It feels like it’s been a lifetime since I blogged on a regular basis. I didn’t realize until this past week that it’s been a few months since I posted with any regular frequency. It isn’t only the blogging that has been neglected… I’ve also been tweeting a lot less and I can’t recall the last time I logged in to SecondLife… ugh! The lack of blogging and tweeting is NOT an indicator that I am giving up on my online activity or with shared learning with my PLN - it’s just that my new job has kept me much more occupied that I expected. And that’s a GOOD thing.

See - before my new job, much of what I wrote on my blog about technology, Web 2.0, and student learning (through & with technology of any form) was based more on ideas and theory. There were a few posts here and there that were based on my personal experiences with students - or with other educators and the use of these tools - but there more posts that could basically be described as “hey, here’s good idea or here’s a great new tool and here are some ideas for using it!” types of posts. Nothing wrong with any of that, but I often really wished that I could convince other colleagues to join me so that we could really explore those ideas by DOING them rather than just talking about them.

My new job has been wonderful so far, but more importantly, for the purpose of this blog post, it has enabled me to move from the KNOWING position to the DOING position. And this was a pleasant and unexpected surprise for me with this new position. I knew that my immediate supervisor wanted me to integrate more technology use into the professional development work that we do with the network of teacher-leaders with whom we work. What I didn’t anticipate was the high level of interest in Web 2.0 that I would find across the entire Curriculum & Instruction department! Not a day goes by that I don’t have a conversation with someone else in the department about how to use blogs, wikis, podcasts, and video in their work, in our classrooms, and across our department. Even more importantly, we are DOING rather than just TALKING or KNOWING. The network of teacher-leaders now has it’s own wiki which we are using for everything from collecting resources and keeping meeting agendas & notes to embedding training modules and reflection forms (using Google Docs for forms and presentations). The other literacy specialist and I have also started a blog just for the network where we are modeling how a blog can be used to extend the conversation and the learning (for educators as well as for students). Last week we even had the network working in small groups during their weekly meeting and each group “scribed” their collective work on separate wiki pages - using the wiki pages in place of post-it chart paper (saving $$$ and TIME) which made the collective work immediately accessible to the entire network. In addition to the network wiki, I have also collaborated with other curriculum areas to help them set-up their own wikis and now there is talk of perhaps creating a department-wide wiki where we can share our work more efficiently. We are bridging the KNOWING-DOING gap.

I’ve also recently entered a “mentor” stage in a hiring process for an online teaching position, and I am now experiencing 100% online teaching first-hand from the perspective of the instructor or learning facilitator. This is so very different from face-to-face - which I knew before I started, but now that I am experiencing it for myself I UNDERSTAND the differences so much more deeply. This is just another example of how I have recently begun bridging that KNOWING-DOING gap. There will definitely be more “reflection” on this experience in future blog posts. For now I will say only this - if we REALLY believe that online learning is a major aspect of the “future of education”, then we better get much more serious about LITERACY education at all levels across all borders. By literacy I mean reading, writing, listening, speaking, and thinking - but especially reading & writing at a highly proficient level that enables the learner to be able to read & write fluently, intelligently, and critically. Those skills will determine the ability of any learner to be successful in a 100% online learning experience. (I’ll be writing more about this in a future post.)

So I hope you’ll forgive my recent lapse in posting. Trust me, I am not going anywhere - I’m just out here DOING rather than just knowing or talking… and as I start blogging again on a more regular basis, I now have a whole lot more material to work with. I’m looking forward to sharing my insights and reflections - along with my lessons learned and “what worked/what didn’t work” in all of these experiences - through my blogging. Thanks for reading!

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The “Knowing-Doing Gap” reference is loosely inspired by the concepts in the book “The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action” (Jeffrey Pfeffer, Robert I. Sutton)

Technorati Tags: blogging, EdTech, edublogs, education, literacy, Technology, Web 2.0, wikis

From Michael Horn’s presentation on “Disrupting Class” - October 16, 2008, University of Houston, Houston, Texas.

Sponsored by Houston A+ Challenge

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I can’t let another day go by without expressing some thoughts I have regarding our current economic situation and our students. Maybe I’m just ready to explode over everything I am hearing in the news and I just have to get this off of my chest - and maybe seeing the president on television tonight was the final straw…

Before I continue, let me ask you one question:

Are you talking about this news in your classroom with your students?

This is big. This is huge. This needs to a part of classroom discussions right now. This is a learning moment.

Now for my personal opinion on this whole mess…

I am angry. I am angry with the financial institutions that created this mess. I am angry with out government for allowing it to happen and allowing it to reach a point of crisis. I am angry that there are other citizens in my country who are clueless about this issue and who only allow their opinions to be informed by mainstream media.

I don’t agree with the bailout as it has been proposed. I believe that individuals - especially individuals who are in leadership positions in companies, financial institutions, and government - should be held accountable for their actions.

I do believe that something must be done, but I disagree with the “used car salesman” tactics that were utilized by this administration in attempting to have this bailout approved quickly by Congress with no careful reading or discussion. I am glad that so many of our members of Congress have refused to approve this without careful scrutiny.

Back to our students - I ask you this: What lessons are we teaching our students right now in this entire debate over this mess? What are they learning about responsibility? What are they learning about ethics? What are they learning about power and corruption?

What are they learning about leadership?

What should they be learning?

As some of you know, I live and work in Houston, Texas. This past week we have endured Hurricane Ike and the aftermath. This morning I woke up in my own bed for the first time in several days - we had electricity to our home restored finally and were able to come home after staying with relatives for a number of days. We are among the lucky ones - so many people still do not have power and many do not have homes to return to after the damage caused by the wind and the water.

Yesterday as we were cleaning up at our house and moving clothes, food, and ourselves back in, I was reflecting on the entire experience and what struck me was the variety of sounds that I have heard throughout the entire experience. I have no other way to explain this other than to just write it out in a train-of-thought manner, so I hope you won’t mind if I let my thoughts just pour out on the page/screen…

Before the storm

Saws, hammers, nail guns, and drills… the sound of our neighborhood boarding up…

During the storm

There was little rain at first… silence as the city sheltered in place in advance of the storm….

As the wind began to pick up I could hear the leaves rustling around the house… it was very, very light at first and the light breeze seemed to last forever as we waited…

As dark fell, the wind picked up and I began hearing the first stronger gusts - a light roar that only lasted a few seconds at a time…

The evening wore on and the wind grew in strength… the gusts were more frequent now with a steady light roar of the sustained winds blowing through the trees…

A very steady roar now as the wind raged outside… I started to hear things hitting the windows and walls of our room… the gusts sounded explosive as the wind howled… the rain was pelting the windows sharply now…

Transformers blowing - the sky constantly lighting up with the green flashes of the transformers as they blew out… the ones closest to us made a horrific sound - a low boom/hum that was as frightening as the sound of the wind…

As the eye wall came over us the wind became a solid and steady howl that drowned out the sound of blown transformers…

End of the storm

Silence in the light of dawn as the wind died down…

The sound of water rushing in a small river down the street… it looked as if we had moved the house to the bank of a canal…

Silence as the city waited for the storm to pass…

The crackle of the radio as we listened to the news reporters describe the extent of the damage…

After the storm

Chainsaws buzzing for days as neighbors and work crews scrambled to clear trees and branches from streets and yards…

The whirring hum of generators everywhere… all over the city…

SIrens, oh so many sirens… fire, police, ambulance… racing to one emergency after another… the sound of sirens and chainsaws has lasted for more than a few days…

Cheering… the sound of clapping and cheering around neighborhoods as soon as the electricity is restored.

Other Thoughts

Our schools are out until at least next Monday - possibly later… it’s hard to start schools back up with no electricity, shortages of gas (for buses), and with so many families still lacking basic needs.

It is quite unnerving to drive around in a major city where nearly all of the traffic signals are out because of lack of electricity.

I am so grateful to our mayor for fixing the water situation so quickly. It was bad enough to not have electricity, but to not have running water in the city of Houston was a (thankfully) short-lived nightmare.

I am so thankful to all of the people involved in getting so many of the grocery stores up and running so quickly. You are all heroes in my opinion.

The other heroes - ALL of the electrical workers and crews who have come from all over the country to restore power to the entire area. I know you are all working hard and that this is not a quick & easy process. Thank you for everything that you are doing.

It breaks my heart to think of all of the people who have lost everything in this storm - and so many of them didn’t have much to lose to begin with.

I’m frightened by the thought that all of the damage that I see was caused by a category 2 hurricane. What would a cat 3 or 4 or 5 do to us?

I’m grateful that Mother Nature only sent us a cat 2 storm and that she then sent us a VERY nice cold front to keep things cool as we worked on restoring our lives without electricity.  It could have been so much worse than it was.

I’m tired, beyond stressed out, and ready for life to get back to normal. Not sure when “normal” will come back, but I’ll try to be patient.

Technorati Tags: IKE, hurricane

I am two and a half weeks into my new job and I just realized today that I am relying on a LOT of web-based tools for my productivity, communication, and collaboration (yay!). I wanted to quickly reflect on that and ask you to share what tools you are using most in your work at the start of this new school year.

Here’s my list:

Google Docs (document, spreadsheets, and even presentations) - our literacy team is using these for collaborating on a wide variety of documents, spreadsheets/databases, and surveys (forms). My supervisor just LOVES the ease of use and the time that we save by using the tools.

Wikispaces - I set up a private wikispace for our team that will serve as our collaborative “one-stop-shop” for nearly everything we do. We are using the wiki to generate a collection of resources, archive meeting agendas & notes, store powerpoint presentations, and to draft resource pages that will eventually be moved to a public site on the district’s website.

WordPress - we’ll be using this initially as an internal blog to help the larger literacy support network (roughly 80 to 90 people scattered across the district’s many middle and high school campuses) learn how to use a blog for professional learning in a way that mirrors effective classroom use of blogging for learning. In addition to discussing “hot topics” in literacy on the blog, we will also use it to supplement our face-to-face book study that we will engage in this year.

As we move forward I will be helping the entire literacy support network learn how to use RSS, create their own blog, and how to use our new wiki (only three of us are using it right now). I found out yesterday that two of the new members to our support network are already familiar with blogging - one has recently created her own blog for her own professional reflection & learning, and one has used blogging in the classroom with students this past year. Very exciting!

In addition to those, of course I am still using email to communicate with my team and the larger literacy support network. However, I don’t feel that the email is as much of a productivity booster as the tools listed above. Those of you who have known me for a while already know that these tools are not new for me — what’s new this year is that my immediate team is using these tools as well and they welcome the opportunity to use these tools (which are new to them) to increase and enhance our communication and collaboration.

I don’t feel so alone any longer… what a refreshing feeling

So what’s on your list of essential tools for the 2008-2009 school year?

Technorati Tags: blogging, EdTech, edublogs, education, Instructional-Technology, literacy, Technology, Web 2.0

The following notes are from David Warlick’s Keynote at the HISD Leadership Institute, August 6, 2008.

“Literacy & Learning in the 21st Century”

redefine, literacy, warlick

I will spare you the long story and just say that yesterday I accidentally DELETED my entire blog and blog database from my web server. Yes there were some tears and some nausea. Fortunately, I was able to retrieve nearly everything except comments on most of the posts from the past 4 months.

CALL FOR COMMENTS - If you commented on any of my posts during the past 4 months (since mid-March), and you have those comments archived in coComments or some other place, I would very much appreciate if you could repost your comment on the appropriate blog post.

I will be adding in retrieved comments (from recently cached Google pages) directly into the body of the posts for now. Getting them back into the data table for comments will be tricky, so I’m not even going to attempt to do that right now. Hopefully this won’t cause problems for anyone.

I do have to re-customize the blog template and I still need to rebuild my sidebars and additional pages, but it all could have been much worse.

I am incredibly grateful for Google for caching some of my content. I used the technique described by Dave Cormier here. I took the content that was cached and copied and pasted each page into a new Google Docs document - this preserved the links and structure of the text. Very nice

I am also very happy that I have used Ecto to write my blog posts - AND that I had the foresight to make sure the program was set to store local copies of posts on my computer after posting to my blog.

If you linked to any of my blog posts then you shouldn’t have to change anything. I carefully restored the recent blog posts to ensure that the URLs for each post were the same as before (another nice feature of Ecto - the syncing between the blog database and the program to ensure accurate post IDs).

I am also glad that I do occasionally do full backups of my entire home directory on my server. This saved me countless hours of work.

And, as Miguel Guhlin said last night:

mguhlin @ssandifer The opportunity to begin anew is often disguised as a disaster.

As I restored all of the posts from March 2008 post-by-post - a tedious process - I spent time reflecting on what and when I post on my blog. This gives me the opportunity to rethink some of the design of this blog and to think carefully about my content.

I’ll be continuing to work on this restoration today (and most of this week), but the bulk of the work is completed.

So here’s my PSA/warning to everyone - Backup your stuff! Backup, backup, backup! The data you save just might be your own.

Okay - fire at will… How do you define literacy in the 21st Century?

I am looking for as many opinions as possible, so please comment with your thoughts and definitions. Thanks!

Technorati Tags: 21st Century, education, literacy

So we’ve all been talking about getting out of the “echo chamber” quite a bit lately. To help us be a bit more organized in those “outreach” efforts, I’ve added a new page to Scott McLeod’s Moving Forward wikispace.

Your task:

• Add information about regional/state/national non-tech academic or educational leadership conferences that accept proposals for sessions.
• Focus on only one or two with which you are most familiar.
• Keep the information updated if you post it. This means that you should update the deadlines and URLs each year if necessary.
• Spread the word about this resource so that those of us who are interested can stay informed and take action when/where appropriate.

Important Note - please indicate whether or not the conference that you are listing only accepts proposals from organization members (i.e. National Art Educators Association).

Technorati Tags: 21st Century, conferences, education, Instructional-Technology, Technology

Remember all those recent discussions and blog posts about how we need to be getting out of the “echo chamber”?

Well here are a couple of excellent opportunities to do just that. Special thanks to Dennis Richards for working so hard with ASCD to create this opportunity.

By the way, if you are interested in getting out of the “echo chamber” and your name isn’t on this list, it needs to be.

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The following comments were retrieved from Google cached pages after accidental loss of this blog’s database.  If you are one of the authors included below, feel free to restore your original comment using the comment form below.

1. diane July 11, 2008 7:36 pm

   In classical mythology, Echo pined away for love of Narcissus. Neither of these characters are role models I choose to emulate!

   I’m on the list and hope to make some sort of contribution.

Technorati Tags: ASCD, Instructional-Technology, leadership

I am currently reading “Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns” (Clayton M. Christensen, Curtis W. Johnson, Michael B. Horn), and I wanted to share some snippets from a passage that I read last night that really resonated with me.

… The tools of the software platform will make it so simple to develop online learning products that students will be able to build products that help them teach other students. Parents will be able to assemble tools to tutor other students. And teachers will be able to create tools to help the different types of learners in their classrooms…

… they (these “modules”) will be pulled into use through self-diagnosis — by teachers, parents, and students. User networks, not value-chain businesses, will be the business models of distribution…

…Ultimately, people will assemble them together into entire courses whose approach is truly student-centric — custom-configured to each different type of learner…

I think the most powerful part of this passage for me was the reference to students building products on their own to help them teach or tutor other students. A few pages later the authors acknowledge the value in this when they say:

….We mention above that these software platforms will enable students to teach other students by developing tools and putting them into the user network. Isn’t it better to have the professionals teach, and the learners learn? No, not necessarily. We often learn better when we teach than when we listen to a teacher.

I definitely agree with this statement and find the future that he envisions very promising and exciting. As I read this passage though, I couldn’t help but wonder: do we already have tools and online apps that allow for at least some of this? Perhaps not as seamless and as easy as they describe in the book, but do we not already have Web 2.0 tools that can be used in combination with one another to create an environment where this kind of user-developed product can be created and shared?

Technorati Tags: Clayton-Christensen, DisruptingClass, EdTech, education, Instructional-Technology, Web 2.0