2010 AASA iTouch Workshop

PV USD provides the video to educators through their iTunesU subscription & Arizona’s IDEAL eLearning Platform. I hope you try similar projects with your classes and children!

Consider the information in the video above. What is the purpose behind the video? If we define the video in terms of the rhetorical situation, there’s certain analysis that is evident albeit if I then explain to you that it’s an advertisement for a paper book, how does that change your consideration for the above video?

Comments?

The coolest part of the conference though was seeing PJ Haarsma, author of The Softwire Series, again. He and I have presented together a few other times, and I’ve written about my work with him HERE and HERE before. This time he brought fellow author, Frank Beddor, with him to Arizona. Frank’s primary, current work is The Looking Glass Wars. He, as I’ve written here, posited the What If Alice Liddell really did come from Wonderland and was in fact the last remain heir to the Hart throne, after her wicked Aunt Red (think Queen of Hearts) had her family slaughtered. This narrative became the The Looking Glass Wars series and the Hatter M comic series.

Jim Blasingame, board president of Kids Need to Read and ASU professor, invited several people to his home the evening of conference, including yours truly. PJ and Frank are those rare breed of author who truly cares to engage children in reading and finding innovative ways to excite children about reading. Moreover, they are just nice guys.

The Kindle’s form factor is thing and larger than the iTouch, and all it does is allow you to read, download text, and and annotate. Plus it is damn expensive and for the price, foughetaboutit! Not too mention it’s easier to break because of the fragility of the factor. For me, I enjoy several different sorts of applications for my iTouch. I use educational mobile apps, games, travel apps internet utility apps, obviously my eReaders, games and some other random things.

My daughter, Claire, spending an evening out with dad at an event, playing games on my iTouch.

I’ve installed Evernote, which my friend Alan discusses at length HERE, as well as Shmoop LINK which is a mobile study guide system for history and English. Many of the games I have installed are for my daughter, but her favorite is Word Magic which allows her to learn to spell by giving her an image and a word with letters missing. She fills it in and wins virtual medals and ribbons. She can play this for hours. My travel apps were a huge deal last summer when I toured Europe, and these include Skype (which you can use easily with a miced ear piece), translators for the languages of the countries I visited, Google Maps, language dictionaries, and currency converters. Some of the coolest internet utilities I have include, obviously, Google Apps, Google Voice (before it’s ben embargoed by who knows whom), Tweetdeck, Yelp, Twitterific, Facebook, Remember the Milk, and Tumblr. My eReaders include Sony eReader Pro, which is absolute favorite because I can bookmark a page by “dog-earing” it, Stanza, which has a powerful file converter application for the computer side, and, of course, Kindle, which I actually find myself using infrequently.

I am a self-proclaimed bibliophile and was apprehensive to begin reading books electronically, but you know what? After reading a chapter, I was hooked. I could take as many books with me anywhere in the world, read in the dark (think LCD screen), and I completely forgot it wasn’t paper in front of me. No issue. I have now read about a dozen books in three months on my iTouch and haven’t look back.

Did I mention free wireless anywhere there’s a signal in the world? It’s like a mini-computer in my pocket!

After I finished talking to my colleague about that, her response was “Looks like I have a lot more research to do before settling for a Kindle.”

“Kelsey Texting” found on Flickr by searching Creative Commons using keyterms “texting” and “school”.

Academia may whine that these new forms of writing aren’t good, but Lunsford points out that today’s students and the “modern world of online writing, particularly in chat and on discussion threads, is conversational and public, which makes it closer to the Greek tradition of argument than the asynchronous letter and essay writing of 50 years ago.” I found this argument telling, and push my students to encourage any and all writing. Parents sometimes believe twittering is for teens and wierdos and others are only on Facebook to watch their own children, and I get the sideways glance when I run Twitter & Facebook workshops for the Boomer Generations but ladies and gentleman, I am a rhetorician, a compositon teacher, and a love of language. All language.

In the past I’ve always had a no show policy for electronics in my high school English classrooms. This year that opinion has begun to shift. My syllabus clearly states that all mobile phones will be kept away and if I see them at all, then I will confiscate them; I’ve confiscated my fair share of cell phones & iPods over the years. After Christmas break when the gadgets came out, I didn’t say anything. I just waited to see what would happen, and you know what? They were respectful. Occasionally they’d look down, check something, fire off a message and move on. Then came a bigger test. When the questions came, instead of telling them I’d get back to them, looking it up myself, etc… I told them to check for themselves. I got confused looks, but then slowly, they got it. More and more kids got it. They pulled out their mobiles and did research in the classroom.

There are several Web 2.0 tools that I know students can use with mobile technology on their phones (e.g. Utterli, Twitter, Poll Everywhere, etc…) but even I still ask, why bother? What can they do with their phones that they can’t just do when they are there in my classes. I know there are reasons to use these things outside the classroom, but, for example, why text to Poll Everywhere when we’re all sitting in the class? Together? Utterli is cool for our Rhetoric Out on the Town Assignment, and I think I am going to try to use it for that, and it’s great for recording foreign language homework, but why do we use it IN THE CLASSROOM.

Ok so this is the big question, and I’ve not discounted it. I’ve embraced it. Two of my colleagues at the college are studying Mobile Pedagogies this summer, and since this has always been rolling around my interests/issues and I recently fell into an iPod (door prize, conference), I am not the proud owner of an iPod Touch. I do not have AT&T, nor do I have an iPhone, but an iPod Touch gets me everything but the voice and camera. I am going to research and play all summer. Watch for my fall syllabus policies.

Did Google Doc fail today, or did a link path break?

Now, I think I have a solution. Too many people don’t realize that there are so many EASY ways to get to certain Google places. Want mail? Try google.com/mail. Want calendar? Try google.com/calendar. Want scholar? Try google.com/scholar. Want voice? Try google.com/voice. Want docs? Try… you betcha… google.com/docs. Now when I try this, I am in like slim. The file is up on my machine in nanoseconds. Kiddies are going to gmail, click on email that notifies them that I shared something with them (cause, they won’t look if I don’t tell them it’s there!), and then the path is messed up. Bummer. So yes, something is messed up today, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s a very little error for such a ginormous company that does a pretty good job of running the world.

My response is 1) you shoulda not procrastinated. Your procrastination does not constitute a problem in my life. 2) there are 90 kids in my AP and several sections of Crabtree’s. I bet one of the over achievers downloaded the file weeks ago. This is what Google Groups is for (and I bet you know the URL for that one). Ask away. 3) be creative and try to figure it out. And by the way, in case it does work, here’s the BHS direct URL to the assignment.

Update two hours later…: Here’s an update after two hours of talking to students, colleagues, and researching online (just what I want to do on a Sunday!). The problem is NOT Google. It IS Microsoft. No one who has been using Firefox has any problem whatsoever. Every single person using IE cannot get to Google Docs. Microsoft sucks. Not Google.

So your solution is: Install a real browser like Firefox and proceed.

The future of education in technology is a virtual, non-corporeal space outside the walls of the traditional classroom. An organic, paperless global space of bits and bytes far from limited walls, limited censors, limited minds, limited cultures where the censor of knowledge doesn’t exist. Knowledge can’t be chunked into school periods from discipline to discipline. Learning has to be organic, asynchronous and synchronous simultaneously. Students should take classes based on needs and interests rather than someone dictating their learning based on what they need in order to get a piece of paper. Locale is no longer important. You could be in the same class when ANYONE demographically. ANYONE, and you would not know them physically. That doesn’t matter now. Avatars represent people however they want to be represented. Individuals CHOOSE who and what they are. They CHOOSE how they learn, what they learn. Learning now needs to be equally accessible and cross-disciplinary with the knowledge of experts who team teach what they know. Educators need to be moderators, facilitators who are flexible within their specific tool sets, and understand that we, as educators, are learners, too. We learn from our students as much as they learn from us.

Teachers are limited by (some) administrators who have been ingrained with the sorts of curriculum coming out of the late 80s, and IT departments who fear their jobs and the security of what we want them to do (Note: If you’re in IT and reading this blog, you’re obviously not that kind of IT person.) In our districts we need continuity and access. When I was in Tempe Union High School District I was given a laptop and administrator access to that computer. When I came to work I plugged it into the network and that was that. In my current district I have no legal access to mostly anything, although when I got this job we technically weren’t even allowed to use USB drives in the computers. No matter how innovative my district is, they limit us and our students. We need more access and trust. We’re not going to break anything. Teachers need symposiums on a yearly basis, where faculty can showcase their technology uses from their classes. Administrators, district and officials need to attend. Learn from Teacher 2.0 and give us flexibility and freedom to create the ideal classroom 2.0 for our 2.0 students. And what is this concept of Student 2.0 or Classroom 2.0?

Well, first of all let me be clear that we cannot have a 2.0 classroom run by 1.0 teachers. I am Teacher 2.0. If you’re here you are, too. Or at least, if you’ve read this far, you at least care enough to maybe want to be. One of the biggest concepts to review is HOW students are taught. We can no longer allow teaching in get in the way of learning. Our schools need to foster the culture that matches the tech innovations of the 21st century, and stop the teacher-centered dichotomy of the last century. School 2.0 infuses the learner-centered concept and every level, and these students are real people with minds learning and teaching teachers –not just statistics, numbers, and state funding. We need to change every thing.

Teacher 2.0 needs to move beyond Classroom 1.0, and I realize that this concept of Classroom 2.0 is relatively ambiguous (but aren’t all concepts at first?) We need MEANING in learning. If the curriculum isn’t meaningful, then forget it. We can’t teach to a set of “standards” from those who don’t know. My colleague’s on a review board of the AZ Language Arts standards, and I trust her, but she’s one person. And she’s not Teacher 2.0. Maybe don’t look for experienced teachers (those who’ve been in education for years). Pick up some people who think outside the traditional brick and mortar segmented cubicled classrooms of compartmentalized education.

Teacher 2.0 needs to rethink what it means to teach. Classroom 1.0 does not teach our students. Classroom 2.0 is learner-centered learning, and, frankly, our schools aren’t. We, Teacher 2.0, cannot adopt the awful practices of Classroom 1.0. We cannot adapt Classroom 1.0. We must begin fresh. No longer can the curriculum dictate the learning. Student 2.0 needs to negotiate their learning, while their 2.0 teacher should be facilitator. Teachers are NOT the keeper of the knowledge, and we as Teacher 2.0 need to know that learning is everywhere –not just online or offline. Everywhere. Effective learning is satisfactory and Student 2.0 is excited over the meaning of knowledge and the expertise of gaining new skill sets. Teacher 2.0 understands the concept of collaborative learning and collective intelligence instead of Classroom 1.0’s emphasis on standardized individual testing.

In Classroom 2.0 students are excited about making meaning from new learning and negotiating a community of learners. Student 2.0 learns to learn rather than being dictated that the textbook learning is holy writ. They negotiate their learning as equals with Teacher 2.0, who does not set fixed curriculum finalized by arbitrary testing. They negotiate the subjects, their education, their scholarship. Without meaning and with forced unexplaination by Teacher 1.0, Student 2.0 festers in their rowed seats.

The 21st century skills initiative calls for the preparation of Student 2.0 for the global economy. Synchronous and asynchronous relationships need to occur between the global 2.0 student whose Teacher 2.0 teaches them to navigate and evaluate the petabytes of information available to them worldwide. We need to prepare them to contribute to the global collective intelligence through an evaluation and contribution to multi-modal multi-media video, audio, textual, and image information which they then consume, rework, and regurgitate for another skill sets consumption. Student 2.0 needs to be innovative global thinkers who are provided with opportunities to tackle and challenge their world communities.

From my syntactical structure above my flip-flop of responsibility is purposeful because Classroom 2.0 is not a traditional space where we, as teachers, enter our classrooms in the summer to prepare OUR classroom. Friends, this is NOT OUR CLASSROOM. The classroom does not belong to the teacher. The classroom space belongs to all of us. You AND your students. They are Student 2.0. They NEED Classroom 2.0. Are you Teacher 1.0 or are YOU Teacher 2.0?

Some of the thoughts above were adapted, in part, from Albert Ip (2006) and Liz B. Davis (2008).