As with any new technology, there are challenges (legal and technical) to its implementation. Additionally, some are more apt to embrace its use while others are more cautious or even try to block them. We will discuss this in depth in future posts. For now, I’ve posted our presentations below. Feel free to use them, we only ask that you attribute them to us.

According to Bramble,

“Researchers have already enumerated the benefits that kids can get from traditional media. Watching Sesame Street or Blue’s Clues improves children’s problem-solving skills and school readiness. Teaching students how to use word-processing software, Web-design programs, and video-production tools is a proven way of refocusing at-risk teens on school, and, eventually, getting them jobs. Social networks can also pull in students who are otherwise disengaged, because they draw on kids’ often intense interest in finding new ways to communicate with one another.”

Putting aside the potential pitfalls of utilizing social networking tools in a traditional school setting (i.e., privacy issues, inappropriate student behavior, etc.), how can educators effectively do it? Here’s Bramble’s suggestion,

“For starters, students could talk about what they’re doing on Facebook and company, map out the ways they’re making connections with one another, and share videos and software they’ve created. Once the conversation gets going, teachers could figure out whether some kids were being left out and find ways to increase those students’ media literacy and bring them into the fold. Teachers can manage the project by selecting the best content and conversations, and incorporating it into other parts of the curriculum. If a student created an entry on Wikipedia for a local band or sports team, other students could work on revising the entry and building it into a larger local history project. The audience for school projects need no longer be one hurried teacher.”

Some of Bramble’s ideas sound good, but his suggestion that teachers should set aside valuable instructional time so students can discuss how they are using applications like Facebook to connect with one another seems very simplistic, to say the least. Simply having kids share the content they created over the weekend, for instance, is certainly not effective in terms of  improving student achievement. If social networking technology is going to be used successfully in the classroom, it must be implemented in a systematic way, in a way that directly and clearly supports academic learning. It’s nice to use social media technology as a way to link curriculum to student prior knowledge at the beginning of a lesson, let’s say, or as a discussion starter or wrap up to a lesson, but this sort of approach is only marginally beneficial. Considering the potential pitfalls, most teachers are left wondering, “Is using this technology really worth the hassle?”

Bramble also argues teachers should take advantage of our students’ desire to produce things using this technology. Why not have them use it to do something productive? Bramble suggests schools have students

” produce a school-sanctioned video[s]—the re-enactment of a literary or historical scene, for example. This isn’t as simple as a teacher saying, “Why don’t you write a poem about your frustration, rap it on video, and put it on YouTube?” Instead, a teacher could assign students the task of filming a scene from The Scarlet Letter in the stairwell, identifying the dynamic of shaming in the novel, and writing about how it might be playing out in their Facebook news feeds. In math class, students could develop statistical models and graphs of the patterns of information flow in their social networks. To understand how advertising works, students from different backgrounds and with different online habits could compare what’s being hawked to them. And for a school journalism project, teams of students could aggregate other students’ narratives from blogs, Facebook, and Twitter and compile a real-time collective analysis of the state of their educational union.”

This sort of approach makes sense. As I noted in a recent post, having students actually “do” something with their learning is a very effective way to utilize social media technology in the classroom. In other words, social media technology provides an easy way to enable students to actually demonstrate their learning. The “doing” part is the last phase of what Curtis Bonk refers to as a learning wheel– read, reflect, display, and do.

Social networking technology certainly has a place in schools. The hard part is finding truly beneficial applications that promote student learning or foster positive communication between members of the school community.

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Open curriculum, or curriculum based on open educational resources, presents exciting opportunities for public schools. The curriculum is very flexible, easily personalized, inexpensive, and has (over the last few years) significantly improved in terms of academic quality. Many prestigious universities are  involved in building open curriculum, including MIT, Carnegie Mellon University, Yale University, and Stanford University. With the difficult testing requirements and economic circumstances facing most schools, a significant demand has emerged in the  K-12 market for both open source technology and curriculum. State-wide programs in Utah and Florida, for example, are serving thousands of students using open curriculum. This trend appears to be growing fast.

Open curriculum has a few important benefits worth noting.

1. Low Cost– Most schools pay large sums of money for books, resources, and curriculum. Therefore, the financial benefits of utilizing open curriculum is obvious. As a site administrator who is strapped for resources, this is certainly a very appealing reason to use open curriculum.
2. Flexibility– Open curriculum is usually easily customizable and can involve third parties, including learning management systems like Moodle (which is also free). This means new features, tools, and apps can be imported from the open source community. These applications can greatly enhance the effectiveness of the virtual learning environment.
3. Curricular Continuity– Because open curriculum projects usually involve a large network or community of contributors, it is very unlikely the curriculum will be discontinued.
4. Continued Improvement– Because of the aforementioned network of contributors, the product is always being improved.

Some of the most important developments in open curriculum have taken place at the university level. Following is a list of a few exciting programs.

1. MITOpencourseware (MIT)
2. Open Learning Initiative (Carnegie Mellon University)
3. Open Yale Courses (Yale University)
4. Stanford Engineering Everywhere (Stanford University)
5. UOnline (University of Utah)

In addition to colleges and  universities, a few influential organizations have begun developing open curriculum for K-12 institutions.

1. National Repository of Online Courses
2. HippoCampus
3. cK-12
4. Curriki
5. OER Commons
6. UC College Prep

Although open curriculum presents many exciting opportunities for K-12 education, it also presents significant challenges.

1. Building Consensus– When it comes to using open curriculum at the K-12 level, building consensus around a particular type of curriculum is difficult. Whether in a small department or a large program, it’s very hard to get  professional educators to agree on a specific approach or course of action. Often times, this sort of disunity sinks a fledgling online program.
2. Implementation– The implementation phase of an online program which utilizes open curriculum is the most difficult. Finding a curriculum that best suits the students’ needs is challenging. However, building an online platform which not only integrates various technologies (i.e., communication tools, grade book tools, assessment tools, etc.) but also effectively delivers curriculum to students at the K-12 level can seem like an insurmountable task. Moreover, finding ways to modify and improve the open curriculum can also present difficult challenges for K-12 educators.
3. Hidden Costs– Every open source curricular program has hidden costs. Depending on the nature of the online program, these costs can quickly sink a project. Developing online curriculum and managing a complex learning management system, for example, can be a very costly endeavor, particularly for a cash strapped public school.
4. Intellectual Property Issues– The intellectual property issues usually associated with open source curriculum can be confusing and frustrating for educators, especially teachers who have limited experience with online learning.

Even though open curriculum presents a few difficult challenges, its potential for improving student achievement is very exciting.

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Social Books Unlock Reader’s Voice and and Provide Opportunity for Conversation– The Innovative Educator

Learning Styles Theory Versus Sustained Hard Work– Steve Hargadon

New Electronic Devices Could Interest Schools– eSchool News

Netbooks All Around– Bridget McCrea, THE Journal

Top Ten Free Resources for Digital Learners– Online Learning

Top Five Web Trends: Personalization– Richard MacManus, ReadWriteWeb

Open Courseware Gains Momentum– Maya T. Prabhu, eSchool News

Five Reasons Why RSS Readers Still Rock– Richard MacManus, ReadWriteWeb

Teachers’ Digital Use on The Rise– eSchool News

Man, I guess Twitter really is a brain drain! By the way, I just woke up, and I guess I should do some work…

Bonk’s R2D2 learning model is intended to promote the sort of problem solving skills today’s students must have to learn effectively in the information age. The model or “wheel” involves four phases– read, reflect, display, and do.

Phase One involves exploring information on the Internet. During this phase, the teacher designs curriculum that organizes relevant digital information while still enabling students to explore the vast array of academic information located online. According to Bonk,

“The web contains countless resources for reading, researching, and listening. You can have your students discover and read online articles from open-access journals, expert web sites, or online portals of famous scientists like Albert Einstein, Jane Goodall, or Charles Darwin or writers like William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, or Edgar Allan Poe. There are tens of millions of online documents to read, discuss, debate, juxtapose, connect, compare and contrast, and perhaps turn into something totally different. Your students might also download and read scores of free eBooks made available by Google, the Internet Archive, ManyBooks.net, Bookyards, and others.”

The read phase is an important first step in what Bonk refers to as the “problem-solving wheel.” Even though his model is designed for college-age students, it is certainly applicable to K-12 students, too. In order for teachers to enjoy success with this particular phase, I would advise establishing a clear curricular approach for organizing the academic information students will research. This approach should involve an appropriate level of structure and direct teacher guidance based on the age of the student. Moreover, it is important for teachers to consider the extent to which their students understand the nature of academic research. Simply exploring the Internet is not sufficient for authentic learning. In order to promote critical thinking skills and prepare students for the information age, educators must teach students how to research properly, how to effectively navigate through the World Wide Web, and how to evaluate and process large amounts of information. Students do not develop these skills naturally. They have to be taught.

The second phase involves student reflection. During this phase, students

“… blog about the concepts or ideas that they learned from their reading or listening activities. Such blogging might be done individually or in teams. Critical friends within the class or experts outside it might provide feedback on their blog posts. [S]tudents might also read or track the blog posts of experts that relate to the topic of a class or program of studies. To push beyond the instructor as the sole source of knowledge, they might watch and reflect upon keynote speeches and the teachings of other participants from online conferences. [S]tudents might also reflect on cases or scenarios that are posted online.”

This particular phase involves utilizing Web 2.0 technology. The read-write technology associated with Web 2.0 gives students the ability to easily author ideas and their peers the ability to respond. This phase is highly reflective and requires the use of dynamic authoring tools (e.g., wikis, blogs, etc.).

The third phase involves displaying the information learned. During this phase, Bonk suggests students use pictures, time lines, flow charts, diagrams, and films to represent what they’ve learned. There are thousands of tools (many of which are free) students can use to visually demonstrate their understanding.

The fourth and final phase involves actually doing something with the information. Bonk believes

“[t]he internet provides many paths to try out course content in a safe harbor. Your students can perform plays in Second Life. They can practice their language skills in Mixxer, Babbel, KanTalk, or Livemocha. They can collect survey or polling data with dozens of different tools and collaboratively analyze and share their results using Google Docs. Similarly, real-world data from corporations or nonprofit organizations might be analyzed and reports generated. Beyond simple reports or term papers, they might also compose their own books in Wikibooks or create class projects such as a glossary in a wiki (e.g., PBworks or Wikispaces). Students might also produce their own podcasts or podcast series or YouTube-like videos related to course content. They can also solve problems or simulations online.”

Bonk’s model provides an interesting approach to teaching and learning in the information age. Perhaps the most difficult struggle K-12 teachers face is how to structure their curriculum and pedagogy to reflect 21st century learning standards. Simply integrating exciting Web 2.0 tools is not enough. Teachers need to rethink how they teach and how today’s students learn. This involves devising learning models that not only emphasizes 21st century thinking skills but also utilize technology to create relevant learning experiences for students.

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While many secondary schools continue to utilize basic Web 1.0 website technology to communicate with parents, students, and the broader community, most of the people schools are trying to reach, particularly the students and parents, rely on Web 2.0 technology like Facebook to share and receive information, even when it relates to education.

Most school websites are one-way information highways that might be appealing in design but lacking in functionality. As a result of the Web 2.0 revolution, students and parents are becoming accustomed to using social media technology to gather important information. From an educator’s perspective, it seems what makes these technologies appealing, particularly to the edupunks, is the various social media tools that enable users to easily publish ideas and broadcast them to a wide audience. Unlike the one way communication associated with Web 1.0, today’s technology enables users to create a sort of digital identity by sharing personal thoughts and relevant ideas. By utilizing social networking tools, savvy users can create and participate in a vibrant online community. For the 21st century student, this is powerful stuff.

With this in mind, it’s important for educators to consider the different ways this technology can be used to improve how schools communicate with students and parents. It’s also important to consider how social media technology can be used to create a dynamic online presence or digital community that promotes important aspects of the school’s mission. One particular Web 2.0 platform with enormous potential to improve the way schools communicate is the social networking site Facebook.

More and more teachers and administrators are taking advantage of the different tools Facebook offers to improve how they communicate with parents and students. What’s exciting is the way Facebook is being used to create a vibrant learning community.

For the past few months, I’ve been using Facebook to communicate with parents. I have to be honest. Being a high school administrator, I had serious reservations about using social media technology in this way. At first, I guess I was really worried about all the potential pitfalls. I suppose it was the administrator side of me!

Anyway, I thought I’d share a few examples of how administrators at my school are using Facebook to improve the way they communicate with parents and students.

1. Constant Contact– Managing a school today is as difficult as ever. With state-mandated testing, extracurricular activities, fundraising pressures, academic concerns, and so on, effective communication is particularly important. But, finding ways to effectively communicate with parents and students is certainly not an easy task. Today’s digital world  is noisy, complex, and often times disorienting. The result often means school communication gets muddled and with it the intended message is often lost in translation.  With all the other things going on, it’s not easy getting the parents’ attention, let alone the students. This is why frequent contact with parents and students is vital to successful school communication. If schools can find a reliable conduit to communicate to parents and students on a regular basis, school administrators are able to share important information that will not only improve student achievement but help build a productive and healthy school culture.

Facebook’s social networking tools can help build the sort of communication structure that enables school administrators to communicate with students and parents on a regular basis. Because most parents and students are comfortable using Facebook to communicate, utilizing the following applications can really help improve school-related communication.

• Group Feature– Creating targeted communication groups, such as for parents, students, specific grade levels, or extracurricular activities, allow administrators to easily share information in a way that is specifically tailored for the recipient.

• Event Schedule Feature– Because most schools need to communicate information related to numerous school-related events, Facebook’s event scheduling feature can really facilitate effective communication. Scheduling an event is very simple and its broadcast feature allows school administrators to not only reach a large audience but easily remind parents and students of important events (For the busy parent, this is certainly a plus!).

• Send Message Feature– This feature enables school administrators to send messages directly to parents and students. Administrators can create a variety of groups based on communication needs. What makes this application so appealing is, much like e-mail, administrators can pinpoint communication to specific parents or students.

• Multimedia Feature– School administrators can share multimedia with parents and students. The ability to easily share multimedia with parents and students can greatly enhance the way schools communicate.

• Announcement Feature– School administrators can easily broadcast announcements and reminders to help parents and students stay on top of important school-related events.

• Blogging Feature– By using the “What’s on your mind?” feature or the “Notes” feature, administrators can provide daily updates, blog about important events and issues, and provide valuable information for parents.

2. Back-to-school– One of the most powerful ways school administrators can use Facebook is to provide parents with a unique inside view of the daily operations of the school. Administrators can take pictures of daily events, record interviews with teachers and students, film student projects or particular parts of a teacher’s lesson and share this information with parents. If designed properly (and in accordance with student privacy rights), these “snapshots” can provide a powerful insight into the school’s community. Because today’s parents really want to be involved in the day-to-day activities of their students, utilizing Facebook can be a very effective way to create this meaningful connection for busy parents. Besides, by emphasizing certain aspects of the school’s community, administrators can have a powerful hand in shaping it.

3. Digital Discussions– By using the discussion feature, school administrators can create a safe and effective way for parents to share ideas with school administrators. As long as the discussion items are properly designed and managed, they can present a wonderful way for parents to participate in the school’s decision making process.

4. Alumni Communication– One of the most popular ways school administrators use Facebook is to help former students connect with their classmates after graduation.

Facebook is a powerful tool for school administrators because its social networking structure can be used to facilitate communication and build a dynamic online community. Most parents and students have Facebook accounts, and they update them on a regular basis. This means school administrators have a powerful communication tool at their finger tips, one that can be used to share all kinds of information– blogs, event updates, photographs, and video. This information can easily be tailored to meet the personal needs of the school’s community.

With this in mind, it’s important for educators to rethink how they communicate with parents and students. This new communication transformation must involve the sorts of social media tools normally associated with Web 2.0. These tools present an exciting opportunity to improve the way educators communicate.

Here are a few links to help you develop a vibrant school community. Good luck!

Opening Facebook: How to Use Facebook in the College Classroom

The Facebook Classroom: 25 Apps that Are Perfect for Online Education

Schools Use Facebook, Twitter to Get Out Their Message

Teacher’s Guide to Using Facebook

PBS Teachers

If It Doesn’t Spread, It’s Dead

Best Practices for Educators Using Facebook

How To Social Media Videos for Administrators

Drive Belonging and Engagement in the Classroom

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Because of advances in technology– mobile technology, new and exciting social media platforms, iTunes, and YouTube– the way today’s students share information is very different than in the past. This new information paradigm requires educators to consider new approaches to educating students. Because of the way today’s students learn, it’s important that educators tailor instruction to meet individual student learning needs and design curriculum that addresses student interests.

One of the first successful ventures into this new learning paradigm was MIT’s free online coursework venture in 2001. Kamenetz points out,

“Today, you can find the full syllabi, lecture notes, class exercises, tests, and some video and audio for every course MIT offers, from physics to art history. This trove has been accessed by 56 million current and prospective students, alumni, professors, and armchair enthusiasts around the world.”

What’s interesting about these new sorts of technology-oriented changes is they are disrupting the traditional model of teaching and learning. As schools like MIT take advantage of the Web, they are able to “disseminate high-quality materials at almost no cost, leveling the playing field.”

According to Cathy Casserly, a senior partner at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, organizations like MIT are

“changing the culture of how we think about knowledge and how it should be shared and who are the owners of knowledge.”

The problem, it seems, is most universities are still mired in a 20th century mindset when it comes to how educators think about knowledge and learning. While universities remain prohibitively expensive and unnecessarily rigid in terms of how instruction is provided, a growing movement of high-tech do-it-your-self students or “edupunks” are creating a new and exciting market for decentralized learning.

According to Kamenetz,

“The edupunks are on the march. From VC-funded startups to the ivied walls of Harvard, new experiments and business models are springing up from entrepreneurs, professors, and students alike. Want a class that’s structured like a role-playing game? An accredited bachelor’s degree for a few thousand dollars? A free, peer-to-peer Wiki university? These all exist today, the overture to a complete educational remix.”

The education futurists see the development of Web 2.0 as the final death knell of the 20th century learning model. The proliferation of open source learning tools, social media technology, mobile learning tools, and the ability of educators to cheaply and effectively construct rich, complex, individualized learning experiences for students is bound to revolutionize education.

As teachers move to utilize new technologies to improve curriculum and pedagogy, there are a few important problems to consider. Perhaps the most difficult problem, at least in a practical sense, is how teachers effectively integrate different technology-based learning tools to create a seamless learning experience. As a pedagogical practice, using new technologies to disseminate the different sorts of academic information high school and college students need is a very complex task. Therefore, teachers are left asking an important question: How should teachers use this technology to deliver effective instruction, and once we’ve identified effective ways to do this, how exactly should teachers organize the curriculum?

In some ways, integrating technology with high school and college curriculum may seem like a simple task, but any experienced educator will tell you it’s definitely not. Shifting from a classroom mindset to an online mindset not only presents significant practical problems, but the transformation can be very difficult for teachers to conceptualize. Perhaps this is why many universities, including MIT, have been unsuccessful at creating highly effective learning environments using Web 2.0 technology, at least compared to the traditional classroom experience (MIT’s online courses could hardly be considered examples of effective curriculum and pedagogical design!).

It’s not to say there aren’t individual examples of online curriculum that incorporate innovative design principles and rigorous curriculum to create a rich, student centered learning experience. The problem is finding examples of large-scale models that can easily be incorporated by any given university or high school. Although there are certainly emerging models that show exciting promise, most tech savvy educators would admit we’ve got a ways to go.

It’s also important to consider the problem of deciding exactly which digital tools educators should utilize to improve student learning. Digital tools such as micro blogging, open source learning management systems, and web-based student information systems are important tools for creating a robust and integrated learning platform. But which tools should educators use, and for what purposes? Furthermore, how can these tools be integrated to create a seamless learning experience? What’s exciting, I think, is that the tools and information are presently available. The problem now is constructing a learning infrastructure that truly works? Today’s teaching environment requires educators to utilize a variety of programs in order to deliver effective instruction– a learning management system, a different grading program, a different student information system, and so forth. Teachers, therefore, are faced with a difficult challenge. Not only do they have to figure out which technologies to utilize, but they have to figure out how to make them work together. Figuring this out requires a lot of time, experience, and perseverance. Once all the factors are considered, designing a great online course can be quite expensive, time consuming, and frustrating.

When this problem is considered at the high school level, moreover, the issues become even more complex. Perhaps this is why high school teachers and administrators are reluctant to move courses online.

Although the potential benefits online learning presents are exciting, shifting the way educators think about teaching and learning is definitely not an easy task. Nevertheless, the more students and their parents demand highly individualized and inexpensive curriculum, educators will be forced to change the way they deliver instruction. The market forces that are shaping today’s schools will, at the most fundamental level, disrupt the current educational model. The problem we face as educators is deciding which tools we should use and the best ways to use them. Finding a solution to this problems might require the sort of radical thinking the edupunks like to embrace.