Reflections on NECC09

I can't believe that NECC09 is over already.

This has been an awesome week worth the time and money it took to get myself here.

I have attended several NECC's over the years. I have learned not to over plan for myself. I did have one or two sessions planned for each day; however, I left plenty of time to spend on the exhibit floor. The exhibit floor is so much more than 5 football fields of vendors. It is a place of networking with vendors, an efficient way to find out what is new in educational technology, and a place to meet / remeet educators that I communicate with online.

I enjoyed the BYOL sessions that I attended. Learning new things and being able to try them out at the same time has been great. I remember several years back when NECC didn't provide wireless as part of the conference. (Yes I attended pre-edublogger...)

Having continuous internet changed my conference. This year I was able to blog during my sessions (hence the recent activity of my blog.) (A sore spot still is that the Renaissance Hotel didn't provide internet access for the digital equity summit.

I was able to attend several of the sessions that were hosted in the SMART room. This forum actually allowed for a much more interactive type of workshop. Presenters were mostly great educators that happen to use SMART boards.

One of the greatest successes for myself is the networking and re-networking that took place. Some of this happened during the day, but much more during the evening receptions / events. A highlight for me was attending the reception at the Canadian Embassy. It was powerful to know that I was walking back into Canada when I walked under a row of Canadian flags flowing in the breeze and then into the building.

I hope to present again next year but would really like a space in the regular program not on the first Saturday AM before most have even arrived....

Feedback that I plan to officially provide will include:

1. Better publicity for evening events. (Even if they are invitation only events - if they have an event code, they could be placed into our planner with out us having to input all details.)

2. Recognition of Canada on Canada Day during the conference (which ironically doesn't apply next year)

3. I would like less 'guest' passes in the exhibit area. I appreciate that spouses can join; however, there were too many times with young children on the floor that seemed detractions. (I do greatly appreciate the students that were attending as part of a poster or other presentation.

4. There weren't any family events planned this year. I travelled alone this year but really appreciated that my family was able to be involved at previous NECC conferences. It is hard to be away from family a long time and almost as hard to come back to the hotel to find a well rested family ready to go out. (when all I want is some quiet time to process the day.)

I do hope I can attend the rebranded ISTE conference in Denver next June.

I find that attending NECC is a huge power boost to my batteries. I am ready to go again for a year of learning and working with students and teachers. If you ever get the chance to attend a major conference (especially ISTE) try and make it work somehow.

Erin Gruwell at #necc09

Erin is an author of Teaching Hope.

Dealing with inner city kids. Starting with challenging days with students not wanting to read about "dead white guys in tights." Erin have them all write in their journals. After some time she found Homer. They would be interested in a 'Homie' trying to get home.

The life story of the students that had many challenges. It was more important to make people laugh than be laughed at by the teacher. It was better to belong to a gang and belong. It was better to be beaten than to not belong.

Given an opportunity to change then reading the Diary of a Young Girl. This student was able to relate (after being supported to connect the similarities) Maria was captured to reading the story but was shocked when Anne dies. This surprise was a loss of hope, but Darius commented that Anne did live because of the writing she did.

Darius was inspired to write to the women that helped hide Anne. She did come. All 150 students came to the 'student renovated' community centre.

There is too much to share with the story. I am certain that Teaching Hope by the Freedom Writers and Erin Gruwell will be an incredible read. So many stories ....

Very moving story.

150 students that had a difference made for them, 150 students that chose to make a change, 150 students that made a difference by raising money to present their stories to Congress, 150 students invited 150 teachers and trained them in what it takes to reach students. 150 teachers that then wrote their stories.

Very powerful story and great way to end NECC.

Integrating SMART and Google Earth #necc09

Planning for Field Trips

- students label where they are going, and how they get there. Now with more Google Street View, you can walk through many neighbourhoods at street level. Learning theory considers that the we need to have prior knowledge and to activate prior knowledge.

Much of what I saw was not about the SMART board (except the screen capture to Notebook that Mac and already do)

Cool Tools in Google

- Showing Day view - then sliding through a day to reveal where doesn't get dark in the summer (or is always in the winter)

- Showing Chronological View - then sliding to change over time (forest growth, building, demolitions)

- Weather Layer - looking at weather patterns, following hurricanes, look at difference between weather / climate

Version 5 also includes Google Ocean. You can explore the depths and terrain under the ocean surface

create-kmz-who-me.pbworks.com

I had a question after the session by another delegate about creating KMZ with timeline so I showed him.

• http://earth.google.com/outreach/tutorial_time.html

Lots of fun using the SMART board.

Earth Mashing

Earth Mashing: Web 2.0 Meets Google Earth #NECC09

Jim Holland and Susan

Several different ways in which Google Earth can be combined with Web2.0

(Web 2.0 defined as something students can create, hosted on a server, and a product of learning)

http://googleearthlessons.wetpaint.com/page/Google+Earth+Lessons

Files and samples

http://web20tools.wetpaint.com/

Great set of web2.0 tools that can embed well into Google Earth. I am inspired to look closer at how to bring more teachers into using these tools.

Magtoo.com is a really great option where a teacher can upload images to flickr, then students can access your folder of images in flickr. Then they can order them and title the images

(A cool feature that I knew but forgot. If you need students to sign in with an account, you can have a class account and then use the + tag. kevinamboe+theirpseudoaccount@gmail.com is their email but it only goes to kevinamboe@gmail.com.

Otherinbox.com is another solution - anything@kevinamboe.otherinbox.com - everything goes to the one account for verifications)

Literacy isn't enough: 21st Century Fluency for the Digital Age - Lee Crockett

Lee has warned us that he will be speaking very fast....

Following up from yesterday's presentation (that I didn't attend)

Kids are fundamentally different. Classical conditioning. If you put apes in a cage, and spray if they reach for bananas, soon other apes will prevent any ape from going for bananas. You can replace all apes one at a time will prevent any ape from going for the bananas. The apes learn

TTWWADI - That's the way we've always done it.

This is true of modern day axle width for trains - goes back 2300 years ago from a Roman War Chariot - The chariot was just wide enough for two horses rear ends. Today the Solid Booster Rockets are built to the same 4' 8.5 Inches because they are shipped by rail. The most complex piece of machinery built base the specification on the size of two horses butts.

Education has a lot of TTWWADI.

Why are kids in our classrooms ???? they have no other choice.

There are 5 skill sets in education and life today

1. Obsolete Skills

- once valued - sharpening swords, milking horses, candle maker

2. Traditional Skills

- once important - less mainstream - still valued - handwriting, dewey decimal system

3. Traditional Literacy Skills

- Reading, Writing, Numeracy - Traditional Communication Skills

- just as important today as they are an essential foundation for 21st Century Skills

4. Modified Traditional Literacy Skills

- Emphasis has increased based on the digital culture

- Reading is no longer a linear passive activity

- Writing is no longer reading and writing a report on what you read

5. New Skills

- emerged or are unique to the Digital Age

- This are critical in the world today - online communication - social media

Schools continue to train students to be consumers of content; now students need to be producers and prosumers of content. Students literate with 20th Century skills only will only be prepared for our past and not their future. (What a great quote)

Students need to move to fluency in 21st Century Skills. Fluency is at a level that you no longer need to think about how to do the skill

1. Technological Fluency - you know how to use excel and use it to calculate and think - the focus is not on the hardware, it is on the headware

2. Media Fluency - Beyond creating a podcast or taking a photo - It is about looking critically at the medium and how it is being used to communicate and shape your opinion. Measuring the effectiveness of the message communicated with the media.

3. Information Fluency - Unconsciously and Intuitively interpret information

a. Ask good questions

b. Acquire

c. Analyze - authenticate, arrange, understand bias

d. Apply - within context of real life, real world problem - write a blog, - vision into practice

e. Assess - product and process.

Traditional Literacy and 21st Century Fluency need to both be taught in a structured and valuable way. Our job as educators should be to teach lazy (progressive withdrawl) - empower our students to be independent learners and thinkers with 21st century thinkers - provide them with the skills and knowledge to succeed in the outside world.

Our job is to plan for learners to graduate no longer needing us for them to succeed.

To have learning stick (learning triangle) we need to have students teach concepts to each other and apply it. Now they will remember 90%

Today's students are not the students that schools were designed to teach. Today's students are not the students we were trained to teach. If we don't change how we teach, it is us that has the learning difficulty

http://committedsardine.com/resources.cfm

Kevin

10 Ten Web2.0 Tools - Gail Lovely

1. Wikis.  Gail considers them a bit more flexible thus ranked higher.

Cool Branching Story with the wiki - Teacher starts a story, students add choices for the next step in the story.  Then they write the results.  What a cool idea for collaboration.

2.  Blogs

Gail shared an example where a grade 3 student had 800 readings of her writing.  This level of readership encourages and motivates your readers and writers.  (The comments were moderated by the teacher)

3.  Voice Thread

The ability to publish quickly with multimedia.  Voice, Text, markup, or image.  

I missed the rest of the presentation.  The full presentation http://glovely.wetpaint.com

The special focus with this presentation was aiming at young learners.   

Early Literacy Skills

Attending #NECC09 Early Literacy Skills by Kathleen H. McClaskey, EdTech Associates

The website is at http://earlyliteracyskills.wikispaces.com 

Great list of websites that are listed for supporting early literacy.  Several to start  Phonemic Awareness.

Creating Practice Guides.  This was interesting.  Setting up a set of websites and providing links for a specific skill.

Phonemic Awareness

Website	Activity Link
Star Fall - A	http://www.starfall.com/n/short-a/sa/load.htm?f
More Sites

You can then carry on with placing the table on a websites

Also looks at Vocabulary Building

(A great one that I didn't bookmark is WordWeb that looks at synonyms but is a free PC download)

News to me - You need to be exposed to vocabulary at least 11 times before you know it.  From Grade 4 to 12 students need to acquire 3000 words per year to stay at grade level.  Wow.  It highlights the value of reading and exposure to literacy in many forms.

Check out her website.

It was impressive to see the collection.  Kathleen has more resources here as well.

http://www.edtech-associates.com/education-and-technology.htm

Kevin

SIG Digital Equity Summit

Digital Equity Summit #NECC09

 

An interesting start to the summit when the bloggers at the table realize that we don’t have internet access.  It is amazing that free internet has only been provided for the last few years and already we can't live without it.

 

ISTE now has 20000 individual members and over 100 000 with affiliates.  Together we can plug in on issues that we are passionate about.

Today’s summit is named “Success Against All Odds”

Stories shared during the session

1. Despite Low Income and under served situations partnerships and connections grow
2. Zoe’s Room – online afterschool community working toward STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math)
3. Community Computer Centre – created STEM program with no money
4. MOUSE – young people developing help desk in school 
5. Students are the best textbook written for each other
6. Students helping students becoming tech literate
7. Building and designing educational games with STEM content
8. Students refreshing computers to provide to the community after used in School 

 

Keynote Opening – Jenelle Leonard – US Department of Education

 

Many changes are happening in the US DoE with a shift from compliance bureaucracy.  There is a new culture in the US Department of Education focused on TeamWork for those in the department and those served (80+ million kids)   The new administration is listening and sharing what is heard and publishing it publicly.  The administration is listening to keep what was good and fix what isn’t

 

The goal is to be back on track being number one in education including 

-       Modernizing Classrooms

-       Keeping Teachers working

-       Early Childhood Education

-       Improvements in teacher quality and effectiveness. 

-       Spurring on Teacher Innovations

 

The soon coming result will be High Quality Education For All.

 

Education is a Civil Rights Issue.  A fight for education is a social justice fight.  We need to work with a sense of urgency.  Our children can’t wait

 

(What a great viewpoint.  It feels like in my local government that education is a drain on the system, not a civil right, not an urgent need, and not worth investing in by meeting needs (not just enough to keep the lights on))

 

Milton Chen – George Lucas Educational Foundation

Milton started with sharing 10 films produced by 9 to 18 year olds.  We need to see what these kids are doing to realize how far behind the thinking about education really is.  More than 300 hours of media about kids and by kids.  www.Edutopia.org – Digital Generation Project - http://www.edutopia.org/digital-generation-youth-portraits

 

One of the videos features Luis Chavez.  He is from Oregon and his parents are immigrants from Mexico with technology skills limited to the ATM.  He has excelled and has presented in Chile by the age of 18.  He recognizes that opportunities have been presented to him and he took advantage of them.  It motivates him to give back.  He supports both the community and the school.  He is a great example of paying it forward.

 

Edutopia is working to provide case studies of model schools to help with information on funding, policies, successes, and challenges.  More is being developed to support more schools in becoming Model Schools. 

 We next had 8 minutes at tables to learn about a project....

  Project 1

http://www.FlatClassroomProject..org

(Support from ICT Qatar and HSBC)

-       Key learning from students – “I Learned Not to Sterotype”

- Amazing communication – two students communicated only through Google Translate (while sitting beside each other)

Goes beyond HOTS to HO Living

 

First Step to flattening classroom is to Connect Self

 

Project 2

http://www.MOUSE.org

Targeting high need schools and high need students.  The program is challenged with funding and challenges with the nature of high need students and schools.

 

Results include increases attendance, improved reading skills and 21^st Century Skills.  Need to support teachers in being comfortable with technology but the teachers need to be comfortable with the technology to allow students to excel.  The whole school environment gets tech support.  Teachers and students are trained together.  Networking sets up schools to support each other as well.

( There continues to be issues with access – parts of NC only has dial up access.  Some areas only ½ of students have computers at home and only 1/3 of them have internet access.)

While Canada and the USA are diverse, we end up with very similar needs.  We have very low performing segments of the population, we have areas of high poverty and we have locations with very high English Language Learners.    Supporting all students is a critical challenge that we need to meet.  Following Malcolm Gladwell's conversation, these students are disadvantaged by lack of access to gain expertise, and a lack of feedback.  They have lots of opporunities where compensation is needed to overcome; however, they don't have the teachers or resources to develop compensation strategies.

In Surrey it is a challenge while the district faces a 9 million dollar shortfall and we need 3 million annually just to provide a minimal level of sustainable computers.  (Computers aren't the solution; however, students need access to technology and the lack of functioning computers at a reasonable ratio is an indicator that we are not providing equity.)

Kevin

Malcolm Gladwell at NECC on Learning Environments

Learning Environments through Fleetwood Mac as a Case Study.

Peter Green hears the band members before they became a band.  He met with them, jammed together, then released Fleetwood Mac.

Rumours is one of their best albums.  Most think it is 3rd album - actually 16th.  There is a long history between 1967 and 1973 with members coming and going before they become the band we think of as Fleetwood Mac.

Lesson 1

We tend to telescope the time for learning between inception and success.  Pscyhologists have suggested that to become mastery requires 10 000 hours of practice (4 hours / day x 10 years).  Mozart was a late bloomer - his better compositions took 14 years of composing (age 9 to 23)  The Beattles played together live 1200 times before coming to America.  

As people, we have an attitude toward learning that sees the product not the effort to get there.  The effort is telescoped.  

The TIMSS test tests math and completes a 120 question survey.  A research correlated the number of question answered on the survey to the marks on the math test - it was a direct correlation.  If you can sit still and focus to complete a task, you will do well with Math.  

Attitude and Effort are more important than Ability.  

KIP model - working with disadvantaged children - provide instruction from 8 to 5:00 instead of 9 to 3 and 3 less weeks of summer vacation - can eliminate the disadvantage - 

There is no substitute for time and effort

Lesson 2

Most believe success is built on success - Capitalization strategy

Instead - Success is built on previous failures.  This is a compensation strategy - Compensate for your weaknesses.  NFL draft - First 50 for QB - their next year stats slightly under perform their 50 to 140 draft picks.  The first 50 have height, strength, looks, 'talent;' however the next 100 know they have to compensate for their disadvantages by being hungrier and more committed to excel.

A Compensatory strategy is more effective to improve.  Four of the best QB had the worst scores on IQ tests.  Being smart is valuable to learn the plays and other details of football; however, if you are not as smart, you will have to work harder to compensate.  Dyslexic entrepreneurs are at the top of the list because they had to work harder at school but learned instead - leadership, teamwork, aural communication, and delegation.  They succeeded because they compensated.

(interesting consideration)

Large class sizes force students to compensate.  Learning to learn with minimal support allows for compensations to develop.  We need to have respect for difficulty.  It is crucial to learn to overcome difficulties.  

How can we create 'constructive disadvantages' in learning environments.

Lesson 3

Learning Paths are not necessarily Linear

Fleetwood Mac changed styles many times over the 16 albums.

Paul Cezanne started with not good work, but 30 to 40 years of work and exploration developed famous styles.   He learned brush strokes from Pizarro for years with feedback

Huck Finn was written over 9 years.  Most completed early but needed 9 years of trying endings to create a literary masterpiece.

Feedback is at the core of learning.  The struggle to learn is where the learning lies.  The record industry would not wait for 16 albums today.  It is expected to be instant success.

Conclusion

Put it together

Learning takes time and effort

Learning takes making mistakes and compensating

Learning takes struggling and exploring along the way

Impressive Starting Points

I have had the privilege of working with SFU's Field Program - Learning and Teaching Through Technology for today - March 7, 2009. One of the activities that they have been working on is sharing "Who am I as a learner?"

What a great question.  I remember a similar activity several years back that I was involved in.  I will have to go and find what I wrote for that.  I highlight wrote since my work was written.  Since Graduating from TLITE in 2002, I have thought a lot about reflection, my practice, but I haven't had to make it salient.  

The rich thinking that went into the presentations was inspiring.  I will likely redo my thoughts of who I am as a learner.  (A key part of that is that I can see something and I will want to accomplish the same thing. )

It was impressive to see the learners reflected through their presentations.  From Blogs, to Movies, to warped photos, to PPT, to Keynote....  I can't believe the strength of technology use to produce amazing presentations, but more importantly that none of it was gratuitous glitz.  The technology tools chosen enhanced each of their presentations.  While I am tech savvy, I will have to strive to match the depth of reflection about themselves as learners.

Kudos LTT 2009