Get the download for Patricia Miller/Ft. Sumner on Lou Dobbs

It will be available this evening, Friday, June 27, 2008. It will be in hour 2.
http://www.loudobbsradio.com/showdownload.asp

:)
~julz

Ft. Sumner Zunies on Lou Dobbs Radio Show!

Thanks Jana for the below news!
:)
~julz

Just wanted to share some excitement…..!!!

I just found out that one of our own (from New Mexico)—Patricia
Miller…will be interviewed tomorrow by Lou Dobbs (from CNN).
Patricia Miller and the Ft. Sumner school's podcasting project will be
highlighted on the Lou Dobbs Radio Show.

You can listen live at 2pm Friday, June 27, by going to the website
www.loudobbsradio.com . You need to first download the player by
clicking on the "Listen Live" link located toward the top right side of
the webpage. Then, find the download link near the center of the page.

OR…you can listen later by going to the same website and downloading the
archived show for June 27th.

I Googled " Ft. Sumner and Zune" and you cannot believe how many times
they are listed! Apparently, the Associated Press came to Ft. Sumner
in May and wrote a story on their project. This story is being
reprinted globally.

Thanks to Patricia and Ft. Sumner Schools for creating positive
educational news from New Mexico!!!

Leadership in the Digital Age

I walk into a classroom to observe what is being presented as, “A 21st Century Classroom”. Do I see a class full of desks, students, and books? Not hardly! In fact each desk has a laptop computer with a headset, ICam and IPod attached. Students are engaged and using each piece of equipment in sync with classmates from around the world. The teacher is facilitating the discussion in a virtual online forum where each student has his/her own avatar. (Perkins, 2007) The student can manipulate the avatar to answer a problem on a white board, participate in small group discussions, pull a girl’s hair, and even chew gum. The student who may not be able to join in this lesson will have it loaded on to their IPod and be able to join later as a non-synchronistic student from home.

These students are digital natives, kids online since they were 3 or 4 years old. In an article, “Listen to the Natives”, from Educational Leadership, Marc Prensky defines the digital native as, “native speakers of technology, fluent in the digital language of computers, video games, and the Internet”. (Prensky, 2006, p.8) For the digital native the computer and internet are appendages of their body. Take it away and they don’t know how to learn. Learning for them is a world experience with no boundaries. They do not have the cultural boundaries, the information boundaries, or the limitations from the generation before. In his article from EduTopia, “The New Face of Learning”, Will Richardson writes, “most of us live in a world where, with access, knowledge is abundant, yet we have yet to reconsider our traditional school model, which is based on the obsolete idea that knowledge is scarce”. (Richardson, 2006, p.37) Talk about a generation gap!

To the administrator who is a “digital immigrant”, the 21st century classroom could be like walking onto an alien inhabited planet. Prensky defines the digital immigrant as those of us who were not born into the digital world. (Prensky, 2006) Nothing is traditional about this classroom. This administrator must choose, let go and learn from the kids or fear the unknown? The administrator of a 21st century school does not yet know what the issues will be. He/she does not have the experience. But the kids DO!! Will the administrator listen? Susan Patrick, Director of Educational Technology, United States Department of Education stated, “There is a new fervor in American education, a new creativity-driven in part by this generation of tech-savvy students – that bodes well for the future of our country. We must listen to our students.”(Watkins, 2005 p.65)

Education is now part of a competitive global economy. The United States is falling behind in this economy. According to a report written by The North American Council for Online Learning, “Virtual Schools and 21st Century Skills”, U.S. students are falling behind their peers internationally in innovation, creativity, and high tech training. “Students from around the world out perform U.S. students on assessments that measure 21st century skills.” (NACOL, 2006) Eighty four percent of employers say K-12 schools are not preparing students for the global workplace.( 2005 Skills Gap Report) Students who are prepared with 21st century skills are self directed learners, able to use appropriate technology to process and present information, have the ability to manage their time, and have an awareness of global responsibility.

To effectively administrate in today’s world a shift must happen. Karl Fisch states in his UTube video, “Shift Happens”, “we are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t exist…. in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.” He continues with statistics like, 50% of US 21-year-old’s have produced web content, 70% of US 4-year-olds have used a computer, and the amount of technical information available is predicted to double every 72 hours by 2010. (Fisch, 2006)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U&feature=related

Leadership in the digital age starts with an understanding of the importance of digital educational, being able to learn from the stakeholders, and allowing for a shift in ideals. In the book “Schools That Learn”, Peter Senge states that there are five organizational learning disciplines that constitute a successfully learning organization: personal mastery, systems thinking, mental models, shared vision, and team learning. (Senge, 2000) When incorporating these principals into the whole school setting, an administrator can find his/her way through the uncertainty of leadership in the digital age.

By: Traci Filiss

Collaborative vs. Cooperative Learning

According to Ted Panitz (Collaborative vs. Cooperative Learning), there IS a difference between collaborative an cooperative learning.  Collaborative learners express themselves individually within their project goals.  They assemble individual parts to accomplish a task.  Cooperative learners, however, have to work together to form one cohesive finished product that everyone has contributed to throughout to create the finished product.

-Amy, IDEAL-NM

Online Learning

There does not seem to be a great deal of difference between collaborative and cooperative learning. The main difference is that cooperative learning is more structured with the teacher as the leader. Collaborative learning shifts the responsibility for learning away from the teacher as expert to the student. This concept allows students to buy into their education and become responsible for their learning. Traditional learning with teacher as lecturer is outdated, and as teachers we have to find ways to help our students become responsible for their education.

Collaboration

The article Collaboration Versus Cooperative Learning was very timely for current work our consortium is doing. Teachers have received professional development in aspects of effective lesson design and collaboration. The end result expected is that teachers from Network schools will continue to work collaboratively online to design and provide feedback to their group members. In an online environment, collaboration is critical to establishing a sense of community. Although the structures of cooperative learning can be included in collaboration, the processes are different. A principle of collaborative learning (Orr 1997) is that “working together results in greater understanding than would likely have occurred if one had worked independently.” If the contributions and abilities/knowledge of group members are respected, the bond of ownership for the group task becomes part of the process.

Google Tools

I am a big fan of Google and their products. Besides the valuable features of each individual product, the greatest benefit lies in the tight integration among the products and the availability of nearly each one on a mobile phone. It is easy to exchange data between products and if you have the mobile web on your phone, you never have to be separated from your data. These products also have the potential to be very powerful in the classroom. Creating, sharing and collaborating are all activities our students are engaged in online, outside the classroom. Bringing these tools into the classroom does open a can of worms. Perhaps we can have that discussion at another time. Below is a list of Google products that I use on a regular basis. Notebook I just started using Google Notebook recently and don’t know how I lived without it. With Google Notebook, you can browse, clip, and organize information from across the web in a single online location that's accessible from any computer. You won't ever have to leave your browser window. I use it mostly to keep track of my to-do lists. Docs You can create documents and spreadsheets in your browser which are saved on Google servers so you can access them anywhere you have an Internet connection. You can also add people to collaboratively work on a document. You can find a link to a lesson plan in my post below describing how to use Docs with students during the writing process. Reader is a feed aggregator. If you’re having trouble keeping up with all the updates to your favorite websites, you can read all the updates in one place with Reader. You can also share and publish items that you choose from your feeds. You could easily create a reading list for your students by using Reader’s publishing feature. Blogger is a super easy to use blog (web log/online journal) and now has more features. When students know they are writing something that will be seen by someone other than their teacher, they tend put a little more effort into it. SketchUp is a super awesome, easy and free 3D modeling software. I teach a unit using SketchUp in my 7th grade Tech classes. It is useful for teaching, measurement, scale and perspective along with skills that can transfer to more complex computer aided drafting programs. Calendar is a great organization solution for both students and teachers. I had been looking for a calendar that I could access anywhere and this is it. You can add events from any computer sure, but you can also add events by sending a text message to the calendar from your cell phone. The calendar can also send you text messages to remind you of events. You can also publish and share your calendars. Picasa is a photo organizing tool which also has an online component that provides 1 GB in photo storage. iGoogle is a Google start page where you can add mini-programs or widgets. I use the calendar, word of the day, headline news, weather, driving directions and email widgets on my iGoogle and can therefore access all that information on one page. Gmail is a terrific web mail program with a tremendous amount of storage (over 2G). Yahoo’s free email service and Gmail are duking it out for webmail supremacy in my humble opinion. Google's Toolbar A couple of my favorite features of the toolbar include a spell check (which I used to correct my many spelling error and typos in this post) and a real time translation tool. If you place your cursor over a word in a web page, that word will be displayed in your chosen translation language. I have mine set to Spanish so our ELL and bilingual students find this feature quiet useful. Page Creator If you just want to create quick and dirty web pages, Page Creator is about as easy as you can get. Kent Sabo