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If this then that: automating the web
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Al yamama 2

This is our villa on al yamama 2, the compound we live on, in Riyadh. In the bottom corner you can see our bunny cage for our two bunnies, Harry and Jewel.


This posting has been posted to two blogs at the same time.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:ابن ماجة,Riyadh,Saudi Arabia

Google Wave Looks Impressive

I spent a rather geeky evening last night watching an hour and a half demo of Google’s new Wave product. It takes an updated look at web-based communication and combines email, chat, wiki and real-time collaboration into one slick package. Here’s a link to the Youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_UyVmITiYQ

I have been thinking a lot about web-based apps etc. lately and the possibility of moving away from purchased apps and dependence on a desktop OS towards platform independent web apps. I love the idea of students choosing their own computer, own platform, using Mac or Linux or Windows as needed and doing more in the browser. This looks like a leap in that direction.

This is Why I love the Internet

I love the Internet. With all its rubbish and junk you can still find the most amazing things. These days you can even find the most amazing tools. What most pundits would agree is the feature of Web 2.0 that distinguishes it from what came before, is the prevalence of online applications. Dynamic sites that harness the power of back end databases and java, ajax and flash, silverlight etc.

The reason I love these online apps, over software like say Photoshop or MS Office, is that they are built to be user friendly and simple from the outset. When a developer puts up an online app or tool, it must be simple and intuitive or people will move on and find another web site to tickle their fancy.

The online app that has me excited today is a #backchannel tool called http://drop.io/

Drop.io is a simple site that allows you to create an online, temporary, chatroom.  A simple idea and there are many other tools out there that do that.  I just happened on Drop.io and liked the interface.  The power of this simple tool for education is in the use of #backchannel discussions in the classroom.  In a nutshell, you run a chatroom during your lecture or lesson where students can post ideas and questions, share files and links and you can guage and monitor understanding through their written feedback.

Earlier this year I had the pleasure of watching a Microsoft video titled “Schools of the Future”.  In the video we are shown what MS must see as a typical higher education classroom, a lecture hall with the prof at the front standing at the old-school overhead projector writing notes and all the students in the room rather sleepily taking notes in notebooks.  The school of the future was transformed with technology however!!  (some sarcasm there; bear with me) With technology, students all had laptops and so were able to rather sleepily take notes in MS word.  The professor no longer had to stand at the overhead.  He was free to pace back and forth at the front of the room, making notes on his tablet PC which showed those same boring notes on the big screen at the front.  Wow.  Transformative. (more sarcasm)

I mention this video because, besides showing how technology can replace old tools (and still not change the teaching and learning), they also added a feature that I thought was truly transformative.  They were also running an MSN chat for the class to post questions, add ideas, guide the discussion and give feedback to the prof.  The classroom TA manned the chat room at the front, taking the feedback and questions and filtering those to present the prof with common misconceptions, frequestly asked questions and such.  Allowing the students to ask questions in this way, posting their queries and thoughts as they happen, instead of waiting for the end of the lecture, is a little thing, but a great use of technology.  I just this week found several articles about this kind of #backchanneling in the classroom that brought this idea back to the fore for me.  At the time of watching the video I was struck that, using MSN limited the ease of use of this tool.  You would have to ensure everyone had a PC, that they all had MSN accounts, etc.  Not simple.

But, just this week I read about successful backchannel uses in the classroom and online tools for quickly and easily creating a chatroom for your class or lesson, on the fly.  All that students would need is a browser and the Internet.

I love that the Internet is becoming more and more useful with these great learning tools and also that the tech needs in school are being reduced to a nice and simple need: Internet access.

If you want to see what I was reading and where these ideas sprung from this week, get over to http://search.twitter.com and search on backchannel.

The IT in the Classroom Imperative

I was recently having what has become a very frequent conversation for me.  The conversation surrounds the different ways of ensuring students get the IT skills they need, through IT classes or IT in the classroom, through IT lessons or integrated IT in the classroom, through IT teachers or classroom teachers, in computer labs or in classrooms with laptops, on a schedule or as needed.

I found myself saying something I have grown fond of and that is “Computer teachers, or integration specialists if you like, are charged with helping teachers integrate IT into their lessons.  We expect that from them.  But classroom teachers are not formally charged with getting help.” (I am long-winded apparently)  Classroom teachers are not expected to integrate IT in a formalized way, like in their job description or through performance evaluation criteria (at least not in the schools I have worked at).  Even when you have a whiz-bang IT specialist who gets out there and plans with teachers, it too often is an uphill battle and that person can become very tired of making folks do things they don’t want to do and change when they are happy doing what they are doing.  If integration doesn’t happen, the IT specialist is seen as ineffectual but classroom teachers are rarely seen as complicit in that failure, at least not openly and individually.  “They” may be seen as such, as a grade level or team, if they act as such as a grade level or team, but classroom teachers are rarely fired because they did not integrate technology into their curriculum (at least not in the schools I have worked at).

What makes teachers learn new methods, integrate technology and change their practice?  What makes them embrace tech tools in their teaching?  What would make them go to the IT specialist spontaneously and say “Hey I want to learn about podcasting because my students need to know how to do that to improve their learning.”

And then it hit me (I am slow on the uptake apparently). That is exactly what would make them say such a thing: if it were true and they knew it and believed it to be so.  If a teacher knew that the students in their classroom would learn better, more, and with greater effect, because of an IT tool, they would want to use it.

Teachers will do what is best for kids or what they believe is best for kids.  That is the IT imperative.  Professional educators will change their practice and learn new skills if it will benefit the kids.  PD, therefore, must make that case.  Not the case that IT is easy or makes teaching or learning easier.  It doesn’t. IT often makes things take longer and is actually harder.  But the benefits, the long term learning benefits, outweigh that.  PD must show that, convincingly and repeatedly.