Multimedia learning environments - Mac versus PC? or I'll have the deep and rich new learning, please.

This is a pivotal point in my life - ya know, the "two roads diverged in a wood" kinda thing.... Sixteen years ago I went from a Mac to a PC and never looked back. That is until I started learning about Web 2.0 and meeting people associated with this more multimedia oriented learning community.

My reflections on the pedagogy being used to engage students using digital tools has helped me appreciate implications of a new profile of student learners has for instruction. Aussie Judy O'Connell in her blog, Hey Jude: Fortunate Discoveries about Web 2.0 ..... does a fine job describing the learning characteristics of our students in an October 12, 2007 post she appropriately titled Digital kids - learning their own way.

multiprocessing;
multimedia literacy;
discovery-based learning;
bias towards action;
staying connected;
zero tolerance for delays;
consumer/creator blurring;
social networking.

Now you say what do these characteristics of our students-as-learners have to do with choosing a Mac or a PC? Let me continue that story.

Since switching to a PC, I have been tweaked by Mac users along the way; they are a loyal bunch! My daughter and son-in-law have always been Mac people because of their work in graphics and web design. My son and I have an interest in photography, and his use of a Mac for his pictures was always in contrast to my use of a PC for mine. When I asked Chris Betcher for his opinion of Macs, he did not want to influence my thinking unfairly, but he did admit that when working in a multimedia environment, he liked the Mac. John Pederson (alias ijohnpederson) is currently my scout leading the way into Apple's new operating system, Leopard. John, thank you for your helpful twits and posts on the subject. What do you think I learn from an educator who goes by iJohn?

The choice I need to made has gradually become clear to me. Given my commitment to K-12 leadership and learning, I can't accept the pedagogical orientation that refuses to adjust to the learning characteristics of the students we teach. When I add to that the realization that our culture, our economy, indeed, all facets of our way of life are headed in directions that parallel and most likely fostered the digitally oriented students who want to learn in their own way, the dilemma is clear. On one horn of the bull is a traditional orientation to student-as-learner which for me is associated with the more pragmatic oriented PC; on the other horn is the Mac. Granted, the PC world has arguably tried to keep pace with the shift that is occurring, but the Mac seems for me to have been associated with that shift for some time. Now, that perception may be nothing more that successful marketing associated with how the Mac has been branded, but I have arrived at my decision for another reason.

Learning for me is good. It stimulates my mind and keeps me feeling young and connected to the organic flow of life. I have found the most stimulating environment for my learning has been to embrace risk, to intentionally sever the orientation that provides me my current sense of security. For me, as I pursue a journey into "fortunate discoveries about Web 2.0," personally moving to a Mac just seems right. The disorientation and ambiguity I will feel as I make the transition will, at times, be frustrating in its own right, and I will reach out for "just in time" help that may or may not be available just in time, but isn't that how many of our students feel or experience the learning in our classrooms - some more often than others? Is there a better way for us to empathize with our students? Is there a better way for me to honestly position myself to need authentic student help? If you are bright, well-informed and successful educator, but can not embrace the disorientation and ambiguity associated with deep and rich new learning, how can you see yourself as a leading learner, someone who models for students what it takes to experience learning in significant ways? The dilemma is resolved....

Here I come Apple, don't let me down!

K12Online Educators Community Thank You or Claiming What We Imagine

Stephanie Pace Marshall, at the end of her book The Power to Transform, pleads with us not to wait for others. She says "Courage is the capacity to claim what we imagine. If you are carrying this new story in your heart, now is the time to step forward. There is a place in the world for your unique voice, and it carries a message that must be heard. Start anywhere, but begin the conversation, and tell the new story that brings learning and schooling to life.” p. 210

Over the last three weeks the K12Online Educators Community has shown me what courage in the service of children looks like in practice. I have learned so much about you and from you that I am encouraged thinking that you may be my best hope for hearing what I have to say.

Are you ready to take the next step to transform learning opportunities for every child on this planet?

K12Online Community

I will always remember the Will Power to Youth students from Los Angeles, California and the words of Ben Donenberg, who said, at the ASCD International Conference last March 2007 in Anaheim, California, “What [children] need is to feel that we adults in power value them highly enough that we are willing to invest our wisdom in their potential.”

I will always remember Stephanie Pace Marshall for her generosity of spirit and the poetic vision of the new story of learning she narrates in her book, The Power to Transform.

I propose we commit to work toward a statement of Vision for our work. I offer some words to begin the conversation.

K12Online Educators Community Vision

Educators from across the planet come together during K12Online as the planet's whole-child learning community, a learning community of educational professionals. Each day we strive to kept our promise to ourselves to be significant in the learning lives of each child on this planet. We strive to fulfill this promise by infusing a generative, integral, balanced, inspirational new story of learning into every school and classroom and beyond, every place where children learn. This new learning landscape for educating children is our planet’s best hope for guaranteeing a future where every child goes to bed each night with recollections of feeling healthy, safe, and supported during intellectually challenging and personally engaging days of learning.

The Power to Transform

In her book, The Power to Transform, Stephanie Pace Marshall asks the … leaders of this planet “… to declare a new path, awaken to the songline that imperceptibly weaves through humanity and the natural world, and use its clarity and deep resonance to tell a new story and [create a] transformative landscape of generative learning and schooling.” p. 210

In some way what I am going to ask you will initially be perceived as a Declaration of Independence from our past, but like all learning of significance, it actually is an affirmation of the positive intent of our past motivations; educators always mean to do well by students; however, the profession now knows that to be faithful to our trust with humanity, we must commit to the transformational behavior necessary for shaping the a new generative, integral, balanced, inspirational learning landscape for educating whole children. If we do not commit, the downward spiral for too many children and schools will accelerate. If we do commit, some day each child will go to bed each night with recollections of a healthy, safe, challenging, engaging and supportive day. Like the Declaration of Independence that gave birth to America, there is no other way. This is the courageous choice that has been our songline for years; now it is ready to be born. ¹

Children-as-Learners

Knowing that our planet, at this point in its evolution, requires bold and visionary leadership and significant systemic change if as a civilization we are to secure life, liberty – and happiness for current and future generations,

I propose …

We commit to set in motion the mechanisms for writing and for eventually adopting a Children-as-Learners' Declaration of Independence from the past story of learning and schooling in favor of a new generative, integral, balanced, inspirational story of learning and schooling; and

We commit to set in motion the mechanisms for writing a Children-as-Learners' Constitution and a Children-as-Learners' Bill of Rights for a new generative, integral, balanced, inspirational story of learning and schooling; and

We commit to present for adoption draft Children-as-Learners' Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights at an Online Convention on a date certain on or before October 2010; and

We commit that once these statements are adopted, to set in motion the mechanisms for obtaining as signatories to the Declaration, Constitution and Bill of Rights, on or before October 2020, the myriad individuals, groups and associations; teachers and administrators; schools and school districts; and local, regional, national, and international government entities; and finally, that

All signatories commit to ensure that all professional statements of educational vision, mission, priorities, beliefs and goals, strategies, actions and measurement are aligned with the Children-as-Learners’ Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights.

^{1 Stephanie Pace Marshall, The Power to Transform}

Amos & Boris ~ Storytime for Children

With some help from AllanahK and Chris Betcher I was able to understand how VoiceThread works. But to really make it stick, I decided I needed to create my own.

Along the way I watched a VoiceThread on New Zealand money that Miss K's class produced and titled Money, Money, Money. In their own words, "Today we recorded our comments for our Voicethread about New Zealand's money. We used a resource from the Reserve Bank to find out more about our coins and notes." The students' work inspired me to use this tool in a very familiar way to say thank you to them.

Because I occasionally visit classes to read stories, I decide to use VoiceThread to read a story to Miss K's class in New Zealand.

Hope you enjoy it kids! Mr. Richards

PS When you start the story thread, you can use the magnifying glass to zoom in and out with a click and to move around the screen by moving the cursor left and right. You can also record an audio comment or a text comment by clicking on the appropriate button and clicking save when you are finished. Click the arrows to move to the next screen shot. The cluster of four small photos can be clicked to bring up a screen of all the pages. Click a page to go to it.

Whether or not you know me, we need to be friends. Together we can improve schools. I know we can!

I want to thank Karen Janowski for making me aware of a post on Darren Draper's blog Drape's Takes: Our Fearless Leaders - Technologically Incompetent? In the post Darren speaks of his trip to present at a conference.

... I had the privilege of presenting (thrice) with Margo Shirley and Kathy Ridd at the National Federation of Urban & Suburban School Districts conference. The small, annual conference attracts an elite crowd of superintendents, school board members, and other high-ranking district administrators from various school districts across the United States.

I am a superintendent in Massachusetts, and although I did not attend the NFUSSD conference, I have recently had many experiences that confirm Darren's experience. He goes onto say...

While presenting, I was struck (and rather severely) with the realization that many (certainly not all, but many) of the participants in the conference had extremely limited technology skills. Furthermore, this realization had even greater effect as I better understood to whom I was presenting: Remember, these participants were educational leaders (superintendents and the like) of school districts throughout the country. Indeed, I was literally awestruck as I was forced to throttle back my discussion (almost to the point of that famous right-clicking lesson), in order to help several of the participants to understand.

Last summer I was totally unaware of the extent of the paradigm shift that is going on in the world of Web 2.0 and so readily experienced through the stellar creativity, ingenuity, and drive of so many educators who have built the free and open online world at K12Onlineconference.org currently happening on the internet. I was not technologically illiterate. I had a laptop; I know how to use much of the typical Microsoft tools and used them when appropriate; I used Wikipedia; I had tried blogging and a wiki (a little). Then I met Alan November at a technology conference for superintendents. Alan's message had nothing to do with the sales pitches I heard over those two days. There was something new and unusually insightful about what he was saying.

Fortunately for me, Alan became interested in helping my school district with a project we were trying to do with the scientific institutions in Woods Hole, a village of Falmouth, Massachusetts, so, along the way, I began to learn about his Building Learning Communities (BLC) Conference he had each summer in Massachusetts. Unfortunately, it was scheduled for the same week as the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents (MASS) executive conference in July 2007. Many superintendents and assistant superintendents go to the MASS conference each you and I was one of them. Summer 2007 I decided to go to BLC -- and am I glad I did. Publicly, I have said in many venues that it was a life changing experience for me, not because of the technology, but because of educators developing the incredible plethora of possibilities the new technological tools - and I mean something new is happening in this field daily it seems - have for pedagogy.

Here is a video that will give you a glimpse of the new story of learning; it is what I and 600 other educators experienced at the BLC 2007 conference. It introduces you to the educators who are in touch with the paradigm shift and using it to invigorate their classes, engaging students in powerful learning experiences through the application of technology tools. Notice the technology, but pay attention to the pedagogy threaded through the comments of these educational leaders. If you are in a school, I need to let you know that it is a link to a YouTube video so you will only be able to see it if YouTube.com is not blocked in your school. View it at home if that is a problem. It's worth the trouble.

November Learning's Building Communities Conference 2007

At the conference I attended Darren Kuropatwa's workshop Thinking About Innovation in Education or Learning the Guitar. I remember thinking to myself, well, that was interesting, but the more my mind tried to move onto the content of other workshop's that day I kept coming back to what Darren showed me about the technology tools, the pedagogy, and what and how his students were engaging in learning... and Darren's presentation modeled everything he was saying about Web 2.0. As the conference continued, I began to develop a context for appreciating the other presenters' workshops, but I could not stop thinking about what Darren Kuropatwa was saying and doing. So...I attended the other two workshops that Darren gave: New Tools, New Pedagogies: What Can I Do Now That I Couldn't Do Before? and New Tools, New Pedagogies: Developing Expert Voices. What an eye opening experience! He's a great teacher. To see these presentations, search for Darren Kuropatwa's work on SlideShare.net, a new tool that Darren told me about in the workshop so I could, as he said, take away what he was having us experience and go home and apply it in my schools.

I have not stopped thinking about that three day conference. In my opening presentation to the staff of the Falmouth MA Public Schools in August 2007 I took everything I learned during the conference and during my reflections on the experience and combined it with the ideas I was developing while reading Stephanie Pace Marshall's new book The Power to Transform, to create a presentation modeled after Darren's presentations. I called it The New Story of Learning or Thinking about Abundance, Creativity, Interdependence, and Wholeness.

Darren Drapers' blog post that prompted this post references The Partnership for 21st Century Skills' framework of 21st Century Skills. I have been speaking about that framework for two years; actually the current framework is actually a revised version. I summarize it in a post below.

I developed a wiki that I won from Darren that week and then I got involved in trying to publicize this world of Web 2.0 pedagogy through telling anyone who would listen about the K12 Online Conference: Massachusetts superintendents and assistant superintendents, ASCD Leadership Council representatives from the 50 states and many counties in the world, my own school district's Instructional Leadership, MASCD's Board of Directors, participants in the state STEM Summit IV, and a gathering of 200 educational leaders who were convened to discussed The Future of Education in Massachusetts by the Governor's Educational Adviser, the chairpersons of the Board of Higher Education, the state's boards of K-12 education and early childhood and the commissioner of education Chancellor of the Board of Higher Education. I spoke after the presentations and said I had no questions or comments because I generally agreed with the speakers views. Instead, I wanted to offer them a solution that could dramatically transform the experiences in classrooms throughout the state. I spoke about my experiences with Web 2.0 and told them I have a model through which they could experience what I was speaking about, K12onlinconference.org. I would like to be able to say that I had a positive response; they were polite, but only 5 people approached me during the break to say they appreciated my comments and planned to visit the site. You need to know that I was the only one who had a laptop out at that meeting (internet access only if you had a means other than your laptop to receive the password that would be sent to you to access the internet through your laptop) and that was generally the same at the Massachusetts STEM Summit IV (no internet access), and a New England Association of Schools and Colleges and The Center for Secondary School Redesign's Showcase of Model High School Programs Conference (internet access available if you asked and were given a sheet of directions that took a few minutes to implement). The comment, "Web 2.0? It's not on the radar screen!" comes to mind.

Thanks to the generous people associated with K12Online; I am slowly becoming familiar with their world. Sheryl Nusbaum-Beach was very kind to help me during a Skype session we scheduled because I had so many questions. "I need twitter friends," I told Sheryl. "How do I reach out into the "twitterverse" and make friends who can help me learn about this "parallel universe?" Sheryl helped me a great deal, but now a suggestion. I need more friends and so do others looking to learn what we can from you so we can generate new knowledge as we interact. Follow me on twitter if you want to help me so I can follow you and watch you think about this world and reflect and contribute to the community conversation ~ that's the only way we can continue learning. All I can promise is to be your friend, do my part in this movement, and continue learning, modeling and trying to help students, educators and others with a stake in or authority over education in Massachusetts, the USA, and the world.

www.twitter.com: dennisar.

K12 Online 2007: David Warlick's 24 Hour Chat Log Comments & Dennis Richards' Reflections

K 12 Online Conference David Warlick Keynote Chat Transcript

Page 1

David Warlick:

Challenge is, how do I model for my children -- for my students. If we're preparing our children to be free-agent workers (and that's just a speculation), then perhaps we should help them to become free-agent learners.

DR: Powerful Learning Experiences?

I think this is the crux of the problem we face in schools today. Most educators were not taught to be free-agent learners so they don't know what we mean. Learning as we experience it in these interactive environments is exhilarating because it's inquiry driven, personally meaningful, open-ended, and intellectually stimulating. How many classrooms, schools and professional development experiences can be described with those words? We "hold administrators accountable;" "negotiate contractual articles" to define teacher common learning time; and lecture students, quiz them, test them and move to the next unit regardless of what they didn't learn so they are "well prepared" for high stakes test that decide if they will graduate or not. In the curriculum-frameworks-driven environment of schools today is they any room for "powerful learning experiences?"

Page 2

David Warlick:

He is my son, who learned to re-mix video by knowing how to find people who could help him learn what he needed to know to do what he wanted to do. This, in my opinion, is one of the most powerful messages of the video.

DR: Students and Web 2.0 Tools

Yes, David, but the message is hidden... Kids and even younger teachers are using many similar tools for personal reasons. If we can give permission and support to teachers and administrators to use these tools, they can begin to shift student use from the personal use of web 2.0 tools to its powerful use for learning. Imagine what educators and kids would experience if 30% of the time they were using these tools for learning? And as the percentage goes up for administrators, teachers and kids, we can use this new interactive environment to structure new boundaries around 21st Century Skills. That is when you will have the traction we need for students and educators to feel fulfilled in our schools.

Participant: (KS) I am in Higher Ed and the boundaries are prison fences it seems to me and most higher ed faculty are not ready to integrate tech into their content, talk about boundaries!!!

David Warlick:

This is so incredibly disheartening. What is it about a profession that is entirely about help people to grow, so reluctant to grow itself?

DR: Educator Supply Chain

Unfortunately, it is more challenging than just higher education. I am a member of a working group of professional educators, business representatives, and legislators in Massachusetts. We are working on legislation that world ensure systemic change reaches every classroom in the state.

The bad news is that we have a lot of work to do; the good news is that we have generated significant support around a common focus that seeks to improve the heart of education: teaching and learning.

The central issue is this: there is a common core of knowledge about teaching and learning, including interactive technology, for good professional practice that gets results for students. Large segments of this common core of knowledge are missing in action from each of the ten subsystems that form the supply chain for our teacher workforce. No one is accountable for seeing it even shows up in these sub-systems, much less in an integrated way. This is eminently fixable; but only if we redefine the problem and radically refocus our resources. (The same can be said for the knowledge and skills of school leadership.)

The ten sub-systems of the educator workforce supply chain are:

1. University Preparation Programs

2. State Licensing Requirements

3. School District Hiring Processes

4. School District Induction Programs

5. School District Supervision and Evaluation Systems

6. School District Professional Development Systems

7. State Recertification Requirements

8. School District Salary, Promotion and Advancement Policies

9. Individual School Working Conditions

10. Individual School Organization Culture

Participant: (Th) Bangkok is asking How do you infuse the concept of "learning how to learn" into a k12 curriculum

David Warlick:

Step 1: Model it. Rather than using textbook and other "packaged" content, use sources from the Internet that you (teacher) have found, evaluated, mixed and re-mixed, and then explain to your students, while you are teaching them, how you found it, how you decided to use it, how you combined it with other content, etc.

Step 2: Expect it of your students. Assign aspects of the unit to be learned independently by your students. Have them work in teams or whatever. Then, as they share what they have learned, ask them, "How did you find that?" "Why did you decide to use this source?" "How did you make it look like this?"

DR: "Chief" Learner

Interesting how this advice applies to administrators and teachers also.

I am a superintendent responsible for a school district with 4000 students. In my opening address to the staff, I modeled what I had learned at the November Learning Building Learning Communities Conference 2007 from Darren Kuropatwa. Over the next few weeks I will meet with the faculty at each of the seven schools in the district. I will be showing them what I have learned since then as I interacted with many educators on Twitter and through K12Online 2007. These people are friendly and willing to help those of us who are new to these Web 2.0 tools.

If you are the "chief" learner, I think you need to make your learning transparent and available to your colleagues. It wasn't easy for me to make that leap, but this is what I believe so I have decided to walk the talk!

In the end it has been lots of fun.... and rewarding too.

I ran out of time to offer more comments. I hope to continue over the next week or two.

New Territories for Learning in the 21st Century

David Warlick used a videocast to give the world an interesting pre conference address, Inventing the New Boundaries, to open the second annual K12Online 2007 Conference. In it he speaks about teachers and students wanting and needing new boundaries to define their work. David, try these ideas for new boundaries that teachers and students could use to define the border territories of learning in our classrooms and schools.

• Grappling for solutions to problems of societal importance (local, regional, national, international)
• Creating content to share with a global audience
• Inventing, supporting, and contributing to learning communities (local, regional, national, international)
• Using core knowledge as a critical resource
• Discovering interdisciplinary connections and interrelationships
• Etc. (See below)
  

Watch the Encyclopedia of Life Video and you'll experience the future within which our students will live and learn:

EOL ~ Encyclopedia of Life

David, as you well know, it's not 1961 and your Grolier's Encyclopedia is no more!

To really prepare our students for the learning communities that await them, I proposed to our district the following elements for a Framework for Learning, a new policy of learning for our school district based on the assumption that what students need to learn must be the way we teach them....

From Partnership for 21st Century Skills

Global Awareness

• Using 21st century skills to understand and address global issues
• Learning from and working collaboratively with individuals representing diverse cultures, religions and lifestyles in a spirit of mutual respect and open dialogue in personal, work and community contexts
• Understanding other nations and cultures, including the use of non-English languages

Creativity and Innovation

• Demonstrating originality and inventiveness in work
• Developing, implementing and communicating new ideas to others
• Being open and responsive to new and diverse perspectives
• Acting on creative ideas to make a tangible and useful contribution to the domain in which the innovation occurs

Critical Thinking and Problem Solving

• Exercising sound reasoning in understanding
• Making complex choices and decisions
• Understanding the interconnections among systems
• Identifying and asking significant questions that clarify various points of view and lead to better solutions
• Framing, analyzing and synthesizing information in order to solve problems and answer questions

Communication and Collaboration

• Articulating thoughts and ideas clearly and effectively through speaking and writing
• Demonstrating ability to work effectively with diverse teams
• Exercising flexibility and willingness to be helpful in making necessary compromises to accomplish a common goal
• Assuming shared responsibility for collaborative work

Information Literacy

• Accessing information efficiently and effectively, evaluating information critically and competently and using information accurately and creatively for the issue or problem at hand
• Possessing a fundamental understanding of the ethical/legal issues surrounding the access and use of information

Media Literacy

• Understanding how media messages are constructed, for what purposes and using which tools, characteristics and conventions.
• Examining how individuals interpret messages differently, how values and points of view are included or excluded and how media can influence beliefs and behaviors.
• Possessing a fundamental understanding of the ethical/legal issues surrounding the access and use of information

Life and Career Skills

• Flexibility & Adaptability
• Initiative & Self-Direction
• Social & Cross-Cultural Skills
  
• Productivity & Accountability
  
• Leadership & Responsibility

Financial and Economic Literacy

• Knowing how to make appropriate personal economic choices
• Understanding the role of the economy in society
• Using entrepreneurial skills to enhance workplace productivity and career options

Civic Literacy

• Participating effectively in civic life through knowing how to stay informed and understanding governmental processes
• Exercising the rights and obligations of citizenship at local, state, national and global levels
• Understanding the local and global implications of civic decisions

Health Literacy

• Obtaining, interpreting and understanding basic health information and services and using such information and services in ways that are health enhancing
• Understanding preventive physical and mental health measures, including proper diet, nutrition, exercise, risk avoidance and stress reduction
• Using available information to make appropriate health-related decisions
• Establishing and monitoring personal and family health goals
• Understanding national and international public health and safety issues

Core Knowledge

• English, reading or language arts
• World languages
• Arts
• Mathematics
• Economics
• Science
• Geography
• History
• Government and Civics