Textbooks and iPods and Facebook — Oh My!

This Special Report in Businessweek this week takes a fascinating look at how technology — from iPods to professors’ Facebook pages — is changing the face of your average campus.

I especially like this quote from a researcher in the story:

Cara Lane, a researcher who studies learning and scholarly technologies at the University of Washington in Seattle, says all that time spent searching for Hannah Montana videos on YouTube can help make teens better at searching the databases, including Lexis-Nexis and J-Stor, they’ll need for academic research—those IMs, texts, and status updates are a primer for participation in online forums related to classwork. “Students usually arrive not knowing how to use education-oriented technology tools,” Lane says. “But they quickly surpass their instructors in their ability to use them effectively.”

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New York — The Virtual Learning Backwoods

Utah Education NetworkImage via Wikipedia

I received an email today from Rich Finlinson, Public Relations Specialist for the Utah Education Network, who attended my NSPRA Gold Mine Session in Washington, DC, in July. The session, “School PR and Social Media,” focused on using social media in doing public relations for schools.

Rich wanted some advice about online press release creation and distribution sites, which I’ll get to in another post, probably tomorrow.

But in communicating with him, I decided to check out the Utah Education Network online and was blown away not only by the agency’s website but by the educational programs the state of Utah offers its kids. Most notable was the Utah Electronic High School, that state’s version of online high school courses as an option for students.

I recently heard Susan Patrick, President and Chief Executive Officer of the North American Council for Online Learning (NACOL), speak about virtual schools at the staff development meeting of our Lower Hudson Regional Information Center.

Patrick spoke about the growing presence of virtual schools, online courses and distance learning in the U.S., with state education departments jumping on this bandwagon with zeal. Patrick’s organization, NACOL, is an international K-12 nonprofit association representing the interests of practitioners, providers and students involved in online learning worldwide. You can see the lengthy list of institutional NACOL members (schools) on their site.

The Utah Electronic High School has been in operation since 1994, and provides a wide variety of courses to Utah students. Courses are added each year as interest and funding permit. The Electronic High School courses have been developed by master teachers and are correlated to the state of Utah’s core standards and objectives.

Students enrolled at the UEHS are able to work at their own pace until the class is completed. Most students, they say, spend about 200 hours on a full-credit course, and all courses are rigorous.

This is the case in many states, but when Ms. Patrick showed us a map of the U.S. depicting states either with government-funded virtual school programs or with partially government-funded programs, New York was one of a handful of states without either. How entrenched and backward is the state I live in?

The public approves our public school budgets, except in the state’s large cities. So most New York boards of education are under pressure each May, during the budget vote season, just to get a bare bones budget past the voters. I work for school districts where every penny, from textbooks to salaries, is picked apart by taxpayer groups sick and tired of paying high local, New York, and federal taxes. Property taxes alone in my neck of the woods run anywhere from $10,000 to $25,000 a year.

Unfortunately, I don’t see virtual schools making their mark in New York, unless they’re privately funded, the state overhauls the public education financing system, or the voters decide to be gracious. Or none of the above.

And the sad thing is, our kids will be the beneficiaries of this sad, backwoods legacy.

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Syllabi for the Millennial Student

The Millennial Professor, whose site I visit now and then for ideas, had a post today about her syllabi for Millennial students — you know, the kids who do nearly everything electronically and are plugged in 24 hours a day. (I’m so jealous of this generation, remembering with horror the late nights I spent in my dorm room, using WiteOut and an IBM Selectric typewriter, praying the ribbon didn’t run out of ink at 4 a.m., which it inevitably did.)

So here’s the checklist the Millennial Professor uses in assembling her syllabi for courses. It’s great to use these ideas as you plan your own courses, college or K-12, for the year.

1. She includes a photo of the textbook the class will be using. I’m sure this comes in handy when students are in the college bookstore trying to sort out their purchases, or ordering online, when a photo of the book might be useful. For K-12 teachers, this might be useful information for parents.

2. She includes an explanation of her virtual office hours. Because many teachers and professors  don’t have virtual office hours, this simply helps to explain what this is. Millennial Professor includes her Yahoo instant messaging user name and describes how her virtual office hours work and might help them. Virtual office hours — via email and instant messaging — provide an alternative to in-office hours, particularly for students who need a quick answer or explanation.

3. She uses her syllabus to remind students that laptops are not allowed in her classroom, except on designated days. Because her lectures are in Powerpoint and she makes them available online to her students, laptops generally aren’t useful in the classroom and deter from class discussions.

4. She includes a “Best Practices” section in her syllabus. Today’s students want to know how they can make a certain grade, so she provides examples of best practices so students will know exactly what they need to do to make a satisfactory grade. For K-12 teachers, posting your class rubrics would be a viable alternative.

5. She includes her attendance policy, because she always takes attendance. Her students are allowed to have two to three absences without an explanation.

Bloggers Unite on Nov. 10th

Image via Wikipedia

I’ve signed up to participate in the Bloggers Unite initiative on Nov. 10. This worldwide initiative will benefit Refugees United with information, which leads to empowerment.

Refugees United is a non-profit organization that helps refugees relocate family and friends through the use of the internet. It provides refugees with an anonymous forum to reconnect with missing family members. By registering with nicknames, scars, former locations and other markers only identifiable to family and close friends, everyone can remain ‘invisible’ to all but their relatives.

The Refugees United search engine is the first of its kind. Visit Refugees United to see how it works and to learn more about the work that Refugees United is doing. You can also read the Refugees United blog.

Here’s what Bloggers Unite says about this effort:

It is very difficult to reach refugees in remote areas. By advancing the power of blogs, bloggers are effectively placed in a position to fulfill a job that could not be done without the power of the internet and the skills that bloggers possess to quickly and effectively raise the necessary awareness and aid about critical social causes. We hope you will join us, as together we harness the expression of the blogosphere to reunite family members who have been separated from each other.

Bloggers who participate will blog about any refugee issue to help shed light on the plight of refugees and the hardships they endure around the world. If you have a blog, join the effort.

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Pbwiki Ready to Help Public Schools

Dave Nagel over at TheJournal.com is reporting that collaborative technology developer PBwiki has announced $25 million in new grant programs for education, offering free upgrades to its hosted wiki service and other awards.

Back To School Challenge will allow up to 100,000 teachers and librarians to earn a free gold-level PBwiki account, which usually costs about $250. Other prizes include a $1,000 gift certificate for purchasing school supplies, Lego educational products, and games.

The Partner Program for Education allows districts and associations to offer free PBwiki gold accounts to members.

“With schools and libraries feeling the pinch of the slowing economy, PBwiki wants to make sure educators can still afford the tools they need to make 2008-2009 the year of collaborative learning,” said PBwiki CEO Jim Groff in a statement released this week. “Giving away 100,000 premium wikis lets us help out and spread wiki-based collaboration to an even wider audience.”

Both programs are open now through Oct. 31. Go for it!

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Technorati, Here I Come!

20080823-IMG_5263-1Image by Barack Obama via Flickr

So I’m finally being listed on Technorati, after many false starts and apparent system problems on their end. I hope some of you will visit me over there and I hope to get a Technorati button on this blog soon. Check out my
Technorati Profile.

A Back-to-School Wakeup Call

I am a major fan of Dr. Michael Wesch, professor of digital ethnography at Kansas State University, best known for his video, The Machine is Using/Us, which went viral on YouTube.
Because I just dropped off my two college students for another year of learning, and because the public school year is about to begin here in New York, I thought I’d provide this gift to you of another Wesch video, which serves to remind us who our students are. The video was made after 200 students collaborated on the topic: “A Vision of Students Today.” Enjoy — it’s an eye-opener.

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Land of the Open and Free? We’ll See…

I have been a fan of the openness of Web 2.0 — we’re listening to music, watching movies and TV shows, replaying Michael Phelps Olympics videos over and over again. All for free and open to anyone willing to put in the time and energy to click a few times. Everything I’ve read tells me it’s the open source decade, when licenses and copyrights will be a thing of the past. But the former journalist in me is skeptical.

This week, I wrote for another site about the Web 2.0 phenomenon of free books and free magazines online. The old-timer in this area is Project Gutenberg, with its 25,000 free books in its online book catalog. Also out there is the catalog of 30,000 books at the Online Books Page maintained by the University of Pennsylvania, Google Books, and Bibliomania, which has thousands of e-books, poems, articles, short stories and plays online, along with message boards about books and authors and lots of reference materials.

Keep in mind that all these forward-thinking sites are prohibited by copyright law from reproducing any books published after 1923, so they all contain classics. But there’s Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and a slew of other recognizable (albeit classic) authors whose works have outlived the copyright laws.

An even more controversial newcomer to the Web 2.0 world is Mygazines, a site that encourages its members to upload their copies of Life, Time, Playboy and many more magazines as PDFs, which are then converted into easily readable “flip book” versions of magazines that anyone can read for free online. This, of course, has sent the publishing world into a tailspin over copyright laws and I’ve read that attorneys are working overtime to shut the place down. But so far, it’s still out there, as you can see from my screenshot. I personally (former journalist that I am) love it.

For those of you who prefer to live within the confines of the law, Zinio offers a long-overdue service. By obviously partnering with the magazine industry, Zinio offers single-issue purchases of magazines online, providing you with immediate access to the issue you wanted to read and saving on paper by letting you read the entire thing online. Awesome. The corner newsstand on your laptop.

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A Little Link Love Never Hurts

Thanks to Sherilynne Starkie of Strive Public Relations for listing School Communications 2.0 on her July Link Love list. Just when you begin to think that no one reads your blog, someone like Sherilynne comes along and makes your day by listing your site on hers. I’m a mere amateur, so getting a mention from a PR professional helps boost the blog-esteem. Hey — I like that. Blog-esteem.
Thanks again, Sherilynne.

I’m Signed Up: Blog Action Day 08 – Poverty

Impoverished area near 125th street in Harlem,...Image via Wikipedia

My 18-year-old son is always wearing one of those colorful rubber bracelets signifying his concern for global problems — hunger, war, cancer. Our young people are always setting examples for us, aren’t they? Now it’s my turn, by participating in Blog Action Day 2008 – Poverty, a worldwide attempt by bloggers to all write a post about this issue on the same day — October 15th. So far, more than 900 websites (and counting) have signed up to participate with an audience of more than 2 million reaaders.

Here’s how Envato, the non-profit behind the idea, described Blog Action Day:

Global issues like poverty are extremely complex. There is no simple, clear answer. By asking thousands of different people to give their viewpoints and opinions, Blog Action Day creates an extraordinary lens through which to view these issues. Each blogger brings their own perspective and ideas. Each blogger posts relating to their own blog topic. And each blogger engages their audience differently.

If you’re a blogger who would like to participate, go to the website and sign up. It’s easy and free. If you’re an educator, why not make this day a teachable moment? How about doing some research about poverty? Comparing numbers? Learning more about what poverty means in different countries? Training your lens on poverty in the United States?

If you’re a superintendent of schools, why not set a great example by participating in a food drive, working at a soup kitchen, volunteering for Habitat for Humanity, or simply blogging about the issue?

Join us on Oct. 15, 2008.

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