheating, but working through the problems with another person shouldn’t be.

Our assessments are what is wrong — not the collaboration. Students are by nature social creatures. The world works on teamwork and cooperation. Let’s reward that. Let’s nurture that -not criminalize it by calling it “cheating.” If our assessments rely on basic factual recall or some other simple form of grading to make things easier on the grader, than perhaps THAT is the problem. Not the fact that students collaborate.

I’m taking a MOOC right now. It’s not for credit, so it has a different tone and importance, I grant you that. However, I want to learn the content. I don’t care about my grade on the weekly quizzes. In this set up, you get 3 chances at a quiz. The best score is recorded. Each time to you take it, you have an opportunity to see the explanation for the answers. It doesn’t take much to figure out how to get a perfect score. The first time I took one, I felt horrible for using the answers (given to me) to get a perfect score. Then I thought again. This was about ME learning the content. Not about a grade, not about credit, so I feel no guilt. The questions are straight from the lecture or reading. There is little thought needed to answer them, no critical thinking. Just basic factual recall.

If, however, any online course was designed to give a grade or credit based on this type of quiz, that would be ridiculous. That type of assessment is ridiculous and shouldn’t be used. It is up to the educators to use assessments that are more creative, rely less on the straight factual recall, and demonstrate the ability to think, analyze, problem solve, cooperate, create, translate, etc. Look at the higher thinking skills on Bloom’s taxonomy.

Don’t criticize the students for cheating when you’re basically telling them to.

Digital Delivery of History

Ran across “Clouds over Cuba” today, a digital interpretation of the Cuban Missile Crisis produced by the JFK Library.

The site won a Webby for its navigation/structure. I agree that it is an inventive, creative solution to navigation.

However, to me, it represents a fascinating way of delivering digital history.

First, it has an accessible documentary about the Crisis, broken into chunks/chapters of about 3-5 minutes. Perfect length. Content isn’t superficial, nor is it too complex.

Second, you “earn” a dossier — a file of primary sources. This is awesome. You don’t actually do anything to earn the sources, but as you watch the documentary, sources that relate to the content in the video are added to your dossier.

Then, you can go see these primary sources. They have everything from recordings of phone calls and meetings, photos, letters, notes, radio addresses by Kruschev, newspaper articles and more. I believe there are 187 items in the dossier when you’re done.