OHagOnline.com Blog

Upgraded this blog to Wordpress 2.5.

You may continue with your lives.

Is Diigo the Department of Homeland Security of Web 2.0? A virtual Tombstone that is booming and will quickly bust? I look around and see a landscape that tries to be Facebook and Del.icio.us and does not do either well in a slick, simple way. It feels like a layer of bureaucracy that sits on top of my browser.

Ironically, I start this conversation in Diigo, rather than in a blog to see how this goes. I will also post a blog starter on this and copy that link into Twitter to see where that goes.

UPDATE

Here is what Diigo comes down to and my beef. It isn’t “hate” that I have for Diigo that the creator of the product alluded to in a comment on my blog.

As technology educators it is intellectually dishonest to push teachers and staff to use a product, promote the heck out of it, then abandon that product when something offers a shiny superficial upgrade somewhere else.

For example, del.icio.us has a larger network already in place that people built up over time. People have invested hours into their personal network there only to be told by influential technology educators that del.icio.us is no longer the place to be. You should be in Diigo. And not because necessarily that this is the best solution now, but because there are those more excited about being the first to the party.

My concern is that, and this goes beyond Diigo and goes more to the heart of innovation with Web 2.0 technologies, that we are not fulfilling the potential found in the resources we already have in place. del.icio.us is a deep, rich, tool that is being tapped by many users everyday. We are doing a disservice to the teachers and staff we serve by suggesting we use one product one year, and then turn around and tell them, forget that product, we’re over here now.

Imagine at a non-Web 2.0 level you are a PC user, your district then switches in one year to Mac (investing time to retrain and relearn the platform) and then switch to Linux (again investing time to retrain and relearn the platform). As someone involved in technology, this might be a simple switch, but for a teacher who has a million other balls to juggle, this would be a nuisance and foment resentment towards technology.

There needs to be more of a sense of responsibility with promotion of these technologies as we move forward. There needs to be critical evaluation. To say someone has a “hate” for a product because they question how good a product is is counterproductive and goes against what we hope our students will be… critical thinkers.

If you use Diigo, and are comfortable with Diigo, good for you. However, before sharing this new technology be aware of your audience and ask yourself if this is really the best for them. As Art Gelwicks said “there is most effective right now,” but is that “most effective” worth the switch?

I recently posed the question to the Twitterverse.  Is Web 2.0 too fast for education? Is it a disservice to promote a technology for teachers to use, only to jump to another one months later and say you need to be here now?

Maybe it is the packaging of certain Web 2.0 products that lead to confusion. I had a recent talk with several education technologists and around the table we were talking about Twitter. Some use it regularly, some were new to the technology, some had no idea, and some had varying degrees of understanding of the technology. All the while I was thinking, we are using Twitter now, but where will be be in six months, or a year. I think back to those who got started with MySpace, which was great two years ago, but now is a lumbering technological dinosaur. Facebook is clean and simple to use, but requires the user to completely recreate their profile. MySpace is left in the technological dust.

Twitter is in danger of also being left in the technological dust. Pownce offers a better, more stable interface that has a greater range of functionality. But are we going to completely understand the potential of Twitter? Do we really understand the potential of other Web 2.0 technologies?

Let’s simplify things. Blogs? Simple. Wikis? Simple. How you decide to create your blog or create your wiki needs to be considered a substantial intellectual investment. If you do wish to move forward with staff development of Web 2.0 technologies realize that just like with computer hardware, Web 2.0 moves just as fast. Don’t be quick to abandon your investment because of a flashy website. Let us get the most out of our intellectual investments before moving on to the next flash in the pan.

While this is a bit late, I just received a tweet from budtheteacher about NASA’s attempt to produce a Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) educational game. This game would support STEM areas of study, those being science, technology, engineering and mathematics. My comment is that Daniel Pink must be giddy. If you do not know who Daniel Pink is, that’s OK. I did not either until I took a masters course on being a principal, and the gentleman who taught the course, Dr. John McGraw, talked about a book written by Pink. That book is A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age. Intrigued I bought the book, read it and read it again (I rarely ever read books twice… Animal Farm, 1984 and A Brave New World are the only ones that come to mind). It is a fast read, but the gist is we have ignored Right-brained education in this country for so long and yet there are important aspects to developing a whole individual that will become more important as the world flattens further a la The World is Flat. Game play is a core component of Pink’s argument in his book to areas we need to focus more on in education to achieve an edge in the world market. Even though on the surface NASA’s goals cover seemingly left-brained subjects, these subjects do have deeper right-brained tendencies. 

This is a response to Will Richardson’s Post.

What I am tired of seeing is the “end.” I am interested more in seeing the “how do we get to this end.” Showing, for example, a Web 2.0 project is one thing, but those things don’t just happen. There is a mountain of groundwork that has to take place. Schools that like to show off their 1:1s make it seem like toss the computers at the students and teachers and you will have success (from first hand experience it is not like that at all). That really irks me. It is dishonest.

In my estimation, to achieve real pedagogical change in a school might take 3 years minimum, but probably longer. That is a total guess from my limited years in education (9). Of course, the Great Society (in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act) has been with us since the mid 1960s, has had tons of money allocated, and that has produced little change in schools in how we teach at a basic level between then and now other than the medium of presentation (there has been other far reaching impacts with this act however with regards to things like special education). The teacher, by and large, is still the presenter, the students absorb and regurgitate.

And while we expect educators to keep up with changes in technology, that is not their focus. Their focus is how best to educate their children. And just when we thought the innovation of the Read-Write Web was fast, it is getting faster. People jump platforms on a whim. Remember Friendster? That was MySpace before MySpace. Now, Facebook is the new MySpace. Remember Twitter? Heard of Pwnce? Pwnce is Twitter on steroids.

The forum of a conference, I feel, is all wrong. Has the way we collaborate now changed all that? Thinking back 9 years ago when I first started teaching, I felt like I was on an island. Now, there are presentations going on all the time via ustreams and blog posts. The conference is a social event, so let it be just that. Instead, it is a pony show. It is the “deer-in-headlights.” Too formal and structured much like a classroom. But isn’t that what the teachers expect when they go to a conference? Maybe a better example of what a conference should be is the poster sessions? It is less formal, can be engaging so long as people aren’t just there for “the handout” (oh that bothers me when I see colleagues grab a handout and leave a presentation… it’s embarrassing).

As for credibility, if things are as fast paced in this world now, then how can someone outside of working with a school full-time, really get what is going on here? Maybe an example to equate would be baseball. You are a fan of your team, you follow your team, you read the website, you read the box scores, you listen to the games, you listen to sports radio… but you still do not see the day-to-day in-house operation of that team. And yet, baseball fans are always critics of their teams, sometimes correctly, sometimes totally off-base. Even baseball analysts, those in the know or who worked or played professional baseball, are gravely incorrect in their assertions. White Sox radio announcer, Steve Stone, is probably the best analyst in the business, but isn’t always correct in his assertions.

That isn’t to say that experience shouldn’t be valued, or that free speech should be restricted. But, as we tell our students when surfing the Internet, consider the source. Relying on laurels and reputation produces nothing more than complacency, stagnation and potentially disastrous results. See Maxime Weygand, the successful Supreme Allied Commander in WWI and failed French Commander in WWII. He was called back to duty in an attempt to stop the Nazi advance, but had not seen active combat since the end of WWI and attempted a trench-style defense which was quickly overrun.

In simple terms, there has to be balance with experience and  credibility and real world realities. Web 2.0 should not be defined or confined into narrow terms, but for the sake of the educator, it very well might have to be. And where do we begin educating our educators? How do we build that online community in our schools. No one has shown it, and unfortunately, I do not think there is a formula that will fit everyone.

As for PRN, leave those alone, Will.  Don’t even go there. 

I know many of you are regulars at several conferences. I skipped the conference at Pheasant Run this year, but for a night of Karaoke, because I looked at the list of presentations and had the feeling of “seen that, been there.” So, rather than sit back and wait for something to happen, I have been thinking about what is missing from education technology.We are but a small, but growing important and impactful part of education. You have  seen technology in all facets of schools and education. Unfortunately, our passions do not always translate into a passionate staff. A staff that is intrinsically motivated to seek out and try out new technologies. In my experience, there has been a lot of sitting back and waiting to be spoon-fed information. Yes, there are superstars out there who are classroom teachers who go “all out.” But what do we do to get the regular joe classroom teacher to buy-in, to spark them to become intrinsically motivated.That sounds simple, but intrinsic motivation cannot be taught or shown. It has to be there. Much like their passion to teach is intrinsic, or you at least hope they are still motivated. But with ISATs, state standards, continuing education that glosses over technology altogether (don’t get me started on the poor job masters programs around here are incorporating technology), a home life, and a FAST paced Web 2.0 world where you are hot like MySpace, then all of a sudden your base leaves you for Facebook, how can we sell that? How can we build that spark?That’s what I want to see. I want to see how you build that base of teachers who really do use all this time and money spent on technology well. For the love of it, I will openly retch if I see another presentation titled “Websites You Can Use…”

I have officially begun to move my district toward thin client software, specifically Google Apps for Education. I have the mail service up and running. I am now, in earnest, moving the district mail service over to Google Mail (still maintaining the d128.k12.il.us domain).

Well, this is the first post on my blog. Not really tech related, but I thought my first post would revolve around the installation of AT&T’s Opteman fiber optic network in our district. After filling out the appropriate paperwork with the Federal eRate program, it looks like we are on track to have the system installed no later than July 1, 2008.

The system will have an 11Mbps up and down connection to the Illinois Century Network with all traffic being routed out of Independence Junior High School. This is an interesting process to me because I have never gone through any sort of large network upgrade on this scale. I have done a large internal network upgrade when I was at CCSD 180 in Burr Ridge, but this is a whole new level of connectivity.