Organic Learning

This week, all 150 participants are invited to contribute media about our week at the Teach the Teachers Collaborative in Ojai. Teachers in grades 4-8, from all over LAUSD, have come to learn how to integrate technology into their science curriculum, mostly using podcasting. In the past, one person was designated as the one to stay up all night the night before our last day to create a movie of all the photos and sound bytes from the week. Now, we are using the internet to have everyone contribute content, which will go into a slide show that can be played on the final day.
CellBlock
We decided to use a new (to us) program called Cellblock to send pictures to our group picture slideshow. The online application is very easy to set up. You create an email address within Cellblock to which contributors can send their photos and short movies (under 10mb). They can email from their cell phone or thier computer. The images show up almost immediately in the slideshow. There are varying levels of privacy and security. What a great tool for our use this week!

Gabcast

We’ll be using Gabcast to leave our reflections about the learning that’s taking place this week. Gabcast is an easy to configure tool that you can set up for any kind of collection of audio recordings. Gabcast has a toll free number that contributors call. You set up a channel number and password that is used in the phone call., and the recording is added to the “podcast”. What’s nice is that individual recordings can be downloaded as .mp3’s to add background music or remix.

User contributed content is easier than ever, now that we have tools that allow us to easily contribute photos through email and recording voice through calling a simple phone call. Using the cell phone to contribute this content is a great way to model how this powerful technology could be used in the classroom.

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This evening, our group of science educators will be attending the keynote presentation by Dan Schmit, which will kick off our week of engaged learning. Here’s the Coveritlive live blog with attached uStream Video. Please join us at 7:00 p.m. PST on Sunday, July 20, 2008

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21st Century Learning seems to be a very popular educational buzzword these days. Some people have asked me to define 21st Century learning, and I have to supply a short and very inadequate definition about connected, collaborative, natural learning with passion. It doesn’t begin to address the broader definition of what my learning has become in the past few years. Maybe a good way to define it is to provide some examples coming out of NECC 2008 (the largest National Educational Technology Conference of all) this year. Unfortunately, I won’t be there in person. Even though I would love to be there, at least I can participate virtually. Here are some opportunities. I hope you’ll join me.

1. The NECC Ning (A social network for conference attendees, including virtual attendees) Join the ning, and then join some groups. So far, I belong to Digital Storytellers, Moodle, Virtual NECCers, K12Online2008, LOTIMotion, EdubloggerCon, Google in Education, and NECC Unplugged. There are many other groups that may be of interest to you. Browse them and find some of interest to you. Join and begin the conversation and learning.
2. The Edustream.tv Home Page - A place to watch some live broadcasts of various sessions at NECC. This is awesome! Come visit, chat, and learn together.
3. Watch the conversation about NECC on Twitter on a tool called Summerize. Join Twitter and add some of the people you see tweeting about NECC on Summerize to engage in the conversation.
4. Come (virtually) to the Blogger’s Cafe to attend some of the sessions at the “unconference”.
5. Join with all the educators at Saturday’s EdubloggerCon - wish I could be there in person to meet people, but I won’t miss out on the learning. This was the best part of last year’s conference for me.
6. Follow the blog conversations and the images (from Flickr) at the conference aggregator, Hitchhikr and Technorati’s blog, photo, and video search.
7. Subscribe to what people are bookmarking about NECC08 on Delicious, a social bookmarking tool.
8. From NECC’s official site, listen to podcasts and watch videos, and read the blogs from and about various keynotes and selected sessions.

This is just a small sample of how conferences and learning have changed in just a few short years. This is 21st century learning, connecting with people of similar passions to connect, collaborate, learn, and create. Please join me.

twitter id: janstearns

Skype id: janstearns

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I was tagged several months ago by Jennifer Wagner on a meme started by Barry Bachenheime based on NPR’s This I Believe. I’ve probably broken all the rules by taking so long to respond, but time just slipped away. I thought it was such a good one that I decided to follow up on it, even though it’s long overdue. Thanks, Jen, for the push. Here goes…

I believe that students should have plenty of opportunities to learn in an environment that celebrates individuality, uniqueness, and respect.

I believe that caring for classroom animals, playing with blocks, exploring bubbles, singing, dancing, and watching plants grow are necessary components of a Kindergarten classroom. What has happened lately?

I believe that students should have multiple ways to demonstrate their learning, whether in text, mixed media, video, or audio.

I believe the BEST teachers are the ones that miss their kids on the last day of school and reflect on their practice.

I believe that every educator should build a personal learning network that helps them push their thinking and teaching and learning.

I believe that no matter how much you think you aren’t being heard, you keep pushing. Change begins to happen right before your eyes.

I believe we should never perceive ourselves as experts at anything. We’re all learners and there’s just so much to learn.

I believe that this is a very exciting time to be in education - I feel change for the better is in the air.

I’d like to hear from:

John Rivera

Antonio Hernandez

Jose Rodriguez

Mathew Needleman

Edie Walker

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We’ve been talking about change in our district office. I’m glad to be part of the conversation. I know that the leaders in my district understand the need for change and are looking for how to go about it.

That’s why I was so excited to see Chris Lehmann’s Twitter post this morning about Educon 2.1 at the Science Leadership Academy that will take place in January 2009. Chris is the principal at Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia. His leadership and vision makes this school truly exceptional. His thoughtful reflections on his blog, Practical Theory, inspire me to keep moving forward.

Last year, he hosted Educon 2.0 at his school, an informal conference where many edubloggers gathered to see how learning takes place at his school. As in all activities at his school, students were part of the conference. They attended, facilitated workshops, oversaw the virtual connections (which allowed me to attend a few sessions), and in general, were part of the learning going on. I really wanted to attend in person. I want to see his school in person and participate in the learning that happens at this unique conference. I’m not missing it this year, and I’m going to bring along leaders in my local district. I’m working on it now…

Ideas are coming together in our district. From our conversations in the district office, we are seeking ways to grow and change. Tomorrow, the Superintendent, several Directors, … and I … will be traveling down the coast to San Diego to visit two innovative schools, The San Diego MET School and High Tech High School.

The San Diego MET is an innovative school the holds its classes on the local community college campus. Students don’t learn just from the classrooms, but participate in internships. Mildred Phillips, the principal, shared that all 51 graduates this year will be attending 4 year universities or community colleges. Project based learning is the norm in this school.

High Tech High School is equally based on project based learning. Students study the world through authentic learning opportunities, from working with the San Diego Zoo to building pool tables to study “how impulse, momentum and angles play a big part in society through sports and games.” Wow!

We’ll take what we learn and create our own path. I’m excited. This, and a chance to visit Educon 2.1 in January 2009, makes going to work so rewarding.

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Jeff Utecht, in his post, Schools: Take control or forfeit your profile, points out that many schools carry an online profile, from entries in places like Wikipedia and FaceBook, that needs to be monitored and maintained. Many schools aren’t even aware of this online presence, or might dismiss an article in Wikipedia as not trusted, so not a priority.
It got me thinking about really reading some of the wikipedia articles about our schools.
These are the schools that I could find that have an entry on Wikipedia:

Bell High School
South Gate High School
Huntington Park High School
South East High School
Maywood Academy
South East Middle School

You can tell that some of the schools have student created entries. Some of the articles are really quite good, but need some editing. Others need quite a bit of work. All haven’t been updated in quite some time - probably since our external IP was banned from Wikipedia. There was abuse to Wikipedia articles from our domain, so Wikipedia has blocked the entire domain from editing. This was a few years ago. As far as I know, no one can update Wikipedia articles from within our district firewall since then.

This causes a problem. If no one is updating these articles, then they will never be of high quality.They will never reflect our schools for some of the great things that happen there. Just this morning, there was an article in the LA Times written about an outstanding new teacher at South East Middle School. (Thanks Paul B. for telling me about it.) That should be linked to the SouthEast Middle School entry.

Since students and teachers can’t access the editing features from within the firewall, maybe we need to find other means of updating and maintaining these entries. Maybe students should have this responsibility as part of their homework. For those with internet access, they could be writing about their schools. What could be more authentic? They could also monitor the pages. This could be a shared responsibility between students, teachers, all staff and parents. The community could join together for something positive. This could be a very positive step into beginning to “get” 21st century literacies.

Thanks, Jeff, for posting this article to spark my thinking. I will be calling together interested educators from all our schools to see if we can figure out how to make this work as an authentic learning experience for all of us. I think this is extremely important.

.. Now if I only knew how to find profiles on FaceBook. All I see are students from those schools, but not much about the schools. I’m sure I’m missing something…

Note: After looking at the history pages of all the entries, it is apparent that some editing and revising has taken place recently. However, there certainly isn’t enough there to represent the schools well. It was interesting to see the discussion on the Bell entry. An alumni from the graduating class of 1965 had entered that the school colors were purple and white, and it had been changed by a more recent graduate. It’s interesting to see how those that contribute collaborate on the writing.

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