A few more thoughts … and questions … on Educating the fear out of them – helping teachers, administrators, parents, board members, and politicians (all the decision makers and change agents) learn accurate information about the use of educational technologies in our schools.

Are you an email or a billboard? (Credit to Gary Bowman, 1999)

Who can we influenced by an email we send? Only those who are on our mailing lists … those in our circle … ultimately, only those who actually have an email. Yes, there are still those out there who do not have email. How do we communicate our message of effective educational uses of technology? Billboards? Well, that’s one way.

How can we be walking billboards?

Flickr photo by LancerE

Although we might not want to be extravagant in our presentation of educational technology … sometimes flashy does get people’s attention. We want to make sure that the message gets through – that we don’t create so much flash that the message is lost.

What’s the message?

Give our students a chance to experience the world. In your attempt to protect them from the evil that lurks in cyberspace, they’ve been cut off from the wonders of connecting with others. We’ve got the ability to create environments that will break down many of the walls between cultures – don’t think small – we’ll protect them, just as you do in your neighborhood. Trust us, we have their best interest in mind and we believe that this is an integral part of their education.

So get your billboard materials out and start spreading the education.

Lucy Gray started a Google Wave discussion focused on blocking and filtering. Several of us added our comments and mine paralleled what I  talked about in a recent blog post, Don’t know? Just say “No!” There was a sense of gestalt about this new conversation – it seems that many times different people, in different places, begin talking, exploring, discovering, and learning about the same things – a kind of community (or collective) consciousness. Maybe it’s simply our awareness of the increase of this element of the access gap. Schools and districts are interpreting CIPA differently. Some uphold the law with strategic filtering and provide teachers and students with a wide variety of tools to use safely. Others choose to block all social networking sites to uphold the law. The gap between the two seems to be widening … as are the skills and experiences of teachers and students.

One way to help close the gap is through education. Providing local workshops for parents, teachers, and administrators; encouraging faculty and administrators to attend state and national conferences; e.g., ISTE, ICE, CUE, and ACSD; and helping everyone in education in developing connections to effective practices of educational technology. We need to show administrators what kids are able to do when the online tools are available.

Just as it’s shown by this kitten, fear can come across as aggression – well, at least her face looks aggressive. So the more fearful we are, the louder we shout in hopes of securing our safety.

Attribution: Andreas D.

It’s time to come out from behind the façade of safety that fear imagines. Will you answer this louder call to educate the fear right out of them?

Continual growth and pushing out the walls of my comfort zone is part of my personality … well, most of the time. Maybe it was because we moved around a lot when I was a kid. Maybe because I was an athlete from a young age and programmed to always push for improvement. It was a pervasive attitude for almost 20 years as a college athlete and coach … always trying to get better, both physically and mentally … and now it carries on in my life in higher education.

How’s your comfort zone?

Listen to Brian Glazer as he talks about disrupting his comfort zone.

I’m going to follow his example and push one of my comfort zone walls out a little by identifying 4 people to talk to – people who I know I can learn from.

So, how’s your comfort zone? Are you stretching yourself?

There seems to be a pervasive attitude in tech support circles … among administrators … indeed, the human condition. If we don’t know about something – have never thought about the concept – don’t want to change … we just say

I hear about this happening in many K-12 schools (and some community colleges) when it comes to access to online tools. I am very blessed to be at a university that has an open access policy – I have never been blocked from accessing anything online. But many schools restrict what their students, faculty, and staff can get to on the Web.

Some use the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) as the reason to block:

… filter Internet access to pictures that are: (a) obscene, (b) child pornography, or (c) harmful to minors (for computers that are accessed by minors).

… adopt and enforce a policy to monitor online activities of minors.

… adopt and implement an Internet safety policy addressing:

(a) access by minors to inappropriate matter on the Internet;
(b) the safety and security of minors when using electronic mail, chat rooms, and other forms of direct electronic communications;
(c) unauthorized access, including so-called “hacking,” and other unlawful activities by minors online;
(d) unauthorized disclosure, use, and dissemination of personal information regarding minors; and
(e) measures restricting minors’ access to materials harmful to them.

I don’t see anything here about blocking all social networking and Web 2.0 tools. But many schools do just that. Is it really about safety? I think for many it’s more about control, being overwhelmed, and just plain lack of knowledge. If they don’t know, they just say, “No!”

A couple of years ago one of my master’s students put her entire 1st grade reading curriculum on a blog. But … you guessed it … the blog was blocked in the district. When she approached the district technology director she was told, “If I unblock your site, then other people are going to want special treatment also.”

Why?

Too many districts (and community colleges) have technicians making educational and pedagogical decisions. I’ve talked with educators who can use whatever online tools they deem necessary and most of them have an educator as the technology or integration director – they have another person taking care of the nuts and bolts.

Fear can also result in the blanket blocking online tools. Fear of predators is the main issue that arises. This connects back to, if you don’t know, just say “No?” Why is it not ok for students to have personal information published on a website when it’s a common practice to publish their personal information in the newspaper? What is the difference? Can’t a predator read a newspaper and find the child, school, schedule, etc.? And what does that all have to do with blogs, wikis, nings, social bookmarking, Twitter, etc.? (NOTE: I’m not suggesting we make students’ personal information accessible, this is just an example.) Again, we’re back to … if they don’t know, they say, “No!”

What are some other reasons? What have your experiences been?

So … how can we change things?

I need to make a much more concerted effort to recruit Ed Admin students – those who are going for their administrative certificate. Since they are the future decision-makers, they need to be learning about the effective uses of online tools.

We also need to make sure that our K-12 administrators are being invited to the state technology conferences. That’s where they will be exposed to all that is good about using online tools.

Instead of blocking, we should be educating. We need to teach students how to be safe online, how to be good digital citizens, and how to take responsibility for their actions – teachers, administrators, and parents need to know these skills and principles also.

What else can we do to change the culture? What do you suggest?

]]> http://drctedd.wordpress.com/2009/10/13/dont-know-just-say-no/feed/ 2 drctedd Nofotogail http://drctedd.wordpress.com/2009/10/08/so-many-presos/ http://drctedd.wordpress.com/2009/10/08/so-many-presos/#comments Thu, 08 Oct 2009 13:58:14 +0000 Cheri http://drctedd.wordpress.com/?p=604 ]]>

If all my proposals are accepted I’ll be presenting 6 times between November and June. That doesn’t even include all the little side presos I do here at ISU and the locals schools and organizations.

Am I crazy?

sprkels' photostream

Well maybe, but I’d like to share about the backchanneling study (with Sharon Peters‘), about what over 900 educators from around the world had to say about their use of Web 2.0 tools, and about other skills and info that will help teachers and students. So here’s the schedule:

November:

Illinois Education and Technology Conference (IETC)

The 3-Tool PLN

Critical Web Skills for the 21st Century

February:

Illinois Computing Educators (ICE) – these have been submitted, not accepted

Around the Web in 60 Days

Going Wild With Wikis

June:

International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE)- these have been submitted, not accepted

Educators’ Perceptions: Uses, Constraints, and Successful Practices of Backchanneling

Global Educators Using Web 2.0 Tools

Now maybe that is a little crazy … 6 different preps … plus I am teaching 3 new classes next semester, that’s 3 preps. Oh, well, I do always like to push the envelope. So the key is to prepare ahead and practice … that’s right, practice. I will be referring to Garr Reynolds’ Presentation Zen and Seth Godin’s Two Elements of a Great Presenter to pick up new info and cue me on what I already know. And practice … yup, there it is again. You know what they say, “Practice makes perfect.” Well … actually … perfect practice makes perfect … something I learned (and said repetitively) during 15 years of coaching volleyball.

So if you are at any of these conferences, please come up and say “Hi” – after all, that’s the biggest part of conferencing: spending time with people.

I’m not crazy … just excited and I want to provoke more excitement!

leeander's photostream

Do you have any crazy ideas? Share them!!

In the midst of trying to meet a deadline for our backchanneling article, Sharon Peters and I had put together over 9000 words, thinking that we had an extra 1000 words to play with. Then I talked with one of my ISU colleagues who had submitted her article to the same publication. She was so pleased since she had been able to submit her article a day early … meeting the 20-page maximum … that was fine … double-spaced … WHAT?!?

Was it a bad dream?

Not only did I want to start that day over …  I actually wanted to go back about 3 weeks and read the submission criteria more carefully.

These types of experiences … of course, this isn’t my first … help increase my empathy for my students. It also reminds me to make sure that I practice what preach to my doctoral students who are working on their dissertations, “Tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell it to them, then tell them what you told them.”

When I first started teaching online I was fairly good at providing explicit directions – or so I thought. Now, 10 years later, I am much better at organizing instructions so that my students don’t have to guess what I’m thinking. I want them to successfully complete the assignments so that they can learn what will help them be better teachers.

We cut to 5600 words and 19 pages … Phew! Watch for the article in late November. I will post the URL as soon as I get it.

Thank you again to everyone who completed the survey and to those who shared the link with others around the world. The raw data shows some interesting results. I’ll give you a sneak peek at one today.

Now remember, my main purpose was to survey those people in the ed tech network – those using Twitter, Nings, blogs, webcasts that center on educational technology. This is not a study of everyone in education.

With that said, here’s what the gender/age comparison looks like:

I am not surprised. Every conference, webcast, and seminar I go to I see mostly women and mostly those in these age groups. The question I will be asking in the follow-up interviews is, Why?

On that note, I will be setting up a qualitative study (interviews) to answer some of the questions that come from the analysis of this study. If you’re interested in participating, look for a call after the first of the year.

Flickr: vrogy

Yesterday I ventured over to the dark side … the forbidden zone for higher education faculty … my undergraduate (pre-service teachers) child development students were divided into work groups ad required to provide a visual representation of their topic areas.

Yes, its true … they spent the classtime drawing. Oh, and I also had four cannisters of playdough, so a couple of them really took a leap.

What I saw were young adults who didn’t know what to do … they asked me what I wanted … they asked how they should draw. Some of them started and asked me if what they were doing was ok.

This is very sad. But, I will be trying to help them locate their creativity again so that when they are out in the schools they will think twice before they perpetuate the squelching of creativity.

We all hear about the power of the network … and this experience is proof of that power.

At 11:50 am (GMT -5; U.S. Central Time) on Tuesday, July 21, I launched a survey about online tools – I wanted to avoid the term Web 2.0 in order to broaden participants thinking. I sent it out on Twitter – and asked everyone to retweet [RT]), posted it in several Nings that I’m a part of, posted it in my blog, and even used old fashioned email.

Then I sat back and watched the responses come in. I’m using SelectSurvey for this anonymous survey and am able to watch the total grow without knowing who (or from where) the participants are. Here’s a running total as I saw them and tweeted:

Tuesday

• 12:18 pm 1 response
• 12:40 pm 3 responses
• 6:33 pm 48 responses
• 7:10 pm 105 responses
• 8:03 pm 160 responses

Wednesday

• 8:37 am Logged on to find 340 responses
• 10:20 am 379 responses
• 4:04 pm 491 responses
• 4:10 pm 500 responses
• 10:09 pm 642 responses

Thursday

• 4:30 pm 784 responses
• 7:30 pm 799 responses

Friday

• 8:30 am 829 responses
• 9:45 am 832 responses

Here’s a visual:

The surges in responses came as a result of the retweets within the network. We really are connected … and it would seem that we really like that we are connected.

If you or someone you know has not had a chance to participate in the survey, please send the link: http://snipurl.com/nnpvg.

A huge thank you to all who have completed the survey so far and to those of you who have spread the word – it’s almost viral – keep sharing the link.

Calling all educators

Please complete a survey about how you use online tools personally and with students.

Go to http://snipurl.com/nnpvg

Please share with others

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