5:58 PM

[Warning: This is a conference session blog, so please forgive grammar and punctuation mistakes. My comments are in italics]

The keynote session has begun, opened by Benjamin Franklin, who welcomed us all as educators and technologists. While waiting for the program to start, I had a long conversation with Mike Lawrence from the Computer Using Educators, California’s ISTE affiliate and a very fine twice a year (Northern and Southern CA) ed tech conference. Mike mentioned a quote that, the more I think about it, the more sense it makes. He says that conferences are people aggregators. How right that is!

ISTE President, Kurt Steinhaus started the official session with welcomes and some announcements, including mention of a NECC style conference in India. Intriguing. Think about the conversations that come out of that, and I mean that in a new shape of knowledge sort of way. Kurt also made a passionate appeal for advocacy as our government(s) continue to cut out budgets in a time when we need to be investing more heavily in school technology.

The Shape of Knowledge
Keynote address by David Weinberger

Weinberger says that the Wikipedia will be what people point to when talking about when the information changed. He referred back to the Wikipedia several times during the presentation. I am still surprised at how few people in many of my audiences are not aware of the Wikipedia. I’m sure that won’t be the case here.

Knowledge began in ancient greece, in the Agora, the open market, where affairs of state were decided. Anyone (white, male, property owners) could stand up and speak. Knowledge it justified, true, belief (Plato).

Nature of Knoweldge

• We assume that there is one knowledge
• Knowledge is neatly organized (a tree of knowledge)
• We need experts to know the knowledge
• Those experts will have power.

This sounds like industrial age schools and too much like the definition of knowledge that we continue to rely on in our education system. ..and perhaps this doesn’t seem as ridiculous to most people as it does to me.

Think of Melvil Dewey, of the dewey decimal system. 88 numbers for christian religion, one for judism, muslem and all related get one number, and budhists go to the right of the decimal place. I guess this is what happens when we treat knowledge/information as objects to be placed neatly in bins, based on a 10 digit grid.

“This is not a solvable problem. There is not one knowledge.” bang!

Four basic principals of organization

1. One thing in one place — except in the digital world many things can go in many places.
2. Things are neat and clean — except when it’s digital, the more links the better. Messy is good.
3. The owners of the information own the organization — except now the customer owns the organization. (it’s an enormous transfer of power)
4. Users are passive — except people are not contributing.

One of the mantras of the Wikipedia is that “wiki is not paper”. You know, I think that this could mean a lot of things. What Weinberger went on to was the limiting nature of the traditional encyclopedia, because when it is in print, then the encyclopedia is seen as a container, and a container can hold only so much.
Weinberger says that Britannic consists of 32 volumes and 65,000 topics. Wikipedia consists of more than 600,000 topics and more in other languages.

According to Amazon, Britannica weighs 120 bounds, at 65,000 topics. Assumming all things equal, the Wikipedia at more than 600,000 topics, would weight more than half a ton. Add in the versions in Deutsch, Francais, Nederlands, Portugues, Italiano, Espanol, Plski, Svenska, and 日本語, it would weigh well over one and a quarter tons. But in the digital world, that doesn’t matter.

Weinberger goes on to say that Bloggers are not writing in their diaries. They are people participating in conversations by linking to other peoples ideas and conversations. Every link is a little act of generosity. Very few commercial entities understand that.

Multisubjectivity means lots and lots of viewpoints. but the point is that the viewpoints come from conversations with each other. It’s a paradox that people from varied perspectives converse on common grounds. It’s actually a miracle.

Knowledge as conversation

1. Multi-dispute-ism — dispute is trying to get the other person to admit when he is wrong. But in the blogsphere, you disagree, talk about it, and then it’s over. In digital conversations, the dispute is never going to be resolved, and you accept it.
2. In the real world, we accept “good enough”. In the web, “good enough” needs to be enough. with 3 million hits on google, you won’t find perfect. Print knowledge looks for what’s perfect.

This is probably the most profound statement in Weinbergers talk as it relates to education. It cuts through to our reluctance to let go of our authority as keepers of the knowledge and allow our children to truly become explorers in the world of information and construct their own knowledge. They need supervision, counciling, and consulting from us. They need us to craft their activities so that their exploration remain relevant to the curriculum expectations. We need to stop teaching students to be students, and start teaching them to be learners, teaching them how to teach themselves.

We have an abundance of information, but it is a connect abundance of information. How true. The connection here, and this plugs in perfectly to part of my literacy model, the problem is not trying to consume all of that information. The problem is managing it, and this requires that we create and cultivate our own digital libraries if content, organizing it in ways that help us do our jobs and pursue our hopes and wishes. This is where librarians come in. They know how to do this. They not how to organize libraries. We need to figure out how to have librarians teach us all what they do, but how to organize personal digital libraries. It’s what our aggregators will become, our personal digital library.

Accountability is accountibalism, eating our young alive! Wow!

Knowledge is conversation, and he means that literally. I’ve been saying this for years, probably ever sense I read Cluetrain

Our job as teachers is to make things more complicated. The world is not that simple. Again, Wow!

There is an epochal struggle going on. One side is afraid. They want there to be one knowledge, one world, one truth, and that it’s simple. OK, I’m going to step way out on a limb here and say that perhaps, and this is just a perhaps, there is a tie between this idea of the one truth and one knowledge, and even one custom, and what is behind our struggle today with “terrorism”. The fundamentalists want the world to remain under control. But that just ain’t so. The world is changing more rapidly than we even understand. As the world of nature adapts, we too must adapt, and this plugs in to what we should be doing as we prepare our children for their future.

The day after 9/11, I tried to write a piece about how it was an attack against what we stand for as professional educators, but I just couldn’t put my finger on it. I think that David Weinberger has. Educators here were liberally and courageously guiding our children into “their” future by creating and crafting engaging and potent learning experiences. …While the fundamentalists want us to go back to a world under control. And folks, the fundamentalists are not just over there. Again, I’m just suggesting something here. I don’t know. Don’t believe me.

2:26 PM

[Warning: This is a session blog, so please forgive grammar and punctuation mistakes.]

I just finished my presentation for the SIGTC (Technology Coordinators) Forum on telling the new story. I think that it went well with a lot of participant in the audience — some very smart, knowledgeable, and well-read. One book that was suggested that I’m going to look into is Jennifer Government (I think that’s what it was). Anyway, I tried using a wiki in the session, but the room (counter to plans) was set up auditorium style, and we did not have wireless in the room. One of the IT guys did set up my laptop as a wireless base station, so a few people on the first few rows had wireless, but not enough to make the activity work. Please do visit the page. I have linked in an RSS feed to the web links (del.icio.us) related to the presentation. I love RSS.

My session was followed by a panel on handhelds. In my notes below, the text that is italicized are my comments, not those of the presenters:

Elliot Soloway is talking now about handhelds. His initial proclamation is the 1:1 works. In today’s information environment, students must have ready access to information. You can’t do it with one computer in the classroom and more than the class can share a single pencil. He says that a handheld can do 80% of what a desktop or laptop can do. Hmmm! May be.

Kathy Norris, a professor at North Texas University, says that if the computer doesn’t help the teacher do his or her job, then students will never touch the computer. She says that students are collaborating with handhelds in ways that they wouldn’t before, because the students couldn’t read each other’s writing.

Norris also says the teachers must be able to collaborate with each other. There should be at least two teachers in a single building who are implementing handhelds. They need to work together in order to learn and develop skills. This seems obvious, but I think that there is something else in this statement, something that is important, something that is just under the surface that I think we can take advantage of. I don’t know what it is, but I’m going to keep thinking about it.

OK, one of the presenters broached the subject, my objection to handhelds. The screens are too small. She says that this is an adult issue, not a child issue. This may well be. I can’t disagree.

One of the panelist quoted Elliot Soloway, saying:

That which will change education is that which can be put in the hand of a student.

How very true!

I’m sorry I don’t know their names, but the discussion has come to comparing handhelds to laptops. The college professor says that she talked with a school board member before leaving for NECC, and that he said that he didn’t know why they kept buying laptops for their students, because the students hate them. They don’t like lugging them around. I don’t know about that. I have to wonder if that school board member had a different agenda. I don’t know. That just doesn’t ring true for me.

There is another panelist who appears to be a vendor. He said that data indicates that handheld failure rates was 3%. For laptops, it was 27%. That is compelling for a school district without the tech support to handle this.

Someone asked about Negropante’s $100 laptop proposal. Soloway replied that this could happen, it can be done. But do kids in China want a laptop when they already have a mobile phone. Perhaps what we need to do is put more power into the phone. OK?

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I think that what struck me about teachers working together is what it says about information. If there was a textbook, or if the users guide was enough, then they wouldn’t need the collaboration, the support of another local educator. The solutions to what, how, and why you use technologies in the classroom come from using them, and sharing the experience and growing knowledge.

4:51 AM

I wrote yesterday about the support staff at the PENN Alex school and their work to assure that the technology was available and reliable for us. I can’t thank them enough, and if you are here at NECC, and see a tech person, thank them. This event would not happen without them.

I neglected to mention the friendly and knowledgeable help that I received when I checked-in at the conference registration area. NECC works because of an enormous number of volunteers who are investing their valuable time into making this a valuable event.

I want to mention one more group of people. There are many here at NECC who will not get a chance to sit in sessions and learn. They are the many educational technology leaders, who are here for meetings. NECC is one event that most ed tech people attend. For that reason, many societies, associations, corporations, and national and international agencies hold there meetings at the conference, and I have meet quite a few people here who will be spending all of their time in meetings sharing, building, planning strategy, approving products, and much more. They are the leaders of this great movement to modernize our schools and classrooms.

Even if we can’t distinguish them from all of the other increasingly fatigued educators here at NECC, give them a thanks in your mind. If this movement succeeds, it will be to no small measure a result of our leadership.

4:51 PM (yesterday)

The day is almost over. Teaching a programming class of 30, mostly techno-expert educators, was a demand that I wouldn’t be up to for more than a few days. Teaching a six-hour workshop without the stamina that teachers seem to have on demand is quite a challenge. It reminds me of those days at the beginning of the school year, when after the day was over and you walked into your home, and the only thing you could do is fall into your couch. Teaching can be an exhausting job. My workshop participants were wonderful, and wonderfully patient and understanding when the breakers on the computers in the lab kept breaking, due to the heat in the room.

That problem sorted itself out. But, I have to note (and this is the purpose of these blog) that the NECC support staff on hand at Penn Alex school, set up a new lab, and configured all of those computers as web servers and installed the files and a demo copy of BBedit on each of those computers, so that we could have a fall-back of the breaker problems percisted. It had taken me and one other person three hours to accomplish the configurations the afternoon before.

This expression of support was nothing less than heroic, and I want to thank the tireless staff at the Penn Alex school for helping to make the workshops a success.

Now, where’s that couch.

7:31 AM

I just checked in and got my name tag and a really cool looking conference bag. I have to be real careful not to leave it anywhere. I do that a lot.

I’ve already run into some friends. Number one, Holly Job, the director of technology at the Montgomery County IU. She is a long-time ed tech’er and a name that many look to for direction. I also ran into Michael Butler, an old friend and natural-born teacher. Michael does a who range of workshops on Front Page, Dreamweaver, and many other topics. He’s one of these master techs, who is also very good at talking about it.

The conference center is very pretty. It’s old and has an atmosphere that is absolutely appropriate for an old east-coast city. I’m now sitting in a comfortable leather chair (Looks like leather, feels like leather), waiting for the shuttle buses to take us to the outlying workshops. I’m teaching at Penn Alex school on or near the university campus. I took the subway out there yesterday to configure the computer as web servers.

The workshop, again, is Advanced Interactive Web Site Building with PHP. The participants’ computers are all set up as web servers. So they will be writing their code and then testing it on their own computers.

10:02 AM

I’m sitting on the tarmac of the Philadelphia airport. They’ve finally brought us to the gate, but there is apparently some kind of security breech in the airport, and they will not let us leave the plane until it is solved. So, I’m going to take the opportunity to do a little writing.

Monday night’s keynote speaker will be Dave Weinberger. I do not know a lot about him, except that he was one of the authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto. Cluetrain was an extraordinary book that, although it was a business work, presented insights that apply to what, how, and why we teach.

One of the uniquenesses of this book was that it was first available over the Internet, before it went into print. I puchased the book as an audio file from Audible, and listened to it while driving to a workshop in eastern North Carolina. The other thing that was extraordinary about Cluetrain, was that it took a relatively new technology, the world wide web, and completely turned around how we think about it.

Their over-arching theme was that the web is not about publishing or online brochures as much as it is about conversations, that the true value of the Net is in people talking with other people.

Today, this has never been so true. The emerging blogsphere is where people are talking and listening. But today, our messages are being cast out into an information environment with new laws of nature, were messages are automatically linked logically, and form themselves into new and larger messages or information constructs.

For instance, go to http://technorati.com/tag/necc. Here you will find a range of blog messages that all have in common the word necc as a tag. In addition, there are pictures taken by people associated with NECC, as well as web links from del.icio.us and Furl. A construct of information that has value as much from how it assembles as it does from the individual authors, and photographers.

What does this have to do with teaching and learning. Well, that has yet to be determined, and perhaps we’ll explore and discover some implications at the conference. But the implications are there and I think they will be exciting. I certainly look forward to hearing Dave Weinberger speak.

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Also, consider Small Things Loosely Joined, Weinberger’s latest book. I haven’t read it yet, but I hear it quoted very often.

4:48 AM

It’s early morning, though not nearly so early as I have been getting up lately. I’m more relaxed though. A contract programming project met its deadline yesterday, and my clients seemed pleased. A number of other things that have been pressing me this week have also come to fruition, or at least to an end. All that is left is NECC.

I’m packed, except for my computer (obviously), and at 5:30, I will begin my final preparations and Brenda will drive me to the airport for an 8:00 flight directly to Philadelphia. I’ve been excited about this NECC, probably more so than any other. So much is going on with education technology — so much that has emerged just in recent months. I feel like we are reaching one of those points in education where opportunities are making themselves loudly available, and it will be up to us, those who are going and listening, to spread the word.

As a counter balance, much of the Internet seems to be down. None of my sites are coming up, nor is NECC or the Whitehouse (none of them). But Google and Yahoo, both come through with successful searches.

NECC is just days away. I fly to Philadelphia tomorrow morning to set up the computer lab for my PHP workshop on Sunday.

On a more technical note, I want to suggest that those of you who will be blogging or podcasting at NECC, tag your entries with “NECC”. This will enable us to aggregate the blogs, through Technorati (http://technorati.com) in some interesting ways.

For instance, the following web page will display a dynamic list of blogs that are tagged with “NECC”:

http://technorati.com/tag/necc

You can subscribe to the follow RSS feed address with your aggregator and have NECC-tagged entries sent to you:

http://feeds.technorati.com/feed/posts/tag/necc

It is true that you can search Technorati for blogs that contain NECC, but you also get entries about the New England Convention Center, among many other things. Apparently necc means something rather rude in another language.

If you are unsure how to tag your entries, here are some instructions from Technorati:

If your blog software supports categories and RSS/Atom (like Movable Type, WordPress, TypePad, Blogware, Radio), just use the included category system and make sure you are publishing autodiscovered RSS/Atom and we will automatically include tags with your posts! Your categories will be read as tags.

If your blog software doesn’t support categories or you’re not sure, you can still participate. To associate a post with a Technorati Tag all you have to do is “tag” your post by including a link (in your article) with a defined tag relationship. For example:

<a href=”http://technorati.com/tag/[tagname]” rel=”tag”>[tagname]</a>

The [tagname] can be anything, but it should be descriptive. Please only use tags that are relevant to the post. You do not need to include the brackets, just the descriptive keyword for your post.

If you have not already, it is also a good idea to register your blog with Technorati. It speeds up their references to your writing.

http://technorati.com/signup/

Finally, if you will be taking pictures and posting them onto flickr, tag them with “NECC” as well. If you’re using a camera phone, and are already set up to send pictures to flickr, go to http://flickr.com/profile_mailconf.gne and enter “NECC” (without quotes) into the text box

Hope to see you in Philly.

Yesterday, I wrote about the middle school that my children attended and that funding constraints were forcing them to late the music teacher go. Well, they found a way, and the teacher will remain as well as the 6th grade band program.

I wish that I had more details, but, needless to say, we are very happy.

Those of you who have heard me speak, know how I feel about music and art education. You also know that I have a passion for making music, even though I have no formal training in composition, and that my son is one of the best high school musicians in the state and plans to study music performance in college.

All of that said, we have just learned that the middle school that my children attended will eliminate its full time music teacher this year and drop the 6th grade band. Apparently, budget constraints are preventing the school from continuing its very fine music program, because of increased expectations from government regulations and continued inadequate funding.

Primary among the responsible is our County Commission, who is funding $14,000,000 less than the School Board asked for. As I’ve reported before, one of Wake County’s continuing challenges is enrollment. 2005-2006 expects to see between 5,000 and 6,000 additional students.

All concerned want what’s best for our children. But in the continuing struggle to balance budgets without impacting on tax payers, a very simple but definite fact is being ignored. Our world has changed and it will continue to change, and the classrooms of the twentieth century will not prepare our children for that world.