Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Live Interview Thursday: Panel on Search Literacy with Google's Tasha Bergson-Michelson

Join me Thursday, December 1st, for another live and interactive FutureofEducation.com webinar as Tasha Bergson-Michelson brings Debbie Abilock and Jole Seroff together for a panel and audience conversation on "search literacy" in education: what is search literacy, what sources should students be using, how do we help them evaluate what they find, what are the biggest misconceptions about search, and what is the school's role in teaching search literacy and skills?

Additionally, the panel wants to address:
  • Now that we can search for information, do we need to learn facts?
  • Is everything we need online?
  • How do you teach students to recognize when a source fits their need? 
  • How do you teach students to be resilient in their technology use, especially in the face of web resources tools, which change all the time?
This should be a great conversation. Come with your ideas and questions.

Date: Thursday, December 1st, 2011
Time: 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern / 12am (next day) GMT (international times here)
Duration: 1 hour
Location: In Blackboard Collaborate (formerly Elluminate). Log in at http://futureofed.info. The Blackboard Collaborate room will be open up to 30 minutes before the event if you want to come in early. To make sure that your computer is configured for Blackboard Collaborate, please visit the support and configuration page. Recordings of the session will be posted within a day of the event at the event page.
Recordings: The full Blackboard Collaborate recording is at https://sas.elluminate.com/p.jnlp?psid=2011-12-01.0600.M.9E9FE58134BE68C3B413F24B3586CF.vcr&sid=2008350 and a portable .mp3 audio recording is at audio.edtechlive.com/foe/searchliteracy.mp3.

Tasha Bergson-Michelson is a Search Education Curriculum Fellow at Google. Drawing on seventeen years as a librarian and research skills trainer in K-20 and corporate settings, Tasha collaborates with educators who want to integrate research skills into their classes to help their students access the most relevant, highest-quality sources available today.

Jole Seroff is Director of Library and Academic Technology at Castilleja School in Palo Alto, CA, an independent school for girls in grades 6 through 12. She has previously served as librarian in urban public schools in Memphis, TN. Her work involves collaborating with teachers to situate the learning of information and technology skills in the context of classroom curricula.

Debbie Abilock has over 30 years of experience in independent schools as an administrator, curriculum coordinator, librarian and director of a unified technology and library department.  As a principle and content developer at NoodleTools, a company whose software supports the teaching and learning of academic research, she understands the new challenges educators face in teaching students to find and evaluate credible sources.  She conducts training in schools on curriculum design, assessment, and inquiry research.  She has been honored as a Library of Congress American Memory Fellow, a Library Journal Mover & Shaker, and has received Time Magazine’s Grand Prize Award for innovative Internet curriculum.  However, her favorite “prize” is the opportunity to teach a class of third graders!

2011 Edublog Awards - Nominations Due by Friday!

I have the pleasure again this year of co-hosting the annual Edublog Awards, designed to promote the educational value of social media. I encourage you to consider nominating someone or a site for an award in one of the eighteen categories, and to do so this week!

Here are the Web 2.0 Labs projects I hope you'll consider nominating:

After the nominations close on Friday, public voting will take place until December 13th, and the award ceremony will be live in Blackboard Collaborate at 7pm US-Eastern Time Wednesday, December 14th.

Here's the announcement from the official Edublog Awards site:
The Edublog Awards is a community based incentive started in 2004 in response to community concerns relating to how schools, districts and educational institutions were blocking access of learner and teacher blog sites for educational purposes.  The purpose of the Edublog awards is promote and demonstrate the educational values of these social media.  The best aspects include that it creates a fabulous resource for educators to use for ideas on how social media is used in different contexts, with a range of different learners while creating an invaluable resource of the best-of-the-best on the web!
How To Nominate
To nominate your favorites, we’re following the same approach as the last three years, namely asking you to:
  • Write a post with your nominations for the different categories on your own blog (or a website – anywhere public) 
And we’ve made some changes to categories this year such as:
  • Some categories have been combined together (Best ed tech / resource sharing blog and Best educational use of audio / video / visual /podcast)
  • We’ve created two new categories (Best open PD / unconference / webinar series and Best free web tool) 
  • Virtual worlds are encouraged to be part of the expanded “social network” category
Here are the categories in full – nominations are open from now until Friday 2 December, and voting will then be up until Tuesday 13 December and the ceremony will be rocking on Wednesday 14 December!
So go nominate your favourite blogs, twitterers, community sites, videos, podcasts and more… for 2011:
  • Best individual blog
  • Best individual tweeter
  • Best group blog
  • Best new blog
  • Best class blog
  • Best student blog
  • Best ed tech / resource sharing blog
  • Most influential blog post
  • Best twitter hashtag
  • Best teacher blog
  • Best librarian / library blog
  • Best School Administrator blog
  • Best free web tool
  • Best educational use of audio / video / visual / podcast
  • Best educational wiki
  • Best open PD / unconference / webinar series
  • Best educational use of a social network
  • Lifetime achievement

Monday, November 21, 2011

This Week: Kindle Fire Education Review, GlobalEdCon Recordings, Community News, and the Hack Education Roundup and Podcast!

Welcome to week six of this new weekly blog post / email, including the round-up of the week's news and the always-fun podcast with Audrey Watters in which we really drill down on the Amazon Kindle Fire (see my blog post below as well).

ANNOUNCEMENTS + EVENTS
  • The 5-day, 300+ session 2011 Global Education Conference wrapped up on Friday, and the recordings are available now here in both HTML and spreadsheet form! As well, the recent Library 2.011 conference recordings are here.
  • SXSWEdu (South by Southwest Education) announced their first list of 50 accepted concurrent sessions and panels proposals for the 2012 conference, March 6 - 8, in Austin, Texas. My panel proposal "School 2.0" was accepted, the topic being the role that teachers should and will play in the future of the education reform dialog (with panelists Stephanie Sandler, Thomas Ho, and Donna Murdoch). I'm still waiting to on two other panels I proposed (one on "hacking" your education, the other on the dangers of "red herring" tech solutions to education). Based on the list of sessions already accepted, this promises to be a very interesting conference where many of the cutting ed-tech discussions will be taking place--discussions that aren't always at the traditional ed tech conferences. Hmmm...
  • I'm giving the keynote address next week at the DET/CHE 2011 Annual Meeting in San Francisco, an event for leaders in educational technology in California higher education. 
  • I know it's early, but be sure to start thinking about the ISTE 2012 conference in San Diego. This will be the fifth year of EduBloggerCon, which is being renamed SocialEdCon and will now incorporate our other great events at ISTE:  the Bloggers' Cafe and ISTEUnplugged. More details coming soon, but be sure to put Saturday, June 23rd, into your calendar for when you are making your travel plans! And this year, let's make sure that this event draws in the Library 2.0 crowd--something I really want to see happen more often.
  • Also on early radar--Lucy Gray and I are talking about a Global Education Summit physical meeting, also to precede ISTE... we plan to chew up your summer days in the most pleasant of ways, but at least our events are free! 
BLOG POSTS
COMMUNITY NEWS
  • The Future of Education interview series returns tomorrow (Tuesday, November 22nd) from our virtual conference break for an interview with Scott Nine, the Executive Director of IDEA, the Institute for Democratic Education in America. More information here
  • The recording of this past Saturday's Classsroom 2.0 LIVE! show with featured teacher Beth Still has been posted. Classroom 2.0 will not meet until December 3rd in observance of the Thanksgiving Holiday in the US. The topic for Saturday, December 3rd will be ”Can We Skip Lunch and Keep Writing?” by author Julie Ramsay. Julie will share the ways she uses technology, tools and resources with to motivate students and re-energize writing instruction.
  • I'll be meeting next week with Gina Bianchini, co-founder of Ning and creator of the new MightyBell that's hosting the new Teacher 2.0 self-paced, free online workshop. We're going to brainstorm how her social teaching and learning program could best help educators.
  • In December, We Collaborate becomes the official user network for Blackboard Collaborate (formerly Elluminate and Wimba) users. Come to trade tips and tricks with other Collaborate users. December 31 LearnCentral.org will officially be closed down.
  • Community Numbers: If numbers equate to finding interesting people, which they often do, these number may be of interest. Library 2.0 has reached over 12,500 members from 153 countries, growing almost 7,000 members since the Library 2.011 conference was announced earlier in the year. Classroom 2.0 is at almost 62,000 members from an incredible 181 countries. Teacher 2.0 is growing more slowly with almost 2,800 members (a cutting edge-group!), while the ever-small Student 2.0 is seeing a rash of student sign-ups from Ohio and France for cultural exchanges. The Future of Education will reach 7,000 members this week or next.
THE WEEKLY ED TECH PODCAST WITH AUDREY WATTERS

Blogger Audrey Watters (Hack Education) sits down with me (virtually) each week to discuss the ed tech news of the week and drill down on stories that have caught her eye (and attracted her writing talent). Audrey is a writer for the NPR education technology blog MindShift, for the data section of O’Reilly Radar, and for the Edutopia blog.

Here's the direct link to our latest podcast: http://audio.edtechlive.com/cr20/WattersHargadon2011-18-11.mp3. The podcast feed link is http://feeds.feedburner.com/edtechlive/hackeducation

HACK EDUCATION POSTS LAST WEEK

Live Interview Tuesday November 22nd - Scott Nine from IDEA on Reclaiming and Reinventing Education

Join me Tuesday, November 22nd, for another live and interactive FutureofEducation.com webinar with Scott Nine, the Executive Director of IDEA, the Institute for Democratic Education in America. IDEA is a national effort "to unite education with our nation’s democratic values" and they believe that "young people ought to be active co-creators of their own learning and valued participants in a vibrant learning community." We'll talk about democractic education, building momentum for education change, and where and how he sees healthy change in education coming.

Date: Tuesday, November 22nd, 2011
Time: 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern / 12am (next day) GMT (international times here)
Duration: 1 hour
Location: In Blackboard Collaborate (formerly Elluminate). Log in at http://futureofed.info. The Blackboard Collaborate room will be open up to 30 minutes before the event if you want to come in early. To make sure that your computer is configured for Blackboard Collaborate, please visit the support and configuration page. Recordings of the session will be posted within a day of the event at the event page.
Recordings: The full Blackboard Collaborate recording is at https://sas.elluminate.com/p.jnlp?psid=2011-11-22.1722.M.9E9FE58134BE68C3B413F24B3586CF.vcr&sid=2008350 and a portable .mp3 audio recording is at http://audio.edtechlive.com/foe/scottnine.mp3.

Scott Nine is the Executive Director of IDEA. A dynamic public speaker and organizer, he enjoys teaching and learning about leadership, social justice, community, educational reform, environmental sanity, personal growth, entrepreneurship, and how we get along with one another. Scott has a Masters Degree in Social Work from Arizona State University. He has experience teaching, advising, and creating learning communities for people ages 5 to 95. Raised by two public school educators, Scott fell in love with his partner Hollie while growing up in Apache Junction, Arizona. He lives in Portland, Oregon where Kristofer, KD, and Ellanore teach him new lessons on an almost daily basis.

From the IDEA Website:  "IDEA is a national effort to unite education with our nation’s democratic values.  We believe that young people ought to be active co-creators of their own learning and valued participants in a vibrant learning community.  This is democratic education in action, which as you know is sharply different from the reality experienced by most young people and educators throughout the country...

"IDEA is committed to bridging the disconnect between our democratic values and the way we educate and treat young people. This disconnect is striking, as the learning experience today is largely determined by a standardized, high-stakes, and de-personalized approach that alienates young people from learning and drives gifted teachers out of the profession.

"In contrast, democratic education starts from the premise that every young person is unique, and that all young people ought to have the opportunity to live and learn in an environment that practices meaningful participation, that supports self-initiative in learning, and that is directed towards greater equality and social justice...

"IDEA defines democratic education as learning that equips every human being to participate fully in a healthy democracy. We believe that in a democracy based on participation of each individual, education should also be democratic.

"A democracy is a system in which the people have power and are able to exercise it. Democratic education incorporates the principles of a healthy democracy: students have an active role in shaping their own learning, rather than being passive recipients of knowledge. They are participants and citizens, each with unique gifts, not empty vessels or products on an assembly line....

"IDEA collaborates with communities around the country to reclaim and reinvent education, in ways that develop compassionate citizens and changemakers."



Saturday, November 19, 2011

The Kindle Fire - So Close... A Review with Education in Mind

I have had really high hopes for the Kindle Fire, as an Android tablet lover, especially as it might work as an education device. Amazon is big enough and well-positioned enough to bring to market an inexpensive tablet that combines 1) a virtually unlimited library of public domain and traditional books with 2) access to the Web, and 3) an open development app platform. I recognize and appreciate how much the "wow" factor plays a big role in the adoption of the iPad in education, and that an Amazon device is not going to elicit the same reaction--but I'm not sure it needs to if the solid learning functionality over time proves itself.

My own 10" Acer Android tablet (the A500), which I bought only because it was on sale at Staples at the still-amazing price of $299, has become my primary learning device in a way that I didn't anticipate. I've basically stopped using my netbook computer, which indicates that the form factor and size, more than the capabilities, must have been the hidden heart of the netbook's appeal to me. While the tablet is not a great device for creation, which I still do at traditional PCs, the world of knowledge that the tablet conveniently opens to me every day is stunning in scope. I really want that for my own children and for our students.

Having played with a Fire for several hours, I am if anything only more convinced of its potential in education, but less sure that Amazon is taking the product in a direction to realize that promise. I might try to put aside the fact that my own personal work habits are so tied to Google that I won't actually use the Kindle Fire myself as a primary device (more below), but even then the degree to Fire presents an Apple-like integrated/locked-in experience ultimately leaves me uncomfortable evangelizing it to education right now. My Acer tablet has much of the same integration with Google, but without the lock-in.

Intriguingly, though, there's another side to this:  that Fire is more Apple than Android--more locked-down with less work getting started--might actually make it more attractive to schools and parents. I'd have to see what the implications are for giving Fire to a student or child (do they get their own Amazon account? do they have to have the right to make purchases? can I put their Fire on my Amazon account, and if I do so will they have unlimited access to ordering books/movies/music?), but this control could make entry into the student market much easier even if I don't personally like it.

More details below, plus Audrey Watters shared her thoughts about the Kindle fire here, and she and I discuss it at length in our weekly ed tech roundup podcast which will be released on Monday.

First Impressions
  • Minimalist packaging, loved it. Classy, but not over the top.
  • The Kindle Fire recognized me, probably from hardware spec tied to my order with Amazon. Very nice, meaning it brought in all my Amazon content.  Much like Android tablets automatically bring in all your Google content (Gmail, contacts, app purchases), Fire linked to all all my Amazon content (books, music, and video).
  • It found wifi right off the bat, connecting to my network was painless.
  • After it downloaded an update automatically, I was up and running in a few minutes. Here again, more Apple than Android in the user experience setting up.
  • Every time I pick up the device to use, it's pretty much instant-on, which is very nice. It's made me realize that my Android phone and Acer tablet are actually a little sluggish there.
Overall
  • The price point ($199) is a huge plus in its favor.
  • Interestingly, by being more than a Kindle, it almost feels like less... Because this is a integrated media device (Amazon video and music, Audible audio book), it left me wanting more because it gave me more. By adding so much additional functionality, I realized how locked in I was to Amazon compared to a traditional Android device.
  • Amazon would really benefit, I think, by focusing this device on education in some way. This would make a LOT of sense for giving the device a mission/purpose. I don't see that yet. If there were a compelling reason for school adoption--either content or capability--I think the price point would make it a no-brainer for parents and teachers.
Amazon Integration

  • This is an Amazon, not Google, integrated android device. I'm so wed to Google that I miss the Google apps and other pieces not authorized by Amazon. But it also makes me realize the degree to which my love affair with my tablet is in part because of my deep Google usage. Right off the bat I miss Google Maps, Google Music, and Skype. 
  • There is value in the unified Amazon experience. It's easy to navigate, and much simpler than my Android tablet--at the cost of being a less fulfilling device for a power user.
  • The Audible integration to Amazon has been a bonus for me just as customer, and is added to on Fire. However, because audible allows you to download audio books (I love this on my Android phone!), I immediately realized that I can't do the same thing with an Amazon movie that I rent or buy, so I can only watch a movie on Fire if I'm connected to a wireless network (in other words, not on a plane or in a car). 

Books

  • I am interested to see if this continues, but I actually found my eyes more tired after reading on Fire than reading on my phone or my Acer tablet. I actually had trouble focusing when looking at reviews in the Kindle store. That would be a little bit of a deal-killer for me as a read.
  • I've lamented the fact that as a Google Prime member who orders lots of books both electronic and physical, and an active user of the Kindle software on my phone and Android tablet, I haven't had access to the new Kindle lending library because it requires and actual Kindle device. So having a Fire comes with the added bonus of being able to borrow a book each month.
  • Also a little unrelated to the Fire itself, I still wish that book samples would synch between devices. I use the book sample feature basically as a way to collect potential purchases, like I would browse in a bookstore, and having those samples on different devices means I never really drill down on most of them.
  • I do a lot of PDF and other non-Kindle reading on my Acer tablet, and I have no interest in trying to figure out how to do this on Fire within Kindle, as I'd be shocked if Amazon will make it easy for me to do... which make the lack of any external memory understandable. My Acer has full USB and micro-SD.

Amazon App Store

  • I've never liked the whole Amazon app store idea, since one of the great features of apps on Android is that the system is seamless over multiple personal devices.  Amazon's app store, by design, doesn't know what apps I'm already using, doesn't know which ones I've paid for already, and doesn't carry some of the ones I use the most.
  • My Android-using 13-year-old daughter, who's been coveting the iPhone recently, grabbed the Fire, looked at the games installed, and immediately said:  I wouldn't want an iPhone if I had a Fire. That surprised me, and I haven't looked in detail at the games available, but am guessing this is the response Amazon wanted!

Browser

  • For all the talk about the Silk browser, this was a real disappointment to me. I know it's supposed to "learn" and speed up over time, but right off the bat it didn't feel any faster than my good Android browsers.
  • A major downfall of the browser is that the top and bottom panels eat up so much real estate that in landscape mode I just didn't want to even read the web pages. Maybe I just couldn't figure it out, but I was not able to make the panels auto-hide.  
  • Honestly, I just won't use the browser now if given a choice to use another device.
Movies

  • Acknowledging the frustration of having to be on a wireless connection, watching an Amazon movie this way is a very experience.
  • Of course, they are not likely to let me watch Netflix on Fire.   :)  (UPDATE: To Amazon's great credit, the Netflix app is available on the fire.)  Netflix is available on my Android phone, but not on my tablet. I can watch Amazon movies on my tablet using Flash, but it's not a great experience. So what's obvious here is that the movie piece is a big strategic play, and candidly, that's what worried me--the focus and attention on this will detract from the (to me) more important educational opportunities.

Email

  • The Gmail experience is so amazing on my 10" Acer tablet, and so bad on Fire, that I deleted my account within about 5 minutes and didn't even consider using this device for email.

Other

  • Again, I'm really interested in how student accounts would work--do they have to be on their own, with a form of payment involved? If my child has a separate account and I buy a book for him or her, will I also have access to that book?  This is my next research area, as I imagine this is going to be complicated for parents and am hoping that Amazon surprises me and they have some good solutions here. 
  • Like all Android devices, this also suffers from non-multiple user capability.
  • Fire uses the standard micro USB for power charging, which is a HUGE plus for someone always having to think about what cables I need to have when and where. But the power cord is way short--what is that all about?  
  • Because there is no Google Map, I probably won't miss GPS, but it's not there. But it also comes in handy for apps that benefit from knowing where you are (weather and movies, for example).
  • No 3G of course
  • Anecdotal, of course, but the UPS guy who delivered my device, when asked if he'd been delivering many, asked what the Kindle Fire was. Since the name is printed on the box, and the packaging is unique, I guessed my was his only delivery that day. He confirmed that when I showed him the box.





Monday, November 14, 2011

November 14 - Ed Tech News, Our Weekly Podcast, and the Hack Education Roundup!

Welcome to week five of this new weekly blog post / email, including the round-up of the week's news and podcast with Audrey Watters.

ANNOUNCEMENTS
  • The 2011 Global Education Conference has begun! Come sign up--it's free! In it's second year, this amazing five-day, 24-hour-a-day event helps educators and students connect with each other and with global education programs all over the world. The session schedule is up in all 36 time zones. Recordings of sessions are going live as soon as the sessions are finished--look for the "QUICK LINKS AND RECORDINGS" page.
EVENTS
THE WEEKLY ED TECH PODCAST WITH AUDREY WATTERS

Blogger Audrey Watters (Hack Education) sits down with me (virtually) each week to discuss the ed tech news of the week and drill down on stories that have caught her eye (and attracted her writing talent). Audrey is a writer for the NPR education technology blog MindShift, for the data section of O’Reilly Radar, and for the Edutopia blog.

Here's the direct link to our latest podcast: http://audio.edtechlive.com/cr20/WattersHargadon2011-11-11.mp3. The podcast feed link is http://feeds.feedburner.com/edtechlive/hackeducation

HACK EDUCATION POSTS LAST WEEK

Wednesday, November 09, 2011

The Second Annual Global Education Conference Starts Monday!

It's almost here!  The second annual Global Education Conference is a week-long, and free, event bringing together educators and innovators from around the world.  The conference features sessions and keynote addresses to inspire global connections, projects, ideas, and action in an increasingly connected world.

We'll be streaming live online November 14-18, 2011 (the actual session links will get posted this weekend).  The entire conference will be held online for free using the Blackboard Collaborate platform (formerly known as Elluminate/Wimba). The session descriptions, forum discussions, and session calendars (one for each of the world's 36 time zones!) are available at http://www.globaleducationconference.com. Look at last year's reviews, check out this year's awesome sessions and keynotes, and get yourself set for a ton of fun and learning--join us if you can!

More Information:
The Global Education Conference is a collaborative, world-wide community initiative involving students, educators, and organizations at all levels. It is designed to significantly increase opportunities for building education-related connections around the globe while supporting cultural awareness and recognition of diversity. The conference seeks to present ideas, examples, and projects related to connecting educators and classrooms with a strong emphasis on promoting global awareness, fostering global competency, and inspiring action towards solving real–world problems. Through this event, it is our hope that attendees will challenge themselves and others to become more active citizens of the world. Let us learn, question, create, and engage in meaningful, authentic opportunities within a global context!

Keynote addresses this year will be given by noted thought leaders Alan November Chris Dede, Howard Gardner, Fernando Reimers, Esther Wojcicki, and many more. Conference sponsors include Brainpop and iEARN-USA  Partner organizations are numerous as well and many will be presenting their work throughout the conference. Last year’s conference featured 387 sessions and 60 keynote addresses from 62 countries with over 15,000 participant logins. Sessions were held in multiple time zones and multiple languages over the five days, and are currently archived as a standing educational resource at http://globaledcon.weebly.com/recordings.html. For further information, please join our network at http://
globaleducationconference.com and follow us on Twitter (@GlobalEdCon). Conference related tweets will be aggregated using the hashtag #GlobalEd11.

Monday, November 07, 2011

November 7 - Ed Tech News, Our Weekly Podcast, and the Hack Education Roundup!

Welcome to week four of this new weekly blog post / email, including the round-up of the week's news and podcast with Audrey Watters. If you haven't listened to a podcast yet, we think they are a blast and hope that you do as well!

ANNOUNCEMENTS
EVENTS
THE WEEKLY ED TECH PODCAST WITH AUDREY WATTERS

Blogger Audrey Watters (Hack Education) sits down with me (virtually) each week to discuss the ed tech news of the week and drill down on stories that have caught her eye (and attracted her writing talent). Audrey is a writer for the NPR education technology blog MindShift, for the data section of O’Reilly Radar, and for the Edutopia blog.

Here's the direct link to our latest podcast: http://audio.edtechlive.com/cr20/WattersHargadon2011-11-05.mp3. The podcast feed link is http://feeds.feedburner.com/edtechlive/hackeducation

HACK EDUCATION POSTS LAST WEEK