I did my Millennial Learners presentation at 8:00 AM this morning, here at the TRLD conference. It seemed to have been well received and I was pulled into several conversations by some really smart people in the hall afterward. The best thing that I can say about this conference (about which there are many great things I can say) is the conversations I’m having outside of the sessions. As I was mostly listening to people talking after my session, I tried to find in all of the statements being made, a unifying theme. It’s my nature. The one I came up with was audience. Our children are literally accustomed to having an audience. How might classroom blogging be used to leverage audience for learning.
I had nothing else to do until 5:30, so I attended sessions, and was surprised at how many Web 2.0 presentations are being done — considering that this is not entirely a technology conference. John Fleischman, of the Sacramento County Office of Education, presented a session called Digital Native Tools: What Every Educator Should Know. It’s a great title for a great presentation. I was especially impressed with the clarity of his work. He very masterfully presented the components of Web 2.0, without getting bogged down in the muck that is the philosophy of the new web. It’s my problem in presenting this stuff, that I seem compelled to try to convey not only the tools but the spirit of the new web — and that’s really hard. Often, it’s just too much information.
Then I sat in the back of a hands-on workshop, a fly on the wall. It was facilitated by Austin educator, Janice Friesen, and introduced wikis to about 20 educators, most of whom knew nothing about the topic when they came in. Janice is an excellent hands-on teacher. It’s not an easy thing to do. I know! One of the wonderful techniques that she employs is simply providing the gift of time to explore.
They started with the Wikipedia, and about ten minutes to explore and ask questions. One young man asked something that I have not heard before. He said, “What if I’ve found an article in the Wikipedia that is just what I need. Can I bookmark that version of that page and get back to it?”
I haven’t tried, but I suspect that you can display the page from the history listing, and then bookmark that. But it was a good question that I’m surprised I haven’t heard before.
I also walked the conference exhibitor’s area, which was quite impressive for such a small conference. Very few of the offerings really applied to me, but I asked about one service called, TeacherFileBox. Essentially, for $9 a year, teachers have access to a large library of classroom activities. The teacher can access lessons by searching the database by curriculum areas, grade levels, and keywords. The lessons come as PDF files, which can be printed for students. The service also offers a web-based organizer for teachers, where they can organize their lesson file by folders and also use a pretty slick online calendar to plot the activities through the school year and even journal about them. The print-centric part of me kept thinking, how cool would it be if teachers could basically design their own activity book from the database, and then have the book printed for their students. Alas, I couldn’t come up with any good reason why they might prefer a work book, over independent PDF files. 😉
I would like to say just a few things in response to a session I sat through in the afternoon.
- 1 in 5 teenagers have not been sexually solicited by online predators, nor is the Internet full of sexual predators.
- Cell phones are not dangerous!
- IM is not insidious!
- MySpace is not a blog!
- and just because a child prefers that her parents not read her chat messages over her shoulder does not necessarily mean that she’s doing anything wrong.
Cyber-safety is too important an issue to be misrepresented for the sake of scare impact.
Oh yeah! Stop, please, with the swishy letter-by-letter animations. They irritate the pigs.
The 1 in 5 statistic above refers to a study that was published a few years ago, that stated that 1 in 5 online teens have been sexually solicited while online. The study was almost immediately debunked because of the questions that were asked. However, people continue to cite the finding, and wrap it within discussions about online predators, implying that one in five has been approached by predators. It’s a scare tactic! Sorry for any confusions.
This has been an absolutely wonderful conference. Something very powerful happens when you get together educators interested in new information technologies and educators who care about students with diverse learning skills. I’ve had such amazing conversations. It’s easy to see why so many of the attendees here, from across the U.S. and Canada, are alumni of the conference — and I’m exhausted.
Of this very fine conference, I can express only two complaints. One, there should be ubiquitous wifi throughout the conference center. There are many people in the audiences with laptops, and there are many bloggers here. We are coming to expect to be able to blog live and to access resources in real time.
Second, of all of the technology presentations that I’ve seen, and the conversations I have been a part of or listened to, the one thing that is certain, a do or die, is that in the future every teacher and learner will walk into their classrooms with a computer. It won’t be called 1 to 1. It will simply be called teaching and learning. And it won’t be a PDA stretched into the learning tool, and it won’t be a game system stretched into a learning tool. It will be a computer.
My complaint is that Floyd Braid’s session, “Chickens, Tax Cuts, and Laptops for all Students…” was at the end of the day instead of at the beginning of the day. It was an excellent and skillful presentation, even when he went entirely over our heads by talking about his family’s experience with their new Wii game system. No one in the audience had any experience, including myself. I was intrigued when he said that his children seemed to enjoy constructing their personal Wii avatars more than playing the games.
Hi David,
One easy way to get a bookmark to a specific version of a Wikipedia page is by using the special Cite page. You just type an article title and click “Cite.” That shows you a permanent link to that version plus the full citation in APA, MLA, Chicago, and several other styles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Cite
You can also access that page from anywhere in Wikipedia under “Special Pages.”
Hope this helps!
Dave,
I had a chance to hear you and John Fleischman speak yesterday. Please do NOT consider changing how you present – you provide the passion, the synthesis of information and you ask the questions that stimulate action! John provided the practical considering the realities that you present and the stories that you tell. It’s for the benefit of our students and our kids!
(My presentation this morning will hopefully combine the passion with the practical in a hands-on session.)
“1 in 5 teenagers have not been sexually solicited by online predators . . .”
Do you have that statistic right? Wouldn’t that mean that 4 in 5 teenagers HAVE been solicited by a predator. Not exactly a statistic that would comfort many people, parents especially.
But I wish there was more information about what exactly young people are doing when they get solicited. Does someone who just has a blog get soliticed? Has someone ever been soliticed as a result of a teacher putting up their picture on a class website? Are the risks as great from the typical material that is put up on school sites as they are from teenagers who put up personal information and revealing photographs of themselves on their Myspace page? I think the chance is just about 0, but I have nothing to back this up.
Since we don’t really have any facts about any of this, all of it gets lumped together and causes what I believe is a great deal of needless fear. Until we can define online activities rationally as to their degree of risk, I think we’re going to continue to face this hurdle.
Dean,
I added a note to the blog to try to explain my usage of that 1 in 5 statistic.
Thanks for helping me to clarify.
— dave —
I really appreciate your comments regarding Cyber-safety. Although I agree with Dean that the 1 in 5 statistic is very unnerving, I am glad that you are writing abut this topic because so many people read your blog. I have no problem with cell phones in my school. They are not getting in the way of our students’ learning, and they provide a safety net for kids who stay after school for the numerous extra-curricular activities we offer. Sometimes we need to close the office early, and there is no access to the phones. The pay phone was removed years ago!
I let my own kids IM and email as much as they want as long as their homework is done. They know that I could check “over their shoulders” (but I don’t often do so) and this keeps them under control with their language and content. Trust has been established with them. I think this encourages a love writing. I want that in my kids. I am not afraid of Club Penguin and other social sites for the same reasons.
In school, we are teaching appropriate uses of blogging, Wikipedia, and other Web 2.0 technologies. This is our responsibility. We need to teach students to be safe, be appropriate, and be responsible with the Read/Write Web; NOT be afraid of it.
Thanks for the nice mention of my session. It was fun. What I like about this conference is that it is really curriculum focused rather than technology focused although technology is an essential part of it.
I totally agree with the idea that wireless should be everywhere. I am going to put that into my conference evaluation. They seem very open and receptive to what people think.
Janice
p.s. And it doesn’t hurt that the conference is in San Francisco!
David,
Thanks for the kind words, flattering photo(could have added a funny hat or hair) and being a good sport during my presentation. Not bad considering I just threatened you with bodily harm in front of a room full of people. Check out The Floyd Bob Blog for the story. Maybe we can just put that behind us. I have been invited to this conference for the last 7 years and truly believe it gets better every year. The groups are always so focused. I’m glad it was in the afternoon because it enabled me to attend your morning session which was very helpful yet overwhelming.
Thank you, Thank you, for clarifying the presentation on cyber-safety…….
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