Year: 2012

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Free Webinar on Higher Order Thinking – the Student Perspective

Update 2013: The free pilot has concluded – but click here for info on my $275 webinar.

One of this year’s resolutions was to begin offering webinars. (not that I don’t enjoy airports) I recently completed my first pilot (description below) and I’m looking for three school sites who would like to try a free pilot webinar and offer me some feedback. More details on my free webinar below.


Live Meeting – My “teacher” view with presentation, video, audience, Learning Catalytics

I piloted my first webinar with a group of instructors from Southwest Wisconsin Technical College. (Hat tip to SWTC’s Kristal Davenport) We used Microsoft Live Meeting as a platform. Participants at SWTC were gathered in one room. We maintained webcam contact with each other throughout the workshop. (I’m not a big fan of watching webinar presentations delivered by a disembodied voice.) I pre-loaded high-quality video in advance that ran smoothly during the webinar. The webinar went very well and I think we were able to create the level of interaction that I strive for in my on-site workshops.

For years I’ve used a TurningPoint audience response system (ARS) in my on-site keynotes and workshops. When an ARS is used in a Socratic manner it fosters great conversation and reflection. So a key component I wanted in a webinar was a “distance version” of an ARS. I was pleased to discover Learning Catalytics. While it was designed for on-site classroom use, it was just what I needed to enliven the webinar.

Learning Catalytics is a web-based response system that allows participants to answer from any web-enabled device – computer, tablet, smart phone. It was easy to input questions (it even provides for copy / paste of text) and using it during the webinar was a breeze. It allows the teacher to ask a wide variety of questions. Not only the usual questions such as multiple-choice, priority, and ranking. But also some unique questions for an ARS where students use their devices to – draw vectors indicating directions, indicate the points on an image, and even aggregate student text into Word clouds. Imagine your students generating real-time Wordles from their devices!


Learning Catalytics: Teacher view and iPhone view

Learning Catalytics was designed from the ground up to foster student discussion. It most notable feature is peer-learning tool (which unfortunately, I did not use – my pilot group was too small). In advance of class, the teacher inputs a seating chart of the the class. Students log into their seat locations. After posing a question, the teacher can use Learning Catalytic to automatically create student discussion groups that direct students to talk to specific peers based on their response to the question. “Peter turn to Nancy on your left and discuss the thinking behind your answer.” After the peer discussion, the teacher can repost the original question and graph the changing responses.

I like to continue piloting this model so I will offer a free live webinar to the first three schools (or sites) that follow through with my registration process.

I think professional development should model what we want to see in the classroom.  So I’d like to start with an 45-minute experiential webinar called: “Higher-order thinking skills (HOTS) - What’s that look like in the classroom?”
We’ll watch a few short video clips, do a few activities to model instruction at different levels of Blooms and then reflect on the experience. Our instructional goals for the webinar:

  • Develop a working definition of HOTS
  • Clarify how the tasks we assign students define their level of thinking
  • Leave with 3 ideas for fostering HOTS with your students

A few stipulations:

  • Participants: Minimum 15 / Maximum 30. Could be teachers or admin.
  • You’ll use with a single webcam at your end, so they will need to be located in the same room.
  • Webinar length – roughly 45 min. Plus about 10 minutes for webinar feedback.
  • Timing: Sometime between 8:30 AM and 5 PM (PST – Pacific Standard Time)
  • Feedback: Since this is a pilot. I will expect you to assist in evaluating the webinar, gathering feedback from your participants and helping me “document” the user experience.
  • Technical details: More to follow if you get a webinar. But for starters – ability to run a WebEx Meeting (web access), LCD / sound for display, webcam / microphone to record your end, participants with web-enabled devices, designated coordinator to manage your end.

If you are willing to meet these stipulations in an efficient manner, fill in the request below. Remember – this is just a request. I will select from requests that demonstrate you’ll be easy to work with.

After the pilots are completed and my webinar model is refined, I plan to offer a series of (paid) webinars. I think there’s a need for short, inexpensive, engaging webinar-based PD that can foster reflection and professional growth. Something you can use with admin, faculty, department or grade level to foster local capacity.

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Wordle: Obama’s State of the Union 2012

This Wordle Word Cloud features the 100 most frequently used words from the full text of U.S. President Barack Obama’s 2012 State of the Union address (reported in Wall Street Journal).
Full text

Look carefully and you’ll see “education.”

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If you want to analyze word use in all the State of the Union addresses, there’s a great tool at State of the Union. Image below is from JFK’s 1961 SOTU. (This a static screen shot go to site for a functional word map.) More instructions below.

Here’s some of the features of this site:

To move between State of the Union addresses, click or drag on the graph below the word cloud; the president who delivered each address and the date of delivery will appear at the bottom of the screen and in the center. The current date will appear in white and the previous one in red.
You can also use the right and left arrow keys to move one year at a time.

The words from the previous address viewed will appear in red when your mouse is over the cloud window so you can compare them. Mouse out to make them fade into the background.

Click on a word to view the full State of the Union address in the window to the right; the selected word will be highlighted.

Click below the graph or on a blank area of the word cloud to view the Wikipedia U.S. History Timeline describing events that happened in and around the year of the address.

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Worksheets and Kodachrome: Lessons in Kodak’s Bankruptcy

This week Eastman Kodak filed for bankruptcy. Is there a lesson for educators about what happens when you lose touch with your customer?

First some personal background. I’m from Rochester New York – “The Kodak City.”
My dad worked at Building 29 – right at the heart of the business. Rotating through round-the-clock shifts, literally working in the dark, he mixed the chemicals that became film. One of Kodak’s many benefits, was a guaranteed job for your children when they reached college age. So in the late ’60’s, during my college summers, I worked at Kodak. The first two summers I worked on the Kodak railroad. Yes, Kodak ran it’s own track and trains within the 1,200 acre Kodak Park industrial complex. The summer before my senior year, I washed tour buses and drove the Kodak ambulance. If I remember correctly, I was making more than triple the minimum wage.

Of course, Kodak could afford to be generous to its workers (and extremely philanthropic to the Rochester community). It had a monopoly on the film market. George Eastman had transformed the complexities of the 19th century photographic “chemistry set” into something easy that anyone could do. He understood that his customers wanted simplicity. In the early days of the 20th century he pitched his cameras with the slogan “You push the button, and we do the rest.” (Users of the early Brownie cameras shipped their cameras to Rochester, where the film was taken out, processed and printed. Their reloaded camera and finished prints were shipped back to them.) Kodak continued to simplify with innovations, like drop-in film cartridges, but they always maintained control of all phases of the photographic process – dominating the markets for film, film processing, processing chemicals, and photographic paper.

At the same time the George Eastman popularized photography, compulsory public education brought education to the masses. Instruction was based on the notion that you could tell people what they needed to know. State education departments, publishers and teachers decided what was important and then delivered it to students via textbook and lectures. Perhaps the unstated slogan of that instructional model was “you listen and take the notes, and we do the rest.”

Ironically Kodak sowed the seeds of its own demise by pioneering digital photography in the mid 70’s. But the innovators at Kodak’s Apparatus Division Research Lab couldn’t make the case for “Film-less Photography” as it was called. “Why would anyone ever want to view his or her pictures on a TV? How would you store these images? What does an electronic photo album look like?” More on the first digital camera

Kodak leadership couldn’t accept challenges to their traditional photosensitive film model, so they licensed their digital patents to other companies who began creating the first digital cameras. Kodak’s leaders scoffed at the primitive digital images, and continued to milk their cash cow. The only thing to fear was losing market share to film competitors like Fuji Film.

At the core of Kodak’s eventual demise was the failure of the leadership to remain connected to their customers. They convinced themselves that the public would continue to want to buy film, load it into the camera, take a picture, drop the film off at the processor, and return later to pick up their photos. Easy to believe when you’re making money at every stage of that process. Leadership wouldn’t accept that their customers wanted greater control and functionality over the imaging process. Users would be willing to forgo the quality of the Kodachrome for the ability to do new things with images. Manipulate them, mash images up with other content, e-mail them off to someone, and perhaps never actually print a photo.

So do education leaders have something to learn from the bankruptcy of Kodak? Is their obsession with standardized achievement test data as misguided as Kodak tracking Fuji’s market share? Will innovative teachers get tired of explaining “the effectiveness of social media in the classroom” to their school board and leave the profession?

Has our educational leadership lost touch with their customers – the students? Given the growing array of cheap digital tools available to our students, will they passively wait to be told what, how, when and with whom to learn? Is the information flow of the traditional classroom (lecture, note-taking, test) as outmoded as taking your film to the drugstore for processing?

Given all the technologies available for students to direct their own learning, how much longer can the traditional school survive? When will worksheets go the way of Kodachrome?

Image credits: Emergence of Advertising in America On-Line Project

Kodak Simplicity
Kodak advertisement, 1905
Ad#K0431

Let the Children Kodak
Kodak advertisement, 1909
Ad #K0082

John W. Hartman Center for Sales
Advertising & Marketing History
David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library
Duke University

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Join Portland Educators at edCampPDX – February 4, 2012

edcampPDX is back! Calling all teachers, instructional technologists, IT Directors, Principals, Admins and Teacher Librarians who live in the Pacific NW. Join us at Catlin Gabel School on Saturday, February 4 from 9:00 am – 4:00 pm for our third edcampPDX.

Map | More info and sign up

What is edcampPDX?

  • It’s FREE, democratic, participant-driven professional development. Great teachers, interesting conversations and an excellent chance to network.
  • An unconference-style day of professional development organized and given by the local participants.
  • Follow Twitter updates at #edcampPDX  
  • Visit edcampPDX on Facebook.
  • More info on edcamps

What are the goals of edcampPDX?

  • Networking: Connect educators in the Portland / Oregon area
  • Instructional Practices: Learn new curriculum ideas, best practices, and/or tech integration ideas from other educators
  • Personalized: You customize your own PD by suggesting, facilitating and attending sessions about topics that interest you!

What does it cost?
The day is FREE!!! (unless you want to pre-order a $5.00 lunch)

Check these Twitter archives from edcampPDX I and edcampPDX II

edcampPDX II Storify
edcampPDX II Storify