Why I Hate Interactive Whiteboards Too

Last week I had a lengthy conversation with a big wig at an IWB company who was trying to convince me that my idea that educators could Erase Unnecessary Costs by Getting Smart about Interactive Whiteboards was way off. He couldn't understand how I could think that it was unnecessary to spend money on a tool that will allow students to collaborate, promote interactivity, and connect the classroom to the world. Ugh! This is what these IWB companies spend millions trying to get you to believe. Purchase their board and you get all this. So, I shared, that while I do agree those things are valuable, I don't need an IWB for any of it and that they just trick people into thinking they need the device for these things to happen. He asked if I've ever used one. Yes! And, I hate them. There is not a single thing I can do on an IWB that I can't do without one more effectively. Then he went into the whole training bit. No, I don't want training on something that's really expensive that has no value over teaching without one.

It just irks me that these companies lead people to believe they need to spend thousands when they can do the same thing and better using free tools.

Well, I have a blog post brewing that really dives into why these devices make learning worse and why schools and districts should instead spend their dollars on resources for students, but I haven't had the chance to write it (someday, I hope). However, serendipitously I came across a piece that shares many of my sentiments. Mine has a slightly different spin, but until that post makes it's way to the top of my pile, I'll share this one written by educator, author, blogger Bill Ferriter. Like many educators after a year of trying to make the best of a bad tool, Bill began Getting Smart about Interactive Whiteboards

In his article "Why I Hate Interactive Whiteboards," Bill, who gave his IWB away, shares in my belief that...

most of the time, interactive whiteboard programs are, in fact, nothing more than vain attempts to buy change. Sharing that even with time and training, interactive whiteboards are an under-informed and irresponsible purchase. They do little more than reinforce a teacher-centric model of learning. Heck, even whiteboard companies market them as a bridging technology, designed to replicate traditional instructional practices (make presentations, give notes, deliver lectures) in an attempt to move digital teacher-dinosaurs into the light. I ask you: Do we really want to spend thousands of dollars on a tool that makes stand-and-deliver instruction easier?

To read more pearls of wisdom from Bill visit his article here Why I Hate Interactive Whiteboards.

Flip Your Instruction with Flip Video Cameras

You can begin creating a 21st century learning environment today with one of the easiest and least expensive to use technologies out there. A Flip Video. This $150 investment can go a long way in helping digital native students create using the technology they love with a tool that’s easy on the wallet and has virtually no learning curve...especially in the hands of students.

So, how might you Flip Your Instruction? Here are some learning ideas, teaching ideas, and resources and samples to inspire you.

• Learning Ideas
• How To Book -> How To Video
• About Me Book -> About Me Video
• My neighborhood report -> My neighborhood video
• Book report -> book trailer
• Tell your family’s stories (Flip Your Homework by bringing a Flip home)
• PSA or Advertisement
• What is your B Side (Personal narrative of the you people may not know)
  
  
• Teaching Ideas
• Students can create video tips for becoming better readers or writers. Teachers can create the first few sample videos.
• Students can create video tips for ways their parents can support them with their reading or writing.
• Students create videos with questions about reading or writing to be answered by others. Students or global community.

• Resources
• Inspiration
• Inspiration for student work ideas
• Inspiration for video ideas
• Voicethread provides a feedback forum for video projects
• Teaching video ideas
  (Have students or parents create or star in these!)
• Tips for Teaching Guided and Independent Reading in Grades K-3
• Strategies and prompts for emergent readers
• Mathtrain.tv
• What Good Readers Do
• Just Right Book Selection
• Reading Tips for Parents with Beginning Readers
• Choosing Just Right Books
• Helping Your Kids to Read with Leveled Readers

• Other ideas!
  
  Forty Interesting Ways* to use your Pocket Video Camera in the Classroom

  View more presentations from Mark Belinsky.
• Sample Videos
• Book Report
• Request for help in learning concept
• Student “iCan” movies
• Movies Gallaria
  

If you are ready to flip your instruction, it is important that from the beginning, you Don’t Forget Your Audience! 5 Ideas To Connect with Real Audiences. Remember it’s important to help students discover places their work might be published to an authentic audience and also exposes them to examples of other student work. can begin creating a 21st century learningenvironment t

Don’t Forget Your Audience! 5 Ideas To Connect with Real Audiences

As I shared in my popular post 21st Century Educators Don’t Say, “Hand It In.” They say, “Publish It!, publishing to an authentic audience is much more powerful than publishing to an audience of one (the teacher) or some (classmates, parents). It also enables students to produce real work that has real world meaning and empowers them with a valuable skill necessary for success in life. Knowing how to develop and share a message that can make a difference.

Sadly, not enough educators are doing this. They are teaching as though students live in the same world as they did when they went to school. A world where students didn’t think, converse, create, and publish in real ways to real people who cared beyond those in their physical environment. This injustice is no longer okay. Teachers need to prepare students to be global citizens today and tomorrow and let go of the past.

Far too often I experience teachers at schools like the one I attended last month who dig their heals in the past. This school was celebrating the innovative work of students who had put much effort into creating public service announcements (for a non audience???) about issues they selected and about which they deeply cared. When I asked the teacher where the student work was being published she looked at me blankly. She thought her work was done. But it wasn't. She left off the most important part of the work: Helping kids connect with and find a purposeful authentic audience. “Oh,” she said, “You mean like have them publish on YouTube or something?” “Well not really.” I said. “That’s only half the work.” It’s kinda like an author who prints copies of her book and leaves them in a pile somewhere. Sure, someone may come across the pile of books and even read a copy, but just placing your book among the masses is not finding your audience. She explained that next year (when she likely won’t have these students) “she” (not the students) were going to “look into” placing the videos on the school's website in a safe place where others outside of school can't visit. While that’s a tip toe in the right direction, it’s not what I’m talking about. What that accomplishes is replicating what takes place in the classroom. It digitally enables teachers to pass student work out to an audience of some classmates/parents. There is no active audience involved that shares in the passion and interest conveyed in the student’s work.

At this point, the teacher really just wanted me to go away. She was proud with what her and her students did and she was done. She wanted no part of this audience thing. Kids produce work for her and maybe some others. End of story.

“But wait,” I pleaded. Just listen for a minute. Your students are creating videos about teen labor, animal rights, anti abortion. Their voices are powerful and there are people, groups and organizations who would value their work if you supported your students in reaching out to these outlets and showed them how...which is so much easier in our connected Web 2.0 world.

Before I could go on, she cut me off with a litany of "yeah, buts".

• Teacher: Yeah, but it doesn't matter. We can’t do it.
• Me: Why???
• Teacher: We’d need permission slips.
• Me: We have them!
• Teacher: Yeah but, it doesn’t matter because...
• Our parents don’t want kids publishing their work online.
• Our principal has a no publishing rule.
• Our whole school system doesn’t let students publish their work.
• Me: Why?
• Teacher: Because it’s dangerous.
• Me: No, it’s not. Youth are at far greater risk of abuse in their own homes and in the homes of their friends than they ever are in digital or physical publics. I have a nice blog post you can read about this issue. Banning students from being authentic creators is robbing them of meaningful and important learning. And...

At this point, she said, “That's not what I do and I’m not interested in going down this road.” With that she escorted me to the hallway outside her classroom.

Harump! Sadly, this isn’t that unusual in schools today. But what if it were? What are some ways this teacher could have helped students meaningfully publish their work and quite possibly made a difference in the lives of others around a cause they were passionate about? Here are some ideas.

5 Ways You Can Share Your Work and Make A Difference

1.  Share your work on a blog.
People who care about issues are often mobilized via blogs about the issue. Search for your topic using Technorati, Technorati was founded to help bloggers succeed by collecting, highlighting, and distributing the global online conversation. Encourage students to read these blogs and join the conversation in comments and via connecting with the blog author and asking her if she’d like to feature your student-created work. Wa-lah! An instant interested audience.

2.  Share your work with people passionate about your topic on Twitter.
Use Twitter to connect with authentic audiences. You can mine Twitter for information or go to some good sites to find information on topics of interest. Once you see who is Tweeting about these topics follow them, then write to them and share your work. You’ll have a network of people you follow who are interested in a topic you are interested in, and these folks will likely view your work, retweet it, share with others, and help you find places to share it more widely.

3.  Share your work on discussion boards.
People are talking about all sorts of things via online discussion boards. Do a search for your topic “and” discussion boards or do a ning search to find communities of interest. Once on those boards students can see what people are talking about. Various points of view and perspectives. Join the conversation, and share their work.

4.  Share your work on Facebook pages.
Facebook is becoming more and more popular in education and teaching with Facebook provides students with meaningful teaching. From primary school teachers to high school principals, educators are successfully harnessing the power of this medium. Help your students connect to real audiences using this medium by searching for pages on their topic of interest, commenting and publishing their work there.

5.  Share your work with organizations.
In the classroom I share in this post, students were really passionate about their topics but had no idea anyone outside their teacher cared about their work. Well, they do. Students should be lead to search for organizations who support their cause. When they find them, they can contact them, share their work, and ask if they’d like to feature it on their site. The contact may even provide authentic suggestions for improving their work or perhaps also an interview and invitation to do more or share with other audiences.

Yeah, but...
If you’ve read this and like the teacher mentioned in this story, have endless, “yeah buts,” then take a lesson from Will Richardson who advises Yeah, You’ve Got Problems. So Solve Them. Think outside the box, or if necessary, think outside the ban. Take on the responsibility to enlighten parents, other teachers, administrators. If your school blocks all or some of the aforementioned sites, see if you can apply to unblock them which is possible in many school districts. Even here in New York City. Additionally, much of this is the work that should be done away from school anyhow. In the real world students have access to 21st century tools and it is our moral imperative to support students in using them. If you have students who don’t have internet, help them connect with someone/some place that does. A library, a business, a mentor, a friend. Figure out a way these students can borrow laptops over night and connect to one of the thousands of free internet spots or just go to a friends and connect to their network. Schools need to support every student in bridging the digital divide, providing equitable access, preparing students for the real world in which they live, and knowing how to connect, converse, and create with others in the global environment.

Controlling your digital identity is as easy as 1-2-3

Google or You? Who Would You Rather Control Your Digital Identity?

While many users of the internet have accepted a passive digital footprint over which they have not taken control, Dean Shareski recently presented at #BLC10 on ideas for managing and manipulating what Google says about us. To do this, first it makes sense to 1) Get in touch with what your digital footprint says about you, 2) Determine if that is what you would like your digital footprint to say and if not, determine what you do want. 3) Start establishing your digital footprint. Here’s how.

1. Get in touch with your digital footprint.
   Do you know what your digital footprint says about you? If not, find out. Here’s how.
1. Google yourself.
   You can start in the obvious way and just Google yourself by typing your name into Google’s search box in whatever way(s) someone doing a search about you might i.e. John Smith, teacher. Take a look at what you see. Any surprises? Anything you wish were different?
2. Spezify who you are.
   Spezify is a search tool presenting results from a large number of websites in different visual ways. The site moves web search away from endless lists of blue text links and towards a more intuitive experience giving viewers an overview of a subject. The site mixes all media types: blogs, videos, microblogs and images. Everything communicates and helps building the bigger picture.
3. Check out your online Persona.
   Personas shows you how the Internet sees you. It is a critique of data mining, revealing the computer’s uncanny insights and inadvertent errors. It is meant for the viewer to reflect on our current future world where digital histories are as important, than oral histories, and computation methods of condensing our digital traes are largely opaque and socially ignorant.
4. Use Google Alerts to monitor what others are saying about you
   You can sign up for Google Alerts to receive email updates of the latest relevant Google results about you by simply visiting the site and entering your name. You can click preview to see the type of results you'll receive.

Why I *STILL* Love the Phrase Personal Learning Network

During a session with Joyce Valenza at the BLC10 conference, I learned that there are folks who have an issue with the term “Personal Learning Network” (PLN). Valenza referred to her PLN and sort of apologized, acknowledging those who disagree with the term.

As a lover of my PLN, I had to know more. Why was she apologetic about the term? So, of course, to find out more, I turned to my PLN and asked what the issue was on Twitter where they tried to explain in 140 characters or less.

Here’s what they said and what I thought.

eduinnovation @InnovativeEdu I use Prof. Networked Learning Collaborative (PNLC) for PRODUCING / ACCOMPLISHING things with edu people from all over

• My thought: Okay, that’s a nice term, but very different to me then my personal learning network. To me a PNLC seems like a group who all know they belong to a particular collaborative. I might use that for my learning network http://ted21c.ning.com. However, not for my PLN. My personal learning network is unique to me. We collaborate, sure, but we’re not one group. Each of us have our own personal learning network uniquely aligned to our specifications. While members may intersect, each network is different.

juliafallon @InnovativeEdu Jist of it: PLN doesn't mean anything to everyday people. Looking for word to describe w/o taking away human exp./connection.

• My thought: Hmmm...If it doesn’t mean something to people I know, I take it as a great opportunity to explain in person or online like I did here 5 Things You Can Do to Begin Developing Your Personal Learning Network. I enjoy helping others understand the concept and build their own network. Technology gives us a unique opportunity to develop our network in ways never before possible and I want to share and help others get started!
  

tomwhitby @InnovativeEdu Arguments of semantics often take people off what should be the focus of the discussion. #edchat #blc10

• My thought: I don’t get it. It’s personal. It’s learning. It’s my network. The semantics work for me.
  

While I appreciated the insight, I STILL didn’t get it so @akamrt tried to explain further in this series of tweets.
akamrt @InnovativeEdu For me, I think it's a misnomer & far to sterile. @ijohnpederson suggests "guild" as more appropriate term, I agree w/ that.
akamrt @InnovativeEdu A guild is an association of craftsmen . . . earliest guilds were formed as confraternities of workers. (Wikipedia)
akamrt @InnovativeEdu The network model is a database model conceived as a flexible way of representing objects and their relationships. -Wikipedia
akamrt @InnovativeEdu That was the best option on Wikipedia for "network" Also, guild is "us" and personal is "me"
akamrt @InnovativeEdu Networks are also too hierarchical. Also, think "guild" in the way it exists in World of Warcraft.

• My thoughts: Huh? Misnomer? Sterile? Hierarchical Why? It’s personal. It’s mine. It’s the learning network I chose to create for me aligned to my talents, interests and passions. Guild is not more appropriate. A Guild is something people sign up to join. I am a member of the Screen Actors Guild. We all joined this guild because of a common focus, but my network is personal, aligned to my unique focus...not a common one. It’s mine and while anyone can join "MY" network, it is mine. They are a part of it...my network of people I turn to for learning. While I might be a part of their network, we are not all a part of the same network. Each of us has our own network. It is hierarchical and that’s okay. I’m at the top of mine, and you are at the top of yours and we have a lot of people that intersect.

Sadly, despite the best efforts of some members of my PLN, I still wasn't getting why some no longer like the term. So, mbteach tried to come to the rescue. She explained as follows:

mbteach re: PLN it started at ISTE. Certain people like to remind us to think about the terms we use & how we make connections.
mbteach as Tom said, it's a semantics issue but also requires more than 140 characters to explain :)

So I asked her if maybe there was a blog post that said more. She responded with...
mbteach it's not so much the acronym as this: http://injenuity.com/archives/21

This was a link to this blog post titled Embraced by the Cult | PLN | Embracing the Cult.
So I read it, and guess what? I’m still not convinced. While I respect the author’s opinion and clearly there are others who agree, I haven’t had the experiences she outlines, and I don’t perceive the term the same way. I hope there are others in my camp because I find the term personal learning network eloquent and clear. When I first heard Will RIchardson use the term I was filled with excitement. It named these wonderful people, from all walks of life that I learn from and with.

The issues stated in the blog post and how the author viewed the term PLN were just never how I viewed a PLN. True, I gave the term a glorified meaning. I loved it. It signified all the amazing people in my life I can turn to for advice, insight, and learning. I don’t agree with the post's postulation that a pln is cult-like or exclusionary. The author asks if you assign people to be in your PLN, what does that say about the people outside it? I’ll tell you what it says. To me there are two types of people when it comes to my personal learning network.
1) People who are in my PLN
2) People who I hope will be in my PLN.
There is no exclusion. To people outside my network, it says, "Hey, how ya doing? If you haven't connected with me yet, please do and let's get smarter together."

She explains that she believes people learn all the time, and everywhere. She says she doesn’t need to isolate or elevate a group of individuals to be her PLN. I agree with her observation. We do learn all the time and everywhere, and I appreciate that. That's why I am happy to elevate those I learn from and call them my personal learning network. They too are happy when I thank them and tell them how much I've learned from them and how I perceive them.

Furthermore, my PLN is not only digital. My learning network consists of many people that I know only online, only face-to-face, and there are those that I know in both mediums...my favorite, but not always possible. It also consists of people of all ages and with whom I have all sorts of connections. From my personal trainer, to my students who friend me on Facebook, to author Lucy Calkins who I rarely connect with in online communities, to my best friend, boyfriend, volleyball partner who also has a blog... or the one who also has a TV show, and all sorts of inspiring educators like principal Chris Lehmann (lots of on and off line connecting) and superintendent Mike Davino (we mostly connect offline.)

The article expresses a fear of loss of human connection. I don’t have this fear. My PLN enables me to connect to some of the most amazing leaders, thinkers, authors, students, friends, and others when I want, which would never be possible in the past. In fact, while at the BLC10 conference someone mentioned that it was at places like these that it is so great that we often, “meet people’s minds before we meet their faces.” I haven’t lost human connection at all. I’ve extended it in powerful ways.

The post goes on to bemoan PLNs for making influence and power more important than truth. I suppose any tool can be used well or not well. The way I use it, this has not been an issue. I try to connect with smart thinkers about smart ideas. A level of trust is developed. I get to know well the biases, passions, and interests of those in my PLN. I can usually look at their digital footprint for insight in this area. I just haven’t encountered power being more important than truth with anyone in my PLN. Could it be I'm more selective then others? I don't know.

The author also expresses a big problem when she reads “power of the PLN” statements, referencing the recursive nature of using the PLN to promote the PLN, or using tools to promote the use of tools. My PLN really has been powerful. It helps me think, process, discuss, dream, and create. So, I’ll be the first to admit that I often talk and write about the power of my PLN. Search for “personal learning network” on this blog and see for yourself.

Finally, the author shares, “I know people who have no desire to blog. I know people who lack charisma. I know creative people, who don’t function well in this space. They will be excluded, for not playing by the rules. They don’t “get it.” I guess this goes back to my own definition of PLN. Members of my network don’t have to get it to be included. They don’t have to function in this space. We communicate, discuss, learn, grow thinking, F-2-F, phone, email, Twitter, FB, Skype, on the court, wherever using whatever.

As I write this, I'm thinking/wondering if maybe I'm just lucky to have a super terrific personal learning network and realizing that perhaps there are others who in some way have been burned.

I applaud Jennifer Dalby for striking a powerful chord that resonated with many, but, even after reading the tweets and this blog, I still love the term and think I will continue to refer to my personal learning network as just that...unless I’m still missing something. Am I?

I Want Technology to Disappear!