How I keep up-to-date

Here are five e-Newsletters that are delivered to my email box each day. I give them a skim and click on the links that interest me. I save the best articles to my delicious.com account, occasionally forward articles to colleagues, and sometimes find myself exploring unexpected, fascinating sites and blogs for education, leadership, online learning, networking, and more.

1. Edutopia - from George Lucas' educational foundation. Marvelous and exciting examples of what is possible in K-12 education.
2. OLDaily by Stephen Downs -Stephen reads 1o's or maybe 100's of educational blogs each day and posts a summary/link for the 3-8 most interesting sites.
3. Workplace Learning Today by Brandon Hall Research. Like Stephen the Brandon Hall teams reads dozens of blogs and articles. They post links to 3-6 interesting items each day.
4. ASCD Smart Brief - ASCD has a selection of newsletters. This one collects items of interest in education from magazines and newpapers around the country.
5. Higher Ed Morning - Just keeping the pulse on university issue

Commenting on Students' Responses to the NETS-T

I enjoyed reading my students' blogs today. They had to write a post comparing the NETS-T of 2008 with the NETS-T of 2000. They also had to determine where the use of images fit into the NETS-T 2008. Here are some of the trends I saw:

On where images fit into the NETS-T, many of you commented about the need to cite sources, that one shouldn’t just take an image from a site on the Internet and use it. Our students need to understand about copyright issues too. A few mentioned that images may appeal to student creativity, that using images appeals to a variety of learners, and that in fact, the use of images fits into any of the standards. Well done.

We’ll watch a video on copyright this week since this is a major concern. Copyright is part of our digital citizenship unit, which we will start working on. By the way, there are resources in the Course Materials wiki for images that you can use from the Internet. Some need to be cited, some do not.

The comparisons between the NETS-T 2000 and 2008 elicited some great responses:

One person thought that the old standards appeared to written and adopted quickly. Another opined that the old standards might have been more of a precautionary measure rather than a real attempt to address the appropriate use of technology in the classroom.

To summarize more of your responses, the NETS-T 2008 are more technology-focused, less rigid, and address diversity as compared to the NETS-T 2000. In the 8-10 years between the development of the two sets of standards, the world has changed –exponentially- and the new standards attempt to address those changes.

We have a profusion of devices, websites, and applications. There is greater connection throughout the world. Tom Friedman’s book, “The World is Flat”, addresses that notion. Daniel Pink’s book, “A Whole New Brain” gives implications for what it means to thrive in this new era. I recommend both these books to you if you want more depth on where the world and education are heading.

We have been developing the context for educational technology in the 21^st century. I think you all pretty much have a sense of why the new standards are the way they are. That being said, now what do we do?

We’ve begun to explore that process. We are using some of the new tools. Our blogs are in a public space so that we can connect with a global community if anyone happens to notice us.

Here’s the rub: it's natural to:

1. Teach the way we were taught and

2. Teach the way we learn best

Our children are growing up in a different world than we grew up in. It's like teaching children from a different culture. And many who go into teaching happen to like the way school was for them. It’s perhaps harder for us to see how that model has never served all students well. So, technology offers a way to disrupt our thinking about education and approach teaching and learning differently.

I am not sure how this is going to work for all of us. And I intend to continue this experiment. One of the reasons I ask for weekly feedback is so I can see how I’m doing and adjust accordingly.

2+ weeks of teaching ed tech

This week the students had to do a 1-Powerpoint slide summary of an article. The assignments aren't all turned in yet, but I was amazed and pleased by what I saw had been turned in. The students are coming along on their blog posts; they appear to be getting familar with the applications we're using and with why we're using them.

There has been some consternation about the use of tech in schools... and then the article about technology in an early childhood class opened some eyes. I know that my 6 year old grandson navigates through my iPhone with ease to find the light saber and my 10 year old granddaughter will soon purchase an IPod Touch. It's a digital world for them. Their ease and expertise with technology continues to amaze me.

Cool Tools

Maybe it's been around for awhile, but I just discovered cooliris when viewing Alan Levine's Amazing Stories of Openness. CoolIris is an add-on to your browser that allows you to view a collection of pictures or videos in its entirety, on a "wall". You can scroll along the wall, select an image to view. Here's the cool part: the images can be on flickr, facebook, your computer...My grandchildren were mesmerized when we did a google images search for golden retriever puppies and we could browse through the collection. Easy... YES. Cool...YES

Cool tool 2 came to me today from Tom at the Rapid e-Learning blog. It's screenr. It's an online tool for recording videos of your desktop. The video can then be downloaded as an mp4 or sent to your youtube account. Here's my first attempt. Easy... YES. Cool...YES

Enduring Understanding for Ed Tech Class v.1

My task today is to develop the first draft of the Enduring Understandings (EU) for my Ed Tech class. EU are hard. They really do inform the design of the class, and it often takes a bit of work to coax them from the subconscious to written text. I was aided in this process by an excellent paper from Educause: Learn and Technology - "In That Order" by Malcolm Brown. In fact, my first enduring understanding comes from the title of the paper. Here are my draft EU. They seem a bit redundant to me, but they'll do for now.

1.Learning comes first, then technology.
2. The technology supports the learning and student interaction.
3. Teachers and students are partners in utilizing technology to enhance learning.

EDFN 302 Thoughts

I will be teaching EDFN 302 this fall, using the new NETS-T (National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers) as a guide. Teaching something for the first time is always an exciting and a daunting prospect for me. I've developed a brainstorm list of topics. One topic that seems like a good start is to compare the new NETS-T 2008 with the 2000 version. Another topic that intrigues me is to use the new NET-S (National Educational Technology Standards for Students) as a design guide for this course.

I am reviewing various links I have on del.ici.us for interesting online games, brainstorming a survey that I want to give the students, and perusing the Internet for sites that model/discuss the new standards. I have not ordered a textbook for the course because I want my students to use the Internet for resources. After I review the ISTE book on the new NETS-T, I may suggest that the students order the book.

I am into an inch-wide, mile-deep learning, I want all the students to learn a new tool. I am thinking that as a group we could learn Scratch or explore Google Earth.... I really want each of them to learn one tool well for instruction and for management. The exploration continues....

Images in Blackboard and Elive

When selecting images to load into Elive or onto Blackboard, be aware of:

• The size of the file. It should be less than 300 KB, ideally less than 150 KB (these are not hard and fast rules; just recommendations)
• The size of the image. Keep each side in between 150 and 400 pixels.
• Banners for Blackboard are 100-150 pixels by 600-800 pixels. 150 x 600 is a nice banner size.
• Instructor picture for instructor bio is 150 x 150 pixels.

Where to find images:

• Your own
• Flickrcc: creative commons licensed images. You just need to give attribution.
• Animated gifs
• Free clip art

In Mac OS or in Vista, you can look at the file size and the pixel size of an image in properties. In XP, hover the mouse over the image. The info box that pops up gives the size in pixels

Resize images on the web:

• piknic.com
• Picasa probably does this too.
  

Resize image on a Mac:

• Iphoto
• Preview > tools > Adjust size

Resize image on Windows:

• paint.net
• photoresize
• fancy programs like Fireworks or Photoshop

Video on adding images to a Blackboard Item