On ALEX

No, not this dapper font of information available five days a week -- I mean the non-mustachioed resource that's open all the time.

ALEX, an Alabama Department of Education online initiative made possible via private donations and federal/state funding, offers students, parents, teachers and administrators a variety of free educational materials and information, including lesson plans, web resources, and interactive activities.

The ALEX team -- a murderer's row of talent from a cross section of university, K-12, and some guy from NASA (what does that guy think he is, some kinda rocket scientist?) has adopted as its motto "Quality for Every Facet of Learning," and their dedication is clear from the materials assembled to date. There are some extraordinarily valuable resources there, especially example lesson plans. We all love lesson plans, right?

Also, ALEX has a Facebook page. You can "friend" ALEX. ALEX promises not to obsessively check your relationship status or send you the " Which True Blood Character Are You?" survey.

On "Dear Kaia" & Comments4Kids

Meet Kaia: she's a three year-old from Qatar. You can read her blog here.

Photo courtesy Kaia's blog.

This is a remarkable story about how innovative teaching and global connectivity can interact and inspire students. By not only encouraging Kaia's direct interaction and engagement with her environment, but also giving her tools with which she could reflect upon and share her experience, Kaia's "lesson" was cognitively engaging, structurally nuanced, and emotionally compelling.

But equally remarkable is the reinforcement Kaia's readers can provide, practically immediately after she creates and shares her work. I can't imagine how exciting it must be for an eager young learner to get such positive feedback from a global audience. Frequent positive reinforcement is a hallmark of great education, and vital to the inspiration and encouragement of proactive, self-motivated learners. Consider Kaia's likely future, growing up in a world where education too often fails to engage bright students, in the context of her examination of the desert's beauty: not bereft of promise, but bright, vast, wide open, and full of riches to be unearthed.

On New Media Literacies

Answering questions from the Great Blogger In The Sky Who Gives Us Assignments:

What do you think of the New Media Skills covered in this video (judgment, negotiation, appropriation, play, transmedia navigation, simulation, collective intelligence, performance, distributed cognition, visualization, multitasking)?

I think they're dandy. In previous posts, I've stood (virtually) on my (digital) soapbox and shouted (via typing, but typing super hard) about judgment, or being able to assess information you discover in the wild as useful, honest, and reliable. Multitasking, especially, is more important than ever, so much so than some people think we may in fact be reprogramming our brains to better multitask as an evolutionary function. Even appropriation, the sampling and remixing of content into a meaningful new product, is the same sort of informational synthesis employed in academic studies for decades ("sourcing," I think cave-scholars called it), but in a multimedia context.

Are they really the 21st century skills that will be needed to be effective artists, citizens, workers?

Perhaps. Certainly, anyone with these skills will have a leg up in society and in the workforce, by virtue of having developed a more nuanced and comprehensive skill set. But to be an effective artist? Well, that all depends on what kind of artist you mean, and how you can possibly define art as "effective." Art, by virtue of being art, is neither medium-specific nor goal-oriented. I don't think you can say with a straight face that "all effective artists of the future will be masters of transmedia navigation and distributed cognition." Unless you are a robot, and you talk like that anyway, and you cannot smile.

How many of these skills do you possess? Which ones? How will you acquire the others?

I'd wager I've demonstrated each of these skills to some extent before. Certainly, I can improve -- I could multitask better, that's for sure -- and as with any skill, it'll take practice with and exposure to new media applications.

---

And speaking of practicing those skills, MIT'S Project New Media Literacies (NML) seeks to equip students with the "social skills and cultural competencies required to become full participants in an emergent media landscape," while redefining the commonly held view of whatit means to be literate in an international, interconnected world.

NML seeks nothing less than a paradigm shift: rather than adapting our methods of teaching certain subjects, we must reconsider what teaching means by taking ownership of skills fundamental to areas of study. We also must foster participatory culture in education -- for instance, by shifting the focus of literacy curriculum from individual expression to community involvement. For some interesting examples, check out this white paper.

On "The Networked Student"

I love this hypothetical student. I love his spiky, Bart Simpson-esque hair, and his googly volleyball eyes, searching so hungrily for new information. I love his zeal for new ideas, his take-no-prisoners approach to learning, his ingenuity, creativity, fearlessness, technical ninja-ery, and boundless motivation. I'm so in love with this student that I can barely stand to acknowledge that I've never met a student like this in my entire life.

Okay, that's an exaggeration. Given the tools, training, resources, and most critically, personally relevant materials, many students voraciously seek knowledge. Training, as the video plainly states, is crucial, as any erstwhile internet scholar must know the difference between good, factual, scholarly information and Things That People Type On The Internet Because They Can.

This style of learning -- the personal learning network -- nicely compliments social networking, which is old news to this generation and will be ubiquitous, in some form, in the future; maybe an academically-sound architecture that functions according to the same principles (and is therefore relevant to students) could inspire the kind of freight-train effort the "Networked Student" puts forth. FactBook, anyone?

But I also have a gripe. (Don't tell me you didn't see it coming.) In this construct, the teacher is described as a learning architect, whose role is to teach the student how best to seek information outside of the classroom. Are we to suppose that the student should seek all authority outside of the classroom, and that the teacher should serve as some hybrid librarian/operator/IT consultant, free of any particular mastery of the subject matter? Or does the teacher need to do both, in the same classroom, while conforming to curriculum guidelines that realistically cannot require expensive technology (because let's recall that not all students have computers, and not all schools have enough of them, and that's a sad and inescapable fact) AND attempting to engage students who are not crazy self-motivated?

On "This Is How We Dream"

Fascinating big picture spit-balling by Rutgers English professor Richard Miller, a self-described "person of the book" who now envisions technology as a means of articulating dreams, making the humanities visible and vital, and actively, immediately pushing ideas into culture where the may exist and evolve free from their creator and context. "As educators," he says, "we must be in the business of sharing ideas freely."

He freely admits that he doesn't know what shape the next evolution of composition will take, and acknowledges some fairly high hurdles to overcome before such composition is accessible by a wide audience, including an "extraordinary combination" of additional resources, the participation and initiative of inspiring and informed teachers, and pedagogy that has yet to be invented. Despite these... well, let's be generous and call the formidable challenges, he foresees a time when students will compose with "digital composing material" -- creating multimedia, multidimensional, aesthetically innovative pieces -- instead of word processors.

Of course, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, one challenge he does not address is that if you a critical mass of information growing exponentially in already (practically) infinite universe of data, your research is only as good as your research tools and the reliability of your sources. Ideas should exist in a free market, but the question of original authorship becomes important when false facts and bad data aggregate. He mentions, for example, following the 2008 election results in real-time; well, I did that too, and the "real time" data offered by a number of of sites was... well, let's be generous (I guess I'm in a giving mood) and call it "incongruous." (I recommend Nate Silver for all your accurate poll number needs, by the way.)

The evolution of methods and tools by which we access and organize this morass of information must keep pace with the web's expansion. And as there are bucks to be made from such services (Google's awesome, but they aren't exactly a non-profit), we have to assume that politics, economics, bias, agendas, and all sorts of other interference may create an illusory free market of ideas. Not that that's anything new.

I don't mean to pooh-pooh Mr. (Dr.?) Miller's presentation or high-minded ideals. As a book person who's deep in the thrall of new media, I'm fully behind his dream, instinctively and optimistically. But my instincts also scream out for somebody to play devil's advocate when we talk about a future that demands "extraordinary" resources, when extraordinary resources have been, historically and without fail, unfairly allotted.

Maybe that's not playing devil's advocate after all, but rather, just playing plain ol' advocate.

On Did You Know 4.0

Did You Know 4.0 asks, "Are you ready for the future?" I'm not sure the future particularly cares if you're ready for it or not, so it's nice of this video to ask.

Few of these numbers greatly shock me -- for instance, I followed the 2008 presidential election closely, and thought then-candidate Obama's online fund raising success vs. John McCain's traditional (read: antiquated) methods was just more evidence that one of those guys was looking forward and the other, well, not so much. I followed tweeting protesters during the aftermath of the Iranian elections, marking the first time a.) I've ever followed tweets or b.) there was any use whatsoever in following tweets.

On the other hand: 2 million teevees in bathrooms?! I suppose, given the population sample, this isn't a totally outrageous percentage, but it does go to show that I often have no idea what's going on in this country. Who are these people? Do they run coaxial cable to their bathrooms? Is that a thing that electricians do in new homes? (Me, I still read the newspaper -- as recently as this morning, to answer the video's rhetorical question and provide blog readers with too much information.)

And since data convergence is the topic at hand, I can't help but evaluate the reference to countless extant webpages and hours of youtube video in context of this little nugget:
"90% of the 200 billion emails sent daily are spam."

On the Duke Digital Initiative

Educational technology orthodoxy sez, "Better the devil you know." But let's ask the devil we don't.

(This is mildly terrifying.)

In 2005, Duke University did something that made its freshman class as happy as Microsoft shareholders weren't: it gave each freshman (about 1,600, total) a 20gb iPod pre-loaded with orientation material and rigged with a voice recorder. In 2006, Duke made iPods available to all undergraduates in specific courses upon the request of faculty members.

Evaluating the initiative, Duke noted the following benefits:
- Reduced dependence upon physical materials
- Flexible access to digital class resources, independent of lab and library hours
- Convenient digital recording of interviews, lectures, notes, and oral assignments
- Greater student engagement and interest in discussions, labs, and projects
- Enhanced individual leaning support

And remember: these iPods, compared to the current iteration, were practically dinosaurs. Rather, they were dinosaurs with significant sensory impairments -- no graphics, no video, no wifi, no app store (and maybe I've mentioned something about free Ivy League college in your pocket?) -- and fragile brains, prone to aneurysm. We're talking basic text/audio functionality and a spinning magnetic hard drive all too happy to crash and delete that one Norah Jones album you couldn't avoid in 2004.

But the experiment was successful enough to give birth to the Duke Digital Initiative, whose stated mission is to "promote innovative and effective teaching, to use technology in support of curriculum enhancement, to develop our technology infrastructure and to share knowledge about effective instructional technology strategies." In 2007 and 2008, DDI experimented with limited distribution of tablet PCs. In 2009? High-def video cameras, camera-enabled flip-phones, and webcams. You can read more about how that turned out here and here. (SPOILER ALERT: it turned out well.)

My college, on the other hand, has a scanner in the computer lab. So, you know, we got that going for us.

On FREE COLLEGE.

I'm in college. I own an iPhone. I therefore speak with total authority: hey, you know what's prohibitively expensive? College and stuff from Apple!

So imagine my shock and delight: iTunes U is as incongruous as it is completely and shamelessly awesome. Through iTunes, and accessible via internet or cellular connection, Apple and partner Universities (which is to say, any University that wishes to participate, or any museum, or any public media organization, etc.) offers, basically, free college in the form of more than 200,000 downloadable lectures, presentations, audiobooks, language lessons, and more.

Click here to launch iTunes and marvel at the resources available, from the Ivy Leagues to Oxford to many of the top schools worldwide, including Australia, Canada, Ireland and New Zealand. Or, from my beloved prior alma mater, distinguished in both football and, apparently, cutting-edge necrology: "Zombies! The Living Dead in Literature." (Cue Auburn fans joking about how we all wish Bear Bryant would rise from the grave. Go on. IT'S TRUE AND OUR SCIENTISTS ARE WORKING ON IT)

Ahem. FREE. COLLEGE. If I have to explain to you why this is a good thing, you should... well, go get some free college. The haves in the world (those of us whom a college education is feasible, despite myriad financial or societal barriers) may now have so much more, but the have-nots? Well, they gain access to some of the finest educational resources from some of the most exclusionary institutions in the world. And it can live in your pocket. This is the sort of revolutionary deployment of information that reminds us how the internet can, in fact, fundamentally change the world for the better.

Now, to get iPods in the hands of the have-nots. Maybe the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will help! They love to support educational technology initiatives!

...

Oooooooohhhhhhhhhhhh, right. Zunes, anyone? Please, take a Zune?

On Dr. Alice Christie's Phenomenal Website

Alicechristie.org, the homepage of and information clearinghouse run by Dr. Alice A. Christie (President’s Professor Emeritus, Arizona St./massively informed and experienced techno-sage), gives prospective educators a wealth of resources and tools so that they may enhance their practice and their students' education. Really, there's no way I can properly represent the depth of substance here, except to say generally: from her online university to classes to her comprehensive introduction to GPS and Geocaching to her invalubale educational technology guide, any wise neo-futurist edu-person would do well to root around the site and interact with the materials she offers.

One subsection, however, set a handful of my synapses to tinglin': Dr. Christie's Internet Resources and Tools: IM. Language and dialect develops organically, and there's nothing we can to stop its evolution. One of the major issues in any educational setting -- and why stop there, when you can include any circumstance where adults try to communicate with kids, such as, I don't know, parenting, or existing anywhere in the world, anytime, ever -- is the hoary old "communications gap" between generations. But this cliche is alive, well, and happening, as children of the iGeneration interact with those from the "Me" generation. (Has anyone coined that comparison yet? If not, I call trademark.)

"Netspeak," or 1337speak, is the de facto lingua franca (pardon my language) of this generation's digital, textual interaction; it's pervasive in society, multinational in scope, and has significantly altered our lexicon while naturalistically becoming a medium suitable for worldwide reception. From the perspective of a future educator, who will at least interact with masters of this dialect (and who, at most, may use IM and MMS tech to interact with students), we need to remain fluent so that we may communicate with our students.

IMHO. TFWIW.

On Wikipedia (or, for the British, Wikipaedia)

When can Wikipedia be trusted? Well, according to non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, which runs the show, if not now, then soon. According to an August 24th article in the New York Times, Wikipeditors were then in the process of instituting a feature called “flagged revisions,” which requires an "experienced volunteer [Wikipedia] editor" to approve public alterations to articles about living people before those changes go... um, live. Like most message boards worth reading (or, at least, worth not dismissing out of hand), articles won't reflect updates until a moderator gives the nod.

Better refereeing, while perhaps antithetical to the free-for-all origins and explosive growth of the site, is now imperative; in the wake of troubling edits by a variety of self-serving corporations and politicians, and given the site's scope, popularity, influence, and ubiquity. Quoth Michael Snow, Seattle lawyer and chairman of the Wikimedia board: “We are no longer at the point that it is acceptable to throw things at the wall and see what sticks.” Yes: when 60 million Americans a month rely on Wikipedia as a trusted source regarding many subjects beyond the oeuvre of Joss Whedon, time to hold editorial input to a higher standard than the "is my fettucini al dente?" test.

Disclosure! I use Wikipedia. I have Wikipedia in my pocket, thanks to my iPhone. You the best thing about Wikipedia, besides comprehensive Joss Whedon information? The thing that makes Wikipedia something like a reliable source? The webliography, man. The articles may be tainted, but having a clearinghouse of sources at the bottom of each page can save some valuable googlin' time. (Listen to me: as if googling information is so gosh-darn time consuming. Boy, am I spoiled.)