Point A to Point B

  • Frank Lloyd Wright in Buffalo

    One of my hobbies/interests is architecture, and Frank Lloyd Wright is one of my favorite flw.jpg architects. Buffalo has the second highest concentration of FLW designs standing (Chicago has the most).

    I went on what is probably my 3rd or 4th tour of the premiere Buffalo FLW installation, the Darwin D. Martin House. It is undergoing a total reconstruction, which when done will bring it back to its design “date of significance,” 1907. Much of the Martin campus was demolished in 1962 except for the main house. Just under 2 years ago I went on a tour as the lost buildings were in the process of being rebuilt. Today I saw the fruits of those efforts – the Pergola, Conservatory, and Carriage House, built to the specs as FLW designed them. All I can say is WOW. FLW is an amazing designer, and the Martin House Restoration Corporation is an amazing group focused on bringing this jewel back to life for all to revel in.

    If you find yourself in the Buffalo Niagara region, a stop to the Martin House complex should be near the top of your to-do list – you will not regret it. And if you are a FLW aficionado, while in Buffalo, take some time to visit some of the other gems we have…Graycliff, Blue Sky Mausoleum, Boat House, and (soon to be built) Buffalo Filling Station.

    Image citation:
    “Photograph of American Architect Frank Lloyd Wright.” Online image. PowerMediaPlus.com. 29 December 2007. <http://www.powermediaplus.com>

  • Reflecting on our French Video Project

    Now that you have finished your French video project on shopping, take a few mintues to reflect and respond to the following questions.

    • Did your French speaking get significantly better by doing this project? Was it easier or harder than if we just did a speaking piece in class?
    • Was there more value doing this project as a movie than doing it as a skit in the classroom?

    Your honest feedback is just fine (meaning you won’t hurt our feelings). Please use complete sentences and thoughts – no chat language, please!

  • Sage Advice

    During our Monday morning school reading period, I like to read through the pile of educational technology magazines that normally stack up (and until we began this reading time were often ignored…). Top on the pile this week was Edutopia (one of my favorites). In the monthly feature, Sage Advice, the question put to readers was, “What would you teach a teacher?”

    The first two responses (both from New Yorkers, BTW) are:

    1. Realize you are in the people business! (Dan Murray, Principal, Wheatland-Chili Middle School)
    2. Never stop learning. (Kristen Montgomery, English Teacher, Canajoharie High School)

    There it is again – my mantra – A School is People Learning. The other responses were excellent as well – its just that the first two rang especially true for me.

  • Reflecting on Our Digital Storytelling Project

    Now that we have finished the personal narrative piece in ELA incorporating digital storytelling, please take a few minutes to answer the following questions.

    1. Do you think your writing improved as a result of this project? Give at least two reasons why or why not.
    2. How was this project different than if we simply wrote a personal narrative?
    3. Would you want to do something like this again?

  • Raw Materials for the Mind

    I just finished David Warlick’s book, Raw Materials for the Mind. David is a terrific writer (and speaker) and lays out how the digital age has transformed how we can (and should) learn. Two of his summary points stand out:

    Citing Sources (p.192):

    1. Always cite your sources
    2. Seek permission when possible

    Seek Professional Development (p.288-9):

    • Form a community,
    • Set goals,
    • Continue to learn, and
    • Share.

    While both of these concepts are basic, they are at the foundation of learning. Also, they have nothing to do with technology specifcally. They apply to the basic tenets of learning from the beginning of time. All technology has done is provided new access in new ways to information and people. We have spent a lot of time getting distracted by the latest cool tools, and gotten away from the business of learning. There is a ton of great information on technology tools in this book which is worth the read, but at the end of the day, its about learning.

    Book citation:
    Warlick, David. Raw Materials for the Mind. Raleigh, NC: The Landmark Project, 2005.

  • A School is People Learning: Revisited

    Forgive me for waxing a bit philosophical here, but I want to spend a bit of time revisiting my mantra for education…A School is People Learning. I first wrote about it here during NYSCATE last year, and reaffirmed it here just before this school year started. This year’s NYSCATE brought it back again.

    At Milton Chen’s keynote, he showed the terrific video, Animal School. Take 5 minutes now to watch it if you have not seen it. I could not see the video very well during the keynote, and until it was just re-sent to me, I did not realize how powerful it is. It goes to the heart of our primary goal in schools – people. Our customers, our students, are the majority of the people in the school, and although they come in with unique talents, strengths, and weaknesses, it seems like all we do is teach to the test, and beat back all the things that will make each child do their best.

    There is no simple solution to making things better for every person, and we do an incredible amount here everyday to foster our students’ strengths. This video is a reminder for me to try just a bit harder, or try something different, because our students depend on us to. dog.jpg

    Image citation:

    Bondseye. Pose. Photograph. 2007. Flickr. 29 Nov. 2007 <http://www.flickr.com/photos/32731319@N00/492552952>.

  • Synthesizing NYSCATE #2 – Is Google Big Brother?

    nyscate2007.jpgLet me begin by saying that Google is awesome. The breadth and depth of tools coming out of Google each day is unreal. This post is not meant to be a “paranoia” reaction. Its just something nagging in the back of my mind. I’ll try to voice it and see if it makes sense.

    At NYSCATE, I attended 2 sessions in which the various tools of Google were presented. Some are true Google creations (Blogger, Earth, Maps, Reader, etc.), and some are independent, but linked to Google (GoogleLitTrips). There were 5 sessions at the conference which focused on some aspect of Google. They have even started a network of educators, “Google Certified Teachers.” For me personally, I have trained on it – I was a co-presenter for a hands-on workshop 2 years ago at NYSCATE on using Google.

    One of the hottest tools in recent years is Gmail. The web based email has a unique conversation hierarchy, and 5GB of storage. You can archive, rather than delete, email, resulting in the ability to track down old messages you want. You’ll notice the contact at the top of this blog is my Gmail account.

    Blogger was a great independent blogging site that Google purchased and made better. It’s easy to create and begin publishing a blog, and there are awesome examples of how Blogger blogs are lighting classrooms on fire (you must see apcalc07.blogspot.com right now if you never have before!)

    Web History is a newer tool (I believe) which can remember all of your web searches from the point that you activate it. You can go back and review old searches to find information you are trying to recall.

    Google Docs may well mark the end of the stronghold of Microsoft Office. Docs has word processing, spreadsheet, and, just recently added, presentation files available for creation and sharing. More than that, online collaboration is available with multiple users simultaneously editing the same document. Those of us from my district who attended NYSCATE are collaborating on a presentation file to summarize our take-aways from the conference. Its a simple and powerful way to bring people together virtually.

    I ‘ve really just begun to talk about what’s available. I hear many people, rightfully so, singing the praises of Google. So where is my issue? I think it comes down to the fact that all this information is stored on Google servers (a joy for any IT department since they do not have to worry about storage). Its not that I’m worried about server failure or space. Terabytes of storage are added everyday to the Google “cloud.” Its that Google is a business. Businesses are in the business of making money. In this age of Google frenzy, millions of people a day are storing information on these servers that can be used to profile them for future use. It is an advertising/marketing holy grail, far better than any grocery store loyalty card.

    By no means am I accusing Google of doing nefarious things. My concern is that we are placing a lot of eggs in one basket, and that at the end of the day, a for-profit company holds the handle of the basket. This is where I hear myself sounding paranoid – I’m not a paranoid type. Microsoft got into the OS and productivity software game early, and came on strong. Google got into the Internet game early and is coming on extremely strong. There is much talk that they will be at the table when bidding opens in January for the 700mhz bandwitdth auction by the FCC.

    Maybe this is my subconscious reacting to the riveting Epic 2014 video that I first saw a couple of years ago (take the 8 minutes now to watch it if you have not seen it). I can best sum it up by recalling something from the Constructivist Celebration pre-conference workshop on Saturday. I briefly spoke with Gary Stager and told him how I appreciated his tendency to disagree with many educational technologists. The comment he made (I’m paraphrasing here) was: If everyone thinks something is a good thing, there is something inherently bad about it (keep in mind our brief conversation was not about Google at all – this is me re-purposing his comment in my context).

    Well, that’s more than enough about this. If you managed to read this far, I would love your feedback. Tell me I’m just plain paranoid, or tell me to get a life, or anything else. But if you’ll excuse me, I have to go now. I have to go check the RSS feeds in my iGoogle account.

  • Hey – I’m In This Video!

    Some “party crashers” (aka learners from another workshop) dropped into our Web 2.0 workshop with David Jakes on Sunday. They were learning movie making and took the opportunity to interview Dave. There are audio issues where the camera person is heard more than the subjects, but here is the product of their learning, posted as they intended to the world. Nice Job! You’ll see me in the back on the left side, next to my new friend Andy from Ithaca.

  • Synthesizing NYSCATE #1 – Personal Learning Environments

    nyscate2007.jpgThere was no specific session on the topic of personal learning environments (PLEs), but the concept came up many times throughout the conference as what we need to do to move forward with the new, connected, world of learning. Basically, a PLE is a learner-centered starting point, or gathering place, for an individual to create a customized space to manage his/her window to the world. See the Wikipedia article for a good overview.

    A PLE make take the form of a blog, a wiki, or a customizable start page such as iGoogle or NetVibes. Obviously it is an online presence, and includes the ability to aggregate RSS feeds and link to multiple content sources. There are larger PLE environments created in the last seven years or so. One example referenced through more than one source in the Wikipedia article is Elgg.

    Why did PLEs come up regularly at NYSCATE? Simple – web 2.0 tools put learning at our fingertips. We need a place to manage all this information in a way that is simple, meaningful and powerful. Attendees of NYSCATE are tech-oriented, and as such are much more likely to do some sort of PLE. For me, its a combination of iGoolge as a start page, this blog for writing, Bloglines for aggregating, and del.icio.us for bookmarking. Google can handle just about all of those jobs if I want it to – that’s something I’m pondering now (but a separate post is coming soon about that…).

    More importantly, if we want to push our schools forward, both teachers and students need to learn about and use PLEs, so they can take advantage of the world of learning available to them. This is the first step, and why it has synthesized as a major take-away for me. In our district we are going to be meeting soon to reflect on the conference and share where to go next (we’re going to use a Google presentation file to collaborate on our thoughts), and I’m going to suggest PLEs as a key idea.

  • Connecting the Classroom: Helping Student Build Global Learning Networks w/Will Richardson – NYSCATE

    While the title of this session was clear, Will started by inviting the conversation to go in any desired direction. We traversed many topics during the hour with some interesting points and conversations. Of note:

    • Will linked the session into usstream.tv and broadcast video/audio live via the Internet. He “advertised” the session stream via Twitter, and a dozen or so peole from around the world jumped into the chat space and had a sidebar conversation along with us. Very interesting global connection here!
    • Comment from Will (I think): If teachers do not use new tools, they won’t do it with their students.
    • Conversation: How do we as professionals maintain balance in this new world of connected tools? I call this the on-the-plate/off-the-plate discussion. For me personally, newspapers and TV are a thing of the past. Gone. Done. Stopped paying for cable a couple of years ago. That’s where I found the time to “plug-in” to the network.
    • Comment from usstream.tv chat room: Professional Development should be embedded in the curriculum areas and learning, not focused on technology.
    • Bell ringing comment of the session, from a session participant: Schools are still designed for a teaching culture – not a learning culture. Pow. Exactly. This is what needs to change.

    No clear path to the discussion, but very interesting places we went…