On Creativity, Innovation, Motivation and Learning

Here's a Google spreadsheet List of TED Talks I've gathered on creativity, innovation, motivation and learning that every educator should watch.  Each of them are entertaining and inspiring in different ways.

Feel free to add any TED Talks that you believe should be shared with teachers, administrators or anyone else interested in teaching and learning.

If you are curious about TED, you may want to start at the home page and browse through the hundreds of video presentations.  TED2010 is scheduled for February 9-13.

Stranded in the Last Century?

This was supposed to be a podcast but events outlined below precluded me from having the tools to complete it and upload the finished video. I had also planned to talk completely about a different topic but I made a change based on the experiences I had while attending the Michigan Association of School Administrators' mid-year conference this week.  

The conference, an annual event intended to bring superintendents and other leader up to date on the many challenges facing our schools, was held in the Marriott inside the Renaissance Center in downtown Detroit. This large, modern structure identifies the Detroit skyline and is typically highlighted anytime you see a view of downtown Detroit on television. Constructed about 30 years ago, the multi-towered building originally was owned by the Ford Motor Company but is now the world headquarters for General Motors.  

With that prestigious background, you would probably think the Renaissance Center is a world-class, high tech facility, and perhaps it is - but not in the Marriott Hotel. What's the problem? There is no wireless internet or even any consistent, easy way to plug into the internet, outside of the hotel lobby area. It's basically a 70-story structure full of bedrooms and spacious meeting places, but almost totally disconnected from the 21st century world. And it's smack dab in the middle of the world headquarters of an organization that used to be considered the most powerful corporation in the world, with profits that exceeded the gross national product of many developed nations, and considered a leader in world progress! Let me re-emphasize "used to be," but no longer is. The lack of easy public connectivity in Detroit's signature hotel and conference center is symbolic of the decline of the former number one automaker, a dying dinosaur mired in the previous century, headed for extinction.  

My point in all this is to highlight the need for our own district - Godfrey-Lee Public Schools - to continue moving forward, despite nagging financial problems due to Michigan's economy, and steer our schools and our classrooms into the 21st century. Our students are here to learn and they want to do so in an environment that reflects their world, not the world we grew up in. General Motors refused to move forward and lived for decades on the laurels of the 50's and 60's, the heyday of automotive manufacturing, and look where that attitude got it. Will schools continue to do the same at the risk of suffering similar consequences?  

Not the Godfrey-Lee school district, not on my watch! Like most school systems, I recognize that we have been changing far more slowly than the various modes of inventive, collaborative, participatory learning offered by the Internet, rapidly expanding through an array of contemporary mobile technologies available to our students. Our students, unlike most of us, have no memory of the historical moment before the advent of the Internet, and no understanding of what life is like cut off from their friends, disconnected from the world, and unable to actively participate, create, and publish in a digital world. Students entering our classrooms and schools have come to rely on participatory learning for information about virtually everything in their lives. There should be no doubt, we either choose to change with our students to meet this expanding reality or we risk becoming irrelevant.  

Technology is not about learning to use computers or common software applications - it's about using digital technology to learn. To this end, we've been working on the initial steps of crafting a new technology environment through our RebelNet Stoneware project, purchased several netbook carts, recently completed our wireless access, and opened our new 6th Grade Campus for 21st century learning. Our next and most significant step will be moving forward this fall with a 1-to-1 technology initiative that begins with the incoming 6th grade class. The intent of our plan is to put mobile wireless digital technology in the hands of every student, beginning at the secondary level, to ultimately create an "anytime, anywhere, any device" collaborative learning environment. The plan also calls for sufficient classroom technology that complements and supports these networking devices that not only expand on the ability of teachers and students to explore an expanding world of knowledge, but will also help to cut back on the costs of traditional, paper-based media.  

To help us get to our vision, I am working alongside our Board of Education, administrative leadership team, change leadership team, and technology and media staff to identify existing as well as new resources, align our budget to reflect digital learning priorities, and develop the definitive course of action that will move us forward into the future. I am envisioning a five-year plan centered on the 1-to-1 concept that keeps in mind the following key principles from a recent report on digital media published by the MacArthur Foundation:

· First is self-learning, where we collectively recognize that discovering online possibilities is a skill now developed from early childhood through advanced adult life. Access to technology is not limited by age, it is not owned by any one generation.

· Second is the creation of horizontal learning structures which recognize that learning is no longer top-down, but rather a collaborative process that focuses more on discovering and discerning reliable information instead of simply memorizing information. Our students have unlimited access to information but it's up to us to help them learn where to look, how to analyze its validity, and how it can be used to further their own learning.

· This leads into the principle of collective credibility to replace the old school standard of presumed individual authority. Classrooms will no longer be the bastion of one authoritarian instructor - the so-called sage on a stage - but instead will become increasingly interactive, interdisciplinary, and collaborative knowledge-creating learning environments. It will be here that students of all ages will learn by analyzing and researching multi-dimensional, complex problems that cannot be resolved by any single academic discipline.

· The fourth principle is the practice of collaborative learning in ways that extend some of the most established practices, virtues, and habits of individualized learning, but in a world of social-networking, instant global communications, and expectations to work as a contributing member of a team.

· And finally, the recognition that increasingly rapid changes in our world's makeup require that teachers and administrators necessarily learn anew, acquiring new knowledge and skills, facing up to the unprecedented situations and challenges that face us as primarily immigrants in a digital-age.

I've probably talked too much, so let me wrap this up by reminding members of our staff that several days ago, I sent around a link to a video of first graders in the town of Moose Jaw, a city smaller than Wyoming located in south-central Saskatchewan, Canada. This short video, titled Little Kids...Big Potential , goes much further than anything I said in this message in illustrating the future of learning. If you haven't viewed it, you really should. Burying our heads in the sand with regards to technology just plain and simple will not work. The digital age is here to stay.

Now, you may be wondering how I was able to upload this to my blog this afternoon. Thank goodness for McDonald's and its free wireless internet access! At least one corporation understands the significance of moving into the 21st century.

Juggling Tweets with TweetDeck

I fiddle a lot with my TweetDeck, trying to find the perfect mix of columns that help me to both learn from my growing list of colleagues and to engage in collaborative inquiry across the globe.  To add to the complexity of managing my personal Twitter account (coloneb), I keep tabs on our district account as well (leerebels)

Because I use a MacBook Pro, I have a wider screen that enables me to see 5 columns at a time.  The first column, of course, is reserved for my "All Friends" and it is often the most active column, especially as the number of folks I follow grows.  It is a 24/7 column because it represents every time zone in the U.S. and a few from the other side of the globe.

The second column I use for my mentions just to make it easier to follow any conversations or responses to my tweets.

The next two columns are setup for the two hashtags I am currently following: #edchat and #edtech.  Hashtags are used to organize tweets around a similar interest, topic, location, or theme.  I have experimented with other hashtags but for now have settled on these two.  This allows me to read, retweet and respond to others who share my interests but whom I haven't yet decided to follow.

My fifth column is currently occupied by @ShellTerrell's educator-pln list that at the time I wrote this contains 432 educators from around the world.  This saves me from having to follow each individual within the list but still benefit from their collective wisdom and conversations.  Periodically, I pick out an individual that most resembles my interests and I follow them.  By the way, ShellTerrell tweets from Germany making her the ad hoc leader of the night shift.  She also serves as one of the outstanding moderators of the #edchat Twitter discussion on Tuesdays (12 pm and 7 pm, EST).

I have lately added some additional columns that require me to scroll right to see them.  They are not as important and don't require regular tending but I found I was missing out on some important communications so I've added them.

One is the direct messages column for private communications.  I'm not an advocate of using Twitter to convey private messages but sometimes it makes sense so I want to check it occasionally.  The next column is a list of my favorite tweets that I have tagged for reference later.  I don't always have the time to immediately follow a link and have found by tagging it as a favorite, I'm less likely to lose it in the constant flow of tweets.  I can now conveniently follow or share the link when I get time.

The next column is currently occupied by TweetDeck's New Followers feature.  I like this because it helps me weed out spam or unidentified followers with ease.

Two additional columns are for the district Twitter account so that I can keep track of messages and replies surrounding district events and issues.

TweetDeck's flexibility is precisely what I need to get the most out of Twitter.

5 Reasons Why Educators Should Network

"The period of isolationism in the United States ended during World War II, but while political isolation is no more, educational isolation is still prevalent in public schools today.

Many teachers go to school each day, teach their students and leave. If they're struggling with how to teach a lesson that will engage their students, they might ask for advice from the teacher down the hall, but a lot of times, they struggle alone."

Read the rest of this well-written commentary by Tanya Roscorla at Convergemag.com.

Media Blitzed?

A national survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that with technology allowing nearly 24-hour media access as children and teens go about their daily lives, the amount of time young people spend with entertainment media has risen dramatically, especially among minority youth.  Today, 8-18 year-olds devote an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes (7:38) to using entertainment media across a typical day (more than 53 hours a week).  And because they spend so much of that time 'media multitasking' (using more than one medium at a time), they actually manage to pack a total of 10 hours and 45 minutes (10:45) worth of media content into those 7½ hours.

Here's a list of other key findings from the Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Oldsreport:

• Among all 8-to 18-year-olds, total amount of media exposure in a typical day has increased by 3 hours 16 minutes since 1999.
• Most media is utilized in a multi-tasking format.  For example 43% of 7^th-12^th graders use other media while listening to music; 27% multi-task while reading.
• Among all 8-to 18-year-olds, ownership of iPods or MP3 players has shot up from 18% to 76% in the past 5 years; the percent of this age group owning cell phones has risen from 39% to 66% during the same period; ownership of laptop computers rose from 12% to 29%.
• 8-to 18-year-olds talk on a cell phone for an average of 33 minutes per day but use their cells to consume media such as music, games and TV another 49 minutes each day.
• Television content viewing still leads media consumption by 8-to 18-year-olds on a daily average of 4 hours 29 minutes, but only 59% of this time is spent watching shows at their scheduled time.  In contrast, they consume print content for only 38 minutes each day.
• Only 12% of music listening comes from actual CD's.  Most comes from iPods/MP3s (29%) and computers (23%).
• Among all 8-to 18-year-olds, the average amount of time spent using a computer in a typical day has risen from a mere 27 minutes in 1999 to 1 hour 29 minutes today.  At the same time, internet access has grown from 47% to 84% of homes with children in this age group (59% have high speed internet access and 33% have it in their bedrooms).
• Most recreational computer use by 8-to 18-year-olds is for social networking (25%), playing games (19%) and watching video (16%).  Only 6% use the computer for email.
• Video game playing by this age group has risen from an average of 26 minutes per day in 1999 to 1 hour 13 minutes today.  The biggest increase was by boys (from 17 to 56 minutes per day).
• Average daily print reading time has remained relatively flat since 1999 (from 43 to 38 minutes per day).  Only 3 minutes per day is spent reading print newspapers.
• 11-to 14-year-olds spend the most time exposed to media (average of 11 hours 53 minutes per day).  8-to 10-year-olds average 7 hours 51 minutes per day.
• Hispanic and Black 8-to 18-year-olds are exposed to 13 hours of media in a typical day compared to 8 hours 36 minutes for Whites.
• 64% of 8-to 18-year-olds reported the TV is always on during meals; 45% reported it is on most of the time even if no one is watching it; 71% have a TV in their bedrooms (on average this group watches twice as much TV per day than kids who don't have TV's in their bedrooms).