Technology Videos Worth Reel Time

Video sharing sites such as YouTube and TeacherTube offer up a great deal of educational content, consisting of a wide range of appropriate resources for all subject areas and grade levels. Here are a few notable technology/21st century literacy videos worth sharing.

Digital World: Kids Today
The 21st century has created a new digital culture through the use of web tools and technology. Kids today are using new digital literacies to communicate and connect.

Pay Attention
Today’s students can be labeled as digital learners, so why should we pay attention?

A Vision of K-12 Students Today
How did you learn? How do students today learn? A snapshot how best to inspire and engage digital learners today.

Discover Information Literacy
Great introduction to information literacy and how teachers can help students ‘discover’ information literacy:
D Define
I Inquire
S Search
C Collect
O Organize
V Verify
E Express
R Reflect

Ian Jukes: Understanding Digital Kids
Ian is a well-known Canadian educator, author, consultant and keynote speaker. One of his educational missions is to make sure that educators are properly preparing students for the future.

The Machine Is Us/ing Us
This is the second draft of a very interesting video. Who is using who? Are we driving the technology or is the technology driving us? You be the judge…

Did you Know 3.0?
Karl Fisch created this poignant snapshot of the Information Age, Globalization. This latest version has approximately 2.6 million views.

Explanations in Plain English
CommonCraft produces an easy-to-understand video series on emerging online tools such as:
• Blogging
• Podcasting
• Web Search Strategies
• Social Media
• Social Bookmarking
• Social Networking
• Wikis

K12 Online Conference 2009

The K12 Online Conference 2009: Bridging the Divide is right around the corner. Educators from around the world come together to present innovative ways technology and Web 2.0 tools can be used for instructional learning. This year’s pre-conference keynote presenter is Kim Cofino, 21st Century literacy specialist from the International School in Bangkok, Thailand. Kim’s blog Always Learning gives participants an overview of her presentation titled Going Global: Culture Shock, Convergence and the Future of Education.

Getting Started…
To participate in this free online event, register by joining the K12 Conference Ning. During conference dates, participants can view content online or download content and then post comments on the conference blog.

The conference runs between December 7-11th and December 14-17th. Over the two weeks more than fifty presentations will run as well as three ‘fireside’ live events. This conference was first hosted in 2006 so there are well over one hundred archived events for educators to access.

Literacy and Learning in the 21st Century – David Warlick

Today I attended an Edmonton Regional Learning Consortium session titled Literacy and Learning in the 21st Century presented by David Warlick. This was the first time I had the pleasure of listening to David speak in person. What a great learning day!

One of the first questions he threw out to the audience asked “What is the web going to be like in five years?” He deferred answers to this question in interviews given by Google CEO Eric Schmidt. I didn’t catch exactly which interview David pulled his information from, it is worth listening to a variety of Eric Schmidt interviews posted on YouTube. Some of Eric’s predictions included:
• A web dominated by Asian content
• Bandwidth increasing exponentially
• Sites like YouTube making significant profits
• Real time communications growing

How much information is too much information? David reminded us that literacy today is not just about reading and writing, but instead knowing how to find information, ask questions and find answers. For the first time ever, educators must prepare students for a future we know nothing about! We are simply preparing students for an unpredictable future, or what David calls The Perfect Storm. What do we need to do to prepare our students? We need to pay attention and bring their outside experiences into the classroom – blogging, social networking, creating, collaborating, connecting, authoring, and publishing. Education must be relevant; education must keep pace. Teachers must steer classrooms forward as if they are ‘Learning Engines’. The best thing we can teach students is how to teach themselves. Being literate today means questioning information, exposing information and becoming an informational ‘digital detective’.

These thoughts are just a small part of a connected learning session presented by David Warlick.

A Day In The Life of 2.0

This posting was inspired by Joyce Valenza’s School Library Journal article titled “My 2.0 day and the response/rant about our cover argument” from October 15, 2009. Have you reflected on your digital 2.0 life and how it has transformed over the past couple years? What does your digital daily routine look like professionally (or personally)? How many times a day do you have to type in a user name and password? How many different user names and passwords do you manage? It is really quite interesting to list how the digital world impacts my daily routine.

First thing in the morning I check all four of my email accounts – two personal and two educational accounts. Are four email accounts too many? Once I arrive at school the 2.0 life really begins. I check in behind the scenes with the school blog, Technology Learning @Camilla. Are there new comments posted that required an administrative reply? From there I login to my professional Delicious account so that my laptop is ready to use the Delicious quick launch buttons in my browser.
On any given school day, I will login to most, if not all the following digital tools:
• Blogger
• Discovery Streaming
• LearnAlberta
• Promethean Planet
• VoiceThread
• Slideshare
• Podomatic or Podbeam
• Wikispaces

Throughout the day there are numerous web 2.0 tools, Internet resources and digital applications that are part of the regular technology landscape in my classrooms:
• Google Earth
• Wordle
• Audacity
• Photo Story 3

After the school day is finished and I have arrived home, I quickly boot up the laptops. It is now time to manage more digital accounts at home. Some of these applications are simply for personal use, some are an extension of my professional day that can only be managed at home.
• Teching Around with Web 2.0 Personal Blog
• Twitter
• Google Reader
• Google Docs
• Shelfari
• Skype
• Flickr
• Picasa
• ZoHo Notebook

How many Ning’s are too many Ning’s? It is not enough to belong to one educational Ning these days. Each time I read about the creation of a new Ning on Twitter, I suddenly find myself joining the community. I tend to follow some of my favourite Twitter colleagues into new social communities because I don’t want to miss out of the amazing discussions, resources, and sharing. Although I belong to a handful of social networks, I regularly manage four social networks:
• The Educator’s PLN
• Canadian 21st Century Teacher-Librarians
• Classroom 2.0
• Stenhouse Publishers


I have over forty web accounts, and that number is somewhat underestimated as there are many more web 2.0 accounts that I used and have forgotten to type up on my master list.

My day is digitally busy. The rapid growth of emerging technologies will continue to keep my 2.0 life in a state of typing in user names and passwords.

Is life now one big login?

My Personal Learning Network

Building my own personal learning network (PLN) has been professionally rewarding. Next to my graduate studies, my dedication to developing my PLN has been an invaluable investment. Connecting with technology professionals, educational experts and creative individuals through such networks as:
Twitter
EdTech Talk
Classroom 2.0
The Future of Education
Canadian 21st Century Teacher-Librarians

The opportunities to connect locally, provincially, nationally and globally 24/7 have open up dialogue for critical thinking conversations on a variety of educational topics to support my professional learning, which in turns allows new knowledge to be woven into my instructional practices. My PLN provides daily support, gives answers, asks questions, and shares resources.

Look beyond your classroom, your school, your district…there is a global PLN out there ready to
Connect, Communicate, Converse

"You can't stay in your corner of the forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes."
~Winnie the Pooh

Stenhouse Online Book Reviewers Club

I am pleased to announce that I will be part of an online book reviewers club for Stenhouse Publishers.

My online educational responsibilities include:
• Participation on the Stenhouse blog
• Posting book reviews and author information on this blog
• Hosting/participating in blog book tours

I look forward to this new partnership over the next school year and invite administrators, teachers and instructional coaches to join the Stenhouse Publishers Ning for lively discussions on new educational resources supporting professional development.

The first book I will be reading is A Sense of Belonging Sustaining and Retaining New Teachers by Jennifer Allen. Jennifer is a literacy specialist from Maine who has created professional development programs and workshops at the local and national levels.

Take the opportunity to browse the entire book online and then join the Ning discussion!

Twitter #edchat

Edchat has become an exciting collaborative conversation forum for educators via Twitter. Edchat discussions happen Tuesday’s on Twitter in two different time zones – 12pm and 7pm (ET).
• Follow the hashtag #edchat
• Each week hosts a new educational topic

There are great bloggers who have explained, in detail, Twitter and edchats. Here are just a few samples:
Teacher Reboot Camp
The Cool Cat Teacher
Blogging About the Web 2.0 Connected Classroom

I participated in my first edchat discussion on August 18th and was pleasantly surprised at the thought-provoking discussions with last Tuesday’s topic “What Objectives are Necessary for Effective Tech Integration?”
• Technology should become increasingly transparent
• Innovative educators needed
• Do innovative educators always equal good educators?
• Encourage and engage colleagues
• Teachers engaged in teaching; students engaged in learning
• Explore new resources and tools
• Focus on content, not the technology
• Tell admin, show admin, involve admin
• Tech needs to be adopted, not adapted!

I found myself continually refreshing my Twitter page as the conversations were lively and constantly evolving from people joining in throughout the evening. Is this kind of conversation worthwhile? Absolutely! I have added a number of new technology experts to my professional learning network (PLN), and have gained new followers who share in my educational interest in technology.

Dare to Tweet in #edchat…it will do your PLN good!