Serendipity35

I received this information from Heather Weisse Walsh, the MAGPI Manager of Educational Services, about a worthwhile videoconference and webcast.

THE CRISIS IN HAITI: What can you do to help? Students around the world respond
Date: Friday, February 19, 2010
Time: 10:00 AM – 1:00 PM EST (Webstream will be active 10 minutes prior to start of the program)
Audience: K12 Students, University and College Students, Non-Profit and Cultural Institutions

The earthquake in Haiti shattered lives, devastating a country - and the world responded. Most importantly, youth responded in innovative and amazing ways. Join schools around the world for this groundbreaking international videoconference and webcast to hear what youth are doing to help the victims of the Haiti earthquake. You'll also hear from aid organizations who are continually responding to the tragedy and experts that will help students understand the event.

Join us for this groundbreaking event and GET INVOLVED. We encourage you to stream the program in your school, collect change and donations, and donate to one of the aid organizations participating in the program. Or simply tune in and be inspired by what others are doing and then create your own project.

If you're already involved in a project, let us know through Twitter at http://twitter.com/magpik20   and add the tag #kidshelphaiti to your post. Send us a link to your blog entry or add your photos to our online album. We will randomly select tweeters to receive some fantastic giveaways from our sponsors. The more you tweet, the better your chances are of being selected for a giveaway!

If your school has a blog, we would love for your students to be live bloggers during the event. Simply send an email to hweisse@magpi.net to let us know you're interested in live blogging. We'll post a link to your blog on this site and post brief bio information about all our featured bloggers! (You'll also get mentions and links on Twitter as the event is in progress!). Every live blog entry entitles you to a chance to win a giveaway, too.

Add your photos to our online album! We’ve created an album on Google’s Picasa called “Kids Help Haiti.” You can view the album at http://picasaweb.google.com/magpik20/KidsHelpHaiti# If you have photos to contribute (and we’d love to have them!), please email hweisse@magpi.net and asked to be added as an album contributor. You’ll then be able to email your photos to the online, public album. Won’t it be cool to see all of the images emerge on the album map and see what students everywhere are doing to help?

More Information: http://www.magpi.net/Community/Programs/Crisis-Haiti-What-Can-YOU-Do-Help Webstream URL: http://beansidhe.isc-net.upenn.edu:8080/ramgen/encoder/haiti.rm
How to Connect to the Webstream: To view the webstream, you must have Real Player installed on your computer (version 8 or higher). Please see technical requirements and testing nformation on the program webpage. For technical support, please contact video@isc.upenn.edu
Heather's K-20 Interactions blog http://k20interactions.blogspot.com/

I got a nice email from Slideshare this week saying that one of my presentations - "Using Student Blogs As Reflective Practice" was "being tweeted [on Twitter] more than any other document on SlideShare right now. So we've put it on the homepage of SlideShare.net (in the "Hot on Twitter" section)."

Pretty cool. But then today, I was reading a new report from the Pew Internet Project on "Social Media and Young Adults" that says that particular group of online users are no longer interested in consuming "long-form" content like blogs. (I know some educators would have trouble accepting blog posts as long-form content, but read on...)

Communication among teens tends to involve brief bursts of information - status updates and text messages. 14% of online teens (ages 12-17) now say they blog and that's down from 28% of teen internet users in 2006. There has even been a drop in just commenting on blogs within social networking websites - 52% of teen social network users report commenting on friends’ blogs, down from the 76% who did so in 2006.

By comparison, the prevalence of blogging within the overall adult internet population has remained steady in recent years. Pew Internet surveys since 2005 have consistently found that roughly one in ten online adults maintain a personal online journal or blog.

73% of wired teens now use social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace, a big jump from the 55% who did so back in 2006. (Only 40% of those 30 and older do the same.)

What killed blogging? Facebook. Updates take seconds to read, and seconds to write. Blog posts take time. I probably average about an hour per post and that doesn't include the research that some posts require. Teens don't have any interest in spending that kind of time.

I notice that many of my short posts here get more hits than the longer and "more thoughtful" ones. It's not that no one is willing to read. My weekend posts on the blog Weekends in Paradelle have found an audience in the past six months and they tend to be longer and more thoughtful, and I suspect the readers are not teens.

It's not hard to conjecture that teens are overloaded with information online. If I check in only once a day to my Facebook account, I'll probably find about 500 unread updates in my "News Feed." Too many "friends"; too much updating. Who has time to read a blog post, let alone write one?

Perhaps, blog posting will become an activity for the classroom like the five-paragraph essay, and for professionals and adults.

Free registration is now open for the CRSTE CyberConference 2010. It is their first online event free to educators promoting the exchange of ideas and opportunities for collaboration across the CRSTE region and beyond. No registration fees. No travel.

Each evening from between February 21 – March 5, 2010 you can attend any and all sessions of interest to you. (They will also be archived online.) The C3 – CRSTE Cyber Conference 2010 doesn't require you to be from the mid-Atlantic region (Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia, DC, West Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, and Delaware) to participate in this conference.

The conference includes both asynchronous and synchronous events that allow chat and interaction during the live sessions.

Download the conference schedule (PDF)

Register for the conference (check off the sessions you are interested in)

More and more companies are creating a social media strategy. Although the jury is still out on whether Twitter, as one example, will be profitable itself, it's even less clear whether or not the use of social media like Twitter will make other companies more profitable.

It is clear that Facebook earned about $300 million in 2008, more in 2009 and probably even more this year. That has the attention of other companies.

Now, it looks like Google is getting more serious about social networking and has created a Social Web team. It's not that Google hasn't had any social web presence before. Back in 2006, I wrote a few times about Orkut, its social network. (Still big in Brazil, but still a dud elsewhere.) They also have their OpenSocial and Friend Connect projects, but Facebook totally beats those too. Google likes to buy companies and they tried (unsuccessfully) to acquire Yelp which is a business reviews site that has large and active community.

I suppose that if the business world is embracing social media strategies, it will onnly be a decade or so before schools do the same thing. Educators, you still have time to learn and be the early adopters in your school.

When I first started doing "professional development" classes for faculty, the director told me that you can't use faculty and required in the same sentence. That has turned out to be largely true. Of course, I had spent two decades being faculty prior to that, so you would think I would have known that.

So, it caught my attention when Doug Johnson posted the question "What tech use should not be optional for teachers?" Let's assume that you can require something. (In K-12 schools, it may even be possible to require things.) The list of tech basics would be difficult to get any universal agreement on, but here are some minimal requirements from his longer post of ways teachers should have to use technology. They are pretty applicable from K-20.

- Use the student information system to track attendance and record grades.
- Use the student information system's online gradebook to list individual progress/results on student work (quizzes, tests, project etc.) in a timely manner so parents and students have access to real-time information.
- Have a web-presence that includes (at minimum), contact information, classroom expectations of students, and general course outlines with clear learning objectives and timelines. Any large projects should be described along with the assessment tools used to evaluate them. - Make available online all forms, lists and guides useful to parents.
- Use the student information system or school e-mail system to electronically communicate
- Use tools provided by the [school] that are a standard part of each classroom - projection system, voice amplification system, IWB, etc.
- Word process all written materials to be given to students (for ease of reading).
- Receive/access all district communications online.

He has gotten some good comments and suggestions for some additions to the list, like learning to utilize digital library media resources in appropriate instructional settings, and attending professional development sessions designed to teach effective use of instructional and informational technology resources.

What would you add to the list?

Last week Apple announced their tablet/slate/giant iPhone thing called the iPad. Even Steve Jobs described it as something between a smart phone and a laptop. Some people have said it will change the future of computing. Some people say it a solution without a problem. It uses the same operating system as the iPhone and is made to use the same applications (though they will need some tweaks to look right on the iPad).

So, here's my brief, obligatory iPad post through an educator lens. For the education world, there has been a lot of talk about this device being the place for textbooks.

It's pricier than a tablet or netbook and many laptops. ($499 for a 16GB model - 16GB with 3G is $629 and the 64GB version is $699 or $829 with 3G) No camera (so, no video conferencing either), no multi-tasking, no Flash and only a virtual keyboard.

There will be a special stylus to take handwritten notes on the digital pad, but tablets had that years ago and I never saw students opting for it. (Actually, it seems to me that notetaking is falling away in any medium including notebooks.)

So, will iBooks - the eReader/Bookstore for the iPad - be a killer app? Apple has partnered with publishers to create content for the iPad.

The iPad is not ready-for-primetime anyway (it's due in 2 months). So far, I don't see any big advantages yet over other eReaders other than color, but add links, glossaries and more interactivity and maybe...

You probably don't read Bill Gates' annual letter about the priorities of his $34-billion endowment. I wouldn't have clicked the link someone provided on Twitter either except that it said that it was about online learning.

I wrote earlier that Gates' blog (which seems to also have ghostwriters) contains several posts about online courses that he has taken/viewed. Now, he says he is in favor of the open courseware movement to publish course materials free online.

He gives props to systems like the Open Learning Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University that can gauge what students learn and point them in the right direction for a next step.

"So far technology has hardly changed formal education at all. But a lot of people, including me, think this is the next place where the Internet will surprise people in how it can improve things—especially in combination with face-to-face learning."

Some sound bites from the letter on things "we" need to do:

- We need to bring together the video and interactive pieces for K–12 and college courses.
- We should focus on having at least one great course online for each subject rather than lots of mediocre courses.
- A teacher can watch and learn how to make a subject more interesting. A teacher can assign subsets of the material to students who are behind and finding something difficult. A teacher can suggest online material to a student who is ahead and wants to learn more. A teacher can assign an interactive session to diagnose where a student is weak and make sure they get practice on the areas that are difficult for them.
- Self-motivated students can take entire courses on their own. If they want to prove they learned the material to help qualify for a job, a trusted accreditation service independent from any school should be able to verify their abilities.
- There is a lot of online material being developed, but it isn’t organized in a way where it is easy to find the best material that fits what you want to do.
- We need a simple way of taking all of the education pieces and organizing them and then rating them in context.