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.

Bryan Alexander began his keynote with The Complete History of the Soviet Union, Arranged to the Melody of Tetris to show how gaming works to teach. Remixed archival footage, video footage, etc… that anyone can grab and build. The multimedia synthesis is becoming the norm.

Trend extrapolation is one key of futurism that includes assumptive quantitative arcs, allows us to examine trends. Broadband increases and 5 exabytes in 2002 to 11,240 transferring online in 2011.

He’s discussing Chromium the new Google Laptop, which doesn’t have a hard drive.

Crude & Awkward: Educational Forms & Teacher 2.0

In a recent panel I chaired at National Council of Teachers of English entitled LEARNING LITERATE LIVES: 21ST CENTURY LITERACY SKILLS BEYOND INDIVIDUAL TECHNOLOGIES with Shelley Rodrigo, Chad Sansing, and William Kist, the discussion revolved around grass roots educational reform in terms of trying to move beyond the catch phrase “21st century learning” towards what that REALLY means. In November 2008, during Marc Prensky’s keynote from NCTE in San Antonio, he discussed how the taxonomies must shift from the nouns of Bloom’s 1956 model towards a “verbed” model where CREATING is shifted to the top. This same concept, for me, applies to technology tools. Educators want to take these shiny tech tools and try to shove them into the tired, regurgitated pedagogical paradigms. But that’s not effective. We can’t just grab the most recent cool Web 2.0 app and use it in our classes for the sake of using it. It doesn’t work, no matter how hard we’ve tried.

I’ll admit it; I’ve done it. I’ve said “let’s do this project” and “here’s the tool!” The kids groan, and I groan later… the reason I groan is because suddenly this cool shiny tool does NOT work! We use to love utterli.com and used it for maybe a year in a half until, during one project, it just died. I contacted the Utterli people who ignored me. I checked their Twitter feed that looked dead. My kids complained. They emailed me and each other, over and over. Nothing I could. I moved away from Utterli (if you find anything that can replace Utterli, tell me). I then tried another awesome tool I loved one called Xtimeline.com. Guess what? It worked very well until I asked 100 students to use it during the same week! It died. Same deal. Next up, Capzles.com. Some things worked very well but then we found bugs. The “CEO” would answer emails and sounded great. This lasted a week. After that, he stopped responding to my (very respectful) questions/emails. This is what happens.

Teacher 2.0

So what do we do? We need to stop giving them these tools. Yes, I think I said that. Let’s start with the notion of US. Who are we? Who must we be? This blog is called Teacher 2.0 because we need a pedagogical reboot. Most of us are our own tech support, our own pedagogical experts, and our own content area authorities. By wearing all three hats, this becomes more difficult for us. Beyond teaching we, often, are required to teach to the test, chair committees, sponsor clubs, etc… And all of this beyond actually teaching.

cc image posted on Wikipedia by Punya Mishra on February 15, 2009

I call us Teacher 2.0. Not all of us, but the ones who “get it” and really try to become the center of the above diagram. Those of us in these discussions and care about our kids. It’s frustrating to be Teacher 2.0 because we have several challenges: 1) our IT department hates us because we’re the squeaky wheel who wants to get to websites that we hear work well but they filter them because they over filter and have unfounded fears of CIPA, 2) our class building colleagues who roll their eyes when we talk tech (like the teacher down the hall who wants to install a cell phone blocker in his classroom for his students!), or 3) our admin who don’t understand the technology updates because they’ve focused so long on either the pedagogical perspective or (god forbid) the management perspective of running a school. It’s hard to be a teacher in this world, and, too often, one of three things happens: 1) they give up and revert to Teacher 1.0, 2) they give up on teaching k-12 and shift to college/university (less filters, less big brother evals), or 3) they quit teaching all together. The last one is terrible because we lose some of our greatest teachers in our public schools every single day. Henry Giroux, critical and pedagogy theorist, in response to how teachers are currently being portrayed (read: lambasted) in the media and corporate American, argues that “Once eager public servants [teachers] in the fight for equality and justice, teachers are now forced to play with a severe handicap, as if assembled on a field blindfolded and gagged” (October 5, 2010). I have no idea why we placate the negativity thrust upon us. Is it through a mutual fear? We fear what education has become. The powers that be fear that eventually we teachers won’t continue our placated subservience towards the corporatized, politicized educational fruitcake system.

As I wrote that last bit I was about to make a caveat about not trying to sound conspiratorial and negative, but then I’d be sugar coating our current system. I won’t do that. What I will do is shift to a definition of today’s Student 2.0.

Student 2.0

A gap has emerged between the way teachers think and the way students think. The difference between the way we, the native immigrants work, and the way the digital natives learn are vast: they work at twitch speed (how fast their fingers move on cell phones or gaming joysticks), they randomly access information instead of linearily, they parallel process data, they read graphics first, and they are just truly more connected. People toss around terms for various generations. Don Tapscott calls current undergrads, high schoolers, and middle schoolers NetGen (TK) while Marc Prensky calls them digital natives (many people find this term problematic, and typically that focuses on class-based situations); I suggest the students a few years older than my own child in elementary and younger are now the iGeneration (or iGen, if you must). What makes these kids iGen is not knowledge or capabilities but it is attitude and comfort level. While GenX educators (and even those of us on the cutting edge of Teacher 2.0) tend to keep a foot in the past (like the people who print emails and edit research work by printing it and writing on the paper), don’t necessarily instinctively go to the internet first, don’t naturally share their public profiles, make assumptions that real life happens offline, and believe our pedagogical practices are effective, while our students are metaphoric rockets; they go at hide speed, they’re volatile, they’re headed places unknown, they need good programming and good payload, they may require mid course corrections, and they have an enormous potential payoff. Teacher 2.0 is scared, Teacher 1.0 ignores this shift, the administration sweeps this under the carpet, the test makers just want to make their money, and the politicians wants to filter education funds elsewhere.

Together we all need to realize student 2.0 are those who want to consume and create in the digital age.

cc image created and posted on Flickr by Devon Christopher Adams on November 17, 2010

Crude & Awkward

In closing, some technology tools last a few years while others last only a few months. Educators need to be aware that these tools disappear too quickly for us to really engage with them pedagogically. This scares teachers. Email has been considered for “old people” as far back as late 2007. What’s next to go? Our capabilities, mindsets, and activities need to change because technology evolves daily.

Teacher 1.0 and way too many of our IT departments and administrators make excuses that we don’t use the technology because:

We don’t have time.
It produces poor work.
Where’s the evidence it works?
We don’t have computers.
It doesn’t help students pass the test.
Kids will cheat.

Kids will cheat. Why do today’s teachers generalize this notion of using technology to cheat? This is profound because today’s students need to learn HOW to find knowledge and information rather than worrying about how they find that knowledge. Student 2.0 are not just using technology differently, they are reshaping their entire lives with technology. Students have online ways of communicating, sharing, buying/selling, exchanging, learning, meeting, gaming, coordinating, evaluations, collecting, creating, evolving, searching, analyzing, reporting, programming, etc…. Today’s student is a different beast than their predecessors: US, Generation X (for the most part) teachers. We, as teachers, formerly used our own personal, younger experiences to relate to our students, but this generation is different. We can’t do that now. What do we do? How do we reform education? We don’t need educational reform, we need new educational forms. And with these discussions, I hope we find them.

Here I’ll borrow William Kist’s silent film metaphor. The silent film format was cutting edge and brand new a century ago; no one knew what the next step was and no one knew where this all was headed. Those filmmakers were rudimentary, they were “crude and awkward”. Flash forward a hundred years and we have 3D television technology for our living rooms and watch film leap out at us from 15 story movie screens. Sure educational reform may take 100 years but I’m ready to start now. This is grass roots; Teacher 2.0 like you and me are the pioneers, and, I don’t know about you, but I am ok being called crude and awkward.

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.

I’ve been teaching Into the Wild, the journey of Christopher McCandless, since early in 2005 so when Changing Hands Bookstore announced that they were bringing Jon Krakauer to town I was stoked. Into the Wild seems to touch more of my students than any other required novel. Last month Krakauer released his next nonfiction novel- the story of Pat Tillman. Before Bush made him the propaganda poster boy for his wars, mostly only people in Arizona knew Tillman as the NFL safety who walked away from a $3.6 million dollar contract to join the Army.

While I know less about Tillman and don’t have developed comments of my own without researching more and reading the Krakauer book about him, Where Men Win Glory, I do know McCandless. My AP classes just finished Into the Wild and as wanted to know if McCandless was elfish or selfless. We had wild debates about this topic in class, but we never came to any sort of conclusion. Toward the end of one of these hour long debates, I suddenly thought of Tillman. At first I hated Tillman because of what he represented by the government, but as I think more and more about it, I hesitate to pass judgment.

When we arrived at Dobson HS tonight, I discovered close seats near the podium and was excited to be about 20′ from where Krakauer would speak. After a short wait, the Changing Hands person came up to introduce Krakauer who was right behind her. We had our touch with fame as he walked within 10′ of us. I shot several pictures as he began discussing Tillman. He began a slideshow of he made of photos and videos from Afghanistan when he was researching Tillman and he read the excerpt where Tillman was killed.

Afterward he opened for questions and most were about Tillman. One or two people wandered into a discussion of Under the Banner of Heaven or Into the Wild, so I figured my question wouldn’t be too far off. He called on me pretty quickly. I explained to him that I’ve taught Into the Wild for the last five years and he actually thanked me. I then told him I couldn’t understand how Tillman could not give up everything without some idea that he’s be glorified for what he was doing. Krakauer agreed and discussed with me how Tillman’s journals argued back and forth the very point about walking away from his wife and family for his country.

Next I asked him my second part. Was McCandless selfish and how do the journeys of these men parallel. Krakauer told my questions was great and really tough to answer. He talked briefly about Tillman, and he said my kids should continue the discussion about McCandless in class: “You students should keep talking about that. I’d love to sit in on that conversation.” Wow. Wouldn’t we like that? He did move on before talking any more about McCandless and after a few more questions, the hosts had to cut off questioning so he could sign.

I was in the B group so I wanted a short 10 minutes before getting in line. Several people I ended up knowing were there and said my question was profound, and what did I think the answer was. Or what did I think Krakauer thought it was. It was my turn to find out.

The line moved quickly and I got up towards the end to get my books signed. I reminded him who I was, and then I said, “Well, is McCandless selfish?” Krakauer looked up at me and answered. “Yes, he was selfish and rightfully so.” He went on to discuss with me the familial problems McCandless faced and we discussed my teaching his novel. I thanked him as he asked about my British version of Into the Wild that I had him signed, and then we parted ways with a hand shake. For me, this was like meeting a rock star.

(c)2009 Devon Christoper Adams

Tonight I was subbing at MCC for a colleague and conveniently immediately beforehand, Chris Crutcher, author of several young adult novels, was speaking here in the library to kick off banned book week.

He opened with a story about two penguins attempting to nurture a rock that was egg sized. The zoologists realized that it didn’t matter to the penguins so they took an abandoned egg and gave it to two male penguins to nurture. That egg succeeded and hatched, and those two male penguins raised that chick. To them it didn’t matter if there were two men or no females, etc… It was two penguins raising a baby. He segued into how this story was not about homosexuals and had nothing to do with that, and now, in today’s culture, book banning has gone to the extreme. Then he moved into a discussion about book banning.

It the 1950s and 1960s some books were banned, but then it continued to get out of hand. Conservatives argue that “If kids read stuff that they shouldn’t read yet IN THEIR TERMS, then they’re going to be bad.” Who’s to say what the terms should be? Crutcher grew up in the 1960s and after he graduated, he went to Spokane to work as a therapist.

When he wrote Chinese Handcuffs and toured about the book a young woman came up to him and asked “how did you know about my life?” The girl’s English teacher gave her the book and he had the two of them talk. Crutcher said it doesn’t matter that some people were offended by the book, but in this case, this girl was able to get the help she needed.

As a licensed therapist for over two decades, as a teacher, and as a novelist with over ten books, he understands how to skim the truths off the stories he hears; as a therapist, he knows he cannot tell their real stories, but over and over again these truths emerge from writing. “They are pockets where the author just elbows up against people’s beliefs.” Something about books get people going.

Now Crutcher is talking about Deadline, which is the book by him that I own, and about the young man who is living on borrowed time. In this book he makes education and school important; he also makes this about life and living it to the most. Crutcher read chapter 1 of Deadline about Ben Wolf discovering he is terminally ill and choosing to tell no one about it. He made the book mysteriously engaging and those in the room who’ve not read this before sat enrapt.

Crutcher thought it would be easy to write Deadline after the first chapter. He wanted to write a novel about life not about death and how a person who has a short period of time left can make his mark on the world. These “nuggets” or challenges that are thrown at Ben are how he reacts to these situations through that year. Crutcher uses people he knows and in dealing with families, he has come across sex offenders in his work, and he wanted Ben Wolf to meet and engage with this sort of person, so we can see how mankind relates to other people, including people like this who are the bottom of the barrel in prisons, people who are destroyed by the people around them and regret their own illnesses more than anyone. And Ben Wolf meets this sort of person, and by bringing up hard issues and dealing with them in his novels, of course, Chris Crutcher’s books have been banned.

Without addressing the hard issues, without pulling them out into the open, without discussing them, then these issues will continue to fester. Instead of standing up for books we DO like, we need to stand up for the books DON’T like.

Chris Crutcher ended with the paraphrases comment here, and then he opened it for Q&A.

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…

Here’s a link to an article written about the Wikiwire presentation last night. A nice shot of my student and some information I presented on Social Media and collective intelligence.

Last year my friend Kerri Mathew contacted me regarding finding a way to hook up a science fiction writer, PJ Haarsma, with students eager to read his book, play his online game, and connect in new ways with young adult sci-fi. Having just come off a year project with Kerri working with wikis and fanfiction, I immediately saw wetpaint.com as an outlet for the kids, and we we’re all a little excited about the author himself being part of the project. To get the kids excited about the book series, Jim Blasingame, professor at ASU and ALAN/NCTE guru, schedule PJ Haarsma to hit two local Arizona high schools including Basha. The kids seemed a little starstruck, but they quickly realized that PJ is a man just like they could be and he has a vision that could be anyone of theirs.

In the late fall semester of 2008 we encouraged the students to move towards an online official lexicon of PJ’s first two Softwire books and his online video game. I was able to procure an advanced copy of the third book at NCTE in November and used it to bribe the students into working faster and more efficiently. By Christmas they had a large chunk of text in the wiki, edited and put together. Two students stood out beyond the others as the shining stars for this project.

Jim’s goal was to present the wiki as a “premier” by the end of the spring semester at ASU. That was tonight. Tonight Jim invited Kerri Mathew, me, PJ, several of my students, Book Babe, media, professors and others to join him in discussing a summer project PJ and his good friend Nathan Fillion of Firefly/Serenity fame are producing, briefly introducing book #4 of The Softwire Series, and then a conglomerate of social media meets literature project of PJ’s.

I spoke at length in this showcase about the wiki, collective intelligence, social media in traditional pedagogical settings, and what the kids accomplished. Two of the students discussed some as well about their role in everything and how they put it all together. PJ explained what he wanted us to still accomplish, and then Jim presented me with consent forms from the publishers who want to publish the lexicon text in the back of the third book’s paperback form. The student and I are very excited about this, and I’ve discussed briefly with Jim how he can showcase some of this at AETA this fall at ASU and my plans to begin to write up and publish my side of this experience.

After a photo shoot and interviews with press and the media manage at ASU’s decision theatre, I headed home. Now the wiki isn’t public yet, but we will be discussing that move shortly between me, PJ and Jim. As for now, I am waiting to get my hands on the manuscript for book #4 this summer.