Okay… so now I understand what Twitter is all about

Image originally from the Morguefile. Click to view the original

I’ll admit the idea of telling people what you were doing at any given moment did not appeal to the side of me that adores my privacy. Also, being involved in conversations with others that absobed so much chatter didn’t spark the curiosity of that extremely methodical part of me.

Yet the side of me that has come to appreciate “Stream of Consciousness” really gets it.

But after first joining Twitter I can see what people like about it.

A few tricks I learned quickly to reduce the noise factor on twitter:

• The more followers/followees you have the faster the pace of the conversation. It’s good to search for conversations using “key words.” You can also save the chat
• You can easily save tweets you like by clicking the “Star” or favorites option.
• Just accept that you’re not going to get every piece of information being shared. Twitter is pretty ephemeral and it embodies that life of ephemerality characteristic of some aspects of “Internet life.”
• Make comments even ones that appear to have no point every now and then.
• If you’re sharing something cool include the link (be forewarned… if the link is too long you may not be able to share it. Hopefully, web developers out there whose pages require long urls are noting this. Or the twitter people might be able to develop a feature that allows you to associate links to text so you don’t go over the 140 character limit).
• Addressing someone directly requires including their Twitter ID (ie. @nlkilkenny) in your tweet or post.
• If you must, you can search through the archive of a saved search. Depending on the volume of a conversation you may be searching for sometime till you get to the beginning.

I’ve actually learned a lot this weekend on Twitter. Sorry to go off on a tangent, but I get this way when I learn a good deal of new and fascinating stuff.  I saved a search for Arduino technologies because I’ve very interested in learning how to make clothing and knitwear use electronic features using the Arduino Lilypad.

Arduino Lilypad

Can you imagine having a purse that’s hooked up to your cellphone so that it blinks a certain way when different people call? I’d also like to make some kind of garment (even just wristbands) for my brother that plays different sounds. He’s a musician that tries to bring traditional and non-traditional sounds and instruments together: OO-Ray.  I was searching through Make.com’s site and found some very fascinating applications with Arduino tech including this Fabric Synthesizer. What a wonderful way to showcase ingeniuity and creativity.

Art and textiles meet electronics and music

Schools, Please Don’t Kill Our Creativity

At a workshop I attended yesterday, Barry Dahl mentioned this unforgettable lecture by Ken Robinson at the TED conference. In his incredibly adroit and humorous talk, Robinson maintains that schools today thrash the creativity out of kids. I would argue that the final death knell takes place once they enter today’s corporate work world.

In another inspiring lecture, Tim Brown, the CEO of IDEO champions the importance of play in productivity of design and innovation.

Tim Brown Teaches Adults How to Play at a Lecture

How can we, as educators promote creativity and play in our classrooms, while teaching important knowledge and skills? I feel that developing curriculum driven by “student created content” is key to developing the creative minds that will build our future. I don’t know about you, but as an old doddering woman, I would rather live in a world built by the next designer of earth shaking technologies and innovative policies that help promote progress and not in a world populated by people who are fettered by rules that squelch creativity and productivity.

“It’s in the making of things that kids actually do their learning”

(Exerpt below is from an article I wrote for our company blog.)

Creating content in schools extends past the traditional class-report or diorama making. I found this wonderful example of the King Middle School in Portland, Maine. I believe that this school is really putting the approaches to 21st Literacy Education in a Action. The video provides examples of how the school integrates subjects like science, English, math with technology education.

Click the photo to view the video. Note the video will open and play automatically in another browser window.

The kids participate in truly constructivist activities, by developing videos, artwork, and collaborating on the development of music and music scores. All of these activities and projects require formal knowledge in writing, math, science, research and history that used to be taught to students via textbooks in an isolated context. Here are a few quotes from the short film that really captured my attention:

“We don’t use textbooks, per se… we do a lot of research in class.”

“The approach is to bring out the best in every student.”

“It’s in the making of things, that kids do their learning.”

The school also partners with businesses like a local printing press to develop products. The students work together as teams to develop items such as books for the press. These students also have the opportunity to work with professionals like the professional documentary maker who help them improve the quality of their videos. They get real-life experience and are encouraged to stretch and deliver quality projects. They are not coddled or isolated from doing ‘real work’ because they are not ready to do it on a ‘professional level.’

As I finished watching the video, I realized that many teachers might have issues with the fact that some students contributed 7 pages of work to a final project while some contributed only three paragraphs. I like the attitude that these teachers at King have that “Everyone does what they can.” Plus everyone should contribute to the project using the skills and talents that they have. Perhaps a student who needs help with math but has kinesthetic talents can choreograph a dance, and teach the other students how to perform the dance to be included in a final project. A student who lags in writing but has design skills might lead the team that develops the costumes or set. Both students are exercising their communication and leadership skills in helping other get their tasks done. Students who are better at writing can help coach these students when they have to do the written component for the project.

I think the comment that sums up the value and power of this approach to education was made by the kids of King Middle School themselves, “No one feels stupid here anymore.”

Why wasn’t I born twenty years later? I would have loved to go to school in a place like this. Seeing examples like this really makes me excited about the work we do here at PLS because I believe that in what we do we strive to make learning experiences effective and powerful.

Work expectations/behaviors of the ideal virtual employee

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  Image from the Morguefile

• Are you a self-starter, a life-long learner?
• Do you find yourself researching and looking up answers to questions on your own?
• Can you effectively connect and communicate via e-mail, chat and phone?
• Do you have exceptional written communication skills?
• Can you work with out tons of positive reinforcement or those ‘pats on the back?’
• Can you set your own reasonable timetables for getting your work done and then meet them consistently?

If you’ve answered yes to all or most of these questions, you’d probably make an ideal virtual employee.

When I tell people I work from home 100%, I usually get one of two responses.

“That’s great! You get to work in your pajamas!”

or…

“Work must be a cakewalk for you.”

Of course, I try to explain to them that it’s not that simple. It still astounds me that people have those preconceptions that working from home means 1.) You get to do what you want and 2.)You don’t have to do much work. In my own experience, neither of these two notions is true of working from home.

To be honest, after the first six months of working from home I seriously questioned whether or not I was the right person for this job. There were things I horribly missed: making connections with workmates when you work in an office. Informal coffee break talks, lunches, impromptu meetings at the whiteboard to explain or get some validation on a concept.

Working from home and working alone, I found myself having regular conversations with my dogs. At least they were happy because they now had a human being in the house with them twenty-four-seven.  In the end, I found that I needed to join extracurricular social groups outside of work or make sure I pencilled in lunches with former coworkers and current friends into my schedule.

More, I don’t really get to “do only what I want” when I work from home.  I realized early on, that I had to set my own project schedule and milestone deadlines and meet them. With virtual employment gone are the days when the boss sits in an elevated place where they can see what all their employees are doing. The virtual boss needs to trust his or her employees to get the job done, and reciprocally, the virtual employee needs to constantly deliver the products and services that make his group and company successful.

Setting these self goals for success is not the only challenge I face as a virtual employee. As my work now takes place in my home environment, I have to discipline myself to separate both of these worlds. I set boundaries. Work takes place in the room that is my ‘office.’ I stop work at exactly 5:00. I must set up  rituals and practices that enforce the law of separation of work and home life… otherwise I face the danger of work enveloping it all.

Working from home 100% of the time is not the simple cake walk some people make it to be. And oh, I haven’t noted the challenge that those of us face who work from home with other family members including children at home.

Math-a-blogging

So, I sort of lied. I have been blogging in another life. As part of a Math course I recently developed, I set up my own blog to explore many of the concepts in the Algebra course. It’s called Maththinker. Initially I set up the blog as an example for students of my course. Many of the course activities are designed around the blog as the goal is to teach teachers the importance of getting students to express their mathematical thinking in writing. Writing out the thought process of math helps reinforce the learning and also helps students develop a solid understanding of what they are learning. Blogs naturally present a great tool for achieving this.

In addition to the blogs, the course will help students practice developing their own electronic visuals for teaching using simple graphics in PowerPoint. I truly believe that developing visuals or even drawing out concepts helps reinforce learning just as writing does. Even though the students of this course are producing something that they can use in their classrooms, they are also using that visual-spatial muscle to think out problems and concepts. The illustrations also allow the students to enhance their reflections and descriptions of concepts in their blogs.

In addition, to encouraging math writing, the course also focusing on helping teachers develop their own ‘real life’ applications and examples of math concepts and stories. Students share their examples including their own illustrations or diagrams in their blogs. They are encouraged to respond and provide feedback on each other’s work in the blog comments.

Here’s a screenshot from a quick slide show I developed that demonstrated the effect of changing variables in a quadratic equation. I used an applet available in the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives to create the graphs quickly and painlessly.

Working on this course also gave me the opportunity to re-learn some of my ‘rusty’ math. Imagine, I now remember what to do with a quadratic equation. In general, I feel like I’ve developed a greater appreciation of math and it’s applications.

Cool Example of Student Created Content

I was really impressed by this… a Movie/reinterpretation of the events of the Boxer Rebellion in China.

I’m a fan of Hong Kong cinema and I think these guys did a pretty good mix of storytelling with the fantasy martial arts genre. I remember falling asleep during the chapter of the Boxer Rebellion in my history class way back. I think these kids actual brought more meaning to the event than any old crusty history teacher ever could. Plus, they probably learned how much work it takes to produce a short film and became more engaged with history in the process.

I’m just a little bummed out…but it will pass

I know it’s Friday and I should be really happy, but I’ve just been a little bummed out about blogging in general. I’ve suddenly become incredibly self-conscious about anything I write. I know this can be the death-knoll for a blogger and a creativity killer, but I’ll get over it eventually.

I know I’ve said my piece once or twice about the focus on standardized testing in our schools. My gut simply tells me that focusing on teaching to these tests just saps or draws away any interest that people may have even had in learning. I also suspect that it really negatively affects the joys many teachers find in their jobs. Moreover, it can’t help that students perceive the anxiety from the principal, parents and teachers. Still, while I was reviewing research on why some people are better problem solvers than others, I had this thought this morning that perhaps there might be a way to make prepping for tests perhaps a little more engaging. For example, in taking a particular math problem on a test… perhaps teachers could throw it out there to the students so they can solve it together and share their logic and process. They could also work together to verbalize and explain how they solved the problem. I had teachers who did this but for some reason when they called us to the front of the room it aways felt like we were in the limelight performing in front of a dead audience who didn’t really get what we were talking about. It was more of a chore than anything else. Though considering where education and pedagogy were when the paddle and ruler had their active role in classroom management, I think we had it pretty easy.

I found this really neat nation-wide project called The National Math Trail. The Project is described on the website:

The National Math Trail is an opportunity for K-12 teachers and students to discover and share the math that exists in their own environments. Students explore their communities and create one or more math problems that relate to what they find. Teachers submit the problems to the National Math Trail site, along with photos, drawings, sound recordings, videos–whatever can be adapted to the Internet. All submissions will be posted to the site as they are submitted. They are also be indexed according to grade level and math topic and will remain on the site for access by educators, students and parents.

What I love about this effort it it allows teachers and students to learn from the real-life examples of real kids; it bring the mathematical interpretation of our surroundings alive from the view points of real people outside of a text book. I found what Kay Toliver, one of the founders of the project, said inspiring: “Mathematics is a subject in which we have to create thinkers not memorizers.” Okay… so how can we get them to think and still get them to pass these tests? It seems like a stupid question, but it’s not. Here’s another chicken-egg conundrum… but maybe we have to teach them to think before they can pass the tests… and just practicing taking tests or teaching to the tests isn’t enough. Sorry… I’m just venting, but that too will pass.

Why do people ‘Hate’ math?

I was just reviewing the searches for my blog and I found that someone had typed in “Why do people hate math?”

My feeling is that perhaps people do not hate it so much as fear it or are intimidated by it. Our culture (western) is so dominated by the verbal we learn to think in words and feelings perhaps before anything else. Mathematics is simply another language for explaining and interpreting the phenomena in the world. However, it is a very straight forward and logical language that has rules, that often elude us because we are not taught these rules properly in school.

Serendipitously, I’m currently working on developing a course on teaching algebra to middle school students, both the SME (Subject Matter Expert) and myself decided that one of the biggest obstacles to really getting math, let alone algebra, is the proper development of “Number Sense.” If I could explain what number sense means to myself and the other ‘verbal’ people out there, I’d probably start by saying that Number Sense may be analogous to being able to understand the basic rules of structure in language. (Maybe, I need a better analogy. Anyone else out there want to help?) Here is a simple, simple comparison.

Word Sense: I know that a sentence must have a subject and a verb. I know that the verb tense/form must agree with the nature of the subject (I am, you are, he is, etc.)

Number Sense: (Or maybe number babbling) I know that when I add two positives together I get a negative. Conversely, I know that when I add two negatives I get a negative. When I add a negative and a positive… I’m really combining or matching the negative and positive and combining them. After you combine these pairs that each equal zero I take them away – and I’m left with the remainder of the greater number (either positive or negative). Oh, heck… just look at the picture I drew.

If I were asked to explain this using pictures the first time, I think the concept would have sunk it a lot faster. I’ll bet dimes to dollars, if you were taught math more than 40 years ago all they did was simply put a set of problems in front of you. Maybe with the help (if you were lucky) of an astute teacher, they would explain what was happening in the problems or the pattern of solutions. But generally you were expected to figure it all out on your own. I didn’t learn math 40 years ago, but still, that’s how I felt it was taught. I went through the mechanics of solving the problems without really learning the rules of the language of mathematics.

Since, I didn’t understand the rules I could really only solve the simplest level problems in algebra. I sort of got the concepts, but as I moved into advanced algebra and calculus I’d often get lost. I was the “Queen of Partial Credit” on quizzes and tests. In the end in Calculus I barely scraped by with a C-. I could blame adolescent hormonal binges I was experiencing at the time, but looking back, I think that if I really sat down with the teachers and tried to understand math (from my own terms) I might have been able to do much better. I don’t think I really found the language of mathematics meaningful until I started applying it to my work in the form of ratios and proportions. Hexidecimal values and understanding the concepts of arrays and tables. But isn’t that the challenge that most teachers face, we must really coax the understanding and application of knowledge from our students regardless of who they are.

When I was actually teaching in the classroom, I really tried to understand how my students were perceiving a concept or what their general understanding or lack of understanding was. I really did try with certain complex subjects to relay the information to them in various ways or even ask them to explain why they thought they didn’t understand something. This morning at breakfast, my husband and I were talking about the difficulties of designing really good instruction. He puzzled about why it is so hard to teach… it doesn’t seem that hard, he said. More, it shouldn’t be hard to capture all that needs to be taught in writing. Yes, I explained, it’s easy to capture content int he form of raw concepts and information, but it’s the getting the student to understand and apply these things that is the hardest part. You can teach any monkey* to take a test, but getting people to make something with what they learn… that’s another challenge. I explained that teaching is an art that require not just book smarts and knowledge… it requires heart and the ability to read people and adjust your teaching to their needs.

*My apologies to all monkeys out there.

Using Games and Social Networking to Teach – Great Podcast

I’m just catching up on listening to some podcasts I’ve neglected. “Smart City” is one that continually pulls me back.

Here’s a great podcast that talks about the impact of new media and technology on educating kids (media/tech = video games, social networking sites, etc.).

http://www.smartcityradio.com/smartcityradio/past_shows.cfm?showsmartcityID=307&PageNum_getsmartshows=1 

Doug Thomas (author of Hacker Culture) from the Annenberg School of Communication at USC notes that games are actually a really good way for students to learn.  Students need to be prepared for different ways of thinking and innovation. Games are good at (multiplayer games) setting dispositions or outlooks towards certain ways of knowing, understanding how people share information.  Games can help students learn exploring different paths and possibilities and therefore may be able to help students simulate innovative thinking.  Games can allow players to solve problems.

Thomas also notes that educators today (some) are really having a hard time transitioning to accepting new ways of learning that include games…. I’m thinking that this is most likely because these educators don’t like to give up control over the learning and the content that is being presented.

I have to get back to work, but if I have more time later today I’ll try to comment more on the second half of the podcast on use of social networking media.

Future-teach

Why we still need teachers despite the internet

As I was sitting and listening to lectures at the SALT conference I heard a comment that most of the younger generations don’t have the patience to sit through lectures when they can look up answers and information so quickly on the internet. First, let’s note that not all lectures or lecturers are as painful to sit through as listening to someone conjugate Latin verbs in all tenses. You can still get valuable information from a lecture; however, it’s nice to be able to learn via different media or methods. Second, I’m a little wary of the idea of just expecting students of any age or discipline be able to search for information via the net without little or no guidance. If you read any of the Edgar Rice Burroughs stories or comics from the Tarzan series, you’ll remember that there was this assumption that Tarzan learned how to read on his own by reading through the books without the help or guidance from a teacher. Can we assume that students can learn everything they need to know by just having the almost all the information placed in front of them via the internet? Of course, after many trial and error attempts they might be able to function or apply the information they absorbed correctly. Even with all the information and resources in front of you, you still need a teacher or instructor as a guide to help you determine what’s good information and what is not.

Even within the university setting, this type of learning and validation from an expert must occur. Pre-Net we had libraries. Students would often use the libraries to compile information in the form of papers or studies thus augmenting what they learned in class. Now this will probably date me, but I used the index card method of gathering information from my sources. The professor, instructor or teacher would verify if we got things ‘right’ by giving us a grade on the paper. Though, that’s not always the case if you have a professor who is incompetent or even one who dislikes you and gives you a bad grade as a result.

I still believe that teachers are absolutely necessary to perform this function of validator and guide. However, the traditional model of teacher lecturing and students verifying that they got the information via a paper needs to be augmented. Note, I did not say get rid of writing papers. We all need to learn to form our thoughts and apply critical thinking in writing. It helps integrate what we’ve learned as well as learn to articulate our thoughts in a structured format. I do think that the written paper assignment tends to be overused in learning situations because it’s easy for the instructor to assign, and not so bad to grade as long as you have a teacher’s assistant.

If educators of the future are to follow a model I’d say let’s follow tradition way back and return to Socratic Methods of teaching your role must evolve from the guy or lady who likes to talk a lot at the front of the classroom to the mentor who watches the students progress, prompts them with though-provoking questions that would help them learn to apply the information that they’re learning successfully. But this is hard work isn’t it? And in a normal classroom environment of any age level it’s logistically impossible to get to all students and personally monitor their activity and ask them these questions.

I believe the answer to this lies in harnessing collaborative learning with student peers. At SALT I attended an excellent talk where the professor/instructor actually had students work together to post their learnings (and subsequently discussions) on topics via a wiki. The result was that students were able to quickly share what they learned and provide examples via links (if the information was available via the net) to each other. Using this method of collaborative/peer learning is powerful, especially if you couple it with assignments of well though-out questions that get students to think about applying what they’ve learn as well as looking at it with a critical eye.

Social and collaborative learning is the key, but the instructor need to trust the students and let them drive their learning for a change.

Notes from Karl Kapp’s Talk on Games and Gizmos for Learning

http://karlkapp.blogspot.com/

Digital Natives want electronics….

Kaybee, FAO Schwartz and Toys R US have all declared bankrupcy (NL: That’s sad…having manipulative toys is a key part of childhood, not to mention developing hand-eye coordination and motorskills)

Information and knowledge are the thermonuclear weapons of our time.

Era of Baby Boomers and their technology

• Color Television….
• Disney’s wild world of color… technology that drove things… 1 way broadcasting
• Passive ways of absorbing tech

Need for War Stories in the Workplace (Knowledge Management)

• Lockheed Martin hiring 14,000 in a year
• US Defense department will loose 500,000 people
• Average age of retirement is going down (59)

Learning Styles

• Characteristics of Baby Boomers… formal learners
• Gamer Generation… informal learners

Games, games, games

• Casual games à Example you don’t know jack
• Girls play games
• 43% of gamers are female.
• Play PC games a lot more.
• Women over 40 fastest growing segment
• 70% use of Sims users are women under 25 (I am)
• Grounding kids - don’t send them to the room… Say…No Screens.

Multitasking and Absorbing all that information

• They like to think that they can multi-task… we don’t think so but they can…
• ADD??
• Kids can wipe out background distraction? Is this true?
• They have to deal with massive amounts of information. They’ve always had a lot of information.

Net-gen communication preferences

• Kids go to instant messaging from e-mail.
• E-mail is too SLOW. Again… e-mail is for old people
• Generation wants to share all the time and be virtual. Example: Twittr
• 85% of the kids have a media device
• 44% have two.
• 15% of 2-5 year olds have a cell phone.
• This kids are linked in…
• Internet has been around for 14 years

Gamers Characteristics

• Problem solver à can solve problems in game… some cases can apply outside of game
• Confident
• Resilient
• Social à Online social via games and electronica
• World of Warcraft make Clans of people
• Multitasking
• Informal Learners
• Don’t want to sit through 45 minutes of class when they can google to get the answer.
• 3D world where you get your own stuff.

My thoughts….There’s a diy movement right now I think that there’s no coincidence that this is happening as technology is moving us more into a virtual world.

People want to make physical things.

More games examples

• Laundering money in Second Life… Hey, vinny don’t forget the virtual cannoli…..
  Protosphere… 3D business environment.
• Kids are getting into these games earlier.
• Disney.com… kids get involved in games where they build their own business.
• Nobelprize.org… learn about history via games

What the teacher should be today…

• More of a guide rather than a lecturer
• Not my best friend
• Socrates was a really great example of a guide
• We should Teach young people to be observant.

Mobile Learning Examples:

• Example settting up a display in a store
• Taking SOP’s and putting them in a video with audio that can be viewed on a hand-held device
• Note some things translate better to video than others
• Flight simulator game…
  • Demonstration mode
  • Practice
  • Test
• Sales rep game
  • Teach a doctor how to sell pharmaceuticals
  • Choose your strategy