I recently came across an article describing a video conferencing project in Maryland. Middle school students interacting with musicians from New York City.

When I shared the idea with a colleague, she replied, “yeah, but don’t you want kids having really experiences and not just watching screens?”

I good point. Although I am a strong advocate for technology in schools and although I believe those who cannot use technology are not qualified to be educators, I am an equal advocate for real experiences throughout one’s educational career. Of course, middle school educators know that: we create advisories, we ensure students have rich and diverse exploratory experiences, we use field-based experiences.

But technology can connect individual who were never before connected. How many of us consider colleagues who we met once (or maybe never) but with whom we exchange email or messages on online communities? I expect not enough of us, otherwise, video conferencing would no longer be newsworthy.

Word has come though that NELMS will be trying a new wireless networking device at the Annual Conference. If things go as planned, we should have our own wireless network in the Technology Playroom ,and we should be able to avoid the intermittent connections that plagued our work last year.

As a graduate student researching educational technology on and off for the better part of the last decade, I have seen again and again in the literature research and opinion and advice articles that stress the importance of leaders in efforts to make technology and important part of learning and life in the modern school.

We needs “strong leaders,” “champions,” “standard bearers,” “visionary leaders” at the top. Without their leadership “initiatives fail” and “technology is just another fad.”

Sounds good… then I find this article…
http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2008/01/23/3leadership.h01.html

Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t want computer geeks running our schools. Most computer people who I know don’t have the understanding of young people and the dynamics of learning that are necessary to run schools. But we can no longer accept school leaders who do not understand how technology is affecting teaching and learning, society and culture.

I propose local technology boot camps for superintendents and principals (and any other administrator). Let’s lock them in a school and find some tech savvy adults and kids to bring school leaders up to date. Let’s make them create a social networking site. Let’s make them watch YouTube. Let’s make them talk with each other only through instant messaging. Let’s immerse them in modern communication to make them aware that information technology is here.

So, what experiences must we give school leaders to help them become aware of modern communication technology?

Today was the end of the progress report period for my middle school students (half-way through the third quarter!). My students always end marking periods (or progress report periods) with some reflective writing. Once they had finished with the prompts I provided to focus on our work, I posed this:

“I am reading Everything Bad is Good for You, a book about television, movies, and video games and the affects of these media on young people and their brains. I am not finished yet, but the thesis is clear: Today’s moves, television programs, and video games are making today’s young people smarter. Basically, your interaction with these media are making your smarter than your parents. Do you agree? Prove it with an example or a story.”

Middle school students really do see their game playing. their TV and their movies as mdia that promote thinking. My son (an eighth grader who was in my class today) and I continued the discussion over dinner:

“Look, when I play a game, I really have to look around and try to figure out how is the best way to play,” he said.

“You mean you don’t just play?” I asked, “How about looking at the instructions?”

“No, when you first learn a game it takes a long time to figure out. You have to take time and try to discover not just how to move the controls, but what happens when your guy does stuff,” he explained.

That’s just what Steven Johnson had written about; he called the work of exploring the game “probing” and the goal of discovering “what your guy does” discovering the physics” of the game.

I continued talking with my son, “so what about the end of the game? Do you know the goal?”

“Yeah,” said Emmitt, “you gotta figure out all the steps along the way. If you want to capture one place, you have to figure out all the steps that lead up to it.”

“Cool, Steven Johnson calls that telescoping,” I said.

“You really need to stop reading those brain books,” Emmitt concluded.

But we continued to talk. TV was next. I am proud to say that I watch little TV, but the shows I like were all mentioned in the book as being examples of shows good for the brain: “Scrubs,” “South Park,” “The Simpsons,” “Seinfeld.” (What do my tastes say about me sense of humor? My tastes do explain why I get along with middle school kids so well!)

Emmitt (who watch those shows with me) agreed. “I like shows were the jokes are inside jokes. I like movies where you have to figure things out.”

Anyone else with stories to tell about your middle schoolers opinions about how TV, movies and video games are making them creative thinkers, I would like to read them.

Here is a link to Steven Johnson’s web site… read more about his book and ideas there.
http://stevenberlinjohnson.com/

On April 18, 2008, the Vermont Statehouse will be the location of an Internet Safety Summit. For more information about this event contact Aimee B. Stearns at the U.S. Attorney’s Office (802-951-6725)
or aimee.stearns@usdoj.gov.

Keeping kids safe on the Internet is obviously a serious concern for educators. NELMS recognizes this and the Technology Committee and NELMS staff have been including sessions at the Annual Conference that focus on this important topic, and NELMS has presenters available who can speak to parent groups and others concerned about Internet safety.

Blogging is a very famous (perhaps infamous) technology that middle schoolers must understand. Several times in recent years, I have introduced blogging to educators and was first met with upturned noses… “what in the world do I have to say in a blog?” is a common first reaction. But once educators experience blogging, they frequently become enthusiastic bloggers.

The essentials of blogging:

1.It is a method of publishing to the web. The details of publishing (all of the server connections and similar confusing details) are set up once and then saved. Those settings are used whenever the blogger accesses the pages to post to the blog.

2.Posting is simple: Bloggers access a web page (by providing a user name and password) and then type (or copy and paste from a word processor) the text to be posted. Most blogging tools allow bloggers to upload images and add links as well.

3.Posts are managed by the blogging engine. (I use the term blogging engine to describe the software installed on the web serer that manages blogs.)

> Posts are organized in reserve chronological order: new posts at the top, old posts on the bottom.

> Posts are archived: Blog engines add calendars to each page and clicking a month and year will show the visitor all posts made in that month.

> The appearance is kept consistent: bloggers can change the skin or theme of the blog. All pages on the blog are updated when the skin is changed.

> Categories are added to posts: Bloggers can use Categories to help visitors find the posts of interest. Interested in the Must Know Tech posts on this blog? Click that category on the menu to the right.

> Commenting is a useful feature, but it must be used judiciously. Blogs are intended to be vehicles for online dialog. Bloggers post ideas, visitors post comments. Obviously, there are situations in which educators do not want visitors to be able to comment. Imagine students’ comments about the posts to your homework blog! Blog engines do allow bloggers to control commenting: Commenting can be disabled, commenting can be open, commenting can be moderated (the blogger gets to decide which comments are published and which hare ignored).

Educause provides an interesting article on blogging in edcuation.
http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0450.pdf

A few changes in the information technology industry in the last decade or so has made the practice of podcasting reasonable for those with access to modest technology:

1)The production of iPods and other digital audio players. Although the term podcasting derives from Apple’s iPod (the industry standard digital audio player) one can listen to a podcast on many different types of players or one can listen to a podcast on a computer.

2)The availability of broadband Internet connections. Podcasts are digital files that can be large (think tens of megabytes). Without a broadband connection which will transfer these files from the web to one’s computers in a few minutes, the time needed to transfer podcasts becomes prohibitively long.

3)The increased storage space on computers. Because of the size of podcast files, it is unreasonable to manage a collection of podcasts without a harddrive with scores (or more) of gigabytes of space.

Finding podcasts acceptable and appropriate for use in classrooms can be a challenge. David Warlick maintains a collection of podcasts for education called the Education Podcast Network.

Creating your own podcasts is also an option for many teachers and students. Audacity is a piece of open source (of course!) software that can be used to record and edit audio files. Two resources for those who want to begin podcasting:

A podcasting tutorial

Transom.org’s Audacity tutorial

Bookmarking is a familiar practice for Internet users; upon finding an interesting site, the user adds the site to his or her favorites or bookmarks. The user can then return to the site by clicking the title of the page in the list of bookmarks. This capability has been built into web browsers since the mid-1990’s (that means since the beginning).

Many educators use many different computers: one at home, one in his or her classroom, many in computers rooms and libraries. Because bookmarks are added to the web browser on a specific computer, one may the bookmarks one needs are not available on the computer being used. A simple solution to this problems is to use an online bookmarking system.

The basics of online bookmarking systems are simple:

1)Create an account on an online Bookmarking site.
2)Install software that allows you to access your account from your web browser.
3)Log on to the system and start bookmarking.

Social bookmarks are organized by tags (words attached to bookmarks that can be searched) and bookmarks can be shared.

YouTube has an excellent video on using social bookmarks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x66lV7GOcNU

The first Must-Know-Tech is Skype…

What it does: Use your Internet connection to (a) “call” other users and talk via your computer microphone & speakers, (b) place a video call (think Jetsons!) if you have a web cam, © call phone numbers (not terribly reliable).

How: Download the software (http://skype.com/ ), install it, launch it…

Why: Here is where the list gets long in a hurry… let’s see… in the last week, I have:

(a) sent students in to the building to fix some computer problems in classrooms… they skype me in my office if they have trouble…

(b) heard my friend Bill is having students from another state teach his students web page design over skype…

©spoken with my colleague in the next town over when I needed his help troubleshooting a network issue

(d) offered to skype a basketball game to a parent who was to be out of town for a big game (he returned from his trip early so this wasn’t necessary)

Anyone with good instructional uses of skype, please post ‘em

In early February, the NELMS Technology Committee met and we brainstormed some useful additions we might be able to make to the NELMS online presence. One idea was an on-going collection of “emerging technologies” or as one member suggested, “the best technology tools for teachers that they don’t know about.”

So… this blog now has a Category called “Must-Know-Tech,” a title that I hope captures the idea of tools that educators can and should be aware of (we know our students are aware of these).

In this Category, I will try to introduce a technology, and give visitors an idea of:

What it is

How ones uses it

Why one would want to use it

If you know of a tool that should be listed here (or hear of something that you would like to see in this described here), drop me an email: gackerman@rcsu.org

Three items of interest came across my desk (one across my virtual desk, one across my physical desk) on this snow day… both are of interest to middle school teachers and learners, neither require much thought:

1)The February issue of Learning and Leading with Technology (a publication of ISTE) came across my physical desk today (actually the magazine arrived a few weeks back, but I didn’t open it until today’s snow day). In the letters, the editors report the results of the question Is “chatspeak” (the loose grammar and spelling conventions used by digital natives) ruining English? The results: 89% say “No,” 11% say “Yes.”

Ackerman’s answer: No way English is threatened by chatspeak… kids are communicating… kids are using the tools that are available… maybe we (adults… digital immigrants… luddites) need to learn from young people and ask them how to more effectively communicate.

2)An item on one of the education lists I read reports a study from Illinois that documents one thing middle school educators have always known: Exercise helps young people learn. Yeah, we know, maybe the rest of the world are coming around to our way of thinking.
3)Another item in the same listserv reports a project in Detroit in which young people are connecting with their communities through digital photography.

So, here is a great idea… let’s all start our days with a brisk walk around the school… we will stop every 10 minutes and text message our principals with reports on the pictures we are taking!

No, seriously, let’s walk around town and document the current history of our communities.

Let’s have students use their shorthand to note what they hear and see and let’s let them take all the pictures they can. Then let’s have them cull and polish… think and write.

Can it really be true the proposed federal budget for 2009 has no money for Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT)? Apparently it is.

Follow this link to write your representatives seeking their support for restoring this important source of funds for our schools.

Some have probably picked up on the “open source” theme of this blog… it continues here…

The National Center for Open Source and Education (a group from Vermont) has published a collection of open source titles that educators will find useful. The book gives a brief overview of the functions of each title as well as screen shots so readers can have a sense of what each interface will look like.

The book is available as a free download or as a $16.08 paperback at Lulu…
http://www.lulu.com/content/286873

Closed circuit to the Tech Committee… this is a great example of the site I mentioned at our February meeting.

As the World Wide Web has matured over the last decade, a significant change has occurred: Internet technologies changed from tools for individual and groups to publish to tools that allow users to create and control content and this has allowed dynamic and diverse online communities to grow.

These technologies are commonly known as Web 2.0, and NELMS has been begun to use these in recent months:

Blogs– Sites were an individual (the blogger) posts usually brief messages; visitors to the site can (if the blog allows) post comment to the original message. The work of organizing the posts (into categories and into chronological order) is done by the blogging software. This blog is an obvious example.

Discussion Boards– Sites where visitors can post questions and others can reply or post their won questions. The NELMS discussion boards are another (be sure to visit and contribute to the discussion on differentiated instruction being facilitated by Rick Wormelli.

Social Networks– Sites such as FaceBook and MySpace where members can establish a web site and connect to other through networks and groups. The NELMS FaceBook group is an great example.

Social Bookmarks– Sites where users can maintain collections of bookmarks; users can make their collection public and they can tag their collections that other users can search and share bookmarks. Recently, I created an account on del.icio.us for NELMS. Other del.icio.us users can contribute to the collection of links on the NELMS account by tagging bookmark sites with nelms_tech. Del.icio.us bookmarks tagged with nelms_tech will be added to the NELMS PageFlake.

PageFlakes– This is a service that allows members to add real simple syndication feeds from any source to a single page. By visiting the NELMS PageFlake, users can see updates to the NELMS blog, discussion boards, and del.icio.us bookmarks in one place.

My copy of PCWorld arrived today… the 25th anniversary issue… that means the first issue arrived in 1983… hey, that’s the year I graduated from high school! (ouch!).

The issue includes “25 Days the Changed Everything.”
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,141699/article.html

Anyone remember when Windows 95 was released? How about the Y2K threat? Do you remember your first eBay auction?

Here are a few stories from my computing history…

1)Late 1986… as an undergraduate studying to be a science teacher coming to the realization that I needed to learn to use a computer if I was to be a teacher. I went out and spent $2000 on an Apple Iic.

2)1993… five years into my career realizing computers had changed… seriously changed… in the time I had been happily tapping away on my Apple. I went out and spent $2000 on a Mac PowerBook.

3)2000… after purchasing another $1500 computer (the 3rd in 4 years) and realizing my abilities to “do work” had not significantly changed in all of the years I had been buying computers and learning to use them.

Since 2000 (the last time I purchased a new computer!), I have come to the realization that quality of my computing is the result of…

1)the quality of the information I access

2)the speed with which I can access information

3)the nature of my interactions with others that occur using technology

4)the depth of my thinking about ideas and interactions.

This also raises important questions that I think school and technology leaders must answer related to information technology in schools:

1)Are we prepared to be learners about technology?

Looking over the last 25 years, it is obvious that times have changed. If we hope to be effective users of information and if we hope to be effective communicators, we must be able to learn about and learn to use new technologies.

2)Do we still accept too little technology as an excuse?

I recently spoke with the a technology coordinator at a nearby school. A team of teachers had asked for a new mobile computer room and claimed an initiative to reintroduce interdisciplinary units into the school could not move forward until the new laptops were installed (along with a $1500 color printer!). My colleague explained that there were already two mobile computer rooms in the school and that they were used only about 25% of the time. When I saw my colleague a few days later he told me how things were resolved, “the team is not getting their own mobile computer room,” he explained, “but neither are they going ahead with the new units.”

3)Are we changing the nature of our classrooms to make better use of the information and interactions available because of modern technology?

The academic skills necessary for the modern world are different from the academic skills necessary for the 20th century. The resources for dynamic and evolving curricula and instruction and learning are here. Over the coming months (I do not believe we have time to plan for years) educators face the task of adopting new technologies and adapting their practice. Our individual and collective future as relevant contributors to society lie in the balance.

So… What have been the important technology events in your life/ career? What does powerful computing look like 25 years into the PC revolution? What are the factors that will affect our future as educators in the coming decades?

I look forward to your comments.

On February 2, the NELMS Technology Committee met for our regularly scheduled meeting. Our agenda was taken primarily with two items:

1) Preparing for the Annual Conference, scheduled for March 30, 31, and April 1 in Providence, Rhode Island. For the second year, the committee will be hosting the Technology Playroom, where attendees can stop in for formal and informal technology sessions as well as using laptops (we plan to have Mac, PC, and Ubuntu machines available) to explore vendors’ web sites and visit sites mentioned in other presentations.

One problem with faced by visitors to the playroom in 2007 was the intermittent Internet connections. The committee and NELMS staff are finalizing our plan for providing more reliable connections in 2008.

2) Brainstorming ideas for technology-rich conferences for NELMS. Continuing the practice begun about 3 years ago, the committee is reflecting on the current state of educational technology and giving advice to NELMS to ensure NELMS activities are supporting middle schoolers as they use technology in an effective manner.

We welcome ideas and suggestions for how NELMS can support your work with technology… comments to this post will be be taken seriously by the NELMS Technology Committee as they advise the NELMS Board of Directors and NELMS staff.