Its been a busy couple of weeks. Thought I’d fill ya’ll in on one project I’m doing just for the intrinsic rewards. I’ve been enlisted as a designer for a Second Life project that intends to create a virtual model promoting a concept of sustainable urban housing units called Alley Flats. The Basic Initiative, from the University of Texas (Austin), established this concept that developed a model for housing units that would essentially fit in the back yards of existing homes and result in smaller sub-houses that front the alleys between the main roads. The home owner could then either rent the smaller house or move in and rent their main house. This essentially adds to the available housing while at the same time providing income opportunity while maintaining the character of the existing neighborhoods.

I’ve been working at creating a Second Life rendition of one of the two flats that are actually going to be built in Austin, TX. The intent of the SL project is to provide a center of information about this project that can be shared with communities around the world. Here’s the SLURL, but I’m not sure if the area is opened up for visitors yet.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Educators%20Coop%201/155/105/21/

I’d say I’m about half way done with a lot of work left to do. Turned out to be a much bigger commitment than I anticipated, but its pretty interesting and I’m gaining a lot of experience building - a skill set I’m sure could come in handy. And its kind of therapeutic as well. Open house event scheduled for December 6th

Well I just got a promotion. At least that’s what my nametag says. When my superintendent couldn’t attend the PSBA conference this week, I took his spot (entusiastically because I noticed David Warlick was giving a keynote). Well, they screwed up my nametag and it now indicates that I am the Superintendent. I noticed you get treated better as superintendent than tech director, at least at this conference…lol.

This morning’s keynote was David Warlick. He’s great, but I did see this presentation before (I think it was one he delivered at this summer’s NECC conference). Still liked it. Basically his general premise is that we should stop focusing on integrating technology into the curriculum and start focusing on technology literacy instead. I think it hit home with the audience (primarily school directors) and the message was well recieved. I totally agree with him, but would argue that technology integration does serve to a good extent to move us toward focusing on the technology literacies. We need to synthesize both activities - integrating activities at the same time we improve the literacy skills (of BOTH teacher and student).

David is presenting a longer session at 1:00. I’ll go try to get a password so I can blog that one live. It is so annoying that you can’t get on the web in the conference rooms at the Hershey Lodge - I’ve come to rely on continuous access and recording my notes here.

…time passes…

AAARRRGGHHH…I hate it when you can’t get on the network. Have to resort to composing my thoughts in Word and then a little copy/paste action if I happen to remember after I reestablish my link to the metaverse. Weird isn’t it how we rely so heavily on the continuity of our connectedness. However, I guess spellcheck is nice.
Anyhow…David presents another session…YEA!
He starts this session showing the “I make a difference” video.
Q&A session…couple of the questions from board members revolved around how do school leaders “cheerlead” this initiative of school reform and technology literacy. Also concerns regarding the higher-order tech literacy skills .

One board member was very interested in Skype and seemed to generate a lot of interest among other members of the audience. That makes me think  I really should do a professional development activity focusing on Skype. I wonder if we can deploy Skype via SMS?
How do students demonstrate competency? “What kind of test would show they have achieved competency/proficiency.?” David mentioned a school where they have instilled a ‘rule’ where the students (after a certain grade level) can only submit assignments digitally. He indicated that this has served as a powerful catalyst that instilled many more skills – would really push teachers and students to use the technology and discover new ways of working in the digital world.
Demo of SecondLife. “What I find fascinating about it is the mathematics involved.”

Beacon School
Question – Do you see any implications for Second Life on the futures eof education?
Three Converging Conditions
1. Unpredictable Future
Cited data from Richard Florida’s Rise of the Creative Class, indicating that in the next five (??) years we will lose 400,000 manufacturing jobs, but gain 200,000 science and engineering jobs and, more importantly, 500,000 creative arts jobs.

“Our kids are different” – much more connected, but we prevent them from being who they are as soon as they walk into the classroom. We try to make them the students that we want to teach instead of teaching the students that they are.

2. Information-Savvy Students
These are the kids that will be defining the future. Teachers need the same skills – skills to develop the learning communities that allow them to get the skils they need to get when they need to get it. “There is power in that community.” But most of our kids aren’t provided the supports that develop healthy communities.
Students have created a “new grammar”. (WOMBAT – waste of money brains and time)

The traditional definition of what it means to be a teacher and the traditional focus of what it means to be a learner are out of alignment – need to bring those two concepts into better alignment. Teachers need to model themselves as ‘MASTER LEARNERS’.
Video games – showed an impressive video demo of Assassin’s Creed from Xbox. It shows a very free-form environment. [This might have relevance for my presentation on Second Life – draw a parallel between the high quality video environment in the latest games and the tools used and interface of SL]

David Williamson Shaffer – A game must have Roles and Rules. You play some type of role and operate within some ruleset. Maybe educators need to structure lessons with this in mind
Machinima –

RSS –
Netvibes.com - recommended aggregator

Closed with his wearenotafraid.com blog spiel.

He never did get to the 3rd item… But stll a great presentation. I really really like the informal approach with the audience interaction.

The new Montrose Adult School needed another teacher for a digital photography class. I thought it might be an interesting experience so I volunteered. I really like the way Will Richardson gives presentations using a wiki to track the flow of things and provide links and a lasting record of the discussion so I decided to create my own for this class. Also helps as an organizational tool in building the instructional content.

I’ll have to get started on one for my presentation at the BlendedSchools conference in October.

And I had been sooo good about posting regularly, then I go and take a couple weeks off…

Been a busy couple of weeks. First off, got the Lasik surgery and I’ve got to say if I had known what was involved and what the results would be I would have saved some money and done this ten years ago (of course, the technology has got to be vastly improved since then). Absolutely AWESOME. That’s the only way I can describe it. The technology involved in the procedure alone is fascinating. The whole thing is done with lasers now. One (called the IntraLase laser) is used to cut a flap on your cornea and create a thin layer that is easily peeled back by the doctor before placing the eye under the eximer laser to reshape the layers underneath, thereby correcting your vision. The eximer even locks on to your eye and makes adjustments for any tiny little eye movements during the procedure. The whole process literally takes less than five minutes - a total of maybe 30 seconds of laser per eye between both lasers. AWESOME. I was able to sit up after the procedure and see perfectly. No pain. No discomfort. The biggest annoyance of the whole process is the loads of drops you have to use gumming up your vision. Eyes are periodically mildly itchy for a couple two three days, but since the fourth day I have had no dryness or itchyness or any irritation of any kind. And my sight is perfect. Better than perfect. No more contacts, no more glasses. AWESOME. In case you were interested, I had my procedure done by Dr. Tom Boland at the Northeast Eye Institute in Scranton. Not cheap, but these guys are the best.

I’ve been spending a lot of time on what I will hesitantly describe as ‘research’ on the applicaiton of the virtual environment of Second Life. Second Life is a MUVE (Muli-User Virtual Environment). It is massively popular - nearly 40,000 people within the virtual world of SL at any particular time and millions of registered users woldwide. I think it might have enormous potential in education, but I’m not sure. The question is beginning to absolutely facsinate me and I am spending entirely too much time in this world of make believe trying to answer it. My charater’s (or avatar as it is correctly called) name is Zipplestich Bing. I have joined a group of researchers from the University of Texas that have created a region within SL called the Educators Coop. This has provided me with access to some personal ‘land’ where I can create a sort of ‘home-base’ within SL, and the goal of the Coop is to bring together a diverse group of educators that are focused on exploring the application of these virtual envoronments in the future of education. The focus seems to favor higher education applicaiton, but there are a few members of the coop that are K-12 so I am looking forward to developing more collaborate relationships and riding the leading (or bleeding) edge of the future of instructional delivery mechanisms.

What I find most interesting and educationally applicable with SL is the fact that the entire ‘world’ is interactive and manipulable. Objects can be created or edited using a robust but simple pallate of tools. It has its own scripting language so scripts can be created and applied to objects. There is an entire in-world economy (similar to the economies that have developed within other online games like World of Warcraft) that literally translate into a real exchange rate between game money and real money. Objects can be created, bought, sold, borrowed, traded. Real estate is a large focus as well - land can be sold or purchased, terraformed, built upon, improved, speculated upon. I see it the entire SL world as a really giant set of legos. And I loved legos. Haven’t had the opportunity to play with legos in a long time, but I’m making up for it now. This really fits in well with what Mitchel Resnick and his research group at the MIT Media Lab would describe as Lifelong Kindergarten.

I will definately be posting more on my experiences in SL. It has captured by interest and attention. Can it do the same for our students?

Check out this mock periodic chart listing a bunch of good internet resources.  Found it over on Bib2.0, a new blog I found tonight focusing on educational technology with an eye on the school library.  Its published by Jeri Hurd from Pittsburgh.  Another tool that I noticed while visiting was stu.dicio.us, providing some useful tools for students.

Found another new read tonight as well - The Committed Sardine Blog which is put together by the well-known Ian Jukes. The following is an excerpt from their ‘about us’  thing that I found interesting…

“…little known fact about the blue whale is that it is so large that when it decides to swim in a different direction, it can take 2 to 3 minutes to turn 180 degrees. That’s the reason why some people draw a parallel between the blue whale and school. It just seems to take forever for schools to turn things around. Our ability to adapt to changing times helps explain at least in part the rise in demand for vouchers, charter schools, home schooling and virtual schools. There are some people who just don’t believe or don’t want the public school system to turn things around in time.”

While I love the concept and the analogy of the whale and a critical mass of sardines that can shift the entire school, I didn’t really find much content on here worthwhile.  It was more along the lines of a Slashdot for education.

As long as I’m posting some random links here, I want to give a shout out to Google Docs & Spreadsheets.  While I have been aware of these tools for a long time now, I really got turned onto them at NECC and I can see some fantastic application of these fantastic resources in the classroom.  Some of the most powerful features include some decent compatability with MS Office as well as a great sharing feature that allows you to identify people to sahre your document with just by typing their email.  Very slick.