Firing up my own little trail....

To learn about how I problem solve with Moodle, please view this video and trailfire! ;-) This is my first use of Trailfire.com ~ Have fun.
http://trailfire.com/hollyrae/trailview/47431

2.0 ToDo list with Todoist

I am a listmaking girl. Give me a task and it will appear on post its, digital lists, mental lists, iGoogle widgets, and in my Treo inside Palm ToDo. Yes, some day, it might actually get completed, but that's another story.

All I can say is, I have never, ever been so impressed as I am with Todoist. Found it on iGoogle homepage widgets and it integrates with my phone. In other words, I have it everywhere. It is so super smart and figures all kinds of things out for you. You must play. It's worth the 2.0 minutes it will take to set it up.

http://todoist.com/

Andele! Go!

Social Graph & Attention Economy

It's all the rage now to look at the bigger picture of social media and how all of these 'tiny' pieces fit together to inform a semantic web of human relationships. The concept seems to have gained ground in the past month, suddenly I'm seeing it in a lot of blogging on web 2.0 and hearing colleagues (a la Julz) talk about it's connection to education.

Take a start by reading this article from Read/Write web...
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/social_graph_concepts_and_issues.php

Of course what really cracked my thinking open was this reference to the Attention Economy -
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/attention_economy_overview.php

I think it's definitely related to the 'Fakebook' phenomenon...
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/06/opinion/06mathias.html?ex=1349409600&en=2da1c3f706197a55&ei=5124&partner=delicious&exprod=delicious

We want people to see our profiles...but we find it disconcerting to think that anyone knows which profiles we're actually looking at...Our attention, where we spend our time, what we read, what we look at...it's valuable marketing information and the basis of an economic force.

Another cool stream I got from this article is my newest fave feed...
http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/

Wow...now go play and check out these sites, they will really get you thinking!

Guns & Fun & Chuckwagon Dinner

@ Flying J Ranch-!

Just the essentials

What is in this pile of stuff? Only the essentials for tech divas at a tech conference....Laptops, projector, diet coke, h20, extension cords, gum, starbucks, handouts, prizes, Internet access, Treo 650, Blackberry Pearl, TIE schedule, lipgloss, and the RIGHT clothes (killer heels optional).

Womanning the table

We strongly suggest you enter our drawing!!

We try to attend our webinar

Julz and I are trying to attend our Social Networking in Higher Education webinar. It looks like it's just what we need to know for our Thrive project. This presentation with Catherine Serrin Niekro of U Michigan is going to be about using a vendor to create the network. It has been rescheduled to to issues with WebEx!!!

ITEA vs. ISTE Standards

Our next speaker, Dr. William Dugger, is going to present about technology standards. Wow, I'm so excited about this because I actually did a policy analysis on standards in 2006. Now things have changed but the fact that there is confusion about techology standards is not a surprise to me.

He brings to our attention the ITEA Gallup poll where Americans tell us that technology is COMPUTERS and INTERNET. Now that is correct but reflects a very narrow view of what technology is. The definition I always used with my 6th graders was 'technology is the study of machines and tools' - it's simple but it lacks the emphasis on process. To quote our speaker, "Technology solves problems but it also creates problems." It is not just our innovations of our technology but the impact and the design of the technology that is truly lacking in many of our technology in education efforts.

There are so many types of technology literacy - and they are not equivalent with technological competency. I think too often teachers are focusing on competency and missing the literacy component.

Btw, I am now going to have to attach my paper and powerpoint on that but I can't do so through mobile blog (note to self).

ITEA standards actually focus instruction on how technologies are engineered and how they affect and impact society and the environment.

So Julz and I sidebar about how this is achieved. Students don't just work within the network, they play a role in the construction and administration of the network. Students don't just use a tool, they evaluate the usability of the tool and the impact of said tool on themselves and their envirionment. Where does this 'student as programmer' role originate? In my mind, it's from Seymour Papert. But these constructionist roots came log ago, and for the large part are still missing in our classrooms. Aside from innovations such as ThinkQuest and SuperComputing Challenge (which only a few kids actually do) the student as programmer role is missing - ESPECIALLY as accessed by low-socio-economic categorized students.

If students are programmers, does that mean they all have to know programming languages? Not necessarily. I would argue that Web 2.0 is the perfect launchpad for this student as designer and programmer role.

So as Julz and I talk about our Standards project (incorporating the best of online teaching and learning standards) we must now devise the Pedagogies of Web 2.0 standards....and you can bet your bottom dollar we will focus our attention on the true technology literacies - the abilities of students to design, evaluate, and improve technologies for self-development and improvement of society. Our kids need to be prepared to evaluate the safeness of technology as they are sure to live in a time where change is certain....if they're not able to decide for themselves what is healthy and safe, who will decide for them?

NM TIE Keynote

Dr. Reed Dasnbrock - Cabinet Secretary of Higher Education discusses the changing scene of lifelong learning. He's actually in Singapore and presented via prerecorded video.

He spoke of the challenge of the need to do what we want to do with such rapid changes in technology. We are falling behind on an international scale when it comes to percetage of people with advanced degrees - NM is 47th in the US and the US is far behind other advanced countries ! Clearly the system is not working very well. He asked us to help us answer the question - what can we do?

We need to make the roadmap & test the effect - not just try for the sake of trying. How can we help NM citizens get the education they need to have jobs in the 21st century?

CoMoBlog w Julz

We cooperatively blog our post pre-con walk @ NM TIE!

Will my phone work?

Testing testing

***Attachments excluded by request.***

Action Research Conference Rocks

Now that I'm back and not dependent on travel internet access, I can finally post some images from the conference. Unfortunately my verbosity peaked long ago. What I can tell you without working too hard is that there were some awesome presentations and we were lucky to raise a bit of excitement over Moodle. I'm happy to be back and home, but now the journey is my PDD, so I'm off to work again. Next conference, I promise I'll do a better job.

Projector vs. Projector

Well our More about Moodle session went just fine. We could see the wheels turning in the heads of the attendees...as if they were thinking "hmmm now how can I get Moodle running in my school/district.."

We were trying to plant seeds. Wanted to do the live demo but tech problems struck again.

BTW, just remember when a you see the word "projector" some people think this:



and then some people think this:




One can never underestimate the power of semantics. ;-) We were lucky in that most people at this conference are using the first kind so that meant we didn't have to compete for the second kind. Just a minute and a laugh. We'll get back to you with more later.

Action Research - Design for Learning

Happy to say I made it to Taos for the Center for Teaching Excellence Action Research Conference. The theme this year is "Design for Learning." Somethings wacky on my phone with my VersaMail (which is how I mobile blog) and I haven't quite got it fixed yet, so I have no pictures to show you. I'm actually on roaming right now so what you see comes directly off of my laptop. Would have made it sooner but it also took me a while to get my laptop wireless running (there's that whole laptop battery issue also, but that's ok).

Why is it we always have problems with technology when we need it the most?

Cest la vie!

No EXPLORATORY Left Behind

The picture shows PE equipment designed to teach character education. The role of exploratory was addressed in this session by allowing each exploratory domain to break into a small group and share ideas using discussion questions. I met an innovative group of about 25 tech teachers and we all shared resources, lessons, & strategies. We will follow up by forming an email listserv! Went to session expecting to find info for my exploratory team but left deep in techno-innovation. Very good & interactive presentation!

Online predators

Very eye opening presentation on all of the tricks predators use to lure middle school kids. Just something as simple as accepting a file can provide a predator a map to your home via savvy IP tracking tools. I learned how to look at profiles to learn a kids true age no matter the age they claim. This is information our kids & parents need!

School wide technology integration

The pictures you see here are attempts to share with you the amazing work at Keith Valley Middle School at Horsham, Pennsylvania.

Three years ago they decided to change from technology as a pull out skills based class to technology support labs for each content area. The way this works is each of their 3 tech teachers works with one grade level and schedules the lab for the content areas throughout the year. The tech teachers work with the content area teachers to plan & coteach an in depth tech infused activity. Every student then does a project using technology for each of their classes during the year.

I could literally go on for an hour describing the benefits of this approach. This school is maximizing tech resources to affect all content areas. The content area teachers are able to approach the lessons without stress of tech problems and the tech teachers can maximize student and access in a way which supports content learning.

The examples of student work created in this program are what really get you thinking (links to come soon). Full rigor and higher level thinking are very explicit in their interactive timelines, virtual museums and podcasts. So very cool.
I have so much more to say about this but my Palm keyboard needs a driver update so i'm thumbing this....

Don't worry...I will surely bring this up again.

Home away from home

Practice room at the Gibson guitar outlet provides a Cruces girl all she needs to cure the homesick Nashville blues. Thank you!

Frank Baker on Film

Just came from the session on ML with creator of the ML Clearinghouse, Frank W. Baker. I really connected with his message of using film to advance our curriculum goals and engage students in 21st learners. He offered a thorough overview of film as a vehicle for media literacy with dozens of resources @ http://www.frankwbaker.com

Now I'm off to learn about a schoolwide tech integration project!

NMSA Registration!

We are at the amazing Gaylord Convention Center. Huge...lots of people...about to start a session on media literacy. Can't wait!