To what extent do the expectations for students below match what the Read/Write Web is about, and what students are already doing? I started to write this the other way around...how does the Read/Write Web and what students are doing now match the ISTE standards, but that's just not the way it is anymore, is it? Things have changed. We're playing catch-up, no matter how excited we are as adults that we're starting to understand the shift. We're being prescriptive rather than proscriptive (that's fancy talk from my English linguistics days...basically, showing what is, rather than telling it the way it should be).

“What students should know and be able to do to learn effectively and live productively in an increasingly digital world ...”

I. Creativity and Innovation (new) - Students think creatively, construct knowledge, and develop innovative products using technology.
Students:
A. apply existing knowledge to generate new ideas and products.
B. use technology for creative self-expression.
C. use systems thinking to explore complex issues.
D. identify trends and forecast possibilities.

II. Communication and Collaboration (4)- Students use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a distance, to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others.
Students:
A. collaborate, publish, and interact with peers, experts, and others employing a variety of digital media and formats.
B. communicate information and ideas effectively to multiple audiences utilizing a variety of media and formats.
C. develop cultural understanding and global awareness by engaging with learners of other cultures.
D. contribute to project teams to produce original works.
Source: ITSE's latest draft of their NETS recommendations

Does this all capture the dynamic of global conversations?

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Categories: Education, MGuhlin.net

No, I don't have anything profound to say about the conference. I had the good fortune to listen to George Siemens on Day 1, listen to Will Richardson (although I didn't see the connection to Connectivism), received a hundred or so emails via the Moodle discussion, and then promptly missed all the other presentations. I'm going to have to spend some time listening to everything from the beginning, reviewing presentations, etc., and part of the job was going to involve FINDING everything.

Fortunately, John at EdVentures in Technology beat me to it. He's put everything in a nice list and you can download the presentations, the audio/video, etc. Thanks, John!

So, if you missed the Connectivism Conference, drop the audio into your digital audio player, and go to it!

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Categories: Education, MGuhlin.net

The results of yet another online test...these never end. For once, I agree with the results (you know, being Superman was nice but I wanted to be Green Lantern! Isn't that the way it goes?)

The Paladin

You scored 13% Cardinal, 48% Monk, 52% Lady, and 62% Knight!

You are highly moral but also don't shy away from using force if your lord commands it. You are honourable to the point that you would readily sacrifice yourself for a noble cause. Your name will be the subject of tales and song for generations, however their concentration will be less on your deeds in life as on your martyrdom.

You scored high as both the Knight and the Lady. You can try again to get a more precise description of the Knight or the Lady, or you can be happy that you're an individual.

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Categories: MGuhlin.net

Something to invest in or is the built-in Macbook battery good enough?

FastMac claims "up to 5% more capacity" and the batteries feature "sensors in the integrated circuit inside the battery that detect undesirable levels of swelling and/ or a short circuit [and] will power off the battery in certain extreme conditions." These replacement batteries are due to ship "in 30 days" for $99.95 (versus $129.00 for the official model from Apple).
Read Source: TUAW

Worth the investment?

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Categories: Mac, MGuhlin.net

Yesterday, Linspire and Canonical issued a joint announcement that Linspire would begin to base its distributions on Ubuntu rather than Debian, and that Ubuntu users would be able to use CNR to install proprietary applications and drivers, starting with the Fiesty Fawn release.

Linspire will begin basing the Linspire and Freespire distributions on Ubuntu beginning with Freespire 2.0, which will be based on the next release of Ubuntu, Fiesty Fawn. Fiesty is expected in April, and Freespire users will start seeing preview releases based on it sometime in the first quarter of the year, with a final release in the second quarter after the release of Fiesty.
Source: Linux.com

Nifty! Click-n-Run (CNR), in case you don't know, is:

...a free on-line digital software warehouse and one-click delivery service designed to solve the complexity of finding, installing and managing software applications on your Linux desktop computer. CNR.com will be the most extensive resource available anywhere for desktop Linux software.

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Categories: MGuhlin.net, OpenLearning

I just ran across this article by Blue Skunk Blog author, Doug Johnson. Actually, I sort of gulped when I saw Doug's name next to free software in the search results...here's the lead:

Free is Good: A Beginner’s Dozen of No-Cost Computing Tools
By Doug Johnson

Ah, survived the holidays! But if your bank balance is anything like mine right now, you’re looking for ways to save money. Here’s one means of economizing -- stop buying computer software. No, I’m not advocating becoming a pirate. Johnny Depp can pull it off, but I wouldn’t recommend it for educators. (Too few of us look that good in mascara.) Instead, take a serious look at some high quality software that is now available -- at no cost.

Read the rest of Doug's article.

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Categories: MGuhlin.net, TechTips

Looking for a few good CD-burning software? Here's a short list.

Linux:

• Gnomebaker - sudo apt-get install gnomebaker
• K3b - sudo apt-get install k3b

Windows

• ImgBurn
• Deepburner
• DVD Flick - DVD Flick aims to be a simple but at the same time powerful DVD Authoring tool. It can take a number of video files stored on your computer and turn them into a DVD that will play back on your DVD player, Media Center or Home Cinema Set. You can add additional custom audio tracks as well as subtitles of your choice.

Mac:

• Burn

Any other suggestions?

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Categories: Mac, MGuhlin.net, TechTips

Source: WebMonkey using Captioner

I've been exploring a variety of web-based image editors, including the following...let me know if you're aware of any I've missed:

1) Block Posters - Upload an image from your computer and choose how many sheets wide you would like your poster to be once printed.

2) Picnik - With Picnik you can quickly edit all your online photos from one place. It's the easiest way on the Web to fix underexposed photos, remove red-eye, or apply effects to your photos. It lets you pull images from Flickr, yuor computer, from a web site URL, Yahoo or Flickr Search, or a webcam if you have one connected.

3) Snipshot - Includes basic editing tools like crop, rotate, resize, as well as image adjustments like contrast, brightness, saturation, sharpness and hue. 100% web/browser-based, edit big pictures—up to 10 MB, or 25 megapixels.

4) Wikipainting - Enables you to paint images collaboratively.

5) ePassPort Photos - Lets you create passport photos.

6) Fauxto - Image editing...reminded me of Paint. Will require a free account sign up (2 seconds).

7) LiTha-Paint - Pretty nifty tool! Check it out.

Any other suggestions? Oh, and while looking, I ran across these....

Flickr utilities:

1) FlickrLeech

2) FlickrCC - Edit and attribute easily Flickr Creative Commons images.

3) FlickrToys - tons of services, but also, lots of ads. Services include comic book captioner, slideshow, billboard, top cameras, mosaic maker, motivator poster, magazine cover, CD cover maker, calendar, trading card maker, photo fortune, movie poster, hockneyizer photo collage, and a few others.

4) Tons of Flickr Tools here, too numerous to list again. Just check 'em out.

5) Spell with Flickr

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Categories: MGuhlin.net, TechTips

Check out this 60-second anti-Digital restrictions management video that is described by it's author as:

a sixty-second video spot warning of the hidden difficulties consumers face when provided DRM-laden files for their media-purchasing dollar.
Source: no substance, all eloquence blog - DRM and History

Very simple message.

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Categories: MGuhlin.net, OpenLearning

My mom would always come out and yell at me, "Stop playing on the computer!" for the first few years. She bemoaned the fact that I was never going to be a programmer, but yet I spent so much time on the computer...neither of us realized at the time that there might be benefits for non-programmers using computers! I'm sure she changed her mind over time, and when I went into educational technology, my father was vindicated for spending so much money. It's a decision that prompted me to invest in tech for my kids, even though we could barely afford it (remember, i work in education).

But, there was one other reason my mom was worried. My eyesight. I'm horribly nearsighted, and always assumed that it was due to my heavy diet of reading and computers when I was in my teen years. I was surprised to read this report at Future Tense:

Researchers at the University of Rochester have found that people who play high-action video games see better than those who don't. The study showed that people who played action video games for a few hours a day over the course of a month improved performance on a standard visual test by about 20 percent. Daphne Bavelier, professor of brain and congnitive sciences, says video games appear to change the way our brains process visual information.
Source: Future Tense

What do you think? Another plus for students to play high-action (gee, is there any other kind? <smile>) video games? I wonder if schools aren't taking on too much in trying to engage kids with video games in school. Maybe, the State should just provide gaming computer and Internet connection to kids and turn them loose...see what they come up with. what are your thoughts?

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Categories: Education, MGuhlin.net

Something came over me at the TCEA Conference. I need to be deprogrammed, like some cult freak (Thanks to Doug Johnson for this link). I was going to buy a nice PC Torque machine without an operating system, but then, I ended up hanging out with that Mac subversive, Wes Fryer (SpeedofCreativity). There was something about having easy access to a small Mac laptop, using it wherever because it was conveniently small and powerful. As I started to place my order for the PC Torque laptop, I fell into deep lethargy, and everything seemed distant, remote. Suddenly, I was entering www.apple.com on my UbuntuLinux Firefox browser, and found myself ordering a Macbook with Wes' voice in the background...clearly, I had been led astray.

When I awoke the next morning, I felt as if I'd betrayed fundamental ideals. I'd ordered a Macintosh instead of the PC Torque machine I'd planned on for weeks. Alas, I have either backslid into proprietary software ways, or realized the potential benefits of a having a computer that can run Mac and Linux and Windows on one machine. So, I vow that I'll be running the Linux side as much as possible...but the words ring false. Woe is me! Ahh, the hypocrisy!

In the meantime, thought I'd highlight these articles from LifeHacker that refer to running Parallels:

• Side by side Windows and Mac with Parallels
• How to run Windows and Mac apps side-by-side with Parallels
• Resizing Windows Partitions in Parallels
• Quicksilver Apps
• Using Q instead of Parallels - Built on the open-source QEMU software, Q is simply the UI that QEMU does not have. While the performance may not compare well to Parallels, it’s a great alternative if you’re just looking to test websites in Internet Explorer.

Some other nifty things to read and implement on a Mac:

• OpenSourceMac
• Freeware OS X
• FreeMacWare.com (Thanks to Stephanie Sandifer)
• 10 Things Every New Mac Owner Should Know
• The comments in the above article are very useful, especially the use of Command-, to bring up App Prefs, and Command-` which cycles through open apps.
• Top 10 apps every Mac User Should Have
• The Best Unknown Mac Apps 1
• The Best Unknown Mac Apps 2
• Adding Shortcuts to the Finder Toolbar
• ImageTricks
• Instashot screen capture
• iRedLite - control your Mac remotely via USB

Stuff I would like to know but haven't found anywhere, but have observed in presentations (if you'll tell me, I'll post it here, credit you and be grateful!):

• How do you zoom in to a URL or a part of the screen to read text? I saw David Warlick and Will Richardson do this at their presentations and loved that capability but don't know how to do that.
  Update 02/11/2007: Diane Quirk shares the solution: "To zoom in to a URL or part of a screen, hold down the Apple and Option keys and press the + sign. To zoom out Apple-Option and the minus sign. If you go to System Preferences, you'll see Universal Access which will give you Zoom options to play around with."
• Will this work on the Macbook I ordered? Enable 802.11n fast networking on your Mac (for under 2 bucks)
• List of top 10 must-read Mac blogs to get me started

What else do I need to know about as a "new" Mac owner? (I can't claim newbie status...I've run a mac off and on for years). Seriously, being able to run 3 platforms on one machine is just too attractive an offer. I do intend to go Linux but will have to use Mac or Windows as the situation demands...situational ethics.

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Categories: Mac, MGuhlin.net, TechTips

I still remember the first time I bypassed PDF password protection to make a point. The grant evaluator swore by the fact that Adobe PDF files were inviolate; this was important in his line of work because clients sometimes wanted him to change the reports he wrote about their work. He wouldn't believe me when I told him PDF files were not sacrosanct, so I decided to prove it to him. Searching the web for an hour gave me all the tools I needed, and I edited the PDF and sent it back to him.

He was furious with Adobe for false advertising and spent the morning on the phone with them. I was laughing my head off that I'd "made the point" (I was young and immature as ever), and he was grateful to me for having pointed out this chink in the armor of infallibility. All in all, the grant evaluator did great work...and was better prepared in case someone else became aware of the technique. (BTW, let me know if you need a top-notch grant evaluation team).

He didn't know that software had been released to bypass the password and that allowed me to make changes. Now, the information is common info on the Web. But I hadn't seen anyone write about it recently...so, it was with some interest that I read the following:

Say one of your former colleague created some critical sales reports in PDF format but he is not working with the company anymore. In his absence, you have no option but to crack the PDF password in order to open, read or print these PDF files...There are sometimes genuine reasons to unlock or crack a password protected PDF file. You have the legal right to open the encrypted PDF document but forgot the password like in the case below.
Read more

BTW, the article linked also includes the first method for bypassing PDF Password protection.

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Categories: MGuhlin.net, TechTips

I am a person. I am not a consumer or producer above all else. I want to take a stand for slogan free spaces. I see a real need here for advocacy and education. Can we as a society say no to ‘guerilla advertising’? Can we say no to overt advertising? Every concert hall, every sport arena is a sponsored place. My Luddite is screaming here. How do we teach about this?

In the mad rush to become content creators, producers, to escape the yolk of oppressive consumerism and proprietary software, I often forget that I am just one person, that I have desires, dreams, and that all these points of view are just that...points of view. It's so easy to get caught up in the rush of this belief or that, to just know that failure to adhere to a particular ethic will result in ultimate destruction. And, for some things, that's true. Indulge despair, and you will end up dead from drugs, drink, or whatever. Indulge food, and well, the consequences won't hang over your head, but certainly your belt.

In this entry, Susan Ens Funk shares the following:

One of the commentators said that it was an old-fashioned idea that there is a difference between private, personal space and public economic or commerical space. He mentioned that for young people in MySpace, the world is a mash of items - some cultural, some commercial, some personal and the dividing lines are blurred. I believe he is right and I am frightened by it.

How could she not be frightened by it? We are all overwhelmed by advertising. It enters our homes through NetFlix envelopes, through the TV, through pop-up adds, appears in magazines made incarnate as attractive people who imply the product they are advertising made them the eye-candy we see, a dehumanizing experience some might say, and we find ourselves constantly thinking about what we don't have.

Yet, I like the idea about being a producer and consumer. I like the fact that I can produce a product--this blog, my writing--and share it with a wide audience. I like the fact that it's easy to share it with others--not advertise--and that advertisers appreciate that so much they want me to write about their products. And, because I like that, I ignore them because I like the fact that I'm writing free from advertising. How do we teach about this? We encourage others to produce content that is their's, to contribute their knowledge and wealth of ideas but to do so without the advertising, and give it to others under Creative Commons copyright...share alike. It's a prettier word than advertise...it means, "I share this with you. This comes from me, and you can take it or leave it...I don't need your attention, but you can share it with me if you want to."

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Categories:

Kelly shared this, and I honestly had missed it (sorry, sometimes I do other stuff):

I agree that we must seek hope - new hope! We are in a time of great change and, although I see that there will be apple carts overturned, I don't necessarily see it all being negative. What I was doing was looking beyond the walls of the schools we teach, as directed by these students, to offer them some type of glimpse at what they may face. I agree that I was at first taken aback by what Friedman said but, having just been through a major amalgamation, I can see that change, even huge change, is coloured by one's take on the situtaiton. So, our school has embraced the change with the realization that things will be different but good things will happen while others have not and see only doom and gloom, wishing for the past. My comments about the future of higher education are just ponderings about what will happen.

I really want them to turn out to be freeing and give more people greater opportunity but I am not going to ignore that some other things might happen which are negative. As within our own division, to ignore the negativity gives it license to breed. Now, having identified it and named it, we, as a new group, can come to terms with those who are creating the negativity and work to bring about positive change. Vicki and her students may see only positive, which is great, but without those who can identify the negative and actually deal with it, there is a good possiblility that the negative will undermine, to some degree, any positives that are taking place.

So, in relation to higher education and technology, there is not a critical mass of the positive that will sway the majority so it will be those who are willing to identify and counter those who are negative or even neutral that will bring about the change that I describe at the first. I'm in no way pessimistic about the future but neither am I idealistic - love, trust and pixie dust will not get us where we want to go - determination and the belief in what we do will have a huge affect on what we accomplish. I know that you and Vicki do great work and are leaders in the trek. For those others, much further back, the ways aren't as clear , the freedoms aren't as liberal and our voices aren't as well known - some blog in isolation and do not have a readership of 100's to bouy us along. As it was mentioned, with a world full of educators, there are only a few hundred taking in the conference, unaware of that this conversation is even taking place.

As I read Kelly's comment on my post, Passion River, I was reminded that it is so important to not ignore the negative, or extol the positive. It's important that we deal with both, remember the dragon as well as the phoenix.

While the water may look placid, who knows what lies beneath the surface? I like the fact that Kelly is willing to challenge the negative, work to transform it. It's what school administrators are called to do.

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Categories: Leadership, MGuhlin.net

There are times when I am reluctant to write in this blog. I felt one of those times today...I wrote most of today's entries early in the day, a way of getting into the morning, then walked away without publishing them. I ended up visiting Tom's Ribs, wiping out an incredible meal, then promptly fell asleep for four hours. Unbelievable. As a Panamanian, I consider it my duty to take a nap on a daily basis <grin>, but most of those are 1-2 hours, tops. A 4 hour nap means that I was overwhelmed by food, and had not slept enough this past week...which doesn't surprise me.

But, I still felt a reluctance to write. But then, I started to read and the thoughts started flowing again. I started to get excited about things to write about, and as soon as I did, I felt myself in the zone again. It's that sense of pleasure from writing that is addictive, and liberating. I was at my happiest on Friday, writing a grant as part of a team, facilitating a conversation. Unfortunately, it's time to sleep again...what conversations am I missing out on?

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Categories: Education, MGuhlin.net

Not sure if I spelled that title right, but a mis-spelling might allude to the smell coming from blog entries asserting that School 2.0 is just so much hogwash. David Jakes' School 2.0 entry at TechLearning.com has drawn some fire, which BTW isn't harmful. As I read the words "Jakes" (read David Jakes' points about what School 2.0 is REALLY about, IMHO) has written, a mash-up paragraph of terms regarding School 2.0, I'm reminded of my recent conversation with elementary school teachers. While I certainly wish I'd recorded it, the fact is that what is being described is a conversation that is NOT constrained by curricular mandates, fear of reprisal by upper administration. It is a recognition that district curriculum is obsolete, worthless because of its irrelevance. It is irrelevant because it's obvious that it fails to engage children.

While this failure to engage has always been a problem, some children always managed to pay attention and make it through because they realized the value that education could have in their lives. Now, the pace of change being so fast (but hasn't it always been so, in one way or another), children are finding that life outside the classroom is more engaging. Well, as soon as I wrote THAT sentence, it hit me that no, the pace of change is a lot faster than before and that it's not that life outside the classroom is more engaging, it's that life IN the classroom has become LESS engaging. In fact, consider this image:

Now that resonates with me...we've bled out the human factor in our classrooms, the creativity, the drama of learning that we've killed the education beast. Simply, we are trying to control community law in schools...but we just can't do it anymore.

People have always needed a little edge, a bit of thrill in their learning...learning has to mean something, be a lifeline out, or a path to something. Children are treating our obstacles as puzzles to play. This came home with David Warlick's presentating about the millennial learner--they see obstalces as the Boss in a video game, something to be overcome. David called for us to be facilitators, strategy guides, or what I interpreted as "dungeon masters." School environments can also involve vibrant relationships with the people around us, especially the teacher and other students. That's why School 2.0 is so attractive, because for children who know everything, have everything, perpetually in contact and connected with others, there's no need for that teacher-approval once so valuable. It lets the community back into our schools, which have been shut out for more years than i care to consider.

Worse comes to worst, children can find approval elsewhere in the community. That's not to say they don't want teachers' love and esteem, but that they can find substitutes...online. When we talk about School 2.0, I think what we're being invited to do is to welcome learning for the sake of survival, for fun, for love back in.

Learning is in the links and how/why they are made than the content of those links themselves, and more importantly, the engaged conversation students and teachers have about that work. David's offending paragraph is this one:

Unlearning. Relearning. The desire and climate to do both, by all members of the school community in a constant and never-ending self-adjustment dance. Fluid. Moving in a purposeful and positive direction, and with a velocity-never standing still, always in perpetual beta, adapting, with information, conversation, ideas, creativity and contagious energy being delivered via digital tools and networks, all driving the learning experience forward to prepare kids for their world.

In a word, a dance of learning, an ever-changing conversation about the nature of life, and what we know. That we have to shroud the dance in such heavy paragraphs highlights the problems our schools face. Instead of being free to have a conversation, we are proscripted, legislated, mandated, restricted, fossilated, bifurcated, and constipated. We've forgotten what learning is about...it's about conversations! That's what makes writing this blog entry on a computer that's running the UbuntuLinux OS so nice. What's Ubuntu mean?

I especially liked David pointing out this link to Clarence's review of Will Richardson:

When students are aggregating streams of content in many forms, from many sources each day, the ability to lift out certain pieces from that stream to examine them further, or to simply tag them as important to their understanding of an issue is a skill to consider. It is essential information management that has yet to make it into classrooms in any wide spread form. Understanding that a picture from flickr goes with that blog post, which built on a podcast from last week and a comment before that is a difficult, mature understanding of how content is created, distributed, and built upon.

Finding patterns in the conversation, in life, is an essential skill. By externalizing what we're learning, we're allowing others to interpret our actions, to get insights, we're starting conversations they wouldn't have had without us...understanding is socially constructed, not dictated.

It is what makes us human, allows us to build relationships with one another. School 2.0 is an understanding that humans are at the heart of the conversation, not the curriculum, not the lock-step scope and sequence. The Read/Write web is about freedom, the same freedom found in open source, the freedom to share ideas, to level out the playing field to allow us to be people, each with a unique gift to offer each other, rather than a hierarchy of administrators, teachers and students, organized by fear and aggression in a human wolf pack (can you tell I watched Animal Planet tonight?).

In the conversation I had with teachers recently, I sought to leverage the power of the Read/Write Web as a way to foster conversations, to set up an environment where teachers and students are transparent about their learning objectives, the methods they go about doing their work, and their learning. The Read/Write web tools chosen makes such an environment extremely easier to create, rather than not. It is not "high technology" but rather, an renewed invitation to have conversations that people passionate about their content have. But that work was still "baby steps." It was exciting because I was having a conversation about setting up an environment that was about conversations about stuff we all cared passionately about...students making stuff using content they need to know. At the center of that is the expectation that children will be excited about what they're making, the fact they're sharing that with each other and via the Web, that working with the content will be something they put up with. I hope that works.

In the meantime, thank goodness some are choosing to be passionate about School 2.0, either with a manifesto or with an objection. At least I know we're still alive. The only crime is indifference, a protracted withdrawal from the conversation, an intellectual snobbery that denies us all the benefit of your wisdom, and you...well, you, it denies you the benefit of deepening your understanding of how we connect with each other...understanding is socially constructed. If you leave the conversation, we are all poorer without you, and vice versa.

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Categories: Education, MGuhlin.net

Would that all memes were this easy to fulfill...

Source: Miguel's home connection

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Categories: Memes, MGuhlin.net, TechTips

While my daughter loves to read/write, my son is more engaged by media than text. To put it in balder terms, he'd rather play on his computer than read a book, watch TV, go to the movies, or anything. In short, he's addicted. Having your son so obsessed has benefits. When necessary, I balance obsession against desired behavior changes...and it works for now, even though such efforts are doomed in the long-run.

One of the events he struggles with is sustained silent reading. We all read 3 times a week, but the plodding story line of children's books is too slow. He's used to faster plotlines, more interactive games. He reads, but only to satisfy the requirements of the game. He has little interest in the simple books that are age-appropriate. Of course, this was also true of me. I wanted to read adult books--such as sci-fi/western/horror--rather than the relationship crud that seems to captivate some folks. Now, I notice that the Choose Your Own Adventure video games he plays are VERY sophisticated, and people write tomes about them.

So, it occurs to me, that fiction is fiction. Just like Mark Ahlness is encouraging his students to read blogs instead of books, it might not be unheard of to encourage my son to read, not print books, but online resources that are fictional about the games he plays...in print format. Then, I'll encourage him to try online. This might be less costly than checking out books from the library that never quite seem to find there way back.

Thanks, Mark, for the inspiration. It was this paragraph that caught me:

So here's silent reading (SSR - "sustained silent reading") in my reading group this afternoon. Tried this out yesterday, and today the kids were much more comfortable, started getting into it, maybe a little novelty had worn off. What were they reading? Blogs! Who wrote them? Kids!

Maybe, this might work with kids at school, too?

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Categories: Education, MGuhlin.net

A court in Dallas, Texas has found a website operator liable for copyright infringement because his site linked to an 'audio webcast' without permission...Davis argued that he did not actually copy any material, he only provided a link to it which opened the material in a user's media player, but the court ruled that that link broke the law. "The court finds that the unauthorized 'link' to the live webcasts that Davis provides on his website would likely qualify as a copied display or performance of SFX’s copyrightable material," said Lindsay. "The court also finds that the link Davis provides on his website is not a 'fair use' of copyright material as Davis asserts through his Answer."

Judge Lindsay did not look to other cases on deep linking, being hyperlinks that target something other than a website's homepage. Instead, he looked at cases on live television broadcasts. He compared Davis's actions to those of a company sued by the NFL for the unauthorised capture and satellite transmission of live football broadcasts to viewers in Canada. Finding infringement, that court said a public performance or display, for the purposes of the Copyright Act, "includes each step in the process by which a protected work wends its way to its audience."
Read Source

Conflict between the old and the new approaches. Which one are you sharing with your students, teachers and administrators as the most appropriate?

Over at Bump on a Blog, Brian writes:

Web 2.0 represents a shift in how information and ideas are communicated via the Web. In the past, the internet (Web 1.0) was a place where information was simply presented to, and absorbed by, end-users. Information and ideas were made available in push fashion; much like information in a traditional library is made available. Web 2.0 has allowed for the two-way flow of information via the Web. Users can not only absorb, but now also have the capability reflect and respond to that information. Web 2.0 has allowed for true communication to take place. Web 2.0 enables us to collaborate and share with one and other in ways we weren’t able to in the past. A large part of Web 2.0 is about what we are in the process of doing right now, discussing and taking a stance on a topic from two separate viewpoints.

While he's writing about Web 2.0 and what it is about, one of the pieces that he left out (at least, I missed it...correct me if I'm wrong) is the ability to mash-up and remix content. Mash-up is defined as:

A mashup is a website or application that combines content from more than one source into an integrated experience. It is sometimes created as a critique or commentary on an existing work or product.
or as defined here:
This capability to mix and match data and applications from multiple sources into one dynamic entity is considered by many to represent the promise of the Web service standard (also referred to as on-demand computing).

Whether the mash-up concept applies to the use of SFx's copyrightable materials...well, if it's on the Web now, isn't it available for mash-up? Does Davis' use represent a mash-up? And, I guess it must be illegal since DJ Drama was arrested. Maybe what we need is what Jamey Osborne shares in a TCEA presentation about using music from CCMixter. He asks, why not let THAT type of music drive your multimedia projects? Not a bad question at all.

In the meantime, I'll have to investigate Marshall Kirkpatrick's suggestion to experiment with SplashCast, which shares:

SplashCast enables anyone to create streaming media 'channels' that combine video, music, photos, narration, text and RSS feeds. These user-generated channels can be played and easily syndicated on any web site, blog, or social network page. When channel owners modify their channel, their content is automatically updated across all the web pages 'tuned' to that channel.

How is this different from the recently announced Yahoo Pipes?

Pipes is an interactive feed aggregator and manipulator. Using Pipes, you can create feeds that are more powerful, useful and relevant.

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Categories: MGuhlin.net, Texas

My bypassing filters blog entry gets a lot of attention, even though it's not the most comprehensive list of ways to bypass content filters. You can get my up to date list online, but I recently read this The Chronicle article about The Onion Router, TOR via Blog of OG. It was a fascinating read. From the article:

At 9:15 one Thursday morning, there came a polite knock on my mostly closed office door. I was expecting the knock. A student was coming to talk to me about getting into one of my courses, which he needed to graduate. So when I heard the knock, I said, "C'mon in, Kyle." Someone said, "Hello?" and came in, along with two smartly dressed men extending business cards to me. I recognized the speaker as a network-security technician in my university's office of information-technology services. The other men were not familiar, but a quick glance at their cards told me they were detectives on our campus police force. They closed my office door behind them, sat down, took out notepads and pens, and asked if I had a few minutes to speak with them about Tor.

Tor — an acronym for The Onion Router — is a freely available, open-source program developed by the U.S. Navy about a decade ago. A browser plug-in, it thwarts online traffic analysis and related forms of Internet surveillance by sending your data packets through different routers around the world. As each packet moves from one router to the next, it is encoded with encrypted routing information, and the previous layer of such information is peeled away — hence the "onion" in the name. Basically, Tor is a way to surf the Internet anonymously.

That article outlines several reasons why TOR is useful, such as:

1. Someone looking up potentially sensitive information might prefer to use it — like a person who is worried about potential exposure to a sexually transmitted disease and shares a computer with roommates.
2. Abuse survivors might not want anyone else knowing they have visited Web sites for support groups related to rape or incest.
3. Journalists in repressive regimes with state-controlled media use Tor to reach foreign online news sites, chat rooms, blogs, and related venues for information.
4. Tor can also be useful in e-commerce
5. anonymous Web surfing can be used to conceal fraud and other forms of electronic malfeasance
6. Technologies like Tor represent a beacon of freedom to people in those countries, and I would be doing my students a disservice if I didn't mention it.
7. corporate whistle-blowers
8. used by average people like me, as a way to keep innocuous and personal online activities private.
9. Tor is a perfectly legal, open-source program that serves a wide variety of legitimate needs around the world.

I recently received an email from someone thanking me for the list of tools included in my Freedom Fight article.

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Categories: Leadership, MGuhlin.net, Privacy, TechTips

(Left to Right: Librarian, 1st Grade Teacher, 2nd Grade Teacher, Instr.Tech Director (me), 5th Grade Teachers

I had a lot of fun today working with a group of classroom teachers. Since all my team are at the TCEA Conference, it fell on me to go work on a grant project with a campus. I was a bit nervous since it's been awhile since I've participated in grant writing...and the fact that I'd only studied the grant since yesterday--and most of that involved dropping it into a wiki--left me feeling a bit unprepared.

However, I had a ball of a time (I'm the fourth from the left, going left to right in the photo above). They were kind enough to give me a laptop and let me do some writing alongside them, and I anticipate reworking the wiki text through the project. I'm using PmWiki to organize, but I made a mistake that was potentially problematic...fortunately, I was able to quickly reconfigure the content of a single wiki page--the grant proposal--and divide it into multiple wiki pages.

The team of teachers working on the grant was enthusiastic, and highly motivated to apply for the HP grant. The project we're considering was inspired by the Flat Classroom project to some extent...essentially, using a wiki to organize math and science product creation, conversations about content and product, and sharing that with as many elementary students as possible, including the world. Here's how we ended up writing it up:

Our goal is to transcend the barriers of science and math vocabulary and the limitations of traditional text learning to empower students to discover, create, and share information in a global digital community. We will team 5th grade students with “TECHNO–BUDDIES” in the 1st and 2nd grade and invite other schools to join the community. We will utilize a district hosted wiki site to serve as a platform for community wide conversations about student generated math and science digital content.

This community of experiential learners will incorporate text, audio, and images in digital format. Students and teachers will use this digital compilation to build documentaries and an electronic glossary in the areas of mathematics and science. These products are intended for use with elementary grade students in a collaborative effort. The equipment provided by this grant will be the gateway for the teachers to facilitate their own professional learning. In addition it will allow the students to build a compendium of electronic information. That information – such as use of manipulatives, experiments, and illustrations – using the digital cameras and scanners. This will include teacher lesson plans, student created projects including digital storybooks, multi-media presentations, an interactive glossary, and podcasts.
Read Project Description

Of course, I'm excited about the possibilities...and the teachers were as well. We decided we would do this even if we didn't get grant funded. Do you know of a similar type project involving math and science? I would love to investigate what they are doing!

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One of the fun moments in David Warlick's presentation at TCEA 2007's TEC-SIG Luncheon was his showing of this short video clip...he represented it as an example of way kids are mixing things up, using online games to create their own movies.

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Categories: MGuhlin.net

Although I've given up on Dokuwiki (sigh) because it's formatting is so different from the Wikispaces site that I use, I ran across another wiki tool that doesn't use back-end databases. Why didn't anyone tell me about it?!? It's FAST, easy to add stuff on to, simple to backup and edit stuff.

Sitting in over at David Warlick's presentation at the TCEA TEC-SIG Luncheon, I noticed the wiki he uses for handouts was a little different. At first, I thought it was a MediaWiki that had been highly customized. On closer inspection, I see now that it was a PmWiki. I'm going to play with it and set one up...but right now, I'm impressed by the amount of customizing using their Cookbook solutions one can do with it...and the advantage is that all your wiki pages reside on your server rather than a third party location.

What's even more exciting is that you can run PmWiki on your own computer, then synchronize...work and fun never stop!

Two examples:

• Around the Corner - MGuhlin.net Wiki
• HP Grant

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Categories: MGuhlin.net, OpenLearning, TechTips

Doug's (Blue Skunk Blog) recent response put me in the mind of a rubric for leadership. I'm not sure how good such a list could be, but...what if we pulled together a list of everyone's leadership qualities? A user-generated list of valuable leadership qualities? Would such a list be worthy of being collected? If so many of you have written about those qualities that they hold dear, then I suggest the "master list" is worthy of being made because it means something to us.

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Categories: Leadership, MGuhlin.net

Jeram Froese (Left Lane Ends) shares his ideas as to why open source hasn't found its way into K-12 education...

I’ll toss out two reasons that I believe are the primary factors in keeping us from using open source.

1. It’s the way we’ve always done it. Brett Dennen - one of my favorite artists - says it best. Go to his MySpace (http://www.myspace.com/brettdennen) and click on the song, ‘Ain’t No Reason’. For those of you with MySpace blocked in your district (like us), grunt a short/quiet yell, let your anger go, and view it at home. ;)

2. Our technical/hardware/network support staff is a product of a Microsoft/Big Business knowledge network that keeps them engrained in supporting the systems that make these companies money. There are control issues involved, learning a new way of doing things and trying to replicate the current systems with a new structure. But these can be overcome.

So, let it go, people. Give each student a CD/access to the image and make them resintall their own OS if they have problems. Give them rights to do the things we THINK we need to do for them, and save some money in the process. Seems so simple … so why is it so hard to get over our hang-ups?

I agree. Some folks have been coming up with complex formulas regarding change. I have a simple one I'm implementing from now on:

S + M + I + L + E => Change

Sustain current initiatives

Models new approaches

Innovate as much as possible

Laugh and invite others to recognize the silliness of one solution to the exclusion of others in a Web 2.0 world

Empower the powerless

Ok, it's an acrostic, not a formula. I'm lousy at math...ok, I'm lousy at acrostics, too!

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Categories: Leadership, MGuhlin.net, OpenLearning

Jeram Froese (Left Lane Ends)--gee, Jeram, you should go to conferences more often--writes:

I propose that we still utilize time away, kind of like a sabbatical for a short period of time, to reflect in groups and dialog within our own learning networks. After all, I am still sitting in this wonderful little coffee shop after assimilating a whole new chunk of knowledge while I reflected on this single, little thought. With my new proposal verbalized, it is now time for the big question…

If people aren’t getting out of it what they could, the message from the big name presenters can be found in their books, we have our own personal learning network that blows away the current system of continuing education, our reflection is separated from our real-world experience and a cost/benefit analysis didn’t put us out on top - does that make TCEA obsolete?

What caught my eye about this, aside from the factI said something similar recently,was his point about sabbaticals. Note the bolded section above. Believe it or not, that's exactly what I do when I go to conferences! Most of my time is spent, not in a session, but chatting with people. In fact, walking down the convention halls is one of the most powerful experiences I go through and worth the price of admission at TCEA. Seeing everyone, touching base with everyone...it's a different reality than where we work. It is radically different. Think about it:

• Where else can you run into brilliant people who want to tell you something and you actually have the time to listen?
• Where else can you get up when you've "caught enough" and go somewhere else?
• Where else can you go to the restroom when you need to?
• Where else can you answer the phone or call someone or eat when appropriate?
• Where else can you have ubiquitous access to technology?
• Where else can you learn just for the fun of it and/or share that with other people?
• Where can you perform like a seal and get free trinkets to take back to your family and/or students?
• Where else can you get free meals like lunch or dinner simply by listening to a vendor "hawk" his wares?

Not necessarily in schools! That's why, when budgets are shrinking, that MORE people than ever go to conferences. Yes, let's still have conferenes, but realize that the benefit of conferences like TCEA was NEVER the workshops, the presentations, etc. All that is just so much appropriate background noise, like the hum of a well-oiled machine idling underneath you as you have a conversation with your significant other driving down that country road. You need the TCEA machine to create the environment, give you the right ambience, but then, the rest is up to you.

Where else can you be with educators who are passionately rediscovering that teaching is more than enduring slings and arrows of outrageous fortune?

Why no where else but TCEA.

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Categories: MGuhlin.net, Texas

Source: 'City Of Bath Reworked'

I occasionally check to see who's linking to me, and Educational Discourse was one of those. Kelly writes:

Now, as these conversations take place, I wonder how this type of forum, still in its infancy, will impact the generation of students I will be speaking with next month. Will we see a change in the offering of university classes or will we see an aligning of class expectations as universities begin to become more global in nature? Will classes, especially the first and second year general classes be less restricted to site and open to whomever has a spot in a global learning environment? Will we begin to see an emergence of a general concensus globally of a minimum standard? Will there be more transparency at all levels of learning? Or, will the academics begin to wall their own gardens? Will popularity, similar to what we have seen with some of the blogosphere comments, become more important than understanding? Instead of seeing advantages to this ability to share and build, will the human tendencies of greed, envy and lust get in the way?

There were some responses from Vicki and David, and here's mine:

If you haven't already, read Dan Pink's book, "A Whole New Mind." As an administrator responsible for facilitating change, I was ...frightened...at the changes prophesied as required by Friedman. Dan Pink's book offered fantastic solutions...and I have to agree with Vicki--the message is one of hope, one where we get past machine-like living and lives, and tap into the heart of what makes us human--our spirit, our creativity and ability to innovate.

Though we have all been damaged by our schools--for example, why don't I ask questions when someone is lecturing, and just sit there passively, unlike others who actively ask and challenge what they are hearing?--each of us has channeled his/her creativity into some way.

Our mission has to be to "overflow the banks" of the river of passionate creativity. Are the ripples building within?

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It was a bit of a rush today at TCEA, so I had a chance to catch some quick photos and audio of folks and sessions I saw today. I was hoping to talk to more people but I was honestly rushed for time between several meetings and getting from one end of the convention center to another. I did meet some people I had never met before, including Stephanie Sandifer (Change Agency), Will Richardson (Weblogg-ed), Tim Wilson (Savvy Technologist), as well as chat with old friends. One of the wonderful things about a face to face conference is that you can't go too far without running into someone you know. So, here's a quick visual/audio tour of my day at TCEA 2007 Conference.

I was going to post all these as SEPARATE blog entries but ended up just doing this one. BTW, every audio file on this page is MP3 even though its says OGG on the graphic and there are some links to audio that don't have the graphic... Anyways, I had a lot of fun chatting with folks and I hope you have fun listening in!

MORNING

BREAKFAST

I had a slightly rushed, but worth being present for, breakfast with Wes Fryer (SpeedofCreativity), Tim Wilson (Savvy Technologist), and Jamie Osborne (PHP/MySQL database wizard). A fascinating conversation resulted about new efforts, and I was especially interested to hear about Tim's ideas. Wes was kind enough to take this photo (I'm the guy on the far left):

DURING THE DAY
I also had the chance to reunite with Mark Gabehart and Onore Valenzuela, two colleagues I worked with in Northside ISD.

and...

STRATEGIC OPEN SOURCE SIG MEETING
...the new Strategic Open Source (SOS) Special Interest Group (SIG) members were inducted. We didn't have to swear any mighty oaths, do any secret handshakes...I suppose knowing how to use GNU/Linux is esoteric enough! Here's what we looked like:

From left to right, photos include Dirk, Ed, Ken, Mark, Miguel, and Greg. Congrats, guys! I'm sure a more formal announcement will appear elsewhere!

I also had a chance to chat with Scott Floyd (shown below) who is a regular commenter here at Around the Corner...you can listen to my chat with him here about Open Source and find out what he is doing in White Oak ISD with thin clients.

Listen to Scott Floyd, White Oak ISD - implementing USB flash drives with open source software on them for students to take home, as well as using thin clients in a computer lab. You can read the blog he refers to here.

ESCALATOR CHAT
On my way somewhere, I had to ride two flights of escalators and I found myself next to a friendly Tech Apps teacher, Katherine. So, I had a quick chat with her (click to listen in) on the way up. I had a chance t

TEC-SIG MEETING
I ran from this SOS-SIG meeting this morning to get ready for the Technology Education Coordinators (TEC-SIG) meeting taking place at 11:00 AM. Our keynote speaker was David Warlick, but Juan Shepperd from Dell Computer was there to say a few words and introduce David. Dell Computer was there to sponsor the event and there were over 300 Texas Technology Education Coordinators present! Whew!

You can see Juan Shepperd above and that's Wes Fryer listening intently...to Wes' right, and my left, sat David Warlick wolfing down his lunch so that he could be ready to present. David did a phenomenal job, and although I recorded the presentation entitled Millenial Learners, I'm going to link to Wes Fryer's site (read Wes' notes) since he had a better quality recording since he plugged into the sound output directly! Way to go, David!

I also met Tim Holt from El Paso ISD, but regret that I didn't take a photograph.

AFTERNOON

Source: David Warlick

with Will Richardson
Before I started thinking about heading home, I had a chance to drop in and listen to Will Richardson (Weblogg-ed). And, darn it, I was side-tracked by Randy and missed taking a photograph! Thanks a lot, Randy!! <smile>

I hadn't know Will was going to be in town, so I was delighted to get a chance to meet him. He was speaking in a Ballroom and folks were scattered throughout...since I wanted to read the screen, and though I had walked in late, I went up to an almost empty table near the front. Will was doing something I hadn't seen before, which was using a wikispace he'd created to guide his presentation. I can certainly warm up to this kind of presentation because it was word focused...and served as an outline. Although I walked in about 5-10 minutes late, I did sit still and my iRiver T10 picked Will up quite well...listen to Will Richardson. One neat point that Will shared is that he's clickable...David Warlick describes it this way:

He has demonstrated how clickable he is. If you type Will in Google, his blog is the third non-commercial site listed. This is very impressive.

For fun, I typed in "Miguel" and guess what, I was #3 on the list of 117,000,000 hits. Of course, that still not that impressive. Will was #3 out of 2,760,000,000. WOW!

Meeting Stephanie from Change Agency Blog
The day pretty much flew since I had to head back to San Antonio (personal stuff). Of course, as I headed down the hall, I ran into more folks...one of them being Stephanie Sandifer (Change Agency). You can read her notes on Will Richardson's presentation here. She picked me out of the line-up, and let me take a quick snapshot of her:

and, finally, the last folks I saw on the way out the door were the incomparable Patsy Lanclos (Mother of Texas' Technology Applications: TEKS) and Janice Schlottmann (TCEA superwoman):

(Left to Right: Patsy Lanclos, Janice Schlottmann)

Listen to Patsy on Math and Technology at the High School (here's her workshop materials), then Janice on TCEA 2007 and membership/attendance stats for this current conference.

All in all, it was a FAST day.

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Categories: AudioBlog, Education, MGuhlin.net, OpenLearning, Texas

Unfortunately, I had to back out of delivering my TCEA workshops due to other commitments (TCO meeting and SIG meetings). However, I felt pretty comfortable entrusting the workshop to several people. Although I was able to drop in to the session, I could only stay for a few minutes. I felt terrible that I was missing the workshop...and that later, several folks appeared unhappy about the technical portion of the presentation. That aside--although it's tough to put aside--I did have a chance to quickly touch-base with the presenters and one innocent bystander.

 Listen to a quick brief overview by Dr. Maria Kaylor, Dr. JoAnne Ollerenshaw and Laura from Deer Park ISD (who was a great sport and put on the spot).

You can find all the materials shared at the digital storytelling workshop online. BTW, if you're interested in finding a digital storytelling workshop facilitator team, let me know! I'd love to!

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Categories: Digital_Storytelling, Education, MGuhlin.net, Texas

I had a chance to ask 3 people about their reactions to Anita Givens' presentation at the Texas CTO Council Meeting on February 6, 2007. These were really brief, but you might want to listen to them. I ended up taking pictures of the folks separately....

Listen to their reactions

Patti Holub, Executive Director, San Antonio ISD (my supervisor):

Mark Gabehart (Abilene ISD) and Greg Veal (Lewisville ISD)

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Categories: AudioBlog, Leadership, MGuhlin.net, Texas

Image: Anita Givens at Texas CTO Council Meeting on 02/06/2007

Listen to Anita Givens (unedited/uncut)

Anita Givens is speaking...these are my rough notes, and any inaccuracies are my fault because I couldn't type fast enough and paraphrased. My observations are in ][ brackets. Listen to Anita to get accurate info <smile>. Thanks to Anita Givens for granting permission to share this audiocast and photo with you!!.

"We now have a vehicle for sharing what Texas wants to do for tech for the next 14 years. This new plan is from 2006-2020. There 3 things that people want to know:

What is it you want to accomplish? This plan really tells you where we want to go and what it's going to take to get there. There's a lot of talk in the plan about how much it's going to cost. We have about 4.5 million students in Texas. Any number times 4.5 million is a big number.

We can't ask for more than we got before...we want to restore the tech allotment to $115,000,000. We are now back at level funding. In the grand scheme, there is a long road ahead. It will be the end of May before we know what the funding is going to be. It's important to share why the investment in Ed-tech is SO important. You've prob heard from the national perspective, that there are some key things--global competiveness, investment increase in achievement in math and science, better prepared workforce, data-driven decision-making.

[Anita is emphasizing the impact of tech and its importance].

We're busy implementing House Bill 1. HB1 provides $275 per high school students...some of that is for advancing the academic opportunities those students have. Also a need for a 4x4 curriculum. Guess where we have the fewest teachers at our HSs...math and science. Looking for online courses, videoconferencing, technology is one of the strategies for achieving that.

[someone in the audience asks why we can't pay teachers to stay in high school in these areas...not articulated to Anita...why not?]

End of course tests are being developed as online tests. Whether we continue to put TAKS online, a combo of TAKS and end of course, or end of course, the primary delivery method will as an online test. One of the things we talk about is...it's fine to use the tech to do those things, but don't forget about the tech that has to be in the classroom for the instructional side. We know that people recognize the need for that.

Today, the House Public Education Committee, meets for the first-time. The chair of the committee is very interested in tech. There are other members who have expressed an interest in tech. A few bills have already been introduced last year is Rep. Madden is a state-wide virtual school network. Find some way to structure online learning across the State. There is a lot of interest in doing something at the state-level of coordination. What it might look like, we have no real idea. Know that is on the minds of a lot of folks. Depending on what happens, it could have a definite impact on your plans and how you will accommodate online learning.

Another one is how the telecommunications infrastructure fund collection is being used. They've stopped all that has been done with TIF funds, but collection is still occurring. $210 million was collected, but $115 million was paid for the tech allotment. The TIF is the source of funds for the state technology allotment. We know that Senate Bill 1 has the $115 million in the appropriations bill out of general revenue. As they stop that collection, that's going to lower the amount available...whether or not they stop that collection, what impact will that have on the tech allotment? What's the revenue system stream or funding source? (e.g. general revenue).

When you say the word instructional materials, it means diff things to diff folks. Discussion of a textbook allotment, textbook/tech allotment, and discussion continues about how to change that process. In the meantime, HB1. The Board adopted secondary math materials.

Another piece of the puzzle known as ancillaries...items that the publisher provides as part of the textbook for "free." Lot of CDs come with these materials. Publishers were concerned about changing the adoption process since it was clear the legislature wanted more electronic content. So Proclamation 2004, there 14 electronic products that made the list, as well as the ancillary list. have any of you seen those materials? Do you know what's coming? No one else but math teachers have heard this. Some are providing software generated assessment tool, access to web sites, but some are providing online edition of print. Many of them have a student response system, a scanner, a laptop for the teacher, some have an LCD projector, and some have an interactive whiteboard, and some have all of those.

Your math teachers may be selecting math materials and technology that will be introduced for free in schools. We need to be talking to our Math folks to find out what they are selecting. If your dept is not in close communication with Math Depts, you [tech dept] could be surprised.

After math, the next area up for adoption is K-12 Reading/Language Arts. This is the largest area up for adoption...there is a lot of stuff that comes with that particular content area. Back in 2004, if enrollment growth continued, that the cost of those two proclamations could be a billion and half dollars. They are looking at technology as a more effective way to deliver instructional content.

[this is great because it means that we will have to equip teachers and classrooms with technology...glad I submitted this, but would have been happier if we'd been listened to sooner]

The perception is that schools see textbooks as free, they're entitled to them. The constitution says that schools are entitled to them. But is this the best way of delivering economical materials? Is this economically viable and appropriate for kids? things change very quickly...so rhetoric is that we still have textbooks in classrooms that are older than children using them. They perceive that there is a lot of free content out there...you can prob teach using what's available for free on the web.

[they is legislature, I believe]

We did not issue a proclamation 2006, but there will be a proclamation 2007 for elementary...proclamation 2008 for secondary, but none of the decisions have been made. We also know that the state auditors office has surveyed all the textbook coordinators in the state about how that operates...something is going to happen but we don't know for sure what will happen. that's for the upcoming session.

The other thing we're trying to look at is the possibility of online courses, review of instructional materials with online materials, possibility of online testing...put all those things together in an online environment, it's going to have an impact at the state level and districts and how we plan for the future. There is going to be opportunities to talk through best practices and TEA will want to hear back from you. If one of those things is to step back and get out of the way, then we need to do some planning. This will be important to leverage the wisdom of those involved in day to day work to ensure that this is all beneficial.

There is a lot of interest in expanding TIF from legislators, but they are also interested in going in different directions.

Question from audience: What amount was TEA shooting for the Tech Allotment?
It would cost almost $200 per student. The State Board wasn't comfortable for that. They approved $50 for student for 07-08, and $60 for 08-09. Some legislators have proposals for increasing state allotment by $25 per year.

Question: Any serious discussion regarding providing math/science teachers a raise to keep them?
There has been talk of a special stipend and conversations are taking place around that. In the next few weeks, we'll hear some more

Textbook-credit pilot...what's up with that? That pilot ended in 2004 so there's no money involved. What has happened is that a bill was introduced to expand that pilot state-wide.

[More was said, and I hope to share the digital recording of Anita's presentation.... ]

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Categories: AudioBlog, Leadership, MGuhlin.net, Texas

Have you read the E2T2 story on ESchool? That would cut budget again for educational technology? We need to talk this up with the tecsig group, don’t we? That doesn’t sound to good as to what I got out of the article.
Source: Technology Director on a Texas-wide list

As I walked into the Austin, Tx Convention Center this morning to attend the Texas Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Council meeting, who did I find sitting at a table? My old boss, Dr. Don Knezek (now ISTE CEO).

It was a joy to see Don. As I read eSchool News in response to a question posed by a tech director, I see Don quoted.

"President Bush's decision to eliminate funding for EETT fails to meet the needs of America's students," said Don Knezek, chief executive officer of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). "I simply cannot understand how this decision squares with the administration's stated goal of ensuring that our nation's students can compete globally and effectively in math and science." Knezek added: "The administration's proposal completely ignores the vital role digital technologies play in those disciplines. Moreover, it turns a blind eye to the importance of exposing all American students to the technology tools and skills they'll need for future success in school, work, and civic life."
Source: Bush budget again would cut E2T2, eSchoolNews

What are your thoughts?

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Categories: Leadership, MGuhlin.net, Texas

Randy writes at Teaching Better with Web 2.0:

I am in Austin for the Texas Computer Educators Association convention today. I will be attending a session by Miguel Guhlin entitled “Setting Up Web 2.0 in Your District” this afternoon. I will post my notes as it goes along.

Well, I'm in Austin, too, but I won't be giving this session, Randy, since I have to be at a meeting. However, one of my team--Greg Rodriguez (pictured below working on Web 2.0 workshop but camera-shy)-- will be there on my behalf. He's going to do a fantastic job, but if there's anything that you have questions about, please don't hesitate to ask.

BTW, I tried to leave a comment on your blog Randy but was unable to. Hmm...

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Categories: Education, MGuhlin.net, Texas

Sitting in at the Texas CTO Conference on Tuesday, February 6. Lots of CTOs, Executive Directors of Technology...about 35. I'm recording the session and hoping that the audio comes out alright. Here are a few folks participating...

First presentation: CoSN Overview

Listen to Keith Krueger from COSN

One of their core values is...

The primary challenge we face in using technology effectively is human, not technical. . . .

[Aside: Anita Givens, TEA Ed-Tech Director has just walked in]

These notes are not going to be verbatim, at least not right away. I'm goingHelp leaders why technology directors are important. Technology is seen as one more department in what the District does. We really need...technology horizontally enables the entire enterprise. Technology enables everything the school district does. The Superintendent needs to include technology directors/CTOs at the Cabinet level. The speaker is encouraging everyone to sign up as a member...problem with that is that CoSN is so expensive. The benefits include access to lots of information from the "national" perspective...as I reflect on this, it's interesting to note that bloggers are distributing much of the information that is touted as being available, although I'm sure there is definitely value-added in joining CoSN. I see the real benefit of CoSN as putting lobbyists out there. But, what is it exactly that the lobbyists are advocating for?

The speaker is now sharing there are 6 chapters, Texas CTO Council being one of them. They are having a K-12 School Networking Conference March 28-30, 2007. The title is "Bridging Individualized Learning and High-Stakes Accountability." They don't see NCLB going away, so they want to focus the conference on bringing every child up. I'm not exactly excited about this approach...now, they're sharing about Gaming and Simulations, one of the conference topics. Is gaming really going to be the way we meet NCLB? They have Marc Prensky giving a talk. Some of the other presos will include individualized learning plans for every student, administrators 1:1 project, Jim Hirsch will talk about using open technologies, state breakfasts which is a nifty idea...you can meet others from your state at each breakfast.

Now there is some discussion regarding free webcasts, K-12 open technologies committee...their goal in this committee is:

Helping educators evaluate and adapt open technologies in K-12. Some discussion regarding New Implementation studies, such as Indiana LINUX Desktop program (inACCESS) and Saugus, CA Enterprise Open Source. They also mention Value of Investment--as opposed to return on investment--which seeks to provide educators the tools to better understand the costs and benefits of proposed technology projects. Other stuff includes upcoming case studies on online learning (in house vs outsourced), one-to-one initiatives, cyber-security, data-driven decision-making, total cost of ownership to the classroom, etc.

The speaker is now sharing that he's just starting with blogs and podcasts...going to Asian countries and see how these high-stakes countries are using ICT, and he blogs about it. His presentation comes to an end...you can find everything at http://www.cosn.org/

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Categories: Leadership, MGuhlin.net, Texas

Zillions of new blogs coming up every day, but here's one that announced via the Connectivism Conference...

The Center for Intellectual Property (CIP) at the University of Maryland University College is excited to announce the launch of a new blog portal addressing the cultural, political and legal context of copyright issues: (c)ollectanea! http://chaucer.umuc.edu/blogcip/collectanea/

The new (c)ollectanea blog will serve as an online discussion platform for the current and future Center for Intellectual Property scholars. Today, join one of the leading copyright scholars in the country, GEORGIA HARPER as she provides insight and leads discussions with guest bloggers on issues relating to copyright generally, with a specific focus on issues facing the education and library communities. Georgia K. Harper serves as the CIP 2006-2008 Intellectual Property Virtual Scholar and the Scholarly Communications Advisor for the University of Texas at Austin Libraries. Previously, Ms. Harper specialized in copyright law and created the well known and widely used online publication, The Copyright Crash Course, for the University of Texas System. CIP is one of the leading online educational centers providing training, and solutions on copyright issues affecting the higher education community. This new blog, (c)ollectanea, furthers the Center's mission to provide timely copyright resources for educators. Although the blog will address the needs of the education and library communities, all are welcome to engage in the discussion and contribute.

Worth checking out?

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Categories: Education, MGuhlin.net

How do you justify, defend, empower or endorse teachers going to TCEA?

In response to the question above, I sent the following response...note that I borrowed from an earlier post. I hope my interpretation was accurate and didn't totally flub things up. I say that because someone called me up and told me I'd lost everyone after the first paragraph...in the sense that I was messing with their bread and butter, moving too much cheese, etc. Unfortunately, I was painted as a radical when I'm just observing changes others are making successfully...what do you think?

This obstacle to sending teachers to TCEA presents an opportunity. I would like to discuss an interesting alternative to--or perhaps, a way to complement--the TCEA Conference. Now, let me get my biases out of the way. I truly enjoy attending the TCEA conference each year and believe it to be as good as, or better, than other national conferences. This email is just floating ideas out there...I'm not trying to put pressure on future conference chairs, just having a conversation.

In regards to past TCEA Conferences, when I can, I try to send as many people as possible to TCEA because sending folks to a conference is really one of the primary ways to generate excitement for using technology in schools. However, this perspective is facing challenges such as impacting instructional time in the face of TAKS test-prep, shrinking budgets, and the perception of diminished esteem of technology.

The Read/Write Web--a.k.a. Web 2.0--allows us to leverage new technologies and establish venues for the types of conversations that traditionally take place at face to face conferences. I'd like to suggest we, as an organization, put on an Online Conference for the future. Based on recent online conferences--such as the K-12 Online Conference and the Connectivism Conference--it's definitely worth considering doing this. We've seen some of the benefits of putting resources online for TEC-SIG membership, but a coordinated effort by the organization as a whole...wow, that would be awesome.

I am enthused about the possibilities of taking any conference to the 2.0 standard, but because I like TCEA the most, the idea of having a "TCEA 2.0" conference gets me even more excited about the possibilities. However, I'm not imagining this for the 2007 conference. This phenomena is too new. But, and this is MY opinion, it is definitely worth investigating for future TCEA Conferences.

Any future conferences will have to consider the following ways that Web 2.0 tools--blogs, wikis, audiocasts--are changing traditional conferencing:

1. Communication in the form of conversation...must facilitate two-way discussion, discourse, and debate with little or no moderation or censorship. This means that users can blog, record audio from, and share content on their own, as well as have direct conversations with other speakers without the mediating agency--in this case, TCEA--getting in the middle. For TCEA, the challenge is building the platform for these conversations to take place without getting in the way.

2. Participants in social media are people, not organizations. I see the organization's role here as a way to leverage the tools needed for people to connect to each other in ways they can't right now. For example, we're all accustomed to walking down the hall at the TCEA Convention center and seeing folks we haven't seen for a year. For me, this is a wonderful experience...it's the face to face contact. However, I can't connect with everyone at TCEA...even though I know there are people attending that have answers to questions I have. If TCEA could establish a virtual place where I can connect with those folks, it could greatly expand the impact of its conferences. This could be as simple as using Moodle--which is what the Connectivism Conference is doing--or a central blog with supporting wikis, which is what the K-12 Online Conference did.

3. Honesty and transparency are core values. Spin and attempting to control, manipulate, or even spam the conversation are thoroughly discouraged. Many conversations are spun in a certain way, usually to reflect positive aspects. However, every conference has warts and problems. When users ONLY see the positive, they have a right to be suspicious that they aren't getting the full story. Bloggers are providing insights into what works, what doesn't, and offering suggestions. This type of transparency is powerful because it is honest and builds trust in online environments...it's not about marketing, in other words.

4. It's all about pull, not push. "Pull systems let people bring to them the content and relationships that they want, instead of having it forced upon them by an external entity...with extremely large audiences. As you shape a social media community, understanding how to make embrace pull instead of push is one of the core techniques. In social media, people are in control of their conversations, not the pushers."

This means we need to encourage our teachers, administrators into using tools like Bloglines to learn how to subscribe to content and keep up to date. I can honestly say that when I read magazines these days--Educational Leadership, Learning and Leading, Scholastic Administrator--I find the content to be a repeat of what's already out in the blogosphere. And, I have access to actual presentations. One of my favorites is Stephen Krashen (recorded by Wes Fryer) and what he has to say about Accelerated Reader, Libraries and Reading in general. His is an awesome presentation and I never would have heard it if I wasn't subscribed to Wes Fryer's blog, SpeedofCreativity.org

5. Distribution instead of centralization. "Social media is highly distributed and made up of tens of millions of voices making it far more textured, rich, and heterogeneous than old media could ever be (or want to be). Encouraging conversations on the vast edges of our networks, rather than in the middle, is what this point is all about."

A conference is about enabling conversations...any organization (including TCEA) that's planning future conferences is going to have to take social media into account and wrap itself around the connections such media enables, rather than trying to use the social media to extend what is already occurring. The shift is not unlike what is happening in business, and what change will look like in our schools. The future is unwritten (to quote that popular song)...

So, what about a Texas K-12 Online Conference? Anyone up for that?

Find out more:
Connectivism Conference - http://connectivism.ca/blog/2007/02/online_connectivism_conference.html
K-12 Online Conference - http://k12onlineconference.org/

Then, I had this fun conversation with TUANZ (pronounced "two-andz") writer, Sarah. I'll post some of the main points from our conversation later.

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Information technology has catalyzed the creation of new forms of communication, self-expression, and collaboration. Social networking, podcasting, and videoblogging exemplify a do-it-yourself culture where peer-to-peer, multi-modal communication challenges traditional text-based, authoritative channels. The co-creation of material and the emergence of amateurs as authorities, as epitomized by wikipedia, signal a cultural shift among many of today’s learners. And, with the Web as learners’ information universe—not the library—no learner is ever far from abundant information. In a rapidly changing environment, how well is education keeping pace with learner expectations, IT capabilities, learning principles, and cultural shifts? How much agility—or stability—is required?
Source: Diana Oblinger, Connectivism Conference

I'm continually amazed at the stuff coming out of the Connectivism Conference. I'm not sure I understand "multi-modal communication" but I do know that a cultural shift is underway...and I'm excited about the change. In one paragraph, she's summarized the powerful tidal wave of change that's slamming into schools and the people who work in them. Can we maintain the status quo in the face of all this change? The answer is obvious--NO. I can't wait to catch her presentation as a podcast.

Diana will be presenting on Tuesday, February 6. Unfortunately, I'll miss her presentation since I'll be in another meeting at that time where Internet access is uncertain--a face to face conference in Texas. Ahh, the irony.

One of George Siemen's presentation slides reads as follows:

As I read the rhetoric calling for new learning models, I wonder if the approbation isn't more about the fact that technology is being used, that it is bringing us all together in ways impossible to accomplish in the past. At George's presentation earlier, there were 197 people in the "room." That wouldn't be so astonishing except that we were from all over the world. Technology is transforming how we communicate, and everything we know is being challenged...

I'm curious to find out what Bill Kerr is going to say later this week. My only advice is that he use short words with a few syllables to explain it. Maybe I'll understand what's being discussed. What I do know is that I'm incredibly excited about the ability to converse at a distance, to engage others, especially our children.

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Categories: Moodle

Euan Semple writes:

The real gold dust [in social computing] is in difference, dissent and debate. Surfacing things you didn’t know, dealing with the things you’d rather not and connecting people you’ve kept apart.

So, how is difference, dissent, and debate "handled" in your district?

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The majority of deaths and injuries from earthquakes are caused by the damage or collapse of buildings and other structures. These losses can be reduced through documenting and understanding how structures respond to earthquakes. Gaining such knowledge requires a long-term commitment because large devastating earthquakes occur at irregular and often long intervals.
Source: Building Safer Structures

Crumbling building structures seldom leave room for doubt--One look and I know I wouldn't allow my children in the building, and the question on my lips is, "How come this building hasn't been condemned or torn down yet?" and, if I lived in California, I might also ask, "What if there's an earthquake?" Fortunately, I don't encounter crumbling structures often, but some argue, I work in one. Of course, I'm not referring to the physical building, but the metaphorical building we ALL work in--U.S. K-12 education. Amidst the conversations of necessary change for the future, a convenient whipping boy is K-12 education. Alvin Toffler's recent interview printed in Edutopia is shocking in its honesty. And, who can blame Toffler? After years of advocating for change, all that's left to show for it is our current education system. Some might argue that looking at the shadows too long will forever blind you to the light. Maybe, that's true...or not.

My recent quote of Toffler--which by the way, Will Richardson in Connectivism Conference presentation referenced a quote from the same article on the speed of change in schools (classic bandwagon appeal, did you catch it? You might want to listen to George Siemens as well) --has drawn fiery responses from two well-respected bloggers. I suspect Toffler touched a nerve. I'm reminded of an NPR Fresh Air story of a photographer who goes into the South and, as I recall, is led by a poor man dressed in resplendent white to his humble abode of cement blocks. Despite the humility of the building, the poverty, the lack of electrical and phone connections, the man in white is proud of his home. After all, he built it with his own two hands, the sweat of his brow, the ingenuity he was gifted with.

I am reminded of the story because I wonder if Toffler's isn't right, a modern day contractor looking to build something new, but not quite sure of the possibilities until the crumbling buildings are torn down. It's clear Toffler's touched a nerve because he offends and disappoints. But is Toffler wrong in spite of his bluntness, his speaking, perhaps, from a profound sense of disappointment at the rate of change in schools?

One blogging K-12 education administrator writes:

And this would be the same educational system that gives the US a vibrant middle class and high standard of living for most, a low unemployment rate, more patents than any other country, and still the most democratic system of government in the world? I am well aware that our system does a very poor job of serving too many children, that we could do better with all children, and that we may not be teaching our students everything they will need to know or be able to do in the coming years. But I get very anxious when anyone says toss out the old without providing a model proven to be better. I was very disappointed in Toffler's interview. He's become a clueless old man, I'm afraid, dissing the present, but not offering solutions for the future.

The sentiment is echoed by another, these words crying out for justice and equal treatment:

It was a place where students were treated with dignity, were fed, and had some order in otherwise chaotic lives. Oh, and BTW, there was also teaching and learning going on. This dedication to children goes on today in schools across our country. For the most part our teacher corp is caring and accomplished. I am a stand for change and for honoring the amazing work that is being done every day by our schools. This argument by Toffler is offensive. It sounds so profound and rolls so easily off the tongue...but it's really an insult to my wife, and to the many educators in my life whose work I respect and who inspire me with their effort on behalf of children.

Toffler is remarking on the state of the building that we are in and that it needs to be torn down. Those of us IN the building may find the remarks offensive, but that may be because we live in the dilapidated building. Maybe, what we need to consider is that while we may be actively contributing to keeping this building from falling down around us, our children may have better opportunities in a new construction.

Schools need to change, but there is a tremendous tension--like an earthquake--that is building up, and when it moves, this will be catastrophic. That is the message that Thomas Friedman, Dan Pink, and others are warning us about. Change, it's a-comin'. We either pick up the sledgehammers ourselves and make the change, or the walls will come tumbling down at inconvenient times.

While some liken change in schools to a hurricane, I think of it as an earthquake that will shake everything loose. Are the buildings we have now Web 2.0 Safe structures?

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Categories: Education, MGuhlin.net

Is asking these two questions enough?

1. How are you building your network?
2. How are you modeling your learning?
   Source: Questions asked during Will Richardson's preso at the Connectivism Conference

Of course not! But, they are still, powerful responses to offer to schools because they reflect our own learning and action. I'd love to see answers to these questions that Will Richardson asked...but answered, not from a personal blogging perspective, but from a work perspective. How are you building your network at work? How are you modelling your learning at work? What specific steps would YOU take to facilitate this in your particular environment? Leave your list on this wiki page.

Scott (Dangerously Irrelevant) answers this question in one way, suggesting we take the Jim Collins' approach.

Read Jim Collins work, and you'll soon run into the idea of a "big hairy audacious goal." When I read the acronym--BHAG--a part of me shudders a bit. Really? And what makes you think that declaring a BHAG is REALLY going to make a difference?

Then I remember one of my favorite quotes...once you really commit to a goal, all sorts of stuff starts to materialize to support you. Here's Dr. Scott McLeod's call for a BHAG:

I think we also need a BHAG: a big, hairy, audacious goal. A tangible, concrete target that lets us know when we’ve reached some crucial point. A new story (or three or four…) is a necessary component, but I don’t think it will be sufficient in and of itself. I think we need a new story and a BHAG, because the BHAG will help drive action and allocation of resources. A new story tells us what the issues are but it doesn’t necessarily help people know what to do. The BHAG helps people understand where we might go and how to get there. Together a new story and a BHAG will help educators, and parents, and community members, and politicans create the will and the action to move us forward.

Barbara (Dare to Dream) follows up on Scott's call for a BHAG. She writes:

So do you have a BHAG? "A tangible, concrete target that lets us know when we’ve reached some crucial point." ( Scott Mcleod)...Just as the story has been shared, ripped and remixed I think we need to articulate our BHAGs so we can draw inspiration and ideas from each other as well as clarify our own thinking. So who is willing to take the challenge and articulate their BHAG?

One would suppose that School 2.0 was that BHAG. I hadn't taken the time to read Chris Sessum's manifesto, but I did today. I wasn't impressed. It appeared to be more of a laundry list of what's wrong with schools than a vision of what could be. Chris Long and John Pederson come closer to what I had hoped for.

Until now, I'm not sure I was ready to hope for more. With all this Toffler-talk about razing schools, not having buildings that are Web 2.0 Safe Structures, I found this quote to blow my mind:

People at the edges of your organization do not have access to the same massive existing resources that those at the center do, they have to take in new, previously unknown, inputs in order to create new value...Many of the structures and processes we have in place in modern organizations are reporting mechanisms built to filter unnecessary information and to wash undesirable information from reaching unprepared ears, but modern social software tools give us far more bandwidth that allows us to both hear more disruptive thinking and information, and also deal with that information in a way that was not previously possible.
Source: FASTForward Blog

Hey, am I living at the edge of my school district doing Read/Write Web, or am I in the middle maximizing current assets? I'm not surprised administrators find the idea of razing schools offensive. But that they are offended MAY highlight the fact that administrators maintain the status quo, telling us how great things are now. On the other hand, innovative classroom teachers who work at the edges, may have previously unknown inputs needed to create new value. What is the new value in School 2.0, something that will help us bring regular goals from the edges--something dramatic--and systematize it as a BHAG?

Share your BHAG online...

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At last, someone who I agree with completely. It's time to shut schools down.

You've been writing about our educational system for decades. What's the most pressing need in public education right now?
Shut down the public education system.

That's pretty radical.
I'm roughly quoting (Microsoft chairman) Bill Gates, who said, "We don't need to reform the system; we need to replace the system."

...

I just feel it's inevitable that there will have to be change. The only question is whether we're going to do it starting now, or whether we're going to wait for catastrophe.

Source: Alvin Toffler, Future School, Edutopia

The sky is falling, the sky is falling. Where's my handy-dandy trash-can lid?

via Web 2.0 and School Administrators

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Categories: Education, Leadership, MGuhlin.net

Lots of folks have been linking to that Machine is Us/ing Us video hosted on YouTube that helps folks better understand Web 2.0. Thanks to Kyle B for pointing it out in a comment to an earlier post of mine. However, this image shared via Harold Jarche is what catches my attention in a visual sense. It doesn't mean the video isn't compelling, but I'd rather read it as a graphic organizer or as a summary.

Thanks to Dion Hichcliffe's Web 2.0 Blog for developing the image...the following point is what is causing such an uproar in our schools...

Primarily because it's a powerful democratizing force due to its pervasive, low cost nature; anyone can get in the conversation with only a small investment of their personal time and access to a network. And since communication is essentially free over computer networks today, combining an architecture of participation powered by network effects makes social media platforms almost certainly the most powerful form of media yet created.

Democratizing. Powerful. Social. Change. Isn't this what America's founders dreamed about? Dion makes some additional points that are spot on:

1. Communication in the form of conversation...must facilitate two-way discussion, discourse, and debate with little or no moderation or censorship.

2. Participants in social media are people, not organizations.

3. Honesty and transparency are core values. Spin and attempting to control, manipulate, or even spam the conversation are thoroughly discouraged.

4. It's all about pull, not push. Pull systems let people bring to them the content and relationships that they want, instead of having it forced upon them by an external entity...with extremely large audiences. As you shape a social media community, understanding how to make embrace pull instead of push is one of the core techniques. In social media, people are in control of their conversations, not the pushers.

5. Distribution instead of centralization. Social media is highly distributed and made up of tens of millions of voices making it far more textured, rich, and heterogeneous than old media could ever be (or want to be). Encouraging conversations on the vast edges of our networks, rather than in the middle, is what this point is all about.

These are incredibly powerful concepts...what's challenging for schools is the response...I'm exploring ideas here, and maybe not going deep enough.

1. Conversations are to further some instructional or administrative objective, to transfer a mandate or information...conversation without moderation or censorship isn't desired because the focus is on getting things done according to a particular agenda, not "democratizing" education where all can participate and engage in the debate. And, censorship is actually desired because it protects the school organization's managers/handlers/ "leaders."

On the other hand, what tremendous potential schools have for bringing people together via Web 2.0 environments. Instead of having solutions that do not consider the needs of ALL stakeholders, they can all contribute to the solution. While a decision has to be made, there is no longer the excuse that you didn't have your say.

2. Participants in schools are organizations, groups of people because any one person is not powerful enough to take on the District. That's why we have unions advocating on behalf of groups of teachers. What happens to the unions when teachers can represent themselves? What happens to the mediator between District and employees when the employees can make their case known to a world wide audience?

3. Honesty and transparency are prized only insomuch as they do not embarrass or threaten the status quo. Too much honesty or transparency has to be controlled, ignored, or pushed out. We don't really want to know what's going on as an organization because it's ALWAYS in the best interests of the organization NOT TO KNOW. This means that while executives may know what's going wrong, everyone is afraid to say something about it. Web 2.0 tools make it possible, if not dangerous, to get the word out...even if it's done anonymously. In schools, everyone is busy protecting status quo. What are the secrets you are afraid to confess in public? Why?

4. Pull systems are the most difficult areas to address in schools. There is a tremendous amount of work in educating teachers, administrators that pulling information that you are interested in is of value. Once that value is shared by increasing numbers, the Organization will fight back. This is because it's NOT in the interests of the Organization for people to seek out their own staff development...especially if they want to PUSH a particular curricular strategy or approach. When the curriculum is out of date, PULLing your own curriculum results in severe mis-alignment between what the District says SHOULD be taught and what IS taught.

5. Distribution of conversationalists means a more inclusive environment...you're not excluded because it's so easy to bring you into the conversation. No longer are we having conversations over here, while you're stuck OVER THERE. Instead of central body making all the decisions, it's now possible to have conversations across the District without leaving your office. We can collaborate on documents

These are some quick reflections about how Web 2.0 is going to hit schools, but much more needs to be considered. These are simply MY efforts at better understanding the changes. I do know that those of us responsible for introducing these Web 2.0 points in schools will either be greeted as heroes, or martyred. Again, the key is to focus on a grassroots approach where it becomes obvious to everyone, from superintendent to students to Board members that PUSH isn't as good as PULL, that two-way conversations rather than top-down edicts are the way to go, that honesty and transparency are ALWAYS to be valued not just because it's politically expedient, and the more people one has at the table, the better...and the virtual table is large indeed.

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Categories: Transparency

On January 10, 2007, Jeff Utecht wrote in Pedagogy Defines School 2.0:

School 2.0 although driven to change by the advancement of technology is not about technology, it’s about the advancement of society, of our culture as a world. Technology played a large part, but it is society that has changed. Everything from out-sourcing work to Asia, to the built in GPS in your car, to the phone/pda/web/music/video/picture iphone. Society has changed [and] that’s why a new school is needed...Schools need to change because our society has changed. Placement on the earth is becoming irrelevant. Being able to connect to others is what is relevant.

It’s about understanding a world in which connections and communicating with others is at the foundation of how we learn, that through creating our own knowledge not from what a teacher tells us, but rather from what we read, listen to, and watch ourselves is far more powerful...School 2.0...is a school that defines learning and knowledge not by seat time, or hours spent on a project, but by what is experienced, created, and communicated.

These are powerful words, and I'm struck by Chris Lehmann's thoughts on School 2.0 as well. In fact, I'm frightened by these words. Advocating for change in schools is safe enough since so little happens right away, but to acknowledge that society has changed can hit you over the head. The ground is shaking, and everything is being tossed around...when the shaking is done, what will remain?

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Categories: Education, MGuhlin.net

If Google's your favorite search engine, you'll positively enjoy GoogleFight and GoogleBattle...a brief description:

...you can pit one key word or phrase against another, and see which one gets more hits on Google from users. In other words, you can rate the popularity or frequency of search words
via VasperstheGrate

For fun, I decided to pit several big names against each other via Google. Enjoy the results...yes, I know it's silly, but why not?

1) David Warlick and Tom Hoffman:

2) George Siemens and Stephen Downes

3) The Savvy Technologist and Speed of Creativity

4) Will Richardson and Jamie McKenzie

The fun part about all this is that it depends on your search terms....

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Categories: MGuhlin.net

Someone contacted me in regards to my opinion to the following topics:

1. Online games such as World of Warcraft and how they can be used as educational tools.
2. Gen 2: Relational Technologies - the new approach to knowledge creation.
3. The use and value of open source software.
4. The idea that blogs, wikis and Web 2.0 sites such as YouTube and MySpace are "disruptive" because they circumvent traditional knowledge sources.
5. The use of mobile phones in schools.
6. What is K-12 education?

What are some talking points you would be sure to include? I'll post my responses later this week....hmm...good blog post for tomorrow!

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Categories: Education, MGuhlin.net

A few folks shared recently that they had removed themselves from MySpace.com and other places. Unfortunately, I wish it were that easy. I'm of the opinion that if I don't get there first, stake out my claim as "MGuhlin.net" and plant my metaphorical red shirt-flag (you know which book I'm alluding to right?) at the peak, it's going to get stolen.

I recently renewed my MGuhlin.net domain, but left "mguhlin.org," "mguhlin.cc," "mguhlin.com," "miguelguhlin.net," "miguelguhlin.org," and "miguelguhlin.com" wide open for conquest. Why am I saying that? Well, to go on record that I have no intention of claiming those domains...in fact, if what happens to Taran happens to me, then you'll know that anything coming out of those domains is, to use an old word, bogus.

Poor Taran is now suffering...

It came to my attention yesterday that someone had registered TaranRampersad.com; in tracing who had done so (and used a derogatory Trinidad and Tobago colloquialism in the WHOIS information), I came across the email address deranged_trini@hotmail.com. Searching for that email address took me to the Trinidad and Tobago Students Federation of Yorke University. That same email address is being used by Saish Balkaran, whose name was mentioned as the registrar of a site related to the Sean Luke Case. Is it the same person? Given the same emali address, it would seem very likely. Credit card information, which can be subpoenaed, can verify. It would be a pity for a silly prank to get to that level - it could be very damaging to a young career. In other words, I don't expect anything good to come from TaranRampersad.com

So, the question is, do you feel compelled to mark your virtual territory before someone else does with malicious intent?

As for me, "MGuhlin.net" is the only valid domain for me!

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Categories: Education, MGuhlin.net

If you use YahooMail or Gmail, this article may be of interest to you. You can enhance Firefox/Flock to automatically scramble your email communications via Yahoo/Gmail, making them "secure."

Remember, "secure" web pages scramble human-readable words into hard-to-decipher data so that it's very difficult for others to listen in on your computer. Secure web pages have an address that start with https, not just http. Remember that secure web pages are generally slower than regular connections to the web, so use 'em only when you need them - like on open, public wireless networks, or when you're latched onto the neighbor's wifi.
Source: LifeHacker

This can be helpful for you to prevent other people from reading your email on the local network while in transit. You can install Greasemonkey add-on for Firefox, then use the HTTP to HTTPs re-director...this will ensure that when you try to go to http://mail.yahoo.com or gmail.com, that you will switch automatically to the secure version. I've installed it and it works fine. I'm guessing it will work with Flock as well, but I haven't tried that yet. If you do, let me know!

In the meantime, for Gmail Chat users, this apparently also encrypts chat communications as well. In the interests of ensuring secure communications on public workstations, why not install Greasemonkey and the HTTP to HTTPs Redirector on those computers?

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Categories: Leadership, MGuhlin.net, TechTips

Jack be nimble
Jack be quick...
Source: Mother Goose

It's a simple expectation--that all students, teachers, administrators use the same productivity software. This enables ease of document sharing among all groups--whether through online resource materials, rubrics, lesson plans, templates, etc. I have encountered the problem many times...some teachers are unable to open district scope and sequence on their computers because their computers are running an older operating system and MS Office version than what the curriculum documents are distributed as. Although there are easy ways to bypass this issue, the divide between schools and students' homes is greater. Since Office is the standard app in schools, it becomes the standard app in students' homes, even though they may not be able to afford it.

Students in low socio-economic areas who can barely afford a 4 year old computer then have to figure out how to open files shared on the District web site that are built with the latest and greatest...but should the latest and greatest be used for a simple list of school supplies or homework assignment template?

While such documents and sharing can be orchestrated by the District, I wonder how many districts take the time to do so, especially large districts. In one instance I'm familiar with, the District upgraded MS Office software so everyone would have the same version at work...but teachers had to buy MS Office on their own for home. Students in similar situations have several options--1) Buy the software; 2) Do without; 3) Steal MS Office; and if they have Internet access, 4) Use a web-based app like ZohoWriter, GoogleApp, or AjaxWrite.

The old approach of having productivity tools on a computer, Live-CD or Flash drive are still ones folks look for...consider the story of Paris schools.

Schools in Paris are issuing USB flash disks to students with open source software:

The Greater Paris Regional Council will give out 175,000 USB sticks to students at the start of the next academic year according to Yahoo news. The sticks will contain a range of open source software which will allow them to access their email and other documents on computers at school, home, a friend’s house or in an internet cafe. Unlike other initiatives to reduce the digital divide, the regional council consider this much more effective than providing laptops for all, or computers in homes.

Although the contract to supply the sticks has not been awarded yet, the contract requires the software bundle to be open source. It is expected that they will contain Firefox 2, Thunderbird e-mail client and OpenOffice 2.
Via Gareth Davies at Never mind the technology, where's the learning?

The actual article goes on to describe the following:

"It's better to copy that than Microsoft Office: it's cheaper, and it's legal," he said. School heads will distribute the USB (Universal Serial Bus) sticks to 130,000 students at the start of the next academic year, as they arrive for their first of three years at high school. There are 476,000 students in the 468 public high schools operated by the council and the 213 privately run schools it funds. Apprentices at the 173 professional training centers funded by the council will receive the other 45,000 sticks.

In the United States, as well as elsewhere, school districts are locked in by force of tradition to use MS Office, Internet Explorer, and more established applications. You know, as I get older, I start to realize that the reason younger folks are able to innovate, to move quickly is because they're not burdened by past decisions that must be honored.

When will we realize that honoring past decisions that are no longer relevant is costing us billions of dollars, money better spent developing the hardware and human infrastructure we need and have in our schools? Why do we continue to invest money in software companies' futures, when the real investments need to be in people? I hope that American schools will take note of quicker, nimbler schools in other countries that are innovating on how to deliver technology tools in an equitable, cost-effective manner to all, rather than just the elite.

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Categories:

I wish I was Inigo...

> >

"A princess bride personality test!"

>You are Miracle Max. Everyone turns to you to solve their problems but you always have a price! There is nothing you cannot do, no problem beyond your miraculous intellect, providing some cold, hard cash is involved.
>Take this quiz!
>
>> Quizilla | Join | Make A Quiz | More Quizzes | Grab Code

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Categories: MGuhlin.net

Pete Reilly in a fantastic adaptation of my MeMe post (which is my second contribution to the 5 things you don't know that help me blog) writes the following:

It's interesting that many of the attributes of a good writer are also the attributes of a good leader. In order to bring about educational change we will definitely have to:
1. empty our hands-of many of our preconceived notions and beliefs about what is possible. Trust, ourselves and others.
2. Indulge little ideas - ours and others. Institutional change can seem daunting. Sometimes its the small action that makes the big impact (see Rosa Parks).
3.ruffle my feathers - am I being honest? am I "walking my own talk"?
4. satisfy your passions - passion inspires others to their own greatness.
5. put fear aside - sometimes, if we believe in something strongly enough; we have to step forward and take action, regardless of the consequences.
Writing, like leading, has a distinctly spiritual aspect to it.

Based on this adaptation, I'd like to start a new meme...how would you answer this question?

What are 7 qualities we don't know about you that help you be a leader?

And, in the spirit of 7 things, I tag the following 7 folks:

1. Doug Johnson (Blue Skunk Blog)
2. Kimberly Moritz (G-Town)
3. Lisa Raines (Click of the Mouse)
4. Chris Hitch (Executive's Edge)
5. Joe Poletti (Haulin' Net)
6. Miles Berry (as himself)
7. Steve Poling (Mr. P's Blog)

Suggested guidelines: Ask for 7 things, tag 7 people, try to make sure all those tagged are in either campus/district administration, or directors. If someone wants to adapt this for a teacher meme...hmm...what about...

What are 7 qualities that we don't know about that enable you to provide leadership at the campus level?

Image Source: 'SNWR_041220_030'
www.flickr.com/photos/84826593@N00/297077257

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Categories: Education, Leadership, Memes, MGuhlin.net

Since brevity is the soul of wit, and being witless, I lack brevity, I'm going to feign spirit. Doug Johnson (Blue Skunk Blog) has tagged me again, even though I originally wrote on this subject on January 20th. However, it being the end of the work day instead of a Saturday with miles to go before I sleep, I'm not as inclined to be as long-winded. And, it's easier to write to this meme than come up with something else.

The task set is, How do you go about writing your blog?

1) Empty my hands.

When a child, I quickly learned that to pick something up, I had to let something go. What always drove me crazy about learning was that I would forget what I'd written, essentially, what I'd learned. That's how my brain works, a large archival system that digs works on recall. I can remember the reference, but not the whole of the text. Blogging enables me to empty my hands so I can pick up something new. The new stuff comes from blogs, listservs, emails, and conversations with people face to face. Seldom does it come from television, but there are some exceptions.

2) Indulge my "little" ideas.

The temptation of any writer is to reach for the BIG IDEA that's hovering over your head. The problem is, that big idea may have little or no relevance to your life. Instead, I like to pick out "little" ideas that I imagine no one else will think worthwhile. In other words, I have to trust myself, that what I'm experiencing and thinking may be useful to others. My little ideas may turn out to be big ones, or not. What's striking is that--for others--what I imagine to be little can be big, and what I think is big, is little. Funny, no?

3) Ruffle my feathers.

When I write something, I ask myself, "Is it honest? Am I being true to the spirit of this as I understand it?" When I write, I want to be as true to it as possible, whether it is something I made up to ruffle my feathers (am I incensed about it?). And, that's one reason I write...to find out what i believe, or don't. Is what I'm writing something that will ruffle my feathers were I to read it as a stranger?

4) Satisfy your passions.

I write about stuff that gets my blood going in a slow boil, or at a quick-step beat of excitement or suffuses my body with a melancholy wistfulness. As an education administrator, I feel the pressure to write about leadership, the gap between what is espoused and the reality, realizing I hang in between like a pendulum, swinging from one side to another. Let me kick a bit, like a man strung on a rope, and see if my fate will be more. It is no accident that I'm a Libra, striving for balance, achieving it, then losing it again.

5) Put fear aside.

As a young blogger, I was afraid to share what I thought. I was afraid that I was off-topic, people wouldn't read. But I put that fear aside, and now I write about what grabs me, ideas I can sift through my fingers, like digging up the soil in a garden. There may be worms in the dirt, but the feel of earth, oh, fear of belly worms has nothing on that. That's what blogging is like...a romp in the soil as you plant the seeds.

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Categories: Education, Memes, MGuhlin.net

"Careful, that's your partition table you're messing with," my internal anti-techie conscience yelled.
"I know, I know," I muttered as I modified the size of my partition table on my son's computer. I needed to make more room to accommodate his data files, less room for the other stuff.

What tool was I using? Gparted. I generally followed the steps in an online article:

This article shows how you can modify the partitioning of your Linux system with GParted (Gnome Partition Editor) without losing data. This includes resizing partitions (enlarging and shrinking), moving partitions on the hard drive, creating and deleting partitions, and even modifying filesystem types. GParted is a free partition editor available as a desktop program and also as a Live-CD. It supports the following filesystems: ext2, ext3, fat16, fat32, hfs, hfs+, jfs, linux-swap, reiserfs, reiser4, ufs, xfs, and even ntfs (Windows).

Read the complete tutorial online.

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Categories: GNU/Linux, MGuhlin.net, TechTips

Earlier today, I ran across this blog entry:

What if seeking to increase your ranking actually impairs your ability to communicate, because people become mistrustful of your intentions? There's two things. 'Being heard' is one of them. 'Dominating the conversation' is another. They're different.

As I read this, I find myself agreeing. Transparency is key in blogging. If you disclose why you want high rankings, then everyone knows why and it's a non-issue...if you're doing it because you're a high-priced consultant, a learning theory expert trying to impose your vision, or a company trying to spin the PR your way rather than being honest and open, then you're not blogging, you're guilty of trying to dominate the conversation.

Dominating the conversation is like someone who swings a hammer to crack a stone. Their goal is to subdue the environment, to break it then reshape it into what they see as right. Rather than welcome diversity, they condemn the expression of others, impose their narrow vision of what should be said and how change should be accomplished. Simply, they sit in judgement from their lofty position at the top.

We've seen the effect of such conversation domination in our country...to ill effect, NCLB the perfect example of domination of conversation...as if reading experts could proclaim their "A-List" status and impose their myopic vision on the rest of us. If NCLB is a monument of hard, cold stone, then no wonder that people would like to break it down with their hammers.

Stephen's next question just gets me all jazzed up:

What if the best way to influence people is to give away your ideas and to let other people take ownership of them?

Of course, the best way to influence people is to give away your ideas, and let others take ownership! But, people are mistrustful of this approach. I have been conditioned in a variety of ways by significant others to question what is freely given, to assign it a "no value" label. And, this is a big problem. Overnight, I'm supposed to believe that everyone became a saint? In our American culture, "you get what you pay for." With this type of attitude, what hope have we, as educators, of embracing solutions that can transform our work and our lives?

Free, open source software in schools...and the whole open source approach...Clearly, establishing this in schools flies in the face of conventional wisdom. We pay for the best so our children get the best. However, what happens when the best is free and we have the power to modify, to own the ideas (e.g. Wikipedia), the software (e.g. OpenOffice), the tools we use to communicate and collaborate (e.g. The Read/Write Web)? The answer is simple. We don't believe it. . .to accept what is free becomes an act of faith, a defiant act of rebellion. You become the person who can be laughed at because you ARE a deviant. Who can believe a little lichen could break solid rock?

Bloggers may characterize schools as isolated boxes where learning experiences are scripted, not created. Nothing is done in schools that is not controlled, regulated, bound by procedure and practice as hard as stone. Schools are artificial structures, created for a short time to meet specific goals in an age long ago.

Can we honestly believe that School 2.0 will come about without cracking that stone? Can we honestly believe that certain voices won't seek to dominate the conversation? As more teachers and administrators join the ranks of edubloggers, I start to believe in the power of lichen...I see edu-bloggers, not the giant oaks and maples around us, but the smallest of us as wielding the most power.

...lichens slowly degrade their substrate by chemically degrading and physically disrupting the minerals, contributing to the process of weathering by which rocks are gradually turned into soil. While this contribution to weathering is usually benign, it can cause problems for artificial stone structures.

Otherwise benign, our collective ideas will degrade and disrupt the artificial structures--those we call schools--that have built up over the years. It will happen, slowly, inexorably.

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Categories: Education, MGuhlin.net

Howdy! Tim Holt, Director of Tech for El Paso ISD, has shared some videos of children speaking to the benefits of technology...be sure to reload the page to see a new video clip! Find these online at:

http://www.episd.org/News/index.php

Kudos to the El Paso ISD students, not to mention, Tim Holt for facilitating this! Some of the students appearing include a 4th grader (below), a middle schooler, and an older student.

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Categories: Education, Leadership, MGuhlin.net

The concept of everyman always attracted me in college English class. It was part of my British literature class (1 or 2, I don't remember) and something just stuck with me. I hadn't thought about it until recently with the discussions about blogging, blog stats, and why we blog. Perhaps, it's just better to "be" a blogger than it is to study the phenomena too closely. I like to read fiction, not write it.

Here's a quick reminder of Everyman in case you've forgotten:

Everyman, a short play of some 900 lines, portrays a complacent Everyman who is informed by Death of his approaching end...The play makes its grim point that we can take with us from this world nothing that we have received, only what we have given.

This seems so much like blogging...we can take with us from this world nothing that we have received, only what we have given. The more we give, the better. This means that as experts, we become repositories of learning, recipients of the wealth of many minds. But what we have to give, what we have to offer is even more important. As a writer, I honestly don't remember what I've written/given after it's done. The act of writing leaves me empty...now, with so much out there, I honestly don't remember what the heck I've written. I have to go back and read it again. The technologist is always at his best when he is beginning to understand something. This is reinforced by descriptions like this:

The idea is that people who are less knowledgable about a subject very much should be a primary actor in the authoring of the text. Not the sole actor- you need experienced people to perform correction, offer up alternative explanations, to make sure that it’s not wrong. But I think that beginners have unique advantages in teaching other beginners. Reasons: They understand their own misunderstandings. They have strong empathy with other learners, because they are at the same place, or just a single step beyond. The beginner is motivated by the need to make their understanding more concrete.
Source: Learn Online

If you've lost that blogging feeling, maybe it's time to remember that you have only to cast yourself as a beginner again to rediscover the joy of blogging...rediscover that it in the giving, not the receiving, that one may find excitement. Don't be afraid to go off the beaten path...in fact, you're expected to...don't follow the herd, find your own way.

There once was an Indian medicine man who made hunting maps for his tribe. When game got sparse, he'd put a piece of fresh leather in the sun to dry. Then he'd say a few prayers, fold and twist it, and then smooth it out. The rawhide was now etched with lines. He marked some reference points, and a new map was created. When the hunters followed the map's newly defined trails, they usually discovered abundant game.

Moral: By letting the rawhide's random folds represent trails, he pointed the hunters to places they had not looked.
Source: Creative Think

Can you find knowledge in unlikely places, just like a beginner would, and then give that knowledge away? Can you put aside the list of edubloggers that everyone links to, and find new voices?

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Categories: Education, MGuhlin.net

Anne 2.0 shares:

I’m starting to think that I was a better technology blogger before anyone knew of me. I’m not saying I’m all that well-known now, although someone did once call me a “minor Internet celebrity”–a title I have milked to death with my husband–but I’m known enough to get pitches by email. . .I feel so dull that I can’t even gather up the links that would prove my point. . .I miss the olden days, way back in December 2005, when I was all full of unknowing.

Over at Dangerously Irrelevant, Scott shares some graphs of popular edublogs and Technorati rankings appear...they're nice to look at, and for a moment, I forget why I'm blogging. While I'm compelled to agree with Scott that the idea is to impact a greater audience, that assumes that one is really out to impact a greater audience. That blogging is about impacting an audience...I imagine that this is more like Web 1.0, the concept of the person who uses the web to publish his or her ideas, one-way communication.

I do know one thing--when I look at my Technorati rankings, I feel like I'm hanging on by my fingernails. It has less to do with what I write, and more to do with who links to me. Part of me says, "Forget it! I'm getting over 1,000 hits a day...ain't that good enough?" And, by old standards for a personal web site, that would be. In 5 years, I only achieved 84,000 hits with my entire web site. In a matter of a year and a half, the web site jumped to over 100,000. When is enough, enough?

Maybe Doug (Blue Skunk Blog) has the right idea:

Two of my favorite bloggers have lately taken to commenting on the size of their blogs. Personally, I think this unbecoming and invites Freudian-like speculation about what these gentlemen may be compensating for.

When you consider there are millions of blogs, and you rank in the first 25,000, well, that's pretty awesome. But after that, I begin to wonder, so what? I'm not getting a bigger paycheck out of it. It knocks you back on your haunches, forces you to re-evaluate why you're even here. Is it to impact lots of people? Well, yeah. But not to impact them in the way I first understood Scott's message...to get THE MESSAGE out there. Instead, it's to share information and ideas that would be dated if kept to oneself, that would spoil so quickly they just aren't worth hanging on to. In fact, ideas and information are burning holes in our bloggers' pockets...if we don't get them out there, they die.

When I read Anne's message, her longing for the olden days, I remember that magic of writing to discover, to explore. I'm reminded that while conquistadores and explorers set out to get rich, this blogger is looking, not to fill the empty vessel with knowledge but to share ideas and information before they expire. The benefits? A rousing conversation...and in this, I disagree with Wes Fryer. Go ahead, set yourself on fire...I'll bring the marshmallows.

In the meantime, this part on Learning Once Again from Barbara Ganley resonated with me:

"Sometimes I feel as if I need permission. Not just to blog, but to make connections with what I'm learning to my own life. I still can't tell sometimes if it's selfish, if it's distracting to the intellectual standards of the conversation. Frankly, there is information professors must transmit to their students. Lectures and summative testing are the first two obvious ways for transmitting and evaluating that knowledge. But on the other hand, it's like putting on a mask every time you enter the classroom--the PC mask. How honest are we with each other wearing that mask? What goes left unsaid? Who chooses not to speak? Who does? Why?

It's alright to be dull, to slip in the rankings. We're not here to be brilliant, chatty and positive...at least, I'm not. I'm called to discover with every blog entry how to be more honest about who I am and what I believe, to be more open and transparent than I ever thought possible, to stop being a "safe" writer and be a real writer.

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Categories: Education, MGuhlin.net

Doug Johnson (Blue Skunk Blog) asks in his blog entry, Library-proofing Library Programs:

A good question to ask ourselves is what do we do as librarians that justifies having us on the job, the cost of which results in more kids in a classroom, less technology, older curriculum materials or lower taxes? If the offer were made to your classroom teachers to have a couple fewer kids in class or better technology or a new reading series or a professional librarian in the school, which would they chose? What would parents choose? What would your principal chose? And most importantly, what would your kids choose?

Perhaps the answer is simpler than whether librarians are book people or people-people. Maybe it's simpler than whether librarians are friendly or not, whether they have fixed or flexible schedules and how does that serve schools, whether teachers can drop off the kids, or if they have to stay in the library.

What do I think the answer is? The idea came to me while I was reading Jane Healy's Endangered Minds earlier today. Since our society values books less, and our media-centric environment has messed up our children's brains, maybe the answer is that the guardians of books just aren't held in high esteem anymore. Book knowledge, while important in the traditional sense, is as permanent as ever, but because of rapid change, more inaccurate...the infallibility of the printed word as represented by books has been proven fallible.

As such, I question the value of making the librarian into a chameleon who can change his coloration depending on whether he'll be called on to be a CTO, computer geek, Accelerated Reader manager, information literacy specialist, media specialist, or teacher-librarian. The essence of being a librarian has always been as follows:

• The librarian "who walks in the shadow of the Library...gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness. If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind" (adapted from Gibran, The Prophet).
• The librarian is the person who says it's alright to share--books, ideas, and knowledge with each other. More than any other person, the librarian is the richest person in the school because they have the most to lend.
  
  
• The librarian is the one person in the school who isn't grading children on what they learn, but rather, offering them the opportunity to choose to learn.

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Categories: MGuhlin.net

The experiment with DokuWiki, the php file-based wiki, is over. I'm headed back to Wikispaces. What really convinced me was that I had over 100 pages in my wiki. The thought of running them through the DokuWiki macro--via OpenOffice just to keep the formatting--made me cringe.

In recommitting myself to using Wikispaces, I realized that I could have my wiki wide open for anyone to edit and could also lock pages that I didn't want others to change. I once thought you had to have "members" and only they could make edits, but I was nervous about having my CV and published articles in a place where a member I hadn't met could make modifications. All about trust, right?

So, this was a big discovery for me: I could just leave pages unlocked so that anyone could contribute to it, but lock the others that I didn't want changes on. One such page that I welcome changes/edits to is the Creating the Walled Garden: List of Web 2.0 Apps that can be included on a school district's server. I have a few more in mind.

Some other changes/modifications:

• Modified my template's colors
• Added my Around the Corner Wiki banner image to the main page
• Updated the Digital Storytelling Workshop materials (finished the oral composition approach, but still need more work on the written) and resources
• Added part 3 of the series on Unleashing the Power of Digital Storytelling
• Cleaned out old pages
• Locked everything that needed to be locked.

A few things I haven't figured out how to do with Wikispaces but would love to see:

• sure would be nice to have a universal lock/unlock button, or something with checkboxes so you could apply modifications to certain pages in one fell swoop...
• also would have liked to list ALL pages rather than have to hunt through them one page of 20 at a time.

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Categories: MGuhlin.net, TechTips

Over the last few years, I've wanted to facilitate an online book study. Searching the Web, I haven't found anything on HOW TO facilitate such a book study. I'm sure the info is out there, it's just not out there in the way I'm looking for it. Some quick information:

Book: Dan Pink's A Whole New Mind. Participants will have to buy their own copies of the book.

Tool: phpBB

Target Audience: Anyone who wants to participate in my district along with a few others.

You can see the schedule here.

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Categories: Leadership, MGuhlin.net

The TILT initiative was granted approval. It's moving forward. But what does that mean? You can find out more about TILT below:

The school district will have twelve teachers certified by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) by participating in PBS Teacherline. By participating in the certification process, district teachers will be engaged in an in-depth study of how technology can improve teaching and learning, network with educational technology innovators from across the country, create a portfolio to demonstrate your proficient use of technology in the classroom, and demonstrate their knowledge of the ISTE National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers (NETS•T) while earning a certificate of proficiency in the ISTE NETS•T. Teachers certified with proficiency in the ISTE NETS•T will, in turn, become leaders in developing and aligning curriculum for Technology Applications TEKS at all grade levels.

A major component of TILT will be incorporating Read/Write Web tools for staff development and idea-sharing among facilitators. My goal is to build an online community, a cadre of individuals who will be like beacons of light in the turbulent environment of urban city schools (wink).

I was inspired by Haulin' Net's idea to arrange a series of sessions on Web 2.0. But I have a few different ideas. Need to flesh those out.

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Categories:

Thanks to a fellow venting teacher, Bud The Teacher <chuckle>, I had a chance to read the SchoolZone blog. The author of SchoolZone is the one who wrote that controversial article that lumped folks like Bud, Vicki in with teachers who use their blogs to vent. I notice that Stephanie (Change Agency) has written a wonderful entry about the venting teacher blogs article here, and others have left comments or also written blog entries worth reading to my original entry. Stephanie shares this perspective:

I would hope that districts would take this stance with educators who choose to blog — instead of reprimanding them or trying to prevent them from blogging — they would welcome the blogging as a way to understand what teachers are thinking and feeling. Instead of telling teachers not to blog about their frustrations – how about asking teachers to blog as problem solvers? — how about asking teachers to use their blogging as a way to explore positive alternatives with other educators?

I wholeheartedly agree with this approach, and even recorded a short audiocast on my way into work this morning.

The following is a comment I left on School Zone to the entry, "Teachers: Are your voices heard?" That entry shares:

I wrote a story today about how more and more teachers are starting their own blogs. (Here's an example from a KIPP teacher. ) One expert suggests that teachers are turning to the Web to get their voices heard. In this day of standardized testing and No Child Left Behind mandates, teachers feel like no one is turning to them for their expertise. We certainly saw that last week - when scores of teachers posted their feelings here about HISD's controversial incentive pay plan - but is this a growing problem? Do teachers feel left out of the loop?? Have you ever considered airing your feelings out on your own blog? Would you be scared that your bosses would frown on that? Do you think teachers who blog are just wasting their time? How should teachers make sure their voices are heard?

Comment Begins:

Be careful that you do not equate blogging with venting. While some certainly may use their blogs as soapboxes to air their differences with draconian administrators, there is a vast majority of educators that use blogs to build professional learning networks.

As a contributor to that learning circle of networked professionals, I benefit from colleagues who are committed to transforming teaching, learning and leadership through the strategic application of technology. As educators, we face many challenges. Those children for whom we are responsible face even greater ones, not the least of which is entering an education system that does not value their informal learning.

My 13-year old daughter uses technology at home. Her uses include Skype, concept mapping tools, use of open source software, blogs and wikis for collaborative writing projects and publishing. Unfortunately, that informal learning is not valued in schools. There she must write with pencil and paper. Yet, fear of liability, fear of openness and transparency that protects the District, not the child, limits what she can do in school. Why is that?

As a parent and school administrator, it is my responsibility to question why. It behooves us all to engage in conversations that leverage both the power of our intellect and the passionate commitments we have made to be K-12 educators.

You can find my blog Around the Corner-MGuhlin.net at http://www.mguhlin.net

My name is Miguel Guhlin and I'm an educational technology administrator for a large urban school district. My views are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.

Join us in the conversation and OWN the solution.

Wishing you well,

Miguel Guhlin
Around the Corner-MGuhlin.net
http://www.mguhlin.net

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Categories: Education, MGuhlin.net

Pretty exciting announcement...

An Open Source Wiki-Spreadsheet
wikiCalc is designed for everything from simple lists to light- and medium-duty spreadsheeting. It is a complete basic spreadsheet that can produce output for the web on par with what many desktop spreadsheets produce on paper.

The wikiCalc program lets you make web pages with more than just paragraphs of prose. It combines the ease of authoring and multi-person editing of a wiki with the familiar visual formatting and calculating metaphor of a spreadsheet. Written in Perl and released under the GPL 2.0 license, it can easily be setup to run on almost any server as a web application or on a personal computer to publish by FTP.
View Walkthrough of WikiCalc |

WikiCalc is now version 1.0 and ready to try out. I've been dying for something like this ever since I realized a whole team of folks in my district LOVES spreadsheets. While they probably won't be able to do everything, it will be nice to have them use WikiCalc for making information only they have access to more accessible! I definitely encourage you to check out the walkthrough...it's excellent!

via Ben Horst at SolidOffice

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Categories: MGuhlin.net, OpenLearning, TechTips

This past Saturday, I found myself sitting in the parking lot of a local high school forty-one minutes away from my home. My daughter was inside taking the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). They put her in a special room for seventh and eighth graders taking the SAT. As she walked down the hall, I made to follow her but the hall monitor stopped me, "You can't go any further, Dad." My daughter walked on, alone.

As she walked on, I turned away and settled into a chair near the front door, my earphones in place, David Warlick's Connect Learning #78 playing. In my hands, a copy of the Demos study entitled "Their Space." As I listened to the podcast, I also began to read the report. These points were worth writing in the margins about...

1) Attitudes to technology encompass moral panic versus digital faith. This difference reminded me of Lakoff's concept of frames. Another point also caught my attention is that there is a disconnect between the people who make the decisions and those who are experiencing the results in schools. At the same time I read those words, a teacher in the podcast mentioned there is a disconnect between what's needed to pass tests and the future. I found the conversations occurring in David's podcast to match the reality of the Their Space.

2) Soft skills needed by employers include creativity, ideas generation, presentation, communication, innovation, and knowing how to evaluate, question and prioritize information. The question that popped into my head is, "How do you teach for innovation?" In the article, the skills a World of Warcraft guildmaster needs are attracting, evaluating and recruiting new members; creating apprenticeship programs; orchestrating group strategy; and managing disputes. Consider that these skills are exactly what a director of instructional technology needs to have. I can cite numerous examples for each of the guildmaster skills that I use on a daily basis. Could an affinity for online games signal an aptitude for my kind of work?

Online communities provide opportunities for critical reflection and learning along with an audience for creative efforts. This certainly seems true, whether you're participating in World of Warcraft, Enemy Territory using Ventrilo to orchestrate your plan of attack to capture a military objective. When my son and I play Enemy Territory against a team that's using Ventrilo, it's clear that they are more organized and communicating better. Ventrilo describes itself in this way:

Ventrilo is best known for it's superior sound quality and minimal use of CPU resources so as not to interfere with day to day operations of the computer or during online game competitions. It is also preferred for the simple user interface that any first time computer user can very quickly learn because the most commonly used features are immediately visible and can be activated with a single click of the mouse.

Ventrilo facilitates communication among game playing...it involves using Voice over IP technologies banned in school environments because gaming isn't allowed. Yet, isn't it ironic that these are the tools that business finds useful, necessary for communication in a flat world?

It's clear that these soft skills, as well as the skills of a WoW guildmaster, are about working collaboratively with others. The old view is one of an individual working alone, creating reality in solitary confinement, committing acts of indescribable genius. As Whitby shares in his presentation, this is "Gen1: connecting and publishing." That's over, or "dead." Now, in "Gen2: Relational technologies," it's about spinning reality with others. The old view was symbolized by an eighth grade writing teacher in the podcast. He shared, Students need to think for themselves, reflect for themselves, then project that the audience. Don't abdicate it to the technology. For this writing teacher, students could not think for themselves and orchestrate group thinking and problem-solving. The work they were about required they do it alone, the supreme art of creation, then share that creation with the audience. Students, with increased, daily use of technology develop the ability to think, act, and collaborate online. In fact, they may be more sophisticated at doing that than the old approach to knowledge creation.

3) Changes needed in schools include the following: a) Recognize/value learning that occurs outside the classroom; b) Support this outside learning, providing a space for reflection, enabling students to recognize and transfer those skills to new situations and contexts. This sentence made wonder at what goes untapped in schools today? The answer was staggering--our children. It is our children that are untapped. This led me to the next question: What needs to be unleashed in schools? Again, children's power for creativity and innovation. Slow to respond to change in schools, schools' failure to recognize and value the skills that young people are developing is a blind spot.

4) The more children are encouraged to expand their digital repertoire, the more adept they become at using tools for different purposes. As children expand their digital repertoire, how do keep track of that? How does that come to be valued? The article refers to this as informal learning...which leads one to ask, How do you prove when and exactly how a child has learnt a skill? My daughter and son know how to use different technologies...but none of that is valued in schools. My daughter knows how to use Skype, concept mapping tools, zip files, etc., but none of those skills are valued in school. There, the focus is on writing papers by hand. However, at home, she writes using a word processor, drops the text into a wiki and that's that. At school, that wiki is banned and off-limits. So, how do schools come to value what they could not see?

5) Digital technology helps you...communicate in new ways, develop creativity, collaborative with others. As I read this statement, the question came to mind, "Is this really true or what I want to believe as an educational technology advocate?" On the next page, though, there was an example that reminded me of a conversation I'd just had. I'd been struggling to find an example about the importance of free, open source software in schools. FOSS offers children access to technology that is non-proprietary, but also the freedom to innovate by changing the very infrastructure they use to create, communicate and collaborate. The article provided this example:

Zooomr, a direct competitor of Flickr, was created by a 17-year-old and many other children and young people have taken advantage of the growth in open source methods to build tools and edit content. This represents a new shift towards a generation that contributes actively to the public realm every day.

6) Finding knowledge in unlikely places and learning a huge range of skills in the process. The power of self-motivated learners is finding knowledge in unlikely places. Rather than follow mapped out learning paths, learners in the Read/Write Web have the freedom to make their own way...for the rest of us, leaving the road most travelled is difficult, if not impossible. This excerpt from Greg Whitby's talk is just awesome.

Since knowledge can be found in unlikely places, conversations provided a rich source for such knowledge. Knowledge is to be gained from conversations.

7) Technology that reflects children's lives. Again, I'm reminded of Gregory Whitby's reference to mobile phones as relational technology. This time, though, I have a direct audio clip to play. I encourage you to listen to it. I'm saddened by school administrator perspectives that hold that we can't interact with technology we're given, even though the act of relating to technology is an act as old as us. Like weapons of old that were customized by their users, humans have always made technology their own...an extension of oneself. Inanimate objects reflect who we are, something that is demonstrated in the clothes we wear, the vehicles we drive, the pen/pencil we choose to use. They reflect our likes, dislikes, our attitudes about them in ways that send a message. That these assertions are obvious to us all only goes to show what folly it is to imagine we could give a teacher or student technology and not expect them to make it their own.

MOVING TO SAT 2.0
More to read and explore in the report. However, at the end of the presentation, I started to wonder at the relevance of the SAT my daughter was taking. Wouldn't it have been better if they'd put her in a team of learners who had to solve a problem? And, solving that problem involved coordinating the work of others around the world (or in the next classroom) using technology tools, voice over IP? Wouldn't such approach to assessment do what the SAT was meant to do in the first place? SAT 2.0 would do the following:

• Challenge young adults to demonstrate how they can collaborate at a distance to develop creative solutions that involve mashing-up different technologies.
• Successful completion of the SAT 2.0 would mean using Web 2.0 tools to connect, collaborate, create and share ideas/solutions with each other.
• Successful completion would involve the team catalogue each team member's strengths and weaknesses, then assign jobs/tasks that build on strengths.
• Based on a team's weaknesses, staff people from outside their team--across the world but accessible via VOIP technologies (like Skype)--to buttress their weaknesses. Like John Maxwell says, "You staff your weaknesses."

What other ways could such a project be used to measure what students need to know in a Read/Write Web world? What skills and strategies that need to value the soft skills our children are developing for recreation, that are worth emulating, but aren't unleashed in schools today?

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The following an audiocast I recorded while waiting for my daughter to take the SAT this past weekend. She's a 7th grader, and the experience was akin to watching her go through a rite of passage. . .it was a feeling I wasn't ready for as a dad. Anyways, I had the opportunity to sit around for a few hours, listen to David Warlick's Connect Learning #78 and read the Demos report entitled "Their Space." I highly recommend that every educator read such a well-articulated report on the power of the Read/Write Web, and connected learning that children are capable of. It is a challenge to how schools need to be transformed, and recognize the value our children bring to the table.

I like to think of this audiocast as a revised SAT 2.0. I summarized some of the points I make in this audiocast in this blog entry; this audiocast is a think-aloud, a jumble of ideas and thoughts. It's also an invitation.

Listen to audiocast.

By the way, if you're not sure how to deal with an OGG file, you can use the free VLC Media Player to listen to it, regardless of operating system. If you'd like to extend iTunes capability to support OGG, you can follow these steps. Why do I use OGG? It's non-proprietary and it's Audacity's native export format.

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Categories: AudioBlog, Education, MGuhlin.net

I was cleaning my desk off this evening and ran across a stack of old articles. As I skimmed them I realized how much the world had changed since I printed them out in February, 2005. It's hard to believe almost 2 years have gone by. However, one section of text in an article jumped out at me. I'm not kidding, it resonated that strongly. You may recognize it, but I'm going to retype this and save this information so it won't crowd my desk.

The author writes the following:

Students must learn to:

Expose the Truth - Reading remains core to literacy. But we must be willing to expand our notions of reading to include skills to research and find information, gain meaning from what we find, and evaluate the information in order to select that which is most valuable.

Employ the Information - Mathematics remains a core skill, but it is an irrelevant skill unless students learn to analyze, synthesize, manipulate and add value to digital information, and assemble new and valuable information products that accomplish worthwhile goals.

Express Ideas Compellingly - We will be writing for a long time to come. But if our ideas are to compete with the ideas of others, then we must be able to use images, animation, sound, music, and video along with our words in order to be heard.

Ethics and Information - Information has a new value in the 21st Century.At the same time that we teach children to harness global libraries of information, manipulate that information and compellingly communicate their ideas, we must also teach them to love and protect the truth.

Reading these words again after so long, especially now, highlighted the brilliance of the author. If you haven't figured who wrote the words above yet, you can read the complete article here.

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Categories: Education, MGuhlin.net

Chris Charuhas just sent me this essay, and I had to share it:

Find out why:
* An iconic tech publisher is threatened by the Web it loves.
* A guru of the geek world is eating dog food for dinner.
* The computer book industry won't survive past this decade.

There's a camel on the cover of the O'Reilly book Programming Perl. Along with the Dummies cartoon guy, it's one of the most recognizable images in computer books. In the future, you won't be seeing it much. That's because free online forums, wikis, and search engines will eliminate the need for many geek-oriented how-to books, like the $30 paperback with the camel on the cover. For that matter, you won't be seeing the Dummies guy around much either: free online tutorials are going to replace newbie-oriented computer books. Free online tutorials and forums will kill the dead-tree computer book business. They'll also ensure that the vast majority of computer how-to content will be available free of charge.

I agree.

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Ran across this request for help...how would you respond?

I am in need of some advice. I have a situation where a teacher asked me to burn one song (purchased legally) to 3 additional CDs so that several groups could use it for a project. I told her that it was illegal for me to do that. But then someone else said that it wasn't illegal as long as the original song was purchase legally and we weren't selling the song but only using it for a school project. I went to several sites about copyright and also did a Google search, but I didn't see anything related to this exact scenario.

Does anyone know if burning the song to additional CDs constitutes a copyright infringement or is in any way illegal?
Source: EdTech list email

Based on my understanding of Carol Mann Simpson's work, this kind of use would qualify as creation of an anthology, reproduction, and distribution. All three of these--anthology, reproduction, and distribution--are protected rights of the copyright owner (CD maker). Even if the school wasn't selling the song, they would still violate copyright. Therefore, use of this song has to fall under fair use...here are the provisions Simpson shares for a similar scenario:

1. The original recordings have to be played in the classroom and are directly tied to the lesson at hand in that specific classroom at the time.
2. The teacher is the one who makes the decision to use the CD
3. The only ones to hear the CD are the students and teachers in class.
4. Teacher has to be working in a non-profit educational institution
5. You are working with a legally acquired copy of the work.

All that said, I'm not sure that this is legal...because it denies the copyright owner $$$. What do you think?

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Categories: Leadership, MGuhlin.net

David Warlick asks...

“We’re trying desperately to find ways to deal with budget crunches. With all of these computers and access to online information, do we really need librarians or libraries any more?”...If you have only a minute to support librarians, what would be your elevator answer?

Let's see...here are some possible responses, some of which you won't like depending on your perspective...

• Librarians are the last gasp of an educational system that believes in information gatekeepers, master archivists who works like priests. It's about time we did away with these intermediaries to the words and ideas of people like you and me, and helped everyone accept information literacy as their own personal responsibility (oh, I wanted to write "saviour" but it wouldn't fly...).
• Library proponents are prima donnas, touting their extensive knowledge of arcane decimal and filing systems, owlishly peering over their desk hutches with a checkout ray-gun to emphasize their importance.

Ok, that's about as much vituperativeness as I could launch. Whew! Tough work to write fiction.<wink>

Let's see if I can do the same but in the opposite direction:

• Like the one-eyed cyclops in the land of the blind, librarians provide the last best hope for vision in a society awash with information, but ignorant of the symmetry of data.
• Librarians and libraries provide learning safe havens where children, parents, and teachers can better come to understand and develop 21st Century Skills.
• Libraries are bastions of democracy, providing equal access and freedom of information to those abandoned like driftwood by society's technology tide; librarians are the lifeguards at the tide's edge.

Seriously, all joking aside, libraries and librarians are under siege. Without a content area to assign them to, school districts are getting rid of them, relegating them to the past. It's not hard to imagine the image of the librarian as priest, an intermediary between God (Information) and the common people (you and me). To overcome this, librarians must become more approachable, easier to connect to, helpful...and possess something regular teachers can't do without. Unfortunately, without the mandate of NCLB, ignorance of the research that makes librarians righteous, many teachers are content with an attitude of indifference to librarians and their keeps.

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Categories: Leadership, MGuhlin.net

I couldn't resist a quick allusion to Austin Powers, even though (and I know this will come as a shock) I've never seen the movie! In our past conversations about disclaimers, this article by Houston Chronicle just caught my eye:

In the Cyber world, these chatty, often frustrated, teachers pour their thoughts out under screen names like "Bud the Teacher," "Hip Teacher" and "Cool Cat Teacher."

"While the district does not have the authority to prevent district employees from subscribing to these types of applications from their homes or from exercising their rights to free speech, employees are held accountable for adhering to the state code of ethics for educators," ...districts can't restrict teachers from commenting on public matters. They can, however, forbid teachers from revealing students' identities or from using taxpayer resources for personal pursuits. "They have an absolute right to blog," Fallon said. "Just not on school time, not on school computers — even if it's lunch, it's still a school computer."
Source: Teachers venting on blogs often go underground

When I read the first line quoted above, I had to laugh...poor Vicki, pouring out her frustrations. <smile>. The truth is, there's a lot to be frustrated about in education, and this article doesn't mention that. Instead, it focuses on blogging teachers as bad folks or outlaws who have something to hide or just haven't been caught. There's no connection to School 2.0, the changing nature of K-16 education, no deeper understanding about how blogs can serve as "professional learning networks."

This is an old topic, just coming out in the news media. When I blog, I see myself as doing the same thing I was doing when I was a teacher reading a journal article...then, I would take notes, ask questions in my composition book. Now, I take the time to do some of that in my blog.

Districts only argue it's a matter of ethics when they've been embarrassed. The rest of the time, the behavior is ignored...and if it's of benefit to the District, it's praised until you mis-step. Like anyone else, I've struggled with the division of work and professional reflection...so much so, I decided to create a work blog so that I could explore work-related ideas via a blog at work, rather than leave them for my late afternoon/early evening writing efforts at Around the Corner. There's clearly overlap, but better safe than sorry. In this game, the Districts we work in want to have all the power...it protects them from liability, and that's not unreasonable. However, for you and me, it means we have to take precautions and ensure our work is beyond reproach...failing that, that we are willing to accept the consequences.

The more I reflect on the quotes in this article from central office administrators, the more I realize that having your own laptop/tablet computer is essential. Your thoughts?

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Categories: Education, Leadership, MGuhlin.net

I recently received the following....

I'm playing with the notion of training my tech facilitators on either Edublogs.org or WordPress.com
I have a blog on each, and I see pro's and con's to each. Wonder what your take is on this? Wonder what your readership would say? Can you treat this topic in Around the Corner?

The short answer? Well, it depends.

If I were doing this, and had full access to a district server (hehe, I have 3), I'd just setup my own b2Evolution blog with each of the facilitators as a child blog of the parent blog. This means that all child blog feeds would be individually subscribable, and feed into the parent blog feed as well...think of tributaries of a river, eventually joining the sea of RSS feeds that populate the Read/Write Web. If I didn't have sufficient access on a server to load WAMP or LAMP or XAMPP, then I might use one of these: Thingamablog, Simple PHPBlog, or DokuWiki (which can be customized to work as a blog but prob shouldn't be with newbies from what I can tell), which only require FTP rights.

Failing that, I would probably lean towards a service like Vox.com, which is a pretty nifty provider that enables you to hook into Flickr, add audio/video, etc...I recently created my gospel blog (City Without End) there, although the pews in that church are growing a mite dusty.

But, if I had to choose one of the services above, Edublogs or Wordpress, I'd go with WordPress.com. While Edublogs is friendly to educators (visit one of my sites, TexasLeads!), there's something about Wordpress.com that inspires confidence (view example of my site).

What do you think? In the meantime, I better get cracking...

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Categories: Education, MGuhlin.net, TechTips

...yet another judgement. Sigh. Who cares? Ahh, apathy is our enemy in education, not ignorance. Ignorance, defined as lack of information and/or knowledge, has been banished with ready access to data and information. Even if one is knowledgeable in the WRONG facts, one is still knowledgeable. But apathy, that's something else altogether. Apathy and despair sink their hooks into your soul, rip apart the spirit so that you feel every action you take is act of futility. It is the power of the Borg collective, summarized in the statement, "Resistance is futile."

After awhile, you start to wonder, what the heck would I be doing if I wasn't spending time worrying about test prep? What would my students be experimenting and exploring if curriculum wasn't narrowed. Then, you begin to ask, "Did I really teach innovatively before this? Was I really able to guide children and/or adults to learn exciting things that are relevant to living in the 21st Century?" And then, it's downhill. Self-doubt is path on the precipice, 1 step away from a casual slip and death. On that happy note, consider this:

The No Child Left Behind act and, in Texas, the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills are standardized measurements intended to reveal students' knowledge of specified subjects...NCLB and TAKS are punitive. If students do not pass the state-provided test, the teacher, the principal and the school district are subjected to dire consequences. Threats of dire consequences alter human behavior. In the public school system, the emphasis has changed from educating the students to assuring that the students pass "the test" - two different things entirely. In some schools, it is reported that as much as 30 percent of instructional time is devoted to "test prep," also known as "teaching to the test." In some elementary schools, recess has been done away with so more time is available for "test prep." Curricula are "narrowed"; i.e., subjects not tested are being de-emphasized or eliminated. NCLB and TAKS do not yield the intended result, which is a true measure of students' knowledge. And bonuses to teachers based on students' test scores is a very bad idea. NCLB and TAKS should be eliminated or radically changed.
Source: Mansel Phillips of Spearman

Folks know that NCLB has ripped out the infrastructure educators need. Worse, it's demoralized folks. This is driven home when you read brand new blogs like this one that, right out of the starting gate, start out negative:

I am preparing for a presentation week after next at TCEA, Texas Computer Educators' Association. I will be touting exciting Web 2.0 sites and other great online resources. While I look forward to talking about all these great services, I am suffering from a sense of futility. Why talk about this topic? So many attendees and even more of their unrepresented colleagues who cannot get support to attend the conference have no access to anything that offers Web 2.0 features. In a recent district where I presented, I could not even use my university's online databases. Getting to any blog was out of the question. I know all the well that this is the norm, not the exception. I would love comments from people who have experience in overcoming the roadblocks to creative teaching with technology that are so common in the restrictive environments existing in so many schools. If you have been able to make progress and gain access that has improved your ability to access online resources, I would love to hear your stories.
Source: MA Bell's Blog About Librarianship and Technology

The only answer is to continue to create, to innovate in the face of that futility. It means writing your way through the obstacles, breaking the rules in the AUP in a way that is so obvious a benefit to education mission that "prosecuting" would be unreasonable. This is no protection against getting reprimanded for breaking the rules, however, it is a practice that works for all involved.

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Bloggers come from all walks of life! Some are SEO experts. Some are writers. Some are sports enthusiasts. Some are affiliate marketers. Some are business professionals. Some are political. ALL HAVE OPINIONS!!! Some bloggers blog to make money. Some do it for fun.

There are dozens of social networks that bring the blogosphere together, with Technorati and MyBlogLog being two of the biggest. I wanted to bring a whole bunch of bloggers together on one page. 2000 bloggers to be exact! As I write this there are 300 bloggers on the page to start. If you want to be included in 2000 Bloggers, leave a comment here with a link to your blog and your name and I will add you. Two requirements, though: 1. You must have a photo of yourself somewhere on your blog, and 2. Your blog must have been created prior to January 1st of this year.

And, don't worry... I won't judge your blog. I link to all bloggers, A-List Bloggers, C-List Bloggers, All Blogs in between, and some that nobody has ever seen. I don't care if you have a daily readership of 100,000 people or if you have a daily readership of a dozen people - I'll link to you.

For fun, check it out...view the photos here.

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Categories: MGuhlin.net

It's been a long slow weekend, and yet, I had to make a note of this cartoon:

via Learn Online

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Over at InstaBloke, the following appears:

Don’t believe the Hype: Unique Content is not Enough -I couldn't agree more with that statement. But just how do you promote your blog anyway? So how do you promote your blog anyway (or do you)? Are you a suck up, or just plain snarky (or like me do you speak your mind and let the chips fall where they may ;-)?

Well, the truth of the matter is, you don't promote your blog; other people do that for you. It's unbelievable. Different folks promote your blog, add it to a variety of resources (e.g. Digg). Of course, my new favorite is StumbleUpon. Why? Well, look at today's stats (Saturday)...all because of a post I shared LONG ago, which means, unique content does eventually get noticed, even though it's been months since it was shared. Did I do that? No...someone else who knew about Stumble Upon did it and it's made all the difference. The problem I see is that third bar, the returning visitors. How do you get them to come back? That's what I'd like to know.

Revised: January 28

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Categories: MGuhlin.net

Building relationships with technology is something that's been on my mind since listening to Gregory Whitby's presentation. I suppose what grabbed me was the idea that closed systems determine where we go, what we do. In one of the quotes inside of Whitby's presentation, we hear someone describe the difference between train stations and cars. The people who built the train system can't understand why--in the perfect system they've constructed of getting people from one place to another--that people would rather drive their cars. It's so obvious that having a car gives one freedom, not only to go where one wants, including off the beaten path that a train can't go because the rails just don't go there, but also to customize that car.

Customize the vehicle you use to travel around in...consider the success of the new Volkwagon Bug, and how customized it is...the idea of being able to establish a relationship with the technology we use can literally transform the world around us.

A short time ago, I mentioned the open source phone. In a recent blog entry entitled White-box cell phones, this diagram is shared:

An explanation of the diagram follows:

This diagram describes the difference in terms of two axes: one for control and one for interaction type. On one end of the control axis is "vendor control" meaning that the vendor controls the experience. At the other is "user control" meaning that the user can control the experience. At one end of the interaction axis is "transactions" meaning that the vendor just wants your money for service. At the other end, "relationships" means that the vendor interactions don't just exchange money for services but also establish community and social applications.

What if we changed the diagram a bit? Some quick editing (right-click to view larger):

Now, it's a question of learner control vs school control. In School 2.0, it is all about learner control and relationships. Or, as Jeff (The Thinking Stick) writes:

It’s about understanding a world in which connections and communicating with others is at the foundation of how we learn, that through creating our own knowledge not from what a teacher tells us, but rather from what we read, listen to, and watch ourselves is far more powerful...School 2.0...is a school that defines learning and knowledge not by seat time, or hours spent on a project, but by what is experienced, created, and communicated.

So, when Jeff and Chris argue that society has changed, and that change is propelling schools, we might say the same of business. The same societal changes that are making open source phones acceptable in schools, that make blogging a force to be reckoned with in both schools AND business, are playing out in our classrooms. In a very real way, schools are caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, we have an almost Orwellian approach to managing children and those who "teach" them, even as changes in society give us back control, help us build relationships that must inevitably move us to the upper right quadrant.

In the lower left quadrant, schools are there to foist information on us and do the job inefficiently and poorly because their control structure just doesn't work anymore. In the upper right quadrant, learners take command and control of their learning.

As the authors of White-box cell phone blog entry share, experience (i.e. the Web) has shown that openness leads to much richer ecosystems than the alternatives (i.e. the old AOL). If we revamp that for Schools 2.0, then we're seeing that openness leads to greater learning environments and learning opportunities that meet children where their needs are rather than where the curriculum says all children should be.

Again, the questions businesses face are the same ones education faces...because the foundation upon which both are built has shaken:

Whether we can achieve this is held hostage to the closed mobile system that we live with. Is RaveWireless the answer? In an open scenario no single company can be the answer, but they are an example of the possibilities.

Isn't this the exact same problem? Aren't teachers advocating for Web 2.0 held hostage in a closed system? In an open scenaro, no single education system that proposes to be such without relinquishing control and building relationships.

Posted by Miguel Guhlin at | +Del.icio.us |
Categories: Education, MGuhlin.net, OpenLearning

Over at ELSUA, Luis Suarez shares his frustration with WordPress blogroll management. While he hopes for a plug-in, he finally confesses he's not sure how to handle a few hundred feeds that he wants to display:

But, alas I have not been able to find such plugin. At least, not yet, which is a pity. So here is the challenge. I know I could go ahead and add that blogroll with the categories manually one by one (That is not too difficult, I must say), but somehow I am not really sure I would want to do that for the over 500 feeds (Out of the 700 I currently have) that I want to display in my blogroll.

Having played around with various blogroll solutions, and finally finding one I like <grin>, my recommendation is that Luis use Bloglines.com to manage his RSS feeds. Each folder he creates in Bloglines becomes a category that he wants to use. Since there is drag-n-drop in Bloglines between folders/categories, it's pretty easy to arrange things the way you want them.

Once the folders are set up, all Luis will have to do is to add some code to the Wordpress front page sidebar that looks like this:

<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="http://rpc.bloglines.com/blogroll?id=mguhlin&folder=EdTechAdmins&target=_blank"></script>

I've bolded the items that would have to be customized. Note that "folder=" points to the name of the folder you have. This allows you to organize your blogroll and display certain folders first.

Another solution is to use Blogrolling, but I switched to Bloglines.com because I could easily subscribe to RSS feeds and they would automatically show up in my blogroll.

Luis, you might also want to read Borg Your Blog...it has a few other suggestions.

Posted by Miguel Guhlin at | +Del.icio.us |
Categories: MGuhlin.net, TechTips

I was following trackbacks via Technorati, and noticed where Around the Corner ranks. I'm terrible in math, and hope that smarter folks can help out. If Around the Corner is ranked 24,768, where does that put it? Is it in the top 10%? Top 20%? What does that ranking mean? And, how many blogs are in Technorati anyways? 20 million?

Just what is one supposed to do with this ranking and why does it even matter? I guess I'm the guy who looks at his standardized test scores and wonders, uhh, am I scoring better than the other 50% of folks who took this test?

Posted by Miguel Guhlin at | +Del.icio.us |
Categories: Education, MGuhlin.net

 is a Flickr screen saver that shows images by:

• User - Favorites, Set, Tags, Contacts
• Group
• Everyone - Tags, Recent, Interestingness
• Local

Download it for Windows. Anything out there for Mac or Linux?

Now the question I have, is there a Flickr tool that allows you to bypass firewalls and still access content, aside from what one can do with FlickrCC ?

Posted by Miguel Guhlin at | +Del.icio.us |
Categories: MGuhlin.net, TechTips

Flaming Sword Filtering is an apt description of DOPA Jr.'s provisions. In a learning.now blog entry, Andy Carvin writes:

The title also adds an exception “during use by an adult or by minors with adult supervision to enable access for educational purposes.” Supporters of DOPA have argued that this exception would mean that interactive tools wouldn’t be banned outright, and would allow teachers to use them in supervised activities. Critics, however, reply by noting that many school districts do not give individual educators the ability to de-activate filters as needed, either preventing them outright or setting up so much red tape that teachers just don’t bother. Assuming this is the case, even if the bill contains this exception, in practice, many educators won’t have the ability to use interactive sites in their teaching. And there’s nothing stopping schools from ignoring the exception and blocking any site that whiffs of Web 2.0itude, perhaps in the fear that it’s better to be safe than sorry in today’s litigious environment.

Let me share a story. As we all know, social bookmarking sites like Del.icio.us, Blinklist, and Simpy.com are powerful tools for aggregating and sharing information with others. Teachers can choose to build their own Internet Treasure Hunts using social bookmarking sites and then pointing students to a particular link. Voila, not only do you have the links to the web sites needed, you also have specific teacher comments/questions that students are encouraged to explore. All this can be setup from anywhere, at anytime because these social bookmarking sites can be accessed anywhere, anytime.

What's more, enterprising teachers can even empower students to share information via social bookmarking sites. While some argue that such tools should be under the control of the school district--perhaps, using an district-owned server running de.lirio.us, Scuttle, or Sabrosus--it's possible that draconian districts may not see a need to provide these services to schools. More importantly, unless the use of social bookmarking tools can be aligned to improving academic achievement, the question will be, "How does this directly relate to achieving curricular goals?" The focus may be misplaced on curriculum rather than 21st Century Skills, but for the teacher in the field, that's just the way it is.

Oops, I was going to share a story. Let's say that Delicious is approved and a special exception is made for it. Then, routine upgrades to content filtering software are completed, and Delicious is blocked. From one day to the next, an instructional resource is blocked. The process to overturn the decision? Submit a request to the HelpDesk to have it unblocked...and then the whole discussion of why social bookmarking site--which can be used by students to store personal data--comes up. Worse, what happens if people find INAPPROPRIATE web sites bookmarked on Delicious? This intensifies the debate...and the classroom teacher who was using social bookmarking tools decides, "You know what, if this is going to be so much darn trouble, forget about it. I don't need to teach 21st Century Skills to my students...it's not in the curriculum scope and sequence."

And, you know what? They're right.

So, red tape is so much a reality in large--and small--school districts that teachers just don't bother. And, that means that Creating the Walled Garden, as distasteful as that is to the purists and I, will be the only way to enable teachers to use and model district-approved tools with students.

Posted by Miguel Guhlin at | +Del.icio.us |
Categories: Leadership, MGuhlin.net

When my copy of TCEA's TechEdge magazine--circulation is 8,000 readers--arrived today, I was overjoyed...it featured 3 articles I was particularly excited about re-reading.

The 3 articles included:

1) On the Precipice of Change: 3 Obstacles to Technology Use in K-12
Mark Ahlness is quoted in this article. It is one of his best quotes. I encourage you to read it. Here's the lead from that article:

"Let's talk about 3 obstacles,” shared one executive director in a conversation that I had the opportunity to participate in, “that keep you from doing what you want to accomplish in Instructional Technology." What a great opener for a conversation about district-level initiatives! We are often stopped by obstacles that we perceive. Warren Greshes' shares that for most people, there are 3 obstacles that they just cannot get around (Source: Read More) .

2) Unleash the Power of Digital Storytelling: Part 3
This is the final story in a digital storytelling trilogy. This section was primarily written by Dr. Maria Kaylor in collaboration with Dr. JoAnne Ollerenshaw and, of course, me. Kind of them to share the byline...you can read the first two at http://mguhlin.wikispaces.com/writings

This article describes reasons for using digital storytelling with students who have learning disabilities.

3) Download a la Mode: Apps that Simplify Your Life
More and more school districts are placing restrictions on the rights of teachers to select and install software they view as relevant to classroom needs and/or instruction. On the one hand, districts deal with these requests from an increasingly tech-savvy group--especially those who read this column--and complaints from the district's helpdesk that end-users are "trashing" the machines with unrestricted install rights. So, even as teachers become more tech-savvy, more restrictions are imposed on work computers.This article addresses how you can bypass all the protections by booting off a CD-ROM, as well as deals with other exciting how-to issues such as getting YouTube videos for use in K-12 (if appropriate) if YouTube web service is blocked in your school district, and several others.

Get a PDF copy of all 3 articles

Posted by Miguel Guhlin at | +Del.icio.us |
Categories: Digital_Storytelling, Download a la Mode, Education, Leadership, MGuhlin.net, OpenLearning, TechTips

You know the DOPA story. Clone of DOPA is back. Take advantage of Bump on the Blog's attempt to fight DOPA Jr (yes, I know...it's still incubating):

The question I keep asking myself is, why wait and see whether or not it makes it out of committee before we begin to take any action and let our voices be heard?

Last fall, with the help of David Warlick and Miguel Guhlin, I put together a Flash applet that could be placed in the sidebar of a blog. This applet allowed users to enter their name, city, and state, and a preformatted email would be generated for them, addressed to their Senators. The email let their Senators know that the sender was not happy with the, then current, wording of DOPA. I received quite a bit of positive response for that applet, and with that in mind I have revised it a bit and am making it available once again.

The current applet will send an email to all members on the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation; the committee is currently considering the bill. I’ve made a few changes to the language of the body of the email to reflect the new legislation. Of course, the body of the email can be edited to reflect your own thoughts and opinions on the legislation. Otherwise, if you used the applet in the past, it is nearly identical. If you would like to place a copy of the applet in your blog, simply copy and paste the following piece of code and place it in your template:

<embed src="http://bumpontheblog.etowns.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/dopa_jr_button.swf" width="147" height="183"></embed>

Please help spread the word.

Posted by Miguel Guhlin at | +Del.icio.us |
Categories: Education, MGuhlin.net

(read Swiss?)

Someone wrote me recently (tonight) and asked for a quick recommendation on backing up their data directories on Windows. I recommended they download SyncBack Freeware and follow this LifeHacker tutorial.

SyncBack Freeware V3.2.14 works on Windows 98, 98SE, ME, NT 4, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows 2003. Windows 95 is NOT supported.

Posted by Miguel Guhlin at | +Del.icio.us |
Categories: MGuhlin.net, TechTips

Today, I had a chance to meet with a professor with whom I've been collaborating on Digital Storytelling series for the TCEA TechEdge (more later). As we chatted, she shared that she'd been working on writing and doing research. As I gently reminded her about blogging at her web site, we chatted about collaborative writing ventures. She mentioned that TCEA TechEdge magazine has 8,000 readers. This is something I'd forgotten, but what she said next shocked me:

One scholarly journal I am submitting for only has 1,000 subscribers. . .I'd rather read TechEdge because it's more practitioner oriented than the article in the scholarly journal...and I probably wouldn't read it anyways.

Of course, this has obvious repercussions for us all. Researchers NOT reading scholarly journals, instead preferring the free stuff on the Web? Where is the world going? <sarcasm>

In the January 24, 2007 "issue" of USA Today, the question is asked, "Is this the end of the scholarly journal?"

With blogs and e-books providing easy means of self-publishing, some observers are speculating that scholarly journals and their controversial system of peer reviews may not be needed at all. "The traditional journal publishing medium we've grown used to really needs to evolve and change because that's not the way people are accessing information," says Mark Gerstein, a professor of biomedical informatics at Yale University in New Haven, Conn. Dr. Gerstein cowrote an article, "The Death of the Scientific Paper," which appeared last year on The-Scientist.com, an online science magazine...Already, an online database called arXiv (www.arXiv.org), hosted by Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., contains more than 400,000 scientific papers posted by their authors without peer review. (The papers often appear later in peer-reviewed journals). Its comprehensiveness makes arXiv (pronounced "archive") a valuable tool, Gerstein, the Yale researcher, says. If someone claims to make a new discovery, anyone can search this database and say, "No, you didn't. It's in the arXiv."
via Drexel CoAS E-Learning

In The Death of the Scientific Paper, Dr. Gerstein shares the following needs:

• Online deposit of data as a requirement for publication
• Unified nomenclature
• Deliverables that include structured methods and results suitable for computer parsing, lay-friendly news blurb (uhh, that's me)
• Powerpoint slide summarizing the work
• All information is peer-reviewed and
• Published en masse

In regards to an online deposit of data, I wonder if a site like Many Eyes would be useful. Although still in alpha, Many Eyes hopes to leverage "the power of human visual intelligence to find patterns. Our goal is to "democratize" visualization and to enable a new social kind of data analysis." Consider this example from the site (ain't it pretty?) on GDP in Purchasing Power Parity:

Posted by Miguel Guhlin at | +Del.icio.us |
Categories: MGuhlin.net, OpenLearning

Yesterday afternoon, I was having a chat with the editor-in-chief of an ed-tech magazine. Their February 2007 issue is going to be on open source. As we were chatting, I made the point that it was important that students be able to both use free software (a la Free Software Foundation definition) as well as "hack" that software. As students use free software, they have the freedom to hack it in ways that may be innovative and useful. In other words, the same tools that they use to communicate and collaborate globally are open and accessible. It's not unreasonable to expect that students in education systems will want the ability to customize the tools they're using.

As an example, I shared TOCMAG. I also shared mobile phones--remember Greg Whitby's example--and how people must be able to relate, to personalize the technology they use...to make it "an extension of" themselves. One of my favorite phrases in any book on the frontier and/or early West is the idea that a weapon is an extension of a person's arm. Our familiarity with technology--a weapon in that case, a phone now--makes our use of it an extension.

Is it any wonder that just as weapons were "customized," and innovation resulted with weapons, that teachers and students would want to also customize their tools, make them their own? This whole idea that the technology just doesn't belong to you, it belongs to someone else...that's baloney. If we can't feel that a tool is a part of us, of who we are, how can others expect us to be innovative with it?

Is that a crazy idea?

I was reminded of the phone conversation with the editor when I read this entry over at Open Board Blog. Jim makes the same points I did, reassuring me that I was in the ballpark on the topic of open source in schools, and that innovation could only flourish when students had easy access to the source.

Every kid should know how to hack. If there’s gonna be cyber-fighting, why not teach the kids how to defend themselves — and do it legally on FOSS software? It would be a great introduction to ethics too.
Source: Fight Back and Hack, Open Board Blog

When you consider quotes like the following one from Their Space report (you need to read it!), you begin to appreciate that while the rest of the world may be no-tech, low-tech, mid-tech, America wants to be high-tech:

Most young people use technology to facilitate the kind of social interactions that we all recognise. However, there is a smaller group of digital pioneers that is pushing at the boundaries of conventional practice. For every focus group we ran there was a ‘leader of the pack’ who was one step ahead of the other children. These individuals have strong digital identities and are making the shift from consumption to creation. A range of characteristics is common to this type of activity – self-motivation, ownership, purposeful creativity and peer- to-peer learning.
Source: Demos Their Space Report

Not only that, we want our children (I do at least) to be the leader of the pack, one who has a strong digital identity and is focused on creation. "Hacking" the infrastructure is exactly the kind of behavior I want to see...but our education culture criminalizes this type of behavior. Our laws--set to protect proprietary software--make it a crime to be creative "outside the box." How funny. That these conversations are taking place in multiple places confirms that a paradigm shift <gasp> is occurring. I only wish I'd known about this report yesterday when I had my conversation:

The current generation of young people will reinvent the workplace, and the society they live in. They will do it along the progressive lines that are built into the technology they use everyday – of networks, collaboration, co-production and participation.
Source: Their Space Report

Posted by Miguel Guhlin at | +Del.icio.us |
Categories: Leadership, MGuhlin.net, OpenLearning

A key benefit of open content, sharing ideas with others, is getting feedback. I often learn a lot more about a product because of questions readers provide. Often, these are questions I was too ignorant to ask. With that in mind, I'm overjoyed when I get feedback like what I received from Al Leitch below. In regards to my Download a la Mode, Part 3: Free Tools to Ease Data Loss/Theft Concerns, he writes the following:

I definitely think you've got an excellent article in mind. I've been really happy with TrueCrypt. All 3rd party add-ons referenced here can be obtained at the link below this email. Anyway, there are certain things I should point out:

1) Page file - this is the file on a PC serving as the virtual memory when the real mem runs out. Do not forget that if you open a Word file from a TC encrypted container (file or partition), that word file is plunked into memory decrypted. The OS may at any time plunk it into the pagefile. This issue can be addressed by TCTEMP, a third party add-on.

2) Registry file: you cannot encrypt this one here using TC. Even if you apply all the 3rd party stuff in that link, the reg remains exposed. Windows needs this even before the login screen.

3) Hibernation file: this cannot be encrypted because the machine needs it in order to exit hibernation. Best option is to disable this option altogether.

4) User profile directory: this is where your temp files, internet history, downloads, etc are stored. People tend to store documents and stuff here too. Fortunately this can be addressed by TCGina. My only concern here is if any temp stuff ever hits the c:\WINDOWS directory...

5) Incorrect passphrase: this is different from a usual password in that it needs to be a very very long (ie: 23 chars minimum). The problem is many users don't understand that a world class crypto won't protect them if they use a highly guessable or short passphrase.

Anyway, thank you for this article. I also liked your other article mentioning Mac based disk wipers. I know about eraser and the great DBAN, but now I know how to help my mac buddies wipe their drives.

For more security issues, please refer to the user manual: http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/

3rd party add-ons (if you write an article showing how to use these, that'd be awesome): http://www.truecrypt.org/third-party-projects/

I even like the fact he suggests a future article! Great!

Posted by Miguel Guhlin at | +Del.icio.us |
Categories: Download a la Mode, MGuhlin.net, OpenLearning, Privacy, TechTips

This is a fascinating observation, don't you think? Probably goes for edu-bloggers, futurists, as well as Linux users...hehe

via Learn Online

Posted by Miguel Guhlin at | +Del.icio.us |
Categories: MGuhlin.net, OpenLearning

Kudos to Absolute Software for creating a blog! The blog is entitled "Laptop Security." Of course, I disagreed with their portrayal of my blog entries about them, but that's alright. Disagreeing isn't a problem so long as lawyers aren't involved! <smile>

Although the Laptop Security Blog is missing a few components, I'm sure they'll be added soon enough. I encourage them to read Borg Your Blog. And, I recommend a page on full disclosure so that there's no mistake that this blog is run by Absolute Software...at least, I think it is!

That said, I enjoyed reading the following points:

First is legislation - updating privacy laws. In Canada, that means telling people when there is a breach of security. This could lead to more public pressure to clean things up. More than 30 US States already have this mandatory reporting in place.

Second, understanding when a breach is significant. Not all lost laptops contain personal information.

Third, put in place penalties for breaches that go beyond just being embarassed - placing a fiscal outcome on significant breaches. This could trigger a whole new wave of companies attempting to strengthen their security protocols internally, as well as externally (laptops).

It's important to protect digital information...as well as find ways to protect the laptops upon which it is found!

Posted by Miguel Guhlin at | +Del.icio.us |
Categories:

Karen points this out with my favorite classic short stories web site:

Students need access to all curriculum materials and many of these short stories are the classics assigned in schools. Attach a voice to them using Click, Speak, a free text-to-speech extension in Firefox, and you've made the text accessible to your students with reading disabilities without leaving the Internet!

Nifty tip! Thanks, Karen! Anyone know of similar type services?

Posted by Miguel Guhlin at | +Del.icio.us |
Categories: Education, MGuhlin.net, OpenLearning, TechTips

I love this post that Eric (Sicheii Yazhi) put up on Joomla in the Classroom, replete with screenshots and more. Check it out! A brief blurb:

For a few years, I’ve been using Joomla (previously Mambo) to run an "interactive" website for students in AP English, humanities, and creative writing classes at my school: WSHSBeyond.com. This provided some "social" web work before the term caught on. Now, with additional extensions, the site provides a pretty excellent (though not perfect) social learning environment.

In case there are others searching for a way to move their students online, I thought I’d give an overview of what’s great and not-so-great about using Joomla as a solution. First of all, Joomla can provide an excellent "walled garden" for students, and it’s particularly suited for creating a social network built around a discussion forum. Each student has a profile to collect their work on the site and their links to other sites.

This graphic of customized wikispaces rocks! (gee, that's the first time I've used that expression ever!)

Posted by Miguel Guhlin at | +Del.icio.us |
Categories: Leadership, MGuhlin.net

Well, when I finished doing all the evening stuff at my house (dinner, going over the day, relaxing, breathing a sigh of relief that my passport arrived so now I can travel!), I powered up the computer...and braced for impact. I just KNEW that I'd take some hits for Harpy Education Reform. I was feeling the chest pressure. "Man, I really blew it this time!" Then, I remembered. I live in Texas, not Pennsylvania <evil grin>.

On a more serious note, Karen left this comment to my post about Jerome Bruner. I'd like to invite your feedback on the situation. Let's go with this as a problem-based lesson. This is the problem narrative. How are you going to handle this?

My high school age daughter took on more than she could handle - seven courses, no studies, color guard, drama club officer. The color guard competitions and drama club musical happened at the same time and ended in November. At that point, she got pneumonia and lost five days of school due to sickness and exhaustion (she literally slept all day).

Needless to say, she fell behind in her two honors courses. She passed in her assignments (admittedly, very late) and one teacher refused to give her ANY credit for handing in her overdue work. I argued for at least a 50 and not a zero on the five assignments. (It's still an F and gets across the point the teacher wanted to make.) All assigments that were completed on time earned As, but there were enough zeroes that she got an F for the quarter. I argued that teaching is a noble profession, where is the nobility in that type of rigid, dogmatic reaction? What was the educational rationale for inflexibility? Her self-esteem is shot to say the least.

(We lived through many all nighters and tearful episodes as she is extremely sensitive, more so than my other two kids.)

Where is the humanity? Any thoughts? Am I way off base here?

Ok, as I recall my PBL procedure, let's go with:

1) What hunches do we have about Karen's daughter's situation with her honors' classes?

2) What do you know about Karen's daughter and the situation?

3) What questions do we need answer in order to do something about this situation?

For now, let's respond to question #1. Leave your hunches, or guesses, about this situation in the comments. Please refrain from responding to questions 2 & 3, ok?

Posted by Miguel Guhlin at | +Del.icio.us |
Categories: Education, MGuhlin.net

I gave in to peer pressure, I'm ashamed to admit it. I switched from Bloglines to Google Reader. I thought maybe the link blog would be nice to have, or being able to press "J" or "K" would do it for me. Or being able to star items that I wanted to read later (I like this feature...I want it on Bloglines). But none of those things did it for me. A few days later, I'm back to Bloglines. I really tried hard, but...Reader just didn't work for me. Bloglines is faster, let's me see my feeds at a glance much better instead of all these little windows that Reader has, lets me generate my blogroll...no, Bloglines is still the winner.

Posted by Miguel Guhlin at | +Del.icio.us |
Categories: MGuhlin.net

(safest harpy image i could find!)

Warning: I am playing with this entry. Ok, you've been warned. Aren't you glad I told you up front? What do I really think? Hmm...longer conversation needed.
And, my apologies to Robert Scoble; you're doing a great job but you knew that already. Oh, and no comparison between harpies and actual people is suggested, implied in this post. If such is inferred, keep it to yourself since I didn't imply it, and don't want to hear about the more colorful aspects of harpies or see it dropped [pun intended] into the comments.

An ardent advocate of Robert Scoble's approaches to business, think:lab blogger Chris Long writes:

He [Miguel] disagreed with me [Chris] about bringing Scoble (and the other business blogging contenders) into 'education' (read his comment at the bottom of this post to see what he said in full). I disagreed, respectfully, that the business issue is a non issue. That blogging is a communication and thinking medium in any domain. And that kids/teachers stand to learn a lot from business bloggers who talk well, link fast and furiously, and have developed a brand that gets attention.

That Chris has re-visited this idea speaks well of him. I appreciate his moving this from a comment to a main blog entry. That said, in re-reading my comment, I must note that I actually agreed with the general direction of his assertions...allow me to highlight the phrase as I quote my comment:

I agree with both of you! However, isn't it dangerous to apply Scoble's wisdom and observations to education settings? While some education administrators (supes) are working to apply business principles to K-12 education, the reality is that they are being selective about messing with education culture...they may be trying to bring about change with business principles but without full commitment to transforming the education culture.

Simply, if blogging hasn't quite caught on in business, it's less likely to catch on as a transplant from business to K-12 education. What are your thoughts?
Comment posted to think:lab

What's powerful about blogging is that it allows us to connect emotionally, viscerally with each other. An educator who blogs is on a performance-enhancing drug, able to make and invite relationships with others. You just know that a blogging educator is a better educator because CONNECTING with people is what being an educator is about. If you can't connect, if you can't emotionally engage your audience of students, then who cares? If we can't connect to each other, then we're less human. Ok, I'll go out on a ledge. A blogger is MORE in touch with their humanity than someone who doesn't blog. But, can we apply Scoble's wisdom--earned in business--to education?

APPLYING BUSINESS PRINCIPLES TO EDUCATION: A VALID APPROACH?

How often has it been said that public education in the United States should be run more like a business? This exhortation urges American public schools to apply the same management, leadership and organizational approaches to public education that have been used to create the iconic state of global business. The idea is simple and seductive. The problem is that while public school districts have a myriad of managerial, leadership and organizational concerns, they are not businesses. In reality, their differences are greater than their similarities.
Read Source

What confused Christian is that while I agreed, I also asked if it was wise to apply business practices to education settings. Is it wise to assert that proven business principles can be universally applied to other settings, including education? Consider Jim Collins in his book, Good to Great. In it he writes:

Our five-year quest yielded many insights...but one giant conclusion stands above the others: We believe that almost any organization can substantially improve its stature and performance, perhaps even become great, if it conscientiously applies the framework of ideas we've uncovered.

Why is blogging a business practice? And while Scoble may be an expert business blogger, what does he know about blogging in education? Is this even a valid criticism, or am I missing it altogether?

How can we be sure that books and ideas designed for business, or flowing from business lessons, can be applied to education? I'm reminded of a comment Sylvia Martinez left some time ago when I shared I was reading Jim Collins' work:

Read the Jim Collins books with a jaundiced eye - people are drawing way too much out of these books as they try to apply them to schools. The companies he profiles were selected for very specific reasons, mostly to do with stock price. Some things apply, some things don't hold water for organizations with different goals (like schools).

So, a question that is raised in my mind is, what is the equivalent "stock price" for education? We've certainly seen legislators push that this "stock price" should be tests, but being able to pass a test in the short term doesn't equate to long-term success for a system of education or its students. In fact, Julia's revision of Jerome Bruner's statement suggests that, "Any system of education or theory of pedagogy that fails to teach skills students need to survive in the 21st century is a system doomed to fail our students."

The dynamic tension in between desired reality and current reality....it is such a yawning gap that educators, as well as students, are unable to straddle the divide. Blogging is as disruptive to business as it is education, yet, can Scoble's ideas of abundance and scarcity be applied to education? In education, haven't we always worked from an abundance model?

Of course, I am asking questions here. The reason I ask is simple--if the business model that involves communication still hasn't caught on, except for a few notable exceptions, what makes you think that blogging will be effectively, systemically applied in K-12 education? Can blogging for business be the same as blogging in education? In business, it's been about developing a product and selling it...and keeping secret that process. In education, it's been about sharing ideas, whether as lessons, strategies to use with students, or workloads. "I'm pitching in to help," not because one makes money, but because "helping children actualize their dreams is what we're about." The best way to help children actualize those dreams is by providing them with a good education. Isn't that the traditional expectation?

As we focus on reforming, transforming, we want kids to accept delivery of the "clue train," to reflect on what they've received, and better yet, to refine the system itself. As edu-bloggers, we are called upon to refine the education system so that conversation is possible, so that we're not locked into teaching curriculum, but rather, helping students learn 21st Century Skills and apply that in a world where you can google any information you need.

Is transplanting blogging in business, learn to go from good to great, really going to work? In education, we want competition because it's children need to make it on their own. In a changing world, we want children to communicate and collaborate with each other, regardless of time and space constraints. We want to form learning circles...can education accomplish that by adopting business models? Which to adopt? Why Scoble? Who died and made him worth emulating?

Before you answer, "Yes" to the question about applying business models, consider that K-12 education has systemic structures in place that are responsible for certain patterns of behavior. The measure of those systems may be standardized prices, but not stock prices (for one example). It may be students earning good grades, earning a diploma that reflects time spent learning critical work skills, or doing well in higher education systems. Whatever the criteria for success, the focus has been on helping children achieve it.

When we read Practical Theory's review of Pennsylvania's blogging guidelines, as well as Vicki Davis' commentary, we have to ask again--can blogging by itself--unlock the interlocking systemic structures that have long endured in K-12 education? And, what are those systemic structures? And, do our superintendents and those who have the authority to initiate the conversation about changing those structures, are they fully committed to transforming the education culture?

Superintendents are reading all the literature from business, seeking to apply it to education...and, I'm reminded of the Greek Myths that describe the combination of eagle and woman. Instead of an angelic being, we're stuck with the harpy. I hope that's not too harsh an analogy. . .I may dump it. but for now, combining business and education together may result in a creature that misses the target of such a union.

Posted by Miguel Guhlin at | +Del.icio.us |
Categories: Education, MGuhlin.net

Thanks to Shel Israel (Global Neighborhoods) for sharing this service. The response about what Roam4Free FAQ appears below:

Roam4free is a prepaid mobile phone service that allows you to use your mobile phone when you are travelling abroad, without incurring roaming charges. Using our service will cut your mobile phone bill by as much as 85%. Simply swap to our SIM card whenever you travel abroad and take advantage of calls for as little as 45c per minute and receive calls in many countries for free. When you move between countries, our SIM card will move seamlessly with you, picking up a new network as soon as you arrive at a new destination, enabling you to make calls the moment you step off the plane. The service works in over 120 countries. When your credit runs low, simply log in and top up your account using our automated and instant top-up service, from anywhere in the world, 24 hours a day.

If I'm reading this right, I can use this when travelling to New Zealand and Panama this year. Wow!

Posted by Miguel Guhlin at | +Del.icio.us |
Categories: MGuhlin.net

I was surprised to read the following:

So I was a little surprised to receive email a couple of days ago from Microsoft saying they wanted to contract someone independent but friendly (me) for a couple of days to provide more balance on Wikipedia concerning ODF/OOXML. I am hardly the poster boy of Microsoft partisanship! Apparently they are frustrated at the amount of spin from some ODF stakeholders on Wikipedia and blogs.

Is this how Wikipedia should be updated? I suppose all this happens in the background with "closed" encyclopedias, so we're not aware of it. But, to pay someone to update Wikipedia. Is that an idea we want to get accustomed to?

Posted by Miguel Guhlin at | +Del.icio.us |
Categories: MGuhlin.net, OpenLearning

After my initial post on CompuTrace--what, day before yesterday?--Steve E. and a stockholder in Absolute Software have emailed or left comments on the original post. While Steve acknowledges the technical accuracy of the post, he shares it doesn't reflect his experience. As Steve points out, my comment remains technically accurate.

I am writing because what Miguel has written, while technically accurate, does not reflect our experience with Computrace.

And, that's true. CompuTrace has been successful in reducing computer theft, both as a preventative and in recovery. This makes it a unique product and a viable alternative--for now--to computer cables, etc. And yet, my purpose is to highlight that CompuTrace is not foolproof. A determined, knowledgeable thief can bypass CompuTrace if they reformat the machine using a program like Darik's Boot-n-Nuke, and then, in lieu of Windows, install a GNU/Linux operating system (e.g. UbuntuLinux). Is that more work than getting around a cable? You decide...and that's the point of sharing this information. One stockholder actually didn't know/understand that loading an alternate operating system instead of Windows would effectively nullify CompuTrace's effect. You need the information to make the decision and ask questions. Kudos to Absolute Software for being unafraid to share their thoughts in the blogosphere.

As schools are moving towards open source software deployment--consider the State of Indiana's initiative--I suggested to the CEO that he consider including Linux as one of the operating systems supported by CompuTrace. He has responded that they will do more research.

One of the follow-up questions I had from readers via email was, "Thieves could just 'flash the BIOS.'" I have never "flashed" a BIOS so I'm not technologically savvy in that regard. When I shared the question with John (CEO, Absolute Software), he responded in this way:

On the BIOS flash - the OEM's have created flash updates that include Computrace support so our module is still present and the anti-theft setting and original ownership record is persevered. We have created the Computrace persistent software/firmware module to ensure that when a school or individual activates our computer theft recovery service - that upon a theft, the stolen notebook can be tracked, recovered and returned to its rightful owner.

From what I have read about flashing the BIOS, it is a deliberate action that can ruin your computer if done incorrectly. Again, sophisticated thieves would have to be involved a computer theft ring, and if one can imagine a chop shop for cars, why not for computers? Is this response valid to the flashing the BIOS? In this case, I must depend on you.

Finally, to round out the conversation, I invited John Livingston, CEO of Absolute Software, to participate in a Skypecast, as well as setup a blog for his business. Here's the invite for the SkypeCast:

Is there any interest on your part in doing a Skype interview to share your product, and then share that as a podcast? We could then invite in--via Skype--educators to share their experiences. The Skypecast would go for an hour, then be released as a podcast. Let me know and we'll set up a convenient time.

John's response was as follows:

I would look forward to the Skype interview and have cc Courtney C.[last name omitted] to help arrange it.

So, what kind of questions would you like to see about CompuTrace and computer security in general?

Posted by Miguel Guhlin at | +Del.icio.us |
Categories: Leadership, MGuhlin.net

Someone shared the following on the WFTL-LUG list...thought I'd share it here:

Tech Support: Yes, how can I help you?

Customer: Well, after much consideration, I've decided to install Love. Can you guide me through the process?

Tech Support: Yes. I can help you. Are you ready to proceed?

Customer: Well, I'm not very technical, but I think I'm ready. What doI do first?

Tech Support: The first step is to open your Heart. Have you located your Heart?

Customer: Yes, but there are several other programs running now. Is it okay to install Love while they are running?

Tech Support: What programs are running?

Customer: Let's see, I have Past Hurt, Low Self-esteem, Grudge and Resentment running right now.

Tech Support: No problem, Love will gradually erase Past Hurt from your current operating system. It may remain in your permanent memory, but it will no longer disrupt other programs. Love will eventually override Low Self-esteem with a module of its own called High Self-esteem. However, you have to completely turn off Grudge and Resentment. Those programs prevent Love from being properly installed. Can you turn those off?

Customer: I don't know how to turn them off. Can you tell me how?

Tech Support: With pleasure. Go to your start menu and invoke Forgiveness.

Do this as many times as necessary until Grudge and Resentment have been completely erased?

Customer: Okay, done! Love has started installing itself. Is that normal?

Tech Support: Yes, but remember that you have only the base program.You need to begin connecting to other Hearts in order to get the upgrades.

Customer: Oops! I have an error message already. It says, "Error -Program not run on external components." What should I do?

Tech Support: Don't worry. It means that the Love program is set up to run on Internal Hearts, but has not yet been run on your Heart. In non-technical terms, it simply means you have to Love yourself before you can Love others.

Customer: So, what should I do?

Tech Support: Pull down Self-Acceptance; then click on the following files:Forgive-Self; Realize Your Worth; and Acknowledge your Limitations.

Customer: Okay, done.

Tech Support: Now, copy them to the "My Heart" directory. The system will overwrite any conflicting files and begin patching faulty programming. Also, you need to delete Verbose Self-criticism from all directories and empty your Recycle Bin to make sure it is completely gone and never comes back.

Customer: Got it. Hey! My heart is filling up with new files. Smile is playing on my monitor and Peace and Contentment are copying themselves all over My Heart. Is this normal?

Tech Support: Sometimes. For others it takes a while, but eventually everything gets it at the proper time. So Love is installed and running. One more thing before we hang up. Love is Freeware.

Be sure to give it, and its various modules, to everyone you meet. They will in turn share it with others and return some cool modules back to you.