New Jersey

Elaine Plybon, blog coordinator for the Texas DEN Leadership Council, needs YOU!  The Irving Independent School District in Irving, Texas, for which she works, hosts an annual Technology Media Fair.  This year, the district has opened up several categories for online judging.  The hope, above all, is that involving you as judges will keep the students excited about technology and sharing their work with a global audience.  This is where you come in.  The contest needs judges.  Anyone who has an interest in technology in education is qualified to be a judge.  All the projects can be judged beginning now through January 7, 2008.

There are six categories and levels from K-12.  Anyone who chooses to judge may evaluate as many or few entries as they wish.  Would YOU consider helping with this cause?  You can volunteer to be a judge and you can also share the word with other education professionals through your own blogs, twitters, feeds, and other social networking venues.

To judge the projects, click here, then click on the judging link.  Please include your name and email address.  Your email address will not be published.  Your information will be used for security only.  If you choose to help, please expect an email from administrative staff confirming that the address listed next to you name is a valid email address.

Let’s see if we can help spread the word and help students in their global outreach!

I used to focus my thoughts on “Text Speak” on the implications it would have on our written language. Is SMS just the natural evolution of language (anyone whose ever had to read Beowulf is probably thankful about how much our language has already changed), or is it “belittling” the written word? After reading the following tidbit, I started thinking about the spoken & socialization aspects of it instead. In one of my Senior classes (24 students) I recently asked, “Have you ever broken up with someone via a text message?” Answers were submitted anonymously on paper. An astounding 13 responded yes!

The following was submitted by Jeff Moore 11.21.2007

Hello, everyone.

Last spring, Cingular/AT&T offered what has become one of my favorite television commercials. The cell phone bill is too high. Mom is scolding her daughter for too much text messaging. The daughter, of course, responds in that strange language:

Mother: Who are you texting 50 times a day?

Daughter: I-d-k. My b-f-f, Jill.

(Subtitle: “I don’t know. My best friend forever, Jill.”)

Mom struggles to drive her point home by attempting to communicate in this youth-tongue. Daughter exits stage right, where we assume she remains unimpressed.

The language that has grown around “short message service” (SMS) on cellular phones, and which has spread to instant messaging and other social tools on the internet, is still foreign to many of us. It’s a polarizing thing. Some of us want to accept it. English, after all, is an ever-evolving thing. Some of us want to reject it.

There is clearly a phenomenon to deal with, here—one that’s not going away any time soon. On one hand, you have to hand it to student ingenuity and flexibility. Your teenaged son/daughter can punch through an entire conversation on a cell phone and stay engaged with a whole bunch of other stimuli (iPod, homework, AOL Instant Messenger, dinner), all while listening (or at least pretending to listen) to you. The shorthand of SMS has evolved to help them multitask. However, while the media has gone way overboard in portraying SMS shorthand as a “youth code” designed to subvert our authority and even our very culture, we are rightfully concerned that our students are losing control over the nuances of rhetoric, persuasion, etc., etc. (A nod, there, to my fifth grade English teacher, the very traditional Mrs. Hornetsnest. She’s smiling on me from heaven right now.)

The larger concern for me, however, isn’t language. (Sorry, Mrs. Hornetsnest.) A recent poll out of AOL and Associated Press has discovered that students use mobile communications devices—and the blunt shorthand that goes with them—to squirm out of uncomfortable situations. They’re avoiding “omg” (“Oh my God!”) moments. They have a tool in hand to deliver all of their social assertions, to fling them off to where they cannot see how those assertions actually impact upon another person. Without a full range of senses, do they really learn how to read and communicate emotion? Does empathy really translate through this shorthand?

dEr john U R a gr8 guy bt I tink we shud jst b frnds! l8r!

Rather than just an evolution of language, then, this may be part of an evolution of expression. And it’s troubling. We have to recognize, however, that millennials need to be conversant in SMS shorthand if they are find success in the highly competitive, fast-moving world that they will enter after they leave us. If you see “cyr ofis,” you’d better call your boss. Maybe it’s nothing important. Maybe it’s a crisis. Who knows? Better call, though.

Not that we need to teach SMS shorthand. No, no, no. We might explore, however, capitalizing on students’ ability to “code switch”—a skill that we’re much more apt to recognize in limited English proficiency students. Treating SMS as a translation tool, for example, may just allow us to explore the meaning of English. A student who can translate the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet into SMS shorthand may send Shakespeare (and Mrs. Hornetsnest) spinning in the grave. However, that student really has to decode and understand the scene.

Romeo: wotz dat lite? itz juliet. she ndz my ;; lIk d morn ndz d nyt.

(“;;” is “sadness.” Look at it again, this time thinking about two eyes with tears. The rest? Well, look to the links at the end of this email for a translation tool.)

Students also need to understand when and how to perform this code switching. Emailing your boss? Writing an essay? Applying to college? Better be formal. Texting friends in the mall? It’s SMS “pRT tym.”

Want to know more? Copy/paste these addresses into your browser. (Clicking on them probably won’t work.)

Read a short article on AP/AOL Poll (from CNN):

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/11/16/im.poll.ap/

Have fun with this SMS Translator:

http://www.transl8it.com/

OK everyone- I’m like, totally going to use this tool ALL the time!

Jott is a free service that offers you a phone number to call in order to record a message that will be translated into text format and sent via email. Jotts can be sent to yourself or to a group of contacts. Jott can also import your email addresses from Yahoo, GMail and Outlook.

Here are some examples of what you can do:

• Jott yourself (sends you an email).  I’ve started doing this all the time in the car.  Hands-free reminders to myself that I can SEE in my email (which has basically become my to-do list).  Not quite sure yet if this extra efficiency isn’t just making more work for myself (i.e. I can’t “forget” to do the things I think of in the car anymore), but for now at least, I’m embracing it
• Jott someone else (sends him/her an email and/or a text message if you’ve entered phone numbers in your address book)
• “Bulk Jott” (sends message to a group).  Forgot to tell your students something in class & you suddenly remember while you’re in the car on your way to see the Nutcracker with your family on Sunday (yes, this happened to me yesterday)?  Bulk Jott everyone!
• Jott to your blog.  Jott supports the following blog engines:
  • 
  • 
  • 
  • 

• Jott to an Internet Voice Journal.
  • 
  • 
• Jott to your online calendar:
  • 
  • 

These are just some of the major ways I see Jott being useful in my own life.  Here’s a link that explains how other people use currently using Jott.

Now, the potential downside:

• Jott’s current technology has actual people (yes, real, live human beings) transcribing your messages.  Here are some potential issues I see with that:
  • maybe you feel uncomfortable knowing that a person is listening to your messages
  • increases the “ownership” issues of sharing intellectual property over a non-secure network (i.e. you might want to think twice before you Jott yourself a memo about the greatest idea since sliced bread that you churn up while sitting in traffic)
• The voice recognition has a few bugs- Jott seems to have trouble differentiating some key sounds, which translates into your contacts’ names not being recognized…A common problem that you can solve by saving contacts under more “unique” lables (I started doing this already for my OnStar car-phone)

Jott is not the only player in this game- but it’s interface is VERY user friendly.  SpinVox,a British company, offers a similar service and they use a Voice Message Conversion System (Not actual humans) to convert your messages to text.  I set up an account with them, which, FYI, took many more steps that it did with Jott, but I have yet to actually try it out & compare it to Jott- maybe you will & will let me know

So, although voice memo technology has been around for a long time, Jott offers a user-friendly way to convert those messages into text.  If you’re like me & need to SEE your to-do list, you might want to give it a try.  And then let us know what you think.

In an effort to raise the level of conceptual conversation in my school district, Jeff Moore, Administrative Supervisor for Curriculum & Instruction/ Technology (aka my tech boss), has recently begun sharing some of his thoughts about technology & education.

So that we can spread the conversation, he has graciously agreed to let me post them here as they come- Thanks Jeff!

I feel really strongly that we’re not going see technology use by teachers become routine, as opposed to EVENT-based, unless we can raise the level of conceptual conversation. So….my Christmas wish this year is that my fellow DEN members all make a New Year’s resolution to read the tidbits & participate in the discussion (please )

Here’s the 1st tidbit:

“Good morning, everyone.

The recent realization that my children (2, aged 4yrs and 13 months) will not know a world without TiVo brought me back to an article that, although a couple of years deep in my pile of articles, discusses ideas that still influence a lot of current thinking on how “millenials” approach technology. They’re in control of their stimuli to a degree that is unprecedented in human history. The interesting question to have in the back of your head as you read this is: where does my lesson plan fit into this?

The article’s a little long, but worth a read. Here’s the best part, though:

What ties all these technologies together is the stroking of the ego. When cable television channels began to proliferate in the 1980s, a new type of broadcasting, called “narrowcasting,” emerged—with networks like MTV, CNN, and Court TV catering to specific interests. With the advent of TiVo and iPod, however, we have moved beyond narrowcasting into “egocasting”—a world where we exercise an unparalleled degree of control over what we watch and what we hear. We can consciously avoid ideas, sounds, and images that we don’t agree with or don’t enjoy. As sociologists Walker and Bellamy have noted, “media audiences are seen as frequently selecting material that confirms their beliefs, values, and attitudes, while rejecting media content that conflicts with these cognitions.” Technologies like TiVo and iPod enable unprecedented degrees of selective avoidance. The more control we can exercise over what we see and hear, the less prepared we are to be surprised.

TiVo, iPod, and other technologies of personalization are conditioning us to be the kind of consumers who are, as Joseph Wood Krutch warned long ago, “incapable of anything except habit and prejudice,” with our needs always preemptively satisfied. But it is worth asking how forceful we want this divining of our tastes to become. Already, you cannot order a book from Amazon.com without a half-dozen DVD, appliance, and CD recommendations fan-dancing before you. And as our technologies become more perceptive about our tastes, the products we are encouraged to consume change as well. A story in the Wall Street Journal recently noted that broadcasting companies such as Viacom are branching out into book publishing. A spokesman for Viacom’s imprint, which targets 18-34 year olds, told the Journal, “Our readers are addicted to at least one reality TV show, they own one iPod, and they are in love with their TiVo.” Companies are capitalizing on this knowledge by merging their products. Viacom’s contribution to literature are books that spin off of television shows: He’s Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys, written by a former Sex and the City writer, and America (The Book), by The Daily Show’s faux-naïf anchorman, Jon Stewart, for example.

University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein engaged this dilemma in his book, Republic.com. Sunstein argues that our technologies—especially the Internet—are encouraging group polarization: “As the customization of our communications universe increases, society is in danger of fragmenting, shared communities in danger of dissolving.” Borrowing the idea of “the daily me” from M.I.T. technologist Nicholas Negroponte, Sunstein describes a world where “you need not come across topics and views that you have not sought out. Without any difficulty, you are able to see exactly what you want to see, no more and no less.” Sunstein is concerned about the possible negative effects this will have on deliberative democratic discourse, and he urges websites to include links to sites that carry alternative views. Although his solutions bear a trace of impractical ivory tower earnestness—you can lead a rabid partisan to water, after all, but you can’t make him drink—his diagnosis of the problem is compelling. “People should be exposed to materials that they would not have chosen in advance,” he notes. “Unplanned, unanticipated encounters are central to democracy itself.”

Sunstein’s insights have lessons beyond politics. If these technologies facilitate polarization in politics, what influence are they exerting over art, literature, and music? In our haste to find the quickest, most convenient, and most easily individualized way of getting what we want, are we creating eclectic personal theaters or sophisticated echo chambers? Are we promoting a creative individualism or a narrow individualism? An expansion of choices or a deadening of taste?”

-Jeff

What do you think?

Don’t miss the chance to watch the Daniel Pink webinar archive!  I was lucky enough to be able to attend & all I can say is WOW!  Not only was Daniel, himself, an excellent presenter, but the conversations that abounded in the chat box were amazing- and that’s just the threads I was able to keep up with!  I am definitely going to listen to this one again!

Here’s a short breakdown of Dan Pink’s synopsis about the future of education:

1. We need New Metrics- new ways to gauge student progress & our own effectiveness.  In other words, & I love this statement, we need to prepare our students for THEIR future, not OUR past.
2. We MUST Integrate Art into the entire curriculum
3. We need to develop more flexible & customized curriculum based on individual students’ interests& experiences (i.e. Life integration)
4. We must find a way to allow teachers a greater sense of Autonomy.  Only then, will they (we) feel free to instruct with greater creativity & authenticity.

So, treat yourself to an early holiday gift-  Curl up with your computer & one of the holiday gift boxes of chocolate you got from a student & Watch the Daniel Pink Webinar 

EdTechConnect with Daniel Pink, December 12th 7:00pm EST

Daniel Pink, bestselling author of A WHOLE NEW MIND, will describe how three powerful economic forces are putting a premium on right-brain abilities in the workforce. He’ll describe the six artistic, empathic abilities that now matter most — and discuss how educators are beginning to surface and sharpen those abilities in students.Daniel is a contributing editor at Wired, where he has written about topics ranging from grassroots solar power to the rise of Wikipedia to the economics of creativity. His articles on business, technology, and economic transformation have also appeared in The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, and other publications.

A popular speaker, Dan lectures to corporations, associations, and universities around the world. He’s provided analysis on dozens of television and radio broadcasts -including CNBC’s “Power Lunch,” ABC’s “World News Tonight,” NPR’s “Morning Edition,” and American Public Media’s “Marketplace.” And as an independent business consultant, he’s advised start-up ventures and Fortune 100 companies on recruiting, business trends, and work practices.

RSVP at http://tinyurl.com/2y6f9c

DEN members are a VERY  productive group- In fact, you are all just about the best multi-taskers that I know!  With all that we do at school & in the DEN, it’s easy to forget that we all actually have lives outside of our jobs too-  you know, Moms, Dads, Husbands, Wives- all that good stuff

In the DEN spirit of sharing & the Holiday spirit of giving, here’s a fun, collaborative website for all you MOMS out there:

Mamasource is a private website for moms, which is safe, local and free. Find the advice, referrals, and insight you need, in a supportive community of moms helping moms. In addition (here’s the giving part), when you sign up, a tree will be planted in your & your children’s honor (the trees are planted all across the world by a non-profit, environmental group) to help increase our planet’s sustainability & green-scape.