by Shelly Blake-PlockHere's a bit of one of the most popular posts to appear on TeachPaperless over the last few months. On a personal level, it was also a big reinforcement in my mind as to why networked learning is so valuable.Maps tell a story. And that's what my Human Geography students and I talked about today. We talked about how you could lay a map of something as seemingly innocuous as how people describe soft drinks over the context of patterns of human habitation and find a telling correlation. They were pretty blown away. Until somebody said, "But how do we know that's accurate?"Check out the original post for the full story. Click here for the full account of how our network helped us verify and extend what we learned in class.

by Shelly Blake-PlockThe students on our school's newspaper do a bang-up job. They tend to be the kids I see working early in the morning and late into the evening as teachers are closing up shop and the maintenance crew is getting to work. And they put out a good paper, both in print and online; I'm especially fond of the opinion pages (go figure). Check it out at: http://www.jcpatriot.com/ and follow them @JCPatriot on Twitter.I bring this up not just as a plug for our school's paper, but because I see student run media -- especially online and connected student run media -- as a perfect form of hyperlocal journalism. I think there is a lot to be learned from how student writers and editors cover their "local market" and in the ways they present their findings, investigations, observations, and opinions to the wider world. I would love to see a connected and organized student run media network develop online -- something that could connect student journalists in hyperlocal markets throughout the world... something with a tag like #studentmedia or #hyperschool or #k12voice.I would love to help our students connect with other student journalists out there; if you've got leads, leave 'em in the comments. And thanks.

by Mary Beth Hertz "Can I use a pencil?""Do you have a piece of paper, Ms Hertz?""Can I just please write it down, Ms Hertz?"I get these questions in my lab from time to time. My answer is always, "No," provided the student is not writing down a password or URL to take home or if the student has an IEP or other individualized learning plan.  I answer that my job is to teach them how to use technology instead of paper to solve problems and organize ideas. I am showing them a different tool to use--one that I believe will be ubiquitous by the time they are my age. One that they are already at a disadvantage with because of access at home and lack of proper instruction in the past.It is my belief that my students will be required, like no other generation has in a long time, to replace some of the tools we have grown accustomed to with new tools that often do the same job, only more efficiently and often better.With these tools comes new responsibility.See, not only am I teaching kids how use computers to do more than search YouTube and play games, I am also responsible for sending good digital citizens out into the world. More and more conversation and interaction between people is moving online, and children are joining those conversations at a younger and younger age.Just as teaching with just a pencil and paper no longer suffice, teaching courtesy and manners face to face no longer suffice.  While both are an integral part of our formative years, we cannot stop there. Students who cannot type or navigate a computer will be left behind. Young adults who have not learned how to conduct themselves online will have dire consequences--some immediate, some later in life.I am charged with making sure that my students leave my classroom prepared to engage in an online world in a meaningful, collaborative and respectful way. It is my job to give them the technical skills and the social know-how that will help them navigate their futures.

by Steven W. AndersonThis is a post that has been brewing for a while now....But after a conversation I had a few days ago I think it's time to get some of my thoughts out there for reflection. I totally get passion in education. And really can you be an educator and not have passion for education? Perhaps that is a post for another time. But the way I see it, many have moved passed passion and moved to anger. Again, I totally get that. I am upset with many things in our current system. Sure, if asked, I would give a lot of the "reformers" a piece of my mind. But...It seems like if  you disagree with one side or the other you are perceived as dumb, stupid, or much, much worse. My conversation started out with a Tweet that (to paraphrase) asked if a certain, central figure in the reform debate, that many admire and look up to actually had any ideas or if she just ran around the country telling us what is wrong without actually offering up any ideas. I follow this "reformer" on Twitter and her stream is filled with what comes across in 140 characters as anger. Again, I get that. (Remember, I am angry too.) But my point was that when you had the audience she did last week why not give them something tangible to take back to their districts to try or do? Seems reasonable, right?Normally I don't tweet things like that. I don't. I like the discussion but there are people out there in ol' Twitter land that use the screen as one of anonymity and they believe because they are behind this screen they can say and do whatever they like. Don't get me wrong. Again, I love the conversations. I totally enjoy for my thinking to be pushed. However I have limits....So after my tweet, which I figured would draw some comments I got plenty of, "I agrees," and a few people who disagreed, which was great. I had fun engaging and talking to them. Then there was one who, has passion, but that passion has grown to anger. And if you cross them, say anything negative about the reformer  whom I mentioned earlier, well, you might as well pack up and go home. This tweeter had solid arguments for certain types of reform and the direction we should be going; with many of these arguments I agree. However, it was the personal attacks and just general poor language that really made me lose respect for this tweeter. Disagreement is cool. Makes us think differently and see other sides, but to move from disagreement to creative hashtags, none appropriate to even write here, really just make your arguments look weak. This isn't the first time I have written about this or even encountered it. In a post from late last year I wrote about Education Nation project from NBC and how it was getting all sorts of negative attention from the Twittevers and blogsphere. Again, there I tried to say we needed to move from talk to action. In the most popular post ever on my blog I wrote about why we should all think before we Tweet. For me I keep coming back to this idea that I believe people who use social media or tools like it feel some level of anonymity and they can say, really what ever. What if we were having a face-to-face conversation? Would the person who I had my conversation with this past weekend behaved the same and said the same things? I am doubtful. I am not the only one to notice this trend. My friend Michelle, just wrote a post today about the exact same issue. In it she says; What do we tell kids about comments on blogs, online articles, Facebook status updates?PLAY NICELY.If you disagree, you can do so without attacking another person’s character.If you wouldn’t say it in person, don’t type it online.Remember, there are human beings on the other end.Remember, you are also a human being.Rule #1 is really all you need.So why so much animosity amongst educators in online spaces lately? I would say that the current turmoil in which we find ourselves (perhaps related to education reform discussions) is part of it. But are we practicing what we preach? I don’t think so.Couldn't agree more Michelle. And Seth Godin had a piece a few weeks ago where this last line says simply, "Anger, on the other hand, makes us smaller." We are going to disagree. And you know, that makes us smarter, pushes our thinking and helps us see all sides. But is it possible to do it without anger? Passion, sure. But anger?What do you think? Is this a problem today? Is it a result of the anonymity I say the screen provides or is it something else? 

By Steve KatzAlso posted on my Teach With Video blog.Last week I presented at the KORCOS conference in Korea about my experience having a paperless classroom this year, and my recommendations to teachers who are thinking about moving toward eliminating paper from their classes. Teaching paperless isn't as difficult as I thought it would be, and we have not used paper in my class this year. The Paperless Classroom View more presentations from Steve Katz

by Shelly Blake-Plock KQED's MindShift ran a piece today that I wrote in response to the idea that my 21 Things That Will Be Obsolete in Education by 2020 was a list of impossible tasks. We’re not talking about computers anymore. We’re talking about the way that we connect to one another as human beings.Don’t let the reality of whatever condition your school might be in right now dictate what reality will look like in the future. Shape the future you want to see.Check out the piece and please comment; discussion is energy.

by Shelly Blake-Plock Job Description for an $60 - $80K per year position that I stumbled upon on LinkedIn today:- Develop socially engaging experiences to create stickiness and loyalty.- Identify brand evangelists and celebrity bloggers to virally spread company's value through relevant online communities- Viral seeding: incentivize Influencers to expose brand to their fan bases- Use Smart Monitoring Tools for action-oriented insights from all social media outlets: pages, sites, blogs, etc.- Use Smart Management Tools (TweetDeck, etc.) to manage the communities effectively.Just for fun, would love to hear from you all about what kinds of skills and intelligences you see needed for this position and what kind of teaching and content best prepares a student to enter into a job market where this is a job that would produce a substantial income.For you overachievers: Does/should school meet the demands of the job market?

by Shelly Blake-PlockWine AND Cheese. Laurel AND Hardy. Mick AND Keef. Lennon AND McCartney.The best things in life compliment one another.And so it should be with Analog AND Digital.The new paradigm shouldn't be about exclusion. It should be about dynamics. We don't exclude Paper because we include Digital. Rather, we strive to exclude the static modes of thinking often represented by paper -- but also easily represented by poorly-used digital.The new paradigm shouldn't be about closing down schools and taking learning exclusively online. A computer screen will never replace a football field. A smartphone will never replace a theater. A Skype chat will never replace a high-five.But neither will arguments berating tech alter the fact that digital tech is the context of the present and that we owe it to our kids to educate them in the world in which they find themselves living and not in the world some of us may wish still existed.And so we look to augment one with the other to the exclusion of neither. We seek to bring the speed and democratizing openness of the digital to the solidity of the analog and bring the warmth and experience of the analog to the cool intelligence of the digital.Schools themselves are changing and they will continue to change. So let's use what we've got -- both analog and digital -- to the full benefit they both offer. We don't need a classroom in which to learn poetry. A tree and some shade will do. In winter, we can take inspiration from the museum school model and take the kids directly into the experience. In the meantime, use all that space in the old classrooms to do what those types of building do well: let them be labs, let them be community spaces. Turn your rooms into STEM innovation centers. Let the science loose. Let the math live and let it get messy. Use your on-site tech and know-how to train, empower, and embolden the children AND adults in your community. While we're at it, create those partnerships with museums, historical societies, libraries, state parks, local farms, and public institutions. Spend Mon, Wed, Fri in the lab and Tues and Thurs taking in Van Goghs, or farm animals, or new friendships and alliances through community outreach.Teach English by reading about whatever it is that you are doing. Make art on the move and in the field. Learn history by learning how to talk to strangers; make new friends who are not like you, and listen to perspectives different than your own.Keep those smartphones handy all the while.Turn lab time into bring-a-scientist-to-school time. Turn math into a worldwide problem solving mission. Pull out that smartphone and turn a stroll through the art gallery into an augmented trip through history.Try things out. See what happens.Bring the Analog and the Digital together. The life of the heart and the life of the mind. The mathematician and the poet.Enough with the idea that one thing excludes another. The only thing worth excluding is fear. Fear, ignorance, and banality.Write that out on a Post-It and stick it to your monitor.

Reader Audrey comments on 21 Things That Will Be Obsolete In Education By 2020:The biggest problem among many with your assessment is that once education is a video delivered system (oh the desks will still be there), the state can create a curriculum that limits vision to a single narrative. To imagine that the state would not do exactly that is naive in the extreme. The world isn't available for everyone's success. Look around you. It's a pyramid and in order to keep the largest portion of the population in place, you need them to be compliant. Young entrepreneurial teachers at the top of the food chain are all about their contribution to education via zuckerberg fueled start up fantasies and it's a whole new world paradigms. But they aren't really paying attention to the structure of the system or the lack of opportunity possible for the largest mass of the population. It's a ponzi scheme. I love technology, but it won't save us. Your thoughts?

http://willardeastelementary.edublogs.org/2010/04/22/paperless-earth-day/By David Andrade, cross posted at http://tinyurl.com/edtechguy I'm working on going paperless in my classroom. I'm almost 100% paperless myself, but have many students who don't have computer access so need to print things for them.Here are the tools that I feel are essential to be paperless at school and at home:1. Scanner - preferably one with an auto feeder. This is how I take paper items and make them electronic. I save them as PDF files so that they are easy to view. I'll upload some to Evernote (which can search the text) and attach it to notes in Evernote as needed. 2. Evernote - free, multi-platform system for taking notes, clipping webpages, and much more. You can organize notes, upload photos (Evernote can search text in photos too), attach files and more. It is truly a one-stop, does-it-all, system that is indispensable. 3. Google Docs - do all of your office work - documents, spreadsheets, and presentations - online. Collaborate and share with others without needing to print out files. Can also upload other files to keep them there. 4. Google Calendar - keep yourself organized and on schedule. Create group calendars or share calendars. No need to print them anymore. It can even email or text you reminders for upcoming events or tasks. 5. Google Tasks - tasks is a simple task list that comes with Gmail. Use it to make sure you don't forget to do things. You can also schedule due dates and have it link to Google Calendar. 6. Electronic Gradebook - if your school system isn't already using an electronic grade book, you can use your own for free. Engrade is a free, online grade book that is easy to use, fully functional, and allows students and parents to view their grades. 7. PDF tools - use these tools to create, modify, and mark up PDF documents. Make electronic versions instead of printing to paper. 8. Student online services - Trackclass, Shoshiku, and Dweeber and Note.ly - students use these free services (along with Evernote and Google apps) to take notes, organize their schedule and assignments, and much more. 9. Smartphone with camera - access all of the services mentioned here. Do work anytime. Stay organized by accessing your calendar, task list, notes, and more. And use the camera to capture information and notes. This becomes your pocket organizer. 10. Websites and Blogs - use websites and blogs to post information, files, and other items to communicate with faculty, parents and students. 11. Digital Textbooks and sites - use digital textbooks and reference sites instead of paper textbooks. Accessible anywhere and free. Digital Textbooks12. Smartpones, Tablets, Computers, Netbooks - use these in class instead of paper notebooks and textbooks to access information, take notes, and create assignments. You can even use an inexpensive digital notepad, like Boogie Board, to take quick notes without using paper. 13. Digital assignments instead of paper - have students use Google Docs, blogs, websites, etc. to create digital assignments instead of paper ones. Have them create new things, like Glogs, videos, and presentations instead of the typical paper assignments. 14. Electronic bulletin boards and digital displays (digital photo frames)- use these instead of paper bulletin boards to display messages and notices. Going paperless is not only good for the environment (the increased use of electricity is still less than the power, resources, and byproducts of paper production) but can also save schools money and make people and students more efficient.All of the software/services I mentioned are free and available online through any web browser and available from smartphones. What do you use to go paperless?