To my 7 readers from Utah:

2007 has been a banner year for education in Utah's political landscape: Increased funding for educational technology, a possible three-way Jordan School District split, and the upcoming unprecedented attempt to incorporate government-sponsored vouchers to fund private schooling. This issue of vouchers, currently being referred to as Referendum 1 (here and also here, see page 4), will be decided in three weeks when Utahns will vote on one of the most debated, polarizing issues in state history. As I've been asked by several people "why referendum 1 is so bad", I'll give you may take now.

• While never guaranteed to be great, private school can be great... for those that can afford it.
• Most Utahns can't afford private school - even with the funding that vouchers would provide.
• Hence, Referendum 1 would be a way to reward the people that already utilize private schools and not really a way to recruit new students.

To continue, I honestly believe the opening paragraphs of our nation's Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Furthermore, I believe (like many of the educators that served to shape our nation's educational system):

• Education is one of those unalienable rights to which all men (and women) are entitled.
  
• Neither liberty nor the pursuit of happiness can truly be obtained without an education.

Yesterday I had the privilege of interviewing Steve Hargadon for an episode of T4 Tips Podcasts. In the interview, we discussed social networking and its utility in education. Rather polished and a great teacher in his own right, Steve did an excellent job in detailing the Classroom 2.0 social network and provided several compelling reasons for teachers everywhere to join in on the conversation.

Technorati Tags: social networking classroom20 t4 podcast education professionaldevelopment

Last night's Social Software in the Classroom open professional development class went as well as I had envisioned it could go from the beginning. To say that it went perfectly would probably be an understatement:

• Recording, transmission, and connecting went flawlessly.
• We opened with the first "show & tell" session that I know of that has included teachers from across the country. The topic: Bring your favorite Firefox plugin.
• We continued with a wonderful discussion about the in-class use of various exciting, online teaching tools.
• After a brief break, we were happy to interact with our first international guest speaker. Rachel Boyd (from New Zealand) was kind enough to explain to our class about a few of the experiences she's had in using blogging as an educational tool for her students. How many guest speakers from New Zealand have you brought into your class lately? +10pts to Rachel for her willingness to share.
  
• Finally, Rachel's discussion led perfectly into a discussion about blogging. We used Blogger as our tool of choice, simply because the participants already had Google accounts and the Blogger interface is relatively easy to use.
• In total, roughly 35 teachers from around the world participated in our class.
• It's been amazing to see how far we've come in 5 short weeks, and am glad that we were able to shine in this final session.
• None of this would have been possible without educational social networking! Classroom 2.0, EduBloggerWorld, FaceBook, and especially the Twitter network (my TwitterSchool) have been able to come together to make truly great things happen.
  

Again, the entire class was extremely refreshing, and I'm confident that everyone that participating walked away from the night having learned much.

Part 1 - Pretty good stuff. If you're interested in CamTwist, we go over a quick run-down in the first five minutes.

Part 2 - Doh! While teaching about Firefox plugins (installing and then restarting Firefox), I forgot that I was recording in Ustream.

Technorati Tags: socialsoftware07 firefox blogosphere professional_development classroom20 edubloggerworld twitter ustream camtwist

I've really enjoyed the sparring that has been taking place between Stephen Downes and David Wiley related to learning objects. Having followed the progress of learning objects for several years now (I first met Dr. Wiley in 2001 in connection with my Master's program at Utah State), I can say that (a) they've come a long way and (b) there's still a long way to go. For those keeping score at home, a learning object (as defined by Wiley) is "any digital resource that can be reused to support learning."

Much like the "most famous scream in Hollywood" (above), there exists a plethora of educational content (much already digitized) that is just as effective in its reuse as it was in its first use. Wherein many original issues surrounding the implementation of learning objects centered on the practicality of creating and maintaining a centralized repository, it appears that Google has provided our much needed, neatly indexed repository: the world wide web itself. Furthermore, use of such learning objects is becoming easier and easier as most social media distribution sites (think: YouTube) freely offer the embed code that most wikis, blogs, and other content management systems willingly accept.

I suppose the next real hurdle for the global implementation of learning objects is the question of licensing. Ironically, we're back to the lessons that were once taught to us in Kindergarten: It's always nice to share.


Technorati Tags: creativecommons learningobjects education technology

I had the opportunity to present at the TESOL Macedonia Thrace Conference (held in Northern Greece) today. Rather than fly to Greece to join the conference, I elected to give my presentation via Skype and Ustream. Other than the 30 minutes of technical difficulties that the TESOL folks had on their end, the presentation went well and was a good experience all around.

If you're interested, the Google Presentation file I used can be found here (a spin-off of the general message I've been giving lately) and the stream of my presentation (take 3, anyway) can be viewed below.


For a good time (when you have a spare minute or two), you may want to check out takes 1 and 2. Take 2, by the way, begins with a very good intro to my actual presentation.

For those of you keeping score at home, the technologies I used to get all of this running were truly amazing - and what was more amazing is the fact that everything worked flawlessly on my end. We may have turned this classroom-broadcasting thing into a science.

Each of the windows shown in the screen shots above were used at some point in the presentation. Here's a quick rundown:

• A few visual aides during the presentation were shown using the Google Docs presentation component.
• YugmaSkype was used initially to share my screen. Their limited bandwidth called for plan B.
• I had an additional iSight connected to my MacBook (which has an iSight built in). One camera was used for Skype video, the other was used for CamTwist - I then used CamTwist to feed both my desktop and my picture-in-picture webcam image to Ustream.
• In truth, Ustream is the most critical component to this entire technological equation as it allows your video to be easily recorded and also provides an easy-to-access back-channel.

Technorati Tags: TESOL ustream skype yugma camtwist education technology google