This post is a response to the Teacher Leadership Challenge 2014 being coordinated by Michigan Educator of the Year, Gary Abud. Weekly prompts for the challenge can be found on his blog. All educators are welcome to participate and share their thoughts using the #tlc2014 hash on Twitter, or submit thoughts via their own blog, vlog, or comments on Gary’s blog.   Who is the "the learner" and who is "the teacher"? It would be fashionable of me to claim the old roles of "teacher and learner" are giving way to trendy and far less didactic roles of "facilitator and collaborator", but I suspect that in effective classrooms the roles have been intertwined for decades, if not centuries. The Socratic Method has been applied to learning environments for several millennia, the dialectic it creates forming an essential cornerstone of many effective group learning situations. That is to say, conversation and collaboration among both teachers and learners as equal partners in the learning process is not a new concept. For the sake of this reflection, let’s assume (and perhaps safely) that in many school systems the roles of teachers and learners are still what we would consider to be traditional roles of "master and apprentice". In other words, the teacher is a knowledgeable veteran, well experienced in the ways of both educating minds and imparting knowledge through lecture, work, projects, etc. The learners in this scenario are seen as inexperienced, in need of tutelage, and often are given tasks to prove how much, or how little, they have learned from their teacher. In these roles, the teacher serves as an unquestionable authority, and in many ways is the living embodiment that the learners are trying to emulate. Looking at the evolving roles of teachers and learners, the current trend appears to be one in which the teacher role is seen as a guide or facilitator. Teachers still set early learning goals, but are increasingly aware and encouraging of learners setting and achieving their own goals. Learners are seen more as equals in the sense that each and every learner has the potential to be a teacher or leader, and must be presented with the right tools, or engaged with appropriate materials and experiences, so that each and every learner can discover how much they have to learn from themselves. Both learners and teachers are encouraged to see the world as problems or puzzles to be solved together, each playing an important role in the solution. Where does this leave me and my thoughts then? As mentioned, it would be popular of me to agree with current ideology regarding the roles of teachers and learners. But it doesn’t capture how I feel completely. Nor does the more traditional description of master and apprentice. Not to have it both ways, but my thoughts linger on the idea of teachers and learners as partners, almost friends; individuals tied together with common goals and ambitions, yet experienced in ways that compliment the problem-solving tasks they will encounter together. Teachers however, will still have times when they are expected to lead based on the knowledge gained from their life’s experiences. Learners should still have experiences in which they are tested. However, more opportunities should occur for both to switch roles, or take on shared responsibilities (setting learning goals, creating individualized assessments, etc.) in which they are dependent on one another. Not quite friends, but more than colleagues.        

I recognize that this isn’t a terribly scintillating topic for many advanced iOS users, but I’m helping to support a school full of teachers with brand new iPads this year. I’ve found it a bit trying to facilitate teacher-management of the devices, oversee the Volume Purchase Program for Apps, and attend to the other duties I’m responsible for throughout the rest of the district. This is the busiest start to the school year yet in my role as an instructional technology coordinator, so in an attempt to stay ahead of at least a few things, I’m making new "how to" videos for the iPads each Monday in hopes that I can answer questions before they arise, and have a ready made stock of video answers for when teachers do come asking. One question that I’m anticipating is importing videos and pictures from the camera roll of the iPads to teacher’s laptops. I’ll be encouraging teachers to use the iPads for as many student-created media projects as possible, and foresee that the camera rolls on the shared devices (each classroom only has 5 iPads) will fill up fast. While teachers can use a host of options to import media from the iPads (Photostream, e-mail, sync with iPhoto), I’ve loved using Image Capture on our school Macs to quickly pull images and videos from iOS devices to multiple Mac laptops throughout the district. You can view the video below, or click through to watch via Youtube. For those that have Macs, Image Capture is a great little application that can be used with any digital camera, and works very well for iOS devices that you want to import media from, but don’t want to have to worry about syncing or cluttering up your iPhoto library with images and videos you just need to get on your machine to then upload or share to other places.

How do we encourage good "netiquette" among our students? I use that term as it pertains specifically to conversation that takes place online, but in truth encouraging positive, constructive discourse and conversation among learners is essential in all environments. I try to look past the distinction between commenting on a blog, and having a face to face conversation around a table, but there is a difference. The medium (blogs) are seen as cousins of typically more terse electronic modes of conversation; texts, messages, snapchats all encourage short, punctuated quips. Face to face conversation in a classroom is expected to be the opposite of that. So it was with great pleasure that I sat in the back of one of Melinda Boydston’s Tech Literacy classes at our middle school today. I try to make it a point to plant myself in a classroom and observe  a few times a week to gather my thoughts, and see how students are interacting with technology. More importantly, it’s a good way for me to build some small, yet crucial connections with teachers and learners. I find myself asking questions along with the students, and getting some great tips and tricks for instructional practice. Sometimes the smallest of boxes are the hardest to fill up. In today’s case, Mrs. Boydston was helping students work on their commenting skills among their fledgling blogs that they’ve started on Kidblog. They had a brief discussion about etiquette in various social situations; around the dinner table, at school, in the hallways, etc. A few students shot a few snarky remarks her way, trying to throw her off her game, most of the comments being along the lines of "but what if I want to tell someone that his blog post was swag?!" Most students understand what Mrs. Boydston was talking about, and they all sort of agreed about how their "netiquette", or how they behaved in their online learning environments, was very much akin to their "real world" learning environment. She wrapped up the conversation about commenting, and kept it simple; she wanted more than the "one word comment", something that went beyond "awesome". Which got me thinking. When you’re trying to combat the already anemic length and depth of electronic communications sent among students each day, what sort of questions and criteria do you give students to encourage them to go beyond awesome in their blog comments? William Chamberlain goes for the "blitzkrieg" approach, rallying his thousands of teacher and student Twitter followers to help add comments to freshly minted student blogs posts. With that many commentators, there’s bound to be plenty of comment gems among the rough. An older post from Meredith Stewart encourages groups of students to brainstorm "less useful" and "more useful" types of comments before clicking away at their keyboards. Although the digital remains are no longer found on the web, I used to require my 6th graders to ask 3 questions about what their peers were thinking about while writing their blog posts. You could even go old school, and diagram what makes a good comment with pencil and paper like Mrs. Yollis does (another oldie, but goodie blog post I keep bookmarked). With the rapid transition of student writing from notebooks to Google Docs and blogs within my district, I found myself incredibly curious today, wondering how well teachers’ traditional methods of getting students to craft well written comments are translating to digital writings. I’m going to make a mission out of gathering and culling together the most effective methods that teachers in my district have devised for helping students go beyond awesome with peer feedback, and will report back here in a few weeks. In the meantime, if anyone else out there has thoughts, links, or methods they find particularly useful at fostering good commenting skills in learners, please share.   photo credit - "add your comment" - http://www.flickr.com/photos/dharmasphere/20993325

Alright, so the promotional coupons known as Kohl’s Cash aren’t really stealing, but it sure felt like it this last weekend. I had spent a tidy sum on back to school clothes for the family over Labor Day weekend, and was rewarded for my good consumerism with promotional coupons worth $80 of merchandise at the Kohl’s chain department store. For those not in the know, Kohl’s is one of those large discount department store chains based out of Wisconsin. One of their signature hallmarks are the seemingly magical discount racks found throughout the store; %60-%80 off clothing racks are present in almost every department, and through some retail wizardry, clothes that would normally cost close to $100 are a mere fraction after further discounts and promotions. It’s almost enough to make you question the authenticity of the "original price" stickers and signs. Regardless of whether Kohl’s and other retailers are pulling a fast one on me, it feels great to be able to walk out of a store having spent $5.28 for over $100 worth of merchandise! Call me easily manipulated (as I had to spend a fair amount to get the discounts in the first place), I at least put the experience to some good use, and created the following video story problem using some simple Algebra to question whether I could have walked out of the store with my purchases without spending a single dollar of my own money. I know that it’s a rather simple answer, and might not play well in an advanced Algebra class, but the important part is the engagement and connection to a real world setting. I’ve harped about this in a number of blog posts and presentations now for almost a year and a half, but it bears repeating again. We have the tools to bring the world into our classrooms, so why don’t we? Rather than try to create a facsimile of real world problems, why not capture the moments when we feel like we’re "getting a deal too good to be true" or run across some genuinely curious event? Why not encourage our students to do the same, and do away completely with the "when will I ever use this?!" whine heard in many secondary math classrooms. There’s a wealth of experience for us to tap into; if I could find a simple problem like this in purchasing pants, a pancake griddle, and a shower curtain, I shudder with glee at the thought of what an actual math teacher might be able to make of it.   P.S. You should check out the nerdy, yet great, WeUseMath website from BYU.

I must preface this post with a brief disclaimer. I do not swear on this blog, nor do I swear in my professional duties while working with students. I don’t advocate swearing in the classroom, but one of the most entertaining videos I’ve found that helps explain Joseph Campbell’s "Monomyth" uses the "S" word twice, although it is censored with "bleeps" in both occasions. Mario and Fafa are puppets; highly entertaining puppets created by Damien Eckhardt-Jacobi and Vincent Bova. Mostly they star in comedic videos referencing pop culture, but every so often the furry groundhog and his red friend present us with a humorous attempt to educate their audience about important cultural touchstones. In doing so they create marvelous pieces of video that fit someplace between "The Muppet Show" and "PBS". The only problem (for almost all K-12 schools) is the occasional use of off-color language. And while the two instances of the "S" word in this quick-witted explanation of the "Hero’s Journey" are both bleeped out, I still find myself hesitant to share what would otherwise be a rather engaging, and lighthearted, look at a topic that can typically be quiet dry in its introduction to students. Feel free to watch the video below and ask yourself what teenager wouldn’t get a kick out of two furry puppets explaining one of literature’s most infamous narrative patterns by referencing Star Wars, Adam Sandler, Indiana Jones, The Hobbit, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Harry Potter. And thus I leave you with these questions. Is content this captivating worth the risk of introducing the censored language that it uses? What role, if any, would language like this have in any K-12 classroom? Certainly content like this would pass muster at the post-secondary level (although last year Arizona law-makers thought differently). Am I barking up the wrong tree, and trying to push material like this where it wouldn’t be appropriate? Or would some desperate language arts’ teachers out there share something like this outside of class time, or through social media channels, to avoid any direct accusations of encouraging indecent language? How are teachers handling an increasingly connected, and blended teaching environment in which media streams in from all corners of the internet? How should we "vet" content like this, and how do you make a call on what is "safe" or not for your classroom?

Web clips are an often under-utilized feature of all iOS devices. The ability to add direct links to websites on your device’s home screen is often overlooked in favor of native apps that don’t always need access to the internet in order to function. However, giving students a "one-click" button to a popular web service used in your classroom makes navigating the device a bit easier, and allows them to then quickly jump quickly between multiple tabs and websites while they’re in mobile Safari, rather than dive into a single purpose app. Many popular websites, like CNN, provide nice custom icons for the web clips you add to your home screen. However, many popular learning sites (like Spelling City), don’t always provide those nice icons, instead creating a screen shot of the entire webpage, which gives you a less than spectacular visual result. Here’s a brief video that I hope will help teachers create "prettier" web clips so it’s easier for younger learners to navigate visually if their literacy skills are quite ready for them to be using text search. It’s not a terribly creative or "game changing" feature as far as using your learning devices to improve your instructional practice, but it is a nice way to manage your iOS device so all learners have an easier time navigating the environment.

Please finish the analogy for me if you have a moment. Many districts around us are starting to talk about Edgenuity’s signature elearning platform, and before people in my district start mentioning it, I’d love any and all candid, honest, thoughtful responses. My district is one of the largest consumers of MVU courses in Michigan, and we’re starting to look at additional providers to make our online offerings more robust. I’ve heard many stories particularly about e2020, and I’ll be doing some thorough research, but I wanted to get some gut reactions first. So I thought we’d have some fun with it, and turn it into an analogy. Face-to-Face learning is to e2020 as ____________ is to _______________. Leave your responses in the comments below.

This post is a response to the Teacher Leadership Challenge 2014 being coordinated by Michigan Educator of the Year, Gary Abud. Weekly prompts for the challenge can be found on his blog. All educators are welcome to participate and share their thoughts using the #tlc2014 hash on Twitter, or submit thoughts via their own blog, vlog, or comments on Gary’s blog. The Wrong Homework Argument Our default "mode" for viewing the world comes from our own egocentric view of reality. It’s why we’re shocked when students we work with everyday still can’t grasp a difficult concept. It’s why our close friends and loved ones surprise us with radically different political viewpoints. It’s why we still struggle with judging "rightness" through the application of absolute principles rather than our own experiences and feelings. Our individual experiences shape who we are. If we can accept as a natural truth (or at least a strong assumption) that each of us is unique, we can shift the conversation about homework. We can talk about the value of homework not as a polarizing dichotomy, but as an encompassing plurality.   My wife, the art teacher, agrees with this one. Homework is Unnecessary Josh Stumpenhorst,  a former Illinois Teacher of the Year, insists that homework is really only stealing time away from students that they could be using to be kids. Josh considers that the differences in home life between his "have" and "have not" students means that most traditional homework would be unfair as some students would be met with too many obstacles (lack of safe environment, quiet space, computer access). In short, Josh doesn’t want his students to "burnout" on learning. Alfie Kohn would probably agree.   Who’s to say that something incredible won’t happen through homework? Homework is Necessary The research in support of homework is far less sexy  a tale as Josh’s stance against it. The supporting evidence focuses on the direct impact homework has on percentile scores, emphasizing the nature of short term gains many schools are under pressure to produce. Even Alfie Kohn acknowledges that despite overwhelming evidence against it (research evidence as early as 1897 suggests homework produces no discernible effect on learning), homework still exists as something that is just accepted as part of our culture in the United States.   My Take I’m not going to take sides on this one. Whether it’s from a stance of "repetition makes perfect" or "homework kills learning," the redefinition of homework thanks to virtual schools, online classes, and the internet makes that choice moot. Almost all work completed in an online course could be considered "homework". Students in more traditional learning environments that want to explore interests and curiosities from their daily lessons have access to many "homework like" activities online. MOOC participants will create homework for themselves on occasion. The question for me then isn’t one of assigning homework or not, but helping students determine how to make work and learning that happens outside of the classroom meaningful. Give learners choice in what they want to complete, similar to the DS106 Assignment Bank. Give them the agency and flexibility to alter or remix classwork to better suit individual needs or curiosities. Brainstorm some creative alternatives for those students who need a little more. If homework is a necessity, make sure you provide as much time in class to work, digest concepts, and produce new understandings as students are given at home. Because leaving students to fend for themselves can quite often produce less than desirable results: images: I liked homework better when it was called coloring - http://www.flickr.com/photos/busyprinting/4225224298/ sagan quote - http://www.flickr.com/photos/limadean/5238649892/

These tips are nothing new for veteran iPad users. However, I’m supporting more than 30 teachers with brand new iPads in their classrooms this year, so I’m trying to stay ahead of requests, questions, and troubleshooting by building up a number of "How To" videos for them. I’m usually available to meet with teachers face-to-face at the beginning of the school year, but as my schedule gets filled up with other job duties, it’s nice to have a quick video to fire off if I can’t help them out immediately. If you happen to be an iPad user that dreads the low battery warning on your device, here are the top 5 ways that I manage my iPad’s battery without seriously affecting the useability of the device. Keep in mind, your mileage may vary, especially if you depend on location services or a connected bluetooth device. For those users who have recently upgraded to iOS7, the background app refresh is a new feature that might be a trouble spot for those watching the battery closely. And if these tips aren’t enough, Apple has a whole lot more on their website.

Yes, the image is me, and one of my favorite apps on my iOS devices; the NASA app provided by the U.S. government’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration. And yes, that’s a lovely  "Network Error" you see in the middle of the app. It’s been that way since yesterday. Many of NASA’s other media outlets, including their main website, are also down or severely hampered during the federal government shutdown. How am I supposed to get my daily fix of gorgeous space imagery? How can I get my geek on by watching NASA TV? Alright, so there are other ways, but come on Congress, think of the kids! I wonder how much learning is being disrupted in science classrooms across the globe because teachers suddenly found themselves without their resources this week. As someone who advocates using free and open resources, such as those supported by the U.S. government, this is a real blow to my way of doing things; "Hey everyone, come check out these awesome resources that I just found, you can….oh wait, sorry, the politicians are being childish right now." Although the mainstream media isn’t likely to pick up on small issues like this (and who can blame them), it makes me curious how many other small (or large) disruptions like this will be occurring this week in classrooms.  

I support the technological efforts of a few hundred teachers and thousands of students within my school district. I know there are others that perform roughly the same function as I do around Michigan, and the United States. I figured there might be a few more of us out there trying to provide support for iPads and other iOS devices. I’ve been creating "how to" videos for iPads every week since the start of this school year, and I though it might be a good idea to create a how to video of how I’m actually making the iPad videos. Using both Camtasia and the Reflector App for Mac (there are free trials for both), I’ve been having a lot of fun creating screencasts that allow me to offer a greater degree of fidelity in screencasting my iPad. No rigged document camera, or an app that allows me to import screenshots of apps; actual live streaming video feed of my iPad makes it easy for those I’m helping see exactly what to do. Those last few sentences almost sound like a late-night infomercial, so I’ll just link to the "How To: Screen Record Your iPad" video, embed it below, and be done. Enjoy!

I’ve written about speeding up my work day in the past. I even took the time to turn it into a rather simplistic ds106 video assignment. For me, altering the speed of a video clip feels like a cheap emotional trick (not that I’m not above easy emotional manipulation). So I wanted to give 60 minutes of my time in front of computer a twist that would hopefully give it a more thoughtful glimpse into my work day. It also gave me an opportunity to see what I could glean from Google’s Account Activity tool. It’s a terribly useful (or frightening depending on the results) cursory look at the number of emails sliding on and out of your inbox, videos you’ve watched on YouTube, and a few other bits of analytics. In the last 30 days I’ve received more than 1200 emails. That’s an average of 40 emails a day finding their way to my inbox, and while that’s a startlingly high number, I suspect there are many people in positions like mine that would consider that just one week’s worth of email traffic. I dedicate this video to them. The stats provided by Google, and a few that I gathered myself, gave me the opportunity to reflect on how much time my job requires me to spend on clerical, bureaucratic, and otherwise administrative communication. This communication is the cornerstone of how I’m able to get anything done. While this video doesn’t reflect the much larger amount of face-to-face time that I spend working with students and teachers in my district, it’s the digital dissemination and collaboration that serves as the glue between the joints of physical meetings and one-on-one instructional time. I’m curious now to look at my data for the next 30 days, to see if there’s a drastic difference between the first month of the school year and the second; we have standardized testing happening throughout October, routines have been established and require much less monitoring to work, and I’ll be transitioning into more face-to-face time for lunch and learns and small group meetings. I’ll have to try and remember to come back and revisit this post, or at the very least, compare the stats to see if I can establish a baseline of what a "normal" workload looks like for me.  

Another week, another "how to" iPad tutorial. While I don’t expect this one to get as much attention as my video explaining how I record my iPad’s screen complete with audio, the ability for teachers (or anyone using a shared iOS device) to enable restrictions is fairly important. If you have a managed device, here’s how to enable (or disable) restrictions on your iOS device. Being able to restrict the ability for users to delete apps, or gain access to materials and content that otherwise might be inappropriate to younger eyes, comes up from time to time. Turning off Gamecenter, limiting device bandwidth by turning off changes to back-ground app refresh, and ensuring privacy by restricting location services are just a few examples that I could see school districts, parents, and corporations wanting to control. While I’m personally not a big fan of crippling what your mobile device is capable of (I’ve known some school districts in Michigan to restrict camera access on student iPads!), I’m also a realist at times. I also want to provide teachers with any tools that they have to help them manage devices and content in their classrooms, rather than shut them out of the process all together. Far too often I see school districts limit the ability of teachers and students to manage their own devices, instead leaving such management decisions up to district administrators. This encourages a false "us vs. them" mentality among users, and even encourages some users to try to circumvent security measures. By putting the decision making for limitations in the hands of the teachers using the devices, it’s easier for them to have meaningful conversations directly with their students about what’s appropriate and what’s not; this helps foster a more "we’re in this together" environment, in which students may have a better understanding of why a device may have limitations put upon them. Perhaps that’s a bit too idealistic for larger school corporations, but I’m a firm believer in a more "bottom-up" approach to managing technology in the classroom.

One little click. That’s all it takes. Alright, so two clicks, once to get to my video, and one to click the "Like" button For those that don’t know, I submitted my "How to Screen Record Your iPad" tutorial to Techsmith’s Screenchamp competition. Techsmith is one of those insanely cool companies that develops all sorts of nice screencasting and video creation applications across a range of platforms. They also happen to be based right here in Michigan (I’ve visisted their campus a few times, you should too!). I submitted among dozens of professionally created screencasts, going up against people that create video tutorials and recordings for a living as consultants or well paid social media types. Imagine my surprise when I was chosen as one of just 16 finalists! Further imagine my chagrin when I realized that I had vowed to step back from blogging in November so I could focus on a lot of happenings at school. I’ve been writing and working, just not blogging here, where I could have been promoting this achievement. I’ve also been coordinating professional development for data analysis, coordinating some video conferences for 3rd grade classrooms, working on a secret video project about our district’s philosophy of education, and dealing with 17 inches of freak snow and wind storms that tore a hole in the roof of our high school’s gymnasium and shut the district down for two days. You know, fun stuff! Why Should You Help Me Out? While I am a self-proclaimed technology-savvy individual, I’m also one that doesn’t always put himself first, which can have a detrimental effect on the work I do. Every year I help funnel thousands of dollars worth of technology grants into the hands of teachers and students in my district, and other than a flipcam and a wireless mouse, I haven’t used any of my district’s technology department budget to procure fun tools and toys for myself. It’s a flaw, one that forces me to borrow tripods for video projects, use microphones and other loaner equipment from other teachers. I don’t have a classroom of my own, so it’s more important to me that funds are spent directly on students or on teachers that are working closely with students everyday. So in a way, this is sort of a selfish request, as the prizes for People’s Choice would be pretty nice for bringing a new level of quality to the video work I do for my district. Suffice it to say, I couldn’t stay silent any longer because the votes for Screenchamp "People’s Choice" will be tallied on December 4th, and I wanted to give anyone and everyone a chance to vote and help spread word to any and all of your colleagues, friends, or family that you feel might be able to help support me. So to all 5 or 6 individuals who still read my blog on a regular basis (there are more of you, I know, but I’ve been gone for awhile), please consider going over to Youtube and giving my "How to" video a thumbs up! If you like it, or it’s useful, please share where you feel comfortable sharing! Oh, and have a great Thanksgiving!

Creating a positive message about students using technology for educational success can be difficult. Showing off students typing away at a row of computers is a nice way to say "look at all this productivity," but it doesn’t convey something as emotional as a student-led presentation or a teacher’s own voice. I tried to blend both in a recent video that I made for my district, showcasing the thoughts behind the use of technology in education. It’s not perfect, and I had all sorts of headaches with the audio (lots of noisy classrooms), but this is my first attempt to show some of the thought behind our teachers’ instructional methodology when using technology. You can view below or on Vimeo. In all fairness, this video was born out of Gary Abud’s Teacher Leadership Challenge from October 25 of this year. In the post, Gary challenged us to answer the question: How is your personal philosophy of education demonstrated in your teaching style? At the same time Gary asked this question, I also received a request from my school district’s Superintendent to craft a short video to present the use of technology in our schools. Blending the two seemed like a good idea, and while my execution is certainly still a bit off (I should have shot a lot more footage of students using mobile technology), I feel as though I at least presented these educators in a positive light. And I began to touch upon what Gary is asking of us…to re-examine those questions we most likely haven’t been asked since our pre-service days; "what is your personal philosophy of education? What impacts your instructional environment? How do you see the influence of the world around you changing the way you teach?" I’m planning two more installments to this question, with a heavy shift to student voices for the next one. In the meantime, I wanted to get this one out there for the world, solicit some advice for polishing it up, and maybe spark some more conversation and sharing about how we think about technology in the classroom, and how we share that with others.

Quick in that the resources and materials I gathered took me all of 30 minutes to assemble, and would likely take most educators about 5-10 minutes to dig through and utilize. Dirty in the sense that the most formal piece of information on the document is a link to my website and information about my school district. It’s actually a small collection of resources that I use whenever a teacher wants me to come into a classroom and do a "brief" presentation about persuasive video, resources related to PSAs (public service announcements), and provide students with a "jumping off" point. Link to Ben’s Quick Tools & Tips for Creating PSAs This is not meant to be an authoritative document; it’s just a quick "let’s get our feet wet" guide that would give anyone interested in creating a PSA just enough information to get themselves started. Yes, it links to Wikipedia (it’s a source I use often, regardless of how many media specialists feel about it). Yes, it links to Alan Levine’s amazingly robust "50 Ways to Tell a Web 2.0 Story" Wiki (it’s a great resource, right up there with Wikipedia). It gets the job done, and I can stretch it into a 50 minute class session (with a few activities), or share the resources and the videos in 15-20 minutes and be done if need be. This week I’ll be doing a longer share, and asking students to get together in small groups to talk about how persuasive media (or PSAs) influence them, what emotions seem to be best to employ based on the subject matter, and then letting them share their favorites for me to show the class (thank you, Youtube). I’ve been asked to present this to a few Literature classes at our high school this week, one of them being the AP section, so I don’t get too heavily into the content specific nature of the persuasive writing (I’m certainly not the expert on that). One thing I can safely call myself an expert on though are the old G.I. Joe "Knowing is Half the Battle" PSAs form the 1980s. Enjoy!  

Last month I was selected as a finalist for Techsmith’s Screenchamp video contest. Alright, so my video was selected, I just had to stump for it…a lot. While each category within the contest had a winner chosen by a secretive group of videophiles and Techsmith staff, all of the finalists were all in the running for a hefty "People’s Choice" award. The finalist’s video that received the most "likes" on Youtube was crowned the people’s choice winner, and given a whole bunch of awesome tech. Sadly, I didn’t receive enough likes to achieve people’s choice. The competition was fierce, and eventually a great video from Francis Joseph Seriña introducing the "5 Love Languages" won the top prize. It was well deserved, as both the production and polish were well above my efforts. The good news is, despite not winning people’s choice, I was selected as a category winner (yay!), and got a nice bunch of gear and recognition for the work that I do to support my teachers and staff. This is the first time I’ve ever put forth a sustained "vote for me, vote for me" effort in several social media realms. It gave me an opportunity to see just how amazingly supportive my collected network of friends, colleagues, and followers can be in a pinch, and helped pull me a few feet further out of the "I can do this on my own" pit of mentality that I quite often stumble into. I preach connected and collaborative work online, but I’m not always the best practitioner of it; face to face is my preferred realm. I’m sure there’s a nugget or two of something deeply important to better understanding myself in that, but I’ll save that for a conversation with my psychologist Suffice it to say, I’m amazingly thankful and grateful for all of the shares, votes, and help from others. We all have incredibly busy lives, and in addition to thanking Techsmith and their employees for giving me this opportunity to begin with, I wanted to say "Thank You" for all the time and energy that was spent on my behalf. I have a new-found love for my network, and will certainly be pursuing some more adventurous projects in the new year with the knowledge that so many are willing to help share what I love doing.

I’ve become curmudgeonly in my "older" age. To my dismay, I’ve found myself drifting away from my more idyllic attitudes of 12 years ago, and settling into deeper, more moody, thought patterns that have me thinking more like Gary Stager than I would like to admit (although I certainly wouldn’t approach his level of bombastic rhetoric). I’m being slightly alarmist here; I’m only 34, and I certainly have a long ways to go to cement myself in the straight jacket of "old man grumpiness". Perhaps it’s the role I find myself increasingly playing at school; the "anchor" attempting to slow down and "manage" some of the institutional changes in my district while simultaneously allowing the "explorers" to push ahead. The cognitive dissonance of working both angles is stressful at times. Which is why I’m tossing this challenge out here, provided anyone actually reads it. I want to believe that most technology has amazing educational applications. I want to know that some of the up and coming leaders in the educational technology world are up on stage (or their Youtube channels) singing the praises of amazing educational opportunities, not just the same old "snake oil" sales pitch that even I’ve pitched in the past. Your Challenge - Show me the promise of Augmented Reality beyond the current "fluffiness" that has captured the internet’s heart. (note: by fluffiness, I mean the unfulfilled promise of an application) Some background on my thoughts: AR, Augmented Reality, is the newest darling to hit the mobile scene for education. I’ve seen "hot new" devices and technology come and go (interactive whiteboards, webquests, PDAs, netbooks, etc.). For the most part, our tools are what we make of them, but they can only be stretched so far. Is the promise of Augmented Reality being stretched too far? When Andy Losik, king of the "let’s do awesome stuff for education" crowd here in Michigan, starts questioning the value of how a technology is applied to the learning environment, I take notice. "New hotness" is great for highlight reels, but we need a lot of depth on our educational benches, and I’m not seeing that yet from Augmented Reality. I’m always suspicious when products and/or technologies are rapidly adopted for advertising and marketing campaigns. Yes, there’s something to be said about the power of a tool that seems so magical it puts a smile on the face of all that see it (myself included). I’m just looking for applications beyond the "engaging hook" factor. I’m sure they’re out there, I just need someone to show me the deep student-led application of AR in the classroom. There’s a serious "creepy factor" to Google Glass and other augmented reality devices that seem to break certain pre-conceived notions of privacy and causes discomfort when you’re unsure of what’s being captured or not. To be clear, I’m not saying that Augmented Reality is a poor learning tool; just questioning whether it’s time in our classrooms as a powerful learning device is here, or if it’s still in incubator stage. Interactive whiteboards were promised to be "transformative" teaching and learning tools when they exploded in the early 2000s. While I still believe they can be effective and creative tools in the hands of the right individuals, the reviews on their impact appear to be mixed. As we stand at the precipice of mobile device ubiquity in our classrooms here in the United States (well, those school districts with any money left), I fear that Augmented Reality and other "apps" may prove to be just as tempting, yet underwhelming in delivery. Are my thoughts off base? Am I wrong? Does someone have some great examples of the promise of Augmented Reality fulfilled in ways that aren’t just 3D encyclopedias, or playful "auras" that are being gobbled up as the latest marketing sensation? Am I even asking the right questions? image - Augmented Reality by Tom - http://www.flickr.com/photos/turkletom/4325703868/

I’m teaching an online graduate certificate class for Michigan State University. My students are almost all educators, and I never like to ask my learners to do something that I’m unwilling to do myself. So when they started on their Networked Learning Project (NLP), I decided it would only be fair for me to jump in and learn something myself. The NLP is simple in concept; the learners have to accomplish a task they’ve never done before using only Youtube videos and help forums. The internet would serve as their teacher as a means to reflect upon just how amazingly diverse and rich a resource the web has become. Many of my students were eager to get started; learning the cello, how to yo-yo, and stained glass were just a few hobbies chosen to tackle. I choose to learn how to play the electric guitar. My father was in a pretty decent high school band, but never really went anywhere with it beyond an album or two and hitting the local night clubs. When he hit his 40s, he and his buddies decided to have a little fun. They all bought new instruments, practiced hard, and put on a big charity concert for our community. He had a blast helping organizing and playing in the concert, but sadly it wasn’t long before he passed away from cancer. His Heritage H-535 cherry red electric guitar was passed down to me, someone who had never played a guitar in his life. It’s been sitting in closets and attics for almost 20 years now, going unplayed. I figured the Networked Learning Project was a good excuse as any to learn how to play this gorgeous guitar. So I found this beginner’s video for guitar tuning from GuitarLessons365 on Youtube: Having successfully tuned my guitar to itself (I don’t have an electric guitar tuner as was recommended in the video), I was quite proud about having learned that I didn’t actually need a pitch pipe or fancy equipment. I could get a "rough" tuning job done as long as I could tune the 6th string (the "E" string). From there I could tune each string to the previous one, and get an approximate tuning good enough for the likes of someone who is lucky not to drop the pick into the open holes on the face of the guitar body. And then I followed up with a terribly short rendition of the "Louie, Louie". Or rather, a terrible AND short rendition of the Kingsmen hit. My son really stole the show, so if you want to see a precocious 4-year old ham it up with a microphone and a webcam, listen to me sing poorly, and play guitar even worse, the video I made is right up your alley! Up next is going to be basic strumming. I’ve found a few videos that look promising, but I have yet to determine which will be best for a beginner. Stay tuned for more terrible tunes

There’s been a lot of traffic on Twitter and a few blogs (some of them quite prominent in the education world) about the Video Story Problem concept that I’ve been toying with the last few years. It helps that I’ve had plenty of educators and students helping me with it, and as of today we’ve collectively produced almost 200 videos that help capture math (and a little bit of science) in the real world to be brought back into the classroom. So it’s with no small measure of humble gratitude to many educators out there sharing my ideas that I have an opportunity to present the concept in Los Angeles this weekend. I’m headed out to the Milken Community High School in Los Angeles to lead a couple of Video Story Problem workshops at the Playful Learning Summit being held there. I’m a little nervous, but hopeful for a good day of learning with teachers on the West Coast. Although it will be a quick turn around (fly in the 8th, lead the workshops on the 9th, and come home on the 10th), I’m excited to work with some educators eager to take a more playful approach to learning, and reconnecting with some old friends that I haven’t seen in several months. I promise not to show up at the doorstop of any celebrities, shamelessly asking them to give me a cameo for a math video, but I won’t deny that I may feel an urge to stop at one of L.A.’s many tourist traps. Perhaps a walk down Rodeo Drive and attempting to recreate the shopping scene from Pretty Woman with a remix of my Kohl’s Cash video problem will be enough to keep me from making too much of a fool of myself…. Nah! I can’t help but make myself look stupid in public by asking nerdy science and math questions to an imaginary classroom in my phone. I couldn’t even make it through a trip to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago last month without creating a quick "how can you explain this" science video for Foucault’s Pendulum.

Being part of the MACUL Leadership team means a lots of volunteering, last minute scheduling changes, and other duties that prevent me from having a typical conference experience. Don’t get me wrong, I love being on the service-side of the organization, helping so many educators connect, learn, and grow. But it was nice to sit down for a couple of sessions, connect with some new colleagues previously only known through Twitter, and play "conference attendee" for a bit. So I’m dedicating 14 posts to my experience at MACUL 2014! Today’s post is a Storify archive of all the tools and sites shared on stage during Leslie Fisher’s "Smackdown" session on Friday morning of the Michigan Association for Computer Users in Learning (MACUL) annual conference. View the story "The Leslie Fisher #macul14 Smackdown #lesliesmackdown" on Storify

I’m not one to usually struggle with tech tools; new updates to iMovie set me back a day or two, animated GIFs were quite easy with the proper apps, but Vine is something I struggled with for quite some time. I would create a 6 second clip, realize I had my phone turned the wrong way, and trash it. I would try to capture some humorous moment, only to run out of "recording time". I wanted to use it for something moving, creating a digital story beyond the six-second jokes and visual gags that seem to litter the Vine community. And then it happened. I captured the joy of my friends Dan Spencer and Kim Powell playfully role playing a "hashtag battle" between iPads and Chromebooks during the Instructional Technologist Rally on Wednesday, March 13th. I gave in to the silliness that is Vine, and made a couple more. It would have been much more, but I lost my iPad for half of the first day of the conference (that’s a story for another day), which set my nerves off a bit. I never quite recovered, but I’m definitely intrigued to play more with Vine! I mean, if my wish for MACUL 2014 came true, what else could happen? I did manage to sneak into the vendor hall early on Friday morning (I was volunteering at the MSU booth), and I should have known that when I found Leigh Graves Wolf hunched over her laptop giggling, that it would lead to something spectacular. It did. Leigh, Michelle Hagerman, Matigna Ragatz, and I went #whaling at MACUL 2014! Yes, it’s as silly as it looks, but it was a well deserved bit of childish fun before the vendor hall opened up for the day. And if grown adults can’t behave like the students they work with when they manage to escape the school hallways for a day or two at a conference, then this is a dark world indeed. Looking forward to the next iteration of #ds106 to have a lot more fun with Vine!

Rarely do you get to experience the unbridled joy, enthusiasm, and energy of first time attendees of the MACUL Annual Conference in a way that makes you tear up with laughter. At this year’s conference, MACUL E. Culkin provided that magical look at the conference. Through an imaginative and amazing role play as the once beloved child-star Macaulay Culkin, his (or her) twitter account (@MACULfun) was filled with silliness, humor, and exploration. The following tweet is just one of many hilarious moments shared by this individual. So many people doing selfies. Old news. I'm doing stealthies, which is sneaking up behind strangers and tickling them. #macul14 — MACUL E. Culkin (@MACULfun) March 13, 2014 It wasn’t just playfulness that was shared, as this "MACUL E. Culkin" wrote what has to be one of the best reflections on the MACUL Conference that I’ve read in quite some time. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of amazing reflections on the conference, but our mystery "Home Alone" fan shared a compelling narrative about a transformation that took place that was larger than the conference. MACUL E. Culkin talked about the transformation that took place around his or her thoughts about Twitter, and how the social media platform can be used as a vehicle for not just connecting people, but ideas and passions. A quote from the reflection about the use of this playful Twitter account during the MACUL conference: As my inbox overflowed with Twitter notification emails, one thing became painfully obvious: I had more meaningful interaction in three days with this account than in the six years I’ve used my personal account. Wow. If you haven’t read MACUL E. Culkin’s reflection on MACUL 2014, you should. It’s worth the time, I promise. And don’t forget to keep the #macul14 hashtag alive, because there’s power in the community. Thank you MACUL E. Culkin, whoever you may be! Every time someone at #macul14 Instagrams a picture of the river, a student somewhere gets an iPad. pic.twitter.com/X16qbh6LTC — MACUL E. Culkin (@MACULfun) March 13, 2014

I’ve always been curious to know what a room full of a few thousand people looks like for someone up on stage during a large keynote talk. So I setup my iPad on the table at the front of the ballroom for Adam Bellow’s keynote talk at MACUL 2014, and I used Frameograph to take time lapse photos every 5 seconds. I wasn’t sure what to expect, and after compressing the footage to fit within 60 seconds of video (because who wants to watch nearly an hour of still shots with no audio), I’m still not sure what I captured. It’s not terribly interesting, at least not from what I see. To be honest, I’m not sure what I was expecting; it was an hour of a few thousand people sitting patiently listening to someone entertain them. So I stuck a question at the end of the video, "what did you notice?" There may be no more startling revelations to be made other than MACUL attendees are quite attentive, and rather well behaved, but I couldn’t just let the video sit on my computer knowing that someone out there might have some other thoughts. I’ve come to internalize that keynote talks are a rather odd beast, especially in our current era of educational thought. We profess how the lecture is dead, and yet it isn’t. The current "maker movement" is experiential learning in its most pure form; reflection and conceptualization are the direct result of concrete experiences. We herald small project based learning groups, and challenges that connect learning to applications in the real world. We beg for anything but one more lecture……and then we pay hundreds of dollars to attend workshops and conferences in which we spend the majority of our time listening to other educators lecture. Be very clear about what I’m getting at, and read my next sentence carefully. I’m not saying that keynote lectures and talks are bad. I’m merely stating a curiosity that I have with the dissonance created  in my own mind  between motivating teachers to adopt new pedagogies of instruction, and the traditional lecture format that we use to motivate those teachers to change. Yes, keynote talks can be fun, engaging, humorous, heartfelt, and poignant. But after watching this video, I can’t help but wonder if there’s any other way to impact a room full of a few thousand people that doesn’t involve them sitting in a chair for 60 minutes. Engaging keynote lectures will certainly always be with us, but I can’t help wonder what others’ perspectives are about them. I’d love to hear your thoughts. And if you’re out there Mr. Bellow, I’d really love to know what you think about keynote talks.