Two themes are emerging in what I’m learning here at ISTE 2010. These aren’t new ideas by any stretch, even to me. It’s just that they are being driven home in very powerful and deep ways.

The world is small and flat. Not precisely in the sense that Thomas Friedman meant in his book, but in the sense of connections and relationships. As I said yesterday, I can hardly turn around anywhere without seeing someone I know, or meeting someone I’ve conversed with on Twitter. Today I met Jeff Agamenoni and Sue Waters, from Montana and Australia respectively, and with whom I have chatted many times over the last couple of years. (Sue, of course, reminded me almost immediately that I forgot to bring her the chocolate I promised her. And then I took her seat in the Blogger’s Cafe. Great way to treat someone I’ve just met.)

When our students leave our schools, they are going to land in a world where they need to relate not just with people who live and work near them, but with people around the world. It’s not optional any more. Everyone is your neighbor. Distance is now measured not in miles but by your ability to connect with different channels. The more communication tools you know, the closer you are. Kids are going to have to be able to find people and be found, to build their own digital homes and tell their own digital stories.

Which is the second theme I’m seeing over and over:

Design is an essential skill. Garr Reynolds in his book and blog, Presentation Zen, talks about how often people treat design as an afterthought, as though it’s decoration to be painted on after making the content. But design is much deeper. It is ultimately about effective communication and facilitating connection. If a valuable message is obscured by poor design, the message will lose power, or the recipient will give up before it gets through.

Just as kids have to learn how to connect with the world and manage those connections, they have to learn how to effectively use the principles and tools of design to enhance their communication. The only way we will ever be able to teach those skills is to use them ourselves.

So my first takeaway from the day is that all educators, not just the ones who like that “technology stuff,” have to become connected and become designers. It’s not optional anymore, because we will be putting our kids at a disadvantage if we don’t get there.

So here I am, sitting in the Blogger’s Cafe at the ISTE Conference, a place that until now has existed only in myth and legend. This is, depending on how you count it, either my first or my third ISTE. Two years ago, I attended NECC 2008, but only virtually, through the activities at ISTE Island in Second Life. I met many people there, and blogged about my experience. Last year, I did the same, again meeting new people, building my network of colleagues, and growing my interest in attending in person.

So this, year I’m at ISTE for the third year in a row, but this time in person. And as I tend to do, I didn’t do this halfway: not only am I attending my first ISTE, but I organized a Tweetup earlier this morning, I’m volunteering at the Information Booth in about an hour, and I’m presenting a model lesson on Tuesday.

I have attended professional conferences before, sometimes with other colleagues from my district and sometimes on my own. In some ways, this is much like the annual conference of any other large, international organization: there are thousands of attendees (I overheard one person estimate it at 20,000), a huge exhibitor floor of corporations wanting us to buy their products, a bookstore, keynotes, workshops, and so on.

But I think what defines ISTE for me, and what sets it way apart from the other conferences I’ve been to, is that this is all about connections. I walked into the Denver Convention Center this morning, and ran into Scott Merrick, someone I’ve known for two years online, but never met in person until today. Although I am a little intimidated by the enormity of the site and the number of people here, it was immediately comfortable, because I knew that I already know dozens of people. I’ve run into many of them, and I’m very likely to run into more as the week goes on.

This conference, then, isn’t a one-shot event where I will be immersed in individual learning for a few days and then go back to “reality” where I can only hope to apply a few things that may have been absorbed while the rest evaporate like the fading shreds of an interrupted dream. This conference feels to me much more like an intense concentration of the relationships and conversations that happen on a daily and weekly basis with the network of professional colleagues that I’ve been building over the last two years through Twitter, blogging, and Second Life.

Every moment of my time here so far has involved learning. Even at dinner last night, the conversation turned to some deep philosophical discussions about the nature of learning.

On its surface, ISTE is a technology conference. At its root, though, are not hardware and software and vendors and books. This conference is really about professional educators who care deeply about learning and students and maximizing potential.

Tomorrow I begin attending the formal sessions. I expect to learn more than I can process, and will be blogging about my experiences. I also expect to learn just as much from the informal gatherings, the hallway conversations, the dinner meetups, and the other amazing people I will meet. What I hope to bring back to my district is a renewed enthusiasm for creating an awesome environment in our schools for students to learn and thrive, and ideas about how to introduce my work colleagues to the power of this network I have discovered.

Let me just say up front that I know I’m &submit=Search" target="_blank">hardly the first person to address this topic, and I’m sure I won’t be the last. In fact, so much has already been written on the subject of student blogging that I’m not going to spend time here talking about the basic reasons or the how-tos of doing it. Others have done that better than I.

What I want to explore today are a few of my thoughts about why blogging is a particularly powerful tool to give to gifted students. Gifted students have some unique needs that blogging can help teachers to address. Read the rest of this entry

Though it has taken me much longer than I planned to get back to this topic, I want to share with you today what I believe is an outstanding and probably very obscure tool that would be excellent for gifted students.

Think back a few years. No, further back. A little further. When home computers had memory measured in kilobytes, an 8-color monitor was high resolution, and disks were floppy.

The cutting-edge trend in computer entertainment was something called a “text adventure game.” Zork is the classic example of games in this genre, but there were dozens of them. They had no graphics and no need for a controller, because the entire means of interacting with the game was through text.

For those who have never played a text adventure, here is a typical sequence of moves you might see in one of these games (this is part of the sample transcript that was in the instruction manual for the original Zork): Read the rest of this entry

It’s a line you’ve probably seen on ads for sports equipment:

Better Tools for Better Performance

A debate is swirling among many people in my PLN about what’s more important: the tools and technology, or the teaching and learning. Before I begin exploring examples of great technology tools to use with gifted students, I thought it would be worth exploring, since it is directly relevant. The crux of it can be summarized in this exchange I had recently with Tony Baldasaro (@baldy7) on Twitter: Read the rest of this entry

First a disclaimer: If you read that title and thought, “Oh cool, another list of [sites/games/activities] I can plug into my [instruction/centers/homework/busywork] to keep my gifted kids [challenged/engaged/occupied/from bugging me],” then this is not the post you were looking for.

Read the rest of this entry

Earlier this summer I was introduced to the educational version of Glogster. For those not familiar with the site, Glogster is marketed as a sort of graphic blog (the site’s tagline is “Poster Yourself”). It has some interesting features that also make it a unique tool for student work. The education version allows teachers to register up to 200 student accounts which are all connected to each other in a class. Students can then create an unlimited number of glogs, each of which is a one-page interactive poster.

Glog creators can embed text, clip art, photos, video, and sound on each page. Each object can also have a live link attached to it. The pages can also be embedded into other locations such as blogs and wiki sites (see my classroom wiki as an example of this). The embedded glog is live, so any changes that are made to it at the Glogster site appear immediately wherever else you embed it.

So besides “postering themselves,” what could students do with Glogster? Here are a few ideas. I’m sure these will get you thinking about others—please share your own ideas in the comments.

1. Creating a “Choose Your Own Adventure” graphic novel. Each page would be a scene from the story with certain clickable elements that would take the viewer to a new page which continues the story.
2. Build a personal portfolio, showcasing links to scanned work, uploaded files, and online work such as blog posts and web sites.
3. Create a visual glossary for a unit or subject.
4. Write an interactive, visual book review or character study.
5. Make a clickable diagram to illustrate a concept or model a process. Links would take the user to a definition, explanation, or a closer view of that portion of the model.
6. Mock up a web site home page.
7. Develop an interactive magazine or newsletter. Each page could represent a department, feature, or activity and include pictures, video, and text linking to stories in a blog or other online publication.
8. Invent a game or puzzle which includes video, image, sound, and text elements and requires the players to interact with them to move.
9. Assemble an interactive exhibit illustrating an event or era of history in pictures and video.
10. Make a talking storybook for children using clips of narration and sound effects attached to pages and images.

Truly creative students will certainly be able to come up with many more ways of using the site, so let them loose and see what they can do.

I had a conversation the other day with Kelly Hines on Twitter about resources for teachers. There are a number of sites out there (like this one and this one) that collect links to resources for teachers in one place for easy reference. Some people find them useful, and there are undoubtedly some great resources there.

But I tend to find them difficult to use, at best. Though they frequently are categorized by topic, or grade level, or some other system, in practice, it is sort of like handing someone a list of all the book titles in the library. I think these kinds of kitchen sink link buckets have value, and I’m not saying there’s no point in having them or using them. I just personally find their value to be limited. For someone who plans around resources, they are, I’m sure, invaluable. Browse the list, gather a few good sites, and then build your instruction around them.

But I tend to plan in the opposite direction. I’ll select my objectives and projects and develop a general outline of where I want to go, then look for resources that will plug into the outline. Link buckets are not the best way to track down this sort of resource.

Problem is, I’m not sure what really would work. I’m a member of Diigo and Delicious and do search through the socially tagged links there. I do use the link buckets from time to time. But what I think we need is something that’s a blend of a wiki and a social bookmarking site. The problem I see with current social bookmarking is that each person’s links are separate. When I search, I get an uncategorized, unsorted list of links which may well contain duplicates. I can see if multiple people have saved the same link, but a different link on the same domain will show up as a separate item.

Here are a few features (in absolutely no particular order) I’d ideally like to see in the perfect resource site:

• Search within search results to narrow the focus
• Grouping and sorting within results
• If I save a link, I will immediately see who else has saved the same page or domain so I can make an intelligent decision about how to save the link
• A way to display annotated links (not just titles or summaries) for a particular tag or search term
• A broad but structured way of identifying links as appropriate for various categories (e.g. K-2, math, geology, etc.)
• A way of editing the categorization made by others and modifying the structure itself (like a wiki)

There has to be some way of balancing volume (lots of worthwhile links) with findability (limiting links to a few strong candidates so it is more browsable, like this list I put together for a workshop I did recently).

What am I missing? What other features should it have? How would it look in practice? Is this even a possibility? Maybe it already exists and I just don’t know it yet. I’d love to hear what other people have to say.

In my last two posts, I wrote about the responsibilities that go along with using powerful technology tools, both for students and for teachers. Today I will consider a third group: administrators.

The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) recognizes the importance of strong leadership to the effective use of technology in schools, shown by the fact that they have developed national standards for administrators. It is not enough to simply create policies aimed at enforcing safety and productivity for students and teachers. Administrators must accept their responsibility for visionary leadership, which takes several forms.

Understand

Just as teachers and students must understand a new tool or technique before they can use it properly, administrators must deeply understand what is happening in the realm of technology if they are going to be able to lead effectively. This means learning about research and best practices.

It also requires them to use the technologies themselves. Consider what a “chalkboard policy” might have looked like if designed by administrators who had never used one:

1. Chalkboards by nature are open and accessible forums, and as such have inherent risks involved with their use. In the best interests of student and employee safety, it is the policy of this administration to restrict access to chalkboards and to monitor their use at all times.
2. Chalkboards will be maintained behind a locked panel when not in use. The key to this panel is available in the main office of each school building and must be signed out when needed.
3. Only authorized brands of yellow or white chalk may be used on District chalkboards. Other writing implements, including but not limited to colored chalk, serve no discernible educational purpose and are forbidden.
4. Only those who have a signed “Chalkboard User Agreement” on file may write on the chalkboard at any time.
5. The use of the chalkboard is a privilege, which may be revoked by the administrators at any time for abusive conduct or violations of this agreement.

Of course, there are many places where the parallels break down, and it is not my intent to make light of the real issues and risks involved with Internet use by students. I believe, however, that if more administrators had a thorough understanding of the tools affected by their policies, those policies would have a different focus.

Plan

Many districts seem to think that the principle of reverse psychology–where doing the opposite of what is expected will have more powerful results–also applies to policy implementation in this three-step process:

1. Implement new policy
2. Determine how the policy should work (usually after 6-12 months of practice)
3. Decide whether the policy was warranted in the first place (often after a year or two of failure)

In reality there must be thorough planning before a policy can be put into effect, with consideration for how it will impact all areas of curriculum and instruction.

Another, more subtle sort of planning is required if the use of technology tools is going to be anything other than just a tacked-on option to an already overstuffed curriculum. This is where a clear, long-range vision for the future is crucial. The higher in an organization an administrator rises, the more that person needs to see the big picture and proactively design, not manage, what that picture will look like as the district develops.

Model

Educators know that more powerful than telling is showing. Good teachers build modeling into their instruction because it provides students with an example of what skilled, expert use looks like.

Administrators cannot expect teachers and students to simply follow their vision with having an example to follow. If administrators expect technology tools to be used properly, they must show what that proper use looks like. If they want to see more students and teachers blogging, they must blog. If they want to see Twitter used as a professional tool rather than simply a social one, they must be on Twitter themselves.

Communicate

A clear, effective vision will never become reality until it is communicated with those who are ultimately required to put it into effect. Just as teachers must communicate with students, giving feedback, sharing goals, setting expectations, administrators must communicate in all the same ways with their constituents.

Conclusion

Implementing technology responsibly and effectively is a complex thing. Because it has so much power, I believe it would be irresponsible not to embrace these tools in schools today. Many students, teachers, and administrators are understandably reluctant to take on the responsibilities that come along with the power of the tools. But like Peter Parker, who received his powers without asking for them, we cannot ignore them. We have to dive in, accept the fact that we have been handed great responsibilities, and use our powers to become superheros instead of villains.

Yesterday, I began a series of blog posts about the responsibility that comes along with the use of powerful technology tools in school. We cannot hand students the keys to the Internet without some discussion of the ethics and responsibilities of driving on the Superhighway.

But students aren’t the only ones in this discussion that have responsibilities. Teachers also must understand their role in the process—and I’m not just talking about their responsibility to teach responsibility to their students. Teachers have three main areas of responsibility of their own when using instructional tools in the classroom.

Learn the Tools

Long before a teacher can possibly use a tool to teach, she must first be a student. This has been true as long as there have been technological advances in education. When chalkboards were first introduced to schools, teachers responded much like they do now to modern tech tools.

Black-boards are not uncommon, but are little resorted to by the teacher. This would be the case with most of the school apparatus which is thought indispensable…. Most teachers, with their present qualifications, would not understand their useful applications. (Barnard, 1839, p. 5)

The importance of the black board as an instrument of instruction…has been insisted on in every periodical on education which I have seen…. In many of our common schools, however, it has been but barely introduced. The teacher knows almost as little how to use it as his pupils. (Alcott, 1843, p. 170)

That second quote comes from a book of instruction for teachers about how to use a chalkboard, including step-by-step tutorials. Today, of course, the chalkboard (or white board) is such an integral part of what we do we don’t even give it a second thought. Instruction in its use is no longer necessary.

This is not true with more recent technology. Unlike the chalkboard, today’s teachers did not grow up in a culture where computers and the Internet were an integral part of daily life and school. Thus, we need to first become learners and understand the technology ourselves. This may mean taking workshops and seminars (more on this in my next post), reading books and articles, or just jumping in and fiddling, but it will not happen on its own, and it will not happen by osmosis.

I read a blog post yesterday which gives a great explanation of the importance of this mindset, and which also leads right into the next responsibility:

Use the Tools

Many times teachers attempt to leap directly from a basic familiarity with a new tool into using it in instruction. I’m certainly guilty of this myself, particularly if the tool is one that intrigues me and is full of possibilities. In my experience, though, this usually leads quickly to either miserable failure or at best a superficial layer awkwardly tacked on to existing instruction.

There is a crucial step missing: teachers must first use the tool themselves for their own learning, professional or otherwise. Until you integrate something this deep and powerful into your own learning process on some level, you can’t comprehend how a student will interact with it. This is not a new idea, but it is one that does not yet pervade the profession, and until it does, new technology will be thought of as a fad or an add-on—or worse, a substitute for “real” instruction.

We have to continue to remind ourselves that these are not new subjects to be taught, they are simply new tools. Would you trust a flying instructor who could pass a written test about piloting but had never flown an airplane? Why, then, do we think we can teach students about blogging if we aren’t bloggers ourselves?

Design Quality Learning Experiences

This is (and should be) the hardest part of teaching, and one which consumes the largest amount of energy and time. If done well, it will be like the Parthenon: the structure you and your students build together will hold up for a very long time. If done poorly, it will be more like a movie set: it looks great from one side, but has little substance and less endurance.

Yesterday I discussed the students’ responsibilities in using technology and the importance of teaching them. Many objections to technology use revolve around keeping the students from “fooling around” during class. Let them blog, and they might write about something inappropriate. Let them have cell phones and they might text the test answers to each other. Let them use a wiki and they might get outside help on their assignment. (All of this happened before there was technology, of course, but let’s just give the argument the benefit of the doubt for the moment.)

I suspect that beneath these objections is fear: fear of losing control of the classroom and fear that the lost control will reveal inadequate and ineffective teaching methods that are more easily hidden in a teacher-centered, traditional structure.

Thus, the problem isn’t the technology, it’s the teacher. Know the limitations and pitfalls inherent in the tools and plan for them. If they might get outside help because they can access the wiki any time, then build that into the assignment. Encourage it, even. Make it essential to the task. That’s more realistic anyway. Of course creating assignments like that is more complicated. It takes thought, energy, and time. But truthfully, it is thought energy and time that we should be putting into our instruction even if it does not involve new tools.

To paraphrase Haim Ginott, we must collectively recognize the frightening conclusion that we are the decisive element in our classrooms, and the responsibility is ours to see that the climate and the learning environment allow our students to thrive.

References

Barnard, H. (1839).First annual report of the Secretary of the Board. &printsec=titlepage&source=gbs_v2_summary_r&cad=0" target="_blank">Connecticut Common School Journal, 1, 155-176.

Alcott, W. A. (1843). &printsec=titlepage&source=gbs_v2_summary_r&cad=0" target="_blank">Slate and black board exercises. New York: Mark H. Newman.