Alberta Distributed Education and Technology Association

This was posted to the NACOL forums earlier today.  An experiment worth keeping an eye on.

New CPS school offers high-tech education
‘ON THE FOREFRONT’ | New CPS school has youths do work on laptops, adding new dimension to learning environment

September 2, 2008 Recommend (10)
BY ROSALIND ROSSI Education Reporter/rrossi@suntimes.com
http://www.suntimes.com/news/education/113…-skul02.article

Freshmen won’t need book bags filled with textbooks or even pencils and pens when they walk into the new Chicago public high school opening today in the old Austin High building.

Instead, they will be entering a mostly textbook-free world at Virtual Opportunities Inside a School Environment, one of 26 new or revitalized CPS schools to open today.

At VOISE, students will be flipping open personal laptops, not textbooks, to not only read — but watch and hear — online lessons packed with animation, video and quizzes.

Forget the spiral notebooks. Kids will be taking notes on laptops — just as many college students do. They’ll also get home computers, so they and their parents can e-mail teachers questions or check on student grades, homework and attendance 24/7.

“I’m going to be nervous, but I’m going to get used to it,” said VOISE freshman Ashley Guilty, 14, who doesn’t have a home computer now.

“They will be preparing us for the future,” Ashley said. “When it comes time for me to walk across the graduation stage, I’ll know a lot about technology.”

VOISE is one of three small high schools housed at 231 N. Pine. But as the only school in the state to mix daily lessons by teachers with an all-digital curriculum, VOISE offers the best of both worlds, said Principal Todd Yarsh.

Teachers will introduce new material, then support kids as they advance through online units at their own pace. Those who need more time can take it. Struggling readers can slap on headphones and simultaneously listen to their lessons as they read them.

Kids who digest material quickly can advance to the next unit, or dig deeper into a topic in the current unit that interests them.

“This model allows you to not let the learning stop at a book,” Yarsh said. “There’s no end to their learning.”

Students will still read novels in English class, and textbooks will be around for reference in classrooms, but most work will be online — including all written papers.

Kids who may be shy about raising their hands in class can discuss their studies at online message boards and blog sites.

“You could have a classroom of students that could be dead silent, but they could be having a hugely rich conversation just by messaging on a site,” Yarsh said.

The textbook-less curriculum is produced by Seattle-based Apex Learning, which has provided online Advanced Placement courses for years to kids whose pass rates on AP tests mirror the nation’s.

The VOISE curriculum is “more than a textbook; it’s a complete course of study,” but one designed to be led by a teacher, said Apex Learning CEO Cheryl Vedoe.

Today, many kids weaned on computers and fast-paced videos “tune out” in a traditional classroom, Vedoe said.

“When they are given instruction in a format that is more like their lives, they see it as relevant,” Vedoe said. “We’re on the forefront of something that’s very powerful.”

I was sure I had mentioned this project before - Web 2.0 and Emerging Learning Technologies. However, I can't find record of it. So, rather than ignore this valuable resource (put together by Curt Bonk and a global group), I'll risk linking more than once :). The last year has brought about a tremendous surge in interest in emerging technologies. I don't fully understand why. What's different this year than in the previous 8? Oh well, whatever it is, resources like the one listed above will become increasingly valuable as more educators discover the opportunities of extending interaction and content creation to the network.

Well, it appears that Darren over at Teaching and Developing Online wasn’t finished with Series: Tell Us Something.

• Tell us something … Part 6
• Tell us something … Part 7
• Tell us something … Part 8
• Tell us something … Part 9
• Tell us something … Part 10
• Tell us Something … Part 11
• Tell us something … Part 12
• Tell us something … Part 13
• Tell us something … Part 14

If there is more posted, I’ll add them new Friday…

I've had one patron report this problem, and thought I'd post the official word from JSTOR for wider discoverability:
We have recently become aware that certain versions of Mac Preview are incompatible with the newest generation of JSTOR PDFs. For some users, this means that only the cover page is displaying. Other users have reported that the downloaded article appears to be missing the first portion of the article—it begins somewhere after the first 10 pages of the article. The article is in fact intact and complete, but some pages are not displayed properly. We are working to fix this and plan to continue to support the use of Preview with JSTOR PDFs. We apologize for the problems that this is causing for Mac users.

For now, the quickest workaround is to download the latest free copy of Adobe Reader, available on the Adobe web site:

http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2_allversions.html

Once Adobe Reader is downloaded, please check to make sure that the default PDF viewer is set to Adobe Reader rather than the original PDF viewer installed on your Mac.

The default viewer for PDF documents in Mac OS X is Preview. To change the file association for PDF files:

* Select any PDF file and choose File > Get Info.
* Choose the application that you want to open PDF files from the Open With menu.
* Click Change All, and then click Continue.

You will also want to make sure that the popup blocker is turned off for the JSTOR site. The new PDF files are set to open in a new window and popup blockers may affect this.

jstor, pdf, preview, acrobat

I just ran John McCain’s speech from the final day of the RNC 2008 convention through Wordle to generate a word cloud to see major themes.

Monthly Webinars for September 2008

iEARN (International Education and Resource Network) is the world’s largest K-12 non-profit global network that enables young people to use the Internet and other new technologies to engage in collaborative educational projects that both enhance learning and make a difference in the world. In this webinar you will meet some iEARN teachers, learn about the network and its online collaboration center, and learn how find projects that can be used to enhance your curriculum. You can have your students learning with the world not just about it in projects that can easily be correlated with curricular objectives.

Presenters

Annindita Dutta Roy - iEARN-USA Director of Membership and Youth Media Programs

Diane Charlton Midness - iEARN-USA Coordinator for Professional Development

Freda Goodman - Teacher, Fulton County Schools

Cindy Knoblauch - Teacher, Florida Virtual School September 18, 2008
6:00 PM (Eastern)
“Creating a Video Essay with Your Online Students”

Learn how to use the video essay as a powerful tool in your online classroom. The video essay is an exciting way to get your students to do interesting and inquiry-based learning. Not only do they have to prove their own hypothesis but they must create a video or audio essay for other students to view. The essay can also be used to promote online asynchronous discussions or can be viewed in synchronous formats. Free tools on the Internet that allow any student to use this exciting format in an online classroom will also be shared.

Leader

Tom Stanley - Teacher, Advanced Technologies Academy, Clark County School District

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Timothy Peters writes to the OFFCAMP mailing list:

Pew Internet has released an interesting study on how people blend online and traditional media. I rarely read a physical newspaper or watch a news program. Apparently that's not the norm. While traditional media has declined (newspaper readers has dropped from "40% to 34% in the last two years alone"), it certainly hasn't been abandoned. In the report we're introduced to new terms: integrators, net-newsers (ugh), traditionalists (largest group), and disengaged. We're still at that interesting crossroads of serving the the function of the old with new media and beginning to recognize new opportunities.

I'm almost done posting links to the course on this blog...I'll continue the posting on the course blog. A short presentation introducing massive open online courses (MOOCs) is now available here.

The Connectivism and Connective Knowledge online (open) course starts on Monday. If you're interested, you can still sign up. The course outline is also available if you'd like to get a sense of what's coming next...

I’ve been slowly tinkering on the Learning Communities concept, playing with the idea and starting small by facilitating a “blogging and student publishing” group. Today, I opened it up pretty wide, sending an email to over 2200 faculty members to invite them to identify topics that would interest them for potential learning community gatherings.

I expected to have to explain what I was intending, to describe what I mean by “learning community” and to reinforce that the groups are completely about faculty (and grad student, and staff) contributions, rather than The Official Presentation From the TLC. This is a faculty thing, inquiry in action. I’m just there to facilitate and provide caffeine and carbs (and whiteboard and any other support is needed to keep the discussions moving).

I’ve had phone calls in response, every one of which along the lines of “that’s great! you’re really asking US what’s important! and have I got some ideas!” - there’s been enthusiasm, eagerness, and excitement.

I posted a poll to help gather priorities about the various topics I brainstormed (as well as encouraging people to suggest other topics by posting comments, or to indicate that the whole thing is just silly). And pretty quickly the votes started rolling in.

I was a bit sneaky in how I managed the invitation for participation - I used it to quietly announce UCalgaryBlogs.ca since the poll was hosted on a blog there. Already, a prof has set up a blog to use with her class, and others are telling me they’ll be checking the service out. Very cool stuff.

This has been one of the better days. Do the right thing, don’t ask permission, and run with it.

TED Talks are extremely popular. Excellent speakers and provocative subjects. Universities are aware of the value of short informative videos and are launching similar initiatives. I see no reason why all universities and colleges shouldn't have a similar feature to attract learners, students, and donors. Why not showcase your best?

I've read a series of books/articles recently that are quite negative on technology. A particular emphasis seems to be that technology is somehow making us dumber - distancing people from what really matters. We search Google and think we have acquired knowledge. We blog and think we have subjected our ideas to peer review. Or, we publish an article on our website and think that qualifies as a publication. I partially understand the negatives being expressed by these authors. Times of transition are unsettling. We don't know if we're giving up too much. I struggle with this with my children - how much screen time a day is too much? This past week, I found myself informing my daughter that she should search for information beyond Wikipedia and rely on other sources as well. But that's just good information management. We should always be seeking multiple sources. We should always be striving for a deeper understanding of subjects through the type of information and dialogue we engage in. Critics are valuable in that they give us moment to pause and consider where we are really going.
One area of concern that I just can't fathom is the assumption that technology disconnects us from others. I'm more in touch with more family members, friends, and colleagues than I have ever been. Through skype, twitter, facebook, mobile phones, (and yes, email) I have a continual connection to people I wish to be connected with. A recent report supports this feeling: "Almost all (97 per cent) of the respondents stated they felt more connected to people and networks now than they did 5, 10 and 20 years ago."

Donncha pushed the WPMU 2.6.1 update live today, and it’s a required upgrade for security reasons. I just wanted to post that I’ve upgraded ucalgaryblogs.ca to WPMU 2.6.1 and everything appears fine. It took all of 2 minutes to do, too.

Here’s my process:

1. back stuff up.
2. login to the server via ssh
3. download WPMU 2.6.1 into ~/temp, and unzip it. cd ~/temp wget http://mu.wordpress.org/latest.zip unzip latest.zip
4. delete the wp-content directory in the freshly downloaded copy of WPMU 2.6.1 - I do this so I don’t accidentally overwrite any customized themes, or nuke anything in mu-plugins or plugins… rm -R wordpress-mu-2.6.1/wp-content
5. copy the fresh copy of WPMU over top of the existing one in the web directory cp -R wordpress-mu-2.6.1/* ~/webdata/ucalgaryblogs.ca/
6. run the WPMU upgrade site script to run any necessary updates (I don’t think there were any database updates, but it’s probably a good idea to run it anyway). This will automatically run the script on each blog installed on that copy of WPMU.
7. done. test some blogs to make sure stuff is working fine.

I link to this largely because it's a rare point of focusing on innovation that arises in Canada (and, after all, the world needs a bit more Canada :)): Backbone Magazine Top 20 (via Academica). Many of the sites listed were new to me...

I'm trying to understand why Google is releasing a browser. I'm sure there's a very good reason. When Apple announced it's Safari browser for Windows, it didn't make much sense - why enter the battle ground of browsers? Well, as was evident once Apple released the iPhone, Safari is a browser that helps to bridge the transition from Microsoft to Apple computing devices. Safari for Windows was more about introducing a new audience to Apple than about trying to create a better browser. Google is expected to release its new browser - Chrome - today. A short comic book overview of Chrome is available. While the official marketing message is about creating a more stable, safe, functional, and user-friendly online experience, the message I think is more inline with Apple's move. Google offers significant support for Mozilla, so in theory, they don't need a browser. But, Google also recognizes that if the web is the "new" operating system, then a browser is the key battle ground for control.

Google asks us to make a simple sacrifice: they'll make the online experience much simpler in exchange for our ongoing reliance on their products. Tying together our gmail, search, and other online activities will be a valuable addition. Focused advertising based on our online habits is the logical next step (it already happens in gmail, google groups). But Google does more. Google also promises to filter sites. In theory this is good. In actuality, this moves Google away from being a neutral provider to assigning a value statement of content. Obviously, given the amount of junk online, this is important. I just don't want the same company that provides the access to also provide a value statement. How much longer can Google innovate the web before it crosses over to controlling it (a strong argument could be made that this has already happened)? Out of Microsoft and into Google...