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K12 Online Conference » 2006- Basic Advanced Training

Category Archives: 2006

2006- Basic Advanced Training

BASIC/ADVANCED TRAINING KEYNOTE “I Did Not Know You Could do THAT with Free Web Tools”

Published by:

Alan Levine
Phoenix, Arizona
Blog: http://cogdogblog.com
Twitter: @cogdog

Presentation Title
“I Did Not Know You Could do THAT with Free Web Tools”
….. a web dispersed presentation of unleashed potential for the 2006 K12Online Conference

Bio
Alan Levine is the Director of Member & Technology Resources for the New Media Consortium (NMC, (http://www.nmc.org/). Before this, he spent 14 years evangelizing technology for the Maricopa Community Colleges, where he first hosted a web server back in 1993 on a Mac SE/30. While at Maricopa, Alan was a key contributor to significant efforts such as Ocotillo, a faculty-led initiative that promotes innovation and drives change, created the Maricopa Learning eXchange (MLX), a virtual warehouse of innovation that pioneered the use of RSS in syndicating learning object content, and developed Feed2JS, an open source software shared for allowing people to easily incorporate RSS content into web pages. Alan works from home in Phoenix, Arizona and publishes his work on CogDogBlog (http://cogdogblog.com/)

Presentation
There are more than enough blogs, conference presentations, and Big Name EduPundits, extolling the future of the Read/Write web tools like blogs and wikis (hey, they are almost “old” technologies in internet time!). Here, I am trying to demonstrate some lesser known things that you can do with common web tools or some specialized web tools that do things that would perhaps spark the interest of an educator. The only requirement is it must be completely free to use. The bits I have cooked up include:

All of these will be intensely interconnected. Each one actually uses the tool of the topic as the presentation platform (flickr is demo-ed in flickr, del.icio.us content is hosted in a del.icio.us tag set…) While billed as “Advanced/Basic Training”, rather than providing 1-2-3 recipes for these sites, this “presentation” assembles a varied collection of what is possible, with the examples and linked resources where available. I tend to aim for a more exploration mode of presenting than just showing and nothing shown requires advanced technical skill.

Finally, for each section, I am linking to an open WikiSpaces site where I invite you to add more examples, ideas, etc. Let’s see what we can build.

To get started, my intro about web video tools is of course… sitting in a web video site, YouTube: I Did Not Know You Could Do THAT With Free Web Tools!

For the YouTube-less, a QuickTime version is now available at
http://cogdogblog.com/stuff/k12online06/k12online-you-tube.mov

You can find the next step in the presentation there, or from the presentation wikispace: http://cogdog.wikispaces.com/k12online06

2006- Week In The Classroom

WEEK IN THE CLASSROOM KEYNOTE”Journey through the Week as I Journey Up (or Down) the Road”

Published by:

Bud Hunt
Fort Collins, Colorado, USA
Blog: http://budtheteacher.com
Twitter: @budtheteacher

Presentation Title
“Journey through the Week as I Journey Up (or Down) the Road”

Bio
Bud Hunt teaches high school language arts and journalism at Olde Columbine High School in Longmont, Colorado.

(Since this presentation is audio-only, a YouTube version is not available)

Presentation
http://k12online.wm.edu/a_journey.mp3

While it’s certainly an honor to have been asked to deliver the keynote for the “A Week in the Classroom” portion of the first of what I hope will be many K12 Online Conferences, I have to admit that, after the excitement of being asked to contribute, I was a bit perplexed. Still am. Sure, I’m using this new web in my classroom when I can, and I am fascinated by the blurring of the borders between my classroom and pretty much the entire rest of the world, but I’m not an “expert” when it comes to Web 2.0. None of us are. That’s one of the best parts of exploring these spaces with our students — they and we and us are all traveling together, on a real exploration of a new frontier, a frontier of ideas.

I certainly hope that we don’t tame this frontier too much, and that there are always wide open spaces in some parts, sandy beaches in others, and, not to take this metaphor too far, a few rocky peaks always looming in the distance, transfixing us with both their beauty and the horrific jagged edges that they add to the horizon. Some folks, many of them my teachers, have been living in this space for some time. Lots more folks enter this world every day. Everyone, novice and experienced, teacher and student, brings their ideas and experiences with them, ready to share with the world. As problematic and essential as school, education, teaching, and learning are, there’s plenty of room — and some real, legitimate need — for all of that conversation and learning and juxtaposition and re-mixing of ideas. If you haven’t already, make sure that you know how to contribute to the conversation, David Warlick suggested several tutorials for getting started.

I hope you’re enjoying your exploration of the Read/Write Web. I hope you’re learning. Better still — I hope you’re sharing what you notice as you travel along the road . . . or leaving the (t)rail(s) entirely. Teachers do not traditionally have voices outside of their classrooms. We sit, alone, in little rooms, studying and grading and feeling lonely. It doesn’t, and shouldn’t, have to be that way.

My last hope for you, whoever, wherever, and whenever you are, is that you’re doing good work, with your students, and that you’ve discovered that the work that you are doing is so important, so vital and so necessary that you shouldn’t keep it to yourself. The Internet won’t run out of room anytime soon.

When Robert Fulghum (http://www.robertfulghum.com/) ended Uh-Oh: Some Observations from Both Sides of the Refrigerator Door, he made mention of the fact that Pueblo pottery contains a particular line break in every pattern to represent that, while a particular piece might be completed, the life of the artist is not. “A ritual sign of continual possibility,” he called it (246). To model that same idea, he ended his book not with a period, but a semi-colon. I shall do the same here, but for a slightly different reason. For me, I do so as a reminder that, no matter how many words we write, speak, draw, sing, or otherwise utter, there still remains much to discuss;

Works Cited
Fulghum, Robert. Uh-Oh: Some Observations from Both Sides of the Refrigerator Door. New York: Ballantine Books, 1991.

Links Mentioned (or neglected) in the Podcast
A Conversation about Elgg in the Classroom
http://edtechtalk.com/node/254

Blogessor
http://blogessor.blogspot.com/

Elgg
http://www.elgg.org/

EducationBridges.net
http://educationbridges.net/

My Learning Network
http://www.bloglines.com/public/budhunt

Olde School Space
http://www.oldeschoolspace.org/

Teachers Teaching Teachers
http://www.teachersteachingteachers.org/

Will Richardson
http://www.weblogg-ed.com/

Worldbridges
http://www.worldbridges.net/

Youth Voices.net
http://www.youthvoices.net/

All music in this podcast by the group “La Grosse Couture,” via BeatPick.com (http://www.beatpick.com/).

2006- Basic Advanced Training

Basic/Advanced Training”Blog if You Love Learning: An Introduction to Weblogs in Education (Basic)”

Published by:

Mark Wagner
Irvine, California, USA
Blog: http://www.edtechlife.com
Twitter: @markwagner

Bio
A former high school English teacher, Mark has since served as an educational technology coordinator at Estancia High School, the Newport-Mesa Unified School District, and the Orange County Department of Education. He now serves as the president of the Educational Technology and Life Corporation, which provides professional development and consulting services to schools, districts, and other educational institutions. Mark has a masters degree in cross-cultural education. He is also working towards a PhD in Educational Technology at Walden University, and expects to complete his dissertation in early 2007.

Presentation Title
“Blog if You Love Learning: An Introduction to Weblogs in Education (Basic)”

Powerful teaching and learning tools for both students and teachers, blogs can be used for student reflection, class webpages, professional development, and much more. This session briefly introduces participants to the read/write web, and to weblogs, or blogs, specifically. A live demonstration of WordPress will illustrate that… “If you can email, you can blog.” This will be supported by an overview of best practices and inspirational examples of actual student and teacher weblogs. These will include individual student reflections and learning logs, team blogs used for group work, teacher blogs, class blogs, blogs used for professional development, and blogs used to reach out to parents and the community. The session will leave participants inspired to take their next steps with educational blogging, whatever their level”¦ just beginning their own blogging journey, ready for their students to join them, ready to implement new best practices, or ready to innovate and lead the way.

Presentation

Originally posted on:
http://k12online.wm.edu/BlogIfYouLoveLearning.mov

Supporting Links
http://blogifyoulovelearning.wikispaces.com/

2006- Week In The Classroom

Week in the Classroom”Wiki Collaboration Across the Curriculum”

Published by:

Victoria A. Davis
Camilla, Georgia, USA
Blog: http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/

Presentation Title
“Wiki Collaboration Across the Curriculum”

Bio
Vicki Davis is a teacher and technology administrator at Westwood Schools in Camilla, Georgia. She has taught for four years at the high school and middle school level. For ten years prior, she taught professional development courses for teachers and college level adult computer literacy training. She is known for her award winning class wiki, wiki-centric classroom structure, and use of broad scope of Web 2.0 tools to improve student performance. She is a graduate of the Leadership Georgia program and graduated first in her class from Georgia Tech. She actively blogs her experiences at the Cool Cat Teacher blog and has been cited in the Boston Globe and Wired News for her work with wikis.

Description
Vicki loves it when she gets students excited! She loves it even more when she know that she has covered difficult material and the students had fun and retained the information. Vicki has become convinced that research-based think-pair-share and post lesson summarization are employed effectively whether you use paper, oral discussion, or online collaborative learning tools such as the wiki. The basic methodology (and result) is the same although the medium is different.

Last November 2005, Vicki was a scared beginner when she ventured out onto this new Internet that experts call Web 2.0. Within one month, her class wiki was named wikispace of the month and was being recognized as a model classroom for wiki use. But the most profound change was inside her classroom. Her classroom went from a challenging, rigorous curriculum to a challenging, rigorous, and fun curriculum with increased student involvement. Vicki will share what she has done with you in the hopes that you can learn more quickly than she did.

Vicki has done this in two ways: a video with show notes and a live wiki project for YOU to join in. So, if you want to learn something new (and have a sense of humor) we hope you’ll join the presentation. Vicki welcomes feedback on this blog or on her Cool Cat Teacher blog.

Video Presentation Outline:

  1. Wiki Background
  2. Why students need to know how to wiki
  3. A brief overview of the active portion of this project
  4. The pedagogical use of wikis in the classroom
  5. Wiki assessment strategies
  6. Common questions from school administrators

Note: To show you how rapidly things change, this presentation was finished on Sunday, October 15th and on Monday, October 16th, wikispaces has announced a new feature to help with the concurrent editing problem of wikis.

Presentation

PC users right click, Mac users control click to download for viewing …
http://k12online.wm.edu/k12wikipresentatation_LowRes.wmv 18 MB
http://k12online.wm.edu/k12wikipresentation_highres.wmv 41 MB

Supporting Links
Show Notes
http://k12online.wm.edu/K12shownotes.pdf

Wiki Grading Rubric
http://k12online.wm.edu/WikiGradingRubric.pdf

Components of an effective Web 2.0 Classroom
http://k12online.wm.edu/Web20classroom.pdf

Active Project Outline: The K12 Wiki Project
1 – Sign up to participate at the conference wiki project wiki – http://k12wiki.wikispaces.com/
Our live wiki project. Sign up and request to join the space before 8 AM EST Wednesday, October 24th. All project instructions are on the wiki home page.

2 – Team Announcements
You will have your team assignments posted on the wiki Thursday, October 26th.

3 – Wiki on your topic for up to 20 minutes
You will have until Saturday, October 28th to spend two 10 minute sessions editing your wiki. (Vicki will have volunteers on the wiki to answer your questions and help you.)

4 – Awards
Three Amazing judges, Andrea Forte (wiki researcher), Stewart Mader (wiki author), Jennifer Wagner (international collaborative teacher projects) will evaluate and judge the best wiki of this project. (See the K12wiki for their bios.)

5 – Listen in on the skypecast
Winners will be announced at the concluding skypecast (https://skypecasts.skype.com/skypecasts/skypecast/detailed.html?id_talk=45270%29 on Monday, October 30, at 8 pm EST (October 31 at 1:00 am GMT). Some of the judges will join us and we will give you some ways that you can match your classrooms to wiki with others that match your objectives.

2006 - Keynote

PRE-CONFERENCE KEYNOTEDerailing Education: Taking Sidetrips for Learning

Published by:

David Warlick
Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
http://2cents.davidwarlick.com/
Twitter: @dwarlick

Presentation Title
Derailing Education: Taking Sidetrips for Learning

Bio
David Warlick is a 30 year educator, author, blogger, and Web 2.0 programmer. Since 1981, he has been using information and communication technologies to help people learn, young and old. When his school could not afford any software for it’s computers, he taught himself to program and wrote award-winning instructional games, before computers could even display in color. His blog postings are read around the world, and his free online web tools are accessed millions of times a week. At heart, David Warlick is a teacher, with a contagious passion and enthusiasm for helping people discover a brand new world of teaching and learning.
David blogs at http://2cents.davidwarlick.com/
and podcasts at http://connectlearning.davidwarlick.com./

Presentation

Originally posted on:
http://k12online.wm.edu/k12online2006_optz.mp4

Hello and welcome to the k12 Online Conference!

http://davidwarlick.com/images/davidonimovie_sml.jpg

It is a great honor to be delivering the keynote address for this, the first K12 conference of this type. I must admit a certain amount of discomfort with my experience in doing this. First of all, I am not happy performing into technology. I can feel quite at ease speaking to 5000 people in a conference hall. But sitting and speaking into my camera does not come at all naturally to me. I thought it might help to take my camera out of my office and into public places, but, nope that didn’t help at all. You judge!

The second reason why I am not taking readily to this arrangement is that I really like teaching people. I like the energy that arises from a group of people who are learning something new or thinking about something in a new way. It is an electricity that hums in my ears, and the electricity of my video camera in hand, does not hum to me.

Still, we teach and we learn in order to accomplish our goals — our personal goals, our community goals, and our planetary goals. ..and the landscape within which we must teach and learn has changed dramatically in just the last few years. Therefore, we all must learn new skills, learn to think about our work in new ways, and to redefine what it is to be a teacher. I am no longer merely one who stands and teaches. I am also an information artisan, creating and crafting learning experiences that bring knowledge, skill, and joy. — and I hope to get better at it 😉

Traditional conferences act like traditional teaching and learning experiences. I face you. You face me. You all face in the same direction. In this conference we are not only facing in different directions, and not only in different locations, but you are reading this blog and watching my keynote at different times. We are free from what Chris Anderson calls the tyranny of locality (Anderson 17). You’ll spend some time paying attention to me and others, but the best part of this conference will be the time that you are reflecting on what you see, hear, and read, and then writing in your blogs and populating wikis, and then reading other people’s reflections, and reacting. This conference is not as much about teaching and learning as it is about building new knowledge.
Here are some links that may be useful to you:

  • K12 Online Conference Hitchhikr — A page where you can read blog entries posted about this conference.
  • K12 Online Conference Blog Tagger — This tool will help you generate Technorati tags for your blogs that will make it much easier for you to have your blogs accessible to other conference attendees.
  • My Keynote Wiki — Here you can register yourself to the wiki page and generate your own conference notebooks for taking notes during the various presentations and conversations. Through this wiki page, your notes will be available to others — and visa-versa.

Ya’ll have a wonderful Conference


Anderson, Chris. The Long Tail. New York: Hyperion, 2006.

2006 - Keynote

PRE-CONFERENCE KEYNOTE Part 2Derailing Education: Taking Sidetrips for Learning

Published by:

Your Wiki Assignment

The Long Tail* is a model developed by Chris Anderson, the Editor and Chief of WIRED Magazine. It describes a shift in the information landscape from an environment dominated by a limited number of products (a best-seller market) to an information environment where information is spreading out into many more products of widening variety (a niche market).

As we consider education, within this context of a changing information landscape, I am super-imposing over the Long Tail graph, a layer for education technology. On the vertical axis is a timeline, beginning at the top, with education before the personal computer, and ending at the bottom, with increasingly ubiquitous broadband access to content. Across the horizontal axis is an un-scaled spectrum of variety, in terms of variety of content and learning experience.

Assignment:
Your assignment is to think about the educational technologies that we have used in the past, and the applications you learn about and explore in this conference, and try to place them in what seems to you to be the proper positions on the long tail. There are further instructions on the assignment at the wiki page. I look forward to watching this grow and evolve.

1  Anderson, Chris. “The Long Tail.” WIRED Magazine. Oct 2004.
2 Anderson, Chris. [Weblog The Long Tail] 9 Oct 2006. 12 Oct 2006 <http://www.thelongtail.com>.
3  Anderson, Chris. The Long Tail. New York: Hyperion, 2006.        

2006- Overcoming Obstacles

“Overcoming Obstacles” presentation ideas

Published by:

Hello everyone, I am so pleased to be involved with the first K-12 Online conference! I’m convening the “Overcoming Obstacles” strand for week2, and I’d like to encourage you to submit a proposal!

I’ve started an open wiki with topic suggestions for “Overcoming Obstacles,” and you are welcome to both check that out and add to the list. (http://obstacles.wikispaces.com/topics) There are an amazing array of web 2.0 tools out there, but if we can’t figure out how to work within the real-world contexts in which we find ourselves, they won’t be able to do much to help our students better engage in the learning process.

If you’re ready to submit a proposal, please refer to the proposal submission guidelines (which are applicable to ALL strands) and then submit using the online form. If you make a mistake, just resubmit your proprosal and we’ll just keep the most recent version. That way we can minimized exchanged emails, and use the blog and wiki more to collaborate and answer questions. As of this morning we’ve received 22 submissions (in all categories.)

Also, EVERYONE is invited to sign the guestbook on this K-12 Online blog. Let us all know where you are living– this is a global conversation, and it’s very cool to have this opportunity to learn together! I hope you’ll plan to participate in one or more capacities during this free online conference opportunity. 🙂