Final Reflection

            According to the World English Dictionary, technology is:

1.	the total knowledge and skills available to any human society for industry, art, science, etc

            According to the World English Dictionary, culture is:

1.	the total of the inherited ideas, beliefs, values, and knowledge, which constitute the shared bases of social action
2.	the total range of activities and ideas of a group of people with shared traditions, which are transmitted and reinforced by members of the group: the Mayan culture
3.	a particular civilization at a particular period
4.	the artistic and social pursuits, expression, and tastes valued by a society or class, as in the arts, manners, dress, etc
6.	the attitudes, feelings, values, and behavior that characterize and inform society as a whole or any social group within it:

Both technology and culture are difficult words to describe as they are very broad.  In my time as a 6^th grade social studies teacher, I was challenged each year to help students learn and understand what these two terms meant.  The above definitions, while accurate, are certainly not going to be well understood by your average 11-12 year old.  I started by defining culture in very broad terms, the way of life for a group of people.  I then broke it out in over a dozen parts such as: food, recreation, shelter, economy, government, rituals, religion, etc.  Technology was one of those parts.  We then defined technology as having two interconnected but different strands.  First there was the simple to identify tools that the society used.  The second was the knowledge and understanding they had which allowed them to take as step forward from the groups before them.  For example, two important technological developments were necessary to move beyond hunting and gathering to an agricultural lifestyle.  The easy part was learning how to adapt from using wood, bone, and stone to make weapons to make articles such as shovels, plows, and baskets.  The hard part was the discovering that planted seeds would grow.  The point I’m trying to demonstrate is the technology is not just the updating of the tools we have, but it is often accompanied, or even led, by a transformation in thought and understanding.  This course has demonstrated the exact same process has been in effect to change our culture so dramatically. 

            In our course we first looked at the tools.  Early in the course we read Leonardo to the Internet and a book chronicling the many new web 2.0 tools called Web 2.0 How-To for Educators.  Obviously the creation of the internet, the World Wide Web, the microchip, smaller and more powerful computers, and networks both wired and wireless have all been dramatic discoveries that have enabled the creation of the web 2.0 tools documented in the other book.  All of these discoveries have tremendously changed our culture in numerous ways.  They’ve changed how we communicate, how we do business, our understanding of timeliness, the way we stay informed on world events, and most notably for me, how we educate our students.

            The second part of our course shifted away from the tools aspect and focused on how technology has changed our ideas, beliefs, and values.  We were presented with two different and opposing viewpoints.  In The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, we are presented with some cautions about the impacts technology has on our culture, but also shown many examples of these cautions being expressed throughout history with many other culture changing inventions.  The second book, Cognitive Surplus, lauds the internet and Web 2.0 technologies for leading us out of an era where we, and our free  time, were consumed by things being fed to us by others and into an era where we are full participants.  Both books focused on the larger but more abstract components of culture.  They address not the tools so much, as the change in thinking and knowledge and skills that our technology has brought us.

            This leads me back to an important part about how technologies develop.  There is a certain amount of “which came first, the chicken or the egg” factor in looking at this.  Do the tools need to come first, or do the ideas come first.  I’d argue both. In the oft used example of the printing press, the tool came first and that drove the next step which was the massive change in the way people interacted with the written word.  In the stone-age example I provided, the development of the tools clearly came after the new idea about planting seeds and growing crops.  However, once that first step is taken it becomes a symbiotic relationship.  Once people learned to stay in one place the culture continued to develop as people found ways to make the agricultural work easier, allowing some to stop working in food production all together, which led to specialization, which led to better quality products, etc. 

The same is true with technology.  Obviously the tools, primarily the developments of smaller, cheaper, more powerful computers, combined with the development of the Internet sparked this movement.  However, since then it has been a combination of both forces to drive things forward.  The development of the Internet and the 2.0 technologies, has led to a desire to stay in touch all the time, which has led to the development of better mobile devices, which has led to a higher level of connectedness, which has led the call for city, nation, even worldwide wireless access.  The distinction between tools driving ideas and ideas driving tools continue to blur. 

Dr. Kim has mentioned that in feedback from previous classes, she has been asked to spend more time on the tools and less time on the aspect discussing how culture has changed.  I think that would be a mistake personally.  I think personally that if one gains some awareness of what sorts of tools are out there, he or she can easily find and adapt something to meet whatever need.  The tools are so broad and vast that to try and cover them all would be defeating a major skill necessary today which is learning how to find what you need.  Being aware that this is not just about a new set of tools, but also a whole different way of thinking is much more critical.  In the stone-age example the change from being nomadic hunters to stationary farmers impacted almost all other areas of culture.  Technology today has that same affect. 

Education was changed in both instances as well, and I believe the change in education has only just begun to occur.  I heard a presentation from Steve Dembo recently that correctly summed up what has occurred and what needs to occur next in education.  Thus far, technology in the education has mostly allowed educators to do old things in new ways.  Teachers are using technology in their classrooms but are primarily teaching the same content.  His challenge was to continue to work to make education teach new things in new ways.  While I agree with him in many ways, we do also need to consider that some of the old things are valuable as well and need to be kept. 

In conclusion, I can’t help but come back to the same key word I’ve come back to in other reflections, balance.  Just as I enjoyed the balanced presentation of this course, I believe that things need to be kept in balance.  Technology constantly changes that balance and culture needs to deal with it to find the proper balance.  The atomic bomb is an example.  It gave humans and ability we never previously had, the power to destroy ourselves.  There was a time of great upheaval when many prepared for that on a daily basis.  However, this fear has subsided, positive uses of this power have been found from this technology, and societies have learned how to balance this new power.  The same will be true with the internet; we all will have to find the way to balance this tremendous new power that has been unleashed.  With sound and thoughtful minds, I have no doubt that this is an attainable balance for all of us.

Cognitive Surplus Reflection

I have to admit that upon first learning the definition of cognitive surplus, basically what people do with their time and brainpower outside of sleep and work, I found the concept quite ironically comical.  The notion is that as society has advanced to a point where we do not need to work every hour of every day and have thus created a society based on 8 hours of sleep, 8 hours of work, and the other 8 hours are our cognitive surplus.  My life currently features a job where the 40 hour work week is more like 60 or more, a graduate level college course, 4 children one at that age where any moment you are not entertaining her will result in twice that time to clean up the mess she’s made while you try to do something else, etc., etc.  I truly feel like I’m running a cognitive deficit! However, while I might disagree with the quantity of time, there certainly are free choice moments for all of us.

            The author’s focus in the beginning is in how that free time is spent has changed quickly, radically, and for the most part (from the author’s point of view) for the better.  For many years, that free time was dominated by television.  Television and its output only mode were what people devoted their cognitive surplus towards.  Television created a generation of consumers of what was given to them, first from a small group of networks, and later from an ever growing list of channels.  This was a “receive only” medium, where the user had no interaction with or through the medium and very little reaction to those around them.

            The internet changed that, but even that change was gradual.  At first, even the internet was just another source through which people were served information.  Yes, it was more varied and less controlled than previous media outlets such as TV, radio, and major newspapers, but it was still mostly information to consume.  However, the Web 2.0 revolution has made the internet interactive.  An internet user no longer just consumes information, but interacts with and even produces new information.  Making and sharing new products and information is an integral part of the world online.  The internet has thrown off the yoke of those who controlled the information, decided what we wanted and needed to hear, and decided what was of good enough quality for us to receive.  It also has opened up a whole new world for many….that of the contributor.

            The author makes a strong case that the internet has created a huge positive outlet for people’s free time.  Yes, time can be frittered away easily and pointlessly, but many great things have happened using the net with people donating their cognitive surplus towards many positive projects.  While he cites many of these positive cases, he also points to blurred lines it has created between labor and labor-of-love. While there are far more points in the book, I’d prefer to steer my reflection back to education as those same lines (between labor and labor-of-love) are constantly blurred for educators. All educators devote the required hours each week as prescribed by their “job.”  However, many, if not most, educators devote countless more hours thus making up the labor-of-love part.  Many teachers devote much of their cognitive surplus to their students in one way shape or form.

            Shirkey’s book has many more connections to education.  As one of the many people advocating the promotion of technology integration to education, I’ve heard all the lines about how technology is creating a less personable youth.  “Young people can’t even communicate face to face.  They will text someone sitting right next to them.”  “Kids are losing the ability to make personal connections as their friends are all online.”  These sayings could go on and on.  However, Shirkey makes a powerful argument on page 38. 

People concerned about digital media often worry about the decay of face-to-face contact, but in Seoul the most wired (and wireless) place on earth, the effect was just the opposite.  Digital tools were critical to coordinating human contact and real-world activity.  (Shirkey, pg 38)

Online is part of the real-world and interactions there are just are real as interactions face-to-face, and far more real than any interaction anyone ever had with a TV.  Yes, it is different and sometimes hard for those of us who grew up differently to appreciate, but these connections are still real.  It is time to stop minimizing these connections and begin to foster them and participate in them in some fashion if we are going to connect with the young people of today.

            Another interesting thought I had relating the book to education is the connection between older teaching methods and television.  Teaching and learning used to often be done in a “sit and get” format.  The teacher presents the information, the student takes it in and then tries to repeat it back to the teacher keeping it as close as possible to the original message.  This is strikingly similar to TV where a person is supposed to “sit and get” the message.  The only difference is TV wasn’t designed to give the information back to anyone.  As the internet has changed the way people interact with information, it makes more sense why students seem to increasingly struggle with this older method of teaching.  They don’t want to sit and get.  They want to interact with and be part of the information.  They want to talk to others, create, share, and have a part with the information.  I even see this develop in kids as they age.  Younger students, who often are not online as often yet, are less likely to demand these newer activities, but older students (even much older ones as myself) are starting to expect and almost demand a seat at the table rather than just being fed what someone else decides to feed them.

            I thought the story the author chose to close the book with was particularly apt for those of us charged with teaching the newest generation.  Like the little girl, our students will likely be searching for the mouse.  Maybe we can find a way to help kids find learning to be their labor of love and thus deserving of their cognitive surplus.

The Shallows

            “Technology is our servant but also our master.”  This is just one of the many quotes I felt worth writing down from the book What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, by Nicholas Carr.  This powerful statement is supported by numerous examples in the books of the way technology of today and of the past has helped people in many ways, but has also affected people, their culture, and as Carr argues our brains as well.

            Carr does a great job, in my opinion, of mixing cultural history, anecdotes from his own life and the lives of other authors through history, and summaries of brain research.  Again referencing my teaching curriculum, I always had defined technology as “things a culture creates to improve their lives.”  The idea is that technology is a new and better way to do things that will improve life.  Carr proposes that it is not at all about improving, but rather changing.  The technologies while improving one part of our life, may actually impact our brain in a way that is negative. 

            The internet is not the first technology to do this, nor is it the first to come along and while being embraced wildly by many, be cautioned against by others.  The first example from history that Carr uses is the simple alphabet.  Created by the Phoenicians but perfected by the Greeks, the simple alphabet brought writing to the masses.  Literacy no longer lay in the hands of only a few elites schooled in the endlessly complex written languages of the Egyptians and other early civilizations.  In my classroom this was always held up as one of the great legacies of the Greeks and later the Romans.  However, this book showed some of the concerns raised about this new “technology.”  Socrates cautioned that being able to write things down would diminish the ability of people to store information in their mind.  It is ironic, that decreased memory is also the target of many internet antagonists today.

            The second major focus was on the printing press.  This invention again brought a lot more information to a lot more people.  In opened the door of literacy to those who had not been welcomed previously.  However, it also opened doors many would have preferred to remain closed.  The new printing press allowed anyone to publish information even if not completely accurate or accurate at all.  It also allowed previously disallowed forms of literature to be published.  I was very surprised to learn that there was concerns about pornographic writing exploding during this time.  Again it reminds me of concerns voiced about the internet: too much information, little or no control of what was factual, and inappropriate topics.

            The third major change mentioned was the explosion of media in the mid 1900’s.  First radio and later TV changed the way we got our information and what we did for enjoyment and learning.  Carr doesn’t spend as much time on this as the other areas, but does talk about how these changes again affect culture.  Someone else was back in control of the information and could make decisions about what news we go and from what point of view. 

            In the midst of describing these technological breakthroughs, Carr also takes us through the history of brain research.  His key emphasis was on the way the brain has elasticity.  It also discusses how the way the brain is stimulated controls which parts of the brain are growing and developing more connections and how not using parts of the brains causes the reverse.  The main point he makes is that everything affects our brains, so a major technological and cultural phenomenon will certainly impact the way our brain works. 

            I first of all was impressed that while the book took a fairly anti-internet stance towards its conclusion, it for the most part presented the changes that technology causes as neutral.  Carr doesn’t praise or condemn the changes, rather he points out that we must accept that change does occur.  The idea that at one time books were considered to be the polluters of peoples’ minds is almost comical even though it came from one of the most respected philosophers of all time, Socrates.  Carr also points out the many benefits that have come from technology and that those have to be factored in when considering and inventions value to society.  The bottom line is technology changes our brains.

            As a person fully immersed in the educational world, my first thoughts turn to education and what this means for teaching and learning.  My job is to be the technological leader for my school district, so I’ve always considered myself a strong advocate of technology.  I am, and was prior to reading this book, very aware of how technology has changed the brains of our students.  I’ve read and heard on numerous occasions about how this generation is wired differently.  However, I’ve never considered two very important aspects the author brings up. 

While I’ve heard that our students’ brains are wired differently, I’ve never really know what that meant.  Carr’s summary of brain research and how connections are made was very eye-opening for me.  I now feel like I have a better perspective on how this wiring works, and how it can be trained to be wired differently.  The scary part is our students’ brains are going to be wired radically differently depending on how they’ve grown up.  I’ve always learned that their home life can change how they are wired, but never really thought of how their exposure to technology could affect, for both good and bad, their brains as well.  The digital divide takes on a new meaning and new implications as we may not be able to assume that just by providing technology to our students without that we are going to undo years of development.  However, Carr gives us hope with some examples of how the re-wiring can happen pretty rapidly.

            Probably the most provocative part for me in the book as an educator involved the use of memory in school.  The debates over memorization of facts are a constant battle in schools today.  “Why memorize things when you can Google them?” is a statement that often challenges those that require students to commit things to memory.  I found this quote on page 143 a particularly striking:

The Net grants us instant access to a library of information unprecedented in its size and scope, and it makes it easy for us to sort through that library – to find, if not exactly what we were looking for, at least something sufficient for our immediate purposes.  What the Net diminishes is Johnson’s primary kind of knowledge: the ability to know, in depth, a subject for ourselves, to construct within our own minds the rich and idiosyncratic set of connections that give rise to a singular intelligence.  (Carr, pg 143)

This quote strikes at the heart of Carr’s message in my opinion.  While the internet can be a lot of things and can do a lot of things, it cannot and shouldn’t be allowed to replace the human brain.  While the Net can store lots of info and make it available at the blink of an eye, only the human brain is capable of using that information.  When information is  not stored in the human brain, the brain in incapable of making those rich, deep, and meaningful connections.  Most of the critical thinking we are asking our kids to do is not possible if the students have no info in their brains with which to think critically.  While I do not believe that we need to memorize everything, or even a lot of things that students have been asked to memorize over the year, it is still good for kids to learn things for themselves and possess knowledge.

            While I looked at this book through the lens of an educator, I also found parts of it profound for me personally.  I spend much of my day working on a computer, probably more than most people.  I love technology, but I realize I have become a slave to it in some ways.  While staying connected is great, it makes it very hard to disconnect.  Many a time, I’ve had my relaxing times of which there are few interrupted by and email, text, or phone call about some issue at school.  Most of the time I’m in no position to resolve the problem nor do I need to, but it disturbs my relaxation time which is so scarce for a school principal and father of four kids ages 1-10.  I too have felt what the author described, an inability to concentrate on things, easy distractibility, and just a general state of overstimulation.  Like the author I’ve attributed it to age, the stress of my job, or most likely my four children.  I guess I’ve come to believe that there is something to the case Carr makes.

            So where does that leave me?  The author himself doesn’t offer up any answers, as he admits there isn’t an obvious one.  Should I keep pushing technology for our students?  Should I keep doing what I’m doing personally?  Should I make changes in what my kids do?  There is no easy answer, but I think the closest thing to an answer is a simple word….balance.  I’m not sure the author ever says much about that, but balance is the key to so many things and I think it applies very well here.  Yes, I should continue to push staff members to incorporate technology in their lessons.  Students learn from having material presented in a way that is familiar to them and many are familiar with technology.  Those who are not familiar need to learn those skills as they will be expected to function in a technological world.  Advocating for technology in education doesn’t mean we need to eradicate traditional methods of learning.  Yes, I can embrace technology personally and enjoy what it allows me to do.  However, maybe I need to work on disconnecting and being okay with that decision.  Yes, I can allow my kids to embrace technology, however my wife and I can continue to place limits on them that force them to do other things that will develop the other parts of their brains.   This book opened my eyes to the importance of recognizing that yes technology can serve me, but I must be wary that it doesn’t become my master.

Leonardo Reflection

In my years as a sixth grade teacher, one of my main tasks at the beginning of the year was teaching kids the definition of culture.  Many had heard the term, but definitions eluded the students.  My plan was to break culture down into a series of parts: food, clothing, shelter, language, economy, several others, and of course, technology. My definition of technology often was difficult for kids to fathom as it encompassed all the different technologies that a society possessed, some simple and rudimentary like the knife or fork we use to eat with, while others were world-changing like the internet.  The author of this book divides history into several key periods, each defined by the different way technology and culture were interwoven in these different eras.   He looks focusses extensively on the world changing technologies that emerged from these periods, the cultural forces that created them, and the effects they had on the culture of that periods. 

            Chapter 1 focuses on the period of Leonardo da Vinci himself.  This period was defined by court patronage.  Patronage was the process where the wealthy and powerful would sponsor an artist, scientist, or both (as in da Vinci’s case).  This sponsorship could be for many reasons.  It could be to produce gain for those patronizing someone, or it could be just a way to sponsor a talented young individual as she, or more likely in that time period, he would use the talents they have.  This is the format that allowed Leonardo to produce the wide variety of things he did in both art and science.  The variety of his achievements is a good example of what drove technological advances in that time period.  In the patronage system, what the patron wanted would drive the direction of the technological advancement.  This system will surface again in later areas, but is pretty simple.  If I’m paying you, I have say in what you work on and how those developments are used. 

            Chapter 2 described the Era of Commerce.  This era was defined by traders and trading companies.  It was discovered that there was tremendous profits available in trading.  The key was to find something that was cheap and plentiful and thus cheap in one location, and transport it to a place where it was rare and thus more valuable.  Our class presenter characterized this period as commercial but not industrial.  The things being traded were not being produced but were rather raw materials and commodities such as sugar, slaves, tobacco, cotton, and even tulips.  Technology of this era focused on allowing these traders to function in the most timely and efficient way possible.  It also shows the diversity of what qualifies as technology.  The aspect of this period that focused on building better ships and navigation tools is a fairly obvious example of technological examples.  However, the development of the trading systems, the commodities houses, and the banks particularly in the Holland were examples of other new ideas that show the less obvious side of technology.

            Chapter 3 chronicles the period often described as the first industrial revolution.  At the beginning of this period most people were still living an agrarian lifestyle.  However, as new inventions allowed the amount of food needed to be produced by a smaller number of people, combined with the new technologies such as the steam engine allowed the development of the first factories.  This period was most prevalent in Great Britain as they had all the right pieces to make this new system function:  iron, coal, and water power were readily available, numerous colonies to provide raw materials not found at home, and a large population freed up for factory work by the technological advancements in agriculture such as the seed drill and cotton gin.  The factory system was able to produce goods faster and cheaper and was built on the premise that efficiency increases profits.  While several business flourished under this model, other ancillary enterprises sprang up around these factories as well.

            Chapter 4 was a natural next step in the progression.  As these factories were reliant on raw materials that often were not located near the factory, both the acquisition and maintenance of empires as well as improvement of transportation methods would drive this period.  The large factories were predominantly in Europe.  These European countries relied on two things from their empires, cheap raw material and a captive market for finished products.  Also during this time the steam engine was converted from a means of powering factory machinery to a means of faster transportation through railroads and steamships.    These new methods of transportation drove this era as they provided cheaper and faster transportation of raw materials and finished products, but also provided for fast military transportation necessary to maintain order in growing empires.

            While many people prior to the era chronicled in chapter 5 may be referred to as scientists or engineers, they were likely given those titles after their accomplishments, not as a job title.  That changed during the second industrial revolution.  While the patronage system did have a little sense of being employed, it wasn’t the same.  This was an era of corporate industry driving technology.  Companies acquired technology in many ways beyond those developed by their employees.  This was the beginning of the relationships between universities and corporations.   Companies also purchased technologies or bought up competitors to acquire their technologies.  This is a practice still alive and well today.  This was also the time where industrial chemistry became more prominent.  Synthetic materials began to replace natural ones, often outperforming natural products and for less cost.

            Chapter 6 was on Modernism was one of the harder chapters for me to comprehend in reference to the rest of the book.  Each previous chapter seems to be charting a course straight through history with the way technology changed culture and the way culture changed technology.  Modernism seems to take the book on to a bit of a tangent that seems to dead-end.  The modernist movement makes use of technology but this era seems to be more about architecture and ideas than about the hard technologies described in other chapters.  Maybe this was the author’s purpose.  Many previous chapters had described ways that technology had changed culture, but modernism represents a shift in cultural beliefs that isn’t forced by technology but rather a result of technology.  What is ironic to me is that these idealistic and left leaning ideologies were fostered in countries that would soon be led in and entirely different path by far right wing dictatorships.

            That leads us to Chapter 7, The Means of Destruction.  While war and military purposes have always driven technological advances, this was more true during the period leading up to World War 2 and the long Cold War that would follow it.  Leonardo himself was employed for a period of time to develop military technology for his patrons, but never on the scale seen during this period.  The Manhattan Project was a key example the author used to show how military objectives drove the top scientists, universities, and corporations to work together to achieve military supremacy.  Post World War 2, this continued with the development of new technologies such as the transistor and eventually the internet.  Another example that strikes me that the author didn’t mention was the Space Race.  As a history teacher, I had often taught this theme of how military needs can drive technology and how that technology developed for military purposes would often lead to better technology for the regular man and woman.  While this can be true and often is, the author pointed out how this military driven mentality can hold back technology that would benefit society as a whole.  This discovery was one of the most striking for me from the book.

            Chapter 8 takes us more into the modern age with the idea of technology creating a more global society.  Mass media, satellite relays of TV, and the internet all act to bring the world culture closer together.  McDonalds spread world-wide was highlighted as an example.  It reminded me of a college professor commenting in the early 90’s about how US cities had become so much the same, same restaurants, same stores to shop in, etc.  Today that is being said about cities world-wide.  The internet and its origins were also a focus of this chapter.

            Chapter 9 honed in on some major problems technology has created and is yet to solve.  Many new technologies still run on old sources of energy.  Just think of how many things we now use that plug in and how they all still depend on the almost ancient technology of burning fossil fuels to produce that electricity.  We’ve made a huge technological apparatus standing on the fragile and unsustainable base of fossil fuel electricity.  This will have to be corrected or we are in for a nasty fall.  Also the tremendous amount of information online creates tremendous security concerns.  Two movies strike me for expressing these concerns: Enemy of the State from 1998 and The Net from 1995 both chronicle the dangers that powerful new technologies pose… and they are both more than a dozen years old.  Far more happens online now then when these movies came out. 

            Chapter 10 summarizes the books and  a few key concepts struck me.  Technology has always been “shrinking” the world.  From the Dutch traders, to steamships, to railroad, to telegraph lines, to fax machines, to the Internet, many of these technologies have sped up the time it takes to communicate and travel over greater distances.  The factory system tied parts of the world closer together, first in forced ways through empires, and now through the global economy.  The second key point that came out often throughout the book is how technology is both a force and a product of change.  Back to the very beginning of my reflection where I commented how technology is a part of culture.  However it is a unique part, as it can have such profound effects on the culture, while it can also be a result of cultural change.  Sometimes it can be difficult to identify whether people changed resulting in new technologies, or if technology changed thus changing the people.  Either way, whether for better or for worse, one fact stands above all -  technology and culture always have been, are today, and will be in the future infinitely intertwined.

Visual Learning

The move from education being in a classroom to online will hinge on the success of visual technology.  I’ve seen many online class formats, but I would contend that none of those will be truly as engaging as a real life classroom unless there is extensive use of visual learning.  I’ve seen online class formats where everything is based on students having to read and write information.  Those may work for those very committed to learning that topic, or those who learn well with that format, but this will not affective for the masses.  Students have always benefitted from visual learning being integrated into the classroom, and this will be even more critical as more courses are offered in an online format. 

            In going through the online book, I noticed that for me the most intriguing parts were when the instructor was interacting with a group of students.  The part where it was just her talking were not very engaging or informative.  This too makes me wonder if learning in an online environment can match the classroom  There are many ways to interact online, but I’m not sure they will ever match the effectiveness of personal instruction.  However, I also believe that both in-person and online instruction can be very effective or very ineffective depending on how they are conducted.  The skill of the person designing and delivering the lessons will continue to be far more important than the medium used to deliver them.

            The above point is almost moot, as online education is here to stay and will only continue to grow.  That is where I see it as part of my job to help assist and lead those delivering lessons to do so in an effective manner.  The use of visual learning will be a key part of that.  Today’s students have grown up with screens being a major part of their lives, so I can’t help but conclude that they will be more visual learners than previous generations.  Delivering content visually in an effective method will be very important. 

            I see a great deal of potential in the use of video sharing programs such as YouTube.  Again, Google has done a lot right in how they have given some options to the users in terms of how videos can be shared.  However, I cannot overlook YouTube’s greatest obstacle for schools and that is the presence of material that is not only non-educational, but highly offensive.  It took less than five minutes and typing “Naked Woman” to hit numerous sites that would be completely unacceptable in a school environment.  The difficulty is that the way YouTube works, it is only possibly to block or unblock sites based on specific URL.  This makes the task impossible for those managing those filters.  While I’ve also seen all those who say we should just toss out the filters and teach responsible use, as a school we still have an obligation to parents to provide at least some level of security for their students.  I did discover in doing a little research tonight that YouTube does offer a safe mode, which may offer us a way to allow certain URL’s while blocking the inappropriate material.

            That issue I do believe will find a way to be solved as more and more schools are looking for ways to offer fully online (or blended) education opportunities.  Another major consideration as schools move towards more online education is the increased hardware demands that video streaming places on a machine and also the infrastructure the supports it.   To conduct video learning, quality webcams, microphones, and video cards are necessities along with more RAM and faster processors.  Also, wired or wireless networks have to have the external and internal bandwidth to support these high volume videos.  At least currently, these things are extremely costly and would be cost prohibitive to many districts, especially those in the many rural areas currently unsupported by even broadband.  These same areas would probably be some of those to benefit the most from online education. 

            It will be very interesting to see where this goes in the next several years.  In some ways the ability to conduct education at a distance using these visual tools is already here.  Many schools are already doing it, but they are having mixed success (which in fairness all schools do.)  Some of the above issues I’ve raised are parts of those struggles, but there is also the accepted definition and practice of what going to school means that will need to change.   Technology will grow and hopefully things like bandwidth and equal access will continue to move in the right direction.  Even this week the FCC announced that they may shift as much as 8 billion dollars from subsidizing phone service, to beefing up broadband access for schools through the E-rate program.  Those hurdles are large, but they will be nothing compared to the hurdles of changing peoples’ attitudes and beliefs about what going to school will look like.  

Reflection on Social Bookmarking and Networking

While last week’s items, Google Sites and Google Docs, were both very familiar to me and things I had already been using in education, this week’s topics were voyages into the unknown.  I’ve heard a lot about social networking and social bookmarking, but I have never really taken the time to explore them and consider how they could be useful to me in my job or in my life.

            My experience with Diigo was an interesting one.  I had been exposed to social bookmarking previously as a way to get your bookmarks to travel with you, rather than being tied to your machine.  I never really embraced this as it is very easy to add to favorites, and I don’t work on that many machines.  In using Diigo, I found there is way more to it. 

I have to admit that at first I was turned off by the “so much more” factor.  I sometimes get frustrated with software that attempts to do everything and thus complicates what might have been a useful resource.  When I first got into Diigo, I was frustrated as I was challenged to learn all the things it could do.  This seemed to get in the way of the original idea of storing bookmarks.  However, after spending some time with it, I found the “social” features of it actually will make it far more useful.  While I never found a need to save my bookmarks, I really am intrigued with the possibilities that it offers for creating an online community to share information. 

One of my jobs is to lead our district staff forward both in the area of educational technology and in the education of students at the middle school level.  I was able to use Diigo to create groups for each of those areas.  Through Diigo, I’ll be able to share sites and articles on these topics, while my staff will be able to do the same.  One of the biggest challenges is there is only so much time where we can all meet and discuss these important topics.  This will allow staff to participate in this discussion when it is convenient for them. 

I do still have concerns that the amount of information can be so overwhelming.  I already feel like I have so little time to consume the information, let alone act upon it.  There are so many different things that great schools and teacher do, that it can be overwhelming.  It is so important, especially in this information overload era, to remember the important saying: No one man (or woman, school, etc) can do everything but don’t let that keep you from doing something. 

The second part of this week’s lesson was using Twitter and numerous articles on social networking.  Reading all the information on social networks, the wide variety available, the great education uses, and the concerns about student privacy and safety are very unsettling for me.  I see social networking as having such great value in education.  However it poses so many questions I feel I need to solve:  What is the best site out there, how will students privacy and security be protected, do we need permission for students to use it, what do we do with parents who won’t give that permission, what policy changes need to be made, how do we train staff how to use it, how do we provide the technology in school and at home for students to use this, where will those funds come from?  Those questions alone, not to mention the numerous other duties that consume our time, are the key reasons many schools make like Nancy Reagan and “Just say no.” 

I’m very grateful for this course as it is pushing me in some directions I’ve always wanted to go, but haven’t had the impetus to get going.  I do feel unsettled by all this, but I do also see a course of action.  These problems need to be solved one by one.   The challenge now will be to figure out what step to take fi

Electronic Field Trip | National Park Foundation

• Electronic Field Trip | National Park Foundation

  tags: VirtualFieldTrips Parks

• Balancing Classroom Assessment

  tags: education adolescence assessment

• Educational Leadership:Assessment to Promote Learning:Reclaiming Testing

  tags: formative assessment

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Reflection #1 Google

In my opinion, no single piece of web 2.0 technology has had the impact on the education world as the Google suite of products, particularly Google Docs.  Google has revolutionized the world of software by taking on one of the largest, most widespread, and most engrained pieces of software, Microsoft Office.  While other forms of open source software have been in existence, they all required downloads, installation, and often compatibility issues when trying to transfer documents between them and Office.  Google Docs took the entire experience into the cloud.  No more installations, no more updates, no more compatibility issues, these were all huge positives for Google’s product, and in the words of the TV telemarketer…there’s more!  In bringing documents into the cloud, they also revolutionized how people can collaborate on documents. 

            I first experimented with Google Docs in the spring/ summer of 2008.  As a technology trainer for our school, I taught a full day workshop on Google Docs to a group of teachers from our school and from neighboring schools.   Teachers really were taken by the ability for multiple students to be working on a document at the same time, but not in the same place.  Others also loved the ease of which the document, presentation, or spreadsheet could be converted into and out of Office.  The feature allowing students to share without a gmail.com account even helped get over the hurdle of using in schools where gmail is usually not available to kids. 

            For myself, my favorite use of Google Docs as a teacher was with the presentation portion of the suite.  While students working on a document simultaneously could interfere with each other, the nature of a presentation with its multiple slides, was ideal for students to work simultaneously on the same presentation.  Previous to Google Docs I had students creating and saving slides in different presentations and then trying to pull them all together through cutting and pasting after passing through shared folders on our network. 

            I was excited to learn on Tuesday about the Google Forms.  This was not available when I had previously been working with Google Docs.  My mind has been racing with different thoughts on how to use this exciting tool.  I already was able to create a form that I’m using to gather feedback on the trainings my technology trainers are currently offering.  In my job as principal/technology director, gathering feedback from staff, students, and parents has always been something I want to do and this gives me a great way to do that.

            Google Sites was the other tool we spent time learning on Tuesday.  I had very limited experience with that tool, but have done an extensive amount of web design.  One of my first challenges when I changed roles at the school was the transition from our Dreamweaver based web site, to a much more user friendly site using CMS4Schools, a product sold by CESA 6.  Dreamweaver requires a high level of technical skill, knowledge of writing html code, and a complex folder structure, and was not easy for your average person to use without extensive training.  The CMS product is designed to be very user friendly.  Google Sites reminds me a lot of CMS, as it is pretty easy to learn.  In a short time you could use Sites to set up a fairly professional website.  While Sites would be great for an individual teacher to use if his or her school did not have CMS or a similar product, it would be very difficult to design and manage an entire site with the depth and complexity of a website for an entire school district using this program.  I do however appreciate the advancements Sites offers as it keeps pressure on our provider to continue to add features to keep up. 

            This pressure on others software developers is probably one of the best outcomes of Google’s efforts.  Microsoft now offers far more collaboration and mobility in its software at a far cheaper price, email providers all offer web-based access meaning anywhere/anytime access, and the above mentioned improvements to our web design software are just a few examples.  The other key that separates Google from the rest is there is little to no risk of it disappearing (always a worry with web based, free software).  Google has entered into almost every area of Web 2.0, particularly now that they are stepping up to offer a social networking feature comparable to Facebook.  It’s been interesting watching Google drive so much of the current field in terms of software and it will be interesting to see how this continues into the always uncertain future.

Bonk article in EdTech magazine

One thing pointed out in this article is so key to me!  He stated (summarizing) that he was asked what technologies people should be using and he responded saying you don't need to master them all.  I couldn't agree more.  We get caught up in things like if you are not using Twitter, or Facebook, of GoogleDocs (this list is endless) you are missing out on being technologically savvy.  The key is there are endless possibilities.  Don't try to use them all.  Pick the ones that accomplish your goals and master them.  The goal of technology isn't to prove who's smarter or more tech savvy, rather the goal of technology is to better allow us to do what we need to do.

Reaction to 7 things about Google article

I just finished reading the article 7 things you should know about Google Apps.  It was striking that while written in 2008, many of the same things expressed here, match those that existed 3 years ago.  I did a training in the summer of 08 on Google Docs and wowed my students (fellow teachers) with the capabilities.  It was for many the first trip into the cloud.  The strength of Google made a compelling case for choosing it over other online services with similar features as Google is going to be around for awhile and they seem committed to an "anything you can do, Google can do better" mentality.  That still holds true.  The security issues and the concerns about letting go of data were their then and still persist for me and others.  The lack of trackability of what students are doing is also a concern.  Interesting that over 3 years, no clear cut answer has emerged. 

A little background about me

My name is Mark and I'm the middle school principal and director of technology for the School District of Bonduel.  I'm in my second official year in that role, but I served both duties for 15 months prior to assuming the role officially.  Prior to that I taught 6 grade for 12 years in Bonduel.  I coached both baseball and basketball at many levels including varsity, but now coach only at the youth level with my sons.  My wife and I have four kids, three boys age 10, 8 and 5, and a baby girl who is 1.