RWLD #9: Final Projects for EIT - Students' RWLDs

We have come to the final day of our Emerging Instructional Technologies course.  Now the students have the opportunity to share their work. We will spend the last half of the day with each team presenting a lesson using the student-centered, technology-enriched experience that we have been studying all week.

Here are the Readings, Watchings, Listenings and Doings (RWLD) for their lessons:

Different Jobs in Our Community (Grades 1-3)

Team JLC

Healthy Computing for Windows 7 (Adults)

Corporate Cats

Modern Entrepreneurs (Grades 11 & 12) Social Studies, Language Arts, Humanities or Business classes

Team CBS

Technology and Society (Grades 9 - 12)

Technology, Literature and Social Studies classes

Team Googlers

Famous Iowans (Grade 4)

Team Cookie Cutters

image: flickr.com/david H-W (extrajection)

RWLD #8: Copyright, Creative Commons, Atomic Learning and Guests

Copyright/Creative Commons

We began a good discussion about Copyright and Creative Commons. You MUST be knowledgeable about these topics if you are going to lead your schools down the right track. Here are some resources:

• Brief Notes: Copyright for Students
• Taking the Mystery Out of Copyright (Library of Congress)
• Copyright Basics (US Copyright Office)
• Creative Commons homepage
• What is Creative Commons: Want to Work Together? (Creative Commons intro video)
• Stacy Marcus' posting of resources concerning Copyright/Creative Commons
• Please watch this video FOR SURE!!!!

Atomic LearningAtomic Learning was originally a wonderful tutorial site for learning how to use software. Since then, it has expanded to include a number of educational topic like teaching strategies.

Iowa PK-12 students and teachers have access to Atomic Learning through the state licenses that our Statewide Area Education Agencies. You need to access the site through http://iowaaeaonline.org

You will need a user name and password to access this.

Remember that you will be using Atomic Learning to teach yourself iMovie 9 in class.  It will be a little different to experience using these tutorials to learn the software instead of having someone teach it to you.  Imagine empowering your students by trusting them to teach themselves in the same manner.

The Iowa AEA Online site has all of the resources listed in the tap displayed here on the right. Some of the resources (e.g., iClipArt) can be used by your students for in-class and on-line activities. The DE (Discovery Education) Streaming service has a plethora of videos in science, social studies and other topics. Some of them can even be edited and used in student projects.

The important thing is to know that the copyright restrictions are not the same in each of the services and you should review each of them separately and follow the rules accordingly.

Julie Lindsay

Julie founded the Flat Classroom project along with Vicki Davis in 2007.

Julie's Blog

Flat Classroom Ning - Central meeting place for Flat Classroom participants.

Flat Classroom Wiki - 
The interactive site where students, teachers and organizers communicate and actually get involved in the various projects that are part of the Flat Classroom Project. 

Flat Classroom Conference in Dubai, 2009

Angela Maiers

Angela is a vibrant professional who works with schools worldwide. She has been in education for 20 years and is known as a writer, lecturer and teacher.  

Recently, her passion has been writing a book about Teaching to Students' Passions. This book has yet to be released but I look forward having the opportunity to read it.

As some of your groups have been working on your final projects, you have been trying to design your projects so that they address your "students' passions." Until the book is available, we will have to hear what Angela has to say through Skype. She should meet with us on Thursday afternoon.

Bloom's Taxonomy

An important aspect of designing learning environments involves evaluating the level of complexity of the tasks involved. In 1956, Benjamin Bloom and his colleagues developed a hierarchy of questioning complexity, Bloom's Taxonomy. 

In the mid 90s, Lorin Anderson revised the taxonomy to what is shown on the left.  

A more complete comparison of the two versions  by Overbaugh and Shultz can be found at Bloom's Taxonomy.

images: flickr.com/linaeu; julielindsay.com; 
angelamaiers.com; www.odu.edu/educ/roverbau

RWLD #7 - Due Tuesday, June 15 - Second Life and Podcasting

This will be an opportunity to meet, greet and talk with people through virtual means. Review these materials, enroll in Second Life (SL), and explore Second Life before we meet on Tuesday.

 
After you sign-up for SL. remember to post your Second Life name on our Student Contact page.
We will visit the Iowa Island in Second Life on Tuesday Morning. The owner of Iowa Island, Inna Greenwood, will meet with us in SL and take us on a tour. Read the materials and watch the videos below to get an idea of what SL involves. Can you find any materials on the web that you would like to add to our collection?

7 Things You Should Know about Virtual WorldsA virtual world is an immersive online environment whose "residents" are avatars representing individuals who participate through the Internet. Many institutions are experimenting with virtual worlds for educational purposes. They may foster constructivist learning by placing students in a context that challenges them to learn without explicit learning objectives and assessment.

Using Second Life for Immersive Learning podcast
(Educause Connect Podcast) 14-minute podcast with Dr. Cynthia Calongne, Professor of Computer Science at Colorado Technical University. Discusses how she uses Second Life to provide rea-life laboratories for her students.

Educational Uses of Second Life
Interesting 7-minute video introduction to the educational possibilities of Second Life.

Dr. Z's Intro to Second Life Wiki
A series of YouTube videos that Dr. Z found to introduce you to Second Life.

Virtual Social Worlds And the Future of Learning
Learning in Three Dimensions: Experiencing the Sensibilties Imagining the Possibilities of virtual worlds in education.

Making Landmark Notecards in Second Life
A tutorial that Dr. Z created using his avatar in Second Life. It explains how to create notecards that can be used to help direct people around SL.

 

Podcasting

Download iTunes to your computer.

Listen to some podcasts:
Ed Tech Talks - One of the pioneering podcasts for and by educators.
Women on the Web 2.0 - Listen to some women who are leaders in using Web 2.0 in their classrooms.
Room 208 Vodcast - Watch 3rd graders create their own podcasts.
Willow Web Willowcasts - Listen to podcasts created by elementary students in Omaha.

Go to the iTunes site and find some podcasts that you want to enjoy on a topic of your choice.

 

Optional Resources

Build fast in Second Life with free stuff
Tutorial on how to build a house in second life.

Second Life Building Tutorial by NSS
Fun to watch video that teaches basic building skills

Second Life Camera Turorial by NSS
Really helpful for looking at things and getting differents views of objects

RWLD #6 - Due Monday, June 14 - RSS, PLN and Google Apps

Monday:

This is our first day of the on-campus portion of our course.  Today we will begin with the basics like registering your computer, etc.

We will then explore RSS and Personal Learning Networks (PLN).

Prensky, M. (2005) Young Minds, Fast Times: The Twenty-First-Century Digital Learner
Read this article and leave your own insightful comment.

The Networked Student - a 5-minute video about Connectivism and Personal Learning Networks.

Getting Started with iGoogle tutorial (.pdf) - Printed

An important part of your PLN is your Twittersphere. So we hope to use Twitter before lunch. You SHOULD have TweetDeck downloaded to your computer before Monday.

Getting Started with Twitter-TweetDeck tutorial (.pdf) - Printed

In the afternoon, we will explore a way to share research through social bookmarking and then have a visit from a teacher who has made a big difference in the world with PLNs, Vicki Davis.

Personal Learning Networks are Virtual Lockers for Schoolkids
Vicki Davis explains how she uses PLNs in her classroom






Social Bookmarking
Social Bookmarking is a system for sharing your discoveries in an organized manner. The Social Bookmarking tool is a huge database containing lots of personal databases. When you bookmark your sites and then assign tags to them (e.g., Web2.0, videos, socialbookmarking), it is reflected in the Master Database. This means that when people search for a specific tag (e.g., Web2.0) they will search all of the entries in all of the personal databases. 


You need to learn about this in Plain English:
Social Bookmarking in Plain English (3:30) - Uses the Del.icio.us tool.   We will learn Diigo.

Diigo is a bookmarking tool that can be shared with groups.
Diigo: Highlight and Share the Web - Social Bookmarking - 4 minute video intro

Getting Started with Diigo tutorial (.pdf) - Printed 

Collaborative Research Project

Finally, we will explore how you can work collaboratively, using Google Docs.

• Google Docs in Plain English - 3-minute overview of Google Docs.
• Writing a Love Letter Using Google Docs - This is how Google Docs SHOULD be used.
• Using Forms in Google Docs - 2-minute video overview of using and creating Google Forms. 

Google Docs Tutorials

• Getting Started with Google Docs tutorial (.pdf) - Printed
• Getting Started with Google Forms tutorial (.pdf) - Printed
• Google Presentations (TeacherTube video) - Try learning this software piece through watching a video.  What is your preferred form of learning?

We will engage in a Collaborative Research Project in class.  This will provide you with an opportunity to use a variety of tools including: Google Docs, Google Forms, Google Presenter, Google Spreadsheet, Twitter, Jing and wiki.

Sounds like a Ton of Work but this is how we will lay the groundwork for the upcoming week.

Optionals:

The Machine is Us/ing Us
A 4:34 video taking us on a tour of what and how the Web is changing who and what and where we are.

The Gen-Y guide to Web2.0@Work
Sacha Chua's presentation on Slideshare about how her network helped her get a job with IBM. (2 minutes silent presentation)

Want More Traffic on Your Blog? 
You should be proud of the blogs you have been writing. Your classmates have been commenting about your work as well as other admirers like . . . me. Now you can share your gems of ideas with the world through Google. The Web-bots might find your blogs eventually, but you can nurture it along by signing up with Google. This will direct them towards your blog.  It is not difficult.  Just follow this video and set of instructions I have created.

Signing Up Your Blog with Google

1. Go to Google.com
2. Click on the Business Solutions link in the middle of the page.
3. Next Page – click on the WebMaster Central link
4. Click on the Sign in to WebMaster Tools (You need to have a Google Account for this.  I assume that since you have a blogger account, you have a google account.  Just enter you name and password for blogger when they ask.
5. Next page – Click on the Add a site button in the middle of the page.
6. Add the URL for your blog site.
7. Click the Continue button.
8. You need to copy some HTML code into your blog.  So copy the Meta tag in the middle of the page.
9. Then open your blog.
10. Click on Customize.
11. Click on Edit HTML
12. You will find something that says in the code.  Paste the Meta tag into the code right after the
13. Click on Save Template
14. Now you just need to wait to see what happens when Google sends out a WebBot to look at your blog.

photos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwM4ieFOotA; http://21stcenturylearning.typepad.com/blog/wikis/

RWLD #5 - Due June 9 - Student-Centric Learning

The World is at Your Door.

The power of technology in education has little to do with the whiz-bang gadgetry. It has to do with the opportunities that are available when you use those gadgets to accomplish learning tasks that expand a student's opportunities.  It might include new forms of observation (Time-lapsed photography, underwater webcams.) It might include different forms of communication with other learners (Skyping around the world, meeting in Second Life.) 

Readings

Read pages 89-143 in Disrupting Class. 

Read the Power of Social Interaction Technologies in Teacher Education (.pdf) This is a paper presented at the National Educational Computing Conference, 2009 in Washington, D.C. It does a good job of reviewing the literature about using social networking in education. The description of the research is scant but the lit review is good.

Doings 

Building Your Blog

Your blog is your form of expression. It is you. Question is . . .  is anybody listening?  You have received a great following from your classmates. They have been commenting on your ideas. In some cases they are validating what you have said and other cases involve asking questions that challenge and expand your thinking. Here are some additions for your blog that will help you track your followers.

RSS Subscription - Video on Adding a Subscription Link Gadget to your blog.  This will allow your readers to subscribe to your blog using RSS so that they don't have to go to your blog every time.  It will be brought to them using RSS.

Wondering about RSS?

Read What the Heck IS RSS?
Watch RSS in Plain English

Beginning Your iGoogle/Personal Learning Network

The iGoogle Online Tutorial Part 1 - a 9-minute introduction to setting up your iGoogle account. Watch this and then set up your iGoogle account.  Use this video to begin creating your own iGoogle page.

The Networked Student -  a video that tells a true story about how a student used a Personal Learning Network (PLN) to develop a network of resources for his learning.

How I Built My Personal Learning Network (PLN) - Art Titzel, 8th grade American Cultures teacher, explains how he created and maintains his PLN.

Begin Creating Your Own PLN - a short video that describes how you can create a tab on your iGoogle page completely dedicated to your classmates' blogs.This process can be used to create an RSS link to other blogs and resources throughout the web.

More for Your Blog

Clustr Map - It is also possible to follow who in the world is visiting your blog.  Don't think that your ideas matter to others in the world? They do. Notice the Clustr Map in the upper right corner of our RWLD blog. The blog hasn't been publicized anywhere (yet) but we have a couple of dots signifying that visitors from outside Iowa have looked at the blog.  They will probably visit your blog as well. The Clustr Map will keep you posted about the traffic coming to your blog.  Here is a quick video showing you how to add a Clustr Map to your Blogger Blog.

Discussion
I am SOOO impressed with the discussion threads that I have read for the discussion #2 topic. Many of you truly took the readings to heart and were devising innovative ways to use these new tools in your own educational situation.

Now, you have the opportunity to read what the other groups discussed. I have opened up the discussion so that you SHOULD be able to see everyone else's discussions.

Read through at least 2 of these threads and finish with a final posting where you relate what you and your group discussed with the discussion thread that you just read. Think about varying perspectives. How can they apply to your situation?

Please have this completed before you arrive in class on Monday morning.

How's It Going? Survey
We have been at this for about 5 weeks. Now it is time for some feedback. Please complete this survey so that you can share what works.

Photo: flickr.com/sophiacreek

RWLD #4 - Due June 2 - New Tools and New Skills

You have had the opportunity to use new tools and develop new skills.  I am most excited about how most of you have been taking to blogging:

• Some of you have posted as many as 8 times already. 
• Some of you have been commenting on each of your classmates' postings (and yes, it DOES make a difference even if you feel that your comments might be insignificant.)   
• Did you notice that the list of blogs in the right column are arranged by which one has the most recent posting?  There is some motivation for you to post well and post often.

Wiki Knowledge - Recently, you posted resources that supported the Distributed Learning Community characteristics. I asked you to do this because I wanted you to see that I (the teacher) don't need to be the only source for important resources to review in this class. The $64 question is:   

How many of you actually looked at the resources that you didn't post?

If you don't review those resources, how will we know which ones are the ones that should be reviewed?
This week you need to review the resources and then indicate 2 resources in each category that you believe your class members should review. Here's the process:

1. RETURN TO OUR EIT WIKI.
2. Review the four characteristics from the Dede articles to remind yourself what they mean.
3. Select one of the characteristics on our wiki page and review each of the resources.
4. Place your initials after each of the 2 resources that you believe best represent needed information in the characteristics.     i.e.,    (LZ)
5. Move to the next characteristic on our wiki page and repeat the process.
6. Continue until you have completed all of the characteristics.
7. NOW review the 2 top selected resources in each of the characteristics.

Blogging
You have been following 4 of the recommended blogsters and at least 2 other blogs from your area of interest.  This week it is time for you to comment on what you have been finding there:

• You may have found a common theme between a couple of these blogs.  Write about it.  Make commentary about what they are saying.  
• If you can, link it to what one of your classmates has been saying in her/his blog.  
• If you can, link it to what you have been reading in the Christiansen or Solomon/Schrum books. (If you cite them, you can just reference them at the end of the posting OR you can link directly to the book on Amazon or Barnes and Noble or University Book and Supply or ??)

EVERYTIME you mention one of the blogs, include a link to the posting (NOT just the blog) that you are quoting.  This is the beginning of becoming a member of the Blogosphere and this is how you will become an active member in your educational community whether you are interested in corporate training, elementary, secondary, or post secondary education.

Jump on Board, the Ride is Wonderful!!!






Photos: flickr.com/brian.ch; flickr.com/crunchy_footsteps

RWLD #3 - Due May 25 - Innovating Change

Innovating change is a difficult thing to do in status quo institutions today. Whether that institution is education, business, or government, creating change can be difficult and sometimes perilous.

Why do we need change? Not for the sake of change, but for the sake of advancement. In 1968, Robert F. Kennedy quoted George Bernard Shaw as saying:

Some men see things as they are and ask "Why?"  

I dream things that never were and ask "Why Not?"

That is what we as educators and custodians of our schools' futures must repeat daily. We must find ways that we can look ahead and "teach to our students' futures, not our pasts." (Pink, 2009)

VoiceThread - Ever look for a way that you can have learners virtually gather around a video or document and then discuss it?  VoiceThread will allow you to be able to do this. 

Your assignment (should you decide to accept it) is to:
1) Go to VoiceThread and sign up for an account.
2) Go to the VoiceThread discussion site that is linked right here. 
3) Click on my photo on the left so that you can hear the instructions.
4) Watch the video, Learning to Change-Changing to Learn.
5) Comment on the video using the prompts below.  You can comment through audio, video, text.  Whatever you want.
    a)  Your comment should include your ideas about what is said in the video about education.  
    b) Integrate what you have read so far in our class.
    c) React to what at least one of your classmates has commented so far. If you are the first commentor, you can make a general statement that addresses the World's perspective on this topic.

Learn more about VoiceThread through watching this video and this blog posting on MPB Reflections

Blogging
Blogging is the tool that has done a great deal to democratize information and communication. No longer do we need to have our own printing press to share our ideas with others. It is as easy as 1-2-3 (see Blogger) to hang out your publishing shingle and get into the business of writing for the public.


Let's see what a blog is and what it can be:

• Blogging in Plain English
• How to Create Your Own Subject or Classroom Blog
• Creating a Blog for Your Business

Before you can blog, you need to know what composes a blog. You need to have background in reading blogs in your area of interest. You need to see how postings are usually more interesting if they have been well researched and provide a variety of links that will help the reader explore further into the topic.

Working with blogs during this course will involve Reading, Commenting, and Writing/Creating.

Reading

1. Read ALL of your classmates' blogs ALL of the time.  It is important to keep up on what they are saying. It will also give them a reason to write. Blogging has little meaning if no one is reading it. Besides, it will mean that someone will be reading yours as well.

You will find links to your classmates' blogs in the right-hand column of this RWLD.  See them over there?

2. Follow at least 4 of these professional blogs over the rest of the semester.

• Dr. Z Reflects (Leigh Zeitz) - Explores ideas, gadgets and opportunities for using technology to support learning.
• Social Media in Learning (Jane Hart) - Deals with both business and K-12 learning.
• Cool Cat Teacher Blog (Vicki Davis) - Ranked #1 education blog. Written by a high school business teacher with an amazing global perspective.
• 2 Cents Worth (David Warlick) - Leader in using Web 2.0 tools in education.
• Dangerously Irrelevant (Scott McLeod) - Technology, Leadership and the Future of Education 
• ClifNotes (Clif Mims) - Wide variety of ideas and reflections. Explore his whole website to find a wonderful collection of ingenuity.
• Langwitches Blog (Silvia Tolisano) - Elementary school teacher with a global vision. Avid user of Skpe.
• Angela Maiers' Blog - K-12 ideas and experiences. Good blog for classroom teachers and those who want to know about integrating Web 2.0 into the classroom. 

3. Read at least 2 blogs in a personal area of interest.  Use the Google Blog Search (blogsearch.google.com) to find someone who writes about what you enjoy. This search will provide you with postings, but usually the blogs that hold the postings are in your area of interest.

Commenting 

Commenting is important if you are going to be an involved part of the Blogosphere. Your comments give a blogger an indication that someone is reading her/his work. That gives a sense of mission. Interestingly enough, bloggers will often respond to your comments either directly or in an future posting.

Writing/Creating 

Writing is the key to it all. This is where you can share your ideas with with world. It is where you have to confront your thoughts. I once had a professor (Dr. David Moursund) who told me that he didn't know how he felt about a topic until he had written about it. Writing makes you organize your ideas so that you can express them in a clear and cogent manner.

1. First thing you must do is create a blog. We use Google's Blogger as the standard because it is quick and easy, but you can use whichever blog you would like. Just remember that it needs to be accessible to the world.

2. Now that you have the easel, it is time for you to share your ideas.  Here are a few suggestions for this week:

• Comment on your experience with using Adobe Connect last Monday.
• Comment on using VoiceThread and how you see that it can affect learning.
• Integrate your ideas about our readings and specifics about what changes you want to see.

Here are some hints for making effective postings:

• Begin with an active title.  Something that is interesting.
• Include an image or photo of some sort.  You can find a wealth of photos you can use (as long as you cite them as I have done below) at Flickr/CreativeCommons  (www.flickr.com/creativecommons)
• Always include at least 2 links to something relevant on the web. Your postings must have depth and that is more than can be captured on the single page.  Writing is post can be a small research project that will provide readers a deeper understanding of the topic.
• End your postings with questions to elicit responses from your readers.

So how do you see yourself using blogs in your future teaching/training careers?

Z

photo: flickr.com/roland

RWLD #2 - Due May 18 - Distributed Learning Community

You are entering a distributed learning community. Distributed learning environments emphasize building a community of learners where individuals can be experts and are acknowledged as such.

A learning community is a group of learners who agree on 4 characteristics:

1. diversity of expertise; 
2. shared objective of advancing the collective knowledge;
3. learning how to learn; and 
4. mechanisms for sharing what is learned.

• Dede, C. (2004) Enabling distributed learning communities via emerging technologies - part 1 (.pdf)
• Dede, C. (2004) Enabling distributed learning communities via emerging technologies - part 2 (.pdf)

Read the Web 2.0 book: pgs. 1-44.

*********************************

Collaborative Wiki:
This week, we will ask you (the students) to find the information that we will need to review. I have created some wiki pages that correspond with the learning community characteristics. Your job is to find resources (text, image, video, audio, etc) and post them to the appropriate wiki resource page. This is not a graded activity but merely another experience in building a collaborative learning experience.

Videos:

• An Introduction to Using a Wiki
• How to Edit a Wiki (use this to complete the assignment)

********************************* 

Emerging Instructional Technology Twittering:

Another thing that we will be doing this week is signing up for Twitter.   This will be a way that we can follow each other as well as follow any comments that apply specifically to our Emerging Instructional Technologies (EIT - I will use the EIT to refer to our class.)

Twitter in Plain English video

Before you sign up for Twitter, I would like to give some User Name advice.  You should identify a username that you will use for ALL of your places on the social media network.  This should be a professional name that will easily identify you.  

DON'T use one with long numbers or cute saying: jbrown714 or funnyguy3933

DO use something with your name if possible  zeitz, leighzeitz, leigh.zeitz, vvrotny

1.  Join Twitter.  (http://twitter.com)

2.  Once you are signed in, go to http://twitter.com/zeitz   Click on the Follow button so that you can follow my tweets. I will automatically follow you back, so you will know that you have at least one follower.

3.  Download TweetDeck from http://tweetdeck.com This is a program that you can run from your computer to check your twitter account. I suggest this because it makes it easy to organize the tweets from your friends.

4.  Go to our NamePage where you will post your twitter name.

We will use a few different ways to follow each other:

• Hashtags (#UNI_EIT)
• Lists
• TweetDeck columns

I will provide more information on how to use these soon.

Review (don't have to read) these 6 Sources for Using Twitter in Education 

Twitter Spoofs for a little fun.

Have fun,

Z

photo: flickr.com/cekrypton2

RWLD #1 - Due May 11 - The Basics

Begin by completing the ILS questionnaire below and then entering your personal information into the following surveys.

Surveys to Complete:

• Index of Learning Styles (ILS) Questionnaire
  Learn which learning styles are your strengths. PRINT your results.
• Learning Styles Survey using the information you just learned from the ILS Questionnaire.
• Technical Skills Survey I will use this information to begin to create groups.

Watch these videos. They will hopefully provide some interesting perspectives on emerging technology throughout the ages.

• Introducing Le Book - depicts the process that a support person might have used when books were first introduced.
• Web 2.0 . . . The Machine is Us/ing Us - How has/is life changing in the digital age. Prof. Wesch explains this in this video. Learn what Prof. Wesch is learning about the digital age at Kansas State University.
• The Sixth Sense - Dr. Pattie Maes shares her research into creating a wearable device that "enables new interactions between the real world and the world of data." This video is on the TED website. These are short presentations by some of the greatest minds in the world. You will enjoy exploring the TED Talks website. It will definitely replace the time you spend watching TV.

Remember to read pages 1 - 44 in the Disrupting Class book.

photo:flickr.com/GypsyFae