Technology in Education Online

I decided to announce my first annual, maybe semi-annual, maybe when I feel like it, technology awards. My awards are based on the 4 catfish system. Four catfish means it rates the highest achievement in technology and it’s uses in the educational sector.

 - Great program, product, or service would recommend highly

 - Good program, product, or service would recommend

 - OK, but I’d wait awhile for improvements

 - A real stinker

 My first award and recipient of the four catfish award goes to JingProject. What started out as a free beta download has now become an official TechSmith product.   I’ve used Camtasia Studio and SnagIt for a number of years. Over the past year or two I’ve reconsidered how often I’ve put together tutorials for students and teachers. Now with JingProject, they can do it themselves. On JingProject’s one year anniversity, Techsmith is offering even more storage space (2 GB) plus 2 GB of transfer sound. I can’t wait to see what lessons students put together using JingProject this coming year.

 Another  four catfish award goes to Moodle.org. What started out as a collaboration with three teachers has now taken me around the country promoting the use of Moodle.  Another great free program. Moodle is revolutionizing the way teachers are teaching. And to top it off, the Moodle community is tremendous in their support of users. And it’s all free!!!

   My third four catfish award goes to Joomla! Here is another great free open source web-base program for creating websites. Like Moodle, Joomla offers an array of free extensions (Moodle refers to them as modules).  The Joomla! community is great when it comes to support.  When you look towards creating a collaborative web presence Joomla! is a great choice. It takes the creation of a website out of one person’s hands and makes it a true joint effort.

   A three catfish award goes to Apple’s Garageband. I would probably give a four catfish award if it was available on something other than a Mac.  OK settle down all you Mac devotees out there! Researching the best tool for creating podcast there is no better tool. And this is coming from someone who has been a PC person most of their technology life. I have yet to see a program on the PC side that matches the ease of use.

  A three catfish award goes to Audacity. A free open source program that is available on multiple platforms and can be used for creating podcasts. Not as user friendly as Garageband, but for free you can’t beat it!

 A two catfish award goes to Xobni (inbox spelled backwards). If you’re a Microsoft Outlook user this is a great little plug-in (and it’s free) that makes finding things so much more easier. Great for finding email attachments, previous emails from contacts, phone numbers from emails, and assorted other features. I run it on two computers, one it seems to work fine on and the second one seemed to slow down my system a bit. The other problem I had was sometimes Outlook wouldn’t start-up and I had to reboot to get it working again. However, please note that I run several, and I do me several, Outlook plug-ins along side of Xobni which may contribute to the problem.

 And my dubious one stinkin’ fish award  goes to the scanning technology at conferences in the vendor areas. It sure makes it easier to pass on your information but the amount of phone calls I get after a conference sometimes is unbearable. Look I know people are only doing their jobs and trying to earn a living but to keep calling and calling! The worst part is when you agree to purchase their product(s) and once the sales is complete it is as if you never existed. There goes the phone calls.

So there you have it my first annual, semi-annual, occasional, CATFISH AWARDS!!! If you have a program, hardware, etc that you would like to nominate for the illustrious CATFISH AWARD, please let me know.

OK, here is my frustration…I ‘ve been presenting at conferences on a regular basis for the past couple of years. I’ve setup my website and Moodle. Since setting up my Moodle I’ve had people register from all around the world.  I’ve set up discussion forums, encouraged people to participate, share their ideas, ask questions, etc. The results? Not much participation. So the question becomes (OK, this is where the pity party comes in): How much energy do I put into creating my website and Moodle if I’m having to guess what educators’ needs are? Or, what they would like to see on both sites.

I know people are busy with their lives, but I think we need to encourage ourselves, as educators, as much as we encourage our students, to be active participants in our own learning.  If we remain passive receptors of information, how does this encourage learning?  So if there is anyone out there that has some suggestions, I’m listening!

We need to look beyond the factor of what looks good.  Some administrators too often can’t look beyond what appears to be technology integration. What do I mean? Comparing what "we" have with what others have doesn’t equate to being more technologically innovative. Nor does what others have versus what "we" have equate to them being so far ahead of us.  Are we worried about appearance more than content?

It becomes a fashion show of hardware. School districts purchase equipment and once it is placed in the classroom it just sits there. Why? Teachers are never trained on how best to use the technology.  Comments such as, "I have five computers in my classroom and twenty-five students. How can I possibly use them?"  Most times these computers wind up being used as a "reward" for students that complete their work quickly.  Or the clamor for interactive white boards and projector units are heard to be a necessary piece of equipment. And what do they wind up being? An expensive overhead projector and transparency unit.

How do you avoid this way of bringing technology into the school? First step is to make a plan whereby teachers are given the opportunity to learn how best to integrate the technology into their classroom.  This step is usually skipped in order to quickly show-off their new equipment.  To exasperate the problem even further in tight budget times, teachers become frustrated because the money is spent on this equipment at the expense of other things including additional teachers to reduce class sizes. 

Until leadership takes a more proactive role in planning, it is inevitable we will repeat this pattern over and over.  We can never move forward until we break this cycle.

Ok, so I maybe a little late to the revolution but I’ve got the religion now! Open source is my new found call to arms!  The latest- Joomla!  A great open source resource used to create a website.  In looking at a collaborative approach to web development I looked at several options - Joomla!, Drupal, DotNetNuke, and Mambo.  I settled on Joomla! after setting up some test sites and running through the various options.

At a recent NJAET executive board meeting I demoed a mock site I set up using Joomla! and people were amazed out the power behind it and what it can do.  With the additional extensions that are available, and the ease that they install, I’m convinced that utilizing a CMS is the best solution.  My goal to find ways for educators to collaborate and not work in isolation.  The great thing about Joomla! is that no one needs to be the sole source of disseminating information.  You now have the option to assign a variety of roles to individuals. You can have users, authors, publishers, administrators, etc. all contributing to creating an active website. For those that like to be in charge it means giving up a little bit of the power to allow others to participate. So all of you control freaks out there take a deep breath and plunge right in. You’ll find it all works out for the better in the long run.

As time moves along I find myself moving away from the mega software publishers to open source solutions.  The great thing also is there is a whole new industry out there of people developing additions to these great open source software solutions.  Some of the additional extensions are commercial products. But I’m more open to spending a little to support these developers than continued to feed those hungry giants out there.  So if you’ve been contemplating a transformation of your website, take a look at one of these open source CMS programs.

How often has this saying been used these days? There comes a time when a cleaver saying becomes more of a cliche than actually having meaning. “Thinking Outside the Box” has now officially entered into my cliche database.  This term is bantered about in education more often than any other saying today.

But here is my thinking. Maybe thinking outside the box isn’t really thinking outside the box. Maybe we’ve got it all wrong and the outside is in and inside is out. We are so locked into educating to perpetuate the status quo that anything outside of teaching to the test is thought of being some type of outside the box experience. And then we wonder later on why people are so enamored with these 30 second sound bites.

It is as if all of those multiple choice, true/false, and fill-in-the blanks tests has prepared us not to question anything. Just get the quick answer and don’t scratch below the surface to explore any further.  We learn that the answer must be a, b, c, or d and then carry this over to adulthood accepting those 30 second sound bites as fact. Never questioning beyond the surface.

So, perhaps we are already thinking outside the box and that is the problem.  If we really want to move education beyond this state, we must move our teaching methods towards a more appliciable experience for our students.  Utilizing concepts put forth with Web 2.0 tools is just one avenue to explore in making education a more interactive experience.

Here is my presentation from this year’s conference. The focus of this presentation is how teachers are using a Moodle in the curriculum. I also explain how to get started with a Moodle.

 

 Using Your Noodle on the Moodle Presentation: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Continuing my random thoughts theme from my first FETC 2008 post, I’ll continue on.  I’m waiting the opening session to start and thought I’d put down my thinking from conversations today. So here they go:

1. I like wireless wireless access where ever I go.  I don’t like when I keep getting dropped off. It makes working while at the conference so much easier since a lot of my work these days is web-based. I just have to get over my need to plug-in for electricity. Can we have some type of solar or self generating power supply?

2. We need to move away from our fear factor.  Why do I say that? While sitting down for the opening session The Journal sitting on my chair listed on its’ cover “Handle With Care” In the wrong hands school PCs can be agents of improper even unlawful activity.  I’m not discounting the need for security, but when our focus is on this fear factor we lose track of the positives and focus on the negatives.  This is true of many of the Web 2.0 tools students use.   We must move away from this if we are to keep up with today’s students.  We can flourish using these creative, interactive, student driven tools.

3. Educational Leaders must be just that!  I had a great discussion with another presenter today discussing this issue.  How can we move away from NCLB and teaching to the test mentality if our educational leaders of our schools only perpetuate the status quo? If they only focus on test scores or padding their own resume then they have lost focus on what educational leaders should be.  If we are truly going to move towards a more constructivist approach to education, with technology integration being one of the many tools, then we must expect more.

4. Appearance is nothing. This piggy-backs off of #3.  If technology is about what looks good rather then how to better integrate technology then we are missing the boat.  Is it about show, how it appears to the community?  If this is true, then what are we to expect of our students?  As I walked around the vendor area I have a whole new outlook on how I assess what they are selling.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m one of the first ones to jump at the “cool” stuff. But when I take a step back and assess what value it has my perspective has changed dramatically.

5. Technology isn’t just about standards, security, test scores, cool devices and nice looking reports.  Again I refer to #4 above. I don’t dispel these things I just don’t think they are the end pieces.  If we purchase these types of programs that generate these great looking reports with graphs and charts are we simply presenting them to our BOE to make it look good?  I don’t mean to be a cynic, I’m just a little tired of how people bend and twist technology into being the pacifier of accountability.

And so ends my latest random thoughts for the day. 

As I left the cold rainy weather of New Jersey, I was happy to arrive in Orlando and feel the warmth.  Often before a conference many random thoughts go through my mind, especially at a conference I’ve never attended.  What will the presentations be like, how will the conference go, will it be informative, what new things will I learn, and the list goes on. I even haven’t got to those random thoughts about my own presentation.  Being the last session of the conference I wonder what the turn out will be like.  Do you know you’ve made it regarding conference presentations when you move up the schedule? Time will tell. 

The one thing I’m really happy about (OK, sometimes the little things make me happy) is being able to access the Internet from my hotel room for free!  There is nothing worst when you make reservations and the hotel states that they have “free” Internet service. Free! Yes, if you want to hang out in the lobby.  I like access directly from my room. I can stretch out, relax, and work in my own space. 

I will be a correspondent for eSchool News during the conference and will include links to my reviews during the conference. Stay tune! Enough random thoughts for now!

This podcast talks about technology integration or the lack there of and how we need to assess our own teaching methodolgy with today’s students.

 

 Technology Integration: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download