My colleague and roommate for the week sat down for a little recap of Wednesday’s T+L2 events. I’m going to skip doing detailed show notes since it’s 1:42 a.m. here. I will point out, however, that I give the wrong URL for Rubistar in the podcast. The correct address is rubistar.4teachers.org. Enjoy.
Download: STP-NSBA2005-1 (4.6 MB, 9:57)
I discovered Comic Life last April and blogged about it. Since then we’ve installed Comic Life on over 1,000 computers in my school district, and our teachers are finding new uses for it every week.
Robert Grant, head coder, and Cris Pearson, UI designer, were good enough to chat with me about Comic Life via Skype recently. We talked a bit about how Comic Life came to be, tossed around some interesting ideas about educational uses, and even heard a bit about some upcoming features. On a technical note, I think the recording turned out pretty well considering that I’m in Minnesota, Robert lives in Charleston, SC, and Cris is in Australia.
Feel free to post questions about the podcast or Comic Life in general in the comments. Cris said that he’d be happy to monitor the comments and respond.
Download: STP-ComicLife (15.8 MB, 34:09)
Here’s Part II of my recent conversation with Professor Scott McLeod from the University of Minnesota. I had quite a bit of feedback on Part I of our conversation on data-drive decision making so I hope you will enjoy this talk about legal and ethical issues facing educational technology leaders. I won’t repeat all of the background information about Scott in this post, but it’s important to emphasize that he is a lawyer in addition to a professor of educational policy. So while you shouldn’t take anything you hear as official legal advice, you can be sure that Scott knows what he’s talking about.
Of all the interesting things that Scott shares, the most useful for me is the notion that we don’t need to put ourselves in the endless cycle of inventing new policies, rules, and regulations to deal with every new piece of technology that our students bring to school. If fact, it’s just the opposite. I think schools are in a much stronger position when they apply the old, tried and true policies. Kids already know that they shouldn’t bully, disrupt class, interfere with their colleagues’ learning, etc. Camera phones, MP3 players, Web sites, and all of the other technologies that can cause trouble occasionally are just the latest verse to a really old tune.
The more we set technology apart from the rest of school life by making all sorts of special rules about it, the more marginalized technology becomes with respect to the curriculum and the more likely it is that students will view the rules as yet another reason that school is irrelevant. Does your high school ban iPods or other MP3 players from the hallways during passing time? I know of some that do. Have you walked down the sidewalk of a major metropolitan area lately? Those aren’t cotton balls in everyone’s ears.
Download: STP-ScottMcLeod-2 (20.5 MB, 44:48)
Tim Lauer couldn’t make it, but that didn’t stop Steve, Will, and me from recording another episode of Ed Tech Coast to Coast Tuesday night.
Our conversation centered mostly on the topic of access to technology and how full-time access changes the teaching and learning environment. Will’s school just launched a tablet PC project for teachers, and we’re in the second year of a 1-to-1 project with 600 elementary students and their teachers. We’ve both found that if teachers let it happen, 1-to-1 environments can change the day to day work of teaching and learning dramatically.
Are we approaching a day when not providing a computing device to each and every student constitutes educational malpractice? A laptop changes nothing by itself, of course, without a well-trained teacher to create and facilitate learning activities that exploit the technology. At least if you send the technology home with the students they can explore things on their own regardless of what goes on at school.
Download: ETC2C-20050922 (19.5 MB, 42:32)
The No Child Left Behind Act has forced school districts across the U.S. to take a hard look at data about their students’ achievement. Lots of data. But some districts have gone beyond the requirements of NCLB and have embraced data and used the information to identify best practices and improve student achievement.
Dr. Scott McLeod is a professor in the Department of Educational Policy and Administration at the University of Minnesota and a proponent of data-driven decision making. As director of the University’s Center for Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE), Scott works with educators around the country, helping them understand how being data-driven doesn’t have to be as scary as it sounds. We sat down for a chat earlier this week about some of the ways district’s are using data, how to overcome barriers to utilizing data, and some examples of using data that go beyond student achievement. And we even take a question from a “caller.”
Scott has agreed to monitor the comments on this post to dialog with any listeners who would like to follow up on something they hear. So don’t hesitate to post another question or ask for clarification on something from our conversation.
Download: STP-ScottMcLeod-1 (15.9 MB, 34:43)
My guest for this edition of the Savvy Technologist Podcast is Earle Harrison. Earle is an assistive technology consultant and owner of Triumph Technology, a source for adaptive technology and adaptive media solutions. We talk about universal design, assistive technology, and accessible Web design. I learned a lot during my conversation with Earle, and I think you will too.
Earle mentioned many different hardware and software products during our conversation. I’ve included a list of as many of them as I could find. If you’re using iTunes 5 or the new iPod nano, then you’ll be able to read this message and the product list in the lyrics section of the ID3 info.
Download: STP-EarleHarrison (18 MB, 39:10)
The gang, minus Steve Burt, got together via Skype to record another episode of Ed Tech Coast to Coast. Tim Lauer, Will Richardson, and I started with the broad topic of “barriers to technology implementation” and started vamping from there. All of us spent way more than our $0.02 during the 40-minute chat.
It’s not exactly an earth-shattering insight, but I was reminded how similar the challenges are for those of us out there trying to inspire, convince, and train teachers to use technology in new ways. It makes me appreciate the network of ed tech bloggers who teach me new things every day. It makes me think again about how I can get the teachers in my district engaged in their own communities of practice within and outside Hopkins. It’s an enormous challenge to be sure.
Download: ETC2C-20050901 (18.7 MB, 40:43)
Dr. Larry Anderson is founder and director of the National Center for Technology Planning, an organization dedicated to providing resources for schools and school districts who want to develop dynamic and effective technology plans. From their Web site:
The National Center for Technology Planning (NCTP) is a clearinghouse for the exchange of many types of information related to technology planning. This information may be: school technology plans available for downloading online; technology planning aids (checklists, brochures, sample planning forms, PR announcement forms); and/or electronic monographs on timely, selected topics. The NCTP was created for those who: need help, seek fresh ideas, or seek solutions to problems encountered with planning.
I met Larry last July in San Jose at the Apple Distinguished Educator Summer Institute and have been looking forward to recording this conversation ever since. Larry outlines some of the benefits that schools and districts can derive from the technology planning process, describes a technology planning approach that will be much more meaningful than the typical state-mandated ones, and shares lots of examples from his years of experience. This is a pretty long conversation, but there’s so much valuable material in what Larry has to say that I couldn’t bear to cut it down any more. Please feel free to post comments or additional questions in the comments section. I’m sure Larry would be happy to respond.
A quick production note: Larry and I spoke via Skype and the sound quality is quite good. He was using a headset mic and it made it much easier to set a consistent sound level, presumably because he was staying a constant distance from the microphone. I did all of the editing with Audacity which I am convinced offers the best combination of simplicity, power, and cost.
Download: STP-LarryAnderson (25.7 MB, 56:12)