I have been reading a lot about digital pictures and the "entrypoints" images provide for new ways of learning. For me, I hear digital images and the first creative application that comes to mind is digital storytelling (excluding typical ways of documenting). However, a close reading of Glen Bull's Teaching with Digital Images opened new ways of thinking about digital imagery's role in classrooms. I highly recommend this book.

The book left me thinking about Ning, a web 2.0 application that I wrote about in a previous post. Ning allows users to create their own applications for collaborating and sharing information. What sparked this connection was a Ning tool that incorporates blank Google maps and user-created digital images to display visual connections to other people, places, and/or things. The cool thing is that the map can be whatever you want it to be! It is entirely open-ended!

I created a "GeoMap" for the new school that I will be working for this fall. Will the teachers and students use this map to describe their local community? Will the teachers and students use it track and monitor (visually) local wildlife over a period of time? Will the teachers and students use it as the platform for learning about new areas within Atlanta? Will the teachers and students partner with another school in another state that uses their own "GeoMap" as a way of sharing and communicating? Will the teachers and students upload historical pictures that correlate to modern locations (reinforcing the fact that history is an important part of life today)? I don't know, but it could be cool.

Here is the link to Trinity's Geomap. I hope that teachers play with the zoom on the left, change the map type on the right, and choose to participate!

Technorati Tags: maps, photos, & education

With my impending birthday looming on the horizon, I would like to give my readers (all three of them) a birthday gift(s): Free eBooks. For a limited time (July 4th to August 4th), you can download books at the World eBook Library Consortia for free. There are plenty of mp3 versions as well.

This is some nice "online goodness."

I am not sure where to begin with this post. I came across an article in an e-business journal called, "Wikis, Blogs Won't Survive." What? How do you respond? I am flabbergasted. Luckily Mark Harrison, the individual who made this bold prediction, provided his notes in a Breeze presentation. Harrison makes some valid points, but I find it hard to believe that the future will label wikis as "too complicated" and that

blogs are just too rambling- everyone has one in the end.

How would Thomas Friedman respond? If you haven't read his book, "The World is Flat," you need to go out and get it. How would Richardson and Warlick respond?

Technorati Tags: blog, future, & technology

A friend of mine recently sent me a link to MoMB, The Museum of Modern Betas. This website provides a quick glimpse of web 2.0 applications that are currently receiving lots of attention. I was blown away! It has an evolving feel, much like a blog, that isn't present in lists like SEOmoz's Web 2.0 Awards.

As I was perusing MoMB, I cam across ning. Ning is a web 2.0 service that allows users to create their own 2.0 applications (that is a very "Alice in Wonderland" statement). How might this be used in classrooms? I gravitated towards the map "apps" and kept wondering how this tool might be used in the early elementary social studies curriculum (ie, digital photos and descriptions that demonstrate student exploration of their surroundings). Could be cool...

Side Note: The image is a web 2.0-themed photograph by Leigh Blackall. I have enjoyed reading Leigh's posts/comments in various educational blogs, and I highly suggest reading this Aussie's personal reflections. He even invited me to join his YouTube group (despite the fact that I have very few instructional videos uploaded)!

Technorati Tags: education, web 2.0, & technology

This post has both nothing and everything to do with educational technology.

The "nothingness:" The link below references a blog post about art.
The "everything:" The link below references a blog post about art that was created by mother, Mandy. The educational connection between her blog and what I write about is learning. My mother wanted to be able to connect her experiences (learning about art and classical realism) to a larger audience (the blogosphere). I helped her, but she took that those all important first steps: struggling to truly understand something new and taking a "risk." The result was undoubtedly new understandings/learning. I only wish that more of the classroom teachers that I work with would follow her example. I think teachers would reach more children if they were willing to say, "I don't know, but I want to try and learn something new. I am willing to take a risk."

Here is the link to her first post: Apprenticeship in Classical Realism: Still Life of Apple and Red Bottle. I am proud (a) that my mother was willing to let her son teach her something new and (b) that she was willing to do something that is quite scary for many people (try something totally differnt and new).

I am fascinated with the power of student immersion in virtual worlds that have true educational value. This video clip comes from a future "game" called Ancient Spaces. According to the April issue of Wired magazine, Ancient Spaces:

...is an online 3-D environment that re-creates past civilizations through wiki-like mass development. [Players in this massively multiplayer online game] can earn points by contributing historically accurate structures and objects or by completing missions.

I can't wait to see it in action. I imagine, given the fact that it is a MMO game, that there will be a large component of real-time collaboration among players (much like River City).

I can't pretend to know EXACTLY how these women learned (or didn't learn) about suffrage. It just makes me wonder: What happened? There are tons of possible reasons that, at least in my mind, don't relate to a failure on the part of the students. Obviously there is a culture in this school that values education and success. It is a "School of Excellence" after all. I am also willing to bet that these women were exposed to the concept of suffrage given their age. I surmise that these students memorized the concept, performed well on the test, and then quickly forgot about it. If this guess is correct, please internalize the result!

There are other ways to teach. However, it takes work and a willingness to change. A good place to go to begin rethinking teaching practices is George Lucas's Edutopia. Intel's Innovation in Education is another. The list goes on and on. Seek and ye shall find.

PS- I don't support learning experiences that use mockery to degrade and embarrass students. However, I do believe that these women now know what women's suffrage is all about.

There are lots of benefits to Web 2.0 technology. Collaboration, instant communication, and networking. However, there is a dangerous side, one that many students and children fail to realize. I believe that a lack of role models and an insufficient understanding of what should/shouldn't be posted (among a list of other "failings or trappings" in naive use of tools like myspace and AOL im) can prompt situations like the one depicted in this movie.

Will this be your child or student? What are you going to do about it? Ignore it or try to learn more and begin a discussion?

This is a fairly good overview of how to edit and change text in mediawiki. Nothing more- just a good tutorial...

I have been thinking about YouTube a lot today. I posted an initial description of YouTube in my last post (a website for users to upload movies and then share with others). I won't go any further with regards to an overview; just check out the website and you'll "get it."

I think that YouTube, in many ways, embodies the Web 2.0 phenomenon that is growing each day. It has the user support, user organization, and it isn't something that you pay for. It is open, collaborative, and encourages sharing. These elements make it appealing to people, and companies see these "web aware" people as their new target audience. Just look at Yahoo!: They paid approximately $20-30 million for del.icio.us which is another Web 2.0 entity that is entirely free and generates no fees from users.

So, how does this relate to education and technology? Take a look at Atomic Learning. Atomic learning provides, for a subscription fee, access to movie tutorials on popular programs. Microsoft Office, Inspiration, and even open source applications like OpenOffice are but a few example of the titles that they support. They provide what, ultimately, I believe users will provide: information. Information in the form of help, tutorials, and quick/accessible information. I could, with the help of other educational-minded folks and YouTube-like resources, re-create tutorials on exactly the same information that Atomic Learning provides using something like SnagIt or Camtasia, both of which come from Techsmith.

I wonder if Atomic Learning is listening... I know that they recently offered a number of states reduced discounts on their subscription services.

It is only a matter of time before web 2.0 and "traditional" companies collide.

PS-I recognize that Atomic Learning provides a huge, gigantic, enormous degree of safety; there aren't any "questionable" or "obscene" movies on Atomic Learning. However, how long will it be before education-minded entities catch on to web 2.0?

This is a movie from YouTube that I embedded within this blogpost. YouTube is interesting in that it is a movie database provided by people like you and me. There are many, many interesting resources, but there is a lot of stuff that is inappropriate. This makes YouTube a difficult tool for student use, but it can be wonderful for teachers and adults. This movie is a great example of something good within the site.

This movie shows the power of a number of different tools: Bloglines, Blogging and RSS, del.icio.us, and Firefox. Goochland County Public Schools uses del.icio.us (and I imagine these other tools) as a way for all of its teachers to save/categorize internet sites that are useful for teaching and learning. Each teacher posts his/her own websites into their county's del.icio.us account which creates a uber-list of websites for everyone!

I came across a website called "LoudLit" while reading Tim Lauer's Blog. This website provides podcast audio recordings of novels like "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" as well as other famous work of fiction and poetry. It made me wonder: How would most students or teachers use this tool? The optimist in me says that teachers and students would use it as an additional tool, but the pessimistic side says that it would be used instead of actually reading.

The following paragraphs come from an article entitled, "Going Colonial." Click on the link to read the full text.

"When Crompound Elementary School teachers Rebecca Carcova, Patricia Canini, and Judy Pietruska—the school's information technology specialist, library media specialist, and art teacher, respectively—sat down to develop an enrichment project for fourth-grade students, it didn't take them long to come up with a star-spangled winner.

The Colonial era is a big part of fourth-grade social studies curriculum," says Carcova, "and we wanted to pick an area that would help students in their testing." Fourth-grade is a big testing year in New York state, the teacher explains. Study of the Colonial period offered ample opportunity for research, hands-on investigation, creative expression, and learning. In addition, students would use technology as a tool for both research and presentation. "

What would this type of learning experience look like in Second Life? For those of you who are unfamiliar with Second Life, it allows users to explore and CREATE virtual worlds. I am all for the way in which these teachers used technology to support their students' learning as well as their tangible product, I just feel like the technology exists to design/share/experience learning at a whole new level. Unfortunately, Second Life isn't geared towards students or the school environment. But, what if something existed? Hmmm...

The image above comes from MIT's education arcade and a colonial game they were/are developing.

Laura hit on the core connection between the picture and the David Warlick quote. The airplane is a piece of technology and, like its educational counterparts including weblogs and wikis, is nothing more than a tool. I see these technologies as vehicles (for lack of a better word) for creating new learning experiences, just like traveling on an airplane can transport you to a new place. I am not excited about the tool itself (airplanes, weblogs, or wikis for example), but what you can do with it (shining the light on real learning).

The one key point that Laura did not address was the bird. If you look closely (or even click on the picture), you will see a tiny bird. The bird is a metaphor, in my mind at least, for similar ways of doing what new technologies now leverage. For example, wikis (a new technology) allows for asynchronous writing collaboration, something that can be done through face-to-face (F2F) writing conferences. If opportunities exist, however, wikis can allow someone to collaborate across geographical boundaries (an American working with someone in South America) which is something that isn't easily possible with F2F conferencing. Similarly, an airplane can transport people through the air to new locations just like a bird can fly to a new place (not transporting people or happening as fast).

That's it...

I found the quotation that follows on David Warlick's website. The picture that I included, The Race, is a metaphor for what I believe is an important takeaway in David's words.

"I am not a techie. I know some techies, and I am not one of them. Techies have created wonderful machines that are offering us possibilities that could not have been imagined only a few years ago. They are highly creative and knowledgeable people who live the technology. They are excited by the "light". I, on the other hand, am excited by what we can shine that "light" on..."

Write a comment to this blog post that describes what you think I am trying to say by associating this picture with the David Warlick text. I will write my true reflection/intention/connection in my next post...