Slideshare and slidecasting

A nice little bit of Web 2.0 goodness is the ability to create slideshows that live on the web. At worst, web-based slideshows are just one more way to do a presentation but hey, it’s easy and fun to do!

Slideshare is a nice site that organizes slideshows a bit like YouTube, meaning you can have a login and upload your own slideshows and it automatically creates the code to embed your slideshow in a blog. It also allows Slidecasts, where you can synchronize an MP3 file with your slideshow.

Be aware this site is not specifically for educators or k-12 schools.

Here’s a Slideshare I created, where I was experimenting with copying a style of slideshow where the graphics are predominant, and text on screen is essentially the narrative. This could be an interesting student assignment, with students asked to think about what the elements of a particular style are, and then copy that style.

Web 2.0 – Share the Adventure with Students (Meet Jane) Teaser

Here’s what I was copying: Meet Henry

Web 2.0 – Share the Adventure with Students

Another K12Online 2007 Conference session goes live today – Web 2.0 – Share the Adventure with Students

For many teachers, Web 2.0 tools offer exciting opportunities for students to express themselves and take command of technology that stretches the mind and reaches outside school walls. For some teachers, these tools are like trying to take a drink from a fire hose – endlessly expanding into a bewildering array of choices.

It’s a daunting task to figure out all the options with Web 2.0 tools and choose the “best” one to introduce to students. But why should you have all the fun!? Share your Learning Adventure 2.0 with your students and you will all benefit from the experience.

Web 2.0 – Share the Adventure with Students is available both as a video and audio only podcast on the K12Online 2007 conference site.

 

Student Speak Up 2007 – Add your voice

It’s that time of year again – time for Speak Up!  The annual event opens this week with online surveys for K-12 students, teachers, parents and new this year – school leaders.  This is the 5th year of the Speak Up, facilitating the inclusion of student voices in national and local discussions on education and technology.

This year’s question themes:  Learning and Teaching with Technology, Web 2.0 in Education, 21st Century Skills, Science Instruction & Global Competitiveness, Emerging Technologies in the Classroom (Gaming, Mobile Devices, Online Learning) and Designing the School of the Future.  Also new this year: the parent survey is available in English and Spanish.

The Speak Up surveys will be open October 15 through December 15 2007. You may register your school or whole district on the site and take the surveys at any time.

The impact of the Speak Up data over the past 5 years has been tremendous. Each participating school or district gets online access to their own aggregated quantitative data with national benchmark data; districts use that data as input for programs and budgets.  National data findings will be released in March 2008. For more information or data from previous years, check the Project Tomorrow site.

K12 Online 2007 Conference – comfy slipper learning

Flickr photo - slippersLike going to educational conferences? I do. Meeting new and old friends, learning cool things, and being inspired is revitalizing. But it’s not something I want to do every day! Airplanes, leaving home, work piling up, big crowds, and jet lag can make you wonder if it’s all worth it.So here comes some web 2.0 savvy educators with a great idea. Can’t we have it all? Can’t we share, collaborate, and be inspired without the TSA being involved? Can I participate in a way that’s easy for me, comfortable for me, and convenient for me? Oh, and did I mention… FREE?

Yup, and it starts next week. The K12 Online Conference about 21st Century teaching and learning will run over the next three weeks. But really, you are in charge. You can look at the keynotes and sessions where and when you want. You can watch videos or listen to audio. You can download them as podcasts. This is an online conference, but it isn’t about online learning. It’s about using technology – web 2.0, software, and other tools to enhance teaching and learning.

What happens during the next three weeks is that the sessions are slowly unveiled, one at a time, and there are online discussions scheduled at different times over the course of the whole conference. Some of the conversation times may be convenient for you, some may not, but somewhere, someone around the world will be thinking… “hey, they thought of me!”

Plus there will be places to comment on the presentations in a blog format – if you want to. That’s what it’s all about. You could replay your favorite session twelve times — if you want to. You can explore last year’s sessions — they are still up there on the website. You could wait until December to do this — if you want to. You can download something and share it at a staff meeting — if you want to.

But only for the next three weeks will you be able to participate with educators from around the globe talking about teaching and learning with technology in real-time sessions — if you want to.

We all like to be challenged and inspired, but we all like to put on our comfy slippers too. Now we get both.

k12online logoThe 2007 K12 Online Conference about 21st Century teaching and learning is scheduled to be held over two weeks, October 15-19 and October 22-26, 2007, and will include a preconference keynote and fireside chat by David Warlick during the week of October 8. The conference theme is Playing with Boundaries.

Check out the website, cruise around and look at the teasers for all the different sessions. The sessions run the gamut of different grade levels, classroom ideas and staff development and from practical how-tos to more philosophical things. I guarantee there will be something you will like.

Download a printable flyer and send it to a friend (or two, or ten) K12online flyer (PDF). Be brave, like Cathy Nelson of TechnoTuesday and demo it for your colleagues! Next week I’ll post more the conference and about my sessions coming the week of Oct 22-26. I blogged about my “teasers” here if you can’t wait 😉

“See” you there – Sylvia

Update – Added links to all my sessions:

Wiki with supporting resources, research, and how I made these presentations!

Flickr photo: Winston thinks my new slippers are very tasty.

Nonconformist students – allies in educational technology use

Yesterday I posted about the new NSBA report on teen and tween use of online networks for talking about education and creating content. Today, I’d like to review a really interesting part of the report that has gotten less attention – nonconformist students and their use of technology.

Nonconformists — students who step outside of online safety and behavior rules — are on the cutting edge of social networking, with online behaviors and skills that indicate leadership among their peers. About one in five (22 percent) of all students surveyed, and about one in three teens (31 percent), are nonconformists, students who report breaking one or more online safety or behavior rules, such as using inappropriate language, posting inappropriate pictures, sharing personal information with strangers or pretending to be someone they are not.

No surprise here, it’s probably the non-conformist teachers who are also the heaviest users of technology too!

Nonconformists are significantly heavier users of social networking sites than other students, participating in every single type of social networking activity surveyed (28 in all) significantly more frequently than other students both at home and at school — which likely means that they break school rules to do so. For example, 50 percent of non conformists are producers and 38 percent are editors of online content, compared to just 21 percent and 16 percent, respectively, of other students.

These students are more in touch with other people in every way except in person –their own classmates, other friends, teachers, and even their own parents.

These students seem to have an extraordinary set of traditional and 21st century skills, including communication, creativity, collaboration and leadership skills and technology proficiency. Yet they are significantly more likely than other students to have lower grades, which they report as “a mix of Bs and Cs,”or lower, than other students. However, previous research with both parents and children has shown that enhanced Internet access is associated with improvements in grades and school attitudes, including a 2003 survey by Grunwald Associates LLC.

These findings suggest that schools need to find ways to engage nonconformists in more creative activities for academic learning. These students talents are being ignored, when in fact they are:

  • Traditional influentials (students who recommend products frequently and keep up with the latest brands)
  • Networkers (students with unusually large networks of online friends)
  • Organizers (students who organize a lot of group events using their handhelds)
  • Recruiters (students who get a disproportionately large number of other students to visit their favorite sites)
  • Promoters (students who tell their peers about new sites and features online)

So, are these kids your allies or enemies?
These students could be the key to successful school-wide use of technology, providing both expertise and the networking ability to create wider acceptance among their peers. By providing them with a role, graduated responsibility, and an understanding of what the goals are for educational technology, they could be a primary asset, an advance team, and a force for change.

Download the NSBA reportCreating & Connecting: Research and Guidelines on Online Social and Educational Networking (PDF)

Teens talking about education online

A new study released by the National School Boards Association (NSBA) exploring the online behaviors of U.S. teens and ‘tweens shows that 96 percent of students with online access use social networking technologies.

You can download the 9 page PDF Creating & Connecting: Research and Guidelines on Online Social and Educational Networking from the NSBA website. If you are engaged in any kind of evangelism for online student activities, this report is a goldmine of data. You might be surprised to find out that many schools ARE working towards figuring out policies and practices that work. It’s not so lonely out on the “bleeding edge” of technology knowing that lots of others are out there too.

Students report that one of the most common topics of conversation on the social networking scene is education. Nearly 60 percent of online students report discussing education-related topics such as college or college planning, learning outside of school, and careers. And 50 percent of online students say they talk specifically about schoolwork.

While most schools have rules against social networking activities, almost 70 percent of districts report having student Web site programs, and nearly half report their schools participate in online collaborative projects with other schools and in online pen pal or other international programs. Further, more than a third say their schools and/or students have blogs, either officially or in the context of instruction.

It’s not just all talk
Students report they are engaging in highly creative activities on social networking internet sites including writing, art, and contributing to collaborative online projects whether or not these activities are related to schoolwork. Almost half of students (49 percent) say that they have uploaded pictures they have made or photos they have taken, and more than one in five students (22 percent) report that they have uploaded video they have created.

Students are using technology outside of school to make school relevant to their lives – can we find ways to make sure that technology use inside of school is at least as relevant?

More Virtual News from Google (and others)

Two more developments in the virtual world since the announcement of Metaplace last week (here’s my take on the education potential).

  • Google seems to be testing a virtual world engine at Arizona State University.
  • Scenecaster is promoting itself as a way to “mainstream” virtual worlds, much like YouTube did to video

There is a nice write up of these two developments in Virtual World News.

Really, the hype around these worlds and engines has nothing to do with use, and especially not educational use. The hype is to create “buzz” for these companies that creates value by generating attention. Someone is going to “win” the attention war and make a bunch of money. The more hype and publicity a company generates, the more attention it can get from venture capitalists or bigger companies hoping to score a competitive advantage by buying a hot technology. Part of the reason that all these annoucements are coming now is that there are a couple of big conferences devoted to promoting new companies going on this month.

Of course, what does this mean to educators – today!

Today, the choices for educators exploring virtual worlds mean that you have to commit to one of number of proprietary worlds with some pretty serious limitations, some technical, some social. Second Life has certainly gotten a lot of publicity, but it’s not the only game in town. As with many Web 2.0 tools (and really, any technology) it’s going to shake out and leave a lot of companies on the sidelines. It’s not a question of if, but when. Educators using any tool should seriously think about what would happen if the company shut its doors suddenly, or if something much better comes along. That way, the lessons learned can be transferred to the next tool, technology, or platform.

It seems to me that anyone exploring the use of any technology tool with students should always be thinking about the “big picture” — what does this mean for students, how does this enhance learning, and what the lessons learned are for the future. Getting married to any technology tool doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the best choice for your class, but keeping the big picture in mind means that your time invested will always pay off.

Sylvia

Sharing Student Voice: Students Presenting at Conferences

cover of whitepaperI’m proud to announce the release of Sharing Student Voice: Students Presenting at Conferences. This 10 page monograph contains both research support and practical tips for teachers working with students to plan presentations of student work by students in formal, adult venues, specifically educational conferences. (Download PDF)

The paper contains:

  • Research on student voice and student empowerment, reflecting on 21st century skill development and inclusion of Web 2.0 technology
  • How to plan and submit sessions with student presenters
  • Types of conference sessions and how students best fit into different formats
  • Planning, creating, and practicing the presentation while creating student ownership
  • Treating the presentation as part of the reflective process that builds student voice
  • Balancing the needs of the audience with the needs of students while retaining authentic student voice
  • Top Ten Tips for Student Presenters
  • Logistics tips for bigger conferences and exhibit halls
  • The role of the teacher in the presentation, providing context and being the audience surrogate
  • Session and speaker etiquette and what to expect

I hope this resource is useful to anyone wondering how to take students to speak at a conference, or anyone planning an event that includes students. I wrote it to be a very practical guide for busy teachers!

We often work with teachers to bring Generation YES students to various events to talk about how they work with teachers to improve technology use, or how they function as a trusted part of the tech support team, or how technology literacy can be assessed with student peer mentors. We’ve learned a lot over the years about how best to do this, and want to share it with everyone. It’s not hard to do, but why not learn from our experience (and mistakes!)

Our first monograph, Vision to Action: Including Student Leadership in Your Technology Plan, released in February 2007, was a big hit and we hope to build on that success with more free resources that help school leaders enable student voice to improve education. We all know that student voice and student participation in authentic activities is important, but without focused, ongoing efforts by adults, this can get lost among other priorities. We hope these resources help people get started or keep their momentum going by not having to “reinvent the wheel.”

Over the next few days, I’ll share a few highlights from this new monograph, but if you’d like the whole thing, please feel free to download and share it with others.

Download PDFSharing Student Voice: Students Presenting at Conferences by Sylvia Martinez

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Web 2.0 community for new teachers

My recent post, Connecting Ed-tech to Ed-reform got a nod from Will Richardson (mother-of-all ed-tech bloggers) as part of a thoughtful post on his search for connection and meaning beyond the latest shiny new technology.

It also attracted a comment from Peter Henry, one of the participants of the panel and author of some of the educational reform articles I linked to. Web 2.0 at its finest.

I was on the panel that you quote above and wrote some of the material. And yes, I am specifically talking about using new technologies to fundamentally change and “reculture” public schools. I myself offer graduate level courses online and have completely rethought how I teach based on using the Web as a learning tool.

In fact, my site, www.newteachernetwork.net, is dedicated to the proposition that “new teachers” (the new generation, mainly) collaborate, share and team much more regularly and effectively than do previous generations.

The goal is to build a learning community online that is dedicated to using technology and the ethos of open source learning to bond new teachers together, wherever they may be.

And, frankly, I need help. I need members, I need content, I need web designers. This is an open call to the community. If you want to move toward democracy, incorporating new technologies and building networks of like-minded people, please contribute what you can, when you can and spread the word far and wide.

It is a new day, a new dawn really, and we are on the cusp of something really special here but like any incipient community, we need the founding members to come forward, stake a claim and build something tangible so that others can see the dream actually going up.

So there ya go – I think this call to action deserves to be up front, not hidden in a comment. I’m not sure if I agree that new teachers are better (or worse) at teamwork than previous generations. But really, we certainly should do anything possible to prevent the incredible exodus of new teachers from the profession. So if what Peter wrote intrigues you, head on over to New Teacher Network and join the cause!

Sylvia