Transcript for How Can I Become Part of this ReadWriteWeb Revolution?

Getting Started

And we are glad that you can join us because, oh, we can't have the cameras in our faces.

We are glad that you can join us because we have just reviewed the movie and

we have talked about what old classrooms looked like and old things looked like

and we want our classrooms to be as exciting as homecoming and I don't feel like

my classrooms have always been as exciting as home coming so I want to change that.

..So what's the... the big piece in that is how do you make it so engaging for students

as learners and how does the teacher make it engaging? That's a big question.

It is a big question and I think one of the things that we are going from .....

Learning to read, learning to use numbers, learning to write and now we have

and now we have our students who are digital students.... yeah...

and that brings a whole new kind of literacy to us....

And so our literacies now include.. you are going to have to help me out, cause I'm..

media literacy, which we learnt about in the Jenkins White Paper, which is really good.

The Horizon Report gives us a lot of really good information and visionary things

that we need to be doing and um..... I think communication, collaboration. When you look

at things like Net Standards, where students and teachers, um... innovatation.

is something.... Information literacy. Information literacy, digital citizenship is a huge thing.

Ethics, um, civics. All of those things are, are sort of new 21st century literacies that

we, in the past we sort of took.. you hear about the three Rs.. reading, writing, arithmetic.

This, this is a new kind of skill learning. It's, it's... It is. It is a new skill set

and, as teachers we are expected to know how to teach this skill set and we may not

have been taught that ourselves. That's right, So, and I think that's really hard because

one of the things that people like Thomas Freedman speak about in his book is

how if we are going to succeed as a country, we need to help kids learn how to

invent things and innovate and think for themselves. Be self directed.

That's very different than what we learnt to, what we learnt to teach as teachers.

So, how do we do that when you are stuck in a classroom with, ahh, so many tasks that you

gotta accomplish and.. and CLB and assessments and all. And our, our vision is

you don't do it alone. And so we wanna.. you know this, this keynote, um, is, hopefully

gonna help you find a community that you can do this with others and after we talk

we're actually going to show you how to join a Skype chat or a chat room that is ongoing

never closes. Um, sounds like, um, what was that old show with everybody knows your name

... Cheers. Cheers, yes, yes. So this, this, this the Skype Cheers. The Seedling

Skype Cheers and you can, um, stop by at any time and get support and we're gonna

show you how you actually sign up for that and any time you go to Skype there'll be a

running, ah.. list of questions and support from people and you don't have to go, go it alone.

And I think, um, what you're seeing now is really interesting because the three of us

normally are not together and, um, when we tried to do a collaborative online, um, movie

of this keynote, we decided we needed to do a conversation and have it in a cafe

and so we're in an outdoor cafe right now and having this conversation, recording it and

making this to engage you and then hopefully motivate you to join our network that we have.

You don't have to go it alone. Ah, so should we.. do we want to talk anymore about how you

can join the revolution. Because it is a revolution. Well, I think we probably oughta

introduce ourselves.... That would be a great idea Alice.... and then we'll start the revolution.

How does that sound. So, with that being said, I'm Alice Barr and I'm the Instructional

Technology Integrator at Yarmouth High School, Yarmouth, Maine and I work with high

school students in a 1 to 1 laptop setting..... Thanks. And I am Cheryl Oaks and I work in

the Wells Ogunquit School system and I'm a K-12 collaborative content coach which means

I get to work with all teachers and students k to 12 and supporting them, coaching them on

using technology tools with the content and the curriculum that they are working on.

And I'm Bob Sprankle, a technology integrator at a K-4 school in the same district with Cheryl

and, ah, it's called Wells Community.. Wells Ogunquit Community School District and

I was just thinking the revolution will not be televised but it will be preserved on Flip video.

So.. Yes, yes. We're using Flip videos to get different perspectives here in case your

wondering what, why we're holding these little things. Right. In front of our faces. Yes, and as

always we have a purpose for doing that. We're demonstrating some technologies

that we hope you will be able to use in your classrooms. Some of the technologies

that we will be demonstrating are the Flip video and the ease at which you can use them.

Um, Skype, which is Internet telephony and we'll learn how to be engaged in a Skype

chat that is ongoing. We'll also reference our Seedlings ning and, um, that is ongoing where

you can get, um, support, join groups and post questions or post reflections that you have

about what you're working on in your classroom. And the interesting thing about the

Seedlings ning is that we started it as our, um, one of our sessions last year and we have a

great community already started there so right away should you choose to join that you'd

have a lot of support right from the beginning. It's a really nice group of people who answer

questions or post questions, often. Right. So that's a lot of fun... I think our most pressing

question that we've, that we've been talking about for a while, for a while and I think it's

really with some reading that we've done, um, is how can Web2.0 and using these tools help

you allow for your students to be, to be co-collaborate, collaborators or co-creators of the

learning in there. Would you guys like to talk about that at all. Well I think of the, the

latest and greatest thing that most people will have been using in the past year, almost

18 months, um, was Voicethread and it's such a great thing for beginners to use because

first of all it allows you really easy access to publish whatever you are doing in your

classroom. If you wanted to publish about a fieldtrip or you wanted to publish about

students answering a Math problem, um, you can post that information and students

and anyone else viewing that can type a message, record a message with their audio

and now, with the advent of a lot of built in cameras, they can give you a video recording

of their messages or comments about whatever you're sharing in the Voicethread, so

I think that, um, you know that's one of the greatest tools that has brought many beginners

using the web technology, Web2 tecnologies into the arena and then through that

they've made great connections with other kindergarden teachers, or other 6th grade

teachers or other maths teachers and then that growth, that journey continues.

And we really believe that it doesn't matter what the tool is. The tool's not important at all

and that's why we're using Skype as our support this time because we're thinking a lot

of people have at least heard of Skype or a lot of people have been using it to make long

distance calls from their computer so, so we hope that it's got a familiar feeling, um, and

you know, one thing that, that bringing in these technologies is that it has a transformative

effect that can get us out of these patterns of what we've been doing and if you think about

these Flip video cameras, ah, you can't help but lose control of some of the things you've

been doing and being the only person controlling the learning. When you hand these

out to your students, they're gonna, they're gonna take over and they're gonna start to

contribute. And so that's, that's how we see technology with that trans formative effect.

And what I think's really interesting, when you hand kids something, a tool like this, they will

think of things that you would never use. We would never think of using them and it's

amazing what they, what they create or what they think of to create. It's pretty, pretty neat.

Pretty exciting. And, I think along those lines, it, it, um, shares the ownership for the learning

so that no longer do we have to come to school with our whole bag of tricks ready to entertain

for the day. You know, we can pass out some of these tools and students will find appropriate

ways to use them and they will find innovative ways and that's really one of the tools that we

want. I mean skills that we want students to have. Is to be able to create and to have

innovative things to share with other people and to collaborate. And you know we really believe

that people want to make meaning out of their lives and part of using these tools to create

satisfies that human need and um, definitely helps preserve, we believe, preserve the work

that they've done so that it doesn't all just blow away, so students are archiving their learning

with flip videos or something like voicethread or ahh, or what not, then it makes it much more

meaningful.... How about differentiation? How does, how does jumping into the revolution

help with differentiation? It, these tools help all kids... no matter what. It's very simple.

There, there is a tool or a technology for every learner... And the engagement part really, really

has a lot to do with that. One of the books said, um, we will offer up and we have a couple of

articles we should mention too. New book out by Clayton Christensen called Disrupting Class

and, um, what he's talking about is that differentiation is really almost impossible for a

school to do in a factory model that we've had for the past hundred so years, um, and that

the software choices are what's gonna make this be more possible where we can

differentiate for different learning styles. It's an excellent book to read and he talks about

like the software that's emerging. Some of whats in place. Some of, certainly these

Web2.0 tools that is gonna make this possible. So it's very exciting. Highly recommend that

book. And we already talked about the Jenkins White Paper. Um, another.. Did you, did you

say the title of that. Um, the.. No. Challenge, what, what is it? The Challenges of

participatory culture. So that whole vibe, you know. We live in a society now where people

don't want to just injest. They want to be part of the, of the creation.... And the other article that

we had, um, that we'd really like to promote is Pow Wham. The Power of Pow! Wham!

by Dr Shore, coming out of the Cooney Institute and again about the skills necessary for, um

this new future and how to engage students in this participatory culture. And I think, I think

the kids naturally participate and so it makes, I mean this makes perfect sense how, how

some of these tools have developed. How some of these tools are used in the classroom

I, I watch students often at the end of the day. They're all working together in small groups

at tables. They all have a computer with them but they're having a conversation. They're

doing work. And very often they're also talking to people who are not in the room, all at once.

And they're, they feel strongly that they're all, they're able to learn that way. They learn better

that way. And they'll tell you that. And yet in our classrooms we're on a very one to one

teacher-student, you know, two way street and that's really it. Um, and it's very interesting to

see it happening before our eyes. Yet, when they walk in the classroom door, they're in

those nice straight rows in their, in their desks... I was thinking about, um, using

specifically a flip video camera and we have, um, a young student who just, was a

kindergarden student and he's not very verbal and I thought what a great tool this would be

for him to take a flip video, walking down the hall or into his class or into a therapy that he is

going to and then take that home and share it at home, because, um, that would certainly

be his window, if he was filming, that would be his window on his day and not an adult

transcribing what his day looked like. And, think of the power in that, um, you know, for a little

guy who's not verbal to be able to quote, unquote, verbalize or visualize what his day is

like. So that's where we need to get out of the business of collecting and keeping up

that bag of tricks to ourselves and making that available as communicatin tools to our

students. And, you know, we're in the, sort of the beginning strand so, you know, welcome

to the, all the new people that are really taking this plunge and, and we salute you and

really in doing this, in starting your own community of learners, joining a skype group,

like we've set up or a ning or any of those other things. Well then you really, you really, um,

showing your students the skills that are necessary for their future careers cause

this is how it's gonna happen, where people are going to collaborate. Thats, thats the place

to me that Web2.0 has in our classroom. If we leave it out, if we leave some of the social

networking tools out, because we're afraid of them, then we're not helping to prepare

students at all for some of what you were saying earlier, the ethics and responsibilities

and things like that. So you've done a great thing for your students already by....

climbing aboard the K12 Online revolution. Right. Magical mystery tour. And don't just

take our word for it. Real, you know. Argue with us. Come up with a reason why you shouldn't

be doing something. But, um, you know, really look at your students and look at that

homecoming message. Is your class, is your classroom a journey and an adventure that

elicits that excitement, not only of your students, but remembering the, um, in the

video, you know, the message is from the people in town who were on the route to the

basketball tournament. You know, for the students to have the power to continue on and

that's what we want. We want our whole community. We want our parents, our

students, our community members to really support what's happening and in order to do

that, we have to start putting that.. publishing what the students are creating in a responsible

fashion.... Good... Any summary that we can offer? Well we will have, um, an opportunity in

Elluminate for participation with anyone whose, um, been part of the video or even hasn't been

part of the video. Just wants to be part of that, um, Elluminate session, so you would have

an opportunity to talk to anyone of us and any of the group of people who will be

participating in this, um, K12Online event. And of course that's the synchronous part of the

presen, of the conference. But, K12 lives on many years after. So if you are discovering this

sometime in the future. Um, please by any, by, by all, you know, please come and get in touch

with us. And we do a, we do a Seedlings show and we'll have our seedling ning as we said

and it, it's ongoing. It just doesn't stop. So don't feel like you've missed it because you

didn't get to the Eluminate. Right. For sure. Right.... I think... Welcome aboard. Yeah.

And have a great time, it's so, it's so amazing to be, to be a learner and just taking it all in.

Take it in. Check it out. Go slow, but do it because it's so worth it.. That's basically it

the Nike slogan, 'just do it'. There's lots of support and, you know what, I think, when you,

when you tell people to 'just do it' and they're just really scared about that, um... there's no

road map for this. You know, we are the new frontier and our students are the new frontier

and we have to support the successes and the failures and, you know, the mistakes are all

things that you won't do again or you'll modify and, um, you know, we don't know what our

students are gonna be doing in 5 years much less 10 years. We don't know what we'll be

doing. But this is the journey that we're on so 'fasten your seat belts' and we're off.

Thanks for listening and we'll have an explanation, a little screencast of how to sign

up for the Skype chatroom and we look forward to talking with you there... Take care.

Over and out. Bye. Bye.

OK, the first thing you're gonna do to join the Seedlings chat is to go to Skype and

download Skype, if you don't already have it. It is a free download. And once you've

downloaded Skype, you're gonna go to this address here. I made a tinyurl of the address

cos the Skype address for Seedlings chat is quite large. So, so this is it right here

tinyurl.com/562nm4. So go ahead and go to that and it should bring you to a window that

looks like this and you'll see open public chat and when I do that a little popup will come up

and have me go choose the Skype application so you'll just click there and drill down to your

application folder and finally find Skype. Now this is Macintosh but I assume it'll be pretty

similar for Windows as well. And, so if you don't already have Skype open that will open

up Skype and you'll see that, a chat window, ah, comes up and right now I have webcast

academy megachat and so this shows, you know, that a lot of people leave a lot of

messages in these chats in such a group as webcast academy and here I am looking at the

last year that I belonged to the chat for webcast and there's quite a lot of messages in there.

Now over here. This is the Seedlings one and I'll click on that and, ah, again I can look at all

the messages. I'm looking at, um, the recent ones. I can look at six months there and so

there your in the chat and like any chat you would just leave a comment here and, um,

people would respond. If I open up the Seedlings chat over here in the window you'll

see all the members that are currently signed up for... the Seedlings chat. Now here's the

important thing. Up here, where it says Seedlings, you'll notice a little book like a

bookmark, and what you want to do is either click that or go up to, let's see, um, set

bookmark under chat and that will keep this set within your chat bookmarks. Now you want

to do this so that you don't have to go through and sign up again to get back into the chat or

find the link. And let's say this was closed. If I close all my chats. I have my bookmarked chat

chats up in the window here. Bookmark chats and then I just can open up Seedlings again

and I haven't lost that link. So that's how you sign up and we can't wait to see you in the

chatroom. Thanks a lot.