Pennsylvania

Wow . . . Thanks to Ken Pruitt for sharing this video on his DuBois and Beyond Ning network.  I also published this over on my cliotech blog.

The video is from a presentation delivered by Sir Ken Robinson at the 2006 TED Conference (TED = Technology, Entertainment, Design).

I have been engaged in conversation with colleagues for years about what we have perceived as a decline in independent thinking and creativity among our students.  So often it appears that students are motivated primarily by the grade and less by the experience.  All too often they get boxed in by rubrics and exemplars and cannot think outside of that box. Yet, expected practice dictates that we provide students with rubrics, exemplars, and other resources to ensure their success.  While I understand that, philosophically I am opposed to students working to my expectations rather than to their own.  I don’t want them performing for me, I want them to intrinsically driven to learn and share their learning with others. Perhaps, that is why I am so attracted to Web 2.0 applications . . .

Anyway, watch the video.  It is immensely entertaining and I think it will engender some critical conversations.

What are your reactions to Sir Ken Robinson’s observations? 

I am sure that most educators would agree that the nature of Web 2.0 has really exceeded the threshold of contemporary copyright licensing.  Creative Commons has mitigated this somewhat, but [I think] teachers in general lack the confidence to truly bring their classrooms online for fear of copyright violation.  I am in agreement with Vicki Davis [a.k.a. CoolCatTeacher] on this point.

So, I was thrilled to read Vicki Davis’ recent blog posting about ccLearn - a division of Creative Commons that just launched this summer.  Many of us will recognize the names on the ccLearn Steering Committee: James Boyle, Hal Abelson, Michael Carroll, and Jimmy Wales.

ccLearn is a division of Creative Commons which is dedicated to realizing the full potential of the Internet to support open learning and open educational resources (OER). Our mission is to minimize barriers to sharing and reuse of educational materials — legal barriers, technical barriers, and social barriers.

With legal barriers, we advocate for licensing of educational materials under interoperable terms, such as those provided by Creative Commons licenses, that allow unhampered modification, remixing, and redistribution. We also educate teachers, learners, and policy makers about copyright and fair-use issues pertaining to education.

With technical barriers, we promote interoperability standards and tools to facilitate remixing and reuse.

With social barriers, we encourage teachers and learners to re-use educational materials available on the Web, and to build on each other’s contributions.

For those of us who have obtained our digital passports [thanks to Steve Dembo for that catchy phrase], the issues of intellectual property and the democratizing of information that Web 2.0 has illuminated are not necessarily black and white.  The shades of gray are infinite, though the CC licensing designations have helped.

While ccLearn has only just launched, it has articulated a fairly ambitious list of goals:

• Working with open education leaders to refine and share standards for the creation and use of OER.
• Sponsor competitions demonstrating the power of open education to enhance teaching and learning.
• Building communities of users and expertise around open learning and OER.
• Easing the process of discovering OER and open learning communities.
• Leveraging the power of open education to bridge educational divides: grade levels, disciplines, cultures and countries, and formal and informal instruction.
• Pursuing outreach and translation of intellectual property issues (copyright, fair use, educational exceptions, etc.) for educators worldwide.
• Building tools for derivatives, re-use, and creative alternatives to static content.

When I am working with other teachers on podcasting, blogging, digital storytelling, or any digital authoring activity, the issue of copyright infringement ALWAYS sparks apprehension and some measure of debate.  Of course, this issue is not limited to teachers.  I experience similar discussion when I introduce digital activities to my students.

Are you just learning about CC? 

Use this video as an introduction.

Here is another video that explains the evolution of CC.

While I am certainly not an expert in any measure when it comes to copyright, I have been forced to investigate copyright license as I have delved further into the Web 2.0 applications with my students.

I came across an excellent comic, "Spectrum of Rights," posted on the Creative Commons wiki that explains in four short cells how licensing works and what protections copyright confers.  This would be a great one to use with your students as an introduction into copyright issues. 

I have spent pretty much all summer reading, exploring, blogging, and discussing new Web 2.0 applications as they pop up online.   I have spent hours teaching Web 2.0 "academies" to interested teachers.  I just learned about a brand new feature for one of my favorite Web 2.0 applications, SlideShare, from Chris Craft’s Crucial Craft blog.

SlideShare is a service that I have blogged about in the past, though the new SlideCasting feature warrants another look.

The SlideCasting FAQs page offers a thorough screen cast along with tips and tricks for creating your slidecast.   Here are some quick highlights:

What is Slidecasting? And how is it different from podcasting, webcasting or screencasting?

• Slidecasting is a new multimedia format from SlideShare - you can play any slidedeck synchronized with an audio file. To create a slidecast, you need to upload slides to SlideShare. Your audio file, however, can be hosted anywhere on the web- any server, file storage, or podcasting service. You link the slides & audio together using our synchronization tool. Now every time you play the Slidecast, the audio is streamed from its location and plays with the slides.
• You can think Slidecasts as a mashup of slideshare with podcasts.
• Slidecasting is also different from webcasting (or screencasting). Unlike webcasts or screencasts, slidecasts does not require complex recording or streaming technology. Instead it allows you to take existing media (slides and audio) and link them together using a free, web based interface. Additionally, webcasts are usually bandwidth hogs, difficult to create and annoyingly sluggish to view. A slidecast, on the other hand, can be setup in a jiffy, has a much faster experience. And yes, it is completely free.

The process of creating a SlideCast is pretty straightforward, especially if you have used the service before.

Here is an example of a SlideCast created by Jonathan Boutelle.

I can imagine dozens of uses for SlideCast.  In fact, when you visit SlideShare, there is a new front page feature called SlideCast of the Day.  With all the blogosphere chatter about the relevance of face-to-face conferences - or the "unconference" - I would imagine that I will be seeing quite a bit of SlideCasting accompanying traditional gatherings. 

I would really love to see how other educators make use of SlideCasting. 

I hope that Lance won’t mind, but I took this posting directly from the DEN National Blog.  While I realize that this is a NJ DEN event, other nearby states are invited as well.  August 15th is the RSVP deadline.  Download the PDF for more details.

The DEN will be in New Jersey on August 21 and 22 for two jam-packed
Days of Discovery.  Come learn about new ways to use media in the
classroom and network with some amazing STAR Discovery Educators.  And,
join us for a special evening event on August 21.

You don’t have to be from NJ to attend (hint, hint: NY, PA, DE, MD).
We’d love for you to join us and bring a colleague or two.  All the
details are in the PDF below.

Download nj_day_of_discovery_august_07.pdf

We look forward to celebrating the start of a new school year with you!  See you in NJ.

Wow!  DEN has just announced its upcoming August webinar line-up.  Be sure to check out the DEN National blog for the August schedule and information about the 2007-2008 webinar series.

I am soooo tardy in getting this posting up. After losing my luggage and teaching five workshops (starting the day after I returned from the DNI Cruise), I had little time to catch up on my blogging.

The DEN cruise was really outstanding. I just can’t even begin to fully catalogue all the applications, ideas, and resources that I am taking away from the experience.

To get you started, check out the DNI07 wiki that Diana Laufenberg created. I added my notes from the Cruising with the Stars competition - a series of presentations from STAR Discovery Educators about their favorite tool, site, application, or resource.

Here are my favorite resources:

• GapMinder - I actually blogged about this data visualization resource previously.
• GeoHive - Data resource
• WorldMapper - Data visualization tool
• Stellarium - a free open source planetarium for your computer
• BigHugeLabs - Flickr applications
• GoodReads - a place where you can see what your friends are reading and vice versa

You can take a look at the photos to get an idea what we did. If you search for Flickr tags DNI07 and Cruise, you can see the photos that other DNI attendees shared.

The Pennsylvania Educational Technology Expo and Conference (PETE&C) is calling for presenter proposals. 

The conference will be held February 11-12, 2008, at the Hershey Lodge and Convention Center.  You can check out the program schedule for more information.

Proposals for one-hour concurrent presentations can be accessed here. Proposals for 3-hour and 6-hour pre-conference workshops on February 10 can be accessed here.  Pre-conference proposals will be accepted until August 17 and concurrent session proposals will be accepted until September 30.  If you are considering applying, check out their presenters’ FAQs.

I have been presenting at PETE&C for a number of years and have to say that this conference coalesces some of most inspiring educators from across Pennsylvania.  Even if you are not interested in presenting, at least consider attending.  You will find it well-worth your time and I can promise that you will leave with great ideas. The DEN always has a really strong showing at PETE&C.  We’ll be posting more information about DEN activities at PETE&C in coming months. 

I wish I would have seen these three resources before I taught my digital storytelling workshop yesterday . . .

The first is a digital storytelling page on Kristin Hokanson’s Connected Classroom wiki.  Kristin has put together a wealth of resources for teachers, including sound, image, and video resources.  In true Creative Commons fashion, I will be supplementing my own digital storytelling wiki with some of the resources that Kristin posted.  Thanks, Kristin!

The second resource is a web application that I came across on Jim Gates’ TipLine blog.   The service is called Celtx.  Celtx is a cross-platform media application that provides support for the entire pre-production process of film making.  It operates both online and offline.  You can view their Flash video tutorial for a comprehensive overview and check out the crisp interface by looking at some screenshots.  Here is a quick summary of its features:

Writing Tools

• Story Development - Celtx helps you develop your story by gathering and organizing details on key elements like locations, scenes and characters.
• Scripts - Celtx includes three editors - one for writing a properly formatted SCREENPLAY, one for writing an international standard THEATRE script and a third for writing a PLAIN TEXT document.

Pre-Visualization Tools

• Storyboarding - Drag and drop images in to the Storyboard feature. Add detailed descriptions to communicate your creative vision. Use the slideshow feature to play the images to help pre-visualize your media project.
• Media-Rich Breakdowns - You can add sound files, video clips, digital photos and scanned documents to your project to create a media intensive breakdown. You can then associate the media with any one of the 34 production categories, including wardrobe, props and locations.

Organizational Tools

• Project Folders and External Documents - You can add any document from any application to your Celtx Project - PDFs, budget spreadsheets, images, and scripts written in other applications - to help stay organized.
• Scheduling and Reports - Celtx includes a ‘Just In Time’ Scheduling feature. Drag and drop scenes to the calendar to build a shooting schedule. Generate customizable Reports to keep track of the resources you’ll need during shooting, including lists of props, actors, and wardrobe items. Reports can be printed or shared online using the collaboration feature.

Web Services

• Collaboration Tool - Celtx has a built-in, relay style Collaboration feature that lets you share your Project with others. Upload your Media Project to the Celtx Server and grant password and username protected access to team members.
• Private Work Space - You can also create a private, username and password protected work space on Celtx Project Central so team members can view the project using a web browser.
• Back-Ups - Gain peace of mind by backing up your Media Project to the professionally managed Celtx server.
• Publishing - Is your project "in the can"? Want to give people a sneak peek at your work in progress? Looking for feedback? Post your project to Celtx Project Central where it can be seen by the world at large.

The third resource is one that I just came across on a few different blogs (I apologize that I can’t recall which blogs offhand) and, also, on Kristin’s wiki.  This service is called VoiceThread.  As per their home page, VoiceThread is a place to capture voices.  Here are a few quick facts about VoiceThread, though their tutorial is a better place to learn about their service.

A VoiceThread is an online media album that allows people to make comments, either audio or text, and share them with anyone they wish. A VoiceThread allows an entire group’s story to be told and collected in one place.

When you create a VoiceThread or are invited to one and have permission to share it, you will see the option to share the VoiceThread in a number of places. If you create, you will see an option to "Share VoiceThread" where you can add contacts and share with them, otherwise with permission to share you will see the ‘Share’ link, which will take you the Create page for that VoiceThread for you to share.

Think of an identity as your VoiceThread personality. Each time you leave a voice or text comment, your VoiceThread will attach your identity to the comment. By creating more identities you can share a single account with an entire family, so the whole group can comment on a VoiceThread without ever having to sign into another account. This feature is really good for parents or teachers who wish to monitor a child or student as they leave comments in a VoiceThread, or for those of you who enjoy wearing costumes and role-playing. One thing to remember is that all identities share the same account, therefore, there is no privacy between identities. If you would like a totally private account, we would recommend that you simply register a new account.

So, let me offer some quick thoughts about the two web services.

I can see Celtx being used very successfully if your digital storytelling project is a long-term collaborative endeavor.  I think that there is too much detail and too many features in Celtx for a short digital storytelling assignment.  As one who has had the opportunity to attend one of the AFI Lights, Camera, Education workshops presented in conjunction with Discovery Education I can see Celtx being a valuable resource in the production process of a long-term assignment.  I could envision taking many of the AFI steps to the computer which may serve to better maintain the engagement of students (though, to be honest, students will be well-engaged throughout the process regardless).  For shorter projects or younger students, they might get overwhelmed by the features of Celtx.

VoiceThread is a service that I could use in my classroom tomorrow (if it weren’t summer).  I usually conduct some scaffolding activities prior to starting a digital storytelling activity.

• Stories from one image
• Stories from a sequence of images
• Stories from a sequence of images with specified persona
• Stories from a muted video clip
• Stories from a muted video clip or sequence of images with background sound
• Stories with student-found images and set narrative
• Stories with student-found images and student-created narrative

Many of these steps would be enhanced through the use of VoiceThread.  Actually, I think students would be more creative and excited about the process if they had the opportunity to use VoiceThread.   At the end of last year, I had my students conduct living history interviews.  They interviewed their grandparents, neighbors, an family friends about their experiences as civilians or soldiers during World War II.  How cool would it have been had they uploaded photos of these people to VoiceThread and recorded the stories from these people?  We could have put all the photos and stories into one VoiceThread that all could have experienced online.  Since VocieThreads can be embedded on blogs, wikis, and other web sites, we could have shared these stories with a worldwide audience instead of limiting them to class setting.  Just imagine the power of those stories!  It makes me think of the Ken Burns challenge that I blogged about last week.

So, enjoy these resources.  I would love to hear from teachers who have used either VoiceThread or Celtx with their students.

I came across a fabulous tool on the Contagious Curiosity blog.  The tool is an interactive comparative visualization tool called Gapminder.  This application has been showcased at TED.   FYI, TED is Technology, Entertainment, Design - an annual conference that started in 1984 in an effort to coalesce the preeminent thinkers in those three areas.

I actually blogged briefly about Gapminder a few months ago because I was intrigued by the graphics, but didn’t really appreciate the amazing data correlations and analytical possibilities that it contained until I viewed a speech by Hans Rosling recorded at TED 2006.

Before I explain the tool, here is some background about the Gapminder organization:

Gapminder is a non-profit venture for development and provision of free software that visualise human development. This is done in collaboration with universities, UN organisations, public agencies and non-governmental organisations. Gapminder is a Foundation registered at Stockholm county administration board (Länstyrelsen) (reg. nr. 802424-7721). It was founded by Ola Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund and Hans Rosling on 25 February 2005, in Stockholm. Gapminder Foundation will advance software development that have been done earlier by the non-profit company Gapminder Ltd. Funding has been and is mainly by grants from Sida for the Trendalyzer project. Being a producer of global public goods Gapminder benefit from free and creative inputs from pilot-testers and other end-users in many institutions and organisations.

Here is the speech by Hans Rosling explaining the Gapminder tool in February 2006.

And, here is Rosling’s follow-up speech in March 2007.

In case you don’t have time to listen to Rosling’s speeches (they are tremendously entertaining and I really recommend it), here’s the skinny on the Gapminder tool. It is a fairly robust visualization application that plots various data streams onto an interactive grid.  The size of the bubbles represents relative size of the data that is being analyzed.  So, for instance, if personal income by year is the plotted data, the USA and Western Europe would be represented by significantly larger bubbles than Southeast Asian nations.  The Gapminder site hosts a plethora of tools with different data spreads that can be downloaded to run locally or can be streamed via Flash online.  The site also contains handouts and posters, document analysis, and presentations.

So, if you thought that the data on Swivel was really cool, you’ll be entranced by what Gapminder has to offer.  Check it out!

It appears that 2007 is the year of Facebook, at least if you are a college grad who finds him/herself in the top three income brackets.   

comScore, Inc. released some data about the demographics and usage of Facebook.  Business Week decided to delve into Facebook and MySpace usage following the June 24th publication of a controversial essay by U.C. Berkley researcher Danah Boyd about the class divisions that are appearing on the two most popular social networking sites.

Boyd’s essay, though not meant to be a truly academic piece, is based on months of observation and discussion.  Boyd asserts that a demarcation line has emerged separating the demographic of Facebook and MySpace.  Facebook users tend to be college-bound, in college, or graduates.  Networks center around learning institutions and places of employment.  This is partly the result of the exclusivity of Facebook in its earlier days when one needed to belong to an educational network to join.  Since September 2006, Facebook has been open to all, but the educational scaffolding remains intrinsic to the organizational and participatory structures.  Aesthetic critics have consistently lauded the polished look of Facebook and eschewed the garish Vegas style of MySpace.  To contrast, MySpace was always intended to be an open and creative medium.

According to the analysis of Business Week reporter, Maha Atal: 

One critical distinction between MySpace and Facebook is how users present themselves. Facebook originally flourished in college communities (it was founded by Mark Zuckerberg, then an undergraduate at Harvard), and students needed a ".edu" e-mail address to join the site. As a result, users stuck more closely to their real identities, and their online behavior in terms of manners and expectations tended to mirror their offline behavior. Although Facebook is now open to anyone, that tradition still holds. "On Facebook, you really have to be who you are, so it’s more controlled and polite," says Jason Hirschhorn, president of Sling Media Entertainment Group, formerly head of digital media for MTV.

On MySpace, on the other hand, there is an understood degree of fantasy involved. Users reveal who they want to be, through their interests in music or movies, but people aren’t always who they say they are. Says Jeff Jarvis of popular media blog BuzzMachine.com: "Facebook brings elegant organization to real identities and communities people already have. MySpace is a gussied-up personal Web page, and it’s about new publishing forms and mediums." If Facebook users are displaying their real-world relationships, MySpace users are self-promoters, concerned with making new connections through exaggerated, even fictionalized, personas.

Based on this division, it appears fairly obvious why parents, teachers, and even the military, promote Facebook over MySpace.  In fact, the military banned MySpace on its servers in May 2007.   

I’ll admit that I helped to promote Facebook.  I publish the link to my Facebook profile on my blog and wiki and make my students aware that I belonged to Facebook.  I actively discouraged MySpace membership and used MySpace as an negative object lesson in appropriate online behavior.

What has been interesting to observe over the past ten months is how much more "stuff" is popping up on Facebook.  From digital gifts - like the cuddly white seal today - to third-party applications such as My Questions, Biofeedback, Fortune Cookies, Where I’ve Been, etc. Facebook is becoming increasingly interactive and attractive to a younger clientele.  Certainly, more high school students are popping up on Facebook.  In fact, ask any college-bound freshman about their roommate for the fall.  I’d bet that they’d answer much the same way my cousin did when I posed that question - Yeah, he’s pretty cool.  We’re already friends on Facebook.  How different from my freshman experience . . . maybe social orientations are a thing of the past.

Here is how the demographics and usage statistics break down for Facebook.

So, should people conclude that one’s preference for MySpace or Facebook means something about their character?  While the statistics do seem to indicate that some will certainly read into your social networking memberships, I still maintain that it is what users choose to do with these tools that makes all the difference.

(P.S. - I’ll still recommend Facebook over MySpace to my students . . . )