Google Reader

First you will need to set up a Google account if you do not have one. Quick and easy - here is a short video on setting up an account.

A Google account enables you to make use of a number of applications - our interest here is in the Google Reader. With the Reader you can follow a number of blogs; the new posts from these blogs will all be in your Google Reader to scan. For a fun look at the concept of RSS feeds check out this video - or this specific to Google Reader

You are probably wondering where you'll find blogs to "feed your reader". One service is called Technorati.

Finally Back Again!

Again too long - I actually enjoy blogging and aim to get better at it!! Stumbled on to a new McLeod wiki -moving forward. This links goes to a page called Blogs; created in wikispaces, it looks straight forward. Many links to blogs and blog "vendors".
One blog vendor is 21 Classes - it provides a 2 layer arrangement; classroom level blog and then interconnected individual student blogs. A very limited free version - can create blogs for up to 10 students.
Recalled Scavo using Saywire -

Baldrige

I get to attend a half day workshop in May sponsored by the Iowa Quality Center. The Iowa center runs the Iowa Recognition for Performance Excellence - one of about 40 states that have a "baby Baldrige program". Most national winners have started their quality journey in a state program.

The workshop is called "The Making of a World-Class Organization". Two folks from Boeing will be conducting the workshop - Spong and Collard - their division of Boeing won the Baldrige Quality Award a few years ago. Yes they have a book too. Schools are organizations; can schools learn from outside their own sector? Baldrige folks (the genesis comes out of the quality movement) say absolutely! The framework will enable "any organization in any sector" to make large, sustainable, customer focused improvements. World Class eh? - that's what the Des Moines Register has been talking about for education in Iowa.

The Baldrige National Quality Program is administered by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Links to the 1987 law that created the program and FAQ are available on the home page.

The Baldrige Awards are given to a few organizations each year. In 2008, 3 organizations were awarded the award. One has ties to Iowa - Cargill Corn Milling - with a large operation in Eddyville 10 miles south of Oskaloosa. A North Carolina school district (with a short 2-page summary of highlights) and a health system in Colorado also won Baldrige Awards in 2008.

The award started in 1988. The program initially had a real manufacturing focus. Service industries, health care, education, non-profit and governmental organizations have all gravitated to the Baldrige as a framework for achieving and sustaining organizational performance excellence.

The first education Baldrige winner was in 2001. This year's winner made a total of 8 awards to educational programs - some have been colleges. A complete list of all the winners and links to their application summaries are available. Information on each the K-12 winner are available - Chugach Schools, Pearl River, Community Consolidated and Jenks Public Schools, although called summaries - most are 50+ pages.

A short 3 minute video from one winner - the first governmental winner - an Army research and materials center (their full appplication - 50+ pages) :




The core of the Baldrige are the "Criteria for Performance Excellence". Education and health care each separate Criteria - the language is different - concepts are the same. Ex - customers in most organizations are known as students (and stakeholders) in education and patients in health care. The Criteria for education is a 92 page document. The link also has a self analysis resource.

The home page also has links to a self assessment tool and an "Are We Making Progress?" instrument. The Baldrige criteria has 7 components -
1 Leadership
2 Strategic Planning
3 Customer Focus
4 Measurement, Analysis, and Knowledge Management
5 Workforce Focus
6 Process Management
7 Results

I'm excited about how we might use the framework at Future Pathways. I know our leadership team is committed to excellence; this approach is sound. It also takes a lot of work and disipline. No quick fixes; not much shooting from the hip. I've had the opportunity to be an examiner in both Minnesota and Iowa in previous lives. So exciting to be looking at it from education this time.

Tregoe Education Forum

Erin had a new book on her desk earlier this week, Analytic Processes for School Leaders. One co-author was Tregoe, one of the founders of Kepner-Tregoe. I studied their work back in 80's, The Rational Manager. Just discovered they did the NEW Rational Manager in the 90's. Missed that one, I guess.

The subtitle on the first one was "A Systematic Approach to Problem Solving and Decision Making". Pretty cool eh - I've always loved this kinda stuff? I always thought their work going back into the 50's would have been more studied in the 80's if we hadn't been so taken with the Japanese work and approaches.

Tregoe formed the Tregoe Education Forum in the 90's, my sense at the end of his distinguished career. I've supscribed to the newsletter and plan to keep track of this effort. On the site I found a great link to a quick organizational assessment tool - your Analytical Thinking Quotient.
Took it and it helped me think about the pay off to using their framework.

Some of the other material on the website was targeted to teachers and students. Yes, I think this type of material is needed to help meet the DMPS New Ends of critcial thinking, problem solving and decision making. I thought of our new Current Issues class - what opportunities - check out yourtake.org. I also thought of the systems thinking research I did a year ago. If we are serouis about helping our students learn these skills, but resources are available - and increasingly at no cost. Cost to learn and adapt - sure. Cost for the material - no to not much. I think of the Einstein quote on Creativity - "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."

Little wonder that 21st Century skills have gotten relatively little action and only some attention. Up until recently, we've been flying pretty high. Things are GOOD - the exception being 9/11. Today we have a world economic crisis of unknown proportions and duration, we have North Korea playing with missles and nuclear weapons, we have a ship captain being help hostage off the coast of Somalia by pirates. NPR referred to this current type of pirate activity as the worst the world has seen since the Barbary Wars in the 1780's. Yes - we face "significant problems". Will our educational institutions respond with new levels of thinking or same-o same-o? Only we can decide.....

Wikis

I've played wikis for a couple of years using wikispaces. A wiki vendor, they give spaces to educational institutions. Another large supplier of wiki is called pbwiki; here is a link to public wikis that focus on 9-12 high school education. Scanning some of these will provide ideas on how some are using this tool in the secondary education. This link is to pbwiki resources - they are presented in a wiki format of course. I think of scanning some of these resources as equivalent to looking through a catalog to get ideas. They can help expand of horizons; to see new possibilities.

Spring Break

Spent spring break in Helena visiting my son and daughter-in-law - Pad and Nisan. I had a wonderful time- great little place.

My son is youth librarian at the library system in Helena. I discovered he had won the Little Miss Muffitt contest at the library (a staff function - assume an excuse for a pot luck and some laughs & creativity)

I was going to send pics to some of my co-workers at DMPS but they would have totally clogged up the e-mail system. Having NOT yet included single pics in my blog, it provided an obvious choice.

Spent Saturday at the Como Park zoo with friends, Rick and Sherry, and their grand kids. We saw giraffes, but NO elephants. Sent them these pics from Africa. The video is of Judy at a giraffe park; elephant picture is from our trip to Lake Manyara Nat'l Park in Tanzania in 2007.

My first slideflickr. The "Stop Math" pic uploaded from my computer from a digital camera, as are the xc skiing and church pics. A few others are from cellphone camera and sent directly into a flickr account using a flickr e-mail. Set up on slideflickr; it scrolls thru pics as a slide show. Don't think for a moment I figured this out on my own; I had help from Liz Kolb. She set up a great 5 minute tutorial using screen-cast-omatic; great step by step presentation - audio and broswer screen demo!




My first podcast using my cell, recording from NPR and uploading using Gcast. I chose auto play initially. I went back and changed to manual play.


Subscribe Free
Add to my Page

Cell Phones

Toys to Tools prompted me to play with some cell phone and web2.0 capabilities. Set up a pollanywhere account and started a cell phone based poll at school. Topic was on raising the age for staying in school from 16 to 18.
Slow to get folks to use. I felt like I had promoted - power point slides on our big screens, e-mailed staff. Didn't gaggle it to them nor use the FP wiki. Not a convenient way to discuss these things with people - either students or staff.
Seemed timely - a bill was introduced in Iowa legislature to ban cell phones in schools this week. Did a test Gcast using my cell. Considering doing a mass podcast on protesting the bill.
Explored signing up for Jott (cell call to text) capability. Didn't finish; seemed to have changed. Only 7 days "free" - if you cancel within 7 days. I thought I was going to sign up at $10/month. When I proceeded I got directed to $4 or $14 dollar options - seemed that the $10 one had disappeared. The cheaper one allowed a max of 15 seconds of recording. Also a max of 40 messages per month I believe; an additional charge if exceed. I proceeded. At some point it stated that Sprint (my cell phone plan) charged 20 cents for each voicemail to text. I wasn't looking for this "service", but couldn't figure out how to turn it off and avoid the charge.

My point, Jott has some features that are annoying. Most web2.0 applications seem to have a basic free service and then add-ons for a fee. Not so with Jott. I'll shop for an alternative and sort it thru. Buyer beware is still true. I also want to explore a cellphone picture to flicker slide show.

I had digital fun with Wordle, displaying an hour long online chat on Des Moines Dropout efforts in a basic "tag cloud". Neither "teacher" or "graduation" appeared; student was the most frequent word.

Signing off for now; hope to add links on this post w/in 24 hours.

Starting a Blog

Starting a blog - a piece of cake - quite easy. This blog is set up on Blogger, part of the Google suite of services. If you have a google account, sign in and set up your blog. If not, simply sign up; it is free, you'll need an e-mail address. Blogger is one of many "blogging engines". Here is a site the compares web-logs. Wikipedia's entry on blogs has an extensive including a list of notable blogs (this one is missing:-)) and a list of blog terms (with short definitions :-)).

A co-worker recently said, "I don't like blogs; they all look different. I can't figure them out." I knew what she meant. Initially, I was lost too. What I missed was that most blogs are personal expressions, creative outlets; of course they look different, people dress different too. We know the colors and terms for different articles of clothing. Blogs are new to many of us, we just need to learn what's in common in a blog. Here are some blogging terms. I'm going to use Blogger examples.

A blog Post is an entry into the blog - narrative, photos, video/audio link or a combination. Most blogs are made up of a series of postings. By far most frequently, only one person posts to a blog. That person owns his/her blog, deciidng how it looks and feels and what and when items are posted. Some folks blog daily; basically an online journal. The Blogger start page has "Blogs of Note" in the lower right corner. One is titled "A Tidings of Magpies" - this blog was started in early 2008 with 308 postings during 2008. As of 3/1/09, a total of 61 postings, right at one a day. You may wish to scroll through some of the "blogs of note" - appears to be about a dozen of them - they may change and I have no ideas how they are selected. If you scroll through some you'll get a taste of the variety of looks that a blog can have.

A blog Comment is also a part of most blogs; readers can comment on the post. The Magpie had a post this morning at 6:20 AM; by 2 PM in the afternoon, 11 comments had been made. Viewers/readers can usually post comments to posts. You may have to be a member to see/view a blog or to make comments. The blog "owner" can set the blog up so that comments are not visible until the owner was reviewed them.

Blogger uses 2 categories of actions to personalize your blog. Settings allow you to set up your blog's comments, to design how archives of past posts will be displayed and much more. Layout lets you modify how the page looks - several templates are provided. If you can write HTML, you can modify/add code to customize your blog look.

Summary - just do it may be good advise for setting up a blog. You can start with the defaults and then modify settings down the road. While you are reading other blogs, note features that you like. Experiment with them in your blog. If you have readers, ask them to comment on what they wished you had. Ask them to give you feedback after you've made a change. Good Luck - be creative.

Cell Phone Etiquette

It's about 7:15 on Saturday morning. Half an hour ago I sent an e-mail on the school e-mail system to some of my peers including my boss and friend (I hope still a friend) Erin. The e-mail was strictly informational and not urgent; something I'd intended to do all week.

Ten minutes later I get an e-mail back from Erin about I must not sleep in. Oh shucks did I do it again? Two weeks ago I sent "mass texts" to friends saying "Happy Valentine's Day" at about 7 AM on a Saturday. The next Monday, Alison (another good (former?) friend said, "I gotta a bone to pick with you. Nice thought, but at 7 on a Saturday! I awake to Happy V-day from you!"

Being a slow learner, I will finally now reflect. What is the etiquette with all this new tech? I have made a poor assumption - generalizing from my own behavior. I plug in my cell out in the kitchen to recharge about 10 every evening. Because I am "polite", I have my cell on low ring and vibrate for calls and vibrate only for texts. My cell does NOT interrupt "everyone in the room". So I consider myself "digitally polite".

Perhaps not so eh? WHEN do I call, when do I text, when do I send e-mails and at some point when do I tweet? (I'm not a Tweeter yet. More later.)

I know on a land line, not to call before 7 AM, unless it is an emergency. Of course, 7 is not firm - it varies by person and by day. Sam's always up by 6 and add an hour on the weekend and 2 hours on New Year's Day.

That was with last century's technology. Our phones (land lines) rang at one level - loud enough to be heard in any room. We seldom shut them off. They were meant to wake us up - if it rang it was (better be) urgent. It was most impolite to call before 7!

What is the new etiquette? I don't call on my cell before before 7 unless urgent. So what about texts and e-mails. Do I need to change my behavior? Alison said she has her phone at bedside. I haven't talked to Erin yet. (I hope she'll talk to me. I did a really dumb thing of immediately e-mailing back "sorry if I awakened you". I suspect it arrive just about the time she was back to sleep. Gene THINK!)

I need to adjust. Almost the only land line calls I get are from solicitors. I am awakened by my land line for wrong numbers; haven't had an emergency call for years thankfully. If someone wanted/needed to wake me, what would they do. Increasingly fewer folk even have my land line; I am totally inaccessible to many from 10 PM to 6 AM.

My work; my adjustments. Do I want to to be inaccessible to many from 10 to 6. What types of incoming messages do I want to awaken me? Do I really need to be interrupted from my important sleep? On the flip side, how do make sure I'm not interrupting others unintentionally. I really do want to be polite; I want to practice digital etiquette.

How can technology help me? I can set my home thermostat to turn down at night by a couple of degrees to save fuel. Can I set my cell to only ring for live incoming calls from 10 to 6? Not sure. I am sure sure that I don't want to be awakened by my 4 AM nuisance e-mails!

As I compose this, I am multi-tasking. Yeah, listening to NPR. Two items of note; I'll try to add links to this or a next blog.

The first a segment with Daniel Schoor, newsman - must be in his eighties - almost a Walter Cronkite. The segment was on Twitter. It was wonderful. They were tweeting during the 10 minute segment. In response to the tweet "Why do you use Twitter?", one response was "I tweet for the same reason that I read, to know that I am not alone". Pretty heady; pretty scary. To almost equate tweeting and reading; I considered being deeply offended. This new techy opportunities are powerful; they provide the ability to connect and create.

As I noted previously, I'm not a tweeter (yet). The NPR Twitter segment further piqued my interest. Mr. Schoor got signed up during the segment. The second segment was on Algebra; a wonderful interview with Scott Devlin - the Math Guy. He said Algebra is important because you can't do a spreadsheet without it. Now that is a guy and a comment I love! Algebra with some relevance! Links to stories to read and/or listen. Signing off for now. Sorry Al; sorry Erin. I am learning.

Researching Blogs - Part 4

Miss Baker's Biology Class is the home page for a HS biology class with numerous links. Extreme Biology is one of those links - a class blog. It won the Edublog 2008 best class blog. The Edublog site provides a wealth of examples of blogs (and wikis and other web 2.0 tools) in education. Since 2004, Edublog has recognized high quality uses of technology in education. In 2008, awards were given in 16 categorizes (not unlike the Oscars which are on tonight, you can view all the nominations too!)

Back to Miss Baker's blog, lots of postings, some/many by students. Many pictures and links; since her classes have a home page also, I don't think the blog is as comprehensive as some. She writes, "Hello! My name is Stacy Baker. I’m an upper (high) school biology teacher at a school in the northeast United States. I started blogging for my students in 2006. During the first year I only used the blog to post class information. In 2007 I decided to turn the blog over to my students and have been thrilled at the results. It has greatly increased student involvement and science literacy in my classroom."

She also has a blog called Using Blogs in Science Education, for educators.

The Number Warrior is - you guessed it - math blog set up on wordpress. My sense is that this blog's primary function is enrichment for the students. Doesn't appear that students comment routinely. A one way blog - getting info out to the kids. Lots of puzzles and games.

The last example of blogging from the SAI training is Teaching the Civil War with Technology. It includes lots of digital resources that a college prof has put together on the Civil War. Developed as part of his dissertation I believe. There is also a Civil War wiki.

Researching Blogs - Part 3

Another Class Blogmeister blog, this one from a 9th grade English class located in Michigan. Called "Exploring Learning and Communication through Writing" , this link opens to an assignment on "Blogging in Education". You can read each students essay/reflection on having blogged for a semester. On the left side column you may notice an assignment on "Myths on the Internet". Open that assignment link to read the studnets description of a myth they found by searching the internet.

Room 9 is a 2nd/3rd grade class blog. This one is a class blog with material from the teacher - not much work from students. Based on a blogspot framework, it appears this blog is usually primarily for dissemination info to the kids. You will notice numerous link to pictures, podcasts and videos. This is an "info out" approach to use; no apparent use of student postings on this one.

Researching Blogs - Part 2

I can't believe it has been 2 weeks since I posted!!! Not what I planned. My goal is to post at least 3 times a week. No excuses - not yet a habit.

On to Blogs! Lauryn's blog is called "Lauryn rocks"; she is a 3rd grader. Her class "Room 12" has a blog also; both are set up on a blog service/product call Class Blogmeinster. I'm intrigued by how these blogs are interlinked. It appears a teacher can set up a class blog and blogs for each student. I can see the teacher's posted assignments and the Lauryn's responses. I can also view other students responses. I can see student comments on Lauryn's posts. Most touching was a comment from a grandparent. I sensed the grandparent lived in a different area, but could still see the granddaughter's work.

Seeing the work and commenting on the work; "seeing thoughts/thinking" and seeing changes in the students ability to express themself. So, so much better than parents (or grandparents) just seeing the "grades", never seeing the work that generated the grade. No wonder kids confuse learning and grades! What we need is kids joyfully producing and creating, not earning grades. Blogs seem to represent a wonderway for folks to see student work! Question: Who can see Lauryn's blog? Obviously I could; cna anyone in the world look at Lauryn's work? I'm thinking about safety and internet "overexposure".

Jamin is a 6th grader; she has been blogging for 3 years also on Class Blogmeister. Here is her 2/13/09 blog post "on blogging". So far 74 hits on her post - no comments yet online. I decided to send a comment. I sent a short supportive note; in posting the comment I learned that the teacher will review comment and let it be posted (I assume if it was appropriate.) You can sense Jasmin's excitement in blogging. She has posted about 50 items over almost 2 years. It appears she started in April 2007. Scanning a few of her posts, I could see real growth in her abilty to express herself. You'll note some grammer issues (right instead of write for example). I sense the teacher must be secure; some teachers wouldn't "allow" public view of such errors - it might a reflection on the teacher, not the current level of Jasmin's writing....... Her is her post.

BLOGGING
	I Just Like Blogging This is my third year of blogging and I just love it. My favorite thing about blogging is that I always get to see how many people all over the word read my blog post in one day. I mean it is just so amazing. I also love just being able to right my own expressions and in my own words. One of the other things I like about blogging is that you get to talk with people all over the word. Talking To Kids All Over The World Talking to kids and teachers all over the word is the best. Why you ask. Well lets just say that when you talk to kids all over the word you are able to chat with them and tell them all about your cutler and they can tell you about theirs. You also could ask them what time it is down or up there and see what the different is from here to there. How Does It Help You Blogging is another way to teach you how to read and to spell. One way that it helps you learn to read is because when you check it you read fluently. Another way that you learn to spell is that you see your mistake and you pronounce the word

Researching Blogs - Part 1

One of my commitments is to study the use of blogs in education - and then to use the blog as a vehicle for recording and sharing what I find/learn. This was prompted in part by Scott McLeod's work here in Iowa with SAI. He linked about 8 blogs from education into his workshop wiki.

I've become convinced that I have been using the web like a TV - surfing it and being stimulated. I remember some of it. forget a lot of it and don't assimilate much of it. I believe by writing (taking notes) and describing items that I explore, I will make more connections and links. I want to move beyond being amazed by the capabilities of Web2.0 to using it it enable and enhance my learning.

On to Blogs - I'm going to jump around a little. McLeod's "example 5" is Mr Mundorf's Class. He teaches 5th grade on Macro Island (Florida?). It is set up on edublogs. This blog's layout is 2 column - a main center column and the right "skinny" column. The right column is filled with enhanced features of the blog and add in widgets. If we go to the bottom - scroll down - we find "previous entries". I "clicked" back about 5 times and found the first entry - September 2006. It is easy to see the evolution of the Blog. The early posts were short and primarily narrative, sometimes with links. Overtime posts become much more colorful (pictures, embedded videos, etc.). His first posts were frequently "You Decide" - dilemmas for kids to write about. Yes you can read the student's comments.

Scroll down the right column just below the personalized clock (face is a cross-section of an ornage - most appropriate eh?) - is a blog roll - about 20 blog links are listed. It appears that these links are both ones students might use and some that seem to be more for the teacher (or teacher readers of the blog) One that caught my eye was "Speaking of History....", this blog is hosted on blogspot. This 8th grade American History teacher was Teacher of the year in Missouri in the 07-08. The blog has 250 to 300 posts since 2005. He uses lots of podcasts; his last post included Podcast #175. Lots of blog links here too. One of the widgets in the right column is realtime veiwers - a vendor called FJ FEEDJIT lets you see "who" has recently looked at the blog and here they accessed it from (I got to it from Mr. Mundorf's blog). This blog has perhaps 40 to 50 blogs listed. This blog has fewer commnets compared to the Mr Mundorf's. Perhaps students are writing about the material in their own blogs. Lots of audio and video links in this one.

Thoughts: Many resources and links - items for students to use. Some examples of how students are using the material. Can see maturity over time of the blogs - how to use plus widgets and blog capabilities I assume. This is just a start on blogs. More later.

Friday, January 30th

The Des Moines Register has been doing a series on Education. I'm watching the Iowa Journal on IPTV. Fandel the head researcher for the DMR and Jeffrey the head of Iowa DOE are discussing findings and issues. DMR visited Canada and Finland;links to the Regisiter World Class Schools series are worth exploring. Links to stories, editorials and panel discussions; even a few videos/ You may wish to follow Fandel's blog on this subject. The Iowa Core also has a web site.

What does Iowa need? High expectations for all students. Business support for better education. Jeffrey seems to be using this program to sell the Core Curriculum. Jeffrey is looking to get some of the Core "taught" in extracurricular activities. Alberta seems to be like Iowa - lots of extra activities. In Finland, few extracurricular activities. Finland - rigor very early in school. Clarity of expected results; freedom for teachers on the "how".

Technology enables individualization; learning plan also is (should) very individualized. In Finland, only 10% of applicants get into Education - UNI accepts about 85% of applicants. Jeffrey notes that Iowa will be retiring quite a few teachers, especially in some shortage areas (eg physics). Through this IPTV link you can access the broadcast.

Gone Too Long

Been over a year since I've posted anything on this blog. Tonight my meanderings are re: One Laptop per Child (OLPC) - I loaned my more recent one to a co-teacher (Scott S. @ CC) yesterday. I hope he and his kids can make use of it. I'm excited about the power of these little machines to connect kids to the world and to each other.

But these little machines are foreign to me - like a foreign language . Actual language is Linux - "Sugar" I believe. I'm too much of a PCer and a 2nd gen immigrant. Can get around on MS 97, XP and now learning Vista. I've bought 4 OLPC laptops - 2 donated and 2 now loaned out to folks with more expertise than me. My first one went to kid in Osky Iowa as a HS grad present. He is tech savvy bright kid who was next door neighbor's to my folks. The last one I bought as a result of Scott McLeod demonstrating one at a workshop - I ordered one during the workshop on the first day of the 2 for 1 donate one/get one special in mid November 2008.

Some OLPC links seem to be in order. Try OLPC.org for the organization's home page; watch out - it is basically 4 large icons. For OLPC pictures and videos, this site will help. Wikipedia's OLPC page includes a number of links and external resources. OLPC is the brainchild of an interesting guy from MIT named Negroponte. Check out this wiki page on him; it includes some great interviews and other links on him.