Category Archives: Technology Resources

I’m a huge fan of the K12 Online Conference. There’s always a roster of thoughtful educators sharing out engaging ideas and projects, and I always find myself thinking about the possibilities of new ideas after listening to the presentations. One thing I do wish, though, is that more folks would get engaged in the conversations about the presentations. I almost always try to leave a thought or a question on the K12 Online site after watching the presentations, but often, I think I am one of the only ones to do so.

It makes me wonder why that is. I’ve even written about this same topic in the past, and I can’t quite figure out why more folks are not using the opportunity to ask presenters more questions or asking for advice on implementation. I am even over at a P2PU Course right now that is using the K12 Online presentations as a launching pad for discussions. There have been a few lively threads, but not too many.

I suppose folks are either waiting to watch the presentations (which is one of the benefits of the conference, as it all gets archived and available for the future), don’t have the time to post a comment or question, don’t know what questions they have to ask, or don’t realize that the site is built as a blog, allowing for and encouraging user engagement. I, for one, would love to see more discussions, particularly if the presentations represent shifts in teaching and learning.

That said, I have been enjoying a number of presentations so far in the 2012 K12 Online Conference (more get released just about every day or so), including:

• Karen Fasimapaur’s keynote about encouraging new ways of looking at curriculum development, and opportunities for learning for kids that fall outside the traditional expectations of the classroom. Karen (whom I know via P2PU) offers an insightful look at how we might engage all kids, in project-based learning opportunities.
• Gail Desler and Natalie Bernasconi give an inside look at a digital citizenship project that is emerging to help teachers help students understand their digital footprints, and how to best manage their identities in a digital world. Really, we all need to be doing much more of this kind of work with our students.
• Bud Hunt’s talk about making and hacking and playing … spot on!
• Valerie Burton showed off how to be begin building student digital portfolios online with some free tools that also teach students about information management and design elements.
• Jane Krauss gives an inside look at the computational search engine Wolfram Alpha, and I am still trying to wrap my head around how I might bring that into our class research projects. I appreciated the time to play around with it, and Jane also shared some resources about using data from the engine to create infographics.
• Bron Stuckey gave us a tour, with student voices, of the Quest Atlantis site, which is an immersive community for students and built around gaming and inquiry and communty. I’m intrigued but need to learn more.
• Ben Rimes showed how simple video collection can transform math story problems with real-life examples. All it takes is a cell phone and a good eye towards examples of math in real life.
• And Matt Needleman’s keynote about apps (It’s not about the Apps) was a great reminder of agency, and how we as users (and our students as users of technology) need to bend devices and technology to our own needs. He talks about photography here, but his larger message is about making shifts from users to creators.

I hope you find something to pique your interest at the free conference, all online, and engage in discussions about these great ideas. I’ll see you there.

Peace (in the exploration),
Kevin

For a year or so, I have had friends in the National Writing Project run Hackathons or Hackjams, using various tools to show how hacking skills are another form of literacy, and how those skills are becoming ever more important to young people in a digital world because it provides them with agency via remixing and a lens to critique online sources.

One of those tools is the Hackasaurus Xray Goggles, a handy bookmarklet from Mozilla that lets you change the text and design of a website. I finally got around to checking it out, and boy, it is pretty fun to use.

Check out what I did to my own blog site here — compare it to the real thing:

I wonder how this might be used for the political season? And it does bring up questions of ownership, right? Who owns a webspace and what does it mean when you hack it? I see that Mozilla is working to create an unique URL for sites that get hacked via Goggles. (Right now, you can only save the HTML code of the hack). Interesting …

Peace (in the hack),
Kevin

I’ve been asked to give a 50 minute literacy-based workshop to my upper elementary colleagues today (sort of a last minute request) and since my professional goal this year is to really dive into developing research skills with my sixth graders, I am going to share out some strategies for using technology to help students conduct research. As luck would have it, this week, I got a book that I had ordered about research and am already loving it, sharing it and will be using part of it today.

The book is by Christopher Lehman and is called Energize Research Reading and Writing. (Lehman is a colleague of Lucy Calkins and collaborated with her on the Pathways to the Common Core book that I have also shared.) This book outlines the rationale behind the push for more research-based reading and writing in the new standards, but also offers up a lot of practical advice. I will do a more formal review when I dive deeper into Lehman’s book.

Here is my agenda for the session today. Understand that while this handout succinctly focuses in on tools and standards, our discussions and activities are all framed around student research and writing. Our state standards call for research in the earlier grades, ramping up over time until sixth grade (which I teach) when suddenly the research component expands greatly. I’ve been revamping my curriculum to shift basic research skills early in the year so that my students have some knowledge about search queries, citation of sources, and more.
Research and Writing and the Web

Peace (in the search),
Kevin

I found myself lost in this Web History timeline, which is put together smartly and which brings you right into the history of the Internet and the Web. There are many links you can follow, but what becomes clear is how recent the history of the web and hyperlinks and hypertext really is. It’s another reminder that we are living “in the moment” and yet, we still are trying to make sense of it all.

And can I just say that I found it incredibly fascinating to think that the first point plotted on the line is a short story (by Borges) called The Garden of Forking Paths, which prefigured hypertext choices of the reader and provided a conceptual framework later on for the integration of hyperlinks to connect information (or stories) together. I don’t know the story, but I am going to try to find it and read it.

Check out what Wikipedia has to say about the story:

“Beyond its façade as a spy narrative, “The Garden of Forking Paths” has similarities to today’s digital media and hypertext projects. Borges conceives of “a labyrinth that folds back upon itself in infinite regression”, asking the reader to “become aware of all the possible choices we might make.”^[4] The elaborate hypertext is much like the book which Borges suggests to be the labyrinth, (“Every one imagined two works; to no one did it occur that the book and the maze were one and the same thing…the confusion of the novel suggested to me that it was the maze”^[1]) in a sense of how the site offers different approaches to how you may interpret the information provided, yet you’re not trapped in the dilemma of choosing one and eliminating others; you may choose to unfold all possibilities. You “create, in this way, diverse futures, diverse times which themselves also proliferate and fork” (Wardrip-Fruin, 33). Although the story appeared before the advent of modern computers, Borges seems to have invented the hypertext narrative structure. Wardrip-Fruin and Montfort write: “Our use of computers is … based on the visions of those who like Borges—pronouncing [The Garden of Forking Paths] from the growing dark of his blindness—saw those courses that future artists, scientists and hackers might take.”^[1]”

— from Wikipedia

Peace (along the line),
Kevin

PS — Reading the timeline inspired me to begin writing a new webcomic, called Walking the Web, about two kids who go back in time to see the development of the World Wide Web. It’s sort of like Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure but the boys meet up with folks like Steve Jobs, and Tim Berners-Lee, Steve Case, and others. I’ll start sharing that comic tomorrow.

Check out the video above, which is an advertisement for a new Google App (on Android) called Field Trip, which pings you with information about places and things, and history, as you walk around with your phone or device. It’s like the next version of the MP3 Museum Tours, but outside, in the big world. (Add in something like Siri and you’d have a chatty companion talking as you walked, I suppose)

It’s intriguing on one level. You can get deep knowledge about various buildings and locations that might have some significance you never knew. It’s also a bit worrisome from a privacy level (you’re being tracked!) and on an advertising level (buy our stuff!), and you can see how this kind of app might be integrated into the Google Glasses idea (wearable computers for the eyes).

You have to wonder, though, about the possibilities for education. Could we get our students to eventually move towards constructing tours of their own communities, based not on businesses selling stuff but on historical records?

We’ll see ..

Peace (in the walk),
Kevin