Dangerously Irrelevant

Here are two commercials for the iPad. The first (and newer) one highlights the power of iPad apps to facilitate learning. I like the second one because it emphasizes the lines that are blurring as these technologies (iPad or otherwise) and their accompanying affordances take root in our daily lives.

Happy viewing!

Learn

Now

The Did You Know? (Shift Happens) videos have been seen by at least 40 million people online and perhaps that many again during face-to-face conferences, workshops, etc. This week saw the release of the latest version, this one focused on the state of Iowa. Titled Iowa, Did You Know?, the video is aimed at Iowa policymakers, citizens, and educators and is intended to help them feel a greater sense of urgency when it comes to changing our schools. Right now there’s a fair amount of complacency; the average Iowan isn’t coming to his or her school board or politician saying, “Hey, why aren’t you preparing my kids for this digital, global world we now live in?!”

Take a look at the video and see what you think. Even if you don’t live in Iowa, I think you’ll find it quite pertinent to your educational context too. More thoughts and resources after the video…

Additional resources

We are hopeful that the video will be shown to groups all over the state. It comes with a facilitator’s guide to help spark conversation as well as PDF versions of each slide. The idea is that any local group – school, Rotary club, senior citizens’ center, community group, or book club (or even just a small bunch of neighbors) - can convene for 30–60 minutes, show the video, and then start talking and acting. Additional resources and information are available at the Iowa Future web site to help these groups. We need a groundswell of Iowans to start advocating for 21st, not 19th, century schools.

Leadership Day 2011

In addition to announcing Iowa, Did You Know?, this post also is going to serve as my Leadership Day 2011 contribution. If our schools are going to ‘shift’ and prepare students for the next (rather than the last) half century, school leaders are going to have to be much more proactive about engaging with parents, community members, and policymakers. Whether it’s pulling snippets from this blog or Mind Dump and mentioning them at every possible gathering, showing videos like this one and inviting discussion and action, or finding ways to regularly and visibly highlight innovative student and teacher uses of higher-order thinking skills and digital technologies, principals and superintendents can’t just focus on what occurs within their school systems. We MUST engage the public and we MUST engage the people who make policy at the state and federal levels. Right now we’re not doing this nearly as much as we should be. For example, we debuted Iowa, Did You Know? at the School Administrators of Iowa conference earlier this week. I heard lots of comments afterward from administrators about how excited they were to show the video to their staffs. But nary a single one said that he or she was excited to use it to help spark needed conversations with parents, citizens, or legislators. If we don’t have these latter conversations too, we’ll continue to run into the external mindset and funding/policy constraints that surround and hinder what we do, regardless of how innovative we are internally.

Does every state need a video like Iowa, Did You Know? Probably. If not a video, then a report or a recorded speech or something that galvanizes citizens to start putting pressure on school boards and lawmakers to do something DIFFERENT when it comes to learning, teaching, and schooling. Right now most of the discussion regarding educational reform is simply tweaking what we’ve always done, trying to make it a bit better or more intense. Given the transformational impacts of digital technologies on learning, communication, the global economy, our jobs, entertainment, and just about every other area of life we can think of, tweaking just doesn’t cut it.

With gratitude

It is with great appreciation that I thank:

• Troyce Fisher, School Administrators of Iowa, and everyone else involved with the Iowa Future initiative for being so patient with me as I worked to get this done, for insisting that the video have an encouraging ending, and for having the original vision for a visibility initiative to reach Iowa citizens and legislators, not just educators.
• XPLANE, who now has done the graphics on 3 of the 5 ‘official’ versions of Did You Know? and who came through yet again despite a very tight timeline. I can’t emphasize enough how creative the folks there are and how wonderful they are to work with. I have absolutely no hesitation recommending them for any project, any time. They are truly amazing and gifted.
• All of the wonderful Iowans, educators or otherwise, who will help spread this video across the state and maximize its impact. I’m thanking you all in advance; it’s up to us to make these conversations happen!
• Karl Fisch, who started the whole Did You Know? phenomenon and has graciously included me on every step along the way.

Previous videos in the Did You Know? series are available at the Shift Happens wiki. Source files for Iowa, Did You Know? will be available there soon.

Happy viewing!

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills and Fablevision have just released a short animated film, Above and Beyond, that emphasizes the value of the 4 Cs: communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity. There's also an accompanying downloadable poster.

Happy viewing!

Three videos worth watching…

In Fall 2008, only 6 school districts in Iowa had a 1:1 student laptop initiative in place. In Fall 2011, as many as 90 to 100 districts (one-fourth of the state total) may be giving laptops to some segment of their student population. This explosive, grass roots growth has completely changed the tenor of many conversations here in the state and has fostered some very rapid innovations in learning and teaching.

Contest winners

Here are the winners of CASTLE’s first-ever Iowa 1:1 Student Video Contest. Congratulations to Matthew (Valley CSD, Elgin, IA) and Janae (Sioux Central CSD, Sioux Rapids, IA)!

Van Meter

The Van Meter Community Schools (Van Meter, IA) recently made a video highlighting its 1:1 learning and teaching initiative. Maybe next year CASTLE should have a school/district video contest too!

Kudos to the creators of all three of these videos. Nicely done!

If you’d like to know more about 1:1 laptop initiatives in Iowa, contact Nick Sauers (and read his blog, 1 to 1 Schools), check out CASTLE’s annual Iowa 1:1 Institute, and/or participate in the 1:1 Laptop Schools Ning. We also have a map showing all currently-known 1:1 schools in the state. If your district’s not on this list, please let Nick know!

Apparently it’s Richard Elmore Day in my electronic inboxes today. Here are two great quotes…

From Using technology to move beyond schools (Elmore & City):

With rare exceptions, schools currently treat the digital revolution as if it never happened. Computers, more often than not, still sit in dedicated rooms, accessible only with adult supervision. Laptops, when they are used at all in classrooms, are frequently employed as electronic worksheets, digital typewriters, and presentation producers, rather than as extensions of students’ access to knowledge. When students do use technology to extend the reach of their learning, they typically do so by visiting predigested information sources and cutting and pasting information into predetermined, teacher-driven formats. “Social networking” among students is treated as a subversive activity engaged in by kids who are up to no good, and certainly not as a promising point of entry to anything that might be called “learning.”

When students step out the door of the institution called school today, they step into a learning environment that is organized in ways radically different from how it once was. It’s a world in which access to knowledge is relatively easy and seamless; in which one is free to follow a line of inquiry wherever it takes one, without the direction and control of someone called a teacher; and, in which, with a little practice, most people can quickly build a network of learners around just about any body of knowledge and interests, unconstrained by the limits of geography, institutions, and time zones. If you were a healthy, self-actualizing young person, in which of these environments would you choose to spend most of your time?

The basic problem with this scenario, however, is this: The more accessible learning becomes through unmediated relationships and broad-based social networks, the less clear it is why schools, and the people who work in them, should have such a large claim on the lives of children and young adults, and the more the noneducational functions of schooling come to the fore.

From What would happen if we let them go? (Elmore):

what would happen if we simply opened the doors and let the students go; if we let them walk out of the dim light of the overhead projector into the sunlight; if we let them decide how, or whether, to engage this monolith? Would it be so terrible? Could it be worse than what they are currently experiencing? Would adults look at young people differently if they had to confront their children on the street, rather than locking them away in institutions? Would it force us to say more explicitly what a humane and healthy learning environment might look like? Should discussions of the future of school reform be less about the pet ideas of professional reformers and more about what we're doing to young people in the institution called school?

For those of you who don’t know Dr. Elmore, he’s the Gregory R. Anrig Professor of Educational Leadership at Harvard University. As you might imagine, he is quite smart and is widely recognized as one of America’s leading thinkers about classroom instruction and school curriculum. If you haven’t read School Reform from the Inside Out or Instructional Rounds in Education, it’s probably time that you did.

Here’s a video that I made in 2007 of an excerpt from one of his speeches. Happy reading (and watching)!

It was about 95 degrees as we strolled into the Ames Middle School band concert Tuesday night. Although the outside air was stifling, the air conditioning inside was blissfully cool. We settled into our seats and perused the program: ‘A Salute to Veterans,’ featuring classic band fare like Fanfare Americana and Home on the Range and Highlights from The Music Man. Excellent. The band is ready. The audience is eager, anticipatory, and silent. And then two projectors turn on, beaming their rays of light across the dark auditorium. The images resolve themselves and …

There on the sides of the auditorium, bigger than life, is Capt. Sean Taylor, Iowa National Guard member, father of a 7th grade trombone player, and uncle to a 7th grade percussionist. Unable to attend in person because he’s on medical evacuation from Afghanistan, Capt. Taylor is attending his family’s concert virtually instead. The band begins to play, and the grin on Capt. Taylor’s face is as wide as the horizon.

In between sets, Capt. Taylor is kind enough to share some news about the Iowa National Guard and its role in World War II, Iraq, and Afghanistan. His wife and children are in the crowd. His son and niece are recognized by the band teachers. Everyone does their community and country proud.

The concert closes with another surprise appearance, this time by the Ames High drum line. They’re joined by the entire middle school band in a rousing, roof-shaking rendition of 76 Trombones. As the crowd gathers their children and shuffles out the door into the parking lot, the buzz and excitement are palpable.

Why don’t we do more stuff like this in our schools? The videoconferencing worked flawlessly. We have the ability to pull in distant family members, luminaries, scientists, poets, artists, and authors at any time, from anywhere, into our auditoriums and theaters and classrooms. This shouldn’t be a special event. It should be an everyday occurrence. The technology is there. Where’s our will to use it? Where’s our creativity?

A hearty pat on the back to the Ames school music programs, the Ames school district technology staff, and Capt. Taylor. It was a joyful, tearful, amazing evening for everyone. Thank you for reminding us that, rather than isolating us, the true powers of our new technologies are their ability to bring us closer together in ways that were formerly unimaginable.

This week is Children’s Book Week. In honor of the event, I thought that I’d highlight 21 interesting e-books for kids. Collectively, these give us a glimpse into what the future of children’s publishing is going to look like. As I compiled this list, I was struck by how quickly the field of interactive e-books is moving. The iPad has been around just over a year…

Some folks are mourning the transition of children’s books from paper to digital. Despite having thousands of traditional kids’ books in my house, I’m not one of those people. The lines between electronic books, videos, animation, interactive games, and learning software are blurring and it’s going to be fascinating to see what gets created as authors, artists, animators, game designers, photographers, videographers, educators, and publishers work together over the next few years.

What do you think? After seeing the videos below and/or trying some of these e-books, how do you feel about the upcoming transition of kids’ books from paper to digital?

If you know of any cool e-books for kids that I missed, please share them. Also, for those who are interested, here’s my burgeoning collection of videos that envision the future of print. If this post is a success, I’ll do this again next year during Children’s Book Week!

The Penelope Rose

Cozmo’s Day Off

Grimm's Rapunzel

The Elements

Alice for the iPad

The Three Pandas

PopOut! The Tale of Peter Rabbit

Violet and the Mystery Next Door

The Going to Bed Book

Marvel Comics

Snow Globes 3D!

Wild About Books

Heart and the Bottle

Aesop’s Wheel of Fables

Poe's Christmas

A Present for Milo

Am I From A Belly Button?

Magic School Bus: Oceans

Gamebook Adventures

Toy Story

I SPY Spooky Mansion

Here’s the trailer for The Bully Project, a new documentary on school bullying. This and Race to Nowhere are the two films for which I wish my school district would host a public screening and conversation. My heart breaks for these kids and other victims; adolescent cruelty knows few bounds…

I love this quote: “The power of hearing one voice in solidarity with you can be transformative for people.” So true on so many fronts.

Here are some bullying and cyberbullying resources that may be helpful to you.

Florida Virtual School’s second online course / video game, Conspiracy Code Intensive Reading, appears to be ready.

I blogged about Conspiracy Code American History a year and a half ago. Check out that video too.

Happy viewing. What do you think of this model of teaching / learning?

‘We may need to seriously rethink the university and its future.’ [feel free to substitute ‘school’ for ‘university’]

Another thought-provoking video by Dr. Michael Wesch. Happy viewing!