I would love to see some crosstabs from that survey data!  Go take the survey – you could win an iPod nano (I know, I know – they should have made it a Touch instead).

One of my first new things to try is a “photo a day” project on Flickr.  Last year I caught glimpses of these projects from some of the edtech bloggers I enjoy.  Over the past week I’ve had the chance to catch some of their retrospectives.  (For inspiration please see: Dean Shareski, Alec Couros, D’Arcy Norman or Stephen Downes. Warning: viewing 366 photos takes time, so get yourself a cup of tea and choose one to enjoy).  It is amazing how you pick up on the change of seasons, the growth of children, the passage of time and the essence of love.

There are various 365 projects on Flickr, but I’ve joined the 2009/365 photos group as it has many members I already consider part of my personal learning network.  Plus, I like the rules they’ve established:

It doesn’t matter what you shoot, or what equipment you use – just that you shoot one photograph each and every day. You don’t have to post them all here – it’s not meant to be a report card or audit tool – but please feel free to share them here.

While I haven’t been able to write a blog post everyday, I hope to manage to click a picture.  I know from the experience of others that it’s not as easy as it sounds, but I believe forcing myself to find something to capture everyday will help me to focus on those small things in each and everday to be thankful for. Pictures can be of anything – big, small, poignant or simply pleasant.  I’ve got my kids permission to occassionally use photos of them as long as I don’t use anything they don’t like.  They don’t yet understand the “why” of this project, but I hope they will “get it” by the end of the year.  Of course I always have my cats to turn to when the kids get shy! (Click here for a link to my photostream.)

Finch and Boo

2009 will be a year devoted to personal learning: learning to be a better photographer, learning more about WordPress (*sigh* i.e. embedding widgets so that they work), learning how to blog “well”, learning how to use a Mac, you get the idea.  I plan to use our 21C tools to engage myself and hopefully learn how to engage others as well.  Most of all, 2009 will be about learning to live more consciously, conscientiously and connected. 

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

My take away thoughts are that we must continue to be as optimistic as Stephen Heppell and believe that these are indeed exciting days to be involved in public education.  The opportunities for education as community, as mutuality, as democracy are here – it is up to “us” to embrace the tools, we cannot wait for “them” to find us.

While the K12 Online Conference is mainly aimed at educators, parents might be interested in taking in Lorna Costantini and Matt Montagne’s presentation, scheduled for October 31. There are 40 presentations to access over the next 2 weeks – there is sure to be something for everyone.

One of the first tasks was to introduce ourselves in the moodle forum. I wrote the following about my goals for the course:

I will consider myself successful if I gain the knowledge and confidence to express to those I have the ability to influence why technology is important to all of us involved in education – students, teachers, parents and administrators. I will consider this course successful if it empowers the participants through our connections, collaboration and creativity. 

Post to moodle – easy. Contribute to the google map of participants – also easy (although someone moved my pin from Hanwell to Minto…?…hmmm).  I read most of the pre-course material and felt prepared going into week 1. And then – Monday morning – OMG.  Rather than get right into the readings I decided to read some of the participant bios and discussions to try to find some people like me to connect with (a major component of a course on Connectivism is making some connections).

Two hours later (the time I had allotted to work on CCK08), and I was lost in debates about epistemology, scepticism, technorealism, communism, constructivism,…I read a lot, but I learned little. But I didn’t give up – having learned my lesson I began the next day with readings. I’m glad I did because of passages like these:

Connectivism finds its roots in the climate of abundance, rapid change, diverse information sources and perspectives, and the critical need to find a way to filter and make sense of the chaos (George Siemens, link)

Previous conceptions of learning rested heavily on information and knowledge acquisition. The fundamental need of learning in our society has changed. Due to rapid growth of knowledge, the act of learning has shifted from acquisition to assimilation, from understanding of individual elements to comprehending an entire space and, thereby, understanding how elements connect. (George Siemens, link)

 This I understand, and more importantly I believe. So on I go.

Wolk remarks:

“If the experience of “doing school” destroys children’s spirit to learn, their sense of wonder, their curiosity about the world, and their willingness to care for the human condition, have we succeeded as educators, no matter how well our students do on standardized tests?”

He goes on to explore 11 ways that educators can integrate JOY into the classroom, including: Give Students Choice, Take Time to Tinker, Get Outside, and Show Off Student Work, and he make an important distrinction between joy and fun.   

Many of the ideas are simple and in fact I’ve seen many examples in local schools, but the impact we could have by integrating 9, 10 or all 11 of the ideas would be wonderful to see.

Recently I had the opportunity to briefly address around 900 teachers in the school District where I serve as an Education Council member.  The primary purpose of District Councils in New Brunswick is to set the overall vision and goals that are in turn operationalized by District Staff.  We are beginning a new 4 year term and will be undertaking a great deal of strategic planning in the next few months - finding a common focus, revisiting mission statements, goals and strategies, and reinvigorating our education plan. 

While I was officially at the event to bring greetings on behalf of the Council, I decided to take the opportunity to invite teachers to get involved in our strategic planning. I thought it best to give them an example of what the future could look like.  I described for them one vision of the future referenced in the OECD’s excellent document Schooling for Tomorrow, which I referenced in the post “The school is dead…Long live the school“. (Hence the prevalence of the word “scenario” in the above cloud). 

I’ve played around with various Wordle clouds since finding this tool several months ago, and I’ve read some interesting points of view as edtech bloggers have played with the tool and debated the educational value of it. This is the first time I’ve used it to really analyze a piece of my writing for content and I have the following observations:

• Wordle is a lot of fun. I enjoy playing with the fonts, colours and other alterable aspects.
• But it can be more than fun.  Finding the right combinations to convey the message you want is a good exercise. I chose the above cloud for the separation it created for the word “learning” – it was the central focus of my remarks and I like how it floats on its own.
• It is amazing how many different words one can say in a few minutes. Too many words can be distracting from the message so I cut this cloud down to the top 100 words.
• I created this wordle cloud after the fact, but there is great potential to use the tool ahead of time to help me shape the message I want to convey. 
• I use the word ”really” much too often. 

There are a lot of people playing around with Wordle - try it for yourself and check out the gallery.  It is a great little tool – for work and for play.

It is the hope of all three organizations that this site will be used by youth, educators, parents and community members as a place to make connections, explore ideas, share experiences and get support. By facilitating discussions around the site and around the idea of transforming education, we can begin the process of shifting public consciousness and inspire a groundswell of activities, initiatives and pressure that will be a force for the re-invention of education.

Last summer I attended one of John Abbott’s lectures titled “Let Children be Children” and was very interested in his theories about how brain research should be integrated into how we design our learning systems. At changelearning.ca you can find many links to Abbott’s work as well as many other resources. The site brings an interesting mix of information together: research papers, videos, blogs and forums. Topics are varied and include motivation, engagement, creativity and 21st century skills. 

This website is aiming to bring together all those with a passion for public education in Canada to share information and ideas.  It is still in the early stages, but hopefully others will join in soon and we really can CHANGE LEARNING.

Stakeholders at each “level” (province, district, school) have the authority to make certain decisions, as well as the capacity to involve other stakeholders in decision making. Every few years we endure swings from centralization to decentralization and each time we create confusion, lack of empowerment, and dis-engagement of stakeholders at all levels. Our public education system is very bureaucratic and protective and though it often consults the public, it rarely engages the public in collaborative decision making.

A greater emphasis on collaborative decisions made through public engagement would mean better decisions and likely greater satisfaction with the results. So while the Minister would have the ultimate authority for any major decision, support for decisions made via a collaborative effort would be greater and the political price for the decision easier to absorb.

How do we move from schools as factories to schools as community learning centres? How do we foster collaborative decision making? How do we engage reluctant participants? How do we make sure students are full participants in the decision-making process? Which decisions do we need to work together on, and which decisions should each of us be empowered to make on our own?

I have more questions than answers, but I hope that what I experienced today was the beginning of citizen engagement in public education in NB.

While the research did not address my questions it did make some very interesting recommendations about involving parents in the development of a technology-rich school environment.  The report clearly encourages us to move from seeing the Internet as a “threat” to embracing it as an “opportunity”.

The QESBA Task Force set out a framework of prinicples to guide policy and practice which includes the following:

…parents can and must be active partners in better understanding the dynamics and impact of new technologies on their children, and in engaging and guiding them in the responsible and accountable use of those technologies.

There are many good recommendations in the report, but the following are pertinent to parental involvement.

• Educate and involve community partners in responsible and informed Internet use
  • Involve students, teachers and parents directly in developing and delivering (as well as receiving) information, skills and approaches on rules of Internet use, conduct and respect for privacy.
  • Enhance on-going and open communications between school and home on these issues. Seek to involve the co-operation, collaboration and participation of parents who are a key source behind the possibility for action and change.
  • Provide accessible materials, interactive training for interested parents on Internet use and abuse, appropriate supervision techniques and modeling behavior for their own consideration.

The authors of the report also recognized the importance of involving students in this process. I particularly like the following statement:

The task force has learned of a pressing need for educational and transformative approaches and preventative practices to more fully engage students in dialogue, provide them with responsibility, leadership and learning opportunities within ethical frameworks that guide both young people and adult stakeholders to appreciate the impact of their words and expressions on others.  

And this recommendation:

• Encourage young technology users to work with adults to teach them more about the technologies, and show confidence in their expertise.

 The QESBA report encourages a reasoned, balanced and collaborative approach to embracing 21C tools. Hopefully it will be read by school boards and governance bodies across Canada.

Thank you Sharon for bringing it to my attention.

As a parent interested in engaging other parents in our education system I wondered if these web service companies would go beyond what a parent would need to assess their own child’s performance – could they be used to increase the involvement of parents in schools, and ultimately to engage parents in school improvement planning? I decided to explore a few of these commercial school data systems and as in everything I found there is a wide variety of services – some simply offer parents access to information on grades, homework, and attendance, while others go much further and provide tools for multi-level communication and collaboration.   

Those of us involved in education governance often discuss the role of communication in increasing parent involvement/engagement, we talk about the processof communication.  Some of us see great potential in using web technology to improve this process – to reach more people where they are, when they want and how they want. Web tools such as blogs, wikis, nings and webcasts provide us with a lot of options for reaching parents (and many of them are free!). So in the absence of an integrated school community management system accessible to parents these tools could be quite useful.

But what kind of information should we be sharing to improve collaboration? What do parents need to know and discuss in order to be engaged in schools?

In my province we are a long way from finding that tipping point from enough information to too much.  A large number of parents I talk to do not feel really connected to what is happening with their child in the classroom, and fewer are aware of what is happening educationally on a school wide basis. They want to have more frequent contact with classroom teachers as well as school administrators. Until parents feel there is adequate communication with teachers and principals can we really expect them to feel comfortable in a open, collaborative school improvement process?