Unleash The Superhero In You - NYSCATE 2016

Source: NYSCATE

The theme for the 2016 annual conference of the New York State Association For Computers And Technologies In Education (NYSCATE) was "Unleash The Superhero In You." This effective branding throughout the conference hall — and the colorful capes given to every attendee — spoke volumes to the notion of teachers as heroes in seizing opportunities and embracing technology, and often struggling against the curmudgeonly villains standing in their ways.

Source: NYSCATE

After three days of sessions and keynotes, kiosks and meet-ups, it was more clear than ever that educators are feeling they have the necessary tools to invigorate the learning potential of their students. Every teacher we met was excited to try a new web app or a backchannel to decentralize daily instruction. As Chromebooks catch up to (or surpass) iOS devices, the Google Apps For Education (GAFE) suite of tools is clearly permeating state-wide districts. As videos and online media put information squarely in the hands of learners, both children and teachers feel more empowered than ever to chart their own courses in meeting the various standards.

For our part, we are grateful to the 60+ participants who sat on the floor and stood against the walls for our presentation on Sunday, November 20, 2016, about “Student Videos & Animations Empower Creativity.” We apologize to those who were turned away for space reasons, and we have put all of our resources and slides online to share with any interested parties. Thank you to all of the attendees for the insightful questions and terrific recommendations about lessons and tools related to student projects and videos.

In hearing from the other experts in the terrific workshops during the conference, highlights that stood out included the tips on formative assessments from Steve Garton (@sgarton121) and Jeff Mao (@jmao121) of Common Sense Education, as well as the annual App Smackdown from Rich Colosi (@richardcolosi), Ryan Orilio (@ryanorilio), Mike Amante (@mamante), and Monica Burns (@classtechtips).

Other eye-opening sessions were engaging the writing process using Google Apps, WeVideo, and Recap with Megan Hugg (@Megan Hugg) and Lindsey Peet (@LindsMariePeet); liberating students from paper using ePortfolios with Betsy Hardy; and tapping the lesser-known features of Google with Carol LaRow (@larowc). Student coding, blended writing, and shared collaboration also emerged as recurring themes within the high-quality professional development. Perhaps the keynote comment by Adam Bellow (@adambellow) summed it up best, "Technology does not drive change; it just enables it."

Source: ASIDE 2016

The lake-effect snowstorm that blanketed downtown may have kept some New Yorkers homebound, but it made for a tight-knit group in the warm confines of the Joseph A. Floreano Rochester Riverside Convention Center. It also meant that Dinosaur BBQ was blissfully quiet on Sunday night, as we savored our favorite fried green tomatoes and spicy pulled pork. Pane Vino on North Water Street continued to rank as one of the best restaurants anywhere in the nation. And we also recommend Starry Nites Cafe in the arts district as a short hop away for a quick latte and chicken chili after perusing handmade jewelry at Craft Company No. 6.

Finally, we want once again to give a big shout out of thanks to the NYSCATE conference organizers for all they did in staging this seamless annual get-together. The smoothy run sessions and the high-quality breakfast / lunch / dinner included in the overall fee, as well as the warm welcomes and conversations throughout the event, confirmed once again why this is the best confab of the year. See you in 2017.

Source: NYSCATE

Born Digitals Love To Make Things – Vintage Matters!

Source: ASIDE 2016

Born digitals deftly use technology; for them, it just is. Yet we constantly see discussions, blog posts, and articles about where and whether we should integrate technology, how it should be done, does it motivate learners, etc. We are decades past this discussion. Of course technology feeds motivation. What else would — filling in worksheets, taking linear notes, or sitting through text-laden PowerPoint presentations?

Education seems to view technology as something separate. It’s not for us, nor is it for our students. We use our devices all the time, and so do they. In fact, they approach technology fearlessly and can find workarounds with little trouble. Internet down? No problem. They set up hot spots using their phones to work on their iPads. Looking for contact information? No problem. They conduct a Google image search to connect to a LinkedIn profile. Need to send a direct message? No problem.  They do it through social media. We've witnessed all of these scenarios with our middle schoolers.

So why do we now see a surge in kids regarding making things with their hands as so exciting? Simple. They rarely enjoy opportunities to do this type of work anymore in most classrooms across the country. Few students experience “free play.” They live in a play date world of scheduled activities and rarely take risks without a helmet and harness.

Physically designing, building, prototyping, and testing things they construct is the novelty, not the technology. Most of them have grown up using tech since infancy. It’s a no-brainer to search to find information or watch a YouTube video for ideas, tutorials, and entertainment. But to actually make something is the memorable part. It’s what John Spencer describes in his video entitled "Kids Need Vintage Tools."



Vintage does not mean old; instead, it refers to something of high quality and lasting value about a particular object from the past. We see the lasting value in balancing high tech with high touch in our curricula, and we make room every chance we can to incorporate it. This includes hand-drawing maps, constructing early farming settlements outside, or planning community villages. Our students may use technology in the process to document their work, but what they remember most is making it. They use vintage tools all right, including pencils, paint, and glue. They love it.

So while we applaud, integrate, and depend on technology using any device, in the end what we find is using tactile materials changes the way students feel about their creations. We don’t slight tech at all; in fact, we love it. We would argue that today's heightened interest in robotics is not in using the technology to program, but instead in actually watching the robots come alive. This applies to creating stop-motion movies, designing apps, and creating computer games. Each of these endeavors turns out a product in the end. The process in making any one of these, however, is the addictive part and the one that is most remembered. Making matters.

Our high tech born digitals may just thrive on high touch even more!

Born Digital, Live Digital, And Our Students' Obsession With Documenting Their Lives

Source: Spencer Brown

Does our obsession with technology and documentation go too far? This powerful, short film titled “The Boy With The Camera Face” by filmmaker Spencer Brown is a satirical fairy tale about a boy born with a camera instead of a head who cannot escape the lens. From the moment of his birth, everything about his life is recorded. Does this sound like our students, or maybe you?


The Boy with a Camera for a Face from Spencer Brown on Vimeo.


The narration by Steven Berkoff tells the story in a nursery rhyme or somewhat Seussical way. As the tale unfolds, it’s clear that the effect on people’s fixation with the daily life of the “Camera Boy” is hypnotic. They stop noticing things around them and become transfixed as if in a catatonic state -- a scenario we witness on a daily basis with our students on their devices.

Perhaps even more important is the issue of privacy in the always-on world. As educators, we want to take advantage of the liminal web while still preserving the anonymity of our learners. That task is a lot harder today then it was a decade ago.

This award-winning film is worth 14 minutes of your time. It puts modern reality into focus in a beautiful, strange, and moving way.

A Philosophy Of Education: Energy, Inspiration, And Understanding

Source: ASIDE 2015

This week we were asked to share our philosophies of education. It was a worthy question and a worthwhile endeavor. Even though like most teachers we’ve gone through many versions of these philosophies over the years, it was thought-provoking to reframe our tenets as both learning and we have evolved. We thought we might publish our current thoughts, to see what other educators think and to invite feedback about other philosophies of teaching in today’s learning climate:

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If students were given a choice about which classes to attend each day, would they choose our classes? Is there something about the tone, the environment, the practice, or the design of information that makes our time seem worthwhile to learners?

One of our mantras with learners has been to “Look at more stuff; think about it harder.” We seek to inspire learners to use creative thinking to come up with innovative ideas; likewise, we hope to do the same with our approach to teaching. In their schooling, students hope to experience moments of wonder. An instance of surprise or curiosity, even if brief, can make all the different in motivating learners to explore and delve deeply. Insight leads to ownership, which makes meaningful the internalization of skills or concepts. One "ah ha" moment is worth one hundred perfect test scores.

To inspire others is, after all, why we teach. We rely on inspiration as the fuel for engagement. We want to encourage an environment that fosters creativity, inquiry, ownership, and independence. Learners need a stimulating environment that fuels inspiration and a hunger for knowledge. This atmosphere refers to both the physical space and the personality of the teacher. Is the room stimulating and engaging? Is the layout flexible and complementary to the learning? Furthermore, is the temperament of the teacher encouraging, with an authentic sense of optimism about the journey the learner and the educator are about to take together?

It is not about efficiency and compliance; instead, it is about things like mindset, mood, mechanisms, measurement, and momentum that push the critical thinking process in order to extract new ideas. What is the tone of the instructor's language? What is the tenor of the student-teacher relationship? A bit of humor, for example, can be key to keeping the mood light and productive. A sincere repartee can make the minutes tick by with less tedium and maybe even some anticipation.

Source: ASIDE 2015

The more interdisciplinary, collaborative, and challenging approaches we use, the greater the chance to develop individuals that are confident to take risks. In this vein, teaching and learning is a partnership. A conversational style or technological savvy can help validate students’ daily experiences and show an effort to connect to their worlds – to what is important to them. This connection stems from mutual trust. Students want to trust that their teachers are laying out clear expectations, that their grades are based on fair assessments, that their learning is in the hands of an expert. If students don't trust that we as teachers are going to keep our word, treat them with decency, and give them the benefit of the doubt, then they will tune out everything else we try to communicate.

Today, learning is no longer limited to the teacher as keeper of the knowledge, nor to the moment with little connection to the future. It has to be deeper; it is about understanding. We want students to be more like hunter-gatherers, who constantly search for anything that interests them and who share it with the world. Life-long learning is far more like the migrating hunter-gatherer, and technology has opened that door. 

We hope to harness that energy, that inspiration, and that understanding of the power of connections to explore ideas. Our hope is to tap a learner’s inspiration and creativity so that they develop as innovative thinkers and knowledge seekers.

As teachers, we want to engage students:

• To think like designers to transform the way they learn and look at the world
• To develop flexibility in their thinking about ways to learn, and to tap their curiosity
• To grow to be open-minded individuals who are knowledgeable about historical events
• To gain confidence about what they know to share their understanding and enthusiasm for history and geography with others
• To help them develop a curiosity for learning through the creation of their own work
• To provide a range of choices for them to visually map their ideas to realize there is more than one way of seeing
• To design curriculum to meet the information, technology and new media literacies needs of today's learners through current best practices that incorporate digital learning, technology integration, and social media
• To develop flexibility in their thinking about ways to learn, and to help them feel comfortable with being uncomfortable
• To promote honest discussions about disparities in society such as race and class to promote empathy for our differences
• To recognize, value, and assess the many diverse ways children learn and how to meet them there

The Uber Generation Of Learning — Fast, Efficient, And Driven By Tech

Source: ASIDE 2015

It’s no surprise that the New York Taxi and Limousine Commission is lobbying for limits to Uber’s expansion. In fact, municipalities across the country are fretting over Uber’s intrusion.

Uber’s appeal — and its rapid, unmitigated ascent — is exactly like the edtech groundswell in contemporary learning.

Uber is a private car service currently taking the country by storm. It allows anyone with an app to instantly summon a professional ride. It takes away the guessing about street corners and hand-waving. It offers customized choices, such as a car seat or SUV. Uber provides real time, visual tracking of how far away the car is and how much the trip will cost. 

Uber takes the frustrating tasks of flagging a phantom taxi or confronting a gruff phone operator and replaces them with immediate, digital satisfaction.

This is exactly what today’s students expect from their lessons and teachers.

For better or for worse, children enter our classes with a ready affinity toward online tools and an understandable assumption of digital learning. They are used to texting in realtime, chatting in realtime, Googling in realtime, and creating in realtime. When anachronistic teachers give them paper worksheets and bubble tests, it’s no wonder they roll their eyes and feel like they’re being intentionally stranded on the side of a high-tech boulevard, while the wired world seems to be passing them by.

Kids (and adults) live on their smartphones. They demand instantaneous answers via Siri or Wikipedia to any question that might pique their curiosity. In this way, they are uber-researchers. They seek information more actively and more frequently than any prior generation. The gift of the Internet offers them answers, but they still need to know their end destination. They still need to have a conclusion in mind, to drive their scholarship in the right direction.

Source: ASIDE 2015

The greatest gift from laptops, iPads, SMARTboards, and phones is efficiency. What used to take a middle schooler an entire Saturday now takes a split second. Kids can diagram the locks of the Erie Canal or study the bricks of the Giza pyramids in the same time it takes to tie one’s shoelaces. The “Internet of things” is a powerful encyclopedia. Any school district that blocks access to YouTube or Twitter, therefore, is closing the doors to Alexandria, erecting antiquated barriers in the face of authentic learning.

We expect our Uber driver to know our name, know our route, and know our credit card number. We expect service with a smile and quiet satisfaction in skipping the crowded van to the airport or the late-night carpool quest.

This is modern education — personalized, differentiated, and affordable.

This is technological learning — satisfying, searchable, and immediate.

As a point of reference, check out this current ad for Microsoft Windows 10:

Many educators still fight against this disruption, against these invading technological hordes. They demand professional development and budget studies to delay the inevitable. Many administrators side with city districts, viewing apps as interlopers seeking to upset the status quo.

Many still resist the arrival of a learning alternative, because it’s not “the way we’ve always done it.”

But the rabid popularity of Uber speaks to a communal need. The instinctive embrace of real-time learning by students means that if educators don’t change, kids will be chauffeured off into the sunset without them.

SXSWEdu 2015: Education For All - How Far Have We Come?

Source: TES Global

An important and undeniable thrust of the 2015 SXSWEdu conference has been the attempt to reconcile the nation's educational inequalities. Marquee panels and sofa conversations alike have centered on this notion of access – access to college, to technology, to careers, to mentors, to professional development, to contemporary learning tools.

Last night's reception at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library made this theme immediate in bringing together historians and educators to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act.

Source: LBJ Presidential Library, ASIDE 2015

This morning, Second Lady Of The United States Dr. Jill Biden kept this dialogue moving forward in leading a summit by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation about redesigning higher education to fuel student success. Dr. Biden noted that education is the great equalizer, the basis for a better life. For this reason, she stressed, "Teaching is not what I do. It's who I am."

A panel discussion later with Jamie Casap, Timothy Jones, and Isis Stephanie Cerda focused more intently on the need for diversity within educational technology. Similar messages emerged in workshops on "Equal Opportunity For Deeper Learning," "My Brother's Keeper: One Year Later," and "Teaching A New Narrative For Black Male Achievement."

Source: ASIDE 2015

An equally critical thread appeared in the number of talks about empowering girls and women in technology and entrepreneurship. For example, EdTechWomen was named this year's official SXSWEdu Change Maker. Other titles included: "Women Disruptors 2.0," "Paying It Forward: Leveraging Today's Female Voice," "Empowering Girls And Women To Lead," "Digital Diversity: Minority Women In EdTech," and "EdTech For Educational Inclusion."

Another highlight of the day was Kristin Ziemke’s and Cheryl Boes’ presentation of innovative project examples to engage young learners with voice, choice, and audience. Their use of easy apps and elementary blogging revealed the many avenues that let children demonstrate understanding in exciting, authentic ways.

A later workshop featured a panel of thought leaders who promoted creativity in schools. They championed "less talking and more doing." The speakers paraded both theoretical and tangible ways to inspire kids as imaginative thinkers. As Jonathan Plucker, Professor at the University Of Connecticut, noted, “creativity is about constraints.” A teacher’s task, therefore, is to help students identify constraints and then decide which ones to get rid of, which ones to ignore, and which ones to live with.

Ultimately, after a day of education and introspection, of creativity and contemplation, we recalled John Ashbery's lines from Three Poems, which speak to the impossibility of certainty and the elusiveness of knowing:

"The term ignorant is indeed perhaps an overstatement, implying as it does that something is known somewhere, whereas in reality we are not even sure of this: we in fact cannot aver with any degree of certainty that we are ignorant. Yet this is not so bad; we have at any rate kept our open-mindedness -- that, at least, we may be sure that we have -- and are not in any danger, or so it seems, of freezing into the pious attitudes of those true spiritual bigots whose faces are turned toward eternity and who therefore can see nothing.” 

SXSWEdu 2015: The Boy Who Beeps - Who Can Speak The Language Of EdTech?

Source: SXSWEdu

Now in its fifth year, the 2015 SXSWEdu rally in the Texas midland is more inclusive than ever. The panelpicker judges eschewed trendy topics like flipped learning and Big Data in favor of deeper discussions about Social Emotional Learning and Gamification. Major themes that ran through the first day included programming in schools, authentic PBL, and contemporary professional development.

A major highlight of the day was hearing about the impressive Coded Curriculum implemented by Beaver Country Day School in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. The school has embraced a "launch / test / refine" approach to incorporate coding into every academic discipline. The faculty actively seeks to "make excellent mistakes" as they teach children the "New Basics" of open-ended problem solving, non-linear thinking, and collaboration.

Source: Sunni Brown

Another centerpiece of the sessions was Sunni Brown's mesmerizing workshop about "how to stay curious." A guru of visual thinking and a doctor of doodling, Brown reminded the crowd that visual language is a river native to cultures across the world that instills a powerful cognitive awareness.  

The spirit of sharing was genuine today at SXSWEdu. Every attendee was universally open and eager to connect. Yet a question kept trickling through the meandering hallways like the incessant drip of Austin’s rain: How many actual classroom teachers were present at the conference? When Brown asked how many classroom educators were in the room, fewer than ten percent among the hundreds raised their hands.

Source: ASIDE 2015

Throughout the day, we met: an online charter school principal, a start-up edupreneur, an NAACP coordinator, a not-for-profit founder, an NEA staffer, a Museum and Library Services researcher, a corporate communications director, a Learning Sciences professor, a former math instructor in Ethiopia, and a doctoral candidate who moonlights at Khan Academy. We met other interesting people, too, but we did not meet one classroom teacher.

We know they were there. But they seemed few and far between. Maybe this is a good thing. Maybe it signals that SXSWEdu is not for everyday teachers. Maybe the passionate attendees perceive a sea change in education that is more galvanizing than "regular" teachers can see. Or maybe not.

Either way, it speaks to a road diverging in a not-yet-understood wood. If start-ups and online outlets are careening onto their own edtech on-ramp, what happens to the students and teachers driving in the HOV lane? 

For example, after participating in one session about a full-scale coding curriculum pushed across all disciplines, we attended a completely different panel about whether edtech really offers any solution at all. It feels strange that this question is still being asked: Is edtech a panacea or a distraction?

Source: General Electric

The nuanced nature of this tacit tech tug-of-war reminded us of a General Electric ad from September 2014 called "The Boy Who Beeps." The touching ad follows the birth of a baby who can speak the language of technology. The commercial intends to tout GE's omnipresence in electronics, but to us it highlighted the children today who are always plugged in, always wired. 

Kids are born who can seemingly speak to machines, communicate with the digital world, control their own access to e-learning. What happens, though, when their days become disconnected? Can they muster the skills to navigate a tangible, interpersonal world? Or better yet, can they make things, create their own machines? Are they controlled by the very machines they rely on? And what about children who don’t have machines?

Source: General Electric

In the edtech learning space, are there start-ups who talk only to machines – and not to educators? And what about the teachers who cannot (or will not) talk to machines, who can’t negotiate the apps and iPads filling their classes?

By the end of today, we were encouraged. We decided that educators are indeed emerging as a potent force in the digital economy. American Federation Of Teachers President Randi Weingarten noted a change since last year's SXSWEdu. She now hears tech companies asking, “How can we get teachers involved in the process?” She emphasized that with the onslaught of shiny edtech tools, the best advice is to know how to teach first, and to learn to use technology second. Brown echoed the same, saying that digital tools are great, but they're not worth much if we can't use them. The learning is the key.

Thank You NYSCATE 2014 - TransformED

Source: NYSCATE 2014

The annual NYSCATE 2014 conference ended just before the Thanksgiving holiday in Rochester, New York. Thanks to another excellent roster of educators assembled by The New York State Association for Computers and Technologies in Education (NYSCATE), we returned with our toolkits full, ready to share what we’d learned with our colleagues and learners.

Source: NYSCATE 2014

The theme for this year’s conference was TransformED, with a magical overlay to encourage us to wave our magic wands to engage the mind. For the first time, an EdCamp component was added to the roster of sessions, as well as 15-minute lightening sessions on a variety of topics.

We had the privilege of participating in an EdCamp round on visual thinking, and we met a host of impressive educators who emphasized the importance of the learning environment and the ability of teachers to influence it with creative ingenuity, technology know-how, and forward-thinking approaches.

The social media kiosk, a fixture at the conference, added a new twist to attract educators to grow their personal learning networks with a visual display of live tweeting and cameo photo opportunities.

Source: NYSCATE

The “iPad App Smackdown” session by three Apple Distinguished Educators, Mike Amante (@MAmante), Richard Colosi (@RichardColosi), and Ryan Orilio (@RyanOrilio), did not disappoint. The friendly rivalry for the session's winner and the shouts of “SLAM” allowed for an engaging banter between presenters and audience. All we could think of was how fun this would be to do with kids or at a faculty meeting.

Source: iPad App Smack Down

Click here see the 12 apps they demonstrated in the session.

Lastly, thank you to the generous crowd who attended our session on Simple Ways To Publish In A Paperless Environment. All of the resources and links highlighted in our workshop are available here.

Source: ASIDE, 2014

Finally, if you're ever at the Rochester Riverside Convention Center, stroll three blocks for a delicious, dining experience at Dinosaur BBQ, and if time permits, don’t miss Craft Company No. 6, a unique gallery housed in a Victorian Era firehouse, located in the Neighborhood of the Arts district.

The #Unclass Movement – Why Structure Is The Enemy Of Anytime, Anywhere Learning

Source: ASIDE, 2014

Many current initiatives, such as blended learning, genius hour, and flipped instruction, are all embracing the same potential of disrupted education. They all recognize the multi-latticed, pan-directional nature of contemporary learning. In essence, they are trying to make class time less like class time. We call this the "unclass."

Learning no longer begins and ends at the school bell. Students don’t switch off their devices and their senses of wonder just because the final period clocks out. Even though children have always pursued hobbies and outside interests, today they can network their school inquiries with their personal passions and continue their threads of discovery any time, any where. Learning becomes more like free time and free time more like learning.

Just like adults who juggle smartphones and information streams, kids today reach for a variety of sources to satisfy their natural curiosities. Schools that try to stifle this octopus impulse can run the risk of becoming irrelevant to contemporary learners.

Source: ASIDE, 2014

Recently, we have initiated the “unclass” philosophy to change our prevailing stencil of in-school activity. Rather than falling back on the typical model of teacher instruction and student compliance, the unclass approach imagines a classroom as neighborhoods of self-directed learning. It encourages imagination and skills through social media, backchannels, and self-publishing. Just as companies embrace flexible workspaces and educators flock to “unconferences,” teachers, too, can cultivate student dialogue and self-direction that can be continued at home at the end of the day.

The unclass approach is both a structure and a practice. It offers a strategy for running an organic environment in which children have ownership over their own time. It also still achieves the desired goals of learning and skill acquisition – such as linking the controversies of the Reconstruction Era to America’s racial climate today, or making the scientific method actionable in a digital, non-tinkering world.

The unclass philosophy also emphasizes a mindset. This outlook recognizes that students and teachers can engage in meaningful collaboration well after a 40-minute period has ended. In fact, only a few key questions can be addressed during a day's limited course time. The ramifications of these inquiries, though, can echo later into living rooms, ballparks, and backseats via social media and digital devices. Creative apps and self-directed technology mean that learning occurs via an unclass, with enlightenment an exuberant affirmation of student passion and teacher inspiration.

Source: Yong Zhao, Zhao Learning

In his terrific book, World Class Learners: Educating Creative and Entrepreneurial Students (Corwin, 2012), Yong Zhao talks about the "grammar of schooling," which refers to the organization of class time and rosters into periods, sections, grades, and subjects (180). He points out the "inherent logical contradiction" in trying to instill student innovation and initiative within this type of structured, one-size-fits-all curriculum (94).

In fact, Zhao quotes Professor Kyung Hee Kim in the observation that while "teachers claim to value creativity in children," they often squelch "creative behaviors," because they are non-conformist and hard to wrangle (14). Zhao argues that transferring the responsibility to the learner emphasizes engagement, accountability, and relevance for all students (171).

Extrapolating from Zhao's thought-provoking work, teachers in an unclass find that their "primary responsibilities have shifted from instilling the prescribed content in students following well-established procedures in a structured fashion to developing an educational environment that affords children the opportunity to live a meaningful and engaging educational life" (176).

For more ideas about the unclass movement, we recommend "The EdCamp Mindset - How An 'Unconference' Can Yield An 'Unclass.'"

Resource Roundup: The Pencil Metaphor - The Point, Labor, And Fun

Source: ASIDE, 2014

We are down to the last few days before the Labor Day weekend signals the end of summer. All schools will be back in full swing next week, and summer Fridays will end for those lucky enough to have them in the work world.

For most educators, back-to-school decorations still include the proverbial apple, school bus, writing strips, and black and white composition notebooks. We definitely need a revamp in the bulletin board market to bring it into this century. We’ve yet to see tablets to add to the decor. That said, one of the most useful, iconic, and versatile images in education is the pencil.

Looking back, we wanted to round up some of our favorite resources that highlight the pencil as a metaphor for leadership, work, and fun.

The Pencil Metaphor graphic that has been reproduced in many places is a perfect place to start. It symbolically represents a continuum of where individuals might be on the learning curve of adapting new technology. The closer to the point, the more willing to take chances, lead, and share knowledge with others.

Source: Chief Technology Learning Center

I, Pencil: The Movie could not be better suited for the holiday weekend. It’s a symphony of human activity at work to produce one of the most basic tools used to record information, draft ideas, and doodle creations. It represents the interconnectedness of labor in the same way the pencil connects with learning.




Lastly, #Pencilchat had to be the one of the best viral chats on Twitter in 2011. It was friendly and a real mix of clever ideas, but at the same time a pointed discussion about technology integration with the coming onslaught of the tablet boom. We cannot help but revisit the hilarious video entitled Ode to #Pencilchat: Technology Integration in the Classroom.




Whether metaphor, symbol, or tool, the pencil is flexible, durable and timeless. We wish everyone a great school year.

Ten Tech Tips To Spice Up Summer Reading

Source: ASIDE, 2014

Most kids (and teachers) hate summer reading. They view it as a chore, an unnecessary evil, a relic of schoolhouse drudgery. Even students who love to read groan at prescriptive lists of books that will receive little attention once the academic year begins. Even when offered a choice of titles, students drag their heels in completing linear book reviews or reader-response journals.

Click image for larger view

This is because in their active lives, kids are multitasking on social media while setting up Minecraft servers. They don't understand why summer work should force them to take a step back in time and technology. In order to spice up their summer literary lives, why not let students savor some easy tech ingredients, to make reading a zestier part of their wired worlds?

1. Animated book trailers - Instead of a book report, invite students to create animated book trailers to advertise their favorite titles to friends. Adobe Voice and Vine are perfect options for free, fast, embeddable movie-making.

2. Remote book clubs - Children regularly see their parents laughing in living room book clubs. Kids can form their own real-time remote clubs via Skype or FaceTime, to network and debate with classmates even while on vacation.

3. Journal blogs - Rather than relying on paper and pen, kids can publish their thoughts via personal blogs and then comment on peers' posts. Kidblog is a safe and self-contained option, with teacher-controlled classes to monitor conversations.

4. Character infographics - Visual thinkers and graphic artists will love making infographics of themes and events. Easel.ly and Piktochart are flexible platforms to unleash creative potential in ranking events and rating characters.

5. Chapter podcasts - Many learners prefer audio books, so why not encourage students to record their own podcasts? Audioboo, for example, will let kids embed recordings of chapters or reviews, to disseminate to classmates underneath their Beats headphones.

6. Twitter chats - Teachers can set up unique hashtags around specific questions, to unite students in online chats. Twitter will then serve as a permanent archive of notes and quotations, to tap for further discussion once the school year begins.

7. Virtual pinboards - Symbolism and visual metaphor can be difficult to teach. Virtual pinboards such as Pinterest offer fun ways for students to curate and share pictures that connect to specific plot points or motifs.

8. E-reader magazines - Any type of reading counts as reading, so instead of limiting kids' choices to a few books, schools can open up the options to magazines, newspapers, and graphic novels. E-readers like Kindles and Nooks provide portability and bookmarks for easy access.

9. Plot comics - Boiling down a book's plot to a few cartoon panels is harder than in sounds. Web tools like ToonDoo present a range of settings and personalities to capture key events, or even invent alternate endings to a novel's action.

10. Original fan fiction - The best follow-up to reading is writing, and many students love penning their own fan fiction to continue the interplay of favorite characters. Wattpad is a popular publishing site for young wordsmiths.

If you have any other suggestions to enhance summer's literary recipe, please share them. We'd love to hear more engaging tech ideas!

Digital Empathy: How Modern Maps Are Charting A Personal Cartography

Source: Historypin

When most people think about maps, they think of social studies worksheets or antique dealers. They might also remember the avatar on their Waze app or the time they got lost in Amish country.

In truth, maps are emblematic of mankind. The act of mapping is about trying to locate oneself within a geography of space and emotion. The human impulse to pinpoint "place" is about giving order to a complex topography of physicality and personality.

Today, easy access to data and technology has opened a door to a new host of personal map renderings. Interactive, customizable tools allow individuals to create a visualization of his or her own depiction. For this reason, maps are the new meme, more prolific than ever.

In fact, the Wired article, "Uncharted territory: amateur cartographers fight to put their communities on the map," highlights a crowdsourced project called OpenStreetMap that aims to compete with Google's "authoritarian" "agenda" by putting the power of place back in the hands of local inhabitants.

Source: Mapline

Source: Historypin

One of our favorite initiatives is Historypin. This site (and mobile app) overlays historical photos on top of contemporary maps. Users can explore how their home town looked in past centuries, or they can compare snapshots of a same location across time. With searchable archives by both setting and time, students can comb through the existing collection or upload their own contributions.

Source: Stately

For designers and programmers, another clever tool is Stately. Stately is a symbol font. A simple keystroke of an uppercase or lowercase letter generates each state on the screen, sized and positioned perfectly within a scaled map of the United States. As a font, the states can be sized and colored to meet any specification. This ease and flexibility are perfect for rendering infographics, and they also invite possibilities for shaded regions of colonial development or visualized statistics from the Census.

Another data-rich resource is Mapline, formerly known as Topo.ly. This tool allows anyone to build a map from Microsoft Excel spreadsheet data. Major companies use Mapline to visualize store locations on their web pages. Journalists build heat maps of trends and figures. Political scientists drill down on electoral results and polling statistics. For their part, students can take advantage of our favorite reference series, The Almanac Of American Life, to chart a changing America.

Source: Mapline

In related news, at this week's SXSWedu 2014 conference, tucked away in a corner of the Austin Convention Center, was an intriguing talk intended for teachers rather than edtech entrepreneurs. The presentation, "Learning With Digital And Participatory Maps," featured a panel of Guiliana Cucinelli, Claudia Silva, Debora Lui, and Andrew Lombana-Bermudez, who narrated the process of their scholarly research. Nestled within their lectures were a few gems of insight about the role that cartography plays in helping humans define themselves amid a chaotic world. Some takeaways were:

• Personal geography explores memories, nostaligia, and playfulness
• Active mapping brings out cultural identity through shared “third spaces”
• Locative stories enhance connections to neighborhoods by archiving a community's history
• Maps are not a product, a visual artifact, or a fixed entity to read for information -- they are a representation of truth as corrective of past injustices
• Participatory maps engage real-world challenges and offer experiential, hands-on learning 
• The study of geography fosters relational literacies, multimodal design, and critical thinking
• Maps for centuries were top-down creations, made by the elite and pushed to the populace -- digital maps now subvert this hierarchy

Source: Stately

The tools featured below are incredibly useful for this kind of hands-on, experiential mapping. All of these applications tap into emerging digital technologies. Some of them involve a bit of programming know-how, while others are user-friendly smartphone apps:

Source: Logos of referenced sites

• Mapskip
• Kullect
• Everplaces 
• TagWhat
• Findery
• Leaflet
• Korsakow 
• Geocommons
• Open Layers
• Ushahidi

For other ideas on the new nature of mapping, check out:

• Geography Is Having A Moment - Why Maps Are The New Meme
• Rethinking Global Education - Maps As Social Media
• The Visual Politics Of Cartography
• Mapping By Hand: Another Case For Paper
• Geography On A Different Scale

Transforming Learning: NYSCATE 2013

Source: NYSCATE 2013

We just finished attending three days at the NYSCATE 2013 Transforming Learning conference in Rochester. The New York State Association for Computers and Technologies in Education (NYSCATE) assembled another terrific roster of speakers sharing their ideas and best practices for teaching and learning.

Once again, we met a host of impressive educators who emphasized the importance of the learning environment. It was refreshing to hear again and again that it wasn't the app, website, or device that defines the learning, but the opposite. The focus should be on the learning objective. Define the target goal, and use technology to change the process of how it's accomplished.

We'd like to thank the educators who attended our session on Projects In Web 3.0: Privacy Is The New Predator. In addition to our prior post listing the resources we referred to in our talk, here is the SlideShare for our presentation.

Projects In Web 3.0: Privacy Is The New Predator from Mercer Hall and Patricia Russac

We look forward to tweeting with our new friends and our expanding PLN of collaborators.

Education And E-cology

As we embark on another year as educators, we have a lot to think about with regard to designing new tasks made possibly by technology. We’ve heard and read countless times about how we are educating kids for jobs we don’t know will exist, resulting from technological advances happening at lightening speed, to the point where it seems overwhelming to keep up. And it is not likely to abate any time soon. We are no longer in a world that is changing a certain amount every year. The luxury of a slow, linear, arithmetic approach is gone. Instead, our learners are operating in a world that is changing exponentially.

We recently came across the motion graphic "Trillions," produced by Maya Design for the book Trillions: Thriving In the Emerging Information Ecology by Peter Lucas, Joe Ballay, and Mickey McManus. The video gives an overview of how we arrived where we are in computing today using a time line based on seconds. The authors make the point that designing for trillions is a huge challenge, bigger than any we have ever faced.


Trillions from MAYAnMAYA on Vimeo.


It was the line in the video that “computing is an ecology” and that it is all around us – “not information in the computers, but people in the information” – that made us think: What do we mean by ecology? The standard definition for the word didn’t seem to help, and we wanted a way for our students to get a better grasp of how ecology relates to computing.

This is how we came up with the term e-cology and the subsequent definition: the branch of sociology that deals with the transmission, creation, and design of digital content and its interrelationship with society and the environment.

If we want our learners to have a stake in the developing digital world, we need to consider how we educate them in this new e-cology. We rapidly see the changing face of jobs now, let alone 12 years from now when out current kindergarten students will graduate from high school. New positions for social media, digital asset management, and data visualization are just a few of the employment opportunities that were in their infancy just five years ago.

 

Startups are also on the rise in many fields, including education. We see the extent of new types of opportunities for educators, and we don’t just mean companies trying to market material for the Common Core. The challenges do seem enormous for our students, but the risk of not facing the need for changing education in our schools is far greater. We need a paradigm shift in curricula now to accommodate the changing e-cology or we will fall further behind as a society of innovators.

5 Things Learners Expect From Their Educators

(This is Part Two in a two-part series about the expectations of learning relationships. Please check our previous post in Part One: "5 Things Students Expect From Their Teachers.")

More and more in recent years, we've started referring to the kids in our classes as "learners" rather than "students." It began unintentionally but became more and more frequent. We gradually realized that the relationship between learner and educator is not always the same as between student and teacher. As we explored earlier in the "5 Things Students Expect From Their Teachers," we are shaping our goals for new school year, and we're trying to consider an even more nuanced connection between any learner and his or her guide.

A learner is someone who seeks knowledge, who solicits professional development, who values links from a Twitter PLN, or who watches YouTube videos to hone a skill. Employees and entrepreneurs, welders and poets all further themselves by seeking insights from a trusted specialist. Any interaction that results in greater understanding or proficiency forges a learner/educator bond.

The word "learner" suggests an open-mindedness and a self-initiation. The word "student," however, implies a hierarchy. It defines a status, where one is the instructor and the other is the pupil. This difference is akin to actively enrolling in a class versus being at the mercy of a class. It is the difference between training and tutelage, between aficionado and authority.

We’ve all experienced the letdown of learning, whether at disappointing conferences or half-hearted meetings. As both educators and life-long learners, therefore, we want to make every effort to cultivate scholarship by aligning realistic expectations.

What do learners expect from their educators?

Expertise

Any learner who willingly admits that they do not know something is relying on the expertise of the person at the podium or the webcam. A genuine educator needs a reflexive, virtuoso mastery of the content, so they can then focus on the complicated business of information delivery. Their prowess should be evident and even taken for granted, so the learners can feel safe. Novices can know they won't be led astray or put to the mercy of someone bluffing through sessions in exchange for a paycheck.

Clearly Delineated Goals

To march hand-in-hand with a coach means that there should be targeted, mutually agreed upon goals. Physical therapists and personal trainers know this, but sometimes traditional classrooms or webinars avoid this crisp delineation in favor of generalized discussion. Jointly designed benchmarks and precise assessments can ensure that every moment matters. For both adult learners and middle schoolers, a specific end is critical to seeing a process through with motivation.

Mentorship

Hesitation and insecurity are natural byproducts of learning. Coming to grips with a difficult skill often requires asking for help. In this confession, the apprentice hopes for a mentor's empathy. Mentorship means partnership. A mentor's role is one part confidante and another part older sibling. It involves the sharing of wisdom and the patience of listening. Even in a crowded classroom, a teacher can try to remember this counseling, advising mindset that lets every learner feel heard.

Feedback

Feedback is perhaps the most difficult thing to give and, therefore, the rarest dynamic in learning. Authentic feedback takes time. It requires a bias-free, assumption-free language to offer constructive advice. Knee-jerk criticism and empty praise are not feedback. In fact, they do more harm than good. Feedback is one-to-one, honest, actionable input about what went well, what didn't, and what steps can be taken to go forward.

Deftness With Necessary Tools

A valued educator needs a fluency with the most apt resources for his or her field. Even a talented professional will draw skepticism if he can't nimbly negotiate the tools of his trade. A chef with a sophisticated palate will still be circumspect if she can't effectively wield her knives. An architect with a revolutionary design will still invite worry if he couldn't safely construct his home. This agility refers both to the latest instruments and the time-honored implements. We can't force children to use typewriters just because we did when we were their age.