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COETAIL Courses - Random Thoughts

Less is more

October 8, 2009 by 1 Comment

2252338216_0ce0f5d73c_b1I met with a student the other day who said to me “I didn’t finish my Powerpoint presentations because I was SO confused!” He went on to explain that in one class they are working on creating presentations in Powerpoint using more of a Presentation Zen style-minimal words, powerful visual imagery, etc. But then in his other class where he was supposed to create another Powerpoint, he was instructed to include a lot of information in the Powerpoint. Now this is a student who struggles with following directions anyway, but add to that two directly conflicting sets of instructions on two very similar assignments…he was doomed!

Seeing presentations done in a more ‘Zen’ style certainly helps convince me that they are more interesting and informative. Yet the concern has been raised that as educators, especially in International Schools, we routinely are working with individuals who’s native language is not English. Does the same concept apply then? Using minimal words/texts on a slide is great for me, a native English speaker, but if I were trying to follow a presentation in a language that I am not a native/fluent speaker of, I’m not so sure it would have the same effect.

I think being aware of your audience and the purpose behind what you are trying to communicate are key factors when utilizing any presentation style. Garr Reynolds, who blogs about professional presentation design, writes about when he’s asked what is a ‘good’ Powerpoint:

So much depends on how the visual is placed within the context of the presentation, and the content and objectives of that particular presentation are of paramount concern. Without a good knowledge of the place and circumstance, and the content and context of a presentation, it is impossible to say this is “appropriate” and that is “inappropriate.”

1483289796_ce342252b5_oGoing back to my confused student above, the class that wanted more information on the Powerpoint was a Modern Language class-where students are not native speakers of the language they are learning/presenting in. The class that wanted a more ‘Zen’ like design was his Humanities class. This goes back to again understanding the purpose and audience for whom the presentation is intended. I feel, too, that there is a personal preference and expertise that comes into play as well. I know for me (who hates doing presentations passionately) I prefer to have a bit more information on a slide to support, inform, and (maybe a bit) distract from looking/listening to me! I also think it is about changing the way we’ve always done things. We’re moving away from the Powerpoints with listed bulleted items (gotta love the bullets, the check marks were my favorite) and moving towards a simpler, more visual presentation style. This change comes with time and an understanding why this style can be a more effective way to communicate. My guess is even people who do a lot of presenting (Jeff and Kim) started out slowly until they developed and expertise of utilizing this visual imagery style of presenting. The rest of us are coming along…maybe a bit more slowly and reluctantly, but we’re coming!

COETAIL Courses - Random Thoughts

Backwards by design…maybe?

March 1, 2009 by 0 Comments

Part of this course involves us creating a final project…and to this end we were asked to create a project sketch on our blog prior to completing the project on the class wiki. As per typical Daneah fashion, I went about it all backwards and did the project first and now am feeling like an idiot trying to write a ‘sketch’ for something I’ve already completed. Sigh. Some things never change. I hated those classes in college that required a rough draft or an outline prior to the final product. I often found myself completing the final project, then going back and creating a pretend rough draft and outline. I earned pretty decent grades, so it’s a method that worked for me…hmm, I wonder if this qualifies as ‘backwards by design‘!?

Anyway, so instead of the project sketch, I thought I would post here links to some videos  that may come in handy for teaching a unit on cyberbullying and digital citizenship. They’re favorites that have been around for awhile, but I like them. A few from the adcouncil that I like are: Kitchen, Bulletin Board, and Talent Show.

I constantly marvel at how the level of engagement from students increases dramatically when Web 2.0 tools are utilized. Now, not all students of course respond the same and some students seem to be reluctant learners in almost any situation! However, I have never experienced the level of engagement and response as I did when I worked with my 4th grade students last year on a friendship video project. First I showed the kids a couple of other videos, Don’t Laugh At Me and Hero in the Hallway. We discussed what message those videos were sending, then decided to create our own video about friendship at Shanghai American School. The first question in every individual class was “Can we put it on YouTube?” I had students meeting after school, on weekends, and during their recess time to work on their projects for the video. I actually had students writing songs, including music, for the video. All on their own time and their own volition…it was remarkable! It certainly helped me to see how the utilization of many of these ‘new fangled’ tools can seriously impact a student’s learning in powerful and meaningful ways. I was so proud of what my kids had created…but more importantly, they were proud of themselves!

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Pedal to the metal, getting in gear

February 27, 2009 by 2 Comments

Something has stuck with me for the last few weeks and I feel the need to vent it out…maybe that’s what a blog is for!??!

A good friend of mine’s younger brother (who I will forever think of as a sixth grader-that’s how old he was when I met him) just graduated from a well regarded teacher training institution. He decided that he wanted to give the overseas teaching a go and attended the ISS fair in Philadelphia. He was hired (had many interviews actually) and will teach his first two years overseas.

Prior to the career fair, he sat down with me to ‘prepare’ for the interviews. I spent some time sharing with him my experiences overseas and what life has been like. I also shared with him what I felt would be priorities with the recruiters he would be interviewing with. Chief among these was the use of and comfort with technology. I explained that understanding things like blogs, wikis, podcasts, etc and how to integrate them into his classroom would be a huge boon for him in his interviews. After a few minutes of him listening to me, I realized that his face was slowly changing and showing the beginning signs of panic. I stopped and queried “You do know how to use these tools in your classroom, right?” Sheepishly he shared that while he knew what those tools were, and used many of them in his personal life, he had never actually been taught to use them in his education program. Now it was my turn to have the color drain from my face and the beginnings of panic to set in.

How in the world can we be turning out brand spanking new teachers that have never experimented with these tools in their training? How can any higher education program claim to be training 21st Century Teachers and yet still be graduating students with little to no exposure of current trends in technology? The university he graduated from has one of the best reputations for an education program in the entire state…how is this disconnect happening?

I used to think that we needed to dump all of our resources and energy into schools and professional development for current teachers. Now I’m afraid I was overlooking an incredible opportunity to fight the battle from the ‘ground up.’ What if all of the new graduates coming out of teacher training programs already had adopted this ‘paradigm shift’? What if they went into schools automatically teaching and collaborating in the ways of the 21st Century? Then they could share with the current teachers and influence students in this new landscape of learning.

This is not a new idea, I know (remember, most of what I could ever possibly say or think of is really old news-see my first blog post “Maybe Blogging Isn’t For Me…”). In searching to see what other people were and were not saying about education programs, I came across this article on the Milken Family Foundation website: Information Technology Underused in Teacher Education. In the article, there is a quote from Dr. David Moursund of the International Society for Technology in Education. He said:

“In the past few years, the preservice teacher education programs have made substantial progress in preparing future teachers in information technology, but they still have a long way to go”

The article goes on to share the results of a survey given to faculty members in teacher training programs. The survey asked the faculty about the extent to which future teachers are being exposed to technology. The survey results showed that:

“The majority of faculty-members revealed that they do not, in fact, practice or model effective technology use in their classrooms.”

The conclusion of the article is a direct quote from Cheryl Lemke, Executive Director of the Milken Exchange on Education Technology:

“The findings in this report should be a wake-up call for higher education institutions and policymakers across the country – today’s students live in a global, knowledge-based age, and they deserve teachers whose practice embraces the best that technology can bring to learning.”

Sadly, this article was published exactly 10 years ago…seems maybe not enough people read it, or believed it! I keep finding myself becoming discouraged and disheartened. When will education put its foot to the accelerator? What will it take to get future educators prepared and in the driver’s seat? How do we get this car in gear???

COETAIL Courses - Random Thoughts

Suspicious Swimmers

February 25, 2009 by 0 Comments

Part of our blog assignments allows us to choose some posts of ‘our choice.’ Since I am trying out this whole blogging thing, and not sure if it’s something I want to do…I thought I might as well throw some more personal stuff into the mix.

Recently, I have been reading the headline news online (abc, bbc, bangkok post, etc) and sharing the most hilarious and/or fascinating stories I encounter with anyone who seems interested. These last few weeks, however, I have been traveling and my Internet connectivity was severely limited (sad how this impacts us and we feel ‘cut off’ from the world when we can’t be connected). So I had to resort to the good old fashioned perusal of a real live hard copy newspaper.

My mother and I are sitting on the Seattle Ferry, sipping a latte and passing the paper back and forth, sharing little tid bits here and there. We happened to have grabbed a copy of the Kitsap Sun as my mother lives in Poulsbo, WA. As we’re leisurely enjoying our cup of joe, my mother suddenly begins to giggle quietly. Pretty soon she’s erupted into convulsive laughter that she’s trying to stifle, which is just resulting in an even more fantastic display of her choking on her fits of giggles. As I watch her body spasm with the force of her mirth, I begin to wonder if she is in need of medical attention. Finally she manages to choke out past the tears streaming down her cheeks “dolphins…gasp…handcuffs….gasp…intruders!” And then I lose her again for another fit of convulsions.

Eventually I managed to wrest the newspaper from her grip and determine the cause of her mirth. I find the article titled “Dolphin Patrols Pick Up Support” and quickly scan the print. I’m going to share with you some direct quotes from the article (I promise they are DIRECTLY quoted, I am not making this up…I’m not that clever really!):

“…opponents knitted sweaters, hats and mittens for the dolphins. They did so because they believed the warm-water mammals would get chilly swimming in Hood Canal.”

The article goes on the talk about the program that has been developed at the Bangor Naval Base and it’s use of marine life:

“The dolphins, accompanied by a handler in small power boats, work at night. If they find an intruder, they swim back to the boat and alert the handler, who places a strobe light on their nose. The dolphin races back and bumps the intruder’s back, knocking the light off. The light floats to the surface, marking the spot.”

Can you imagine? Out for a nice swim and suddenly a dolphin is whacking you on the back with a strobe light? Don’t worry, the program does not exclusively use dolphins. It has also recruited sea lions to assist in the protection against terrorism:

Suspicious Swimmer?
Suspicious Swimmer?

“Sea lions can carry in their mouths special cuffs attached to long ropes. If they find a suspicious swimmer, they clamp the cuff around the person’s leg. The intruder can then be reeled in for questioning.”

I’ve got to read the hard copy newspaper more often…this takes the cake! Just remember, if you do plan to swim in the Hood Canal, look as ‘un-suspicious’ as possible or you could find yourself wrangled by a sea lion. One has to wonder, what does a suspicious swimmer look like to a sea lion??

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Are you truly a lifelong learner?

February 9, 2009 by 0 Comments

Having been exposed over the years (often against my will) to anything tech related, like Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy and George Siemens’ theory of Connectivism, I don’t know if I would say my thinking is necessarily changing…but maybe my understanding is reaching a deeper level. Often when I’m introduced to these ideas, it’s through Jeff (he likes to talk, I’m a counselor so I’m compelled to listen). This then naturally lends itself to me seeing things from his perspective, or a teacher’s perspective. It has been interesting for me to read some of the information that I’ve known about, but looking at it more from the counseling perspective.

When Siemens wrote:

”Learners as little as forty years ago would complete the required schooling and enter a career that would often last a lifetime”

I found myself reflecting on the traditional role of School Counselors. Our role has historically been one of career development, exploration, and college preparation. This is evidenced in the “Career Development” domain of the standards and benchmarks created by the American School Counselor Association. Siemens goes on to discuss how this ‘one lifetime career’ idea no longer holds true. He shares his thoughts on the half-life of knowledge and how the current rate of growth for knowledge is exponential. He concludes with the idea that

“Our ability to learn what we need for tomorrow is more important than what we know today.”

How does this impact our job as counselors? Our role is to assist in preparing students with the skills and attitudes to be successful in life. How do we help students to develop the necessary skills when things are changing so quickly we can’t possibly know what the world will be like? It’s a daunting thought for sure.

I felt the glimmer of some answers when reading the Digital Media Youth Project and this paragraph about a ‘new role for education’ caught my eye:

“What would it mean to really exploit the potential of the learning opportunities available through online resources and networks? Rather than assuming that education is primarily about preparing for jobs and careers, what would it mean to think of it as a process guiding youths’ participation in public life more generally? Finally, what would it mean to enlist help in this endeavor from engaged and diverse publics that are broader than what we traditionally think of as educational and civic institutions?”

I do believe that this is where we need to be headed…this is definitely a time for education to take on a new role in our society. We as educators and counselors must be looking at our ‘new roles’ and how we can best support our students in this digital world. Whether we like it or not (and there are certainly times when we don’t!) this is where our kids are- it’s their world, it is how they think, how they interact…how they exist. The question we need to be asking ourselves isn’t whether or not we’re equipped to help our kids navigate this world, but whether or not we’re willing to learn to navigate this digital world with them.

COETAIL Courses - Random Thoughts

Finding passion and forming truths

February 5, 2009 by 0 Comments

Truth and bias are things we have always struggled with addressing in a classroom, aren’t they? They really are not new concepts that we now have to figure out.

Prior to the advent of a Web 2.0 classroom, the truth and biases we faced were the ones of the teachers, text book publishers and students. Now we address these ideas on a more global scale. Maybe one could even argue that this then actually reduces bias in a classroom. With the click of a few buttons, we have a global perspective…

Clarence writes about an example of how he helped his students to reach a deeper understanding of truth and bias. They reviewed multiple reports from around the world about the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts that are happening in Gaza. They were exposed to many truths and biases. His kids are leaving his class with a better grasp of what truth and bias really are. For me to achieve a similar understanding, I had to grow up, get a Master’s degree, and move to Saudi Arabia for a few years!

I am not saying that we shouldn’t help kids (and ourselves) to understand how to filter information, how to verify facts, and how to analyze whether what we’re reading is reliable or not. Chris Betcher did an excellent job of sharing loads of tips and techniques for navigating the Web with students. However, I found myself focusing not on the idea that ‘finally we can safely navigate the web’ but instead ‘finally we can be exposed to a lot of truths and then use those to form our own truths.’

I felt a strong kinship with Barbara’s post where she examines how our passions guide us down the path towards discovering truth. Yet she stops to wonder:

“Does this passion result in a greater effort to find the truth or an inherent bias?”

She continues with the idea of encouraging ‘investigators’ or students to find the alternative view points to their truths, challenge themselves to admit their bias and be open to the idea that ‘compelling arguments may win the day.’ What if this was the way we approached information online? What if instead of being afraid of this barrage of information, we embraced it and all of its imperfections? What if we found our passions and formed our truths…

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Testing the water temperature

February 4, 2009 by 4 Comments

And rapidly on the heels of post number one comes my second valiant effort at being profound…or at least something slightly less than dull!

My hope that post number two would come with somewhat more ease than the first one was quickly dashed away. I sat in the F2F meeting and watched everyone copy and paste one another’s blog into our mandatory RSS readings. So much for the hope of remaining ‘under the radar’ when it came to an audience; we’re now all following each other.

In contemplating the idea of online Personal Learning Networks, I am realizing that part of our class is to force us to create these networks for ourselves. Using one another (Andy, Vu, and Nancy for example) and a few other recommended sources (Langwitches and Practical Theory are some), we are mandated to explore this world of connected and online learning.

How authentic will these be, though? I am already finding myself gravitating towards the blogs of the people I know, I mean really know, in person (what I call “real friends” right Clarence?). So, is this what will then start us on our path towards building a PLN online? Is it kind of like dipping our baby toes in the water to test it out?

Maybe some of us will decide the water is the perfect temperature and take the leap. Others of us may slowly ease our whole foot in, then the other, and so on until we’ve comfortably acclimated to the water temperature. And maybe some of us may decide that the water is still a bit too cool, not quite right for a swim just yet. Guess we will see…

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Maybe Blogging Isn’t For Me…

January 30, 2009 by 11 Comments

So here it goes…my first blog post. Technically that’s not exactly true, but it’s my first personal blog post. I’ve struggled for the last week to think of what to write, how to write it, and how to make it something worthwhile. These thoughts and reflections have led to many an interesting discussion at my house. Being married to an avid blogger and Web 2.0 guru (Jeff Utecht), I have been inundated over the years with the idea of the power these web tools can bring to a person. I have also been witness to how these tools can effect change in teaching and learning and the sharing of information and knowledge. Yet, when it actually came time for me to have to start my own personal blog for this class, I found myself reluctant at first, procrastinating with the best of them next, and finally forcing myself to work past the ball of anxiety in the pit of my stomach. In stepping back and taking a more analytical approach to my reluctance (it’s the counselor in me coming out), I began to understand why I was feeling the way I was. It had nothing to do with ideas, I have plenty of those! It also had nothing to do with the writing part, it’s something I’ve always enjoyed. One would then naturally come to the conclusion that I would take to blogging easily and enthusiastically. However, I have realized that the dread I was feeling in relation to my anticipated ‘blog post’ was akin to the panic I feel every time I am required to speak in front of a group of people. For me, to post my thoughts and ideas for a potential world wide audience, creates an apprehension on a scale of mammoth proportions!

This has led me then to my conclusion…blogging is not for everyone. Much like public speaking is not for everyone! Some of us prefer to keep our thoughts and ideas more private, some of us would rather share our insight with a small group of people in a more intimate environment; some of us would rather be keen observers of the world and not have to be the main contributors. What would happen if everyone did blog? Wouldn’t that create an overwhelming amount of information to sift through? And as much as we like to think we are original and creative in our thoughts, for many and most of us, someone else out there has already had the same thought, idea, or epiphany. A perfect example, my first (and agonizing) blog post, has really already been given ‘voice’ by Will Richardson who recently wrote:

So I’m wondering through all of this what role social technologies have for those who may not have the aptitudes to tap into their potential.

I guess that’s kind of what I’m wondering too!

So, in answer to the question “what do you want to get out of this course?”; I would have to reply with another question:“Is blogging for me?” This course will push me to try something new, to explore and expand my thinking, and to know for sure if I’m one of those people that prefer to remain a keen observer and let others take the stage.

There are additional things I hope to get from this course as well, but I might save those thoughts for my next blog post, just in case I should run out of material! So Kim and Jeff, perhaps you can convince me that I am a blogger yet…only time will tell.