ISTE Daily: Day 2 - Keynote w/ Dr. Ken, Blossom, and a Prescient Pink Floyd Reference

This is going to be a hard blog to structure. There was so much content and so many thoughts running through my head and the structure of a daily blog makes it very difficult to organize in any kind of coherent way. So I think I am going to try chronological stream of conciousness based on my notes and tweets and see where that goes. I will be sure to signpost the snark along the way (debate geeks just chuckled, trust me).

What to do with Downtime at ISTE:

Coronado Island is a nice beachy diversion. It is a short ferry ride (takes off from right behind SDCC) over and is relatively regular in its takeoff. The @wishbabydoc and I had about the best stack of lobster and avacado we could imagine at one of the restraunts, The beach is lovely and the view of the aircraft carrrier is impressive. Because of the ferry schedule, we missed the kickoff celebration which I understood included Batman, so that was a bit of a downer, but you have to go where the sun takes you right?

not-even-an-interlude-sidenote: I love that blogger integrates with picasa/G+ enough to get pictures from my phone. so much easier than copying URL from another window.


Tweet-up and SIG Showcase:
For non- or new- ISTE people, the heavy lifting of communication and PD is often done by special interest groups. these non-exclusive groups hold webinars, maintain mailing lists and wikis, etc. Booths were setup after the kickoff so that people could wander, get added to the lists with a swipe of a barcode, and have an excuse to bump into people.

And the highlight was the bumping into people. I finally got to put names and faces with Twitter handles that I consider some of my closest colleagues in education. Some of them like @artsedtech had distinctive clothing (the batman tie was classic), others had t-shirts with twitter handles. I wore my avatars had and carried my sonic-screwdriver pen. Most people had a system of look at face, glance to nametag to see if it is somebody you are actually online besties with, and back up to face. My wife assures me that women are used to this behavior for entirely different reasons.

I had a geek-crush moment when Tom Whitby, creator of #edchat, pulled me out of a crowd to say "Hi" and introduce himself. It is fascinating how twitter and social networks have allowed us to create geek-cultures of celebrities that we can interact with.

Interlude: The dying of the connection
So...

• I realized halfway through Coronado, that using my phone for non-stop pics was killing the battery which only had half a charge when I got to the island-of-no-outlets.
• Powered up the hotspot and switched to my tablet to tweet some things but left the hotspot running through the tweetup.
• Hotspot died just before the keynote began.
• The ISTE wifi was not connecting from my seat.
• I was in a keynote ripe for livetweeting with no connectivity. 

I felt like a one of our students: twitchy, slightly annoyed, feeling like i was suffering a great injustice. But i fired up evernote and persevered.
[end Interlude]


The gathering of the educators outside the keynote was impressive. So many people it was a little overwhelming. This is not surprising given that there were 15,000 people signed up for the conference, but those kind of numbers made me find a wall and people watch quickly...

The Keynote - A Litany of Talking Heads
Awesome videoscreen. The thing was huge. Not just wide-screen huge, but E3/Olympics huge. Good production quality to set the theme through inspiration quotes and photos: Expanding Horizons.

ISTE Daily: Day One - Student Portfolios

Conference on the Bay

The ISTE Daily blogs will be less of my usual attempts to find meaning in the chaos that is #edtech and more of a recounting of some of the things heard, said, and thought during the ISTE Conference going on this week. Limited perspective, but hopefully enough of these will be around that people without the opportunity to attend (or attending other things) will find some professional development opportunities.

The official Keynotes and Kickoffs are tomorrow, so I decided to spend the day in a workshop presented by Dr. Helen Barrett (@eportfolios) titled "Student Centered Interactive E-portfolios with Google Apps". I am seriously leaning toward a portfolio model for the #digcit class at Brebeuf Jesuit and wanted to get another perspective on implementation. I am not sure if that is what I got, but it was a useful day and a good way to start the conference.

The presentation itself had tremendous content (you can in fact get an entire course worth of information here: https://sites.google.com/site/k12eportfolioapps/) and did a great job of focusing on the student-outcomes expected, but it suffered from a growing trend in conference professional development: splitting-the-difference between pedagogy and the technical. In a room filled with educators (k-college), technicians, and everything in-between, it became very difficult for her to maintain a storyline for the presentation even over the course of day-long workshop.

There were some great highlights though:

The POV of the Portfolio: Student vs School

• A six step process on e-portfolios that begins with the VISION STATEMENT. Given the types of portfolios and the numerous tools out there (even within the GoogleApp world there are choices), it is important to know what you want out of the portfolio
• In describing professional development, she made an excellent division between the pedagogical training necessary and the technical training which is necessary but can be broader, changes regularly, and may become less important as the BYOT/D mindset begins to take hold and students, at least in secondary, become more responsible for tech-maintenance. Focusing on the pedagogical objective is of course one of the mantras on this blog and I was happy to be the choir preached to.
• After over 20 years in ePortfolio design, Dr. Barrett had some amazing anecdotes and visuals. Her contrast between the student who offered a reward for her lost portfolio vs. the students who held traditional year-end bonfire to burn their collections really drove home the idea that the portfolio is a tool that is only as good as the care, effort, and purpose behind it -- what is daunting is that much of that foundation is laid by the teacher.
• Favorite Line: "Portfolios come out of the constructivist tradition; Standardized testing draws from a behavioral model." -- had never thought of it like that, but it does put the entire assessment thing in perspective. :)

There was a mixed audience, and while the planned opportunities for interaction were minimal outside of the initial icebreaker, there were those classic conference moments where the presenter took the step back and let the discussion flow. I even got into the mix a few times, dispelling the myths of the complicated back-end of the Apps-for-Education environment and a little bit of BYOT-evangelizing. It is always a great time to hear from educators as they work through the struggles of education together.

The Jen and JD Show episode 2: Trust falls and Icebreakers (How to Torture Introverts)

Thanks for the feedback and praise of the first Vlog!

by far, Android guy was the most popular feature, followed up by Jen's analysis of carb preference. keep the feedback coming and let your friends, colleagues, and baristas know about the show.

Today's episode is fast and furious and only posted to YouTube this week since we were both minutes/hours away from going on the road. In fact, I am posting this at San Diego ComicCon Convention Center, getting ready to start a workshop on Google Apps and Portfolios.

Comment, Share, and Give us feedback on what you want to see!

On Impromptu Speaking and Digital Citizenship: Thoughts from the National Debate Tournament

Today is Thursday, June 14, 2012. More importantly, today is the Thursday of the National Forensic League Championships, or as I affectionately call it, Impromptu Day.

For those of you who have never been to a High School Speech and Debate tournament, I want to take a few minutes to paint a picture, because it is what is best about education on a number of levels. Students who are passionate about learning, competition, performance and excellence are competing in intellectual, communicative, and critical thinking activities through their own choice, guided by passionate teachers and educators.  They are also generally dressed really nice and on their best behavior which is also cool.

Students wait for postings of the semi-final speech competition

The national tournament is the culmination of this activity, gathering over three thousand of the best speakers, debaters, and performers from around the nation. To compete at this level you must qualify through local competitions and the quality shows. Over the course of three days students compete in ten main events, gradually narrowing the field from hundreds, to sixty, to 12, to 6, to the national champion.

On Thursday of nationals week, about a thousand of the speakers and debaters who have been eliminated from main events gather in a single room for the Impromptu speaking competition. These students have a variety of skill sets: excellent speakers, critical analyzers, extemporaneous responses. Each of these skills play a part as 3/5 of the competitors are eliminated each round throughout the day. The competition is intense and the stress level resembles a marathon as students are given five minutes to prepare a five minute speech on a choice of three topics and then wait to find out if they survive to compete in the next round. Sometime late Thursday evening, the final six competitors are sent home to prepare for a final round of competition and the crowning of a new national champion.

It is amazing.

As I drove into the competition this morning I was reviewing the last minute advice to give my six students entering this fray:

• Speak slowly and give yourself time to think of your next sentence
• Play to your strengths, debaters are analyzers -- don't try to out-smoothtalk a person who gives prepared speeches every weekend.
• Find a structure: Thesis supported by two independent  points works well. Examples should support the points, not the thesis directly. Don't speak a string of examples. It's not good in life and not good in competition.

As I constructed the final piece of advice in my head regarding introductions (quality quotations, striking statistics, alliterative anecdotes), I was struck by a disconnect that applies to Impromptu speaking, Extemporaneous speaking (30 minutes of researched preparation), debate events -- the lack of Internet.

Interlude: 
I am often asked to draw on my forensic experience to be give impromptu speeches about technology, digital citizenship, a pre-dinner invocation, etc. It is not atypical for me to reach into my pocket and grab a phone to look up a quick statistic, remind myself of the exact wording of a quotation that stuck in my head, or find something pithy from a Jesuit. In the same way that technology has made memorization of quick-reference facts unnecessary in many circumstances, the internet has done away with the traditional quotebook, almanacs, etc. -- Except in competitive speech.
[end interlude]

While computer use has been growing in competitive forensics at all levels (taking notes, storing/retrieving local information, reading speeches), there is a ban on connectivity in all competitive events and only explicit acceptance of any computer use in debate and one type of speech.

On Vivid Descriptions and Big Tents: Breaking Down the Claim for Fewer Teachers

An analysis of the most recent attack on teachers -- that there are just too many of them.


for those of you who have watched the new Jen and JD Show or followed the blog/twitter, you'll know that a recurring theme in my thought process is my slightly shocked reaction to the attack on teachers in recent years. Given that teachers are not a strong political group, that the unions in general have lost their power, and that ready-made scapegoats are much easier to attack than issues like poverty or cycles of illiteracy, it should not be surprising that sound-byte culture has taken the stance that teachers are to blame. It is slightly more frustrating that both big-tent political parties have taken this position to some extent by placing faith in high-stakes tests and business-centered competition rhetoric, but we are past the stage where we can look to any political party to speak out in the name of educators.


So it falls to educators to call "foul" and get the word out.


This is not going to be an easy task. The news is not going to cover it. The sunday morning talk shows don't have a place for an educator's voice (although they seem to always have seats for multimillionare businessmen), and the most powerful bully pulpits are reserved for talks about "filling in ovals completely and dark" as the pathway to educational heights of performance ecstasy.


So let's take the arguments one at a time. Blog, write, advocate through social media, and begin to change the conversation around at the grass roots level. Because, and this may be important: teachers, as a group, know how to educate children. We know what works and what doesn't. We know how to fix problems that happen. We know what bad teaching looks like and, in general, call it out to administrators.


We care about our students. We care about them even when they frustrate us. We care about learning. We care about it in spite of all of the barricades that the Federal and State governments and their puppet masters the book publishers and large corporations put in our way. 


On Fewer Teachers -- The Premise


The latest attack that is gaining traction in the political discourse claims that we need fewer teachers. The claim seems to be taking a few different forms and is based on the generalizing "well everyone know that..." down-home rhetoric that appeals to people who will only consider a sound-byte and not dig deeper. Eventually we need to come up with a good counter-soundbyte, but until that time, I want to pick apart the argument a little.


New Hampshire Governor, John Sununu, seems to be one of the many voices spearheading this argumentation. The mass appeal whips up fervor over smaller government, fewer public employees, etc. Naturally, since many teachers are public employees, they fall into this group. What is astounding is the reasoning behind it:

There are municipalities, there are states where there is flight of population. And as the population goes down, you need fewer teachers...If there’s fewer kids in the classrooms, the taxpayers really do want to hear there will be fewer teachers. [...] You have a lot of places where that is happening. You have a very mobile country now where things are changing. You have cities in this country in which the school population peaked ten, 15 years ago. And, yet the number of teachers that may have maintained has not changed. I think this is a real issue. And people ought to stop jumping on it as a gaffe and understand there’s wisdom in the comment.

ThinkProgress has the full article and includes video for those of you skittish about the bias of a liberal news source (of course, if you fall into that category, you have probably already stopped reading, which is part of the confirmation-bias issues that we need to address in our #digcit classes with the next generation).

 So, let's break down the Sununu quote, acknowledging that he may have deeper analysis that did not come out in this interview, but holding him accountable as a taxpayer making public statements to a wide audience:

Population is going down: His first argument is one of simple arithmetic. If we need X number of teacher per Y number of students. When the number of students goes down, the number of teachers should go down. -- Its so simple that absolutely no one could disagree, right? There are a few problems with the premise of the claim though:

The Jen and JD Show: Episode 1 - Snarkfest

Taking our education and geeky wisdom to a new level (not to mention our hubris and love of parenthetical cartoon bubbles), Jen and JD have decided to do a video podcast!

After a TON of playing around with hotspots and various broadcasting platforms. The @40ishoracle and I are proud to present the first episode of the Jen and JD show, brought to you on the screencast.com platform (mainly because YouTube doesn't allow links to outside sources. What is up with that?)

So please, sit back...no, on second thought...
Read the links.
Post comments.
Retweet, share, subscribe....

Do that interactive PLN thing that you do SO well.

Episode 1: The Snarkfest o' Educational Stuff.

Ed Tech Reflections: A BYOT Glossary for the School Community

The @40ishoracle shames me with her prolific posting this week. I took the week off since we were doing professional development so much. We are beginning to put together some buy-lists, suggestions, common terms list based on feedback we are getting from parents and teachers. Read more:

Ed Tech Reflections: A BYOT Glossary for the School Community:

'via Blog this'