I spent the day (and what a freezing one it was!) in Sturbridge at the first day of the MassCUE conference. My electricity went out overnight so I am relieved that I made it in time for the first session! I chose to not bring my laptop today and instead mobile blog and twitter my movements throughout the day, while jotting down notes here and there. Conferences can be so overwhelming sometimes! But today I left feeling just plain happy to be in the field that I am, and to be among people who share that passion - and their knowledge. I attended sessions on topics I had already had some experience with, that encouraged my interests in them, connected me with colleagues who share the same passions, and provided me with “nuggets” of info or sources to pursue. I ended the day touring the exhibition hall for goodies and won a free polo shirt!

I first attended a session where I got to play with the XO laptop. I am familiar with the OLPC initiative and amazon.com’s give 1 get 1 promo last year (which just went out again this week at amazon.com/xo), but I hadn’t had a hands-on walkthrough of the little guy. Its a Linux platform with SUGAR GUI and an SD card port and 3 USB ports - meaning you can hook up another operating system if you wish via the SD card, and increase its disk space by connecting an external drive. Hackers are delighted to jump into its open source code and customize it to their needs. Activities and apps are shared and downloadable on the XO wiki (wiki.laptop.org). It is wireless enabled but also connects to mesh networks, so even if only 1 XO is connected to the internet, every XO on the same mesh network can connect through it. The mesh network also allows XO’s within range to share files and collaborate on documents without having to connect to the internet. The screen is daylight readable and although the battery can last up to 8 hrs, there are usb port solar panels for $9 a pop that can keep it running. SO you can see how engineering kept (and still keeps) its target audience in mind - members of 3rd world countries.

Next I checked out a session about videoconferencing in the classroom. This is something I have been struggling to make happen and was very curious what the “easiest” method was among the tools I knew of. A discussion about hardware did not occur, but it was apparent that the macbook was the best choice with its built-in webcam and ichat application. I am pretty sold on that combination too given my experiences videoconferencing from Germany with the students in Boston. I will have to get my hands on some webcams for our pcs at BRCPS in the short-term. As for applications, the speaker, Wesley Fryer, showed us Skype, iChat, and oovoo (a new one I hadnt heard of), and I add into the mix Google’s new Google Video chat feature, as well as FlashMeeting. The best news is that these apps are all FREE to use, so cost is a non-factor! So more time was spent selling reasons why to videoconference in the classroom, and Wesley gave some inspiring examples as well as resources for free content providers. Any child who is too ill to come to school can virtually attend the class and fully participate via a live video feed. In his example, the child was literally sitting at a desk (as a laptop on the table) and would raise her hand and ask questions the entire class could hear. Similarly, a teacher can teach his lesson by projecting his Skype session from home onto the screen and leading the lesson while a substitute manages the class - but wait, is that still a sick day?! lol. Finally he left us with the following content providers :

• CILC.org
• Berrien RESA
• NoodleTrip.com
• Epals.com/search
• K12 online conference 2008

Ill have to look back into these later. The links and more details will be posted on the Masscue site but I just want to transcribe my notes!

I was super excited to attend the Global Discussion session! I have been working on the Global Exchange project for now 3 years, and hoping to keep it alive in my new school setting. I was relieved to hear the presenters say that they had been at this for 5 years and finally felt able to share what they’d learned and provide sensible and successful guidelines for establishing international exchanges. I was also excited to see that I had already used the tools they had suggested for connection including wikis and the ning. What I took away was a connection to a developing hub, also a ning, for K-12 global classrooms in Massachusetts that certainly my ning will need to hook up with. I also saw lesson plan templates and suggested project ideas and timelines that WILL work! I am looking forward to sharing these ideas and guidelines with BRCPS teachers. I think it will help focus our projects and ensure success. I will be posting more on this topic for sure, as I spoke with the presenters afterwards about visiting BRCPS. Cool! Some tips included :

• Lessons must be flexible and at least 3-6 weeks long
• Choose broad themes and design universal questions that are sensitive to the country you are working with
• Make the experience authentic and more of a dialogue, not simply a fact-finding assignment, or compare and contrast activity such as “what are the qualities of a leader?” or “what does home mean to you?”
• join irex.org
• choose a product and/or culmination of the experience

FINally, after discussing a civic media project with our BRCPS technology teacher, Mr. Dodson, over lunch, I listened to an overview of RSS by Will Richardson. This was good timing for me bc I just spent the last few days re-organizing my Bloglines subscriptions and publishing my feeds. I added to the sidebar here a “I’m feeding on…” link to my Bloglines feeds so people can see who and what I am reading online. I learned that I can also subscribe to feed searches by adding the RSS feed of the results from a blogsearch.google.com. HE walked us through Google Reader but the concepts are the same. I liked his approach to blog searching. I recently have been searching edublogs.org for good examples of ways to use blogs in education to show my teachers, and have been disappointed with the results! I found that Im not the only one frustrated (see this educator’s blog post), but this still doesnt help! Today’s lessons on how to search and subscribe to find what I want will be helpful. I liked Will’s discretion while searching too. His method makes sense. Of course your keyword choice drives the results, but you have to do more work. Investigate the expertise of the blogger, how often the blog is updated, and the amount and quality of the commentary done there.

He also walked us through Delicious which is not just a bookmarking tool (so you dont lose your “favorites” when you go to another computer or browser), its a social bookmarking tool. In short, you can save and categorize your favorite links (not feeds - this is different), and also find the fav links of people who share your interests and passions. This is suuuper useful bc it cuts down on the hunting YOU have to do. Right now, I save my bookmarks on my iGoogle dashboard, but I think I will move these into delicious so I can share them and find more that relate to (and may be even better) than mine! To complicate things even more, I can subscribe in Bloglines to the feed of search results from Delicious.

Phew that’s it for me today!!

On Wednesday evening, I attended a public forum in the Brattle Theatre featuring an impressive discussion panel : Jonathan Fanton (president of the MacArthur Foundation), Howard Gardner (Professor at Harvard Ed School), Henry Jenkins (Professor at MIT), and Katie Salen (Professor at Parsons School of Design & game designer). Unfortunately, there was an overflow so I had to watch it via a webcast in the Ed School (I grabbed a sloppy burger at Charley’s Kitchen first! Doh!), but that actually afforded me time to get to the reception at Upstairs on the Square early. I was able to say hello to Professor Jenkins, but I don’t think he quite remembered me from the C4CFM! I actually spent most of the reception catching up with old acquaintances from Facing History and Ourselves’ Digital Legacies Project. I still and know I will always feel a strong bond with the teachers and students from that summer project! I meant to introduce myself to Howard Gardner, as he knows my headmaster, Mary Skipper, who had approached me last year about integrating morality into the media classes (which was in fact my thesis topic choice last year : moral dilemmas in media). I couldn’t locate Katie Salen either! I am fascinated by the new school she is founding in New York : its curriculum will be based on games and the gaming experience (this was a point she made that I latched onto : gaming is not just about the game itself - its not like kids will be playing games all day in math class! - but about the whole experience the gamer goes through).

The forum itself was hard to hear from the webcast! But I picked up some “nuggets”.

The panel, facilitated by Ellen Fanton, Director of MIT Press, discussed ways in which young people’s participation in online social communities and gaming affects their learning experience. Across the panel, there was a consensus that learning was indeed taking place online in the following 5 areas :

1. identity : who am I online vs offline?
2. privacy : there is a HUGE learning moment when a child must decide what to make private and what to make public
3. ownership & authorship : if I modify existing media, is it “mine”?
4. trust & credibility : what is credible in an information overload? who can I trust and how do I know I can?
5. the definition of community & what it means to be a member of a community

One challenge is how to assess the learning that is indeed taking place in “new” media, versus “traditional” media (these labels were also put into question by Gardner : what is “new” and what is “traditional”?). What are the performances of understanding ethical behavior in a digital world (a TFU framework approach)?

This was the endeavor that Fanton was announcing : to identify the behaviors of a participatory culture and to find ways of assessing them. From my perspective, a digital media teacher who has had students blogging, posting into forums, and joining social communities like Tapped In since 3 years ago, how do I TEACH the students how to behave? I think this involves a much more explicit teaching of morality and ethics in the classroom than ever before, as there are definitive behaviors that are acceptable and not in most online communities : see the acceptable use policies…But what I am facing in the international Ning is emails from banned members demanding to know WHY they were banned, or why they can not post that picture…There is still a disconnect between what is explained to participants explicitly and how they actually CHOOSE to behave. How do I teach them to make “better” choices online?

The participatory culture is widely “blocked” (quite literally) in schools, and extreme examples of “bad” behavior online is sensationalized in the news. What was “too risky” before with myspace (anyone can join, even predators) is now being solved by social tools like Ning and CrowdVine in which users can create and control their OWN social communities. What would be cool would be a class in which students create and control their own online community, where they do everything from forming their own AUP, electing moderators, banning their own members, and more! Kindof like a digital version of Kid Nation!

Jenkins pointed out, whereas before we had a “digital divide” (a discrepancy over access to computers), we now have a “participation gap”, where not every child has the same experience online. Not every child is in MySpace - a fact I assess when 1/4 of the hands go up in the 9th grade Web Classroom. Why am I surprised? And by asking this survey question, do the kids who choose to not participate feel they should be?

The MacArthur Foundation announced the new International Journal of Learning and Media which examines the effect of digital media on how young people learn, play socialize and participate in civic life. Mr. Fanton announced a call for project proposals and papers.

I think Ill be submitting something, especially as my thesis research on youth-produced civic media evolves…

Last Thursday I was invited into a Flash meeting with teachers and principals in the UK. Here’s a Screenshot :

It was pretty seamless - the live video streamed quickly. When you want to speak, you click on the orange hand to get in line (the “queue”) and then your video appears in the main screen when its your turn. The group had a specific agenda, so I was kindof eavesdropping…just to get a sense of the tool. Thanks Ian! More on the ways in which we are working together soon…

So I really WAS paying attention at the Boston Media Makers meeting on Sunday at Sweet Finnish, and not just posting from my camera phone…In fact, I was supercharged up afterwards with ideas and new contacts and just plain happiness to be around people who “speak my language.” Aaaaaw. I aimed to get ideas about how to logistically get the students mobile blogging while in Germany and Paris, and the crew of about 15 or so (including a babbling baby) gave me some leads and solid tips. Thanks!! I gotta run out the door now, but Steve Garfield posted links and a summary on the group’s blog that sums it up…Ill post later about the “gems” I got.

Thanks again to Steve for inviting me!

I successfully uploaded my podcamp day 1 video to my Blip.tv space AND tagged it correctly in order to get it included in the Podcamp Boston aggregate, which is cool. Baby steps, folks, baby steps. BUT I am now emailing with “Justin” from Wordpress to help me cross-post onto THIS blog. There are some “problems”…ARGH.

In other news, as I nail down the HOW TO in the next few days, I am recruiting students for the podcast class here. I hate to use the term “class” cuz it really won’t be run in that traditional sense. I simply want students who want to broadcast their stories through media in an effort to connect our own classrooms, with the greater community of the neighborhood, the school system, the city, and even the world.

My students will also join a global discussion forum which will include our school, a school from Japan, and a third school from Yorkshire. I think we can get some cool trans-atlantic projects going! That’s what new media is all about - sharing in and building a collective and collaborative knowledge base with and through multiple forms of communication. And my goal is to get teen voices heard among all the twitter!

Oh here’s my extreme close-up (DORK!) on Steve Garfield’s excellent video blog.

Turns out that the 5 easy steps to video podcasting are not so “easy” after all!

I reflected on my first day at Podcamp by video taping a session from my camera. I figured I already have a Google Video account and a blog, so I can edit it a bit in MovieMaker, and upload it before I go out to watch the Sox game. Um. Google Video does not have the option to post directly to your blog after you upload it to your account…MovieMaker is compressing the thing SO small that the result is the above file…I tried 4 different formats so far…the wordpress plugin for video play also is changing the quality of the video…and I thought Blip.tv would answer this all but no, I need my wordpress api url or whatever and yet that doesn’t solve the cross-blogging posting (according to wordpress support forums). SO I just spent the last hour on this when I should now be on my way into the city. And all you get is the above poor quality video!! The sound is awful! I am so disappointed.

Help? Plus, this isn’t even actually syndicate-able, is it, since I uploaded it from my computer? (I just made that word up)

You KNOW I will repost this tomorrow once I figure it all out, but, I gotta go get a life right now!

Oh, and that special appearance of a Sox fan at the end is Teddy. Depending on the sports team, he can be Teddy Bruschi, Teddy Hesburgh, or Teddy Williams. “High Five! Go Sox!”

The group at Henrietta’s Table
Originally uploaded by AlleyesonJenny

In the midst of Octoberfest in Harvard Square on Sunday, 6 bloggers, including yours truly, met up for brunch at Henrietta’s Table in the Charles Hotel. Many thanks to John Wall of the M Show for arranging it! In my quest for new endeavors and new ideas in education and technology, it was the perfect launching pad. I indeed did pass out my new business cards, and while doing so made the humble “I’m in the process of updating my sites…(grumble, grumble)” comment, and promptly went home with lists of links to check out (LinkedIn, Twitter), new blogs to read (Jeremiah, C.C., Len), events to attend (Blogtoberfest, PodCamp), and old friends to reconnect with (Big Red Blog, All Eyes on Jenny, Ronin Marketeer). There’s a great group picture on Jenny’s blog!

Great conversation over eggs benedict and fresh fruit beats text messagin any day, I say!

I just registered for Podcamp Boston : http://www.PodCampBoston.org

I am super excited. Last year was the first of its kind and I was unable to attend. I am teaching a podcast class this year which hasn’t officially started yet, so I am eager to learn about the possibilities.

I am also engaging in the MIT media lab’s Youth and Civic Media focus group (C4FCM). The group is exploring ways to engage youth in civic participation with and through technology. The Media Lab hosts some very interesting conferences and forums, one of which on November 8 discusses the effects of gaming on civic engagement.

Lots going on…hence I spent the weekend making new business cards and planning for an update to my site(s), WHILE still searching for a new home. To keep the stress in perspective, 2 students at my school lost their home and everything in it last week after a terrible fire. I am lucky to have someplace to go.

Happy Case of the Mondays! GO PATS tonight.

 Students watched the final PSA’s completed by the Junior level Media Seminar students today! The students used Adobe Premiere to edit their digital videos about such topics as teen violence, drug abuse, teen pregnancy, suicide, and online predators.

Today, Microsoft revealed more than 100 of its research projects at the annual Microsoft Research TechFest 2007. Among some of the innovations are ways to get kids as early as the age of 4 into programming, turning your PC into a telescope, and mapping the structure of a web site like constellations in the galaxy.

http://research.microsoft.com/