Karen Cator Direction, Office of Education Technology US Dept of Ed on Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Tech #mec2011

Cator was introduced by John Huppenthal, Arizona Superintendent of Public Schools. National Education Technology Plan introduced in fall through Drupal, and they said it was a “draft” because this is a working document that is alive. Not some proposal printed, stuck on a shelf and forgotten.

“Now is the Time!” Obama, Huppenthal, and Cator are speaking the language of tech in education. Teachers have been doing this for years, she said; it’s time to make hit work. Obama: “By 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduate in the world”. Now the question actor asks is “how do we become a learning nation”. Obama said we need to “…out innovate, our educate, out build…” by learning from other nations and jumping ahead. 82% of schools are in improvement currently, and that can’t work.

CC image posted on Flickr by ALan Levine.

We need to reboot our education system … this is a “matter of national security”. One year ago there was no market for tablet computers. What we’ve seen this year is a proliferation of mobile computing that includes 24/7 access. 50-70 million tablets will be sold this year globally. Mobile productivity means we move beyond eight hours inside four classroom walls. Learning in the 21st century is about learning how to handle “Social Interactions for Learning”. There’s so much digital content out that that we can all learn from including PBS chunking their videos, universities adding free online free courses. Stop blocking student access to these things. We do need to learn how to “safe search” in schools, but don’t just arbitrarily block everything. We have paper classrooms and online classrooms but how do we blend the two? Print has become digital.

Digital books can take us deeper into concepts, teach us about the writers, take us to other books and ideas by others. Much more than just the print book of yesteryear. When disability act required ramps and sidewalks, it did not just help wheel-chaired people, but also strollers, bikes, etc… Digital print is like this as we move to a digital learning environment.

NETP has three parts. Teaching, Learning, and Assessment. This is the infrastructure, and now we need to move towards productivity. Next up is R&D. What is the importance of learning and what do we need? How do real world people think and learn? “We’re training for 2020 Olympics, but we don’t know the sport yet.” We need 21st century expertise. How do students learn to think globally? In what ways do students now approach learning? NETP is grounded in how people learn and the importance of affect, language, prior experience, etc… We need to personalize learning, and with tech this is absolutely possible. There should be a universal design for learning, and multiple avenues for learning are being created so students can access learning in various ways. Finally, in the learning space learning has to be connected as informal and formal; we can’t keep kids in schools for 12 hours. Learning moves beyond the classroom walls. Students have so many opportunities: robotics, music classes, sports, etc… So much of their learning is outside of schools.

Assessment is still key. How do we make sure student performance is measured? We need to measure what matters. Assessment 2.0 goes beyond the bubble test and gives us an understanding about growth. The opportunity to embed assessment inside games, scaffolded spaces, etc… gives measurement on the fly. Which sorts of assessments work for which kids, in which circumstances, etc… By examining this, we have real time feedback. Real time feedback is better than the refrigerator door model. Online student publishing is so important today, and no longer does it really matter when teachers hang student work on their classroom walls … it’s more important to have that work published online where it is more permanent than the end of the quarter when the classroom is cleaned.

Teachers need to be highly “effective” and highly connected. Teachers need to be connected to the experts, colleges of ed, and their peers. Engage teachers in new ways of thinking about learning and how we can use ubiquitous technology. Teachers should have a laser focus on the idea of time as an issue; we live in a print based environment, but as we moved to digital, students can move on to the next piece of learning instead of waiting for the teacher. Once we put the tools in the hands of the students, teachers will have more time to be more engaged with more of our students. Differentiated roles of teachers is important. Online scaffolded education is so important as we have so many experts but so little physical time, let’s move this all online. So much teaching is outside of the school walls. And what can we do to help teachers be more successful in helping students learn. We need to inspire both our colleagues and our students. Teaching never ends when the final bells role.

Cator said teachers need to have a persistent online profile, just like a Facebook profile. The profile should include what we’re interested in, what we ourselves want to learn, what we’ve published, etc… We can’t shy away from online profiles. When this is public student can seek us out to learn from us. When we hide this information away, we reach less students.

Cator said our goal is “All students and educators will have access to a comprehensive infrastructure for learning when and where they need it.” What the Department of Education wants for our education system is: 24/7 Community wide to technology (some school districts like Vail in Tucson give them hardware), Broadband in schools, Access Points for the Internet, and support for technology (having access to people who know how to troubleshoot the hardware and software), and we need equity in technology. Data.ed.gov is launching broadband availability for US Schools. NITA and the FCC is working on this right now with the department of education. This is the National Broadband Map, and Dept of Ed wants transparency on where broadband is so we can all work on building up access so ALL students have connectivity EVERYWHERE they need it WHENEVER they need it.

How do we make sure we’re building efficiency and effectiveness in student productivity? We have had decades of print education, and we need to have new ways of redesigning processes to better deal with helping learning be more productive. Cator’s talking about Kahn Academy about learning math online; videos online is cool but now practice sets have been added, so students can practice, find out if they’re right or wrong, and then students can measure their own learning. How can teachers use this for learning?

Research and development. What needs to be invented next for all of this to work? Nobody is being funded to take these ideas to market even when we have prototypes available. There’s a gap between R&D and getting tech into the hands of our students. This is being worked on now.

CC image posted on Flickr by Devon Christopher Adams
Slide with Department of Ed’s National Technology Educational Plan outlined. At Microcomputers in Education conference at Arizona State U.

How will the Department of Education help support schools, a teacher asked Cantor? Her response: NETP is a good start if you make that required for teachers, admins, district officials and school boards. There are a ton of examples that you can put into practice right now in schools.

To conclude, NETP is improving access, creating transparency (telling thew stories of what is working in tech ed now and the classrooms, focus on people (support our communities and support system), and we need to invest in rapid improvement in technology for our students and classrooms. This is where the department of education is now, and these are the discussions that need to be going on in our schools and districts RIGHT NOW.

Last year several of my tech geek friends kept talking about this PodCampAZ thing, and I said “well that’s not really for me since I don’t podcast that much” (Been trying to this year, but it’s a shot in the dark). I didn’t pay much attention, and I didn’t want to pay for another conference. I like the ones where I present and they don’t make me pay since I am presenting. Others cost too much. Of course, I did no research.

Suddenly it was November and I was home with my kid. It was a Saturday afternoon and the tweet feed exploded. Suddenly all my friends were talking about this phenomenal conference in Phoenix, and I was jealous. Why wasn’t I there? By dinner time I was itching to get out of the house, and people began to converge on Chino Bandido’s in Chandler. I told the wife to watch the kid, I was going out. I got there, checked in on Brightkite (as I do anytime I go anywhere) and waited for my few friends to show up. Suddenly my phone began to beep. Other people were checking in. People came into the restaurant in droves. They looked like me. Acted like me. I didn’t know them.

Suddenly what I thought was a small geek community in Phoenix was much much larger. I also realized that this PodCampAZ thing was for real, and I was missing it.

By Sunday morning I was at PodCampAZ, in my new, cool t-shirt and ready to rock ‘n roll. I spent a great day with all of these people, and quickly registered for PodCampAZ 2009. Next up was the call for presenters. What did I want to say? I had to say something? Why just sit there and not share? Something. Anything.
I found new ways this year to contact parents and communicate through the high school community as a teacher who is obsessed with technology, but as a parent I knew too few teachers thought like I did. Therefore, my market was both. Here’s Devon the teacher. Here’s Devon the parent. Which are you? Come find out. My proposal was accepted and I even get to present on my birthday! Woohoo! I am ok with that, since I’ve done it before in a former life.

So here are the basics for the conference, and I hope you can join us. It’s free. The only pre-req is to have fun, and if you have something to say, well then say it. I will see you there. Come say hello.

PodCampAZ is at the University of Advancing Technology on Baseline Road (just past Fry’s Electronics for all of us geeks out there). It’s next week November 14 & 15 (wow, I will be 35. Odd.) Some of the people will include YOU (yeah, you). … and New media innovators, enthusiasts, participants, and newbies who are interested the role of the internet in interactive communication. It really is two crazy cool days of learning, sharing, and people meeting. And Phoenix metro is gorgeous in November. An the coolest part is, it’s free!!! Totally free. But you could buy a t-shirt and support @podcampaz for years to come.

So here’s the skinny from my buddies around the valley who wrote the media kit for this event:

It’s that time of year again – PodCamp AZ is coming to the University of Advancing Technology November 14th and 15th! PodCampAZ is a FREE networking media unconference, dedicated to blogging, video blogging, podcasting, social networking, and all other relevant media. At the heart of the unconference is the opportunity to have a conversation at large with those innovators which have created a successful blend of relevant media and put it to work for them. Speakers will address emerging trends and best practices on everything from print and radio to mobile, interactive web, and in real life information exchange. During PodCamp sessions, attendees are free to drop in, listen and learn about what is relevant to their needs, and if they choose to, move on to other sessions. You can also become an interactive part of the experience by sharing your knowledge as a speaker or stimulating ideas and asking questions as an active attendee.

If you are an established or aspiring blogger, podcaster, video blogger, or social media advocote and want to meet hundreds of people with the same interests, head over to podcampaz.org to get more information about this exciting event. And above all else, register to attend PodCamp AZ!

Other Links and Topics
If you want to go beyond the basic information, there are several areas that we currently focused on developing. We’d love you forever if you picked one or two to highlight in your article/cast to help us spread the word.

• Sponsorship – We are actively seeking sponsors for everything from rooms to metals to after-parties. Find information about sponsor levels and contact Paul Valach sponsors@podcampaz.org.
• Speakers – We have an awesome speaker lineup already, and are still taking submissions, but only through Saturday. The schedule gets published Monday! If you have questions, contact Sheila Dee and Lawrence Riddick at greenroom@podcampaz.org.
• PodCast AZ – Every year we have live podcasting throughout the entire session. Contact Dani Cutler and Dan and CJ Feierabend at onair@podcampaz.org to get on the airwaves.
• Volunteers – We’ll need a small army of people to help on event days. We might even have some cool swag for you, like a t-shirt and other unidentified stuff. If you want to march in our army, contact Crystal O’Hara at volunteer@podcampaz.org.
• Tees – We have 600 t-shirts to give to registered attendees, and over 500 people are already registered. If you want in on the goodness, get registered.
• This year, there will also be a monitored Help Desk area to handle your issues as they arise.

Registration
Registration is open. Please make sure you link to the registration page. The event is free to attend, but not free to put together, so we have a pre-registration and donation option.

Graphics
For all your official PCAZ 2009 graphics desires, see our digital swag.

And one two last things…

1. We’ve created an awesome overlay for your Twitter avatar. Add it, or we’ll sic Chuck’s Chihuahua on you!
2. We’ve got Facebook flair to flair your profile and send to friends. (Include images on blog post.)

   http://apps.facebook.com/getflair/viewflair.php?id=11386354&ts=profmain
   http://apps.facebook.com/getflair/viewflair.php?id=11385790&ts=profmain

   http://apps.facebook.com/getflair/viewflair.php?id=11386354&ts=profmain

So will I see you there????

I’ve been teaching for a decade now, was in college for 11 years writing research, and before that spent the required amount of time in high school. I’ve probably written 4-5 dozen researched papers and have probably taught the form to at least 25 different courses. Mr. Morgan in 11th grade English class back in the early 1990s taught me how to use notecards and bib cards and also how to cite in MLA. I never officially learned how to cite in MLA and still look things up, and it wasn’t until graduate school that I had to use APA. My family and colleagues say that APA is easier, but I am use to MLA. A lot of college instructors I hear about don’t require a certain style; they just want the students to pick one and go for it. I’ve had colleagues tell me they teach APA because it’s easier or more relevant, so sometimes I wonder if I don’t teach MLA, will they see it in college? Which brings me to to question really: Does a certain citation format matter? Is there a standard anymore, or is it slowly going by the wayside? I’ve seen several different citation formats recently in different venues, and a recent district workshop instructor in response to my question about adding citations to a lesson unit required of me that included required images from the internet told me, “don’t bother with that. No one will know.” Now, the discussion of copyright is another story all together for a different post, but let’s talk about citations here.

My friend and colleague Shelley Rodrigo recently published the 2009 MLA updated The Wadsworth Guide to Research with Susan Cochran-Miller. In that book she covers the big three at length: APA, MLA, and CSE. But the strong thing they did was begin to make these styles relevant. The citations are for things like Flickr comments, YouTube videos, etc… media and resources relevant today. There’s a subsequent website, too. Moreover, her book is more about how to build citations than just how to look them up in her book.

Shelley and I present together often, and we typically use Creative Commons images we find on Flickr for our presentations. When citing this work I’ve followed Shelley’s lead with citations, but for the traditionalist this can become concerning with authors like “ferretbaby” and “billybob69696″. In terms of Web 2.0 all students are also teachers, all writers are also authors, everyone with a camera becomes the photographer, and this is really ok albeit not everyone is ready to embrace non-refereed publication of the neophyte’s work.

As I continue to attend workshops, I watch how presentation images are cited. Sometimes there’s full pages in formal MLA or APA, other times there is a hodgepodge of information that may include the URL, may include the name of the creator, and may include date information. I say “may include” because many times this information isn’t there. I’ve seen huge discrepancies from all sorts of people to colleagues who model writing styles daily in their classes to some of the top instructional technologists in my field. I was surprised recently to realize 1) many of my high school colleagues don’t even know where to begin with writing styles and 2) many of them don’t teach documentation style at all.

Some presenters I see make up their own citation style based off of real styles. If we as educators learn to understand these styles, then when something new emerges, we can work through the citation format. Shelley and I have been pulling creative commons images from Flickr for most of this year now to use for presentations, and below you will see the citation style we use.

As you can see here the syntax is different than you’d expect, but you have the creative commons denotation (CC), the uploader’s name (we call this person uploader because we can’t differentiate who has shot the photo versus who has upload privileges), how we can to find the image, the title, and the link (embedded). One thing to note here is that it’s more important in understanding the different parts of a citation to learn how to do build this rather than just arbitrarily pasting a URL under a photo they snagged from who-knows-where on the web. That personally scares me. Of course, I always hear the argument of “why bother?”, but think of it this way. If I shot that photo, spent time downloading it, spent time composing it, and spent more time editing it in CS3, then you better damn well believe I want attribution. If we fail to keep this in mind, then powerful collective concepts like creative commons fails and you can go back to using clip art or buying stock photos. None of us want that.

Presenter at state conference whose data citation included ONLY the URL.

Notice that this man has used this famous image of Barack Obama and provides a link only. He didn’t even attribute the artist. This presentation image was shot by me at the Conference on College Composition and Communication in San Francisco in March 2009. Not even at this prestigious conference does some presenters both with writing style citations.

Now that MLA has released their 2009 updates, and with the recent release of the 2009 APA updated style guide and all of the controversy over the blatant errors with that guide, I have no idea where we’re headed. I do know only that as the few strive for consistency of the seas of writing, for me, the beacon of light of the holy writ of style guides is muddied by the clouds of the academy who cannot make up their minds.

This past weekend I was accepted to speak both days at the Arizona English Teacher’s Association, which occurs in central Arizona each fall. Shelley Rodrigo and I had decided we’d present on Embracing the Chaos of Web 2.0, but I also had some other ideas. Sometimes I find there are certain technologies I’ve used for so long (in Web 2.0, this is like months) that I take then for granted. I decided to discuss the use of Google Docs in collaborative peer writing and editing and creating a paperless classroom. I wasn’t sure how that would go over, albeit the people who came to see this session were wildly engaged and some were returning to entire school to implement my ideas. Pretty cool. As for the Creative Chaos presentation, at the last minute, Shelley could not attend so I asked my colleague from Scottsdale Community College, Lisa Young, to join me. She and I discussed various scenarios of how students technologies seemingly interrupt learning in the classroom, and how teachers can embrace these technologies (i.e., mobile phones, iPods, etc…) to enhance learning in the classroom.

The coolest part of the conference though was seeing PJ Haarsma, author of The Softwire Series, again. He and I have presented together a few other times, and I’ve written about my work with him HERE and HERE before. This time he brought fellow author, Frank Beddor, with him to Arizona. Frank’s primary, current work is The Looking Glass Wars. He, as I’ve written here, posited the What If Alice Liddell really did come from Wonderland and was in fact the last remain heir to the Hart throne, after her wicked Aunt Red (think Queen of Hearts) had her family slaughtered. This narrative became the The Looking Glass Wars series and the Hatter M comic series.

Jim Blasingame, board president of Kids Need to Read and ASU professor, invited several people to his home the evening of conference, including yours truly. PJ and Frank are those rare breed of author who truly cares to engage children in reading and finding innovative ways to excite children about reading. Moreover, they are just nice guys.

Earlier today I did a workshop through Mesa Life Options where I taught Twitter and Facebook to Baby Boomers. This was a nonprofit, two hour “workshop” with limited technology. I was invited through some colleagues at Mesa Community College to run this workshop and I was eager to address this generation, since I was use to working with Gen Xers like myself and Millennials like my students.

As I prepped I was relatively unsure how to proceed, but I knew I had very limited time (I could spend a full day teaching either Facebook or Twitter alone). I also knew this generation had different values, interests, and perspectives than mine. For example, many were retired and/or had community ed volunteerism they did regularly. They also were much more hesitant about publicizing any part of their lives than the Millenials who post EVERYTHING online.

I felt that for this audience, videos that they could access at the leisure would be best, so I made a handout for each application, set up wiki sites for the materials, and then began making and compiling videos.

When I arrived at the session, there was no wifi and the hardwire left much to be desired. Of course, we do what we can as presenters/educators so I improvised. Can you imagine teaching Twitter to a room of 55-80 year olds using a whiteboard? It was relatively ironic for 15 minutes. We were able to have the projector set up in the next room, and we all moved over there.

One man said he didn’t think he’d use this stuff, so I asked him what he does. He said he was a director (?) at Mesa Arts Center. Of course, BOTH of these apps would be perfect for him and his work. I hope he took something home.

I discussed Twitter first, planning to spend more time on Facebook since I did see many of them wanted to connect with out of town family. One woman said “My grand kid won’t pick a phone to call me but he’s always writing on there or putting pictures there.” I good naturedly told her I could teach her to stalk him. (Yes, this is tongue in cheek.) I could tell other people did have side groups, volunteerism, and organizations where they could use these. Facebook would’ve been longer but the start was a little rocky and everyone always needs a break.

With Twitter I discussed the four Is of Instructional, Informative, Inquiry, and Insightful developed by Biray Alsac. Instructional is that information someone can tweet that others can use and learn from (free legal advice from a retired lawyer, etc…); Informative is that information that someone can tweet that is perhaps an online news article or breaking news in their area about something that affects multiple people; Inquiry is that information that someone can tweet that is perhaps a question they have about something local (how long is that special art show running) to something national (when are the elections for XXX); Lastly, insightful, in terms specifically with this group, is that information that someone can tweet that is perhaps a life lessons learned and is now being instilled upon others publicly.

At the break some people needed to leave and I handed out cards, and then we moved into Facebook. With 40 minutes left, I felt that signing in, creating a profile, posting statuses, commenting, uploading photos, finding friends, and searching for alumni were the most important points to learn. Now we all know I cannot teach those all in 40 minutes, but I did over view them all and navigate the Boomers to my online videos teaching them all of those actions in Facebook.

The audience was very receptive to my work and eager to learn. They definitely did have questions about security. I showed them how to protect updates in Twitter and block users, and how to build limited profiles in Facebook.

Afterward they all took my cards, and actually a Mesa city Life Long Learners group has contacted me to repeat the presentation for their group. The Mesa Life Options director has also said she will be in contact for me to work with the local rotary to do some of this work as well.

If you’d like to review the work I’ve done for them, I would love your feedback. http://devoncadams.pbworks.com

Here at the ATLAST Project summer institute in Mesa, AZ. This is a project through the National Science Foundation and National Center for Teacher Education. Essentially this group is teaching teachers who teach future teachers how to teach with technology. (Did ya catch that?) Here’s the very cool introductory video they used today for making meaning with Web 2.0 in our 21st century schools. A colleague, Alaina Adams, and I will be presenting at lunch on our experiences with Google Apps in our classrooms. Alaina’s demo is lower SES and mine is pretty much the opposite of that group in many ways, so that dialogue will be interesting. More on that later…

This Arizona Tech Education Association session was on copyright. Check out the presentation below.

A(Re)mediating Social Technologies

Laura J. Gurak (Chair), Dawn M. Armfield (“On the Go: Mobile Technologies and Literacy”, Daisy Pignetti, “What are you doing? Teaching with Twitter!”, Kimberly A. Schultz (“Social presence in the online writing classroom: is student customizable content an answer?”)

At the next panel now, and I am pretty excited. Looks like a good group of presenters up front. Armfield is talking about mobile pedagogy. Scott Campbell is writing on using mobiles in the classroom, and research shows this is not an uncommon occurrence. We’re talking about mobiles & iPod touch/iPhones. She’s talking about how a one time fee to buy an iPod touch then wifi is used to connect wherever you are. Olga Cariff said that a well done cell phone with a keyboard may replace laptops in classrooms. Using laptops in classes is less engaging than mobiles because the monitor screen is between student and teacher. How else do we engage the students and make meaning of pedagogy with their phones? An argument is that students may be writing more, but are they writing well. Armfield asserts that they are, and I would agree. Albeit I personally teach AUDIENCE so they know how to write which ways when they write in those ways. When using all attributes that mobiles have, we have a full mulit-modal tool. (Texting, Image, Video, etc…) These lead to great mashup projects just using these small devices. “Digital kids” are creating a new digital literacy by trying out new online identities and really do consider what they’re doing in online spaces. Here the learner is also the teacher & producer. This is really important for the students as owners of their creations.

Pignetti is talking Twitter now. Awesome. Love the stickers on her computer. She’s interested in Twitter in crisis situations (e.g. post Katrina). She uses Twitter for public journaling with her students. At her university, it’s a laptop campus. She said her students are also FB addicts. With Digital Natives, these kids do not any other way of life albeit Pignetti said many of these students are returning students who are not DN. She uses LeFever’s video and the Daily Show to teach Twitter, and, tongue in cheek, she said Twitter is blogging for lazy people. She has some great information and I will have to wait for the electronic version.

Kimberly Schultz is up now, and I swear I know her. She’s talking informal social media to enhance pedagogy. The key is “informal” here. Schultz is talking about “spoken text” and the intersection between speech, writing and technology. Laura Gurak is beginning a discussing with Schultz about iTunes U at their university. They’re talking about universities who are trying to make their own “itunes u” rather than using the real thing, and how they don’t work very well. They’re suggesting that 75% of students today have online presences somewhere.

Overall great presentation!

Emerging Technologies, Cyborg Futures? Human Rights, and Literacy

Melissa Knous (Chair), Beatrice Quarshie Smith “Identities, Literacies, and Cyber Work”, Liz Canfield, “Cyborg Theories, Meatspace Realities: How Technology Can “Make Waves” in the First-year Writing Seminar”, Bonnie Orzolek