Martin Levins

Robert Siegel, host of "all things considered" National Punlic Radio in the USA, moderates a modified debate, with the motion: "Bricks and Mortar schools are detrimental to the future of education"

Initial "Turning Point" voting from the audience gives: 37% vs 63% against (Perhaps as a hat tip to Iran, it's not clear how many have voted)

Michael Horn, best known for his book, “Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns”spruiks the "factories are dead" line. Standard, predictable, valid, but workaday.

Brad Jupp, a senior adviser to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan continues, but he doesn't really say much that I can remember.

Gary Stager pushes his barrow "the bricks and mortar of our souls" are shown by the No Child Left Behind and similar silliness. He's on fire, very passionate, but is reading (probably the only time he's ever done this) which is distracting. He has great messages, but tries to get them all out in the allocated time, and, rather like a crowded curriculum, the impact is not as powerful as it could be. He talks over audience acclaim which is loud and spontaneous, surprising even him.

Cheryl Lemke argues against is the executive director of the Milken Exchange on Education Technology and founder and CEO of the Los Angeles-based Metiri Group. (These guys have done a lot of white papers for Apple and other tech companies). She engages more with the audience.

Marshall Thompson, a soon-to-be senior from Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Maryland provides the initial rebuttal. (Marshall, along with his followup rebuttal presenter, Erik Hawke, recently competed in the National Forensics League’s annual student competition in Birmingham, Alabama - this is clear from his style of presentation) Standard rebuttal, essentially stating that the bricks and mortar create the impression that this is all that education is about, ignoring the extra curricular and global interaction.

Erik Hakke, a soon-to-be senior at Springfield High School in Springfield, Virginia (yet another Springfield) talks about the leaking sinks in his school, yet this does not diminish his keenness to return to his school, rebutting the contention that bricks and mortar schools are a one size fits all solution.

Stager provides the "For" summation. Reads again, but less so. Better. "The blame lies in the bankruptcy of our imaginations"

Cheryl: claims that the For team has actually made the Against case. Not sure where her logic lies, but it's somewhere about the idea that bricks and mortar can be reinvented, and the community is most important and we can't lose a generation of children as a result of losing the bricks and mortar of the community structure we call a school.

Comments and connections have been collected via twitter, isteconnects and the live audience.

One of the online questions is directed to the 'For" team, but is answered by the "Against" team indicating that the question is largely irrelevant, it's more about the quality of the education irrespective of locale / brick / mortar whetever.

One from the audience: "What does the Fear of lawsuits do to schools?" (Spot the litigious society) Wow. Good answer from Brad Jupp "why is something a kid does in school different to one outside school?

Let's get the audience to respond now: In the words of the games show host: "the Survey said:" 26% (not detrimental) / 74% (detrimental)

This is huge—seriously.

In excess of 18 000 attendees come to Washington DC in a festival of digital educational everything for the 30th anniversary edition of the National Education Computing Conference, or "NECC" to its friends. Here are the interactive whiteboards, student response systems, Adobe, Dell, HP, Microsoft and other people trying to sell you other shiny things, and very large primary school teachers (I love visiting the US—it makes me feel slim)

No Apple, though—a corporate decision made last year means that Apple does not "do" conferences. Curious decision.

President Helen Padgett, PhD, and Dr Don Knezeck, CEO of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), open the conference.

Helen states ISTE's commitment to educators and asks policy makers to focus on the future of students and schools. (Fairly safe, motherhood statements here)

She then introduces Malcolm Gladwell (author of several books including the Tipping Point and Blink) as the keynote speaker

"When it comes to learning, what you get is a simple function of what you put in. That is the beautiful and powerful idea behind learning..." says Gladwell, "Sometimes the struggle to learn something is where the actual learning lies"

Hmm - not sure that this actually means anything, but it's probably meant as an allotrope of process being more important than product. More motherhood stuff. Move along: nothing to see here.

Despite this, the message that we should "embrace failure, as this is how we learn" is a valuable one, but not one that I've seen adopted wholesale anywhere.

Gladwell adds that our learning boils down to two avenues: Capitalisation - where we concentrate on our strengths vs Compensation where we concentrate on our weaknesses. He suggests we need more of the latter.

Michael Eggenheizen from The Kings School describes his institution's journey from dialup to a 50Mb pipe with minimal filtering, with over 1TB per month in downloads

Logs show top sites as facebook, siteadvisor, google, sports sites, big apple hits (lots of boys have iPhones)

Facebook highlighted as a problem, and they are discussing the blocking of Facebook during boarder's prep, but leaning towards education of students as to the positive and negative aspects. Logs revealed that most were using only for a few minutes to check, but there are 4 or 5 who are heavy users, who will be monitored more closely.

This last approach (education rather than punishing) is the approach he has been taking for some time, but it relies heavily on monitoring. This is changing the culture of the school.

He writes to boys if there is a pornography access transgression by students, pointing out that "there may be someone else using your account and you may want to change your password" requiring a response. This has been very successful and no one has been a repeat offender.

He uses a product called webspy to analyse logs and categorises them.

Some discussion ensues regarding how do we manage mobile devices. Interesting to see that so many in the audience ask the question anyway?

We move on to "why don't we block games?" and the audience polarises, smoothed by Michael when he talks about trust and education.

He points out that the HSC results in 2008 were the best so far. He points out that this isn't because of access, but opening of access hasn't caused problems (early days though)

Michale makes a good point that fast access through the school will discourage individual devices as they are comparatively slower.

Reinforces the idea that digital citizenship is really needed for teachers, students and parents, and that bandwidth is the currency or the 21st century.

PLC show their "Intenet Use and Web 2.0 guidelines" document. (bit of a weighty tome), then move onto examples of what has worked and what kids have liked.

Chris Betcher and Chris Waterman from PLC demo tag clouds, voicethreads and the use of FlickCC, where analysis and copyright are naturally woven.

Chris Waterman points out that "make a powerpont" is not a transferable skill, whereas "convince me of your point of view" is and is not locked to a specific application, adding that "our kids will be known by their digital footprint"

John is VP education at Apple

Tells us about the history of Apple's DNA approach to education (Job's computer as a bicycle for the mind, and its disruptive transformations, from "Kids can't wait" to ACOT, and now on to ACOT2, to iTunes, to the iTouch/iPhone

"Leadership by vision" means using passion and imagination, rather than just looking. This gives, clarity, uniqueness, creativity and freedom.

Lots of stories about John's kids...

His take is that kids want learning environments that match their social environments, mobility, adaptability.

If this is the case, Apple's mission is to create the best possible environment, by the strategies of:

• Global repositories
• Mobile platforms
• Integrated teaching and learning environments

iTunesU is now moving to state K-12, replacing the "textbook", beyond campus for museums and government entities, All changes economic model of text in the same way iTunes changed music (and video and software)

He points out how iTunes has achieved what governments have not been able to (and spent more money on) - digital distribution.

He goes on to talk about Ruben Puentedura's work where technology goes from Substitution to Augmentation to Modification to Redefinition. *Backboard to whiteboard to IWB is Substitution / Augmentation)

The redefinition idea leads him to challenge based education: "we'll talk about this later"

He reaffirms that OSX is the glue that holds all this together.

(it's always the OS - the next one will fix everything)

(The "quotes" here are my paraphrasing of actual responses)

"Most of the schools here are international, fee charging. How do you democratise educational change?"

John Couch (Apple VP Ed): "iTunes gives access to content"

Greg Whitby (CEO Parrammata diocese, Australia): "ripple effect by spending that money we do have on teacher ed" Adds: "we have never spent so much money and yet have flatlining results. Too much waste. Let's be honest and admit that there is something wrong"

Stephen Heppell: 'Everything other than education has decreased in price. Is it the traditional, bricks and mortar schooling the reason?. Last century, we built things that did stuff to people. This century we do this together. We change the model to change price, thence access:

Vivien: "combination of online and other creative ways of doing stuff can overcome $ problems"

"Isn't technology used as a bolt-on, especially with external exams? Can we still have external exams in 21C?"

South Island guy: "Bolt-on technology doesn't work, and many schools introduce tech before they're ready. If you are ready, then it isn't a bolt-on and 1:1 is a natural progression. Assessment needs redesign"

Richard: "if schools are light footed they can try stuff and change if it doesn't work. If we have external exams or not is irrelevant - we can't change that. Adapt"

Stephen: "Criterion referencing is a prison and has led to a generation of coasting children"

John Couch: "Maine's research over the last 8 years. Tech not as substitution, but lead to transformation. Re-iterate that state tests don;t test what we want to measure"

Vivien: "every nation wants to move, but are foundering on teachers who have been trained in the "old ways" and external assessment. Researching Digital portfolios as assessment vehicle"

Stephen: "Latest technology is built on trust. Kids doing a binary comparison of others' work gives a better result than triple marking"

Greg: "Latest move to report on teachers' performance. Authorities specify attendance as mandated and achievement optional should be reversed"

Dan (Apple, Ed Denver): "Culture of learning is most important in schools"

"What do you think about distance vs traditional as a learning experience?

Stephen: " Facebook is a model, multiple choice online is a disaster. Face to face can be daunting, kids have developed an "in between space" where sms messages are not necessarily replied to immediately (or at all in my case!) Notschool.org example."

Vivien: "Michigan requires each kid to take an online course to graduate. Probably financial, but it's there.

John: " Clayton Christiansen, "Disrupting class"

Dan: "Online is often a delivery method not a true learning experience"

John: "Penn State teaching class Facebook this year. Students were taking $7k blackboard data and moving it to Facebook anyway"

"How do you strike a balance between openness and restricted network/computer use"

Richard: "Must involve parents in the process"

Greg: "Build robust teams: mininum of 4 people to a team in schools so that decisions are not made in ignorance or are unsupported."

Island guy: "don't tighten, loosen and concentrate on values.

Stephen: " the most dangerous thing you can do is to lock everything down. Draws comparison to water safety: you don't keep kids away from water until they're `6 and then throw them in. In rooms that are technology rich, put mirrors on the walls. Doesn't know any school who has a successful AUP that hasn't been done with kids. His PHd student has discovered that closure of internet is the best predictor of future failure. Should be in his phone blog"

Vivien is VP for Education of the Asia Society.

Piecharts show shift of economic power to India and China, Friedman's flat world, future supply of graduates coming from Asia, yadda yadda.

Current problems are cross border (aren't they all?)

OK - I've got it. (the global thing)

So she asks "what is a global skill set?"

• Knowledge of cultures, regions, issues
• Being able to communicate, more than one language, coupled with
• Sensitivity: values, perspectives and respect

Example of John Stanford school in Seattle, where improved brain development is implicated in the immersion approach to language and (say) Science or Maths.

Chicago schools, such as Walter Payton, who are teaching Chinese to Latino kids, who learn English, Spanish and Chinese at the same time. (Walter Payton is a very wealthy school, I believe, but she tells us that this process is becoming more the norm in Chicago)

She maintains that schools in the US are increasingly making travel, and/or international experience, a recruitment criterion, and integrating international content. Science, for example, can easily have an international focus, especially in the eco/sustainability arenas.

She talks a bit about measurement of global competence, using digital portfolios, for example, and she is trying to develop statements that reflect global competence that use the language of existing graduation criteria. A lot of this is US biased: in NSW, Australia for instance, Geography syllabi will specifically exclude Australian areas for study. The year 8 syllabus for Desert dwellers excludes Australian deserts.

She makes a comment re the number of passports in the US as an indicator of "globalness" (my term). Some useful info here.

Resources available at the Asia Society Website.

In answering the question: "How do we get our schools to become less euro centric?" she gives ideas of awareness raising, book clubs, local businesses coming in etc. The original questioner accepts this, but he wants to know how to retrain teachers.

She answers by saying that we have to find ways of increasing teachers interest and knowledge (which is kinda rephrasing the question he asked)

Nicer answer is that the "one right answer" may not be conducive to globalness (globalosity? globalotion?) as these sorts of questions preclude different perspectives. Good example of dealing with the US/Palestinian problem by not sticking with the two perspectives, but having a range of nations' perspectives and then asking students to swap roles.

I made up my mind to attend this event a few days ago, with a happy convergence of frequent flier and a free weekend at Starwood.

Last night Stephen Heppell (notes coming); today, at Canadian School in Hong Kong

We listen to Tom Kelley, the guy whose company was in part, responsible for apple mice (hopefully not the camembert model) and the iPod

His thing is innovation.

85% of CEOs in the US had innovation on their agenda, yet it's that important, but not urgent category that means you'll leave it and someone else will overtake you (lots of competitive words whenever people talk about this aren't there?)

He talks about the red queen effect (Alice Through the Looking Glass) where you have to run "twice as fast" that has come about as the world flattens, using his hometown, Akron Ohio, who had the monopoly on passenger car tyres and refused to innovate, now makes 0% of tyres for the US, then draws a comparison with the Sony/Samsung branding.

He mentions the Stanford Centre for Innovation & Learning as a showcase of his company's work, and the d.school started by his brother, using a right brained approach to education (less quantitative, more ethnographic)

We get a copy of his book, apparently.

He thinks that his Learning Roles are the most important, starting with the Anthropologist: rather than trying to make a laptop drop proof may be less valuable that watching how people use stuff and making suggestions as to usage and design.

In other words, don't rely on "how things are done", "seeing with new eyes" (Marcel Proust), or "Vuja De" - I've been here before, but I'm seeing it different. "Empathic Design" (Dorothy Leonard)

Not sure who discovered water, but I'm sure it wasn't a fish. Immersion can preclude observation.

Nice example of the logic telling the designer that kids need a skinnier version of the adult toothbrush, but kids hold the brush in their fist, not with fingers where adults have fine motor control. So, paradoxically, they need a fatter toothbrush than the adult.

Nurse shift changes weren't working, so lists were used, but they suggested a move to changeover happening in front of the patient. Much higher bandwidth as you don't need to mention that oxygen is being used as you can see that, and you don't need to mention that Ms Jones is morbidly obese, because it is obvious.

The Experimenter: such as WD-40 (Water Dispersal, 40th version), and over 5000 prototypes for the Dyson vacuum.

He talks about the usefulness of rapid prototyping, and the need to lower the bar, citing a surgical device design that started as a cobbled together idea (pictured)

The third is the Cross-pollinator, who is part student, part teacher. They invert the keeping an idea private as power.

NASCAR pit crews observed by surgeons as they saw the usefulness of having everything at hand when time is critical.

The logical conclusion is a "reverse mentor" similar to our engagement project.

Web 2.0? Web x.y?

We're keen on categorisation aren't we? Maybe it should be "web with a bullet".

I could see the point of labelling web 2 when O'Reilly first coined it, in that he wanted to make the distinction between the "old" read only and the new "read/write" web, but even Tim Berners-Lee commented that the technologies which made it possible have been around for years.

But I've been experimenting with some aggregation thingies that make me think that the web services now becoming available (irrespective of their age in technology terms) are beginning to bite. After all, even talk shows are now discussing Twitter (so it must be good - right?)

I'm using a new Twitter client called Nambu, which seems to have its own network ecology for URL trimming (trim.it), photo storage (pic.im) and a thing that posts your messages everywhere (ping.fm)

Interesting.

Now I can get pictures of people's lunch when they tweet "I'm eating lunch now"

But I do like Trim.it's ability to track who has been looking at your shortened URLs, where from and with what browser and operating system.

Last blog entry was December last year - sheesh

Possible reasons:

• Slackness
• January skiing in Japan
• Deploying 350 new laptops to students: SOE planning, accession, imaging, migrating data to old machines, prepping old machines for sale...
• Father and Son weekend
• Three activities days with Pioneers
• Engagement project with local university
• Several government grant applications (some successful)
• Preparation of July school Ski trip

Aah - Easter

ITSC Sydney has finished for another year, and we all wend our way home (well, I flew, but several wended)

Check out the joyousness and amazing wealth of informational goodness on the wiki and a short movie overview (courtesy Kym Naderbaum) in the Attendees section.

AK-47's to all Year 7's

The head refers to a comment made to Mark when on tour with a peak educational group in Australia: "Giving a year 7 kid a computer is like giving them a loaded gun"

Will teaching Digital Citizenship ameliorate this?

He claims we haven't taught them skills, but admits that this is because we haven't come to terms with the issues ourselves, and asks how many are teaching Digital Citizenship.

Four or five of us rise their hands.

Wow.

Is this because we have misunderstood the question? Or is this really the case? (He does say himself that he has not heard the term before)

Mark Pesce keynotes ITSC and uses the term "Intelligence augmentation" glibly.

It reminds me of Gary Stager's"computers as an intellectual prosthesis" idea. and it's this concept that interests me more than his "Crowdsourcing youself" title.

His narrative begins with Douglas Englebart and ends with Wikipedia, placing personal learning networks into historical context.

He refers to the Chinese proverb "Many hands make light work", but it's more than this. At least it has more to it than shared responsibilities or tasks.

If we don't actively build, if we lurk, then we can still benefit - we can read others' ideas and discussions - but nowhere near as much as being one of the constructors.

Additionally, if you accept this premise (and it's hard not too), you must accept that we rob our kids of this opportunity if we adopt the stand and deliver approach to learning.

This annual thingy is reachable at apple.com/au/education/itsc08

Should be good and looking forward to seeing all the participants.

I'm doing a session on Macintosh Leopard's collaborative services (the OS that is running this) for a couple days.

The paint's a bit drier than it was last year around the same time when I ran the same workshop, but the gurus are still saying "Snow Leopard will fix he current problems"

sigh

Just downloaded the latest Google Application for iPhone and turned on speech recognition

When turned on, it's simply a matter of bringing the pohne to the standard phone use position and the sensor turns on the microphone, you speak and off it goes.

I asked it

Put on a fake US accent for the barack question and got "used for rectal burma used mac" which was very deep.

I'll have to ask it about that.

Buy four now

Some Apple Distinguished Educators (and some others) are preparing a wiki on use of Apple's Leopard Collaborative Services.

These services (free with the server) include wikis, blogs, podcast producers and other collaborative goodness (this blog uses the services). Problem is that there's not much around in the way of instructions as to how to use them, or how schools are using them.

So we thought we do something about that.

Have a squiz at www.levins.net

Just moved everything to a new (well, newish) server and learnt a bit on the way.

The previous incarnation had my short name as mlevins, to match my instance on the school server. When I built the new one, I created myself as martin, rather than mlevins.

It's all good, as email aliases can cope with most, except when it came to migrating this blog, because Apple's implementation makes links as fully qualified, rather than relative. Hence a link to a blog entry has the mlevins/foo/ format hard coded, rather than just foo/ which would assume the parental name: martin/foo if inside the user "martin" collab directory  or mlevins/foo if inside the user "mlevins"

Sigh

So, made a symlink (ln -s mlevins martin) to solve "file not found" messages.

Now, on to creating users for Apple Distinguished Educator sharing.

This presentation, given by Phil Callil from Xavier College in Melbourne, and Martin Levins, is in iTunes format, and will play in Quicktime, or on your iPhone.

This was given at the Australian Council for Educational Computing in Canberra, on October 1, 2008

Pick it up from here (it will take a while as it's around 85MB)

10 Steps to better ICT in schools