The Heidelblog – Becoming a High Tech High

Well, I’ve moved to a new school and in a new job, leaving the classroom for the first time in my career.  And so, I’ve decided to re-start this blog, tracing how to effectively integrate technology into a very low tech building.  So, my audience has changed, as well as my goals… so please follow my journey to make my school a HIGH TECH HIGH SCHOOL.  Wish me luck!

There are a million sites out there to find content, but this site (its still in alpha) seems to hold some promise.  It truly is a Web 2.0 site – content is created by teachers, and then rated by teachers.  There isn’t much there yet, but the idea of teachers rating the content can perhaps highlight the best content, and keep us from having to spend so much time searching for it.

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This article is based on the yesterday’s blog post.  Sorry if things seem redundant – but I think that I fleshed my thoughts better here.

On Election Day, thousands of people “Twittered” when they voted.  Millions more attended Facebook’s Election Rally.  Billions of blog posts and comments were generated about the Presidential Race, and thousands of Podcasts discussed the merits of candidates and issues. During the primaries, a debate was based solely on user-created YouTube videos.  Candidates texted news and updates to supporters, and thousands of citizens created their own online TV shows to comment on it all.

In so many ways, this was the first Presidential Election 2.0.

While the historic nature of Mr. Obama’s election to the highest office in the land is something that will be celebrated for generations as a seminal moment in American politics due to his race, perhaps an equally fundamental change that this election saw was in the way that Americans participated in the political process. This was the election where the Internet matured, realized its’ power, and truly became America’s new town hall.

As in the past, Americans used the web to inform their political decisions by gathering news and information about issues and candidates. Presidential hopefuls used the internet to raise awareness and funds.  However, what was fundamentally different in this election was how many ordinary Americans used the web to engage in the national political discourse, network with other like-minded supporters, discuss issues, and have their voices heard.

Much of this shift in political experience was driven by rise of the so-called “Web 2.0” sites.  Web 2.0 sites are websites that allow easy publishing of user generated content, and the ability for other users to comment critically on that content (think of YouTube, blogs, and social networking sites like Facebook).  The practical effect of these sites was that they allowed citizens to organically build on-line communities around issues and candidates, and engage in discussions and debates about them.

In this election, Blogs allowed for ordinary citizens to find a wide-reaching voice by simply providing a public place to post one’s thoughts and opinions.  The “comment” feature in a blog allowed other readers to continue the conversation, and as more readers contributed the dialogue grew.  And as most newspapers and other media outlets essentially became blogs in their online form – most have a similar “comment” feature beneath their articles – it invited many ordinary Americans to participate in a discussion with the traditional media and were drawn into the political discourse in ways they haven’t before.

For the millions of young Americans that participated in an election for the first time, the power of the social networking sites cannot be understated.  Much like MTV’s Rock the Vote campaign did for an earlier generation, the social networking sites made voting not only important, but cool.  For example, it was not significant to these voters to have a campaign sticker on their car, but it was vital to have a “badge” supporting their favorite candidate on their MySpace page.  Over 1.7 million people attended an “election rally” on Facebook, and millions more signaled their vote by updating their Facebook “status.”  Mr. Obama also leveraged social networking features on his own website, allowing supporters to create their own page from where they could network with other supporters, organize political activities, and discuss issues.

In this election, many voters no longer used lawn signs to show their support for candidates – they created YouTube videos, where the effects can be more wide reaching.   Campaign videos that were created by ordinary people (Obama Girl) and stars alike (Yes We Can by Will.i.am) generated millions of views.  The feature on YouTube that allows users to create a video response to any posted video spawned a new kind of video-to-video political dialogue.

The website Ustream, where users can create a their own live TV station with a web camera and a few simple clips, saw thousands of people share their thoughts about the candidates, debates and issues on their own TV channel.  On election night alone, over a million people watched Ustream programming rather than a network TV or cable broadcast.

In so many ways, Web 2.0 has changed the way that Americans participate in the political process.  It has given ordinary people a wide-reaching voice through the ease of publishing videos, writings and radio shows to the web.  It has given candidates ways to connect to segments of the population that haven’t previously been engaged politically.  And most importantly, it gave many Americans an online space to easily connect to others and build communities around issues and candidates. Web 2.0 has created places for citizens to discuss, debate, and find consensus – a new, virtual Town Hall.

In the 90’s, during my undergraduate studies, I spent some time going to the University of Natal in South Africa. Luckily, my stay there coincided with the second National election after the end of apartheid.

Until that time in my life, I had never seen a country that was so full of optimism, and hope for the future as South Africa of that time. As I drove around the small city and environs of Pietermarisburg and down into the large city of Durban on Election Day, I saw something that I never thought I would see in America – people taking their democratic right seriously – and waiting in line to vote. At some of the polling places that we stopped, people were literally waiting in line for five hours! And doing it happily.

In fact, it was almost a party – an event. People had brought rice and chicken in pots and tupperware containers. People were singing and dancing, and generally catching up with others. In a country that was so very divided a mere 4 years ago, Blacks and Whites, Xoxas and Zulus together in one line. It was one of those things that you never forget – every person in scarred country participating in the political proccess, making it a peaceful, hopeful event, where every vote mattered and every vote counted.

And until I woke up this morning, I never really thought that I would see this in our own country. Watching CNN this morning, seeing the lines, seeing the turnout, and excitement in this country for this election is pretty amazing – a bit like South Africa in the 90s. No matter what happens, millions of people that had never been engaged in the political proccess will be engaged today, and thier voices will be heard. Finally!

Now, I’m going to vote….. hope the line isn’t too long!

For those of you that know me, you already know that I have had the wonderful experience of working in a One to One environment for the past four years in my District. It is a very innovative 1:1, in that it was the result of Kean University partnering with my District (read – footing the bill for everything from the hardware to the PD), and giving a poor urban district a way to compete with the wealthier surrounding towns in access to technology. When the partnership was formed, the “Digital Divide” was an issue in the forefront of Educational Technology, and to be sure, this project went a long way in bridging that divide, at least in our city. With the price of broadband Internet access declining, however, and powerful machines being found for a few hundred dollars, this idea of the Digital Divide seems to be fading from thought. It is something I would still like to post about in the future, though.

Anyway, the Grant that payed for this program ends at the end of this year, and many of the stakeholders are beginning to determine what happens next. I plan on discussing my reflections on this project over the next few months here, but one of the things that I continue to return to in my reflections is the idea of “unintended opportunities.”

No one knew what the 1:1 was going to bring to my school or the community. Of course, we had done our research, and had visited other 1:1 schools in Mane and elsewhere. Apple came in and trained all of us, and we went to NECC and read about what was happening online. But we really didn’t know what we were getting into.

And we got into many things – both good and bad. We have had our share of failures and success. However, the one thing that is woven into all these experiences is the idea that we have had an opportunity with these kids and with this technology to move beyond the four walls of the classroom and the narrow streets of Perth Amboy. Our students have been able to connect to other students across the county, and even from other countries. They have had the opportunity to not only express themselves is ways that would be impossible in the traditional classroom, but to connect these expressions to others and share their worldview.

For the teachers as well, we have been able to see the different ways that kids can learn, and create things for them to inspire them. More importantly, many times the technology has put the students in the driver’s seat and made many of the students teachers, teaching their peers and even their teachers things that range from the mundane to the profound.

I guess that the power of these tools is simply this: “unintended opportunities.” It is true that we must begin with the end in mind, but when you embark on a project like this, you must be flexible and adaptable, and when an unintended opportunity arises, grab it – it can be a teachable moment for your students and yourself.

My problem that I have that I believe that has kept me from blogging, is a common problem that writers have – I can’t seem to define my audience. Who am I writing for? What will people get out of it? With all of the visionary thinkers and writers out there, what possibly can I offer? Why would people add me to their google reader or pageflakes?

So, as a writing teacher, I feel like I need to define my audience, but I’m going to hold off. Let me see what I write about, what my interests really are, and where I want to go with this. And so, I’m going to “write for the wastepaper basket.” It is a fairly important exercise that I teach my writing students, that you don’t have to be Hemingway or Will Richardson on your first crack – just write, and write, and you can find your voice. Here’s hoping that I can find mine…..

A few of the prominent edublogers have been encouraging many of us to begin blogging every day this month, to build a better blog in a month… and I guess to get in the habit of blogging. I’ve struggled to keep blogging on a regular basis, but lets get started….. One post a day!

Google announced today that their Google Sites are now open to everyone. This is pretty amazing stuff, if nothing else for its ease of use. So many times when I do professional development, teachers want to do things online, but don’t have the time or patience to go through a number of steps in order to post something simple: like a number of links for a webquest or a simple assignment. Well, here you go. A simple way for every teacher to have their own web page, with straightforward editing tools and no code needed. All you need is an internet connection! Plus, since it seems like it operates a lot like Google Docs, you have a number of levels of privileges for editing, to make collaboration seamless. Check it out here.

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I’ve been following posts regarding a conference called Berkman@10, which is a conference that celebrates the 10th anniversary of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. The second day had an “unconference” with what seemed like some great ideas peculating about what the future of the web was going to look like. One conversation that sparked my interest started with the discussion of the open-sourcing of many educational materials from distinguished universities and authors (itunes U, etc), but what it ended in was a recognition that a new kind of “classroom” space is needed.

To Quote from Andy Oram’s post about the conversation:

This bold discussion began with a taunt lobbed into the arena from a surprising corner, former FCC chair Reed Hundt. … Hundt’s proposal (was) that well-endowed universities such as Harvard help the six billion people who are now deprived of the education they need to make a decent living.

Charles Nesson, a famous attorney and cofounder of the Berkman Center, picked up the tune without missing a beat. He talked of the enormous amount of high-quality online material that Harvard is making available. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences recently voted to open access to all scholarly articles, and the law school soon followed suit.

(Ironically, Harvard is one of the few Boston-area colleges that doesn’t allow the public into its brick-and-mortar libraries. This policy is understandable though, because to make them open would overwhelm them with the throngs of odd creatures that circulate among the literate classes who inhabit Cambridge.)

Dyson then interrupted with an astute distinction between content and helping people to teach themselves, a goal that is people-intensive and requires a lot of side activities such as making sure children have enough to eat.

Nesson countered by saying that the goal was not to provide sterile content, but to provide content that would stimulate children’s interest and sense of play, which in turn would lead to a peer production of education.

I would have loved to be in the room during this discussion, for it recognizes that content by itself is lacking, although this seems to be the latest movement in the publish or perish culture of higher education. However, in order for Harvard, or any school, to truly continue in its mission of providing a top-level education for its students (and indeed if it actually considers education of the masses part of its aims), it needs to not only open up its content to the masses, but also provide the students with new skills or spaces to learn – in short, a new kind of classroom.

The most interesting part of this discussion to me is the recognition that in this new world where content is ubiquitous, what is necessary for students to learn is a collaborative model based on peer networking and and perhaps even the “hive mind.” This kind of model has proven effective in teacher-led classrooms through the different cooperative learning models – and continues out on the web with wikis and blogs and other web 2.0 tools.

But the hope and great promise is that this access to high quality content can enfranchise a new kind of student. However, many of these “new” students may not have experience in traditional teacher-led classrooms where the kind of collaborative rules and norms are taught and monitored in the first place. Can these “new” kind of students learn those skills necessary to not just comprehend, but synthesize and utilize the content? One must imagine that the capability is there, but as educators, how do we create these new “classrooms – or knowledge spaces” that allow for not only the access to the content, but an engaging way to acquire the knowledge embedded in that content. In other words – is there a way to replace the teacher in these classrooms of the future? Is it gameplay as suggested in the above post? But then, how do we engage students that may have a different kind of intelligence? What do you envision these classrooms/spaces looking like?

A friend of mine who teaches in the midwest just told me about this site, and it is a great resource for those of you who need some help with getting funds for a project or materials for your class. It was started in the Bronx, where classroom materials were scarce, but can help any class get a good idea off the ground. All you have to do is submit a proposal, and that really is it. My friend raised almost $500 for his digital camera project.

Today, I work in a school district that gets funds from the state, and therefore we don’t want for much, but this site would have been helpful when I first started teaching, in a small catholic school in a very poor district, where we literally didn’t even have erasers for the chalk board – I had to use my old t-shirts!