Technology Enhanced Learning

On January 31st, 2009, I had the great opportunity of presenting at Nipissing University’s Pre-Service Teachers’ Infusion Conference.  That’s really not newsworthy…except, I was in Sri Lanka and the conference was happening in North Bay, Ontario!  Then, to make it a truly global experience, the presentation was twittered a few times during the week, announced on the Classroom 2.0 “Live” notice board and also promoted through emails.  I was extremely pleased when we ended up with around 24 Pre-Service Teachers in North Bay and several seasoned Teachers and Web 2.0 users from around the globe, including United States, Sri Lanka and Canada. It was really special to see the activity in the chat room, the mixing of experience and support.

The webinar was entitled “Teaching in the Web 2.0 Era” - Here is the description:

Join us in Elluminate to investigate how the Read/Write Web has affected teaching and learning.  We will review many ways teachers have incorporated web resources and ‘cloud applications’ into their lessons while highlighting the professional development opportunities made available through Web 2.0 technologies. Participants will be encouraged to share their own best-use examples for the classroom, as well.

I was lucky enough to have Paul Soppit, a Nipissing University, “ITeach Support” person in the Conference room at Nipissing to help out while Steve Hargadon got up at an excruciating 6am to assist in the Virtual Room.  Both guys were gems…and were the key to making things go smoothly!

The Elluminate archive of the Webinar can be found here while there is an opportunity to follow up on the conversations started here.

While I was up at Nipissing University recently, I was pleased to find out that although the Pre-Service Teacher Program has an active SmartBoard program, they are also investing an inexpensive alternative, the WiiMote Whiteboard.  I interviewed Ken Waller, the Iteach Co-ordinator and Education Faculty Member about the WiiMote Project including how to set up the WiiMote Whiteboard.  What resulted is the 18 minute video below which provides a plethora of tips and tricks for getting this inexpensive technology working in any classroom. Hopefully Ken Waller’s excitement about the project will spill over to a classroom near you!

I’m thinking that a worthy addition to the blue WiiMote Kit would be a flash drive loaded with the above video, several portable applications such as kindlelabs, VBDoodle, OpenOffice and Edusim, and lastly several ‘ready-made’ activities.

In order to provide a comprehensive instructional video, I needed to rely on other sources around the web… including numerous creative commons copyrighted works and thankfully I received permission from several others who didn’t have their work listed CC. Here is a list of additional resources:

<coming>

You can listen to an extended version of my conversation with Ken Waller about the WiiMote Whiteboard here (right click to download 30 minute 27meg mp3 file)

The K12 Online Conference is over for another year but its archives and ensuing conversations can continue in perpetuity….That’s the nice thing about this online conference – not only is it free but the files, comment areas and this year voice threads keep the learning, sharing and reflecting alive.

For the second year in a row, I’ve volunteered on the Help Desk Team. Both years it has proven to be a hot bed of qualified, eager and determined ed-tech types. We provide a wiki for support, produce screencasts as needed, monitor the helpdesk gmail account, twitter accounts and “sit” in the live meebo room, as much as possible. In our organizational meetings leading up to the conference, the team discusses the best ways we feel we can support the conference and then put things in motion. I have found the individuals I’ve worked with to be real “can do” people – an idea comes up, it’s discussed and then next thing you know, it’s put into action!

Here are this year’s team members:

1. Convener- Darren Kuropatwa
2. Chair- Sue Lister (www.newmediaworkshops.com/listerportfolio/)
3. Member- Patricia Donaghy (http://pdonaghy.edublogs.org)
4. Member- John Evans (http://nlcommunities.com/communities/joevans/)
5. Member- Lee Kolbert (http://macmomma.blogspot.com/)
6. Member- Kathy Gryta

This year, we had a bit of twist with one member living in Ireland. Although it was sometimes difficult trying to set up compatible meeting times between team members on the west coast, central states/provinces and in the Eastern time zone…it worked out well with helpdesk emails since Patricia was almost always well on top of any question or problem by the time we, in North America, were awake! Ah… the workings of a distributed team!

I’d say the conference unrolled with very few ‘bumps’….not so much because of the Help Desk Team but more due to the efforts of the committed Convenors. The team of:

* Darren Kuropatwa (http://adifference.blogspot.com)

* Sheryl Nusbaum-Beach (http://21stcenturylearning.typepad.com/blog/)

* Wesley Fryer (www.speedofcreativity.org)

* Dean Shareski (ideasandthoughts.org)

These four must put in many hours behind the scenes to have such a successful global event! Of course, there are other volunteer committees that support these individuals but good leadership is certainly a key component of the K12 Online Conference.

Some of the highlights of this year’s conference included the addition of voice threads to ‘capture’ the conversation around “Key Questions” for each presentations (Example from PreConference Keynote) and the fact that we started using DOTSub to make the conference more accessible. There were also more “LAN” Parties this year where a group gets together and uses a presentation or two as a jump start to their own conversations, inquiries and reflections. As for the actual presentations, with over forty, 20 minute sessions to review, I am squeezing in content whenever I can - so far I have enjoyed listening to and reflecting on the work of Jon Becker, Jennifer Kraft, and Bud Hunt…believe me, there are MANY, MANY more I plan to engage in!

Speaking of listening to the presentations….there was also this idea from Wes Fryer: “K12 in the Palm of my Hand” where he talks about downloading the entire conference and ‘taking it with him’ on his Ipod. I’m hopeful I can share the K12 Online Conference content this way on my future contract in Sri Lanka.

What did you think of the K12 Online Conference this year?  Are there any presentations you would like to recommend?

Is it possible that a bevy of questions could highlight the differences and similarities in another’s school system? If so, what questions would you ask about the other system?

In preparing the “Connecting within the Unconnected Classroom Project”, an international global project where I’m hoping to bring together educational technologists with those teaching in limited technology and connectivity situations, I have been thinking of ways to help a diverse group of educators come to a greater awareness about the “heart” of the school systems of team members from around the world. I’m not talking about the ‘corporate line’ that is touted on Ministry of Education websites but rather the learning culture as communicated by the educators within the system.

To aid in organizing the questions, I thought I’d try to use a “Contextualized Education” filter since I feel context is a necessary thread to weave through the project. Here are the context headings I have proposed for the questions:

• The People in the System (students, teachers, principals, superintendents, Ministry officials, parents, community people)
• Curriculum and Content of Learning including the media used
• Assessment
• Support (Technical, Learning supports for students & teachers)
• Physical Space and Equipment (bricks, mortar, hardware/software)
• Nature and space of learning (collaborative, teacher-directed, project-based, independent, system mandates, etc.)
• Policies, Administration and Mandates (political arm of education)

(loosely based on “Essential Conditions”, “What is Context” and “ICT Impact Monitoring and Evaluation Framework”)

Are there any contexts in which education, learning or teaching occurs that are missing from the above list? I’ve started the list of questions on the project wiki here and am very interested in having others add or edit.

Recently, George Siemens reported on his trip to Accra, Ghana for a conference on E-learning in June, 2008 . His post “E-Learning Africa “ lists six lessons that he learned from the experience. At least three of the lessons George listed resonated with me – I am going on my 10^th year as an international consultant and teacher – Over these years I have worked in China, UAE, Jordan and Sri Lanka. I have learned much about the educational systems in these countries and am constantly reminded how much more I must learn if I am to be effective in aiding education in the countries I work.

It takes a lot of conversations to truly understand the plight of teachers, students, schools, and Ministries in any country different from that which nurtured one’s own educational ideals. To this end, I have started a small global project that hopes to join people who have an area of specialization in Education and a desire to learn more about other educational systems. I’m hoping to join educators from all around the world with teachers and students from classrooms with limited technology and connectivity. I’m not sure what the end product will be because it depends on the people who join on and the issues/initiatives they wish to tackle. Right now, it will mostly focus on teacher professional development through a participatory action research lens however, the ideal is to actually see classroom learning activities focusing on increasing the 21^st Century Skills of students in developing countries. I sense there will be much to gain for everyone on the team, no matter their background, connectivity and experience.

The main idea is to work at solutions that reflected in three of George’s lessons…. – solutions which are:

Based on sound academic principles - “driven by commitment to core values and existing difficult conditions” (#5),

Cognizant of the financial and political agendas for education reform and therefore not simply an ‘extension of the ideals of development agencies and governments who provide funding’ (#4) and

Contextualized not an “export of ‘our’ solutions to problems we don’t fully understand” (#6).

A notworthy comment based on the last point above came from  Karyn commenting on George’s post,

….. thank you so much for pointing out that “We are exporting our solutions to problems we don’t fully understand.” I keep saying this and I get the impression that people just roll their eyes at me. We keep talking about the flat world. I can’t say this emphatically enough: IT IS NOT FLAT. We collect in our so-called global conferences and Africa is not present. We discuss the issues that face us and come up with solutions. But we haven’t got a clue about the problems that face those who are not present. Yet we blithely expect them to apply our solutions. I’m sorry, but it smacks of “Let them eat cake.”

I am hoping to gather a team of great teachers and educational technologists from across the globe and particularly from developing countries to investigate effective technology integration and 21^st Century Skills uptake in the developing world’s classrooms. I’m hopeful that through a focused approach of reaching out to those in the ‘unflat world’ - this project will not smack of “L.T.E.C.” - the first step will be the learning, awarenes and understanding from those in the ‘connected’ world of the diverse situations elsewhere.  Admittedly, the hardest part of this initial phase is connecting with teachers, students and administrators in technology/connectivity limited situations.

I’m inviting anyone with such interests to join the “Connecting within the Unconnected Classroom Project”. You can find out more (and add to) this wiki: http://unconnectedclassroom.wetpaint.com/ .

To join the team, become a member of the “Unconnected Classroom Project” group in the Classroom 2.0 Ning and post an introduction.

[a version of this posting was submitted as a comment to George’s post]