ISTE Connects

The Rewards of Being an Award Judge

ISTE Award Judges — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 17:45:45 GMT

As part of my work at ISTE, I’ve been helping to judge the Sylvia Charp award for District Innovation in Technology since it started in 2004. The award submission process does involve some paperwork, but has its own reward.

Review your district’s vision and implementation plans to help capture what you’ve already done. Document where you are with the NETS essential conditions (PDF) and you’ll see better what your next steps ought to be.

Reflecting on your work this way leads to fine-tuning and new ideas.

Many school districts embark on multiple-year plans, usually three to five years. If you enter the contest after the first year, you may be not far enough along to have significant results, but each year you can add your gains and submit again. As you review your progress, you may recharge your own batteries in the process!

Anita McAnear
Sylvia Charp Award Judge
ISTE Conference Chair and Acquisitions Editor

I would strongly recommend participating in the process of judging award nominations for ISTE. In addition to contributing to the good of the ISTE community and to the education of children around the world, I feel there are several tangible benefits to the individual involved in the process.

These include (but of course are not limited to):
• Networking with others. Judging the awards gives one the opportunity to virtually connect with other folks with similar interests around the world.
• Seeing what leaders in educational technology are doing in their classrooms and libraries. It is inspiring and uplifting to see some of the creative and caring things going on in so many places. As a judge, one gets to see not only the projects of the final award winners, but also of other nominees as well.
• Getting new ideas for your own work. Becoming aware of good ideas and projects through this process gives one many new ideas, both for new projects to use with one’s students and teachers, but also of how one might restructure or manage existing projects.

Tim Staal
SIGMS Technology Innovation Award Judge
Executive Director, MAME (The Michigan Association for Media in Education)

I’ve been serving as a judge for the Outstanding Young Educator Award since it launched in 2010, and it’s one of my favorite responsibilities. Seeing the amazing work of educators in the field—particularly those who are new to the field—is inspiring and really helps identify educators and projects to highlight to the rest of ISTE membership. Some of these educators are right out of school and have new ideas that they’re excited to implement. Others have been in their job for a few years and already have tried and true teaching practices for creating engaging lessons.

It’s through this process that I first encountered Adam Bellow (the 2011 Outstanding Young Educator) and his EduTecher website (an incredible collection of resources, videos, and guides for the connected teacher). It’s also through the OYEA that I first met Mary Beth Hertz, a remarkable technology teacher in Philadelphia who helped start and continues to help organize #edchat, one of our favorite social media resources for teachers. It’s how I met Josh Stumpenhorst, this year’s Illinois Teacher of the Year, and Caroline Haebig, an inspiring teacher in Wisconsin who uses film and video projects to help learning come alive for her students. I could go on and on about the amazing young educators we encounter each year through this process.

Right away, it became clear to us that we couldn’t pick just one, and so we expanded the circle to include a cohort of Emerging Leaders each year. These 3-5 educators provide ISTE with input, help bring a young educator perspective to our magazine and programming, and act as a planning group for many of the young educator network initiatives and events year round and at ISTE’s annual conference.

If you know of a young educator who’s doing great things and whose work would enlighten and inspire the community, consider making a nomination!

Jennifer Ragan-Fore
Outstanding Young Educator Award Judge
ISTE Director of New Media and Member Communities

Consider nominating yourself, a colleague or your district for an ISTE award or sign up to volunteer as an award judge. Nominations close March 1, 2012.

An Uninspired Presidential Budget... With Promise

Patrick Riccards — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 12:51:43 GMT

And here we thought Groundhog’s Day was February 2.

Earlier this week, President Obama unveiled his FY2013 federal budget proposal. This year’s budget – at least in terms of K-12 education – is a reprise of what we have seen in previous years. Another small increase for the U.S. Department of Education. Another round of proposed Race to the Top money. Another commitment for edujobs money. Another effort to “consolidate” smaller programs and turn them into competitive grant efforts. We are even seeing yet another round of federal school construction funding.

For those not looking for “vintage” federal education budgets, we have the somewhat new “Community College Career Fund,” an $8 billion partnership between the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Labor to continue our focus on college-career readiness.

All told, we are looking at a federal budget that is relatively uninspired. We are revisiting the ideas put forward in the past, but ultimately rejected by Congress. We are looking at another $300 million in RttT, while we still wait to see if the first and second rounds were effective. And we again generally fail to address the needs and value that education technology provides.

But there is a little glimpse of hope. Following the unveiling of the presidential budget, the White House focused on its plans to create a new $5 billion competitive grant program focused on teacher quality. As Education Week notes, it is “a new, competitive grant program that would help states take what the administration is billing as big, ‘bold’ steps to overhaul teacher quality. For example, states could use the funds to revamp colleges of education and make them more selective, make sure teachers’ salaries are tied to student achievement, improve professional develop and offer teachers more planning time, and craft new evaluation systems.”

The White House also seeks to redirect the $2.5 billion a year currently used under Title II to reduce class sizes and improve professional development offerings into another competitive grant program targeting STEM and teacher prep.

If one accepts competitive grants as a way of driving improvement, these developments are quite promising. But as we’ve seen in recent years, the devil is in the details. What will ED prioritize in the competitive grant process? What will earn extra points in the scoring? How will we ultimately define teacher quality?

Last year, I wrote on these pages about the value of establishing a new round of Race to the Top focused on ed tech priorities. So as we look at these new competitive grant programs – particularly those targeting teacher quality – why not focus them even further on education technology? Priority points for those who adhere to ISTE’s digital age standards, the NETS. Greater attention for those who link teacher tech skills to classroom learning. Extra help for those who link ed tech instruction to the STEM priorities.

If what is old is now new again, we need to go back and look at what works. How do we better equip our educators for their 21st century classrooms? How do we build on the successes of programs like EETT? How do we truly invest in the skills that ultimately lead to the classroom outcomes we seek?

Yes, we must remember that these are merely the suggestions of the President and his Administration. Congress will now have its say, and this budget will end far differently than it started. But isn’t now the time to advocate to those Senators and Representatives about how we can improve the President’s recommendations and how we can better serve the teachers and kids in the classroom?

Patrick Riccards is the author of Eduflack blog. The opinions expressed here are his own.

Passion Driven: Reflections of an Outstanding Young Educator

Adam Bellow — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 15:48:20 GMT

Being named the ISTE Outstanding Young Educator last year was a tremendous honor. Having nothing but admiration and respect for my fellow educators and ISTE members, it was incredibly humbling to be selected for this award. I remember excitedly calling my wife and parents to tell them of the overwhelming feeling of pride I felt at the moment I found out. It was pride that stemmed not from being named a “winner”, but from being recognized for the work I was and continue to do. As you likely know, our community is littered with talented and dedicated educators that do amazing things each and every day to make a positive impact on education and the life of students. So to be selected as a person doing good work from a field of spectacular educators was an amazing feeling. I am so very proud to be an ISTE member and a part of the Young Educator Network that is filled with so many young and passionate educators making a difference in today’s classrooms.

I have worked as an educator for almost ten years. Starting out as a High School English teacher I was always working with technology to allow my students to build and tell digital stories and express themselves in unique ways. But my passion for educational technology really came into play in 2004. One of the required courses as part of my Masters Degree in Education was focused on technology in the classroom. After taking the class, while still a student, I was asked to teach the course for the following semester.

It was during this time that I started to explore web-based tools and in 2007 I started a little web resource that grew to become the website www.eduTecher.net. Originally, eduTecher’s purpose was to allow me a place to share all the great free web tools I had been exploring online with my students. The site has grown in scope and reach over the past four years and is now used by teachers, students, and parents all over the world. There are also free mobile apps available that are downloaded on more than 60,000 devices in over 47 countries.

Currently I work as the Senior Director of Educational Technology and Student Services for the College Board’s Advanced Placement program. I am heading up several projects that will help students succeed in their academic endeavors.

In 2008 I began speaking at conferences about education and technology in the classroom. It is such an honor to be asked to speak at conferences around the country and help work with schools to impact positive change. In addition to working, running eduTecher, and speaking, I also organize and run the Change the World charity campaign that you can read more about at www.eduTecher.net/change.

Winning an award is a huge honor – but it is not like winning the lottery. What I mean by that is that your world won’t change unless you continue to do the work that was got you recognized in the first place.

Currently I am working on adding even more features to eduTecher and am already hard at work on my presentations for this summer’s ISTE conference as well as working on some yet to be announced projects for students and educators.

I am so lucky to be part of the educational technology community and I will continue the work for which I was recognized by ISTE and try to do whatever I can to help educators and students on a daily basis.

Recognition by my fellow ISTE members was something I will never forget and I look forward to reuniting with so many wonderful teachers and passionate educators this summer in San Diego.

Adam Bellow is Founder and President of eduTecher, Senior Director of Educational Technology and Student Services at The College Board, and awardee of the 2011 ISTE Outstanding Young Educator Award. The views expressed here are his own.

Technology Innovation in the Classroom: Reflections of an ISTE Award Winner

Cynthia Cassidy — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:50:20 GMT

If you're like me, you probably always end up with the losing lottery ticket and come home empty-handed from the Tricky Tray. So when I was called into my principal's office and heard that Michelle Cook and I had been awarded the ISTE SIGMS Technology Innovation Award in the secondary category, my brain stopped at "second". As we left the office, I said to Michelle, “I wonder who won first?” and then was completely embarrassed as she proceeded to question my listening comprehension skills.

It took awhile for me to believe that our lesson that challenged students to explore the question, "Who owns History?" was the first place winner. We both knew of great things going on in schools in our local area and throughout the US, never mind the world! But what we were starting to learn was that you actually have to be in it to win it.

Submitting proposals, filling out applications, and gathering letters of support takes time and energy. Sometimes it seems like a waste of time. However, even though there’s no guarantee that you’ll be recognized, I think there is always a reward. In my experience, the process of applying for any award or grant provides something incredibly valuable to educators – time to reflect and self-assess. It forces you to look critically at your work and motivates you to make improvements.

Even though our lesson was award-winning, it didn’t mean it was perfect. After reflecting on the lesson during the award submission process, Michelle and I decided to take the project a step further. So this year, after our students used the interactive, Facebook-like, Web 2.0 tool, SCAN, to role-play responses to the question of whether artifacts should be returned to their home country, they were asked to use the lesson as a model to direct their own learning. Our students were going to write their own SCAN lessons.

Our students explored nonfiction texts to uncover interesting topics, from which they generated their own questions, such as “Should people be allowed to own exotic animals?” Once a group settled on a question, the group members identified four stakeholders in the problem and each group member then locates resources that support his/her point of view. As a culminating activity, the “best” project in the class will be uploaded to SCAN and the class will work through their classmates’ project.

Reflecting on our lesson gave us ideas as to how to improve it, and reading the books we received from ISTE as part of our award has led to new project ideas. As a result of sharing these books and my experience at ISTE, my seventh grade language arts classes are bookmapping novels in language arts and I’ve refined the digital storytelling projects my teachers were already assigning. The award also provided us with a cash award that we used to purchase iPads for the media center. Student volunteers now spend time reviewing and recommending apps to be used by students in the developing iPad stations.

The experience of applying for and winning the Technology Innovation Award has helped me be a better educator, one that self-reflects and continually modifies lessons to more effectively meet the needs of my students. It’s also made me realize that the easiest way for all of us to improve our skills is to share our ideas, our problems, and our accomplishments. That’s what I love most about ISTE – I know that when I need an idea or support, there’s an ISTE community or group just a click away.

Cynthia Cassidy is the Media Specialist at Mount Olive Middle School and awardee of ISTE SIGMS Technology Innovation Award.

Pinterest for Educators

Katie Stansberry — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:50:28 GMT

Considering the money behind Google’s latest attempts at social networking, it’s a bit surprising that the social photo-sharing network Pinterest has emerged as the breakout online community of 2012.

Pinterest is a visual bulletin board that enables users to create inspiration boards of images from across the web. Although the network has been around for nearly two years, it has really taken off in the last couple months. The most popular topics for pins tend to revolve around food, fashion and home design, and there is a growing community of users creating boards on education related topics.

Here’s a guide to the basics of Pinterest for educators interested in checking out what’s so Pinteresting.

- A pin is an image added by a user to a Pinterest board. Users can add comments to their pins, include links to the original Pin site, or upload pins from their hard drive.
- User pins are collected on boards, usually organized by topic or subject.
- Pinners are frequent users of Pinterest.
- Pins can be repinned by community members to replicate pins on other boards.

Technically, Pinterest is open only to invited users, but you can sign up for an invite on the site’s homepage and one should arrive shortly.

To get you started, here are a few users that have collected some amazing resources for educators:

Wendy is a prolific Pinterest user (she has created more than 2222 Pins) with eclectic interests. Scroll to the bottom of her page to see a series of education-oriented boards organized by lesson type and subject area.
Favorite board: Children's Books Authors: Blogs & Websites

Pinner Tracy Cousino has created several boards with ideas for things like decorating classrooms, lesson plans and creating kid-friendly crafts. These resources are best suited for elementary students.
Favorite board: Clever Classroom Ideas

Anna Moon’s Pinterest presence is a bit like Madonna’s halftime show: bold, chaotic and full of unexpected elements. Most of the pins that relate to education are clustered in one board that is a cacophony of ideas, images and comments on ways to engage students.
Favorite board: Fun Teacher Ideas

I really enjoy Lisa Manes’ boards because she not only shares some great lesson ideas, she also points out adherence to Common Core standards in many of her pins.
Favorite board: Marvelous Math

Lisa M. is relatively new to Pinterest, but she has created some extremely helpful collections of resources. In addition to handy ed tech recommendations, Lisa has also created a board of recommended teacher bloggers. It’s a great way to share PD resources through a visual network.
Favorite board: Blogalicious! Teacher Blogs You'll Love!

Happy pinning!

Katie Stansberry authors the blog Teaching with Tech. She is the former community manager of ISTE Connects.

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Tech Integration (Hint: It's All about PD!)

Chuck Dinsfriend — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:07:53 GMT

When reviewing new technology tools, keep in mind that they are just that—tools. Therefore, the key is to focus your attention and energy on the outcome. Ideally, new tools are selected because they serve a critical purpose in accomplishing excellent learning and teaching. If the new tool gets in the way of that overarching purpose, then the implementation will fail.

Here are seven things to consider about rolling out new tools:

Gain stakeholder buy-in: Get your staff onboard before purchasing a tool. This will help build the momentum required for successful implementation.

Don’t forget about IT buy-in: Engage your technology leaders in the conversation regarding any new technology before any decision is made to buy. Make sure the IT team understands how the new technology works and why it is being used.

Demand built-in PD: Ongoing, job-embedded PD is one of the best ways to guarantee success. Whether you’re considering a software application or a piece of hardware, it is imperative that the project management team arrange to train all staff involved, from the end users to the IT services team. Most vendors are more than willing to include training in the proposal because they have a stake in the success of the venture.

Train before roll-out: Make sure the new product or tool is installed on users’ computers before training so they can use it immediately. That way educators will be more likely to internalize what they have learned and begin to integrate it into their regular practice.

Build a cadre of experts: A great way to provide technical support to your users is to train one subject matter expert (SME) per school building. But don’t select your most tech-savvy user for this position. Someone who has the ability to learn and is not afraid to try new things can often be the best advocate for a new program.

Avoid selecting the wrong tools: Work with your IT Services department to avoid the pitfalls of buying tools that don’t match your infrastructure’s requirements. Many great technology tools have problems that educators often overlook due to their lack of expertise with networking and technology infrastructure, setup, and maintenance. In the early strategic planning conversations, consider pitfalls and whether another option with equal educational value would be better.

Train, train, train. Repeat: Plan to train and repeat training. Make it available in the beginning, throughout the early stages of implementation, and as long as you plan to use the tool, device or software. New staff will need training, other staff will need refresher training, and technology staff will need to upgrade their skills periodically.

Chuck Dinsfriend is the director of information technology for ISTE. He previously worked for 18 years in IT leadership for K-12 schools.

SOPA, PIPA, and now ACTA: What do all these anti-piracy acts mean for schools?

Vicki Davis — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 12:33:19 GMT

SOPA is not yesterday’s news, it is tomorrow’s topic. The education world reeled last month as we realized just how many of our students were using Wikipedia in their research. In protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the US Senate’s version, the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), Wikipedia blacked out, Google covered its logo, and many other sites were taken down to bring attention to this legislation.

“But we can claim fair use,” say many educators. “This law wouldn’t affect education.”

Look deeper and you can see that this is wrong. It does affect you and everything you do. It gives us an insight into just the first battle we will see between lawmakers and digizens (digital citizens) about who will control this Internet.

Let’s make one thing clear, copyright infringment is wrong and is already illegal according to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) (PDF). Lawmakers are trying to get at “rogue” sites that operate in other countries where the US has no jurisdiction but are becoming overseas “safe houses” for pirated movies, films, and other content.

What are SOPA and PIPA?
If you’re well educated on this topic, skip this, but we cannot assume that everyone understands what these acts would do. I stopped every class during the week of blackouts and protests and taught how the Internet works. The Internet domain name services (.com .org, etc.) are controlled by a central agency, ICANN or Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. This nonprofit agency determines what extensions can be sold and keeps the master list of all domain names.

Computers think in numbers (data) but we humans think in words (information). Every server (and computer) on the Internet has a special number called an IP address. This number is pretty long and would be impossible for most people to remember. So, instead of using numbers, we use names. ICANN has a list of the names and the numbered addresses for where each name should point. This data is housed in a database that is literally distributed throughout the world in the Domain Name System (servers are called DNS servers).

SOPA and PIPA would have effectively inserted a kill switch between the domain name and the address. So, if a copyright holder claimed that someone had infringed upon their copyright, it would have been possible to go into some sort of system and break the link between the domain name and their numbered address. This means that if YouTube.com had one pirated video and the copyright holder went into the SOPA-system (whatever that would have looked like), in theory, that one video could cause the entire YouTube domain name to lead to a page saying something like “this site has been taken down for piracy.” In practice, YouTube’s IP address would still work but who would know that (at least initially.) Additionally, there was no provision in the law for this take-down to go through a judge or any sort of arbiter.

Why do educators care?
Some of you could care less about Wikipedia going down. In fact, you might be pleased. But there are bigger implications here. Let me illustrate with a first-hand experience of trying to claim fair use.

The Digiteen project is managed by our nonprofit Flat Classroom Conference and Live Events to help us cover the ongoing costs of managing the bi-annual conference. We teach about digital citizenship and ask our students to follow copyright laws even though we could claim fair use. Three years ago we received a “take-down notice” for an innocuous photo that someone claimed was theirs that was uploaded as a profile picture on our Ning. (As discussed in chapter 5 of our new book) I responded that we were a nonprofit and these were schools and we claimed fair use.

We planned to remove it but wanted to work with the student involved and create a teachable moment for us all. However, the clock was ticking and our entire Ning was going to be removed from the system because of this photo. After some time (and lack of response from Ning when we had mentioned fair use) we became alarmed that there really was no mechanism to “claim” fair use.

Ning was a for-profit company, so did that trump our claim of fair use even though we were using their platform as a nonprofit and as schools? We never found out because we couldn’t risk losing everything for one photo. We deleted the photo. The teachable moment and claim of fair use was gone; we couldn’t risk it.

Fair use is a lovely idea, but the ability to actually claim fair use is questionable in my experience.

So, in reality, SOPA jeopardized everything for Flat Classroom projects. Our projects could come to a screeching halt when some company that didn’t understand fair use hit the trigger to knock down any of our sites. Students are going to mess up in copyright. We are teaching these things because they don’t understand them, so by definition they aren’t 100% there yet. But SOPA didn’t allow for any failure - 100% compliance, or, if we catch you, we can kill your domain name. This would result in unmanageable online projects where students are involved.

ICANN see the future
The bigger issue is what this has triggered. There is pressure from the US Commerce department on ICANN because of their desire to release new top level domains (the gTLD program) for a whopping $185,000. ICANN argues that this is to allow non-english characters in a domain (instead of .com it would be another language) but also has pointed out that companies like .disney could have their own domain.

ICANN is a nonprofit but every time they release new domains, their coffers are full. The US Federal Trade Commission says that this is not good for consumers and adds no value.
Increasing tension between the US Commerce department (PDF) and ICANN as well as the realization that SOPA was not just a US law has countries like Russia, India, and China advocating that ICANN needs to be under United Nations (UN control), according to a recent NPR report. (This view has been refuted by others, however.)

Publishers in the US are arguing that the rights of their artists and authors aren’t being respected and that billions’ worth of intellectual property are stolen every day. They need more than a copy right, they need a copy protection and today’s internet doesn’t do either.

Enter ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, negotiated “in secret” by the US, European Community, Switzerland, and Japan, and joined by many other countries. Like SOPA, ACTA has far reaching intellectual property implications but doesn’t require congressional approval as it is a treaty. And yes, there is a Stop ACTA movement already mobilizing.

How are we, as educators, to make sense of all of this? How does it impact us? What role will intellectual property play in our ability to run public educational networks? We’re dealing with many unknowns, but let’s look at what we can do.

Education’s Role
1- Help stop demand for pirated material at the source
The greatest filter is the human brain. We are raising a generation of students who don’t respect copyright and download free music any chance they get. They’ll watch a pirated copy of Twilight on TV Shack without thinking twice, even if they have to be wary of malware pop-ups. If a person can pirate it, they will. We must show that we respect copyright. And even if, as educators, we can claim fair use, we want students to be ready for a world where they probably can’t.

2- Advocate to make “A+” quality permissible to educators
But we also need artists and musicians to allow students to contact them and claim permission for using their work in films and other creative endeavors. This is the missing link.

We need a clearinghouse to let us license and remix work from the commercial sector and none exists, because everyone says that we can claim fair use. However, the line also blurs because there are times students create something that profoundly impacts their lives and moves from education to commercial.

For example, we have a Google 20% time project in my 9th grade computer fundamentals class that we call the “Freshman Project” where students spend 20% of their time on the project of their choice. One student @Apps_for_Autism is testing and rating apps for autism and another is recording an album of his piano compositions. These projects are very good and the students may want to market them, so we are doing due diligence on copyright and performance issues.

We must educate students on copyright -- both on using the copyright of others and on creating their own copyright, creative commons or otherwise.

3- We must model best behavior in terms of our own copyright use
We also need to understand that copyright and control of the Internet is a debate that will define this generation and students need to be part of the conversation. If your school didn’t have at least one class that covered SOPA and the implications, then you not only missed a teachable moment, you did a disservice to your students.

4- Intellectual property is the commodity of the 21st century – respect it
Some publishers may read this (including my own, Pearson Publishing) and groan at what I’ve written because outright piracy hurts their bottom line. They are being portrayed as the “bad guys” because they want to protect their intellectual property and this too is wrong. Just because SOPA would have been a poor implementation doesn’t mean that it is wrong to protect intellectual property. Intellectual property rights drive education in many ways and I think that they should be protected.

When we talked about intellectual property, I asked my students --
“What if you wrote an 800-page paper, spent 2-3 years of your life making it perfect, and succeeded in turning it into a book – how would you feel if someone took that book, made a copy, and started giving it away for free?”

They said they’d be angry, that it was very hard to write a term paper, and they couldn’t think of writing more.

They are right. Artists, authors, and intellectual property owners put their lives into their work. It is OK to sell that right and ask people to pay for it just like they pay for the cereal they consume and the clothes they wear. It isn’t a bad thing and it needs to be protected. Most of us who write nowadays also work to add value and give things away for free as well and that is great too.

5- The Open Education Movement carries intellectual property questions, too
Free is not the same as Open. Open education resources are shared and accessible. That doesn’t mean you can copy these resources. There are fine lines here that all of us must understand when we use Open resources.

In Conclusion
The SOPA debate is not going away even if the legislation is lying low for a while. The fact is that the supporters say their mistake was not moving fast enough. When former senator Chris Dodd is released to lobby Congress after his 2 year moratorium is up, this stealth bill will come back under another name. Watch and be ready with an opinion.

Also know that Intellectual Property rights are going to be a hot topic now and for the foreseeable future. This issue isn’t going away, nor is it simple. Big money is on the table and under the table (as evidenced by the luxury cars seized in the on raid of Kim Dotcom, founder of international pirating site Megaupload).

As ISTE members, it is our responsibility to educate ourselves and discuss the important intellectual property issues that will shape the world of education tomorrow. These are important issues and ISTE members are uniquely positioned in society to understand the technology and the educational impact of various decisions that governments around the world could make. We are at a unique point in history where you and your skillset can be uniquely, positively used for the good of mankind. So, educate, advocate, and speak out. These issues are important.

Vicki Davis (@coolcatteacher) has been an ISTE member since 2006 and blogs at the Cool Cat Teacher Blog. She is coauthor of Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds with ISTE Board member Julie Lindsay. The opinions shared here are her own.

The Post-Gutenberg Academic Publishing Market

Katie Stansberry — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 09:53:44 GMT

There is an enduring conversation in high education regarding the academic publishing funding model. In most colleges and universities, faculty job security is contingent both on effective teaching and a record of scholarly research.

Typically, the record of scholarly research is determined by how many articles are published in peer-reviewed publications. Many peer-reviewed publications are published by for-profit companies such as Reed Elsevier, Springer Science+Business Media, and John Wiley & Sons, even though the content for these journals is provided free of charge and the peer-review process to cull submissions and edit content is done by academics on a volunteer basis. The profit margin for academic publications is quite high and a significant portion of library budgets (not to mention my limited graduate student funds) are dedicated to journal subscriptions.

So, ultimately, content for academic journals is subsidized by the colleges and universities that pay professors’ salaries, and these same institutions constitute the primary market for the resulting publications. In this way knowledge is developed, published and shared within a closed network since the cost of access to academic journals is usually prohibitive unless you are a student or employee of an educational institution.

Open access publishing and entirely online journals are starting to make headway in the academic market, but having just come out of six months of searching for an academic job, I can say pretty conclusively that online journals play a distant second to the more established brick and mortar publications.

Last week, Apple Inc. introduced their latest education initiative with the launch of iBooks textbooks for iPad. Apple’s move into the textbook market is no surprise; they have partnered with textbook giants Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw Hill Education and Pearson to offer interactive K-12 textbooks at prices less than half of traditional books. The launch of iBooks Author, however, did cause me to raise my eyebrows.

iBooks Author is an app that provides templates for authors developing their own iPad textbooks, which can then be sold through iTunes. Like most Apple software, the textbook editor looks to be pretty user friendly. The following video shows the basic iBooks development process:

With this tool, Apple is making some interesting inroads into bypassing the monolithic academic publishing industry that has, until now, faced very little competition. Instead of requiring students to buy $100+ in textbooks for each new class, relying on iBooks requires students to buy a $500+ iPad. Unlike Kindle or Nook e-book formats, which can be read on different devices, Apple iBooks can only be read on Apple products.

The rise of an interactive web has made content production and distribution immeasurably easier. I know of several professors who created course websites that have essentially replaced the class textbook, but it’s incredibly time intensive and there is no financial incentive for the content creator. The iBooks textbook model allows the creator to set a price and the author is compensated, but the design template is restrictive and the end product requires expensive hardware for distribution.

The academic publishing industry is changing, but we have a long way to go before a workable model is developed. What do you think is the future of academic publishing?

Katie Stansberry authors the blog Teaching with Tech. She is the former community manager of ISTE Connects.

State of the Union Says Teachers Matter

Patrick Riccards — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:00:00 GMT

As part of his 2012 State of the Union address, President Barack Obama emphasized the theme “teachers matter.” Highlighting the impact, both in terms of learning and lifetime earning, a great teacher can have on a student, Obama called for incentivizing, supporting, and empowering truly great teachers.

With most such rhetorical flourishes, the devil is always in the details. SOTUs are often light on substance, with specific policy recommendations to follow. But as part of this year’s speech, the White House also released its blueprint(PDF) for actually doing what it calls for.

So what does the Obama Administration intend to do to “attract, prepare, support, and reward great teachers”? Specifically, it is offering up five recommendations:

• Reform colleges of education, while making these schools more selective;
• Create new career ladders for teachers to become more effective, and ensure that earnings are tied more closely to performance;
• Establish more leadership roles and responsibilities for teachers in running schools; improve professional development and time for collaboration among teachers; and provide greater individual and collective autonomy in the classroom in exchange for greater accountability;
• Create evaluation systems based on multiple measures, rather than just test scores; and
• Re-shape tenure to raise the bar, protect good teachers, and promote accountability.

With such an emphasis on teachers (and we probably should instead be focusing on educators, so that principals and other building-level personnel are included in the process), it is natural that we focus on inputs like teachers’ colleges and on processes like career ladders. But if we are serious about attracting, retaining, and supporting great teachers in the classroom, doesn’t part of the discussion have to key in on professional development, particularly PD beyond a traditional career ladder?

The President is correct: “Teaching is a profession and should be treated like one.” To do that, we need to seriously address the standards and supports that ensure all educators are teaching effectively and growing professionally in our increasingly digital world. If we want effective educators in every classroom, if we want all students learning and graduating from high school, we have little choice but to equip and empower all educators with the skills and knowledge necessary to lead an effective 21st century education.

How do we do it? One can look to resources like the ISTE NETS to serve as a guide. The White House is now talking about establishing “a new competitive program that will challenge states and districts to work with their teachers and unions to comprehensively reform the teaching profession.” Undoubtedly, this competitive program will focus on the five principles outlined above. But what if one of the components was the adoption of results-based standards and professional development, a la NETS? It seems if we are serious about having truly excellent educators in our classrooms, we need clear standards for what that means, and even stronger systems on which to base meaningful professional development and supports for those in the classroom.

Patrick Riccards authors the blog Eduflack. The views expressed here are his own.

E-book Readers and iPads Redefine Reading and Books

Paul Wurster — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 15:10:52 GMT

What is a book? That question is getting more consideration than ever as the popularity of touch tablets and e-book readers grow.

Back when I was in high school, reading was a simple matter of turning a page. Nowadays, technology has expanded the reading experience to such an extent that we find ourselves having to reconsider our notion of the book and reading all together.

In her article “Reading Redefined for a Transmedia Universe,” author Annette Lamb explores what it means to read a book and how mobile devices, multimedia publishing, and social technologies are transforming the reading experience inside and outside the classroom. She begins by offering simple definitions of reading and the book that take the digital reading environment into consideration. Reading, she says, is essentially the process of constructing meaning from symbols, and a book is simply a published collection of related pages or screens.

Because I am an editor with a background in newspapers, you might be surprised to hear that I welcome the digital reading environment. Don’t get me wrong, I still prefer the tactile experience that only a “real” book or newspaper can provide, but the possibilities that interactive reading bring to the table are too engaging to ignore. Transmedia storytelling allows a reader to explore the content of a book in a nonlinear way. Multimodal elements might include links to original documents, interactive maps, social media sites, online activities and games, or mobile apps that add additional interaction or access to related subject material.

Youth have not hesitated to embrace the digital reading environment and have readily traded the paperback for smartphones, e-book readers, and iPads. To the digital native, reading a book involves more than text alone—and it always has. Books can and should include interactive graphics, sounds, symbols, and even video.

Some may see this additional functionality as mere eye or even ear candy, claiming that it does little more than divert attention away from the core concepts or ideas that a book contains. Indeed, multiple points of entry make it difficult to predict how an individual will choose to “read” a digital book, but that doesn’t mean the reader will miss the message. In fact, transmedia may actually support a deeper understanding of the subject matter because a multimedia environment can present the same information in ways that accommodate multiple learning styles.

Paul Wurster is the managing editor of Learning & Leading with Technology, ISTE's member magazine.

E-Learning and Authoring Tool: There's an App for That

Patrick Riccards — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 16:36:46 GMT

For years now, we have been hearing about how the cost of classroom materials was putting a real pinch on the learning process. States like California looked to put a ban on purchasing new textbooks, hoping to squeeze out a few extra years with their current materials. States and districts explored “e-learning,” believing that using laptops or tablets would somehow greatly reduce the cost of instruction (forgetting that actual machines, their repair, and their replacement cost similar dollars). So then we’re back to the drawing board, looking for new ways to ensure today’s students have the latest information.

This week, though, Apple offered an intriguing answer to the ongoing question. In a splashy news conference in New York City, very much in Apple style, the technology giant introduced its e-textbook initiative. As part of the effort, Apple will launch a line of K-12 ebooks, along with a new application to allow individuals to publish their own textbooks. It is also going to partner with the big three publishing houses – Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Pearson, and McGraw Hill – in delivering classroom materials, via iPad, to our K-12 schools.

Will this latest development solve all that ails us? Probably not. Converting all of our classrooms into iPad reading rooms is a costly endeavor. Many districts have already headed down the path of using cheaper netbooks to enhance the learning process. And, at least for now, the Apple iBooks effort will be the exclusive playground of iPad users.

But it definitely gets us in the right direction. Why?
• Electronic platforms allow us to update content instantaneously. Such approaches mean we don’t have the traditional 10-year lag time of printed textbooks (obviously helped by the downloadable updates many publishers now make available).
• It empowers educators to get involved in the textbook development process. Through the Apple Apps process, anyone can be a program developer. Through this new textbook initiative, Apple has made it clear that individuals can build their own textbooks. The challenge here, of course, is ensuring some oversight to guarantee the quality of content produced.
• E-readers such as the iPad are more relevant to today’s learners than traditional textbooks. Like it or not, we live in a technology-driven world. We should be building on our students’ skills, not turning them away from 21st century platforms. Don’t believe me? Take a look at recent news on how a new Houghton Mifflin Harcourt math product for the iPad has increased student performance numbers significantly.

It is now up to state departments of education, local school districts, school boards, and principals to ensure that teachers are equipped with the skills and knowledge to maximize these new opportunities. How do we effectively utilize them in the classroom? How do we get involved in creating new textbooks? And most importantly, how do we actually improve student learning. The tools and platforms are great, but if we aren’t using them effectively, we might as well go back to using flints and stone tablets.

Patrick Riccards authors the blog Eduflack. The views expressed here are his own.

The Edublogger Web: An Online Network Analysis of Popular Education Bloggers

Katie Stansberry — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:51:24 GMT

It’s unfortunate that in higher education teaching often plays a distant second fiddle to research. Part of why I enjoy working with ISTE so much is because the organization connects me with a community of passionate educators throughout the world. Writing for ISTE Connects usually gives me an opportunity to focus on my time in the classroom, but this week I’m going to divert from my typical topics and try instead to mesh some original research with ed tech blogging.

For my most recent research, I’ve been playing around with IssueCrawler a new tool that facilitates online network crawls. IssueCrawler is a publicly available crawler system offered by the Amsterdam-based Govcom Foundation. The processing power for the tool is shared among the registered researchers using it, much like early mainframe computers shared processing power at the advent of the Internet.

Crawler systems record and follow the hyperlinks from starting points (in this case a list of websites) indicated by the programmer. IssueCrawler, as its name implies, is particularly helpful in identifying networks of websites that all relate to a particular issue.

I have been busy graphing online social networks in interest areas such as parenting and health concerns, but I thought it might be interesting to launch a crawl that showed the online education blogging community. As a starting point to launch the crawl, I used all of the websites that received 2011 Edublog Awards. I ran a co-link analysis on these sites, which means that the crawler identifies and records only sites that are linked by at least two of the starting points. This filters out isolated sites and helps to ensure that crawls at larger depths maintain ties to the original network. Co-link analyses identify larger and larger neighborhoods of web pages for their linkage.

Here is the visualization of the online education blogger network that emerged [the dots represent websites and the arrows show links from one site to another]:

Click the network map to view larger image.

The education blogger network is densely interconnected and rich in online resources. We tend to be comfortable with social networking sites, particularly those that facilitate resource sharing such as Twitter, Flickr, Prezi and Slideshare. Education bloggers tend to be very supportive of other education bloggers and many links appear between individual and classroom blogs. Finally, we appear to depend on educators’ experience for content and information rather than education news from mainstream media.

Each week when I sit in on #edchat I am reminded of what a diverse network of individuals discuss education on the web. This network map is interesting, but remember it only shows a very general representation of the education blogger network. The content being created and shared by these bloggers is the true value of understanding and engaging in network exploration.

To aid in your own exploration, here’s a list of the websites that showed in the edublogger network map ranked by the number of inbound links:

1 - edublogs.org - 7673
2 - edublogawards.com - 7139
3 - help.edublogs.org - 5596
4 - 2kmand2kj.global2.vic.edu.au - 5580
5 - twitter.com - 5555
6 - yollisclassblog.blogspot.com - 5520
7 - jmsalsich.edublogs.org - 5251
8 - linkwithin.com - 5115
9 - postrank.com - 4413
10 - mravery.edublogs.org - 3815
11 - openthedoortob4.blogspot.com - 3601
12 - widgetbox.com - 3333
13 - biancasblog.global2.vic.edu.au - 3169
14 - edublogs.misd.net - 2918
15 - victoria-miriamsmoments.blogspot.com - 2882
16 - feedjit.com - 2799
17 - bellbulldogreaders.edublogs.org - 2790
18 - classroom20.com - 2687
19 - docs.widgetbox.com - 2634
20 - jadensawesomeblog.blogspot.com - 2590
21 - blogs.neisd.net - 2571
22 - voki.com - 2261
23 - studentchallenge.edublogs.org - 2243
24 - hannahshacienda.blogspot.com - 2239
25 - ourworldourstories.edublogs.org - 2157
26 - reformsymposium.com - 1703
27 - freetech4teachers.com - 1555
28 - primarytech.global2.vic.edu.au - 1430
29 - connectedprincipals.com - 1350
30 - larryferlazzo.edublogs.org - 1313
31 - jarrodsblog.global2.vic.edu.au - 1271
32 - dangerouslyirrelevant.org - 1158
33 - flickr.com - 1032
34 - davidwarlick.com - 1017
35 - ilearntechnology.com - 968
36 - rossmannell.com - 947
37 - edu.glogster.com - 853
38 - practicaltheory.org - 850
39 - mrswatson.ca - 819
40 - bbc.co.uk - 744
41 - sormid67.edublogs.org - 722
42 - angelamaiers.com - 607
43 - diigo.com - 579
44 - langwitches.org - 571
45 - wwwatanabe.blogspot.com - 532
46 - ning.com - 508
47 - voicethread.com - 502
48 - animoto.com - 490
49 - buildyourwildself.com - 489
50 - wordpress.com - 470
51 - stevehargadon.com - 463
52 - coolcatteacher.blogspot.com - 448
53 - vimeo.com - 445
54 - wordle.net - 394
55 - storybird.com - 371
56 - facebook.com - 297
57 - slideshare.net - 254
58 - weebly.com - 209
59 - edm310.blogspot.com - 191
60 - developers.facebook.com - 190
61 - teacherbootcamp.edublogs.org - 179
62 - wallwisher.com - 155
63 - ted.com - 141
64 - creativecommons.org - 135
65 - prezi.com - 124
66 - glogster.com - 124
67 - spellingcity.com - 122
68 - gmail.com - 122
69 - delicious.com - 88
70 - edmodo.com - 74
71 - evernote.com - 69
72 - youtube.com - 68
73 - iear.org - 50
74 - polleverywhere.com - 40
75 - iste.org - 39
76 - khanacademy.org - 37
77 - xtranormal.com - 35
78 - audacity.sourceforge.net - 35
79 - brainpop.com - 34
80 - teachertube.com - 24
81 - tagxedo.com - 23

Katie Stansberry authors the blog Teaching with Tech. She is the former community manager of ISTE Connects.

Media Literacy Matters

Frank W. Baker — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 17:22:19 GMT

For more than 20 years, I have taught media literacy—critical thinking about media messages—to teachers and students around the US. In every presentation/workshop, I ask my audience to define media literacy as they understand it to mean. Unfortunately, most don’t understand it.

Media literacy, in the education setting, is about giving students the opportunity to both analyze and create media messages, whether those messages are on the news, Internet, movies, billboards, or radio.

Media literacy is a big part of every state’s teaching standards, whether it’s ELA (bias, informational texts, visual literacy), Social Studies (propaganda, political campaign messages, and mass media), Health (body image, food messages, tobacco and alcohol marketing) or others.

I maintain that many of our students are media savvy—they know how to upload and download with ease—but they are not necessarily media literate. They don’t think critically about their media exposure. Media literacy helps students understand how a media message is constructed. When we engage students in both media analysis and media production, we’re meeting the goals and objectives of media literacy education.

Engaging students with flip-cams is great, but creating photographs or film should be coupled with teaching students to analyze their work and the work of others. Incorporating some powerful images from the Civil Rights movement is a good way to analyze others work while teaching media literacy. I recently conducted a workshop on teaching visual literacy through the images of Charles Moore, the late LIFE magazine photographer whose photos graced the pages of that magazine in the 1960s.

A commercial from a Saturday morning cartoon could be used in elementary instruction to teach media literacy. Analyzing advertising techniques of persuasion and production could be used to enlighten and engage an audience of young people—many of whom believe everything they see on the screen. Methodically taking apart a commercial will not only teach media literacy, but also extend to English language arts by teaching scriptwriting or art through storyboarding.

The buzz right now is all about the upcoming Super Bowl game commercials and how much they cost. Incorporating those commercials into your classroom instruction is a great way to introduce media literacy in an engaging way.

Film is another one of my favorite topics for the classroom since most teachers use film to support instruction. With the Golden Globe and Academy Awards in the news, teachers may want to consider how film is a language of its own. When watching a film, ask your students to consider how cameras work, lighting, music and more, are used to create meaning.

We know our students are enamored of the media. Media literacy offers us many opportunities to engage them with their media while meeting important teaching standards at the same time.

If media literacy is of interest to you, I invite you to explore “Engaging the Eye Generation: Teaching Visual & Media Literacy for the 21st Century” or “Media Literacy in the K-12 Classroom”.

Frank W. Baker is a nationally recognized media educator/teacher trainer and author of "Media Literacy In The K-12 Classroom."

Why Are Schools Still Discouraging Creativity?

Andra Brichacek — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 13:53:19 GMT

As a parent, I have been disappointed again and again by the U.S. public school system. This is not a criticism of teachers, but of the system itself. My disappointment has given way to inspiration at times, when I hear a talk, such as Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk about how our schools are killing creativity, or read an article by someone who recognizes where our system fails and proposes a reasonable way to fix it. And then that inspiration sinks back into frustration when I realize that we still seem to be stuck in place, doomed to repeat our mistakes, despite the fact that everyone agrees they aren’t working.

Creativity, for instance, is an integral skill promoted by the NETS and the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, and experts predict that creative thinking will be even more important in the future. And yet, U.S. public schools continue to discourage children’s natural creativity and emphasize only what can be measured by a standardized test.

For me, the desire to end education’s foibles has some urgency. My son is 17, so there’s not much time left to salvage his love for learning. The system may have worked fine for the kids who excel at memorizing facts and sitting still. But for those like my son, whose talents lie more to the right of the brain, not so much.

This disconnect between my son’s creative gifts and the system that doesn’t value them began to become clear when he was 3, on his first day at a new preschool. He sat down at a table with the other toddlers, grabbed a black and white drawing of a nursery rhyme scene, and did exactly what he had always done in his coloring books at home: He drew his own drawings in the margins of the paper rather than shading in the picture provided. He simply found making up his own art more entertaining than shading in pictures someone else had drawn. But that’s when all the trouble started. The little boy next to him leaned over and gasped, “You’re going to get in trouble for scribbling outside the lines!” as he eyed the teacher floating around the tables, monitoring everyone’s work. The children around them leaned in to see, giggling and shaking their heads. Obviously, this had come up before.

I wish that were the last time he was reprimanded for being creative during his schooling career, but I’m sure you know it was not. He was never disrespectful or disruptive; he just chose to do things differently. Whether it was figuring out his math problems his own way, going rogue with an essay assignment topic, or even composing his own songs rather than practicing one someone else had made up, he ran into biases against his creativity again and again. And he is not alone.

In fact, it’s one of education research’s most consistent findings that teachers generally don’t like creative students. I am not a teacher, but I think I can sympathize with them. When you are overworked and stressed out, tasked with keeping the peace in a classroom of 30+ kids, the student who challenges the rules is probably a major pain. I imagine that, when you’re still grading papers after the workday is over, you don’t have the energy to consider 30 unique and creative answers to every question. You just want to compare them quickly to the answer key and be done with it. But did you know that those kids who won’t get with the program are usually the ones who are highest in creativity? And those star students who follow all the rules and memorize all the right answers? They actually tend to be “significantly below average on measures of creativity and mental flexibility.”

According to Staw (1995), the business world also discourages creative suggestions from employees, despite insisting otherwise. In their case, the avoidance of creativity has more to do with fear of the unknown. Jennifer Mueller and colleagues completed a study last year showing that when people feel uncertain, they are more likely to have negative thoughts about creativity and find it more difficult to even recognize creative ideas. What’s more, there’s a disconnect between what they say (claiming to encourage creativity) and what they do (actively discouraging it). According to the post “Why People Secretly Fear Creative Ideas” on PsyBlog, the thinking goes like this:
We know how to do things we’ve done before, but new things are mysterious. How will we achieve it? Is it practical? What could go wrong?
People don’t like to feel uncertain; it’s an aversive state that generally we try to escape from. Unfortunately, creativity requires uncertainty by definition, because we’re trying to do something that hasn’t been done before.

I’d add that fear of uncertainty is why educational reforms across the board aren’t happening, despite the fact that we all agree that they should. Like the participants in Mueller et al.’s study, we deal with our unconscious biases against making changes by saying one thing but continuing to do another.

So what can we do? If you are a teacher, you can try to be aware of your own biases against creative kids. Notice when you’re getting annoyed because some outspoken kid challenges your facts or questions your rules. And, as often as you can, choose to fan that spark rather than snuffing it out. If you’re an administrator, advocate for standards, such as the NETS, that emphasize the importance of creativity and critical thinking skills. If you’re a parent, be aware that schools have this bias and give your creative child other outlets, as well as reassurance that, despite what their teachers might say, they are not failures because their gifts are more right brained than left brained. In fact, they are just what the world needs.

Andra Brichacek is the associate editor of Learning & Leading with Technology (L&L), ISTE's member magazine, as well as the Journal for Research on Technology in Education (JRTE) and the Journal for Digital Learning in Teacher Education (JDLTE).

Clean Up Your Digital Life

Britni Hartford — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 13:09:28 GMT

A new year brings excitement and hope of new beginnings. You’ve probably already made New Year’s resolutions and perhaps already abandoned a few. Cleaning up your digital life is one resolution that you should make and keep.

January is Clean Up Your Computer Month. Follow this simple list for an easy digital update, and check at least one new year’s resolution off your list!

Clean out the clutter
We have all been there—in a time crunch, maybe late for a parent–teacher conference, and named a file something like letter.doc and saved it to the desktop. File management is a simple way to get your digital life under control, yet it is so easy to let our digital filing cabinet become a scattered mess. Start your new year with a clean slate by organizing your files and folders. Clearly name and categorize all folders and give all files descriptive names. Last but not least, delete files you no longer need.

Occasionally I will open an email and save it for when I have time to read the whole thing. Unfortunately, that occasion happens all too frequently for me, and before I know it, my inbox is a bottomless pit. Resolve to find the bottom of your email inbox this month. Organize the emails you would like to keep and delete the ones you don’t.

Secure your files
By now you have heard it a thousand times: backup everything! While this rule is tried and true, if you’re like most people, you probably have at least a few important files that you haven’t backed up yet. Make sure you have saved all school- and work-related documents, photos, and other important files to an external hard drive or the cloud. While the chances are slim that your computer will crash or a power surge will take place, it is a chance you don’t want to take.

Updating passwords is a tedious process with a great return on investment. How many times during the last year did you have to click “forgot password”? Take the time to update all your passwords to something that’s consistently memorable for you.

Give yourself a digital makeover
Remember when MySpace was the big thing? I am glad that phase came and went. I’m one of many who logged off and never returned. If you’re in the same situation take the time to delete any profiles you are no longer using.
While you’re giving your digital life an upgrade, update your profiles on the social networking sites you still use, including pictures. Updating your profile and outlining your reason for being there has become a necessity now that the lines have blurred between personal and professional social media presences.

Tune up your machine
Ever noticed that pop-up box in the lower right corner of your screen reminding you to update your antivirus software? If you’ve been hastily clicking close on that box and grumbling at it to go away every day, it is time to finally quit ignoring the sign and make sure your antivirus software are up to date.

I saved the best for last. Updating your operating system and browser is usually free and painless. Upgrading will also provide a significant boost in speed and efficiency for your machine.

We all can relate to the feeling of excitement when we get a new computer and a new beginning. Taking the time to clean up your computer will not only help your computer run like new, it will give your digital life a much needed refresh.