Touché!

YouTube Search-and-Delete Code Makes Money for Rights Holders– Elliot Van Buskirk, Wired

Preaching Safety, Inciting Rebellion– Miguel Guhlin, Around the Corner

Be Careful What You Wish For– Tim Stahmer, AssortedStuff

The Decision: Build vs. Buy– Michael Horn, Disrupting Class

What Your iPod Playlist Says About You– Chris Matyszczyk, cnet

8 Things You Can Do with an Enterprise Wiki– Future Changes

Stimulus Could Spur More Virtual Charter Schools– eSchool News

The World Is Open– Curtis Bonk

How Web-Savvy Edupunks Are Transforming American Higher Education– Anya Kamenetz

After over a year of debating and eventually coming to the conclusion that I really wanted an iPhone, I finally found myself in line at my local Apple store the morning the new iPhone 3GS was released. After a two hour wait due to a mix-up with my reservation paperwork, I was the proud new owner of the latest and greatest incarnation of the iPhone.

As with any toy, I started exploring the features. The ability to seamlessly watch Youtube videos was very cool. The GPS feature, again cool. Over the past two weeks, my attention has once again been drawn to the potential role for an iPhone or iPod Touch  in the classroom. Colleges seem to agree (see iPod Touch, iPhone Mandatory for Students) that these devices are not just the future but part of the now.

When browsing through the Education category of the iTunes App store, I realize that there are 176 pages of education applications, each page with 20 apps listed. This is a staggering 3,520 apps for the iPhone or the iPod Touch. Every language is represented from Chinese to American Sign Language. Does anyone else find it ironic that German and Hebrew are listed next to each other? Math, Science, Schedulers, graphing calculators, books (Kindle) available in a portable format, even a California DMV prep. Admittedly, not all apps are top-notch and challenges are posed by the small size of the device, nevertheless, the intriguing benefit of both the iPhone and the iPod Touch are their ability to combine a multisensory experience, in such a small device, into play (especially the tactile aspect).

I would like to see future innovation with apps in two major areas. The first is classroom management. Attendance, notes, and other classroom duties could be made easier through the use of the iPhone or iPod touch. These devices create a powerful and portable hand held input system  With this data sent to the classroom computer (or directly to the school’s servers), organized data can be efficiently gathered and easily used in gradebooks, progress reports, memos, and planning. Time can be saved.

The second area involves the creation of apps that enhance student learning. As mentioned previously, both the iPhone and the iPod Touch offer a multisensory experience. When this is properly used, extremely powerful, multidimensional learning can occur. Lab experiments, astronomy, and fascinating talks (ted.org) help bring a subject alive. The ability for interaction that these devices provide is unprecedented. Books would no longer tours of sites, movies, and a variety of other experiences. Bringing learning alive. I look forward to this.

Here are five educational apps that you may find useful:

• Wheels on the Bus
• Graphing Calculator
• Free Spanish Tutor/Free French Tutor (free)
• Pocket Universe: Virtual Sky Astronomy
• Art
• myhomework (free)

As always please share your feedback…

There were a few interesting morning and afternoon breakout sessions. It seemed the general theme was authoring tools for teachers. Most of the sessions provided a basic overview of these tools (e.g., Camtasia Relay, podcasting, etc.). A few of the interesting sessions included:

1. Youtube, Itunes, and Google Docs. Save Time and Stimulate– David Sconduto had some good stuff on free Internet resources, including Google Docs., Youtube, and iTunes.
2. Certifying Online Instructors with @One– Patricia James provided an interesting presentation on the @ONE project, which provides courses that prepare faculty to teach effectively using online technology (i.e., LMS technology, etc.).
3. Introducing Teachers-Young and Less Young- to Technology– Rushton Hurley did a good job of discussing how digital tools create wonderful opportunities for powerful learning and professional growth. His focus was on the techniques administrators can use to promote the use of Web 2.0 technology at the primary and secondary levels.

The keynote speaker, Luis von Ahn, delivered a fascinating presentation on his research related to Captcha. The thrust of his academic research is concerned with finding ways to use Captcha technology to do positive things for the world community, such as digitizing books, identifying Internet images, etc.

Although von Ahn didn’t really discuss how this sort of technology or the thinking behind it might affect K-12 education, the presentation really challenged how we as educators think about “down time” or “wasted time.”

With the emergence of social media technology in the classroom, teachers are finding innovative ways to promote student learning. As educators become more sophisticated in terms of utilizing Internet and mobile-based technologies to share information, they are taking advantage of new and exciting opportunities to improve their teaching practice. One particular area of interest to me is the way in which this sort of technology might improve the critical thinking skills of high school students.

Perhaps the most difficult task for a high school teacher is promoting critical thinking in the classroom. As students navigate through the giant web of state-mandated curriculum and federal testing requirements, many of them fail to develop the thinking skills necessary to succeed in college and the work world beyond high school. By graduation, high school students find themselves disinterested and unprepared. Perhaps this is why recent studies have shown American students not only lack the basic skills necessary to be successful in today’s global economy but too often they graduate from high school lacking the most important skill: creativity.

As I understand it, the creative student has highly developed critical thinking skills and is able to formulate relevant questions. The obvious importance of critical thinking to student success is not only confirmed by educational research but by the experience of business and community leaders too.  In fact, a recent study, Ready to Innovate, found that the ability to think critically about problems and find creative solutions are the most important attributes business leaders look for when evaluating candidates. According to the business leaders surveyed in the study, creative thinking involves, at a certain level, that a person exhibit such things as curiosity, the ability to recognize new patterns of information, integrate knowledge across disciplines, and, most importantly, the ability to identify problems. Perhaps the most important aspect of these skills, in terms of promoting critical thinking in high school, is the ability of the learner to formulate meaningful questions and articulate thoughtful answers.

Unfortunately, many high school teachers fail to promote this type of thinking in the classroom. A brief visit to a typical high school classroom will prove as much. Students sit quietly in desks, rarely engaged, while the teacher lectures about state-mandated curriculum with the expectation that the students will reproduce the material on the soon to be taken multiple-choice exam. Perhaps this is why American students lack the critical thinking skills necessary to compete in today’s global economy.

The author Tony Wagner thoughtfully analyzes this problem in his recent book The Global Achievement Gap. According to Wagner, all too often public school teachers fail to develop the types of skills normally associated with critical thinking, particularly the skills that enable students to ask good questions.

One important way for high school teachers to promote critical thinking in the classroom is by simply encouraging students to ask good questions. Effective questioning techniques help students analyze academic problems. By asking appropriate questions, students find themselves able to identify problems and, with some guidance, articulating solutions. Utilizing social media technology to stimulate and manage classroom discussions presents an interesting and, perhaps, effective way to accomplish this.

Taking advantage of social media technology to facilitate discussion can make it possible for students to explore the multifaceted nature of academic problems in a way that is normally difficult to achieve in a classroom setting. Where the usual high school curriculum presents standardized information in preparation for year-end mandated exams, this technology may enable high school teachers to foster critical thinking by enabling them to build unique learning situations in which students explore complex academic topics. Moreover, by utilizing the innovative networking features associated with this technology, students can share ideas, work with other students to solve complex problems, and improve their ability to ask thoughtful questions.

The four types of social media technology that seem most promising in this regard are weblogs, podcasts, wikis, and Twitter. What makes these types of social media technology so promising are their accessibility to both teachers and students, wide-spread use in both education and the private sector, and their relevancy to students. Moreover, because these technologies can be used to foster unique technology-based interactions between students and teachers, they present a wonderful opportunity for educators to develop meaningful student-to-student and teacher-to-student discussions. These discussions, of course, represent opportunities for students to develop better thinking skills as they work to understand complex information and formulate thoughtful questions and responses.

There are certainly challenges to using this technology in a typical high school classroom, however. Perhaps the biggest challenge with social media technology is its newness, if you will. Although teachers are experimenting with different ways to use this technology to foster critical thinking and build collaborative teamwork in the classroom, the success so far is limited at best. This means teachers interested in utilizing social media technology are left with few examples of best practices to follow.

The inherent complexity that results from integrating different types of social media technology with traditional high school curriculum presents significant challenges also. Utilizing social networking tools (e.g., Facebook or MySpace) in conjunction with collaboration (e.g., wikis) and multimedia tools (e.g., Flikr or YouTube) is a very difficult task for a high school teacher who has limited experience with this type of technology.

There are other challenges that should be noted. Often basic technology limitations (e.g., lack of resources, school policy, etc.) make it difficult to utilize social media technology in the classroom. Another problem is this technology requires a significant investment in terms of training and resources if teachers are to effectively design and manage learning activities. Perhaps the most challenging limitation for a high school teacher is time. Is it reasonable to expect high school teachers to spend countless hours developing specific learning activities that use social media technology when they are already strapped for time?

At this point I’d like to hear from you. For those teachers or administrators who utilize social media technology in the classroom, please provide your thoughts. Has this technology enabled you to improve student learning? Has it helped your students develop the skills necessary to ask good questions and, more importantly, think critically about academic topics? Have you found it difficult to create projects or curriculum that require integrating two or more of these programs at the same time? I’m looking forward to your comments.